by Lisa Smedman
Leifander pointed up at the trunk of the oak, just above the spot where Dray hung.
“Do you see that?”
Larajin squinted. “Those scratches in the bark?”
“Yes. It’s a warning, in Espruar. This is holy ground. An elf lies buried beneath that oak. This man,” he pointed up at Dray, “must have been trying to loot the grave. He triggered the ward on the tree, and the elves probably hung him on it as an example. If either of us touches the tree, the magic of that ward will send us into a magical slumber. We’ll be as helpless as babes.”
“I thought elves were immune to magical slumber,” Larajin said.
“We’re half-elves,” Leifander reminded her. “We may resist the magic—or we may not. Do you really want to take that gamble?”
Larajin considered for a moment, then shook her head. “I can’t believe that Dray was trying to rob this grave,” she said. “He’s a Foxmantle—a wealthy Sembian merchant who led the caravan that I traveled north with. He has no need to stoop to tomb robbing. In fact, when some sellswords he hired to protect his caravan turned out to be brigands and looted an elven tomb, Dray ordered them to stop. He’s a decent man.”
Leifander glanced down at the disturbed ground, then up at the sleeping man, and asked, “Then what happened here?”
“I don’t know,” Larajin answered, “but Dray might. Let’s wake him up and find out. Will you help me lift him down—carefully, so we don’t touch the tree?”
Leifander nodded, and together they grasped Dray by his legs and eased him off the branch he’d been hanging from. They carried him a short distance through the woods, away from the area blighted by the mist, and laid him on clean ground. After a few moments, he began to stir. His eyes opened, and he stared up at them—then he sat up quickly and looked wildly about, as if expecting something to jump out from behind a tree at any moment.
“What’s happened?” he gasped. “Where’s Klarsh?”
Larajin seemed to recognize the name. “He’s not here,” she told Dray.
She explained how they’d found him hanging in a tree—alone. Leifander added his own observation: the rotted vegetation that surrounded the oak had been devoid of footprints. Whoever had left Dray in the tree had done so before the mist drifted into that part of the forest.
“How long have I been here?” Dray asked. “What day is it, Thazienne?”
Larajin—who didn’t seem to find it unusual to be addressed by her half-sister’s name—gave him a date from the human calendar.
“By the gods … that long?” Dray said in a whisper. “I’ve been asleep for more than a tenday, then.”
He rose to his feet unsteadily, like an invalid climbing from bed. Larajin reached out to help him, careful not to jostle his injured arm.
“Can I heal that for you?” she asked.
Dray nodded eagerly. “Please. If you could.”
Larajin placed her hands gently above the makeshift dressing and whispered a quick prayer. A glow spread from her fingers into his arm, and Dray breathed a deep sigh of relief. Gingerly at first—then with increasing confidence—he unwrapped the dressing. The skin underneath was puckered but whole. He wiggled the fingers of his left hand. Thanks to Larajin’s magic, the broken finger had straightened, and the swelling was gone. Flexing it, he smiled.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
Larajin gestured east.
“Back to Rauthauvyr’s Road? “Dray asked. “Can I travel at least that far with you?”
“Not unless you can fly,” Leifander said bluntly.
“We’re using magic,” Larajin explained. “We’d soon leave you behind.”
“Ah,” Dray said. He glanced at the trail, looking uncomfortable. “Perhaps I should try to reach Ashabenford, then,” he said nervously. Then he added, “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to accompany me?”
“We haven’t time,” Larajin told him. “We’re trying to find someone. We believe she’s to the east, deeper in the woods. She—”
Thankfully, Larajin caught Leifander’s curt head shake, and changed the subject.
“How did you escape the ambush?” she asked Dray. “I thought the elves had killed you.”
Dray glanced nervously at Leifander and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is he one of them?”
“Yes,” Larajin answered, “and no. He’s a half-elf. He’s my … friend. You can trust him.”
Leifander gave this no comment. Instead he merely waited, arms folded, for Dray to tell them what had happened.
