Bladesinger

Chapter 18

The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

Shadows shifted in the curving passageway. Marissa blinked hard to help her eyes adjust as she and her companions followed Yurz through the twisting bowels of the mountain. She watched the goblin's bulbous head bob quickly up and down as he walked, experiencing a rush of guilt whenever he turned and cast an adoring gaze her way. Though she knew Yurz, like all of his kind, was cruel, cu

Thankfully, her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden shift in the tu

"Passage must lead to surface," Borovazk exclaimed as he, too, inhaled the fresh airflow. "Borovazk smell snow and ice."

Yurz nodded quickly. "Oh yes," he hissed, "man-thing speak truth. This passage run out to mountain trail, then into village by man-castle."

"Then let's not delay," Roberc spoke up, his hand resting upon Cavan's broad back. "The sooner we get to the citadel, the sooner we can finish up this gods-blasted mission." He turned to Marissa and cast her a look of undisguised longing. "I haven't found myself on the tail end of a drunken binge in quite some time."

"No, no, no," Yurz replied. "We no follow mountain trail. Village empty except for goblin spies. See us coming. They not understand why Pretty Lady and friends need to see Big Chief." The goblin stamped his foot, a sight so like that of a little child that Marissa found herself stifling a laugh, despite the seriousness of their situation. "We follow this path," Yurz continued, pointing to the left, where the trail they had been following turned sharply. "Soon we get to underlevels of the man-castle. Yurz take you to see Big Chief. There be big feast. We all eat until we fall asleep."

The thought of spending an evening feasting with a tribe of goblins did little for Marissa's appetite, and she could see by the looks on her companions' faces that they felt similarly.

"I still think we should chance the mountain trail," Roberc said. "It seems far safer to me than traipsing through the warrens of a goblin tribe." Led by a goblin. Marissa could hear the halfling's unspoken reproach.

"It is a matter of trust," Taenaran said in Elvish, which he so rarely spoke.

Marissa nodded once to acknowledge the half-elf's words, but she said nothing. So much had happened to her since coming to Rashemen, events that had changed her in ways she was still discovering. For so long, her relationship with Taenaran had been based on mutual need, a desire to drown out the hurts of the heart with each other's presence. Now she needed-no, wanted- something else besides comfort.

Marissa knew Taenaran understood that on some level he was barely aware of, knew that he experienced it as a distance between them-for she felt it as well. Their current situation had provided them with little time to explore this new dynamic, so the druid chose her words carefully, for she did not want to drive a deeper wedge between them than already existed.

"I trust our new-found friend, Taenaran," she replied to the half-elf in their native tongue and watched as his eyes flashed once, only to be replaced by the calm, flat gaze that signaled his withdrawal behind walls so steep she had never managed to scale them. Their mission drove her onward, however, and so she had little time to worry over what her words might have done to Taenaran. Instead, she turned to the rest of her companions and said, "We should follow Yurz's lead. He has guided us well so far."

Which was the truth, she thought. Despite her initial apprehension about the depth of Yurz's enchanted devotion, the druid had found herself relaxing ever so slightly with each twist and turn of the passage. Not only had Yurz proven a knowledgeable guide, steering them clear of several dangerous sections of tu

"Besides," she continued, "we might have a greater chance of bypassing the traitor's defenses if we come up from below the citadel."

She watched as the others nodded in reluctant agreement, even, she was relieved to see, Taenaran. "I don't like it," the half-elf said, "but I can clearly see the wisdom in it." He reached out and gave Marissa's shoulder a squeeze. "I trust you," he finished in Elvish. Marissa fought back tears as she watched the half-elf turn and gather his gear.

"Great," Roberc muttered, once again mounting Cavan, "that's just great. I've always wanted to spend my time skulking around goblin tu

"Wonderful, little friend," Borovazk responded, clapping the halfling heartily on his back. "Now you will get your chance, eh?"

Marissa's tears turned to laughter as the halfling fighter's curse-laden response echoed in the tu

Within her, the war drum thrummed to its implacable pulse.

Taen stood silently in the darkness, listening. The caverns and tu

He'd journeyed into enough dungeons and underground lairs to become familiar with the pulse of life beneath the earth, but he had never grown used to feeling like an intruder, an unwanted visitor from another plane of existence. To him, the darkness had a hundred eyes, each one peering at him from within the shadowy depths of the subterranean night.

"Where are they?" Roberc whispered from somewhere nearby, nearly causing Taen to jump.

The half-elf and his companions all huddled in the darkness, waiting for Borovazk and Yurz to return from scouting the tu

"They will return soon enough," Marissa replied softly from somewhere to Taen's left.

The half-elf hoped so. Though they hadn't stopped too long ago, the group's constant skulking through the lower caverns of the citadel was begi