by Lisa Smedman
The carnivorous vine would be the elves’ ally in the ambush that was to come. When the soldiers marching in front of the caravan trod upon it, the hawk-swift vine would lash them to the spot, making them perfect targets for elven arrows. The humans would then have a choice. They could either throw down their weapons and allow their caravan to be inspected for evidence that it was carrying the blight, or they could be slaughtered to the last man.
As he waited for the caravan to reach the ambush point, Leifander savored the warm caress of the morning sun. Tired from the night’s flight through the forest, he let his eyes close. He listened to the rustle of the leaves around him and the creaking of trees in the wind, and felt the flutter against his forehead of the feathers twined into his bangs: the feathers of his totem animal, the crow, which allowed him to work his magic. Something tickled the back of his bare foot—a spider. Without conscious thought he adjusted his stance as the branch swayed in the warm wind from the south.
Eyes closed, he could almost convince himself that the forest was as it had always been. Instead of the smells of growing leaves, ripening acorns and sun-warmed moss, though, his nose caught an acrid odor, like that of seared grass. It was not the smoky-sweet smell of ash, but something harsher, closer to the stench of sulfuric mud.
Opening his eyes, he fingered one of the leaves on the branch above. It should have been two handspans wide, with delicately scalloped edges, a rich, dark green. Instead it was yellowed and crumpled, spotted with dark gray patches that tore like wet paper and left a stinging, oily film on Leifander’s fingers.
Wiping his hand clean on his leather breeches, Leifander shifted his attention to the trunk. It too was spotted, its bark shriveled and splitting open. The moss that clung to it was as dry and dead as the whiskers on a corpse. Like so many of the trees in the Vale of Lost Voices, this oak was dying. It seemed strange to see it bathed in morning sunlight, with a clear blue sky above. Surely the Leaflord should have been weeping at the sight.
As recently as two months before—the month of Mirtul—trees and underbrush had crowded Rauthauvyr’s Road on either side. With the month of Flamerule only a few days old, most of the trees had lost their leaves. It was less than three tendays before Midsummer, and the bushes below should have been heavy with berries, but they looked instead like winter-blasted sticks. The ferns that had dotted the road were a shriveled, gray mush beside the wagon ruts.
Leifander shaded his eyes and intently scanned the road. The wagons had yet to come into sight. They were hidden not only by a bend in the road but also by the morning mist, which instead of burning off under the rising sun seemed to be thickening below.
A fluttering of wings announced the arrival of a thrush. Leifander glanced up at it, then ignored it, but the bird seemed intent upon catching his attention. It flew straight at him, beating its wings in his face and plucking at his hair with its feet. Leifander tried to wave it away, but the bird was insistent.
“What?” he asked in exasperation, tearing his eyes away from the road.
As the bird settled on the branch above Leifander, a chorus of excited cheeping revealed the location of a hidden nest. Two downy heads thrust out of a tangle of twigs and grass, beaks open wide. Born and reared in this ruined wood, the nestlings were scrawny, and they chirped with a ravenous insistence.
“Ah,” he said to the mother bird, understanding at last. “Your children are hungry. Perhaps I can help.”
After a moment’s search, he located the spider that had tickled his foot and killed it with a quick squeeze of his fingers. Placing it delicately between his lips, he leaned toward the nest. He let one of the nestlings pluck a portion of the spider from his lips, then repeated the process with the second bird.
The mother thrush seemed unsatisfied, however. She continued to flutter around Leifander’s head a moment more, as if recognizing in him a crow that might rob her nest of its young. With an indignant flick of her tail, she flew away.
Leifander resumed his survey of the road below. The caravan had not yet appeared, but it would not be long now. He needed to …
Leifander felt the scratch of tiny claws against his fingers. Looking down, he saw that the larger of the two nestlings had clambered out of the nest and was climbing onto his hand. It perched there, flapping its wings for balance. It seemed poised to burst into flight at any moment.
“Are you ready to leave the nest, little one?” Leifander asked it in a soft voice as he lifted it to eye level. “What is so important, that you must be about it at once?”
