“Destroy the fort,” urged Rhayn, a tone of desperation in her voice.
“It would be wise,” agreed Magnus. “Without their fort, the Silver Hands will surrender. Faenaeyon will rob them, but there’ll be no bloodshed. On the other hand, if the matter comes to blows, the fighting won’t end until one tribe is destroyed.”
“You can’t trick me with your elven games,” Sadira hissed. Speaking loudly enough for Faenaeyon to hear, she added, “I won’t use my magic to help you steal!”
“I hadn’t thought a defiler would be so particular about her causes,” observed Magnus.
The comment stung Sadira as no threat could have. “I only did what was necessary to save my life,” she retorted.
“Then do it again,” urged Magnus, glancing at Faenaeyon’s angry form. “One of the lives you save will be your own.”
“What do you care if one tribe of elves robs another?” Rhayn demanded. “You understand nothing! This is between the Sun Runners and the Silver Hands.”
“Then your chief has no business bringing me into it,” Sadira countered, her eyes locked on Faenaeyon’s.
Magnus leaned his massive body close to Sadira. “What you say might be true if you were in Tyr, but you are not,” he whispered. “You are with the Sun Runners, and here Faenaeyon’s word is the only custom or law-as rapacious as it may seem. If he says to destroy the fort, you must-or a hundred warriors will leap to kill you when he gives the order.”
The windsinger’s harangue only hardened Sadira’s resolve. “I won’t help you,” she called speaking directly to Faenaeyon.
Narrowing his eyes, the chief started toward her. The Silver Hands yelled jeers and insults, mocking the bravery of the Sun Runners and their chief’s ability to lead his tribe. One of the warriors raised his bow to fire at Faenaeyon’s back.
“Look out!” Sadira yelled, her words echoed by a half-dozen warriors.
The bowstring snapped as the chief started to turn around. Before he could react, the shaft sank deep into his hip. Faenaeyon stumbled and nearly fell, then caught himself. As his own warriors began to draw their bow-strings back, he raised a hand.
“Hold your shafts!” he commanded.
The Sun Runners obeyed, though they kept their arrows nocked. Nodding his approval at their discipline, Faenaeyon stood with his back to the Silver Hands, challenging them to fire again. Sadira resisted the temptation to reach for her spell ingredients. Faenaeyon had started this trouble on his own, and she was determined not to be dragged into it.
Inside the stockade, Toramund looked down the wall and bellowed, “Who did that? I gave no order to attack!” Several silver hand warriors responded by knocking a young woman off the wall.
After standing with his back to the Silver Hands for several moments, Faenaeyon reached around and tore the arrow from his hip. He tossed the shaft aside with a casual flick of the wrist, then continued toward Sadira. Although he bled profusely and walked with a limp, the chief’s angry face showed no sign of distress.
“Doesn’t he suffer pain?” Sadira gasped, leaving her hand in the satchel.
“No,” said Rhayn, edging away from the sorceress. “He never feels anything except greed or anger. Right now, I fear it’s anger.”
To the other side of Sadira, Magnus tapped his kank’s antennae, also moving away. “If you wish to survive, don’t make the mistake of thinking he can be reasoned with.”
Sadira began to doubt her wisdom in defying Faenaeyon. She could not believe he truly felt no pain. Yet, it was becoming clear he lacked the feelings that controlled the behavior of most men, such as fear and compassion. He saw the world only as a source for silver.
Faenaeyon stopped in front of Sadira, his sword still unsheathed. Though the sorceress remained mounted on her kank, her father stood so tall he looked her in the eye.
“Destroy the fort,” he ordered, raising his sword just enough to menace her.
Sadira dropped her gaze to the weapon. “If you lift that against me, it’ll be the coins in your purse that I destroy, not the bricks of the fort.”
She put one hand into her satchel and grasped a cold cinder, then turned down the palm of the other and began drawing energy for a spell. “How much is my death worth to you? A hundred coins?”
Faenaeyon’s eyes widened. He glanced at the shimmering steam of energy rising into Sadira’s hand, the lowered his weapon. “I’ll deal with you later,” he said. He turned back toward the fort and pointed his sword at the elves manning it. “Their deaths will be upon your head.”
“Perhaps, if the Sun Runners needed water and I refused to help,” Sadira countered. “But your tribe can reach the next oasis easily. Half your waterskins remain full.”
“It’s not water I want,” Faenaeyon responded. The chief glanced over his shoulder and nodded at his warriors.
As they drew their bowstrings back, Sadira pulled her hand from the satchel, the cinder concealed in her fingers. “Not even an elf would start a battle like this over silver.”
“I am no ordinary elf,” he said, lowering his sword.
The strum of a hundred bowstrings rumbled down the line and Faenaeyon’s warriors launched their shafts into the air. Toramund screamed a command in response, and the Silver Hands loosed their own arrows.
Sadira flung the cinder into the air, crying out her incantation. A fiery band flashed across the sky, intercepting the two flights of arrows over the field of ashbrush. An instant later, all that remained of the shafts was a dark cloud of soot and the dark specks of errant arrowheads falling harmlessly to earth.
Faenaeyon glanced back at Sadira, the features of his pallid face contorted into a furious scowl. “It is one thing not to help, and another to interfere. Don’t do it again!”
Sadira barely heard him, for the ashbrush in front of the gate tower was turning black and shriveling. She looked up and saw that the old man next to Toramund was preparing to cast a spell, and his beady eyes were looking in the direction of her and Faenaeyon.
“Get down!” Sadira yelled.
The sorceress urged her kank forward, using its mandibles to push her father to the ground. She had barely leaped from the saddle before she heard the sizzle of a fireball streaking from he tower. It passed above the kank’s back and, leaving the stench of burning sulfur on its wake, crashed to earth a short distance away. There it remained for a moment, sputtering and hissing, before it finally erupted.
A wave of heat rolled overhead, igniting a half-dozen dry bushes and singing Sadira’s hair. Her kank bolted, and then she heard Faenaeyon’s warriors screaming his name.
The sorceress lifted her head and looked toward her father. If Faenaeyon was seriously injured, she knew more bloodshed would be unavoidable. When he didn’t move, she asked, “Are you hurt?”
“I am angry,” the elf hissed, rising.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Sadira looked upon the field ahead. A wide expanse in front of the gate tower had been reduced to barren and blackened soil. A bewildered lizard clattered across the naked rocks, scurrying for the withered brush at the edge of the desecrated tract. There was no other sign of life in the area.
A terrible sense of loathing and hatred came over the half-elf, and she shifted her gaze to the gate tower. There stood Toramund’s sorcerer, grinning smugly and showing no remorse for the desecration he had commited.
“Go away, Faenaeyon,” yelled Toramund, laying a hand on the sorcerer’s shoulder. “Or Bademyr will finish what he began.”
Before Faenaeyon he could respond, Sadira rose and took his arm. “Do as I say, and you shall have your silver,” she whispered, turning her father around.
“You’ve changed your mind?” the elf asked, allowing the sorceress to guide him away from the fortress.
“I have,” Sadira answered. To prevent Bademyr from noticing that she was drawing the energy for a spell, she kept her back to the Silver Hands. “But you must kill the defiler and no one else.”
“Done,” the elf agreed.