she is likely to insist on going.'
Ilsevele shook her copper hair, met his eyes with her sharp gaze, and answered in Elvish, 'She came in her mother's place. I have a feeling about her, Araevin. I am willing to give the girl a chance, if you are.'
Araevin acceded. He returned his attention to Maresa, who had finished looking over the book. The genasi whispered the words of a seeing spell, and the spellbook began to glow with a soft azure radiance. She carefully studied the book again for a few moments, examining the spells that lay over it.
'All right, then,' Maresa said as she reached into a vest pocket in her doublet and retrieved a small leather folio, opening it on the table by the book. 'Your glyph will be damaged.'
'We will see,' said Ilsevele. 'Do what you need to, as long as you don't damage the book itself.' 'It's your book,' Maresa replied.
She found a small paper packet in the leather case and opened it, shaking out a purple-colored powder over the spellbook. Then she laid a thin piece of parchment over the powdered book. With a stick of charcoal she carefully colored the parchment, making a rubbing or etching of the spellbook's cover.
On the parchment, a string of mystic symbols appeared in her rubbing. No such symbols had been visible on the book's cover beforehand. Maresa left the parchment in place and fished a strange styluslike instrument from her case. Muttering the words of a counter charm, she picked out the symbols on her charcoal rubbing one by one and pressed each out with the stylus, changing it to a different symbol by erasing one stroke. Carefully she negated or altered each symbol in the arcane phrase, then straightened up and shook her flowing white hair. Araevin noticed that she still had not broken a sweat. With a smug smile, she removed the parchment, picked up the book and shook off her powder, and promptly opened it.
'Satisfied?' she asked.
'Damn. That was nicely done,' Grayth said. 'All right, so you're better than I thought.'
'You can come,' said Ilsevele. She took her spellbook back from Maresa with a rueful look. 'I suppose I need better runes to protect my book.'
Araevin set down his mug and looked up at Maresa.
'There is a little more to this than striking out spell traps,' he said. 'It's not wise to seek out dangerous places in the company of people you don't trust implicitly, and to put it plainly, you don't know us very well, nor do we know you.'
'You knew my mother, didn't you?' Maresa riposted.
'She carried your pendant until the day she died, elf. She would have answered your call, so I am here in her place.'
Neither Araevin nor Grayth replied. 'I thought so,' Maresa said. 'In that case, where are we going, and when do we leave?'
Gaerradh knelt easily in a well-disguised tree stand overlooking the village of Rheitheillaethor. The moon was hidden behind the overcast, leaving little more than a silver patch in the darkness overhead, but an elf's eyes needed little light. She could clearly make out the simple shelters and fieldstone storehouses on the ground below, with the gleaming patches of white snow lingering around the boles of the broad weirwoods and shadowtops sheltering the village.
Rheitheillaethor was home to nearly five hundred of the wood elves, but few of them lived in the buildings and shelters on the ground. Instead their homes were hidden high in the branches above the forest floor, a cunning arrangement of disguised platforms and narrow catwalks that was nearly invisible to anyone below. Even knowing they were there, Gaerradh had a hard time picking out other stands and platforms at any distance, but here and there she caught glimpses of resolute wood elf warriors crouching in stands like hers, waiting for the enemy to appear.
She shifted her position, craning her head for a better look. Her platform was near the center of the village, away from the pickets where she would have liked to be, and she was impatient to get a look at her foes. Three days before she had brought news of the breaking of Nar Kerymhoarth to the elders of Rheitheillaethor. The next day news had followed of orc bands on the move in the forest, accompanied by winged elves, cruel and proud, armed for war. Gaerradh had no idea who the elfkin might be, but the fact that they marched in the company of orcs spoke for their intentions. Wood elf scouts had shadowed the invaders since sunrise. There could be no doubt that they were coming to Rheitheillaethor.
'The waiting is not easy, is it?' whispered a voice behind her.
The Lady Morgwais, sometimes known as the Lady of the Wood, shared the large platform with her. She was beautiful and graceful, with long auburn hair and a copper-red complexion that made her seem half a dryad. She had asked Gaerradh to stay close by her in the large tree near the village's center, along with half a dozen more sharpshooters and mages. In better times their perch served as the hall of the village elders, the largest structure in Rheitheillaethor's canopy, but the wood elves had fitted new screens and camouflaging panels to make the hall into a hidden redoubt high above the forest floor.
Gaerradh did not take her eyes from the woodlands to the northeast.
'I don't like meeting them in the village, Lady Morgwais,' she replied. 'I do not mean to question your judgment, but I can't help but think we would be better off in the open forest, where we could ambush and melt away from pursuit. I fear being trapped.'
Morgwais frowned and said, 'I think you might have found these orcs and their bat-winged allies more difficult to ambush than you think. They have held to their course and kept on toward the village, despite our illusions, enchantments, and our scouts' efforts to decoy them away. I suspect that they have some skilled wizards among them, someone who can dispel our defenses and divine a path to our village.'
Gaerradh glanced around at that and said, 'If they are using magic to sniff us out, then maybe we shouldn't be here at all!'
'Rheitheillaethor is no more or less significant than any other place in the forest,' the noblewoman replied, 'but it's as good a place as any to try our enemies' strength. And it might not hurt to teach these new foes that searching out our homes and marching on them will not be as easy as they think.'
A soft owl's cry came from the night beyond the village, answered by another.
'They're here,' Gaerradh whispered.
Other elves nearby repeated the warning. Gaerradh crouched back down in her chosen spot and unlimbered her bow.
She heard the orcs before she saw them. The brutish creatures were holding their tongues, but their armor clinked and jingled softly, and their sandaled feet crunched and scuffled in the thin snow and leafy debris of the forest floor. She spied the leaders, a handful of scouts and skirmishers trotting warily before their fellows, crouching and stooping as they moved from cover to cover. Behind them came a ragged line of berserkers, the champions of the tribe-powerful warriors who disdained armor, wearing little other than broad leather belts and dirty breeches, huge axes gripped in their hairy hands. After the berserkers came long, dark files of orc warriors creeping through the shadows. It was a large warband, bigger than any raiding party Gaerradh had ever seen before.
They know enough to be wary of the trees, she thought, watching the gleam of their yellow eyes as they peered into the dark branches of the weirwoods, shields held high by their heads. But where are the others, the demons with elves' faces?
Almost directly below their tree, a pair of the scouts halted, looking up into the darkness. The rest of the orcs continued forward, but from below Gaerradh heard a wet snuffling sound.
They smell us, she realized.
She started to signal to Morgwais, but the Lady of the Wood simply said, 'Now.'
Five dozen wood elf archers fired as one, sending arrow after arrow plunging down into the orc company below. orcs screamed and bellowed, some roaring in rage, others gurgling out awful death cries as they spun or sagged into the snow. Gaerradh shifted her position and fired straight down the bole of her tree at the scouts below, taking the first one in the throat as he looked up at her, and the second high between the shoulders as he scrambled back looking for cover.
The first volleys were devastating, scything through the orc ranks with merciless efficiency. The elf archers above did not speak or shout, but bowstrings thrummed like harps and arrows hissed in the air like angry serpents. orc after orc fell, plucking at arrows buried in chests and necks. Others quickly covered down beneath their shields, forming turtle-like knots of a dozen or more warriors crowding together to make their shields into an
