To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I’m still … well, no. I do know how I got into that mess. And I think I know ‘why,’ too.” He started to rub his eyebrow with his gauntleted hand, then realized what he was doing, and shrugged instead. “The Wild Magic needed to change Belepheriel’s mind about the way he was seeing things before he made some bad decisions. But it wasn’t very comfortable.”

  “Magic often isn’t,” Shalkan said shrewdly. “At least today you’ll be dealing with simple straightforward actions with no worry about Elven manners: riding places and killing things.”

  “That isn’t exactly straightforward either,” Kellen muttered. Oh, the battles themselves were. But they were brief, compared to the time spent preparing for them and recovering from them. That was filled with complications.

  “I brought you some honey-cakes. And I have a question.”

  “Honey-cakes first,” Shalkan said firmly. Even though the cold had made them rock-hard, the unicorn enjoyed them thoroughly. “And the question?” he asked, when he’d finished the last crumb.

  “Is there supposed to be a pattern on my spurs?” Kellen asked.

  From the look on Shalkan’s face, this wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. “Lift your foot,” the unicorn finally said.

  A reasonable request; both Kellen’s boots were buried in snow up to the calves. Kellen lifted his foot and brushed the instep-plate and rowel of the spur clear of snow. Shalkan inspected both closely.

  “It’s seashells in ocean foam,” he finally reported, in the kindly tones of someone describing a sunset to a blind man.

  “Oh.” Kellen put his foot down again. “He told me his grandfather used to go to Armethalieh, that they had a home on one of the Out Islands.”

  “If you can call ‘going to Armethalieh’ visiting a place before it exists, then … yes,” Shalkan agreed blandly. “The Elves once ruled the seas as well as the forests. But that was a long time ago, even as Elves think of time.”

  Kellen took a deep breath, and regretted it immediately as the cold air seared his throat and lungs. “Are you going to be—” he began.

  Shalkan interrupted him. “I’m fine. I will be fine. Now stop worrying about me. As Riasen says, those of us at Ysterialpoerin should probably have brought xaqiue and gan to keep from getting bored. You’re the ones who will be facing moments of unusual interest tonight.”

  “That’s one way to think of it,” Kellen said.

  But when he had trudged back to his own pavilion again, Kellen somehow felt a little better, though he could not have said why.

  IN fact, he and his thirty spent much of the afternoon being as cold and bored as any of Ysterialpoerin’s nearer defenders. Despite knowing Redhelwar’s plan, Kellen felt very much like a xaqiue piece himself—over and over, it seemed they’d no more than settle into one position than the order would come to shift to another. At least the constant shifts in position kept the horses from freezing solid—if the Shadowed Elves did come out as Athan hoped, there’d be a good deal of mounted combat tonight, and none of them could afford to be stiff.

  The farther cavern was in a more elevated area than the nearer one. The only entrance the scouting parties had been able to locate was at the end of a twisting path halfway up the mountainside. Kellen knew that there were troops actually on the mountain—the men of the High Reaches, and most of the Knights of Ysterialpoerin, who were most familiar with the local terrain. Kellen certainly didn’t envy them their posts. If it was cold down here—and it was—he could only imagine how much colder it must be farther up the mountain.

  One thing a day spent emulating a xaqiue-piece did was give everyone a good idea of the ground they’d be fighting over later. Jermayan had set Coldfire spells over all of them that would trigger with a single word of command, but until that moment, Redhelwar had given orders that there was to be no light at all.

  THEY moved through the dark to their final position. It was almost half a league away from the mouth of the cavern, but Kellen knew why his command was here and not in the front lines. Redhelwar was taking every possible precaution against a repeat of the feint against the camp and the attack upon Ysterialpoerin.

  He could feel the army around him, waiting. Above the clouds, Jermayan and Ancaladar circled. A light snow was falling; the Wildmages had been willing at dire need to shift the heaviest of the weather a league or so westward, but warned that the lull would only be a day at most, followed by a brutal storm.

  Kellen knew, without actually seeing it, the moment that the moon rose above the mountain and Athan began his spell.