“Ah,” Dray said. He spoke to Larajin, but kept an eye on Leifander, heedful of his reaction. “My escape was a fortuitous one—and not at all due to my own merits, I’m ashamed to add. After I grabbed the sword, an arrow struck my arm. I thought I was going to faint from the pain, then suddenly everything was gone.”
Leifander frowned, and saw the same expression on Larajin’s face. “Gone?” he asked.
“I’d been transported to another spot in the woods,” Dray explained. “Magically—by Klarsh, as it turned out. It seems, having lost his chance at the, ah … spoils … he was trying to salvage something of value from the caravan: me.
“I had nothing to fight Klarsh with—I’d dropped the sword after the arrow struck my arm—and I knew he had powerful magic. I had no choice but to accompany him through the woods. I expected him to head for Essembra and on to Hillsfar, which was where that lout Enik had said the brigands would lie low with their loot. I was surprised when we went west, instead. When I asked Klarsh why, he said the north was hardly the neutral haven that Enik had expected. He said he didn’t want to be ‘conscripted,’ and that Enik had been a fool.”
“Conscripted?” Larajin echoed. “By whom? Have the cities of the Moonsea also declared war on the elves?”
Dray shrugged.
Leifander stared at the human, his patience wearing thin. When would the fellow get to the point? “How did you come to be digging up an elf grave?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the oak.
Dray paled and glanced imploringly at Larajin but continued when she urged him on with a nod.
“I didn’t want to do it. Klarsh forced me—with his magic. I was no more than a puppet, jerked by magic strings. It was terrible, being so helpless. The last thing I remember was grabbing one of the roots, to pull it free and suddenly feeling very tired. Then I woke up, here, with you.”
The story sounded reasonable to Leifander, but Larajin had one more question.
“Why didn’t Klarsh use a spell to move the earth aside, as he had before?”
Dray shrugged. “Maybe he thought it would attract too much attention. He thought there might be other elf patrols in the woods. Perhaps he just wanted to humiliate me by forcing me to do manual labor.”
“Or perhaps,” Larajin said, “Klarsh intended you to fall victim to the tree’s magical ward. As a wizard, he should have recognized the glyph on the tree for what it was. He’d probably decided to abandon his treasure hunt and ransom you instead. I’ll bet it was he who took your ring and earring, as proof that he held you captive. The sleeping spell made you easy to handle—and to store. I suppose he intended to leave you here in the woods, hanging on that tree, for your relatives to pick up after they had delivered the ransom.”
She glanced at the mist-scarred oak, then at the trail, and the four spider bodies that lay on it, and shuddered.
“You could have been killed by the mist, had it been just a little higher—or by spiders. You’re a lucky man, Dray.”
“Lucky to have met you, Thazienne,” Dray answered with a bow.
Leifander, aware that he might as well be invisible to the human, bristled. His magic had played an equal part in saving Dray’s life, and yet it went unacknowledged. It was not in his nature to boast his valor or to seek acknowledgement from a human. Even so, it rankled.
Larajin was oblivious to this slight. Instead she seemed troubled by something. She glanced at the ground, as if collecting her thoughts, then
up at Dray.
“I’m not actually Thazienne,” she said. “I’m a … relative of hers. My name’s Larajin.”
Dray’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed? A relative, you say? You’re an Uskevren, then?”
“Yes, but my mother was from a … part of the family that’s not well known.”
“Ah,” Dray nodded sagely, as if this explained everything. “A dalliance, then.” He studied her a moment, his head tilted to one side. “You’re too young to be one of the illegitimate brats Roel was so fond of siring. Was your father Perivel, then? But no, he died when the first Stormweather Towers burned to the ground, years before you would have been born. That would leave …”
Leifander, growing impatient, supplied the answer. “Her father was Thamalon Uskevren,” he told Dray, ignoring Larajin’s frantic motions for silence. “I am also Thamalon’s son.”
Dray glanced at Leifander’s tattooed face, then burst into laughter. Only when Leifander glowered at him was he able to choke it back.
