In Sylvan Shadows Read online

  The elves cried out in savage fury, raining death on the intruders, but no smile found Shayleigh’s face. She knew that the main host, coming in steadily behind the advance lines of fodder, would be more organized and better controlled.

  “Death to the enemies of Shilmista!” one exuberant elf screamed, leaping to his feet and hurling his fist into the air.

  In answer, a huge rock sailed through the darkness and caught the foolish young elf squarely in the face, nearly decapitating him.

  “Giant!” came the cry from several positions all at once.

  Another rock whipped past, narrowly missing Shayleigh’s cowled head.

  The wizards couldn’t possibly conjure enough webbing to block the entire eastern Dells. They had known that from the beginning and had selected specific trees on which to anchor their webs, creating a maze to slow the enemy’s approach. Tintagel and his three cohorts nodded grimly to each other, took up predetermined positions at the mouths of the web tunnels, and prepared their next spells.

  “They have entered the second channel!” called a scout.

  Tintagel silently counted to five then clapped his hands. At the sound of the signal, the four wizards began identical chants. They saw the forms, shadowy and blurred by the web veils, slipping through the maze, apparently having solved the riddle. On came the charging goblins, hungry for elf blood. The wizards kept their composure, though, concentrating on their spells and trusting that they had timed the approach through the maze correctly.

  Groups of goblins came straight at each of them, all in a line between the channeling webs.

  One after another, the elf wizards pointed out at the enemy and uttered the final syllables of their incantations. Bolts of lightning split the darkness, shooting down each of the channels with killing fury.

  The goblins didn’t even have time to cry out before they fell, scorched corpses in a sylvan grave.

  “It is time to leave,” Galladel told Shayleigh, and the maiden, for once, didn’t argue. The woods beyond the second ridge were lit by so many torches it seemed as though the sun had come up—and still more were coming in.

  Shayleigh couldn’t tell how many giants had taken position beyond the ridge, but judging from the numbers of boulders sailing the elves’ way, there were several at least.

  “Five more arrows!” the fiery elf maiden cried to her troops.

  But many of the elves couldn’t follow that command. They had to drop their bows and take up swords, for a host of bugbears, stealthy despite their great size, had slipped in from the west.

  Shayleigh raced over to join the melee. If the bugbears delayed their retreat even for a short while, the elves would be overwhelmed. By the time she got there, though, the competent elves had dispatched most of the bugbears, with only a single loss. Three elves had one of the remaining monsters surrounded, and another group was in pursuit of two bugbears, heading back to the west. To the side, though, another bugbear appeared, and only one elf, a young maiden, stood before it.

  Shayleigh veered straight in, recognizing the elf as Cellanie and knowing that she was too inexperienced to handle the likes of a bugbear.

  The young elf fell before Shayleigh got there, her skull crushed by the bugbear’s heavy club. The seven-foot, hairy goblinoid stood there grinning with its yellow teeth.

  Shayleigh dipped her head and growled loudly, as though to charge. The bugbear braced itself and clenched its wicked club tightly, but the elf maiden stopped and used her forward momentum to hurl her sword.

  The bugbear stood dumbfounded. Swords were not designed for such attacks! But if the creature doubted Shayleigh’s intelligence in throwing the weapon, or her prowess with such a trick, all it had to do was look to its chest, to the elf’s sword hilt, vibrating horribly just five inches out of the bugbear’s hairy ribs. The creature’s blood spurted across the sword hilt and stained the ground.

  The bugbear looked down, glanced up at Shayleigh, and it fell dead.

  “To the west!” Shayleigh cried, rushing over to retrieve her sword. “As we planned! To the west!”

  She grabbed the bloodied hilt and tugged, but the weapon would not slip free. Shayleigh remained more concerned with the progress of her troops than her own vulnerable position. Still looking back to oversee the retreat, she braced her foot on the dead bugbear’s chest and gripped her sword tightly in both hands.

  When she heard the snort above her, she knew her folly. Both her hands were on a weapon she could not use, either to strike or to parry.

  Defenseless, Shayleigh looked up to see another bugbear and its huge, spiked club.

