“I am an elf,” she replied. “Unlike humans, I am not a slave to my emotions.”
He could not rea r tone or.-ter expression. r all the years that he had known her, it was still sometimes difficult to tell when she was joking and when she was serious. Elves had a rather peculiar sense of humor, different from that of humans, and he had never quite grown accustomed to it. Was she simply stating what she believed to be a fact, or was she directin a subtle barb at him?
“If you expect me to believe that,” he replied, “I’m a‘7 afraid you will be disappointed. I know you too well.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You think so?”
“No one can control her emotions all the time,” he said. “Not even you elves, for all your smug superiority. I have seen what you are like in battle. And I have also seen how you respond afterward, when you find out how many of your people fell. We are not so very different, after all. You only like to think we are.”
“I suspect it is you who likes to think we are more similar than our natures warrant,” she replied. “We are different, Aedan. And wishing otherwise won’t change that.”
She had spoken flatly, in a matter-of-fact tone, as was her manner.
However, Aedan thought he had detected a trace of wistfulness in her tone. He cho,t, not to pursue the subject.
Ahead of them, the emperor suddenly reined in, then leaned over to address Lord Korven, riding beside him at the head of the formation, some distance behind the scouts and the advance guar(l.
Aedan and Sylvanna reined in as well, then turned their mounts and rode off to the side, as had the, emperor and Lord Korven, so as not to halt the, troops coming up behind them.
“What is it, Sire?” Aedan asked as they rode up beside the emperor and his general.
“I don’t know,” Michael replied, frowning. “Look there, on that rise.”
He pointed.
At first, Aedan couldn’t make out what he was pointing at, but a moment later, he saw it. To their right, several hundred yards away, the land sloped up to form a rocky hogback ridge. The lower slopes of this ridge were shrouded with a thick fog, with here and there some of the scrubby, twisted trees and sparse undergrowth showing through.
The upper portion of the ridge was devoid of trees or growth of any kind and rose up from the fog like rocks protruding from the sea.
There was something moving along that ridge, paralleling the course of the army.
Aedan stared intently, trying to make out what it was. The shape that moved across the ridge was black as pitch and amorphous. From this distance, it was difficult to gauge its size with any accuracy. It seemed to flow, undulating in a peculiar way, extruding projections that seemed almost like legs, but did not quite hold their shape.
Aedan counted four of them. It was as if an inky black cloud were cantering across the ridge, thought Aedan, though of course that was impossible. Or was it? In the perpettial twilight of the Shadow World, there was much that was different from the world of daylight.
Was this some sort of strange creature they had not previously encountered? And if so, what was it?
Aedan recalled how, as a boy, he had watched (clouds roll across the sky and had searched for shapes within them. If he looked at them long enough, some would appear to take on the shapes of animals, or faces, or birds. So too, he now watched this bizarre apparition and began to see an approximation of a form. The four leglike extrusions that flowed from its main body seemed like a horse’s legs, and after a moment, he began to see the rough shape of a horse’s head, even a mane, which streamed like dark and misty tendrils from the horse’s neck.
And the lower part of the strange black cloud looked rather like the horse’s body, while the upper part
seemed to take on the appearance of a rider with a cloak streaming out behind him.
“It looks like a small storm cloud,” Korven said, and then echoing Aedan’s thoughts, he added, “and the way the wind is blowing it across that ridge, it almost resembles a mounted knight.”
“I feel no wind,” said Michael with a frown.
“That’s because we are below it,” Korven said, t, then shrugged. “It is nothing. Just a cloud, that’s all.”
“That is no ordinary cloud,” said Aedan. “It looks too small. And there is no wind propelling it. Look closely, my lord. It moves as if of its own accord.”
“Nonsense,” Korven said. “With all due respect, Lord Aedan, you are allowing your imagination to run away with you.”
And as they watched, the cloud suddenly stopped, directly opposite them on the ridge.
“Nonsense?” asked Aedan tensely. “Look again. If the wind has ceased to blow it, why does it not drift?
It’s stopped. And now it’s watching us.”
Up on the ridge, the shape of the black cloud shifted. It seemed to solidify before their eyes, and it unquestionably took on the distinct form of a horse and rider, except the two seemed to be one form.
“That is no cloud,” said Michael. He turned to young Viscount Ghieste.
“Davan, ride ahead and bring me Futhark.”
Young Ghieste set spurs to his mount and galloped off, returning shortly with the halfling guide seated on his horse behind him.
“You summoned me, my lord?” asked Futhark.
Michael nodded and pointed to the ridge. “Look there,” he said. “See that dark form on the ridge?”
The halfling looked, then paled, and his eyes grew wide as he beheld the shadowy form. “May all the gods protect us!” he said.
“What is it, Futhark?” asked Sylvanna.
“Doom, my lady,”
