Tanis the shadow years

18

Bnandella broke away from Tanis and ran back toward the shack. The half-elf didn't know what to make of her reaction. Was she reeling with joy or despair7 Inside the cabin, Brandella stood with her longbow in hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. "As soon as Reehsha returns, I am going to the barricades," she announced quietly but firmly. Yeblidod stirred in her bed at the sound but did not awaken. "But what of Kishpa's wish?" Tanis demanded from from the doorway. "Don't you understand? He may die any moment."

"I do understand," she fiercely countered. "But I will not go with you. Not now. It is this Kishpa that I love: the one on the barricades, fighting for his village. It is this Kishpa who made me, a human, feel at home in an elven village that I now love."

Sadness and anger vied for dominance on the weaver's face. Brandella had changed to an outfit more suitable for battle than the previous night's skirt and woven blouse-brown leggings the color of a doe's eyes, with an overshirt of deepest green. The costume added to her air of calm assurance. Once again, her self-confidence reminded Tanis of Kitiara.

"Understand me, Tanis," Brandella said firmly. "I was a mere girl floating in the wreckage of a slaveship that foundered in the Straits. The chains were still on my feet, their weight destined to pull me off the piece of hull that I clung to for life. If Kishpa had not had a vision of me during the storm, I would have perished. On rough seas, he sailed out to find me. To save me."

She looked away from Tanis, visibly embarrassed at what she was about to say. "At first I loved him out of gratitude. He treated me with kindness, taking pains to make sure his elven friends-and dwarves like Mertwig and Yeblidod-did not snub me because of my race. Then," she said boldly, gazing once again directly into Tanis's eyes, "he taught me how to learn so that I could teach myself. I learned to weave, to paint, to use a longbow… and finally, when I grew up, I learned to love him. And he loved me back.

"Now you ask me to abandon my mage," she continued in disbelief, shaking her head, "to abandon the Kishpa I know so well, because you say the old Kishpa has a wish. But I don't know the old Kishpa. I don't know how the years have changed him. I only know that my Kishpa would be terribly hurt if I left him now."

She shook her head as Tanis made a dissenting move. "Listen to me," she said. "He is weak from enchanting your sword. He would never admit it, but he is afraid for himself, for me, and for the village. If I desert him now, it will break his heart. How can I deserve the love of the Kishpa of the future if I abandon the Kishpa of the present?"

"You are eloquent in your devotion," Tanis said softly. "Still-"

She cut off his words with a commanding gesture. "Speak no morel" she ordered. "I will go with you when the battle is over. Not before. I will not let my Kishpa down when he needs me most. If what you say is true, and I am nothing more than a memory, I would not have my disappearance in his moment of need be his last remembrance of me."

"Then you will go with me when the battle is over?" Tanis asked.

She still hesitated. Then-"Yes." Decision was suddenly clear on her delicate features.

'Then I will accompany you to the barricades," he insisted. "I will fight alongside you and make sure-as best I can-that no harm befalls you. But whether the battle is won or lost, when it is over, I will take you with me."

"I will make sure-as best I can-that no harm befalls you, either," she said, flashing a sudden warm grin.*****

Fog hugged the shore, but most of the village basked in brilliant early-morning sunshine. Stone-fronted shops appeared deserted on each side. Tanis and Brandella hurriedly stepped down the empty streets, marking the sounds of battle from up ahead.

"It has begun," she said grimly.

They ran to the barricades, only to find the elven defenders panicking along the eastern wall. Hundreds shouted at Kishpa from every direction, begging him to do something before it was too late.

Clearly something terrible was happening. Tanis and Brandella climbed the ramparts, clambering their way toward Kishpa, who stood in plain view atop the barricade. When they reached the top, they saw what was driving the elves into a state of abject fear.

"By the gods!" Tanis exclaimed.

The human army had swelled to immense proportions, gaining reinforcements that easily numbered more than five thousand and perhaps as many as ten thousand.

"Where did they all come from?" Brandella wondered, squinting against the sun.

The enemy troops were virtually uncountable, charging toward Ankatavaka like an endless sea of humanity. Their numbers stretched in every direction, entering the open meadows on all three sides of the village. And they kept streaming out of the woods.

The elves didn't have enough arrows to kill this many humans, even if they hit their mark with every one let loose. The odds, they all realized, had become impossible. They were about to be overrun by an army that outnumbered them at least thirty to one.

Yet Tanis was surprised to find Kishpa, a figure in red robes boldly silhouetted against the eastern sky, calmly surveying the oncoming human horde. Tanis looked around for Scowarr and Mertwig, surprised that they were nowhere in sight.

Kishpa, having given Tanis a suspicious stare when the half-elf showed up with Brandella, finally answered his lover's question. 'They came," he said matter-of-factly, "from a spell, and that's how they shall perish."

"Are we imagining them?" asked Tanis.

Kishpa straightened his red robes, fluttering in the morning breezes. "No, it's a duplication spell," he explained. "Most of them are phantom reflections of a much smaller number of real soldiers."

"See there," Kishpa said, and indicated a young, blond human carrying a distinctive quiver tooled in blue and yellow. "Now look there, wading across the stream. And there." Tanis and Brandella followed his pointing finger. A blond warrior carried the same quiver across a creek; not 30 yards from that soldier, a duplicate warrior hurried past a tree.

Kishpa looked pleased with himself, his relaxed smile contrasting. "They might have fooled me," he admitted, "but they overdid it, duplicating far too many soldiers. It made me suspicious, and so I looked more closely. That's when I noticed that too many of them are dressed exactly the same, are holding their bows in the same way, and are running in perfect step with each other. That's when I knew.

'The spell, by the way, is rudimentary," he added, "but I've never seen it done on such a grand scale. There must be at least a half-dozen magic-users in the human camp. If this spell is any indication of their power, none of them are terribly advanced, but, combined, they can come up with very powerful magic."

"Are you strong enough to stop them?" Brandella asked worriedly, putting her arm around the mage. Her brown eyes gazed warmly into his blue ones; Tanis looked away.

"I don't know," the mage replied candidly. "I need to husband my magic, so I must counterattack with a spell that is relatively simple."

"I hope you have something in mind," Tanis said irritably, "because, reflections or not, they're getting awfully close."

"If either Scowarr or Mertwig does his job, then we just might-ah, just in time!" the mage exclaimed, pointing down to just inside the village gate. Little Shoulders skidded to a halt below, holding a small metal box in his hands.

"Open the gate!" Kishpa ordered.

"No!" cried a chorus of elven defenders. The ones who didn't reply looked fearfully at the dissenters but did not move.

"Do as I say!" the mage commanded angrily.

No one moved. Tanis, Kishpa, and Brandella looked into a sea of re- 133 calcitrant, almond-eyed faces. With an oath, Tanis jumped down off the barricade and raced across the cobblestones to the gate. He reached for the pulley rope and was about to yank down on it when, just above him on the battlement, a fearful elf with a knife tried to cut the rope. Instead, Brandella sent an arrow flying through the elf's sleeve, pinning it to the battlement wall.

Tanis hauled on the pulley rope; then, as the gate swung open, the half-elf bowed to the weaver up above. She inclined her head and winked.

Once the gate was open, the mage shouted to Scowarr, "Open your box and empty it onto the ground just outside. Then get back in. And you, Tanis, close the gate!"

Scowarr and Tanis did as they were told.

The human horde was fast closing in, covering the open field between the woods and the village. The sound of their charge was deafening, but Kishpa concentrated on his spell, repeating the same strange words over and over again.

Nothing seemed to be happening-until a terrified cry howled from the front lines of the human army.