  The wizards, coming in to join their allies, concentrated their magical attacks on the torches of the enemy host beyond the second ridge. Enchanted flames roared to life under the pyrotechnical magic. Sparks flew wildly, burning into any monsters standing too close. Other torches poured heavy smoke, filling the area, blinding and choking, forcing the monsters to drop back or fall to the ground.

  With that magical cover holding back their foes, the elves soon cleared the third ridge.

  A flash emanated from beside Shayleigh’s face, burned her and blinded her. At first, she thought it was the impact from the bugbear’s club, but when the elf maiden’s wits and vision returned, she still stood over the bugbear she had killed, clutching her impaled sword.

  She finally sorted out the other bugbear, its back against a tree, a smoldering hole burned right through its belly. The creature’s hair danced wildly, charged, Shayleigh realized, from a wizard’s lightning bolt.

  Tintagel was beside her.

  “Come,” he said, helping her tear her sword from the dead monster. “We have slowed the enemy charge, but the great, dark force will not be stopped. Already, our lead runners have encountered resistance in the west.”

  Shayleigh tried to respond, but found that her jaw would not move.

  The wizard looked to the two archers covering his rear. “Gather up poor Cellanie,” he said. “We must leave no dead for our cruel enemies to toy with.”

  Tintagel took Shayleigh’s arm and led her off after the rest of the fleeing host. Cries and monstrous shouts erupted from all around them, but the elves did not panic. They stayed with their carefully designed plan and executed it to perfection. They met pockets of resistance in the west, but the broken ground worked in their favor against the slower, less agile monsters, especially since even on the run the elves could shoot their bows with deadly accuracy. Every group of monsters was overwhelmed and the elves continued on their way without taking another loss.

  The eastern sky had grown pink with the budding dawn before they regrouped and found some rest. Shayleigh had seen no more fighting during the night, fortunately. Her head ached so badly she couldn’t even keep her bearings without Tintagel’s aid. The wizard stayed beside her through it all, and would have willingly died beside her if the enemy had caught them.

  “I must beg your pardon,” Tintagel said to her after the new camp had been set, south of the Dells. “The bugbear was too close—I had to begin the bolt too near you.”

  “You apologize for saving my life?” Shayleigh asked. Every word she spoke pained the valiant maiden.

  “Your face shines with the redness of a burn,” Tintagel said, touching her glowing cheek lightly and wincing with sympathy as he did.

  “It will heal,” Shayleigh replied, managing a weak smile. “Better than would my head if that bugbear had clubbed me!” She couldn’t even manage a smile at her statement, though, and not for the pain, but for the memory of Cellanie, falling dead to the ground.

  “How many did we lose?” Shayleigh asked.

  “Three,” replied Tintagel in equally grim tones.

  “Only three,” came the voice of King Galladel, moving to them from the side. “And the blood of hundreds of goblins and their allies stains the ground. By some accounts, even a giant was felled last night.” Galladel winced when he noticed Shayleigh’s red face.

  “It’s nothing,” the e
lf maiden said into his wide-eyed stare, waving her hand his way.

  Galladel broke his concentrated stare, embarrassed. “We are in your debt,” he said, his smile returning. “Because of your fine planning, we scored a great victory this night.” The elf king nodded, patted Shayleigh on the shoulder, and took his leave, having many other matters to attend to.

  Shayleigh’s grimace told Tintagel that she didn’t share Galladel’s optimism.

  “The outcome,” the wizard reminded her, “could have been much, much worse.”

  From his somber tone, Shayleigh knew she didn’t have to explain her fears. They had hit their enemy by surprise, on a battlefield they had prepared and that their enemy had not seen before, and so they had lost only three. All that was true, but it seemed to Shayleigh that those three dead elves held more value than hundreds of dead goblins among the seemingly countless masses invading Shilmista’s northern border.

  And it was the elves, not the invaders, who had been forced to flee.