“Oh that’s a good one,” Dray sputtered at last. “I suppose you’ll be laying claim to the family fortune, then, like that fellow who pretended to be Thamalon’s long-lost brother. I heard about that—about the fake Perivel, and the magical chalice that proved him an imposter.”
Leifander dismissed this foolish notion with a curt flick of his fingers. Why did every human he confessed his parentage to assume he’d want to live in a crowded, stinking pile of stone like Selgaunt?
“I’m not interested in Sembian gold,” he told Dray.
“Perhaps not,” Dray agreed as his eyes slid sideways to Larajin, “but she is. Or to be more specific, she’s interested in Foxmantle gold.”
Dray turned to Larajin and nodded at her dagger. “The weapon with the Uskevren crest was a nice touch. It had me fooled. No wonder you were so keen on joining my caravan. You hoped to seduce me!”
Anger blazed in Larajin’s eyes. “Sedúcelou?” she echoed in an exasperated voice. “You were the one who practically proposed marriage. I never—”
Leifander, growing impatient, touched Larajin’s arm.
“This discussion is pointless,” he told her. “You’ve repaid this man by saving his life, but now time is wasting. Let’s shift and be off, before more spiders find us.”
Dray, obviously realizing that he was about to be left to make his own way home alone from the middle of the spider-infested woods, caught at Larajin’s arm.
“Larajin, please forgive me,” he begged. “I’m sorry to have insulted you. Please, won’t you at least loan me your dagger, so I at least have a fighting chance of getting home?”
“I can’t,” Larajin answered. “It’s … an heirloom, but Leifander might be able to spare his dagger.”
“What?” Leifander whirled around and glared at her. He gestured angrily at Dray. “He’s a human. An enemy.”
Amazingly, Larajin moved between Leifander and Dray, as if shielding the human.
“He’s harmless, Leifander, just a merchant. I’d stake my life on it.”
“You’d stake other people’s lives on it, you mean,” Leifander muttered to himself. Then, seeing that Larajin was not going to be swayed from this foolish notion, he added, “Do you think he’ll agree to a magically binding oath?”
Instead of answering, Larajin looked at Dray. The human nodded.
Leifander drew his dagger—smiling inwardly as Dray flinched—then reversed the blade. He spoke a prayer in Elvish, activating the spell that would bind Dray to his oath.
“Touch the hilt,” he instructed.
Dray hesitated only an instant before obeying.
“Now swear,” Leifander intoned, “that you’ll only use this dagger to defend yourself against forest creatures—that you won’t wield it against my people, the elves.”
Dray drew himself up and placed a hand on his heart.
“I swear it,” he said. He blinked once, as Leifander’s spell rooted the suggested course of action firmly in his heart, then he hefted the dagger and added, with a grin, “Truth be told, I’m more a man to avoid fights than prompt them.”
He turned to Larajin. “Thank you for all that you’ve done. Back on the caravan, when I said you were pretty, I wasn’t lying. You’re quite beautiful. If you really were an Uskevren, I’d renew my proposals.” He winked. “But business, unfortunately, must always come before pleasure, even for a Foxmantle.”
Leifander tugged impatiently at Larajin’s arm. “Come,” he said. “Time to shift.”
Leifander squatted and spread his arms, preparing to skin-walk. Larajin nodded, then sank to her knees on the ground, clutching the locket at her wrist. As she began the spell that would shift her into tressym form, however, she cast one last glance over her shoulder at Dray, then she closed her eyes, as if the sight of him was distracting her.
Leifander shook his head at her folly. Dray might be handsome but he had little else to recommend him, and yet he’d won Larajin over with nothing more than a few charming words. It was amazing, Leifander thought, what lengths someone would go to, given the promise of a little romance.
CHAPTER 13
Dusk descended as they winged their way east. Ahead in the distance, Larajin could see a sprinkling of lights straddling a dark slash across the forest that could only be Essembra and Rauthauvyr’s Road. Leifander dipped a wing, indicating that they should land there, but before they drew much closer, Goldheart began acting in a peculiar fashion. She meowed once, loudly and plaintively, and circled off to the south. When Larajin didn’t follow, Goldheart beat her wings furiously to catch up, then repeated her meow-and-turn. This time, she continued to fly away to the south, her tail lashing furiously.
