Of Gods and Scorpion Grass

by elwisty

Casavir never returned from his last battle. In the present, the service of remembrance and thanksgiving is going about as well as might be expected. And in the past, Elanee is still looking for her dead knight...

6. Chapter 6

1376 – Marpenoth

One day of flight, and the land was different. She roosted in a linden tree east of the Sword Mountains, and breakfasted on crawberries after finding a bush laden with them. She didn't turn back into her native form: it was easier to feed the bird than the elf.

Before leaving the glade, she listened to the dawn music: there were blackbirds and redthroats, yes, but one of the loudest voices was foreign to her. It sang in a round of hooping whistles and staccato croaks, like someone clicking their tongue against their teeth. The dominating call belonged to a tiny puffed-up finch with an ochre breast and black head; she had never seen one of the sort before. A beetle waddled along the limb of the linden, its shining carapace streaked with satin-red. That was new too.

She gave herself no time to contemplate these discoveries. She must go east, always east. Rashemen lay beyond the Sea of Fallen Stars, and west of the fabled continent where the novels she loved had been set.

She kept flying. At first she avoided open ground, till, realising how much progress she forfeited in exchange for flitting from tree to tree, from hedgerow to hedgerow, she abandoned caution and took to the sky, where the prevailing wind bore her speedily from the wreckage in the Mere. When the shadow of a falcon skimmed the ground below her, she held fast to her course. Either it would catch her, or it would not.

The shadow was circling. Then all at once it wasn't, and a lash of air sent her tumbling. The feathers of the predator gleamed, and vanished as she beat her wings in double-time, righting herself, angling her flight against the morning sun.

The falcon reappeared, its neck bristling, its wings stretched out as it hovered effortlessly on the wind. A pupil narrowed.

Not food — alien thing — pfeh was the idea she caught from it in nothing so imprecise as words. It was rather a very clear feeling which settled at the front of her mind before the falcon sped back to hunt for real prey. There were many similar incidents over the following days, yet, however much she must have appeared like easy pickings, the buzzards and owls and haughty falcons let her cross their territories undamaged.

An elvish arrow caught the tip of a pinion as she sailed over the canopy of a forest even larger than Neverwinter Wood. That scared her enough to send her plunging for cover in the gnarled branches of an ancient evergreen. It looked like the yews that humans planted in groves for the sake of their wood, yet its leaves were formed like blades, not needles. She huddled close to the bark, trusting in her speckled feathers to give her camouflage. Her heart was still beating apace from the shock of the arrow.

The line of elvish huntsmen that passed beneath her hiding place moved with proud steps, their well-fitted armour shining in Tethyrian green, some two or three staring at their surroundings with an air of aristocratic boredom. The tall blond at the rear pulled a muzzled bear on a chain behind him. It had old scars on its muzzle; a lame foot made it hobble along on three paws. Its pained wheezing seemed so loud to her that she imagined the hollow bones of her second shape vibrating in sympathy.

Before she had considered what she should do, she had hopped into the womb of the tree, the sheltered nook in the middle of the thickest branches, and become an elf again. As she whispered the secret names of Silvanus, she rested her cheek against the worn bark, and let her soul reach into it. Its roots went deep and far, but they were tired. The season of frost was approaching, and they wished only to rest. No. Remember the long days of summer. Remember bursting through a decade of leaf mould and twigs to greet the light.

Roots broke from the ground and lashed the hunters round their legs and wrists. They yelled and cursed in a mixture of Common and a rough form of elvish. They yelled even more loudly after the leader of their party let his grip on his arrow slip, and it flew from the bow into his companion's calf.

The others looked around as they struggled with their bonds, and a few had the intelligence to look up, but none of them saw her where she crouched, screened from their sight by the boughs. Her heart had raced in fear as a bird; now, it felt that it was beating with the slow deliberation of judge.

She stared at the bear's chain. Red rust spread through it; the rings began to snap and crack apart, aging a thousand years in a few seconds. Testing the dream-membrane that separated her mind from the bear's, she thought of Kaleil, though this creature was old and injured, and more confused than wrathful. She hesitated.

If she encouraged it to snap the necks of a few of the elves, it would be no more than the hunting party deserved. But no. She knew nothing of these people; for all that she despised their…hobby? …occupation? — and their manner of going about it. To whatever families they had, to whatever friends, they could represent something quite different. There could be universes hidden between each set of iris-blue eyes. She did not like one of their dimensions; that gave her no right to destroy the others.

Go. She put the thought in the bear's head, showed it images of deep woods, of caves, of escape and hiding. Be free.

The bear needed no further urging. It shook its great head, throwing away the remains of the collar, and lurched into the woods. She sent a healing charm after it; a bear with three working legs would have had a short future, whether hunted or not.

That left the huntsmen. Perhaps she should threaten them — tell them that the forest and the animals in it were under her protection, though she was already impatient to continue her journey. She disliked lying, and had no talent or inclination for the utterance of threats. In the end, she set branches to grow between the trees around the party, forming a natural prison. Given an hour or two of intense struggle, they'd be able to break out. She hoped they'd learn something from the experience; encounters with similar groups in the past suggested they wouldn't.

With a last look in the direction the bear had run, and the words that was for you, Kaleil tugging insistently at her thoughts, she morphed, and cleared the canopy like a swimmer coming up for air.

At the limit of her vision, the forest began to thin out. Two more days on the wing, and as the sun went down behind her, she examined the landscape that blanketed the horizon. As a thrush, she saw nothing but a flat expanse of grey. Grey dust on the ground, and grey tidal waves of dust blowing here and there in the wind.

The wasted land was even mirrored in the sky; clouds sweeping in from the lush green country at her back seemed to hit an invisible wall as they reached the barren plains. The air currents wheeled round, and bore the clouds south on their torrent. Sheet lightning lit up the desert all along its border, somehow generated by the unnatural forces that loured deep below the surface.

She had a choice. She could cross the waste, which could only be the infamous Anauroch Desert. There seemed to be no water, no shelter, and no food there, meaning that her chances of emerging on the other side were…poor. But to follow the clouds south instead would slow her down.

Then, there was the final option. Go back. She was still much nearer to the Sword Coast than she was to Rashemen, she was sure, even if she couldn't recall much detail of the countries beyond Anauroch. Her flight east had been foolhardy; if she'd waited a little longer and spoken to Sand again, or contacted Aldanon, they would have suggested a much easier way of reaching Mulsantir. They might even have dissuaded her from going altogether.

But when she set out from Crossroad Keep, the flight east was the only action half-way tolerable to her. It still was…

A gust of wind whipped up the grey dust into a seething fog. Even now she wanted to follow a direct course, in defiance of hunger, thirst and cold. It was what the heroines in her novels would have done, and Kaleil. And him — and Casavir. He'd gone alone to the Sword Mountains to fight the orcs. He wouldn't have baulked from the hazards of a desert.

But the whole point of the journey was to find out what had happened to him; to save him if she could. If she died out there, ended up as a small bundle of feathers and bone under the shifting dunes, she would never know, and could never help. Grand gestures were for romances, and for the best of paladins; little druids from a damp country had to pursue less glorious paths.

Her wings stiff with dust, and her breast aching with reluctance, she followed the cloud road south. After six days, a mountain range steadily rose before her. On its further side, the land was green once more, and forests offered plentiful shelter for the night. Yellow and orange veins webbed the leaves of the trees; autumn was arriving this place east of the mountains.

The next morning, she flew over a four-storied building with a tiled roof and sturdy timber frame. It loomed above a crossroads in the middle of a plain filled with thousands of fir trees. A round human in an apron long skirt was pouring water into a trough in the yard of a stable block that was almost as large as the main house. An inn, maybe? Inns tended to welcome all sorts. Well, The Sunken Flagon had.

She landed silently, and changed. After spending so long as a thrush, her own shape felt deeply awkward; it was like putting on a suit of armour lined with lead.

"Excuse me?" She already regretted her decision; her voice sounded hoarse, and it was a challenge to make her tongue and lips cooperate. They had unlearned the hard sounds of the common tongue.

The woman in the apron jumped, and turned round, then jumped again as she saw her. "Good gracious, sister, where did you come from?" There was surprise in her tone, but none of the wild alarm and fear that Elanee had become very familiar with during the last few months of tension before the siege. Whatever realm she was in, it must be at peace.

"From the Sword Coast," she answered honestly. She doubted the fame of Crossroad Keep would have extended beyond the territory of Neverwinter. In an adventure she'd read by a Sembian author, the characters had dismissed the far west of Faerun as a barbaric backwater whose inhabitants preferred building castles to universities. For all she knew, she might be in Sembia now.

"Good gracious!" said the woman again. She twisted her loose brown hair back into a coil, then wiped her hands on her apron. Her crisp accent wasn't so different to Casavir's or Sir Nevalle's; the common speech must have deep roots here. "You look ready to collapse, and no wonder. We have put breakfast out in the hall. Go in and have something, do."

Elanee shook her head. Early that summer, the last time a kindly stranger had offered her rest and food, she'd almost been killed. Even if the offer was exactly what it appeared to be, she had to keep going.

The thought of sustenance beyond berries and rainwater made her body tremble. Her diet had satisfied the bird, but she was suffering for it now. Nevertheless, she had to go further. Fresh bread and something warm to drink were luxuries that she might have deserved in the spring. Now they should choke her if there was any justice before Kelemvor put his seal on her soul's fate.

"Please— what country is this?"

The woman blinked. "Did you not see the purple dragon on the sign over the door, sister?"

