The Shattered Land_ The Dreaming Dark - Keith Baker [105]
The dark elves watched in silence. Lakashtai was still unconscious; she lay on the ground before the elves, her wrists and ankles bound together.
“Satisfied?” Daine said, wiping his bloody hands on his sleeves.
Shen’kar slowly walked forward, his scorpion-shell armor gleaming in the moonlight. He still held Daine’s dagger in his hand. “A fierce battle. For one of tainted blood, the firebinder fought well.”
Daine spit on the gory corpse. “Not well enough.”
“Truth. You say he betrayed you?”
“All I know is that he lured us away from our friends—and I’m sure he didn’t have our best interests at heart.” He kicked Gerrion’s corpse. “I don’t know what you’ve got against these firebinders, and I don’t care. Just cut me free of this traitor and we’ll be on our way.”
Shen’kar studied him, or so Daine thought; the apparent lack of pupils was deeply disconcerting. “That is not to be.” He drew one of the weapons from behind his back—a rod of dark wood, set with fangs along the edge—or were they scorpion stingers? Behind him, the other elves had produced blades and chains.
“We had a deal!”
“We agreed to decide your fate after this battle, so we have. Even if you had not brought pain to Xu’sasar, even if you were not despoilers of the land, you sought the city of glass in the season of fire. We can give you no mercy.”
“But I killed this … firebinder!”
“Yes. Perhaps that will earn you rebirth as one of the Qaltiar. Let us send you to the testing grounds.” The dark elf raised dagger and rod and took a step forward.
“Wait. Wait!” Daine cried, holding up his empty hands. “Very well. I accept my fate, but before you kill me, there is something I took from your people—something you should have back.”
“What is?” Shen’kar said, curious.
“This,” Daine said, smashing him in the face with the wooden club.
A few minutes earlier …
“Act,” Shen’kar sang. “Kill the firebinder.”
Daine studied Gerrion. The tattooed flames around his face, his short but clearly pointed ears, his eyes—slightly too large, strangely pale. The gray skin. He’d seen half-elves before, and for all he knew, Xen’drik was filled with gray-skinned elves. Now he guessed that Gerrion’s coloring was a faded mirror of his elven parent.
He tested the weight of the baton in his hand. Gerrion was unarmed, his wrists bound behind his back. It would be a simple matter to kill him. Perhaps these elves would let him go. Perhaps he and Lakashtai could find their way through the jungle on his own.
In his mind’s eye, he saw a man with a crossbow standing in an alley in Stormreach. Gerrion had aided them against the Riedrans, without any promise of aid. As angry as he was about being separated from Lei and Pierce, Daine couldn’t help but believe that it had been an accident. If Gerrion had meant to harm them, he could have simply left them to die in that alley.
“Act with speed,” Shen’kar called again. “Lest Xan’tora be sent to touch your mate.”
“She’s …” Daine stopped himself. This isn’t the time to argue. Mate or not, the last thing he wanted was for the elves to poison Lakashtai—at the very least, he needed to buy time. He dropped into a battle stance, bringing the club up into a low guard position and slowly circled to the left, away from the elves.
Gerrion watched him warily.
Daine studied the elves. They had little in the way of armor, mostly pieces of shell or chitin attached to strips of leather, but they were armed, there were four of them, and they had poison on their side—and possibly magic or trickery they simply hadn’t revealed. He was bound to Gerrion, and Gerrion wasn’t even armed. He sighed. Perhaps it was a no-win situation. Could he kill Gerrion, if it would save Lei?
We need Gerrion. We cannot find our way