BELEPHERIEL’S knightly color was a pale blue-violet, and so was the pavilion that Isinwen conducted him to before bowing and leaving Kellen to face the unknown alone.
I don’t want to do this. For all of Isinwen’s assurance that Belepheriel had “petitioned” to see him, and would not insult Kellen while he was Belepheriel’s guest, Kellen was doubtful about what was to come, and his ability to deal with it appropriately. He’d been right to do what he’d done, and once he would have thought that was all that mattered, but he’d grown up a lot since those days. Now he knew that being right wasn’t enough—at least not among the Elves. You had to be right in the right way.
Or so it seemed.
And the Elves had a lot of ways of insulting people. Well, he would just have to be man enough to take it.
He stepped up to the doorway, took the rope of bells in his hand, and shook it gently. At least the first part of what he needed to do was accomplished. Everyone in camp had seen that he had come when Belepheriel had asked.
“Enter and be welcome.”
Kellen stepped through the flap of the pavilion.
The pale violet light shining through the silk gave everything an unearthly pallor. Belepheriel stood to face him. The Elven commander was alone.
“I See you, Kellen Knight-Mage.”
“I See you, Belepheriel komentai.”
The Elven commander’s tent was similar to Adaerion’s and Dionan’s, containing several tables, chairs, a brazier, lanterns, and a number of large chests. All the furniture could be folded away for night, but Belepheriel’s pavilion was large enough that this wasn’t really necessary, though Kellen saw no sign of a bed.
“It would please me greatly if you would take tea with me,” Belepheriel said.
“I would be honored,” Kellen replied instantly. Well, at least he wasn’t going to be slapped across the face with a gauntlet.
At Belepheriel’s gesture, Kellen seated himself at the table. He’d never wished so hard in his life that he’d managed to get all the way through Master Belesharon’s training before all this happened. He was sure this exact situation would have been covered somewhere. The only thing he did know was that he mustn’t rush matters. There was certain to be a good half hour of talk about the tea and the weather before they even began to discuss whatever Belepheriel wanted to discuss.
Belepheriel did not disappoint him. They began with the weather—the winter was far more severe this year than in previous years. Ancaladar promised them a break in the weather, but not for at least a sennight. A winter this severe ensured a wet spring, which would certainly mean deep mud and hard travel. The rice crops would undoubtedly flourish, though the wheat would probably not do as well as in previous years, and it might well be a waste of time to plant rye at all.
By then the tea was ready. Kellen sipped it cautiously, and looked at Belepheriel in surprise.
It was Armethaliehan Black—his own favorite.
“You do me great honor, Belepheriel,” he said, setting down his cup.
“One should not stop learning,” Belepheriel said. “My master and yours said that, in the House of Sword and Shield. I fear I set aside that lesson.”
“We are all finding out things we did not wish to know,” Kellen replied, slowly, and only after a moment of thought.
“Yet we must learn them!” Belepheriel responded, with emphasis, as if it were he who must convince Kellen of this. “If I had not set my face against the Wild Magic …”
“All would have gone just as it did,” Kellen said quickly. “Your voice was not the only voice in Redhelwar’s tent. His was the decision, for he is the leader of us all.”
There was silence for a while.
“I do not know how to say this,” Kellen began hesitantly. “You know I am … uncivilized.” Before he’d come to live among the Elves, he’d certainly never thought of himself that way, and he still didn’t—not really. But considering the news he’d come to bring, he thought it best to give Belepheriel all the warning he could.
“You are not Elven, nor can you ever be,” Belepheriel said simply. “You do as much as a young human may to honor our ways. And you are more than that. You are a Knight-Mage, sent to us by Leaf and Star. Speak, if you would.”
“There is something I would tell you. It is a thing of ill hearing, and it will bring you grief.” Kellen sighed heavily. “There is no good, no civilized way to impart it.”
“I am warned,” Belepheriel said. “Wait.” He refilled both their cups.
