Heirs of Prophecy - Lisa Smedman [32]
"No," she choked out, as a strand of the vine rose into the air, questing for the tressym. "Don't…"
The vine around her neck tightened, forcing her fingers into her throat. Unable to speak, Larajin could only weep, certain that the tressym would be lashed from the sky.
But the tressym proved more agile than the questing vine. A leafy tendril caught and bent one of the feathers at the tressym's wingtip-but then she was swooping back up into the sky with powerful beats of her wings. She repeated the action, and with each dive and ascent more and more of the vines followed her-and Larajin found that her hand, which still held the dagger, was free.
She sat up, slashing at the vine around her throat. The sudden movement triggered the rest of the tangled mass,
which rippled toward her, but the tressym had bought her the time she needed. With a single swift stroke of her dagger-whose magical blade parted the vine as easily as rotted twine-Larajin was free.
Scrambling to her feet, she leaped back from the tangle of vines, onto a clear patch of ground. Sobbing with relief, she glanced up and saw the tressym perched safely on a branch, watching her with large, round eyes.
"Thank you, my little friend," Larajin said. "You and I are balanced now-one rescue for another. If that's why you've been following me all this time, consider your debt to me paid. You are free to go, but if you do decide to follow me farther, I think you should have a name. Certainly you've displayed a heart of gold today-and so, I grant you the name Goldheart."
She pointed the blade of her dagger at the tressym, like a king bestowing honors on a knight, then she bowed.
When she rose, Goldheart was gone. A single bent feather, fallen from her wing, drifted down through the branches. Larajin ran and caught it-then jumped back in alarm as a wild elf stepped out from behind the trunk of the tree in which Goldheart had been perched, bow at full draw and arrow nocked. Larajin thought about raising her dagger, then realized what a futile gesture that would be. If the elf had intended to shoot her, Larajin would be dead by now. Instead the archer just stared.
Larajin stared breathlessly back, incredulous to finally meet a wild elf, face-to-face. The woman's almond-shaped eyes were every bit as feral as the picture in Master Thamalon's book, and the black band tattooed across her nose and cheeks made her look fiercer still. Her long, blonde hair was drawn back in a ponytail, exposing the rest of the tattoo, which completed its circle of her scalp over her pointed ears. Her skin was a dusky brown-the same color as the tanned leather of her clothes. She wore rough breeches and a vest decorated with animal teeth that had been sewn onto it like buttons. Muscles bunched in her bare arms as she held her bow at full draw.
The irony of this meeting was not lost on Larajin. Rather than having to go looking for the wild elves of the Tangled Trees, they had come to her. Now, instead of introducing herself to them as kin, Larajin would be pleading her case as a captured enemy.
"I… elf-friend," she stuttered, using the few words of the wild elf tongue she had been able to glean from the books in the master's library. "I look… forest-mother from… trees-woven-into-trees…"
Wings fluttered above. The elf woman glanced up at Goldheart, but her arrow remained unwavering in its aim. The tressym circled once overhead, then turned and winged her way to the east.
"You must be blessed of the goddess, to have one of her favorites come to your aid," the elf said.
Startled, Larajin realized the woman had spoken in the common tongue. The words were heavily accented- and overlaid with the distinctive inflections of a Sem-bian. Larajin wondered who had taught her the language.
Larajin blurted out her explanation. "I pay homage to Hanali Celanil," she said, holding up her wrist to show the gilded heart that dangled there. "I am part elf myself. My mother was-"
A brief peal of laughter cut Larajin short. The elf had a skeptical, almost scornful expression on her