by Lisa Smedman
She turned to stare behind her, toward the section of trail she’d just ridden.
“Right. Let’s take a look, lads.”
Spurring his horse forward, the leader of the soldiers rode past Larajin. Her own horse shied away, pinching her leg against the trunk of a tree. The other two soldiers followed in his wake. Larajin heard the hoofbeats abruptly slow—they must have come to the bend where the trail turned to follow the cliff edge—and she nudged her own horse forward. As she rode past the spot where the elf had darted into the woods, she glanced neither right nor left, in case the soldiers were looking.
She’d ridden no more than a hundred paces before the soldiers returned, this time riding at a trot. As they passed, forcing her horse to the side of the trail, Muscle Neck waved his thanks. The back of his right hand had a strange scar on it; a pattern of raised lines that looked like a brand.
Larajin waited until the hoofbeats of their horses had receded into the distance, then she turned her horse and rode back down the trail, stopping in the place where she’d last seen the elf. After a moment, a narrow face peeked out of a crack in a hollow stump a few paces into the forest. The elf squeezed out from inside the stump with difficulty, wincing as her misshapen back brushed against its trunk. She turned to Larajin and gave a peculiar bow, thrusting her arms behind her as she bent at the waist.
As the elf bowed, Larajin could see that the deformity on the woman’s back seemed to be centered upon her shoulders. Just below each was a large hump, its exact shape hidden by the baggy shirt she wore.
“You I thank, lady,” the elf said, though it took Larajin a moment or two to understand the words, which were spoken in a strange accent. It was almost as if the woman trilled her words. Her speech had the inflection of a song.
“Why were those men chasing you?” Larajin asked.
“I … came to Arch Dale after many miles journey,” the woman said, watching Larajin’s face all the while for her reaction. “Soldier with mark on hand, he recognize. He know I come from Hillsfar, by this mark.”
She held up her left hand. On the back of it was a brand identical to the one on Muscle Neck’s hand. Except that the elf’s brand was fresher, still pink.
“I didn’t think elves were allowed in Hillsfar,” Larajin said.
A bitter look crossed the woman’s face. “In arena, only. In games.”
Larajin understood. She’d heard of the arena in Hillsfar—it was known far and wide in Faerûn. The Hillsfar Arena was the scene of fabled contests in which gladiators pitted themselves against fearsome monsters. Ogres, trolls, minotaurs … all had soaked the arena’s sand with their blood.
Muscle Neck must have been one of the gladiators who fought there, and so must this elf, though with her fine bones and deformed shoulders she looked too frail to be a fighter.
“Were you a gladiator?” Larajin asked.
The woman frowned. “I am elf.”
She seemed to think this explanation enough, but it left Larajin unenlightened.
“I thought you said that elves fight in the arena,” Larajin said.
“Elves die in arena,” the woman said. “They are put in, with long chain at ankle. No escape can be make. It makes the crowd to laugh.”
The words were spoken softly, but they made Larajin’s blood turn cold. This woman might have spoken in the third person, but it was clear from the ache in her eyes that she was relating a horror that she herself had experienced. Larajin pictured her unarmed, chained to the center of the arena, frantically trying to escape the sword slashes of a burly gladiator like Muscle Neck while the crowd laughed and jeered.
“You escaped from the Hillsfar Arena, didn’t you?” Larajin said in a grim voice. “That soldier—the one that looked like a half-ore—he was trying to capture you and sell you back.”
The woman nodded, a quick bob of the head.
“What’s your name?”
The elf hesitated, as if trying to decide whether to trust her. At last she answered. “Kith. You?”
Larajin gave truth for truth, answering with her real name, instead of Thazienne’s. “Where are you headed?” she asked.
“To Evermeet.”
Larajin frowned. “That’s a long way from here. Why Evermeet?”
Kith’s eyes brightened. “I be told it is place of all elves, of great magic. I go to … seek a great healing. Then I may follow wind home.”
