Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [41]
"But your best guess would be eternal servitude, cooped up like some genie in a cheap bronze lamp?"
Arilyn said with cold rage. "Thanks, but I'll pass."
"You cannot."
"The hell I can't. I didn't sign on for any of this!"
"Your fate was decided when you first drew the sword," the elfshadow insisted.
But Arilyn shook her head, her eyes blazing. "I'll accept that when I'm drinking tea and swapping stories with Zoastria's shade! There has to be a way out! Where would I find someone who knows it?"
"Arvandor," the shadow replied grimly. "And, possibly, Evermeet."
Arilyn threw up her hands. To her, one was about the same as the other. She would never be accepted on. the elven island. And not even for the sake of her soul-if indeed she had one-would she take something unearned from the hands of her mother's people!
Unearned.
Suddenly the furious Harper remembered the missive from the Queen of Evermeet, and she knew what she must do. She would accept Amlaruil's impossible mission, and she would find a way to succeed beyond the elven monarch's highest expectations, and she would do it in her own way and on her own terms! And once that was accomplished, the queen would pay dearly for services rendered.
Arilyn lifted the sword and faced down her elfshadow. "In you go," she said grimly. "Where I'm headed, the patrons are already seeing double."
Six
"It's been days, and no sign of them elves," Vhenlar fretted, and not for the first time. "How're we to know when they're coming? You'd sooner hear your own shadow coming up behind you than one of them unnatural things. Like ghosts, they are! For all we know, every man on patrol is lying under some bush right now with a second smile under his chin!"
Bunlap threw a queuing glance toward the nervous archer. "Maybe so, but well know," he said shortly. TU know."
As the mercenary spoke, his hand lifted to touch the livid scar on his cheek, three curving lines that combined in the simple but distinctive design of a woodland flower of some sort. Bunlap had seen that mark elsewhere, and since the day the red-haired eh7 had marked hьp, he had done his dead-level damndest to make sure other people saw it, too-people who wouldn't think kindly of the elf it identified. And by extension, the rest of Tethir's elves. Bunlap's hatreds were nothing if not inclusive.
They were a scrappy bunch, the wild elves of Tethir, even if they were short and scrawny. The half dozen that Bunlap's men had captured from the forest glade had put up a fight all out of proportion to their size and number. And these were but womenfolk, and half-grown elf-brats! The mercenaries kept these few around as bait for a trap, but there were many other elves in the forest who might well blame the red-haired elf whose arrows Bunlap had strewn judiciously around the ravaged elven settlement.
Bunlap liked the idea of angering some of the Elmanesse border tribes and turning them against the elven warrior who had maimed him, and who had eluded him for too long. Keep the long-eared bastards busy-that was what he was getting paid to do. But when it came time to kill the red-haired elf, Bunlap wanted the honor for himself.
The mercenary propped his boots up on a bale of dried and cured pipeweed. From his left boot he pulled a small knife, with which he began to carve some of the dirt from under his fingernails. From the small window across from him, he had a clear view of the field that stretched between the drying barn and the forest's edge. Sunset colors spilled into the small, winding creek that separated field from forest and provided water for the thirsty crops. In the dying light the shadows were deep and long. Even so, nothing, and no one, would be able sneak past him.
Most of the men in the barn's loft seemed to share Bunlap's confidence. A dozen men sprawled about throwing dice, whittling, or otherwise killing time. Several days had come and gone since their last foray into the deep shadows of Tethir, and as time passed their dread of elven retaliation had faded into nonchalance.