The gorget-wearer called out, “Chief! Come out! We caught us something!”
The chief came out. He was the tallest man Mathi had ever seen, nearly seven feet tall. He was darkly tanned, but in the torchlight his eyes were slate gray. His head was shaved except for a single long lock on the back of his head, which he wore thickly braided and pulled forward over his shoulder.
“What’s this?” His voice was as big as his frame.
“We found these elder kind hiding in the bushes,” said the man called Vollman. “She speaks our tongue good.”
“Oh?” said the giant, advancing a step until he towered over Mathi. “I never met a big-ears who could speak our language well. Maybe you’ve spent some time around people, yes?”
Mathi didn’t answer. She wasn’t being sullen or stalwart; she was just scared. The chief took her silence for resistance. He backhanded Mathi so hard that she fell backward into the arms of the surrounding nomads. Laughing, they boosted her back on her feet. Mathi tasted blood.
“Where do you come from?” the chief bellowed at Treskan. His mumbled “Silvanost” was the wrong answer.
“Spying on us, yes? How many elder kind have we seen on our journey, Nurna?”
A muscular young nomad said, “Three, four, chief. Always on hilltops far away, watching us.”
“Collecting news for their king, yes?” To the men holding the captives, he barked, “Search them!”
They did with brutal thoroughness. Her gown was torn in several places. She did not scream, and the violation did not go any further. They found the secret mark of the brethren under her right arm. The blue tattoo surprised the nomads. They had never seen an elf with marks before. There was some excitement when they found Treskan’s stylus-it was metal and nicely turned-and the talisman Rufe had taken and Mathi had returned. The jeweled gold ornament got everyone’s attention.
Vollman claimed the talisman against the loss of his two deerhounds. There were a few protests, but the lofty chief awarded the trinket to Vollman. Mathi had nothing of the tiniest value on her: a few scraps of parchment purloined from Treskan, some charred wood to write with, a few beads, and a wooden amulet carved in the image of Quenesti Pah, part of her disguise as a former resident of the Haven of the Lost.
The chief examined the small harvest taken from the prisoners. Aside from Treskan’s talisman, there was nothing very rich or revealing about any of it.
To Mathi he said in passable Elvish, “Is this all you got?”
“I am just a poor traveler,” Mathi replied in the same language.
The chief threw the trinkets on the ground. “They know more than they’re telling. Tie them to the cage.”
They dragged them to the roofed-in box in the center of the camp they’d seen earlier, the one made of lashed-together saplings. Mathi was shoved face-first against the rails. Her wrists and ankles were tied with thongs. Treskan was slammed into place beside her.
From within the dark cage, a pair of eyes met hers. Mathi could not tell whom she was seeing, but she heard a whisper say, “Tell them what they want to know. They’ll lash you to death if you don’t.”
Nurna appeared with a rawhide whip. Mathi felt her knees give way. She had not bargained for such treatment. Where was Lofotan? How could he leave her to the savages?
Nurna nodded and two nomads tore the cloth from Mathi’s and Treskan’s backs. She clenched her eyes shut and braced herself for the sting of the lash. It didn’t come. Trembling, she opened her eyes. Twisting her head around, she saw Nurna and others speaking together with hushed urgency. One nomad ran off. Nurna came closer, coiling the whip in his hand.
“Too bad,” he said. “May the great gods pity you.”
Before she had the slightest understanding of what was happening, Mathi and Treskan were cut loose and thrown into the cage. They crouched on their knees-the roof was too low to allow her to stand-and watched in amazement as the nomads dispersed.
“Merciful gods,” he muttered. What stayed their hand? Mathi had no idea.
“You heard the man,” said their unseen companion. “They pity you.”
“Who’s there?” Mathi said sharply, drawing closer to Treskan.
“A brother.”
Their fellow prisoner crawled out of the shadows on his hands and knees. Treskan drew in a loud breath. The stranger’s hands and forearms were covered in short, stiff fur. Where a man or elf had nails, their companion had curving, yellow claws. His face emerged from the deeper darkness. Mathi must have stared too hard, for the creature halted his advance.
“Forgive me. As another mistake, I thought you one of us,” he said. His Elvish was excellent, and his accent urban. If an elf closed his eyes, he would think he was speaking to an articulate resident of Silvanost.
“I am one of you-one of us! Who are you?”
“Taius.” The name rhymed with
“I am Mathani Arborelinex. This is Treskan.”
Taius laughed or coughed. It was hard to tell through the fangs and fur. “He’s not what he seems either, is he?” Neither of them answered. Taius said, “You still use a Silvanesti name?”
“Why not? You do,” Mathi replied.
Taius withdrew into the shadows again. “I no longer claim Silvanesti as my race.” He chuckled, an unnervingly beastly sound. “Do you know your mother and father?”
“No, but I know my creator.”
Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “Say not the name.”
She tried to remember if they had ever met. The children of Vedvedsica’s art had been scattered, by design, all over the kingdom. Mathi lived in the western woodland, not far from the provincial town of Woodbec. Judging by his accent, Taius had dwelt in the city.
“But why did they spare us the lash?” Treskan said.
“When they tore open your clothes, they saw the truth.”
“Truth?”
It struck Mathi like a thunderbolt. Her elf form was her greatest advantage. Among all her brethren, she was chosen for the mission because her appearance was the most perfect. One by one, the others had begun reverting to their original beastly shapes. When she left the brethren’s hidden camp for Silvanost, she was outwardly as elflike as Balif or Artyrith. But the change was affecting her too. Her characteristic fur was slowly returning. The nomads saw she had elf features but with body hair. Treskan was in the same condition but for different reasons. His elf image was wearing thin in the wilderness. The nomads assumed the two of them were-
“Half-breeds,” said the voice.
Mathi was so relieved to escape the flogging that she didn’t care about her degeneration beginning. Being mistaken by the nomads for a half-elf was an unforeseen benefit. Hating and distrusting elves themselves, they had a certain sympathy for half-elves, who were despised by the Silvanesti and officially persecuted by them.
“What about him?” Taius said.
Treskan replied, “I am a scholar, trying to broaden my knowledge of the elves.”
“You’re a long way from a library.”
“You must help us escape!” she said urgently. “I am on an urgent mission for our brethren!”
Taius sprang at her, alighting scant inches from the crouching Mathi. Long teeth bared in a fierce snarl, his hot breath played on her face like flame.
“To the abyss with the brethren and all our kind!”
Mathi pushed her face closer until their noses almost touched. “I thought we are all kindred.”
“The brethren abandoned us in the city. So did the Creator. He gave us, his children, to the Silvanesti. They hunted us down like-” Had he intended to say
“So too our creator,” Mathi said.
“You lie! For his betrayal of his children, the Nameless One was spared!”
Mathi told Taius what she had been able to glean from Balif about Vedvedsica’s trial and condemnation. She went so far as to tell him about Balif’s voluntary exile from Silvanost on the pretext of scouting the eastern province for information about nonelf invaders. Though he had no knowledge of what Vedvedsica was doing, Balif
