Touching the locket at her wrist, Larajin began the prayers that would allow her to skinwalk away from there. As the locket began to glow, she cupped it tightly in her hand, wary lest the glow give her away. As she prayed, she tried to make sense of why Goldheart had led her there. Was Tal indeed headed this way? Was Larajin expected to use her magic to protect him from the drow below?
The voices stopped abruptly, causing Larajin to halt her prayer in mid-whisper. Had she been heard? The answer came a moment later, when another voice-lower than the others, and male-sounded from below. He was speaking the chittering drow tongue, but between sentences there came a familiar wheeze.
Larajin didn’t dare look down into the tower. Not with the moon so bright overhead. Instead she channeled the energy Sune had just blessed her with into the spell that allowed her to comprehend other languages. Her ears tingled briefly, and the words below became as clear as Common.
The drow speaking was female, and Larajin’s spell revealed her words in mid-sentence. “… thank you for that, Drakkar.”
Larajin let out a strangled gasp of alarm. Drakkar! She’d gone through so much to flee the man, and now here he was, in the great forest! In her panic, she missed Drakkar’s reply.
The drow who had spoken a moment before continued, “How much longer, then?” she asked.
“The war builds momentum, even as we speak,” Drakkar answered. “My master has gained the elves’ confidence and will make a show of fighting beside them for a tenday or two-just long enough to drive the humans back. Then, when victory seems assured, there will be a falling out over an incident that will appear to be a deliberate act of betrayal by the elves. His forces will withdraw then. Left to their own devices, the elves will lose the war, and the Sembians, their desire for revenge sated, will return home. The few elves that survive can easily be slain, and the great forest will be ours.”
As a chorus of voices chattered below-some asking why it would take so long, others congratulating Drakkar for his cunning-Larajin seized on that last word. Not ‘yours’ but ‘ours.’ She realized the wizard’s dirty little secret. He might look as human as Larajin did, but despite the absence of pointed ears and glowing red eyes, drow blood flowed in his veins. Now that she thought about it, Drakkar’s ink-black hair seemed too dark for a man of his age. It should have at least been streaked with gray. Its natural shade was probably pure white-something he would be careful to disguise with dye, so none would suspect his true heritage.
She understood why Goldheart had led her to the tower with the cryptic message, “He comes.” It had been Hanali Celanil, speaking through her favored creature, who had wanted Larajin to overhear this exchange and realize what the ultimate end of the war would be: not just death for her dear brother Tal, but the destruction of the elves of the great wood, and the invasion of the forest by drow.
There was only one piece of the puzzle missing. Who was this ‘master’ Drakkar had just spoken of? Larajin listened intently to the voices below, but heard nothing that would answer that question. The drow spoke greedily of how they would turn the forest into a dark haven for their kind, once the other elves-whom they snarlingly referred to as “sun-spit”-were slain. And woe betide any human who dared venture within the tree-shaded wood.
With growing horror, Larajin realized the drow were describing the vision she’d had, back in the Tangled Trees. Dark hands reaching out of the earth, tearing open the flesh of human and elf alike, soaking the ground with blood.
All this would come to pass, if she and Leifander didn’t do something to prevent it, but once again, Leifander had gone off on his own-all over a stupid misunderstanding. Larajin had only wanted to warn Tal to turn back, before an elf archer killed him, but Leifander’s simmering hatred of humans-only partially suppressed and now reopened like a broken scab-had caused him to suspect the worst of her.
With a sinking heart, Larajin recalled Somnilthra’s warning: “Unharness hate, and you will lose everything. Even your very lives.”
She had to find Leifander, and fast-before he did something stupid and got himself killed.
Grasping her locket still tighter, she began to pray in a near-silent whisper.
“Sune and Hanali Celanil, grant me the power to skinwalk just once more. I must find my brother. I must fly.”
The familiar scent of Hanali’s Heart filled the air, and the red glow erupted through her clenched fingers. Larajin drew herself into position, kneeling on the mossy boards with hands clenched into fists to ease their transition into paws. She felt her body contort and contract, felt fur flow down her skin, wings grow from her shoulders, and her spine elongate into a lashing tail. Her whiskers quivered as she caught the buglike smell of the drow below, and she heard their shouts of confusion and alarm. They’d caught the floral scent that accompanied her spellcasting and were shouting questions at each other, asking what it might mean.
It didn’t matter. The stairs leading up to her perch were broken. The drow had no way to reach her. Almost laughing, Larajin launched herself into the air, wings beating as she soared from the tower.
In her elation at skinwalking, she’d forgotten about Drakkar. She realized her mistake when the wizard rose through the opening in the roof of the tower, trailing strands of web behind him like a torn veil. Spotting her at once in the bright moonlight, his eyes widened in recognition. He pointed his thorn-studded staff and shouted a word that was unintelligible, evento Larajin’sgoddess-blessed ears.
Something streaked from the end of the staff in a trail of red sparks, buzzing toward Larajin like an angry hornet. She tucked in her wings and plunged into a steep dive, crashing down through tree branches in an effort to escape. A sharp sting in her right hind paw, however, told her the maneuver had been in vain. Distracted by the painful sting, she tumbled in mid-air, only managing to find her wings again at the last moment before striking the ground. She flew on, weaving between tree trunks in a frantic bid to escape.
Behind and above her, she heard Drakkar shouting at the drow as they poured noisily from the tower. Could the wizard see her? Despite the screening of branches overhead, it would certainly seem so. Whichever direction Larajin flew, she heard the sound of running footsteps in the forest close behind her. A knife flashed through the air and buried itself in the trunk of an oak she’d just swerved to avoid, and to her right she could hear branches breaking as the drow circled around, trying to flank her. Always from above, came the shouts of the wizard, directing the drow to her.
Flying hard, Larajin twisted her hind foot up and under her belly, straining for a look at it. What she saw in that brief glimpse frightened her still further. A thorn was wedged between the pads of her paw. Even as she glanced at it, the thorn disappeared into her flesh like blood into desert sand.
She dropped her paw and continued flying, unable to do anything about it but worry. Was the thorn tainted with some foul poison? Would her wing beats soon slow, as the venom clutched at her heart?
But no, the sting of the thorn was gone, leaving behind no residue of ache, no creeping pain that worried its way up her limb. It felt as though the thorn had completely disappeared, and yet still the drow were pursuing her.
Drakkar must have used his staff to cast some sort of detection spell upon her, Larajin decided-one that made him cognizant of her every move. She might escape the drow, might even be able to fly fast enough to leave Drakkar himself behind, but guided by his thorn, how long would it be until he caught up to her again?
A second, less pressing question also puzzled her. Drakkar must have recognized her. Why hadn’t he simply killed her when he had the chance?