“It doesn’t make sense… only the Masters and star elves can use the menhir,” Courynn grumbled, confused and frustrated as he knelt to examine the tracks which lead into the ancient stone circle and vanished. They’d followed the trail of more than two score men, women and children being herded by a dozen orcs from a ruined camp for hours only to end up here. The implications being obvious. “And here you are… with a star elf,” the feminine voice from the shadows of the tree-line that surprised them carried an accusing tone, but seemed familiar to Courynn, although it took a moment for him to place it until she stepped forward into the sunlight. “Talice,” he identified her, his own voice tainted with a bitter edge. Though a decade older, she appeared a few years younger than him due to her half-elven blood. A dozen years ago, when he was just feeling the stirrings of manhood, she’d already been a beautiful young woman and a subject of his adolescent fantasies. Turning to Nymara, he explained; “She’s a druid and a Master… we grew up together in Relkath’s Foot.” “Explain this,” the half-elf demanded with an air of authority, motioning to the trail he knelt beside. The self-appointed constabulary, the Masters of the Yuirwood were the only natives of the woodlands to know the secrets of the menhir circles, which they guarded jealously, so the thought that they’d been used to spirit away a group of its residents was unacceptable to her. She didn’t think that Courynn would’ve been party to such a thing, he’d always seemed to try and do the right thing, despite being treated as a second-class citizen because he was human. “I can’t,” he growled, angered by the accusation as he rose to face her. “We found their camp in ruins and followed the trail here… and its wasn’t the only one. We came across two others in the last couple of weeks. This has the stink of Thay all over it!” “There’s no way Thayan agents could use the menhir… unless a star elf is working with them,” the half-elven druid charged, eyeing Nymara with clear suspicion. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!” the star elven bard shot back, clearly offended. “Why would any of my people want to do something like this… before we retreated to Sildeyuir we were allied with the Yuir. You may not be pure-blooded anymore, but you are their descendants.” “A lot can change in two thousand years,” the half-elf sneered. The version of history she’d learned as a child held that the star elves abandoned their wood elven allies to the human onslaught, cowardly fleeing to their extra-dimensional sanctuary, a blow from which they never recover, forcing them to interbreed with the invaders to survive and giving rise to the half-elven Yuir of today. “But if you were responsible, you wouldn’t still be here. However, that doesn’t mean that another star elf isn’t involved. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” “It doesn’t matter how they managed to use the menhir,” Courynn snapped. “The point is those people could’ve be taken anywhere in the Yuirwood… and we don’t have any way to knowing where.” “Yes we do,” Talice smirked. “The menhir can only open a portal to the next closest circle. Since I just came from the one near Relkath’s Foot they must have gone to the southeast by the river Yuir.”