When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kellen was sure by now that Cilarnen was taking as long to get to the point as any Elf ever had. But he could also see that whatever conclusion he had reached was a troubling one for the young High Mage, so he supposed that it was just as well to let Cilarnen reach the point in his own way.

  “But the Elves guard their land through the land-wards, which are also linked—according to these scrolls—to the Elemental Powers. Oh, I can’t exactly read them, of course, but Kardus can, and I think I am learning to puzzle out a word or two. At any rate, I think I could adapt the High Magery spell to link with the land-wards and draw on the Elemental Powers through that. I wouldn’t be tapping into the energy of any specific Elemental Creature, so there would be no danger of harming any of them, and I do not think I could draw enough power off the landwards to affect them. At any rate, I could easily do a divination to make sure.”

  Cilarnen seemed to be finished talking, and so far he had not raised any points, as far as Kellen could see, that would require Kellen’s help.

  And if what he had said he had learned from the ancient texts was true, even if Cilarnen knew precisely what he was doing, it would be more than dangerous. And he was talking about adapting a spell that hadn’t been cast since the last time there were Knight-Mages—and if there was one thing Kellen knew for sure, it was that playing fast-and-loose with the rule-bound High Magick wasn’t simply dangerous. It was disastrous.

  “Cilarnen …” he began uneasily.

  “You think I don’t understand the consequences?” Cilarnen asked. “Or just the magickal theory involved? At heart it’s a simple substitution of Powers of equivalent class: every Mage learns it in order to adapt spells to specific functions. Otherwise you couldn’t—oh, Preserve a specific loaf of bread instead of all bread within the range of your spell.”

  It’s just like Maths. At heart, the High Magick is just like Maths, Kellen realized with a stunning sense of sudden insight.

  Of course, he’d always liked Maths. And he doubted anything was ever going to make him like—or really understand—the High Magick.

  “This is a lot more complicated than loaves of bread,” he pointed out. “And even if you get it exactly right, it could still kill you—which I know you know. But mainly, you said you needed my help, and I know it can’t be in the spellwork.”

  Kellen’s comment startled a sharp laugh from Cilarnen. “As if I would have you anywhere near any proper Working Circle! Precious Light, Kellen, I would as soon Work without a Circle at all as have your help! And you would be just as pleased to have me guard your back in battle, I imagine. Whatever it is that you do, I suppose you do it very well, but you are even less of a High Mage than I am. No, it is the matter of permission. If I am to try to take power from the Elven land-wards, I must have permission. But whose? And how do I ask for it?”

  KELLEN raised the matter with Redhelwar the following day, when he met with the Army’s General to plan his own journey toward the south.

  “In a matter such as this, affecting the whole of the land, it is Andoreniel who is the voice of the land,” Redhelwar said, after a long hesitation. But his voice was troubled.

  “Yet Andoreniel is silent,” Kellen said, forcing himself to remain calm. “As is Ashaniel. And we are far from Sentarshadeen. I do not believe that we may let this matter lie until Cilarnen can go in person to Sentarshadeen. Jermayan and Ancaladar could make the journey quickly and safely to bring Cilarnen there, it is true. But we do not know when they will return to the army, and while they are on the wing, flying between cities, there is no way of getting a message to them quickly, so the same problem applies. If I take Cilarnen with me, we will be several moonturns on the road. It is time we cannot afford to waste. We know that a High Mage and a Wildmage combining their powers can slay Them—and the High Magick has other spells that the Wild Magic does not.”

  “I cannot speak in Andoreniel’s name,” Redhelwar said. “But Kindolhinadetil is the Voice of Andoreniel. We must go to him and ask for his counsel.”

  THERE are so many ways this can go horribly wrong, Kellen thought a sennight later, and magic was the farthest thing from his mind.

  He, Cilarnen, Redhelwar, and several others were on their way to seek an audience from Kindolhinadetil at the House of Bough and Wind.

  And Kellen was very much afraid that Cilarnen was going to have to speak for himself.

