Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [122]
A long, heavy silence answered her question. "When your strength faltered, so did the shadow warriors," Foxfire said at last. "More men came from the fortress, and we were forced to flee. A choice had to be made between the living and the dead. Do not grieve for Hawkwing: she is free."
But she was not.
The spirit of the elven girl wandered the battlefield. She was dazed and angry and confused, though the battle was long over. The call of Arvandor was sweet and strong; still more compelling were the rhythms of the forest, heard and felt and understood as never before.
Yet the child could respond to neither. She had been torn from life too soon, and though her existence had not often been easy or happy, she was not yet reconciled to leaving it behind.
Thus it was that the priest of Loviatar had an easy time finding the elf maid's wandering spirit. An unseen hand reached out, seized the girl, and pulled her into a shadowy gray realm.
Hawkwing's untamed spirit rebelled against this captivity, but these were fetters that even a will as strong as hers could not break. The entity that imprisoned her was powerful but twisted; a cold, salacious soul that reveled in the wounds of the girl's discarded body and the frantic terror of her captive spirit. The ugly soul of this being-a human, a priest of some sort-was made all the more terrible for the impenetrable coating of smug piety that armored it.
"You must answer me what I ask you," his voice demanded, speaking in a language Hawkwing had never before heard but found that she could understand. "Behold this man's livid scar. Who is the elf whose mark this is?"
Hawkwing had no intention of responding, but the priest took the answer from her mind.
"Foxfire, an Elmanesse of the Talltrees clan," the priest's voice said aloud. "Where does this elf reside?"
Again the elven child refused. But it mattered not. The secrets of the hidden stronghold poured from her. She could no more stop them than she could command the wind or rain.
And so it went, for as long as the gray-souled priest desired to contain and compel her spirit. At last he was done with her. Hawkwing tore free and flung herself away from the inquisitor's casual cruelty. Nothing the elven girl had endured hi Hie had marked or bruised her as deeply as this captivity of her essence and the plundering of her tribe's secrets. But though she was frantic and half mad, she set a true course for the elven woods and home.
There she had found solace before; in time, perhaps, it would come to her again.
Finding an agent of the Knights of the Shield was not BO difficult a thing to do, provided one knew how and where to look. Hasheth suspected he could learn a great deal of information in the clandestine shop of one of Zazesspur's coin brokers.
A very profitable and unofficial market in Tethyr dealt in the trading of the country's various coins. There were many types of gold pieces used throughout the land. Many of the larger cities and even some of the more powerful guilds or noblemen minted their own coins. The value of these rose and fell with the changing tides of fortune. Predicting how a given currency might fare, and trading coins in speculation of these changes, was a thriving business in Tethyr.
Most merchants and makers of policy argued that there was no real difference in these currencies. The cities with more valuable currencies tended to pay higher wages and charge higher prices that those whose coins enjoyed a lesser reputation. In the end, they reasoned, the value of these coins in barter for goods and services was about the same throughout Tethyr and its neighboring lands. This was true enough, as far as it went, but this argument ignored a simple and rather obvious fact