  TWO

  A BOOK WORTH READING

  You have met Prince Elbereth?” Headmaster Avery Schell asked Cadderly as soon as the young scholar entered Dean Thobicus’s office. The headmaster rubbed a kerchief across his blotchy face, huffing and puffing as his bloated body tried to pull in enough air. Even before the advent of the chaos curse, Avery had been a rotund man. Since having gone on an eating spree along with several other of the Edificant Library’s most gluttonous brothers, he had become morbidly obese. In the throes of the chaos curse, some of those priests had literally eaten themselves to death.

  “You must take longer walks each morning,” offered Headmistress Pertelope, a neatly groomed, graying woman with hazel eyes that still showed the inquisitive luster of youth.

  Pertelope was Cadderly’s favorite instructor, a wistful, often irreverent woman more concerned with common sense than rules. He noted her long-sleeved, ankle-length gown, bound tightly at the collar, and the gloves that she had been wearing every time Cadderly had seen her since the chaos curse. Never before had Pertelope been so modest, if it was indeed modesty that kept her so covered. She wouldn’t talk about it, though, to Cadderly or to anyone else. She wouldn’t talk about anything that had occurred during the time of the curse. Cadderly wasn’t too concerned, for even with the new wrappings, Pertelope seemed her old, mischievous self. Even as Cadderly watched, she grabbed a handful of Avery’s blubber and gave it a playful shake to the incredulous stares of both Avery and Dean Thobicus, the skinny, wrinkled leader of the library.

  A chuckle erupted from Cadderly’s lips faster than he could bite it back. The stares turned grave as they shifted his way, but Pertelope offered him a playful wink to comfort him.

  Through it all, Prince Elbereth, tall and painfully straight, with hair the color of a raven’s wings and eyes the silver of moonbeams on a rushing river, showed no emotion whatsoever. Standing like a statue beside Dean Thobicus’s desk, he caught Cadderly’s gaze with his own penetrating stare and held the young scholar’s attention.

  Cadderly was thoroughly flustered and didn’t even notice the heartbeats passing by.

  “Well?” Avery prompted.

  Cadderly at first didn’t understand, so Avery motioned the elf prince’s way.

  “No,” Cadderly answered quickly, “I have not had the honor of a formal introduction, though I have heard much of Prince Elbereth since his arrival three days ago.” Cadderly flashed his boyish smile, the corners of his gray eyes turning up to match his grin. He pushed his unkempt, sandy brown locks from his face and moved toward Elbereth, a hand extended. “Well met!”

  Elbereth regarded the offered hand for some time before extending his own in response. He nodded gravely, making Cadderly was more than a little bit embarrassed by the easy smile splayed across his own face. Yet again, Cadderly felt out of his element. Elbereth had come with potentially catastrophic news and Cadderly, sheltered for all of his life, simply didn’t know how to respond.

  “This is the scholar I have told you about,” Avery explained to the elf. “Cadderly of Carradoon, a most remarkable young man.”

  Elbereth’s handshake was incredibly strong for so slender a being, and when the elf turned Cadderly’s hand over, the young scholar offered only token resistance. Elbereth examined Cadderly’s palm, rubbing his thumb across the base of Cadderly’s fingers.

  “These are not the hands of a warrior,” the elf said, unimpressed.

  “I never claimed to be a warrior,” Cadderly retorted before Avery or Thobicus could explain. The dean and headmaster turned accusing glares back at Cadderly. Even easygoing Pertelope offer him no escape.

  Headmaster Avery cleared his throat to break the tension.

  “Cadderly is indeed a warrior,” the robust headmaster explained. “It was he who defeated both the Talonite priest Barjin and Barjin’s most awful undead soldiers. Even a mummy rose up against the lad and was summarily put down.”

  The recounting didn’t make Cadderly swell with pride. The mere mention of the dead priest made Cadderly see him again, slumped against the wall in the makeshift altar room in the catacombs, a blasted hole in his chest and his dead eyes staring accusingly at his killer.

  “But more than that,” Avery continued, moving over to drape a heavy, sweaty arm over the young scholar, “Cadderly is a warrior whose greatest weapon is knowledge. We have a riddle here, Prince Elbereth, a most dangerous riddle, I fear. And Cadderly, I tell you now, is the man who will solve it.”

