What tracks there were disappeared, as though the entire group had vanished.
Fife stopped and considered the puzzling evidence for a moment. The ranger had tracked Valtaya's captors through the night and into the day, making his way deep into the heart of the fire ravaged forest. He had moved swiftly despite the pain flaring through his side, stopping only long enough to use his knowledge of wood magic to heal some of his worst injuries. Even through the darkness Fife had kept on the trail, refusing to rest until he had at least seen for himself if the young noble had survived the night. The three sets of apparently elven tracks had been joined by a fourth, and the odd, two clawed footprints from the spider things indicated that at least four more guarded their elven masters. Seven other sets of tracks, appearing dwarven except for the noticeably light impressions of the prints, also followed the elves, but despite the odds Fife was determined to find Valtaya and see his enemies firsthand.
But now they were gone.
"They couldn't have just vanished," Fife said to the empty, scorched forest around him. While smoke still rose from the occasional smoldering tree and soot still rose into the air, the early morning sun shone down brightly on the ranger as he made one more circuit of the immediate area. Still, even his keen eyes could find no new footprints, nothing to indicate that they had done anything other than fly away or vaporize on the spot.
Fife stopped for a moment and looked up at the sun, considering the fiery orb for a long moment. When he and the others had first reached the western reaches, the ranger had felt some sort of strange presence, but that feeling of being watched had only bothered him at night. When they had reached the edges of the wildfires, nothing had seemed out of place until after dark as well. Fife had already considered his opponents to be entirely nocturnal in their dealings, but faced with the sudden end of their tracks he was beginning to think that they took some kind of refuge not only from the sun, but from the entire forest. Although he had never seen them used before, Fife had heard of spells that could provide refuge on the ethereal plane or some other realm. If such a spell had been used, Fife would likely be unable to reach them until darkness returned and the mysterious elves returned to the forest. In the meantime, the ranger could do nothing but wait.
"I need some rest, anyway," Fife decided aloud, looking around the scorched forest. Very little shelter of any sort remained, but the ranger cautiously moved back through the underbrush and found himself a bit of shelter underneath a large fallen tree. Already covered with ash and mud, the ranger blended easily into the sooty landscape, and within minutes the elf had managed to set himself into an uneasy trance as he waited out the long day.
She had wondered what the drow would do with the coming of the sun. The elven legends had been uncertain if the drow could even bear the mere sight of the sun after their forced exile into the earth, but the dark elves' increased anxiety and constant glances to the morning sky were clear signs that they were not eager to face daylight. Valtaya was hoping to take advantage of any edge the daylight would give her, praying that the light sensitive drow would be unable to guard her effectively under a bright sun. Perhaps, if Druce or one of her other companions had indeed escaped the carnage during the night, she would be rescued while the drow tried to avoid the light. But as the sky grew brighter and the first rays of light began to creep over the eastern horizon, Fychan had opened a shimmering portal in the very ground itself. One by one the drow had disappeared into that shimmering portal, until at last Valtaya was lifted from the ground by a pair of axe wielding, dwarf sized skeletons and dumped rudely through the gate into a lightless cave. The drow shelter was nothing more than a large cave, but as she pushed herself back to her knees in one rocky corner, the shimmering portal and any chance of a daytime escape or rescue disappeared. Now she was trapped in some kind of extradimensional cave with her captors, completely lightless except for one small candle that Fychan used to study his tomes. Her situation seemed to be completely hopeless, at least until the dark elves returned to Argent after nightfall.
"You may as well drink something."
Valtaya looked up at Fychan, uncertain how to treat the drow's actions. While Cadwared and the brutal, armored woman that she assumed to be Talaith made it clear that they bore no love for the surface elf, the drow wizard seemed to at least show a certain amount of civility to his captive. At least for the moment, the dark elf seemed to bear no ill will in his eyes or deeds as he knelt in front of her with a small waterskin. Valtaya was certainly parched after her long ordeal, but for the moment the druid hesitated to take anything from the dark elf.
"Could you free my hands, so I can drink?" she finally asked, shifting uncomfortably. Her bonds had forced her to kneel for hours already, and her entire body ached from the strain. While she was uncertain if she could escape, or even manage to cast a single spell if the drow complied, she could at least stretch slightly and relieve some of the cramps that ached in her legs.
