She drew her knife. Instinctively Sturm raised his shield, but she was by him in a breath, kneeling by the monster, whittling frantically at the web strands that bound it.
"I… I don't…" Sturm began, but the elf flashed him a look of such withering rage and hatred that he stopped trying to explain. He stood above her awkwardly, watching her hack and saw at the web. Finally, reluctantly, he knelt beside her, setting the blade of his broadsword against the coarse and stringy cords.
After a minute or so, the spider was free. Wobbily it stood, as though just awakening or just being born. Sturm watched it cautiously, sword low and shield raised, but the thing staggered, gibbered, and raced off into the copse, a strange, gulping sound in its cry, almost as if it were weeping. Completely confused, Sturm watched as the creature vanished into the cedars and pines and laricks, trailing one damaged leg.
"What-" he began, but he never finished the sentence.
The elf maiden's slap caught him utterly, completely off guard.
"How dare you burst into my clearing with sword and mayhem!" she exclaimed, then raised her hand to strike the lad again. Sturm staggered back from her.
"I thought you were in danger," he explained, flinching as again the girl moved suddenly. This time, however, she merely brushed back her dark hair, and sorrow vied with anger in her face.
"You fool of a boy," she said quietly. "You had no idea what you were doing, did you?"
Sturm said nothing. With a weak, melancholy smile, the elf maiden pointed to the heavens.
"Look above you," she said. "What do you see?"
A gap in the trees," Sturm replied uncertainly. "The night sky. The two moons…"
His head reeled as she slapped him again.
" 'The two moons' is right, you dolt! You rash, callow, dwarf-brained excuse for a swordsman!"
The elf reeled, clutching against the bark of a vallenwood for support.
"Two moons," she said more calmly, "who join in the winter sky under the sign of Mishakal… how often, would you say?"
"I am no astronomer, lady," Sturm confessed. "I know not how often."
"Oh, only every five years or so," the girl said, her teeth clenched and her glittering eyes fixed on the lad in scarcely controllable anger. "Every five years, at which time a specific tune, in the ninth mode of Branchalan harmonies, played by a musician three years in the learning of its intricacies, may be used to undo the magic of druids and wizards."
"I don't understand," Sturm said, backing away as the girl took one aggressive stride toward him.
"You don't understand," she repeated coldly, flipping the knife in her hand, blade to hilt to blade. "The song undoes enchantment, lifts curses, restores the transmogrified."
"Transmogrified?"
"Those who have been changed into spiders!" the girl bellowed and launched the knife past Sturm's ear. He stood confounded, motionless, the dagger trembling in a bare oak some twenty feet behind him. Strands of hair, neatly sliced from below his ear, settled on his shoulder.
"At the one worst moment in five years," the elf said, "you came upon this clearing. And in doing so, you have assured that Cyren of the House Royal in Silvanost, descendant of kings and lord of my heart, shall scramble alone in webs, eight-legged and six-eyed, eating vermin and offal for the next half a decade until white Solinari and red Lunitari, each on its separate path, sail through the whole forsaken sky, past fixed and movable stars, and converge again!"
"I'm… I'm…" Sturm began, but the words had fled to the treetops.
"No apologies," the girl said, her smile glittering and crooked as Solinari drifted behind the swaying junipers and the clearing was left in the red, ominous light of Lunitari. "No apologies, please, for I've still half a mind to kill you."
Chapter 9
Sturm settled thee elf maiden after a few minutes, plying her with apologies and admitting that, yes, he was the most foolish boy on the continent and that to find a greater fool one would have to venture among the goblins in Throt. That apparently satisfied her for the moment. She sighed and nodded, then looked about her in dismay, as though the clearing in which she had lived for two months awaiting the convergence of the moons had suddenly become a real nest of spiders.
"I can't stay here," she announced and ducked into the cabin. Sturm stood outside, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying to appear useful. Off among the larick bushes, there was a slight movement, a shift in the underbrush, but when he turned to inspect it, whatever was moving and shifting had vanished.
"Spiders," he muttered. "I'll wager everything turns to spiders, the girl and myself as well."
But she emerged most unspiderlike a moment later, her belongings bundled in a packet of cloth and vine and cobweb almost twice her size and slung across her shoulders like something unwieldy and wounded.
"Well, you'll be taking us home, then," she asserted, her knees buckling beneath the weight of the bundle. Sturm reached out to help her, but she waved him away with a stagger.
"Never you mind. I'll set this upon the horse," she ordered with a nod toward Luin, who stood cautiously at the edge of the clearing, still skittish from the commotion with the spider.
"B-But you can't, m'lady. You simply can't," Sturm protested. "She's thrown a shoe and I can't burden her."
In dismay, the elf girl dropped her bundle.
"You mean we shall have to travel to Silvanost on foot?"
Sturm swallowed hard. Though his bearings were none too good, he knew the larger geographies of the continent. Silvanost was five hundred miles away if it was a stone's throw, and such a journey seemed impossibly long and arduous.
"But I am bound only for the Southern Darkwoods," he protested.
She shook her head. "No longer. Now we are bound for Silvanost, to throw myself on the mercies of Master Calotte."
Sturm frowned in puzzlement.
"The enchanter," she explained dryly. "As you may recall, boy, my true love is still a spider."
They stood and stared at one another.
"I'm… I'm sorry, m'lady," Sturm muttered. "And more sorry still, in that my path lies only to the Southern Darkwoods. The far reaches of Silvanost are, I fear, beyond my… my resources. I have not the time. I may even be followed."
He coughed and cleared his throat.
"Nonsense," she said, her voice cold and flat. "Silvanost could be across the world, and you would still have to take me there. So your honor tells you. What is it your people say? 'Est Sularus oth Mithas'?"
Sturm nodded reluctantly. " 'My honor is my life.' But how did you know-"
She laughed bitterly. "That you were of the Order? When it comes to the sword, nobody is as heedless as a Solamnic youngling. You may go to your Darkwoods and do what you will, but I shall be with you. And afterward, you will take me to Silvanost. It is that simple. You are bound by your silly Oath and Measure."
'Tis a test! Sturm thought, with a rising fear. The elf maiden glared at him, angrily but innocently. After all, if Lord Wilderness can play so readily with the seasons and their changes, why would he not have allies-outlandish folk among the elves and the gods know what other folk-who would do his bidding readily?
Doesn't this creature also play a flute?
And how would an elf know of the Solamnic Oath, which the Measure interprets in the light of helping the weak and the helpless?
He glanced balefully at the girl, whose stare had not wavered. She seemed anything but weak and helpless.
And yet Vertumnus would know, would hold me to the Oath and my honor, would test me further…
He shook his head. After all, what did Lord Wilderness know or care of honor? It was ridiculous to think such entangled thoughts, to see a green design behind this accident.