by Brian Murphy
Beneath his hand now lay the Histories of Kings, the tales of all the rulers of the Qualinesti elves since fabled Kith Kanan himself had separated their race and led the people out of Silvanesti and into the forest. The thin page felt like silk. So did the breeze slipping in through the high window. Out that window the towers of Qualinost rose golden-lovely structures round which a great span of bridgework ran. Upon the bridge used to walk proud elven warriors who kept the kingdom and its gleaming capital safe.
But those were older times. Jai had been but an infant in his mother’s arms, and the king had been Solostaran. In these days of the dragon Beryl, all the Qualinesti had for leadership was Gilthas, the misbred son of the old king’s daughter, Princess Laurana, and her half-elven husband, but he was little more than a puppet on the Dark Knights’ strings. A marshal ran the kingdom now, a human named Medan, and no one doubted it was he who pulled the strings that made the weakling king dance.
At the Marshal’s order, the Qualinesti warriors had been disbanded. The young king did not make any significant protest. Troubled with ill health, when he roused, it was to dance the nights away with pretty women and then lull himself to sleep with his own- by all accounts turgid-poetry. While Gilthas danced, Medan’s black-armored Knights patrolled the silvery span round the elven city and sat in their squat, ugly barracks drinking, gambling, and making certain no elf doubted the ruthlessness of the green dragon’s minions.
The conflicted dragon balanced between her hatred of elves and her love of the tribute Medan squeezed out of them.
Jai’s hand shook, and his breath caught ragged in his throat. Very carefully, he slipped one thin sheet of parchment from atop the other, like brushing a shadow from a shadow.
Behind him, Annalisse said, “Don’t work too late, Jai.”
“I won’t,” he said, but they both knew he’d been long at his work and would be longer still.
She laughed. “Well, at least take time for your supper, will you?”
He said he would try, and the librarian said nothing more to discourage him from returning to his work. Those sheets needed separating before more damage occurred, and Jai Windwild had the patience for the work.
In the purpling twilight, Jai lurched down the garden path and home to his supper. He owned no crutch or cane. He owned only a slanting gait. It was his, and if he did not run on sun-dappled forest paths anymore, he’d taught himself not to regret that too much. He went each day to better places, into the lands of legend and the proud realms of elven history. There, he would have been happy to spend all his days.
The first golden fireflies danced ahead of him into the darker shadows beneath the arbor at the front of his parents’ little house. The heady scent of wisteria filled the twilight. Thick bunches of the amethyst flowers brushed Jai’s shoulders as he passed. He caught the door latch, balancing a little against the jamb, and the door opened under his hand.
Face white as the lone pale moon, his father gestured him inside.
“Father, what-?”
Emeth Windwild shook his head and closed the door behind his son. “Come in,” he said. “We must talk.”
Jai saw his mother beyond his father’s shoulder. She sat still as stone in a cushioned nook near the window that overlooked the little stream beside the house. Marise Windwild loved no place in her home better than this. She did not look out though. Her eyes darted from her husband to Jai, then to Emeth again.
Someone has died, Jai thought. The house had that kind of stillness, the breath-held quiet when sorry news has come. He thought of his father’s uncle who lived down in Mianost, a man so old it had been a wonder for the last ten years that he’d wakened each morning. When he turned to his father again, words of sympathy on his lips, he saw Emeth’s hand trembling. That trembling quieted every word Jai would have spoken. He had never seen fear in his father. Not during the terrible Chaos War, when all the world seemed to run mad, nor afterward when the dragon came. Not even when his son had shattered his knee, nor when he watched Jai struggle to walk again as healers warned he would not win that battle.
“What’s happened?” he asked. Marise Windwild drew a breath, as though her son’s question freed her. She shuddered, and her eyes welled. “Your father… he has been…”
She choked, tears spilled down her cheeks as Emeth finished her sentence. “We have to go, Jai. We have to leave the city. A message to one of the agents of the resistance went astray.”
Jai’s heart slammed hard against his ribs. “Father…” he said, whispering as though agents of Marshal Medan crouched in the shadows. “Father, something that implicates you?”
Emeth shook his head. “I don’t know. A spy was found in Medan’s household, and right after, someone disappeared-someone along the chain I work with.” Cold understanding chilled Jai’s blood. His father was like a number of others who aided the resistance: only a small link in a chain. He would, now and then, hand a note to a tailor, information disguised as an order for clothing. He’d speak a word to one of the bakers in the household of a woman known for her shy and retiring ways, something that only seemed to be about bread or the price of wheat. Intercepted, these seemingly innocent messages and others like them would appear to be nothing more than the daily business of an ordinary man. But in the right ears, they were more. No man or woman passing a word understood the whole of the message, but all the words together became news when they reached their destination. Somewhere, perhaps in a dark and deep forest glen, the leader of the resistance, that fierce warrior known as the Lioness, would see to it that a plan of the Marshal’s would turn suddenly sour. Black-breasted Knights would die with elven arrows in their necks, and the elven warriors would vanish.
Simple men and women made this work, risking their lives and the lives of their families every day in the cause. Now a link in the secret chain had been broken and the delicate trust betrayed to the enemy.
