Shadow Dawn

by Chris Claremont

  The naiad was searching, too, but not for sanctuary. Her eyes marked the gathering beyond, the faces so bright with wonder and joy they might have been alive, only lightly dusted here and there with apprehension as the gossamer mood began to fray. Daikini held Faery in comfort and friendship, as those of Faery did in return.

  With a smile of her own, the naiad spun herself into a slow and languorous pirouette that was a match for the engagement Elora herself had used at the very beginning. She held out her hands to the child with the same gentleness and generosity she would have used for her own offspring, all the while swaying in tune to Elora’s waltz cadence.

  Shyly the girl tried a smile of her own in return and lifted a hand to the naiad’s. As delicately as if she was grasping the most fragile piece of porcelain, the most evanescent of soap bubbles, the naiad gathered the child into her loving embrace.

  On the far side of the river, a gusting breeze set the treetops into motion with their characteristic shushush sound. It swept past the watchers with a chill harbinger of fast-approaching fall and cast the mist into instant chaos. The campfire blazed as though it had been fed oxygen through a bellows pump and a magnificent shower of sparks spiraled their way toward the heavens.

  On the boundary where firelight blended with darkness, Elora stood alone. Of the townsfolk, the Veil Folk, there was no sign, save perhaps for some fast-fading sparkles that might be mistaken for wayward sparks from the fire. The spirits were gone. Only the living remained atop the knoll.

  Elora was breathing hard and her skin gleamed with the exertions of the night. She had to be exhausted but in no way did she look tired. Rool started toward her, a query poised on the tip of his tongue to ask if she was all right, if there was anything he could do, only to realize that she was looking past him and that the night had suddenly grown far more bright and warm.

  On its bluff, the tower burned. The stout stone battlements acted like a chimney, air being drawn in through the open doorway and the various embrasures to superheat the flames beyond white-hot. From the intensity, Rool knew that it would consume everything within its walls and very likely the walls themselves.

  Whatever the High Elves had planned for this valley had perished with them. Now every vestige of their presence was being erased.

  The land, the village, its people, were healed.

  The valley was whole again.

  “Duguay Faralorn,” the Daikini said by way of introduction, accompanied by an elegant bow far more suitable for an imperial court than this frontier lean-to.

  “I’m Elora,” she told him, returning his smile with a somewhat more weary one of her own.

  He had height on her, which was nothing new among Daikini, but his shoulders weren’t that much broader. His body was slim-hipped, lean as a rapier, and he moved with such a lazy ease that she suspected he possessed a formidable strength as well. His features were no more classically handsome than his body, yet the overall effect was quite pleasing to the eye. His mouth was wide, the nose above had been broken, and Elora couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the fellow responsible because this was a man who didn’t suffer such assaults lightly. His face was textured, especially around the eyes, in ways that told her he laughed easily and well. A level gaze, directed now on her, that saw far more than the man let on. A broad brow, topped by an unruly stirring of curly brown hair, a pair of piercing holes in the lobe of his left ear, one in the right.

  He was a very nice man, but in many ways wholly unmemorable—which made the announcement of his occupation all the more remarkable.

  “I’m a troubadour,” he told her, fishing in his kit bag for clothes and other adornments, among them a set of plain gold rings for his ears.

  Strangely Elora found it almost impossible to meet his eyes. When she looked at him, her gaze fixed itself on the tip of his nose, an ear, the hollow of his throat, whatever stood just beyond his shoulder. By contrast, his stare was disconcertingly level as he surveyed her from head to toe, cataloging her in a way that turned her hot and cold all at the same time and left her skin a mass of shivery goose bumps.

  “I am in your debt, Elora,” he said. Then he cocked his head a little sideways, to consider a new thought. “Famous name, that.”

  “Popular, too, so I’m told. Was a time when every newborn girl seemed to be gifted with that name.”

  “And the skin?”

  “How about your silence for your life, Master Duguay, in any way that relates to me, and we’ll call our debt square?”

  “Bargain like a Cascani, you say.” Rool sounded disappointed as he muttered in her ear a small while later, the bulk of his attention focused warily on their new companion while Elora busied herself with final preparations for their journey. “I think not!”

  “Forgive me,” she pleaded as she finished her packing, “I’m tired.”

  “That’s when traders should be at their most dangerous, my girl!”

  “My work here is done, Rool,” she said, then brightened as the trill of a birdsong resounded from the trees across the river. It was the first she’d heard since their arrival. Off to the east, the velvet sky was taking on a faint roseate sheen in herald of the coming dawn. Mist had given way to morning dew, the air brisk enough to make every exhalation visible, and even the smell of smoke off the remnants of the tower didn’t seem out of place.

  “I don’t want to think for a while, I just want to enjoy the moment.”

  * * *

  —

  “Walking alone?” Duguay wondered as they left the village behind.

  She made no audible reply, but swung her eyes to the brownie riding her shoulder and from there to the eagle soaring just above the treetops.

  “Apparently not,” he acknowledged.

