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, Kellen 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 straightforward 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.”
“You would renounce being a commander of hundreds because it did not suit you?” Adaerion asked.
“No! No, nothing like that. I renounce being a commander of hundreds because I do not yet have those skills,” Kellen said frankly. It was true; he could command a smaller force in the field easily now, and certainly he could advise Redhelwar about what he thought the army should do, but as for being able himself to think of and give the orders on such a scale—those skills he still lacked.
“I must learn all that you, and Dionan, and Redhelwar—yes, and Belepheriel—can teach me about the use of an army. And quickly.” He let out a breath he had been holding in without realizing it. “And I honor Belepheriel. It would be wrong for all of us for me to claim what I cannot properly govern. It would be as if I had been foolish enough to claim the Light at the Heart of the Mountain when I did not even know the use of a dagger.”
And I have to figure out what Shadow Mountain is really after. All of this with the Shadowed Elves, bloody and dangerous as it is, is just delaying tactics. There has to be something Shadow Mountain wants—and doesn’t have yet. When it has it, the real war will start. And if we can’t fight it properly, we’ll lose.
He already knew that. The Elves might be able to bring more fighters into the field, but to do so would be to utterly strip their cities of protection. Shadow Mountain was waiting for that, he was sure. The Demons themselves might not be able to enter the Elven Lands, but many of their creatures could. Even when the Elves destroyed the last of the Shadowed Elves, they wouldn’t be safe from the other creatures of the Endarkened.
The Centaurs, the Mountainfolk. the Herdingfolk Wildmages, the Wildlander farmers—all of them would add to the army’s numbers, perhaps even double its size, but that wasn’t enough to gain them victory. Not without an enemy who would stand and fight. And against the Demons …
It would still be suicide.
“Then your decision is made,” Dionan said.
Kellen nodded. He wasn’t sure if he’d made a terrible mistake and insulted everybody, or done exactly the right thing. It felt right to him, that was all he knew.
“Then perhaps you will wish to see what Artenel can do to replace what you have lost,” Dionan said. “At the third hour past noon, it would please Redhelwar to drink tea, and hear your thoughts on tomorrow’s attack upon the farther cavern.”
“Yes,” Kellen said, getting to his feet. “Of course. It would please me greatly to drink tea with Redhelwar.”
He exited Dionan’s tent with a feeling of intense relief.
FORTUNATELY, it was nearly impossible to get lost in an Elven war camp once you’d learned the disposition of the tents. Kellen found the tents of the armorers without difficulty.
The first thing that caught his eye were several of the new shields, racked outside the cooper’s tent for transport to the farther cavern. He picked one up and hefted it experimentally.
Heavy, yes, but not as heavy as he’d expected. It was half as long as he was tall, and would provide good protection in the caverns. Leather over wax over wood, just as he, Idalia, and Artenel had decided. Water-soaked, it would be heavier, but he’d still be able to lift it, he judged, and the Elves were much stronger than he was.
“Kellen! This is no time for idleness. We have much to do,” Artenel said, walking out of the main armorer’s tent and regarding him sternly.
Meekly, Kellen followed the Master Armorer into the tent.
“One wishes, of course, that you had not had the misfortune to lose every piece of your armor all at once,” Artenel said, sounding mournful. “But it is not without precedent. And fortunately, knowing that you would be … difficult to fit, I began my preparations sennights ago.”
He gestured at the long table at the center of the tent, and drew back a protective cloth with a flourish. All the components of a full set of Elven battle armor in Kellen’s size lay there, waiting.
The armor Kellen had just lost had been covered with a subtle pattern like wood-grain. The armorers said the patterns added strength to the metal, and the pattern chosen to ornament the metal of the armor was apparently another matter of great importance to Elves. Jermayan’s had a pattern of tiny stars over its entire surface, and, knowing the Elves as well as he now did, Kellen had no doubt that it was an accurate representation of the night sky at some season. Master Belesharon had called Kellen’s armor plain and dull, because it had been made in such haste that there had been no time to add the coat of glistening enamel that was the final touch on normal Elven battle armor. Kellen had liked that just fine.
But apparently Artenel had had a lot of free time to spend on making a new set of armor, just on the chance that Kellen might need it, because the armor he unveiled for Kellen’s inspection was as green as Shalkan’s eyes. Each piece glittered like glass.
And instead of wood-grain, the metal beneath the enamel was covered with a tiny intricate pattern of twining vines similar to the pattern worked into his clothes. Here and there, Kellen could see an occasional star glisten palely among the leaves.
Leaves and stars. Leaf and Star? He felt a sudden cold chill. Who do these people think I am?
The Elves swore by Leaf and Star, just as the Herdingfolk did by the Good Goddess, and the Centaurs by the Herdsman. When Kellen thought about it at all—wh
ich was rarely—he thought they were all probably different ways of seeing the same thing he and Idalia—and every other Wildmage—touched when they invoked the Wild Magic: the Power that set Mageprices and kept the world in balance.
Certainly one of the first things that Idalia had taught him about the Wild Magic was that paying whatever Mageprices the Wild Magic set was a way of keeping the world running properly, even if he didn’t understand at the time how the prices he paid—some of them quite small and personal—could really help. How had rescuing a servant girl’s kitten back in Armethalieh, for example, helped the wider world?
But knowing that you were a tool of Greater Powers, and accepting that fact, Kellen realized, was far different than knowing that everyone else knew it too.
He’d been able to handle the thought of being scorned, outcast, relieved of his command, a lot better than he was handling this, Kellen realized. Because he was used to being the goat, the misfit, the butt of a thousand jokes. He’d been that all his life. When he’d become a Knight-Mage, well, the Elves were tactful, and he’d gone almost immediately into training in the House of Sword and Shield, where Master Belesharon had treated him like the humblest apprentice, so while life had been much more pleasant, his status hadn’t seemed appreciably different from what it had been before.
Now things were changing, and rapidly.
You wanted to command the Elven army, and you didn’t think things would change along the way? What would Shalkan say if he knew you thought that?
“It is very beautiful,” Kellen said gravely. “I am honored.”
“It is unworthy work, filled with flaws,” Artenel said dismissively. “Done in haste under the worst possible conditions. Had I dared to present such a piece to my Masters as evidence of my craft, I would still be feeding the forge fires in the guild-house. But it is sound and strong, and will turn a blow, I promise you that. And in a few moonturns, better will come from Sentarshadeen.”
The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 142