The Floodgate   ::   Каннингем Элейн

Family- it was a word he had never thought toemploy in his own service. He turned it over in his mind, trying to fit what he knew of such things to the watchful, wary elves with their alien eyes and ready weapons.

"Why have you come back now?" There was no kinsman's welcome in the elf's copper face. Andris would not have noticed Kiva flinch had he not felt an identical pain.

"Is it not enough that I want to come home?" asked Kiva.

"If that were true, you would have come sooner." The elf tipped his head toward Andris. "You would have come alone."

Kiva let that pass. "We are still several days' walk from the Crimson Tree. You found us quickly."

"Our scouts brought word of humans in the forest pass," offered another, younger elf. "Several hunting parties. The latest had only three men, but unlike the others, they found and followed the karasanzor's path."

A deep foreboding came over Andris. "Were they dressed in white, and did they wear medallions like mine?"

The elf leader and Kiva shot identical quelling glares at their companions. But Andris took his answer from the glint of surprise in the young elf's eyes.

So Matteo had come looking for him. That was not completely unexpected, but it was distressing nonetheless. There was no friend whom Andris valued more and no enemy he would rather avoid.

"We remember Akhlaur," the elf spokesman said. "We remember the raid on your village. Later, many of us lost friends and kin to Akhlaur's swamp monster. We want nothing to do with Halruaa or with People who love the humans enough to live among them and their foul magic."

"Do you love the boar, the river eels, the swamp dragons?" demanded Kiva. "If you intend to hunt a creature, you must first stalk it and observe its habits. I know Halruaa better than she knows herself."

The elf folded his arms. "So?"

"Knowledge is a deadly sword. I offer it to the People of Mhair."

"We're to hunt wizards, are we?" demanded the elf leader with knife-edged sarcasm. "With what? The weapons of the jungle?"

"With their own weapons," Kiva countered. "We will fight with wizardly magic."

The elf sniffed derisively. "You might as well offer to bring sea-going ships into the jungle! What value are weapons we cannot use?"

"I can use them. I am a wizard," Kiva said. She grimaced, then amended, "Or so I was, until the laraken drained away my spells."

A moment of profound and respectful silence fell over the elves. "You have faced the laraken? And it took no more from you than your human spells?" demanded the speaker.