Still, it was slower going. It was almost evening when they came down off the ridge and into the next valley.
They made their way down the trail in the deepening twilight, looking for a place to camp.
“What’s that?” Wiz asked pointing to a strange glow moving though the woods ahead of them.
“Off the trail,” Lannach whispered. “Quickly!”
Wiz took a firmer grip on his staff. “Hide?”
“No, just do not stand in their way.”
The light came clearer and brighter through the wood, like sky glow at dawn. Then the first of the procession rounded the bend and Wiz saw the light emanated from figures on horseback.
Elves, he thought, a trooping of elves.
They came by ones and twos, riding immaculately groomed horses of chestnut, roan and blood bay. They were tall and fair of skin, as all elven kind, and dressed with the kind of subdued magnificence Wiz had come to associate with elves.
They passed Wiz and the brownies by as if they were not there, looking straight ahead toward a distant goal or talking softly among themselves in their own liquid tongue.
Last of all came the lord and the lady of the hold.
The man wore green and blue satin with an embroidered white undertunic. Instead of a simple filet to hold his long cornsilk hair, he wore a silver coronet. He had a hawk on his wrist, unhooded.
The woman was as fair and near as tall as her lord, with hair the same cornsilk color flowing free of her coronet and down her back to almost touch her saddle. She wore a long gown of deep, deep purple with a train that flowed over her saddle and her horse’s rump.
The woman turned her head to look at Wiz where he stood beside the trail. The combination of beauty and sadness clutched at his heart.
Wiz stood open-mouthed in awe long after the party had disappeared.
“They go East,” Lannach said. “Beyond the lands of men.”
“I didn’t think the elves would be bothered,” Wiz said numbly. “They’re too powerful.”
“Not all the Fair Folk are as powerful as your friend Duke Aelric. Oh, doubtless they could protect their hills and a few other spots most dear to them. But what then? The lands they called their own would be changed utterly by the mortals.
“As all the land changes,” he added sadly.
Pryddian came into the room a trifle uncertainly.
“You sent for me, Lord?”
Bal-Simba ignored him for a moment and then looked up from the scroll on his desk.
“I did,” the great black wizard said. “We have no further need of you here. You are released from your apprenticeship.”
Pryddian started. “What?”
“Your presence here is no longer required,” Bal-Simba said blandly. “You may go.”
“That is a decision for my master!”
“You have no master, nor will any of the wizards here have you.” He turned his attention back to the scroll.
Pryddian stood pale and shaking with rage, his lips pressed into a bloodless line.
“So. Because I am the victim of an attack by magic I am to be punished.”
“You are not being punished, you are being released.”
“And what of the Sparrow, the one who attacked me? What happens to him?”
The giant wizard regarded Pryddian as if he had just crawled out from beneath a damp log. “The affairs of the Mighty are none of your concern, boy. You have until the sun’s setting to be gone from this place.” He turned his attention back to the scroll.
“Ebrion will have something to say of this.”
“Ebrion is not here.”
Pryddian frowned. “Well, when he comes back then.”
Bal-Simba looked up. “If Ebrion or any of the other wizards wish to speak for you they may do so. But until they do you are no longer required here.”
“I will wait then.”
“You may wait. Outside the walls of the Keep.”
“I . . .”
“Do you wish to provoke me now?” Bal -Simba rumbled. “I warn you, you would find me harder sport than the Sparrow and perhaps not as forebearing.” He smiled, showing off his pointed teeth.
Pryddian snapped his mouth shut, spun on his heel and stalked from the room.