The Dream Spheres (35 page)

“I come here from time to time,” Danilo said suddenly. “The sound of the sea often serves to wash clean my thoughts, allows me to start anew and think with greater clarity. Tonight, it does not avail.”

He related his conversation with Lady Cassandra, his terrible suspicions. “I have always felt somewhat apart from my family, but I never realized how little I knew them. I never conceived of the possibility that they could turn on their own.”

“It happens,” she said shortly, for Danilo’s tale was too like her own early life for comfort. After a moment’s hesitation, it occurred to her that he might find, if not comfort, then at least community in her story

“My mother died when I was barely fifteen,” she said. “A half-elf of that age is little more than a child. Her moonblade came into my keeping. She had always intended that it pass to me, and she had begun training me with an eye toward its demands, but as you know her time was cut short before she could tell me all I needed to know. My mother’s family came to Evereska for the funeral. They were robed and hooded in traditional elven mourning. I never saw their faces, but I heard them argue about the sword and its fate. None of them thought I should have it, but they left it in my keeping. Much later, I realized why. No one thought that a half-elf could claim a moonblade. They fully expected I would die in the attempt and that the family could then reclaim Amnestria’s sword. But they gave me no word of warning or explanation.”

Danilo’s lips thinned in anger. “I never knew that.”

“It’s not something I like to talk about. It took me a long time to realize that my mother’s family are not evil or even thoughtless. Far from it. I was simply not a part of their world. Half-elves are not people to them and so do not merit consideration. That sounds harsh, but they have reasons for their way of thinking.”

“Even so, you were left alone, and at a very young age. I think I have some understanding of how difficult that must have been.”

Arilyn halted him with a hand on his arm. They moved without speaking into an embrace, two figures silhouetted against the night sky.

“You are not alone,” she said softly. “Never that.”

As they stood together a small tendril slipped into her mind, a presence that she had always sensed, but never so vividly. She recognized Danilo’s merry, blithe spirit, but behind it was a darkness that she had never glimpsed. She accepted them both, understanding what this meant. They were connected by elven rapport, a deep psychic and spiritual bond. It was far from complete—the

soul-deep union of the feyfolk was beyond either of them-but still infinitely more than a meeting of flesh or even of hearts.

“There is that, too,” he said softly, answering her unspoken thoughts. By that, Arilyn knew the elven bond encompassed them both. The joining was made, the circle complete.

Suddenly, he swept her up into his arms, as if she were a silk-clad maiden rather than a warrior. To her surprise, she found she did not mind. Danilo had his own patterns, and at this moment the alien urgency of a human’s desire seemed as natural to her as the coming of spring.

She circled her arms around his neck. Magic engulfed them, and the roar of the sea was lost in the sweeping tide of the travel spell.

They emerged from the white whirl of the magical transport into a world that, to Arilyn’s heightened senses, seemed just as enchanted. Apple logs crackled on the hearth fire, and lamps fueled by scented oil burned low. Globes of blue glass filtered the lamplight and cast an azure glow over the room. Arilyn glanced down, half expecting to find herself clad in the deep blue silk and gems of Danilo’s preference.

“Not tonight,” he said aloud as he set her gently on the floor. “As you are.”

She reached for the buckle of her swordbelt and cast the elven weapon aside. It was an instinctively protective gesture, for even a casual touch from the moonblade could burn the careless. She let it fall without care or concern. The sword was her elven destiny, but tonight, she had another pledge to fulfill, just as sacred.

Danilo put her hands aside and tended her himself He gently smoothed away the indentations on her forearm where the bracer and knife sheath pressed against her. Her skin fascinated him, and he explored it with exquisite, torturous delicacy.

“Moonlight on pearl,” he murmured in a reverent tone, easing her shirt away from her shoulders.

Arilyn began to experience a very human level of impatience. Had she possessed any magic, she would have dissolved all impediments. She began to tug at the laces that bound the side of her leathers.

He caught her mood, and moved to help her, but urgency made them both fumble-fingered. Finally she pushed him away and bent, pulling a knife from a sheath hidden in her boot.

