by Anne Logston
“No,” Lord Sharl admitted. “We didn’t have enough time to prepare, we didn’t have enough troops, and Rowan didn’t have complete support among the elves. If we’d had more time to learn to work together, just a few more months maybe—well, we didn’t. We won, but in winning we lost the city. The elves lost, too, a good part of their lands and game and several whole clans of elves, your mother’s clan among them. Nevertheless, every life we saved—human or elf—was a victory of sorts. I think your mother gave you to us to raise in the hope that such a thing would never have to happen again. And whether you agree with the idea of an alliance or not, I think you can at least agree with that.”
Ria scowled. She hated it when her foster parents used that reasonable, patient tone that was so hard to argue with; it was even more infuriating than when they snapped at her or ignored her as if she was an idiot.
“You’re sixteen years old, not a child anymore, however much you look it,” Lord Sharl said a bit more sternly. “It’s time you started assuming some of your responsibilities as my foster daughter and an adult of noble family. As I’m sure Rivkah told you, most young women your age would be long married by now and likely with a child or two at their skirts. Because we were waiting for the city to be ready to live in again, we postponed the wedding—kinder to you and Cyril, we thought, to let you have time to get used to each other, and good for the people’s morale to have the wedding in the city. That may have been a mistake on our part. At any rate, we’ll announce the wedding as soon as we’re settled in—say a week. I suggest you put that time to use working out your differences with Cyril and learning to be of some use to this city as High Lady instead of sulking in your room.”
He left Ria there on the wall in a state of utter panic. A week! Then say another week between announcement and event; Lord Sharl and Lady Rivkah likely wouldn’t bother with too much preparation and ceremony in this half-populated, half-ruined city with so few people living here yet. No more than two weeks and she’d be shackled like a prisoner in this keep even more securely than she’d been at Emaril’s keep. And breaking free of this prison would be much more difficult than simply slipping a lizard down a governess’s gown!
Ria turned and stared down into the city itself. The sun had all but set, and only a small portion of the buildings showed the glow of firelight or lamplight. So many uninhabited buildings might offer limitless hiding places for a nimble-footed elven girl—if the tumbledown structures didn’t fall in on her and crush her, that is. And under cover of darkness, that elven girl might be able to slip through one of the openings in the outer city wall, less heavily guarded than the inner wall. The only problem remained crossing the distance between the city and the forest unseen. The moon was waning, but there’d be no moonless nights for some time yet, and with only two weeks before the wedding, Ria didn’t dare to wait. Maybe with practice she could manage to make people ignore her while she was moving as well as when she was still, but that practice might take time she could ill afford, and how could she test her skill? How frustrating that she couldn’t manage a simple feat that any apprentice mage could!
Then Ria paused.
Apprentice mage—
Ria hurried back to the castle, then ground her teeth in frustration as she realized that she had no idea where Cyril’s room might be. It took quite some effort even to find a chambermaid, and then the flustered girl, as newly arrived as they, was no more certain of the interior of the keep than Ria herself. Eventually Ria gave up and began searching on her own, theorizing that Cyril’s room would be in the same wing as her own since so much of the castle had not yet been repaired. When she eventually found a room where she recognized some of Cyril’s belongings, she found to her disgust that Cyril was not in it; the idiot was no doubt poring over plans or figures with Lord Sharl, or busy with some other equally boring task.
Ria rummaged through Cyril’s chests until she found his books and scrolls, and there she found pen and ink and a scrap of hide. She penned a quick note asking Cyril to meet her in her room as quickly as possible, and as soon as the ink dried, she rolled the note and laid it on Cyril’s pillow.
On the way back to her room, Ria chanced across one of the baths of which Lady Rivkah had spoken. It was an impressive bit of magic to tap into the hot springs far below the surface, much less to pipe the hot water to the upper floors of the castle. Ria was less impressed, however, with the end result; the bathing pool itself needed cleaning and repair and the hot water, though appealingly bubbly and clear, smelled like bad eggs. Ria paused long enough to dabble one hand in the delightfully warm water, but when she realized the egg-stink clung to her fingers, Ria wrinkled her nose and continued back to her room.