“I did not know, that night in Redhelwar’s tent, that Imerteniel was one of the scouts. First, I am sorry for your loss. But there is more of this matter that I must speak on. After I had left the camp, when I rode out over the battlefield, I saw the bodies of the horses, but the bodies of the scouts were gone.” He licked lips gone dry, and clutched his cup so that his hands ached. “The Wild Magic lets me see how a battle has happened, and so I saw what had taken place. Imerteniel and the others died very quickly, fighting to the last. Afterward”—Kellen took a deep breath, told his muscles to relax, and went on—“a Shadowed Elf hunting party came to the spot where the bodies lay and took them away. They were looking for—food.”
Belepheriel got to his feet and turned away. “I thank you for bringing this news to me,” he said quietly.
Kellen sat silently. He didn’t think even Master Belesharon could have told him the proper thing to say to someone when you’d just told them their son’s body had been eaten by Shadowed Elves.
Belepheriel spoke without turning. “Once I mocked the warnings you brought to us. I wish you to understand: our land has been at peace since the city in which you were born was no more than grass and sand. My grandfather would go to the place where it now stands to swim and fish. The sea-folk found those waters a pleasant place as well. In those days, my family had a summer-season home on one of what you now call the Out Isles. The flowers there were very beautiful, and in the orchards there grew a kind of salt-plum that I do not think grows anywhere now since the great storms that came to scour the coast. The sea-folk prize fruit and flowers greatly. They would come to the shore and trade shells and pearls for fruit and flowers. We always traded fairly with them.” There was a sad smile on his lips that did not reach his eyes.
“Now that house is gone. My father and my grandfather are gone. My sons … Imerteniel was the last. I have no wife, and no daughters. I shall have no more children.” The ghost of a smile was gone. “There is no one left to carry on my line, no one left who will remember that pleasant summer home, or the scent of the wind in the sea-grass, or how the storm-light fell upon the sands.”
Kellen looked up at him mutely, unable to think of any way to respond.
“I thought the threat that we faced to be a small and simple thing, easily dealt with.” Belepheriel shook his head slowly. “Even when I saw proof that it was not, I refused to see. I wished things to be as they had always been. But the world does not go according to our desire, but after the patterning of Leaf and Star. And it is the Wildmages who help it to do so.”
Kellen was far out of his depth, and he knew it.
“It is not the Wildmages, Belepheriel,” he said, “but the Wild Magic that works through us. We are nothing but the hands, or the sword that those hands wield. I pay my Mageprices. I try to do what it asks of me. That’s all. Sometimes it moves through me in ways I do not understand, having me do things I do not yet know the meaning of. That night—in Redhelwar’s pavilion—”
Belepheriel turned and looked at him, studying Kellen’s face intently. “The Wild Magic spoke through you. I see. And you do not fully understand what you did.”
“I insulted you,” Kellen said. “I know that now, though I did not then. I challenged you to a Circle. I understand what a Circle is now as well.”
“Then you also understand that you won,” Belepheriel said.
No! But … Belepheriel seemed to think he had.
What if he had? Frantically, Kell
en cast his mind back over everything he’d learned about the Challenge Circle at the House of Sword and Shield, but all that he could remember was that it settled all arguments. He shook his head.
“I do not understand what winning means,” he said carefully. “But it would please me greatly if the whole matter could be forgotten as if it had never been. We have an enemy that will take all our strength to defeat. We do not have to make enemies of one another, nor weaken ourselves by … misunderstandings.” He’d seen enough of the squabbles between Mageborn families back in Armethalieh. The last thing he wanted was to start something similar here.
Belepheriel continued to study him. Kellen kept his face still, but he knew that the Elven commander could read it as easily as Kellen could read a book of wondertales. He only hoped he wasn’t making matters worse, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Redhelwar needed all his commanders, able and ready to fight.
“Your words go against all custom. Yet we must all learn new things, if we are to survive in these dark times,” Belepheriel said. “Let it be so, then. I would give you a gift, if you would accept it. And let it be known, if any should wonder, that the gift would have been given no matter what words you said here to me today.”
