Heirs of Prophecy

CHAPTER 4

Leifander circled over the lights below, which were brighter than the glow from a thousand camphres. Even at this height the city assaulted his senses. The stink of dead fish, tar, and sewage rose from the harbor. Even in the depths of night, grunting laborers loaded cargo into ships, and carriages rattled through the streets, axles squealing. Lanterns burned on side streets where no one walked, and smoke smelling of cooking grease wafted out of chimneys, clogging the already humid air.

Leifander cocked his head, staring disdainfully down at the city. Humans were a wasteful, destructive race. How he yearned for the fresh green of trees that had stood for centuries, the quiet stillness of a forest glade under moonlight. He would be glad when this mission was done.

He finally spotted the building Rylith had described. Stormweather Towers was a massive stone structure topped with towers and turrets; it rose like a rocky spire out of a surrounding fringe of greenery far too symmetrical to ever be thought natural. Smaller buildings surrounded the main structure, marring the gardens with their ugly gray.

Lights burned in several of the rooms, and humans moved around inside, busy at a multitude of tasks. Several of the shuttered windows were open. The clatter of crockery and the harsh sounds of human voices drifted into the air. Leifander circled the building, glancing in through windows for the man he had been ordered to seek out. None of the people inside fitted the description he had been given: a man of sixty winters, with snow-white hair and heavy, dark eyebrows.

Uncertain how to present himself-Rylith had warned that elves were not welcome in Selgaunt-Leifander flapped his way to one of the second-story balconies and landed on its cool stone rail. The double doors that gave access to the balcony were open. Inside the room, he could see the dark shapes of a high four-poster bed with rumpled blankets, two armchairs, and a wardrobe. A small cabinet mounted on the wall behind the bed was fronted by two glass doors. Something amid the clutter of objects inside it glittered as it caught the faint light coming in through the balcony doors. Intrigued, Leifander cocked his head, staring at it.

A shudder coursed through him as he assumed elf form once more. Wings became arms, talons turned to bare feet, and feathers coalesced into a tooled leather vest and fringed trousers. A ridge of feathers along his back became a quiver, holding arrows and an unslung bow.

He hopped lightly down from the rail, arms still spread and fingers fluttering like feathers as he caught his balance. Cautiously, listening attentively to the faint noises coming through the door that led out of the room, he crept over to the bed.

Clambering up onto the rumpled blankets, he peered inside the cabinet. The object that had caught his eye was a quill pen, the shaft of the feather gilded and set with a row of bright diamonds. It looked to be of elven make-perhaps even something that was sacred to the Winged Lady. What was it doing there, in a human home?

As he leaned to the side to get a better look at it, sparkles of red and blue fire danced in the depths of the gems. None of the other trinkets inside the cabinet-tiny gold bells, a silver dagger, ceramic statues, two gold rings, and an enameled locket-even came close to it in beauty.

Unable to resist, Leifander turned the latch on one of the cabinet doors. Something stung his finger, and he jerked his hand back. The cabinet door swung open. Leifander stared in surprise at shelves that had suddenly become empty.

A feeling of dizziness passed over him, then was gone. Leifander peered at his fingertip and saw a bead of dark blood welling there. Angrily, he shook it away, then felt inside the cabinet. The shelves were indeed empty-and though he could still see objects through the glass of the cabinet door that remained closed, his questing fingers found nothing but bare shelves. He had been fooled by an illusion-and, judging by the numbness of his punctured fingertip, nearly laid low by a trap.

Cursing all humans and their devious natures, he sprang down from the bed. In that same instant, the door began to open, spilling a crack of light into the room. Leifander hurried to the balcony, crouched there, and began the chant that would transform him back into a crow.

Before he could complete the spell, light washed over him, and a woman’s voice hissed, “Ebeian! What took you so long? I was worried that … Oh! Who are you?”

