“Ancaladar expected a … small snow-spill,” Jermayan admitted. “He has seen them before, when the snows have been heavy. And we thought—when I sent the wind to scour the caverns—that when the roof of the village cavern collapsed there would be some disturbance, but …”
Jermayan looked a bit shaken, and more than a little drained. Kellen was reminded, once again, that if Ancaladar’s storehouse of power was infinite, Jermayan’s energy was not. He wondered just how much energy it had taken to turn aside that wall of snow.
“But we are all still alive thanks to you, and the caverns are gone, and so are the traps, which is what matters,” Kellen said. “And I do not think, from the way Idalia is looking at us, that either you or I will have to worry about tomorrow’s battle if you do not go and rest now.”
“So I have said,” Ancaladar said, speaking up now. “But I am a mere dragon, so of course my Bonded would not listen to me. No. We must land, and he must assure himself twice-over that what he could see with his own eyes was indeed so, and stand here in the snow when a warm fire and a hot meal is what he truly needs.”
It was amazing, really, how much Ancaladar could sound like Shalkan when he tried, though Kellen had the impression Ancaladar was reserving the worst of his lecture for when he and Jermayan were alone.
“Then let him go to them at once,” Redhelwar said, speaking directly to Ancaladar.
Jermayan bowed once again, and walked back through the snow to Ancaladar.
“Men,” Idalia said in disgust, coming up beside Kellen.
“Wildmages,” Kellen corrected absently. “Or maybe Elven Knights. Keirasti isn’t any more sensible, and she’s a girl.”
“‘Girl’—she’s old enough to be your grandmother,” Idalia said with a snort.
“Great-grandmother, probably,” Kellen said agreeably. “And I suppose the Healers all take care of themselves very sensibly? Or do they work themselves until they drop, going without food and sleep when there are wounded to care for?”
Idalia laughed, looking surprised. “You’re getting far too good at arguing, little brother. And the worst of it is, you’re right—as you know perfectly well, since you’ve worked in the Healers’ tents.”
They ducked their heads, covering their faces as Ancaladar took off, raising a shower of snow. When the black dragon was well airborne, Dionan gave the signal, and they began to ride back toward the camp.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Idalia asked.
“Fit to fight tomorrow,” Kellen told her, allowing himself just the briefest moment of preening, thinking about his new glory of armor and weaponry. “I’ll be a stunning sight, too. You just wait and see.”
THAT night, Kellen attended the meeting of the senior commanders to plan the placement of the troops. No one had remarked about his presence at all, either for or against it. Kellen kept his mouth shut and his ears open. If he wanted to learn how to handle an army—not just set policy for it, or to react to an emergency facing it—here was the place to begin.
Kellen had expected they would attack the farther cavern sometime during the next day, but Athan Wildmage had said that his Calling Spell needed to be timed to the moon’s appearance in the sky above the cavern mouth. The Shadowed Elves were more likely to come out at night, too, and for once they wanted them to come out.
So the army would have one last day of grace to finish its preparations for attack. One more day to rest, to heal, to mend armor and weapons and make new ones, to plan. The trouble was, without knowing what, exactly, they were going to face, it was difficult to plan.
Redhelwar’s decision was to divide the army into very small, very mobile, sections. It was more likely the Shadowed Elves would attack if they thought the odds looked to be in their favor. The third of the army that was to have been used to attack the nearer cavern would be kept well back and hidden until the enemy was thoroughly committed, and those who were already there had been ordered to spend the day appearing to scatter their forces, on the pretext of building a more permanent set of camps and organizing several hunting parties.
Their strategy was founded on the hope that the Shadowed Elves were just as uncoordinated and barbaric as they had been at the first cavern. There was every possibility for the plan to turn to a disaster if the Shadowed Elves showed any organization and generalship at all. And everyone gathered in Redhelwar’s tent that night knew that every battle they’d had with the enemy thus far might be all part of one long feint: the Shadowed Elves might not actually be the feral half-animal rabble that they seemed. If that was the case, the Elven losses would be heavy tomorrow.
But there was no way to know. Kellen’s Knight-Mage gifts couldn’t truly show the future. At best they seemed to give him a wider view of the present—he’d “seen” the attack on Ysterialpoerin because it was already in motion, and the nearer caverns had already been mined when he’d given his warning that they were too dangerous to invade. And he already knew his battle-sight could be blocked by Demonic magic.
When it came to the outcome of tomorrow’s battle, he knew as little as Redhelwar did. The sole advantage they had was that they had not lost a third of the army to the trapped caverns. Kellen only hoped the enemy did not know that, but there was no way to be sure.
