Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [1]
Dead?
The elf closed his eyes and turned his head, seeking out the direction of the breeze by its feel against his skin and the flutter of the feathers in his bangs. He whispered a prayer, letting the wind take his words. A moment later, the sound of a distant flute blew back on the wind. He inhaled sharply, taking it into his lungs, then concentrated its energy from lung to heart to veins to fingertips. Slowly, the egg grew warm under his touch. When it was the same temperature as the others, he nudged it back under the wren's warm chest.
The elf withdrew his hand, then stood. He turned away from the stone to peer through the darkened wood. No more than a few dozen paces from where he stood was a gap in the forest-the wide, bare slash that was Rauthauvyr's Road. It was a wound in the forest that was growing wider, becoming more putrid, with each passing day.
As the clouds overhead thickened, the elf scowled. The Elven Court of years long past was wrong to have capitulated to the humans of the south, to have allowed the trees to be felled and the road to be built, breaking the sacred pact. It was a wonder that the stone had not split then, with the first stroke of the axe.
He spat. If he had been born five centuries earlier
But he had not.
For four hundred and fifty years, human feet had stamped along that road, tramping through the Vale of Lost Voices and troubling the sacred sleep of those laid to rest between the roots of the mighty oaks.
A blight was spreading along that road, destroying the forest to either side and worming its way deeper into the wood with each passing day, Like fleas on a dog the blight must have been carried by humans.
It had to be stopped.
Trees creaked against one another as the wind picked up, and clouds scudded across the face of the moon, throwing stone and elf into shadow. Closer to the road, one of the blighted trees groaned as it was bent by the wind, then it cracked and came crashing down in a tangle of broken limbs. After a silence that stretched for a heartbeat or two, thunder grumbled in the sky to the east. The clouds overhead thickened, and the first drops of rain began to fall.
The elf turned his face up to the heavens, allowing the tears of the Leaflord to mingle with the tears flowing from his own eyes.
These humans," he vowed, in a voice as twisted as a gnarled tree root. "They will pay for what they have done."
He slung his bow over his shoulder and squatted beside the stone, thrusting hands out to either side. A faint tingle began at his splayed fingers, and a shivery chill rushed up his arms. The transformation began. Tattooed fingers flattened and became feathers, arms elongated, changed articulation, and grew into wings. Vest and breeches turned into a covering of sleek black feathers. As the elfs head grew rounder and his nose and lips hardened into a beak, his body shrank, continuing the shift until he stood on three-toed feet.
Shaking the rain from his feathers, the elf-become-crow gave a single loud caw. A heartbeat later, the cry was echoed by a bright flash of lightning.
The crow launched itself into the air, circled the Standing Stone once, then winged its way to the southeast through darkening skies.
CHAPTER ONE
Larajin stared at the face that looked up at her from the pages of the leather-bound book she held in her lap. The woodcut image, printed more than a century before, showed a wild elf with a long, narrow face and high forehead. Tucked behind his pointed ears were braids tied with bits of bone and feather. Feral, almond-shaped eyes glared above cheeks tattooed with thick, black lines.
Bare-chested and clad only in rough leather breeches, the elf stood in a forest, surrounded by the trunks of massive trees, thick ferns hiding all but the top of his fringed moccasins. He gripped a knife with a hilt made from a deer's hoof in one hand, a short bow in the other. Underneath the illustration