Silver Shadows fr-13

by Elaine Cunnighham

  The half-elf groaned and tried to sit up. Strong and gentle hands pressed her back down. "Not yet," Foxfire told her. "You drained your moonblade's magic for Hawkwing*s sake, and for us all. Much strength was taken from you, as well."

  Hawkwing. Memory returned in a vivid, horrible rush. Arilyn turned her head away, unwilling to let her elven friend witness the grief and guilt the elf maid's death brought her. Perhaps, if she had not drained her own strength to call forth the elfshadow entities, she could have made her way to Hawkwing's side in time to save her.

  "You missed the best part of the fight," announced Ferret's voice, wild and exultant still from the excitement of battle. "Never have I seen such warriors!

  Nine

  champions on a field at once! Who could stand against such a force, and who beneath the stars would not follow them? It was a marvel I will long remember."

  "The shadow warriors returned to the sword at battle's end," Foxfire added. "All but one-the tall gold-elf wizard who carried you here. He would not return unless he had your direct command, or, at least, reasonable assurance that you were safe. Although in the case of that one, I do not know what might be considered reasonable," he added in a wry tone.

  Arilyn's lips twitched in an involuntary smile. She knew at once the true identity of the wizard of whom Foxfire spoke. In a few terse words, the wild elf had sketched a remarkably accurate picture of the Danilo she knew: a stubborn, exasperating soul who would have his way no matter what and who usually took center stage while doing so. On the other hand, he was also perhaps the most caring, intuitive, and gifted human she'd ever met. Of course his shadow-spirit could recognize the problems inherent in showing these elves his true face, and certainly he was skilled enough in the magical arts to cast such an illusion over himself. Despite all, Arilyn could not help but be amused by the image of Danilo as a gold-elf wizard. That was a role he would certainly play to the balcony seats! The gold elves were widely considered to be the most beautiful and regal of the People. Knowing Dan as she did, Arilyn could guess that his shadow took on this guise with typical flamboyant elan.

  The warmth these thoughts brought her was rapidly chased away by the chilling memory of what Dan's shadow meant, and the realities of the battle they had fought. Danilo's spirit had been condemned to serve the moonblade. And Hawkwing was dead.

  "The gold wizard left you a message," Ferret said, cutting into Arilyn's grim thoughts. "He bid you remember the legend lore spell, which you heard when first you and he sought the answers to your moonblade's magic."

  The elf woman began to recite words that Arilyn only dimly remembered, words that the archmage Khelben Arunsun himself had coaxed from the moonblade more than two years before:

  "Call forth through stone, Call forth from steel. Command the mirror of myself, But ware the spirit housed within The shadow of the elf

  "He said to tell you that you cannot call the shadow warriors again without great risk to yourself," Ferret continued. "It is a shame. With them to lead, the Talltrees clan could face nearly any foe!"

  "Never beared tell afore that elven folk feared to go into battle," taunted a gruff, vaguely familiar voice. "You couldn't be gittin' soft. Yer too ding-blasted scrawny fer that!"

  After a moment's shock, Arilyn placed the deep tones with a face-that of a young dwarf with a short, dun-colored beard and an unusual zest for both rowdiness and romance. Yet how could this be? When last she'd seen him, the dwarf was reveling in the luxuries afforded by the Foaming Sands, and was washing away the memories of ten years of servitude with as much warm, bubbling water and half-clad women as his coins would buy him.

  "Not Jill?" Arilyn whispered. She struggled to sit, to open her eyes, but could not yet do either.

  The same," the dwarf said gruffly. "Hold still, now. Yer wrigglin' around like a worm on a hook, and with no fish to show fer yer efforts. Rest. That were some fight, though sorry to say oP Kendel and I missed the best of it."

  "Kendel Leafbower," supplied a soft, melodious elven voice. "At your service, Lady of the Moonblade."

  Arilyn recognized the moon-elven clan name. The Leafbowers were renowned as travelers and fighters.

  Such an elf was an unlikely companion for the dwarf. "How did you come to be here, Jill?" she murmured.