“I will remember,” Kellen said. “And I will let it be known. I am honored to receive a gift from your hands”. He really had to find Jermayan and find out what he’d just done, but whatever it was, it seemed to have smoothed things over with Belepheriel, and that was all that mattered right now.
Belepheriel went over to one of the chests, and drew forth two silk-wrapped bundles, one small, one very long. He placed them upon the table.
“You have earned, these,” he said, opening the smaller bundle. “And I have the right to give them.”
Spurs.
There were three degrees of Elven Knighthood. The first was the sword—Kellen had gotten that by default, since he’d taken a sword with him on the quest for the Black Cairn, before anyone had realized he was a Knight-Mage. The second was the shield. Jermayan had given him that—a shield looted from the body of one of the bandits he and Kellen had slain along the way, but it had still counted as a formal shield of Knighthood.
The third was the spurs.
Kellen had spurs, of course—they were necessary to give commands to an Elven destrier. But they weren’t the formal ritual badge of completed Knighthood.
These were.
They were made of Elvensilver, the instep-plate covered with a mosaic of tiny gems in a dozen colors. They glittered as brightly as sunlight on ice, but Kellen could not make out the pattern, if there was one. Maybe human eyes couldn’t.
“I have not completed my training in the House of Sword and Shield,” Kellen said quietly.
“Only Leaf and Star may say whether any of us will see its walls again,” Belepheriel said. “And I say that whatever graces Master Belesharon has yet to teach you, you are now a Knight in all the fullness of the rank, and so you shall be honored. Stand.”
He took the spurs in his hands. Kellen got to his feet.
Belepheriel knelt before him and buckled the spurs into place over Kellen’s boots. When he had finished, he rose to his feet.
“And now, the other.” He went to the table and laid back the wrappings.
It was a sword. Kellen had already guessed that from the shape.
The scabbard was black, smooth, and utterly plain. Some sort of leather. But looking closer, Kellen could see that it seemed to shimmer, casting back not only the color of the pavilion’s silk, but shimmering with other colors as well, like … like Ancaladar’s scales.
The sword itself was as ornate as the scabbard was plain. The quillons were designed to resemble rolling waves; the metal looked blue, but it was difficult to judge colors here in Belepheriel’s pavilion. For a moment Kellen thought that the hilt was encrusted with pearls, but then he realized that it was mother-of-pearl made to look like pearls.
But it was the pommel-weight that drew the eye.
The Elves rarely used faceted stones, preferring the play of light and color to be found in the smooth cabochon cut. But the pommel-weight of this sword was a faceted transparent sphere the size of a large apricot. It glittered brightly, casting rainbows across the walls of the pavilion.
“Her name is The Light at the Heart of the Mountain,” Belepheriel said. “She has always been victorious. It is said that she fought at Vel-al-Amion, but as to that, no one can say in truth. She is a thousand-year sword, forged when we knew to craft weapons of war, forged to teach the Enemy the taste of defeat and dissolution.”
Kellen regarded the sword uncertainly. He knew perfectly well that Belepheriel was doing him an incredible honor, and that many of the other Elven Knights had swords just as elaborate, but he couldn’t imagine riding into battle carrying a piece of … jewelry. The grip looked slippery, just to begin with.
“Try her,” Belepheriel said.
He had no choice. Kellen stepped forward, and took the scabbard in his hand, lifting the sword from the table. He gripped the hilt.
It wasn’t slippery at all.
He pulled. Light at the Heart of the Mountain slipped free of the scabbard with a hiss.
He felt himself automatically settle into guard position, as if the sword were alive. His last weapon had been a good one—nothing that came from the Elven forges was flawed—but this was better than that. A great weapon. Ancient. Perfect. She answered to him exactly as if he and she were one being; he knew precisely where every atom of her was, even with his eyes closed.
After a long moment, he realized he was just staring at the play of light along the surface of the blade, and reluctantly sheathed it again.
How can you bear to part with this? he thought.
