The Fading Dream (14 page)

“Don’t!” Drix shouted. “Don’t hurt them. These are my friends.”

Thorn wasn’t sure who he was trying to protect. “We mean you no harm,” she called.

“Your intentions matter little to me,” the voice said. The speaker stepped out from behind the trunk of a dying tree. He was lean and graceful, clad in a tunic made from overlapping crimson leaves. His face was hidden behind the visor of his helm, which was carved from darkwood and bore the curling horns of a woodland tribex. He held a long spear in one hand, both head and shaft made from a single piece of polished darkwood. “We are guardians of this path. This one has been here before, and we will not bar his way. But you, leave now and leave in peace, or stay and become our prey.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time you struck an innocent, from what I’ve heard,” Thorn said. She heard a rustling around her, the murmured voices of the other guardians. “And I assure you, I won’t fall alone.” Behind her, she heard Essyn Cadrel draw his blade.

“Stop!” Drix stepped in front of her. “We’ve been called. We’re here to save the tree.”

The guardian lowered his spear, leveling it at Thorn. “We knew you would return, Marudrix the Maimed. But you were never to show others the way.”

“One other,” Drix said. He turned to Thorn. “Show them.”

It took a moment for Thorn to realize what he was talking about.
A stone wrapped in thorn
. She turned her neck and pulled back her head. “This better be enough,” she said. “I’m not showing the other one.”

There was another torrent of whispers, voices murmuring in the shadows. Thorn couldn’t quite hear the words, but the sounds were all she needed. In Droaam, she’d been able to spot an invisible sorcerer by the sounds he made and the changes in the pressure in the air.
Drawing on those senses was much like opening her eyes; the challenge was to trust her instincts, to let her subconscious paint a picture. If she tried to fight it, to control it, the flood of information was overwhelming. She just
listened
and let those whispering voices tell her about her hidden foes. Once she was truly listening, she could hear far more than just voices. She could hear a boot shift against soft soil, the sound of a gloved hand changing its grip on a spear, a bowstring held taut. She could even
smell
them, faint scents of leather and sweat: six of them, using the trees for cover, two archers.

The whispers revealed the presence of the hidden foes, but Thorn’s eyes were locked on the knight in the horned helm. He was surprised to see the stone in her neck. It took him a moment to recognize it for what it was.
“Taeli sha,”
he whispered, an Elven phrase Thorn had heard often in her childhood in Wroat … 
This cannot be!
He took a step forward, and for a moment, he loosened his grip on his spear.

That instant was all that Thorn needed. She threw herself forward, racing across the clearing. She closed the distance in three steps, grabbing the shaft of his spear with one hand and pulling hard as she planted a quick kick squarely in his chest. The warrior staggered back, gasping for air and releasing the spear. Thorn wasn’t finished. She could
feel
the archers stepping out from behind their tree cover. Dropping the spear, she vaulted forward, flipping over the shocked soldier and landing directly behind him. Not a moment too soon, as an arrow intended for her slammed into the shoulder of the fey knight. Spinning around, Thorn wrapped one arm around the warrior’s neck. She summoned Steel into her free hand, setting the point against the throat of the eladrin soldier. She knew where the archers were and kept the body of the knight between them.

“Why don’t you show yourselves and lay down your weapons,” she called out as Cadrel and Drix gaped at her. “And perhaps we can sort this out peacefully.”

What happened next was too quick for the mind to follow. One moment she was holding the knight by the throat. Then her arms were empty. And there were four spear points leveled at her chest—four grim eladrin in redleaf armor and darkwood helms surrounding her. The two archers were also in the clearing, both covering Essyn Cadrel. Nothing could move so quickly; they’d teleported, crossing space in the blink of an eye. Thorn could see the tension in the spearmen. They were ready to strike the moment she moved, and they were surrounding her on all sides.

“So perhaps you won’t be laying the weapons down,” Thorn said. She slowly raised her hands. “I’m sure we can still sort this out peacefully. What do you think?”

The last words were directed to Steel more than to the eladrin. She hadn’t expected the balance of power to shift quite so quickly, but it was what she was there for—to learn as much as she could about the threat posed by the feyspire.

Their gear is on par with Cannith third-tier enchantments—the leaves are stronger than steel scales
, Steel reported quickly.
More important—there’s an extraplanar resonance clinging to the ones that jumped. I won’t try to explain, but they won’t be able to repeat that trick for some time
.

The fey warriors were waiting for a signal from their commander. Thorn could feel the knight in the horned helm standing behind her, smell the blood flowing from his wounded shoulder. She remained still as he brushed her hair aside, studying the shard embedded in her spine.

“You have spirit, young one,” he said. “But spirit alone is not enough to earn you a welcome in the City of the
Silver Tree. And this stone does not belong with you; we shall take it from your bones.”

“Don’t do this, Casoran.” Drix had been silent, but he took a step forward. “She’s innocent. As I was.”

“Be silent and still, Marudrix. You do not command my blade.”

“No, you serve the Silver Lady. And it was she who told me to return when I had found the stone wrapped in Thorn. Would you defy her?”

The eladrin took a step back, letting Thorn’s hair fall down to cover the stone. “I am the guardian of this path. Do not presume to tell me what to do.”

For a moment, the eyes of the eladrin were on Drix, and that moment was all Thorn needed. She could channel only a limited amount of mystical energy at a time, and she knew only a few tricks, but those spells had proven invaluable in the past. She could alter her appearance with an illusionary guise. She could hide all trace of her passage. She could leap great distances or scale sheer walls with the ease of a spider.

And she could turn invisible.

It was a difficult spell, requiring constant concentration, and the cloak was shattered if she took any sort of hostile action. But when she was surrounded by enemies, it was the perfect thing. She’d woven the arcane patterns in her mind as Drix argued with the horned knight, and when she released it, she vanished from sight.

