Larajin-who didn’t seem to find it unusual to be addressed by her half-sister’s name-gave him a date from the human calendar.
“By the gods … that long?” Dray said in a whisper. “I’ve been asleep for more than a tenday, then.”
He rose to his feet unsteadily, like an invalid climbing from bed. Larajin reached out to help him, careful not to jostle his injured arm.
“Can I heal that for you?” she asked.
Dray nodded eagerly. “Please. If you could.”
Larajin placed her hands gently above the makeshift dressing and whispered a quick prayer. A glow spread from her fingers into his arm, and Dray breathed a deep sigh of relief. Gingerly at first-then with increasing confidence-he unwrapped the dressing. The skin underneath was puckered but whole. He wiggled the fingers of his left hand. Thanks to Larajin’s magic, the broken finger had straightened, and the swelling was gone. Flexing it, he smiled.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
Larajin gestured east.
“Back to Rauthauvyr’s Road? “Dray asked. “Can I travel at least that far with you?”
“Not unless you can fly,” Leifander said bluntly.
“We’re using magic,” Larajin explained. “We’d soon leave you behind.”
“Ah,” Dray said. He glanced at the trail, looking uncomfortable. “Perhaps I should try to reach Ashabenford, then,” he said nervously. Then he added, “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to accompany me?”
“We haven’t time,” Larajin told him. “We’re trying to find someone. We believe she’s to the east, deeper in the woods. She-”
Thankfully, Larajin caught Leifander’s curt head shake, and changed the subject.
“How did you escape the ambush?” she asked Dray. “I thought the elves had killed you.”
Dray glanced nervously at Leifander and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Is he one of them?”
“Yes,” Larajin answered, “and no. He’s a half-elf. He’s my … friend. You can trust him.”
Leifander gave this no comment. Instead he merely waited, arms folded, for Dray to tell them what had happened.
“Ah,” Dray said. He spoke to Larajin, but kept an eye on Leifander, heedful of his reaction. “My escape was a fortuitous one-and not at all due to my own merits, I’m ashamed to add. After I grabbed the sword, an arrow struck my arm. I thought I was going to faint from the pain, then suddenly everything was gone.”
Leifander frowned, and saw the same expression on Larajin’s face. “Gone?” he asked.
“I’d been transported to another spot in the woods,” Dray explained. “Magically-by Klarsh, as it turned out. It seems, having lost his chance at the, ah … spoils … he was trying to salvage something of value from the caravan: me.
“I had nothing to fight Klarsh with-I’d dropped the sword after the arrow struck my arm-and I knew he had powerful magic. I had no choice but to accompany him through the woods. I expected him to head for Essembra and on to Hillsfar, which was where that lout Enik had said the brigands would lie low with their loot. I was surprised when we went west, instead. When I asked Klarsh why, he said the north was hardly the neutral haven that Enik had expected. He said he didn’t want to be ‘conscripted,’ and that Enik had been a fool.”
“Conscripted?” Larajin echoed. “By whom? Have the cities of the Moonsea also declared war on the elves?”
Dray shrugged.
Leifander stared at the human, his patience wearing thin. When would the fellow get to the point? “How did you come to be digging up an elf grave?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the oak.
Dray paled and glanced imploringly at Larajin but continued when she urged him on with a nod.
“I didn’t want to do it. Klarsh forced me-with his magic. I was no more than a puppet, jerked by magic strings. It was terrible, being so helpless. The last thing I remember was grabbing one of the roots, to pull it free and suddenly feeling very tired. Then I woke up, here, with you.”
The story sounded reasonable to Leifander, but Larajin had one more question.
“Why didn’t Klarsh use a spell to move the earth aside, as he had before?”
Dray shrugged. “Maybe he thought it would attract too much attention. He thought there might be other elf patrols in the woods. Perhaps he just wanted to humiliate me by forcing me to do manual labor.”
“Or perhaps,” Larajin said, “Klarsh intended you to fall victim to the tree’s magical ward. As a wizard, he should have recognized the glyph on the tree for what it was. He’d probably decided to abandon his treasure hunt and ransom you instead. I’ll bet it was he who took your ring and earring, as proof that he held you captive. The sleeping spell made you easy to handle-and to store. I suppose he intended to leave you here in the woods, hanging on that tree, for your relatives to pick up after they had delivered the ransom.”
She glanced at the mist-scarred oak, then at the trail, and the four spider bodies that lay on it, and shuddered.
“You could have been killed by the mist, had it been just a little higher-or by spiders. You’re a lucky man, Dray.”
“Lucky to have met you, Thazienne,” Dray answered with a bow.
Leifander, aware that he might as well be invisible to the human, bristled. His magic had played an equal part in saving Dray’s life, and yet it went unacknowledged. It was not in his nature to boast his valor or to seek acknowledgement from a human. Even so, it rankled.
Larajin was oblivious to this slight. Instead she seemed troubled by something. She glanced at the ground, as if collecting her thoughts, then up at Dray.
“I’m not actually Thazienne,” she said. “I’m a … relative of hers. My name’s Larajin.”
Dray’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed? A relative, you say? You’re an Uskevren, then?”
“Yes, but my mother was from a … part of the family that’s not well known.”
“Ah,” Dray nodded sagely, as if this explained everything. “A dalliance, then.” He studied her a moment, his head tilted to one side. “You’re too young to be one of the illegitimate brats Roel was so fond of siring. Was your father Perivel, then? But no, he died when the first Stormweather Towers burned to the ground, years before you would have been born. That would leave …”
Leifander, growing impatient, supplied the answer. “Her father was Thamalon Uskevren,” he told Dray, ignoring Larajin’s frantic motions for silence. “I am also Thamalon’s son.”
Dray glanced at Leifander’s tattooed face, then burst into laughter. Only when Leifander glowered at him was he able to choke it back.
“Oh that’s a good one,” Dray sputtered at last. “I suppose you’ll be laying claim to the family fortune, then, like that fellow who pretended to be Thamalon’s long-lost brother. I heard about that-about the fake Perivel, and the magical chalice that proved him an imposter.”
Leifander dismissed this foolish notion with a curt flick of his fingers. Why did every human he confessed his parentage to assume he’d want to live in a crowded, stinking pile of stone like Selgaunt?
“I’m not interested in Sembian gold,” he told Dray.
“Perhaps not,” Dray agreed as his eyes slid sideways to Larajin, “but she is. Or to be more specific, she’s interested in Foxmantle gold.”
Dray turned to Larajin and nodded at her dagger. “The weapon with the Uskevren crest was a nice touch. It had me fooled. No wonder you were so keen on joining my caravan. You hoped to seduce me!”
Anger blazed in Larajin’s eyes. “Sedúcelou?” she echoed in an exasperated voice. “You were the one who practically proposed marriage. I never-”
Leifander, growing impatient, touched Larajin’s arm.
“This discussion is pointless,” he told her. “You’ve repaid this man by saving his life, but now time is wasting. Let’s shift and be off, before more spiders find us.”
Dray, obviously realizing that he was about to be left to make his own way home alone from the middle of the spider-infested woods, caught at Larajin’s arm.
“Larajin, please forgive me,” he begged. “I’m sorry to have insulted you. Please, won’t you at least loan me your dagger, so I at least have a fighting chance of getting home?”