Authors: Richard Lee Byers
He didn’t, really, but didn’t think it would do any harm to pretend otherwise.
It gives us joy to behold a winged elf: We feared the Ariltel-quessir extinct, another voice sounded, and another visage, female, gleamed briefly behind a translucent shell of bark.
“Not quite,” Taegan said. “A handful still survive.”
By hiding from the rest of the world. Though contemptible as that existence was. he supposed it had Droved more successful than the way of the moon elves. Except for magical trees, the latter really were gone, from this part of Faerűn, anyway.
trees, the latter really were gone, from this part of Faerűn, anyway.
For a time, the ghosts, if that was the right term for them, just peered at him. Taegan could feel the pressure of their scrutiny.
Then they said, You speak of your people without pride.
if that gives offense, you have my abject apologies. I certainly don’t mean to imply disrespect for you or anyone with whom you share a bond of blood. But truly, we have more important matters to discuss than my manners. Are you aware of what’s happening in the forest’?”
To some degree. Sometimes it takes us time to perceive. We live at a different pace than you. Yet we’re vigilant, after our fashion. That’s why we remained behind, to protect the wood.
Even in the dream, Taegan was tired and miserable with pain, and perhaps that was what made it difficult to curb his tongue: “Well, so far you’re doing a splendid job of it.”
The hobgoblins were a scourge to moon elves, but neither they nor werewolves nor black and green drakes pose a threat to the forest itself. More white faces glimmered inside the tree trunks. We stayed here to shepherd our homeland through times of fire, blight, and drought, to balance forces you cannot comprehend.
“Well,” Jivex said, “these Cult of the Dragon humans are making undeath in the forest. They’ve already killed one green wyrm, then filled it with shadow to walk and fly again. You care about that, I hope.”
Once again, the trees remained mute for a time, perhaps conferring with one another.
Finally they said, Tell us more.
Taegan managed to relate his experiences despite frequent interruptions from Jivex, who evidently regarded himself as the central figure in the tale.
At the end, the maestro said, “I still intend to oppose the cult if I can, but I’m in urgent need of assistance. If I don’t receive it, I don’t know that I’ll even survive this wound in my wing.”
We have power, said the trees, but since our transformation, we’ve never tried to direct it to heal a single small creature of flesh and bone. It isn’t well-suited to that, not anymore. It could do harm instead. But we’re willing to try.
“Then please do,” Taegan said.
Faces glowed from the boles of the trees, the early-morning sunlight brightened until he had to squint, and Jivex’s scales fairly blazed with a hundred vivid colors. Abruptly, agony stabbed through the avariel’s pinion. He clenched his jaw to keep from crying out, and all his discomforts disappeared.
So did Jivex and the circle of gray trees. Taegan found himself standing in the center of a habitation the like of which he’d never seen.
That was because it was a city and a forest at the same time. Instead of clearing the enormous trees to erect houses in their place, the builders of the enclave had by power of enchantment coaxed them to grow into forms suitable for their needs, with hollows in the heartwood for rooms, apertures for doors and windows, sculpted ridges for staircases and balconies, and broad, flat, fused limbs to provide walkways from one spire to the next. Perhaps the city planners had even persuaded certain trees to pull up their roots and shift themselves a little, for broad avenues ran between them to facilitate traffic at ground level.
“Welcome,” said a pleasant soprano voice.
Startled, Taegan pivoted. Beside him stood a female moon elf, or the semblance of one. A head shorter than himself, with impish features that contrasted oddly with a palpable air of dignity, she had azure tresses and slanted turquoise eyes flecked with gold. Her garments were predominantly blue as well.
This is our home as we remember it. Here, I’m still Amra, discrete in some measure from the others.”
Taegan bowed and said, “It’s a delight to make your acquaintance, Lady, but I fear I don’t understand the point of this.”
“We said we’d try to heal you,” Amra replied. “You carry a wound of the spirit, too, a scar of ignorance and shame.”
“Are you certain? I’m told that if anything, I’m prone to conceit?
“Yet you regret your blood, and that diminishes you. We’ll try to relieve you of the burden.”
“That’s kind, but I assure you, unnecessary. I’m quite content with the person I am. Or I will be, if you simply mend my wing?
