“You have met Prince Elbereth?” Headmaster Avery Schell asked Cadderly as soon as the young scholar entered Dean Thobicus’s office. The large headmaster rubbed a kerchief across his blotchy face, huffing and puffing almost continually as his bloated body tried to pull in enough air. Even before the advent of the chaos curse, Avery had been a rotund man. Now he was obese, having gone on a gluttonous spree along with several other of the Edificant Library’s most prominent eaters. In the throes of the chaos curse, some of those priests had literally eaten themselves to death.
“You must take longer walks each morning,” offered Headmistress Pertelope, a neatly groomed, graying woman with hazel eyes that still showed the inquisitive luster more common to a much younger person. Cadderly carefully considered the woman, standing easily by Avery’s side. Pertelope was the young scholar’s favorite instructor, a wistful, often irreverent woman more concerned with common sense than steadfast rules. He noted her long-sleeved, ankle-length gown, bound tightly about the collar, and the gloves that she had been wearing every time Cadderly had seen her since the chaos curse. Never before had Pertelope been so modest, if it was indeed modesty that kept her so covered. She wouldn’t talk about it, though, to Cadderly or to anyone else; she wouldn’t talk about anything that had occurred during the time of the curse. Cadderly wasn’t overly concerned, for even with the new wrappings, Pertelope seemed her old mischievous self. Even as Cadderly watched, she grabbed a handful of Avery’s blubber and gave a playful shake, to the incredulous stares of both Avery and Dean Thobicus, the skinny and wrinkled leader of the library.
A chuckle erupted from Cadderly’s lips faster than he could bite it back. The stares turned grave as they shifted his way, but Pertelope offered him a playful wink to comfort him.
Through it all, Prince Elbereth, tall and painfully straight, with hair the color of a raven’s wings and eyes the silver of moonbeams on a rushing river, showed no emotion whatsoever. Standing like a statue beside Dean Thobicus’s oaken desk, he caught Cadderly’s gaze with his own penetrating stare and held the young scholar’s attention firmly.
Cadderly was thoroughly flustered and did not even notice the seconds passing by.
“Well?” Avery prompted.
Cadderly at first didn’t understand, so Avery motioned the elven prince’s way.
“No,” Cadderly answered quickly, “I have not had the honor of a formal introduction, though I have heard much of Prince Elbereth since his arrival three days ago.” Cadderly flashed his boyish smile, the corners of his gray eyes turning up to match his grin. He pushed his unkempt, sandy brown locks from his face and moved toward Elbereth, a hand extended. “Well met!”
Elbereth regarded the offered hand for some time before extending his own in response. He nodded gravely, making Cadderly more than a little bit embarrassed and uncomfortable about the easy smile splayed across his face. Yet again, Cadderly felt out of his element, beyond his experiences. Elbereth had come with potentially catastrophic news and Cadderly, sheltered for all of his life, simply did not know how to respond in such a situation.
“This is the scholar I have told you about,” Avery explained to the elf. “Cadderly of Carradoon, a most remarkable young man.”
Elbereth’s handshake was incredibly strong for so slender a being, and when the elf turned Cadderly’s hand over suddenly, the young scholar offered only token resistance.
Elbereth examined Cadderly’s palm, rubbing his thumb across the base of Cadderly’s fingers. “These are not the hands of a warrior,” the elf said, unimpressed.
“I never claimed to be a warrior,” Cadderly retorted before Avery or Thobicus could explain. The dean and headmaster put accusing glares back on Cadderly and, this time, even easy-going Pertelope did not offer any escape.
Again, seconds slipped past.
Headmaster Avery cleared his throat loudly to break the tension.
“Cadderly is indeed a warrior,” the robust headmaster explained. “It was he who defeated both the evil priest Barjin and Barjin’s most awful undead soldiers. Even a mummy rose up against the lad and was summarily put down!”
The recounting did not make Cadderly swell with pride. The mere mention of the dead priest made Cadderly see him again, slumped against the wall in the makeshift altar room in the catacombs, a blasted hole in his chest and his dead eyes staring accusingly at his killer.
“But more than that,” Avery continued, moving over to drape a heavy, sweaty arm over the young scholar, “Cadderly is a warrior whose greatest weapon is knowledge. We have a riddle here, Prince Elbereth, a most dangerous riddle, I fear. And Cadderly, I tell you now, is the man who will solve it.”
Avery’s proclamation added more weight to Cadderly’s shoulder than the headmaster’s considerable arm. The young scholar wasn’t absolutely certain, but he believed he liked Avery better before the events of the chaos curse. Back then, the headmaster often went out of his way to make Cadderly’s life miserable. Under the influences of the intoxicating curse, Avery had admitted his almost fatherly love for the young scholar, and now the headmaster’s friendship was proving even more miserable to Cadderly than his former, too-strict actions.
“Enough of this banter,” said Dean Thobicus in his shaky voice, his speech more often sounding like a whine than normal words. “We have chosen Cadderly as our representative in this matter. The decision was ours alone to make. Prince Elbereth will treat him accordingly.”
The elf turned to the seated dean and dipped a curt and precise bow.
Thobicus nodded in reply. “Tell Cadderly of the gloves, and of how you came to possess them,” he bade.
Elbereth reached into the pocket of his traveling cloak—an action that pushed the garment open and gave Cadderly a quick glance at the elf prince’s magnificent armor, links of golden and silvery chain finely meshed—and produced several gloves, each clearly marked with stitching that showed the same trident-and-bottle design that Barjin had displayed on his clerical vestments. Elbereth sorted through the tangle to free one glove, and handed it to Cadderly.
“Evil vermin does not often find its way into Shilmista,” the proud elf began, “but we are ever alert for its encroachment. A party of bugbears wandered into the forest. None of them escaped with their lives.”
None of this was news to Cadderly, of course; rumors had been circulating throughout the Edificant Library since the elf prince’s arrival. Cadderly nodded and examined the gauntlet. “It is the same as Barjin’s,” he declared at once, indicating the three-bottle-over-trident design.
“But what does it mean?” asked an impatient Avery.
“An adaptation of Talona’s symbol,” Cadderly explained, shrugging to let them know that he was not absolutely certain of his reasoning.
“The bugbears carried poisoned daggers,” Elbereth remarked. “That would be in accord with the Lady of Poison’s edicts.”
“You know of Talona?” Cadderly asked.
Elbereth’s silvery eyes flashed, a moonbeam sparkling off a cresting wave, and he gave Cadderly a derisive, sidelong glance. “I have seen the birth and death of three centuries, young human. You will still be young at the time your death, though you might live more years than all others of your race.”
Cadderly bit back his retort, knowing that he would find little support in antagonizing the elf.
“Do not underestimate that which I, Prince of Shilmista, might know,” Elbereth continued haughtily. “We are not a simple folk wasting our years dancing under the stars, as so many would choose to believe.”
Cadderly did start to reply, sharply again, but Pertelope, ever the calming influence, moved in front of him and took the glove, shooting him another wink and subtly stepping on the young scholar’s toe.
“We would never think so of our friends in Shilmista,” the headmistress offered. “Often has the Edificant Library sought the wisdom of ancient Galladel, your father and king.”
Apparently appeased, Elbereth gave a quick nod.
“If it is indeed a sect of Talona, then what might we conclude?” Dean Thobicus asked.
Cadderly shrugged helplessly. “Little,” he replied. “Since the Time of Troubles, so much has changed. We do not yet know the intentions and methods of the various sects, but I doubt that coincidence brought Barjin to us and the bugbears to Shilmista, especially since each carried not the normal symbol of Talona, but an adapted design. A renegade sect, it would seem, but undeniably coordinated in its attacks.”
“You will come to Shilmista,” Elbereth said to Cadderly. The scholar thought for a moment that the elf was asking him, but then he realized from Elbereth’s unblinking, uncompromising stare, that it had been a command and not a request. Helplessly, the young scholar looked to his headmasters and to the dean, but they, even Pertelope, nodded in accord.
“When?” Cadderly asked Dean Thobicus, pointedly looking past Elbereth’s ensnaring gaze.
“A few days,” Thobicus replied. “There are many preparations to be made.”
“A few days may be too long for my people,” Elbereth remarked evenly, his eyes still boring into Cadderly.
“We will move as fast as we can,” was the best that Thobicus could offer. “We have suffered grave injuries, elf prince. An emissary from the Church of Ilmater is on the way, to make an inquiry concerning a group of his priests who were found slaughtered in their room. He will demand a thorough investigation and that will require an audience with Cadderly.”
“Then Cadderly will leave him a statement,” Elbereth replied. “Or the emissary will wait until Cadderly returns from Shilmista. I am concerned for the living, Dean Thobicus, not the dead.”
To Cadderly’s amazement, Thobicus did not argue.
They adjourned the meeting then, on Headmaster Avery’s suggestion, for there was an event scheduled in the Edificant Library that day that many wished to witness—and which Cadderly flatly refused to miss for any reason.
“Come with us, Prince Elbereth,” the portly headmaster offered, moving by Cadderly’s side. Cadderly gave Avery a somewhat sour look, not so certain that he wanted the haughty elf along. “One of the visiting priestesses, Danica Maupoissant, of Westgate, will perform a most unusual feat.”
Elbereth gave a quick glance at Cadderly—it was obvious that Cadderly did not want him along—smiled, and agreed. Cadderly knew, to his further dismay, that Elbereth honestly enjoyed the fact that accepting Avery’s invitation would bother the young scholar.
They came into the great hall on the library’s first floor, a huge and ornate, thick-pillared room lined by grand tapestries depicting the glories of Deneir and Oghma, deities of the building’s host religions. Most of the library’s priests, of both orders, had turned out, nearly a hundred men and women, gathered in a wide circle around a block of stone supported on cross-legged sawhorses.
Danica kneeled motionlessly on a mat a few feet from the stone, her almond eyes closed and her arms held out before her and crossed at the wrists. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, and seemed tinier still when kneeling before the formidable solid block. Cadderly resisted the urge to go to her, realizing that she was deep in meditation.
“Is that the priestess?” Elbereth asked, a tinge of excitement in his voice. Cadderly snapped his head about and regarded the elf curiously, noting the sparkle in Elbereth’s silvery eyes.
“That is Danica,” Avery replied. “She is beautiful, is she not?” Indeed Danica was, with perfect, delicate features and a thick mop of strawberry blond hair dancing about her shoulders. “Do not allow that beauty to deceive you, elf prince,” Avery went on proudly, as though Danica was his own child. “Danica is among the finest fighters I have ever seen. Deadly are her bare hands, and boundless is her discipline and dedication.”
The sparkle in Elbereth’s admiring eyes did not diminish; those shining dots of light shot out like tiny spears at Cadderly’s heart.
Preparation or no preparation, Cadderly figured it was time to go and see his Danica. He crossed through the onlookers’ circle and knelt before her, gently reaching out to lightly touch her long hair.
She did not stir.
“Danica,” Cadderly called softly, taking her deceptively soft hand in his own.
Danica opened her eyes, those exotic brown orbs that sent shivers up Cadderly’s spine every time he gazed into them. Her wide smile told Cadderly that she was not angry about the interruption.
“I feared that you would not be here,” she whispered.
“A thousand ogres could not have held me from this place,” he replied, “not today.” Cadderly glanced back over his shoulder at the stone block. It seemed so huge and so solid, and Danica so very delicate. “Are you certain?” he asked.
“I am ready,” Danica replied grimly. “Do you doubt me?”
Cadderly thought back a few weeks, to the horrible day when he had entered Danica’s room and found her barely conscious on the floor, after having slammed her head repeatedly against a similar stone. Her wounds were long gone now, healed by salves and the magic of the library’s mightiest clerics, but Cadderly would never forget how close Danica had come to death, nor would he forget his own terrible feelings of emptiness when he feared that he might lose her.
“I was under the curse’s influence then,” Danica explained, easily reading his thoughts. “The mist prevented me from attaining the proper concentration. I have studied Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn’s scrolls . . .”
“I know,” Cadderly assured her, stroking her delicate hand. “And I know you are ready. Forgive me my fears. They do not come from any doubts about you or your dedication or your wisdom.” His smile was sincere, if strained. He moved near, as if to kiss her, but backed away suddenly and glanced around.
“I would not want to disturb your concentration,” he stammered.
Danica knew better, knew that Cadderly had remembered the gathering about him and that his embarrassment alone had pulled him away from her. She laughed aloud, charmed as always by his innocence. “Do you not find this alluring?” she asked with mock sarcasm to comfort the nervous young man.
