The Darkness Before the Dawn

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For the Thursday night brainstorming gang with special thanks to Steve and Chris York for the piles of bones.

The fifty or so Jura-Dai elves who cavorted before the flaming wreckage of the enormous wooden merchant wagon didn't seem to care. Their brightly colored cloaks and shirts and loose, blousy pants flapped gaily as they spun and danced in the flickering light, and their voices rose in laughter and song. Of course, they were the victors. The losers-slave runners who had made the mistake of taking one of the tribe captive-were inside the caravan, the smoke of their flesh and bones adding to the wagon's in a single enormous funeral pyre. The few who hadn't died in battle had been driven along with the slaves the elves had freed out into the desert to fend for themselves.

Jedra, a half-elf who had been imprisoned along with the Jura-Dai tribesman, watched the party from partway up the flank of a nearby dune. He could feel the heat of the flames on his face even there, but he was out of the elves' way. That seemed safest, even though he and the human woman, Kayan, had been invited to travel through the desert with the tribe in repayment for their help in psionically guiding the rescue.

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