Free Silver Shadows by Elaine Cunningham Page A

out that way sooner or later—suppose it’s better to go it alive! But tell me this: what’s waiting fer us in there?”
    Arilyn told him. The dwarf pursed his lips and considered, then he emptied some of the booty from his pockets and selected a curved, jewel-encrusted dagger as his principal treasure.
    They retraced their steps to the exit. The door to the first chamber was in sight when one of the treasures— a long case pushed up against the far wall—caught Arilyn’s eye. The case was covered by a low, rounded dome of dusty glass, and through the film she glimpsed something that looked suspiciously like a woman’s form. Curious, the Harper walked over and used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe clean a small circular window. She bent and peered in.
    Within the case was the body of a beautiful elven female, not alive, but not exactly what Arilyn understood as dead, either. The elf looked—empty. There was no other word for it. The essence of the elf woman was gone, leaving her body behind in some form of deep stasis. How long she had stayed so Arilyn could not say, but the elf’s ornaments were of ancient design, and the chain mail that draped her slender form was finer and older than any Arilyn had ever seen.
    The elf was also disturbingly familiar. A single thick braid the color of spun sapphires lay over one shoulder. It was the rarest hair color among moon elves, a color Arilyn associated with her long-dead mother. The elf s face was also somehow familiar, although in truth she resembled no one whom Arilyn could name or remember.
    The Harper’s troubled gaze roved downward and
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The Harpers
    stopped abruptly. Resting on the elf s thighs was a small shield emblazoned with a strange elven sigil: a curving design made of mirror images reaching out to each other, but not quite touching.
    Arilyn’s heart missed a beat. She knew that mark. An icy fist seemed to clutch her gut as she slowly pulled her sword from its sheath. Nine runes were cut into the ancient blade; one of them matched exactly the mark on the elf woman’s shield.%
    “Well, 111 be a one-headed ettin,” the dwarf murmured, his eyes round as he peered into the case. “A sounder sleep than any I’ve ever had, and that’s a feet! I heard tell o’ such a thing. Didn’t believe the stories fer a minute, though.”
    Arilyn didn’t know which story he referred to, but it hardly mattered. She herself had heard many such bedtime tales—of sleeping princesses or heroes who lay hidden in deathlike slumber until a time of crisis brought them forth—and never had she given any of them a speck of credence. There was something about this slumbering elf, however, that made all the old legends seem possible. For once Arilyn rued her lack of knowledge of elven ways, and her near-ignorance of the sword she carried.
    “You go ahead to the well,” she urged the dwarf. “There’re several openings leading out. The dry tunnel is due east and marked with a knife, ni be along in a bit.”
    The dwarf grinned, and a spark of battle lust set his red eyes aflame. “Put the pot on f boil and start chopping up horseradish fer the relish—there’ll be plenty o’ shrimp fer dinner tonight!” he proclaimed gleefully as he took off for the exit at a brisk clip. Arilyn heard his gusty intake of breath, then a mighty splash as he dove into the water.
    Left alone, the Harper turned back to the macabre coffin. Acting on impulse, she touched the moonblade to the glass. A flare of magical power welled up within the

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    sword, like lightning that could not find release. Because Arilyn and the sword were linked in ways she did not understand, she felt the moment of recognition as the almost-sentient sword acknowledged its former master. There was no doubt in the half-elf s mind: she was looking upon one of her ancestors, one of the elves who had once wielded the sword in her hand. But how could this be, and how had this elven warrior come to such a fate?
    Arilyn