“Oh, yes,” the young scholar answered. “I have always wanted to be in love with one who could put her head through solid stone.” This time, they shared a laugh.
Then Danica noticed Elbereth and abruptly stopped laughing. The elf prince stared at her with his penetrating gaze, looked right through her, it seemed. She pulled her loose robes tighter about her, feeling naked under that stare, but she did not look away.
“That is Prince Elbereth?” she asked with what little breath she could find.
Cadderly considered her for a long moment, then turned to regard Elbereth. The gathering be damned, he thought, and he bent back in and kissed Danica hard, forcing her attention away from the elf.
This time, Danica, not Cadderly, was the flustered one, and Cadderly couldn’t be certain if her embarrassment came from the kiss or from her own realization that she had been caught staring a bit too intently at the visiting elf.
“Go back to your meditation,” Cadderly offered, afraid of what the growing number of distractions might do to Danica’s attempt. He felt childish indeed that he had let his own emotions take precedence at such an important moment. He kissed her again, a light peck on the cheek. “I know you will succeed,” he offered, and he took his leave.
Danica took several deep breaths to steady herself and cleanse her mind. She looked to the stone first, the obstacle that stood in the way of her progress as one of the leading disciples of Penpahg D’Ahn. She grew angry at that stone, putting it in the light of an enemy. Then she left it with a final mental threat, turned her attention to the wide room around her, the distractions she had to be rid of.
Danica focused on Elbereth first. She saw the elf prince, his strange eyes still staring her way, and then he was gone, a black hole where he had been standing. Avery went away next, and then those standing beside the portly headmaster. Danica’s gaze shifted and locked on one of the many huge archways supporting the great hall. It, too, disappeared into the darkness.
“Phien denifi ca,” Danica whispered as another group of people disappeared. “They are only images.” All the room was fast replaced by blackness. Only the block remained, and Cadderly. Danica had saved Cadderly for last. He was her greatest supporter; he was as much her strength as her own inner discipline.
But then he, too, was gone.
Danica rose and slowly approached the enemy stone.
You cannot resist, her thoughts called out to the block. I am the stronger.
Her arms waved slowly before her, weaving in an intricate dance, and she continued her mental assault on the stone, treating it as some sentient thing, assuring herself that she was convincing it that it could not win. This was the technique of Penpahg D’Ahn, and Penpahg D’Ahn had broken the stone.
Danica looked beyond the block, imagined her head crashing through the stone and exiting the other side. She studied the depth of the block, then mentally reduced it to a parchment’s width.
You are parchment, and I am the stronger, she mentally told the stone.
It went on for many minutes, the arm dance, Danica’s feet shifting, always in perfect balance, and then she was chanting softly in a melodic and rhythmical way, seeking complete harmony of body and spirit.
It came so suddenly that the crowd barely had time to gasp. Danica fell forward into two quick steps. Every muscle in her small, finely toned frame seemed to snap forward and down, driving her forehead into the stone.
Danica heard nothing and saw nothing for a long moment. Then there was the blackness of the meditation-dispatched room, gradually fading back into images that the young monk recognized.
She looked around her, surprised to see the block lying on the floor in two nearly equal-sized pieces.
An arm was around her; she knew it was Cadderly’s.
“You are now the highest-ranking disciple of Grandmaster Penpahg D’Ahn!” Cadderly whispered into her ear, and she heard him clearly, though the gathering had erupted into a wild burst of cheering.
Danica turned and hugged Cadderly close, but couldn’t help looking over his shoulder to regard Elbereth. The serious elf prince was not cheering, but clapping his graceful hands and staring at Danica with clear approval in his sparkling silver eyes.
Headmistress Pertelope heard the cheering from her room above the great hall and knew that Danica had successfully broken the stone. Pertelope was not surprised; she had seen the event in a dream that she knew was prophetic. She was glad of Danica’s continuing success and growing power, and glad, too, that Danica would remain by Cadderly’s side in the coming days.
Pertelope feared for the young scholar, for she alone among all the priests at the library understood the personal trials Cadderly would soon face.
He was of the chosen, Pertelope knew.
“Will it be enough?” the headmistress asked quietly, hugging the Tome of Universal Harmony, the most holy book of Deneir. “Will you survive, dear Cadderly, as I have survived, or will the callings of Deneir devour you and leave you an empty thing?”
Almost to mock her own claims of survival, the headmistress noticed then that her sharp-edged skin had again sliced several lines in the long sleeve of her gown.
Pertelope shook her head and hugged the book tightly to her fully covered body. The potential for insight and knowledge was virtually unlimited, but so, too, was the potential for disaster.
The wizard Dorigen reached out tentatively for the door handle to the chambers of Aballister, her leader. Surprised by her own hesitancy to go to the man she considered her mentor and had formerly called her lover, Dorigen angrily grabbed the handle and walked in.
Aballister sat in his comfortable chair, gazing out a small window at the distant Shining Plains and at the new construction he had ordered begun at Castle Trinity. He seemed a wretched thing to Dorigen now, not nearly the vital, powerful wizard who had so captivated her and fanned her passions. Aballister was still powerful, but his strength lay in his magic and not in his body. His black hair lay matted to his head; his eyes, dark before, seemed like empty holes now, sunken deeply into his sharply featured face. Dorigen wondered how she ever could have found him alluring, could have lain beside the loose-skinned bag of bones she saw before her.
She shook the thoughts away and reminded herself that Aballister’s tutoring had brought her considerable power, and that it had been worth it after all.
Aballister’s impish familiar, a bat-winged creature named Druzil, perched on the desk behind the wizard, posing as a gargoylelike statue. A nervous-looking orc soldier stood before the desk, unaware that the creature just a few inches away was alive.
Dorigen hardly looked at the orc, focusing more on Druzil, a sneaky character whom Dorigen did not trust in the least. Druzil had been with Barjin when the priest had been defeated at the Edificant Library. The only reason that everyone in Castle Trinity wasn’t muttering about the imp’s role in bringing Barjin down was that few other than Aballister, Dorigen, and the castle’s third wizard, Bogo Rath, even knew that Druzil existed. Aballister had declared that he would introduce Druzil to the castle’s garrison, but Dorigen had managed to change his mind—at least for the time being.
Dorigen looked back to the wizard’s hollowed face and nearly sneered at the notion of his sudden and dangerous arrogance. Always before, Aballister had carefully guarded Druzil as his personal secret, and Dorigen wasn’t certain she trusted so drastic a change in the man.
Aballister, this hollowed man who had somehow traded physical strength for magical power, had grown quite confident in the last few weeks. Barjin, as head of Castle Trinity’s clerical order, had been Aballister’s principal rival for control of the ruling triumvirate. Now Barjin was no more.
Druzil managed to slip a sly wink at Dorigen without alerting the oblivious orc.
Dorigen replied with a private scowl, then turned to Aballister. “You requested my presence?” she asked, sharp and to the point.
“I did,” the wizard answered offhandedly, not bothering to look Dorigen’s way. “Aballister,” he mumbled to himself, then, “Bonaduce.” He considered each word for a moment, then turned to Dorigen, his smile wide. “Or Aballister Bonaduce, perhaps? Do you have a preference, or should I use both names when I claim rule over the region?”
“That claim would be premature,” Dorigen reminded him. “Our only expedition so far has failed utterly.” She studied the orc soldier, no doubt one of Ragnor’s personal attendants, then turned to stare back at Aballister, amazed that the wizard would be so brash with his new rival’s henchmen standing before him.
“Patience,” Aballister said, waving his hand derisively. “Ragnor is on Shilmista’s border. When he chooses to march, the elves will be no more.”
“The elves comprise but one part of our enemy,” said Dorigen, again looking toward the trembling orc. Aballister waited a few moments, seeming to enjoy Dorigen’s discomfort, then dismissed the wretched creature.
“Get word back to Ragnor that he has our blessings and the blessings of Talona,” Aballister said. “And good fighting!” The orc spun and rushed from the room, slamming the door behind it.
Aballister clapped his hands with glee.
“Greetings, Mistress Magic,” Druzil slurred his customary title for the female wizard. He unwrapped his leathery wings and stretched wide now that the orc was gone. “And how is your nose today?”
Dorigen winced at the remark. She was a handsome woman—a bit too round for her liking, perhaps—with fair, if a bit plain, features and small but remarkably lustrous eyes the color of pure amber. Her nose was her one disfigurement, though, the one weak spot of the wizard’s vanity. In her earliest days practicing magic, Dorigen had executed a magically enhanced jump in the air. Her landing had been less than perfect, though, for she had overbalanced on her descent, slammed face first into the stone floor, and bent her nose halfway over her cheek. It had never grown straight since.
“Greetings to yourself, imp,” Dorigen replied. She moved right to the desk and began drumming her hand atop it, prominently displaying an onyx ring. Druzil knew what that ring could do, and he retreated into his leathery wings as though he expected Dorigen to loose its fiery magic at him then and there.
“I need no fights between my allies,” Aballister said, seemingly amused by it all. “I have important decisions before me—such as what to call myself when I have claimed my title.”
Dorigen did not appreciate Aballister’s overconfidence. “There remains Carradoon and the Edificant Library,” she said grimly. She thought she saw Aballister flinch at the library’s mention, but she couldn’t be sure, for the wizard hid his emotions well in the hollowed features of his drained face.
“The men of Carradoon will surrender without a fight,” Aballister reasoned. “They are fishermen and farmers, not warriors. You see, dear Dorigen, we must begin our preparations for what is to come after the conquest. Riatavin is not so far away, nor Westgate. We must establish our appearance as orderly and lawful rulers if we are to become accepted by the surrounding kingdoms.”
“Aballister the diplomat?” Dorigen asked. “Orderly and lawful? Talona will not be pleased.”
“It was I who met the goddess’s avatar,” Aballister reminded her sharply.
Dorigen hardly needed the reminder. It was that very meeting that had so changed Aballister, had turned his simple ambitions to excel at his craft into something more dire, more consuming. It was no coincidence that Dorigen had broken off her relationship with Aballister not long after that time of Arrival.
“Barjin is dead, and our clerics are in disarray,” Aballister went on. “We cannot know how weakened Ragnor will become in his march. Would you have us begin a larger war with our surrounding kingdoms so soon after the first conquest is completed?”
“The first conquest has not yet begun,” Dorigen dared to say.
Aballister seemed on the verge of an explosion, but he calmed quickly. “Of course,” he agreed, seeming in that instant more his old, patient self. “Ragnor is on the edge of Shilmista, though, even now making forays into the elven wood.”
“Have you considered the implications of his eventual march?” Dorigen asked. On the desk, Druzil sighed and nodded in agreement, as if the imp had been hoping that someone would point out the potential problems to the increasingly arrogant wizard.
“Ragnor is powerful,” Dorigen began, “and the ogrillon holds little respect for magic-users.”
“We could defeat him,” Aballister reasoned.
Dorigen nodded her agreement. “Perhaps,” she said, “but what would such a conflict cost Castle Trinity? I know you have shed no tears for Barjin—and rightly so,” she added, seeing Aballister’s scowl. “But the priest’s defeat has cost us dearly. If he and the curse had taken down the Edificant Library, then we could march on Carradoon even as Ragnor begins his assault on Shilmista. We cannot, though, not with the library’s priests looking over the town. If Ragnor wins in the elven wood without incurring heavy losses, he will gain in prestige among the rabble. He might now be wondering how the neighboring kingdoms might deal with an ogrillon king.”
The blunt words slapped Aballister as if Dorigen had hit him with a mace. He sat very still in his chair, staring ahead for a very long time.
He has known of this threat all along, came an unexpected message to Dorigen’s mind. The woman glanced over to Druzil, who peeked at her from above his bat wings.
He has refused to accept it, the imp added, for he is too immersed in his debate over whether to call himself ‘Aballister the Beneficent’ or ‘Bonaduce the Conqueror.’
Dorigen held no doubts that the imp was sincere in his sarcasm, but she could hardly believe that the familiar could be so bold with his master sitting right before him. Wisely, Dorigen did not reply. She pointedly looked away from the imp and back to the seated wizard.
“There can be no doubt that you are in control of Castle Trinity,” Dorigen offered, “but we must continue with caution, for the seat has been a precarious one. What new cleric will rise in Barjin’s place to lead the order? How strong will Ragnor become?”