The eladrin surrounding her thrust their spears forward, but they met empty air. Thorn had dropped to the ground the instant the concealing magics took hold. She rolled backward, out from the center of the ring. She was on her feet again before the fey had time to react, and once again she had her arm around Casoran’s neck and Steel’s tip at his throat. She prayed that Steel had been telling the truth when he’d said they couldn’t teleport again.

“Now where were we?” she said as the mystical cloak faded away.

“A stalemate at best.” It was one of the archers. His bow was still trained on Essyn Cadrel. “You may slay our commander, but your companion will fall. And should you kill your hostage, you will be the next to die.”

“That’s right. And maybe I’ll take two or three more of you with me. What good does that do any of us?” Taking a deep breath, she released the knight and took a step back. “We didn’t come to fight. We came here to protect Drix. He tells me your queen wishes to speak with me. And if you really do have a silver tree in your city … tell me, does it have leaves of gold? And is the bark beginning to crack? Because if it is, I’ve been dreaming about it for weeks now, and I really think I need to see your queen as quickly as possible.”

The archers had trained their bows on her, and the spearmen were ready to charge. But the knight in the horned helm held up a hand, and they took a step back. He turned to face her, blood still dripping down his leafy armor where the arrow was lodged in his shoulder. “I was right, halfblood. You do have spirit. And if you’ve heard the call of the Tree, then it is not my place to strip the stone from you. Let us go to the spire.”

“All of us,” Thorn said, pointing to Cadrel. “If your queen wants to meet me, she can meet my friend as well.”

“As you wish,” the knight said. He reached up and yanked the arrow from his shoulder, flinging it to the ground. He didn’t flinch or cry out, though blood flowed from the ugly wound. He pressed his hand over the gash, and when he pulled it away, the only trace of the injury was the blood drying on his armor. “Follow me, then. The Silver Tree awaits.”

B
less Arawai and her wonders,” Cadrel breathed as the city came into view.

Thorn could only agree. She’d seen it in her dreams, yet she’d failed to grasp its wonder. Shaelas Tiraleth … in the Elven tongue, it meant
Court of the Silver Tree
. And so it was—in more ways than one. Thorn remembered the tree in her dreams, the gleaming boughs reaching up toward the sky, and when she’d heard it was tied to the fey city, she’d imagined a vast courtyard open to the sky. The truth was far more spectacular.

The city
was
the tree.

In her dream, Thorn had seen ivy rising up along the trunk. The ivy was still there, but she could see tiny figures walking along it. There were windows in the great trunk, tiny slivers of light almost hidden within the creases of the metallic bark. This must be what it feels like to be an ant, Thorn thought as she stared up at the majestic tree.

Even as she let the awe wash over her, Thorn could see the rot that was setting in. In her dream, the trunk had been mirror bright, but the silver in front of her was dull and clouded. She could see long cracks running through
the bark, and she remembered the shards that had fallen around her in the nightmare. In places, light spilled out as broken walls opened into interior chambers. If there were any golden leaves left on the tree, they were lost in the branches hidden in the mist. The rest of the branches were stripped bare.

“Sir Marusan,” Cadrel said, amazement still heavy in his voice. “It’s the tale of Sir Marusan.”

“I don’t know if we have time for another tale,” Thorn said. They were walking slowly, and the gates of the Tree were still far ahead of them.

“Oh,” he said, “it’s quicker than the last, my dear. The first version was recorded before Galifar was founded. Perhaps you’ve heard of Kessler’s
Lost in the Woods?
Marusan’s tale was the foundation. He was a knight—in most versions of the story, at least. In some he’s a farmer. In others, a prince. Not Harryn Stormblade or the Shield of Making, but a good man. On the day of his wedding, he goes riding in the woods. There he finds a great city that is also a tree, and he’s imprisoned by the cruel elves that live there.”

“They aren’t
that
cruel,” Drix said. “They’re just skittish, really.”

Thorn glanced at the nearest soldier, but his closed helmet hid his expression. “I’ll take your word for it. So what happened to this Marusan?”

“Apparently it had been some time since these elves had encountered a human. Their greatest wizards were curious to learn more about him. So they starved him and froze him and burned him … never enough to kill, just to see what it would take to bring him to the edge of death.”

“They did this at
this
Silver Tree? The one we’re going to now?”

“So the story has it,” Cadrel said.

Drix shrugged. “They were kind enough to me. Well, aside from the stabbing.”

“Perhaps the wizards learned all they needed from Marusan,” Cadrel said. “So time and again, they pushed him to the edge of death. But Marusan was a man in love. And that love gave him strength he’d never known he’d possessed. He was determined to survive so he could return to his beloved. And that courage impressed one of the daughters of the king, who freed him from the pit and told him how to find the path to his home. But there at the gate, the faerie king blocks his path. The elf lord is armed for war and orders Marusan to return to the pit. The knight knows that he can never defeat this otherworldly champion. And so he does one of the hardest things he’s ever done. He begs. He drops his sword and falls to his knees. And he tells his story—tells the fearsome king exactly what he left behind, and why he cannot wait any longer. Tears fall from Marusan’s eyes as he speaks of his beloved, and his warm tears melt the heart of the dreadful warlord.”

“Let me guess,” Thorn said. “The king lets him go, Boldrei herself appears to bless the union, and everyone lives happily ever after?”

“That’s how it plays out in Tasker’s play,” Cadrel replied. “The original story is darker. In this tale, Marusan learns that the city of the tree moved between Thelanis and Eberron, and that time passes differently in the faerie court than it does here. In the week that he’s been imprisoned by the elves, a century has passed in the world beyond. His beloved is long dead, having married another.”