She hadn't, and purple dragons meant nothing to her. She'd met the trapped spirit of Nolaloth, a crystal dragon in life, and she'd met the savage red Tholapsyx. Many evenings in the Flagon had been passed comfortably over legendaria about the jade dragons of Kara-Tur.

Noticing her blank look, the woman explained, "Cormyr, my love. The Land of the Purple Dragon."

Cormyr. She knew that it was rich, and bordered the Sea of Fallen Stars. Sir Nevalle had once said that it was a land where they revered their kings more than their gods, and had seemed torn between censure and approval.

"And—please—where is Rashemen? I have to go there."

The woman was so astonished that she couldn't even manage a "good gracious!" After looking steadily at her, and perhaps recognising her sincerity, she looped her thumbs under the ties of her apron, and signed.

"My aunt went there a score of years ago now; if she had not, I would not know Rashemen from Redspring." She frowned, as if she was looking back through rings of compressed time to find the one she needed. "East through Cormyr and Sembia. Then on the shore of the Dragon Reach, she turned north, until she reached Harrowdale, and from there caught a ship over the water to Calaunt, then east across the Vast. From there, she must have found another ship to take her east over the last arm of the Stars… After that — there was a lot of wild, cold country. My aunt said something about a lake." She shook her head in disappointment. "Forgive me, sister. I can remember little else."

Elanee nodded. The names the woman had mentioned meant almost nothing to her, but at least they served to give a reality and shape to the intervening distance.

"She was away for a year. Most of that was spent journeying." The human watched her solemnly; to Elanee it seemed she was expecting a reaction. But she was not dismayed. She could travel much faster as a bird than on foot. Even if she were forced to walk every step of the way between Cormyr and Rashemen, she would do it without complaint, however long it took.

"Thank you," she said, turning way.

"Wait!" the woman called. Elanee hesitated. "Who are you? And what in Azoun's name is taking you so far from the west?"

She looked briefly back. The woman had a kind face, round and starting to wrinkle like a dried plum at the eyes and mouth, as human females tended to with age.

"Nobody," she said. "I'm nobody. But I'm going east for the sake of a knight of Neverwinter. Casavir. He's a hero in his own land. Or he should be."

She broke into a run, and spread her wings. A swell of wind bore her over the walls of the stable-yard. Cormyr, then Sembia, she rehearsed. Cormyr, Sembia, the Dragon Reach, and the Vast.

More days and nights went past. The forests thinned, hills flattened, and villages, their houses tiled in patterned red clay, sat at the axle of a wagon wheel of cornfields and market gardens. The evening after reaching the Sea of Fallen Stars, and after watching the sun set over a low-lying haze that had to be the Vast, she lay on the beach as an elf, and let the whisper of the surf lull her to sleep.

The same night she dreamt she was walking through the Cusgáva, through long corridors sunken into the earth, yet open to a wormwood-streaked sky. Shadows pressed around her. Vashne with his flat eyes and lascivious, twitching fingers; Meryl the shapeshifter; Dornyn the watchman; Seheniäth of the sun elves. All the Circle of the Mere whom she'd helped slay, and whose bodies had been left as offerings to the Slow Marching Court.

Old Daeri pointed at his throat, at the cut that split it from ear to ear, and looked at her pleadingly. He raised his fist, and a stream of black sand fell from it to the stone floor. He opened his mouth, and no sound came out.

"I never loved you," she told the Circle. She hadn't thought that before, but as soon as she said it, she knew that the words were as true as the nightmare was false. "I loved Naevan and Kaleil. If not for them, I'd have lain down near my parents a long time ago."

The shadows only sighed, and drifted away. Daeri left a trail of black blood behind him.

After that, she resolved to pass every night in her thrush form. When the bird dreamed, it was of berries that glistened like Karunenn Nord in winter. The talons of the past found little purchase on feather.

The further she travelled, the colder the weather grew. Once she had crossed the great pastures of the Vast, and flown in a long bow around a north-eastern branch of the Stars, as the Cormyrian had called it, every morning brought frost, and the smell of bonfires from the edges of settlements. Winter was drawing near, though it was still Marpenoth, and in the hills and fields round Crossroad Keep the orchards would be laden with fruit. The recollection of particular damson tree at Farnhowe made her heart ache with longing. The bird missed the damsons; the elf missed the warmth of the knotted wood.

Food became harder to find. Once she was forced to be Elanee again, and ask for sustenance from a halfling village in return for healing a few of the local children and elderly.

Another time, she found a bush still carrying the last of the autumn's red fruit. About to eat her fill, she was startled by a creature that ran out at her from the undergrowth: it resembled a stoat, though was three times the size, and its long body was supported by twelve legs rather than four. Fur that might have been lustrous in easier conditions was shabby, and the animal's ribs protruded all along its torso. No wonder it was prepared to defy a druid for the chance of lunch.

Fluttering to the top of the bush, she pulled the highest berries loose, and dropped them on the chilled ground. Whatever the animal was, it clearly needed them more than she did. She left it with purple juice staining its nose, whiskers, and paws.

By the time she stood atop a cliff, watching a couple of small fishing boats float at anchor on the near side of the biggest lake she'd ever seen, she hadn't eaten as elf or thrush for two days. She meandered through the long grasses, following the cliff edge without much thought beyond where to find her next meal.

There might be samphire, or an eastern equivalent. Once she found something edible, however small, it would be simple to encourage it to spread, even in the frost-pocked earth. One mushroom could sprout multiple heads; a knay sveinig could expand underground in seconds with the right encouragements. She remembered Shandra asking her some very precise questions about that skill of hers.

After a mile, the cliff softened, black crags turning into a sandy-soiled bank. Gold scales flashed in the shallows; she was just in time to see a fish's tail retreating into the depths of the lake. As she wondered at the species, the points of ice in the wind hissed round her, and whistled through the rips in her ragged tunic. In high summer, this might be a pleasant spot. It wasn't now.

She stared eastwards, as she had many times in the past month. The wind was bringing tears to her eyes, but she didn't have enough strength to give up foraging and continue her journey. So she stood alone on the shore.

At first, she thought it was just the noise of the breeze stirring the grasses. Certainly, now and then it sounded like a voice, a voice like a soft-stringed viol whispering the grace notes of an old air, but nature could imitate art through happenstance. Khelgar had once convinced himself that a child was crying out for help, trapped at the top of one of the Keep's crumbling chimneys, until she'd shown him the reality of the poor trapped victim. See? Pigeon.

She smiled as she remembered Khelgar's expression, and then shuddered. Wrapping her arms around herself, she rubbed her biceps and puzzled over why her first smile since the palace had been on the shore of a dark lake under ice blue skies.

The voice came again. It was definitely the sound of singing this time. No grasses could replicate that soulful timbre. To the south, a patch of conifers and scrub grew near the water margin. It was the only shelter for miles; either the singer was invisible, or she was there.

Cautiously, she followed the bank further. She could see a flicker of movement behind the trees. At the same time, the song became clearer, and she detected the threads of an enchantment woven into it. The subtle kind that could tangle round the souls of the unwary. Even if she was immune to the spell, the music drew her on. Any song well sung had its own unworked magic.

The words floated across to her, first in fragments, then in whole. It was a lullaby.

Hey-lo e-ro mabi

Sleep on you little baby

Your papa's to the city

A dagger for to buy.

Hey-lo e-ro mabi

Close your eyes my lovely

Your mama's to the valley

Where the green rushes sigh.

A looli loos ym vach ee

So sleep now little baby

Let go of all those worries

While the lake's drawing nigh.

She dodged round the brittle conifer branches, and stopped. The singer was standing beside a steep-sided creek, next to a fishing line whose pole was propped on a forked willow cane. Her form was elven; she was olive-skinned, and her long dark hair fell in a shining wave to the small of her back. She turned; her green eyes shone with moisture.

"Elaníae, caré," she said, reaching out both hands to her, "I've missed you so much, my flower."

Elanee looked at the woman evenly. In a vision beside the Skymirror, Silvanus had once granted her a glimpse of the mother who'd died when she was an infant. Whatever spell underlay the borrowed appearance, it was strong enough to mimic every detail down to the way her mother's lips curved crookedly, the left side rising more than the right.

She hesitated. She knew it was false, a parlour trick, and yet even a counterfeit of her mother was better than nothing at all. It's a trap, she reminded herself. Only a trap.

"I know what you are, siren," she told the creature.

The thing wearing her mother's shape crossed its arms, and looked mildly disgruntled. "Here, we prefer the term nakki, sweetling. I do not linger on skerries to entrap salty sailors, I assure you."

Elanee barely listened to the nakki's answer. For as long as she could look at her mother's likeness, she did, soaking in every angle of the fine-boned face. From the jut of the jaw, and the natural sardonic twist of the eyebrows, she thought her mother must have been the fiercer of her parents. Her father had been mild, gentle. She'd always assumed it was he whom she'd taken after.

"Why did you call me?" she asked. "I'll never be prey for your kind."

The nakki flashed a smile. "I wouldn't speak so quickly, if I were you. Admittedly, there's no flesh on your bones — barely enough to flavour a stew. But my people have had to learn other methods of having our sport. The Wychlaran over the water are strict, and the hads are…territorial."

"That doesn't answer my question," said Elanee. While the nakki looked like her mother, she didn't want to harm her. Nevertheless, sirens were often hostile to everything; this creature might be too. The echo of lightning brushed against her soul; that familiar expectant charge relief her. Grief and hunger hadn't destroyed her powers. She wasn't defenceless.