Her few daily necessities were still in their pack, not yet unloaded. With the bustle of servants in the kitchens and around the wagons, there’d be no chance to sneak a few supplies, but she could hunt, and she’d learned a good many plants she could forage if need be, although most likely she’d have no use for either skill. Surely the elves would give her food, too, while they helped her find her mother and brother. So the only problem remained reaching the forest and contacting the elves once she got there, and Cyril was an apprentice mage who could likely cast a simple invisibility spell—if he could be persuaded to help her.
Now she was glad for the repeated practice conversations in Olvenic her foster parents had pressed on her. Ria had picked up the language far more easily and instinctively than Cyril, although they’d both received their basic grounding in the language magically at the same time. With any luck she’d be speaking nothing but the musical elven language for the rest of her life.
Lady Rivkah had told her endless stories of the elves’ customs, the proper thing to say when greeting them and the kinds of gifts they seemed to like. Ria had learned those lessons easily, too; somehow it was much easier to remember what she was told than what she read off scrolls. Ria had practiced the greeting till she could say it backward if she liked, and she’d accumulated, over the years, a small packet of exquisite gem-bead necklaces and bracelets and two small but marvelously forged daggers. The gifts had cost her most of her pocket money, but it would be worth it if the proper gestures of respect to the Eldest of her brother’s clan could possibly win her a place among her own people.
For the first time in her life, freedom.
“Jenji,” Ria murmured. It wasn’t an exact translation; in Olvenic it meant something like the freedom of fast running against the wind.
The forgotten chirrit pup on her shoulder chirp-whirred in her ear, and Ria reached up to caress the little round head.
“That’s the name for you, little one,” Ria murmured. “I think I’ll call you Jenji.”
There was a tentative rap at the door: Cyril. Ria smiled and thought of tall trees and cool green shadows.
Chapter Four—Valann
“Try again,” Rowan said encouragingly. “Once more.”
“I have come to speak of peace—” Val sighed explosively in frustration as his throat rebelled against the ugly grating sounds. “How can anyone speak this wretched human tongue without choking?”
Lahti giggled, and Dusk had to chuckle, too.
“Your mother once made that same face when she first spoke their words,” he said. “But it’s not so difficult. A little time and practice and you will speak well.”
“You speak it far more skillfully than I,” Valann grumbled. “So does Rowan. I don’t speak for Inner Heart; I’m not even an elder. One of you should be the one to speak to them.”
“How are we to approach them without being killed?” Rowan said practically. “We can’t be certain that the humans we once dealt with are even among those living in the city now. Surely they will kill any elf who comes out of the forest to approach their city. But you they won’t kill, because you are somewhat like them in appearance, and we must learn if the human Sharl or his kin rule the humans who have come again to the city.” Rowan shook her head grimly. “If not, I don�
��t know what hope we have to avoid conflict, even battle.”
“The same hope as always,” Val said crossly. “They can keep to their city and their open lands or face arrows and spears when they near the forest.”
“And the metal coverings humans wear into battle will repel those arrows and spears. And when they tire of spears and arrows and bring their swords and crossbows into the forest, they will face less than a hundred ferocious Blue-eyes,” Dusk said. “And when they have killed the Blue-eyes, they will kill the eighty or so Black Rocks, and then go on to the next clan, and the next, until there are no more spears or arrows to stop them. Once, just before the great war, when other clans were willing to listen to us and possibly even lend support, we might have faced and defeated a city filled with hundreds upon hundreds of humans with huge swords and metal over their skins to protect them from our spears and arrows. And then again, we might have fought and died and left our forest all but empty for the humans to plunder as they would. Now as a few handfuls of scattered small clans as ready to cast their spears at one another as at the humans, we have no chance at all. We must make peace with the humans if we can.”
“And what do you hope to gain even if they’ll speak with me?” Val asked bitterly. “Only a tiny handful of clans will even accept your envoys now. Even fewer will trade with Inner Heart. We have no alliance amongst ourselves to offer the humans.”
