Free Honor Bound by Elaine Cunningham

amulet."
    " Each of us?" Vishni echoed. Her dark
eyes widened. "You knew you were descended from Eldreath, and you
didn't tell me?"
    "You'd make a ballad out of the
tale."
    "No I wouldn't!"
    Fox sighed. "Vishni, you've already
got your book open to a new page."
    The fairy looked down at the book on
her lap. "Oh."
    He pushed himself to his feet.
"We've got to separate. If they find me, they find the Thorn.
Delgar, you go warn your people, then bring my mother to the
den."
    Vishni caught his arm. "What will
you do?"
    "Find a boat. Make arrangements.
When I figure out how to get Delgar to the mainland, I'll send word
to the Cat and the Cauldron."
    "I like that tavern," Vishni said in
a small voice.
    "I know." He brushed the knuckles of
one hand across her cheek. "No explosions."
    "No promises," she said.

Chapter 8: Starsong
     
    Nimbolk strode along the fisherman's
wharf, the hood of his cloak pulled low over his forehead. This did
not made him conspicuous, for the sea wind nipped sharply and most
of the humans covered their heads with hoods or knitted woolen
caps. Like them, he walked with hunched shoulders and an awkward
heel-to-toe stride. The clatter of his own boots against the wooden
planks offended him. No wonder humans crashed through the forest
like drunken trolls.
    He skirted a group of men who were
sorting through the contents of a herring net and a pair of doxies
who watched the incoming fisherman with inviting smiles and hard,
coin-counting eyes. An old man wrapped in a tattered cloak crouched
nearby, using a barrel filled with brine as a windbreak. He might
as well have been invisible for all the attention the others paid
him. This filled Nimbolk with sorrow and outrage. He had heard
humans allowed their elders to go cold and hungry, but knowing this
did not prepare him to confront the reality.
    Was there something in the brine,
Nimbolk wondered, that pickled the humans' brains along with their
fish? Or were they actively taught to ignore the world around them
and the people in it? It didn't seem possible that any sentient
being could be born as oblivious as these humans.
    He lifted his gaze to the cliff-side
fortress, the keep that until recently had been held by the adept
Muldonny. A single road wound up the steep approach to the
fortress, but many more lay hidden beneath the streets and
buildings. Long before any human set foot on these islands, dwarves
had called them home. They'd been gone for a very long time, but
once their tunnels had linked the islands' system of caverns and
protected secrets so old that dragons had forgotten
them.
    Were any of Stormwall's humans aware
of the ancient civilization beneath their feet? Would they care if
they knew?
    The humans of Sevrin struck Nimbolk
as being every bit as contrary as they were oblivious. They had
many good things to say of Muldonny, whose alchemical weapons had
played an important role in ending the harsh rule of the sorcerer
Eldreath, but oddly enough, few people condemned Fox Winterborn for
the raid that killed the island's ruler and war hero. In fact, the
Stormwall fisherfolk seemed reluctant to say anything at all about
the red-haired thief.
    People on Kronhus had been full of
talk of this City Fox, full of outrage over the death of their
adept. But they seemed equally upset at the attempt to use Tymion's
death to discredit Fox and his followers. Nimbolk's attempts to
learn what this Fox's goal had been and what his followers hoped to
achieve had not been well received.
    He glanced down at his knuckles. If
he'd been in the forest with his fellow elves, the scrapes and
bruises from yesterday's fight would have healed by now.
    It occurred to him that he was
experiencing life as humans did—cut off from others, dependent upon
his own strength, living out a singled-minded purpose with only
scant regard for those around him.
    Perhaps he judged Sevrin's humans
unfairly. He wasn't sure an elf would do much better in a world
where everyone regarded himself as