"Perhaps…this…will…" The slender elf expanded, the voice deepened. A linen shirt and hose replaced the dress of red wool. Then Casavir looked down at her.

"I should have come earlier. Forgive me." His face was drawn, as if he'd spent a ten-day on night watch. She recognised the look, recognised the words. Her heart thudded with painful speed. It was after her head injury, and before the battle at the ford. "It seems that if I am to fulfil my obligations to one party, I must neglect what I owe another." He sighed, and rubbed eyes that were heavy with weariness. "Tell me, what would you choose? To do right by a friend, or by a family?"

The nakki cocked her head. Although she retained Casavir's appearance, an alien expression of keen hunger for…something…lit up the blue eyes. It was as if Casavir had vanished, leaving a human stranger in his place. "Do you remember what you told him?" it breathed.

A freezing wind blew through the conifers. Elanee gritted her teeth, and shook her head. Of course, she remembered. I…don't know. My parents died when I was small. If they had lived — I can't say. It's not easy for me to draw a line between friends and family. Family had meant something different to Casavir; something much wider and more generous. It was in the foundations of his faith. She hadn't known that at the time.

"Thank you," said the creature as if Elanee had spoken aloud. The blue eyes glowed with satisfaction. "I've drawn water from sweeter wells, but rarely from ones so deep and pure." A gauntleted hand reached out to touch her cheek. She jumped back, horrified she'd allowed the monster to draw so close.

"Stop using his shape," she hissed, feeling anger towards the nakki for the first time. "You don't deserve it."

The nakki shrugged. "As you wish."

The figure shrank until it was just a few inches taller than Elanee, the plate armour darkening into beaten-up leathers, the face melting and reforming, tiny faded scars appearing round the mouth and eyes as if they'd once been sewn shut.

"Come away with me," said Bishop. She knew this conversation too. Recognised the unusually intent and earnest look in the eyes of the ranger. Less than a month ago, it had happened. An age away. She hadn't said anything then, had only been able to stare at him in shocked disbelief. "This ship's low in the water, and heading straight for the cliffs. Can't you hear them at night? Even the rats are leaving. You should too. You don't belong here, and you know it."

I'm not an idiot, Bishop. I know this is about Casavir. The only reason you want me to leave is because it would hurt him. She didn't say the words again, refusing to take part in the nakki's pantomime. The pseudo-ranger grinned anyway, answering the reply she hadn't uttered.

"Can't say that wouldn't be a bonus. But I'll tell you this for free — what the paladin wants is a pretty woman to weep and tear her hair over his grave. He's more interested in sharing a tomb with you than a bed. Leave with me or not, but I guarantee this — you will never hurt him as much as he will hurt you, if you let him."

A chill not born in on the wind shivered on the back of her neck. She felt dizzy. "Why are you showing me this?"

The nakki crossed Bishop's arms, highlighting the press of his biceps against the sleeves of his jacket. As she had in the real conversation, she felt ashamed of herself for noticing. His eyes looked black; his sharp face was full of shadows.

"Nebeshaxié!" The foreign exclamation in Bishop's voice was odd to see as well as hear; his lips and jaw were recruited into the service of the strange accent. It altered his whole bearing instantly. "Well, I will try to tell you. I will tell you less than twice, but I will say more than nothing, so listen closely. The fishermen here always say the same thing when they leave their houses before dawn. 'Spirits willing, I will catch the stars in a drop of water'. Little druid, I am a nakki, but I am also a child of Lake Ashane, and so I say to you: I wish to catch the stars in a drop of water."

Elanee had no idea what the creature meant. During her long adolescence, she had learned only about the Merdelain, and the beings and the lands around it. Silvanus had always seemed to judge that sufficient. Vashne thought it was too much. The beliefs of nakkis in the Unapproachable East had not even made a ripple in her consciousness hitherto.

The nakki-as-Bishop rolled her eyes, and followed that with one of the ranger's dog-like huffs. "You westerners…tell me, when you read your books, do you do it only for power over the people described there?"

"I'm not in a book."

"But you will be! One day. Your future is written in your past, sweetling. What never was, never will be, and what will be, must have been. With every step you take on the earth, and every beat of your wings in the air, you fly into the sunrise of your history." The nakki paused. Bishop's eyes narrowed. "Yet what do you expect to find there?"

The ranger began to fade, just as she wondered what had become of the real man after he had left the ritual chamber. The doppelganger grew thinner, and darker, a frock coat and red silk sash replaced dull leather, and his auburn hair sprang out into an auburn halo dyed an improbable shade of blonde. The orphan of West Harbour lounged upright before her, looking as she had two years ago, before responsibility and new friends had started changing her into something else.

"Don't worry," said the young woman, spinning a bright new sabre in her hand, "we'll get Casavir back before they can harm him. They left on foot, and they have a prisoner with them — that'll slow them down." For a moment, Elanee hoped that the nakki was showing her the future, for all that Lila's outfit belonged to a time that had passed. It seemed so easy to believe that something like that could happen — the restless human always had plans, ideas, contacts to chase up. Of course she'd know what to do to help Casavir. But then she realised that the nakki had merely interposed his name on a different expedition; it had been Shandra Jerro that they went to save, not Casavir. In fact, he had been with the rescue party, the first to volunteer.

"Is that what you wish, sweetling?" said the nakki, reverting to her mother's voice and looks. "I warn you, you may not find everything as you expect. The elder in my clan dreamed five nights ago of armies marching across the heavens, and a woman with a silver sword at the gates of Kelemvor's grey city…"

The words meant little to Elanee; she told herself that the nakki was wrong about what she sought. She had undertaken her long journey east to find Jerro, the last person to see Casavir before the King of Shadows fell, and the palace with him. She wasn't counting on Lila Farlong's aid, except in preventing the warlock from exacting retribution in blood for her flight from battle.

"A Dounen," she said. The City of Judgement. City of the Dead. Could Casavir be there? But if he was, then why had Harcourt's scrying not revealed it?

"Truly," said the nakki. "But in your position, Elaníae, I would continue to Mulsantir as you first planned. The only birds that sing in the Fugue Plane are the clockwork nightingales in the stone gardens of the great temple. Your god and your land would grant you little advantage there." She stepped closer. In the form she had plucked out of Elanee's memory, the form of an elf woman dead and swallowed by the Merdelain many years ago, she cupped thin hands around her daughter's cheeks, and they looked into each other's eyes.

Elanee readied herself to resist a spell of dominion, but none came. Instead, she discovered that if she focused hard on the blackness of the pupils, and not on the moss-green irises, she was able to glimpse the nakki's real shape at the corners of her vision, grey-blue and small and translucent.

"There is a thing I may tell you to help you on your search. But I will not tell you it for nothing."

Elanee hesistated. Her instincts said that the nakki was not being deceitful, but she knew that they sometimes misled her. There were creatures on Faerun that could say nothing but the truth, and yet lie the entire time. She thought of Bishop. "What is your price?"

The nakki smiled. "Don't look so suspicious. The price is fair, and can be given away infinitely without diminishing your own possessions. All I ask you to do is this: go to the fishing rod, and wind in the line. You will let me keep whatever you find at the other end."

The line that descended from the rod glinted as it disappeared into the creek's still black water. Elanee swallowed. She knew that she was going to reel it in, even if her sense of caution wanted her to leave the line and the nakki far behind her.

She moved closer to the rod. It was finely made; a snake pattern wound around its length, and the willow grip was split by metallic clasps. She stood at the edge of the creek, and looked down, shivering. All at once she recalled a summer afternoon over a decade ago, years before she stepped onto the highway that led to Neverwinter, when she'd lain in a patch of flowering mallow, and watched two human children and a young elf diving in a shallow pool, pretending to be on the search for the treasures of a lost empire.

The pines shuddered in the wind. Somewhere in the little forest, a branch cracked and a magpie cackled. She gripped the handle of the rod, and began to wind.

There was a weight at the other end of the line; she could feel that much. It did not thrash; it made no effort to escape the hook. That was one comfort. She could not have continued if she'd been hurting something living for the nakki's amusement. As she turned the reel, the unknown object grew heavier. The line thrummed in protest, as if she was forcing it to lift a boulder, or — the thought made her uneasy — a body. She imagined a bloated corpse with black hair and empty eyesockets breaking the surface.

"No," said the Nakki firmly. A hand touched her shoulder. "Not that. Now continue."

She did. By the time a golden glow blossomed under the line, making the creak, for a little while, look beautiful, her fingers ached, and her wrist was shaking with the effort needed to keep the reel turning.

Then the resistance vanished. The hook rose, and hanging from it was a string of amber beads. Elanee stared at it, trying to make sense of how something so simple could have been so heavy. The nakki reached across to steady her grip on the rod. "Don't drop it now."

"I won't."

Finally, she had the necklace lying across her palms. It was pretty, but unremarkable, until she looked closely at the amber. At the heart of each polished teardrop was a small black dot like a trapped fly. Except that when she pressed her thumb against a bead, the dot writhed, and she heard her own voice whispering, as warmth seeped into her from the ancient resin.

You don't have to choose. I'm as bound to this cause as you are. If not more. I have a…responsibility…to my home just as you have to yours…Casavir…what happened in Neverwinter? What did they do to you?

She looked at the nakki. It stretched out its hands, still in the form of her mother. Perhaps, Elanee thought, the creature found her more pliant when its games were played out from behind those beloved, barely-known features.

"What is this?" she asked, not yet proffering the necklace.

