R. Salvatore - Luthien's Gamble

With her elven blood, Siobhan understood the means and ways of wizards, and so she had not questioned the arrow’s presence or its conveyed message, though she remained suspicious of its origins. The only known wizards in all of the Avonsea Islands, after all, were certainly not allies of the rebels!

Siobhan kept the arrow with her, though, and now, seeing this situation, the exact scene which had been carried on telepathic waves, her trust in the arrow and in the wizard who had delivered it to her was complete. A name magically came into her head when Luthien took the arrow from her, a name that the half-elf didn’t recognize.

Luthien eyed the bolt. Its shaft was bright red, its fletchings the whitish yellow of a lightning bolt. It possessed a tingle within its seemingly fragile shaft, a subtle vibration that Luthien did not understand. He looked at Siobhan, saw her angry glower turned to the tall tower, and understood what she meant for him to do.

It struck Luthien then how influential this quiet half-elf had been, both to him and to the greater cause. Siobhan had been fighting against the merchants and the cyclopians, against the reign of Greensparrow, much longer than Luthien. Along with the Cutters, she had been stealing and building the network that became Luthien’s army. Siobhan had embraced Luthien, the Crimson Shadow, and had prodded him along. It was she, Luthien recalled, who had informed him that Shuglin had been captured after the dwarf had helped Oliver and Luthien escape a failed burglary. It was Siobhan who had pointed Luthien toward the Ministry, and then to the mines, and the Cutters had arrived at those mines when Luthien and Oliver went to rescue Shuglin.

It was Siobhan’s own trial that had brought Luthien to the Ministry again, on that fateful day when he killed Duke Morkney, and she had followed him all the way up the tower in pursuit of the evil man.

And now Siobhan had given Luthien this arrow, which he somehow knew would reach its mark. Siobhan had led him to his speech and now she had told him to end that speech. Yet she carried a longbow on her shoulder, a greater bow than Luthien’s, and she was a better archer than he. If this arrow was what Luthien suspected, somehow crafted or enchanted beyond the norm, Siobhan could have made the shot easier than he.

That wasn’t the point. There was more at stake here than the life of a foolish viscount. Siobhan was propagating a legend; by allowing Luthien to take the shot, she was holding him forward as the unmistakable hero of the battle for Caer MacDonald.

Luthien realized then just how great a player Siobhan had been in all of this, and he realized, too, something about his own relationship with the half-elf. Something that scared him.

But he had no time for that now, and she wouldn’t answer the questions even if he posed them. He looked back at the crowd and Aubrey and focused on the continuing banter between the viscount and Oliver.

Oliver drew occasional laughter from those around him with his taunts, but in truth, he had no practical responses to the fears that Aubrey’s threats inspired. Only a show of strength now could keep the rebels’ hearts.

Luthien pinned open his folding bow, a gift from the wizard Brind’Amour, and fitted the arrow to its string. He brought it in line with Aubrey and bent the bow back as far as it would go.

Four hundred feet was too far to shoot. How much lift should he allow over such a distance and in shooting at such a steep angle? And what of the winds?

And what if he missed?

“For the heart.” Siobhan answered his doubts in an even, unshakable tone. “Straight for the heart.”

Luthien looked down the shaft at his foe. “Aubrey!” he cried, commanding the attention of all. “There is no place in Caer MacDonald for the lies and the threats of Greensparrow!”

“Threats you should heed well, foolish son of Gahris Bedwyr!” Aubrey retorted, and Luthien winced to think that his true identity was so well-known.

He had a moment of mixed feelings then, a moment of doubt about killing the man and the role he had unintentionally assumed.

“I speak the truth!” Aubrey shouted to the general gathering. “You cannot win but can, perhaps, bargain for your lives.”

Just a moment of doubt. It was Aubrey who had come to Isle Bedwydrin along with that wretched Avonese. It was Aubrey who had brought the woman who had called for Garth Rogar’s death in the arena, who had changed Luthien’s life so dramatically. And now it was Aubrey, the symbol of Greensparrow, the pawn of an unlawful king, who stood as the next tyrant in line to terrorize the good folk of Montfort.

“Finish the speech,” Siobhan insisted, and Luthien let fly.

The arrow streaked upward and Aubrey waved at it, discarding it as a futile attempt.

Halfway to the tower the arrow seemed to falter and slow, losing momentum. Aubrey saw it and laughed aloud, turning to share his mirth with the cyclopians standing behind him.

Brind’Amour’s enchantment grabbed the arrow in mid-flight.

Aubrey looked back to see it gaining speed, streaking unerringly for the target Luthien had selected.

The viscount’s eyes widened as he realized the sudden danger. He threw his hands up before him frantically, helplessly.

The arrow hit him with the force of a lightning stroke, hurling him back from the battlement. He felt his breastbone shatter under the weight of that blow, felt his heart explode. Somehow he staggered back to the tower’s edge and looked down at Luthien, standing atop the gallows.

The executioner.

Aubrey tried to deny the man, to deny the possibility of such a shot. It was too late; he was already dead.

He slumped in the crenellations, visible to the gathering below.

All eyes turned to Luthien; not a man spoke out, too stunned by the impossible shot. Even Oliver and Katerin had no words for their friend.

“There is no place in Caer MacDonald for the lies and threats of Greensparrow,” Luthien said to them.

The hushed moment broke. Ten thousand voices cried out in the exhilaration of freedom, and ten thousand fists punched the air defiantly.

Luthien had finished his speech.

“We could take it down on top of them,” Shuglin offered. The dwarf continued to study the parchment spread wide on the table before him, all the while stroking his blue-black beard.

“Take it down?” Oliver asked, and he seemed as horrified as Luthien.

“Drop the building,” the dwarf explained matter-of-factly. “With all the stones tumbling down, every one of those damned one-eyes would be squashed flat.”

“This is a church!” Oliver hollered. “A cathedral!”

Shuglin seemed not to understand.

“Only God can drop a church,” the halfling insisted.

“That’s a bet I would take,” Shuglin grumbled sarcastically under his breath. The place was strongly built, but the dwarf had no doubt that by knocking out a few key stones . . .

“And if God had any intention of destroying the Ministry, he would have done so during Morkney’s evil reign,” Luthien added, his sudden interjection into the conversation taking Shuglin away from his enjoyable musings.

“By the whales, aren’t we feeling superior?” came a voice from the door, and the three turned to see Katerin enter the room in Luthien and Oliver’s apartment on Tiny Alcove, which still served as headquarters for the resistance even though great mansions and Duke Morkney’s own palace lay open for the taking. Staying on Tiny Alcove in one of the poorest sections of Montfort was Luthien’s idea, for he believed that this was a cause of the common folk, and that he, as their appointed leader, should remain among them, as one of them.