Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham [137]
Below him was the roof of the single-story kitchen; it was steeply pitched and ended not so very far off the ground. He barreled through the broken window and slid, feetfirst, down the rough-tiled roof.
On his way down, Fyodor saw the amorous sellsword scowl and jerk the female toward him. Her dark cowl fell back. Waves of lustrous white hair sprang into full view, framing a face that was blacker than moondark.
At that moment Fyodor hit the ground, taking two stout merchants down with him. He rolled free of the tangle and leaped to his feet, drawing his dark sword as he rose. Ignoring the shouting, fist-snaking merchants, he began frantically shouldering his way through the crowd to the place where Liriel stood revealed.
His progress was slow, for word was spreading through the crowd and with it a panic all out of proportion to the small, dark figure in their midst. Many people turned and ran, trampling the slower and weaker as they fled from the much-feared drow. For several minutes, the crush and press of the panicked villagers held Fyodor immobile.
Then came another, uglier turn of mood. The area around the dark-elven girl soon emptied, and the villagers saw she was one alone. A lifetime of hatred, generations of remem- fbered wrongs, flowed toward the drow female. Like hounds baying at a treed snowcat, they began to close in. Knives flashed in the late-day sun.
Fyodor heaved a pair of gaping minstrels out of his path and surged forward just as Liriel stripped off her gloves and began the gestures of a spell. Some of her attackers also rec- fognized the beginnings of magic and fell back, and for a moment a path lay clear between Fyodor and the drow. Her eyes met his, took note of his drawn sword, and flickered with indecision. Then she slashed the air with one slender black hand, dispelling the magic she had gathered. She closed her eyes and pressed both hands to her temples, as if to shut out the ravening crowd.
A sphere of impenetrable darkness surrounded her at once, a twenty-foot globe that enshrouded much of the courtyard. The crowd recoiled from the uncanny sight, some screaming, many making signs of warding against the drow evil.
"One man's nightmare is another man's opportunity! I;say let's get her!" shouted a familiar voice. A dark-bearded);man pushed his way to the inner edge of the crowd, leveled an arrow at the globe, and let fly at the place where Liriel had stood. Fyodor recognized the bounty hunter and started for him at a run.
From the far side of the globe came a man's grunt of pain, and a woman's scream. "She's killed him! The drow has shot my Tyron!"
Fyodor grabbed the bounty hunter's arm before he could nock a second arrow. "You bloody fool!" he thundered. Tour arrow passed right through the darkness into the crowd beyond."
The man lowered his bow. Eyeing Fyodor's drawn sword, he stroked thoughtfully at his beard. "You again, eh? Give me a better suggestion, boy, and I'll see you get one of the wench's ears."
Rage, pure and utterly his own, flowed through the young fighter. He hauled back his sword and smacked the bounty hunter just above the belt with the flat of his blade. The hunter folded as the air rushed out of him in a wheezing gasp. Fyodor placed himself between the midnight sphere and the crowd, his sword held menacingly before him.
"Liriel!" he shouted, not once taking his eyes from the grim-faced villagers. "Are you hurt? Are you there?"
"Well, where else?" she snapped. Her voice seemed to come from several feet above the ground, near the upper edge of the globe of darkness. "Get in here, would you?"
With a final, warning glare at the villagers, Fyodor stepped backward into the sphere of dark-elven magic.
The sunset colors were spilling into the churning waters of the Dessarin by the time Fyodor returned to the camp with their horses. Liriel was fascinated by the strange beasts, so different from the mounts