Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “Say not the name.”
She tried to remember if they had ever met. The children of Vedvedsica’s art had been scattered, by design, all over the kingdom. Mathi lived in the western woodland, not far from the provincial town of Woodbec. Judging by his accent, Taius had dwelt in the city.
“But why did they spare us the lash?” Treskan said.
“When they tore open your clothes, they saw the truth.”
“Truth?”
It struck Mathi like a thunderbolt. Her elf form was her greatest advantage. Among all her brethren, she was chosen for the mission because her appearance was the most perfect. One by one, the others had begun reverting to their original beastly shapes. When she left the brethren’s hidden camp for Silvanost, she was outwardly as elflike as Balif or Artyrith. But the change was affecting her too. Her characteristic fur was slowly returning. The nomads saw she had elf features but with body hair. Treskan was in the same condition but for different reasons. His elf image was wearing thin in the wilderness. The nomads assumed the two of them were-
“Half-breeds,” said the voice.
Mathi was so relieved to escape the flogging that she didn’t care about her degeneration beginning. Being mistaken by the nomads for a half-elf was an unforeseen benefit. Hating and distrusting elves themselves, they had a certain sympathy for half-elves, who were despised by the Silvanesti and officially persecuted by them.
“What about him?” Taius said.
Treskan replied, “I am a scholar, trying to broaden my knowledge of the elves.”
“You’re a long way from a library.”
“You must help us escape!” she said urgently. “I am on an urgent mission for our brethren!”
Taius sprang at her, alighting scant inches from the crouching Mathi. Long teeth bared in a fierce snarl, his hot breath played on her face like flame.
“To the abyss with the brethren and all our kind!”
Mathi pushed her face closer until their noses almost touched. “I thought we are all kindred.”
“The brethren abandoned us in the city. So did the Creator. He gave us, his children, to the Silvanesti. They hunted us down like-” Had he intended to say animals? Whatever his intent, Taius thought better of it. “They hunted us, killing all who resisted. The rest were spirited away to oblivion.”
“So too our creator,” Mathi said.
“You lie! For his betrayal of his children, the Nameless One was spared!”
Mathi told Taius what she had been able to glean from Balif about Vedvedsica’s trial and condemnation. She went so far as to tell him about Balif’s voluntary exile from Silvanost on the pretext of scouting the eastern province for information about nonelf invaders. Though he had no knowledge of what Vedvedsica was doing, Balif had provided help to the magician. After Vedvedsica’s fall, Balif offered to take full blame for the scandal, but Silvanos would not allow it. How could he tarnish the name of Silvanesti’s greatest hero with such horrible pollution?
“Balif? The general is here?”
“He is near.” Because Taius was so unstable, Mathi decided to not disclose her mission to him. At that time the fewer who knew, the better.
“I bless the name Balif,” he said, despairing, to Mathi’s astonishment.
“What is your story, Taius?” Treskan asked. “I am in General Balif’s employ, but I did not join him until after the trial of-of the Nameless. Who are you, and how came you to be here?”
The beast-elf relaxed his threatening posture. He had actually served in Balif’s guard during the Forest War. In those days his beastly traits were hidden by Vedvedsica’s magic. He thought he was an ordinary elf until the transformation spell worked by the magus began to fail. He tried to hide his condition as long as he could, but it soon became impossible to conceal. Dozens of others like him had mixed in Silvanesti society, serving as soldiers, scribes, artisans, and performers. Some had even married full-blooded elves and had offspring.
Mathi was shocked. Offspring of the brethren and elves? She had not heard that before. Did Silvanos know? Did the Sinthal-Elish, the assembly of great nobles, know?
“They know. And they will never speak of it. It is their greatest shame,” Taius said.
There was a dimension Mathi had not suspected. What great families were mingled with the blood of the beast-elves?
Treskan said, “How did the nomads take you?”
Taius’s eyes glittered in the dark. “I had just brought down a kill, a yearling doe, when their dogs caught my scent. I couldn’t shake them off, so I turned to fight. I was netted like a partridge. When the humans saw what they had caught, they put me in here.”
With sudden violence, Taius leaped upward, grabbing the cage roof with his hands and feet. He shook the willow lattice and roared. The bars held. From a distance, they heard laughter and taunts from their captors.
He dropped lightly to the ground and retreated to the darkest corner of the cage.
“I wonder why they put us together?” Mathi wondered aloud.
“The centaurs they’ve taken are tied in an open pen. The freaks they cage.”
Taius would not speak anymore. Wary of their mercurial fellow prisoner, Mathi and Treskan moved to the opposite end of the cage, where firelight made a dim haven from the darkness.
She dozed. She could not rest. Every sound teased her awake. Passing nomads coughed, hacked up phlegm, or talked loudly, and each disturbance jolted Mathi awake. Treskan sat slumped against the bars, asleep or brooding. Taius was absolutely silent.
Time passed. She didn’t know how much. In the small hours, something hard thumped against the back of her head. She thought a nomad was amusing himself, flinging stones at the half-breed. When the blow was repeated, she turned angrily to insult her abuser.
No one was there.
Daybreak was closer than sunset. Most of the nomads were asleep in their tents. She could see random hands or feet poking out of open tent flaps. The campfires had burned down to embers. Now and then an alert human loped into view with a polearm on his shoulder.
After a watchman passed, another stone came whirling out of the night. Mathi saw it come from the deep shadows between two tents. It was a round, water-washed pebble tumbling end over end, and it struck her square on the forehead.
Like a ghost, a lean figure bereft of color slowly emerged from the tents. It took Mathi a moment to realize it was Lofotan, wearing a long, gray cloak that reached his knees. He moved with all the grace of his race, sidling up to the cage with such calm that not even his breath could be heard.
Starlight gleamed on a length of sharp bronze. Two strokes, and the hide lacing holding the cage closed was gone. Then, without a word or gesture, Lofotan wafted back to the black gap he came from.
Mathi shook Treskan. He started, fists clenched, ready to fight. Mathi hissed at him to be quiet. She stood, head and shoulders bent down by the low top.
“Up,” she whispered. Treskan obeyed.
They braced their shoulders against the bars and pushed. The green wood lattice shifted. Treskan got his arm out and used it to push against the cage frame. They heaved again, shifting the cage top far enough to one side to allow them to climb out.
In a flash Taius was beside them. Treskan almost cried out in alarm when he felt his furry flanks brush against him. In one fluid movement, Taius was out and on the ground, crouched on all fours. He looked back at Mathi and the scribe, staring with amazement from inside the cage. Fangs flashed in a grimace-or smile? — and the beast melted into the night.
With far greater deliberation, Treskan and Mathi climbed out. They tugged the cage top back into place and hurried away, making for the spot where Mathi saw Lofotan vanish. Not two steps into the shadows, she felt a slim, hard hand clamp over her mouth.
“You took your time!” he murmured in the girl’s ear.
After he removed his hand, Mathi hissed back, “My thought exactly!”