“The elfgate,” Arilyn murmured, naming the magical gateway to Evermeet that she had discovered and then fought to protect.
“That and more,” the elfshadow agreed cryptically. “Once accepted, you slowly became attuned to the sword. That is how I came into being. For lack of a better description, I am the personification of your union with the sword.”
“I see. Do all moonblades have people like you?”
“By the sea and stars! No, not at all. The ability to form and summon an elfshadow was one of the powers added to the moonblade you carry. By Zoastria,” the shadow added in a lower voice.
Something in the elfshadow’s tone convinced Arilyn that this was the name of the sleeping warrior. “So that’s why I’ve been having these dreams. Not since the time of the Harper assassin have I had such visions! But why would finding Zoastria’s body stir them, if you are the personification of my union with the sword?”
“Like the elves who have gone before you, you added a power to the moonblade,” the elfshadow continued softly. “A power that reflects your character and your needs.”
Arilyn shrugged, impatient for the elfshadow to move on to something she did not already know.
“Moonblades contain great magic, and they grow in power with each wielder. But as with all magic, the cost is high.” The elfshadow paused and spread her hands, as if inviting Arilyn to observe in her what that cost might be. “My name is chosen well, for I am the shadow of what you will become.”
Arilyn stared at her image, not wanting to understand. Yet she suspected that she knew what the elfshadow meant. Suddenly, she realized that in some small way she had always known.
“Then when I die—” she began.
“You will not die, strictly speaking. Your life essence will enter the moonblade. This is the ultimate source of the sword’s magic.”
Arilyn turned abruptly away. For a long moment she stared at the wall, her face frozen as she struggled to control her roiling emotions. “So what you’re saying is that this sword is full of dead elves,” she said at last.
“No! That explanation is simplistic and crude, not to mention entirely inaccurate. Except in unusual cases, elves are immortal. We pass from this world on to the realms of Arvandor without tasting death as humans know it. But yes, each elf who accepts a moonblade understands that his or her passage to Arvandor will be delayed, perhaps for thousands of years, until the moonblade’s purpose is fulfilled. When a sword falls dormant, the elves are released. It is an enormous sacrifice, but one that certain noble elves take on gladly for the greater good of the People.”
“But what of me?” The words poured from Arilyn in an agonized rush. “I am half-elven! The gates of Arvandor are closed to such as I, and most of the elves I’ve known believe I have no soul! What will become of me? Of us?” she amended bitterly.
The elfshadow merely shook her head. “I do not know. None of us know. You are the first half-elf ever to wield such a blade. At the risk of sounding like a two-copper cleric discussing the afterlife, you will have to wait and find out.”
“But your best guess would be eternal servitude, cooped up like some genie in a cheap bronze lamp?” Arilyn said with cold rage. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”
“You cannot.”
“The hell I can’t. I didn’t sign on for any of this!”
“Your fate was decided when you first drew the sword,” the elfshadow insisted.
But Arilyn shook her head, her eyes blazing. “I’ll accept that when I’m drinking tea and swapping stories with Zoastria’s shade! There has to be a way out! Where would I find someone who knows it?”
“Arvandor,” the shadow replied grimly. “And, possibly, Evermeet.”
Arilyn threw up her hands. To her, one was about the same as the other. She would never be accepted on the elven island. And not even for the sake of her soul—if indeed she had one—would she take something unearned from the hands of her mother’s people!
Unearned.
Suddenly the furious Harper remembered the missive from the Queen of Evermeet, and she knew what she must do. She would accept Amlaruil’s impossible mission, and she would find a way to succeed beyond the elven monarch’s highest expectations, and she would do it in her own way and on her own terms! And once that was accomplished, the queen would pay dearly for services rendered.
Arilyn lifted the sword and faced down her elfshadow. “In you go,” she said grimly. “Where I’m headed, the patrons are already seeing double.”
