by Lisa Smedman
Distracted by the screams of fighting men and a loud groan that might have been Dray’s voice, she stumbled over a root, then recovered and ran on. Behind her, the curses and shouts were getting fainter—and fewer. A moment more, and they were replaced by silence, then came the sound of bottles being smashed.
Larajin ran on through the forest, angling north to parallel the road, all the while casting nervous glances over her shoulder. It sounded as though the elves were sacking the caravan—would that keep them so busy they would forget about pursuing her?
Out of the corner of her eye, Larajin saw something whipping up off the forest floor toward her—a rope? It coiled around her leg. Jerked to a sudden halt, she crashed to the ground, the wind knocked from her. A snare! The elves must have set a trap.
Her dagger lay beside her, where she’d dropped it. Head still spinning from her fall, Larajin groped for it, but as her fingers closed around the hilt, another snare whipped around her forearm, preventing her from using the dagger to cut herself free.
No—not a snare, she realized, looking down. That wasn’t a rope around her arm; it was a leaf-covered vine. It looked like ivy, but it moved with a sinuous grace, and a purposefulness that suggested sentience. She realized that it must be the choke creeper the caravan drivers had spoken of it. This infestation was the reason the wizard was clearing the road.
She watched in horror as the loose ends of the vine coiled their way up her arm and leg like constricting snakes. Struggle as she might, she could not pull herself free. The vines were as strong as braided steel. More of them were questing blindly toward her, drawn by her frantic motions. She had blundered onto a wide patch of the creeper. The entire floor of the forest seemed to have come to life, to be reaching for her. Under that tangle of greenery, she could see the white of bones. She was not the first creature to have been caught in this trap.
Something tickled the back of her neck. Larajin jerked away, throwing herself violently to the side, but to no avail. One of the vines was around her neck. Larajin forced the fingers of her free hand under the vine, struggling to prevent it from crushing her throat, but this gave only momentary relief. Unable to rise, to flee, she wished now that an arrow had found her, instead. Knowing that she was about to die, she began choking out the words of a prayer.
As if in answer, an angry howl came from somewhere above. An instant later Larajin heard the fluttering of wings and saw the tressym swooping down through the trees.
“No,” she choked out, as a strand of the vine rose into the air, questing for the tressym. “Don’t…”
The vine around her neck tightened, forcing her fingers into her throat. Unable to speak, Larajin could only weep, certain that the tressym would be lashed from the sky.
But the tressym proved more agile than the questing vine. A leafy tendril caught and bent one of the feathers at the tressym’s wingtip—but then she was swooping back up into the sky with powerful beats of her wings. She repeated the action, and with each dive and ascent more and more of the vines followed her—and Larajin found that her hand, which still held the dagger, was free.
She sat up, slashing at the vine around her throat. The sudden movement triggered the rest of the tangled mass, which rippled toward her, but the tressym had bought her the time she needed. With a single swift stroke of her dagger—whose magical blade parted the vine as easily as rotted twine—Larajin was free.
Scrambling to her feet, she leaped back from the tangle of vines, onto a clear patch of ground. Sobbing with relief, she glanced up and saw the tressym perched safely on a branch, watching her with large, round eyes.
“Thank you, my little friend,” Larajin said. “You and I are balanced now—one rescue for another. If that’s why you’ve been following me all this time, consider your debt to me paid. You are free to go, but if you do decide to follow me farther, I think you should have a name. Certainly you’ve displayed a heart of gold today—and so, I grant you the name Goldheart.”
She pointed the blade of her dagger at the tressym, like a king bestowing honors on a knight, then she bowed.
When she rose, Goldheart was gone. A single bent feather, fallen from her wing, drifted down through the branches. Larajin ran and caught it—then jumped back in alarm as a wild elf stepped out from behind the trunk of the tree in which Goldheart had been perched, bow at full draw and arrow nocked. Larajin thought about raising her dagger, then realized what a futile gesture that would be. If the elf had intended to shoot her, Larajin would be dead by now. Instead the archer just stared.
