A nobleman’s son turned soldier-of-fortune, Arilyn reasoned, one who was prepared to amuse himself at the expense of the commonborn lad before him. In short, an idiot.
Arilyn let out a brief, disgusted hiss. She parried the rogue nobleman’s first lunge, countered with a quick underhand sweep—which was also deftly parried—and followed up with a flurry of ringing exchanges. He met each of the thrusts and returned as often as he parried. The man was good, but not nearly as skilled as he seemed to think he was.
The half-elf spun, faked a stumble, and went down on one knee with her back toward him. To all appearances, it would be a fatal fumble. She could almost feel his supercilious smile as he raised his sword for the killing blow.
Arilyn listened to the whistling sweep of the descending blade; then, at precisely the right moment, she lifted her moonblade up high overhead to meet it. She leaped to her feet and turned hard to confront him, pushing their joined blades around and down as she came. The speed of the unexpected attack threw the swordsman off-balance. Arilyn, however, lashed up high and hard, severing one of the man’s ears as the moonblade flashed up over his head. Her opponent howled with pain, but only briefly, for Arilyn pivoted to the left and swept the moonblade across in a hard, level stroke. The man’s head rolled from his shoulders.
Arilyn continued the swing, pulling her right elbow back until her two-fisted grip was tightly pressed against her right shoulder. She face off against the nearest man and stepped toward him, her left foot leading and sword thrusting out straight and hard toward his throat. He could not even lift a blade in time to parry.
Pulling her sword from the dead man’s throat, she spun about to see how her companions were faring.
Not well. Hawkwing was down, and Ferret was pressed on all sides. The elven war leader was doing his best to work his way through to any one of the beleaguered females, but he was badly outnumbered. Even if he’d been fighting one-on-one, Foxfire’s bone dagger was not designed for battle against tempered steel.
As if in response to her thoughts, the elf’s dagger shattered under the attack of a mercenary’s sword. The elf leaped aside, agile and quick, but several men closed in, and Arilyn knew he could not long avoid them.
Her next response was pure instinct. She held her bloodstained blade high and shouted a command to the magic imprisoned within: “Come forth! All of you!”
At Arilyn’s summons, magic exploded from the moonblade—a white, swirling mist that rose into the air with a force and fury rivaling that of a waterspout at sea.
Every combatant on the field froze and stared at the brief, spectacular manifestation. Then it was gone, and in its place stood several battle-ready elven warriors, each armed with a sword identical to the moonblade that had called them forth. These advanced on the befuddled humans, and the battle began anew.
For a moment Arilyn could do nothing but gaze in awe at her ancestors, all the elves who had wielded her moonblade since the days of its forging in long-ago Myth Drannor.
There was Zoastria, tiny and wraithlike—the most insubstantial of the elfshadow warriors. The elf woman’s angular face was a mask of frustration as she slashed at the human mercenaries with her sword, a sword that drew no more blood than would a breath of wind. Yet Zoastria’s efforts were not without effect. The mercenaries shrank away in terror from the ghostly elven warrior—and onto the blades of the others.
A tall, ancient elven wizard, his long white hair a mass of tiny braids, held his shadow-moonblade out at arm’s length, point-down, as if it were a mage’s staff. The sword blazed with blue fire, as did his eyes and the fingertips of his outstretched hand. Pinpricks of blazing eldritch light darted toward the mercenaries like vengeful fireflies.
A small, slight male elf held his sword with two hands, yet he wielded the single blade with a dizzying speed that brought to mind the dual swords of a bladesinger’s dance. The crest on his tabard, a bright-plummaged bird rising from flames, proclaimed him to be Phoenix Moonflower, the elf who, centuries before, had imbued the sword with its rapid strike.
Another male elf, this one with flame-colored hair, wielded a shadow-sword that flickered and seared with arcane fire. Heat rose from the blade, which glowed a red so intense that it brought to mind a dwarven forge. Arilyn recognized him as Xenophor, the elf who had lent the power of fire resistance to the blade, and she watched in awe as he fought, for his shadow moonblade leaped and darted and licked like wildfire in a capricious wind.