“And what of Boygo Rath?” Aballister asked slyly, referring to the third and least adept wizard of Castle Trinity, whom both Aballister and Dorigen considered an upstart child. The wizard’s real name was Bogo Rath, but Aballister and Dorigen referred to him as Boygo, even to his face. “And what of you?” Aballister added.
“Do not doubt my loyalty,” Dorigen assured him. “In your absence, I would indeed have designs on ruling the triumvirate, but I know my betters and have more patience than you believe. As for Boygo . . .” She let the thought hang and gave an amused look, as though the notion of the young upstart challenging the likes of Aballister Bonaduce was simply too ridiculous to consider.
Aballister’s laughter showed that he wholeheartedly agreed. “The clerics and Ragnor, then,” the wizard said, “and neither should pose too serious a threat if we are cautious and attentive.”
“Ragnor is a long way from here,” Dorigen reminded him, prompting an invitation.
Aballister looked at her carefully for a moment, as though trying to discern her agenda. “Ragnor will not easily accept your presence in his camp,” the wizard remarked.
“I do not fear him,” replied Dorigen. She clapped her hands sharply three times. Aballister’s door opened again, and in strode a man nearly seven feet tall, with corded muscles obvious under his fine silken clothes. His hair hung, thick and blond, braided down over his shoulders, and his pale blue eyes stared ahead with incredible intensity. Aballister hardly recognized him, except for his bronze skin and the curious tattoo, a polar worm, he wore upon his forehead.
“Surely this cannot be . . .” the wizard began.
“Tiennek,” Dorigen confirmed, “the barbarian I plucked from the shadows of the Great Glacier in far away Vaasa.”
“Dear Dorigen,” cried the wizard, his tone revealing sincere amazement, but also disdain, “you have civilized him!”
Tiennek growled.
“Perhaps a bit,” Dorigen replied, “but I would not destroy Tiennek’s spirit. That would serve neither my purpose nor my pleasure in keeping him at my side.”
Aballister’s jaw tightened at the remark. The image of his former lover in this huge man’s arms did not sit well with him, not well at all. “Impressive,” he admitted, “but be warned if you think him a match for Ragnor.”
Again Tiennek growled softly.
“Take no offense,” Aballister quickly added. The wizard had never been comfortable around Dorigen’s dangerous pet. Under the lip of his great desk, he fingered a wand that would blast the barbarian apart if Tiennek even hinted at charging.
“Your barbarian companion is powerful beyond doubt, possibly the strongest human I have ever seen,” the wizard continued, looking to Dorigen once more, “but I do doubt that any human could defeat Ragnor in combat. The ogrillon would kill him, and then you would have to go all the way back to the Great Glacier to catch yourself another one.”
“I, too, have never seen mighty Ragnor bested,” Dorigen admitted. “Perhaps you are correct in your assessment, but Tiennek would not prove an easy opponent. Within his breast beats the heart of a warrior of the White Worm, and I have given him much more than just that. I have disciplined him so that he might better use those savage powers. Ragnor would find himself hard-pressed to defeat this one, and even more so with me standing behind Tiennek.” Again she drummed her fingers, displaying her deadly ring.
Aballister spent a long time considering Dorigen’s claims, and Dorigen could see the doubts plainly upon his pale, wrinkled face. In truth, she doubted that Tiennek could stand up to Ragnor as well as she had proclaimed—or that she, for all her magical prowess, could offer much help if Ragnor decided to do away with both of them—but going to Shilmista was simply too important for the success of this campaign for Dorigen to accept such possibilities.
“Ragnor could become too powerful to control,” she remarked. “By one count, he has five thousand at his command.”
“We have three thousand,” Aballister retorted, “a strong defensive position, and the services of three wizards!”
“Do you desire such a war?” Dorigen asked. “What title would you gain in fighting Ragnor and his soldiers?”
Aballister nodded grimly and put his sharp chin in his skinny hand. “Go to him, then,” the wizard said at length. “Go to Shilmista and help our dear Ragnor. He should have a wizard at his side anyway, if he hopes to deal with the elves. I will watch the clerics and prepare for the next step in our conquest.”
Dorigen didn’t wait around to see if Aballister might reconsider. She bowed and started from the room.
“Dorigen,” Aballister called after her. She stopped and clenched her fist at her side, somehow knowing that the wily wizard would throw a new complication her way.
“Take Druzil along with you,” Aballister said as she turned back around. “With the imp beside you, you and I can communicate from time to time. I do not like to be left out of so important a matter as Ragnor’s progress.”
Suspicions concerning Druzil’s role in Barjin’s death hovered about Dorigen’s thoughts, and she did not doubt for a moment that Aballister was sending the imp along to watch over her as much as Ragnor. But how could she argue? The hierarchy at Castle Trinity was specific, and Aballister ruled the wizard’s leg of the triumvirate.
“A wise decision,” she said.
More than you believe, came another of Druzil’s intrusions. Dorigen hid well her surprise.
Aballister turned back to the small window and alternately muttered his names to see which would best serve him as king.
Less than an hour later, Dorigen walked out of Castle Trinity, Tiennek at her side and the bat-winged imp flapping lazily behind them, invisible through his own innate magic. Dorigen tried to hide her disdain as she passed the soldiers building the castle’s new walls, fearing that Druzil might already be reporting back to his master.
Dorigen was not pleased by the construction and thought Aballister a fool for ordering it begun. Because of the enclave’s secrecy—it resembled no more than a natural outcropping of stone—Castle Trinity had survived unmolested in the otherwise civilized region for several years. Travelers had walked right past the hidden castle on the northern slopes of the Snowflake Mountains without beginning to guess that a wondrous tunnel-and-chamber complex lay beneath their feet.
But, as with his nearly revealed secret of Druzil to the castle’s common soldiers, Aballister was apparently feeling invulnerable. They would need the new walls, he had argued, if the final battles reached their gates. Dorigen favored secrecy, preferred that the fight never got this far north. She guessed, too, Aballister’s real motivations. Again the senior wizard was thinking ahead, beyond the conquest. He did not really expect to be attacked at the castle, but knew that an impressive stronghold might help him in his diplomatic dealings with neighboring realms.
I share your thoughts, came Druzil’s not-so-unexpected call. Dorigen turned abruptly on the imp, and frantic flaps revealed that he had darted to the side in a wild flurry.
“Apparently you do,” the female wizard snarled, “for I was thinking of blasting you from the sky!”
“A thousand pardons,” the imp said aloud, landing on the ground before Dorigen, becoming visible, and falling immediately into a low bow. “Forgive my intrusion, but your feelings were obvious. You like neither Aballister’s plans nor the way he has behaved since Barjin’s demise.”
Dorigen did not reply, but purposely kept her features locked in an unforgiving grimace.
“You will come to learn that I am no enemy,” the imp promised.
Dorigen hoped he spoke the truth, but she didn’t believe him for a minute.
Cadderly knew that his time was up as soon as Elbereth and Headmaster Avery entered his room, neither smiling.
“We leave today for Shilmista,” Elbereth said.
“Farewell,” Cadderly quipped.
Elbereth was not amused. “You will pack for the road,” the elf prince ordered. “Carry little. Our pace will be swift and the mountain trails are not easy.”
Cadderly frowned. He started to reply, but Avery, seeing the mounting tension between the two, cut him off. “A grand adventure for you, my young lad!” The portly headmaster beamed as he walked over and dropped his heavy hands on Cadderly’s shoulders. “Time for you to see some of the land beyond our library doors.”
“And what are you packing?” Cadderly asked, his sarcasm unrelenting.
His words stung Avery more than he had intended. “I wished to go,” the headmaster replied sharply, rubbing a kerchief over his blotchy face. “I pleaded with Dean Thobicus to let me accompany you.”
“Dean Thobicus refused?” Cadderly could not believe the placid dean would refuse any request from one of his headmasters.
“I refused,” Elbereth explained.
Cadderly, incredulous, stared at him over Avery’s shoulder.
“I am Prince of Shilmista,” the elf reminded him. “None may enter my domain without my leave.”
“Why would you refuse Headmaster Avery?” Cadderly dared to ask, right in the face of Avery’s silent, and rather frantic, signals for him to let the matter drop.
“As I have told you,” the elf replied, “our pace will be swift. Horses cannot carry us through all of the mountain passes, and I fear that the headmaster would not keep up. I’ll not delay my return, and I do not wish to leave an exhausted man in the wild to die.”
Cadderly had no rebuttal, and Avery’s embarrassed expression pleaded with him not to press on.
“Just you and I?” Cadderly asked the elf, his tone revealing that he wasn’t pleased by that thought.
“No,” Avery answered. “Another has agreed to go along, at Prince Elbereth’s request.”
“Headmistress Pertelope?”
“Lady Maupoissant.”
Danica! The name came like a mule’s kick into Cadderly’s face. He straightened, eyes wide, and tried to figure out when Elbereth had found the chance to invite Danica along. His Danica! And she had accepted! Cadderly had to wonder if Danica had known that he, too, would be venturing to the wood before she had agreed to go.
“Why does that so surprise you?” Elbereth asked, a slight trace of sarcasm in his melodic voice. “Do you doubt—“
“I doubt nothing where Danica is concerned,” Cadderly was quick to reply. His scowl turned to an expression of confusion as he realized the many implications of his claim.
“Easy, lad,” Avery said, holding him steady. “Danica agreed to go along only when she learned that you would be accompanying Prince Elbereth.”
“As you wish,” Elbereth added slyly, and Avery joined Cadderly in scowling at the elf, both knowing that Elbereth had made that last remark to throw some doubts at Cadderly.
“We shall depart in an hour,” Elbereth said, standing impassively, fully composed. His black hair and silver eyes shone in the morning light, which streamed through Cadderly’s window. “You will come then with whatever you have packed and silently endure any hardships resulting from what you have neglected to take along.” The tall, proud elf turned and walked away without another word.
“I am starting to dislike him,” Cadderly admitted, easing away from Avery’s grip.
“He fears for his homeland,” the headmaster explained.
“He is arrogant.”
“Most elves are,” said Avery. “It comes from living so long. Makes them believe they have experienced so much more than anyone else, and, thus, that they are wiser than anyone else.”
“Have they, and are they?” Cadderly asked, his shoulders slumping a bit. He hadn’t considered that fact about Prince Elbereth, that the elf had seen more in his life than Cadderly ever would, and probably would live on long after Cadderly’s body was no more than a pile of dust.
“Some have, and they are indeed wise, I would presume,” replied Avery, “but not most. The elves have become increasingly untrusting and xenophobic. They keep to their own, and to their own lands, and know little beyond their borders. I first met Prince Elbereth three decades ago and would guess that I have learned much more than he in that time. He seems much the same as he did then, in body and attitude.
“Well,” Avery continued, turning for the door, “I will leave you to your packing. Elbereth said an hour, and I would not expect him to wait one moment longer!”
“I would not care to live through centuries,” Cadderly remarked just before the headmaster exited the room. “But, then,” the young scholar continued when Avery turned back to him, “I am not certain that I have begun to live at all.”
Avery studied Cadderly for a long while, caught off guard by the unexpected words. He had noticed a change in Cadderly since the incident with Barjin, but this was the most dramatic evidence that something deeply troubled the young scholar. Avery waited a few moments longer, then, seeing that Cadderly had nothing further to offer, shrugged and closed the door.
Cadderly sat unblinking on his bed. The world was going too fast for him. Why had Elbereth asked Danica along? Why had it fallen upon him to kill Barjin? The world was going too fast.
And he was going too slow, he soon realized. He would find enough time on the road for contemplations; right now he had to prepare himself for the journey, before Elbereth pulled him out of the library with only the clothes on his back.
He stuffed a pack with extra clothing and his writing kit, then placed in his magical light tube, a narrow, cylindrical device which, when uncapped, issued a beam of light that Cadderly could widen or narrow with a turn of the wrist.
Satisfied with the pack, the young scholar donned his blue silk traveling cloak and wide-brimmed hat, banded in red and set with the eye-over-candle holy symbol of Deneir in its center. He took up his ram’s-head walking stick and headed for the hall.
At the doorway, he turned back, stopped by the cries of his conscience.
Cadderly looked down to his feathered ring, as if that might offer him some relief from what he knew he must do. The ring’s base was circular and hollow, holding a tiny vial of drow-style sleep poison, which Cadderly had brewed. The point of the tiny dart was a cat’s claw and, once fitted into the hollow shaft of Cadderly’s walking stick, it became a potent weapon indeed.