Six
“It’s been days, and no sign of them elves,” Vhenlar fretted, and not for the first time. “How’re we to know when they’re coming? You’d sooner hear your own shadow coming up behind you than one of them unnatural things. Like ghosts, they are! For all we know, every man on patrol is lying under some bush right now with a second smile under his chin!”
Bunlap threw a quelling glance toward the nervous archer. “Maybe so, but we’ll know,” he said shortly. “I’ll know.”
As the mercenary spoke, his hand lifted to touch the livid scar on his cheek, three curving lines that combined in the simple but distinctive design of a woodland flower of some sort. Bunlap had seen that mark elsewhere, and since the day the red-haired elf had marked him, he had done his dead-level damndest to make sure other people saw it, too—people who wouldn’t think kindly of the elf it identified. And by extension, the rest of Tethir’s elves. Bunlap’s hatreds were nothing if not inclusive.
They were a scrappy bunch, the wild elves of Tethir, even if they were short and scrawny. The half dozen that Bunlap’s men had captured from the forest glade had put up a fight all out of proportion to their size and number. And these were but womenfolk, and half-grown elf-brats! The mercenaries kept these few around as bait for a trap, but there were many other elves in the forest who might well blame the red-haired elf whose arrows Bunlap had strewn judiciously around the ravaged elven settlement.
Bunlap liked the idea of angering some of the Elmanesse border tribes and turning them against the elven warrior who had maimed him, and who had eluded him for too long. Keep the long-eared bastards busy—that was what he was getting paid to do. But when it came time to kill the red-haired elf, Bunlap wanted the honor for himself.
The mercenary propped his boots up on a bale of dried and cured pipeweed. From his left boot he pulled a small knife, with which he began to carve some of the dirt from under his fingernails. From the small window across from him, he had a clear view of the field that stretched between the drying barn and the forest’s edge. Sunset colors spilled into the small, winding creek that separated field from forest and provided water for the thirsty crops. In the dying light the shadows were deep and long. Even so, nothing, and no one, would be able sneak past him.
Most of the men in the barn’s loft seemed to share Bunlap’s confidence. A dozen men sprawled about throwing dice, whittling, or otherwise killing time. Several days had come and gone since their last foray into the deep shadows of Tethir, and as time passed their dread of elven retaliation had faded into nonchalance.
Vhenlar, however, was still as nervous as a mouse in a hawk’s nest. The archer paced the barn’s loft, watching the windows but keeping well out of the line of fire. In the field directly below them, six bedraggled elves were chained and staked amid the rows of aromatic plants. It was Bunlap’s plan that the elves appear to be field slaves—a plan that was about as effective as hitching three wild deer to a plow and expecting a straight furrow to come of it. The strange little folk adamantly refused to cooperate with their captors. Even the smallest child would rather take a beating than harvest a single leaf. Weakened by lack of food and sleep and by the frequent lash of the whips, the elves nonetheless showed a fierce, stubborn resistance that Vhenlar almost admired.
The archer watched as one of the mercenaries on guard duty drew back his whip to punish a recalcitrant slave. His intended victim, an elven lass not yet old enough to bed, faced the man defiantly as the whip flashed up and f
orward.
Up came the girl’s arm, moving with a speed that rivaled that of the flailing leather thong. Even as the whip curled around her wrist, the elf maid exploded into action. Moving faster than Vhenlar would have believed possible, the girl seized the whip with both hands and threw herself into a backward roll.
The sudden tug worked with the whip’s momentum to pull the mercenary off-balance. He stumbled forward. Before he could recover, the elf was on her feet. With the speed of a striking hawk, she was upon him. A quick flash of her bleeding arm, and the now-slack whip was looped around the mercenary’s neck.
Darting around him, the fierce elf child leaped up high and planted both bare feet on the small of the human’s back. She kicked out hard, launching herself back and pulling at the whip with all her might. Vhenlar winced as the mercenary’s head snapped back sharply. He fancied he could actually hear the distant cracking of bone.
“Another man down,” he noted laconically, watching as three of the guards rushed in and wrestled the girl to the ground.
