holding the hems of their robes high out of the running gutter. One turned and saw Phair, the child whose face looked more like a skull than not. With one hand the elf drew aside the hem of his robe, the silk and the brocade all glimmering with jewels. With the other he covered his mouth and nose as one of his companions tossed a copper coin at Phair. The coin fell into the gutter, landing in a pool of muck.
Phair scrambled for it, never minding that she had to scrape through mud and worse to find it. Here was a week's worth of food! Enough to keep her sister out of the brothels where most of the gutter-girls went to earn their bread. Phair had served there herself at need, but never would she let her sister do that. Never. When she looked up, a word of thanks on her lips, she saw only the backs of the elves and heard one say, 'Filthy gutter wretch. Why did you do that, Dalyn? The creature is no concern of ours.'
'None,' his companion had agreed. 'But that will keep it from following.'
But the gutter creature had followed, Blood Gem thought as he soared over the Sylvan Land. She followed those elves right home, didn't she? It took her a while of years, but she did. And now, a highlord in the army of the goddess elves most hate, Phair Caron had a kind of thanks to offer for their treatment of her, that thanks too long deferred.
Blood Gem banked and turned, soaring away north again. When he came within sight of the Khalkists and the northern border of the Sylvan Land where the trees were not so thick, he felt the uplifting currents of hot air. Three villages were afire, the acrid fumes of terror and dying wafted up to the sky. All around the smoking ruins, bodies lay, most looking like they'd been nailed there. Some had been- nailed by spears and ashwood lances. They looked like insects pinned to a display board. An impatient detachment of the dragonarmy had broken through the burning barrier into the stony area beyond where those three villages had lain. The dragonmen weren't going unmet, for even as they ran raging into a fourth village downriver, elves met them with bows and steel.
Phair Caron laughed again, and again the sound of it was torn from her lips. 'Look there! Defenders. Now, that won't do, will it?'
It would not. With startling speed, the red dragon dropped down from the sky, bursting out of the bitter blue sky right over the battle. On the ground, the elves looked up, their faces pale ovals. One, a bold fool, lifted his bow and drew to launch an arrow. Blood Gem roared, the sound so loud the air trembled, the earth itself shook. Screams, like the thin whine of gnats, came up from the battleground. The elf who fancied himself a fortunate archer fell to his knees, terrified. His bow, like a little stick of tinder, fell to the ground.
Tinder, Blood Gem thought. Ah…
He thrust hard with his mighty wings, gaining the heights again, and turned round over the village. Nothing was afire there, not house, not barn, and certainly not the crowding aspenwood. This wasn't good. On the ground, a phalanx of draconians charged into the midst of the defenders, maces whistling, their ghastly voices like the screaming of stones. From so high up, Blood Gem saw the blood gleaming on the terrible points of the maces, though he did not smell it. Just as well, just as well. Had he smelled the blood he'd have been able to smell the misbegotten dragonmen too. He banked and turned. Upon his back, Phair Caron shouted a wild battle cry.
Roaring, Blood Gem dropped low over the aspens as the draconians drove the elves into the darkness of the forest. Behind, a house burst into flames, the fire kindled by a flaring torch in a draconian fist. Inside a woman screamed, a child wailed, their cries damped by the whoosh and roar of the roof catching. The sweet stench of burning flesh drifted upon black smoke.
'A pretty little fire!' Phair Caron shouted. 'But we can do better!'
Blood Gem filled up his lungs with air and, as though those lungs were a bellows, he pushed air out past the place in his throat where dragonfire lived. Death's own banner, flames poured from between his fanged jaws. Flames touched the tops of the aspens, and Blood Gem flew past those, firing the trees beyond and to either side. Elf voices shouted in terror. Men, women, and children were herded into a deadly trap, bounded on three sides by fire and on the other by creatures from nightmare, winged draconians whose reptilian eyes held no warmth, whose powerful tails could break the bones of a foe with one swipe. The least of the tribes of dragonmen, these were the Baaz, and they loved nothing better than killing. Some, it was said, did feast on their kills.