But Cadderly couldn’t count on that. Using the blowgun required time to set the dart, and he wasn’t even certain of its potency anymore. Drow poison did not last long on the surface world, and though Cadderly had taken great pains to protect his investment, placing the sealed vials into a strong box enchanted with a darkness spell, many weeks had passed since its creation.
Reluctantly the young scholar walked back to the wardrobe and put his hand on the door handle. He looked around helplessly, as if searching for some way out of this trap.
He must not fail in his year quest.
Cadderly opened the wardrobe door, picked a wide strap from among dozens of hanging leather ties, and belted it around his waist. It sported a wide, shallow holster on one side, which held a single-hand crossbow of dark elf design. Cadderly took out a bandolier next, and found some comfort in the fact that only three explosive darts remained. Nearly two score other darts were in the bandolier—it was designed to hold as many as fifty—but their centers were hollow and empty, not yet fitted with the tiny vials of Oil of Impact that gave the loaded three their wicked punch.
Despite his ambivalent feelings, Cadderly couldn’t resist undoing the small leather tie and taking out the crossbow. It was an instrument of beauty, perfectly tooled by Ivan and Pikel. That beauty paled beside Barjin’s dead eyes, though, for this was the same weapon that Cadderly had used on that fateful day. He had fired at a mummy, trying to destroy the undead monster as it tried to destroy Barjin. One shot had slipped through the mummy’s meager wrappings, though, thudding into helpless Barjin’s chest as he lay propped against a wall.
Cadderly distinctly remembered the sound as that dart collapsed on the magical vial and exploded, a sharp echo that had followed him every day and every night.
“Belago asked me to give you this,” came a voice from the doorway. Cadderly turned and was surprised to see Kierkan Rufo, tall and angular and tilting, standing in the doorway. Although they had once been friends, Rufo had pretty much avoided Cadderly in the last few weeks.
Cadderly winced as Rufo held out a small ceramic container, for he knew what was inside. Belago’s alchemy shop had been blown up during the confusion of the chaos curse, and the alchemist had thought the formula for the Oil of Impact lost in the flames. Not lamenting the loss, Cadderly had lied and told Belago that he did not remember where he had found the formula, but the alchemist, determined to reward Cadderly for his heroics against the evil priest, had vowed to recover it.
The same trapped, resigned expression he had worn when retrieving the crossbow crossed Cadderly’s face as he took the flask. The container was heavy; Cadderly guessed that he could fill perhaps twenty more darts with this amount. He searched for some way out; he thought of letting the flask slip to the floor, feigning an accident, but reconsidered that course immediately, knowing the potentially catastrophic consequences.
“You are surprised to see me,” Kierkan Rufo said in his monotone voice. His dark hair clung tightly to his head; his dark eyes sparkled like little points of shimmering blackness.
“You have not been around lately,” Cadderly replied, turning his head up to look the taller man in the face. “Are you angry with me?”
“I . . .” Rufo stammered, his angular features contorting uncomfortably. He ran a hand through his matted black hair. “The curse affected me deeply,” he explained.
“Forget the curse,” Cadderly advised him, feeling some sympathy, but not too much, for Rufo’s actions during the curse had not been above suspicion. The tall man had even made advances toward Danica, which the young woman had promptly discouraged—by beating Rufo severely.
“We shall talk more when I return,” Cadderly said. “I have no time—“
“It was I who pushed you down the stairs,” Rufo announced unexpectedly. Cadderly’s reply caught in his throat, and his mouth hung open. He had suspected Rufo, but never expected an admission.
“Many acted unwisely during the curse,” Cadderly managed to say after a long silence.
“It was before the curse,” Rufo reminded him. In fact, that action had set in motion the events leading to the curse.
“Why are you telling me this?” Cadderly demanded, his gray eyes narrowing angrily. “And why did you do it?”
Rufo shrugged and looked away. “The evil priest, I suppose,” he whispered. “He caught me in the wine cellar while you were looking down the secret stairway to the lower levels.”
“Then forget the incident,” said Cadderly with as little anger as he could, “and accept no blame. Barjin was a powerful adversary, with tricks and charms beyond our comprehension.”
“I cannot forget it,” Rufo replied.
“Then why do you come to me?” Cadderly snapped. “Am I to forgive you? All right, then, I do. You are forgiven. Your conscience is cleared.” Cadderly pushed by, heading for the hall.
Rufo grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him about. “I cannot ask your forgiveness until I have forgiven myself,” he explained, and his wounded expression touched Cadderly.
“We all have cause to forgive ourselves,” Cadderly remarked, glancing down to the flask in his hands. His gaze betrayed his haunting thoughts of Barjin’s death.
“I wish to come with you,” Rufo said.
Cadderly could not reply for many moments; Rufo was full of surprises this day!
“I must regain my dignity,” the angular man explained. “As with you, I must see this threat, or whatever it may be, through to its conclusion. Only then will I forgive my actions of five weeks ago.” Cadderly started to drift toward the hall, but Rufo determinedly pulled him back.
“The dwarven brothers are gone,” Rufo reminded him. “And the druid Newander is dead. You may need help.”
“You are asking the wrong person,” Cadderly replied. “Dean Thobicus—“
“Dean Thobicus left the choice to Headmaster Avery,” Rufo interrupted, “and Avery left it to you. I may go with your permission, so say they, and Prince Elbereth has agreed as well.”
Cadderly hesitated and thought it over for just a few moments. After all that had happened, he wasn’t certain he trusted Rufo, but he couldn’t ignore the pleading look in the angular man’s dark eyes.
“You have less than half an hour to prepare your gear,” he said. Rufo’s dark face brightened.
“I am already packed.”
Somehow, Cadderly wasn’t surprised.
Elbereth and Danica were waiting for Cadderly outside the library’s ornate double doors. There, too, were Avery, Pertelope, and two spare horses—apparently the headmasters had expected Cadderly to allow Rufo along.
Danica flashed a wide smile Cadderly’s way, but it dissipated immediately and her full lips turned down into a scowl when she saw Rufo coming out the doors on Cadderly’s heels.
Cadderly offered only a shrug for an explanation as he mounted the horse next to Danica’s.
The monk’s visage softened as she watched Rufo fumble with his horse. The man was so awkward, and Danica was not without pity. She nodded Cadderly’s way; she too determined that she would put the past behind her and concentrate on the road ahead.
“You will see many sights along the road and in the elven wood,” Pertelope said to Cadderly as she moved beside his horse. Cadderly tried not to notice the carefree headmistress’s prudish dress, but her long gloves seemed out of place, especially in a summer day’s warmth.
“Wondrous sights,” Pertelope continued. “I know you will learn more in your short time away from the library than in all the years you have been here.”
Cadderly looked at her curiously, not certain of how to take her strange words.
“You will see,” Pertelope explained, and she tried hard to hide a chuckle, not wanting to mock the young scholar. “There is more to life than the adventures of others, dear Cadderly, and more to living than reading books.
“But, when you find some empty time out there . . .” she continued, and she produced a large tome from under her robes. Cadderly knew the book as soon as she handed it to him, for he, like all priests of his order, had studied the work since his first days in the library: the Tome of Universal Harmony, the most holy book of Deneir.
“For good fortunes?” he asked, still confused.
“For reading,” Pertelope replied sharply.
“But—“
“I am sure you have the work memorized,” Pertelope interrupted, “but I doubt that you have ever truly read it.”
Cadderly wondered if he looked as stupid as he felt. He consciously forced himself to close his hanging jaw.
“Words can be read in many ways,” Pertelope said, and she pulled herself up enough to peck Cadderly on the cheek. “That was for good fortunes,” the headmistress explained, throwing a wink Danica’s way.
“I wish I were going with you!” Headmaster Avery cried suddenly. “Oh, to see Shilmista again!” He wiped a kerchief over his eyes and then over his chubby face.
“You may not,” Elbereth said coldly, tiring of the lengthy farewell. He touched the reigns of Temmerisa, his shining white stallion, and the mighty horse kicked off, a thousand bells jingling with each step. Kierkan Rufo fell in behind the elf and Danica, too, started away.
Cadderly looked from the Tome of Universal Harmony to Headmistress Pertelope and smiled.
“Your perceptions of the world will change often as you grow,” Pertelope said quietly, so that the others would not hear. “And while the words in the book remain the same, your reading of them will not. Deneir’s heart is a poet’s heart, and a poet’s heart drifts with the shadows of the clouds.”
Cadderly held the thick book in both hands. His perceptions of the world, of morality, had indeed changed. He had killed a man, and had somehow found his first adventure beyond the thousands he had read about in books of legend.
“Read it,” Pertelope told him gravely. She turned back to the library, hooked Avery by the arm, and dragged him along.
Cadderly’s mount took its first step, and the young priest was on his way.
Felkin looked around at his eight companions, feeling terribly insecure despite the company. They had come probing deep into Shilmista on orders from Ragnor, the brutish, unmerciful ogrillon. Felkin hadn’t questioned the orders at all, not even to his fellow goblins, thinking that whatever dangers awaited them in the elven wood could not match the sure doom of Ragnor’s wrath!
Now Felkin wasn’t so sure. They had seen nothing, heard nothing, but every member of the nine-goblin scouting party sensed that they were not alone.
They crossed one sandy ridge and came into a deep patch of tall green ferns growing in the shadows of wide-spreading elms.
“What was that?” one goblin croaked, dipping into a defensive crouch and trying to visually follow an elusive, darting figure through the deepening shadows. All in the group danced about nervously, sensing they were vulnerable.
“Quiets!” Felkin scolded, fearing the noise more than any suspected spies.
“What was—?” the goblin tried to ask again, but its words were cut short as an arrow pierced its throat.
The eight remaining goblins scrambled for cover, dropping under the ferns and crawling for the elms. Felkin heard a noise like a snapping stick, and the goblin closest to him soared into the air, kicking and gasping, as a vine noose tightened about its neck.
That proved too much for two of the others. They jumped up and broke into a run for the trees. Neither got more than a few short strides before arrows took them down.
“Where was they?” Felkin called to his companions.
“Left!” cried one goblin.
“Right!” screamed another.
There came a flurry of bow shots, arrows slicing through the ferns and knocking into trees, then all went quiet. The goblin in the air stopped its thrashing and began turning slowly with the wind.
Felkin crept over to one of his companions, lying still in the ferns. “Five of usses left,” Felkin reasoned. When the other didn’t answer, Felkin roughly turned him about.
A green arrow shaft protruded from one of the goblin’s eyes. The other eye stared ahead blankly.
Felkin dropped the corpse and scrambled wildly away, drawing several bow shots in his noisy wake. Somewhere to the side, another goblin tried to run and was cut down with brutal efficiency.
“There remain no more than four of you,” said a melodic voice in the goblin tongue, but with the unmistakable accent of a female elf. “Perhaps only three. Do you wish to come out and fight me fairly?”
“Me?” Felkin echoed quietly, confused. “Only one elf?” His entire party had been trimmed by a single elf? Boldly, the goblin poked his head above the ferns and saw the elven warrior, sword in hand, standing beside an elm, with her bow leaning against the tree, within easy reach.
Felkin looked to his own crude spear, wondering if he could make the shot. One of his companions apparently entertained the same notion, for the goblin leaped from the ferns and hurled its spear.
The elf, not caught unaware, dropped to her knees, and the spear flew harmlessly high. Faster than Felkin could follow, she took up her bow and put two shots into the air. The foolish goblin hadn’t even the chance to drop back into the fern cover. The first arrow thudded into its chest and the second caught the goblin in the throat.
Felkin looked at his spear again, glad that one of the others had shown him his folly. By his count, only he and one other remained—still two against one if they could get close to the elf warrior.
“Felkin!” He heard a call, and he recognized the voice of Rake, a fine fighter. “How many of usses?”
“Two!” he replied, then he called to the elf. “Two of usses, elf. Will you puts your nasty bow down and fights us fair-like?”
The elf leaned her bow back against the tree and took up her sword. “Come on, then,” she said. “The day grows long and my supper awaits!”
“Yous is ready, Rake?” Felkin cried.
“Ready!” the other goblin replied eagerly.
Felkin licked his cracked lips and set his floppy feet for a good start. He’d send Rake into action against the elf and use the diversion to run away into the forest. “Ready?” he called again.
“Ready!” Rake assured him.