Leifander shot a look over his shoulder, and saw a human holding a flickering lamp. She looked to be in her second decade of life, and had dark hair and eyes as green as the emerald that glittered in the ring on her finger. Dressed in tight, black leather pants and shirt, she was slender for a round-ear-and pretty, Leifander grudgingly admitted. A rapier hung at her hip, and the hilt of a dagger protruded from one boot. She made no move toward either weapon.

Leifander rose slowly to his feet, turning to face her.

“Did Ebeian send you?” she asked. “Is he in trouble? Did something go wrong?”

For a moment, Leifander considered trying to pass himself off as a friend of this Ebeian fellow, whoever that was, but he decided against trying to satisfy what was only idle curiosity. The schemes of humans were not his concern. More to the point, this woman seemed singularly unconcerned to have discovered a forest elf in her bedchamber. She might be the best one to ask where Thamalon Uskevren could be found.

“My name is Leifander,” he said simply. “I am an elf of the Tangled Trees. I have come to speak with Thamalon Uskevren. I bring him a message.”

“Do you, indeed?” she asked with an arched eyebrow. “So, messenger, do you always sneak in through second-story windows when delivering your messages-or do you sometimes knock at the front door?”

This woman was truly exasperating. “Will you show me to Thamalon Uskevren or not?”

She did not answer at once. Instead she hung her lantern on a long hook attached to the ceiling and pointedly glanced at the open cabinet above the bed. Leifander stiffened, but when she turned back to him, amusement sparkled in her eyes.

“I see you couldn’t resist a little pilfering while you were waiting to deliver your message,” she said, clucking her tongue in mock reproach. “It’s lucky for you that you’re an elf and immune to that drug-otherwise I’d have found you asleep on my bed. Exotic looking as you are, I’d have been forced to ravish you. As it is …”

She strode forward suddenly and planted a kiss on his lips. Startled, Leifander pushed her away. Were all human women so forward with strangers? He shook his head. It was time to get on with what he had come there to do.

“The message I bear is an urgent one,” he told her. “I would deliver it at once.”

“Give me your message, and I’ll deliver it for you.”

Leifander shook his head. “No. I must speak to Thamalon Uskevren in person … and in private.”

A slight change in the woman’s posture told Leifander that she had grown wary of him. “Why in private?” she asked. “So you can stick a dagger in his ribs?”

Leifander deliberately kept his hands away from the dagger at his hip. “You think me an assassin,” he said bluntly. “I am not. I wish only to speak to Thamalon Uskevren about a political matter. The elves sent me because I have a … personal connection with him.”

His explanation didn’t help. Somehow he had compounded his earlier blunder. The woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, and her hand came gently to rest upon the hilt of her rapier.

“You have no ‘personal connection’ with Thamalon Uskevren,” she said, running the fingers of her free hand through her short hair in a nervous gesture. “If you did, you’d have known he was my father.”

The rapier hissed out of its scabbard. “I think you are an assassin,” she added in an icy voice.

Leifander raised his hands in what would seem a placating gesture. In fact, his fingers were already beginning to weave a spell. Before the woman could move to skewer him, he barked out three quick words in his own tongue. Sparks of magic energy crackled from his tattooed fingers-but instead of flying toward the woman’s head, they struck an invisible shield and scattered in all directions. In the same instant, the ring on the woman’s finger flared as its gem was illuminated from within. The woman stepped forward, and the tip of the rapier was at Leifander’s throat. He swallowed carefully and held perfectly still. The woman had the poise and grace of someone who knew how to use a blade.

“I think I will take you to see my father,” she said. “It should prove an interesting diversion while I’m waiting for Ebeian. But I warn you: Make one move against him, and it will be your last.”

The prick of the rapier against his back sent Leifander forward into a large room filled with foliage. Enormous ceramic pots crowded the floor, each planted with a small tree or flowering shrub. Smaller pots hung from the ceiling or sat on shelves, their greenery spilling down. A fountain in the middle of the room bubbled water into a trough that snaked its way across the floor between the pots. This artificial stream was filled with tiny, silver-blue fish. Banks of windows along the two outside walls of the room gave a view of the evening sky.