“We’re trying. Meanwhile, walk with me. Come see what your kin once accomplished. It’s our gift to you.”
He supposed he might as well humor her, particularly since he’d begged her and the other trees for succor.
“Very well, then, Lady,” he said as he offered her his arm. “I’m at your service.”
It soon became clear they weren’t really strolling, or anyway, not merely sauntering from place to place. Rather, the magic engendering the dream within a dream whisked them from one vista to the next, compressing space and time to impart a sense of the life of the city as rapidly as possible.
Laughing children played tag around a gigantic oak. A craftsman crooned charms, and an emerald grew and branched on the table before him, forming itself into an exquisite tiara. Ladies and gentlemen danced in a high-ceilinged hall lit by floating spheres of soft white light. Farmers hiked through the forest to gather a harvest as bountiful as any yielded by human fields, provided one knew where to look. A priest recited an invocation, and a lammasu, a divine emissary with the body of a winged lion and the face of a bearded saint, swooped down from the sky to counsel him. A chorus sang a lament so beautiful and poignantly sad that every listener wept. Lancers in silvery mail paraded on steeds slimmer and more delicate-looking than any horses bred by men, while warrior maidens cantered on unicorns. It all really was rather marvelous. Taegan had never dreamed elves could create such grandeur.
“If your people possessed all this,” he asked, “why would they abandon it?”
“The hobgoblins came,” Amra replied. “For more than a hundred years, we repelled them, slaughtering horde after horde. But over time they wore us down until we were too few to resist. The survivors had to forsake their homeland or perish.”
“It’s a great pity,” Taegan said, and he meant it.
Yet it also occurred to him that it was additional proof that elves, even ones as blessed with learning and grace as the folk of the Gray Forest had evidently been, lacked some fundamental resiliency or essential worthiness the human race possessed.
Perhaps Amra sensed the tenor of his thoughts, for she said, “Everything has its season, Taegan, and every season passes. One day, this Impiltur you so admire will fade and die as well.”
“You may be right, but it won’t be anytime soon if I can help it. That’s why I’m fighting.” Well, he thought, that and plunder, and a second helping of revenge. Are you and your fellows healing my wing?” Or are you crippling it permanently, Taegan asked himself, or killing me outright?
She cocked her head and stood silently for a moment, evidently communing with the other trees.
“We’ve done what we can,” she said finally. “You can judge the results for yourself when we leave the realm of memory.”
“I implore you, don’t keep me in suspense. Return me now.”
“As you wish.”
A moment later, he was lying on the ground. Somehow he could tell that the trees had whisked him back to wakefulness and not just another level of dream. Jivex crouched on top of him, peering at his face. Obviously the spirits had roused him as well.
“Avariels are big babies,” the faerie dragon sneered. “You were screaming and thrashing around all the time they worked on you.”
‘Since my mind was elsewhere, I can honestly disclaim any responsibility for my deportment. Get off me, please.”
Jivex sprang into the air. Taegan clamored to his feet and took stock of himself, angling his wing forward to inspect the burn. He was still tired, hungry, stiff, and sore, but the excruciating pain that had flared every time he shifted the pinion was gone. The wound looked as if it had been healing for tendays and doing so cleanly. He spread both wings, beat them experimentally, and found them strong enough to carry him aloft. Probably he couldn’t yet fly as fast, far, or nimbly as before, but at least he was no longer earthbound.
Grinning, Jivex spiraled around him.
“I told you they’d help,” the reptile said.
“Indeed you did, and I thank all of you.”
You’re welcome, said the trees. Even awake, Taegan could still hear them, though their silent communal voice seemed much fainter, like a mild breeze sighing through leaves. Did you likewise profit from your tour of our city?
Landing, Taegan said, it was very interesting.”
The spirits contemplated him for a time then replied, So be it. Everyone must decide for himself what to prize and what to cast away. We merely hoped to plant a seed.
“When I have the leisure, I’ll certainly reflect on what fair Amra showed me. Meanwhile, I have a military disaster to reverse. You and Jivex have already saved my life. It’s presumptuous of me to expect any further aid. Yet if you won’t tender it, the necromancers will continue polluting your forest.”
