arrow protruding from an eye. It lay on its side. Just ten feet away, Miral was raising himself on bent elbows, his face blackened with ash. One hand was bleeding.
Xenoth lay dead, face down on the muddy, rocky ground of the clearing, a crimson stain soaking his silver robe and seeping into the earth. The tylor's thrashing tail had crushed his chest. Litanas, Xenoth's assistant, kneeled beside him, shouting something incoherent.
Then suddenly it seemed as though all the elves were staring at Tanis. Even Flint was looking at him with a disbelieving expression. 'What is it?' the half-elf asked.
Litanas moved aside, and Tanis saw.
Protruding from Xenoth's heart was the half-elf's arrow.
Chapter 18
Tanis looked from face to face, each showing the same accusing stare. Only Flint looked anything but convinced that the half-elf had slain the adviser.
'You saw!' Tanis cried. 'You all saw! I shot to the right, toward the body of the beast. Xenoth was to my left when the creature's tail hit him. How could my arrow have struck him?'
'Yet it did strike him, Tanis,' Porthios said quietly.
Tyresian gestured, and several of the elves moved forward as if to restrain the half-elf. With a bound, Flint, still clutching his battle-axe, thrust himself between Tanis and the approaching captors. He raised the weapon, glared fiercely at the advancing elves, and shouted, 'Stop!' Obviously taken aback by the sight of a dwarf outfitted for battle and ready to fight, the nobles stopped.
'We volunteered for this expedition knowing that it could bring our death,' Flint said angrily. 'Isn't that true?'
Ulthen, who with Litanas had been kneeling by Xenoth, stood, his cape splashed with blood. 'But we expected the death to come at the jaws of the tylor, Master Fireforge, not by one of our fellow hunters.'
The elves muttered and growled. The adviser had been disliked by many of the courtiers, so there seemed to be little real sadness at his demise, merely shock that it appeared to have come at the hand of another elf.
'Who says Tanis killed him?' the dwarf demanded.
Tyresian sighed loudly. 'It was Tanis's arrow, Master Fireforge. Now, let's get on…'
But Flint pressed ahead. 'Lord Xenoth was dead when the arrow hit him.'
'How do you know?' Tyresian demanded with a sneer. Behind Tyresian, Litanas had withdrawn the yellow and scarlet arrow from Xenoth's chest and was laying his travel cloak across the body of his former superior. Several other nobles stood apart, poking the tylor's body, glancing at Tanis and Tyresian, and talking in low voices.
Flint folded his arms across his chest, the axe still clenched in one thick hand. 'I saw it.'
'Don't be ridicu-'
Flint interrupted, raising his voice until it boomed across the clearing. 'I was there, Lord Tyresian. You and the others were on the far side of the ravine. I had a clear view. You did not.'
'They argued,' Tyresian said doggedly. 'Tanis all but threatened Xenoth at the stables. Who's to say the half-elf's human blood didn't prompt him to avenge himself? And who will trust the word of a dwarf who also happens to be the half-elf's closest friend?' He turned to Litanas and Ulthen. 'Bind his hands. We will return to Qualinost and set the case before the Speaker of the Sun.'
But Miral, supported by Porthios and Gilthanas, had finally risen to his feet. He staggered forward, holding his bleeding right hand inside his cloak. His eyes were glazed with pain and fury. 'You are wrong, Tyresian.'
Tyresian bristled. 'Mage, you forget who is in command here.'
'Being in command does not imbue you with wisdom, Lord Tyresian,' the mage replied.
Flint interjected. 'Let's examine Lord Xenoth's body. Perhaps that will tell us something.'
After a long pause, during which several elves began to drift over the rocky clearing toward the adviser's corpse, Tyresian nodded and pushed his way through the crowd around the body. Flint followed. Kneeling, the elf lord gently withdrew the cloak from Xenoth's face. The adviser's visage was blank with death and surprisingly free of wounds. His white hair moved with the breeze. He looked as though shortly he would open his blue eyes and speak.
'Farther, Lord Tyresian,' Flint prodded. 'Look at his chest.'
The elf lord drew in a deep breath and pulled back the cloak. The tylor's knifelike tail had caved in and lacerated Xenoth's chest. Gilthanas gasped and looked ill. Porthios laid a steadying hand on his brother's arm.
'Where is the arrow?' Flint said.
'Here.' The new voice belonged to Litanas, who sidestepped through the other elves and placed the arrow into Tyresian's black-gloved palm. Fully one-third of the shaft was stained with blood. Litanas, brown eyes angry, pointed at the shaft. 'Lord Xenoth's blood,' he said.
The dwarf stayed calm. 'I'm not disputing that it is Xenoth's blood,' Flint said.
'Well, it's definitely Tanis's arrow,' Tyresian said stubbornly.
'Certainly,' Flint conceded. 'I'm not arguing that, either. In fact, I made the arrowhead.'
Tyresian laid the cloak back over Xenoth's torso and head, and rose. 'Then what, dwarf?' he snapped, towering over Flint.
'By Reorx, use your brain, elf! Don't you notice anything unusual about the arrow?' Flint put all his scorn into the statement.
Porthios joined Tyresian and studied the weapon. Finally, the Speaker's heir spoke carefully. 'It is a perfectly formed arrow, stained with blood but with no other marks.'
'Correct,' Flint said, nodding.
'So?' Tyresian's voice throbbed with contempt. 'You've admitted it's the half-elf's arrow. So what?'
Porthios made a small noise, and Flint's blue-gray gaze shifted back to the Speaker's son, whose eyes were suddenly wise. 'You understand, don't you?' Flint asked.
Porthios nodded and explained. 'If Tanis's arrow had struck Lord Xenoth before the tylor's long tail did, the arrow would have been crushed by the beast. As you can see, the arrow is undamaged.'
The commander's sharp blue eyes widened. Then he swept one arm aside, all but knocking Gilthanas into Miral. 'His arrow still found its way into Xenoth. So what if the half-elf didn't kill him. Tanis is still guilty of a gross error of judgment.'
Flint and Tyresian stood frozen, gazes locked, for a long moment. Miral's voice finally broke the spell that held them. 'All this talk is not getting our comrade's body back to Qualinost,' he stated wearily. 'I suggest we return immediately and discuss this matter with the Speaker.'
Tyresian balked. 'I have one more question,' he said. 'Who killed the tylor? Tanis?'
'Did the mage kill the beast, perhaps?' Litanas murmured. Several other elves nodded agreement. 'Look at his hand, after all. Even from across the ravine, we saw the lightning burst from his fingers and hit the lizard.'
Porthios turned his gaze to Miral, still supported by Porthios's younger brother. 'Show us your hand, mage,' Porthios ordered.
Miral's hood had fallen back from his pallid face, and the mage's eyes squinted against the light. He gingerly drew his right hand from beneath his cloak. The sleeve was in tatters. Nails were missing from his first two fingers, and all five digits were blackened from the tips to the palm. Angry red streaks extended from the mage's wrist to a scar near his elbow.
This time it was Flint's voice that rose above the rest. 'I didn't know you were capable of such magic, Miral.'
The mage looked confused. 'Nor did I.' He appeared to be on the verge of collapse.
'What happened?' Porthios asked gently.
The mage stammered as he spoke, and a blotch of red appeared high on each blanched cheekbone. 'I saw the beast threaten Flint and Tanis,' Miral said. 'I am but a weak magic-user. Under normal conditions, I would have