  Avery’s proclamation added more weight to Cadderly’s shoulders than the headmaster’s considerable arm. The young scholar wasn’t absolutely certain, but he believed he liked Avery better before the events of the chaos curse. Back then, the headmaster often went out of his way to make Cadderly’s life miserable. Under the influence of the intoxicating curse, though, Avery had admitted his almost fatherly love for the young scholar.

  “Enough of this banter,” said Dean Thobicus in his shaky voice. “We have chosen Cadderly as our representative in this matter. The decision was ours alone to make. Prince Elbereth will treat him accordingly.”

  The elf turned to the seated dean and dipped a curt and precise bow.

  Thobicus nodded in reply. “Tell Cadderly of the gloves, and of how you came to possess them,” he bade.

  Elbereth reached into the pocket of his traveling cloak—an action that pushed the garment open and gave Cadderly a quick glance at the elf prince’s magnificent armor, links of golden and silvery chain finely meshed—and produced several gloves, each clearly marked with stitching that showed the same trident-and-bottle design that Barjin had displayed on his clerical vestments. Elbereth sorted through the tangle to free one glove, and handed it to Cadderly.

  “Such vermin does not often find its way into Shilmista,” the proud elf began, “but we are ever alert for its encroachment. A party of bugbears wandered into the forest. None of them escaped with their lives.”

  None of this was news to Cadderly, of course; rumors had been circulating throughout the Edificant Library since the elf prince’s arrival. Cadderly nodded and examined the gauntlet.

  “The symbol is the same as Barjin’s,” he declared at once.

  “But what does it mean?” asked an impatient Avery.

  “An adaptation of Talona’s symbol,” Cadderly explained, shrugging to let them know that he was not absolutely certain of that fact.

  “The bugbears carried poisoned daggers,” Elbereth remarked. “That would be in accord with the Lady of Poison’s edicts.”

  “You know of Talona?” Cadderly asked.

  Elbereth’s silvery eyes flashed, a moonbeam sparkling off a cresting wave, and he gave Cadderly a derisive, sidelong glance. “I have seen the birth and death of three centuries, young human. I will still be young at the time of your death, though you might live more years than all others of your race.”

  Cadderly bit back his retort, knowing that he would find little support in antagonizing the elf.

  “D
o not underestimate that which I, Prince of Shilmista, might know,” the haughty Elbereth continued. “We are not a simple folk wasting our years dancing under the stars, as so many would choose to believe.”

  Cadderly started to reply, sharply again, but Pertelope, ever the calming influence, moved in front of him and took the glove, shooting him another wink and subtly stepping on the young scholar’s toe.

  “We would never think so of our friends in Shilmista,” the headmistress offered. “Often has the Edificant Library sought the wisdom of ancient Galladel, your father and king.”

  Apparently appeased, Elbereth gave a quick nod.

  “If it is indeed a sect of Talona, then what might we conclude?” Dean Thobicus asked.

  Cadderly shrugged helplessly. “Little,” he replied. “Since the Time of Troubles, so much has changed. We do not yet know the intentions and methods of the various sects, but I doubt that coincidence brought Barjin to us and the bugbears to Shilmista, especially since each carried not the normal symbol of Talona, but an adapted design. A renegade sect, it would seem, but undeniably coordinated in its attacks.”

  “You will come to Shilmista,” Elbereth said to Cadderly. The scholar thought for a moment that the elf was asking him, but then he realized from Elbereth’s unblinking, uncompromising stare, that it had been a command. Helpless, the young scholar looked to his headmasters and to the dean, but they, even Pertelope, nodded in accord.

  “When?” Cadderly asked Dean Thobicus, pointedly looking past Elbereth’s ensnaring gaze.

  “A few days,” Thobicus replied. “There are many preparations to be made.”

  “A few days may be too long for my people,” Elbereth remarked, his eyes still boring into Cadderly.

  “We will move as fast as we can,” was the best Thobicus could offer. “We have suffered grave injuries, Prince. An emissary from the Church of Ilmater is on the way, to make an inquiry concerning a group of his priests who were found slaughtered in their room. He will demand a thorough investigation, and that too will require an audience with Cadderly.”