“Nayla, I don’t like-”
She held up her hand, hissed him to silence.
Out from behind a pile of stone that had once been two chimneys a tall figure stepped. Brown as summer, his silver hair on his shoulders, the newcomer seemed like a spirit of the forest itself. He wore tattoos upon his arms, across his chest. He had the eyes that always chilled Haugh to the heart-the eyes of a Kagonesti in the wild.
Nayla’s hand slipped to the knife in her belt, a broad-bladed glinting knife good for skinning a deer or killing a foe. The Wilder Elf didn’t so much as quirk a brow.
“You,” Haugh demanded. “Who are you and what are you doing here in this ruin?”
The accents of Qualinost, cultured tones no rough garb could disguise, did not impress the Wilder Elf. He looked past Haugh, up the road to the savaged village. When he had completed his survey-a leisurely one, Haugh thought-he looked at Haugh again.
“The same thing you are doing,” he said. “I’m looking.”
Nayla was in no mood. “We’ve been hearing things about the goings on in the forest, Kagonesti. We’ve been hearing about magic and hearing it might have to do with your kind.”
The Kagonesti shrugged and looked away. In his eyes Haugh saw a sly light, a baiting gleam. “Qualinesti,” the Wilder Elf said, “does your woman speak as loudly in the halls of your family as she does in the halls of the forest?”
Something like lightning crackled in the air between the three.
“Kagonesti,” Haugh replied, striving to keep his voice level. “Many of our people have died here, and many of those were our friends. We don’t know who lives, we don’t know who is dead. We’ve come into the forest searching for a friend, a young Wilder Elf woman.”
“A Kagonesti? A friend of yours, eh?” The Wilder Elf spoke as though in disbelief. “You seek her out, and yet you think that maybe Kagonesti had to do with this great burning?”
“No.” Haugh looked around the ruin, the wreckage of homes and hopes where nothing moved but sniffing dogs. Crows called from the forest, from high up the hill. “We think the Nerakan Knights did this.”
The Kagonesti nodded. “You think well. We saw them.” He spat into ash. “They are wolves.”
We saw them.
We…
“Kagonesti,” Nayla snarled, “you saw this happen?”
He nodded. “I have said so.”
“And you did nothing?”
“To prevent? No, we did not. We were only a band of four. We do not have armies, woman. We do not interfere in the business of the city elves and the Knights they allow in their kingdom.”
She flared, filled with grief for deaths, filled with rage. “Kagonesti, you want a better tone with your betters.”
A small smile twitched the corners of the Wilder Elf’s lips. It had nothing at all to do with amusement. “Woman, you want a more courteous tone with anyone.”
Two strides put Haugh between the Kagonesti and Nayla. His hand was out, away from his weapons. The Kagonesti turned.
In the instant, sunlight slipped like fire along Nayla’s blade.
The Kagonesti shouted, “No!” Then again, “No!”
Haugh felt the shock of an arrow in his back. He fell among ashes of the Hare and Hound, stunned by pain and watching his blood run out of him. All the world erupted in storm-wind and thunder, his pulse rushing blood from his body, pounding in his ears. Through the storm of his dying, he heard the roar of a hound-Pounce? was it Pounce?-cut off by its own death-scream.
A hand touched his shoulder, gently. “Hold still,” the Kagonesti said. “Hold still.”
Haugh heard voices now, a man’s, a woman’s, another man’s. The Kagonesti said something to one of them, his voice like an angry whip crack. What he said, Haugh couldn’t tell. His words were simply sounds. In his mind, in his heart he heard other words, those of his king, Gilthas who had said, “Find her, Haugh. Show her the way to me….”
Haugh said, “Listen-”
The Kagonesti leaned close.
“The woman-Kerianseray-”
The Kagonesti leaned closer, and Haugh heard his breathing roughen.
“My pouch-get me my-”
The Kagonesti took the pouch from within Haugh’s shirt He opened it and spilled its contents into Haugh’s twitching hand, the golden half of a royal ring. “It is the king’s. Find the match-the girl-she will-know what it means-”
The air on his skin felt cold, cold. He felt the tide of his life withdraw, taking all warmth and will. His lips formed a word, shaped a name.
Nayla.
He could give the word no voice and he knew, in the gasping last breath, it wouldn’t have mattered. She would not have heard, his Nayla lying dead in the ashes.
Kerian squinted. When her vision settled, she saw before her a stony clearing, a space in which four small campfires made a semicircle around a larger one, a clearing like a stone basin. Beyond the clearing rose a wall of climbing ground, all boulders and pines. She felt no more breeze here than she had in the narrow cave, the passage behind the falls. The place was well sheltered, and the only way in was through the passage she and Ayensha had just taken, or down the sides of the hill. All around her, the distant thunder of the falls seemed to flow into the whispering of the wind.
“Who are you, girl?” A man glared at her, his eyes hard and cold. He had silver-streaked hair that might once have been the color of bright chestnuts, once brown and shining with red-gold. He was past his middle years, and though his features were elven, his ears canted, his eyes slightly almond-shaped, the shape of his face showed an alien stamp, a coarsening line of his jaw, a roughness of hair on his cheek and chin, and that thickness in the neck seen in humans and half-elves. The man must have a human parent.
Around him, shadowy voices whispered: Who are you? Who is she? How did she get here?
A spy!
The hissing word sent fear through Kerian’s belly, sharp as knives, and the half-elf said, “Are y’that, then? A spy?”
The hair raised up on the back of Kerian’s neck. She wanted to look around to find the shadowy speakers but dared not take her eyes from those of the half-elf. Ayensha, though she might have, said nothing. She had brought Kerian here, and now she seemed inclined to leave her to what fate might find her.
In a firm and clear voice Kerian said, “I’m not a spy, and whatever it is you’re keeping to yourself, you can have. I came here with Ayensha and-”
The half-elf snapped, “Name your name, girl.”
Kerian’s cheek flushed. Girl, he called her, as the dwarf had called her missy, as Dar used to name her Turtle.
Eyes narrow, voice cool, she said, “I am Kerianseray of White Osprey Kagonesti. My parents were Dallatar and Willowfawn, and Dallatar was a chieftain among my people. Willowfawn bore him two children, a son and a daughter, and all elves know that is great wealth. With my brother Iydahar my people lived here in this forest in the time before the coming of the dragon Beryl, even before men, in the years of the lost prince.”
Kerian lifted her head., not ashamed to speak the next words. “Though my kin have not, I have spent time in Qualinost. Now tell me, what is your name?”
Ayensha stood away from the half-elf. She murmured a word to him that sounded, if not kindly spoken, at least reassuring. The man grunted. His arms closing round her again, he looked at Kerian long. His eyes narrowed as he reckoned her.
“Killed a Knight, did you?”
“Yes, I killed a Knight.” Remembering Ayensha’s injuries and the haunted, hunted look in her eyes when she’d come hobbled and bound into the Hare and Hound, she added, “I killed a pig of a Knight” She narrowed her own eyes in a show of defiance. “It’s a good thing, I think, or you’d be weeping over a corpse now instead of hugging this woman.”