Healing? The woman must have been talking about her deformity.
“Where is home?” Larajin asked.
Kith answered with a sharp, sweet trill. After a moment, Larajin realized that this must have been the name of the place she came from.
“I’ve never heard of it,” she told Kith, then she added, “If you’re journeying to Evermeet, shouldn’t you be headed west? You must have followed the Moonsea Ride out of Hillsfar. Why didn’t you just stay on that road?”
Kith shrugged and immediately winced. Her deformed shoulders must have pained her.
“Red Plumes would follow,” she answered. “Instead I come through trees, to Highmoon.”
Larajin nodded. Journeying through the great forest made sense. Kith had probably been aided by the wood elves. It also explained how she had come so far with so little. The woman didn’t seem to have a pack or provisions. Having reached Highmoon, however, Kith should have continued west along the road that led through Thunder Gap and into Cormyr.
“You turned south, into Archendale,” Larajin prompted. “Why?”
“Giants,” Kith answered. She said no more, as if that one word was explanation enough. Then, seeing the blank look in Larajin’s eyes, she added, “I am told giants be in mountains through which pierces road. They are enemy to my people. Without my …” She paused, then continued. “I would have no chance against them. I am told of southern road, one that passes south of mountains without piercing. Way of the Manticore. Do you know it?”
Larajin nodded. “That road is a long way from here—at least six days’ journey to the south. There’s no way to cross the river until you reach Selgaunt, and that means entering Sembia, which isn’t exactly welcoming elves at the moment. You wouldn’t be safe in the south. You’d do better to take your chances crossing the mountains. Maybe you could join a caravan. That should offer some protection from the—”
Kith balled her fist and all but shook it at Larajin. “They will see the mark!” she trilled. “They will think of Red Plumes’ coin, and greed fill their hearts.”
“That is a problem, it’s true,” Larajin acknowledged. “Even so, I would recommend the mountains as a better option. You can’t travel any farther south. If you do, you’ll be mistaken for a spy and killed.”
Slowly, with a defeated look on her face, Kith lowered her hand. “All winds blow against I, it does seem,” she said sadly.
“Not all the winds,” Larajin said, trying to sound encouraging. “They blew me your way, didn’t they? And those soldiers aren’t looking for you any more. They’ll be back in Archendale before dark and will soon forget all about you.”
An idea struck her, and she added, “Why don’t you travel with me awhile—at least for the rest of today—and camp with me tonight? Here, climb up on the horse behind me.”
She leaned over in the saddle and extended a hand down to Kith. After a moment, the elf took it. Placing a foot in the stirrup that Larajin had just removed her foot from, she swung lightly up behind her, and settled into place, her legs tucked against the saddlebags. She clutched nervously at the sides of Larajin’s shirt as the horse began to walk. Kith had obviously never been on horseback before.
“Where we are travel?” Kith asked.
“I won’t know that until Goldheart returns,” Larajin said over her shoulder.
“Gold Heart?” Kith repeated. She thought about it a moment. “This be companion to you?”
“A companion, yes,” Larajin answered with a smile. “One whose value I only recently realized.” For the hundredth time that day, she glanced up at
the sky through the trees, hoping to see the familiar flash of colorful wings. “I just hope nothing’s happened to her.”
That evening they made camp in the woods—well away from the trail, since by dusk the enormous stone arches of the bridge at Archendale had come into sight. Larajin fed and brushed the horse first—remembering what her adoptive father had taught her about always caring for your animals before attending to your own comforts—then she shared with Kith a simple meal of dried fruit and soldier’s biscuit. It seemed to matter little to Kith that the latter was stale. The elf consumed it ravenously, as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Perhaps that was why she was so thin.