“Charge!” came Felkin’s cry, and he heard the rustle as Rake, far to his right, leaped from the ferns. Felkin, too, leaped up, but ran off to the left, away from the elf. He looked back once, thinking himself clever, and saw that Rake had similarly retreated to the right. The elf, now wearing an amused smile, took up her bow.
Felkin put his head down and sprinted into the shadows, running as fast as his spindly goblin legs would carry him. There came a distant twang of a bowstring and Rake’s steady stream of curses. Felkin’s hopes returned with the knowledge that the elf had gone after his companion.
There came an agonized scream, and Felkin knew he was alone. He ran on, not daring to slow. Only a few minutes later, Felkin thought he heard a rustle behind him.
“Don’t kills me! Don’t kills me!” Felkin cried pitifully and breathlessly over and over. Panicking, he looked behind him once again—and turned back just in time to see that he had veered straight into an oak tree.
Felkin went down in a heap, folding neatly into a leafy crook between the huge roots at the great tree’s base. He didn’t hear the footsteps pass him by, a few strides to the side, didn’t hear anything at all.
“Are you in contact with Aballister?” Dorigen asked Druzil, seeing the imp in a contemplative stance.
Druzil laughed at her. “Why?” he asked innocently. “I have nothing to tell him.”
Dorigen closed her eyes and muttered a short chant, casting a simple spell that might allow her to confirm Druzil’s claim. When she looked at the imp again, she seemed satisfied.
“That is good,” she muttered. “You are not a familiar in the accepted sense of the word, are you, dear Druzil?”
Again the imp laughed in his raspy, breathless voice.
“You do not seem so tied to Aballister,” Dorigen explained. “You do not treat him as master.”
“Truly you err, Mistress Magic,” Druzil replied, wondering if Aballister had arranged a little test of fealty. “I am loyal to my master, he who summoned me from the torment of the Abyss.”
Dorigen didn’t seem impressed, and Druzil didn’t push it. Rumors had said that he had helped kill Barjin, but, in truth, the imp had considered joining the cleric and abandoning Aballister altogether. Then Barjin’s grand designs had come crashing down. The rumors worked in Druzil’s favor, though. They made upstarts such as Dorigen treat him with a bit of respect and kept Aballister off track in figuring what had really transpired in the Edificant Library’s catacombs.
“We work for a single cause,” Dorigen said, “a cause given to us by Talona. This entire region will fall to Castle Trinity, do not doubt, and those who stand beside us shall profit greatly—but those who stand against us shall suffer even more!”
“You make a threat?” The imp’s simple question nearly knocked Dorigen over.
Dorigen took a moment to collect her thoughts, then replied, “If you believe so. Should it be?” She seemed more unsure of herself than Druzil had ever seen her.
“I am loyal to my master,” Druzil said again, firmly, “and now to you, the wizard my master has bade me to travel beside.”
Dorigen relaxed a bit. “Then let us travel,” she said. “The sun is rising, and we are still several days from Shilmista. I do not like the prospects of having Ragnor running about uncontrolled.” She called Tiennek, who was gathering water from a nearby stream, back to her and took up her walking stick.
Druzil wholeheartedly agreed. He gave a lazy flap and landed on Dorigen’s shoulder, then folded the leathery wings about him to shield him from the sun. He liked his position now. In journeying with Mistress Magic, he could see the progress of Castle Trinity’s conquest, and, even more importantly, in Shilmista he would be out of Aballister’s reach.
Druzil knew that Cadderly, the young priest who had defeated Barjin, was Aballister’s deserted son, and Aballister knew that he knew. The web of intrigue seemed to tighten around Aballister, and the imp did not want to get choked by its strands.
“One of them got away,” Shayleigh reported to Tintagel when she returned to the new elven camp, “but eight others are dead.”
The elf wizard nodded, having heard similar reports all day. The enemy had backed off after the slaughter in the Dells, and now sent small probing groups—mostly goblins—deeper into Shilmista. “Perhaps it is good that one escaped,” the elf wizard offered, the corners of his blue eyes turning up in a smile. “Let it return to its foul brethren and tell them that only death awaits them under Shilmista’s boughs!”
Shayleigh, too, managed a smile, but there was worry reflected in the elf maiden’s violet orbs. The enemy scouting parties were being slaughtered, but the fact that their leader apparently accepted the losses only heightened Shayleigh’s belief that a huge force indeed had found its way into Shilmista’s northern reaches.
“Come,” Tintagel said. “Let us go to the king and see what plans he has formulated.”
They found Galladel alone in a clearing beyond a shielding wall of thick pines, pacing nervously. The elf king motioned for them to join him, then brought his slender hand up to stroke his raven-black hair, still vibrant and thick, though Galladel had lived many centuries. He stopped his movement when he saw that the hand was trembling, and dropped it back to his side. He glanced at Shayleigh and Tintagel to make sure that they had not seen.
“The slaughter continues,” Tintagel announced, trying to calm the nervous king.
“For how long?” Galladel retorted. “The reports, sightings—so many sightings of monstrous scum in our fair wood!—have continued to come in.”
“We will beat them back,” Shayleigh pronounced.
Galladel appreciated his fine young commander’s confidence, but in the face of the emerging force against him, it seemed only a minor thing.
“For how long?” he asked again, less sharply. “This black tide has rolled over the northern reaches. Our enemy is cunning.”
“He sends his troops to be massacred,” Tintagel argued.
“He bides his time,” the elf king countered. “He sacrifices his weakest fodder to keep us busy. Damn this waiting game.”
“Something will happen soon,” Shayleigh said. “I can feel the tension. Our enemy will reveal himself in full.”
Galladel looked at her curiously, but knew better than to dismiss the elf maiden’s intuition. Shayleigh had been the one to argue for, and to organize, the ambush in the Dells, having read the enemy’s initial probing actions perfectly. Certainly the king was glad to have her at his side, especially with Elbereth, his son and closest advisor, in the east, trying to gain some insight from the priests of the Edificant Library. Galladel had ordered Elbereth not to go, but lately his commands carried little weight with his headstrong son.
“Soon,” Shayleigh said again, seeing that the tension was near to breaking Galladel.
“They are marching now,” came a chirping voice from the side. Both Galladel and Shayleigh turned and curiously eyed a large oak tree.
They heard a tittering laughter. Thinking to defend her king, Shayleigh drew her slender sword and advanced boldly. Tintagel took up a position to the side, producing a spell component from his pocket and ready to strike at a moment’s warning.
“Oh, do not tell me you have not heard the warnings of the trees!” came the voice, followed by a movement around the back of the tree. A pixie-featured woman, her skin as tan as the oak’s bark and her hair as green as the great tree’s dark leaves, peeked out from around the thick trunk.
Shayleigh’s sword went back into its scabbard. “We have heard nothing but the dying gasps of intruders,” the elf maiden said coldly.
“Who is it?” demanded Galladel.
“A dryad,” Shayleigh replied. “Hammadeen, I believe.”
“Oh, you remember me!” chirped Hammadeen, and she clapped her delicate hands together. “But you just said you can feel it!”
The dryad’s abrupt changes of subject left the elf maiden bewildered. “I feel what?” she asked.
“The excitement in the air!” cried Hammadeen. “It is the talk of the trees that you hear. They are afraid, and so they should be.”
“What nonsense is this?” growled Galladel, moving to join Shayleigh.
“Oh, no, not nonsense!” replied Hammadeen, suddenly sounding distressed. “They are marching in force, too many for the trees to count. And they have fire and axes! Oh, the elves must stop them—you must.”
Shayleigh and Galladel exchanged confused looks.
“Listen!” cried the dryad. “You must listen.”
“We are listening!” roared a frustrated Galladel.
“To the trees . . .” Hammadeen explained. Her voice diminished—and her body seemed to, as well—as she blended into the oak. Shayleigh rushed over, trying to catch the dryad or to follow, but the elf maiden’s reaching hands found only the rough bark of the wide oak.
“Dryads,” Shayleigh remarked, her tone less than complimentary.
“Listen to the trees,” spat Galladel. He kicked dirt at the base of the oak and spun away.
Shayleigh was surprised by the intensity of the king’s disdain. It was said that the trees of Shilmista had often spoken with the forest elves, that once the trees had even uprooted and walked to fight beside Dellanil Quil’quien, an elven hero and king in times long past. That was only legend to young Shayleigh, but surely aged Galladel, a direct descendent of Dellanil’s, had lived in those times.
“We know now that our enemy is on the move again,” Shayleigh offered, “in great numbers. And we know from where they will come. I will arrange another surprise—“
“We know only what a dryad has told us!” yelled Galladel. “You would risk our entire defense on the fleeting words of a dryad, by nature a creature of half-truths and insidious charms?”
Again the elf maiden was taken aback by Galladel’s unwarranted anger. The dryads most certainly were not the elven host’s enemies, and could well prove valuable allies.
Galladel took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself, as though he, too, realized his misplaced wrath.
“We have only the word of Hammadeen,” Shayleigh offered tentatively, “but I do not doubt that our enemy is on the march. There are many defensible ridges between here and the northern reaches. It would seem prudent to begin preparations even without the dryad’s warning.”
“No,” Galladel said firmly. “We’ll not go out to meet the enemy again. We will not catch him so unaware, and the result might be disastrous.
“Our powers are greater near the center of the forest,” Galladel continued, “and there we may more easily elude this great force, if indeed it is coming.”
Shayleigh was livid and adamant. “If we run, we give them miles of the forest to destroy,” she growled. “Shilmista is our home, from the southernmost to the northernmost tree!”
“Daoine Dun is not so far,” Tintagel offered as a compromise location. “The caves there offer us shelter, and certainly the hill figures prominently in our power.”
Shayleigh considered the suggestion for a moment. She would have preferred taking the offensive again, but she knew well that Galladel would not give in to her reasoning. Daoine Dun, the Hill of the Stars, seemed a reasonable compromise. She nodded to Galladel.
The elf king didn’t seem convinced. “There are better choices more to the south,” he said.
Shayleigh and Tintagel exchanged fearful glances. Both wished that Elbereth had not gone away, for the elf prince was more attuned to their way of thinking, more determined to preserve what little remained of Shilmista’s glory. Perhaps Galladel had lived too long; the burdens of ruler-ship over the centuries could not be underestimated.
“Our enemy numbers in the thousands, by every report,” Galladel snapped at them, apparently sensing their heartfelt disapproval—for his decision and for him. “We number barely seven score and hope that our courage alone will turn aside that black tide. Do not confuse courage with foolishness, I say, and I am still your king!”
The younger elves would have lost the argument then, except that cries rang out in the elven camp beyond the pine grove. “Fire!” the shouts proclaimed.
One elf rushed in through the trees to report to his king. “Fire!” he cried. “Our enemy burns the forest. In the north! In the north!” The elf turned and fled then, back through the natural barrier.
Galladel turned away from Shayleigh and Tintagel, ran his hand nervously through his raven-black hair, and muttered several silent curses at Elbereth for going away.
“Daoine Dun?” Tintagel asked tentatively and hopefully.
Galladel waved a resigned hand the wizard’s way. “As you will,” he offered listlessly. “As you will.”
When Felkin opened his eyes again, he had to squint against the morning sunlight. The forest around him was deathly quiet, and a long time passed before the goblin mustered the nerve to crawl out of the leaves. He considered going back to check on his companions, then snorted the thought away and made off with all speed for Ragnor’s camp on the forest’s northern borders.
Felkin felt a bit relieved a short while later, when he heard the hacking of axes. The sky lightened in front of him, the thick canopy thinned, and he came out of the trees suddenly, only to find himself immediately surrounded by Ragnor’s elite guard, a contingent of eight huge and hairy bugbears.
They looked down at poor, shivering Felkin from their seven foot height, evil, yellow-eyed gazes boring into the goblin.
“Who are you?” one of the creatures demanded, poking a trident against the goblin’s shoulder.
Felkin winced from the pain and fear, nearly as terrified of bugbears as of the elf he had left behind. “Felkin,” he squeaked, bowing his head submissively. “Scout.”
The bugbears murmured something in their own guttural tongue, then one of them prodded Felkin even harder. “Where are the others?”
Felkin bit his lip to prevent crying out in pain; revealing weakness would only inspire the cruel monsters to greater acts of torture. “In the forest,” he whispered.
“Dead?”
