Nancy Berberick - The Inheritance

He touched her gently, and once, his lips against her neck, his beard on her breast, he said, "I saw you try to fly."

He sounded amused but not angry.

She dared not respond to that, the care he took to be easy with her or his amusement. She lay beneath him as she always did. She let him do what he willed, as she always did. Once she wished she could kill him, but even that she did not allow for long. She must not feel, not even that.

When he was finished, he turned away from her. He didn't sleep. He lay staring at her. She closed her eyes, but neither did she sleep. She listened to the outlaws, the mingled voices of women and men. She smelled the blood of lambs, the sudden sharp bite of Char’s dwarf spirits, and smoke and leather and unwashed bodies. When she opened her eyes at last, she saw Brand had a pouch in his hand, the one that hung always from his belt. He jogged it a little, and something rang within.

Her eyes grew wide, and her pulse raced suddenly. It was her stolen phoenix! Her Blue Phoenix! When had the thought of it, the memory of its magic, been chased from her heart? Almost as soon as she'd been taken. Almost the very day she had entered this wretched captivity. She had been hemmed by need on every side, the hundred needs of survival, and they had crowded out all else, narrowing her. Thoughts of her phoenix, the magic and the beauty, had long ago flown out of that constricted existence.

"You remember it," he said.

Elansa swallowed, trying to find her voice. "I do." Brand uncinched the pouch. He spilled the silver links of chain into his hand and tumbled the sapphire phoenix atop them all. How lovely it was! Firelight gleamed on the sapphire, the whole stone shaped by gods, never by the hand of a mortal. He looked at it for a long moment.

She remembered how she'd noted that none of the outlaws had spoken of the hobgoblin's fire-staff but in low whispers, their voices shrouded in superstition. What would Brand's reaction be if he knew the true worth of the sapphire?

Brand slipped the silver chain over his head. The look he gave her as he did this was a complicated one, but Elansa had been long away from her feelings. She could not intuit a meaning.

To the surprise of his men, Brand did not head for the last cache, though they did go south. Whenever they would stop he consulted with Char, quietly in corners. They had a plan between them, the dwarf and the human. They were long-time schemers, these two who had arranged a plot to steal a princess.

"Put it to you this way," Brand said to all of them gathered. "Someone's found our caches. Someone’s blocked our ways out. I'm thinking whoever it is knows where all the hiding places are, and he's expecting us to run to the last."

The outlaws muttered.

Ley lifted his head, a sharp gleam in his long elven eyes, and said, "I expect even Nigh-toothless Kerin has better sense than that."

They laughed, even Nigh-toothless Kerin who'd had the bad sense to fight with a troll. The mood among them eased.

"Even Kerin," Brand agreed. "So we're gonna be keen witted. We're going south. North or east doesn't seem like a good idea, and west is out of the mountain. I like it better in here." He waited for them to murmur and mutter and sort their own agreement out among themselves. "South for us, and something good and grand."

They liked the sound of that, all of them. Even Arawn. Yet it wasn't long before Arawn’s mood changed. A day of walking, a short night of rest, another day of walking, and his became the voice most often heard on the way through the torchlit gloom.

"A mile above is like three below," he said at the start of another day's march. "Be getting tired of it now. Tired." When he said that he looked not at Brand. He stared right at Char as though the distance were the dwarf's fault-a turn missed, a road mistaken.

Char slid Brand a glance, and Brand nodded. When Elansa looked back along the line she saw Dell's head up, her hand upon the hilt of the sword at her hip. The tall woman was but a dark form in the darkness, yet Elansa knew that if she could see Dell's face she'd see it shaped into lines of wariness.

"Come on," Char said, his tone heartier than it had been, almost encouraging. "The way gets longer the more we linger."

The voices of the outlaws welled in the cavern, mingling with the whisper and hiss of torches. Elansa thought some of those voices had more of Arawn’s mood in them today-discontented and restless. It was not the same kind of restiveness she'd sensed in Tianna on the day they saw the ogres. This had more discontent in it, a dangerous edge. She was not alone in sensing this. Brand went like a hound who'd caught a bear's scent, head up and keen.

They had a practiced order for marching: Char and Brand in front, Elansa right behind. Dell kept the rear. Her eyes were no better than any human’s, but she had a sense of hearing as keen as a cat’s. The others had places between, and Fang and the hounds ranged freely up and down the line. They made good time, for the way was smooth for a long while, the ceilings high and the walls wide. The torch bearers kept their fire high, the flickering glow illuminating a floor that seemed to have been worked not by nature but by craft. This didn't last long. Char took a turn into a narrower passage, one that required him to bend low.

"Down," he called back, bending at the waist.

His companions dropped to all fours, Elansa among them. She crawled on stone, scraping her hands and leaving behind little prints of blood. Behind her, men cursed, Arawn the loudest, and Char's voice came back in scornful challenge.

"Come on, ya’ whining babies. It's not that far!"

Knee to hand, knee to hand, they followed, some bleeding, most cursing, until at last they could stand again, stretching cramped muscles and wiping blood on the sides of their trousers.

Brand stood at the entrance to the taller passage and watched each man pass him. To every man he had a low word to say, sometimes a joke, sometimes commiseration, sometimes praise.

Elansa, standing to the side, saw each one of them respond. Even Arawn responded when Brand nudged him and said, "Up on your feet now, Arawn, before we mistake you for a dwarf."

The sullen lines of Arawn’s expression eased a little, and he crooked a grudging grin.

They have traded such, the joke and the grin, before, Elansa thought. Why, at some time they must have been good friends.

Following Char, they went into caverns where wind moaned like ghosts, and into others in which the air didn't stir at all. These last, Elansa liked least. Their stillness was like something trying to steal her breath.

Through all the winding ways, though the humans lost all sense of direction and time passing, Char assured them he knew not only the way south, he knew the hour and time of day. And hue enough it was that he was able to predict the flight of bats out from a cavern at sunset, the rush of their return at night's end, and this when not even the grayest gleam of light could be found. He knew all the passages and tunnels as though he'd played in them since childhood.

"Come ahead," the dwarf said, when weary men lagged. "I'm thinkin’ it's time we got some water for the bottles, eh?"

"Water?" Arawn laughed. "And where will you find that for us, dwarf? Know a pretty little glade we can lay ourselves down in while the water runs by the banks?" His voiced dropped into bitterly cold regions. "Or maybe a fountain springing dwarf spirits to lull you to sweet dreaming sleep?"

Silence settled all in the darkness, a crawling unease. With the suddenness of wind lifting, the murmur of voices swelled, louder it seemed, and undercurrents of fear ran beneath.

Arawn snickered. Dell, coming up from the rear of the line, stood tall between the dwarf and his heckler. With a chill, Elansa realized some line was being drawn upon which the outlaw band was invited to choose position-Arawn on one side, Char, Dell, and Brand on the other. Feet shuffled again, and the band began to separate, to choose.