Darkness fell swiftly as the sun sank behind the southernmost tip of the Thunder Peaks, just west of Archendale. Exhausted after her flight from the soldiers, Kith sank into a curious squatting position, her arms curled around her knees, and seemed to fall into a deep trance—the Reverie. Larajin made sure the horse hadn’t slipped its hobbles—it was munching contentedly on some shoots of grass in the tiny clearing where she’d left it—then she lay down near Kith. She whispered her evening prayers, staring up through the branches at the bright pinpoints of the stars above, then she watched the moon slowly rise into view above the treetops. Its pale light flooded the forest.
Was Tal also staring up at the moon from his soldiers’ camp? If her calculations were correct, in just a few more days his company would reach the forest of Cormanthor. She wondered if his last glance at the sky would be framed by the branches of trees, as was hers.
And what of Leifander—where was he? As to that, Larajin could not even hazard a guess. She whispered a prayer to Hanali Celanil, praising her for the beauty of the sky above and pleading with her to send word through her chosen messenger, as soon as she was able.
Larajin must have drifted off to sleep. She fell into a vivid dream in which she was soaring up through the air, rising toward the vivid stars above. All the world lay below her, a vast crazy-quilt of forest, lake, field, and town. Somewhere down below, there was something she was searching for, but when she tried to think of where it might be, her thoughts became hazy and confused. She realized she was not flying herself but was being carried by a giant eagle. Its wingtips brushed against her bare feet with each downstroke.
Larajin rolled over in her sleep, and the tickling against her foot stopped.
The dream resumed, but this time the eagle was gripping her in its feet. They completely enclosed her head. One of its talons was piercing the soft flesh of her—
With a start, Larajin awoke. Something was poking her cheek. It felt like the point of a dagger. Fumbling for her own dagger, she yanked it out of its scabbard.
“Illunathros!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet.
The trees all around her were bathed in the brilliant blue light of her enchanted dagger.
Sitting at her feet, wincing at the sudden glare, was Gold-heart. One paw was still raised. She had been kneading Larajin’s cheek. Lowering her paw, she butted her head against Larajin’s leg and began to purr.
A pace or two away, Kith sprang out of her crouch. She cried out as she spotted the tressym. A moment later, her alarm turned to a sigh of wonder as Goldheart unfolded her wings, shook them once delicately to smooth the feathers, then settled them against her back once more.
“This is Goldheart,” Larajin explained. “The companion I mentioned earlier.”
Kith fell to her knees in front of Goldheart and tentatively held out a hand. The tressym, after a quick sniff, lowered her head, indicating that the elf had permission to pat her. Kith stroked the tressym’s head, hesitated, then ran her hand the length of Goldheart’s back, fingers lingering upon the wings. The expression on her face, at first rapturous, soon turned to equal parts anguish and longing. She jerked her hand back and turned away, as if the very sight of the tressym pained her.
“What’s wrong?” Larajin asked.
Words choked their way out of Kith’s mouth. “I … had wings once. Gone, now.”
“Wings?”
Kith fumbled at the ties that held her shirt closed, then yanked it down to her elbows, exposing her back. Under that baggy shirt lay the source of Kith’s pain: two crudely hacked stubs where wings had once been. The severed limbs were healed over, but only just. The scars were still raw and red, the skin puckered and dotted with crude stitch marks. It looked as though muscle and bone had been severed with an axe, one brutal chop at a time. Larajin wondered how anyone could survive the agony that must have caused.
Kith’s shoulders shook as she struggled to suppress her sobs. Goldheart, also staring at the elf’s back, growled low in her throat, then, deliberately, she walked up to Kith and gave the elf’s bare leg a gentle nudge with her cheek.
Kith yanked the shirt back up over her shoulders, wincing at its touch as she turned back to Larajin.
“You ask why I go Evermeet,” she said. She jerked a thumb at her shoulder. “This be why. My shame. After I escape first time, arena let wizard take my wings, for his spells. How can I return to flock now? I must seek great healing, before return.”
“Goddess grant it to you,” Larajin whispered.
