The three-foot horns on the creature's head were sharp and wicked-looking. Its eyes, half-shut, showed yellow as it chanted, "Xenothi morandibi, Xenothi darme a te vide, toth." Its clawed front legs stamped on the rocky ground, sending sprays of pebbles flying into the underbrush.

"Reorx!" the dwarf exclaimed again.

Xenoth, his gray eyes terrified and glassy, stepped out of the underbrush into the clearing. He approached the monster, seemingly unable to resist the creature's call. The chanting intensified. One of the nobles on the far side of the ravine cried out with the horror. Tanis stood. "Xenoth!"

Tyresian shouted from across the ravine, "Half-elf! Stay where you are!" But Tanis leaped over the log and nocked an arrow as he ran. Flint followed, swinging his battle-axe.

The creature, from its tail to its beaklike snout, was nearly sixty feet long, with scaly armor. Tanis kneeled within the huge curve of the beast's body, aiming for the tylor's head, off to the half-elf's right. He released the arrow just as the creature's thirty-foot tail whistled through the air, to Tanis's far left. The razor-sharp appendage slashed through an aspen sapling, then slammed into the adviser. Xenoth's scream died in a gurgle.

The words "Tanis, don't move!" came crying from the opposite side of the ravine. The half-elf remained where he was but sent another arrow arcing toward the tylor.

Suddenly, hoofbeats crashed on the mud-splattered rocks near Tanis. Miral, crimson tunic vivid against his white and gray mare, hurtled toward the tylor, chanting as he rode. Lightning burst from his fingers and rocketed toward the animal even as the tylor began a new chant.

The ensuing explosion rocked the clearing, knocking Tanis and Flint into a heap. Dazed, they watched the rest of the hunters pour over the ravine and into the clearing.

The tylor's screams rent the clearing as its claws dug gashes in the rock-hard earth. It struggled to crawl into the underbrush, away from the arrows that now poured toward it from the phalanx of elven nobles. Tanis and Flint could only sit and watch.

Finally, the tylor was dead, scorch marks visible all along one side, arrows cutting into its hide and another arrow protruding from an eye. It lay on its side. Just ten feet away, Miral was raising himself on bent elbows, his face blackened with ash. One hand was bleeding.

Xenoth lay dead, face down on the muddy, rocky ground of the clearing, a crimson stain soaking his silver robe and seeping into the earth. The tylor's thrashing tail had crushed his chest. Litanas, Xenoth's assistant, kneeled beside him, shouting something incoherent.

Then suddenly it seemed as though all the elves were staring at Tanis. Even Flint was looking at him with a disbelieving expression. "What is it?" the half-elf asked.

Litanas moved aside, and Tanis saw.

Protruding from Xenoth's heart was the half-elf's arrow.

Chapter 18

Tanis looked from face to face, each showing the same accusing stare. Only Flint looked anything but convinced that the half-elf had slain the adviser.

"You saw!" Tanis cried. "You all saw! I shot to the right, toward the body of the beast. Xenoth was to my left when the creature's tail hit him. How could my arrow have struck him?"

"Yet it did strike him, Tanis," Porthios said quietly.

Tyresian gestured, and several of the elves moved forward as if to restrain the half-elf. With a bound, Flint, still clutching his battle-axe, thrust himself between Tanis and the approaching captors. He raised the weapon, glared fiercely at the advancing elves, and shouted, "Stop!" Obviously taken aback by the sight of a dwarf outfitted for battle and ready to fight, the nobles stopped.

"We volunteered for this expedition knowing that it could bring our death," Flint said angrily. "Isn't that true?"

Ulthen, who with Litanas had been kneeling by Xenoth, stood, his cape splashed with blood. "But we expected the death to come at the jaws of the tylor, Master Fireforge, not by one of our fellow hunters."

The elves muttered and growled. The adviser had been disliked by many of the courtiers, so there seemed to be little real sadness at his demise, merely shock that it appeared to have come at the hand of another elf.

"Who says Tanis killed him?" the dwarf demanded.

Tyresian sighed loudly. "It was Tanis's arrow, Master Fireforge. Now, let's get on…"

But Flint pressed ahead. "Lord Xenoth was dead when the arrow hit him."

"How do you know?" Tyresian demanded with a sneer. Behind Tyresian, Litanas had withdrawn the yellow and scarlet arrow from Xenoth's chest and was laying his travel cloak across the body of his former superior. Several other nobles stood apart, poking the tylor's body, glancing at Tanis and Tyresian, and talking in low voices.

Flint folded his arms across his chest, the axe still clenched in one thick hand. "I saw it."

"Don't be ridicu-"

Flint interrupted, raising his voice until it boomed across the clearing. "I was there, Lord Tyresian. You and the others were on the far side of the ravine. I had a clear view. You did not."

"They argued," Tyresian said doggedly. "Tanis all but threatened Xenoth at the stables. Who's to say the half-elf's human blood didn't prompt him to avenge himself? And who will trust the word of a dwarf who also happens to be the half-elf's closest friend?" He turned to Litanas and Ulthen. "Bind his hands. We will return to Qualinost and set the case before the Speaker of the Sun."

But Miral, supported by Porthios and Gilthanas, had finally risen to his feet. He staggered forward, holding his bleeding right hand inside his cloak. His eyes were glazed with pain and fury. "You are wrong, Tyresian."

Tyresian bristled. "Mage, you forget who is in command here."

"Being in command does not imbue you with wisdom, Lord Tyresian," the mage replied.

Flint interjected. "Let's examine Lord Xenoth's body. Perhaps that will tell us something."

After a long pause, during which several elves began to drift over the rocky clearing toward the adviser's corpse, Tyresian nodded and pushed his way through the crowd around the body. Flint followed. Kneeling, the elf lord gently withdrew the cloak from Xenoth's face. The adviser's visage was blank with death and surprisingly free of wounds. His white hair moved with the breeze. He looked as though shortly he would open his blue eyes and speak.

"Farther, Lord Tyresian," Flint prodded. "Look at his chest."

The elf lord drew in a deep breath and pulled back the cloak. The tylor's knifelike tail had caved in and lacerated Xenoth's chest. Gilthanas gasped and looked ill. Porthios laid a steadying hand on his brother's arm.

"Where is the arrow?" Flint said.

"Here." The new voice belonged to Litanas, who sidestepped through the other elves and placed the arrow into Tyresian's black-gloved palm. Fully one-third of the shaft was stained with blood. Litanas, brown eyes angry, pointed at the shaft. "Lord Xenoth's blood," he said.

The dwarf stayed calm. "I'm not disputing that it is Xenoth's blood," Flint said.

"Well, it's definitely Tanis's arrow," Tyresian said stubbornly.

"Certainly," Flint conceded. "I'm not arguing that, either. In fact, I made the arrowhead."

Tyresian laid the cloak back over Xenoth's torso and head, and rose. "Then what, dwarf?" he snapped, towering over Flint.

"By Reorx, use your brain, elf! Don't you notice anything unusual about the arrow?" Flint put all his scorn into the statement.

Porthios joined Tyresian and studied the weapon. Finally, the Speaker's heir spoke carefully. "It is a perfectly formed arrow, stained with blood but with no other marks."