"Something you already have in abundance. Memories." The nakki kept her hands out, ready to receive the necklace, but made no attempt to seize it.

"I don't want to lose them." Her throat tightened. "I don't want to lose anything that has Casavir in."

"You won't lose them. But nor would it do you any good to have them tied around your neck like a noose." The nakki smiled her mother's crooked smile. "Besides — if we Prime dwellers started to study our mistakes, and learn from them, where might it lead? The planes themselves would tremble."

Elanee looked down at the beads that lay warm across her palms. The nakki did not seem to be exerting herself very hard to sell her on the deal; that could be part of the creature's tactics. She knew that she was naïve in these matters.

The soft glow of the amber seemed to banish a little of the bleak, black cold. She bit her lip.

"What is your advice?" She expected the nakki to refuse to give it until the necklace had been bestowed. But the creature laughed.

"Advice! Sweetling, I have centuries of advice that I could give you, and you would forget all about it until you realised I was right long after the moment of its greatest usefulness. I can tell you something much better for lost westerners than advice: it's an instruction. Find Okku the prince of the bears. The Wychlaran will use you; the hags will toy with you; Okku will either help you, or break your neck with a blow of his paw."

Elanee felt her lips quirk upward. Most people would not be attracted to the idea of seeking out a dangerous bear. Even some druids would shy away from such an action. She knew bears. This was a task she was more than equal to.

Without great regret, she placed the necklace in the hands of the nakki. For good or ill, the bargain had been completed. If it was a trap, she would just have to deal with the consequences.

As the nakki fixed the beads on their slender chain round her neck, her true shape emerged. She was small — nearly a foot shorter than Elanee — with a delicate face, skin tinged with blue, and silver hair that tumbled almost to her heels in a mixture of uncombed locks and loose plaits.

In a burst of enthusiasm, she skipped to the edge of the creek, and examined her reflection in the dark water. Making a small peep of disapproval in the back of her throat, she waved a hand with imperious confidence, and the surface silvered over, providing a true mirror of the sky, the pine branches, and the two beings gazing into it. Elanee was shocked by how ill she looked: hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, lank hair, ragged clothes. How long could she go on like this?

"The innkeeper was right," said the nakki in high good humour. "This necklace would have suited you. But it suits me better! You see, there is no need for you to wear outside what you already wear inside. If would be like my sister, who refuses to dress in anything but the fur of young wolf cubs who died before they caught their first prey. Overcooking the broth, na?" The nakki rubbed the beads fondly, and gave a satisfied smile. "These will keep me warm all winter and beyond."

"I'm glad you like them," said Elanee, and was surprised to find that she meant it. She was glad that the odd creature — spirit, or fey, or siren, or a mixture of them all — could feel such unblemished delight in something that she had helped create. She watched the reflection of the nakki's smile.

"Bragó, sweetling. And the mood is on me to tell you something else." She turned left, and pointed across the vast lake. "Over there is Rashemen. Follow the banks south for some hundred miles, and you will reach Mulsantir. The bear prince has his den not far from there."

A hundred miles. Set against the distance she'd already travelled, that was nothing. The hopeful news gave her new energy. She could find food when she reached Mulsantir; until then, the nearness of her goal must suffice to power her flight.

"Goodbye," she told the nakki with careful politeness. The creature's eyes glinted, and it answered her in the language of the druids. "Tan vider. Come back when there's more flesh on you, and maybe I will serve you up to my kindred roasted and in dill sauce." She laughed, and raised a hand in farewell as Elanee changed, and began a circling ascent. "Or maybe not. Remember to watch for stars in the water."

She arrived in Mulsantir two days later. The city sprawled over part of a plain beside the great lake. Boats small and large were sailed or rowed along the harbourfront, low wooden houses with carved eaves and window shutters stood at well-mannered intervals along the streets, and a wall thicker even than those at Crossroad Keep looped around all.

A line of heavy wagons waited by the gates, their drivers and crews walking up and down beside them for warmth. Their breath merged with the autumn mist. Although the frost had not reached this far south, the steady cold and faded brown of the leaves on the trees told her that it would not be long in coming.

Every one of the city's inhabitants whom she spoke to was fluent in the common tongue, but none could or would give her a clear answer as to the whereabouts of Lila Farlong and Ammon Jerro. That the two had been there was not in doubt; eyes briefly widened when she mentioned Lila's name, before faces shut down, and lips pressed together in stubborn suspicion. The Rashemi of Mulsantir were not a trusting people.

In one of the grimy dockside taverns, a chatty trader from Luskan, of all places, told her that he'd seen a young human woman walking by the lake with an older man a ten-day ago, or perhaps less. The woman had been dark-skinned and tall; the man pale with a bald head and a red beard…he might have had tattoos on his face, the trader hadn't been close enough to be sure. Then the Luskan had begun to cry into his beaker of firewater, and begged her for news of the Sword Coast, from which he'd been a stranger for three years.

After that experience, Elanee decided to focus on locating the bear prince Okku. On that subject, the locals proved more forthcoming. It was apparently a tradition of sorts for visitors to the city from elsewhere in Rashemen and beyond to pay their respects at a sacred barrow some few miles to the east, where the bear was thought to dwell with his court of spirits.

"Take walrus ivory carvings," said one of the huge berserkers from the Ice Troll Lodge. "He likes those best."

"That's skrot, Radu, and you know it. Bone carvings are what Shou merchants buy to placate their daughters. Lord Okku deserves nothing less than hunting knives sheathed in silk and lapis lazuli."

"You weren't saying that when he—"

"—Quiet, Radu." The second berserker scowled at the first. Both were young; younger than Casavir, perhaps younger than Lila. "Remember what the hathren said? Outsiders don't need to know about it."

"About what?" Elanee asked. Her question was in vain; the two berserkers clammed up, and the by now familiar taciturn look stole over them. Sighing, she left them to stand guard over the doors of their lodge.

After flying over the city walls, she spied a few wild fruit trees with apples still clinging to the upper branches. Although all were wrinkled, small and hard, the flesh was sweet when she bit into it. She ate at the foot of the oldest tree, and, as she ate, puzzled over what she could take as an offering to the bear, since she had no money to buy anything. Wistfully, she thought of the amber necklace. That would have done very well.

In the end, she pressed her forehead against the ground and prayed. As she concluded with the old phrase 'tan a peleg, o dan a volsh', she felt the work of her will reach completion. A simple basket woven from grass and the stems of fibrous plants stood ready for use in front of her. Though almost as light as the breeze, it was still too bulky to carry as a bird.

She followed the lakeshore east for some distance, filling her basket with oyster shells, fragments of quartz and alabaster, banded onyx and the skulls of water snakes as she walked. By the time the barrel-formed hill drew near, standing alone in the middle of a tawny plain, she was trembling all over with cold and exhaustion. She hadn't moved so much in her elven body since escaping the battle beneath the Merdelain.

A well-trodden path led up to the dolmen that framed the entrance. When she looked beyond it, into the shadowy stone passage that wound down into who-knew-what, she felt sick. Carefully putting the basket down so the laboriously gathered contents wouldn't be shaken out, she let herself sink to her knees. Thrust her fingers into the earth in the hope of finding some stability there.

She closed her eyes, and laughed bitterly to herself. If she learned to adopt another form, she could aim to become a tree. An oak, maybe. They seemed to live peacefully, untouched by the hurly-burly of the mortal world, at least until the first work-bands arrived with axes and saws over their shoulders.

She didn't understand how she could have followed Lila into nearly every tunnel, tomb, crevasse, hole and dungeon in the domain of Neverwinter, and yet fall apart now. She struggled to breath as Naevan had taught her, to find balance within herself before looking for it in the exterior world.

Something soft nudged the back of her neck.

"You are blocking the door to my den, little elf," said a voice far deeper than any human's. "I have been hunting all day, and would sleep. Either make your petition, or move aside."

She looked round.

A huge white bear was standing a few feet from her. His fur was long and thick and shimmered like mother-of-pearl. All the colours in the rainbow were represented in the crest of hair that grew from his muscular neck and back. Although the wind ruffled through his fur, the action and reaction seemed disjointed: a breeze hurried over the plain, but only a second after it had set the grasses waving did it have any affect him. His long white claws looked real enough though. The warm puffs of his breath smelled of old wood and fresh meat.

He was more than a little local spirit. This was an ancient power that she faced.

If she hadn't been kneeling already, she'd have thrown herself to her knees. "O great father of bears, forgive me."

From the bottom of his huge chest, Okku gave a rumbling purr in reply. It sounded approving.

"I seek—" She wasn't sure now what she should ask. A glorious being such as this might know anything, even where Casavir might be. But he was not in Mulsantir. Not according to Harcourt's scrying, anyway. According to that, Casavir was nowhere. "I seek two people. Two humans." Dubiously human, in Jerro's case. "I think they have news of a friend of mine. A dear friend."

"I have seen many humans come and go, in my life and in my death." The great bear spoke slowly and with calm deliberation in unaccented common. His incisors were as long as her index fingers. "Why do you think I would remember two of them, still less know where they bide?"

She swallowed. "A nakki advised me that you would. A nakki on the eastern shore of Ashane."

Okku snorted. "That one. I know her. You fortunate she did not send you on the trail of the white dragon of Tirulag. She has played that trick on travellers before."

