he'd reached was no help. To the left was the street of the leather vendors, to the right, the forges and furnaces of Ironmonger Lane. Edgur ran straight across. This was Lanyard Street, where the ropemakers had their shops. If he kept going in this direction, he'd eventually reach the city gate.
Arrows beat on the pavement at his heels, spurring him onward. To his increasing fear, he saw masses of torches flanking him on other streets. The mob was trying to cut him off. He paused to look back and saw the ranks of the city watch had swelled to more than fifty. Even as he looked on they lofted arrows at him.
An awful noise rose from the adjoining streets. Householders were turning out, banging their pots and pans and shouting. Edgur turned away from the side street when he saw it was full of housewives armed with carving knives and ropemakers wielding hatchets. He galloped a few yards into the next street, but his left leg failed, and he tumbled to the pavement. Before he could get up, a gang of yelling boys threw a heavy net over him. Men on horses had hooks and ropes attached to the net, and they pulled it tight, so he couldn't move.
The street filled with torch-bearing Argivians, quiet now that their quarry was caught. The city watch pushed through the crowd and surrounded the bear, pikes leveled and bows drawn.
Edgur could not change back now. If he suddenly resumed human shape, the people would slay him where he lay, city watch or no watch. No, he had to be patient. Perhaps if he acted passively they would cage him up, and once alone, he could return to his natural form.
The captain of the watch was haranguing the crowd. Whose bear was this? Where did it come from? No one knew.
'It must have come from somewhere! Bears don't just roam the streets of Argivia!' shouted the irate captain.
A middle-aged man in long robes appeared. He had the pale skin and soft hands of a man who read books all day, and Edgur saw him approach carefully. The captain and the robed man exchanged whispers. Edgar grew cold with fear. If this man was a wizard, his plot would be unmasked for sure.
— something unnatural about this beast,' the pale man muttered.
'What are you saying?' asked the captain.
'I'm saying this animal could be bewitched. It should be killed without delay.'
Edgur began to struggle. He rolled over on his back with such force he toppled one of the horses keeping the net lines taut. A flurry of arrows punched into his hairy hide. Edgur bawled with the pain, and Dare's jewel slipped from his mouth.
'Hold!' shouted the captain as the gem clinked on the cobblestones. Gingerly he leaned in to retrieve the amulet.
Edgur watched helplessly as the key to his metamorphosis was taken away.
'What do you make of this?'
The pale man examined the stone. 'It's a diamond,' he said. 'Of the first water. The clearest specimen I've ever seen.'
Diamond? Clear? What had happened to the green magic?
'The animal had it in its mouth,' said the captain.
'There's your proof,' said the apparent sorcerer. 'Gems are often used in enchantment spells.'
As Edgur's life ebbed, he tried to summon the image of his lost Riliana in his mind. She did not remain long. The last thing he saw, before the pikemen finished him off, was the face of the trickster Dare, laughing. Somewhere he was enjoying his jest.
Riliana, veiled in black, departed the funeral of her late fiance Joren in an open coach. It was a fine day despite the grim business of the morning, and she relished the sunshine as an antidote to her sadness. A small wicker tray was laden with letters addressed to her, no doubt condolences from her friends and relations.
'Lady,' said the coachman, 'I hope you don't think it forward of me, but we'll be passing near Bowline Square.'
'So?'
'The monster bear that slew Master Joren is on display there,' he replied. 'The city watch gave the carcass to the Ropemakers Guild in recognition of their catching the beast.'
'Why should I want to see it?'
He tugged his forelock respectfully. 'I thought it might do you good to see the culprit's fate, lady.'
Riliana knew her coachman was curious to see the enormous bear everyone in Argivia was talking about. It brought no pleasure to her heart to think the carcass of the poor mad beast was on display, but the coachman would be more careful and appreciative if she indulged him, so she allowed him to detour to Bowline Square.
With an elegant ivory letter opener, Riliana broke seal after seal on the letters in the tray. Each was full of the usual platitudes and the empty rhetoric of regret. After three in a row that essentially said the same thing, she set the rest aside unopened. One letter remained.
'My dearest love,' it began. Who wrote this? She turned the page over and saw Edgur's copper-engraved signet. A flush came to her face. 'This will be a difficult day for you-'
'Whoa,' called the coachman, drawing hard on the reins. The carriage stopped. The crowd was very large and surprisingly orderly. They couldn't drive any closer than the edge of the square. The coachman stood on his seat, trying to see the infamous man-killing bear.
'I see something hanging from the gibbet,' he said, shading his eyes, 'but it doesn't look like a bear. '
'It's not a bear, ' said an old woman at the edge of the crowd. 'Haven't you heard? When the sun came up this morning, the watch found a dead man hanging in place of the bear. He has all the wounds the bear had, they say. '
'A man?' Riliana said. She stepped down from the coach. Overnight she had accepted the verdict that her fiance had been slain by a wild animal. There was talk the bear had come ashore from the harbor, searching for fish. Grizzlies were powerful swimmers. Now they were telling her a man killed Joren?
'Let her through!' said the coachman as Riliana walked forward like a somnambulist. 'Her husband-to-be was killed last night by the bear!'
Murmuring, the crowd slowly parted for the mourning girl. She was aware of a blur of faces beyond her veil, of softly expressed condolences and bluntly curious stares. Riliana walked on, indifferent to the closely packed people around her.
The timber frame erected to display the dead bear was a good seven feet tall. Stout ropes were looped over the top timber, and the grizzly had been hoisted up to a standing position by ropes tied under its front legs. Riliana drew off her heavy veil. The old lady was correct- the bear was gone. In its place was the naked corpse of a man, a man she knew well: Edgur the coppersmith.
A Song Out of Darkness
Already muted by cloud cover, little direct light penetrated the bayou's thick canopy. It fell in thin, lackluster beams that threw shadows and gleamed dully off black and brackish waters. Tendrils of land reached into the darkness, thin bridges that connected small hillocks and some larger spans of wet ground. The mournful cry of a marsh ibis caught in a caster's web rolled through the bayou.
Temken paused, feeling eyes upon him, and rested his leather satchel on the marshy ground next to his feet. His sharp eyes penetrated the bayou's gloom, nostrils tested the cool, dank air, searching. No movement, but for a chill draft stirring among the tall grasses and the gray moss that cascaded from overhead limbs into stagnant pools of water. No tree shapings or signs of organized care for the land. No scent of cookfires or the flower-scented paths commonly marked out by warriors and scouts.
No sign of other elves.
Still, the land called to him. Beneath its own pain and suffering it whispered a promise that he walked the right path. Here, close by, he would find others-Survivors- those he had come to gather. The corrupt pallor draping this land cloaked them from view. Temken reached out as the dreams had instructed, feeling for the power inherent
