Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [2]
He gasped, his body taking in a great breath that burned his lungs.
Sounds filled his ears-water dripping from summer leaves, frogs and toads croaking like wet branches rubbing in the breeze, a cacophony of crickets. Beneath these sounds, like the accompanying harp to a bard's song, was the gurgle of water running sweet and clear. He found himself filled with a thirst such as he had never known.
"Easy," said a voice.
He opened his eyes and saw a figure kneeling to one side of him. Sunlight broke through the ceiling of leaves, and a few beams played over the figure. Streaks of gray flecked his long brown hair, but the sunlight brought out a deep green, like moss peeking out from tree bark. His coppery skin was smooth, but his eyes gazed with the wisdom of years, and the ears protruding from his hair swooped up into a sharp tip. Too thick for an elf, yet not thick enough for most humans, this one had to be a half-elf, and with that knowledge, a name floated to the surface of his mind.
"Chereth?" he asked. "How…?"
"How what?"
"How did I…?" He searched his memory and found only broken bits and pieces. Chereth, a druid, one of the Masters of the Yuirwood, that ancient forest so far from… where? The mountain. A lone mountain rising to great height above miles of rolling grassland. Sentinelspire. That was the mountain's name. "How did I come here?"
"You would not say," said the half-elf.
He sat up and looked down on his body. The pain-the memory of which made him flinch-was only a dull ache in his flesh, but the scars remained, crisscrossing his torso, his arms, his legs. Looking at them, he remembered-rain and wind, a gnarled tree, and through it all, cold knives glinting in the light of a storm.
"You do remember then," said the half-elf. "I was not sure."
"They… they killed me. Th-the knives, they-" "Yes."
"You told them to kill me." "Yes."
"Then why… this? Why call me back?"
The old half-elf raised his hand, and Kheil saw something dangling from it-a leather cord tied to a knot work of twisted vines, all braided round three small stones. As Chereth raised it into one of the sunbeams, the light caught in the stones, and Kheil saw that they were jewels of some sort.
"All your life you have dealt death. Now the god of life calls you. Time to answer."
Part One
Assassins
Chapter One
14 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning
Storms (1374 DR) The Northern
Shalhoond
Lewan crouched in the cover of the thick brush-near the stream. The long tree-shadows and tall grasses made for good cover, but a large predator would detect any movement. Lewan kept absolutely still, save for his eyes, which flitted about, searching for anything on the move. The sound of the stream would hide all but the loudest sounds should he need to move-but it would do the same for anything approaching. Still, he could have sworn that his ears had caught something a moment ago.
The sound came again, off to his right-wheet-wheet!-the call of the spotted crake, one of the many small birds that made its home in the tall grasses where the trees of the Shalhoond thinned before fading into the Great Amber Steppes. Lewan answered with a crane's call.
A rustling in the grass came closer, stopped, then moved closer still. A moment later a small green and brown head, scaled and with a tiny horn above the nose, poked out from between tufts of new spring grass. The little lizard's eyes locked on Lewan, the small black tongue flicked out, tasting the air, then the creature was gone, a hiss in the grass.
Berun came in quietly, scarcely more than a whisper himself, crouching low so he didn't breach the surface of the grass. His silence belied his size. Standing straight, he would have looked down upon most natives of the steppes, though he was lean and his features were hard, shaped by years of wind and sun. He