Stardeep_ The Dungeons - Bruce R. Cordell [40]
"Telarian, once more, explain why you've learned so much, taken so much upon yourself, without informing me."
Now it was his turn to grasp her shoulder, but she pushed him back. She considered asking Telarian to explain the significance of Brathtar's strange summons, but decided to keep that information in reserve.
Telarian paused, said, "If this all turns out to be a mad fancy, I wouldn't want to waste your time and thought on it. You're the Keeper of the Innet Bastion, the Watcher of the Well. Your duties are immediate and vital."
"But-"
"Trust me, Delphe. If this reconnaissance mission to the wood elf encampment confirms any of my visions, however slight, I shall instantly and immediately inform you. That was and remains my plan. Please don't make more of this than what it is-a foray to gather information, and perhaps to save a few elves from their own curiosity-nothing more."
A thought struck Delphe. "The appearance of strange elves in the armor of the Empyrean Knights could reveal the presence of Stardeep to the wood elf encampment."
The old twinkle returned to Telatian's eyes as he explained. "The Knights are not unskilled in woodcraft. They are abroad to observe only, not interact. Anyhow, Brathtar may not have to go anywhere near the village to find the cache."
Powdery snow accumulated across boughs, between pine needles, and across saplings and the dark ground under the great boles. Bit by bit through the night, it formed a curving white blanket covering the sleeping forest.
When Janesta Leafgrace emerged from her double-hide pavilion, she laughed as she shook the snow out of her hair that plopped down from above. She breathed in the crisp air that came with the newly laid covering. After snowfall, the woods took on the aspect of a fey wonderland that called her to explote a terrain transformed. Without distutbing anyone in her pavilion who reclined in remembering trances, she was away.
The snow was smooth and pristine, save for the elf-light ttacks she left behind. The murmuring pines and hemlocks had fallen quiet under their newly made garments of white. Yes, even the sad, old voices of the so-called "elder druids" of the forest were speechless in the mornings wonder. Or so Janesta fancied.
And-
She spied a set of lone prints! Another early explorer, like her. Not a fellow from the encampment-it was a wildling of the forest.
She pursued the trail uphill, skirting an icy boulder field, staying beneath the canopy of oak branches. The prints were only partly familiar; certainly a big cat, but one new to the area, or at least new to het. The snowfall made following easy, but Janesta still practiced her forestcraft; she examined broken foliage, measured the length between prints, moved as quietly as she was able. When she saw a patch of disturbed snow, she dug up a shallowly buried cache of spoor.
It was a cougar after all, one from eastern Yuirwood. It had wandered close to the encampment. Janesta decided to stay on the trail to see if she could track it to its lair, if it had one. She suspected it might be a female, hungry to feed new cubs. If so, perhaps she would bring down a bird to help supplement its diet.
As she examined a spot where it had circled a stump, probably to mark its scent, she heard the first horns.
High, piercing, strangely thrilling… but ominous for their unfamiliarity. They sounded like something described in a shaman's tale, something that warlike humans beyond the Yuirwood might produce on their metallic instruments. She frowned and turned toward home.
The sudden cries and screams that broke under the calling horns jolted Janesta into a run.
When the hunttess reached her village under the snow-bowed canopy, she couldn't understand what transpired before her eyes-the scene was too far outside her experience for comprehension.
Humans-no, elves… elves! Not wood elves like her tribe, or high elves she'd glimpsed on the Yuirwood's borders, nor