Troy Denning - The Amber Enchantress

Instead of using the dagger to clear the pedestrians out of her way, Rhayn sent them sprawling with a hardy shove or well-placed kick. Soon, a long trail of cursing people lay in the street behind her. When the elf peered over her shoulder, there was still no sign of the templars or the wine merchant.

The avenue turned sharply to the left, obscuring the alley from which she had just run. Confident that her pursuers could not follow her through the swarming crowd in the street, Rhayn slowed to a walk. She pulled the tail of her low-cut tunic from its snakeskin belt, then slipped her dagger beneath the strap and dropped her smock over it. The metal blade felt hot and dangerous against her taut stomach, stirring a tingle of excitement deep within her body. The dagger was the first steel weapon she had ever owned, and the feel of its smooth surface against her bare skin gave her a heady sense of power that sent an exultant smile creeping across her sultry lips.

Rhayn came to a small shop where a black-haired elf was leaning over the counter, talking to a pair of human boys. In his hand, the elf held a half-dozen pebbles, each glowing in a different color of the rainbow.

“The scarlet one is for love,” he was saying. “If you leave it under your tongue for three full days-”

“You’ll choke on it when you fall asleep,” said the oldest human, a square-jawed youth with doubtful eyes.

“Not so,” countered the elf, whom Rhayn recognized as Huyar, a long-brother of hers. “You’ll never swallow one of these magical stones. But if you do as I say, you will steal the heart of any woman you desire.”

As Rhayn stepped into the shop, Huyar’s pale brown eyes darted in her direction, lingering over her curves with a salacious glint. Once the two boys followed his gaze, the elf continued his pitch. “As a matter of fact, I used the scarlet rock to win the heart of this beauty here,” he said, reaching out to embrace Rhayn. “Isn’t that true?”

Rhayn allowed Huyar’s arms to encircle her, looking into his eyes dreamily. “It is, my dear.”

Rhayn was lying, of course. Whatever Huyar was to her, he was not her lover. They shared the same father, but that meant little to either one of them-save that tribal tradition forbade them from bearing children together. Among the Sun Runners, as among most elves, only children of the same mother considered themselves to be true siblings. Those who had only a father in common looked upon each other as rivals, competing vigorously for affection and inheritance. Between Rhayn and Huyar, the strife was more fervent than normal, for their father happened to be the chief, Faenaeyon.

Nevertheless, they were members of the same tribe and, as such, would always stand together against any outsider. If, in this instance, that meant letting Huyar grope her in order to sell some worthless stones to a pair of young culls, she would do it.

As Huyar pulled Rhayn close, the tip of her new dagger pricked her in the lower abdomen. She did not cry out, but Huyar looked down with a raised brow. “What’s that I feel?” he whispered.

“Nothing to concern you,” Rhayn answered, pretending to kiss his ear.

“But perhaps it would be of interest to our father?”

Rhayn had to resist the impulse to bite off the lobe of her long-brother’s ear. She had hoped to sneak the dagger into her bed-satchel without anyone noticing. If Faenaeyon learned that she had returned with a prize, he would demand it as a gift. Despite what it might mean to her inheritance, Rhayn had no intention of giving it to him.

“I must get out of sight,” Rhayn whispered, disengaging herself from Huyar’s arms.

She gave the two boys a lingering smile, then stepped away from the counter. Immediately, the younger one asked, “What do you want for the stones?”

Huyar, never very artful, was quick to move in for the kill. “How many coins are there in your purse?”

At the back of the shop, Rhayn slipped through the curtain of snake scales that separated the bartering floor from the storage area. Her father sat in his usual place, upon an undersized leather chair with his feet propped on a keg of fermented kank nectar. Even for an elf, Faenaeyon was a big man, with heavily muscled limbs and a huge barrel of a chest. He wore his silver hair drawn back in an unruly tail that left his sharp-tipped, dirt-crusted ears exposed to full view.

At one time, he had probably been strikingly handsome, for his long, thin features were well-defined and of even proportion. Now, he appeared every bit as cruel and dangerous as he was. He kept his slender jaw tightly clenched at all times, and his narrow lips were forever twisted into a mistrustful sneer. His nostrils flared constantly, as if testing the air for the scent of enemies, and the flesh of his cheeks was pallid and dead-looking. Even his inert gray eyes, framed above by daggerlike brows and below by black circles of exhaustion, burned with a demented light that never failed to give Rhayn an uneasy feeling.

“How did you fare?” Faenaeyon asked, not bothering to focus his vacant gaze on his daughter.

Rhayn went to her father’s side and kissed his cheek. He smelled of stale belches and sour broy. “Not as well as I would have liked,” she answered, slipping a silver coin into his hand. “But here.”

For the first time since Rhayn had entered the dark room, her father’s eyes moved, focusing on the glittering coin. He tossed it into the air to test its weight, then complained, “A daughter of mine should be able to do better than this.”

“Next time, Tada,” she answered, using the elven term for any male whose blood ran in one’s veins.

The dagger blade beneath Rhayn’s smock seemed to grow warmer, and she felt a trickle of blood running down her abdomen. Huyar’s embrace had cut her with the tip of the weapon.

Faenaeyon studied his daughter for a moment, then grunted and slipped the coin into the one of the purses hanging from his belt. Rhayn breathed a silent sigh of relief and moved toward the bone ladder at the back of the room. In a moment, she would be safely away from her father, in the large common room where the tribe was camped.

As Rhayn stepped onto the first rung, Huyar cried out from the other side of the curtain. “What do you want here, templars?”

Instantly, Faenaeyon was on his feet, in one hand clenching a bone sword and in the other an obsidian dagger.

“In the name of Tithian the First, stand aside,” ordered a man.

“Wait here,” countered Huyar. “You can discuss your business with our chief.”

“I said stand aside!” repeated the templar.

There was the sound of a scuffle, and Faenaeyon stepped toward the bartering floor. Rhayn motioned for her father to stay where he was, then dropped off the ladder.

“What is it?” demanded the chief.

“They want me,” Rhayn said.

He shoved her toward the bartering floor. “Don’t let them come back here!” he said, motioning at the mounds of stolen goods filling the storeroom. “If they see this, it’ll cost a fortune to bribe them off!”

“Don’t worry,” Rhayn said.

Her voice was tinged with shock and anger, but not at her father. After fleeing the alley, she had left the fat merchant and the templars so far behind that they could not have seen her enter the shop with their own eyes. Instead, one of the pedestrians outside had to have told them where she had gone. In any other city, such a thing would never have happened. The throngs would have feigned ignorance, as determined not to help a templar as they were anxious to keep their presence in the Elven Market secret. But, as Rhayn was still learning, Tyr was not like any other city. King Tithian was a popular ruler, and unfortunately the people here were eager to aid his officials.