Free The Shards by Gary Alan Wassner

pooled and gathered everywhere, manipulated and directed by the prodigious skills of the elves. It cascaded down from the heights above and ran through the streets of Crispen channeled by elaborately engineered canals, cleansing and revivifying the city continuously, in addition to providing the people with an endless source of fresh and pure water for all their needs. The rushing sound could be heard everywhere in the city, and for the elves, it was one of the most comforting ones they could hope to hear.
    Bristar stood beside Maringar, flanked by the elite of his troops; fifty of the best hunters and fighters in Crispen. The two leaders were a study in contrasts! With his long white beard, sharp features and blue eyes, the Elfin King was the exact opposite of his ally, yet they felt an immediate kinship under these trying circumstances, or perhaps due to them. The pure waters of Crispen were heating up alarmingly of late, and the efforts of the elves to cool them had been rebuffed completely so far. Though the liquid flow was still fresh and pure, it had risen many degrees in temperature, and that rise was accelerating!
    Maringar flipped his braids behind his shoulders, first the right one and then the left one, in a smooth, natural motion, where they finally hung almost to his thick waist, weighed down by silver beads woven throughout. His eyes were bright, though dark as night, and they sparkled beneath heavy brows of dense, black hair. He sniffed the air with his broad nose, which invoked an image of an animal carefully hunting its prey in Bristar’s mind, and that image was strangely comforting. Though young, Maringar exuded an attitude of confidence and purpose that rippled through the air and infected all of those who stood near him.
    “We should not linger too long here. The wind carries upon its wings the scent of evil,” Maringar said.
    “Is it the wind alone my son that brings the Dark Lord to our gates?” Bristar replied rhetorically. “I have felt his presence in our water for a few months now. And in the caverns as well. There is little in Crispen he has not touched,” he scowled.
    “The hearts of your people remain pure, my Lord,” Maringar said. “I sense that it will take much more than this to infect them.”
    “You sense well, young man. And I thank you for the observation. The people of Crispen are a seasoned lot. We have not lived here for a thousand tiels without challenges. But the waters of Silandre have always been a source of renewal for us. Water is like life itself. It has its identity which it maintains over time, yet it is never the same from moment to moment. It is within time, not outside of it, as are we.”
    “Does anything physical remain the same from instant to instant?” Maringar asked in his deep, resonant voice.
    “I suppose not,” Bristar answered, shaking his head. “Only good and evil never change. They manifest themselves in everything that lives, and for them, our world has stability.”
    “Colton’s evil brings stability?” Maringar asked, astounded by the thought.
    “Caeltin’s evil is outside of the world we know. He manipulates what exists to further his desires. His evil brings only death and destruction, as he wishes. He reanimates the evil out of the past and he generates new horrors from the loose threads that society sloughs off,” Bristar said, and a slight shiver coursed through his body. “It was a metaphorical stability that I was referring to,” he continued after a moment’s silence. “Good and evil are ideas, extremes, opposites perhaps. Even though we seem to feel their presence in things, the things themselves are neutral. Warm water may be a boon to a traveler stranded in the frozen north, though it is a fearful threat to us when we do not expect it. Death is death, yet when it is the enemy lying upon the cold earth with his blood spilled, we rejoice.”
    “Intent determines the action, and a thing that is used for evil purpose is not