THE following morning, he went out to say good-bye to Shalkan before taking his troop out into position. The morning meal had been lavish—the cooks had truly outdone themselves, since it was the last proper meal the fighters would probably see for a whole day at least—and Kellen was certain he was not the only one who did his best to try not to think of it as a farewell feast.
When he buckled on his new armor for the first time—it had been waiting in his tent when he returned from the meeting the previous night—he had to admit that despite his reservations about what he could not help thinking of as its gaudiness, Artenel had done a magnificent job. As long as he didn’t look at it, it felt just like his old armor, nearly as comfortable as an ordinary suit of clothing. At that, the showy armor actually made him relax a little—it was very difficult to picture himself going out in something that looked like a fancy-dress costume to actually fight. Never mind what his head knew, his insides took one look and didn’t believe. His sword, of course … well, he’d never mistake Light at the Heart of the Mountain for his old sword, but that was not a disadvantage. The sword moved like an extension of his hand—no, his thought. And if he had to kill any more duergar, well, he’d use a spear.
Tucking some delicacies saved from breakfast into his new surcoat, he went up to the Unicorn Knights’ camp. Even if he didn’t have much of an appetite this morning, that never seemed to hinder Shalkan.
Though the Unicorns were posted at Ysterialpoerin now, there was a great deal of traffic back and forth between the city and their camp. Once Kellen and the others were in position, Redhelwar intended to move the units that had been guarding the cavern back to the main camp for a few hours as well. If the Shadowed Elves were watching, the more confusion about who was where, the better.
“I See you, Kellen Knight-Mage,” a familiar voice greeted him from the edge of the Unicorn Knights’ encampment.
“I See you, Riasen,” Kellen said. “I’ve come looking for Shalkan. I ride out to the farther cavern in a few hours, and I hoped to see him.”
“And I back to the city.” Riasen shook his head ruefully. “I should have brought an edifying scroll or two—you cannot imagine how very dull it is there! But that’s all to the good, when one is hoping not to be attacked, of course.” He glanced out toward where the unicorns were drifting toward the camp. “One imagines Shalkan will be along in a few moments, if only to admire the fact that you have something near to proper armor at last.”
“Urm. Yes,” Kellen replied, blinking owlishly at him.
Riasen chuckled, and motioned to him to follow toward the center of the Unicorn Knights’ encampment. “Only think what Artenel could have done with enough time and the proper equipment—but still, no one
will think badly of you. It is wartime armor, after all, and you will soon have better. And no one, indeed, could find any fault at all with your spurs and sword. Quite fitting, since you come from the sea-city.” He picked up a cup from a table inside the door of his own pavilion, and filled it from a pot steeping on the brazier there before offering it to Kellen. “Tea?”
“I suppose it must be fitting, since the one who gifted me with them is long in years and wisdom,” Kellen said, accepting the inevitable cup of tea with real gratitude. He’d never thought of Armethalieh as a “sea-city” before. He could see the wave pattern in his sword’s quillons, but he still couldn’t make out the pattern on his spurs, even in the strongest sunlight. The stones glowed brilliantly, and he could tell there was supposed to be a pattern, but that was all.
And Riasen, perfectly casually, seemed to find as much fault with his armor as Artenel had.
“Utterly stunning,” Shalkan drawled, mincing into the center of the circle of pavilions. He struck a pose, and somehow managed to remind Kellen of some of his most dandified classmates back in Armethalieh, the ones who spent every moment they weren’t studying the High Magick arguing about clothes. “I can see I shall have to have a new saddle and armor—immediately.”
“Barely worth putting on, I assure you,” Kellen said, doing his best to match Shalkan’s tone. “Still, Artenel does wonders with the poor resources at his command.”
Shalkan snorted rudely. “As if you could tell the difference.”
“Well, I can’t,” Kellen admitted, dropping the pose. “He says it’s sound where it counts, and that’s all I really care about.”
Shalkan shook himself all over in silent laughter. “If you did live a thousand years, I still don’t think they could manage to make an Elf out of you.”
“Probably not,” Kellen agreed.
He finished his tea—it was cold before he was done with it, but the arid winter weather left him constantly thirsty—bowed courteously to Riasen, and followed Shalkan off beyond the circle of pavilions.
“I see you’ve won your spurs—and gained a fine sword,” Shalkan said when they were private. Or as private as things got in a war-camp, anyway.
“Belepheriel wanted me to have them,” Kellen told him, still a bit bemused by it all—and still worried that he might have done something wrong by Elven standards. “I hope I did the right thing by accepting them.”
“If he hadn’t wanted you to have them, he wouldn’t have given them to you,” Shalkan said inarguably. “The way the Elves see things, you honored him by taking them. And if I do say so, you managed your way out of the whole mess fairly gracefully, all things considered.”
“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 it
s 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.
The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy Page 144