'Now take us back,' the highlord shouted. 'This has been diverting, but I have work yet to do before the night is over.'
Reluctantly, Blood Gem turned north toward the Khalkists and the army's camp. Behind them and below, the draconians finished their work, burning every house in the village, killing each man and woman and child they found. One or two escaped. Phair Caron could see it from the heights, but she did not regret that. Let them run. Let them flee downriver to the other towns, wailing the song of their terror until it reached the ears of the elf-king, Speaker Lorac himself. Let him know she was coming!
Chapter 2
On days of sun, Dalamar labored indoors in his lord's steamy kitchen, in the musty wine cellars where he was set to catching rats, or in the attics under the high eaves, where it was Eflid's pleasure to give him the task of sorting through old clothing during the breathless hours of hot afternoons. On days of rain, Eflid made certain that Dalamar worked outside, sometimes in the gardens to brace slender plants against the downpours, sometimes after the rain, slogging through mud to repair what damage had been done.
'It's not fair,' murmured the young woman who served at the lord's breakfast table. 'He treats you worse than he treats any of us, Dalamar. How do you stand it?'
'It's our way,' Dalamar said. They stood in the doorway to the kitchen garden, looking out into the day hung heavily with mist and leaden clouds. He plucked a wisp of straw from the floor, a stray bit of packing from a crate of wine. 'An old pattern. Eflid wants something from me, and I want to be sure he's not going to get it.'
The young woman, Leida, the daughter of a mother who had served in Ralan's hall all her life, child of a father who yet served there, looked at him with luminous green eyes. She had once thought she was in love with a Wildrunner, a young man she saw striding about the city, handsome in his leathers and green shirt. No matter that their life-paths would never cross. No matter that a son of House Protector would never have looked her way but to tell her to refill his mug of ale. When war took the charming soldier north, Leida had wept for as long as an hour, and then she turned her attention closer to home and the dark-eyed mage who seemed suddenly more handsome than the Wildrunner for being so much nearer.
'What, then?' she asked Dalamar. 'What does Eflid want?'
Using only the agile fingers of his right hand, Dalamar tied a knot in the straw. 'A servant humble and biddable.'
Leida laughed, her green eyes sparkling. 'He'd spend all his days trying to make you into that, and he'd die never seeing it done.'
'They're his days to spend.' Dalamar shrugged. 'And that's how he wastes them.'
'And you? You don't mind it?'
He looked at her long, and when he answered, he spoke coolly. 'I mind.'
Leida shuddered, for she saw something in his eyes to make her think of a wolf lurking beyond the light of a campfire.
That morning, rain had poured down in sheets. Now at noon, the sky was still. Clouds hung leaden, threatening to burst, and the garden was filled with mist and the fragrance of mint and thyme and sweet chamomile. Brown muddy water ran like small rivers round the beds, carving new shapes. Leida's yellow hair loved the mist, springing into little curls around her cheeks. She wore it short, though elf women seldom did, because she liked the feeling of air tickling her neck.
A pretty neck it was, Dalamar thought. A gloss of mist, perhaps of sweat, lent a sheen to the skin of her slender neck. He lifted a finger and caught the droplet. His eyes on hers, feeling her move toward him though she moved not at all, he tasted it. Rain. Lightning flickered fitfully, illuminating the garden. Leida's eyes widened. She lifted her head in the way she had of showing off her charming ears. Sweetly canted, they were like the petals of some lovely flower, white and elegant. Her lips moved in a sudden smile. She glanced over her shoulder to the silent, cavernous kitchen. Potboys had finished their work of scrubbing the pans and plates from breakfast. The cook had gone into the storeroom beyond to take the count of what would be needed to prepare the evening meal. The bakers, who labored in the night, were long asleep in their quarters.
