“Yes, he is!” Kevin heard his own voice come out high and shrill, like the voice of a child begging for a happy ending.
“No,” the Dark Elf murmured, and then, in wild anguish, “Eliathanis, no!”
Even as Naitachal forced his horse forward, Kevin saw an arrow flash, saw Eliathanis fall. Heartsick, he watched the Dark Elf lean low over his horse’s neck, urging the animal to greater speed. Naitachal dropped the knotted reins on the horse’s neck, then bent out and down, catching the fallen elf and pulling him up across his saddle bow. As Kevin watched, breath caught in his throat, the Dark Elf came thundering back in a storm of arrows. To the bardling’s horror, he saw Naitachal suddenly seem to falter in the saddle..
He’s been hit, too! Dear Powers—
Almost directly before them, the Dark Elf’s horse went down. Naitachal fell free, Eliathanis in his arms.
Lydia was first to reach their side, kneeling in the mud, staring at the White Elf. Kevin heard her sharp inhalation and saw her face pale beneath its tan. “Naitachal, come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
The Dark Elf glared up at her. “We can’t leave Eliathanis!”
“We must”
“No!”
“Naitachal, look at him.” Her voice quivered with pity. “Look. More than one arrow caught him. He’s dead, Naitachal. Eliathanis is dead. He must have died almost instantly.”
The Dark Elf was too well acquainted with death to deny its presence now. “Damn them.” It was so low a growl Kevin almost didn’t hear it “Ann, damn them!”
Very carefully, Naitachal let Eliathanis’ body sag to the ground, then looked up. And for once his eyes were the terrible, cruel, empty eyes of a true Dark Elf. “If they want death,” he murmured, “then death they shall have.”
“Oh, don’t!” the bardling cried in sudden panic, terrified that they were about to lose Naitachal forever Bo Darkness, terrified of what evil he might release.
But the elf was already on his feet, striding boldly forward into the open. Heedless of the arrows raining about him, he called out harsh, ugly, commanding Words, catching the storm winds, twisting them to his use, heightening them. focusing them, turning them to a savage, terrible frenzy. The attacking army was swept back by the whirlwind, horses screaming, men shouting as they were hurled off their feet. And still the wind’s fury grew until—
“No! Naitachal, stop it!” Struggling beneath the weight of wind tearing at him, whipping the hair painfully into his face, dragging the very air from his lungs, Kevin fought his way to Naitachal’s side. “You’ve got to stop this!”
The Dark Elf’s eyes were blazing with sorcerous Power, totally wild, totally without mercy. He showed not the slightest sign he’d heard Kevin.
“Naitachal, listen to me!” Kevin shouted with all his might to be heard above the roar of the storm. “Those men aren’t evil! They don’t have any choice in what they’re doing! Carlotta enslaved them!”
“They slew my friend.” The Dark Elf’s voice was inhumanly chill. “I shall slay them.”
“And me?” Kevin grabbed Naitachal’s arm, only to be flung aside as if he was weightless. Gasping, the bardling forced his way back to face the Dark Elf directly. “Are you going to kill me, too? Are you going to kill Lydia and Tich’ki? You will, if you don’t stop this storm. Do you want us to die? Well? D-dammit, answer me! Do you want to kill us?”
A glimmer of life flickered in the terrible eyes. “No,” Naitachal said, and all at once his voice was his own again, and infinitely weary. “No. Of course not.”
As he removed his will from them, the unnaturally fierce winds faded ... faded ... were gone. In the sudden stillness, Naitachal staggered, and Kevin cried out;
“You’re hurt!”
“Not badly. Not as badly as ... as ...”
“H-he can’t be hurt now,” Kevin said awkwardly. “But we can.” He put a tentative hand on Naitachal’s arm and when the Dark Elf didn’t push him away, began to pull Naitachal with him. “It’s going to take some time for the soldiers to regroup, but we’ve got to get into the forest’s shelter before they do.”
“Yes.” The Dark Elf’s voice was dull with exhaustion. But he stopped by Eliathanis’ body. “We cannot leave him here.”
Lydia tried to take Naitachal’s free arm, only to let go when he hissed with pain. “There’s no time to bury him,” she said gently. “We don’t have a choice.”
“Naitachal, come on!” Tich’ki added. “I don’t think Carlotta hung around to watch, but she could be anywhere! And her guys are going to come after us. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“We cannot leave him here! Not like this!”
“But what—”
“Stand back.” The Dark Elf’s eyes were wild with anguish. “Stand back, I say.”
So fierce was that command that Lydia and Kevin hurried aside, and even Tich’ki kept still. Naitachal began his harsh spell once more, but this time the bardling could have sworn some of the Words were different.
He was right. Lightning lanced down out of the stormy sky, enfolding Eliathanis’ body in blinding blue-white fire.
Naitachal gave a long, shaken sigh. “I don’t know the burial customs of his clan. But surely they would find no shame in a funeral pyre of sky-born flame.”
“Surely not,” the bardling murmured.
This time when Kevin hesitantly pulled at his arm, the Dark Elf went willingly.
This was not, Kevin mused wearily, the type of adventure of which the Bards sang. Oh, Carlotta wasn’t making any further move to stop them, at least there was that. For all the bardling knew, she had been blown aside by the whirlwind like her soldiers, or so exhausted by her magics she needed to rest But that hardly made matters easy. They had only two horses left, tired horses, one of them burdened with both Kevin and Naitachal. And as the animals forced their way into the dense underbrush of the forest, Lydia said suddenly:
“This isn’t working. We’ve got to let the horses go.”
“No!” Kevin protested.
“Yes. They can barely keep their feet as it is. And this is pretty dense forest: a horse can’t get through without leaving a trail any child could follow. Besides, we can hide better on foot.”
“But Naitachal’s too tired!”
“I can manage,” the Dark Elf muttered, slipping off his mount.
Reluctantly, Kevin followed. Lydia slapped the horses on their rumps, and the animals trotted wearily away. Watching them go, the bardling thought with a flash of wry humor:
It’s not fair! Heroes aren’t supposed to scuttle through the underbrush!
Yes, and by any rights at all, Naitachal’s sorceries should have torn the storm apart, too. Instead, the rain continued to pour unrelentingly down, and the stubbornly stormy sky turned the forest into a nearly night-black maze of roots and thorns, all of which seemed determined to trip up the intruders or tear their flesh.
“I’ll scout ahead,” Tich’ki said shortly. “I’m not night-blind like you humans.”
As she flew, though, she trailed behind her a steady stream of what Kevin assumed could only be curses in her native tongue: even though the thick curtain of leaves cut off the worst of the rain, her wings were plainly still sodden enough to hamper her flying.
“Come on,” she shot back. “No laggards,”
“Such a caring, gentle friend,” Lydia muttered.