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By Root 792 0

down, through cracks between the tightly lashed branches of the floor, and saw a rough sort of camp on the bare ground below and off to one side. Apparently her tree stood at the edge of a clearing. In the middle round a fire sat Evandar’s brother and some six of his men—well, six of his followers, all of them as much animal as man, the wolf warrior with his long snout, the bears with their huge clubs of paws at the ends of human arms, another vulpine creature with a roach of hair like his leader’s but purple elven eyes, a fellow with a human head but a bloated, misshapen body. They’d laid aside their armor and were dressed only in tunics of green cloth, bound at the waist with weapon belts, and low leather boots, so she could see the variegated far they sprouted and sported on their legs and thighs. Nearby sat a being that Dallandra recognized. Hunchbacked and bald, he clutched a long staff, wound with ribands, that lay across his lap. His face was grotesquely distorted, all swollen and pouched, his skin hanging in great folds of warty flesh round his neck,

“Good herald!” Dallandra called out. “Tell your lord that his prisoners require water.”

All of the men jumped and swore, slewing round to look up at her. Leaning on the staff, die herald hauled himself to his feet. The folds of flesh round his neck swung and rustled like dead leaves in a wind.

“My lord,” he said, and his voice creaked and rustled as well. “Well-treated prisoners make for a better bargain in the end,”

The fox warrior grunted, considering, then snapped his fingers in a clear imitation of Evandar’s gestures. At his command a bronze flagon appeared, but it was all lumpy and distorted, as if the mold had been carved by the rawest apprentice at the smithy.

“Haul them down,” he said to one of the bearlike figures. “Her first.”

The rope suspending the cage turned out to be lashed round the trunk of the tree. Growling and sweating the ursine fellow untied the knot, picking at it with clumsy claws, then reeled her down fast. When the cage smacked into the ground, and Dallandra yelped and grabbed the bars to save herself a fall, the warriors screeched and cackled.

“Oh, she’s a fair one.” The ursine fellow shoved his stinking face close to the bars. His lips and nose were human under a dusting of brown far, but his black eyes were tiny and seemingly lidless. “Can we have her, my lord? Can we take her out and pass her round like wine? She’d be sweet, my lord, to soothe a man’s itching with.”

Dallandra spat full into his face. When he snarled and swatted at the cage, the fox warrior grabbed his arm, hauled him round, and threw him down onto the ground, where he howled curses until his lord kicked him in the head.

“Why would Evandar bargain for a broken thing?” the fox warrior snapped. “Leave her alone! Do you hear me? If I find anyone’s meddled with her, or with the page either, then I’ll kill him. We want them whole and pretty for our bargaining.”

Moving sideways, keeping his lord’s temper always in view, the herald sidled up to the cage and passed the misshapen flagon through the bars.

“Keep it,” the fox warrior snapped. “I’ll make another for the lad. Huh, I can match your fine Evandar, I can, and call things from the air and weave them from the light, just as he can. Haul her up, and bring the page down.”

Dallandra clutched the flagon to her chest to keep it from spilling as the cage made its jerky way back up. Once it had stopped swaying, she drank in greedy swallows. They hauled the boy’s cage down the same way, handed him in a flagon of water of his own, but at the fox warrior’s order they left his sitting on the ground.

“You! Elven witch!” The, warrior strolled under her cage. “The lad stays down here, closer to me than to you. One hint of your wretched magicks, and I’ll haul him out and torture him to death right in front of you. Do you hear me?”

The boy burst out sobbing and screaming. The wolflike creature stuck a paw through the bars, grabbed him by the hair, and shook hard, which made him scream the more.

“Leave him alone!” Dallandra yelled.