"I can hold the waterskin for you," Fychan offered, unwilling to give her any sort of freedom. Valtaya shifted once more, trying to imply her discomfort, but the dark elf remained oblivious to her problems. "Drink it," the wizard suggested again, uncorking the waterskin. Without any other recourse, and wishing to at least rinse the rest of the ashen taste from her mouth, Valtaya leaned forward and allowed the drow to pour the water into her mouth. The druid quickly found herself almost lunging at the waterskin, eager to take the edge off of her terrible thirst, but all too soon she had finished off the last of the cool liquid. Fychan smiled slightly at the young druid as he corked the empty waterskin and replaced it in one of the pockets inside his robes.
"Thank you," Valtaya said after a long moment, reluctantly showing a bit of appreciation for the drow's hospitality. Fychan chuckled.
"Consider it a trade of niceties," the wizard said. Valtaya's brow wrinkled in puzzlement at the remark. "You needed the water. I would like to know more about you."
"More… about me?" Valtaya asked. For a moment her vision blurred slightly, but as soon as it had come her sight cleared. Fychan nodded.
"What is your name, faerie?" drow inquired. The last word seemed to echo in the druid's ears for a moment.
"Valtaya," the young druid replied, once again having difficulty focusing. She had not meant to tell the wizard anything just yet, but he suddenly seemed less of a threat to her than he had only moments before.
"Valtaya," Fychan repeated, his voice echoing again in her ears as a haze seemed to descend over her mind. The young druid tried to stand and clear her head, but found herself strangely restrained. "Tell me, Valtaya," the wizard continued, sounding far away now, "are you of noble birth?"
"Yes," the druid answered dreamily. Something in the back of her mind screamed at her to stop talking, that something was horribly wrong, but the warning barely filtered through the haze clouding her mind. "My… father is… a lord."
"Your father is a lord," Fychan repeated. Valtaya looked up at the wizard, but his ebon face and silvery white hair seemed to flow together in a grayish blur. "What is he a lord of?"
"He advises… the king," Valtaya answered. The voice in the back of her mind screamed one last warning before it died away, leaving the druid defenseless against the amiable wizard's questions.
"He advises the king?" Fychan echoed. Valtaya nodded, the simple move almost causing her to lose her balance. "Who is the king, Valtaya?"
"King… Setanta," Valtaya answered, once more slowly trying to stand. Something annoying held her hands to her feet. "Why… can't I… stand up, Fychan?" the young druid asked.
"Don't worry about that, and answer the questions," Fychan ordered. Although she could not be certain, he almost sounded irritated with her inquiry. "King Setanta. He rules your nation?"
"Yes," Valtaya answered. "Argent"
"This forest? This is Argent?" Fychan pressed. Valtaya nodded sleepily. "Where is the king of Argent?"
"In… Oakenbough," Valtaya informed the wizard. A brief instant of relative clarity showed a bit of a smile on the drow's face.
"And how would I get to Oakenbough from here, Valtaya?" Fychan inquired.
"You… you go south… and then… follow the… the river," Valtaya mumbled. It was getting more and more difficult to keep her eyes open, but she felt she had to try, for Fychan's sake.
"What river?" Fychan asked.
"Embléz," Valtaya managed. The last pieces of the world finally slipped away from her, and she drifted into unconsciousness.
"I would be surprised if you discovered anything at all of use."
"We had the time and the means," Fychan said with a shrug. Talaith looked down with disgust on the sleeping surface elf. "We may as well pry some information about the faeries from her."
"We should simply beat the information from her," Cadwared suggested, sitting against one wall of the cave while he watched the sleeping faerie. "I think you're being too nice to her."
"I think you're forgetting that Lolth will want her sacrifice intact," Rhonwen said, speaking for Talaith. The noble's handmaiden, though a hair shorter than Fychan, was the largest member of the group, not quite as feminine as Talaith but an attractive drow nonetheless. Like Talaith, Rhonwen also wore blackened chain mail and carried a snake headed whip, but also added a serrated long sword to her cache of personal weapons. As the priestess spoke, she patted the whip on her side, ready to administer a beating to Cadwared if it proved necessary or simply appealing. Talaith placed a calming hand on her fellow cleric's shoulder, stopping Rhonwen before she could draw a weapon on the assassin.
