“You must be part of the long-range patrol. You’ve come back in good time.” Silvan paused, concentrated his thoughts, trying to penetrate the smothering fog of pain and despair. “We were attacked last night, during the storm. An army of ogres. I . . .” He paused, bit his lip, reluctant to reveal his failure. “I was sent to fetch aid. The Legion of Steel has a fortress near Sithelnost. Down that road.” He made a feeble gesture. “I must have fallen. My arm is broken. I came the wrong way and now I must backtrack, and I don’t have the strength. I can’t make it, but you can. Take this message to the commander of the legion. Tell him that Alhana Starbreeze is under attack. . . .”
He stopped speaking. One of the elves had made a sound, a slight exclamation. The elf in the lead, the first to approach Silvan, raised his hand to impose silence.
Silvan was growing increasingly exasperated. He was mortifyingly aware that he cut but a poor figure, clutching his wounded arm to his side like a hurt bird dragging a wing. But he was desperate. The time must be midmorning now. He could not go on. He was very close to collapse. He drew himself up, draped in the cloak of his title and the dignity it lent him.
“You are in the service of my mother, Alhana Starbreeze,” he said, his voice imperious. “She is not here, but her son, Silvanoshei, your prince, stands before you. In her name and in my own, I command you to bear her message calling for deliverance to the Legion of Steel. Make haste! I am losing patience!”
He was also rapidly losing his grip on consciousness, but he didn’t want these soldiers to think him weak. Wavering on his feet, he reached out a hand to steady himself on a tree trunk. The elves had not moved. They were staring at him now in wary astonishment that widened their almond eyes. They shifted their gazes to the road that lay beyond the shield, looked back at him.
“Why do you stand there staring at me?” Silvan cried. “Do as you are commanded! I am your prince!” A thought came to him. “You need have no fear of leaving me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” He waved his hand. “Just go! Go! Save our people!”
The lead elf moved closer, his gray eyes intent upon Silvan, looking through him, sifting, sorting.
“What do you mean that you went the wrong way upon the road?”
“Why do you waste time with foolish questions?” Silvan returned angrily. “I will report you to Samar! I will have you demoted!” He glowered at the elf, who continued to regard him steadily. “The shield lies to the south of the road. I was traveling to Sithelnost. I must have gotten turned around when I fell! Because the shield. . . the road. . .”
He turned around to stare behind him. He tried to think this through, but his head was too muzzy from the pain.
“It can’t be,” he whispered.
No matter what direction he would have taken, he must have still been able to reach the road, which lay outside the shield.
The road still lay outside the shield. He was the one who was inside it.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You are in Silvanesti,” answered the elf.
Silvan closed his eyes. All was lost. His failure was complete.
He sank to his knees and pitched forward to lie face down in the gray ash. He heard voices but they were far away and receding rapidly.
“Do you think it is truly him?”
“Yes. It is.”
“How can you be sure, Rolan? Perhaps it is a trick!”
“You saw him. You heard him. You heard the anguish in his voice, you saw the desperation in his eyes. His arm is broken. Look at the bruises on his face, his tom and muddy clothes. We found the trail in ash left by his fall. We heard him talking to himself when he did not know we were close by. We saw him try to reach the road. How can you possibly doubt?”
Silence, then, in a piercing hiss, “But how did he come through the shield?”
“Some god sent him to us,” said the lead elf, and Silvan felt a gentle hand touch his cheek.
“What god?” The other was bitter, skeptical. “There are no gods.”
Silvan woke to find his vision clear, his senses restored. A dull ache in his head made thinking difficult, and at first he was content to lie quite still, take in his surroundings, while his brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening. He remembered the road. . .
Silvan struggled to sit up.
A firm hand on his chest arrested his movement.
“Do not move too hastily. I have set your arm and wrapped it in a poultice that will speed the healing. But you must take care not to Jar It.”
Silvan looked at his surroundings. He had the thought at first that it had all been a dream, that he would wake to find himself once again in the burial mound. He had not been dreaming, however. The boles of the trees were the same as he remembered-ugly gray, diseased, dying. The bed of leaves on which he lay was a deathbed of rotting vegetation. The young trees and plants and flowers that carpeted the forest floor drooped and languished.
Silvanoshei took the elf’s counsel and lay back down, more to give himself time to sort out the confusion over what had happened to him than because he needed the rest.
“How do you feel?” The elf’s tone was respectful.
“My head hurts a little,” Silvan replied. “But the pain in my arm is gone.”
“Good,” said the elf. “You may sit up then. Slowly, slowly. Otherwise you will pass out.”
A strong arm assisted Silvan to a seated position. He felt a brief flash of dizziness and nausea, but he closed his eyes until the sick feeling passed.
The elf held a wooden bowl to Silvan’s lips.
“What’s this?” he asked, eying with suspicion the brown liquid the bowl contained.
“ An herbal potion,” replied the elf. “I believe that you have suffered a mild concussion. This will ease the pain in your head and promote the healing. Come, drink it. Why do you refuse?”
“I have been taught never to eat or drink anything unless I know who prepared it and I have seen others taste it first,”
Silvanoshei replied.
The elf was amazed. “Even from another elf?”
“Especially from another elf,” Silvanoshei replied grimly.
“Ah,” said the elf, regarding him with sorrow. “Yes, of course. I understand.”
Silvan attempted to rise to his feet, but the dizziness assailed him again. The elf put the bowl to his own lips and drank several mouthfuls. Then, politely wiping the edge of the bowl, he offered it again to Silvanoshei.
“Consider this, young man. If I wanted you dead, I could have slain you while you were unconscious. Or I could have simply left you here.” He cast a glance around at the gray and withered trees. “Your death would be slower and more painful, but it would come to you as it has come to too many of us.”
Silvanoshei thought this over as best he could through the throbbing of his head. What the elf said made sense. He took the bowl in unsteady hands and lifted it to his lips. The liquid was bitter, smelled and tasted of tree bark. The potion suffused his body with a pleasant warmth. The pain in his head eased, the dizziness passed.
Silvanoshei saw that he had been a fool to think this elf was a member of his mother’s army. This elf wore a cloak strange to Silvan, a cloak made of leather that had the appearance of leaves and sunlight and grass and brush and flowers. Unless the elf moved, he would blend into his forest surroundings so perfectly that he would never be detected. Here in the midst of death, he stood out; his cloak retaining the green memory of the living forest, as if in defiance.
“How long have I been unconscious?” Silvan asked.
“Several hours from when we found you this morning. It is Midyear’s Day, if that helps you in your reckoning.”
Silvan glanced around. “Where are the others?” He had the thought that they might be in hiding.
“Where they need to be,” the elf answered.
“I thank you for helping me. You have business elsewhere, and so do I.” Silvan rose to his feet. “I must go. It may be too late...” He tasted bitter gall in his mouth, took a moment to choke it down. “I must still fulfill my mission. If you will show me the place I can use to pass back through the shield. . .”