There was a tall, rangy elf woman who seemed oddly devoid of color. Her skin was starkly white, her eyes and hair the color of jet, her leathers and boots a dusty black. There was nothing colorless about her fighting, though. Never had Arilyn seen anyone fight with such bloody fury. And there were others as well—Arilyn’s own elfshadow and two males, one small and fierce and the other taller than the rest and golden-haired.
All this Arilyn noted in an instant, for the churning battle did not allow for leisurely study of her elfshadow allies. But as her well-trained mind took note of the shadow warriors and the general course of battle, her eyes instinctively swept the fierce group for a glimpse of a face she had last seen when she was only a child—that of her mother, Z’beryl.
A tall, thick-bodied man reeled toward the Harper, his hands clutching at his torn and bloody jerkin. Arilyn shoved him aside and looked up into the face of his killer.
An icy fist clutched at Arilyn’s chest as she gazed upon her mother. She was as beautiful as Arilyn remembered—as tall as her daughter, with the same milky skin and gold-flecked blue eyes, but her small, fine-featured face was crowned with a cloud of thick, wavy hair the color of spun sapphires. Beautiful, yes, but grim and terrible. This was not Z’beryl of Evereska, the loving mother and patient instructor of swordcraft. This was the elf Z’beryl had once been: Amnestria, daughter of Zaor and Amlaruil of Evermeet, crown princess of the elves, battle wizard, and warrior. And this was the face Amnestria showed to her enemies.
The regal elf woman raised her blood-drenched sword and pointed it at Arilyn. To the stunned half-elf, the gesture seemed ominous, accusing. Amnestria spoke, but only a word: “Beware!”
Arilyn heard the ringing clash of steel on steel, so close and so loud that it seemed to echo through her bones and teeth. Instinctively, she raised her moonblade and whirled toward the sound.
Her own elfshadow stood behind her, shadow-sword uplifted in a defensive parry against the broadsword that would have cleaved Arilyn’s head from her shoulders. The man who held the sword was easily the size of Arilyn and her elfshadow combined. Grinning with sadistic delight, he forced the joined swords downward, pressing Arilyn’s shadow slowly to her knees.
The half-elf recovered her wits and lunged forward. Her moonblade dug between his ribs; she wrenched it out and plunged it in again. Arilyn’s elfshadow threw aside the dying man’s sword arm and wheeled away to find another fight.
Arilyn took a deep steadying breath and made a quick survey of the battle. Although she now understood that her mother’s elfshadow had meant to warn her of the danger behind her, she could not rid herself of the feeling that Z’beryl—no, from now on she would forever be Amnestria—was ashamed of the course her daughter and blade heir had taken. Arilyn’s mother had willingly embraced the service and the sacrifice required of those who wielded a moonblade, as had all the elves who now fought. Was Arilyn, a mere half-elf, incapable of such nobility?
Instinctively, the Harper knew this was not so. She would do what she must for the elven People, as she always had. If that meant giving up her dream of freedom from the demands of the moonblade, then so be it. She would serve the sword, throughout eternity if need be.
With new resolve, Arilyn waded through the fighting toward the place where young Hawkwing had faltered and fallen. But her own arms seemed numb and heavy, and the moonblade refused to move at quite its usual speed. Too late she remembered the warning her own elfshadow had given her: she could not expect both to call forth the magic and wield it.
She managed to block a chest-high thrust and then flung the attacking blade aside. But a second mercenary got through her guard—not with a sword, but with a mailed fist. The blow struck Arilyn’s jaw hard and sent her reeling to her knees. It was then she saw the wound that had at last brought Hawkwing to ground.
The elven girl lay on one side, staring forward with a single fierce black eye. From the other protruded the hilt of a dagger.
For just a moment, grief clenched Arilyn like a giant fist, squeezing the breath from her body and stealing her will to fight. It was just for a second, but even that was too much. A shadow fell over Hawkwing’s body; Arilyn looked up into the point of a nocked and ready arrow. This man had seen her fight; apparently he was not going to chance facing her sword.
Before he could release the arrow, a large missile hurtled over Arilyn’s head and toward the archer. The man staggered back, and the arrow soared upward in a limp and harmless arc. Arilyn stared at the horrid, sticky mess that had taken the place of the archer’s head.