The nestling tilted its head, regarding Leifander with glossy black eyes. Wind rustled through the trees, fluttering what leaves remained. The shifting branches dappled the bird with flashes of sunlight and shadow, causing the nestling’s feathers to change from amber-brown to black-brown and back again in rapid succession. For several heartbeats, Leifander held his breath, convinced that something much greater than the nestling was regarding him through its eyes. Then the breeze stilled and the feathers, pooled in leaf-shade, returned to a solid, dull brown.
Chuckling at his own conceit—surely the Winged Mother had better things to do than look down upon one of her fledgling priests—Leifander bobbed his hand up and down. The nestling responded with a flutter of wings.
“Go on then—try out those wings of yours,” he said, casting the young bird into the air.
He winced as the bird faltered, remembering his own first flight, not so very long ago. Given his youth, he was fortunate to already be an accomplished skinwalker—most elves did not master it until they had reached their first half-century and were well into adolescence. Leifander, however, had matured more quickly than his peers and had been rewarded when Doriantha had chosen him as a scout for this patrol.
Watching the nestling, Leifander smiled as it at last found its wings, flapping its way back up from a plunge that had carried it nearly to the ground. Seeking a clear space in which to fly, the bird winged its way along the road.
Returning to his survey of the road to the south, Leifander saw that the human caravan had drawn into sight. He cawed once to alert those below to its progress, then sought out the nestling again, enjoying its first flight.
The bird swooped low over the ground—too low—and a section of the buried choke creeper lashed out from under the soil. Beating its wings furiously, the nestling rose into the air, barely avoiding the vine’s leafy grip. As the bird fluttered gamely on up the road, toward a thicker patch of morning mist, the choke creeper followed it, uncoiling from the soil like an awakening snake.
Leifander cursed silently. Much of the choke creeper now lay visible on the road, twining sinuously as it quested for its prey.
He glanced in Doriantha’s direction, but it seemed that she had not yet noticed the hole that had suddenly been torn in her plan. Even though the caravan would not arrive for a few moments yet, the elves could not simply rake soil over the vine again—not now that the sun was up. The ambush was ruined—and all because of Leifander. He glared down at the nestling, wishing he had never launched it into flight.
Something was wrong. The young thrush was no longer winging its way steadily through the air—as soon as it had entered the thicker patch of mist, it seemed to forget how to fly. Peeping shrilly, it beat its wings in a frenzy, at the same time spiraling off to the side. Its wings stopped beating, and the nestling fell to the ground like a stone.
Leifander blinked, at first not believing what he had just seen. The thicker patch of mist drifted over the twisting tangle of choke creeper, and every bit of greenery on it wilted. The choke creeper sagged to the ground, like a taut rope suddenly gone limp.
The mist drifted silently on, toward the wood elves’ hiding place.
A frightened caw burst from Leifander’s mouth before he found the words to warn those below. “The mist!” he croaked, rising to a standing position and cupping a hand to his mouth. “Doriantha, beware! That thicker patch ofmist, not more than ten paces to your left—it has
the power to kill!”
Although startled, Doriantha reacted quickly, signaling a retreat. As one, the troop of elves scrambled to their feet and began to melt away into the forest.
Leifander, watching from the safety of the trees above, breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the Winged Mother for her warning. The ambush was spoiled. The elves would have to regroup in the forest and fight another day, but—Aerdrie Faenya be praised—Doriantha and her troop had been spared from that mist, whatever it might be.
Leifander closed his eyes and stroked the glossy black feathers in his braids, summoning up the strength of the crow. As he finished shifting, a cry from below warned him that something had gone wrong. Opening his eyes, Leifander cocked his head to peer down at the ground. He spotted the problem in an instant: one of the elves—Jornel, a copper-haired youth whose face was tattooed below the eyes with raindrops, making it look as though he were perpetually weeping—had failed to move away from the ambush point. From his vantage point, Leifander could see that one of Jornel’s legs had become entangled in a strand of choke creeper that must have quested in his direction after being awakened by the nestling. Jornel slashed furiously at the vine with his sword, but even as he did, a second strand sprang up and caught his wrist. Held fast, he yanked at it in a futile effort to free himself, eyes bulging in horror as the mist drifted toward him.