Although he had rejected her first question, she had a sense that, like the Rashemi in Mulsantir, he knew more, if he could only be brought to admitting it. "Lord, the humans I seek would have been here recently." She remembered Nolaloth, furious at an earlier betrayal. What if they had somehow offended the bear god? Jerro was the sort to make enemies wherever he went, but Lila would have restrained him. Wouldn't she? She felt conscious of Okku's breath on her neck. If he decided to punish her for their crime, she would have no defence. "Their names are Lila Farlong and Ammon Jerro."

Okku lifted one targe-sized paw, and put it down again. She dared a glance up to his face. His eyes, their pale glow announcing his power as much as his teeth and claws did, narrowed. "I know them, and I know that they have many enemies. Why should I tell you anything?" He nudged her forehead with his nose. It was cool and moist, exactly like a normal bear's. "Look at me, little elf."

She obeyed. "Lord, my name is Elanee. I am a druid from the same land as Lila Farlong. I fought by her side for years. I mean neither of them any harm." She did not mean Lila any harm. If Jerro had hurt Casavir within the portal — if he had left him to die — then she would use every scrap of strength she had to make him pay for it. "My wish is only news of Casavir—" the words tumbled out in an uncontrolled stream "—he is a knight of Neverwinter. A very brave, good man with a noble spirit. Did they say anything about him?"

"No. They did not mention this 'Casavir' to me." His growling rumble reached her bones at the same time as her ears. The bear god seemed to be laughing: a deep, serious laugh. "Nor is it fitting for my kind to eavesdrop on the conversations of humans and their mates." The mirth stilled. "But you she did mention. In the Ashenwood she spoke of an elven druid who could make saplings grow from rotten wood, and brown leaves turn green. She said you would have been useful."

Elanee's spirit rose as she heard the flattering description, only to crash again to the earth at the word 'useful'. Of course, that's all she was to the orphan of West Harbour. A tool to be deployed when needed. She collected herself. "My abilities are at your service, Lord." The threadbare remains of her tunic caught her eye. "Such as they are."

Okku sat on his haunches and sniffed the air, his head swaying on his huge neck as he caught scents on the breeze that were indetectable to her. "Winter is nearly here. Let Rashemen sleep for a while; spring is the time for saplings and fresh leaves." He sighed. "I will sleep for a long time too. It was a great fight in the city of mortal souls. The dreams I will have…"

Elanee held her tongue with difficulty as she waited for him to regain focus. Had she met him in any other circumstances, she would have had infinite patience for the ancient spirit; a month ago, she'd have considered herself blessed to sit beside him and listen to his stories, experiences, dreams. Today the desperation for news made every other emotion a mute shadow in contrast. She could only watch him pleadingly.

Finally, his mind returned from whatever battles it was waging in the clouds. "You are not a devil, or a night hag, or a crusader seeking vengeance. And you are a friend of bears: I can smell it on you."

He would tell her. Thank Silvanus. Her hands trembled.

"That means I can report what I know of their plans without breaking faith…" He still seemed to be reasoning aloud with himself. She knew the nature of bears well enough that she did not attempt to hurry him.

"Very well," he said. "I will tell you. They boarded a great barge with red sails some few days since. A barge of the Sakuru, bound south through Thay to a city on its southern coast. Escalant." He paused. "Neither wished to linger in my realm, for all that I offered to share my barrow with them." The rumbling laugh came again.

Escalant. A city she'd never heard of, but it was a relief to know she wouldn't have to hunt the pair over the planes.

"Thank you, Lord." Realising that she was still kneeling in front of the dark entrance to his home, she crawled to the side. Her basket of offerings remained. It seemed a pathetically humble gift for the massive bear spirit.

He nuzzled the woven grass handle, and tapped its filling of skulls and shells with a delicacy that belied his great size. "This will do very well. If any spirits remain in the land of the Red Wizards, then may they watch over you, Elanee." His pale eyes flared with fire. "Guard your soul in Thay."

He picked up the handle of the simple basket with his mouth like a mother cat carrying a kitten, and moved with slow steps down into the depths of the hill. She caught a final glimpse of his shining fur before granite purled up from the threshold, and down from the horizontal standing stone that served as the lintel. Soon nothing of the passage remained to be seen, though a row of hieroglyphs and pictures of stiff figures, human and animal, marked its location. She noted that the last picture seemed to portray a woman holding a wave-bladed sword.

In the absence of the warm presence of Okku, the bleakness of the landscape struck her. How bare and brown it was. How the grey sky seemed to lie heavily on it. A short while ago she had been terrified of the subterranean barrow. Now that she no longer could, she wished she had followed the bear god into the depths. The magic in his eyes and voice had cast a kind of radiance on their surroundings. His withdrawal felt as if life had been withdrawn from them, and her, at the same time.

She sat with her back against the blocked entrance, her legs drawn up, her head resting on her knees. Not east anymore. South. This spot on the surface of Rashemen might be the furthest east she ever journeyed. She'd fly south over the lake, then — there must be a river mouth somewhere, if a barge had been chosen as transport. A great barge with red sails. Even with the limited vision of a thrush, she should be able to spot that.

She remembered wandering along the Neverwinter docks with Casavir, watching as a ship with crescent flags fluttering from its masts was freed from its cargo. He'd never travelled by sea, he'd told her. That admission had astonished her, and, in a trivial way, delighted her; in comparison to her twilight existence in the Merdelain, he seemed to have been everywhere, and encountered everything. The discovery that she'd made a journey by ship, albeit a short one in a coastal cutter, and he hadn't, made her feel almost like a seasoned adventurer, like the people she read about, and overheard Duncan the innkeeper describe in his stories.

Sighing, she swept her hair back from her face. She felt beyond exhaustion and hunger. South. Well, at least she would be chasing the shreds of autumn, instead of flying into unyielding frost and bitter snow.

She let the transformation take her. It was easier now to change from elf to bird than the other way round; it felt like following a downhill current.

It took her a day to find the mouth of a river that was wide enough to carry merchant vessels. Once she did, she followed it through the night; the moonlight that played on its surface was sufficient to guide her.

In the light, Thay proved at odds with her expectations. From the way people talked in Neverwinter, she'd imagined a country of blasted earth and poisoned air. Instead, she saw, first, a some leagues of rough sandstone ridges and thorny shrubs bejewelled with green grottos and dells, then, later, managed acres: big regimented orchards, fields recently harvested, walled towns and spiralling towers that stood alone.

The traffic on the river became more numerous the further south she went. There were rowing boats, pleasure boats, ships that skimmed over the water with no visible means of propulsion, and barges low at the gunnels under the load of cargo. No red-sailed barge was among them.

Buildings of all sorts began to intrude on the river banks, spilling beyond the walls of the settlements, taking up more and more space. After experiencing the wilderness that held the essence of Rashemen's soul, the furious drive to contain and civilize that was unfolding beneath her was alarming. Would Thayvian practices one day reach Neverwinter?

Even the river didn't run free. It had been straightened, and flowed between walls made of packed, hardened gravel. The Illefarn had created similar wonders of engineering before their fall; perhaps another such end would come for the overweening ambition on display here. That was the appropriate attitude for a druid of the Circle of the Mere.

Yet, truly, the newcomer to cities with nothing to her name save her membership of Blacklake Library yearned to descend, to taste the noise and smells of the busy kingdom of jetties and wharfs, which seemed quite apart from the ruler-straight streets that lay further back from the river. Dogs with lion-like manes of flaxen hair watched the coming and going suspiciously from their perches on bow-sprits and cabin roofs; a human woman with a shaven head and a monkey on her shoulder whistled as she stirred a simmering tub of laundry with the aid of an enchanted pole.

Another day, and Elanee flew, not along a river, but a canal, until after a series of water-gates the canal gave way once more to river; first, one that had been straightened and narrowed for the sake of depth, but then, all at once, the walls disappeared and it surged free again, winding through a floodplain where thousands of white-horned cattle grazed in peaceful herds.

She had followed the train of boats as much as she had the waterways. Still, there was no sign of her target. The few barges she encountered with sails of any shade approaching red — orange, salmon, cloudberry, plum, for the boatmen were not restrained in their tastes — were crewed by small families of humans from all over the east, none of whom had heard of Captain Farlong or the warlock.

The river grew wider with every mile, until it seemed nearly as vast as Lake Ashane. She began to skim low along the banks, avoiding the crosswinds that snapped across a grey surface strewn with wavelets and explosions of yellow foam. Salt was in the air. She couldn't smell it, but the flavour lingered constantly on her tongue. The sea was close.

Muted shades of rose and witch hazel blossom stole in from the east, and the smoke of cooking fires blew towards her, coming from the boats that still dotted the estuary. She felt near despair. What if the light failed, and the barge slipped past her in the night? What if Lila and Jerro had changed their plans, or lied to Okku about them?

A lone tree, some kind of stubborn holly, occupied the eastern point of a sandy spit that stuck some twenty yards out into the river. The nearest boat was a long mastless vessel with two banks of oars, some half a mile away from her, towards the middle of the water. The channel must be deeper there. From the holly tree, she observed it pass; the oars drew it out into the open sea, but then, following the same course as most of the riverine vessels that had gone before it, the galley turned towards the setting sun, bound, she assumed, for a destination somewhere along the coast.

More trade cogs and shallops went after it. One even had the segmented sails she'd seen in illustrations of life in Kara-Tur. She had been perching in the shelter of the holly for about an hour, trying to decide what to do, when the monochrome landscape was disturbed by a flash of scarlet. The dusty scarlet of a moth's wing.

The barge was right in the middle of the estuary. The sides of its hull rose sheer from the waves like the walls of a castle. Triangular red sails hung from each of the four masts, filled with a steady wind from the north, a wind that no other boat was benefitting from. That had to be it.