  Imagination and spell-sight showed him what his own eyes could not: Athan kneeling at his small brazier, his Great Grey Owl perched upon his shoulder; Athan casting the dried herbs upon the coals and calling upon the Wild Magic. Kellen knew from what Idalia had told him beforehand that Athan had asked for no aid to his spell: whatever price the Gods of the Wild Magic asked, Athan would bear the whole cost of the spell and the Casting alone.

  Now the price had been asked and agreed to, and Athan’s Calling began, though only the Wildmages gathered here could sense it. Still there was nothing but silence and darkness and the faint moaning of the wind.

  Kellen felt, rather than heard, a flicker of movement, and looked up. Athan’s owl glided by in utter silence overhead, a keystone clutched in its talons. The keystone was brilliant with power to Kellen’s spell-sight.

  It must be the focus of the Calling spell. Wherever it is, that’s where the Shadowed Elves will try to get to.

  Athan still had not moved. The Wildmage stood alone, armored and ready, just below where the path leading up to the cavern opening began.

  With a sinking sense of dread, Kellen suspected he knew what the price of Athan’s spell had been: not suicide—for the Gods of the Wild Magic did not ask for things like that—but to offer his life by being the first to meet the Shadowed Elves’ attack. He was a Wildmage, and, standing in the open, he would be an irresistible target for any Tainted creature. For those who fought the Calling spell, his mere presence could serve to draw them out.

  He might well survive. There was a chance. And there was no rule that said Athan could not defend himself. But the Mageprice Athan had accepted—had probably accepted, Kellen reminded himself, for he did not know for sure—carried with it a terrible peril.

  Still there was silence and an eerie tranquility. Despite the fact that two-thirds of the Elven army shared these woods with him, Kellen could hear nothing, nor did he see anything beyond the men and mounts of his own troop. The moon was the faintest shine in the clouds overhead, casting no light on the snow below.

  He felt his stomach knotting again, and his hands were clenched inside his gauntlets. Let Athan’s spell have worked. Let it have worked. If it hasn’t, we’ll have to go in, and if we fight on their ground, they’ll have all the advantages.

  Suddenly the false peace of the night shattered. He heard distant shouts—the ring of steel on steel—and a moment later, the entire forest was full-moon bright, as balls of Coldfire appeared over the heads of every Elven Knight.

  But he felt Athan die in that same moment, a shining beacon that existed only in his mind, extinguished between one breath and the next.

  “There’s more than one exit from the cavern. Be ready.” Jermayan’s voice spoke as if in his ear.

  “They’re out,” Kellen said to his troop, grimly. “There are multiple exits from the cavern. Let’s go.”

  He could “see” the battlefield nearly as well as Jermayan and Ancaladar could. As Redhelwar had hoped, the sight of their Elven enemy drove the Shadowed Elves to attack recklessly. They swarmed from their cavern like hornets from a nest—and not just from the exit the Elves and Vestakia had first identified. They were burrowing up out of holes concealed by ice high on the mountain as well, attacking the defenders there.

  But Redhelwar did not want to contain them or push them back. He wanted as many of them to come out as would come. So the Elves offered little resistance to
the attack of their foes, falling back before them.

  In Redhelwar’s tent, it had seemed a simple plan, with little that could complicate it.

  Kellen’s first hint that things were about to go badly was the arrival of the Deathwings. They’d never flown at night before but suddenly an enormous flock of them appeared.

  Half of them went after Ancaladar. The other half swept in low over the army, through the areas of heaviest fighting, but in a few moments it became clear that to attack the Elves was not their purpose.

  Again and again they swooped down, snatching up the Shadowed Elves by ones and twos and bearing them over the Elven lines and away. Ancaladar could do nothing to stop them; he and Jermayan had their own battle to fight. Any archer not actively engaged in combat shot at the ghostly targets—aiming for the Shadowed Elves, rather than the Deathwings, as the Shadowed Elves were easier to kill—but it didn’t seem to help. If they managed to kill or wound one of the Shadowed Elves, the Deathwing simply dropped its burden and went back for another. And the Deathwings themselves were nearly impossible to kill with simple arrows.