  "Well now, that's a story," the dwarf admitted in a conversational tone. "Leave it to say that Kendel 'n me borrowed somebody's hired sword and persuaded him to head fer home. This is where he brung us-a bit too late for the fight, like I said, but soon enough fer him to die with people he knew. More'n he had comin' to him, by my way of thinkin',

  "Kendel and you," she repeated, somewhat bemused by the idea of a dwarf and a moon-elf warrior on such friendly terms.

  "Yep. You might say him and me is tighter*n ticks," Jill agreed happily, "though no one what beared us talkin' on the way east mighta guessed it. Argued like brothers, we did, about which of us would git to kill the hired sword and when he'd git to do it. Never meant a word of it. But fun it were!" he concluded gleefully.

  "I see the gold-elf wizard spoke truth," Ferret broke in coldly. "He said you knew this dwarf. You've strange allies, Arilyn Moonblade."

  "You're not fer knowing the half of it, elf woman," the dwarf retorted. "I been in more fights than you've had tumbles, an' I thought I seen it all. But never once have I seen an elf ghost come to the aid of the living! Are you thinking that the ghost of that liddle blue-haired elf woman follered you from the treasure room?" he asked Arilyn. "Morodin's Beard, ifn you could put some starch in that one, she'd be worth fighting!"

  Yes, Arilyn admitted silently. That was precisely what she must do. Perhaps she could not call forth the elf-shadow warriors again, but she could restore to the forest elves a hero they knew, one they would willingly follow. She would have to, as Jill so aptly phrased it, "put some starch" back into the elven battle leader Zoastria. It was time to reunite the elfshadow with the slumbering form of her ancestor.

  But first, she had to regain her own "starch."

  Arilyn willed her swirling thoughts to find focus. She noted that her cheek was pillowed on something deep and fragrant, like moist velvet. Moss. The air was cool here and heavy with magic she had not been able to sense a fortnight ago. These things could mean only that they were back in the forest.

  "Did you bring her home?" she whispered, thinking of the fallen Hawkwing. In her time in Tethir, Arilyn had come to realize that the ties between the elves and then-forest went too deep for death to sever. The green elves returned to the forest in ways that could not be understood or explained, and she needed to know that Hawkwing would find rest beneath the trees.

  A long, heavy silence answered her question. "When your strength faltered, so did the shadow warriors," Foxfire said at last. "More men came from the fortress, and we were forced to flee. A choice had to be made between the living and the dead. Do not grieve for Hawkwing: she is free."

  But she was not.

  The spirit of the elven girl wandered the battlefield. She was dazed and angry and confused, though the battle was long over. The call of Arvandor was sweet and strong; still more compelling were the rhythms of the forest, heard and felt and understood as never before.

  Yet the child could respond to neither. She had been torn from life too soon, and though her existence had not often been easy or happy, she was not yet reconciled to leaving it behind.

  Thus it was that the priest of Loviatar had an easy time finding the elf maid's wandering spirit. An unseen hand reached out, seized the girl, and pulled her into a shadowy gray realm.

  Hawkwing's untamed spirit rebelled against this captivity, but these were fetters that even a will as strong K as hers could not break. The entity that imprisoned her was powerful but twisted; a cold, salacious soul that

  reveled in the wounds of the girl's discarded body and the frantic terror of her captive spirit. The ugly soul of this being-a human, a priest of some sort-was made all the more terrible for the impenetrable coating of smug pie
ty that armored it.

  "You must answer me what I ask you," his voice demanded, speaking in a language Hawkwing had never before heard but found that she could understand. "Behold this man's livid scar. Who is the elf whose mark this is?"

  Hawkwing had no intention of responding, but the priest took the answer from her mind.

  "Foxfire, an Elmanesse of the Talltrees clan," the priest's voice said aloud. "Where does this elf reside?"

  Again the elven child refused. But it mattered not. The secrets of the hidden stronghold poured from her. She could no more stop them than she could command the wind or rain.