"Rhonwen is right," the noble said. "The faerie must remain largely unharmed for her sacrifice. And I will not waste my healing spells on her. For the moment, anything Fychan can learn from her through the use of his drugs will suffice."
"I doubt she will be so foolish as to trust me again," Fychan observed. Although the faerie was certainly naïve and lacked the innate intellect of a drow, he doubted that even she would make the same mistake twice. What little he had seen of the surface elves in the past assured him that Valtaya would not take another sip of water until the brink of death. "And like us, the faeries are difficult to charm."
"So have we discovered anything of use?" Talaith asked.
"They have a city, where their king lives, called Oakenbough," Fychan answered. "It is along a river called Embléz."
"A city, and a king," Talaith echoed, her eyes lighting with interest and ambition. Fychan's sister had originally treated his decision to drug the faerie with disdain, but the possibility of finding and assassinating a king of the surface elves had sparked a new, eager interest in the subject. No doubt the priestess' head was already swimming with ideas of a grand sacrifice to Lolth, one that would seal House Evnissien's ascension to the ruling council of Llyr, no doubt with Talaith replacing Matron Saffir. "Now we know their home and their king."
"Their map showed no cities," Rhonwen argued, removing a map from her backpack as she spoke. Fychan shrugged as Talaith's handmaiden unfurled the parchment that they had stolen from the first elves they had encountered on the surface. "Is she lying? Do they even know how to build a city?"
"Our sleeping poisons have a useful side effect of clouding a victim's mind," Fychan explained. "She was too fatigued and far too trusting to have lied to me."
"Then point their city out on the map," Rhonwen directed, shoving the map into Fychan's hands. The wizard looked at the map for a long moment, but then shook his head. It was certainly detailed and most likely showed the river Valtaya had referenced, but the map was not written in the drow alphabet, and as Rhonwen had observed, did not show any cities.
"These words are written in the faeries' language," the wizard stated, looking up from the parchment. "I cannot read them."
"You communicate with them!" Rhonwen snapped. Fychan considered a fiery retort to the woman, but the lines of authority between a male noble and a commoner female priestess were blurred at best. Talaith, the deciding factor in those boundaries, had not given a hint of whose side she would take if Fychan and Rhonwen came to blows. "Surely you can read their language too!"
"These only work for the spoken word," Fychan said calmly, pushing back his hair to show the sapphire and opal earring in his lobe. The enchanted jewelry that he and Cadwared wore allowed the two males to speak and understand the faerie language, but writing was another matter entirely. "They do nothing for the written language, and I do not recognize their symbols."
"Find the city, dear brother," Talaith said, pushing the map into Fychan's hands. The wizard considered himself lucky that he had not argued with Rhonwen; his older sister had apparently taken her handmaiden's side. "Do not disappoint me on this. House Evnissien's future could rest on our success. And if we lose that favor because of you, Matron Saffir will be more than happy to sacrifice her secondboy to appease Lolth."
"I can use my spells to decipher the script, or to keep the fires burning," Fychan said smoothly. Talaith and Rhonwen both seemed furious with the counter, but Talaith was far too aware of the wizard's usefulness to mete out punishment, at least for the moment. Secondboy or not, Fychan still considered himself important to the rise of House Evnissien, and even if a simple cantrip would have deciphered the surface language, he would not have cast it just to spite the arrogant priestesses. "When she wakes, perhaps she will be helpful enough to point out her home on the map, but until then we must concentrate on spreading the flames north to the tree things. At any rate, their capitol is south to a river and then east, far from our present targets."
Talaith scowled at her brother for a long moment, but finally nodded. Rhonwen's crimson eyes blazed with anger at such an act of defiance from a male, but like Fychan, she could not be certain which of the two of them held authority over the other. Any punishment Rhonwen leveled could be met by Talaith's gleeful approval or furious retribution, and for the time being the commoner seemed unwilling to test her noble's limits.
"Very well," Talaith finally said. "For the time being, we keep the fires burning to the north. But I want to know where their city is before the faerie is sacrificed."
Fychan nodded, and smiled as he looked back to the sleeping Valtaya.
"Given such time, I think I can persuade her to assist me," the wizard decided.