  Kellen had taken every spare moment he had in the past several days—and there weren’t many—to give Cilarnen every warning and piece of advice he could think of about how to behave when he met the Viceroy of Ysterialpoerin. Cilarnen thought the Elves he’d met so far were bizarre and mysterious, but they were nothing compared to the Elves who lived in the Heart of the Forest. Jermayan had once told Kellen that the Elves of Ysterialpoerin were the ones who lived as closely as possible to the way Elves had lived before there were humans. Isinwen, Kellen’s second in command, had left Ysterialpoerin, the city of his birth, because he found the people stultifying formal. If they were so formal that even other Elves wanted to leave, Kellen couldn’t imagine them having any patience at all with humans. The one time he’d been there, he’d kept his mouth shut and his head down, and hoped they hadn’t noticed him too much.

  He’d told Cilarnen all that, of course. But he wasn’t sure he’d gotten through to him. And he hadn’t really had the time to figure out a way to get through, because the preparations for his own departure were taking up all his attention.

  When Redhelwar had said he was giving Kellen a “force” to take to Halacira, Kellen had imagined it would be something small—perhaps his own troop with a few supply-wagons added.

  Instead, Redhelwar was placing a full third of the army under Kellen’s direct command.

  There were ways in which it made sense. Two sets of messengers had failed to report back from Sentarshadeen; Kellen might need to fight his way into the southwest and be able to send back word with a heavily-defended force to the main army without weakening his own forces. Artenel and several of Rulorwen’s people were accompanying Kellen in order to begin the assessment of the caverns, and Engineers do not travel light; there would also need to be enough mounted troops to protect the Engineers’ equipment.

  Pack animals, destriers, and draft animals—and their riders and handlers—all had to be fed and sheltered, which meant supply and equipment wagons, which in turn added to the number of draft animals… .

  And Kellen was in charge of all of it.

  In part this indicated a vote of confidence from the Army’s General. Partly it was—Kellen sighed inwardly—another test. Being placed in charge of this portion of the army meant he was being placed in charge of commanders who were—except for Artenel—his equals in rank, and certainly his seniors in age and possibly experience. Redhelwar would wish to know if Kellen could command them.

  What Kellen wanted to know was if he could keep them alive. The continuing silence from Sentarshadeen worried him desperately. Perhaps Cilarnen could find out what the problem was there.

  If today’s meeting went well.

  If Cilarnen didn’t manage to offend Kindolhinadetil completely.

  And, of course, don’t forget, if this is something Kindolhinadetil can even grant. Redhelwar only said we could “ask his counsel.”He didn’t say what would come of it.

  “Will you stop twitching?” Cilarnen whispered beneath the steady crunch of their horses’ hooves through the snow-crust. The day was clear and bright—for a change—one less thing to worry about in a day that held far too many things to worry about. As much as Kellen had needed to leave Isinwen behind to oversee the work of departure, he’d felt he’d needed him with the embassy to Kindolhinadetil even more. Ysterialpoerin was Isinwen’s birthplace, and Kellen’s Second might be able to help keep Cilarnen from unwittingly giving grave offense. Isinwen rode silently behind Kellen, dressed, as Kellen was, in the best their clothes-chests had to offer after a season of hard campaigning.

  “I’m worried eno
ugh as it is,” Cilarnen went on, in an undertone that was—nevertheless—perfectly audible not only to Kellen but to every Elf there. “You’ve already made it sound as if everything I know about Elves is true.”

  “That they never lie, and they never tell the truth.” Kellen didn’t even need to look around to know that Isinwen would be wearing his blandest expression. Kellen forced himself not to think of the consequences if Cilarnen said something so shatteringly tactless in front of the Viceroy. Dammit—Cilarnen was the one who’d grown up being successfully groomed for a Council seat until Anigrel had maneuvered him into plotting treason. Why couldn’t he remember something as simple as how acute Elven hearing was?

