Lisa Smedman - Heirs of Prophecy

The wand that Leifander had yanked from the wizard’s grasp lay between them on the forest floor. It had been wrapped in rabbit skin, the soft fur turned inward to protect it from the rigors of their journey through the woods. During the days it took Leifander and Doriantha to respond to the summons from the Circle of the Emerald Leaves, the bone had lost its sponginess and turned hard and brittle, and the pearl at its tip had lost its sheen. Yet the wand still stank of the foul mist it had produced.

Above, the chanting stopped, then a single female voice rang out. “Doriantha of the Tangled Trees, rise up, and meet our sacred circle.”

Picking up the fur-wrapped wand, Doriantha rose to her feet. She glanced down at Leifander, still kneeling, who returned her terse nod. Then she reached with her free hand for the trunk of the Moontouch Oak. A branch appeared, pale and insubstantial as moonlight, and she grasped it. Another moonbeam bent and met the trunk near the ground, forming a second branch, and on this she placed her foot. She climbed, using the branches that appeared in a rising spiral around the oak’s trunk, each one disappearing after her foot had left it.

Waiting his turn as voices murmured above, Leifander wondered why the Circle of the Emerald Leaves had included him in their summons. Both he and Doriantha had already related the full story of their aborted ambush to the elves’ High Council, but perhaps the druids wanted to hear the tale themselves. Perhaps they felt there was some detail that only they could coax out of the pair, some thread of information that the High Council had overlooked.

A short time later, a rustling above announced Doriantha’s descent. When she reached the ground, she appeared puzzled.

“Strange,” she muttered. “They didn’t want to know anything more about the wizard or the wand. Instead they asked me about you.”

Leifander’s eyebrows knitted together in a frown. “About my part in the ambush, you mean?”

“Yes … and no. They told me about your…” She hesitated, then seemed to change her mind. “They asked if I had noticed any omens or signs that-”

Before Doriantha could finish her whispered answer, the voice called out once more from the leaves above. “Leifander of the Tangled Trees, rise up, and meet our sacred circle.”

Springing nervously to his feet, Leifander waited as moonbeams coalesced into a spiral of branches around the Moontouch Oak’s trunk. He gave Doriantha one last look, and his courage nearly faltered as he saw the tense, expectant expression on her face, then he climbed.

Despite the warm summer air, the moonbeam branches felt as cool as a mountain stream under Leifander’s bare hands and feet. He followed their course, climbing in a spiral around the trunk until branches completely obscured the ground below. The murmurs of voices overhead led him to a spot perhaps fifteen or twenty times his height above the ground. He peeked up through a hole in the center of a platform that surrounded the trunk of the oak-a platform made of floating leaves, their scalloped edges knitted together to form a soft green carpet.

On it stood the druids of the Circle of the Emerald Leaves: six elves, three male and three female, all elders with deeply lined faces and silver-white hair. Five were moon elves with lighter skin; the sixth was a forest elf with skin a healthier tree-bark color, her cheeks tattooed in a pattern reminiscent of branches.

Leifander knew all of their names by rote, despite the fact that he had never met them face-to-face. Ruithlana was the youngest of the elders, with hair cascading from a gold clip and one eyebrow permanently arched, as if he were about to ask a question. Klanthir the Learned stood stroking his chin with a slender hand, eyebrows frowning beneath a high forehead. Horthlorin wore his hair loose about his shoulders and had eyes that were a rich, forest green.

The three women who balanced the sacred circle included Quinstrella, who had milk-white hair cut high above her ears; the much older looking Bhanilthra, who leaned on a walking stick made of gilded, sacred oak; and the forest elf Rylith.

The five moon elves wore leaf-green hose and boots, and soft shirts whose fabric rustled like leaves in a faintly stirring wind, but Rylith instead wore a serviceable pair of leather breeches and vest. All of the druids had a band of silver oak leaves twined in their hair, and wore cloaks woven from brilliant, fall-colored leaves that somehow had not dried and crumbled-magic must have been sustaining them.

The wand Leifander had taken from the wizard was nowhere to be seen.

As he climbed onto the platform, marveling at the springy bounce of the carpet of leaves underfoot, Leifander wondered which of the druids he should bow to first. Ranged in a circle around the platform as they were, if he bowed to one it would mean turning his back on at least one of the others.

Rylith solved the problem by walking forward and taking Leifander’s hand. Shocked by so intimate a gesture from a powerful druid hundreds of years his elder, Leifander fumbled his way through a bow. As he rose, Rylith shifted her grip to his chin, turning his face for the others to see.

“His eyes,” she said. “See their color? They are hazel-it will be as the legends foretold.”

The others crowded close, solemn faces nodding. Leifander felt uncomfortable under their scrutiny. Yes, his eyes were a strange color, but he’d thought it merely an oddity.

Rylith released his chin. Her dark eyes bored into his and she asked, “Have you ever wondered, child, who your father was?”

Leifander tried to speak but could find no words that seemed suitable. Instead he nodded. He had wondered-every day of his life.

“Your father was a great man,” she continued. “He was a friend to the Harpers, a man who tried to bring humans to appreciate and value the Tangled Trees. Sadly, he did not succeed, but he left his legacy among us: you.”

Leifander stood silent and trembling, like a bird startled by a sudden noise but uncertain which way to fly.

“Who …” He faltered, then tried again. “Who was he?”

He waited for the answer, afraid to breathe. To the best of his knowledge, his mother had never revealed the name of the man who had sired him, even to her closest kin. Indeed, she had left him little at all, aside from the ring that hung at his throat-a ring they said she had been wearing at the time of her death.

The family who had raised Leifander had always shrugged when he asked them who his father had been. Over the years, he’d gradually stopped asking. Now the questions rekindled inside him, burning brighter than ever before.

“There is someone who can tell you who your father is-even introduce you to him,” Rylith said at last.

As he realized that Rylith had spoken of his father in the present tense, Leifander’s heart leaped with joy. His father was still alive!

“That man is Thamalon Uskevren,” Rylith said at last.

Leifander frowned, puzzled. The name meant nothing to him. It sounded foreign. He tried it on his tongue. “Tham-a-lon Usk-ev-ren. Is he a high elf-one of those who departed for Evermeet-is that where my father lives?”

Rylith shook her head. “Thamalon Uskevren is not a high elf,” she said. “Nor a moon elf, nor one of the woods. He is human. He hails from the city of Selgaunt, in the realm of Sembia.”

Leifander’s puzzled frown deepened. “Does my father also live … among humans?” The last word hung bitter on his lips.

Rylith nodded, then quickly turned to one of the other druids. Taking his cue, Klanthir the Learned cleared his throat. Slender fingers gripped the edges of his cloak, hands resting against his chest as he assumed the posture of a speaker of the High Council.