She knew that it would be foolish to attempt to fly over to it. There was a wide stretch of turbulent water between them, and the winds would mock her little thrush's wings. She should observe the barge's course, and follow it along the land; if, as Okku had said, it was heading for a city on the coast, there was small risk of losing it.

But this time she couldn't make the moderate, safe choice. Not when the knowledge she wanted was in sight, and aboard a barge that was cutting briskly through the waves as proud as any Luskan galleon. If it went straight out to sea, she'd never be able to follow.

She launched herself into the air. The crosswinds were as strong and dangerous as she'd feared. Within the first few yards, gusts from different directions first tried to sweep her upriver, and then out to sea. She fought against the deadly pull and push, manoeuvring, gaining height, losing it, and beating her wings fiercely all the while.

A sudden gust almost knocked her into the water — Umberlee's brine, by now, not sympathetic to a lone druid of Silvanus, as the river might have been nearer its springs. It almost drowned her. Even after escaping the immediate threat, the spray came close to soaking all her plumage, and that could have meant drowning just as surely.

Recovering some equilibrium, and aiming once more for the bow of the barge, which still seemed as distant as it had from the land, she discovered that about a foot above the choppy surface, there was a blanket of air that felt almost calm in comparison with the danger above and below.

Pinned between Akadi and the Queen of the Depths, she continued, until finally she felt she was making progress. The reflection of the barge's sails competing with the setting sun to turn the water red. Humanoid figures climbed in the rigging; others moved about on deck.

Then the eagle attacked. She had been battling against a new blast of wind from the eastern shore, unaware of the new presence above her, when it lunged for the first time. The tips of its talons brushed the feathers on her back. If her flight had been less irregular, they would certainly have snatched her up, but a drop in the air resistance let her shoot forward and down.

Although she had escaped once, her instincts told her that eagle wasn't ready to give up on easy prey. Her instincts were shortly confirmed: a large pair of talons with hooked claws appeared, vanished, and reappeared again, first above her left wing, then above her right.

She didn't know what to do. The barge was still a hundred yards away. If the eagle couldn't perceive that its dinner was an elven druid under a coat of feathers, or could and didn't care, there was little she could do to drive it away. Dark figures were lining the nearer side of the barge, and pointing. She heard shouts, and laughter.

A wave surged under her, rising higher than anticipated, making her tumble upwards to escape it. Talons filled the space she'd vacated. The eagle had struck, and missed again. Perhaps Umberlee had some regard for disciples of Silvanus, after all.

Her heart felt close to breaking with the effort of flight and terror of pursuit. As a thrush, she felt ready to let her wings still, and to drop into the estuary, where the current could take her where it would. Elanee saw reason to hope, but the physicality of the thrush was seeping into her mind, washing out the memories of friends, a castle, pitched battles and feasts and replacing them only with whistling songs of dread.

Two robed figures were standing in the middle of the crowd that had gathered on the barge to watch her die. At first, she didn't recognise them. They were hooded; her avian eyes, spattered with salt water, told her no more than that. But the one of the right pulled back his hood, and even half-blind as she was, she remembered the frown, the set of the jaw, and the beard almost as red as the barge's sails. She didn't need to see his companion's face to know that it was Lila.

Both were standing still, their hands on the railing, not joining in the excitement of the crew, who were watching the pursuit as if it was being staged for their benefit, yet making no attempt to help either. Had they even realised it was her? She felt sure Jerro had. Perhaps this was their punishment for her collapse in the fight below the Merdelain. She had expected anger; she hadn't anticipated this kind of persecution.

She dodged the eagle once more. Thirty yards from the barge. She doubted she had the strength for any more manoeuvres. The next strike would get her.

She changed direction. Instead of flying towards the barge, she turned right, and flew madly in parallel to it. The brutal wind opposed her, but she knew she just needed to gain a little distance, put herself some few spear-lengths ahead of the bow so that she wouldn't be left behind in the barge's wake.

When she felt the eagle draw near again, she didn't dodge or dive. She simply kept going, reckoning that every inch she won might count toward her advantage in the next few minutes.

The talons didn't hurt when they took hold of her. That surprised her. The eagle must have been much more surprised when the small bird in its grasp suddenly became an elf. It squawked in undignified shock, sounding more like a chicken than a predator with a ten-foot wingspan.

Together, they plunged like a stone into the estuary. Elanee didn't see what happened to the eagle after that. The water was icy, and immersion in it made her thrash in shock. Her chest hurt with the cold as she surfaced and gasped for air.

She was still panting and wincing when she looked for the barge. Her heart sank. The lead she'd gained on it was diminishing to nothing. Far too soon it would cross the bar and enter the Sea of Fallen Stars. If it did that, then the lamps at its stern would be the last things she saw.

Kicking her legs and pressing the water down with one hand for buoyancy, she managed to keep her head above the rolling waves. They were much bigger than they had seemed from above. With her left hand, she reached out towards the barge; with her mind, she reached inwards to her memories of the weeping willow trees along the banks of the Selverwater.

Green leaves frothed along the barge's gunwale. A withy branch shot out towards her like a serpent on the attack. The end snapped tight around her wrist. She seized the branch in both hands, feeling close to sobbing in relief.

She began to pull herself in. After a few feet, she realised she was moving much faster towards the barge than her exhausted strength should have allowed. She looked up, and saw that some of the barge's crew were drawing on their end of the withy-rope. Now they were helping? At the stern, a rowing boat was being lowered down to the water, a young woman sitting ready at the oars.

In no time at all, Elanee found her finger tips slipping on the wet panels of the barge. The greatness and darkness of the vessel intimated her. She feared that the withy would break, or that she'd be forced under the keel by the freezing current.

Then a rope ladder hit her on the head before landing against the hull with a solid thunk. She took hold of a rung. Someone above her shouted instructions, told her to climb up so that her feet were supported too.

Wearily, she obeyed. As soon as she did, the ladder was pulled up. Several pairs of hands grabbed her, and dragged her over the railing.

At last, she lay on the deck. An unstoppable trembling seized her. She retched brine over the smart wooden planks, too weak to think about what she was doing. Vaguely, she was aware that the crew had surrounded her, and were gossiping and muttering in an unknown language that sounded like the summertime calls of crickets.

Then they moved to the side, opening up a corridor so that two late-comers could walk to the front of the audience. They were both taller than the dark-haired, sand-skinned sailors around them. Elanee squinted at the new arrivals, then vomited some more estuary water.

"Fucking hell, Elanee. Couldn't you have taken a portal?" asked a throaty female voice.

She pushed herself up with effort, and lent her back against the railing. Rubbed salt from her eyes with the bottom of her palm. Lila Farlong and Ammon Jerro were standing in front of her, both wearing the fur-lined robes belted at the waist that had been common in Mulsantir. Both looked gaunt. Lila's braids were gone; her black hair was cropped close to her skull. Her expression was appalled; his was suspicious.

'Hello, Lila' was what she wanted to say, but a fit of coughing came over her before she could pronounce the first syllable. As she got a grip on herself, she saw Lila and Jerro exchange glances above her. Then Jerro snapped his fingers at one of the crew, and pointed to something. A few moments later, the crewman was wrapping a brightly-patterned blanket around her shoulders. It smelled of cardamon.

Lila crouched in front of her. "Let's get you below. There's a spare cabin near the kitchen. You'll be warm there."

Elanee looked past the Captain of Crossroad Keep to the opposite side of the barge. Six magnificent eagles, white-headed and yellow-beaked, were perching in the rigging and on the railings, following every word with synchronised curiosity. When Elanee opened her mouth to reply, each bird cocked its head in interest. She tried to focus on Lila.

"No." She shook her head. The warmth was starting to build under the blanket, but the shivering wasn't stopping; if anything, it was growing worse. She shrugged the blanket off before the warmth could lure her into a feverish, treacherous sleep. "Casavir. What happened? I have to know."

Someone pushed a glass of hot mint tea into her hand. She took a sip to clear her throat of the taste of estuary, then passed it back. "Sand saw him climb into the portal. What happened then? Please tell me."

Lila's expression had frozen at the mention of Casavir's name. She averted her face, and didn't answer. In profile, she seemed more emaciated than Elanee had realised.

Jerro stepped forward. He was far from her favourite person; the disasters of his violent past had never stopped him from treating most of his new allies, Elanee included, like slow-witted servants. He had a long knife hanging from his belt; no black fire sparked on the tips of his fingers, but she knew from experience how fast that could change.

She took hold of a railing, prepared to pull herself to her feet if she had to, but he frowned down at her in what seemed to be generic disapproval rather than immediate threat.

A wave, larger than most, rolled under the hull, tilting the whole deck aslant towards the sky. Jerro didn't even notice, let alone stagger. His frown had turned inwards. Without any preamble, he answered her question.

"I followed him into the portal. On the other side, we found ourselves in a grey landscape. A valley with dust for soil. It wasn't the Plane of Shadow." The drone of the harsh, hoarse voice paused. The frown deepened. "It may have been a pocket plane, of sorts. A blister joining the Prime and the shadow realm. Whatever it was, the portal was more vulnerable there. More solid. It trembled with every blow the paladin struck.

"Shadows crept down the valley slopes, and through the portal, and grew from the dust itself." The fingers of his left hand twitched; fire jumped between them. "I drove them back, while he used that warhammer of his on the portal's edges. I thought the hammer would snap before the portal broke, but that fear at least was unfounded. The ground started to shake. Cracks ran through the frame of the portal, and out into the air."

