But the question remained: Why send her? Why had she been chosen as an emissary of Evermeet, she who had no claim to her elven heritage but the moonblade strapped to her side?
A small, cynical smile tightened the half-elf s lips. Perhaps that was it, Arilyn thought. Perhaps the royal family had finally contrived an honorable way to reclaim Amnestria's sword!
They'd wanted it some thirty years ago, when Arilyn's mother-the exiled princess Amnestria-had been murdered in distant Evereska, leaving her moonblade to her half-elven daughter. Amnestria's family had come to her funeral-from where, Arilyn had no idea-but she remembered with knife-edged clarity the elves' chagrin when they learned of this bequest, their impassioned claims that only a moon elf of pure blood and noble heart could carry such a sword. Although Amnestria's family had discussed the matter in Arilyn's presence, not one of them had a single word to spare for the grieving child-not one word of comfort or even of acknowledgment. The royal elves had worn mourning veils that obscured their identities. They had not given Arilyn so much as a glimpse of their faces. Now, all of a sudden, this aloof, faceless queen decided to grant Arilyn the honor of a royal mission? One that was most likely impossible and, Arilyn noted cynically, possibly suicidal?
In truth, the half-elf didn't believe the elven queen was deliberately contriving her death. But Arilyn could not fathom what the reasoning behind this commission might be, and not knowing-combined with her painful memories-made her deeply angry.
Arilyn reached for the royal commission. Slowly, deliberately, she crumpled up the parchment into a tight wad and dropped it into her half-empty wine goblet.
**I trust you will be so kind as to relay my answer to the queen," she said in a parody of a courtier's respectful tones.
"That's your final word?" Carreigh Macumail asked, dismay written across his bewhiskered countenance.
The half-elf leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. "Actually, I have a few more thoughts on the matter. Repeat them or not, as you choose." She then proceeded to describe what the elven queen could do with her offer, at length, in precise detail, and vividly enough to drain the color from the captain's ruddy face.
For a long moment the sea captain merely stared at Arilyn. His barrel chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. "Well, it's been said there's no wind so strong but that it can't change direction," he observed. "Mist-Walker will be in port for a ten-day or two, should you decide you want to do business."
"I wouldn't lay odds on it," Arilyn advised him as she rose to her feet. She tossed a pair of coins onto the table to pay her portion of the tab and then stalked off.
Macumail watched the half-elf go. A tipsy female sailor rose to block Arilyn's path, her hand on her dagger's hilt and a leer of challenge twisting her lips. The half-elf did not even slow down. She backhanded the woman, who spun on one heel and fell face first onto a small gaming table. Dice and half-emptied mugs went flying, and the sharp crack of splintering wood mingled with the startled oaths of the interrupted gamblers. The woman lay groaning amid the wreckage of the table. Arilyn did not bother to look back.
The captain's gaze shifted from the downed sailor to the wine-soaked parchment. He regarded the ruined document with regret. Then he sighed again and took a duplicate copy from his bag.
Upon Laeral's advice, the elven queen had had five copies of Arilyn Moonblade's commission made. Laeral had warned both queen and captain that persistence would most likely be in order.
After witnessing the Harper's first rejection, Carreigh Macumail sincerely hoped five copies would be enough!
Three
The baying of the hounds was louder now, and the dogs were so close that the fleeing elves could almost smell the fetid scent of their fur and feel their frenzy. They were like humans, these dogs, hunting ____________________ not for food and survival, but for the
sordid pleasure of the kill.
It was not the first time such animals had been brought into the forest. Great mastiffs, they were, so powerful that two or three of them might bring down a full-grown bear, yet fleet enough to run down a deer. They crashed through the underbrush on massive paws, slavering like moon-mad wolves as they closed in on their prey.
The elven leader, a young male known as Foxfire for his russet-colored hair, shot a grim look over his shoulder. All too soon, the hounds would have them in sight. The humans would not be far behind. It took little skill to follow the trail of crushed foliage the hunting dogs left behind like a thick and jagged scar on the forest.
Foxfire was not certain which of the intruders was the less natural-dog or master. He'd seen what the mastiffs could do to a captured elf. Gaylia, a young priestess of his tribe, had been herded by such dogs into the iron jaws of a foot-hold trap and then worried to death. The humans had left her torn and savaged body there for the elves to find. Left behind, too, were the tracks that told Foxfire the humans had stood by watching as their dogs killed the helpless priestess.
"To the trees," Foxfire ordered tersely. "Scatter, but do not let them follow you. Meet me at dusk in the ash grove."
The elves, seven of them, all armed with bows and quivers full of jet-black arrows, scrambled up the ancient trees as lightly as squirrels. There they would be invisible to the eyes of the humans and beyond the snapping jaws of the humans' four-legged counterparts. They disappeared into the thick canopy, making their separate ways from tree to tree.
Only Foxfire stayed behind, feeling uncomfortably like a treed raccoon as he waited for the human hunters to come to the call of their hounds. The mastiffs circled the giant cedar, baying and snarling and leaping against the massive trunk. Foxfire was fully aware of the danger of his position, and never would he have asked this of any elf under his command. There were answers, however, that he must have.
The elf waited patiently until the humans came into view. There were twenty of them, but Foxfire had eyes for only one. He knew this human by his massive size, by the dark gray cloak that flowed behind him like a storm cloud, and by the iron-toed hoots he wore. The elf had found large, unusual boot prints very close to the place of Gaylia's death-bloodless prints upon blood-soaked earth, prints that indicated the man had stood by and watched the elf woman's horrible fate. And after a battle that had cost the lives of two elven fighters, Foxfire had glimpsed the swirl of that dark caps, as the human shouldered the body of one of the elf warriors and bore him away-for what purpose, Foxfire could not begin to guess. He knew only that in this man the elves of Tethir had a formidable and evil enemy.
Carefully he committed the man's face to memory. It was a face easily remembered, a visage that matched the grim deeds of its owner: black-bearded, with a scimitar of a nose and eyes as cold and gray as the snow clouds that gathered around the peaks of the Starspire Mountains.
The man stalked toward the yapping hounds, his face a mask of fury. He kicked out hard, and his iron-clad boot caught one of the mastiffs in the ribs. The force of the blow lifted the large dog off its feet. It fell heavily on its side and lay there, kicking and yelping piteously. The others cringed away with then- tails tucked tightly between their legs.
"Useless curs!" the man swore and kicked out again. This tune the dogs mustered enough wit to dodge.
"Set the tree afire, Bunlap?" one of the men inquired. "That'd smoke the long-eared bastards out!"
The leader whirled on the fighter. "If you had the sense the gods gave a dung beetle," he said coldly, "you would know that the elves are long gone. They leap from tree to tree like Chultan monkeys."