“I say, that was a good one,” announced a satisfied male voice behind her. “Custard and cream, I should think, and a vast improvement in matters of size and aim. Though to be quite frank with you, my dear, the spell for Snilloc’s Cream Pie was rather a benign missile for this blighter. Not his just desserts at all, you should pardon the expression.”
The tone was familiar—a cultured and lazy-sounding tenor—but oddly enough, the words were spoken in the Elvish tongue. Arilyn whirled, staring up in horrified silence into the handsome, smiling, human face of her Harper partner.
She knew at once how he’d come to be here, though never for a moment had the possibility occurred to her that such a thing might come to pass.
Each wielder of a moonblade added a power to the sword. Two years past, Arilyn had done the same, removing certain restrictions so she might share the moonblade and its magic with her partner. Never once had she suspected that in doing so, she had created an elfshadow entity that linked Danilo to the magic sword—and condemned him to her own fate.
“Oh, my goddess,” she said in a despairing whisper. “No, Danilo. Oh, not you too.”
Seventeen
After several hours, the darkness that had cocooned Arilyn’s mind since the battle began to dim around the edges, and bright, blinding colors seeped in to whirl and dance madly behind her closed eyelids.
The half-elf groaned and tried to sit up. Strong and gentle hands pressed her back down. “Not yet,” Foxfire told her. “You drained your moonblade’s magic for Hawkwing’s sake, and for us all. Much strength was taken from you, as well.”
Hawkwing. Memory returned in a vivid, horrible rush. Arilyn turned her head away, unwilling to let her elven friend witness the grief and guilt the elf maid’s death brought her. Perhaps, if she had not drained her own strength to call forth the elfshadow entities, she could have made her way to Hawkwing’s side in time to save her.
“You missed the best part of the fight,” announced Ferret’s voice, wild and exultant still from the excitement of battle. “Never have I seen such warriors! Nine champions on a field at once! Who could stand against such a force, and who beneath the stars would not follow them? It was a marvel I will long remember.”
“The shadow warriors returned to the sword at battle’s end,” Foxfire added. “All but one—the tall gold-elf wizard who carried you here. He would not return unless he had your direct command, or, at least, reasonable assurance that you were safe. Although in the case of that one, I do not know what might be considered reasonable,” he added in a wry tone.
Arilyn’s lips twitched in an involuntary smile. She knew at once the true identity of the wizard of whom Foxfire spoke. In a few terse words, the wild elf had sketched a remarkably accurate picture of the Danilo she knew: a stubborn, exasperating soul who would have his way no matter what and who usually took center stage while doing so. On the other hand, he was also perhaps the most caring, intuitive, and gifted human she’d ever met. Of course his shadow-spirit could recognize the problems inherent in showing these elves his true face, and certainly he was skilled enough in the magical arts to cast such an illusion over himself. Despite all, Arilyn could not help but be amused by the image of Danilo as a gold-elf wizard. That was a role he would certainly play to the balcony seats! The gold elves were widely considered to be the most beautiful and regal of the People. Knowing Dan as she did, Arilyn could guess that his shadow took on this guise with typical flamboyant élan.
The warmth these thoughts brought her was rapidly chased away by the chilling memory of what Dan’s shadow meant, and the realities of the battle they had fought. Danilo’s spirit had been condemned to serve the moonblade. And Hawkwing was dead.
“The gold wizard left you a message,” Ferret said, cutting into Arilyn’s grim thoughts. “He bid you remember the legend lore spell, which you heard when first you and he sought the answers to your moonblade’s magic.”
The elf woman began to recite words that Arilyn only dimly remembered, words that the archmage Khelben Arunsun himself had coaxed from the moonblade more than two years before:
“Call forth through stone,
Call forth from steel.
Command the mirror of myself,
But ware the spirit housed within
The shadow of the elf.”
“He said to tell you that you cannot call the shadow warriors again without great risk to yourself,” Ferret continued. “It is a shame. With them to lead, the Talltrees clan could face nearly any foe!”
