The heartbeat-music, in a sense-grew. Roundabout felt the power as if its source was approaching him.
“Where are you, wizard?” he whispered to the empty air.
The forest went preternaturally silent, and Roundabout held his breath.
And then he saw her, through the trees not far away, a woman in a white gown and with a black cloak, dancing carefree through the trees. Compelled, he followed, and he wound up lying on a mossy embankment beneath a stand of pines, staring out at a small meadow where the barefoot witch danced in starlight.
Roundabout lost his heart at that moment, for never had he seen any woman quite so beautiful and graceful. He couldn’t even blink, fearing to lose the image before him even momentarily. He wouldn’t let it go. He couldn’t let it go.
She danced and she twirled and she sang, and her voice was the song of Iruladoon.
She was the wizard who had enchanted the wood, Roundabout was certain.
Or the goddess … and that thought had the ranger holding his breath once more, had his hands trembling and sweating, and no one who knew Roundabout had ever seen him in such a state.
She stopped her dance and her song, and brushed her thick auburn hair back from in front of her face, revealing eyes so blue that even the night could not dull their inviting luster.
Roundabout shifted uncomfortably. He knew logically that she could not see him, and yet there was no doubt in his mind that she looked at him directly. He thought he should stand and introduce himself, and explain himself.
But he couldn’t move. His legs would not answer his call to stand. His mouth refused to form the words to call out to her.
She smiled and shook her head then spun into her dance again, twirling around and around, faster and faster, until she was but a blur of flowing robes. And from that she leaped, as if upon the starlight itself.
And she was gone.
Gone from the meadow, but not from the mind of Roundabout. He saw her still, he clutched the image. He never wanted to let it go. He never wanted to look at anything else ever again. Just her, forever her. In that dancing creature, that witch, or ghost, or goddess, Roundabout had witnessed the perfection of nature itself.
He managed to mouth the name “Mielikki,” and recognized, albeit briefly, that he wasn’t lying down any longer, but had regained his feet.
Then he saw her again, in his mind or in front of him-it mattered not-dancing under the stars.
Addadearber came up with a gasp and a wild splash, sucking in air. His lungs ached and he desperately gulped more air. It took him a long time to even hear Ashelia calling to him from the bank near the dock, only a few feet from him.
He managed to get there and crawl out of the lake, trembling with fear and shivering with cold.
“How in the Nine Hells …?” the woman asked.
Addadearber shook his head, considering the whirlpool and the tunnel of water that had flushed him from Iruladoon, right back into the small lagoon. It made no sense, even to a man who had flown in the empty air, who had turned enemies into frogs, and who created lightning and fire out of thin air.
“Well, what do ye know?” Ashelia asked, helping him from the water.
But Addadearber could only wag his head and sputter.
Almost at the same moment, Roundabout walked out of the forest, his step light, his eyes glassy, and he seemed not even to recognize them or notice any of his surroundings.
“Roundabout!” Ashelia called, and she let go of the wizard and ran to the ranger.
He looked at her as though unable to understand her alarm. Then he looked all around, at the cabin and the lake, at the dock and
“They attacked me!” Addadearber insisted, storming up to the pair. “I will burn that forest to the ground!
“If you raise a torch or a spell against it, I will kill you,” Roundabout replied, and both Ashelia and Addadearber gasped.
“Ranger!” the fisherwoman scolded.
“We have to leave this place,” Roundabout said, retracting not a bit of his threat.
“We’re sailing in the morning.”
“We’re sailing now,” the ranger corrected.
“We? I thought you were to remain on this bank,” Addadearber said with a sharp tone, obviously unhappy with the threat. “With your friends who haunt the forest, perhaps?”
“Shut up, wizard.” Roundabout turned to Ashelia. “To Lac Dinneshere, all of us, and now.”
“Spragan’s still stupid, and Lathan’s still hurting,” Ashelia argued.
“I will row or tack, then, and so will Addadearber.”
“You have grown quite bold,” the wizard warned.
But Roundabout only smiled, and glanced back at Iruladoon. He had seen her. The witch, the ghost, the goddess-with that celestial image still fresh in his mind, there was little the blustering Addadearber could say that could bother him.
Unless the wizard did indeed try to turn his anger, magic or mundane, at the forest.
Roundabout smiled, hardly believing his own heart, for he knew that in that instance, he truly would kill the man.
They put out from the dock soon after, all glad to be gone from the haunted forest.
All, except for Roundabout, who knew that he wasn’t really leaving, that he took a piece of Iruladoon with him, and would hold it forevermore.
For he would never allow himself to forget the dance of the goddess, and her ladder of starlight.
To Legend he goes
Wulfgar had defied age like no other in recent memory. Some said it was the magic of the dwarves who had raised him wearing off on him. Others just pointed out that the legendary chieftains were often known for long and productive lives. Whatever the cause, Wulfgar had held his own in the hunt and in many battles, and not one in the tribe had whispered that it was time for him to drift on a floe.
But these were not usual times for the Tribe of the Elk, and the stakes were much higher.
“Were it not for Wulfgar, we would not be allowed on the hunt,” Canaufa reminded Brayleen, the two women standing off to the side of the large encampment of the Tribe of the Elk.
“There remain many who question the wisdom of that,” Brayleen countered. “The loss of a man does not weaken the tribe as much as does the loss of a woman. The seed of one can fill the wombs of many, but one womb, one child, one year.”
“And yet, you will remain here for the hunt.”
The simple logical retort had Brayleen’s face tightening with defeat.
“They say he learned it from the elves,” Canaufa went on, “where gender is no matter.”
“Or from the dwarves,” Brayleen added. “From what few females they claim.”
Both paused to watch the council across the way. The decision had been made that the tribe would move along to the northwest. Although the caribou had not yet left the mountainous foothills along the Spine of the World, too many monsters had shown themselves in the region, and a tribe of orcs was known to be crawling from a mountain hole not far away. All the other tribes had already begun the winter migration, leaving the Tribe of the Elk alone and exposed.
The snows had come early this year, and that was never a good thing for the barbarian tribes roaming the tundra of Icewind Dale. The unseasonal storms had brought the yetis down from the peaks and thinned the caribou herd before they even began their great trek across the narrow tundra to the sea. For the barbarians, the result