He emerged from his memories to glance down at Lila where she crouched on the deck, and touched the top of her cheek. "Then you appeared," he told her. "Getting in the way, as usual."

She smiled at Jerro, though when she turned to Elanee again, her face was solemn. As she continued the account, she caught his hand, and held it pressed to her shoulder.

"I saw the portal start to crack in the chamber. Neeshka and Khelgar had to block the King of Shadows from diving straight through the portal, because he'd realised what was happening as well. I could see Ammon and Casavir on the other side, just about, and shouted at them to get out."

She exhaled. Blinked, and looked around as if to remind herself of her surroundings. "They didn't react, so I went through the portal."

"A remarkably foolish course of action, even for you," Jerro remarked. "It could have collapsed and left you caught between planes."

Lila gave him a faded grin, and pressed his hand. The feeling Elanee had last experienced in the library at Crossroad Keep, the feeling of being made of rotten wood shot through with poisonous tendrils, swelled again in her chest. "It didn't though, did it?"

"That's not the point," countered Jerro.

"It was worth the risk," said Lila softly.

Elanee watched the affectionate back-and-forth, and tried to remind herself that she didn't actually hate either of them. Silvanus wouldn't approve of hate, and it had never been an emotion that the Circle of the Mere had given much thought to. The Circle had preferred to look out on a world built round the cycle of birth, reproduction, and death; all the messy details that occupied the spaces in between had generally fallen beneath their notice.

"And then?" she asked. She wished she could take the question back immediately, because now she thought she knew what had happened, and didn't want to hear it confirmed.

"I went back through the portal with Ammon," said Lila. The solemnity that had lifted when she looked at him returned. "We thought Casavir was following us. But once we were back in the chamber, he was still inside. We could still see him, and he could see us. I told him to come out…I yelled and signalled. But he just shook his head, and drew back his warhammer for one final swing. Then everything exploded."

Lila hesitated. Reached towards her, and then, reconsidering, let her hand fall. "That was it. I'm very sorry."

It was good that Lila didn't add anything about Casavir's bravery, or how he had received the heroic death he'd envisioned in the ruins of Arvahn. If she had, Elanee might have tried to pitch her over the side. There was a difference between feeling that perhaps one ought to die, and truly wanting it, a difference which Lila probably didn't grasp.

"He fought well," Jerro offered grimly. It was the only compliment she'd ever heard him pay Casavir, and it completely missed the core of what made her friend remarkable. Luskans fought well. Bishop fought well.

"Was there a body?" she asked.

Lila blinked, and looked to Jerro.

"No," he said. She could have cried in relief. That meant the hope that had formed in Ivaar's temple, a hope that was hard and small like grit in an oyster, was not completely in vain. There was no body, and no answer from the scrying table. "There was nothing left of the Guardian, or the portal. It was as if they had never been."

Jerro stared into the dimming light, scanning the waves for who-knew-what. Then she felt the barge rise and fall, planks creaked, and magic fizzled on her skin as the sails rattled. "We're going about."

Elanee scanned the deck; the crew that had collected in a semi-circle to gawp had dispersed to go about their tasks. She hadn't noticed when. Four of the six eagles were still perched in the rigging, as intent as ever on the conversation.

"Travelling west," said Lila. She stood up, and drew her Rashemi gown more tightly around her. "It's cold. Come on, let's get below."

They were sailing parallel to the coast of Thay; a flat shoreline extended for less than a mile from the bank of the estuary before being submerged in the lamps of a settlement. A big one; the dusk was packed with little twinkling lights for as far as she could see. Elanee remembered the coloured lamps of the Blacklake District. The ones around the lake itself, though a puddle in comparison with Ashane, where especially beautiful and enchanting on a summer night.

"Will this ship take you all the way to Neverwinter?" she asked. It would take a long time to reach the Sword Coast under sail; longer than she'd needed on the wing. It would be preferable if they returned by portal since Lila seemed to think such a matter was easy to arrange. Then Lila would help her find Casavir.

Jerro gave a short, rough laugh. He addressed his reply more to the darkening air than to Elanee. "The barge would capsize before we'd sailed a league out from land. It's built for rivers and coastal waters. The Sakuru can't change their boat's shape, for all their other tricks."

One of the remaining eagles squawked at him, and its neck feathers puffed out while it shook its wings in what would have been a display of dominance in a normal bird. He ignored it.

"Also," said Lila, "we've been exiled. As of dawn tomorrow, we're not supposed to enter Neverwinter territory on pain of death." The Harbourwoman didn't seem downcast by her looming banishment; her tone was breezy.

"Both of you?" If Lila meant that Jerro had been exiled, and she was staying with him, then Elanee was sure that she could be persuaded to visit the Mere. Lila owed Casavir that and so much more for his years of sacrifice.

"I am exiled; you are banished for five years." Jerro gave up his contemplation of the Thayvian coast, and glowered at Elanee, as if she'd personally arranged and signed the orders.

"Just five years?" said Lila. "I thought Sand said ten. I must have been more polite to Sir Nevalle than I realised." She knotted her fingers in front of her, then behind her, then she gave up and shoved both hands into the pockets of her robe. "I'd have aided and abetted fugitives from justice more often if I'd realised the punishment was five years abroad."

A rise in the swell set the barge rocking; one of the crew at the top of the nearest mast howled in delight, and yelled a challenge to the wind in heavily accented Common. Jerro moved to wrap an arm around his lover's waist; when the next wave rolled past, she leaned against him.

"We will be in Escalant before nightfall," said Jerro. "They have transmutationists there who can send you back to Neverwinter in moments." His lips quirked into something between a smile and a sneer. "I would advise you against a return flight in winter. Qorrashi have been seen in the Orsrauns and near Cormyr."

She was sure he'd be happy to see her vanish through a portal, so that Lila had no one to remind her of her life and friends and responsibilities far to the west. Instead of answering, she pulled herself to her feet, letting as much of her weight as she could rest on the railings while the blood flowed back into her legs.

The moon had risen. It sat upon the crow's nest of the tallest mast, looking like the crests on the helmets of Waterdhavian knights in an illustration she'd once seen.

"Casavir isn't dead," she told Lila. "I won't believe it. There was no body, and Harcourt couldn't find him with his scrying, though it worked for everyone else. Help me find him, Lila."

Lila's mouth was pressed into a flat line. Her brows drew together. "There are many things in this world that can destroy souls utterly."

The awfulness of the remark, and the shadows in her hollow cheeks, made her appear almost as threatening as the man next to her. The casual brutality made Elanee's breath freeze in shock. Lila seemed to realise that she'd overstepped: she winced, and shook her head as if to clear it. "Look, I'm sorry. I am so sorry for him, and for you. Of course, you're right — he might be alive somewhere. Anything could have happened when the portal collapsed. But until you know more about where—"

"—the Plane of Shadows!" Elanee hurried to try and convince her. "He was caught between there and here. What if he was thrown into the Shadow Plane? It's got to be worth trying. Please."

She thought of all the times she'd followed Lila unquestioningly into danger, into one mad scheme after another. Since the trip to the Skymirror almost three years ago, she'd asked for nothing in exchange. She'd healed, and scouted, and killed at his woman's behest: now, when she most needed her support and confidence, surely Lila wouldn't brush her aside?

"If the paladin's soul were in the Plane of Shadow, scrying would have revealed it," the warlock asserted without mercy. "Besides, do you have the least idea of the nature of the place? If not, let me enlighten you. It's as large as Abeir-Toril, but with no certain boundaries. Cities and mountains have no fixed location: every speck of dust there is in constant flux."

"I'm not going back to the Plane of Shadow." Lila hunched her shoulders against the idea. "Never again if I can help it."

This person seemed so far from the laughing opportunist who had once been ordered to investigate her own burglary that Elanee wondered if she'd imagined her. And the Captain of Crossroad Keep – where was she?

"He fought for you," said Elanee.

"He fought for Tyr," Jerro snapped.

She stared at him, and felt something snap in herself. With numb hands, she gripped the railing until her knuckles hurt. "He saved our land from the King of Shadows. Not you, Lila, and not him." She indicated the warlock. "Without Casavir, you would have died in the orc caves, and dozens of times since then."

She felt a sob rise in her throat, and pushed it down. She was shaking all over with a mixture of grief and rage and feverish heat. "I cannot believe he's dead. It's not possible. There cannot be any truth in justice, or balance, or goodness in a world where a kind, selfless man is wiped out of existence, and murderers like you, Jerro, go free under the sun. I believe Casavir is alive because I have to. If not, it would have been better that the King of Shadows won, and drew us all into equal darkness."

The fury of her speech exhausted her; one month since, to say so much at once with so much passion would have drained her reserves. Now, it brought her to the point of collapse.

Jerro and Lila both drew breath to reply. The woman was faster, her veneer of sympathy falling away as if it had never been. The grey eyes in her thin face seemed huge, and hard as flints.

"Let's be frank," she hissed. "The reason Casavir isn't being acclaimed and crowned with laurels in the halls of Crossroad Keep right now is that the main healer in our party broke and fled at the start of the battle. Katriona died because she thought she had to protect you. It's not my fault if you threw away the chance she bought with her blood."

They stared at each other. Elanee had never connected Katriona's death to herself — it had been the worst disaster of a terrible day in Kythorn. Lila was likely just using the story like an off-hand knife, as if the first low blow, the reminder of her cowardice, hadn't sunk deep enough.