  They’d lingered at the campsite one day more while Elora regained her strength, at the same time growing increasingly concerned about their supplies as she wolfed down every scrap of food that came to hand in her traveling pouches. Most of Duguay’s instruments had survived his captivity. His clothes proved less fortunate, making the man cluck with dismay at the mismatched garments he was left with. He prided himself on his fashion sense and had no truck with ragamuffins. Rool’s wound turned out to be mostly cosmetic, requiring a poultice instead of Elora’s gifts as well as a bandage, which gave him a raffish, piratical air. Bastian, too, was well on the path to recovery, though both strength and endurance were limited until the soreness passed. His flights were of short duration and he didn’t stray far.

  Ironically the healthiest among them was the one who’d nearly died and he made the most of it, taking on himself the bulk of the chores with a solicitude and charm they all found irresistible.

  “I can find another road, Elora, if that’s your wish,” he offered in that same vein. “It’s nothing to me which way I go.”

  She slid a skeptical gaze his way, making an obvious show of looking past him at the steep ridge that rose up from the road on one side, then swiveled her head toward the widening race of water that paced them on the other.

  Duguay chuckled.

  “Fine,” he said, waving his hands in a concession of defeat. “Shall I retire to some forest hollow to wait a day or three until you’re too far ahead to catch?”

  Elora responded with another dumbshow, cocking her head, raising her eyebrows, pursing her lips, making all manner of obscure sounds in mock consideration of his offer. In fact, a part of her deep inside was doing precisely the same in all seriousness. For different reasons, both aspects came to the same conclusion.

  “You…”—she strung the word well past the point of decency, and let it trail off into a pause that lasted even longer, gleefully taking the opportunity to keep the troubadour dangling in suspense—“can stay.”

  “I am so honored.”

  She made him a face and threw a punch to his nearside shoulder that was meant to thump but
only provoked a laugh when she ended up shaking the numbness from her knuckles. For all the man’s lack of bulk, he was solid as forged steel. The only softness about him was the clothes on his back.

  “I’ve never seen skin like yours,” he noted.

  One of a kind, that’s me was her silent retort. Aloud, she was more circumspect. “It’s a wide, wonderful world,” she told him. “You’d be amazed at what you’ll find in it.”

  “Considering my present company, I already am.”

  She rolled her eyes, shutting her mental ears against Rool’s hoots of derision, but secretly she was smiling with an awkward shyness she’d never before felt.

  His answers proved as vague as hers. He was from somewhere, en route to somewhere else, the clear impression being that his departure was hasty and involved some flagrant breaches of hospitality and etiquette, not to mention propriety. Troubadours had notorious reputations but in Duguay’s case it appeared to be wholly deserved. His capture was deftly explained away as a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of the spell the elves planned to cast, he professed total ignorance. All that mattered to him was that he was to be the sacrifice that activated it.

  For all his mysteries—and who was she to throw those stones, who kept tightly shuttered the doors and windows of her own past?—Duguay proved himself the ideal partner for the road. He was good company, silent when needed, always ready with a story to make her laugh or a witty, occasionally wicked observation, and a song to lift her spirits or make the miles go that much faster. When they broke for lunch and later found a place to pass the night, he pulled forth an instrument from his pack and spent some time in practice with it. Over the course of the days that followed, she saw a bodhran, a tiompan, a set of bellows pipes, and a pennywhistle, a fiddle, and a guitar, and had she not seen how artfully he arranged his kit—and tried hefting the load onto her own back—she was ready to swear he used a variation of her own traveling pouches and stored everything in a hidey-hole of magic.

  For all that she came to like him, though, she still found herself unable to look him in the eye.

  They were proceeding through highland country, and would be until they reached Sandeni, where the continent dropped literally off a cliff toward the west and ultimately to Angwyn. Mile after endless mile of rolling hills that passed through the most impressive forest Elora had beheld since Angwyn. Old-growth conifers, pointed crowns stabbing skyward like lancers at attention, the smallest of their trunks broad enough for a stout man to hide behind unseen.

  Bastian was their primary hunter, providing them with a fresh kill for every dinner, rabbit one day, trout or salmon another. Responsibility for cooking was shared between Elora and Duguay, while Rool took himself into the woods for greens and vegetables, Elora producing condiments from her pouch to add spice to the meal. For drinks, they had to make do with mountain springwater, filling their flasks as required from the river.

  There was no end to Duguay’s repertoire and he needed no excuse to break into song, whether around their nighttime fire or during each day’s trek. He had tunes for every occasion and could make Elora laugh as easily as cry. What she loved best, she discovered with an incendiary passion that was altogether new to her, were the ones that made her dance. She’d never had such simple, pure fun: Duguay would establish a beat on his bodhran before shifting to pipes or tin whistle and Elora would let her body take things from there. There were no inhibitions when she danced, no restrictions, she found in it the way to claim the full measure of freedom she’d been denied most of her life.

  “You never danced at court?” Duguay asked as he ran through a series of paradiddles on his guitar. The word made her giggle to hear it, even after his patient explanation that it was a sequence of staccato, four-element beats, alternating between the strings and his fingers tapping the face of the instrument like a drum.

