Элейн Каннингем - Silver Shadows

“Then when I die—” she began.

“You will not die, strictly speaking. Your life essence will enter the moonblade. This is the ultimate source of the sword’s magic.”

Arilyn turned abruptly away. For a long moment she stared at the wall, her face frozen as she struggled to control her roiling emotions. “So what you’re saying is that this sword is full of dead elves,” she said at last.

“No! That explanation is simplistic and crude, not to mention entirely inaccurate. Except in unusual cases, elves are immortal. We pass from this world on to the realms of Arvandor without tasting death as humans know it. But yes, each elf who accepts a moonblade understands that his or her passage to Arvandor will be delayed, perhaps for thousands of years, until the moonblade’s purpose is fulfilled. When a sword falls dormant, the elves are released. It is an enormous sacrifice, but one that certain noble elves take on gladly for the greater good of the People.”

“But what of me?” The words poured from Arilyn in an agonized rush. “I am half -elven! The gates of Arvandor are closed to such as I, and most of the elves I’ve known believe I have no soul! What will become of me ? Of us ?” she amended bitterly.

The elfshadow merely shook her head. “I do not know. None of us know. You are the first half-elf ever to wield such a blade. At the risk of sounding like a two-copper cleric discussing the afterlife, you will have to wait and find out.”

“But your best guess would be eternal servitude, cooped up like some genie in a cheap bronze lamp?” Arilyn said with cold rage. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“You cannot.”

“The hell I can’t. I didn’t sign on for any of this!”

“Your fate was decided when you first drew the sword,” the elfshadow insisted.

But Arilyn shook her head, her eyes blazing. “I’ll accept that when I’m drinking tea and swapping stories with Zoastria’s shade! There has to be a way out! Where would I find someone who knows it?”

“Arvandor,” the shadow replied grimly. “And, possibly, Evermeet.”

Arilyn threw up her hands. To her, one was about the same as the other. She would never be accepted on the elven island. And not even for the sake of her soul—if indeed she had one—would she take something unearned from the hands of her mother’s people!

Unearned.

Suddenly the furious Harper remembered the missive from the Queen of Evermeet, and she knew what she must do. She would accept Amlaruil’s impossible mission, and she would find a way to succeed beyond the elven monarch’s highest expectations, and she would do it in her own way and on her own terms! And once that was accomplished, the queen would pay dearly for services rendered.

Arilyn lifted the sword and faced down her elfshadow. “In you go,” she said grimly. “Where I’m headed, the patrons are already seeing double.”

“It’s been days, and no sign of them elves,” Vhenlar fretted, and not for the first time. “How’re we to know when they’re coming? You’d sooner hear your own shadow coming up behind you than one of them unnatural things. Like ghosts, they are! For all we know, every man on patrol is lying under some bush right now with a second smile under his chin!”

Bunlap threw a quelling glance toward the nervous archer. “Maybe so, but we’ll know,” he said shortly. “ I’ll know.”

As the mercenary spoke, his hand lifted to touch the livid scar on his cheek, three curving lines that combined in the simple but distinctive design of a woodland flower of some sort. Bunlap had seen that mark elsewhere, and since the day the red-haired elf had marked him, he had done his dead-level damndest to make sure other people saw it, too—people who wouldn’t think kindly of the elf it identified. And by extension, the rest of Tethir’s elves. Bunlap’s hatreds were nothing if not inclusive.

They were a scrappy bunch, the wild elves of Tethir, even if they were short and scrawny. The half dozen that Bunlap’s men had captured from the forest glade had put up a fight all out of proportion to their size and number. And these were but womenfolk, and half-grown elf-brats! The mercenaries kept these few around as bait for a trap, but there were many other elves in the forest who might well blame the red-haired elf whose arrows Bunlap had strewn judiciously around the ravaged elven settlement.

Bunlap liked the idea of angering some of the Elmanesse border tribes and turning them against the elven warrior who had maimed him, and who had eluded him for too long. Keep the long-eared bastards busy—that was what he was getting paid to do. But when it came time to kill the red-haired elf, Bunlap wanted the honor for himself.

The mercenary propped his boots up on a bale of dried and cured pipeweed. From his left boot he pulled a small knife, with which he began to carve some of the dirt from under his fingernails. From the small window across from him, he had a clear view of the field that stretched between the drying barn and the forest’s edge. Sunset colors spilled into the small, winding creek that separated field from forest and provided water for the thirsty crops. In the dying light the shadows were deep and long. Even so, nothing, and no one, would be able sneak past him.

Most of the men in the barn’s loft seemed to share Bunlap’s confidence. A dozen men sprawled about throwing dice, whittling, or otherwise killing time. Several days had come and gone since their last foray into the deep shadows of Tethir, and as time passed their dread of elven retaliation had faded into nonchalance.

Vhenlar, however, was still as nervous as a mouse in a hawk’s nest. The archer paced the barn’s loft, watching the windows but keeping well out of the line of fire. In the field directly below them, six bedraggled elves were chained and staked amid the rows of aromatic plants. It was Bunlap’s plan that the elves appear to be field slaves—a plan that was about as effective as hitching three wild deer to a plow and expecting a straight furrow to come of it. The strange little folk adamantly refused to cooperate with their captors. Even the smallest child would rather take a beating than harvest a single leaf. Weakened by lack of food and sleep and by the frequent lash of the whips, the elves nonetheless showed a fierce, stubborn resistance that Vhenlar almost admired.

The archer watched as one of the mercenaries on guard duty drew back his whip to punish a recalcitrant slave. His intended victim, an elven lass not yet old enough to bed, faced the man defiantly as the whip flashed up and forward.

Up came the girl’s arm, moving with a speed that rivaled that of the flailing leather thong. Even as the whip curled around her wrist, the elf maid exploded into action. Moving faster than Vhenlar would have believed possible, the girl seized the whip with both hands and threw herself into a backward roll.

The sudden tug worked with the whip’s momentum to pull the mercenary off-balance. He stumbled forward. Before he could recover, the elf was on her feet. With the speed of a striking hawk, she was upon him. A quick flash of her bleeding arm, and the now-slack whip was looped around the mercenary’s neck.

Darting around him, the fierce elf child leaped up high and planted both bare feet on the small of the human’s back. She kicked out hard, launching herself back and pulling at the whip with all her might. Vhenlar winced as the mercenary’s head snapped back sharply. He fancied he could actually hear the distant cracking of bone.

“Another man down,” he noted laconically, watching as three of the guards rushed in and wrestled the girl to the ground.