  And so it went, for as long as the gray-souled priest desired to contain and compel her spirit. At last he was done with her. Hawkwing tore free and flung herself away from the inquisitor's casual cruelty. Nothing the elven girl had endured had marked or bruised her as deeply as this captivity of her essence and the plundering of her tribe's secrets. But though she was frantic and half mad, she set a true course for the elven woods and home.

  There she had found solace before; in time, perhaps, it would come to her again.

  Finding an agent of the Knights of the Shield was not BO difficult a thing to do, provided one knew how and where to look. Hasheth suspected he could learn a great deal of information in the clandestine shop of one of Zazesspur's coin brokers.

  A very profitable and unofficial market in Tethyr dealt in the trading of the country's various coins. There were many types of gold pieces used throughout the land. Many of the larger cities and even some of the more powerful guilds or noblemen minted their own coins. The value of these rose and fell with the changing tides of fortune. Predicting how a given currency might fare, and trading coins in speculation of these changes, was a thriving business in ethyr.

  Most merchants and makers of policy argued that there was no real difference in these currencies. The cities with more valuable currencies tended to pay higher wages and charge higher prices that those whose coins enjoyed a lesser reputation. In the end, they reasoned, the value of these coins in barter for goods and services was about the same throughout Tethyr and its neighboring lands. This was true enough, as far as it went, but this argument ignored a simple and rather obvious fact that occurred to remarkably few of Tethir's coin brokers.

  Many of these coins, though quite different in value and purchasing power, contained about the same amount of gold.

  Thus it was that a bag of a hundred Zazesspurian gulders, while nearly twice the value of a bag holding an equal number of the zoth minted in Saradush, weighed almost the same. There were in Zazesspur two, perhaps three brokers who would buy up the lesser coins, then melt and recast them as more valuable currency. The services of these enterprising souls also came in handy when one had other reasons for changing the shape of one's wealth. Prime among these were the personal coins, either stolen or given in payment, that were extremely difficult to pass in common trade. At times, possession of such a coin could be deadly.

  The Knights of the Shield often ordered gold coins to be placed on the eyelids of those slain by their agents. So difficult was it to spend these coins that beggars and pickpockets would often pass such a corpse and leave the treasure untouched, rather than risk the Knights' retribution. There were, however, some people who hoarded these coins and used them in a specialized system of barter. To an assassin or a hired sword, a cache of Knights' coins was a mark of prestige that brought in other lucrative assignments. Such a coin could also be redeemed for favors or information that far surpassed the value of the gold it contained. And from time to time, assassins incurred expenses-such as the need for a new identity or a swift departure to a distant port-that demanded that such coins be melted down and made into more widely accepted currency.

  During his time in the assassins* guildhouse, Hasheth

  had learned the name of a woman who provided such services. He went to her now, riding one of his lesser steeds so as not to attract undue attention in the trades quarter of the city.

  The establishment he sought, unaccountably named? the Smiling Smithy, was the sort of shabby place that |. replaced cast-off horseshoes and reattached the broken j; prongs of pitchforks. The sole proprietor and craftsperson I; did not exactly meet the expectations suggested by the | sign outside her shop. Melissa Miningshaft was a short, ':'• squat woman singularly lacking in either physical beauty or social graces. She was half-dwarven, or per-| haps a quarter-breed, yet she was nearly as stout and;. heavily muscled as any full-blooded dwarven smith.!… Her features brought to mind a dried apple, her graying brown hair was scraped back into a tight bun, and to; call the lumpy, ample form that strained the seams of f her brown linsey gown "shapeless" would be erring on the side of compassion.

  At the moment, the smithy's thick and sculpted arms were bared to the elbows and glowing red from the warmth of the forge and from the effort of pumping the bellows which fanned and coaxed the blazing fire.

  Melissa glanced up when Hasheth entered, scanned him quickly from head to foot, and then harumphed.

  "I would like to trade some coin," he said, placing a leather bag on a stout trestle table that held some of her tongs and hammers.

  "Fer what?" she demanded gruffly. "Yer horse throw a shoe?"