Felkin nodded meekly, then he felt as if he were flying as one bugbear grabbed him by the scraggly hair and hoisted him high off the ground. Felkin’s skinny arms flapped as he tried to secure a supporting hold on the bugbear’s sinewy arm. The merciless creature carried him by just the hair all the way across the large encampment. Felkin continued to gnaw on his lip and fought back tears as best he could.
He determined their destination to be a large, hide-covered tent. Ragnor! The world seemed to spin about to the quivering goblin; he knew that he was fainting and hoped he would never wake up.
He did awaken, and then he wished that he had stayed in the forest and taken his chances with the elf.
Ragnor did not seem so imposing at first, sitting behind a large oaken table across the tent. Then the ogrillon stood, and Felkin whined and crawled backward across the ground. A prod from a trident forced him back to his place.
Ragnor was as tall as the bugbears and twice as wide.
His features were orcish, mostly, with a snout resembling a pig’s nose and one tusklike tooth protruding from his bottom jaw, up over his upper lip. His eyes were large and bloodshot, and his brow heavy, always crinkled in an ominous glare. While his features were orcish, his body more resembled his ogre ancestors, with thick, powerful limbs, corded muscles, and a barrellike torso that could stop a charging horse dead in its tracks.
The ogrillon took three heavy strides to stand before Felkin, reached down, and easily—too easily!—lifted the goblin to his feet.
“The others are dead?” Ragnor asked in his throaty, commanding voice.
“Elveses!” Felkin cried. “Elveses killed them!”
“How many?”
“Lots and lots!” Felkin answered, but the ogrillon didn’t seem impressed. Ragnor put a single large finger under Felkin’s chin and lifted the goblin to his tiptoes. The ugly orc face with evil-smelling breath moved just an inch from the goblin, and Felkin thought he would faint again—though he realized that Ragnor would skin him if he did.
“How many?” Ragnor asked again, slowly and deliberately.
“One,” squeaked Felkin, thinking the better of adding that it was a female. Ragnor dropped him to the floor.
“An entire patrol cut down by a single elf!” the ogrillon roared at the bugbears. The hairy monsters looked around to each other, but did not seem overly concerned.
“You send goblins and orcs,” one of them remarked.
“I first sent bugbears!” Ragnor reminded them. “How many of your kin returned?”
The embarrassed bugbears mumbled excuses in their own tongue. “Send bigger scouting groups?” the bugbear spokesman offered a few moments later.
Ragnor thought it over, then shook his huge head. “We cannot match the elves with such tactics in the woods. We have the advantage of numbers and strength, but that is all in this cursed forest.”
“They know the region well,” agreed the bugbear.
“And I do not doubt that they have many spies about,” added Ragnor. “Even the trees I do not trust!”
“Then how do we proceed?”
“We continue our march!” the frustrated ogrillon growled. He grabbed Felkin tightly about the throat and pulled him off the ground, again close to Ragnor’s ugly face.
“The elves know their forest, so we will destroy their forest!” the ogrillon growled. “We will force them out in the open ground and crush them!” Too excited by his own words, Ragnor’s hand jerked suddenly. There came a loud crack, and Felkin twitched violently, then was still.
The bugbears looked on in amazement. One of them chuckled, but bit it back quickly. Too late; the other bugbears burst out in laughter, and their mirth increased tenfold when Ragnor joined in, giving the goblin a shake to make sure it was dead.
Cadderly sat in the dim light of the dying campfire, a line of tiny vials on the ground before him, paralleling a line of empty crossbow darts. One by one, he took the vials and very carefully dripped in a few drops from the flask that Kierkan Rufo had delivered to him.
“What is he doing?” Elbereth asked Rufo as they stood on the edge of the firelight.
“Making darts for his crossbow,” the tall man explained. His face seeming even more angular, almost inhuman, in the flickering shadows.
Elbereth studied the diminutive weapon, resting on the ground at Cadderly’s side. The elf’s expression was not complimentary.
“That is a drow device,” he spat, loudly enough for Cadderly to hear. Cadderly looked up and knew that the elf prince was about to put him on trial.
“Do you consort with dark elves?” Elbereth asked bluntly.
“I have never met one,” Cadderly answered simply, thinking, but not adding, that if Elbereth’s arrogance exemplified the good side of the elven nation, he most certainly would have no desire to meet one of the bad side!
“Where did you acquire the crossbow then?” Elbereth pressed, as though he was just looking for a reason to begin an argument with Cadderly. “And why would you wish to carry the weapon of such an evil race?”
Cadderly picked up the crossbow, somehow comforted in the fact that it had brought Elbereth some grief. He understood that Elbereth provoked him now simply out of general frustration, and he certainly sympathized with the elf’s worries for Shilmista. Still, Cadderly had his own concerns and was in no mood for Elbereth’s continued insults. “Dwarf-made, actually,” he corrected.
“Nearly as bad,” the elf snipped without hesitation.
Cadderly’s gray eyes were not as striking as Elbereth’s silvery orbs, but his glare more than equaled the elf’s in intensity. In a fight of weapons, of course, Elbereth could easily cut him down, but if the elf prince launched more insults Ivan and Pikel’s way, Cadderly had every intention of pummeling him with fists. Cadderly was a fine wrestler, having grown up among the clerics of Oghma, whose principal rituals involved weaponless combat. While Elbereth was nearly as tall as the six-foot-high scholar, Cadderly figured that he outweighed the slender elf by at least seventy pounds.
Apparently understanding that he had pushed the young scholar as far as he could without starting a fight, Elbereth did not immediately continue, but neither did he blink his silver eyes.
“The perimeter is clear,” said Danica as she came back into camp. She looked from Elbereth to Cadderly and saw the obvious tension. “What has happened?”
Elbereth turned to her and smiled warmly, which bothered Cadderly more than the uncompromising glare the elf had given him.
“A discussion of the crossbow, nothing more,” Elbereth assured Danica. “I do not understand the value of such a puny weapon—nor the honor.”
Danica put a sympathetic look Cadderly’s way. If the young scholar was vulnerable about anything in the world, it was the crossbow and the memories it inevitably conjured. Unexpectedly, Cadderly launched himself in the face of those memories.
“I killed a man with this,” he growled dangerously. Danica’s look turned to one of horror, and Cadderly realized how stupid that proclamation had been. What a ridiculous and disgusting thing to brag about! He knew he had laid himself open to the elf now, that Elbereth could easily destroy him in this argument, for Cadderly would find no courage to back up his bravado.
But the elf, looking from Cadderly to Danica, chose to discontinue the discussion. “It is my watch,” he said simply and disappeared into the darkness.
Cadderly looked to Danica and shrugged apologetically. The young woman just sat across the fire from him, wrapped herself in a heavy blanket, and lay down to sleep.
Cadderly considered the crossbow, feeling that it had betrayed him once again. He wished he had been more attentive in his combat studies at the library; then, perhaps, he would not need to carry the unconventional weapon. But while the other clerics had practiced with the mace, quarterstaff, or club, Cadderly had concentrated on his spindle-disks—twin disks joined by a connecting bar, on which was tied a slender cord—a useful enough weapon for felling small game and an enjoyable toy to put through a variety of mesmerizing tricks, but hardly a match for a sword.
Cadderly’s hand went unconsciously to the disks, which were looped on his belt. He had used them in battle a couple of times, had dropped Kierkan Rufo when the angular man, under the chaos curse’s influence, had come after Cadderly with a knife. Even against the tiny blade that Rufo had carried, Cadderly had won only because his opponent had become distracted. A single lucky throw had saved him.
Cadderly considered his walking stick as well, with its sculpted ram’s-head handle and smooth-bored interior. It was an expensive item and well balanced, and Cadderly had used it, too, in battle. Danica had told him that such a small staff—she called it a bo stick—was a favorite among monks in her mother’s ancient homeland of Tabot. Cadderly was barely skilled with it. He could twirl it and thrust it, even parry basic attacks, but he wouldn’t want to test his talents against a seasoned fighter like Elbereth, or any monster, for that matter.
Resigned, the young scholar filled another vial and carefully snapped it into place in the hollow of a dart. He slipped the loaded dart into a loop on his bandolier; that made twelve.
In the first few fights at least, Cadderly might show as well as Elbereth. The young scholar hated that that fact mattered to him, but he couldn’t deny that it did.
The eastern fringes of Shilmista were not too far from the Edificant Library, and, even crossing the rough mountain trails, the travelers could have seen the forest on their second day out. Shilmista was a long wood, though, running one hundred and fifty miles from north to south, and Elbereth wanted to come out of the mountains nearer the forest’s center, where the elves made their primary homes.
For several more days, the four companions walked up, down, and around high peaks and through steep valleys. It was summer, even in the mountains, and the air was warm and the sky blue. Each turn in the trail promised a new majestic view, but even mountain scenery became somewhat dull to Cadderly after several straight days.
Often during this quiet time, Cadderly took the Tome of Universal Harmony from his horse’s pack. He did not begin reading it, though, for he was too agitated by the potential trials ahead and Elbereth’s growing relationship with Danica—the two got on famously, swapping tales of places Cadderly had never seen—to concentrate enough for a proper read.
On the fifth day, they came at last to the western ridges. Looking down, they could see the dark canopy of Shilmista, a peaceful and quiet cover for the mounting tumult beneath the thick boughs.
“That is my home,” Elbereth announced to Danica. “There is no place in all the world to match Shilmista’s beauty.”
Cadderly wanted to rebuff him. The young scholar had read of many wondrous lands, magical lands, and by all accounts, Shilmista, though a fitting wood for elven folk, was nothing extraordinary. Cadderly had the foresight, though, to understand how pitiful he would sound in making such a claim, and the common sense to anticipate Elbereth’s angry reaction. He wisely kept his thoughts to himself and resolved to point out Shilmista’s weak points to Danica later.
Although the path had become clear and smooth enough for riding, the steep decline and winding turns forced the party to continue walking the horses. As they came to the lower foothills, mountain stone gave way to earthen ground, and here walking their mounts proved a fortunate thing, for on the back of Temmerisa, his great stallion, Elbereth would not have noticed the tracks.
He stooped low to examine them and said nothing for a long while.
Cadderly and the others could guess from the elf’s grim expression the source of those markings.
“Goblins?” Danica asked finally.
“Some, perhaps,” Elbereth replied, his gaze drifting back toward his precious forest, “but most are too big to have been made by goblins.” The elf took out his longbow and handed the reigns of his horse to Kierkan Rufo. He then motioned for Danica to give her mount over to Cadderly.
The young scholar wasn’t thrilled with acting the part of a page, but he couldn’t argue against the value of having Danica and Elbereth with their hands free, ready to meet any sudden attacks.
Elbereth took up the lead, pausing often to study new tracks, and Danica fell into line at the rear of the party, watching all directions.
They came back into the tree line and grew even more cautious, for shadows loomed all about them, possible hiding spots for monsters setting an ambush. For an hour they crossed in and out of the gloom, moving under thick trees one moment and coming suddenly into the open sunlight the next as the trail wound across wide stones.
Temmerisa’s thousand bells tinkled suddenly with the steed’s nervous movement. Elbereth immediately went on his guard, crouching low and looking all about. He moved across the trail, slipped into concealment amid a tumble of boulders, and peered down at the mountainsides below.
Danica and Cadderly joined him immediately, but Rufo stayed back with the horses, seeming ready to spring upon his roan mount in an instant and fly away.
“The trail doubles back on itself down below,” the elf explained in a whisper. His observations were evident to Cadderly and Danica, for the trees and brush were not thick below them and the looping road was clearly visible. Elbereth seemed intent on one huge maple tree, its thick branches overhanging the road.
“There!” Danica whispered, pointing to the very same tree. “On the lowest branch above the road.” Elbereth nodded gravely, and Danica blew a quiet whistle.
Cadderly watched them in confusion. He, too, peered intently at the tree, but all he saw were thick, overlapping leaves.
“The limb bends under their weight,” Elbereth remarked.
“Whose weight?” Cadderly had to ask. Elbereth scowled, but Danica took pity on Cadderly and continued to point out what she had noticed until he, at last, nodded in recognition. Several dark forms were crouched together on that low branch, high above the road.
“Orcs?” Danica asked.
“Too big for orcs,” reasoned Elbereth. “Orogs.”
Danica’s delicate features crinkled with confusion.
“Orogs are kin to orcs,” cut in Cadderly, beating the elf to the explanation. Orogs were not a common monster, but one that Cadderly had read about in many books. “Larger and stronger than their pig-faced cousins. It is believed that they originated—“
“What do you think they are waiting for?” Danica interrupted before Cadderly could make a complete fool of himself.