  I’ll only have to hope he remembers it when it really counts, Kellen thought gloomily. Then a new thought struck him. Just what did Cilarnen really know about Elves? The proverb he’d just quoted to himself was from the oldest Proscribed Histories of the City. He’d learned it from Idalia, who’d been using it to teach him quite a different lesson. What Cilarnen would have been taught, as Kellen had been—back in the City—was that Elves were fatally beautiful, treacherous, and incapable of telling the truth at all.

  He only hoped experience—and familiarity—had been a better teacher to Cilarnen than the City Histories had been.

  Kellen forced a smile. “The truth is, I don’t know what to expect in Ysteri-alpoerin. I don’t like that.”

  “Well, who does?” Cilarnen said crossly. “But from what you say, the Viceroy is the only one who can give permission for me to try this experiment, so …” he shrugged helplessly, the gesture muffled by the heavy cloak he wore.

  Kellen nodded. Outnumbered as they were in this war, they could afford to overlook nothing that might give them the edge in battle. No matter what risk it involved.

  THE High Reaches had a stark beauty in winter. It was a land of dark forests and deep valleys nestled among the mountains that had given the area its name. It marked the border between the Elven Lands and the Wild Lands, and its people loved it fiercely. Centuries ago, in the aftermath of the Great War, humans had come to these high hills and mountains seeking one thing: freedom and peace, and they had found it here. They traded with their neighbors—the Centaurs, the lowlanders, even with Armethalieh in the West—and went their own way, holding to their own customs as they always had, for as long as they could remember.

  They followed the teachings of the Huntsman and the Forest Wife, who taught them to live in harmony with their land, taking only what was needed, and always returning gift for gift.

  And so they had prospered.

  No longer.

  Death came to the High Reaches on silent scarlet wings.

  PRINCE Zyperis stood in the middle of the forest. He could barely contain his glee. Where to begin? The best part was that the foolish Lightborn would not know that he had been here … oh, not for a moonturn at least. It would all be done in secret.

  And sometimes secrets could be the highest form of Their art.

  He spread his wings wide and shook them, and a fine black mist drifted from them on the cold still air. It settled on the trees around him, and wherever it touched, the greenneedle bark began to whiten, just a little.

  Within days, the tree would be dead.

  The blight would spread throughout the forest, spreading from tree to tree upon the wind, to everything that grew. The winds would carry it beyond the High Reaches, into the Elven Lands and the Wildlands as well. It would begin slowly—that was its beauty—but within one turn of the moon that the Light-born used to mark Time, it would have spread so far that all who lived here would know of it… though they would not know its source.

  Zyperis walked on, pausing now and again to seed the forest with blight.

  And that was not all.

  As he walked, he transformed himself, taking on a form he had often used: a shape pleasing to the Lightborn. There were many wanderers these days, and even if someone should see him, out here in the deep woods, it would not be that unusual.

  As he walked, he scattered grain upon the snow. It glowed faintly, but the hungry animals—hares, deer, birds—who came to feed upon it would not notice.

  All of them would leave their feast carrying plague.

  As would those who fed upon them.

  And those who fed upon them.

  Plague and blight, the surest, most stealthy weapons of the Endarkened. They would spread through the High Reaches—oh, not necessarily to kill. That would not be sufficiently elegant. But to starve, to weaken, to cripple.

  To call the Elves’ troublesome Allies home.

  AS on his last visit, Kellen felt entirely out of place in Ysterialpoerin, and the idea that the Elves—any Elves—could consider the city homelike and inviting was disturbing to him in some way he couldn’t entirely articulate.

  It wasn’t as if they were simply living in the woods. Kellen had done that—with and without a roof over his head—and while he preferred to be comfortable, he could understand people (like Idalia) who’d rather live in the forest than in a town.

  But in Ysterialpoerin, the Elves had taken a city and made it look like a forest. Only not like a real forest—by now Kellen had seen plenty of those—but like a dream of a forest, so that the longer you were in Ysterialpoerin, the more you felt as if you were asleep with your eyes open.

  It was … perfect. Every snow-covered branch, every drooping bough, even the shadows on the glittering surface of the snow were … perfect.