“Never heared tell afore that elven folk feared to go into battle,” taunted a gruff, vaguely familiar voice. “You couldn’t be gittin’ soft. Yer too ding-blasted scrawny fer that!”
After a moment’s shock, Arilyn placed the deep tones with a face—that-of a young dwarf with a short, dun-colored beard and an unusual zest for both rowdiness and romance. Yet how could this be? When last she’d seen him, the dwarf was reveling in the luxuries afforded by the Foaming Sands, and was washing away the memories of ten years of servitude with as much warm, bubbling water and half-clad women as his coins would buy him.
“Not Jill?” Arilyn whispered. She struggled to sit, to open her eyes, but could not yet do either.
“The same,” the dwarf said gruffly. “Hold still, now. Yer wrigglin’ around like a worm on a hook, and with no fish to show fer yer efforts. Rest. That were some fight, though sorry to say ol’ Kendel and I missed the best of it.”
“Kendel Leafbower,” supplied a soft, melodious elven voice. “At your service, Lady of the Moonblade.”
Arilyn recognized the moon-elven clan name. The Leafbowers were renowned as travelers and fighters. Such an elf was an unlikely companion for the dwarf. “How did you come to be here, Jill?” she murmured.
“Well now, that’s a story,” the dwarf admitted in a conversational tone. “Leave it to say that Kendel ’n me borrowed somebody’s hired sword and persuaded him to head fer home. This is where he brung us—a bit too late for the fight, like I said, but soon enough fer him to die with people he knew. More’n he had comin’ to him, by my way of thinkin’.
“Kendel and you,” she repeated, somewhat bemused by the idea of a dwarf and a moon-elf warrior on such friendly terms.
“Yep. You might say him and me is tighter’n ticks,” Jill agreed happily, “though no one what heared us talkin’ on the way east mighta guessed it. Argued like brothers, we did, about which of us would git to kill the hired sword and when he’d git to do it. Never meant a word of it. But fun it were!” he concluded gleefully.
“I see the gold-elf wizard spoke truth,” Ferret broke in coldly. “He said you knew this dwarf. You’ve strange allies, Arilyn Moonblade.”
“You’re not fer knowing the half of it, elf woman,” the dwarf retorted. “I been in more fights than you’ve had tumbles, an’ I thought I seen it all. But never once have I seen an elf ghost come to the aid of the living! Are you thinking that the ghost of that liddle blue-hai
red elf woman follered you from the treasure room?” he asked Arilyn. “Morodin’s Beard, if’n you could put some starch in that one, she’d be worth fighting!”
Yes, Arilyn admitted silently. That was precisely what she must do. Perhaps she could not call forth the elfshadow warriors again, but she could restore to the forest elves a hero they knew, one they would willingly follow. She would have to, as Jill so aptly phrased it, “put some starch” back into the elven battle leader Zoastria. It was time to reunite the elfshadow with the slumbering form of her ancestor.
But first, she had to regain her own “starch.”
Arilyn willed her swirling thoughts to find focus. She noted that her cheek was pillowed on something deep and fragrant, like moist velvet. Moss. The air was cool here and heavy with magic she had not been able to sense a fortnight ago. These things could mean only that they were back in the forest.
“Did you bring her home?” she whispered, thinking of the fallen Hawkwing. In her time in Tethir, Arilyn had come to realize that the ties between the elves and their forest went too deep for death to sever. The green elves returned to the forest in ways that could not be understood or explained, and she needed to know that Hawkwing would find rest beneath the trees.
A long, heavy silence answered her question. “When your strength faltered, so did the shadow warriors,” Foxfire said at last. “More men came from the fortress, and we were forced to flee. A choice had to be made between the living and the dead. Do not grieve for Hawkwing: she is free.”
* * * * *
But she was not.
The spirit of the elven girl wandered the battlefield. She was dazed and angry and confused, though the battle was long over. The call of Arvandor was sweet and strong; still more compelling were the rhythms of the forest, heard and felt and understood as never before.
Yet the child could respond to neither. She had been torn from life too soon, and though her existence had not often been easy or happy, she was not yet reconciled to leaving it behind.
Silver Shadows Page 27