Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,213

smiled, quite pleased. “In that time, good sir knight,” he promised, “you will come to know the truth of your King Greensparrow and the truth of what we in Eriador have begun.”

Now it was the half-elf’s turn to mourn the loss of Luthien, though Siobhan had known since that windy and rainy night in Caer MacDonald that their love would not be. It was official now, final, as it had to be.

Still, it hurt, and so Siobhan decided that she, too, would find no sleep this night. She meandered for a while around the encampment, pausing long enough to join in the singing at one campfire, the gaming at another. Making her way toward the southeastern end, she came in sight of Brind’Amour’s rather large tent. A lantern was burning inside, and the shadows showed the old wizard to be awake.

He was clapping his hands, a smile stretching from ear to ear, when Siobhan entered. She noted that he had just draped a cloth over a circular item atop a small pedestal—his crystal ball, she realized.

“You have seen Luthien,” Siobhan reasoned. “And know now that the rumors of his force are true.”

Brind’Amour looked at her curiously. “Oh, no, no,” he replied. “Too much fog up there. Too much fog. I think I saw the boy earlier, but it might have been a highlander, or even a reindeer. Too much fog.”

“Then we cannot confirm—” Siobhan began.

“Rumors usually hold some measure of truth,” the wizard interjected.

Siobhan paused and sighed. “We will need to form two sets of tactics,” she decided. “Two plans of battle. One without help from Luthien, and another should he ride in with his thousands.”

“No need,” Brind’Amour said cryptically.

Siobhan looked at him unblinkingly, in no mood for the wizard’s games.

Brind’Amour recognized this and wondered for an instant what might be so troubling the half-elf. “Word of our victory in Caer MacDonald precedes us,” he explained at once, anxious to bring a smile back to the fair Siobhan’s face. “The pennant flying above Dun Caryth is the mountain cross on the green field!”

It hit Siobhan too unexpectedly and she screwed her face up, trying to decipher what Brind’Amour might be talking about. Gradually, it came clear to her. Brind’Amour had just claimed that the fortress anchoring Malpuissant’s Wall was under the flag of Eriador of old! “The wall is taken?” the half-elf blurted.

“The wall is ours!” the wizard confirmed, lifting his voice.

Siobhan couldn’t even speak. How could such a victory have been handed to them?

“The majority of those living at Dun Caryth and in the various gate towers all along the wall were not cyclopian, nor even Avon citizens, but Eriadorans,” the old wizard explained. “They were servants to the soldiers, mostly, craftsmen and animal handlers, but with easy access to the armories.”

“They heard of the Crimson Shadow,” Siobhan reasoned.

Brind’Amour put his arms behind his head and leaned back comfortably against the center pole of his tent. “So it would seem.”

CHAPTER 22

EYES FROM AFAR

HE WAS SO THIN as to appear sickly, skin hanging loosely over bones, eyes deep in dark circles. His once thick brown hair had thinned and grayed considerably, leaving a bald stripe over the top of his head. The rest he combed to the side and out, so that it appeared as if he had little wings behind his ears.

Frail appearances can be deceiving, though, as was the case with this man. Duke Paragor of Princetown was Greensparrow’s second, the most powerful of the seven remaining dukes. Only Cresis, leader of the cyclopians, and the only duke who was not a wizard, was higher in line for the throne: a purely political decision, and one that Paragor was confident he could reverse should anything ill befall his king.

Paragor wasn’t thinking much about ascension to the throne this day, however. Events in Eriador were growing increasingly disturbing. Princetown was the closest and the most closely allied of the Avon cities to that rugged northern land, and so Paragor had the highest stakes in the outcome of the budding rebellion in Eriador. Thus this wizard, proficient in the arts of divining, had watched with more than a passing interest. He knew of Belsen’Krieg’s defeat on the fields outside of Montfort; he knew that the Avon fleet had been captured wholesale and sailed north. And he knew of his own failure, Estabrooke, who had been sent north with the intent of keeping the Riders of Eradoch out of the Crimson Shadow’s fold.

That very morning, a surly Duke Paragor had watched