Launching herself from the branch, she flew through the forest to a tree that lay in the general direction the men were traveling-north-then landed and strained her ears and eyes. So intent was she on watching for the men to reappear that she only realized something had landed beside her when she felt it brush against her. She turned, expecting Goldheart, but saw Leifander instead. She glanced up and saw the tressym circling anxiously overhead.
Though the soldiers were still too far away to hear him, Leifander’s croaking was low, the equivalent of a whisper. The goddesses’ blessing must still have been upon Larajin, for she heard what he said as plainly as if he’d spoken in Common-“Sembians?”-as well as the tightly controlled anger in his voice.
“It’s Tal’s company,” she answered.
Leifander cocked his head as the riders came into sight again, watching. This time, the men below kept silent. More than one was looking around, as if fearful of attack. One of them looked up, and both Leifander and Larajin instinctively froze.
Leifander waited until the riders had disappeared from sight before speaking again.
“Your half-brother is not with them.”
“No,” Larajin admitted, “but Goldheart said Tal was coming this way.”
“What of it?”
“If I can find Tal, I can warn him that the elves-”
“That the elves what?” Leifander cawed angrily. “Have windriders guarding the forest ahead? I think not!”
Frustrated, Larajin dug her claws into the branch. She had no idea what Leifander was talking about, but his accusatory tone galled her.
“We’re on the same side now, remember?” she cawed back. “We’re trying to stop this war.”
“By betraying the elves’ secrets?” Leifander asked hotly. “How human of you.”
“And what of when we reach the druids?” Larajin hissed back. “Will you betray the movements of the men below and get my brother killed?”
Her words had been plain enough, but Leifander was giving her a blank look, his head cocked and his glossy black eyes unblinking. Then Larajin realized why. For some reason, her last few words had come out in the form of a tressym’s angry yowl. Before she had time to wonder why this might be, Leifander launched himself into the air. Larajin, still angry, hurled herself after him, wings beating furiously.
They chased each other through the sky for several moments, he furiously cawing and she howling like a cat.
The trembling looseness that she’d felt earlier returned. Realizing that she had to land-and soon, before her spell wore off-Larajin searched the forest below. She briefly debated trying to find the Sembian riders again, then decided against it. Master Ferrick would recognize her, but his men might not-and Larajin didn’t relish the thought of dying at the edge of a “friendly” sword after startling them in the darkness.
Rauthauvyr’s Road was an equally unappealing place to land-it was too open, too exposed-but she had to make up her mind quickly. Each wing beat was an effort, and the treetops below loomed ever closer.
She tried to get Leifander’s attention, but he seemed unwilling to recognize her plight. Instead it was Goldheart who aided her. The tressym circled above what appeared to be a small opening in the forest. As Larajin drew nearer, she saw it was the circular rooftop of a slender stone tower. It looked long abandoned. The wrought-iron rail that surrounded the top of the tower was rusted and bent, and ivy grew thickly on its stonework, disappearing inside broken windows.
The tower itself, however, looked solid enough, its timbered roof still intact. Larajin felt her limbs lengthening and changing shape, and she realized it was her only option if she didn’t want to fall headlong from the sky.
She was just able to land on the mossy rooftop before her magic left her, returning her with a wrenching jolt to human form. Rising to her feet, Larajin searched the sky for Leifander and Goldheart.
Leifander was a rapidly disappearing dot in the distance, winging his way north. Goldheart however, had remained close by. Larajin waved to her, and as the tressym descended to where she stood, quickly repeated the prayer that would allow them to communicate.
“Goldheart, I need to pray-to regrow my wings,” she told the tressym. “While I do that, I need you to follow Leifander. See where he goes, then come back and find me. Tell me where he lands.”
Goldheart nodded her head in agreement, then growled low in her throat as she sniffed the wind. Her tail fluffed to twice its size.
“Be watchful,” she hissed softly. “He comes.”
Larajin withdrew her hand in alarm. “Who? Is it Tal who…?”
Before she could complete her question, Goldheart launched herself into the air. She winged away through the night, following Leifander.
A chill breeze whispered through the treetops, making Larajin shiver. Above her, the cold orb of the moon beamed down, throwing a dark puddle of shadow at her feet. Feeling exposed, she wondered for a moment if she shouldn’t try to climb down inside the tower and find a more secluded place to pray. The tower was tall and thin, no more than a few paces wide. The decorative leaf pattern of its rusted railings hinted at elven construction, and Larajin wondered if the tower had been built back in the days when Gold elves ruled Cormanthor.
Remembering Goldheart’s warning to be watchful, she crossed to a darker patch of shadow that was an open trapdoor hanging from one rusted hinge. She kneeled beside it to peer down into the tower. As she’d expected, it was hollow, with a single metal staircase spiraling down the inner walls to ground level, more than a hundred paces below.
The inside of the tower was choked with spiderwebs that glinted silver-white in the moonlight. Larajin jerked back in alarm as a fist-sized spider scuttled across one of the strands of silk, a few paces below her. She forced herself to take another look, to make sure there weren’t larger spiders moving around down there. After a moment, she sighed with relief-there weren’t.
The staircase, she saw, was no longer whole. It ended at a distance of about five paces up from the floor. It was as if the bottom of it had been torn from its moorings by an invisible hand. Frayed bits of metal littered the stone floor.
There was no way Larajin could have descended that twisted mess, even if she’d wanted to brave the spiders. If it was indeed Tal whom Goldheart had said was coming to this lonely spot, she’d have to fly down to meet him.
Just as she was about to sit down and begin the prayer that would return her to tressym form, another movement in the tower below caught her eye. At first Larajin thought she was looking at a pair of spiders, but after a moment she realized they were dark hands, reaching out of a hole in the ground. With a growing sense of dread she watched as the hands grasped a piece of the broken staircase and pushed it aside, widening the hole.
Larajin watched, transfixed, as a woman with glossy black skin climbed from the hole. The woman’s slender build, pointed ears, and bone-white hair marked her as one of the dark elves-the drow. As she climbed from the hole, a spider dropped onto her shoulder from above. She reached up and stroked it like a pet.
As the drow glanced around, Larajin drew quickly back from the broken trapdoor. Heart pounding, she crouched against the rooftop of the tower, not daring to move. Listening, she could hear what sounded like more drow climbing out of the hole, then a flurry of conversation, spoken in a language that reminded her of the chittering of spiders.
How many drow were down there? Larajin didn’t want to risk a look. Two or twenty, it really didn’t matter. Larajin had no first-hand knowledge of the drow, but the books she’d read described the underworld elves as a cruel and cunning race, even deadlier than the poisonous spiders they worshiped. The drow were said to hate all races that walked in sunlight with equal vigor-humans and their elf cousins alike. Those they killed outright were the lucky ones. The rest were fed to the spiders. Bound tightly in their webs, these unfortunates faced a slow, gruesome death.