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rose and headed for her other fallen comrade. Before she reached him, she was shocked
to see Rufus raise his little sword and fall on the back of one of the propped-up cloaks.
This time the cloak didn't collapse into a pile of tree limbs. Arms and legs appeared
beneath it, and a figure leapt up.
"Captain!" Rufus shouted. "It's one of them!"
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Verhanna fumbled for her sword as she ran toward the campfire. The kender stabbed
over and over again at the cloaked figure's back. Though not muscular, Rufus possessed a
wiry strength, but his attack appeared to have no effect. The cloaked one spun around,
trying to throw the pesky kender off. When the front of the hood swung past Verhanna,
she froze in her tracks and gasped.
"Rufus! It has no face!" she shouted.
With one last prodigious shake, the cloaked thing hurled Rufus to the ground. The
kender's small sword flew into the woods as Rufus landed with a thud. He groaned and
lay still, crimson rain beating down on his pallid face.
Verhanna gave a cry and slashed at the faceless figure, her slim elven blade slicing
through the cloth with ease. She felt resistance as the blade passed through whatever lay
beneath the cloak, but no blood flowed. Under the hood, where a face should have been,
there was only a ball of grayish smoke, as if someone had stuffed the hood with dirty
cotton.
Cutting and thrusting and hacking, Verhanna soon reduced the cloak to a tattered
mass on the muddy ground. Shorn of its garment, the thing was revealed to be a vaguely
elf-shaped column of dove-colored smoke. Two arms, two legs, a head, and torso were
visible, but nothing else only featureless vapor. Realizing she was exhausting herself to
no avail, Verhanna stood back to catch her breath.
Rufus sat up slowly and clutched his head. He shook the pain aside and looked up at
the smoky apparition standing between him and his captain. His hat had been trodden in
the mud, and rain streamed from his long hair. Rufus glanced from the wispy figure to the
dying campfire. Only a single coil of vapor, as thick as his wrist, snaked upward from the
damp wood, and it twisted and writhed oddly in the still air.
Suddenly the kender had an inspiration. He dragged the other, unoccupied cloak to
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the fire and threw it over the smoldering wood. The sodden material soon extinguished
the last of the sparks, and the fire died. As it did, the smoky figure thinned and finally
vanished.
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Rufus's and Verhanna's heavy
breathing. At last Verhanna demanded, "What in Astra's name was that infernal thing?"
"Magic," Rufus replied simply. His attention was centered on retrieving his hat from
the mud. Sorrowfully he tried to straighten the long, crimson-stained plume. It was
hopeless; the feather was broken in two places and hung limply.
"I know it was magic," Verhanna said, annoyed. "But why? And whose?"
"I told you those elves were clever. One of them knows magic. He made the ghost as
a diversion, I'll bet, to keep us busy while they escaped."
Verhanna slapped the flat of her blade against her mailed thigh. "E'li blast theml My
two soldiers killed and we're diverted by magic smoke!" She stamped her foot, splashing
blood-colored puddles over Rufus. "I'd give my right arm for another crack at those two!
I never even saw them!"
"They're very dangerous," said Rufus sagely. "Maybe we should get more soldiers to
hunt them down."
The Speaker's daughter was not about to admit defeat. She slammed her sword home
in its scabbard. "No, by the gods! We'll take them ourselves!"
The kender jammed his soggy blue hat down on his head. His new clothes were
ruined. "You don't pay me enough for this," he said under his breath.
* * * * *
How empty the great house seemed with Verhanna gone and Ulvian sent off to toil in
the quarries of Pax Tharkas. Lord Anakardain was away from the city, with the lion's
share of the Guards of the Sun chasing down the last stubborn bands of slavers. Kemian
Ambrodel was out questioning new arrivals in Qualinost about the red rain and other
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marvels of days past.
So many friends and familiar faces gone. Only he, Kith-Kanan, had remained
behind. He had given up his freedom to roam when he accepted the throne of Qualinesti.
After all these centuries, he finally understood how his father, Sithel, had felt before him.
Bound up in chains like a prisoner. Only a Speaker's chains weren't made of iron, but of
the coils of responsibility, duty, protocol.
It was hard, very hard, to remain inside the arched bridges of Qualinost, just as it was
hard to keep inside the walls of the increasingly lonely Speaker's house. Sometimes his
thoughts were with Ulvian. Had he done right by his son? The prince's crime was
heinous, but did it justify Kith-Kanan's harsh sentence?
Then he thought of Verhanna, probing every glade and clearing from Thorbardin to
the Thon-Thalas River, seeking those whose crimes were the same as her brother's.
Loyal, brave, serious Hanna, who never swerved from following an order.
Kith-Kanan rose from his bed and threw back the curtains from his window. It was
long after midnight, by the water clock on the mantle, and the world outside was as dark
as pitch. He could hear the bloody rain still falling. It seeped under windowsills and
doors.
A name, long buried in his thoughts, surfaced. It was a name not spoken aloud for
hundreds of years: "Anaya!"
Into the quiet darkness, he whispered the name of the Kagonesti woman who had
been his first wife. It was as if she was in the room with him.
He knew she was not dead. No, Anaya lived on, might even manage to outlive
Kith-Kanan. As her life's blood had flowed out of a terrible sword wound, Anaya's body
had indeed died. But undergoing a mysterious, sublime transformation, Anaya the elf
woman had become a fine young oak tree, rooted in the soil of the ancient Silvanesti [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]