"So I did. And so he has. Listen to me. Where I come from, ninety-eight years have passed since you cared for Kishpa here in Reehsha's shack. Where I come from, he is old now, dying in a burnt-out glade, lying against the side of a blackened tree, imagining you, remembering you in your glorious youth. And it is he-the old mage, the old Kishpa-who has sent me here to take you from his memory before you cease to be."

'It's a lie!" Brandella cried, eyes aflame. "It's a trick. Kishpa suspected that you were not to be trusted. He told me so. And now I see that you have come to destroy us. I won't let you!"

To Tanis's utter astonishment, Brandella drew a short- bladed knife from a hiding place inside her shawl. She was fast, and Tanis was too dumbfounded to move. But she stumbled as she jabbed the blade at Tanis's side, drawing blood with a cut above the hip.

Before she could stab him again, he grabbed her wrist and squeezed it until she let go of the blade's handle.

"You're hurting me," she protested.

"I could say the same of you." As he spoke, he picked up the knife and threw it into the rocks at the edge of the beach.

A small but steady stream of blood oozed from what was luckily a minor wound. He stanched the flow with his thumb, jamming it over the cut.

"You do me an injustice," he said with more calm than she might have imagined possible from someone who had just been attacked. "I mean you no harm. I only wish to do what Kishpa has asked of me. And I'm afraid there isn't much time. He could die at any moment, and that would be the end of all of us."

She started to turn her back but appeared to think better of it. "Your brain must be addled," she objected.

"Please," he begged. "Think a moment. Imagine yourself in his place. You are part elven. You have lived another ninety-eight years, and the human you once loved has long since died. But you remember her well, thinking of her always. And now you lie near death. Except she, in your memory, is still young and full of life, just as you always pictured her, no matter how the years might have changed her. Wouldn't you, if you could, want that image to exist even if the mind that remembered it no longer lived? Wouldn't that, in your moment of passing, be a gift of love beyond anything you could ever imagine?" Brandella did not answer at once. Tears filled her eyes. "Yes," she finally said. "It would be a great act of love." Then she wiped her eyes and composed herself, saying, "It's a lovely thought, but it doesn't mean that what you're saying is true. You're asking me to leave the man I cherish for a string of pretty words." "Not for a string of pretty words," Tanis countered. "For love. Brandella," he whispered, finding it hard to say these words, "I yearn for the ideal that Kishpa has found. All my life I have craved what he once had with you. He grieves for its loss. I never had it, and I grieve even more that I may never know it." Brandella stared at him with luminescent eyes. Tanis drew from the inner pocket of his tunic a piece of once-colorful cloth that still held faded shades of red, yellow, and purple. He held it out to her. Brandella slowly took it from him and examined it. "It's my weave," she said shakily. Tanis nodded. She turned it over, hands unsteady face ashen. "It's a remnant of the same scarf I've been weaving for Kishpa these past few days. How can it be home, unfinished, and here, ancient and tattered7" One hand went to her mouth, lips trembling. Tanis only watched her closely. His heart went out to her in her confusion. "Kishpa gave this to you?" she asked, looking up. "As a token of his love." Tanis saw her eyes shift, and he knew. She believed.

18

Bnandella broke away from Tanis and ran back toward the shack. The half-elf didn't know what to make of her reaction. Was she reeling with joy or despair7 Inside the cabin, Brandella stood with her longbow in hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. "As soon as Reehsha returns, I am going to the barricades," she announced quietly but firmly. Yeblidod stirred in her bed at the sound but did not awaken. "But what of Kishpa's wish?" Tanis demanded from from the doorway. "Don't you understand? He may die any moment."

"I do understand," she fiercely countered. "But I will not go with you. Not now. It is this Kishpa that I love: the one on the barricades, fighting for his village. It is this Kishpa who made me, a human, feel at home in an elven village that I now love."

Sadness and anger vied for dominance on the weaver's face. Brandella had changed to an outfit more suitable for battle than the previous night's skirt and woven blouse-brown leggings the color of a doe's eyes, with an overshirt of deepest green. The costume added to her air of calm assurance. Once again, her self-confidence reminded Tanis of Kitiara.

"Understand me, Tanis," Brandella said firmly. "I was a mere girl floating in the wreckage of a slaveship that foundered in the Straits. The chains were still on my feet, their weight destined to pull me off the piece of hull that I clung to for life. If Kishpa had not had a vision of me during the storm, I would have perished. On rough seas, he sailed out to find me. To save me."

She looked away from Tanis, visibly embarrassed at what she was about to say. "At first I loved him out of gratitude. He treated me with kindness, taking pains to make sure his elven friends-and dwarves like Mertwig and Yeblidod-did not snub me because of my race. Then," she said boldly, gazing once again directly into Tanis's eyes, "he taught me how to learn so that I could teach myself. I learned to weave, to paint, to use a longbow… and finally, when I grew up, I learned to love him. And he loved me back.

"Now you ask me to abandon my mage," she continued in disbelief, shaking her head, "to abandon the Kishpa I know so well, because you say the old Kishpa has a wish. But I don't know the old Kishpa. I don't know how the years have changed him. I only know that my Kishpa would be terribly hurt if I left him now."

She shook her head as Tanis made a dissenting move. "Listen to me," she said. "He is weak from enchanting your sword. He would never admit it, but he is afraid for himself, for me, and for the village. If I desert him now, it will break his heart. How can I deserve the love of the Kishpa of the future if I abandon the Kishpa of the present?"

"You are eloquent in your devotion," Tanis said softly. "Still-"

She cut off his words with a commanding gesture. "Speak no morel" she ordered. "I will go with you when the battle is over. Not before. I will not let my Kishpa down when he needs me most. If what you say is true, and I am nothing more than a memory, I would not have my disappearance in his moment of need be his last remembrance of me."

"Then you will go with me when the battle is over?" Tanis asked.

She still hesitated. Then-"Yes." Decision was suddenly clear on her delicate features.

'Then I will accompany you to the barricades," he insisted. "I will fight alongside you and make sure-as best I can-that no harm befalls you. But whether the battle is won or lost, when it is over, I will take you with me."

"I will make sure-as best I can-that no harm befalls you, either," she said, flashing a sudden warm grin.*****

Fog hugged the shore, but most of the village basked in brilliant early-morning sunshine. Stone-fronted shops appeared deserted on each side. Tanis and Brandella hurriedly stepped down the empty streets, marking the sounds of battle from up ahead.

"It has begun," she said grimly.

They ran to the barricades, only to find the elven defenders panicking along the eastern wall. Hundreds shouted at Kishpa from every direction, begging him to do something before it was too late.