What do you want us to do? Jivex asked the trees.
It was a good question, one that brought home to Taegan the difference between a teacher of individual combat and a war captain. He struggled to assess the current dismal situation as Rangrim would have.
As I can’t do anything alone,” he said, “I have to assume a reasonable number of the Warswords yet survive. If I could reassemble them into an army, perhaps we could still strike a telling blow. The problem being that they’re scattered through miles of woodland hiding from pursuit, and no doubt intent on fleeing east as expeditiously as possible.”
The other faerie dragons and I could try to find them,” Jivex said, grinning, and shield them with our illusions as we herd them together.”
“How many of you are there?” Taegan asked.
The small reptile hesitated before saying, “Some.”
The avariel arched an eyebrow and asked, “Could you be more specific?”
“No,” the little dragon replied. “I can’t count that high. I’m just as smart as you, but my mind works differently.”
“I understand.”
“If you’re so great, let’s see you make some illusions.”
“I said, I understand and I assure you, I regard you as an altogether sagacious and wondrous creature.” Taegan turned to one of the gray trees, selecting it at random. It was difficult to know where to look when the former elves were all around him. Can you offer further help as well?”
A little, the spirits replied. Several circles of elven trees stand in the wood. Each can shelter some of your comrades until you’re ready to march against the foe. Perhaps we can even call to them to lead them to safety, if they’ll heed our whispers.
“That could be a problem,” Taegan said, “getting them to trust you or the faerie dragons, for that matter, but we’ll simply have to do our best. Perhaps if you invoke my name, it will allay their misgivings.”
“Or,” said Jivex, leering, “we’ll just trick them into heading where we want them to go.” He exuberantly flew through a vertical loop, as if he thought the desperate venture they contemplated would prove a merry lark “Is that the plan, then?”
“Evidently,” Taegan replied, and the absurdity of the statement hit home. “What am I saying? That can’t be all. Because otherwise, even if we succeed in reassembling the expedition, with the casualties we endured, and the bronzes slain or lost to frenzy, we don’t have a prayer of defeating the cult.”
Perhaps, said the spirits, we can help a bit more. Long before any of us was even born, another chose to remain in the forest when by rights she should have departed, to protect the Teu-tel-quessir who were her friends. Alas, as the centuries passed, her slumber deepened, and it became increasingly difficult to rouse her. In the end, when the city fell, she didn’t hear our pleas. But she’s enjoyed a long rest since, and maybe if another elf calls her, she’ll wake one final time.
15 Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons
Jivex and another of his kindit had turned out the Gray Forest was home to six faerie dragons, each with its own extensive territoryled Taegan and a dozen of the queen’s men skulking through the wood. Finally the reptiles wheeled and flew back to their bipedal companions.
“Here we are,” Jivex said.
Taegan surveyed the patch of ground ahead of him. If it had ever been a carefully shaped and tended burial mound, that time had long since passed. It had no discrete edges or discernible form and had seemingly fallen in on itself until it was scarcely higher than the surrounding earth. It even had old maple trees growing out of it.
“Are you sure?” the maestro asked.
Jivex snorted and said, “Who lives hereabouts, you or I? Of course I’m sure.”
Sir Corlas moved up beside Taegan. The cavalier’s surcoat was torn and grimy, his plate and shield battered, his destrier slain, but he still had his lady’s crimson scarf knotted to his helmet.
“I’ll post sentries,” he said, “while you begin the ceremony.”
Though by no means servile, Corlas’s manner was respectful. It had been disconcerting to discover that, with Rangrim and his senior lieutenants either dead or at best still missing, the Warswords regarded the duelist responsible for their reunification as a de facto officer. Accordingly, Taegan tried to behave as if he merited their confidence, and to ignore the inner voice whispering that a war-leader of his meager qualifications was bound to fall well short of expectations.
“It isn’t a ceremony as such,” he replied. “Apparently I simply talk to her, but I have no idea how long it will take, so pickets are a sound idea.”
With Jivex flitting along beside him, Taegan advanced until he was standing at the foot of the dilapidated mound. He drew his sword and saluted the entity who theoretically lay sleeping before him.