"The Lord High Clerist!" he said with apparent delight. "My name is Zen. I wanted you to know that before you die."
She answered him with the Knight's salute to an enemy. Then, with a battle cry surprising for her small stature, she charged, her sword lancing the air before her, her red hair flying.
Valian slipped for perhaps the thirtieth time in the refuse and offal that littered the halls. It seemed more like the dark and dirty alleys of some ancient city than the halls of a castle only a few years old, but he was, after all, in the gully dwarf quarter.
He'd chased the surprised cook for a few hundred yards before losing both the gully dwarf and himself in the maze of twisting passages. The halls of this castle followed no recognizable pattern, and their strangeness and nightmarish quality reminded him of something. The memory fled whenever he tried to grasp it. He tried to backtrack to the kitchen, but the way only seemed to lead him deeper into the heart of a stinking nightmare.
Hoots and howls echoed through the corridors, and gibberish like the ravings of madmen. The walls narrowed and became more uneven in their spacing, until above him they meshed together, overarching the way like the branches of trees. Occasionally, some warm wet hole opened to the right or left, but as Valian stopped and looked into these, trying to decide his way, he felt eyes staring back at him from the darkness, eyes hungry and at the same time frightened. As his elven eyes grew adjusted to the darkness, he saw the warm, red outlines of their bodies, sitting in huddled groups, shifting nervously.
With a shock of horror, Valian remembered. Those days and nights and weeks of terror in the twisted and ancient depths of Silvanesti, years ago now. He'd fought his way through, avoiding legions of dragonarmies and patrols of elves, to a place where he knew no one ever ventured anymore. He'd hoped to find some lost or forgotten enclave of elves, some memory of the beauty he'd once belonged to, if only to stand at their fringes unseen, or to die there.
At last, he'd found them. Hope lifted Valian's heart at the sight of the village through the trees. The war didn't seem to have reached this place. Here no one was preparing for battle or escape. He'd approached slowly, warily, for despite everything, he still bore the stigma of being cast from the light. If seen, these elves still had the right to kill him.
Some tickling of danger warned him as he'd neared the village, but he'd ignored it, so anxious was he to find contact with his race. As he drew closer, he saw that the elves of the village walked with hunched shoulders and bent backs, and their arms seemed unusually long. No elvish voice was raised in song, only brutish grunts and snarls sounded from their throats. When one turned, as though sensing Valian's presence in the trees, Valian nearly cried out in horror at the sight of the twisted, malformed elf. Long fangs thrust up from his bottom jaw like the tusks of a boar, and his almond-shaped eyes glowed red with hate. His hair, once smooth and silken, bristled like fur.
Valian was so stricken with anguish that day, he'd been unable to move, unable to resist, as they gathered round him, grunting, snarling, drooling and touching him with their horrid claws. They grabbed him and lifted him and carried him triumphantly into the village. They brought him to an altar, where wood was piled, wood soaked with tar and oil, and they tied him to the altar, all the while dancing around his prone body. Valian had felt himself outside his own body, as though looking down on the scene from some point high above. He watched them bring torches and light the wood of his pyre, and he watched the flames lick around his body, consume his hair, caress his limbs, sear his flesh.
He hadn't died. Valian awoke on the forest floor, with the ancient and crumbling stone buildings of his dream village all around him. The village had long been abandoned and forgotten, and the forest had reclaimed it, and Valian awoke with a vision of things to come. As he stood and his hair fell about his face, it was white as ash, burned by the fires of his nightmare.
Now, apish hands reached out to touch his body, caress his flesh. Small creatures crowded around him, grunting, snarling like ghouls over a fresh grave. Terror awakened in him, but he was able to move, able to respond. Valian lashed out, and the apes leaped screaming back to their dark lairs. Valian fled; he knew not where.
30
"Where is Dalian?" Ellinghad shouted as he skidded to a stop beside Jessica. Behind them, Lady Meredith's war cry echoed down the hall. The ring and crash of steel upon steel followed.
"I don't know," Jessica answered. "By the time I got here, he was gone."
"He's betrayed us," Ellinghad snarled. "Either that or he's run off to save his own miserable hide, the coward."
"I can't believe either," Jessica said. "We've just lost him. He'll be back."
Jessica bent down beside the gully dwarf. Glabella's eye were as round and white as goose eggs. "Which way to the dungeons?" Jessica asked her. "Which way to Uhoh?"
Glabella's mouth worked, but no sound came out. "Think, Glabella, think!" Jessica shouted.
The gully dwarf only closed tight her eyes and shook her head.
Suddenly, the battle at the end of the hall grew quiet. Then footsteps pounded, running. Ellinghad poised, his blade ready. Meredith appeared, bleeding from a dozen wounds. She staggered into them and collapsed, almost falling on Glabella.
"Lady Meredith!" Jessica exclaimed.
"What happened?" Ellinghad asked.
"I managed to close the door. There was a key. It won't hold them for long," she gasped. As though to confirm this, a thundering boom echoed from the direction of the kitchen as the draconians began to hammer down the door.
"Which way now?" Meredith asked as Jessica bound the more severe of her wounds. "Which way did the elf go?"
"We don't know. I think he's abandoned us," Ellinghad said.
"Damn him," Meredith cursed. "We should have known better than to trust an elf."
Jessica looked at the leader of the Sword Knights in surprise. Never before had Lady Meredith shown racial prejudices. Perhaps it was the stress of her wounds and the imminent danger.
"What about the gully dwarf? Does she know the way?" Meredith asked. Jessica helped her to her feet.
"I don't think so," Ellinghad said.
Meredith roughly grabbed Glabella by the collar of her dress. "Which way?" she snarled. "Tell us now. No more games."
Glabella only stared in wide mouthed terror. Suddenly, she lashed out, sinking her teeth into the thumb of the Knight. With a scream of pain, Meredith dropped the gully dwarf.
As soon as she hit the floor, Glabella raced away, screaming, "Slagd! Slagd!"
"Glabella!" Jessica shouted as she started after her.
"Wait. Let her go. She's no use to us," Meredith said.
"Let's just pick a direction and go."
Without waiting for the others, she stalked away, choosing the opposite way in which the gully dwarf had headed.
"We came here to rescue one gully dwarf." Jessica muttered. "Shall we leave another behind?"
Behind them, the kitchen door crashed open, and draconians poured into the hall. Ellinghad ducked as a draconian arrow whistled past his head.
Jessica and Ellinghad hurried after their designated leader.
Lady Meredith chose a path which seemed to always take them around a corner just before the draconian archers loosed their arrows. A half-dozen times or more, scores of arrows buzzed angrily though space they had just vacated, or shattered against a wall where they had been standing only moments before. The Knights ran, even though fleeing the enemy was against everything they believed in. All those rules seemed silly now. The only thing to do was to save themselves long enough to save Uhoh.
After making yet another hair's breadth escape, they found themselves in a hall which ended in a door. There was no other outlet. Meredith tried the door and breathed a sigh of relief when it swung open on oiled hinges.