  They have a cache of armor and weapons hidden somewhere else for just this emergency. Kellen knew that with a sudden sinking feeling, without knowing either how he knew it or—worse—knowing how to find it. He only hoped that whatever else the cache contained, it did not contain any of the white rings of metalfire.

  Follow them?

  No.

  It was tempting, but if he pulled his unit out of the outer ring to follow them, he would break the wall of Redhelwar’s defense. And he’d received no clear warning from the Wild Magic that there was a crucial need. It would be the height of folly to go charging off without a direction—leaving a hole in the lines that the others were counting on to be filled.

  And without Jermayan in the sky to tell Redhelwar how the battle was progressing on the ground, Kellen was needed here more than ever. He felt Jermayan and Ancaladar being driven further and further away, leaving Redhelwar essentially blind so far as the battle was concerned.

  Suddenly he knew what he had to do.

  “Ciltesse, take command here. Don’t let them break through, whatever you do.” He touched his spurs lightly to Firareth’s sides, and rode to find Redhelwar.

  He’d gone less than a quarter mile when he encountered Shadowed Elves that had broken through the ring. Their tactics against mounted Knights were savage but effective: they struck first against the destrier, if they could, shattering its legs with heavy clubs, and then springing on the downed Knight, using poison, or acid, or thin-bladed knives to destroy the armor’s defenses and kill the Elf within. Every Knight they killed gained them new Elvensteel weapons as well as eliminating an enemy.

  The Shadowed Elves swarmed toward Kellen and Firareth. Kellen had an instant’s warning as he felt the stallion gather himself. He took in a sharp breath, and a shiver of energy ran through him; not quite fear, but a close relative—

  And then Firareth plunged into the midst of the Shadowed Elves, spinning and striking with hooves and heels and teeth. Kellen struck as well, reaching with his sword what the destrier could not.

  Once—it seemed a long time ago now—Jermayan and Valdien had showed him what an Elven destrier was capable of on the field of battle. Kellen had been sure then that he’d never master the intricate cues that would tell his mount what to do, and in fact, he didn’t know them yet. But Firareth obviously knew exactly what the situation called for, and after Master Belesharon’s training—and Shalkan’s—Kellen could stay in the saddle no matter what his mount chose to do.

  And Elven-made equestrian armor was just as flexible as anything the Elves made for themselves. So he let battle-sight and Firareth tell him what to do.

  It was a dance, a dance in which two moved as one. A deadly dance of hoof and steel, and one that the Shadowed Elves were not prepared for. Firareth might have had some form of battle-sight himself, the way he anticipated what the enemy was going to do next, and met the threat before it could even evolve.

  It was over before the Shadowed Elves realized that they were outclassed and outmaneuvered; not one of them escaped.

  “Good fellow,” Kellen said a few moments later, patting the side of his mount’s neck—armor against armor, but it would have to do. Firareth turned to look at him—with, Kellen imagined, an air of equal approval. Then he snorted, and looked about, head high. The stallion was excited, obviously looking for more targets.

  The Shadowed Elves were trying to break through the line, drawn by the Calling Spell and by the nearness of their enemy. With the arrival of the Deathwings, there was no more question of luring them out—it had become a matter of killing them before they escaped, and everywhere Kellen looked, the fighting was heavy. The skirmishers weren’t armed with the Elven lance, but the line units were, and for all its unwieldiness, it proved their most effective weapon against the Deathwings.

  Kellen saw one Elven Knight stand in his stirrups, heft his lance, and fling it skyward like a javelin. It transfixed the body of one of the Deathwings and brought it crashing to the ground. The others with him rode quickly forward, their mounts trampling the creature until they were sure it was dead.

  The fighting was frenzied now, but Kellen did his best to detour around it. His goal was to reach Redhelwar.

  He found the Elven general on an outcropping of rock overlooking the cavern mouth. Redhelwar was surrounded by his personal guard, and by mounted messengers, whose purpose it was to take orders to the various units engaged in battle.

  “Sir!” he called, to catch the commander’s attention.