Doriantha, signaling urgently for the other elves to stay hidden in the woods, slung her bow over one shoulder and doubled back at the run. She drew her sword to hack at the creeper, but it was clear she would not free Jornel in time. Already the deadly white mist was lapping at him like a sickly smelling, cloying tide.
The vine that held Jornel wilted and went slack, then the mist engulfed him. Doubled over, retching, he tried to stagger out of the mist, but the choke creeper still entangling him slowed him down. Dragging the limp vines behind him, he managed only a few stumbling steps before sagging to the ground, coughing violently.
Leifander saw in an instant what needed to be done. As Doriantha backed away from the approaching mist, he hurled himself into a steep dive. He held his breath as he plunged into the clammy mist and landed next to Jornel.
Using his beak, he seized a loop of the vine that was twined around Jornel’s wrist, then leaped into the air, flapping his wings hard. Pain seared his lungs as he took an inadvertent breath, and he could feel the foul-smelling mist eating at the tips of his feathers. His eyes stung, and his vision blurred.
Weakened by the mist, the vine tore free from Jornel’s arm. Dropping the foul-tasting vine, Leifander winged his way out of the mist and took a deep breath of clean air, his feathers and skin still burning from the mist’s corrosive touch.
His effort, however, had been in vain. Jornel’s leg was still tangled in the vine. His skin was blistering, and a bloody foam bubbled at his lips.
While the other elves watched, uncertain, Doriantha took a deep breath, then leaped into the mist. Blisters erupted on her skin as she untwined the last strand of vine from Jornel’s leg and dragged him clear of the mist. Two of her troop ran forward, one to pick the injured elf up, the other to lend his shoulder to Doriantha as she staggered away, coughing violently.
The rumbling squeak of wagon wheels grew louder as the elves took cover in the forest. Leifander climbed to treetop level, still wheezing from the foul mist that had seared his throat and lungs. He circled above the road, squinting down with blurry eyes at the caravan. The soldiers accompanying it seemed oblivious to the retreating elves—and to the mist that lay in their path, no more than a hundred paces ahead. Would they blunder into it and be killed?
Curious despite the ache that gripped his lungs, Leifander watched as a strange thing happened. From somewhere within the mist came the sound of a whistle. Hearing it, the sergeant leading the soldiers raised a hand in the air. Teamsters reined in their beasts, and the caravan drew to a halt.
As if blown by an sudden wind, the mist drifted away into the forest, leaving a wilted mush of vegetation on the road. After a moment or two, a row of dark spots crossed this area. Footprints.
The footprints paused in one spot, forming an overlapping cluster next to a thick strand of the dead choke creeper. A section of the tangled vines moved slightly, as if nudged by a foot.
A heartbeat later, a man dropped the spell that had been cloaking him from sight. Human, perhaps sixty years of age with pale wispy hair over a bulging forehead and soft, fleshy arms, he wore a yellow vest and hose that gave his skin a sickly complexion. Gold rings glittered on every finger of his right hand. His left hand held a slender wand that looked as though it had been carved of bone. Tendrils of white mist drifted from the wand’s tip, which was set with a single black pearl.
A silver whistle hung from a chain around the man’s neck. He raised it to his lips and blew. Back at the caravan, the sergeant’s hand went down, and soldiers and beasts resumed their trudge forward along the road.
Leifander glared down at the man holding the wand, anger burning bright in his breast as he realized he was looking at the origin of the blight that was consuming the forest. Like a nut and its shell, the pieces now fit. This was why the blight had centered itself upon the road. The caravaners had enlisted the aid of a wizard, one who was using destructive magic to clear Rauthauvyr’s Road of the choke creeper that had become so prevalent in the forest. Only humans would be stupid and selfish enough to unleash forces that destroyed not just the creeper but the forest itself.
