The crowd remained rapt, eyes alight. The fire roared eagerly around the writhing body. Her limbs thrashed, and it took a long time before her cries faded into croaks. At last the only sounds came from the flames, crackling, hungry and exultant.
When the druid had been reduced to a blackened shell amid a mound of glowing coals the bearded man spoke.
“Again we have claimed a witch, my valiant Crusaders… and again God is pleased with our efforts!” Cheers and whoops rang out from the crowd, a response that chilled Tam nearly as much as had the gruesome death. “See!” The speaker, his voice sharp, raised a hand in a violent, triumphant gesture. A gold chain dangled from his wrist, and the elf caught a glimpse of a small white stone held in the man’s fingers. He swung his hand back and forth, and the eyes and heads of the crowd followed the talisman in rapt attention.
Something flared redly in that stone, an X-shaped vibration of crimson light that sent a jolt of pleasure through Tamarwind. Stunned, he looked to the side, saw that Deltan had dropped his bow, that he gazed longingly toward the object in the man’s hand. When the hand came down, the stone disappeared from view, and the people in the valley-and the two elves watching from above-sighed in unison.
“But it is time that we did more, labored harder in the name of our Holy Savior. And so I tell you: There is a temple of evil in this wretched swath of purgatory. The place is a monument to heresy. It rises upon an island, forms a minaret of metal that is an abomination, an affront to God. And so I will lead you there, my crusaders… and we will see this temple, and we will tear it down!”
“The Loom of the Worldweaver!” Tamarwind gasped. Deltan Columbine simply shook his head, pulling back from his vantage to sit, stunned, on the forest floor.
The frightening message was still ringing in the clearing when Ulf leapt up on all fours with a startled snort. The dog and the elves spun in unison, Tam leaping to his feet and then freezing in shock.
A giant with a bristling black beard held a stone-tipped spear leveled straight at Tam’s chest. The fellow loomed high overhead, and his body seemed as broad as a wall. Thick cords of muscle knotted his thighs and calves, and each of his arms was as big around as a human man’s leg.
“Come, witch… you can talk to Sir Christopher.” The giant’s voice was a growl like thunder. Tam felt the rumble in the pit of his stomach. “There’s enough kindling left for a double burning.”
Tamarwind’s blood ran cold. The staff was still on his shoulder, but seemed like an impotent twig in the face of that deadly spearhead. He tried to think of something, anything, to say.
Turning his head, he saw that Deltan hadn’t even picked up his bow. Instead, the poet looked back at Tam, a desperate appeal for help written in his terrified expression, his wildly staring eyes. The scout clenched his hand around the staff, but when the giant lifted his spear toward his throat he took a short step backward, unable to make himself attack.
Ulf, on the other hand, didn’t hesitate. He pranced forward, tail wagging as he gazed fawnishly up at the giant.
“Some watchdog,” snorted the elf’s captor.
Ulf suddenly lunged upward, snapping his jaws hard beneath the giant’s shaggy tunic. The fellow left out a pinched scream and doubled over. Somehow Tam’s instincts took over, and he swung the heavy staff. The pole whistled through the air, landing with a resounding crack against the giant’s skull. The shaft of wood shattered but the giant fell on his face with a thud. Groaning once, he kicked, then lay still.
“Come on!” panted Ulf, already starting through the woods.
An impulse penetrated Tam’s fear and he reached down to snatch up the giant’s heavy spear. Then he was off, racing after Ulfgang and Deltan, the wind of his speed drawing tears from his still-horrified eyes.
10
A Girding of Elves
Poem, painting, sculpture; song and prose and play.
Girders of serenity, frame of night and day
Violent shadows shiver, pain and bloodshed wax warfare, plunder, murder are the artwork of the axe.
B elynda lay awake, fidgeting restlessly. The Lighten Hour was still a long time away, but she felt no need to sleep. She didn’t know what subconscious anxiety triggered her unease, but she finally, reluctantly, gave up the attempt at repose. She whispered on the light and found that she didn’t even blink against the soft illumination.
Swinging her feet to the floor, she stood, and then paced across her sleeping chamber for the simple reason that she needed to move. She walked past the reading table without pause. The door to her garden glided open as she murmured the word of command, and then she was under the night sky with its fulgent, gracefully shifting patterns of stars. Sitting on a marble bench, she leaned back to watch the stately wheel of the night overhead. The stars spiraled around the axis of the distant sun-the celestial body that was now no more than the brightest star in the twinkling vista of the sky. Each speck of light seemed to move at its own speed. At times thousands of them formed tendrils of blurry illumination, while shortly thereafter those twisting limbs broke apart, dissolving into their individual, lonely components. And thus they wandered until the pattern brought them again into concentration.
All but hypnotized, Belynda stared into the vastness overhead. As she had done countless times before, she tried to sift some kind of design from the cosmic quilt… but just when she began to perceive a face, a horizon, an animal or leaf, the twinkling display would distort and realign. Inevitably she was left with a sense of randomness that she found troubling, resonant of a vague sense of insecurity.
But tonight even the spectacle of the skies could not distract her from the agitation that ruined her sleep and lifted her from her bed. She still could not identify a precise source of unease. Rather it was as if too many little changes were occurring in the world, niggling things that combined to portend something different, some dire interruption in the stately pace of Nayve.
For, of course, change was bad. In any kind of alteration there was a potential for violence, and perhaps it was this awareness that caused her to think about pain, and killing, and war. Not that she had seen any examples during her lifetime… rather she had learned from tales of the Seventh Circle, stories told by druids who had witnessed the Worldweaver’s Tapestry. In her lifetime there had been many advances in the way humans made war, and she tried to imagine where they could go in the future. Such a frenetic, furious race they were-even, truth be told, the druids, who were supposed to represent the wisest and most serene of the lot.
But in this past year Caranor and Allevia had died violently. She had just learned from Nistel that more giants had come to Thickwhistle, this time rousting a whole clan of gnomes out of a cherished cavern. She missed having Ulfgang to talk to… and even more, she wished Tamarwind was here.
She stood up and stretched, and it was then that she heard the rustling in the shrubbery surrounding her garden. In another moment a canine body, white against the darkness, trotted into view. Ulfgang was followed by Tamarwind Trak, who was breathing hard from exertion, and another, similarly exhausted elf. Both wore clothes that were in tatters, and Belynda gasped at the sight of the scout’s face, haggard and thin, streaked with sweat and dirt.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, rushing to embrace Tam by his shoulders. She stared into eyes that were hooded and dark, and contained the gleam of burning anger.
“No… just tired,” he said. Despite the emotion that seethed almost visibly beneath his skin, his voice was soft and calm.
“We came here without rest,” Ulf explained. “From the Greens, running nearly all the way. Tam even mounted a horse for the last leg of the trip.”
“What’s wrong?” asked the sage-ambassador, shaken by the explanation, by the implication of bad news.