“Us,” Elbereth said grimly. “They have heard our horses, perhaps seen us on the open expanses of the higher trails.”
“Is there another way around?” Cadderly knew the question sounded ridiculous even as he asked it. Danica, and especially Elbereth, had no intention of going around the monsters.
Elbereth considered the terrain straight from his position. “If I pick my way down the mountainside while you continue along the trail,” he reasoned, “I may be able to take a few of them down with my bow.” The elf prince nodded in affirmation of his own plan. “Come, then,” he said, “we must get the horses moving again before the orogs grow suspicious.”
Danica turned and started back to Rufo, but Cadderly was struck with an idea. “Let me go,” he offered, a smile widening across his face.
Elbereth regarded him curiously, and even more so when Cadderly took out his tiny crossbow.
“You believe you can inflict more damage with that than I with my longbow?” the elf prince asked.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to fight them on the ground?” Cadderly replied, grinning Danica’s way. Elbereth, too, looked to the woman, and she nodded and smiled, trusting in Cadderly and knowing that playing a role in the fight was important to the young scholar.
“Go along the trail,” Cadderly told them. “I shall meet you at the tree.”
Elbereth, still not convinced, turned back to study the young scholar. “Your hat and cape,” the elf said, holding out his hands.
Cadderly’s pause displayed his confusion.
“Blue is not a forest color,” Elbereth explained. “It shows as clearly as a fire in the dark of night. We will be fortunate if the orogs have not already spotted you.”
“They have not,” Danica insisted, realizing that Elbereth had made that last statement only to belittle Cadderly.
The scholar untied his short cape and handed it and the hat to Elbereth. “I will see you at the tree,” he said finally, trying to appear confident.
His firm jaw weakened as soon as the others moved out of sight. What had he gotten himself into? Even if he managed to get down the steep slope without breaking his neck and causing enough noise for all the orogs in the Snowflake Mountains to hear, what would he do if they noticed him? What defense could Cadderly present against even a single opponent?
He shook the dark thoughts away and started down, having no other choice, he believed, if he wished to hold any honor at all in Danica’s almond eyes. He stumbled and tripped, stubbed his toes a dozen times, and set several stones skipping down, but somehow managed to get level with the giant maple apparently without disturbing the ambush-intent monsters. He crawled into a crevice between two sharp-edged rocks a short distance from the side of the trail. He could see the orogs clearly then; nearly a dozen crouched side by side on the low branch. They held nets and spears and crude swords, and it wasn’t difficult for Cadderly to discern their tactics.
The monsters went quiet. At first, Cadderly feared he had been discovered, but he soon realized that the orogs continued looking up the trail. He knew that his friends would arrive soon.
He loaded the crossbow, taking care to move the small crank slowly and smoothly so that it wouldn’t make any noise. Then he leveled the weapon—but where to shoot? He could probably knock an orog out of the tree, maybe even kill one if his aim or his luck was good enough. His earlier boasts seemed so foolish now, with the danger so very close and the responsibility fully on his shoulders.
He had to go with his original plan; Elbereth and Danica were counting on him to get the monsters out of the tree. He took aim, not at any of the monsters, but at where the thick branch joined the trunk. It was not a difficult shot with the accurate crossbow, but would the explosive suffice? Cadderly took out a second dart, just in case.
The orogs shifted nervously; Cadderly could hear the plodding hoofbeats down the trail.
“Deneir be with me,” the young scholar mumbled, and he squeezed the crossbow’s trigger. The dart floated in, struck the branch, and collapsed on the vial, and the ensuing explosion shook the tree violently. Orogs grabbed on—one tumbled from the branch—and Cadderly, to his relief, heard a loud cracking noise. The young scholar sent another dart looping in.
The branch blew apart. An orog screamed as its ankle got hooked on the jagged break, the skin tearing off the side of its leg as it fell.
Danica and Elbereth, upon their horses, were barely thirty feet from the tree when the orogs tumbled out. Elbereth, concerned, glanced sidelong at the young woman, for only one of the monsters seemed injured and the others were well armed.
“There are only ten of them!” Danica cried, reaching down to pull a crystalline-bladed dagger from a boot sheath. She laughed wildly and spurred her horse ahead. Temmerisa, bearing the elf, charged right behind.
Danica came in hard and fast on the closest three monsters. Just before she reached them, she rolled off the side of her horse, caught a handhold on the saddle’s cinch, and pulled herself under the horse, straight through the beast’s legs. The horse blasted through the stunned orogs, all of them expecting Danica on the wrong side.
Danica hit the ground running, used her momentum to leap into a spin, and connected on the closest orog with a circle kick that snapped the creature’s neck and sent it tumbling away.
Her wrist flicked as soon as she got her bearings, launching the dagger, point over hilt. It spun several times, a glittering sliver in the sunlight, before burying itself hilt-deep in the second orog’s face.
The third monster heaved its spear and drew out a crude sword. Its aim had been perfect, but Danica was too quick to be taken by such a clumsy weapon. She sidestepped and threw out a forearm parry that sent the spear flying harmlessly wide.
The orog came in unconcerned, and Danica nearly laughed at how defenseless she must have appeared to the six-and-a-half-foot, two-hundred-pound monster. Slender and pretty, she barely topped five feet, with unkempt locks flying wildly about her shoulders and eyes that sparkled, to the unknowing observer, with childish innocence.
Blood quickly replaced drool on the orog’s hungry lips. It stepped in and reached for Danica with its free hand. She caught it with a lightning-quick jab that took out two of its front teeth. Danica jumped back, bouncing on the balls of her feet and feeling good about the beginning of this battle. It had taken just a few seconds, but two monsters lay dead or dying and the third stood teetering and trying to shake the stars out of its vision.
Elbereth’s charge was even more straightforward and more brutal. He led with a single bow shot, catching a monster in the shoulder. Then, drawing his sword and slipping his arm through the leather straps of his shield, the elf trusted in his disciplined steed and crashed right into the main group of orogs. His magical blade glowed a bluish flame as he hacked at the monstrous throng. He took several quick hits from the monsters’ crude weapons, but his fine shield and finer armor deflected the blows.
More deadly were Elbereth’s thrusts; the unarmored orogs simply couldn’t afford to swap blows with the elf, as the closest monster, the one with the arrow in its shoulder, learned when Elbereth responded to its spear thrust by lopping off its head.
Temmerisa reared and danced about, keeping in perfect balance and harmony with its familiar rider. One orog slipped behind the shining white horse, its spear held high for a throw that would have taken Elbereth squarely in the back. Temmerisa kicked with both hind feet, connecting on the orog’s chest and launching it many yards away. The broken monster crumpled to the ground, gasping futilely with lungs that had collapsed.
Elbereth’s battle would have been a rout then, for only two monsters remained (and one of these could barely stand, leaning against the huge tree with one of its legs torn apart). But when the limb had broken, a single orog had managed to keep a handhold in the tree. Grasping a net in its free hand, the monster swung out on the higher branch and timed its leap perfectly, coming down on the slender elf’s back and bearing Elbereth to the ground under it and under the net.
A deceptively swift sword cut forced Danica to hop and throw her head backward. She knew that a monster as powerful as an orog could not be taken lightly, but she found herself distracted, for off to the side, Elbereth had gone down, and Kierkan Rufo had not yet entered the fray. Just as unnerving to the young woman, two of the orogs had fled toward Cadderly.
Another slice made Danica drop almost to the ground; a third sent her rolling to the side. The orog, confident again, advanced steadily.
It swung again, but this time Danica, instead of backing away, charged straight ahead. She caught the orog’s sword hand in her own and stepped toward it, hooking her free forearm so forcefully around the orog’s extended arm that she heard the monster’s elbow snap. Fierce Danica barely gave the monster time to cry in pain. Still holding fast to its sword hand, she whipped her other arm back, free of the monster’s, and threw her elbow up and out, slamming the creature in the nose.
Danica’s elbow came back tight to her side and her backhand went snapping out, scoring another solid hit. When the arm recoiled, still before the orog had time to react, Danica straightened her hand tightly and chopped across the orog’s throat.
She dipped under the monster’s trapped arm. Her grip turned the muscled limb half a circuit as she passed under it, and Danica turned about to face the creature.
The orog reached for her weakly, but Danica paid the lame attempt no heed. Her foot shot up under the orog’s reach and slammed the monster in the chin, then again, and a third time, in rapid succession.
“Cadderly,” the monk breathed, looking down the trail, for the two fleeing monsters were close to her beloved.
Cadderly, acting on pure instinct, didn’t hesitate to consider the moral consequences in the least as the first orog bore down on him, pointedly shifting its course when it noticed him lying between the stones.
An exploding dart abruptly halted its charge.
The monster’s surprised roar came out as a wheeze, for the dart had put a hole cleanly through one lung. Stubbornly the monster came on, and Cadderly shot it again, this time in the belly.
The orog doubled over, growling in agony.
“Die, damn you,” Cadderly moaned when it straightened and came on again. This time his shot blew off the top of the orog’s head.
Cadderly himself was having trouble finding his breath, and his revulsion turned to stark horror when he looked up to see the second orog towering over him, straddling the stones with its very big sword angled to split Cadderly in half. There was no time for another dart, the young scholar knew, so he grabbed his walking stick and tossed it up toward the monster.
The orog’s face contorted in confusion as it batted the walking stick aside, but Cadderly’s ruse was not without purpose. In the split second the orog’s attention was stolen, Cadderly turned himself about and rolled to his back, looking up to the orog’s backside. He curled up in a ball, hooking his calves behind the orog’s knees and then straightened and pulled with all his might.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and Cadderly thought that he must look ridiculous indeed, as though he were straining against an immovable object. Then the orog did fall forward, but not heavily, and with no damage done. Cadderly scrambled forward, over the orog’s back, and he hooked one arm about the orog’s thick neck and pulled for all his life.
Undaunted, the creature stood back up, taking Cadderly with it. It casually looked around for its sword, dropped in the fall, then spotted the weapon and made for it.
Cadderly realized that the monster could easily jab the weapon behind it, right into his vulnerable torso. Frantic now, the young scholar considered letting go and making a run for cover. He knew that he would never get out of the monster’s reach in time.
“Fall, damn you!” Cadderly growled, tightening and twisting his arm.
The orog, to Cadderly’s astonishment, dropped its sword back to the ground. As though it had noticed the choke hold for the first time, the monster’s thick hands came up to grab at Cadderly’s arm, but by that time, there remained little strength in them.
Eyes closed, Cadderly desperately held on, still pulling with all his might.
Finally, the orog tumbled facedown.
The last orog, near the tree, could not put its right foot on the ground. It wanted to go with its two companions, one lying atop the netted elf and the other waving a sword menacingly and looking for an opening, but the creature winced whenever its toe came near the ground. The beast looked up and saw the flesh from its leg hanging grotesquely from the jag on the broken tree branch.
Cursing its luck and ignoring the burning agony, the stubborn creature hopped on its good foot out from the maple’s wide trunk.
Right in Kierkan Rufo’s path.
Rufo rode one horse and held the other beside it, and his charge came powerfully, if a bit late. The angular man hadn’t meant to run the orog down with his own horse—he had purposely placed the riderless steed closer to the tree—but the orog’s unexpected movement had put it right between both horses.
The monster got tangled in the worst possible way and was stepped on several times, but when the horses passed, it was still alive, lying helplessly on its back. Its spine was crushed, leaving it staring straight up at the dripping meat of its own ripped leg.
The riderless horse crossed the broken branch without trouble, but Rufo’s horse, stumbling from the tangled orog, flipped headlong, sending the angular man on a long, bouncing roll. Rufo spat dirt, shifted about, and sat looking back on the battle. His attack did much to aid Elbereth’s cause, for one of the three orogs moving to engage the elf was down and a second had broken away from the fray.
It was little comfort to poor Rufo, though, for the orog had only run because it had spotted an easier target—Rufo. It charged down the trail, its huge sword waving and its tongue hanging hungrily between broken yellow teeth.
Rufo saw Danica, over to the side, react. She snapped off one more kick, which sent her orog’s head jerking backward, then broke free of the monster. She hesitated, glanced at Elbereth, but apparently figured that the elf had the situation under control, and ran after the orog approaching Rufo.
Elbereth squirmed around to face the heavy orog. He worked his hand to his belt, using his other arm to keep the ugly monster’s snapping mouth from biting at his face.
