Thornhold - Elaine Cunningham [46]
“The tanar’ri Vladjick,” the elf said, his voice raw with exhaustion and bitter rage. “Do you remember that story?”
The paladin did, and acknowledged it with a brief nod. A terrible demon, a tanar’ri, had been summoned by an evil man’s ambition. Years before Algorind was born, knights of the Order of Samular had marched against the creature. The battle had been long and fierce, and the tanar’ri had fled into the forest north of Sembia. An elven community lay between the paladins and their evil foe. The elves had resisted the passage of the knights through their forest, thus allying themselves with the evil tanar’ri. Many good and noble knights had fallen in the fierce fighting. Ever since, some of the order had remained wary of elves and their unknowable, inhuman ways.
“I remember it,” the elf gritted out. “I will always remember it! The knights slaughtered my family for no better reason than that we were elves, and we were in the way.”
Again he advanced, but this time emotion outbalanced control. Algorind caught one of the elf’s flailing wrists in his left hand and stuck the elf’s other hand aside with the hilt of his sword. The elf was slight, almost frail. It was a small matter to hurl him back, to advance with sword leading. A single, decisive thrust finished the battle and silenced the lying elf forever.
Breathing hard, Algorind went to the cottage. He hoped the woman would be more inclined to see reason.
The cottage was empty, the back window open. Algorind circled around, easily picked up and followed the tracks of the woman’s feet into the small orchards beyond.
He followed her through the spring-flowering trees and cornered her against the high stone wall of a pig pen. She whirled, the child in her arms, and entreated him wordlessly, her face streaked with desperate tears.
For a moment Algorind hesitated, wondering if he had been tragically misinformed… Woman and child were both slender, and both had brown hair decently plaited. But there the resemblance ended. The woman was human: the child, half-elf Surely this was not the daughter of Samular’s bloodline!
“Don’t hurt her,” the child said in a remarkably clear, bell-like voice. There was more anger than fear in her tip-tilted elven eyes.
“I have no wish to harm you or your mother, child,” he said gently.
“Foster mother,” corrected the child, showing a regard for truth worthy of a child of Samular.
“Woman, is this the child of Dag Zoreth, priest of Cyric?” Algorind demanded.
“She is mine! She has been mine since her birth! Go away, and leave us alone,” the woman pleaded. She set the child on the ground and pushed her behind her purple skirts, shielding the girl with her own body.
This put Algorind in a quandary. Surely this brave and selfless response was not the behavior of an evil hireling. He fell back a few paces, sword still ready in case of sudden treachery. His eyes remained on the purple-clad woman, but his focus drifted past her and his lips moved in prayer. The power that Tyr granted all paladins enveloped him. In the name of the God of Justice, Algormd weighed and measured the woman before him.
Pain struck him like tiny knives to the temples. An image came to him, that of a purple sunburst and a glowing black skull. Algorind drew in breath in a quick, pained gasp. Tyr had spoken: the woman was allied with evil-great evil. She followed the mad god Cyric.
But Tyr was also merciful, so Algorind drew himself back, away from the god-given insight. “Woman, will you renounce Cyric and the evil bargain you have made? Give the child into my hands and live.”
Her eyes flamed, and she defiantly spat at the ground by Algorind’s feet.
Algorind’s way was clear, yet still he hesitated. Never had he killed a woman, much less one who was unarmed and untrained. And certainly never in the presence of a child.
“Run, child,” he advised kindly. “This is not for your eyes.” But