Leifander was surprised to see several plants he recognized-plants he had thought grew only in the shade of the Tangled Trees. Lady’s Lace moss, Burlbush heavy with ripening nuts, a tangle of Honeyfruit vine, and the delicate white blossoms of the triple-leafed Lady’s Promise. In the moist air scented with growing and blooming things, he felt a sudden pang of familiarity, then he reminded himself that this was all artificial-that humans must have stolen these plants from his forest and transplanted them to their stinking city. With an added snort of disgust, he noted tiny fingers of choke creeper growing out of three pots whose other seeds appeared to have sprouted and died. The human gardeners didn’t even recognize a dangerous infestation when they saw one.

Through the greenery, Leifander could see a man dressed in knee-high boots, blue hose, and a gold doublet with sleeves slashed in blue and white. He stood in profile at one of the windows, the finger of one hand tapping his clean-shaven chin as he stared at the northern horizon with a troubled expression. He was taller than Leifander, but only of average height for a human, with a trim, muscular build. Had he been an elf, his white hair and slightly stooped posture would have caused Leifander to guess his age in the middle hundreds, but this was a human, to whom a single century comprised a lifetime. Leifander pitied their race. By the time he was this man’s age, Leifander would still have the reflexes and appearance of a youth.

As if feeling Leifander’s stare burning into him, the white-haired man turned. At the same time, a sharp pricking in Leifander’s shoulder reminded him of the swordswoman at his back. He stepped forward briskly, and-in deference to the mission the druids had assigned him-placed a hand over his heart and gave the human at the window a courtly bow.

“Thamalon Uskevren, I presume?” he said in the common tongue.

“I am indeed he who bears that name.”

Startled, Leifander looked up. Thamalon had spoken in the language of the forest elves-and not in the harsh, guttural accent humans normally mangled the language with. Instead, every syllable was perfect, articulated with flowing grace. Leifander wondered where and how Thamalon, a human of the south, had learned the tongue.

The sword pricked Leifander’s back. “Well?” the woman demanded. “Are you going to introduce yourself? Let’s hear this message that you snuck into Stormweather Towers to deliver.”

Something flashed in Thamalon’s deep green eyes-a warning to his daughter? One hand patted the air, instructing her to lower her rapier.

“A little less impetuosity, Thazienne, if you please,” he said in the common tongue.

A moment later, Leifander heard steel slithering into a sheath behind him. The woman-Thazienne-stepped from behind him and stood to the side, malicious curiosity dancing in her eyes as she waited to hear what he had to say.

Leifander cleared his throat and held Thamalon’s eye. He’d deliver his message quickly, then get on to the important part-asking this man for information about his father.

“My name is Leifander,” he said in his own language. “I am an elf of the Tangled Trees. I bear a message from the Circle of the Emerald Leaves.”

He paused, watching to see if Thamalon recognized the name. Thamalon nodded briefly. He did.

“The druids wish you to raise your voice in the Sembian council to state that the elves have attacked Sembia’s caravans with good cause, to revenge the magical blight humans brought to the great wood. While most of the elves wish war, there are some … who will work for peace.”

Thamalon’s eyes bored into Leifander’s. “But you’re not one of them, hmm? You’d rather fight.”

Leifander squared his shoulders. “I do as I am bid.”

“Odd, that the druids would choose you to deliver their message. Are you certain there isn’t another message you came to deliver, a message from …?” Thamalon let his sentence trail off, turning it into a question.

Thazienne stood with arms folded across her chest. “Father! How can you listen to this nonsense? He’s an assassin-or at the very least, a spy. I caught him in my room, creeping around in the dark.”

Thamalon gave a barely audible sigh. “Hardly the first time a young rogue was found there,” he muttered. His eyes, however, remained locked on Leifander’s. “I’m waiting,” he reminded the elf.