Larajin stared breathlessly back, incredulous to finally meet a wild elf, face-to-face. The woman’s almond-shaped eyes were every bit as feral as the picture in Master Thamalon’s book, and the black band tattooed across her nose and cheeks made her look fiercer still. Her long, blonde hair was drawn back in a ponytail, exposing the rest of the tattoo, which completed its circle of her scalp over her pointed ears. Her skin was a dusky brown—the same color as the tanned leather of her clothes. She wore rough breeches and a vest decorated with animal teeth that had been sewn onto it like buttons. Muscles bunched in her bare arms as she held her bow at full draw.
The irony of this meeting was not lost on Larajin. Rather than having to go looking for the wild elves of the Tangled Trees, they had come to her. Now, instead of introducing herself to them as kin, Larajin would be pleading her case as a captured enemy.
“I … elf-friend,” she stuttered, using the few words of the wild elf tongue she had been able to glean from the books in the master’s library. “I look … forest-mother from … trees-woven-into-trees…”
Wings fluttered above. The elf woman glanced up at Goldheart, but her arrow remained unwavering in its aim. The tressym circled once overhead, then turned and winged her way to the east.
“You must be blessed of the goddess, to have one of her favorites come to your aid,” the elf said.
Startled, Larajin realized the woman had spoken in the common tongue. The words were heavily accented—and overlaid with the distinctive inflections of a Sembian. Larajin wondered who had taught her the language.
Larajin blurted out her explanation. “I pay homage to Hanali Celanil,” she said, holding up her wrist to show the gilded heart that dangled there. “I am part elf myself. My mother was—”
A brief peal of laughter cut Larajin short. The elf had a skeptical, almost scornful expression on her face. Her eyes darted from Larajin’s ears, to her hair, to her fair skin. She was believing none of it.
Behind the woman, from the direction of the road, came the sound of lilting voices. The elves had obviously completed their prédation upon the caravan and now were breaking the eerie silence they had maintained throughout their attack. Larajin wondered if Dray had survived. She prayed that the elves had shown him mercy—and that they would extend that mercy to her. She decided to try a different approach.
Slowly, not wanting her movements to be misinterpreted, Larajin turned her dagger to show the elf its hilt. If this elf spoke Sembian-flavored Common, perhaps she knew a little of Sembia’s geography—and politics. A member of a noble household might be deemed one worth keeping alive, worth ransoming.
“I am a member of a noble Sembian house,” Larajin began. “My …” She hesitated, then decided there was no harm in telling the truth, so far from home. “My father is Thamalon Uskevren. This is his dagger. It bears our family crest.”
Recognition flickered in the elf’s eyes. She knew the master’s name!
Larajin took a deep breath, hoping the elf would listen, this time.
“Twenty-six years ago, Thamalon Uskevren journeyed north to the Tangled Trees. He met an elf woman—a wild elf of the forest—and … lay with her. A year later he returned, and found that she had given birth to his child. She died during the birthing, and so I was given to my father. I was raised in his house, in Sembia, but now I have returned. I am looking for …” She paused, unsure for a moment how to continue. “For my roots. My … family.”
She waited, praying the elf would believe her.
The elf’s eyes had grown wider as Larajin spoke. Suddenly, in one swift motion, she lowered her bow. Removing her arrow, she slid it into the quiver at her hip. She pressed both hands against her heart, palms to her chest, and bowed.
“I should have paid more heed to the goddess’s sign. Perhaps then I would have recognized you,” she said as she straightened, “but it is little wonder that I didn’t. You and your brother are as different as day and night.”
“My brother?”
Before Larajin had a chance to ask more, the elven woman motioned for silence. Behind her, a dozen elves came running lightly through the wood. She turned quickly and signaled to them. They slowed their pace, at the same time lowering their weapons. The woman spoke to them in their own rapid tongue, pointing several times at Larajin, and once getting her to lift her hand and show the elves the tressym feather she was holding. There were mutters, at first, but then more than one of the elves began nodding.