  Hasheth had expected this response. Melissa was extremely particular about those to whom she sold her finer skills. The dwarf woman was capable of making shrewd, clandestine deals and forging incredibly accurate counterfeit coin molds, but if this were to become widely known, she'd be forced to spend too much time and effort guarding the wealth hidden in the walls and cellars of her humble shop and home.

  But Hasheth had credentials of a sort. He pulled his sand-hue sash from its hiding place in his sleeve and placed it beside the bag of coins.

  "I wish to trade standard Amn danters for other coins," he said. "And nothing so common as gulders or moleans. I will pay twice the trade weight for any coin you possess that bears the mark of the Knights of the Shield."

  Melissa let loose a burst of sardonic laughter in much the same way that an irascible dragon might blow forth a puff of smoke. "Yer actually looking for the Knights? Poor sod! I give you three days afore they come looking for you."

  Actually, Hasheth was rather hoping to make contact before nightfall. "Have you any such coin?"

  "A couple," she admitted, squinting at the young man as she weighed and measured the worth of his personal metal. "But that'll cost you four times trade weight."

  "I said two; that is more than fair."

  "Fair? That ring on yer little finger's worth more Amn danters than you could stuff in yonder coin bag, and me living here in this sorry excuse for a shack. You call that fair? Three times trade weight."

  "Two and a half."

  "Done," she said and spat into the fire. Hasheth was not certain whether this gesture was meant to punctuate the closure of their deal or to show contempt, but he was willing to let it pass.

  Melissa pushed past him and disappeared into a back room. She returned promptly and tossed two large gold coins on the table. "Yer in luck. I was gonna melt these -; down for moleans come morning." ‹ Hasheth picked up the first coin and examined the markings. It was definitely a Knight's coin, but he could not place it to any particular individual. The second coin yielded a bit more information.

  "These will do. You'll find slightly more than two and a half times the trade weight in that bag." Ј, The coin broker dumped Hasheth's danters onto the $- table and counted them twice, then nodded. "Good to do | business with you, boy, but truth be told, I don't expect |; to again. Baby assassin or no, you might as well stuff a |.fireball in yer pants as travel with them coins in yer Hj pockets. You won't be coming back." J "I thank you for your concern," he said coldly. Til be ^certain to mention you, should anyone give me trouble H about these coins."

  IP Melissa snorted, for the young man's threatening vj' retort was no more than bluster, and they both knew it. 4 The smithy had clients who held an interest in protect-|ing her
privacy. Anyone who attempted to betray her jЈ was likely to become a notch on an assassin's blade, or gto be discovered with large gold coins, very much like fjftie ones Hasheth had slipped into his bag, weighing ypown his eyelids.

  Hasheth left the smithy, reclaimed his horse, and set Joff at a brisk pace for the stables. He would change to a lore suitable mount, and then he would pay a visit to |flie gentleman whose coin he had purchased.

  But first, he had to devise some pretense. It would be |feurly easy, as Lord Hhune's apprentice, to be granted

  The Harpers

  an audience. But first, Hasheth wanted to figure out some way to insinuate himself into the society of the Knights, something that would buy him membership into this exclusive and powerful group.

  The Harpers were all fine and well, and they seemed to come up with coin when they required it, but from what Hasheth had observed, most of their agents were not concerned with amassing personal wealth or power. All told, the Knights of the Shield was a society far more suited to his ambitions. Hasheth was determined to find a way in, and he would count the cost-whatever it might be a bargain.

  Eighteen

  Nearly two days passed. The forest elves seemed quietly impressed with Kendel Leafbower, for the moon elf had picked up considerable skill at woods lore during his four centuries of life. He walked nearly as silently as a forest elf, and he hunted game for the small group while the others stayed at their camp to guard their moon-elven battle leader.

  Jill spent much of the time teasing Ferret, much to the amusement of Arilyn and Foxfire. It quickly became apparent to everyone but Ferret that the dwarf was flirting outrageously with her. As she watched Jill's avid pursuit of the elf woman, Arilyn was reminded of a question that often occurred to her when she saw a form dog chasing a horse-drawn cart: what would he do iЈ by chance, he succeeded in catching it?