Traitor's Moon

marriage?” Alec teased.
    Beka waved and rode over to them. “I’ve been bragging up your archer’s skills all morning, Alec.”
    â€œIs this the famous Black Radly?” Nyal asked.
    Alec passed the bow to him, and Nyal ran a hand over its long limbs of polished black yew.
    â€œI’ve never seen a finer one, or such wood. Where does it comes from?”
    â€œA town called Wolde, up in the northlands beyond Mycena.” Alec showed him the maker’s mark scrimshawed on the ivory arrow plate: a yew tree with the letter
R
woven into its upper branches.
    â€œBeka tells me you destroyed a dyrmagnos with it. I’ve heard legends of these monstrous beings! What did it look like?”
    â€œA dried corpse with living eyes,” Alec replied, suppressing a shudder of revulsion at the memory. “I only struck the first blow, though. It took more than that to destroy her.”
    â€œTo harm such a creature at all is a wizard’s task,” Nyal said, handing the bow back. “Perhaps someday you will tell me of it, but I believe I owe you a tale today. A long ride is a good time for a story, no?”
    â€œA very good time,” Alec replied.
    â€œBeka tells me you did not know your mother or her people, so I’ll begin at the beginning. Long ago, before the Tír came to the northern lands, a woman named Hâzadriël claimed to have been given a vision journey by Aura, the god you call Illior in the north.”
    Alec smiled as he listened. Nyal sounded just like Seregil, launching into one of his long tales.
    â€œIn this vision a sacred dragon showed to her a distant land and told her she would make a new clan there. For many years Hâzadriël traveled Aurënen, telling of her vision and calling for followers. Many dismissed her as mad, or chased her off as a troublemaker. But others welcomed her until eventually she and a great army of people sailed from Bry’kha; they were never heard from again and given up as lost until many generations later when Tír traders brought tales of ’faie living in a land of ice far north of their own. It was only then that we learned they had taken the name of their leader, Hâzadriël, as their own. Until then, they were simply referred to as the
Kalosi
, the Lost Ones. You, Alec, are the first to ever come to Aurënen claiming kinship with them.”
    â€œThen I can’t trace my family to any one Aurënen clan?” Alec said, disappointed.
    â€œWhat a pity not to have known your own people.”
    Alec shook his head. “I’m not so sure. According to Seregil, they didn’t take much of Aurënfaie hospitality with them.”
    â€œIt’s true,” Seregil told him. “The Hâzadriëlfaie have a reputation for enforcing their own isolation. I had a brush with them once, and almost didn’t live to tell about it.”
    â€œYou never told me that!” Beka exclaimed indignantly.
    Nor me
, Alec thought in surprise, but held his tongue.
    â€œWell, it was a very brief brush,” he admitted, “and not a pleasant one. The first time I traveled to the northlands, before I met Beka’s father, I heard an old bard telling tales of what he called the Elder Folk. Alec here grew up hearing those same stories, never suspecting it was his own people they were talking about.
    â€œI hounded the poor fellow for all he knew, along with every other storyteller I met for the next year or so. I suppose that was the beginning of my education as a bard. At any rate, I finally got enough out of the tales to trace them to a place in the Ironheart Mountains called Ravensfell Pass. Hungry for the sight of another ’faie face, I struck off in search of them.”
    â€œThat’s understandable,” Nyal threw in, then gave Beka an embarrassed look. “I mean no insult.”
    Beka gave him a wry look. “None taken.”
    â€œI’d been in Skala for over ten years and was terribly homesick,” Seregil continued. “To find other ’faie, no matter who they were, became an obsession. Everyone I talked to warned that the Hâzadriëlfaie killed strangers, but I figured that only applied to Tírfaie.
    â€œIt was a long, cold journey and I’d decided to go alone. I started through the pass in late spring, and a week or so later finally came out in a huge valley and saw what looked like a settled fai’thast in the distance. Certain