Still stunned, she tried to form a rebuttal, some kind of answer that would achieve something. But she understood now in totality that the orphan of West Harbour, the Kalach-Cha, the Captain of Crossroad Keep, wasn't going to lift a finger to help her. Lila had seemed to care about Casavir, and about her, only as long as it was convenient. She pretended to be Shandra's friend too. And Melia's. That should have been a warning.

The tense silence persisted. Lila rubbed her cropped hair, and sighed. Some of her hostility faded. She looked as if she was about to apologise. Elanee didn't want that. She preferred to stay angry. The anger fended off the moment of disintegration.

"You've caused enough trouble for one night," Jerro told her sourly, pulling Lila closer as he did so, as if afraid she might be carried away to the west on the enchanted wind that kept the sails full. "Either accept the hospitality you've been offered, or throw yourself overboard. It matters not a whit to me which option you choose, but if you—"

She didn't wait to hear the rest. A month ago she'd set out from Crossroad Keep to learn what the couple knew. That mission was complete. Stiffly, her limbs protesting, she climbed onto the railing. The land was not impossibly far away: a mile, perhaps less.

A wave that would have knocked her into the sea rolled under the hull, but, a thrush once again, she barely felt it. She let go of her perch, and flew towards the sparse lights where the city met coastal pasture. Familiar voices called her back. She paid them no heed; she was done with them.

When she was a third of the way to land, keeping low and taking advantage of the breezes that seemed disposed to carry her in the right direction, she realised she was not alone. Eagles were flying on her left and right. She sensed another above her. They made no attempt to seize her, and as she reached the tideline where crisp dark weed and shells marked the boundary between Umberlee and Silvanus, they wheeled away. The beat of their great wings grew quieter, until the sound vanished into the foam, and the steady rattling of gravel beds shifting under the waves.

A sturdy tree stood among the rough grass above the beach. It was covered in small white flowers and red fruits that glistened like the glazed strawberry tarts that every bakery in Neverwinter displayed in its windows. She alighted on the lowest of its branches. The white flowers smelled like honey.

Without being asked, one of the tree's thick roots curled away from the ground to reveal a sandy hollow. Gratefully, she flew down to it. It felt warm, snug. She wouldn't find a better roost in the chill Thayvian evening. Forcing herself through one more transformation, she curled up in the sand, and submitted to her body's overwhelming wish to sleep.

Something hit her nose, and she started awake. It was morning already. Sunlight was shining on the deserted beach; a queue of barges and ships bobbed at anchor on the murky sea. The line stretched back as far as the estuary mouth.

Something else hit her on the crown of her head. The missile rolled to one side: a plump red enclosed in spikes of flesh like an unusually appetising hedgehog.

"It's low tide," said a female voice with a lilting accent above her. Another fruit bounced off her shoulder. "That means the main harbour at Escalant will be closed till midday. Hence all the boatmen twiddling their thumbs and Zann knows what else out on the water."

Elanee looked up to see a young woman perching ono a bough some eight feet above the ground. She was already aiming another fruit.

"I'm awake now," she said. "You can stop." Shrugging, the woman popped the fruit in her mouth. She bared her white teeth in an exaggerated grin before disposing of her food with a single swallow, like a snake eating a mouse.

Elanee clasped her forehead. Her head thrummed with pain. She felt hot and cold at the same time.

"Try one?" said the woman.

"No, thank you." The squashy, sweet-smelling fruit seemed perfectly designed to make her even more sick. Rather than look at the fruit, she examined the woman. Long black hair, black eyes, ears tapering to a barely perceptible point, and skin that was almost golden.

"You're one of the crew from last night." She might indeed have been the one who was lowered over the stern in a rowing boat. But Elanee found that she would rather not think about the barge, or the conversation she'd had there. Eventually it must catch up with her, in sleep or in trance, and then she'd have to reckon with it.

"Of course I am. Name's Saira." The young woman changed her posture so that she was lying face-down at full stretch along the bough. The move was carried out so smoothly that the tree neither creaked in protest nor dropped a single leaf. She let one arm swing nonchalantly above Elanee's head. "Catch!"

A bag fell from the parted fingers. Elanee decided against interrupting its plummet, and let it land near her knee with a faint chink. It was a tiny bag, no bigger than her thumbprint, yet covered in delicate green embroidery more suited to the proportions of a pixie than an elf.

"The bag's from my people," Saira explained. "Useful when you're on the wing, and don't have a pocket for shopping money. Whatever's inside is from your friends." The young woman blinked at her with wide eyes. "I didn't look, of course."

Elanee was reminded powerfully of Neeshka, the tiefling thief. Former thief, really.

"They're not my friends," she said.

Unable to resist her own curiosity, she opened the bag. It had a drawstring tie which she had to loosen with the nail of her little finger. After that, she tipped the contents into the palm of her hand. A diamond, two emeralds, three rings set with chalcedony, and the life-size carving of an eye lay there, cool on her overwarm skin.

"I wish I had unfriends like you," said her uninvited companion. "Imagine what my real friends would have to give me if they wanted to stay in the competition."

"These are nothing to them," Elanee replied. Dragons' hoards and buried treasure had all passed through Crossroad Keep's account books. "Trinkets."

Absently, she regarded the carving of the eye. It was realistic, painstakingly detailed in the design of the iris and pupil, but in weight and feel more like the marbles that children played games with in the street. She prodded it. The eye blinked. Since the artist had not drawn a lid, it was hard to know how — nevertheless, she was sure she hadn't imagined the blink. The sudden appearance of clammy pail skin over the shiny brown iris and white criss-crossed with red veins had been too real.

"That's a hag's eye," said Saira. The hags. They lived in Rashemen, and were said to seduce and then eat their male victims. She knew nothing more.

"What is it? What is it for?" she asked.

"Like I said, it's a hag's eye. Just don't remove the glamour from it if you've got anything in your stomach you don't want to see again." Elanee squeezed the eye as a test. It still felt smooth and as solid as a pebble. "As for what it does…that depends on the hag it came from. Some bring nightmares, others are like little spies. I heard about one that could turn any drink it looked at into rum punch…"

Elanee returned the eye and the precious stones to the bag. They shrank to silvery pin-pricks as soon as they brushed the edge of the material.

The embers of yesterday's anger wanted her to throw the bag away and leave woman and beach and all behind her. They told her to go and lie down alone in the wilderness. She wasn't ready for that yet. She had felt the pain of "ought", but "want" still lay on a further shore.

"My cousin Bajir saw the whole performance on deck," said Saira conversationally. A smile played around her lips. "It was very generous to share it with us. Normally we ask for stories as the price of a voyage. We did not expect a drama to play out in front of us. Tell me—" she leaned her head down has far as it could reach "—is your knight really such a fine man?"

Elanee was taken aback by the question. Yet it touched her that the sailor had said "is" and not "was". It felt almost as if she had acquired an ally.

"Yes, he's — perfect. Brave, but kind too. When his city wouldn't help the mountain folk resist an invasion, he went alone to defend them. He treated everyone in the castle like his equals. And I've never seen him strike anyone in anger. He fights because he has to, not out of bloodlust."

"And his hair? His eyes? What does he look like?" Elanee struggled to find the words to describe him. Casavir looked like Casavir. "He had — he has black hair, thick black hair that he always tries to keep trimmed and combed, but it kept falling loose. His eyes are blue — the clearest blue you can imagine. And he's tall too, and strong, though he never boasted about it, or showed off. He said it was part of his duty."

She remembered him exercising in the bailey, and hoped that she wasn't blushing. The heat on her face and neck now couldn't be blamed on fever.

"He sounds magnificent," Saira sighed. "Because I'm Sakuru, I don't meet foreign chevaliers. Only boring merchants, and sailors with no manners." She paused. "That reminds me…" She reached behind her, and when her hand re-emerged, it was clasping a bunch of bedraggled blue flowers. "My brother Jamil made me promise to give you these. He says that he's been waiting all his life for a woman to try and drown him. He says—" she rolled her eyes, and delivered the rest of her message in an ironic singsong " —that when you wrapped your arms around him and pulled him underwater, he thought he was in the embrace of a goddess."

She pulled a face. "And he went on like that forever. Stay true to your beautiful warrior, is my advice. Jamil won't have a boat of his own until our parents fly elsewhere, and your children would be under our curse. And between us, I think Jamil has bird-brain. That's what you get if you spend most of your time in feathers."

From the look in the woman's dark eyes, Elanee suspected that Saira was trying to tactfully give her a warning about her own choice of form. It was true that Naevan had cautioned her extensively about the dangers shapeshifters posed themselves: the leaking of personalities, the erosion of self, and, at last, the barring of the door behind them, as the fox or the dolphin or the pine marten abandoned the last of their old life.

Elanee examined the flowers that had been dropped into her lap. They were common ones around Neverwinter. Inescapable, in fact. She'd seen them growing in the Crags, a chain of mountains so bleak that even the wild goats avoided them for lack of sustenance.

"Forget-me-nots," said Saira. "I told him to choose a prettier flower, but he insisted. Then I had to find a human able to walk on the earth and gather them for me."

"They remind me of my home," said Elanee, trying to sound grateful lest Saira thought her efforts were unvalued. She turned the little collection of flowers and thin green stems over and over. Despite their tattered state, the frail pointed petals reminded her of stars. She thought of them growing by mountain streams, in cracks in the masonry of an ancient keep, around the borders of a mossy pool. "In the Merdelain," she murmured, not looking at Saira, "we call them scorpion grass."