This was more than Dag could bear. For years he had bided his time, not risking a possible revelation of his heritage until he was in a position to protect the innocent child who carried, unknowing, the bloodline of Samular. All this, Ashemmi could carelessly undo, and she would just as easily toss the girl aside if there was no benefit to keeping her.
He thrust the sorceress away from him. “It is a poor excuse for a mother who would so exploit her own child,” he said coldly.
“And a poor excuse for an ambitious warlord who would not,” Ashemmi snapped back. “Remember yourself, and while you are about it, bear me ever in mind. This situation presents opportunity to us both, provided we are clever and discrete in how we proceed.”
“And speaking of discretion, how will Sememmon respond, when he learns that you have been keeping this matter from him?” he retorted.
The blatant threat set Ashemmi’s eyes aflame. “If he or any other person in Darkhold learns of the child from you, it will be from conversing with your spirit. I will tell Sememmon, in my own way and at a time that suits my purposes. I! Agree, and you and your misbegotten brat might be permitted to live out your meager, allotted span. Am I understood?”
Dag Zoreth regarded the elf with a degree of loathing normally reserved for the creatures that occasionally oozed up through the fortress midden. “Of course, Ashemmi. I understand you very, very well.”
“Good,” she purred, drawing out the word. She languidly swept her arms high, and her gown dissolved into a swirl of crimson mist. The haze floated out to envelope Dag, as intoxicating as smoldering poppies.
Ashemmi’s smile was hard and enticing. “As long as we understand each other, let us have one more secret to keep from our lord Sememmon.”
For one long moment, Dag wavered on the precipice of indecision. He could step back, he could turn away and quit this room, leaving Ashemmi naked and furious. He could.
Instead, he breathed in deeply of the mist. He held the enchanted fragrance until the power of it nearly burst him asunder, and then he moved through the crimson cloud toward her.
* * * * *
On the second day after he had received his quest, Algorind reined his horse to a stop on a hill overlooking a cozy valley. Smoke from the evening fire rose from a snug stone cottage. Geese strutted contentedly near a small pond, and a small herd of rothe cropped at the grass in an enclosed pen. Soil had been turned for a kitchen garden, and already a few neat rows of seedlings rose from the rich soil. He caught the sound of a woman’s teasing voice and the bubbling response of happy, childish laughter.
As he gazed at the homey scene, Algorind marveled that an evil man should have provided such ease and comfort for his child. By all appearances, this was a goodly household, unknowing of the alliance they had made. Perhaps they knew nothing of their fosterling’s heritage. But surely, if they were goodly folk, they would see the wisdom in turning the child over to him for her good and that of the order.
At that moment the cottage door opened, and a tall, brown-haired woman strode out. She held her apron bundled up before her with one hand, and with the other began to strew grain for the chickens and geese. They came running in eager response to her clucking calls.
Algorind’s eyes widened. At first glance, the woman was seemly enough, modestly clad in a simple linen shift draped with a long kirtle. But the color of her kirtle alerted and alarmed him. It was a deep, vivid purple, a color that was expensive and difficult to achieve, and a hue that no simple, decent goodwife would wear.
Her husband came out of the lean-to that served as a horse barn, and Algorind’s hand went to his sword. Not a human at all, but an elf Algorind’s practiced eye measured the elf’s gait, his way of holding himself; the watchful readiness of his posture and his face. This was no mere farmer, but a well-trained wamOr.
The truth came to him then. The priest of Cyric had arranged his daughter’s fosterage with evil subtlety. Who would suspect a simple farm family of harboring a Zhent’s child? Who did not assume that the elves were goodly folk, best left to go about their business? These were no simple folk, happy in the gift of a child that the gods had not seen fit to send them, but hirelings of an evil priest. The deception kindled Algorind’s wrath. He drew his sword and urged Icewind into a charge.
As he thundered down the hill, the woman shrieked and fled into the cottage. The forgotten grain cascaded among the squawking, scattering chickens. Algorind came at the elf with a mighty swing. The elf deftly dropped and rolled aside. He came up with a long knife in each hand and deadly intent in his catlike green eyes.
Algorind dismounted and strode forward. He met the elf’s first darting blow, swept it easily aside, riposted. The elf met his thrusting attack just as easily. For several moments they stood nearly toe to toe, in a ringing exchange of blows delivered with nearly equal skill and passionate conviction.
In his training, Algorind had learned of many styles of sword play. This elf fought like a Sembian, a two-handed style of quick attack, a street-fighter’s technique best suited for a short, decisive battle and a fast retreat.
“You fight well,” Algorind panted out between parries. “But you are far from home.”
The elf hesitated, startled by this pronouncement. The sudden sharp pain in his inhuman eyes brought something rather like pity to Algorind’s heart.
“It is a sad and evil world,” the paladin continued, “when goodly men or even elves are drawn into the plans of evil men.”
Algorind barely dodged a vicious slash. “It is the good men who sent me here!” the elf snarled, speaking for the first time. He advanced in a flurry of slashing, darting attacks. For many moments it took all the paladin’s skill merely to hold him back.
“The tanar’ri Vladjick,” the elf said, his voice raw with exhaustion and bitter rage. “Do you remember that story?”
The paladin did, and acknowledged it with a brief nod. A terrible demon, a tanar’ri, had been summoned by an evil man’s ambition. Years before Algorind was born, knights of the Order of Samular had marched against the creature. The battle had been long and fierce, and the tanar’ri had fled into the forest north of Sembia. An elven community lay between the paladins and their evil foe. The elves had resisted the passage of the knights through their forest, thus allying themselves with the evil tanar’ri. Many good and noble knights had fallen in the fierce fighting. Ever since, some of the order had remained wary of elves and their unknowable, inhuman ways.
“I remember it,” the elf gritted out. “I will always remember it! The knights slaughtered my family for no better reason than that we were elves, and we were in the way.”
Again he advanced, but this time emotion outbalanced control. Algorind caught one of the elf’s flailing wrists in his left hand and stuck the elf’s other hand aside with the hilt of his sword. The elf was slight, almost frail. It was a small matter to hurl him back, to advance with sword leading. A single, decisive thrust finished the battle and silenced the lying elf forever.
Breathing hard, Algorind went to the cottage. He hoped the woman would be more inclined to see reason.
The cottage was empty, the back window open. Algorind circled around, easily picked up and followed the tracks of the woman’s feet into the small orchards beyond.
He followed her through the spring-flowering trees and cornered her against the high stone wall of a pig pen. She whirled, the child in her arms, and entreated him wordlessly, her face streaked with desperate tears.
For a moment Algorind hesitated, wondering if he had been tragically misinformed.. Woman and child were both slender, and both had brown hair decently plaited. But there the resemblance ended. The woman was human: the child, half-elf Surely this was not the daughter of Samular’s bloodline!