Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [133]
Jill leaned out of the carriage and took the slumbering elf woman from Arilyn's arms. The Harper snatched up a cloak, draped it over herself, and then climbed onto the box beside Kendel. She took the reins from his hands and shook them briskly over the horses' back.
The dwarf, meanwhile, had deposited Zoastria gently onto the carriage seat and extended a brawny hand to Ferret. The wild elf hesitated only a moment, then grasped the offered wrist as the carriage lurched off. Jill tugged the wild elf inside with an ease that nearly pulled her arm from her shoulders, and brought her tumbling into his lap.
"Well, now," the dwarf said happily. "I knowed you'd come around to my way of thinking sooner or later!"
They were an odd company, these six travelers to the Forest of Tethir. There was a priest of Gond, who was a bit grumpy over having been persuaded to abandon his traditional yellow tunic for the more practical browns and greens of forest garb. There was a moon elven maje, who walked as silent as a shadow, and a dwarf whose small boots thumped and cracked with every step. Then there were two elven females, one of the forest folk and one of the moon people, and the slumbering elven hero whom they carried between them on a litter.
Four days' travel lay between them and Talltrees, and Arilyn made good use of the time laying plans for the battle to come. All had a part to play, even the dwarf. Arilyn was past worrying what the forest elves would make of such strange allies. All that mattered was winning freedom-for them, and also for Danilo. How she would accomplish both these goals was not yet clear to the Harper, and these thoughts weighed heavily on her as they made their way eastward.
At last they neared the elven settlement. Arilyn and Ferret placed the litter on the ground to rest for a moment, but Ferret stopped in midstretch and let out a strangled cry. She set out for the settlement at a run.
"Stay here," Arilyn informed the others, and then she sprinted off after the frantic elf.
It was not long before she saw what the green elf had envisioned. Where the elven community had been was only a barren, blasted circle, too eerily precise to be anything but the result of a wizard's fire. The destruction had been swift and terrible. Although most of the circle had been reduced to gray ash, here and there bits of charred trees and the remnants of elven dwellings lay in tumbled piles, little more than glowing coals that Arilyn knew could not be quenched until they had burned all they touched into oblivion. Here and there wisps of smoke still rose from the rubble as the wizard's fire completed its grim work.
Talltrees was no more.
Twenty
For several anguished moments the elven females regarded the smoking ruins of the forest stronghold
"They are not all dead, my clan," Ferret said in a dazed voice. "Somehow most of them escaped, and they are even now nearby."
Arilyn did not need to ask how she knew. In times of great stress, even those elves who were not joined in special mystic bonds sensed things that their eyes and ears could not possibly have told them.
The green elf lifted her hands to her mouth and sent a high, ringing call out into the ruined forest.
The survivors of the Talltrees clan came quickly, but their eyes were glazed with the pain of their loss, and they moved as if their limbs were heavy and numbed by grief and exhaustion.
Ferret ran to her brother and fell into his arms. Khothomir enfolded her to him, but he looked over her head, his eyes seeking out Arilyn.
"How did this happen? How did the humans find this place?" he demanded.
The answer came to Arilyn quickly, painfully, like the stab of a knife. "Probably they had a cleric," she admitted. "Some priests can force the spirit of the slain to answer questions. Hawkwing fell near the human fortress; we could not bring her back into the forest. All that she