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.Imagine, Cadderly winning where Elbereth could not, where King Galladel, lying dead at their feet, could not!There was no pride in the young scholar’s thoughts, just blank amazement.What cruel trick fate had played him, to drop him so terribly unprepared into such a role, and into such chaos.Was this what Deneir had in store for him? If so, did Cadderly really want to remain his disciple?Elbereth’s startled look turned the young scholar about.Ragnor’s remaining elite guard, half a dozen mighty bugbears wielding tridents dripping with a substance the two companions could only assume was poison, charged at the two, not so far away, certainly not far enough for Cadderly to escape.“And so we die,” he heard Elbereth mutter as the elf lifted his stained sword, and the young scholar, weaponless and weary, had no words to deny the proclamation.A blast of lightning abruptly ended the threat.Four of the bugbears died on the spot; the other two rolled about in the dirt, scorched and crippled.Cadderly looked to the side, to Tintagel, bravely propped against a tree, wearing a smile only occasionally diminished by throbs of pain.Cadderly and Elbereth ran to their friend.Elbereth started to tend the wound, but Cadderly shoved the elf aside.“Damn you, Deneir, if you do not help me now!” the young scholar growled.It didn’t take someone knowledgeable in the healing arts to see that Tintagel’s wound would soon prove fatal.Where the elf had found the strength and presence of mind to release the magical strike, Cadderly would never guess, but he knew that such courage could not be a prelude to death.Not if he had anything to say about it.Elbereth put a hand on his shoulder, but Cadderly muttered and slapped it away.The young scholar grasped the spear shaft, still deep in Tintagel’s side.He looked up to the blue-eyed elf, who understood and nodded.Cadderly tore the spear out.Blood gushed from the wound-Cadderly’s fingers could not begin to hold it in-and Tintagel swooned and stumbled to the side.“Hold him steady!” Cadderly cried, and Elbereth, a helpless observer in the spectacle, did as he was told.Cadderly futilely slapped at the pouring blood, actually held in Tintagel’s spilling guts.“Deneir!” the young priest cried, more in rage than reverence.“Deneir!”Then something marvelous happened.Cadderly felt the power surge through him, though he did not understand it and hardly expected it.It came on the notes of a distant, melodious song.Too surprised to react, the young priest simply hung on desperately.He watched in amazement as Tintagel’s wound began to mend.The blood flow lessened, then stopped altogether; Cadderly’s hands were forced aside by the magically binding skin.A minute passed, then another.“Get me to the fight,” a rejuvenated Tintagel bade them.Elbereth threw a hug on his elven friend; Cadderly fell to the ground.The world had gone crazy.Twenty-Four – Pack of WolvesHammadeen’s hand stroked Temmerisa’s muscled flank, tenderly touching the bloodied white flesh around the garish three-holed trident wound.The great horse hardly moved in response, only snorted now and again.“Can you do for Temmerisa what you did for me?” Tintagel asked Cadderly.The young priest, retrieving his walking stick, shrugged helplessly, still not even certain of exactly what he had done for Tintagel.“You must try,” Elbereth bade him.Cadderly saw the sincere grief in his friend’s face and wanted dearly to say that he could mend the horse’s wounds.He never got the chance to make the attempt, though, for Temmerisa gave one final snort, then lay very still.Hammadeen, tears in her dark eyes, began a soft song in a tongue that none of the companions could understand.Cadderly’s vision blurred and the forest around him took on a preternatural edge, a surrealistic, too-sharp contrast.He blinked many times, and many more when he looked at Temmerisa, for he saw the horse’s spirit rise suddenly and step from its corporeal body.Hammadeen spoke a few quiet words in the horse’s ear, and both she and the spirit walked slowly away, disappearing into the trees.Cadderly nearly fell over as his vision shifted back into the real and material world.The young scholar didn’t know how he could apologize to Elbereth, didn’t know what in the world he might say to the elf, now a king, whose father and prized steed lay dead at their feet.Tintagel started to offer condolences, but Elbereth wasn’t hearing any.The proud elf looked to his father and to Temmerisa, then rushed away, stained sword in hand.Cadderly propped up the injured wizard, that they might follow.A pair of orcs were the first monsters to have the misfortune of crossing Elbereth’s path.The elf’s sword moved with sheer fury, tearing through the monsters’ meager defenses and slicing them before Tintagel and Cadderly had the opportunity to join in.And so they went on through the forest, Elbereth leading, his sword, an extension of his rage, cutting a swath through the ranks of monsters in the trees.“The trees fight at Deny Ridge,” an elf told Shayleigh
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