The Sword in the Cave
"Foul," said Drea.
"Aye. And we're going to go hunt for it."
"We don't have to."
" Sitting on this beach waiting for it to hunt us is no wiser. Let's be off while we still have some light."
So they left Arlon and a couple of lackeys with the launch, and with a troop of four men, Tygg and Drea wandered
into the forest. As it turned out, the long slender trees were fare enough apart to allow movement through them
without much trouble, and the underbrush was minimal. But this relative ease was offset by the discomfort of the
setting. It was too silent. No wing flapped and no foot scurried. Not even an insect buzzed. Only the faint smell
grew stronger as the moved in, a fragrance that seemed to swell in the air around them.
After a little ways in, Tygg drew a dagger, and marking the nearest tree with a large X, organized the crew into a
single file. Each little way so he marked a tree again. No one asked why he did so. No one said a word. They just
followed as straight a line as they could manage, stopping to mark the trees, check that the last marked tree was
still visible, and pressed on. The light began to fade.
Drea was just about to ask Tygg if it wasn't wiser to turn back when suddenly he stopped, and she stopped too, and
so did they all. Tygg began to slowly shift his weight; some instinct telling him of an ambush yet invisible. She
crouched with him, reaching around with her mind, asking herself what she was seeing and what she wasn't, asking
herself what was there. All that came to her was the scent in the air.
And then, around, she saw them. They were hooded, and seem to appear out of the thick silent air, not breaking
that silence as they did so. They were separated, one every fifty feet or so, all around the horizon of trees. Tygg
drew his blade and so did the sailors, putting back to back.
Drea felt a different way. Somehow in all she sensed and thought she could see no threat in these strangers, despite
their silence and suddenness. She sensed merely a presence, an observation, and without violent intent. Something,
at least, was bringing out that feeling in her. And something made her want to trust it. So she took a risk. As Tygg
and the sailors stayed in a defensive position, she wandered away from them, and towards one of the strangers. She
picked the one that was clearest in her vision, and trusted her intuition.
"Drea," said Tygg, but she gestured him to hold, and with her eyes told him that she understood. She kept walking,
with her hands out in supplication, which could turn to something else if need be, if she was wrong. But she wasn't
wrong.
As she walked forward, the hooded figure took a step to her as well, and hands emerging from the cloak, reached
up and pulled back the hood. The face it revealed was a woman's, smooth and ageless, with ice-blue eyes and hair
pulled back into a braid. She stared at Drea with her head slightly cocked to one side. Drea returned her gaze
calmly, studying for fear or anger or hunger or anything else. But there wasn't anything. Just her.
The others all around them removed their hoods, and they too were women all, braided all, and all with blue eyes.
After the soft flapping of cloth upon cloth the silence returned again with a vengeance. The sailors relaxed from