“I know.” Rowan sighed. “It will take many years to build ties between the clans again, if it can be done at all. I can only hope that the human Sharl, who dreams far beyond his own short lifetime, will agree to leave the forest in peace long enough to build that alliance, or perhaps offer his aid. The humans know the way of uniting many peoples into one; we know that from what we heard of their own city. Perhaps they can help us find the way.”
“They’ll likely help us find our way to destruction, and gladly, so that they can freely hunt our game and cut away our trees for their own use,” Valann said, scowling. “And then I would be the one who helped them do it. Hasn’t it been enough through my years that half my clan has doubted me and sometimes even feared me, thinking me more human than elf? I was almost denied my adulthood because of those suspicions. Must I now be seen as the traitor who consorts with the humans as well?”
Lahti patted his shoulder comfortingly but said nothing.
“You are no traitor while doing the bidding of your clan’s Eldest,” Rowan said gently. “Listen to me. For sixteen years I have thought to wait until the human lord Sharl came to us as he said he would. When Dusk’s birds showed humans returning to the city, I thought surely he would come to the forest. But he has not come. Dusk’s vision spoke of your sister, and it spoke of an invasion of the forest following far behind her. That vision will allow us to wait no longer. We must know whether the humans in the city mean us no harm or whether we can expect to be crushed between two enemies like a nut between the teeth. If your sister is in the city, we must speak to her and to the human Sharl and learn whether they still desire our friendship. You are Chyrie’s son and Ria’s brother. You must be the one. Sharl will greet you in friendship, or at least without hostility. If he and your sister have not arrived in the city, we must know whether the humans there are loyal to him or to his enemies, and if the latter, we must find a way to stop Sharl and your sister before they reach the city. It’s for your sister’s sake as much as ours that you must go.”
“I saw you walking to meet her,” Dusk agreed. “Therefore you must be the one.”
“Then I have no choice?” Valann asked slowly.
“Always there is a choice,” Rowan said, shrugging. “I can’t force you to obey my bidding, nor would I, any more than Dusk’s vision forces you. You must follow the voice of your own spirit. But an adult of this clan who sits at my fire must also remember that each decision he makes affects not only him, but each member of our clan—and perhaps other clans as well.”
“And who is to accompany me on this pleasant journey, if I go as you bid?” Valann asked bitterly. A hard, sullen ache had settled around his heart. The Mother Forest might have accepted him, but apparently he was not yet finished proving himself to his clan.
“I can send others with you, if you wish, as far as the edge of the forest,” Rowan said, ignoring his sarcasm. “But the more of you traveling together, the greater the chance you will be seen passing through other clans’ territories. The Blue-eyes at least would certainly attack you and take you prisoner, if not kill you. Only you must approach the city itself because you are”—she hesitated, but continued unflinchingly—“apparently human, and any elves you take with you would have to wait in danger in a territory not our own until you returned. It would be wise to take as few others as possible.”
“I’ll go with him,” Lahti said suddenly, and everyone jumped. She had sat so quietly in the shadows behind Valann that they had all but forgotten her presence.
Dusk raised one eyebrow thoughtfully, but Rowan shook her head.
“You are still awaiting your adulthood, little one,” she said kindly. “I cannot send a child who may one day become a ripe woman into such danger.”
“I may be a child, but I’m a healer,” Lahti argued. “You have no other healer to send with him. I can track better than Valann and run almost as fast and twice as silently.”
“Not you,” Valann said quickly. “I’ll go alone.”
Lahti gave him one of her sidewise glances, her dark eyes half-closed slyly.
“I will go with you,” she said silkily, “or I will follow after.”
“And if I order you to stay?” Rowan said sternly.
Lahti said nothing, but her dark eyes never left Valann’s. Rowan groaned.
“And I thought Valann had given me all the trouble a youngling could give,” she said with a sigh.
“You can’t think of allowing her to leave our lands!” Valann said hotly. The thought of Lahti injured, perhaps killed, by hostile clans or, worse, by humans, was intolerable.