This she handed to Danilo. He deftly cut the laces, and she kicked the ruined garment aside, She kicked her boots off so emphatically that one of them hit an oil lamp. The blue globe rocked wildly, and the flame guttered, then disappeared.

The darkness suited her. Moonlight was all that was needed. It filled her, in a very tangible sense. Its silvery light began to gather, burning ever brighter as it rose. Her mind washed clear. There was nothing but this, no time but now. Elven rapport melded with very human urgency, but there was no discordance, only completion, and a shared sense of homecoming so poignant and sweet that she knew the memory would stay with her long after her life essence melded with the moonblade.

Later, they curled together before the fire and watched the patterns in the flames. There was no need for words, for those served to bridge a gap, and the communion they had shared made this unnecessary. Whatever came, Arilyn felt that neither of them would ever truly be alone again.

The morning came in slowly, for the sun was curtained with clouds and a faint rain whispered over the roofs and rustled the falling leaves.

Danilo turned to the sleeping woman beside him and woke her with a kiss. “As much as I hate to say this, we should rise. We have business outside this room.”

She stretched, looking as smug and languorous as a cat. “Had I known what was awaiting me, I would not have waited so long.”

He caught up her hand and kissed it. “My fault entirely,” he said ruefully. Four years ago, when they had declared their love, he had been determined that all would be done as tradition demanded. Their union would be blessed by clerics of Hannah Celanil, the elven goddess of love. There would be a splendid ceremony, a lavish celebration. Theirs was no trivial fancy to enter into lightly.

“You just wanted to do things right,” she consoled him.

“I picked a damnably foolish time to start,” he said with a wry grin. After the depth and shattering communion of their joining, ceremony and tradition seemed paltry things. They were bound for life and had been for a very long time.

Nevertheless there was still a part of him that yearned for the ceremony, the symbol. He reached for the bedside table and took from the drawer a small box. Four years ago he had purchased a hoop of sapphires and moonstones, which he had planned to give her at the Gemstone Ball.

“You don’t wear rings,” he observed. “Perhaps I could persuade you to make an exception.”

She held out her hand. “At the moment, I find myself more open to persuasion than is my usual custom.”

He slid the ring onto her finger. “It’s almost a shame that I can’t take advantage of that! But I can think of nothing in this world that I wish to ask for, that we do not already have. With the possible exemption of a new pair of leather breeches,” he amended, nodding toward the ruined garment.

Arilyn frowned as she tried to follow his reasoning. Then she remembered, with a smug little grin that delighted him. He chuckled and reached for the bellpull. Monroe came promptly to the call. The steward opened the door a discreet crack, and asked how he might serve. Danilo sent him off in search of a gown that might fit Arilyn.

Monroe returned with admirable haste. He draped a linen shift and kirtle over the back of a chair. “Simple garments, but they should suffice for the present,” he announced as he left the room.

Arilyn eyed the practical garments with approval. “Your steward has sense. I suppose I should feel odd, though, wearing clothes that belong to another woman.”

Danilo regarded her with astonishment. “There are other women?”

She sent him a mock glare. “Keep thinking along those lines, and we shall get along fine.”

The peace and unity of that morning lasted until they were on the streets. Arilyn’s eyes turned hard and watchful. An aura of battle-ready anticipation rose from her like mist.

“You’re as nervous as a squirrel,” Danilo observed. “What is wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” The half-elf looked genuinely puzzled. “What of the sword?”

He spoke easily, with none of the resentment that had shadowed him for so long.

“There is no warning, but I feel as if we’re being followed. Why, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t hear anything. I just sense it.”

They skirted an open gutter, mindful of the attack that had followed the last time Arilyn had a presentiment of danger, and hurried onto a more populated street.

So close to the market, street vendors did a brisk business. Small meat pasties scented the air, and fragrant

steam rose from baskets piled with small loaves of fresh bread. People ate these as they walked and stopped to wash down their meal with a mug of ale poured from the keg or fresh milk dipped up from a pail.

A woman’s scream froze them in mid-step.