When Bunlap merely shrugged, the archer turned back to the scene below. He felt oddly ill at ease in the barn’s loft. Trapped, almost. Yet Vhenlar was no stranger to the task before him. During his years stationed in the fortress known as Darkhold, he’d often hidden in the rocks above some nearby mountain pass, picking off travelers. When would-be invaders challenged the Zhentish stronghold, Vhenlar was always called to the walls to help pin down the attackers. His aim was almost legendary, and he had over two hundred confirmed kills to his credit. But compared to the uncanny skill of the forest elves, Vhenlar felt like a clumsy-handed novice. Not even the extra measure of precision granted him by his elven bow evened the score to his satisfaction.
Suddenly the mercenary captain leaped to his feet, his gray eyes blazing in his elf-scarred face. “There it is, men!” hissed Bunlap. “Take your places. Move!”
Although Bunlap’s men exchanged uncertain glances, all did as they were told. Kneeling beside the small windows that vented the loft, they gathered their weapons, fixed their eyes upon the tree line, and waited.
“What d’you hear, Captain?” Vhenlar murmured as he nocked an arrow—one of his own, this time, steel-tipped and fletched with the blue-and-white striped feathers of a bird that brightened the bleak landscape of his native Cormyr. The arrow felt good in his hands, not at all like the black-shafted arrows he had pillaged from the quivers of slain elves or torn from the bodies of his own comrades. There was something unnatural about those elven bolts. Vhenlar couldn’t pick up such an arrow without the strange feeling that it might at any moment turn against him.
“The call of a wood thrush,” Bunlap returned with grim satisfaction. “A sort of bird that never ventures from the forest to the fields. It would appear that our elven friend has less sense than the bird he imitates!”
Vhenlar squinted into the trees, but he could see nothing. He nodded toward the captured elves in the fields below. “If you recognize that birdsong, so do they,” he pointed out.
This, Vhenlar thought, was the weakest point of Bunlap’s plan. Surely the elven slaves realized they were bait for an ambush. If they had bothered to count, they would have to know there had been more humans in the raiding party that destroyed their homes than the few who now guarded them. But the elves also knew enough about their human captors to realize that they themselves would probably not survive a rescue attempt. Vhenlar had no idea whether the elves would try to warn away any would-be rescuers or whether they’d keep quiet and hope for the best.
Then a pale bolt arched up high over the field, followed by two more. The arrows descended upon the three guards who were busy subduing the elf girl with considerably more force than was needed. Startled oaths and shouts of pain floated up toward the barn as the guards leaped to their feet. The men whirled about, pawing at the arrows embedded between their shoulder blades.
“Just out of reach, just above the heart,” murmured Vhenlar with admiration. It was an astonishing feat of skill. Even more remarkable was the range at which the shot had been made. Not even a crossbow-fired arrow could have taken the guards with a level shot. To reach the humans at all, the elves had had to shoot upward at a sharp angle, trusting that the arrows would fall in precisely the right place.
Before he had time to marvel at this feat of marksmanship, the unseen elves’ purpose became apparent. The elf maid, suddenly freed, seized a hand-axe from the belt of one of the distracted men and with one fierce blow severed the chain that tethered her. At once a second barrage of arrows exploded from the forest and took all three of her tormentors through their throats. She nimbly dodged their falling bodies and ran like a deer for the trees.
Instinctively Vhenlar dropped the elf bow and snapped his loaded crossbow up into place. Before he could bring down the elf maid, Bunlap seized his wrist.
“Fool! You’ll give away our position!”
“And she won’t?” Vhenlar retorted.
For once Bunlap had no argument. He released the archer’s wrist and nodded grimly.
Vhenlar pulled the crossbow’s trigger. The arrow streaked toward the fleeing girl, and though she was at the outermost edge of his range, he saw his aim would be good.