  It made Kellen feel as if he were suffocating. In a strange way, it reminded him of the City. But at least if you were born in Ysterialpoerin and didn’t like it, there was somewhere else you could go, since in the Elven Lands, nobody objected to your leaving the place where you had been born.

  He glanced over at Cilarnen. Cilarnen looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a very large hammer. He was staring around himself, eyes wide, and his lips were pressed together in a tight line.

  At last they reached the House of Bough and Wind. Kellen was pleased to see that its beauty had brought Cilarnen out of himself. So far as he knew, it was the only building in Ysterialpoerin that looked like a conventional house, and it was as beautiful as all things Elven, though thankfully in a way humans could appreciate.

  This time they were making a formal visit, so Kindolhinadetil and Neishan-dellazel were not waiting for them on the steps of the House. Instead there were six servants waiting—one for every rider—all wearing long gray hooded cloaks precisely the color of the House. The cloaks were stitched all over with tiny colorless crystals that precisely duplicated the pattern of the carving of leaf and vine that covered every inch of the structure, and when they came silently down from the steps and across the snow to take the horses’ headstalls, the fabric shimmered in the pale sunlight as though stitched in flame.

  They did not speak, so Redhelwar and the others did not speak either. When the riders had dismounted, and their horses had been led away, the door of the House opened, and a woman appeared.

  To Kellen’s great surprise, he recognized her. It was the Lady Arquelle, the Elven Healer from Ysterialpoerin who had aided the Unicorn Knights after the Battle for the Heart of the Forest.

  “In the name of Kindolhinadetil, Voice of Andoreniel in Ysterialpoerin, in the name of Neishandellazel, Lady of Ysterialpoerin, we See you, Redhelwar, General of Andoreniel’s armies; Adaerion; Dionan; Kellen Knight-Mage; Isinwen; and Cilarnen High Mage of the City of a Thousand Bells. Be welcome in the House of Bough and Wind, branch of Leaf and Star.”

  As was traditional among the Elves, she had put the most important name last; Kellen wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that Kindolhinadetil knew that Cilarnen was important or just continue to worry about all the ways this meeting could go wrong.

  “We thank the Name of Kindolhinadetil for his welcome,” Redhelwar responded gravely, “to find sanctuary in the home of a friend is to be doubly blessed.”

  Arquelle stood aside, holding the door even wider
, and the six of them entered.

  Kellen was glad he’d warned Cilarnen what to expect, because even having been here before, even knowing what he was going to see and knowing that it was all an illusion, crafted not by magic but by simple skill, it nearly took his breath away.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold of the doorway into the House of Bough and Wind, he was standing in a summer forest. The snow might be melting on his boots, but the melt was trickling away into thick green moss. Trees stretched away as far as the eye could see—it didn’t matter that he knew he’d walked into a perfectly house-seeming house on the outside: In here there was a forest. He could smell flowers and feel the warm summer breeze, and as he looked up into the golden light of the forest canopy, he could see butterflies flitting back and forth among the leaves. He wondered if the forest outside looked anything like this when it was summer, and if so, did they make the House of Bough and Wind look as if it were a winter forest then? Interesting thought.

  More servants appeared to take their hooded cloaks and fur-lined gloves, and the party followed the Lady Arquelle farther into the House.

  HE wasn’t sure how or when it happened. He’d been lulled by the beauty of the forest, even if it wasn’t, in any true sense, “real”—but when they arrived in what, for lack of a better term, his mind insisted on thinking of as the “clearing” where Kindolhinadetil and Neishandellazel were waiting for them, Adaerion, Isinwen, and Dionan were no longer with them. He, Redhelwar, and Cilarnen were the only ones following Arquelle.

  Kellen blinked, running the last few minutes through his mind. Adaerion and Dionan had been ahead of him; Isinwen had been behind. No, at one point Adaerion and Dionan had simply stepped aside, going around a tree in one direction while Redhelwar went around it in another. They’d gone off somewhere else then, and probably Isinwen with them.