Gently, Belepheriel took the scabbard from Kellen’s hands, and hooked it to his belt. “Use her well,” he said. “And know that you will always be honored in my house and at my hearth.”
“And you. In mine,” Kellen said. “I, uh, don’t actually know if I have a house or a hearth, Belepheriel …”
“But I shall take the desire for the deed, Kellen Knight-Mage,” Belepheriel said, bowing. “And now, I believe you will need to surprise Redhelwar.”
IT didn’t take long for Kellen to discover what Belepheriel had meant.
He presented himself at Dionan’s pavilion as soon as he left Belepheriel. As usual, Redhelwar’s adjutant was busy, even with two-thirds of the army elsewhere—if an Elven army didn’t run on paperwork, then endless meetings and consultations seemed to take their place. If Kellen didn’t receive any looks of open curiosity, he was at least thoroughly inspected by everyone he passed, and by everyone who found a reason to pass by Dionan’s tent while he waited. He had no doubt that the information about the spurs and the sword would be all over the camp by the time he was finished here.
At last he was able to enter.
“As we await Adaerion,” Dionan said, pouring tea, “it would please me to hear anything you wished to tell.”
This was briskness indeed from the Elves! Well, he could certainly match it. “You will have seen that I bear gifts given by Belepheriel’s hand,” Kellen said. “He wished it known that the gifts would have been given no matter what I said to him today.”
Dionan looked … puzzled. “We will drink tea,” he said, after a long pause.
Adaerion arrived a few moments later.
“Belepheriel has given Kellen gifts,” Dionan said, without preamble, as brusquely as any human. “He has given him The Light at the Heart of the Mountain. He has given him the spurs of Knighthood.”
“Leaf and Star!” Adaerion said. He inspected Kellen closely. “It would please me to hear how Belepheriel fares, if you would care to oblige me in the telling.”
Elves. I will never understand Elves, Kellen thought. Do they think I’ve killed him?
“He looked well when I saw him, and when I left him,” Kellen began cautiously. Well, if they were going to be as straightfor
ward as any human, then he would take the rare opportunity to do likewise! “Isinwen told me when I awoke that Belepheriel wished to see me. I went to see him. I apologized for being rude to him. I told him how Imerteniel had died, and what happened to his body. It and those of the other scouts were taken by Shadowed Elves. About the Challenge … he told me I had won it. I don’t understand that, because we didn’t fight. I asked him to just forget it had ever happened, because we don’t need to fight among ourselves. He gave me the sword, and the spurs, and said he wished it known that he would have given them to me no matter what happened between us. I apologize if my brevity offends,” Kellen added, for good measure.
There was a very long pause. Adaerion and Dionan looked at each other, then back at him. Both of the Elves were watching him as if he might faint, or explode … or turn into a dragon right before their eyes.
“Kellen,” Adaerion said, speaking slowly and carefully, “do you understand that by winning the Challenge, you had the right to take Belepheriel’s place in rank? And that you gave it up to him by your words to him?”
Oh. Oh. No wonder everyone had been acting so oddly. And no wonder Adaerion had felt it necessary to speak so bluntly now. Kellen knew enough by now about how Elven gossip ran to know that everyone in camp must have a pretty clear idea of what had happened between him and Bellepheriel in Redhelwar’s pavilion that night. And it looked like running off the way he had hadn’t changed his position particularly—at least, it seemed his so-called rights under the “Challenge” would still have been honored. Everyone must have been expecting him to take over Belepheriel’s command the moment he was on his feet again.
Kellen shook his head.
“Adaerion, Dionan … you both know that I want Redhelwar to … listen to my counsel, when I have something to say that is given to me by the Wild Magic. To say that I don’t want what Belepheriel has would be a lie. But I wish to earn it—not to take it away from someone else. Not by—” He was about to say “playing children’s games” and stopped. “Not this way,” he finally said. “Earning it would be right. Having it because we have lost a commander, and I was needed would be right. Taking it would be wrong.”
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