Before Danilo could turn toward the sound, Arilyn already had her sword out. No fey light limned its length, but Danilo’s attention was captured by the runes carved along it—one for each elf who had wielded the sword and who had imbued it with a new level of power. One of these markings glowed with eerie white light.

Never had Danilo seen the moonblade respond in such fashion. This was nothing like the blue glow that warned of coming danger, or the soft green luster that led Arilyn to aid her fellow elves.

The woman gave another cry, this one closer to a strangled sob. Danilo tore his eyes from the moonblade. A dairymaid stood beside her upturned stool and pail, her hands at her mouth and her eyes enormous, oblivious to the spilled milk pooling at her feet. The girl seemed to be in no immediate danger, but Danilo tracked her gaze to the source of her distress.

Behind Arilyn, almost indistinguishable from the play of light and shadows cast by the milling crowd, was the ghostly image of an elven woman.

Though the form was faint and as translucent as a soap bubble, Danilo made out the ghostly elf’s stern expression, the sapphire-colored hair braided tightly in a practical, battle-ready fashion.

“Thassitalia,” Arilyn murmured.

Danilo had heard that name, and he knew at once what it meant. This was an elfshadow—a manifestation of the moonblade’s magic and the symbol of the spirit—

of one of Arilyn’s ancestors, one of the elves who had wielded the moonblade and whose spirit lent magic to the elven sword.

He had seen the elfshadow before, but it had appeared more solid and it had worn Arilyn’s face. That had been a time of uncertainty and danger, for the moonblade’s magic had been twisted and exploited by an elven mage. Arilyn had confided once that she often had nightmares about the possibility that this could happen again. It would seem that her fears had come to pass.

The ephemeral shadow studied them, her insubstantial face awash with puzzlement and consternation.

Arilyn was equally dumbfounded. “I did not summon you,” she said to the ghostly elf in the Elvish language. “Return to the sword at once.”

The essence of the warrior Thassitalia merely shook her head, not in refusal, but as if to indicate that she could not hear or understand.

Danilo caught Arilyn’s arm. “Let’s move on before we create a panic,” he said in a low voice.

She nodded and fell into step as he ducked down a narrow opening between two buildings. They followed a Harper’s road, an intricate, hidden path through the back ways of the city, over rooftops and through the hidden entrances of shops whose owners were sympathetic to the Harper folk.

Each step of the way, the ghostly elf followed them like a third shadow.

Elaith Craulnober padded lightly through a similarly convoluted path, as quiet and anonymous as the occasional cat that prowled the alley for vermin.

For all his wealth and power, the elf still moved about the city without attracting much notice. He preferred it that way. This was one reason why his recent inclusion onto Galinda Raventree’s social registry had been so ill advised.

There were many people of wealth and influence in this city who knew his name, but not his face. Elaith could deal with them or gain information in casual conversation that they would never knowingly confide to a competitor. To oblige the man he had named Elf-friend, he had yielded this advantage. The peerage knew him now—or at least, they thought they did. If they had true knowledge, they would not move against him by sending masked men and second-rate soldiers such as Rhep.

It was almost a shame that they would never know the shape of his vengeance, but that was the way of things. Elaith would never have achieved his wealth or success if he had dealt in an open and forthright manner. Nor would he survive now if too much attention came to be focused on him and his activities. It was time for the eyes of the merchant nobility to turn elsewhere.

He found Rhep loitering behind an Ilzimmer-owned warehouse, shooting dice against the wall with a trio of Ilzimmer soldiers. Elaith lingered in the shadows long enough to take the measure of his foe. A woman clad in a tawdry scarlet gown leaned against a discarded barrel and watched the game, not apparently much concerned about the outcome of the men’s wager. From the coarse comments the men made, Elaith discerned that she was to he the prize. The men had pooled their coin to pay her rent.

It would be convenient, Elaith mused, if Rhep won the wager. He could then follow the man to his afternoon’s entertainment and deal with him in relative privacy.

Rhep’s luck, however, was not good. A short, ginger-bearded man with a peg leg stumped off in triumph with the woman. His comrades threw a few more rounds for the sport of it, all the while discussing the likelihood of finding a tavern that would extend credit. The elf managed to catch Rhep’s eye as they turned to