“And what do you propose?” Dusk said, chuckling. “That Rowan tie her to a tree or cage her in a hut? She too must follow the voice of her spirit.”
Valann glared at Lahti, who only smiled. He shook his head furiously. Now that Lahti had shamed him with her eagerness to run off into danger with him, he could scarcely refuse Rowan’s request. Oh, he’d go—if for no other reason than to meet at last the sister he’d seen in his dreams—but now he’d have to creep away in the nighttime to get away without Lahti. He’d have to be careful, too, to cover his tracks; Lahti was every bit as good a tracker as she claimed. Bad enough to have to dodge all the hostile clans between Inner Heart and the edge of the forest; now he would have to cover his back trail, too. And all for the dubious privilege of walking alone up to the gates of the human city to demand entrance.
“I’ll consider it,” he said at last. With any luck, he could gather his supplies and creep away at night before Lahti even knew he’d decided to go.
“Tonight I will dream and ask the Mother Forest for a vision to guide you,” Dusk said, ignoring Rowan’s sharp glance of disapproval.
“And I will see that Valann eats supper and doesn’t spend all evening brooding,” Lahti said merrily. “By the time I pour three or four skins of moondrop wine down his throat, he’ll be ready to agree to anything you want.”
For probably the first time in his life, the very last thing Valann wanted was Lahti’s company; he wanted solitude to think and plan, and he certainly didn’t want Lahti to see any preparations he might be making to leave the village without her. But perhaps this was for the best after all; if he could convince Lahti that he would never agree to the journey, it might be all the easier to slip away without her.
“Now, this looks more like a proper home,” Lahti said approvingly, glancing around the inside of Valann’s hut. Valann had strewn the hard-packed earth floor with furs he’d taken and prepared, and likewise he had decorated the walls with other furs, hides, and antlers from successful hunt
s, together with the gifts he’d received after his passage. Valann had hung his new adult’s sling bed—by elven custom, wide enough to hold two comfortably—and decorated nooks in the walls with carvings, strings of beads and teeth, and arrangements of feathers and colorful stones. It was still a barren hut by elven standards, but that was to be expected of a young man only just passed into adulthood.
In preparation for his passage, a few months before Valann had begun joining the clan’s hunting parties instead of hunting smaller game alone or with a few others of the child-pack, or perhaps a deer with some adult mentor. Tonight he had two plump brush fowl that he had cleaned, stuffed with berries and tubers, wrapped with herbs, and coated with mud to cook slowly in the embers in his fire pit. Lahti poked the lumps out of the embers and used one of the fire pit stones to crack open the hard mud, filling the hut with the rich aroma of herb-flavored fowl.
“Just because Rowan has been as mother to you, you often forget to show her the respect due our Eldest,” Lahti chided as she picked mud from the leaf-wrapped fowl. “She speaks with the wisdom of many centuries. And Dusk’s visions have eased our trail for many years. Are you not even a little curious to meet your sister, to see these folk whose blood is partly yours?”
“They are none of my blood,” Valann growled. “My father was a stinking northern barbarian who took my mother by force. My human blood is a shame that I can’t seem to escape. I’ve spent my life trying to prove I’m elf enough for my own clan, and now I find that even Rowan thinks me more human than elf, human enough to fool a whole city of them, with my life most likely the price if I fail.”
“All our lives might be the price,” Lahti said soberly. “There are bare places in the forest still, burned to the roots so that almost nothing grows there. I’ve heard it said that the surviving elves of the forest were months finding and returning all of the dead to the Mother Forest. Whole clans were slaughtered down to the merest infant. But even that victory, if we can call it a victory, was with the aid of the human city and the strength of many elven clans united together. If Dusk’s vision truly showed a second such invasion, how will the forest fare with so few of us all scattered throughout it and wasting our arrows on each other, and the humans our enemies instead of our allies? And this time our children, our sick and helpless, our pregnant women, will die as well, for we’ll have no stone city to shelter them.”