The Dream Spheres Read Online Free PDF Page A

pin in honor of my father, but for no other reason. My allegiance is elsewhere.”
    “Yes, I am all too aware of that,” Danilo said with more bitterness than he intended. He lifted a hand to forestall her explanation. “No, don’t. We have traveled this road. What you did, you did for love of me. I wish the result had been different, but I cannot fault your intentions.”
    Again his gaze shifted to the moonblade, a hereditary elven sword to which each wielder could add one magical power. For Arilyn’s mother it had formed a magical gate between her human lover’s world and the distant elven island of Evermeet. This had led to tragedy for the elven folk, and many years later it led to a long string of events that had brought Arilyn to the attention of the Harpers of Waterdeep. Danilo had been assigned to follow and watch her. In the course of this mission, he and Arilyn had formed their own bonds: trust, friendship, and something deeper and infinitely more complex than love. Arilyn had ceded to him the right to her moonblade and its power. In doing so, she had broken a tradition of many centuries, that none but a moonblade’s true inheritor could wield the blade. In doing so,
    she had unknowingly committed him to eternal service of the magic sword.
    It was a price Danilo would gladly have paid for the bond it gave them, but he had never had that choice. When confronted by the results of her decision, Arilyn had taken it upon herself to free her friend from a service he never chose. In doing so, she had broken the mystic, elven bond between them. Once that bond was broken, the sword had granted Arilyn a different power and forged another allegiance.
    Now the moonblade warned her when the forest folk were in need of a hero’s sword. There were small bands of elves scattered through many forests in Faerun, and many were in danger and decline. Arilyn’s sleep had become dream-haunted, and her sword gleamed with verdant light more often than not. Though she understood that hers was but a single sword and that she could not stand beside every beleaguered elf, the calls were too strong for her to ignore. Elf and moonblade shared soul-deep bonds. Since that day she had been on the road almost constantly and could not do otherwise.
    “You do what you must,” Danilo said softly. “I have had my duties here. However, there is nothing more to hold me in Waterdeep. There is no reason why I cannot travel with you.”
    There was, and they both knew it. Arilyn was an oddity among the forest elves, who seldom had anything to do with strangers among their own kind, much less moon elves with human blood. In the eyes of the forest elves, though, she had become part of the centuries-old legend of the moonblade she carried. Thus she had finally achieved what she had longed for all her life: true acceptance from the elven folk. No human was likely to manage such a feat.
    “No. No reason at all,” she said faintly and unconvincingly. She met his eyes and manufactured a rueful smile. “You seem to have broken free of all things but
    one. This night you must meet family obligations. When does this ball start?”
    Danilo squinted at the window. Twilight had passed, and the faint glow of lamps rose from the streets below. “An hour, I should think. If you hurry, we can be fashionably late.” He punctuated this remark with a sly smile. “If we take our time, we could be scandalously late.”
    “A tempting suggestion, Lord Thann,” she said with prim tones but laughing eyes. “I am in accord with the spirit of it but not the timing. You go on without me, and I’ll follow as soon as I can. Since this is your family’s party, your absence would be noticed and remarked.”
    “The Lady Cassandra sees all,” he murmured, naming the formidable woman who had given him life and who managed the Thann family fortunes with an iron will and a capable hand.
    Arilyn’s blue and gold eyes took on the hard, flat gleam common among warriors who