AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And at the end we have my wife, son, and granddaughter,” her host said.
Did elves not keep their family about? “I’d like to see them in person to compare with these likenesses,” Wistala finally said. “Will I meet them?”
“An impossibility with Nyesta and Eyen, my wife and son. They are dead.”
His wife had a softness to her features, done in colored sand and painted shell. “I hope she had a peaceful passing,” Wistala said.
“Age and infirmity took her too soon, as it does all humans. But we had many years of comfort together. I met her when she passed through with Old Nightingale’s Circus, now under Ragwrist—though, like everything else these days, much reduced in scope and splendor. She left me comfort in my son, transitory though it was; he had something of his mother’s temperament and my father’s courage.”
She looked at his portrait. Some manner of sash was woven about the harness that held his sword. His eyes challenged, as if daring the portraiteer to capture him.
All that served to remember his granddaughter was a sketch. A simple charcoal depicted her; Rainfall apologized that he had no skill with formal portraiture. The girl-child had overlarge eyes compared with the others, but perhaps hominid youth accounted for that, for if the sketch was life-size, she was a good deal younger when drawn than the others. The elf blood came through strong in her cheek-bones and delicate ears.
“She still lives?” Wistala asked. Curiosity about her host made her stop in front of the drawing.
“Yes, but Lada’s been away from me these eight years.”
“With her mother?”
“We never knew her mother. Or I should say, I never knew her. Some sport of her father in one of the taverns of Quarryness or Sack Harbor, I expect. She arrived on my doorstep as an infant, bearing a note my son burned rather than show to me. She was my comfort after her father’s death. Since—since—please excuse me.”
Rainfall turned his face to the wall, and after a last look at the charcoal portrait, Wistala crept out of the room.
As the leaves turned color and dropped, Wistala explored the broken houses at the base of the two hills, pulling nails and hinges from the ruins to satisfy her hunger for metal. She’d come terribly close to stealing a small silver candleholder from a side table on one of her passes through the house and decided to hunt metal on her own.
When she returned, all her claws counted thrice worth of horses were standing in the field beyond the barn under the care of two boys who occupied themselves by throwing rotten apples at each other from opposite sides of a stone wall that held the saddles.
She circled the house to get downwind of it and found a yew tree to climb, where she spent an uncomfortable night. The riders left in haste the next morning—she saw only the backs of cloaks and a few gamboling dogs of the ordinary sort, not the huge savage brutes she’d pulled over the ledge.
Somewhat stiffly she climbed down from the tree to hear Rainfall calling:
“Tala Tala Comeoutfree! They’re gone, and it is safe.”
He hurried to meet her as soon as she extended her neck above the bushes.
“More of the thane’s men?” she asked.
“Better and yet worse, at least for you. It was the Dragonblade and a party of hunters.”
Breath and death, the Dragonblade! Wistala couldn’t help but crouch at the name.
“He said a young dragon had escaped him, blamed the miss over the loss of his beloved pack in the summer. He has to go back to training pups for a while.”
“You fed him and his horses, then?”
“What could I do? He carries a Hypatian Knight-Seal. I’m old fashioned enough to bow to any who carries it, even if he hunts a friend. Though I felt no need to disclose your presence, especially as his line of questioning allowed me to keep my honor and your friendship.”
“What do you mean?”
“The description he gave was laughable. He got your size right, but had the color wrong—lots of talk of wolves’ hides and such. I could honestly say I’d not seen anything like that about the road.”
“Why the road?” she wondered. Of course, they first came upon my scent on the same road near Tumbledown.
“I gave his dogs as vast a meal as I could manage so they’d sleep rather than sniff around the barn. Same with the men. I fear our dinner tonight will be their leavings, little though there are.”
Wistala was grateful for a moment that she hadn’t been hidden in the barn or somewhere closer. There would be danger, yes, but temptation. Men were vulnerable when they took off their armor to sleep. She’d learned the knack of walking silently through the home without letting her claws touch the flooring to save Rainfall’s woodwork.
“Have they gone for good, or will they be back?”
