by Anne Logston
“Thank the gods you’re safe,” Rivkah said gratefully. “We searched the city for days, and as far into the forest as we dared to go. Every time we found a female elf’s body I was afraid—” Her voice trailed off as Chyrie turned those unearthly eyes on her.
Rowan stood and slowly approached, reaching toward Chyrie. Chyrie danced back as an animal might shy from a hunter, and Rowan stopped.
“Then Jeena was right,” Rowan whispered. “Oh, little one, have you gone so far away that you cannot come back to us?”
Chyrie gazed at her impassively for a moment; then unexpectedly she grinned, a fleeting ray of sunshine that passed across her face and was gone as suddenly as it had come. She turned back to the bush she had emerged from, then turned again, two bundles in her arms, and the chirrit, Weeka, perched on her shoulder. She placed one of the bundles in Rowan’s arms and the other in Rivkah’s, folding back the protective flap of leather to reveal the small, staring faces of her children.
“Oh, Chyrie, she’s beautiful,” Rivkah exclaimed, letting the baby clasp one sun-browned finger. “And so tiny. What lovely eyes she has.”
Rowan stared at the infant on her lap, and slowly unwrapped the leather from around him, lifting the baby high. He crowed with delight, reaching for the shiny beads in Rowan’s hair.
“I see,” Rowan said slowly. She lowered the baby back to her lap, then shifted him in her arms so she could hold him close, rubbing her cheek on the thick black hair.
“I see,” she said again. She looked up at Chyrie and smiled. “He is beautiful, Chyrie. And perfect. His eyes are much like yours, are they not?”
“But his ears,” Sharl protested. “Aren’t all elves—” He fell silent. “Oh,” he said, at last. “I see.”
Chyrie squatted beside Rivkah, lifting the chirrit from her shoulder and holding it out. Weeka chattered protestingly and ran back up Chyrie’s arm to resume its place on the elf’s shoulder.
“I think she should stay with you.” Rivkah smiled. “Loren would have wanted you to take care of her, and she seems very happy.” She held the baby out carefully. “Do you want her back now?”
Chyrie shook her head, and Rivkah was surprised to see that the amber eyes were very full. Chyrie reached out and touched her daughter’s cheek gently, then backed away. She turned to Rowan, took the older elf’s hand, and laid it on the baby boy, caressing the infant’s face tenderly before she backed away.
“Valann,” Chyrie said hoarsely.
Rowan gazed at the baby for a long moment, then nodded slowly and met Chyrie’s eyes.
“Of course,” she said. “He will be the son my womb never bore, to me and to my people.”
“Oh, no,” Rivkah protested. “Chyrie, you can’t mean—I couldn’t possibly—”
Chyrie touched Rivkah’s lips gently, silencing her. Another quicksilver smile flitted over Chyrie’s face, and she folded the baby’s fist again around Rivkah’s finger.
“All right,” Rivkah said quietly, tears in her own eyes. “I’ll love her as if she were my own daughter, Chyrie. I swear it.”
“When Rivkah bears my heir, they’ll be betrothed,” Sharl promised. “If Rivkah and I aren’t the ones to build this city in peace with the elves, your child and mine will be.”
To Sharl’s amazement, Chyrie chuckled, a hoarse little laugh, that said as plainly as words, “Any daughter of mine will have something of her own to say on that matter.”
“Chyrie?” Rivkah said softly. “What’s her name?”
Chyrie backed to the edge of the clearing, then gave Rivkah one last grin.
“Ria,” she said. Then she was gone, as silently as she had come.
“Ria,” Rivkah repeated, her lips trembling. She looked down and touched the tiny brown cheek as Chyrie had done. “Thank you, Chyrie. Doria would have been proud.”
Rowan gazed for a long time into the darkness where Chyrie had disappeared, then turned back to Sharl.
“Did you return here because of the geas?” she asked.
Sharl grinned that engaging sideways grin.
“The geas would have made me come back,” he said. “But this time I came because I wanted to.”
Rowan nuzzled little Valann’s dark hair.
“And you meant what you said?” she asked. “You still intend to build your city and to make peace with the forest?”
“I will do it,” Sharl said firmly. “It will take time and money and a great deal of work, but it will be. And if I am not the one to do it”—he glanced at Rivkah, holding Ria a little awkwardly over the bulge of her own belly—“they will be.”
“Then I will continue to try to bring the clans together,” Rowan said softly. “If you will not surrender the dream, how can I?” She shook her head. “I release you from the geas I laid upon you.”
Sharl raised both eyebrows.
“I could demand many things of you,” Rowan said in answer to his unasked question. “But you give me hope, and your son and Chyrie’s daughter to fulfill that hope. What more than that could I ask?” She patted the baby’s back. “And when you send your children to the forest, Sharl of Allanmere, this child and others will be waiting to greet them in friendship. Go and build your dream, and we will mend, our lands and our spirits. One day it will be as we both wish.”
“Thank you.” Sharl stood, then helped Rivkah up from the log on which she was sitting. “I will wait for that day as eagerly as you do.”
Chyrie watched the man and woman ride slowly back south, the woman cradling the baby as tenderly as if it were made of spun spider-silk. When they were out of sight, she mounted the doe waiting beside her and returned to the temporary den she had woven in the branches of a willow tree leaning over a small creek. Inside the nest, she pulled off her tunic and trousers and carefully fed the tiny fire in the small clay firepot until the shelter was warmly lit.
She reached into the pack beside her and pulled out several small clay pots, pulling out the stoppers to glance critically at the colors inside—bright shades for adding flowers, berries, butterflies. Then she shook her head, smiled, and reached for the green and brown pigments and the packet of needles, then contemplated the place on her hip where the two vines came closest together.
Working slowly but skillfully, she began to make the two vines one.
About the Author
Anne Logston was born February 15, 1962 in Indianapolis, Indiana and grew up there and in the country in southern Indiana. She started to write fiction as soon as she could put intelligible words on paper. She quickly learned to type so she could put intelligible and LEGIBLE words on paper. Anne graduated from the University of Indianapolis in 1984 with an Associate’s degree in computer sciences, for which she had no talent, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, for which she had no practical use.
After college, Anne spent six years masquerading by day as a bad-tempered but sane legal secretary, then coming home at night to assume her secret identity as a bad-tempered and mildly demented writer. After significant bootsole-to-buttocks encouragement from her best friend, Mary Bischoff, she reluctantly sent off her first manuscript and was blessed with a remarkably short search for a publisher. Her first novel, Shadow, saw print in 1991, and two years later she abandoned my “normal” life and descended completely into fantasy.
Anne has a remarkably patient husband, Paul, who supplies the sanity in their marriage. Together they are owned by three cats, two dogs, and one snake. In her infrequent leisure time, she likes to grow and/or cook strange and spicy things, and is an avid collector of anything about vampires.
Table of Contents
Title page
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
&nb
sp; Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