“The damage has been done, Jai,” his mother said. “One by one, those who had to do with this matter will leave the city. You, your father, and I will go at dawn, for we have a plausible excuse for leaving and will arouse no suspicion.”
They would go to Mianost, the three of them. They would leave before first light, making sure that messages were left behind to say that Emeth’s uncle was failing fast, that the family wanted to gather one last time to be with their venerable relative. Passes would be secured to take them safely out of the city and past the checkpoints manned by the Dark Knights. In an occupied city, not every elf was trustworthy, not everyone a partisan. The whole of the plan to escape was not revealed to everyone who had part in it. Each knew only what he must.
“This much your mother and I know,” Emeth said, “for the rest, we will do what we’re told when we arrive in Mianost. We are confident that once we reach Mianost there will be a way to true safety.”
Stunned, Jai spoke without thinking. “Leave…” He shook his head. “I just got to the last page of the histories of the kings-”
“Damn the kings!” Emeth cried. “Jai, listen to me. We have no choice. If we don’t leave tomorrow, we must take our chances here. I forbid that.” His hard expression softened. He was not unaware of his son’s love for his work. Indeed, he had fostered it. “I’m sorry, son. Events give us no choice. We must leave. I know very little, but if I were ever made to tell even that, others would be found out.”
Jai heard that as though hearing his father’s death sentence, for there was a place in Qualinost not so old as the lovely houses and homes of the elves. It dated only to the time of the dragon’s conquest-a crouching, ugly building of sandstone, hard planes, and biting comers. Narrow windows, like suspicious eyes, glared round the square structure. Ironbound doors opened only at the order of one of Marshal Medan’s soldiers. There the Knights were barracked, and below that place was an unlit hole of a room. In that chamber, no man or woman had ever survived the torturer’s attentions with all secrets intact. The telling was the fee paid for death at last.
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br /> Quietly, steadily, Jai said, “You don’t have to stay, father, but I don’t have to leave.”
Marise rose, turning her back on the window. “You do, Jai.”
“But I don’t know anything! I don’t know who you talk to, when or where or what you say. You’ve always made sure of that, so there’s no need for me to flee. I couldn’t tell anyone anything if I wanted to. Go to Mianost and leave me behind-”
“No,” said Emeth, and now his face wasn’t so pale. His hands didn’t tremble. “No, Jai. If Medan ever came to suspect us, he would take you to torture.”
The Knights would break him bone by bone in that terrible place beneath the barracks. Jai’s blood went cold. “But I would never- Father, you know I would never-”
Emeth held up a hand, a gesture Jai knew well. “No more, Jai. You would never tell, but you would be killed for your silence. That won’t happen. You will come with us. No more will be said.”
Jai took in a long, difficult breath. In his mind he heard the words of the Lady Librarian, spoken only today: We can’t forget who we were, Jai. It’s how we know who we are, and how we can guess who we will be. How could he abandon the holy work? Breathing again, he understood he could not, and he knew it would gain him nothing to continue to press his case with his parents.
“Jai,” Marise said. “Son, go back to the Library.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
“Have your supper and then go back. You always do at this time. It would seem strange to anyone who might be watching if you didn’t tonight.”
Jai looked to his father, who nodded slowly. “Yes, but be back before the moon is highest. Say nothing to anyone about our plans.”
Jai did as he was bidden, and when he left his parents’ home, his were the usual lurching steps, his hitching gait well-known to his neighbors and to any minion of the Marshal who might be watching.
Jai sat in silence among the histories of the kings. He had no plan for staying behind. He had not even the smallest thought or idea to turn into a plan. He had only his work, and this he did, trusting that some idea would spring to mind. So sunk in concentration was he that the sound of a footfall startled him. His heart jumped, and he looked up to see Annalisse standing in the doorway.
“Here you are,” she said, entering the room. “I’m not surprised.” She slipped a finger around the edge of the first page of The History of Kith Kanan. “You are the best of my students and the most faithful of my apprentices. Any of the others would have left this work for tomorrow.” She fell silent a long moment, her silence like shadows creeping. “And yet, I don’t know how many tomorrows there are.”
Jai looked up. “Lady?”
“Don’t you hear it, Jai?” She looked at the manuscripts and books, at the sturdy tables and high stools. She turned, looking out the door, and Jai knew she saw what he did: gracefully spiraling staircases leading down into winding corridors, reading rooms, the silent nooks where once scholars came to study, and the vast, high arched chamber in the middle of all, where the most prized pieces of the library’s collection were displayed. There, in older days, elven kings had entertained poets and philosophers.
“Jai,” she said, “This place has been a temple, in its time as sacred as any raised to gods. Treaties were signed here, laws enshrined here. All that we are is contained in the towers of this place. In the march of Medan’s Knights I hear an ending coming.”
The scent of ancient ink and venerable parchment filled the room. Jai looked around at the folios, the books, the tightly rolled scrolls all here for repair. Sometimes in quiet hours, when there were only these for company, Jai thought he heard the scratch of ancient quills, the voices of elves many long years dead as they spoke the words of an age-old ballad or tale. And yes, he could feel an end coming.
