he saw dancing on the young man's shoulders - shadowy forms of scantily clad dancing girls and disembodied breasts - were of his own making, an interpretation from his own mind.
Cadderiy turned away and snapped his eyes shut. An interpretation of what?
He heard the song again, distantly. The chant was specific this time, the same phrases repeated over and over, though Cadderiy still could not make out the exact words, except for one: aurora.
"Are you all right?" Brennan asked again.
Cadderiy nodded and looked back, this time not so startled by the dancing shadows. "I am" he replied sincerely. "And I have kept you here longer than you wished."
Brennan's face screwed up with curiosity.
"Tfou be careful at the Moth Closet" Cadderiy warned, referring to the seedy private club at the end of Lakeview Street, on the eastern side of Carradoon, near where Im-presk Lake spilled into Shalane River. "How does a boy your age get into the place?"
"How .. ." Brennan stuttered, his pimpled face blushing to deep crimson.
Cadderiy waved him away, a wide smile on his face. The dancing shadow breasts atop Brennan's shoulder disappeared in a burst of splotchy black dots. Apparently Cad-derfy's guesses had knocked out the teenager's hormonal urgings.
Temporarily, Cadderly realized as Brennan headed for the door, for the shadows already began to form anew.
Cadderly's laugh turned Brennan back around.
"Tfou will not tell my father?" he pleaded.
Cadderly waved him away, stifling the urge to burst out in laughter. Brennan hesitated, perplexed. He relaxed almost immediately, reminding himself that Cadderly was his friend. A smile found his face, and a dancing girl found a perch on his shoulder. He snapped his fingers and swiftly disappeared from the room.
Cadderly stared long and hard at the closed door, and at the telltale crumbs on the floor beside his night table.
Things had seemed so very obvious to him, both of what had transpired in his room while he was asleep, and of Brennan's intentions for a night of mischief. So obvious, and yet, Cadderly knew they should not have been.
"Aurora?" he whispered, searching for the significance. "The dawn?" Cadderly translated, and shook his head slowly; what could the dawn have to do with silhouettes of dancing girls on Brennan's shoulder?
The young priest looked back to the tome. Wnild he find his answer there?
He had to force himself to eat, to remind himself that he would need all his strength for the hours ahead. Soon after, one hunger sated and another tearing at him, Cadderly dove back into the Tome of Universal Harmony.
The pages began to flip, and the song played on and on.
Mopping Up anica blew a lock of her strawberry blond hair from in front of her exotic, almond-shaped brown eyes and peered intently down the form est path, searching for some sign of the appreaching enemy. She shifted her compact, hundred-pound frame from foot to foot, always keeping perfect balance, her finely toned muscles tense in anticipation of what was to come.
"Are the dwarves in position?" Elbereth, the new king of Shflmista's elves, asked her, his strange, almost eerie, sflver eyes looking more to the trees surrounding the path than to the trail itself.
Two other elves, one a golden-haired maiden, the other with black hair as striking as Elbereth's, came to join the friends.
"I would expect the dwarves to be ready in time," Dani-ca assured the elf king. "Ivan and Pikel have never let us down."
The three elves nodded; Elbereth could not help but smile. He remembered when he had first encountered the gruff dwarves, when Ivan, the tougher of the pair, had found him bound and helpless as a prisoner of their enemy. Never would the elf have believed that he would soon come to trust so implicitly in the bearded brothers.
"The dryad has returned," the black-haired elf wizard, Tintagel, said to Elbereth. He led the elf king's gaze to a nearby tree, where Elbereth managed to make out Ham-madeen, the elusive dryad, as her tan-skinned, green-haired form peeked from around the trunk.
"She brings news that the enemy will soon arrive," remarked Shayleigh, the elven maiden. The anxious tone of her voice and the sudden sparkle that came into her violet eyes reminded Danica of the fiery maiden's lust for battle. Danica had seen Shayleigh 'at play* with both sword and bow, and she had to agree with Ivan Bouldershoulder's proclamation that he was glad Shayleigh was on their side. Tintagel motioned for the others to follow him to the rest of the gathered elves, some two score