The half-ogre’s arm rose and fell, bashing at the creature long after it was dead. Exhausted, Groller dropped the belaying pin and fell to his knees. He began to unwrap Feril, as he prayed.
“Furl be all ride. Please.” His words were nasal and slurred.
“Furl be’live.”
Her eyes fluttered open. Groller effortlessly picked her up and bore her away from the dead snake. “Furl be all ride,” Groller kept repeating. “Furl be all ride.”
She focused on Groller’s face, upon his knitted brow. Shaking her head to clear her senses, she returned her mind to a world from which Goldmoon and Shaon were absent, a world that had corrupted Dhamon Grimwulf. She dropped her chin to her chest and pointed toward the ground.
“I’m all right, Groller,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t hear her.
He released her, holding her arms until he was certain she could stand. The wolf brushed against her leg with his wet nose, and somehow gave her strength. Feril looked up again and met Groller’s worried gaze, then brought her thumb into her chest, her fingers splayed wide. She waggled them and smiled. It was the gesture for fine. But she didn’t feel fine. Her chest burned, her ribs were sore, and the contentment that she had found in this place was gone.
Groller pointed to the bulging sack resting near the dead snake. “Got dinner,” he said. “Meat. Fruit. Znake. No mer hunting today. No mer talking to znakes.”
She nodded and let him lead her back to Rig and the others.
Jasper was disappointed in the food at first, but he found the fruit to his liking and the massive constrictor more palatable than lizard. He devoured enough to fill his stomach, then settled back against a trunk and looked toward the setting sun. He listened to Feril talk about the swamp, of how she had watched it come into being.
The air was filled with Rig’s questions, Groller’s hand signals pantomiming his fight with the snake, and Feril’s replies about her experiences. Fiona worked on preserving the snake-skin. It could be made into excellent belts.
Reaching inside the leather sack, the dwarf let all the competing sounds recede into the background. His fingers brushed aside the big ivory belt buckle Rig had found in the muck and closed instead on the scepter’s handle. He pulled it out into the fading light and admired the jewels dotting the macelike ball. It made his fingers tingle.
4
Stolen Thoughts
“The Fist of E’li,” Usha whispered. She paced up and down the hall, passing by the closed door to the sorcerers’ study. She let out a deep breath and finally stopped before a painting, one of a willow birch she’d finished nearly two decades ago. Palin sat beneath the tree, with a very young Ulin between his knees. Usha’s fingers traced the raised paint swirls on the trunk and dropped down to linger on Palin’s face, then rose to touch the weeping leaves that shaded him.
There were trees like this on the island of the Irda, and more like this in the Qualinesti forest— though those willow birches were much larger. She had seen them when she stayed with the elves, when Palin, Feril, and Jasper went after the Fist. Were Feril and Jasper in a similar place now, an overgrown forest corrupted by a dragon?
She closed her eyes and tried, one more time, to remember. The Qualinesti. The forest. The Fist of E’li.
Remember.
Usha watched Palin leave, the forest swallowing him, the Kagonesti, and the dwarf, the green filling her vision and making her feel suddenly empty and isolated, somehow frightening her. For several moments all she heard was her own uneasy breathing. She felt in her ears the beating of her heart, and she heard the gentle rustling of the leaves turning in the breeze.
Then the birds in the tall willows around her resumed singing. The chittering of chipmunks, chucks, and ground squirrels reached her, and she sagged against the thick trunk of a shaggybark and took in the myriad sounds of the tropical forest, trying to relax. Had the circumstances been different, or had her husband been with her, she might have enjoyed her surroundings or at the very least appreciated and accepted them. As it was, she couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, a leery intruder in the elven woods. She couldn’t help but inwardly jump at every snap of a branch.
Usha inhaled deeply, summoning her resolve, and scolded herself for being nervous. She offered a silent prayer to the departed gods that her husband would be successful and would safely return to her, and she also prayed that he would find the ancient scepter, that she would be safe, too, that the elves would realize she and Palin were whom they claimed to be.
Usha wasn’t nearly so confident as she had sounded when she volunteered to be left behind. She wasn’t certain that Palin could find what he was looking for during the brief time frame of a few weeks allowed by the elves. Nor was she entirely certain that the scepter even existed. It might, after all, be nothing more than the figment of a senile scholar’s mind.
But there was something she was certain of: she wasn’t alone. The elves who stopped her and Palin, and who didn’t believe they were really the Majeres, were still nearby.
Though the elves had left the clearing when Palin left, she felt their eyes still boring into her, felt the prickly sensation of being watched. Usha imagined the elven archers, their arrows trained on her. She tried to appear composed and aloof, determined not to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they had successfully unnerved her. She stilled the trembling of her fingers, gazing straight ahead, and didn’t flinch when suddenly words came from behind her.
“Usha.” Her name sounded like a brief puff of wind. It was the female elf’s voice, the leader of the elven band. “Usha Majere, you call yourself.” The tone was sarcastic and sounded like a curse. “The real Usha Majere would not trespass in our woods.” The elf silently stepped into the clearing, brushing by Usha’s side, the bushes moving slightly in front of the pair, hinting at the presence of elven archers.
“Who are you?” Usha quietly demanded.
“Your host.”
“What’s your name?”
“Names confer a small sense of power, Usha Majere. I’ll give you no power over me. Create a name for me, if you think you need one. Humans seem to require labels for everything and everyone.”
Usha sighed. “Then I’ll simply not refer to you. I’ll consider you my host, as you wish, nothing more. There’ll be no closeness, no hint of friendship. That, I suppose, is also a measure of power.”
The elf smiled. “You are brave, Usha Majere, whoever you truly are. I will grant you that. You stand up to me. You stayed behind while your dear husband heads toward his doom. But you are also foolish, human, for there is a good chance he will never return, and then I will be forced to decide what to do with you. You cannot stay with us. So just what will I do with you? Leave you for the dragon, perhaps?”
“Palin will succeed, and he will return.” Usha continued to stare straight ahead. “He is who he claims to be, as I am who I claim to be. Palin Majere will find the scepter.”
“The Fist of E’li,” the elf answered. “If he is not Palin Majere, and if he does manage to succeed, we will take the Fist from him.”
So that’s why you let him go, Usha thought to herself, so he could get the Fist for you. “He is Palin,” she repeated aloud. “And he will succeed.”
There, straight ahead near a tall, broad-leafed fern, Usha picked out part of a face, a gently curving pointed ear. The elves weren’t so invisible after all, she thought smugly. Then she pursed her lips. The elf archer had met her gaze. Perhaps he’d wanted to be seen, serving as an implied threat.
“He will succeed?” The female elf parroted. “Hardly.” The elf took several steps beyond Usha, pivoted to face her, green eyes boring into Usha’s golden ones. “Dozens of my men have learned the folly of approaching the old tower where the scepter rests. How will three—a dwarf, a Kagonesti and a human—win where dozens of others have failed?”