expression on his face promised nothing good.
“The Firstborn are no more than a fifteen-minute run away. And there are many of them.”
“How many?” I said, asking the question that was on everybody’s minds.
“More than forty. We are on the land of the Grun Ear-Cutters now.”
Lamplighter uttered a picturesque description of the mothers of all orcs. Nobody needed to be told that we couldn’t hold out against that many of them. Fifteen would have been enough to dispatch us into the light. We were too tired after all this running through Zagraba without a break.
“We need a clearing!” Kli-Kli said suddenly. “Egrassa, I need a large clearing!”
“What have you got in mind?”
“I’ve prepared the Hammer of Dust, all I still have to do is draw the activating rune. The spell is our only chance of holding out now. For it to work properly, there shouldn’t be any trees around. We need a clearing, a big one if possible.”
“Are you sure of your spell?”
“May the forest spirits take me, I am! This time you’ll have to trust me. It’s the spell or your swords! I’d put my money on the spell.”
“We’ll do it your way. A clearing, you say?”
The drums were rumbling like demons’ hearts. Kli-Kli ran on ahead, and the four of us carried the stretcher.
“Stop!” Egrassa barked. “Off the path! To the left!”
I didn’t know what the elf had sensed there, but the gobliness immediately did as he said and dashed into a dense fir thicket.
“Set him down!” Egrassa ordered.
We put the stretcher on the ground and the Garrakian grunted as he picked the gnome up in his arms.
“Forward! Get the branches out of the way!”
Egrassa reached for his s’kash, but I handed him the krasta. The Gray One’s magical spear cleared the branches away as if they were blades of grass, and the elf easily cut us a path through the thick fir grove, without bothering at all about the orcs finding our trail. They’d find us in any case.
The fir grove came to an end, and we emerged into a large black clearing veiled in trembling mist.
“How did you know?” Lamplighter blurted out.
“I smelt it,” said the elf, and suddenly smiled. “I think Kli-Kli did, too. There’s been a fire here. Look, the trees are scorched.”
Black mud born from the meeting of rain, ash, and soil squelched under my boots. It was slippery, which meant that fighting would be difficult. When we stopped in the middle of the clearing, the trees surrounding it seemed like black phantoms hiding in the mist. We couldn’t see a thing. Mumr put a cloak on the ground and Eel laid Hallas on it.
“When it starts, stand behind me and don’t move forward, until I say so. All right?” Kli-Kli asked us as she hastily used her finger to draw something in the mud that looked like a fat caterpillar with little wings.
“All right. When you finish, go over to Hallas and stay there,” said Egrassa, changing the string on his terrible bow. “Eel, you cover me as well as you can. Mumr, Harold, take the flanks. Don’t move forward, thief.”
“I wouldn’t think of it,” I answered him hoarsely.
“They’re close. Now’s the time to start praying.”
“This isn’t a very good time that you’ve chosen. Especially for magic like that.”
The clear young voice from behind our backs came as a complete surprise. For a moment it even seemed to drown out the rumbling of the drums. Egrassa swung round sharply, with an arrow poised to go flying from the string of his bow. Eel’s “brother” and “sister” rustled out of their scabbards, the bidenhander circled round above Lamplighter’s head. Kli-Kli looked up from her drawing and gave a quiet gasp. We had been taken by surprise in the most blatant manner possible, and the sensitive goblin and experienced elf hadn’t sensed a thing.
When I saw the speaker, I was amazed. I was expecting anything at all, up to and including a h’san’kor riding a bubblebelly, but not four young girls, not in this place.… This was absolutely absurd!
There were four of them and they all looked very much like each other. Like sisters. A thought flashed through my mind: How could four twelve-year-old girls have come so far into the forest, and what were their parents thinking of?
They were just children. Not very tall, with short black hair soaked by the rain. Their eyes were large and round, almost black. The strangers had a zigzag line painted in red on their left cheeks—it looked very much like a bolt of lightning. In fact, only three of the girls had a single lightning bolt. The fourth, who had spoken to us, had lightning bolts on both cheeks and two thin red lines drawn under her eyes.
The little girls were dressed in jackets of leather, wool, and fur. Short skirts made out of long strips of leather. No shoes. They clearly weren’t bothered in the slightest by the autumnal chill or the rain. But I would certainly have thought twice before wandering about barefoot in this weather.
The only jewelry they had were strings of carnelian beads and bracelets. And their only weapons were straight daggers with broad blades narrowing to a fine point.
Egrassa lowered his bow and unexpectedly went down on one knee. Kli-Kli bowed very respectfully indeed. Eel, Lamplighter, and I looked rather surprised. Well, never mind Kli-Kli, but for an elf of a royal family to bow the knee before a bunch of little girls! This really was amazing!
“The son of the House of the Black Rose greets the Daughters of the Forest!” Egrassa declared.
I gaped wide-eyed, unable to believe it.
The Daughters of the Forest! That was what the elves and the orcs called the dryads. Was this really yet another legend of Zagraba standing right here in front of me?
All sorts of things were said about the dryads, but very few men had ever met the Daughters of the Forest, and not even the elves, orcs, and goblins were very far ahead of us when it came to that. Those who had the blood of Zagraba flowing in their veins were never quick to reveal themselves to others’ eyes.
The elves and orcs regard themselves as pretty much the masters of Zagraba, but there are many other inhabitants of the forest kingdom. The dryads are really part of the forest, and they are the ones who rule it. They merely tolerate the presence of others in their forest, and the young races understand this and try not to annoy them. Even the proud and intolerant orcs bow their heads to the Daughters of the Forest.
At least, that’s what they say. The dryads weren’t interested in squabbles between the orcs and the elves until they started to cause damage to the forest. And they were even less interested in men. Dryads were concerned with the life of Zagraba itself. They took care of the forest and helped it, from the moths and the broods of mice to the families of oburs and the groves of golden-leafs.
And I had imagined all sorts of things, but not that they would look so much like ordinary human girls.
“The Black Moon…,” said the dryad standing in front of the others, and laughed. “Proud as the flame and passionate as the water.” This was a reference to the House of the Black Flame and the House of Black Water. “What is your name, elf?”
“Egrassa, madam. I am at your service.”
“At our service? We have no need of anyone’s services. The forest helps us. But I am forgetting my manners, forgive me. My name is Babbling Brook,” said the little girl, looking at the elf with a serious expression.
He bowed his head even lower.
“We are pleased to meet the Mistress,” Kli-Kli squeaked in a shrill voice.
The drums were rumbling behind us, and Mumr couldn’t help looking round. Babbling Brook noticed this and said, “Do not be afraid, man. We have a little time before what has been predestined happens. Arise, elf. It is not fitting for a king to kneel, even before the Mistress.”
“Madam is mistaken, I am no king,” Egrassa said guardedly, rising from his knees.
“Madam is merely running ahead of events,” the dryad replied, imitating the elf’s tone. “I am looking into the future, although I cannot see very much. Everything is covered in ripples because that man carries a blizzard within him.”
Babbling Brook looked at me. “You took something from the cradle of the dead that should not have been taken, and now it is in my forest. Before, when the elves had it, I closed my eyes to the matter, but now, when its
