farewell, an exchange of information, psychic healing? Because they were in trouble, obviously. The drow had caught them in a spider s web. They had come out from the dark woods, and out from the shadow of the wall, and had spread into the fields at either side.
Marabaldia looked up. Friends, she said, let us prepare to do our duty here. And if the day should go against us, let our final consolation be that we have borne ourselves according to the highest standards of our character. A bold death is a treasure that cannot be bought or sold. As for myself Poke, you, and Suka, and you, Borgol I will always be grateful
Suka thought: What, cyclopses have names? And in this case always looked to be about seven minutes. The drow weren t wasting their arrows, but moved steadily toward them along each of the four roads and also through the dried brambles of the fields. Nevertheless she found herself inspired almost against her will, as she unhooked the crossbow from her back and wound it up. She risked a smile at the cyclops, who was crouched so low his head was scarcely a foot higher than her own Borgol, are you kidding me? What kind of a stupid name was that?
How s it going? she muttered, planting her back foot and taking aim at one of the drow captains who sauntered insolently up the road, the last of the light in her white hair. Oh, well. At least she didn t have to make any decisions. And Marabaldia had saved her life back in the prison. Suka owed her something, whatever little she had.
The cyclops had a big face, heavy and massive as if hacked from wood, but not unpleasant, his big lips and brows. And he spoke in a low voice, a rhythmic chanting in a language she didn t think she recognized, until she did. As the shadows darkened, she found it speaking to her from the depths of forgotten memory, a prayer out of the Underdark, in the first language of the fey.
Then she heard screaming in the harsh voices of the drow. A stroke of light split the darkness north of them, toward the wood, and the dark elves scattered from the road. Horsemen were there, a troop of horsemen. But Suka saw the captain on the west road raise her black sword, and she shot at her and missed, hitting another behind her shoulder. Then the drow were on them, and it was hard for them to use their bows in such close quarters. Suka had her knife out, and she stabbed a fellow through his black leather armor into his belly, and felt the blood slide over her hand. The horsemen were around them, driving the drow back, and a man reached down and grabbed her by the back of her leather shirt, and lifted her over the saddle bow she couldn t tell what kind of man he was. Someone held onto her foot, and she kicked away hard, while at the same time she watched Poke clamber up onto an enormous Cambro draft horse, twenty hands high now that s something you don t see every day, she thought, a pig riding a horse, and not doing it well, which was a relief. Suka wasn t much of a rider herself.
But Borgol was dead. He had stood up to protect his mistress from the arrows, and had taken two in the chest. The light behind his eye flickered and went out. Marabaldia lowered him to the ground. The horsemen raged around them, keeping the drow at bay, but only for a time because their numbers were so great. Marabaldia stood over him, and it was only when he was gone that she stepped up into the stirrup and swung her leg over the great horse, who quailed under her weight. She pulled her dress up around her thighs and shook her bridle free; she knew how to ride. She held the iron bar above her head. And with her hair flowing in the wind she kicked her horse up the road toward the black trees.
Suka had already reached them. The boughs hung close overhead. Feeling her indignity, she squirmed around onto her back, so that she could see her rescuer, a human being by the look of him, black-bearded, dressed in chain mail and wearing a steel cap. He had an axe in one hand, and with the other he held onto the collar of her shirt. The horse galloped with no need of direction, a beautiful flaxen-haired creature who now broke away from the dirt road under the trees, following the others through the sylvan glades, between the cedar trees, up the slope into the hills. Sharp small branches whipped at Suka s legs as they passed, and whipped at her arms.
But they didn t go far. Suka reckoned they were scarcely more than a mile into the trees when the horse paused at the crest of a low ridge, then walked his horse downhill into a bowl-shaped dell where a fire already burned. Not a bonfire, but instead a soft, cool radiance that rose up as if from a hole in the ground. Other riders had dismounted, and the Northlander pirate for that was what he was released his hold on the back of Suka s shirt, and she scrambled down.