She realized what Kith was: an avariel elf—a breed of elf so rare that the books in Stormweather Towers had referred to them as mere legend. And here that “legend” stood in front of Larajin, broken and dejected. She wished she knew a healing spell that would regrow Kith’s wings, but such powerful magic was beyond her. Her spells could close a wound, or slow bleeding, or even splice a shattered bone, but they could not regrow flesh and feather from air.
Kith’s eyes dropped to Goldheart, who was still rubbing against her leg.
“Companion-to-Larajin, I know you mean comfort, but beautiful wings make sadness.”
Turning away, Kith strode out of the circle of light cast by the dagger, into the moonlight-dappled forest. Larajin was about to run after her but paused as she heard Kith settle again, a short distance away in the woods. From that spot came the soft sound of a woman weeping.
Torn between her desire to comfort Kith and the certain knowledge that Goldheart must be bearing urgent news, Larajin hesitated. A familiar tingle began in her ears and lips. As it grew, she heard the tressym’s meows turn into intelligible speech.
“She aches like a wounded bird,” Goldheart observed, peering off into the darkness where Kith had disappeared. “Someone should give her a swift death.”
“She needs healing,” Larajin answered curtly, “and I can’t give it to her.”
Frustrated, she dropped to her knees in front of the tressym.
“I am glad to see that you are safe, Goldheart” she said. “Did you follow Leifander? Where is he now?”
“He nested for one night in a place not far from here, and another night in a place that lies a day’s flight in that direction,” Goldheart said, nodding toward the northwest as she spoke. “The place was at the edge of a great wood and had many trees heaped in piles. The humans and elves there busy themselves day and night building walls and practicing with their long-claws.”
Larajin nodded. Goldheart must be describing a town in Deepingdale, known for its timber trade. She guessed that the “long-claws” were swords or daggers.
“He then flew toward the forest, stopping here and there to meet with groups of elves—but only nesting for one night in a single place. For the last two nights he has nested in the same spot: on a hill with no trees, only stones on top. I left him there this morning, and flew back to find you. I have been a day and most of this night returning.”
Larajin mulled that over. “Can you describe the stones on the hill?” she asked.
Goldheart thought a moment, then scratched at the ground with a paw, leaving a half-circle mark. “They formed a bent line, like this.”
“How many stones?”
“Many.”
Larajin held up one hand, fingers splayed. “This many?”
“More.”
She laid the dagger down, and held
up her other hand. “This many?”
Goldheart studied her hands as the dagger’s light waned. “Perhaps.”
Larajin sat thinking as the dagger’s light gradually went out. The moonlight was bright enough that she could still see the tressym clearly. Thanks to the elf blood that flowed in her veins, she could even see the colors of her wings.
“To get to this hill, how would you travel?” she asked. “What would you see below as you flew?”
Goldheart thought a moment. “The place with the walls and piled-up trees, the edge of the forest, a river … then the hill.”
Larajin fell silent, considering this information. She had spent many long hours in the library at Stormweather Towers, reading every book she could find that described the history and geography of ancient Cormanthor, but none of the information she’d gleaned on the former elven kingdom mentioned a hill like the one Goldheart had just described.
Larajin did remember a map that showed the river Gold-heart was probably talking about. It was called the Glaemril. It was reputed to be easy to cross. With Goldheart scouting from above and giving directions, Larajin could make her way to the hill where Leifander had camped, but she couldn’t ride as fast as the tressym could fly—especially through thick forest. By the time she reached the hill, Leifander would probably be long gone.
The alternative was, of course, to have Goldheart return alone to the hill as soon as she was rested, and continue to follow Leifander, but that would leave Larajin blundering around in the forest on her own, searching in vain for a hill that might not even be visible from within the trees.
Remembering the dream she’d just awakened from, Larajin wished she had wings to fly—or that there was someone to carry her through the skies. If only the avariel elf still had her…
A thought occurred to her then. Had the goddesses been trying to tell her something? Was it they who placed that dream in her mind?
If so, Larajin could see little use in it. Kith’s wings were gone. She wasn’t about to fly anywhere.
