Элейн Каннингем - Silver Shadows

The elf was also disturbingly familiar. A single thick braid the color of spun sapphires lay over one shoulder. It was the rarest hair color among moon elves, a color Arilyn associated with her long-dead mother. The elf’s face was also somehow familiar, although in truth she resembled no one whom Arilyn could name or remember.

The Harper’s troubled gaze roved downward and stopped abruptly. Resting on the elf’s thighs was a small shield emblazoned with a strange elven sigil: a curving design made of mirror images reaching out to each other, but not quite touching.

Arilyn’s heart missed a beat. She knew that mark. An icy fist seemed to clutch her gut as she slowly pulled her sword from its sheath. Nine runes were cut into the ancient blade; one of them matched exactly the mark on the elf woman’s shield.

“Well, I’ll be a one-headed ettin,” the dwarf murmured, his eyes round as he peered into the case. “A sounder sleep than any I’ve ever had, and that’s a fact! I heard tell o’ such a thing. Didn’t believe the stories fer a minute, though.”

Arilyn didn’t know which story he referred to, but it hardly mattered. She herself had heard many such bed-time tales—of sleeping princesses or heroes who lay hidden in deathlike slumber until a time of crisis brought them forth—and never had she given any of them a speck of credence. There was something about this slumbering elf, however, that made all the old legends seem possible. For once Arilyn rued her lack of knowledge of elven ways, and her near-ignorance of the sword she carried.

“You go ahead to the well,” she urged the dwarf. “There’re several openings leading out. The dry tunnel is due east and marked with a knife. I’ll be along in a bit.”

The dwarf grinned, and a spark of battle lust set his red eyes aflame. “Put the pot on t’ boil and start chopping up horseradish fer the relish—there’ll be plenty o’ shrimp fer dinner tonight!” he proclaimed gleefully as he took off for the exit at a brisk clip. Arilyn heard his gusty intake of breath, then a mighty splash as he dove into the water.

Left alone, the Harper turned back to the macabre coffin. Acting on impulse, she touched the moonblade to the glass. A flare of magical power welled up within the sword, like lightning that could not find release. Because Arilyn and the sword were linked in ways she did not understand, she felt the moment of recognition as the almost-sentient sword acknowledged its former master. There was no doubt in the half-elf’s mind: she was looking upon one of her ancestors, one of the elves who had once wielded the sword in her hand. But how could this be, and how had this elven warrior come to such a fate?

Arilyn knew little of her sword’s history, beyond the names of the elves who’d wielded it and the powers with which they’d imbued it. Her mother had died before telling Arilyn of her heritage, and her mentor—the traitorous gold elf Kymil Nimesin—had been more interested in exploiting his young charge than educating her. As the half-elf pondered the sleeping elf woman, the vague dread she had always felt for her moonblade—but could never explain—enveloped her like a suffocating miasma.

She got a firm grip on her emotions and quickly reviewed what little she did know of the moonblade. Nine people, including herself, had wielded the moonblade since its forging in ancient Myth Drannor, and each had added a magical power to the sword. Although Arilyn knew what these powers were, she could not match each one to a rune, or each rune to the elf with whom it had originated. She did not know the name of the elf woman who slept here, but perhaps the answer to this could be found in the glass that entombed her.

Most humans did not realize that glass was not a solid object, but rather an extremely viscous liquid. Its flow was too slow to be measured, much less noticed, in a human’s lifetime. After many years, a pane of glass thickened near the base as the slowly flowing substance settled at the lowest point. Elves knew that in time, all windows would open—from the top. The problem was how to measure this flow without actually breaking the glass. This Arilyn did not wish to do, for fear of disturbing the elf woman’s unnatural slumber.

But as she examined the coffin, she realized that this was not a concern. The glass lid was not sealed, but rather hinged on one side. And a long, meandering crack had already begun working its way downward from the top of the low-rising dome. Arilyn pulled a knife from her sash and rapped the hilt sharply along the crack, then again not far away. A second fissure rippled through the glass, and a curved shard fell onto the sleeping elf. Arilyn carefully lifted the lid and picked up the shard. She measured it with a bit of twine, then broke off a piece from each end. These she wrapped securely and tucked into her bag. Tinkersdam could probably estimate the age of the glass with a quick glance. That done, she turned one last searching gaze upon her ancestor.

The elf was much smaller than Arilyn, with finer features and more delicate bones. Her long-fingered hands lay at her sides, palms facing up. The Harper noted that the elf had the deeply callused fingers and palm of a swordmaster—but only on the left hand. This told her the elf had likely been an early wielder, before the moonblade had acquired the speed- and power-enhanced strike that demanded a two-handed grip.

Outrage, cold and deep, filled the Harper as she slowly lowered the glass lid. It was not right for the noble elf woman to be part of some rich man’s “collection,” displayed as if she were just one more curious and beautiful object!

It would not always be so, Arilyn vowed as she slipped from the treasure rooms. She would return, and she would take the moonblade’s unknown wielder away to a more fitting rest. But this was not something she could do now, or alone.

Setting her jaw in a grim line, the Harper made her way back to the well and dove in.

The dwarf, it seemed, had been busy. The split and emptied shells of two giant crustaceans swirled through the churning water, and the contents had been hacked into bits the size of finger food. The surviving creatures were in a feeding frenzy and, by the look of things, would continue to eat well for days to come.

A glow of lingering heat drew Arilyn’s eye toward the bottom of the pool. There, its translucent carapace bulging and heaving with some internal conflict, was the largest-shelled monster Arilyn had yet seen, one large enough—and stupid enough—to swallow a live dwarf. The creature would have already died for its mistake had the dwarf not dropped his new dagger in the struggle. The Harper caught a glimpse of the jeweled weapon, which skittered about like a frantic squirrel as the crustacean’s many feet kicked it this way and that.

Arilyn pulled her knife from her sash and dove deeper. The monster did not notice her approach, for it was well and truly distracted by what was certainly the worse case of indigestion it had ever suffered. The giant crustacean whirled and twisted, occasionally toppling over and then scrambling upright again. Although the dwarf couldn’t last much longer without air, he was still putting up Nine Hells of a fight.

Arilyn drove the knife deep between two plates of the monster’s shell. Straddling the creature and gripping its shell with her knees, she began hacking her way through to the dwarf. As soon as she’d cut through the surprisingly tough and elastic stomach lining, he exploded upward.

Stubby legs and arms churning, the dwarf instinctively headed for air. Arilyn followed, quickly passing the much-slower swimmer and darting into the marked portal. She turned, seized a handful of beard and dragged the dwarf into the opening.

They shot up through the water-filled tunnel and bobbed to the surface. The dwarf grabbed a handhold on the blessedly dry rocks that littered the tunnel floor, and dragged in several long, ragged breaths. Arilyn crawled past him and rolled onto the rocky ground. For several moments she was content merely to lie there and wait for her pounding heart to resume its usual pace.