Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [0]
Sembia 05 - Heirs of the
Prophecy
By
The Year of Wild Magic (DR)
Crowned by the horns of a rising crescent moon, the stone stood in the forest, dappled with shadow and enfolded deep in the whispers and creaks of trees moving in the wind. Four times the height of a person and wider than extended arms could reach, it had been hewn from a single slab of gray granite, then polished by ancient crafters until it was as smooth and glossy as the surface of a still lake.
A solitary figure kneeled before the stone, his knees and bare feet denting the loamy ground. Dressed in short leather breeches with fringe at the knees and a leather vest tooled in an oak-leaf pattern, he held a bow, the ends of which had been carved in the shape of acorns. The fingers and thumb that gripped that bow were dark, though the hand itself was no ruddier than was usual for his race.
The figure's dark auburn hair was pulled back in a single braid, revealing sharply pointed ears, the left one pierced near its tip with a length of gilded bone. The elf s face was long and narrow with almond-shaped eyes, and framed by bangs that hung in a series of tiny fringelike braids. A small black feather was woven into the tip of each braid and fluttered against his forehead in the wind. At his throat was a glint of gold: a ring that hung on a leather thong.
With his free hand he reached out, touching the stone with slender fingers. As they rested upon its surface, moonlight revealed the delicate tracery of ink on skin that made the digits appear darker than the rest of his hand. A single, broad line had been tattooed along the back of each finger, another along the thumb. Smaller lines feathered out from these root lines, giving his digits the appearance of dark quills.
Feather-fingers moved upon the Standing Stone, tracing the words that had been inscribed upon it more than thirteen centuries before. Twining around the base of the stone like a vine around a tree, the inscription-written in Espruar, the flowing script of the elves-commemorated the ancient pact between Cormanthor and the humans of the Dales.
The kneeling figure whispered it aloud, from memory. "For thus have the humans of the East solemnly sworn: No axe shall fell the Forest, nor road cross it, nor settlement or farm reduce it, nor invasion claim it, so long as there are elves in this Wood. In return, the Elven Court grants the humans from the East full title to the lands surrounding Cormanthor, to tend and sow as they will. Let this stone stand as a permanent monument to this our solemn pact. For so long as the friendship and trust between our two races endures, so long this stone shall…"
Where the final word should have been was only a dark, empty space. The flowing script vanished into a split in the stone. More than four fingers wide at the
base, the crevice rapidly narrowed, but a thin crack continued up the front of the monument, marring its smooth surface.
Tracing this crack with a fingertip, the elf slowly stood. The line ended at a point even with his heart.
The elf drew a bone-handled knife from the belt at his waist and tested its tempered steel against a smooth section of stone. Metal grated against granite once, twice, thrice, eventually etching a faint line. Lowering his knife, the elf peered at the scratch hed made, watching as it began to glow with a faint, silver light. As the wound in the stone healed itself, the elf slowly nodded. The magic of the Standing Stone was still intact.
Movement at the base of the monument caught the elf s eye. Sheathing his dagger, he kneeled swiftly. He reached into the crack in the stone with a slender finger and felt something round and rough that had an opening in its side. After a moment, he recognized it as a carefully woven ball of twigs and leaves: a hidden nest. The crack must have been there for some time, perhaps a month or more.
Gently probing inside the nest, his fingertips brushed against the soft back of a tiny bird with an upturned tail-a wren-who protested the intrusion with a sharp peck of her beak. Ignoring