The woman turned back to Larajin. “You will come with us, to the Tangled Trees,” she said. “We will leave at once.”
Larajin nodded, and allowed a smile of relief to creep to her lips. Silently she thanked the goddesses—first Hanali Celanil, then Sune—for watching over her. Despite the terrible fact that men had just fought and died on Rauthauvyr’s Road, Larajin had survived, and would soon be on her way to the Tangled Trees. The goddesses seemed to be watching over her, after all.
CHAPTER 4
Leifander circled over the lights below, which were brighter than the glow from a thousand camphres. Even at this height the city assaulted his senses. The stink of dead fish, tar, and sewage rose from the harbor. Even in the depths of night, grunting laborers loaded cargo into ships, and carriages rattled through the streets, axles squealing. Lanterns burned on side streets where no one walked, and smoke smelling of cooking grease wafted out of chimneys, clogging the already humid air.
Leifander cocked his head, staring disdainfully down at the city. Humans were a wasteful, destructive race. How he yearned for the fresh green of trees that had stood for centuries, the quiet stillness of a forest glade under moonlight. He would be glad when this mission was done.
He finally spotted the building Rylith had described. Stormweather Towers was a massive stone structure topped with towers and turrets; it rose like a rocky spire out of a surrounding fringe of greenery far too symmetrical to ever be thought natural. Smaller buildings surrounded the main structure, marring the gardens with their ugly gray.
Lights burned in several of the rooms, and humans moved around inside, busy at a multitude of tasks. Several of the shuttered windows were open. The clatter of crockery and the harsh sounds of human voices drifted into the air. Leifander circled the building, glancing in through windows for the man he had been ordered to seek out. None of the people inside fitted the description he had been given: a man of sixty winters, with snow-white hair and heavy, dark eyebrows.
Uncertain how to present himself—Rylith had warned that elves were not welcome in Selgaunt—Leifander flapped his way to one of the second-story balconies and landed on its cool stone rail. The double doors that gave access to the balcony were open. Inside the room, he could see the dark shapes of a high four-poster bed with rumpled blankets, two armchairs, and a wardrobe. A small cabinet mounted on the wall behind the bed was fronted by two glass doors. Something amid the clutter of objects inside it glittered as it caught the faint light coming in through the balcony doors. Intrigued, Leifander cocked his head, staring at it.
A shudder coursed through him as he assumed elf form once more. Wings became arms, talons turned to bare feet, and feathers coalesced into a tooled leather vest and fringed trousers. A ridge of feathers along his back became a quiver, holding arrows and an unslung bow.
He hopped lightly down from the rail, arms still spread and fingers fluttering like feathers as he caught his balance. Cautiously, listening attentively to the faint noises coming through the door that led out of the room, he crept over to the bed.
Clambering up onto the rumpled blankets, he peered inside the cabinet. The object that had caught his eye was a quill pen, the shaft of the feather gilded and set with a row of bright diamonds. It looked to be of elven make—perhaps even something that was sacred to the Winged Lady. What was it doing there, in a human home?
As he leaned to the side to get a better look at it, sparkles of red and blue fire danced in the depths of the gems. None of the other trinkets inside the cabinet—tiny gold bells, a silver dagger, ceramic statues, two gold rings, and an enameled locket—even came close to it in beauty.
Unable to resist, Leifander turned the latch on one of the cabinet doors. Something stung his finger, and he jerked his hand back. The cabinet door swung open. Leifander stared in surprise at shelves that had suddenly become empty.
A feeling of dizziness passed over him, then was gone. Leifander peered at his fingertip and saw a bead of dark blood welling there. Angrily, he shook it away, then felt inside the cabinet. The shelves were indeed empty—and though he could still see objects through the glass of the cabinet door that remained closed, his questing fingers found nothing but bare shelves. He had been fooled by an illusion—and, judging by the numbness of his punctured fingertip, nearly laid low by a trap.