Leifander cleared his throat a second time. He decided to say as the druids had bade him, ask Thamalon for whatever information he could provide about his father, then be quit of this place.

“I am told, Thamalon Uskevren, that you have a fondness for the Tangled Trees. That you traveled there some years ago.”

Thamalon’s eyes brightened with anticipation. “Go on.”

“While there, you had union with a woman of my people. That union produced a child.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Leifander noted that Thazienne’s mouth had dropped open. He hadn’t realized that she understood the language of the forest elves-and neither had her father, from the startled look that Thamalon shot her.

Leifander kept an eye on Thamalon, watching for confirmation that the story the druids had told him was true. It came, in the form of a slowly creeping flush that spread upward from the collar of Thamalon’s doublet, not quite reaching his cheeks. Thamalon’s expression, however, remained utterly unchanging, as if his features had been set in wax.

“Go on,” he repeated, this time in a voice crackling with tension. “You’ve come with a message from Larajin, haven’t you? Is that where she’s run to-the Tangled Trees? Is she safe-is she well?”

Puzzled, Leifander faltered to a halt. He’d spoken the words that Rylith had made him memorize-a message designed to play upon Thamalon’s sympathies for the elves by reminding this human that he’d sired a half-elf child. That child, according to Rylith, lived in Selgaunt, and was named Larajin. It seemed this Larajin had flown from the nest. If Leifander revealed the fact that he knew nothing of her whereabouts, would Thamalon dismiss him without answering the questions that burned inside Leifander?

Thazienne ran fingers through her hair, then broke the strained silence with a question. “Father? Is what this wild elf’s saying true? Is Larajin really your daughter?”

Thamalon closed his eyes for a moment, as if gathering strength. “I’m afraid she is.” He shot Thazienne a look. “And you are to tell no one-not even your mother-what you have just heard. Am I understood?”

Thazienne started to arch a mocking eyebrow, then thought better of it. “All too well, Father,” she said, struggling to keep a straight face. “These … impetuosities … do happen.”

Thamalon glowered at her.

Leifander cleared his throat to remind them that he was still there.

“Sir,” he said, “having delivered my message, I wish to speak to you about another matter. The druids told me that you know my father. He is an elf, living here in Selgaunt. I was hoping you could give me news of him.”

Thamalon at last tore his eyes away from his daughter. “What is his name?”

Leifander blushed. “I … don’t know.” He reached inside his vest, feeling for his mother’s ring. “The druids told me you would know him by his ring. He gave it to my mother, just before he left the Tangled Trees.”

Thamalon stiffened as he glanced at the ring. His face blanched still further, and his voice grew strained when he asked, “What was your mother’s name?”

“Trisdea. She was a priestess and warrior among her people. She died giving birth to-”

“Trisdea was also the name of Larajin’s mother,” Thamalon interrupted. “But that can’t be. They said…”A troubled look came into his eyes. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

Thazienne snorted. “The same age as Larajin? How convenient,” she said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “Father, you can guess what’s coming next. This elf is going to tell you some ridiculous story-that he’s Larajin’s twin, or something.”

“No,” Leifander protested. “My father was-”

“Then he’ll try to claim his inheritance,” Thazienne continued, “just like the last Uskevren ‘heir’ did. This fellow may have learned your dark secret, but whatever he says next will be lies and nonsense. He hasn’t got a shred of proof that-”

Thamalon turned on his daughter, his voice pitched dangerously low. “Look there,” he said, pointing a quivering finger at the ring that hung at Leifander’s throat. “That ring. I was the man who gave it to his mother, twenty-five years ago, as a token of my affection. Leifander is indeed … my son.”

Thazienne’s mouth fell open in mute surprise. Her eyes darted from the ring to her father, then back to Leifander again. She gaped at him, as if seeing him for the first time. The shock she must have felt, however, was a pale shadow of Leifander’s own.

