The Moon Elf's Shadow

The eclipse was three nights away, and Vareth had not slept for two. Silverwood held its breath around him. Moonlight fell through the pale birches in ribbons of white fire, and the wind carried the scent of frost and something older — the copper tang of an oath unpaid. He walked without sound, as elves of the moon are taught to walk, but tonight even his own shadow disobeyed him. It trailed a half-step behind, hesitating at every root, as though it had learned to fear the ground beneath it. "Come," he whispered, and the shadow flinched. The clearing waited where the old maps said it should not. A ring of black stones. A well of ash. And at its center, a figure that was not a figure — only the memory of one, folded into moonlight. "You are late, Vareth Ilyandor," said the memory, in a voice that his mother had once used to sing him to sleep. "The debt does not wait."