As if sensing Leifander’s glare, the wizard looked up. His eyes fixed on the crow circling overhead, and the fingers of his right hand twitched. Did he recognize this “crow” for what it truly was? Did the raising of his hand mean he was about to cast a spell?
If so, Leifander would never escape in time. Instead of fleeing, he did the unexpected. He tucked in his wings and dived. Pulling up at the last instant, he beat his wings in the wizard’s face, raking the man’s fleshy cheek with his talons.
Cursing, the wizard reacted instinctively, raising his wand to beat Leifander off.
He’d done exactly as Leifander had hoped.
Twisting, Leifander wrapped his talons around the wand. It felt spongy and slick, like a bone slimed by rot, but the wand was solid at its core. Throwing himself backward, wings beating furiously, he tore it from the wizard’s grip.
As the wizard began chanting in a strange, garbled tongue, Leifander realized his folly. Not only had he announced himself as something other than a crow, with his strange, uncrowlike actions, but he had placed himself too close to the wizard for escape.
An arrow shot out of the woods ahead, whispering past Leifander, then another arrow, and another. More than one thudded harmlessly into the ground, or caught in the branches of a tree before reaching the road—but the distraction gave Leifander the chance he needed to escape. Instead of casting a spell at Leifander, the wizard halted his incantation in mid-phrase and began another. The air in front of him shimmered, obscuring him from sight. An instant later an arrow hit this sparkling wall of force—and exploded with a crackling release of energy into a thousand harmless slivers.
As yet more arrows sang out of the woods, shattering on the wizard’s spell-shield, he blew on his whistle to summon the soldiers from the caravan. The hail of arrows stopped abruptly as the elves, seeing Leifander enter the safety of the trees, retreated into the woods.
Still clutching the wand in one foot, Leifander winged his way after them.
From high in the forest, drifting down from leaves dappled by moonlight, came the sound of chanting voices. Leifander kneeled at the base of the tree from which they originated, an oak so old that its trunk was as wide as extended arms could span, with pale gray bark that looked silver in the bright moonlight. High above its thickly leafed, spreading branches, a near-full moon crept to its zenith against a star-speckled sky.
Doriantha kneeled beside Leifander, also awaiting the summons from those above. In the days that had followed the abortive ambush on the c
aravan, Leifander had used his magic to heal the blisters on her arms and face, and to heal his own wounds. Now all that remained were a few faint pink scars.
The wand that Leifander had yanked from the wizard’s grasp lay between them on the forest floor. It had been wrapped in rabbit skin, the soft fur turned inward to protect it from the rigors of their journey through the woods. During the days it took Leifander and Doriantha to respond to the summons from the Circle of the Emerald Leaves, the bone had lost its sponginess and turned hard and brittle, and the pearl at its tip had lost its sheen. Yet the wand still stank of the foul mist it had produced.
Above, the chanting stopped, then a single female voice rang out. “Doriantha of the Tangled Trees, rise up, and meet our sacred circle.”
Picking up the fur-wrapped wand, Doriantha rose to her feet. She glanced down at Leifander, still kneeling, who returned her terse nod. Then she reached with her free hand for the trunk of the Moontouch Oak. A branch appeared, pale and insubstantial as moonlight, and she grasped it. Another moonbeam bent and met the trunk near the ground, forming a second branch, and on this she placed her foot. She climbed, using the branches that appeared in a rising spiral around the oak’s trunk, each one disappearing after her foot had left it.
Waiting his turn as voices murmured above, Leifander wondered why the Circle of the Emerald Leaves had included him in their summons. Both he and Doriantha had already related the full story of their aborted ambush to the elves’ High Council, but perhaps the druids wanted to hear the tale themselves. Perhaps they felt there was some detail that only they could coax out of the pair, some thread of information that the High Council had overlooked.
A short time later, a rustling above announced Doriantha’s descent. When she reached the ground, she appeared puzzled.
“Strange,” she muttered. “They didn’t want to know anything more about the wizard or the wand. Instead they asked me about you.”
