had provided help to the magician. After Vedvedsica’s fall, Balif offered to take full blame for the scandal, but Silvanos would not allow it. How could he tarnish the name of Silvanesti’s greatest hero with such horrible pollution?
“Balif? The general is here?”
“He is near.” Because Taius was so unstable, Mathi decided to not disclose her mission to him. At that time the fewer who knew, the better.
“I bless the name Balif,” he said, despairing, to Mathi’s astonishment.
“What is your story, Taius?” Treskan asked. “I am in General Balif’s employ, but I did not join him until after the trial of-of the Nameless. Who are you, and how came you to be here?”
The beast-elf relaxed his threatening posture. He had actually served in Balif’s guard during the Forest War. In those days his beastly traits were hidden by Vedvedsica’s magic. He thought he was an ordinary elf until the transformation spell worked by the magus began to fail. He tried to hide his condition as long as he could, but it soon became impossible to conceal. Dozens of others like him had mixed in Silvanesti society, serving as soldiers, scribes, artisans, and performers. Some had even married full-blooded elves and had offspring.
Mathi was shocked. Offspring of the brethren and elves? She had not heard that before. Did Silvanos know? Did the Sinthal-Elish, the assembly of great nobles, know?
“They know. And they will never speak of it. It is their greatest shame,” Taius said.
There was a dimension Mathi had not suspected. What great families were mingled with the blood of the beast-elves?
Treskan said, “How did the nomads take you?”
Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “I had just brought down a kill, a yearling doe, when their dogs caught my scent. I couldn’t shake them off, so I turned to fight. I was netted like a partridge. When the humans saw what they had caught, they put me in here.”
With sudden violence, Taius leaped upward, grabbing the cage roof with his hands and feet. He shook the willow lattice and roared. The bars held. From a distance, they heard laughter and taunts from their captors.
He dropped lightly to the ground and retreated to the darkest corner of the cage.
“I wonder why they put us together?” Mathi wondered aloud.
“The centaurs they’ve taken are tied in an open pen. The freaks they cage.”
Taius would not speak anymore. Wary of their mercurial fellow prisoner, Mathi and Treskan moved to the opposite end of the cage, where firelight made a dim haven from the darkness.
She dozed. She could not rest. Every sound teased her awake. Passing nomads coughed, hacked up phlegm, or talked loudly, and each disturbance jolted Mathi awake. Treskan sat slumped against the bars, asleep or brooding. Taius was absolutely silent.
Time passed. She didn’t know how much. In the small hours, something hard thumped against the back of her head. She thought a nomad was amusing himself, flinging stones at the half-breed. When the blow was repeated, she turned angrily to insult her abuser.
No one was there.
Daybreak was closer than sunset. Most of the nomads were asleep in their tents. She could see random hands or feet poking out of open tent flaps. The campfires had burned down to embers. Now and then an alert human loped into view with a polearm on his shoulder.
After a watchman passed, another stone came whirling out of the night. Mathi saw it come from the deep shadows between two tents. It was a round, water-washed pebble tumbling end over end, and it struck her square on the forehead.
Like a ghost, a lean figure bereft of color slowly emerged from the tents. It took Mathi a moment to realize it was Lofotan, wearing a long, gray cloak that reached his knees. He moved with all the grace of his race, sidling up to the cage with such calm that not even his breath could be heard.
Starlight gleamed on a length of sharp bronze. Two strokes, and the hide lacing holding the cage closed was gone. Then, without a word or gesture, Lofotan wafted back to the black gap he came from.
Mathi shook Treskan. He started, fists clenched, ready to fight. Mathi hissed at him to be quiet. She stood, head and shoulders bent down by the low top.
“Up,” she whispered. Treskan obeyed.
They braced their shoulders against the bars and pushed. The green wood lattice shifted. Treskan got his arm out and used it to push against the cage frame. They heaved again, shifting the cage top far enough to one side to allow them to climb out.
In a flash Taius was beside them. Treskan almost cried out in alarm when he felt his furry flanks brush against him. In one fluid movement, Taius was out and on the ground, crouched on all fours. He looked back at Mathi and the scribe, staring with amazement from inside the cage. Fangs flashed in a grimace-or smile? — and the beast melted into the night.
With far greater deliberation, Treskan and Mathi climbed out. They tugged the cage top back into place and hurried away, making for the spot where Mathi saw Lofotan vanish. Not two steps into the shadows, she felt a slim, hard hand clamp over her mouth.
“You took your time!” he murmured in the girl’s ear.
After he removed his hand, Mathi hissed back, “My thought exactly!”
“It was not my plan to attack thousands by myself. Come.”
Lofotan led them through a maze of tents populated by snoring, snorting nomads. They hid once or twice from prowling sentries then slipped through the palisade to freedom. On open ground, Lofotan broke into a run. Mathi and Treskan were not fleet enough to keep up with an elf of Lofotan’s size. Stumbling, Treskan pleaded to Lofotan to slacken his pace.
“Do you want to linger near their camp? Their dogs may pick up our scent again.”
With Taius free she doubted that. He smelled too strongly of beast. Given a choice, the hounds would chase him and not a human or a near-elf such as Mathi. Still, Lofotan’s point was well made. Speed would put more safe ground between them and the nomads. She jogged after the spry warrior.
Back in the myrtle thicket, they found Balif awake, still chained to the tree. Rufe slept soundly a few feet away.
The general greeted him courteously.
“My lord, you seem … yourself.”
“So I am. I cannot explain it.” Even shackled, the elf was extraordinarily poised. “You’ve had quite an adventure tonight.”
Ruefully Mathi agreed. She related her experiences in the nomad camp, leaving out their exposure as half- breeds. Treskan let her do all the talking.
“They didn’t question any more closely than that?” said Balif.
“No, my lord.”
She described the cage and her fellow captive. “This Taius claimed he had served under you in the Forest War,” Mathi said.
“I remember a warrior named Taius. A very brave soldier of noble countenance.” His countenance was no longer so noble, but he was civilized enough not to attack Mathi on sight.
Then, not knowing exactly why she did so, she related to Balif the story of Taius’s true nature. The general listened calmly.
“He’s not as far along as some others,” Balif said. Sooner or later the transformed beasts always reverted to their animal origins, Balif said. Vedvedsica’s spell, though powerful, could not overcome nature forever.
Taius retained a fading veneer of civilization, the general continued. If he lived long enough, he would forget everything and be nothing but a beast. The worst creatures were the ones who had almost forgotten their elf lives. They were beasts in every way, but their minds still held memories of their former lives. Because of that they were filled with rage over their situation.
Vedvedsica had exploited that rage, Mathi knew, by urging them to find and kill Balif.
Lofotan appeared. He looked haggard but alert. “We should move,” he said. “By daylight we shall be too exposed here.”
Balif agreed. Lofotan had packed the baggage onto the horses while Mathi and Treskan were captive. All they had to do was release Balif, rouse the kender, and go.