But while the arrow was still hurtling downward toward the elf maid’s back, an answering flash came from the forest’s edge. There was a sudden bright spark, clearly visible against the darkening forest, as Vhenlar’s steel arrowhead met one of stone. Both arrows fell to the ground, and the elf maid disappeared into the trees.
“Bane’s dark blood,” the archer swore in an awed tone. Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed any mortal being could shoot accurately enough to hit an arrow in flight, point-to-point.
Bunlap seemed to be having similar thoughts, for he edged away from the open window. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed instructions to the men below. The guards unchained the captured elves and, holding them as shields, began to drag them back behind the barn.
“Lot of good that will do,” Vhenlar muttered. “Elves are small; there’s still too much human target exposed. Those elven archers could put a bolt through a hummingbird’s eye!”
“So we might lose a few guards,” the captain returned coldly. “What of it? Enough men remain to bring the captives out of range—and out of sight. The wild elves won’t stand and fight, but we’ll give them something to think about. Every now and again we’ll cut one of their womenfolk. They can sit there and enjoy the music while we kill off their people, bit by bit, or they can leave the shelter of the trees.”
The archer responded with a derisive sniff.
“An easy choice for them to make, is that what you think?” inquired Bunlap. “Mark me: that fox-haired elf will come. Hells’ dungeons—I’d come, if for no other reason than to take up the gauntlets we’ve been leaving all over the forest!
“But more than that, he wants me,” the mercenary captain continued with dark satisfaction. “I’ve looked into that elf’s eyes. He’s the sort who likes to think of himself as a noble leader, but deep down he’s the same as I am. For both of us, this has become personal.”
* * * * *
The elven maiden stumbled into the forest and into the waiting arms of Tamara Oakstaff, the only female in the war party. The young fighter steadied the child, then held her out at arm’s length. Tamara’s expert gaze slid over the girl, measuring her hurts.
These were many and considerable: welts and gashes dealt by the whip, skin rubbed into raw, angry wounds by rusted chains, a frail body weakened by lack of food and water and rest. There were unseen hurts, too, apparent only to Tamara’s fey eyes. For a moment the elf woman flinched away from the terrors the child had endured. But any thought of pity died when Tamara’s gaze reached the girl’s fierce eyes. The older female nodded approval. This one would not only survive, but fight!
“Give the little hawk some water,” she said with a smile, “and then give her a bow and quiver!”
; But the elf maid waved away both and pointed to the retreating humans. “Too late for that,” she said.
“They are beyond range,” Foxfire agreed.
As the leader handed the girl a waterskin and indicated that she must drink, his eyes searched the windows placed high on the large wooden structure that stood at the far side of the field.
There archers lay in wait for them. As he’d expected, this was an ambush. What he hadn’t bargained on was that Bunlap would use elven children and females to lure his opponents into the trap. Silently Foxfire berated himself. He should have foreseen something like this, given what he knew of the man.
“Tell us of our foe. How many humans do we face?” he asked the elf maid, speaking as one warrior to another.
This show of respect brightened the child’s eyes. She bit her lip, concentrating, nodding off the count as she silently tallied their foe. “More than a hundred men attacked Council Glade; of that number, perhaps half survived. We six managed to kill a few more since we were brought here, but there were far too many for us!”
“A familiar story, when dealing with humans,” muttered Tamsin, Tamara’s twin-born brother.
“And in the barn?” Foxfire pressed.
“Ten, maybe more,” she said. “There were twelve guards in the field, and two patrols of ten each in the forest.”
“You needn’t worry about them,” Tamsin assured her in a tone that left little doubt as to their fate.
“A score of humans. We outnumber them three to two,” exulted Tamara.
“And in the forest, that would be overwhelming odds,” the leader said. “But the humans have turned this battle around, forcing us into a stupid and suicidal charge while they fight from cover as forest people do!”
“It is not our way, but if you say it must be done we will follow you,” one of the warriors said. The others, thirty in all, nodded and raised their hands in a silent gesture of assent, as the elves of Talltrees pledged their lives to their war leader.
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