Leifander, oblivious to Goldheart’s antics, flew steadily on to the east. If Larajin turned and flew after Goldheart, would he follow? The battle with the spiders had taught them that their strength lay in keeping together, but there was no guarantee he wouldn’t ignore the tressym and continue the search for Rylith on his own.
Larajin did the only thing she could—she prayed silently, since her tressym vocal chords could not articulate words. She begged the goddess to give her the power of human speech, so she could talk to Leifander. She knew he could understand language, even in crow form. If she could just—
There. A familiar red glow started at the tips of her whiskers and traveled down them like a flame along a wick. Her lips and tongue were tingling, too. She opened her mouth to call out to Leifander, but what burst forth was the caw of a crow.
Leifander understood it, however. Wheeling up and over in a loop, he flew back to her.
“What?” he cawed back. “What’s wrong?”
Larajin jerked her head in the direction of the rapidly departing tressym.
“It’s Goldheart. She’s spotted something and wants us to follow her.”
Larajin started a wide turn toward the south, and Leifander did a loop that placed him beside her, flying in the same direction—for the moment.
“She’s probably hunting,” Leifander said. “We don’t have time for games of cat and mouse.”
“I don’t think so,” Larajin replied. “She deliberately got my attention before turning south. She wants us to follow. I’ve learned to trust her intuition. Goldheart is blessed by the goddess. Hanali Celanil herself may be guiding her.”
Leifander gave a rattling croak that to Larajin’s ears was clearly a grumble of frustration.
“All right,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see what it is.”
Goldheart, seeing that Larajin and Leifander were at last following, allowed them to catch up to her. As they did, Larajin switched to the tressym’s language, meowing a question.
Goldheart’s answer was cryptic. “He comes,” she yowled back in an excited voice.
The tressym sped up. Unable to further question the creature, Larajin translated for Leifander, who jerked his wings in a shrug.
Goldheart led them south, then turned east to cross Rauthauvyr’s Road. Even in the
gloom of dusk, Larajin could see that it was choked with the aftermath of war. Half a dozen wagons of peculiar construction had obviously fallen victim to an elf ambush. They were stopped at odd angles along the road with horses lying dead in their traces. Dozens of bodies—the wagon drivers and the archers who must have been escorting them—lay scattered around the wagons and on the road itself. Larajin grimaced, glad she wasn’t flying low enough to see their terrible wounds.
The only sign of those who had attacked the caravan was a creature that hung, dead, in the broken branches of a tree next to the road. Its body was a mix of eagle and lion, and there was a saddle on its back, though no rider was to be seen. Leifander, when he saw it, gave a strangled caw and swooped down for a closer look.
Goldheart continued to the south, not even glancing at the carnage below. It seemed she had another objective in mind. Larajin hoped it wasn’t far. Already she could feel the looseness of limb that was the first warning of her change back to human form. Soon, she would have to land and rest and pray to renew her spell.
She saw Goldheart descend toward the treetops as if she had spotted something. Larajin glanced over her shoulder, and saw to her relief that Leifander was still following—he hadn’t landed at the caravan. She angled toward the trees to the spot where Goldheart had landed. As she did, she heard the thudding of hooves and the snorting of horses.
Cautious, she landed on a branch and peered down through the tangle of foliage. Her heart leaped to her throat as she recognized one of the riders below. It was Master Ferrick, leader of the company Tal had joined. There was no sign of Tal among the riders, who numbered less than a dozen. All of them rode as though exhausted, and one was injured, with a stained dressing wrapped around his shoulder.
Had Tal’s company already been attacked by the elves, leaving these men the only survivors? Had Larajin’s vision of Tal’s death already come to pass?
The riders were talking together in low voices, but at this height she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She stalked from branch to branch, trying to get closer to the ground. At last she could pick out a little of the hushed conversation.