“I’m no human!” he said, spitting out the word. “Nor even half-human. You’re wrong!”

“I’m afraid not,” said Thamalon. “Your story meshes with my own, like two hands folded together. I lay with Trisdea, and later, during my second visit to the Tangled Trees, learned that she had become pregnant by me. The elves told me that she died giving birth to that child-that although there was a cleric present at the birth, his magic could not save her. That her death was the will of the gods. They also told me she bore twins, but that only one lived. Now I see that they lied.”

“Twins?” Leifander echoed.

Could it be true? He could feel his eyes widening. According to the ancient tales, twins were favored of the gods-twice blessed and destined for great and noble deeds.

He was too upset to say more. All he could do was stare at Thamalon. With a growing horror, he realized that what Thamalon was saying must indeed be true. Now Leifander knew why the druids had chosen him to convey their message, why they had said that by doing so, he would learn who his father was. They’d told him the truth, but now Leifander wished they hadn’t. His father … a human? He couldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t believe it.

But part of him had already accepted this terrible fact. He thought back to the taunts he’d endured in his youth-taunts thrown at him by an elf many years his senior who had teased Leifander by calling him “round ears.” At the time, he’d shrugged it off-his ears were as pointed as any other elf’s-but Leifander’s adoptive father had taken the incident more seriously, and had come to blows with the man. Later, when the fellow disappeared, there had been rumors that Leifander’s father had killed him. At the time, Leifander had dismissed this as idle gossip, knowing there was nothing that could have prodded his father into so brutal an act.

He realized, now, that he’d been wrong. His adoptive father must have known all along that Leifander was indeed half-human. He’d killed the man to spare Leifander the shame of it.

A part of Leifander, however, still struggled with the revelation. How could he be part human? He had the look of a full-blood elf! Then he realized that subtle hints had been there, all along. He’d always been tall and somewhat heavyset for his age. His deep auburn hair was much darker than the autumn-leaf red of the other elves. Added all together, it seemed like damning evidence against him being a full-blooded elf.

He stared at Thamalon, searching for any resemblance, but just could not see it. Thamalon looked so human, and yet this man’s blood flowed in his veins.

Human blood.

With that thought came a second realization, even more terrible than the first. If human blood flowed in Leifander’s veins, that meant his life expectancy would be half what it should be-less than two hundred years. He stared at Thamalon with narrowed eyes, suddenly hating him.

Leifander started to turn, intending to stride back down the hall to the nearest balcony and fly off into the night, but Thamalon stepped forward and caught his arm. Though the fingers that gripped him were strong, the touch was a light one, imploring, rather than commanding.

“Please,” Thamalon said. “Stay a little longer. I would like to speak with you further, my son.”

Leifander tried in vain to keep from wincing at the word. “I must leave,” he snapped. “Tonight.”

“Must you?” Thamalon asked. “A pity. I’d have liked to have told you more about your mother.”

Thazienne, having been roundly scolded, was keeping her silence, but her eyes spoke volumes. She shook her head, obviously still not believing a word of it.

Thamalon turned to her. “Please leave us, Thazienne. I wish to speak to Leifander in private.”

Thazienne opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it. Lips pressed together in a tight, angry line, she turned on her heel and strode away.

Thamalon watched the door close behind her, then turned back to Leifander. His eyes lingered on the ring at Leifander’s throat.

“I think there will be much for us to speak about,” he said. “Did you know that your mother was a Harper?”

Surprised, Leifander shook his head. If it were true, not even the elves of the Tangled Trees had known it. What other surprises did this man have in store?

His curiosity piqued, he said grudgingly, “I’ll stay … until I’ve heard you out, but then I must go.”

“Fair enough,” Thamalon said. He motioned to a bench under one of the windows. Leifander sat on it, on the far side from where Thamalon settled. Sire this man might be, but father? Never.

The older man looked off through the window at the stars, and absently tapped a finger against his chin, thinking.

“Well then,” the human mused. “Where to begin?”