We continued forward, finally getting past the large manor house. Once we were inside the tree line, I allowed us to stand. The trees and brush would hide us from view.
The earth was still damp, sucking down my feet as I moved. Despite that, there were no visible tracks in the forest, no evidence of where the children had gone. The swamp had consumed any trace of their direction, making their footprints disappear the way it did all bodies.
I held up a hand, and Iradîo froze behind me. Something about the forest was throwing me off, something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite feel what it was. As we paused, waiting, I realized our breath was the only sound.
The singing insects had dropped to silence. Even the fireflies with their buzzing wings had disappeared. I frowned, narrowing my eyes as I tried to see. My eyes had adjusted, but the further wegot from the lights of the manor house, the darker it was going to get.
Finally, clearly fed up with my hesitation, Iradîo whispered, “Where are we going?”
I nearly pointed in a random direction, but hesitated. I could hearsomething. A delicate tune played on a flute. It rose and fell, lilting.
Iradîo grabbed hold of my arm, squeezing once and pointing. We knew better than most that sound carried strangely through forests, so it was dangerous to follow sound alone.
But there was something haunting about the song, as though its tune was a stream of light, drawing us deeper into the swamp. I took a few steps forward, then froze. Letting strange magic summon me into dark forests and swamps was dangerous.
Perhaps it would be better to come back in the daytime. But would the children even be there in the daytime? Would we lose our chance at speaking with them at all?
There was always the manor house servants or the teachers that worked at the school. They might know something, but there was a reason the children had been hidden. There was a reason they had been sent away.
A few yards ahead, the branches of a tree crackled, and I looked up sharply, ready to face whatever monster the swamp had summoned to deal with us. Instead, I saw a surefooted child, leaping between the trees, using her hands and feet and the tendrils of long vines to keep herself steady.
I grinned. The flute wasn’t for us.
It was summoning all the children home.
Quietly, I crept forward, following the noisy child as they leapt from branch to branch, eventually joining a small group. Their voices carried in the forest and they must have assumed they were too far away from the manor house or that nobody from the emperor’s party would be following them, because they spoke loudly, laughter nearly covering the haunting pull ofthe flute.
The echoes of their joy surrounded me, reminding me of the few moments in my childhood when I had been allowed to be nothing more than a young northern boy. During winter, when all of us were packed too tightly in the Silver City, Eonaî and I had been allowed to be children of the Silvereyes Clan.
With the gates of the Silver City closed, my mother had been too busy overseeing the endless drama of the clans’ bickering and rationing supplies. So Eonaî and I had still trained, but our spare time had been our own.
We would run and play with children our own age, regardless of clan, tumbling into heaps of young bodies in front of the fires.
With the other children, we had begged scraps of pastries from the kitchen and slept in the great hall after stories were told. I still remembered waking in my father’s arms as he carried me back to bed, Yorîmu holding Eonaî in hers.
I hoped that was what childhood was like for these young elves. It was obvious to me that, despite all protests to the contrary, the Chaliko family had not abused these elven children as the Imperium had demanded. Perhaps, even though they hadn’t been able to save any of the blood monks, they had been able to save some of the heirs of Tavornai.
The laughter of the children covered our nearly silent footfalls, and Iradîo kept pace with me, guarding my back as I readied myself for any attack.
Naî moved with such grace and quickness that she may as well have been a ghost herself. She made no jokes, and periodically straightened her body, tilting her head back and forth as though she sensed prey that Iradîo and I couldn’t see.
We were nearly inside the elven town by the time I realized Naî had disappeared.
I froze, barely shifting my weight, holding up a hand so Iradîo paused. With a frown, she lifted a hand, palm up in question. I shook my head. Looking around, I squinted into the darkness, searching for any sign of Naî.
Her silver fur and scales should have stood out even in the near darkness, but she was gone. Nothing could have happened to her. She was adragon.
Still, my heart raced, and I desperately hoped that I wasn’t wrong in my confidence. Shifting my weight back, I slid my front foot backward, moving slowly in reverse, never giving up the balance I would need to move forward or backward.
Iradîo followed my lead, and we had moved back just far enough that when the roots of the tree in front of us exploded up out of the ground, we were out of reach of the tendrils. I heard a whistle through the air and ducked, throwing myself backward as an arrow passed where my throat had been.
I had been wrong. The musichadbeen for us. Tempting any imperials that wanted the secrets of the swamp deeper and deeper into their territory so that they could be killed for daring to threaten the children of Tavornai.
Iradîo grabbed a throwing knife, pitching in the direction of the archer, but she didn’t have my aim, and I could tell it went wide, falling with a thump into the soft earth of the swamp. I gripped hold of her arm, dragging her with me, hiding behind one of the trees. Once we were out of sight of the archer, we ducked down, trying to find cover in the tall, marshy grasses.
“Wait!” I recognized the voice as Lady Chaliko’s.
There was a scuffle, a soft argument in a language I didn’t speak. Iradîo leaned close, pressing her mouth to my ear.
