Silver Shadows - Elaine Cunningham [75]
Lythari.
Ferret formed the word with silent, awed lips. All her life she had heard tales of the lythari, an ancient race of shapechanging elves, the most elusive and most magical of all the forest People. Few knew of their existence beyond those who dwelt in the forest. Those who spoke of the Silver Shadows did so with reverence-and dread.
The lythari were usually as reclusive as the wolves they resembled, but from time to time they moved with incredible ferocity against some enemy of the forest. Even the wild elves, who-next to dryads and treants- were the most attuned to the ways of the woodlands, did not understand the ways of the lythari and occasionally fell under their swift wrath. Few forest dwellers had caught a glimpse of a lythari, and never in elven form.
As if to mock Ferret's unspoken thoughts, the lythari's wolflike form shimmered and disappeared. In its place stood a young elven male, beautiful and fey even by the measures of elvenkind. Ferret bit her lip, hard, to keep from crying out in wonder. The lythari was taller than the half-elf and just as pale, and his hair retained the shimmering silver color of his wolflike form. He called Arilyn by name, speaking the common Elvish tongue, and embraced her warmly. But try though she might, Ferret could make out nothing of the low, earnest conversation that followed.
She watched in wonder as the lythari slipped back into his wolf form and stood patiently, allowing the half-elf to climb onto his back. Thus mounted, Arilyn Moonblade slipped beyond the forest glade-and beyond Ferret's reach. No one, not even a tracker as skilled as she, could follow a lythari who did not wish to be found.
To Ferret, this could mean only one thing: the lythari intended to take Arilyn to his den and wished to remove all possibility that someone could trace her to this hidden place.
As Ferret slipped down from the tree, she pondered the mystery that was Arilyn Moonblade, a half-woman who bore the sword of an elven warrior and had earned the friendship of a lythari. Yet Ferret knew of several times that Arilyn had killed for no other apparent purpose than the coins the deed would place in her pockets. The other assassins applauded her cold-blooded skill and accepted her as one of their own. But having seen both sides of Arilyn, Ferret simply could not reconcile the two halves.
The lythari male apparently knew the better part of Arilyn Moonblade, the noble elven warrior, the identity that Ferret had just now glimpsed. Unfortunately-and herein lay a danger beyond reckoning-the lythari also knew all the secrets of the forest.
Did this young male know that he was about to betray them to a half-elven assassin?
Eleven
There was nothing, Hasheth was coming to learn, that could lift the heart and enflame the pride like a good plot successfully executed. Not even the grinding, mind-numbing chore of copying piles of receipts into Hhune's ledgers could dim the young man's inner glow of excitement. He had done well-even Arilyn Moonblade, Harper and Shadow Sash, had admitted as much.
And in truth, Hasheth did not mind his apprenticeship so very much. In a way, these bits of parchment and paper were like pieces of a puzzle, and there was little that he enjoyed more than a good puzzle. The Harpers, what a life they had-traveling the world, tracing convoluted plots to their source. The only thing that could possibly be more interesting would be devising such a plot, one so tangled that not even the best among the Harpers might unravel it!
Despite his pride, the young prince possessed enough self-knowledge to know that he himself was not capable of such a thing. But in time-why not? And what better training could he have than learning at the foot of the complicated and ambitious Hhune?
As guildmaster, merchant, land owner and member of