“Leave me alone,” she warned.
The elf pulled his dagger and cautiously limped toward her. “Who’d have thought I’d find you so close to camp?”
The young warrior’s face, with its hooked nose and square jaw line, seemed only remotely familiar to Sadira. “Are you a Sun Runner?” she asked.
“How many other tribes have you robbed?” the elf demanded. “Come with me. Faenaeyon wants to-”
The youth stopped speaking in midsentence and peered over Sadira’s shoulder. “Magnus, Rhayn! What are you doing here?” he demanded. His gaze dropped to the heavy keg in the windsinger’s hand. “Where did you get that?”
There followed an uncomfortable silence as Sadira waited for companions to respond. When both Magnus and Rhayn seemed too stunned to answer, Sadira did it for them. “As you can see,” she said, gesturing at her captors. “I’ve already been caught.”
“With a cask from the Bard’s Quarter?” the youth demanded, pointing his dagger at the poisoned wine. “What fool did you intend to drink that?”
This time, not even Sadira could think of reasonable answer. There was only one thing to do with a cask from the Bard’s Quarter, and the young warrior certainly seemed to realize what it was. Even if the sorceress claimed that the wine had been intended for someone else, Faenaeyon would never drink it now.
Then Sadira thought of the antidote in her pocket. “There’s nothing wrong with this wine,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to share some with me?”
The warrior scowled at her. “I’m no fool.”
“This wine is not poisoned, Gaefal, if that is what you are thinking,” said Rhayn, picking up on Sadira’s tactic. “I’ll have some too.”
“How can you know this wine’s safe to drink?” the youth demanded.
“Because she didn’t get it here,” said Magnus. “We saw her buy it from the Swift Wings.”
“I saw no wine in the tent of the Swift Wings. And their camp is on the other side of the market,” Gaefal said, waving the cloth he had ripped from Sadira’s collar toward the far end of the courtyard. “Why let her come all the way to the Bard’s Quarter if you saw her back there?”
As he realized the answer to his own question, the young warrior’s jaw dropped. “You’re lying,” he gasped, backing away. “I don’t know why, or what you’re up to, but you’re
lying.”
He turned and began to push his way into the crowd.
“Gaefal, come back!” yelled Magnus.
When the young warrior showed no sign of obeying, Rhayn pulled her dagger and threw it. The blade struck the boy squarely between the shoulder blades, sinking clear to the hilt. He cried out once, then sprawled face-first onto the cobblestones.
A few astonished cries rose from the crowd, then people scurried away as fast as they could. In the Elven Market, someone died every day. If this time it happened to be an elf, it was more a cause for relief than concern.
For a moment, the three stood outside the Bard’s Quarter in absolute silence, staring at the boy’s unmoving body. Finally, Magnus allowed the cask to slip from his thick fingers. “Rhayn!” he gasped. “In the name of the Silt Wind, what have you done?”
“Stopped him from giving us away, that’s what,” the elf answered. She pushed the windsinger toward the youth’s inert body. “Now heal him, then we’ll decide what to do.”
Sadira started to follow Magnus, but Rhayn pointed at the cask. “Don’t let that out of your sight,” she said. “Someone will steal it.”
The sorceress began to object, but when she thought of what would happen to the hapless thief who stole the keg of poisoned wine, Sadira saw the wisdom of Rhayn’s command.
The windsinger’s lyrical voice began to drift over the cobblestones, carried on a soft breeze. He was singing the same healing canticle he had used to mend Sadira’s wounds. It was a calm, melancholy tune with an undertone of hope and kindness, and Magnus rendered it beautifully.
Before the sorceress had come to fully realize how angry she was at Rhayn for attacking the youth, she found all of her wrath fading away in the dulcet harmony of the healer’s song. There was no room in her heart except for the emotions that the music demanded of her; sympathy for the young man’s pain, and the desire to bear some of his suffering.
The song ended too soon. Sadira rolled the heavy keg over to Magnus and Rhayn. The windsinger kneeled on the ground, the injured elf’s limp body cradled in one massive arm. To plug the hole in Gaefal’s back, he had used the shred of cloth the young warrior had ripped from Sadira’s collar.
“What’s wrong?” Sadira asked. “Can’t you heal him?”
The windsinger fixed his orbs on her face and slowly shook his head. “Even the winds of mist cannot bring man back from the dead.” He glanced up at Rhayn, who was staring at the boy with an expression of disbelief and horror. “ ’You have gone too far,” he said reproachfully.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, but we couldn’t let him return to camp and tell on us,” Rhayn whispered. She ripped her eyes from the youth’s face and studied the area. There were no onlookers, for wise pedestrians in this part of the city made it a point not to interfere in others’ business. Nevertheless, the three companions were quite noticeable. In avoiding the area, the passersby had created a conspicuous circle of emptiness around the body.
“We’d better leave,” Rhayn said. “Sooner or later, a templar will come.”
Magnus nodded and laid the body down on the street. He gave Rhayn’s dagger back to her, then took the cask and started to leave.
“What about Gaefal?” Sadira asked, unable to believe Rhayn and the windsinger would leave the body lying in the street.
“We can’t take him back to camp,” Rhayn answered. With that, she turned to follow Magnus toward the center of the market.
Sadira stood over the body a while longer, wondering what courtesies Sun Runners normally showed their dead. Finally, she decided that, given what she knew of elves so far, it might well be customary to let them lie where they fell. She turned and went after her two companions.
When she caught up, Sadira said, “Rhayn, I want no part of helping you become chief if it means murdering innocent people.”
Rhayn stopped and spun on the sorceress. “What does a defiler care about one elf’s death?”
Hoping her eyes did not show how much Rhayn’s question had hurt, Sadira retorted, “I may be a defiler, but I have never killed one of my own.”
Rhayn grabbed Sadira by the arm. “You are not a Sun Runner,” she hissed. “It doesn’t matter to you whether one of us dies or we all do. You’ll take the wine to my father.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Sadira countered.
“Would you really want the Veiled Alliance to discover that the legendary Sadira of Tyr is a defiler?” Rhayn asked, releasing the sorceress’s arm. “And to believe that she would betray them to the king of Nibenay?”
“It would be a simple thing for me to kill you,” Sadira warned. “I should probably do that anyway, considering what you are saying.”
“And would that not make you a murderer, too?” Rhayn asked. The elf studied Sadira for several moments, then gave her a conciliatory smile. “Let us do what we must and be done with each other,” she said. “There is no reason for empty threats.”
“My threat is not empty,” Sadira said. “I’ll help you with Faenaeyon, but only so long as it suits me to stay with the Sun Runners-and provided there are no more murders.”
“Then we are agreed,” Rhayn said. “As long as we both do what we have promised, neither of us need worry about the threats of the other.”
TEN
SWEET WINE
Sadira rolled the cask toward the dark archway, followed closely by Magnus and Rhayn. They were entering the moldering tower where the Sun Runners had made camp. The building’s ancient foundations had settled badly, and it seemed to the sorceress that the derelict structure remained upright only because it stood propped against the walls in one corner of the Elven Market.