As was her habit, she tried to salve with bellicosity her injured pride. Swearing and muttering, she put herself in order, pulling her clothes down over her stomach, running her fingers through her hair, dusting herself off, taking inventory she had lost her crossbow but retained her knife and several other small weapons. And when her rescuer climbed down out of his saddle and busied himself with his horse, checking her for wounds, rubbing her neck, murmuring appreciation, Suka accosted him, not with recriminations, which would have been absurd, since he had saved her life, but with complaints:
Are we safe here? They ll have us surrounded in half an hour. They can see the glow, et cetera, et cetera, until the Northlander held up his hand.
Peace, said someone else, still on horseback.
They won t come here. And when she turned her rage on him, he explained: This is a fierce wood since the Spellplague and the fall of Caer Corwell a wild wood. Two hundred years ago the Kendricks ripped these groves up by the roots, but they ve grown back. The dark elves won t risk it. Not on foot.
This wasn t quite the reassurance Suka had been looking for. The rider must have seen a question in her face. We ll be all right, he grunted. This is a haven for my kind, but we won t stay past dawn.
He raised the visor of his cap, and Suka saw with surprise that he was an eladrin, with sharp, feminine features and bright eyes that seemed to pick up a reflected radiance from the fire. He took off his cap, revealing his gray and yellow hair, which he shook free around his face. He was dressed in the scaled armor of his kind, skillfully worked and decorated with damasked lines of gold.
Marabaldia, whose horse was slower and more heavily burdened, now appeared at the top of the slope.
Princess, said the eladrin, making a gesture with his arm, I am honored to welcome you. I see the reports of your beauty are justified, and if anything fail to express the truth. I did not expect, though, such courage and such grace all of which seemed a little much to Suka, a little over the top, since, personal virtues aside, Marabaldia was nine feet tall if she was an inch, with purple skin, straw-colored hair, and widely mismatched eyes. But maybe there was something about the magic light in the little dell, because as the giantess swung her leg over her horse s rump and stepped down from the stirrup the great draft horse, meanwhile, seemed suddenly buoyant, suddenly inflated because of the reduced weight Suka was able to imagine what the eladrin was talking about. In the kind radiance the giantess s features seemed less bloated and grotesque, and her voice, always her best quality, sounded positively angelic when she said, Captain, I will not forget what you and your brave men have done tonight. You have my thanks. You know my name and some of my history, but I confess that I am ignorant of yours. And I wonder, do you have something else for me to wear?
The light, also, was kind to the blue dress, which, though tattered and ripped, Suka now confirmed to be of costly fabric, some type of iridescent velvet, with a woven pattern that had been invisible before.
In the Common tongue, said the eladrin, my name is Mindarion, warden of Synnoria, and I am at your service. This is my friend and companion, Captain Rurik of Winterglen.
Other soldiers milled around, both eladrin and Northlanders. Poke s horse had arrived with the last stragglers, and she needed help in her dismount. She rolled out of the saddle and sprawled heavily onto the ground. Her own clothes, which she d taken from the Ffolk guards in Corwell prison, had scarcely survived her transformation and return to human shape, but someone had thrown a cloak over her, which she had wrapped around her body. Aghast, Suka looked into her face, examining the mixture of human and porcine features, and at the same time she was thinking how astonishing it was to hear an eladrin of high rank identify a man as his friend what did the word mean to him? To both of them? And in this new world of possibilities, was it conceivable that her own friends and companions were a fomorian princess and a lycanthrope? She felt lightheaded, sick.
And yes, continued Mindarion. I believe we can find some more suitable clothes.
The horses had been drawn away to the other side of the fire. Suka noticed that no one was attempting to strip them of their saddles or bridles, and she drew a small conclusion as she turned to face the Northlander, a famous man, after all, and the reason she had come to Gwynneth Island in the Sphinx, with Aldon Kendrick and the others, carrying an important letter (yeah, right) from King Derid. I have a message for you, she said.
He raised his big eyebrows.
The message is she coughed into her hand portentously that the leShay can kiss my scrawny ass.
She watched him laugh. Some of his teeth were false, made of steel, and a livid scar ran over his lips and down into his beard.
