This was not the case tonight. Kerian fell deeply asleep. Then she began to dream. Vividly.
She was in a forest, a dense woodland, green and cool. Moss was thick underfoot, and gentle sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves. The air was wondrous, full of the scents of growing things. A faint breeze teased her face. Reaching out, she felt the suppleness of the leaves. They were ash leaves, slender and pointed. Kerian was in a forest of ash, like the wild land along the Silvanesti border.
Into this idyllic setting came two figures. One was a goblin with along, beaky nose, pointed chin, and sallow, gray-green complexion. The other she glimpsed only briefly through the foliage, but he appeared to be a Silvanesti elf, dressed in a silky green robe more suited to a city street than the deep forest.
The goblin said, “They’s a nest in this one.”
“Are you sure?” asked his companion.
“Oh, aye. I seen it come out last ev’ning.”
With the illogical logic of dreams, Kerian was no longer standing in the forest, but was tucked into a hollow tree. She didn’t mind the tight confines. This was home. Its walls were smooth and smelled strongly of musk. An opening overhead led outside, as did the hole in front of her.
Home trembled. The goblin’s face appeared in the hole. He grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth.
“Careful,” said the elf, below him. “I don’t want it damaged.”
The goblin’s face went away from the hole and he reached one arm in, long, spidery fingers coming for Kerian’s throat.
She didn’t wait to be caught. Swift as a striking viper, she uncoiled and sprang at the intruder. She was slender, no more than two feet long, but her claws and teeth were sharp.
They tore into the goblin’s cheek and left eye. With a shriek, he fell backward, taking Kerian with him.
They crashed to the ground. He jerked her loose and flung her hard against the trunk of her pine tree home. She lay on her back, stunned, four paws in the air.
The goblin would have killed her then, while she was helpless to defend herself. He lifted his hatchet high, but a hand grabbed his wrist from behind.
“That’s not what I’m paying you for.”
It was the elf. He had a long face, a sharp chin, and hazel eyes. A robe of pale green silk hung in pleated folds from his narrow shoulders. His blond hair was cut in an antique bowl-shaped style. His hands were large for an elf, with long fingers and knobby knuckles.
“Look what it did to me!” screeched the goblin. Blood ran from his ruined eye and cheek.
The elf merely took a small bag from his waist and shook it. The jangle of coins was unmistakable. He counted thirty steel pieces into the goblin’s hand.
The goblin seized Kerian by the throat and thrust her into a dirty burlap bag. The effects of the blow were wearing off and she might have chewed her way out of the sack, but she didn’t. The elf and goblin were talking about her, and the elf gave her a name: marten. With the word came a rush of memories.
Covered in brown fur, with a white neck and chest, she was more agile than a squirrel, swifter than lightning. She leaped from branch to branch, climbed up and down rough-barked trees, lay in wait among green boughs for an unwary squirrel. A dash, a pounce, teeth sinking into the rodent’s throat. Blood. Delicious. Warm. She prowled the treetops, despoiling nests for eggs or hatchlings, and venturing to the ground to penetrate burrows in search of rabbits. She was mistress of the twilight woods. Not even the panther or the bear could compete with her in ferocity, in kills.
Kerianseray knew she was dreaming, but it was all so rich and real, her own memories seemed to melt into those of the marten.
In the strange way of dreams, time began to telescope, passing rapidly yet with no sensation of speed. The Silvanesti was a mage. He’d been slaving for decades on a procedure that would transform a wild marten into a semblance of himself. He took the marten bitch to his hut on the edge of the forest and began the lengthy, laborious process. It seemed to go well. The marten became a young girl, flawlessly elven in appearance, with hazel eyes and sable hair. He taught her civilized ways, but she never quite lost her predatory instincts or animal appetites. These he indulged. He learned much from her associations with naturally-born elves and humans.
In her twentieth year, she began to change. Her pure Silvanesti features softened and thickened, giving her the look of a half-elf. When fur reappeared on her legs, the mage knew the transformation had failed again. So many times he had performed the spell, trying to find the perfect conjuration, but every one had failed, sooner or later.
One night soldiers from House Protector came and arrested the mage. Kerian found herself chained in a deep dungeon in the heart of Silvanost. There she met others like herself, creatures whose elven veneer had decayed. But although the mage’s conjuration didn’t make them fully elven, it kept them from returning fully to their animal state.
Such creatures could not be allowed to remain in Silvanesti, so they were exiled. Closed wagons transported them far from the land of their birth to the Silent Vale, where the half-creatures were turned loose to fend for themselves.
The night sky above Kerian’s new home contained three moons—one white, one blood red, and a third, black moon she knew Two-Footers couldn’t see with their feeble eyes. But she could see it.
She also could see something falling from the dark moon. Just as she recognized it as an arrow, it struck the base of her neck. She was knocked to the ground. Blood welled from her throat.
What treachery is this? cried a far-off voice. Then a multitude shouted, The Speaker! The Speaker has been attacked!
She jerked awake. She was lying on her bedroll, and the night sky above her was the one she recognized. She was Kerianseray, Wilder elf, warrior, wife of Gilthas, not some half-animal abomination.
Rolling to her feet, she caught sight of Favaronas. His back to her, he squatted at the water’s edge a few yards away, sipping from his cupped hands. She rose and called his name.
He almost fell head-first into the creek. She covered the distance between them in two long strides, snagged the back of his robe, and pulled him to his feet.
“Favaronas, I had a terrible dream!” she said. “More than that! A premonition.”
He was taken aback. The ever-sensible Lioness, talking of premonitions?
The earlier part of her dream, of being an animal made to look like an elf, was fading into a confusing jumble of sensations. Kerian skipped that part, describing only the end, the terrifyingly clear vision she’d had of Gilthas being hit with an arrow.
Favaronas, who had read much about historical presentiments of disaster, didn’t think such things occurred nowadays. Doubt was plain on his face.
“It happened!” she insisted. “Or will happen. I don’t know which. But I felt it!”
“So, what will you do?”
She raked her fingers through her matted, sweat-soaked hair. What could she do? Gilthas was her beloved husband. Even more than that, he was her Speaker, the king she had pledged to serve and defend. She wanted to fly to him, to make certain he was all right.
Fly!
“Eagle Eye! He can get me to Khurinost in half a day!”
The griffon was tethered twenty yards from the horses, further along on the path back to the mouth of the valley. Kerian turned to race off in that direction. Favaronas caught her arm.