Cursing all humans and their devious natures, he sprang down from the bed. In that same instant, the door began to open, spilling a crack of light into the room. Leifander hurried to the balcony, crouched there, and began the chant that would transform him back into a crow.
Before he could complete the spell, light washed over him, and a woman’s voice hissed, “Ebeian! What took you so long? I was worried that … Oh! Who are you?”
Leifander shot a look over his shoulder, and saw a human holding a flickering lamp. She looked to be in her second decade of life, and had dark hair and eyes as green as the emerald that glittered in the ring on her finger. Dressed in tight, black leather pants and shirt, she was slender for a round-ear—and pretty, Leifander grudgingly admitted. A rapier hung at her hip, and the hilt of a dagger protruded from one boot. She made no move toward either weapon.
Leifander rose slowly to his feet, turning to face her.
“Did Ebeian send you?” she asked. “Is he in trouble? Did something go wrong?”
For a moment, Leifander considered trying to pass himself off as a friend of this Ebeian fellow, whoever that was, but he decided against trying to satisfy what was only idle curiosity. The schemes of humans were not his concern. More to the point, this woman seemed singularly unconcerned to have discovered a forest elf in her bedchamber. She might be the best one to ask where Thamalon Uskevren could be found.
“My name is Leifander,” he said simply. “I am an elf of the Tangled Trees. I have come to speak with Thamalon Uskevren. I bring him a message.”
“Do you, indeed?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. “So, messenger, do you always sneak in through second-story windows when delivering your messages—or do you sometimes knock at the front door?”
This woman was truly exasperating. “Will you show me to Thamalon Uskevren or not?”
She did not answer at once. Instead she hung her lantern on a long hook attached to the ceiling and pointedly glanced at the open cabinet above the bed. Leifander stiffened, but when she turned back to him, amusement sparkled in her eyes.
“I see you couldn’t resist a little pilfering while you were waiting to deliver your message,” she said, clucking her tongue in mock reproach. “It’s lucky for you that you’re an elf and immune to that drug—otherwise I’d have found you asleep on my bed. Exotic looking as you are, I’d have been forced to ravish you. As it is …”
She strode forward suddenly and planted a kiss on his lips. Startled, Leifander pushed her away. Were all human women so forward with strangers? He shook his head. It was time to get on with what he had come there to do.
“The message I bear is an u
rgent one,” he told her. “I would deliver it at once.”
“Give me your message, and I’ll deliver it for you.”
Leifander shook his head. “No. I must speak to Thamalon Uskevren in person … and in private.”
A slight change in the woman’s posture told Leifander that she had grown wary of him. “Why in private?” she asked. “So you can stick a dagger in his ribs?”
Leifander deliberately kept his hands away from the dagger at his hip. “You think me an assassin,” he said bluntly. “I am not. I wish only to speak to Thamalon Uskevren about a political matter. The elves sent me because I have a … personal connection with him.”
His explanation didn’t help. Somehow he had compounded his earlier blunder. The woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, and her hand came gently to rest upon the hilt of her rapier.
“You have no ‘personal connection’ with Thamalon Uskevren,” she said, running the fingers of her free hand through her short hair in a nervous gesture. “If you did, you’d have known he was my father.”
The rapier hissed out of its scabbard. “I think you are an assassin,” she added in an icy voice.
Leifander raised his hands in what would seem a placating gesture. In fact, his fingers were already beginning to weave a spell. Before the woman could move to skewer him, he barked out three quick words in his own tongue. Sparks of magic energy crackled from his tattooed fingers—but instead of flying toward the woman’s head, they struck an invisible shield and scattered in all directions. In the same instant, the ring on the woman’s finger flared as its gem was illuminated from within. The woman stepped forward, and the tip of the rapier was at Leifander’s throat. He swallowed carefully and held perfectly still. The woman had the poise and grace of someone who knew how to use a blade.