  The question caught her off guard, as much as the casual way he asked. Her reply was automatic.

  “That wasn’t dancing,” she scoffed, realizing too late what she’d just revealed about herself but deciding to plunge on regardless. To hear her name and see her argent skin told him all he needed to know about who she truly was, anything more was window dressing. “I’ve seen soldiers have more fun during close-order drill.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “Step-two-three-four-step-two-three-four,” she continued in that same derisive tone, mocking court behavior with the same joyous enthusiasm as a brownie. “Wrapped so tight in gowns you can hardly move, face your partner just so, hold your body thus, such a touch is permitted while this other is most definitely not! See what the others are wearing and never let on that any look more glorious than you.”

  “I can see a lovely time was had by all.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I was only ever allowed to watch.”

  She folded her body in on itself and dropped like a puppet whose strings had just been cut, loose-limbed and without the slightest stiffness to her joints as she planted her bottom on the ground and flopped full-length onto her back to stare at what stars were visible through the treetops.

  “Enjoy that, my girl,” Duguay told her.

  “Enjoy what?” she wondered, bridling ever so slightly at the possessive reference.

  “How easily your body obeys you. We take it for granted when it’s ours, and lose it all too quickly.”

  “You move well enough, Master Faralorn.”

  “And greet the morning with groans to prove it.” He strummed some random chords on his guitar. “Have you ever tried singing, Elora?”

  “By myself,” she confessed.

  “I’d like to hear.”

  She shook her head, grateful the nighttime shadows hid the flush that warmed her cheeks. She wasn’t used to compliments, and even when they came, a part of her always feared they were offered because of who she was rather than what she’d done. Reverence was hers almost as a matter of right. Respect, she had to earn. And once gained, it was something she was loath to place at risk. She didn’t want to seem foolish in front of him.

  “What’s wrong?” he prodded gently.

  She made a weak gesture in the general direction of her throat.

  “You’ve heard my voice.”

  “I like it.”

  “Don’t be mean, Duguay. It’s deeper than most girls’ and broken besides. Audiences like their girls to sing clear as crystal, sweet as May wine.”

  “That they do.”

  “You have a broader range and you’re a wonder to hear. I’d just be a joke.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself. Trust me, Elora, I’ve heard the others. Everyone sounds the same, where you’d be unique. Especially if we can find a way for you to sing the way you dance.”

  “Make things up as I go along?”

  “With passion. The way you move, when the light flashes off your skin, it’s like watching fire come to life, a radiance so intense it hurts. Yet one can’t look away.”

  “Rool,” she called, “help! The man’s demented.”

  “Can’t argue with you there,” the brownie agreed, polishing off the last of a sprig of wild blackberries, each one of which was bigger than his head. “But he’s right nonetheless.”

  “Traitor,” she cried, plucking a couple of berries from his grasp to pop one in her own mouth and toss the other across the fire into Duguay’s. “Score,” she said proudly, savoring the tart juice as she swallowed.

  “Where’s the harm to try, Elora?” chided Duguay. “There’s none but us to hear.”

  Her first inclination was to fake going asleep until they lost interest, but they all knew her too well to fall for that old ploy.

  Duguay started a round, pitched the refrain to Rool, who caught it with ease, carrying the tune with a strong, mid-range tenor that brought Elora over onto her belly, chin resting in cradled palms as she listened and enjoye
d.

  Then it was her turn. She caught the refrain well enough but her position denied her decent breath or voice. Rool pinched her hard enough to make her yelp and the look on his face prompted her to sit straight up, promising far more inventive torments if she didn’t at least make a credible effort.

  “I thought you were my friend,” she hissed at him.

  “I am. I happen to think this’ll do some good.”

  “Wretch!”

  “Never in the history of the world, of any world, has there ever been a being so stubbornly determined to make herself utterly and eternally miserable!”

  “Not so!”

  “Really.” He wasn’t convinced.

  Again the round came to her. This time she tried her best.

  She was right on both counts. Her voice was low and husky, described by Duguay as a “whiskey contralto.” The term meant nothing to Elora, who didn’t drink beyond the occasional glass of wine. To her it seemed the poorest of tools, the weakest of her body’s assets.

  “An asset is what you make of it,” Duguay told her. “And more often than not, it’s the presentation of a song that makes the difference to the audience, more than the tune itself. Keep at it, you’ll see.”

  * * *

  —

  Within a week they came to their first fork in the road, the other path branching off to their left to disappear into the deep woods, no doubt leading to some other remote settlement. Elora considered sending Bastian in that direction, to see if things there were all right. The problem was, what then? She didn’t know these folk, nor how to use the golden eagle to convey a warning to them. If she went herself, who knew how long the journey might take or what might happen along the way?

  Bastian spiraled as high as he could but saw no sign of any Daikini habitation. There were too many folds to the land, too many valleys to choose from.

  It was Duguay who found an answer, though it wasn’t one that made any of them feel easier. The road they had followed was relatively flat and unmarred. The other fork was marked with deep ruts, as was the way ahead, clear sign that heavily laden wagons had passed by recently.