“Do you think the dragon will fall upon us, lady? Do you think…?”
Annalisse shook her head. “Who can know? But I feel… something. Like the future knocking on the door of the present. I have spent so much time among the histories and the long tales that I often think I can see the pattern of how things work out. You feel it, too, don’t you Jai?”
He admitted that he did. An end was coming. To a kingdom, to a long and many-leafed branch of a shining history…
Annalisse’s eyes went soft and sad. “I feel something else, a closer ending. Are you leaving, Jai?”
Shock ran like lightning along Jai’s nerves.
Annalisse shrugged, a melancholy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Well, I see how you look around tonight, how your fingers linger on everything-table, pen, page. You look like a man who has another road to take.”
Fear made him shiver even as he scrambled to think of something to say. In the end, he reached for a portion of the truth, hoping his voice didn’t shake.
“Madam, I’m sorry. I would have told you in time. My father has had word that his uncle who lives in Mianost is calling the family to gather.”
A cloud chased across her brow, then vanished. “Ah, that’s a shame, but it has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?”
Jai nodded. “It has.”
“Well”-she sighed-”I’m going to miss you. How long will you be gone?”
Jai said he wasn’t certain. “There is the gathering of the family, and then…”
And then they must wait for his father’s ancient uncle to die. After that, the funeral rites, a period of mourning, and the settling of the will. All this, his pause asked Annalisse to understand, and she nodded gravely as though she did.
“When do you leave?”
For the barest moment, Jai hesitated, feeling he’d said too much already, not knowing how he could have said less.
“I’m not sure,” he lied. “Mother said something about making an early start. Father said he had some small matters to tend to.”
His lie sat like truth. He knew it because Annalisse’s grave expression never changed. With his next breath, however, Jai spoke sudden words unplanned, and these were not lies.
“And,” he said, glancing causally away as if this were a minor detail, “I don’t know that I’ll stay in Mianost as long as my parents will. After my uncle’s death, that is. The business of his will and the disposition of his home… well, that’s best handled by my father. I might well come back here.”
He said this, and it was all he could do not to smile. He’d found his plan. He had, for he’d said aloud that he would return, and if he did not… why, that would look suspicious indeed.
Briskly Annalisse clapped her hands, as one does who doesn’t like to dwell on sadness anymore. “Well! Let’s make use of you while you’re still here. There’s no reason we can’t at least begin to catalog the repair needed on the first page of the Histories tonight.”
Jai agreed there was no reason, and they spoke of his departing no more.
When he returned home, Jai let his parents know he’d been obliged to say something to Annalisse about their leaving Qualinost, and he told them what other thing he’d said. About Annalisse, they seemed to understand that he’d had no choice. They agreed that he’d handled the matter well. About his decision to return to Qualinost after sufficient time had passed, his parents were not pleased. His father looked like a man being blackmailed. His mother quietly wept. Neither could change what he’d done.
The Windwild family left Qualinost as planned. The night’s darkness was just going to gray, the sky yet possessed a few stars, and the moon had only an hour before sinking into the west. Like people who had nothing to hide, the Windwilds left the city riding-Marise upon a pretty roan mare, Emeth on a tall black gelding, and Jai astride a docile little gray that followed his mother’s mare peacefully. At Manse’s suggestion, they made the most of their pretense, taking care to greet those few who saw them and to say they were going to Mianost prepared to mourn a kinsman. At the black-breasted guards who walked the four spans of the silver bridge that girded Qualinost they did not look.
One of tho
se who stopped them on their way was Annalisse, the Lady Librarian. Outside her home, which was not far from her beloved library, she looked up from a bench in the garden at the sound of bridles ringing. She went out from the garden and took Emeth’s hand in hers, speaking quietly of her wish that his uncle pass peacefully from the world. “But not,” she said, “until he experiences the joy of seeing all his kin come to gather around him, the old and the young. Travel in peace, Emeth, and keep well.”
“You, too, old friend,” Emeth replied quietly. “And we will meet again.”
Her sapphire eyes luminous in the fragile light, the smallest of smiles tugging at the corners of her mouth, Annalisse agreed that they would.
Hearing her say so, seeing her smile, Jai suspected what he had not before: the Lady Librarian was part of the resistance.
“Mother,” he whispered, his voice a little tinged with surprise.
“Hush,” Marise murmured, and that one soft word was all the confirmation Jail needed.
The small shady path at the head of a winding forest trail was known best to the folk of Mianost who liked to slip away from parents or spouses to keep a lover’s tryst. There, in the late afternoon, Jai and his parents met a tall, lithe woman with flashing eyes so palely blue as to look like diamonds. She wore her golden hair in a thick braid. Her clothing was of gray and green and butternut, so that, seeing her move, one had the impression of sun-dapple and shade and fern. Jai’s heart rose to see her, for she was lovely like a wild thing, quick and canny and dangerous.
She stepped toward Emeth, and though he was surprised by her sudden appearance, he greeted her courteously. Jai noticed that she did not offer her name, and his father did not offer theirs.
“Greetings, traveler,” she said to Emeth.