would be useful in turning still more people against the forest elves.

The elves, however, seemed determined that Vhenlar would get none of these things. They apparently carried their dead and wounded, and they used green arrows that, although finely crafted, were of little use in Bunlap's plans. If the mercenaries did not have hounds to sniff out the nearly invisible trail of blood, the elves would have eluded them altogether. It was a stroke of genius for the fleeing elves to send a party of archers to circle back and slay the hounds. Even Vhenlar had to admit that. But what else the elves had in mind, he could not begin to say.

A distant roar sent a spasm of cold terror shimmering down the Zhentish archer's spine. The two scouts hesitated, looking back at Vhenlar as if to protest their assignment. In response, he placed a hand on his elven bow and narrowed his eyes in his best menacing glare.

"I'm for lighting torches," Justin said defiantly. "Can't see where we're going, otherwise."

Vhenlar shrugged. Tales were told of the fearsome reprisals the forest folk took against any who dared to bring fire into the forest, but he doubted their elven shadows would kill the scouts-leastwise, not until they'd herded them to their unknown destination! And Justin had a point: it was dark, for in the deep forest not even the faint light of moon and stars could penetrate the thick canopy.

So he watched as the scout took a torch from his pack and struck flint to steel. A few sparks scattered into the night like startled fireflies, and then the flame rose high. Vhenlar blinked at the sudden bright flare of light. His eyes focused, and then widened. There were not two, but three figures standing in the circle of torchlight!

A wild elf, a young male with black braids and fierce black eyes, hauled back a waterskin and prepared to douse the flame. Or so Vhenlar assumed. He watched, as

transfixed as the two dumbfounded scouts, as the elf hurled the contents of the skin. Not at the torch-wielding Justin, but at Tocher.

And then he was gone, before any of the mercenaries could unsheathe a blade or nock an arrow.

Justin sniffed, and his face screwed up into an expression of extreme disgust as he regarded the other scout. "You smell like something my mother drinks outta painted teacups!" he scoffed.

The analogy was apt. Tacher had been doused with a strong infusion of mint. Vhenlar, who could see no reason for this action, turned to one of their rangers-a tall, skinny fellow from the Dalelands. Once a noble ranger-whatever the Nine Hells that meant-he'd fought the Tuigan horde and seen his illusions about humankind burn to ash in the inferno that was war. Since then, he'd taken to looking out for himself and had developed a real talent for it.

"You know more about the forest than most of us," Vhenlar said. "Why'd the elf do that? He coulda killed Tacher and Justin both, easy."

The ranger shook his head impatiently and held up a hand, indicating a need for silence. The others fell quiet and listened, but their ears were not as sharp as those of the Dalesman. To Vhenlar's ears, there was only the constant hum and chirp of insects, the occasional shriek of a hunting raptor, and the whispering of the night winds through the thick forest canopy. A whispering, Vhenlar noted, that seemed to be growing louder.

Suddenly the ranger's eyes went wide. "Wintermint!" he muttered and then took off at a frantic run.

The others watched, bemused, as the ranger crashed off heedlessly toward the south. Before they could follow suit, a roar rolled through the forest-a fearsome sound that was both shriek and rumble, a cry of rage such as few of them had ever heard before. Yet there was not a man among them who did not know instinctively what it meant:Dragon.

Vhenlar had heard men speak of dragonfear, the paralyzing terror that comes from looking into the eyes of a great wyrm. He now knew that the very sound of a dragon's cry could root a man's boots to the soil and turn his legs to stone.

The dragonfear lasted but a moment, but that was long enough. With the speed of a wizard's transformation, the dragon's passage through the forest changed from a rustling murmur into a deafening crash. Like a tidal wave, the dragon came on. Vhenlar would never had guessed that something so large could move with such speed!

Then he caught a glimpse of it through the trees, still a couple hundred feet away but closing fast. It was a white, and it glittered like some enormous, reptilian ghost against the darkness of the forest. The creature stopped, fell back on its haunches, and inhaled deeply.

The trees parted, the leaves cringing away and falling in brittle shards as an icy winter wind tore through the forest. Widening as it came, a cone of devastation blasted everything in its path and reached icy, grasping hands toward the mercenaries.

With the clarity of absolute terror, with a heart-stopping fear that made everything around him seem to slow down to a speed of a drifting snowflake, Vhenlar watched it come.

The dragon's breath reached the scouts, so quickly that it froze Justin's face in its derisive sneer, so suddenly that it caught Tacher in the act of turning toward the onrushing sound. It leached all color from their skin, coating their hair and clothes in a thick layer of frost. To all appearances, the men were as completely frozen as if they'd been turned to ice statues by a vengeful sorceress.

Then the cold hit Vhenlar, bitter, searing, but not quite enough to immobilize him. Quite the contrary, like a slap to the face, it tore him from his momentary terror. He realized the dragon's breath weapon had reached its outer limits with the unfortunate scouts. Even so, he did not intend to stay around in case the monster could repeat its trick.

"Run!" he shrieked, and he kicked into the fastest gait his benumbed limbs could manage.

Bunlap's secondhand authority was not needed this time. The men followed Vhenlar without pause or question. As they fled wildly into the forest, their steps were spurred by the sound of cracking ice, a horrid crunching, and the faint and deadly scent of wintermint.

Ten

From the palisades of his fortress, Bunlap had a splendid view of Tethyr and its varied landscapes. To his east lay the Starspire Mountains, their jagged and lofty peaks snow-tipped even now in early summer. On the western side of his land were the rolling foothills, and just north of him the sudden, dense tree line that marked the southern edge of the Forest of Tethir.

A brisk wind ruffled his black beard and sent his cloak swirling up behind him. Bunlap caught the flying folds and wrapped them around himself, folding his arms to keep the garment firmly in place. Mornings were chill, even this time of year, for the western winds came straight off the Starspires, as did the icy waters that spilled into the river below-the northern branch, most called it, but Bunlap liked to think of it as "his" river.

Located as he was, on a cliff overlooking the plain where a dozen or more small waterways converged into a single flow, he could exact a tariff from every small-time farmer or trapper who floated down the tributaries to paddle his goods downriver to the Sulduskoon, and thence to Zazesspur.

It amused Bunlap that his demands were never challenged. The people of Tethyr were too accustomed to paying tariffs and tributes and out-and-out bribes at every turn, for petty noblemen bred like rabbits in this land. Not a single traveler questioned Bunlap's right to tax their cargo. He held this remote territory with a fortress and men-at-arms. In the mind of the Tethyrians, that made him nobility.

"Baron Bunlap," he said aloud, and a wry smile twisted his lips at the irony of it. Not a man alive was more lowly born than he, but what did that matter in Tethyr? In the few short years since he'd left his post at Darkhold, the former Zhentish soldier had amassed more land, wealth, and power than was possessed by most Cormyran lords. Bane's blood, how he loved this country!