Elbereth’s arm moved in three rapid jolts, the orog heaving with each. The fourth time, Elbereth held his arm tight against the monster and began twisting his wrist back and forth.
The monster rolled off the elf’s slender stiletto and thrashed in the road, trying to hold its entrails inside its opened belly.
In a single movement, the agile Elbereth slipped out from under the crude net and came up to his knees. Merciless and grim-faced, he whipped his dagger into the squirming orog’s leg so that it couldn’t run while he retrieved his sword.
Danica was swift, as fast as anyone Rufo had ever seen, but the orog’s lead was too great. Reluctantly, the angular man pulled his mace from his belt and tried to stand. He was less skilled with weapons than even Cadderly and could not hope to hold out for long. Even worse, Rufo’s ankle, twisted in the fall, would not support him, and he fell back to the seat of his pants. The orog was almost upon him; he knew he was about to die.
The orog’s head jerked suddenly to the side, then half of its face blew off, showering Rufo and Danica, as she rushed in, with blood and gore.
Rufo and Danica stared at each other in disbelief for a moment, then turned in unison to the side, to see Cadderly standing between the rocks, crossbow in hand and a horrified expression splayed across his face.
Cadderly stood perfectly still for a few moments, too immersed to even notice his two friends’ approach. All of his thoughts were focused on what had just occurred, on what he had just done. Three orogs lay dead by his actions, and, worse yet, he had killed one of them with his bare hands.
It had been so easy. Cadderly hadn’t even thought about his actions, had moved solely on instincts—killing instincts—that had even urged him to destroy the orog running down the road toward Rufo, nowhere near Cadderly. The orog was there, in his crossbow sights, then it was dead.
It was too easy.
Not for the first time in the last few weeks, Cadderly questioned his purpose in life, the sincerity of his calling to the god Deneir. Headmaster Avery had once called Cadderly a Gondsman, referring to a sect of inventive priests who showed little moral guidance in forming their dangerous constructions. That word, “Gondsman,” hovered about the young scholar now, like the dead eyes of a man he had killed.
Cadderly came out of his trance to see Danica standing beside him, wiping her face, and Kierkan Rufo holding Cadderly’s wide-brimmed hat and nodding appreciatively. Cadderly shuddered as Danica wiped blood from her fair cheek. Could she really clean it? he wondered. And could he cleanse his hands? The image of beautiful Danica covered in gore seemed horribly symbolic; Cadderly felt as if the world had been turned upside down, as if the lines of good and evil had flip-flopped and blurred together to become a gray area based purely on savage and primal instincts for survival.
The simple truth was that the companions could have bypassed this tree, could have avoided the slaughter altogether.
Sympathy was plain on Danica’s face. She took the hat from Rufo and offered it to Cadderly, then she offered her arm. The shaken young scholar took both without hesitation. Kierkan Rufo again nodded grimly at him, a gesture of thanks, and it seemed to Cadderly as if the angular man, too, respected his inner turmoil.
They headed back to the maple, Danica and Cadderly arm in arm, just in time to see Elbereth smash in the skull of the writhing orog. The elf prince unceremoniously tore his stiletto out of the creature’s leg.
Cadderly looked away, pushed Danica from him, and felt sure he would vomit. He eyed the elf prince for a moment with a grave stare, then pointedly turned and walked from the scene. He moved parallel to Elbereth, but did not look at him.
“What would you have me do?” he heard an angry Elbereth call out. Danica mumbled something to the elf that Cadderly could not hear, but Elbereth was not finished with his tirade.
“If it were his home . . .” Cadderly heard clearly, and he knew that Elbereth, though talking to Danica, was directing the remark his way. He looked back to see Danica nodding at Elbereth, the two exchanging grim smiles, then clasping hands warmly.
The world had turned upside down.
A sound by the maple caught his attention. He saw the lone living orog, lying still and staring upward. Cadderly followed its gaze up to the broken tree limb, to the piece of dripping flesh. Horrified, the young scholar rushed to the wounded creature. It took him a moment to discern that the creature was alive, that it actually still drew breath, for its chest moved so slowly, its breathing shallow and uneven. Cadderly pulled the eye-above-candle emblem, his holy symbol, from the front of his hat and fumbled with a pouch on his belt. He heard the others moving behind him, but paid them no heed.
“What are you doing?” Elbereth asked him.
“He is still alive,” Cadderly replied. “I have spells . . .”
“No!”
The sharpness of the retort did not strike Cadderly as profoundly as the fact that it had been Danica, not Elbereth, who snapped at him. He turned about slowly, as if he expected to see a horrid monster looming over him.
It was just Danica and Elbereth and Rufo; Cadderly hoped there remained a difference.
“The creature is too far gone,” Danica said, her voice suddenly quiet.
“You shall not waste your spells on the likes of an orog!” Elbereth added, and there was nothing at all quiet about his sharp tones.
“We cannot leave it here to die,” Cadderly shot back, fumbling again with his pouch. “Surely its lifeblood will spill out into the mud.”
“A fitting end for an orog,” Elbereth replied evenly.
Cadderly looked at him, still surprised by the grim elf’s lack of mercy.
“Go if you will,” Cadderly growled. “I am a cleric of a merciful god and I’ll not leave a wounded creature like this!”
Danica pulled Elbereth away then. They had much to do before they could leave, in any case. A lot of their equipment lay scattered, weapons buried in orog flesh, and one horse, the one that had stumbled over the broken branch, needed tending.
Elbereth understood and honored the young woman’s feelings. Cadderly had fought well—the elf couldn’t deny that—and they could prepare to leave without his assistance.
Back up the trail, Elbereth retrieved his dropped bow. As he began to sling it over his shoulder, he heard a gasp from Danica, picking up her pack just a few feet from him.
Elbereth spun to her, then turned immediately to where she was looking.
Black smoke rose over Shilmista’s northwestern edge.
Oblivious to the distant spectacle, Cadderly worked furiously to stem the blood flow from the orog’s torn leg. Where to begin? All the flesh of the outside half of the leg, from ankle to midthigh, had been ripped away. Furthermore, the creature had suffered a dozen other severe wounds, including broken bones, from being run down by Rufo’s horse. Cadderly had never been overly proficient at his priestly studies, and clerical magic was not easy for him. Even if he was the finest healer of the Edificant Library, though, he doubted he could do much for this broken creature.
Every so often, a drop of blood plopped beside him from the hanging skin. A pointed reminder, Cadderly believed, falling rhythmically, like a heartbeat. Then it stopped. Cadderly took great pains not to look up.
The least he could do was comfort the doomed creature, though that hardly seemed sufficient in the face of his actions. He pulled in a piece of the broken branch and propped it under the orog’s head. Then he went back to work, refusing to consider the beast’s nature, refusing to remember that the orogs had planned to kill him and the others. He wrapped and tied, plugged holes with his fingers and was not disgusted by the newest blood on his hands.
“Young scholar!” he heard Elbereth say. Cadderly looked to the side, then fell back and cried out, seeing a drawn bow leveled his way.
The arrow cut right by his chest—he felt the windy wake of its rushing flight—and dove into the wounded orog, catching the monster under the chin and driving up into its brain. The creature gave one violent jerk, then lay still.
“We have no time for your folly,” Elbereth snarled, and he stormed past the stunned man, not taking his glare off Cadderly until he reached the wounded horse.
Cadderly wanted to cry out in protest, wanted to run over and punch Elbereth in the face, but Danica was beside him, calming him and helping him to his feet.
“Let the matter drop,” the young woman offered. Cadderly turned on her fiercely, but saw only tenderness in her clear brown eyes and pursed lips.
“We must leave at once,” Danica said. “The forest is burning.”
With his already bloodied sword, Elbereth mercifully finished off the doomed horse. Cadderly noted the elf’s sad expression and the gentle way he completed the grim task, noted that the elf cared more for the horse than for the orogs.
It had been Cadderly’s mount, and when they left, Cadderly was the one walking, refusing offers from Danica and Rufo to share their steeds, and not even answering Elbereth’s offer that the elf prince would walk and Cadderly ride.
Cadderly looked straight ahead, every step, refusing to acknowledge his companions. In his silent vigil, though, the battle replayed, and Barjin’s dead eyes stared at them all from above the mental battlefield, forever judging.
They entered the thick boughs of Shilmista at twilight, and Elbereth, despite his desire to find his people, quickly moved to set up camp. “We will leave long before dawn,” the elf explained sternly. “If you wish to sleep, do so now. The night will not be a long one.”
“Can you sleep?” Cadderly snarled at him. Elbereth’s silver eyes narrowed as the young scholar boldly approached.
“Can you?” Cadderly asked again, his voice growing dangerously loud. “Does your heart cry at the deeds of your bow and sword? Do you even care?”
Danica and Rufo looked on with alarm, almost expecting Elbereth to kill Cadderly where he stood.
“They were orogs, orc kin,” Elbereth calmly reminded him.
“Without mercy, how much better are we?” Cadderly growled in frustration. “Do our veins run thick with the same blood as orcs?”
“It is not your home,” the elf replied evenly. His voice filled with sarcasm. “Have you ever had a home?”
Cadderly did not reply, but he did not, could not, ignore the question. He really didn’t know the answer. He had lived in Carradoon, the town on Impresk Lake, before going to the library, but he remembered nothing of that distant time. Perhaps the library was his home; he could not be certain, for he had nothing to compare it against.
“If your home was in danger, you would fight for it, do not doubt,” Elbereth continued as he maintained control. “You would kill whatever threatened your home without mercy, and would hold no laments for its death.” The elf stared into Cadderly’s gray eyes for a few moments longer, awaiting a reply.
Then Elbereth was gone, disappeared into the forest gloom to scout out the region.
Cadderly heard Danica’s relieved sigh behind him.
Exhausted, Kierkan Rufo tumbled down and was snoring almost immediately. Danica had the same idea, but Cadderly sat before the low-burning fire, wrapped in a heavy blanket. Its thickness did little to warm the chill in his heart.
He hardly noticed when Danica came over to sit beside him.
“You should not be so troubled,” she offered after a long silence.
“Was I to let the orog die?” Cadderly asked sharply.
Danica shrugged and nodded. “Orogs are vicious, evil things,” she said. “They live to destroy, further no causes beyond their own vile desires. I do not lament their deaths.” She glanced sidelong at Cadderly. “Nor do you.
“It is Barjin, is it not?” Danica asked him, her voice full of pity.
The words stung. Incredulous, Cadderly turned on Danica.
“It was never about the orog,” Danica continued, undaunted. “The fury of your movements as you tended the creature was not befitting any kin of orcs. It was guilt that drove you, memories of the dead priest,”
Cadderly’s expression did not change, though he found it difficult to dispute Danica’s claims. Why had he cared so deeply for the orog, a notorious villain that would have torn the heart from his chest if given the chance? Why had that wounded orog evoked so much pity?
“You acted, you fought, as the situation demanded,” Danica said quietly. “Against the orogs and against the priest. It was Barjin, not Cadderly, who caused Barjin’s death. Lament that it had to happen at all. Do not accept guilt for that which you could not control.”
“What is the difference?” Cadderly asked sincerely.
Danica draped an arm about his shoulders and moved close. Cadderly could feel her breath, hear her heartbeat, and see the moisture on her full lips.
“You must judge yourself as fairly as you judge others,” Danica whispered. “I, too, battled Barjin and would have killed him if given the opportunity. How would you look upon me if that had come to pass?”
Cadderly had no answers.
Danica leaned closer and kissed him, then hugged him tightly, though he had not the strength to respond. Without another word, she moved back to her blanket and lay down, offering him a parting smile before she closed her eyes and gave in to her weariness.
Cadderly sat for a while longer, watching the young woman. She understood him so well, better than he understood himself. Or was it just that Danica understood the wide world as sheltered Cadderly could not? For all of his short life, Cadderly had found his answers in books, while Danica, worldly wise, had searched out her answers through experience.
Some things, it seemed, could not be learned simply by reading about them.
Elbereth came back into camp a short while later. Cadderly was down, but not asleep, and he watched the elf. Elbereth rested his bow against a log, and unbelted his sword, and place it beside his bedroll. Then, to Cadderly’s surprise, Elbereth went over to Danica and gently tucked her blankets up tightly about her shoulders. He stroked Danica’s thick hair, then walked back to his own bedroll and lay under the myriad stars.
For the second time that day, Cadderly didn’t know what to think or how to feel.