  He caught it, all right. The Elven commander turned in his saddle to stare. “Why are you here?” Redhelwar demanded.

  “Jermayan can’t see the battlefield for you,” Kellen said, as his battle-sense and Wildmagery told him just how far they actually were. At the moment Jermayan and Ancaladar were far to the west of Ysterialpoerin. Kellen could locate them as easily as his own right hand. “The Deathwings have driven Ancaladar off. But I can tell you what is happening. The Shadowed Elves are breaking through our lines. And they have weapons and—something—cached somewhere between here and Ysterialpoerin. I don’t know where.”

  “If you can see the battlefield, then tell me what you see,” Redhelwar ordered sharply.

  Automatically, Kellen closed his eyes, responding to the command as if he’d been bespelled himself. For a moment the world seemed to spin, then everything steadied, dreamlike and impossibly tiny, a pattern in his mind, in colors that only Elves could see. As if it were nothing to do with him, as if it did not matter, he heard himself reciting the places where the line was weak, where units had been decoyed out of position—or slain entirely.

  THEY had assumed the numbers of the Shadowed Elves would be similar to what they had encountered in the first cavern—doubled, of course, since they were facing the warriors of two caverns here, but of the same order.

  They’d been wrong.

  There were far more of them here. The Shadowed Elves thrived on darkness and cold. And they’d been preparing for this battle for a very long time. If Redhelwar had fallen into their trap, and lost a third of his force in the nearer cavern, tonight wouldn’t be a battle at all. It would be a slaughter.

  Redhelwar was giving orders to his messengers now, and they sped off like arrows from an Elven bow, but Kellen didn’t listen. The important thing was to see the picture and report it. Would a time ever come when he could see and fight?

  “They’re behind the line,” Kellen heard himself say. “They’ve really broken through now; they’ve driven a gap in the lines.”

  “Where?”

  “East and north.” Not just the few dozen that the Death-wings had managed to carry over their line, but a number that could pose a serious threat to Ysterialpoerin. “A hundred, perhaps more.” He could see how they’d done it—the long perilous climb over the glacier, the bitter clash with the High Reaches warriors, then down the side of the moun
tain and into the night.

  “Go. Find them. There’s little more you can do here,” Redhelwar said.

  Kellen opened his eyes, drawing in a deep breath of icy night air, and for a moment the battle spun crazily around him before everything settled again. The world seen only through his human senses seemed oddly flat and simple.

  But now urgency tightened his gut, and he had orders to follow. With a quick salute, he turned Firareth about and rode back to his men.

  The fighting was heavier now, and several times Kellen was delayed, though he went as quickly as he could. By now the skirmishing units had been drawn into the fighting, called up to replace fallen comrades and to draw the ring of Elvensteel tighter around the enemy.

  Kellen located Isinwen—he did not see Ciltesse—at the head of the troop. They had obviously just withdrawn from a clash with the enemy, and were looking about for fresh foes. Isinwen was not riding Cheska, but a strange destrier whose caparison and barding was drenched in blood.

  “Ciltesse?” He did not want to know, yet he must ask.

  “We were separated,” Isinwen replied, voice cracking and hoarse from shouting. “I have not seen him since.”

  There was no time to worry about a single member of the troop. He would either be alive, or dead, and they had a job to do. “Disengage! We have orders! Come with me!”

  Isinwen raised the warhorn to his lips and blew a short call. A few moments later a few more members of Kellen’s troop came riding up, their swords black with blood even in the blue light of the Coldfire. Ciltesse was not among them.

  “Follow!” Kellen called. “They’ve broken through the lines! We’ve orders to stop them!”

  Kellen set a hard pace, and the others followed him in the direction of where the Shadowed Elves had broken through the lines in his battle-vision. Kellen wasn’t sure what their plan was. Escape? To attack Ysterialpoerin? It didn’t matter—whatever they planned, he had to stop it. If he could do no more than warn the defenders of Ysterialpoerin, that would be enough. If this was not completely familiar land, it was familiar enough now, with the Coldfire to help, that he dared take them at a hard canter. They pounded through the soft snow, a growing urgency in him, though no direction as yet.