She should not be listening to criticism of the Lady, even though she herself had reason to criticize. But she was Kieri’s Squire, and Kieri’s love, and nothing to the Lady but a problem to be tossed away. A confusion of feelings emerged in speech. “But why am I here? Is she?”
“She is below.” The dragon tipped his snout to point at the ground. “Kapristi and elf together—as kapristi insisted—began cleaning out the debris left by the banastir the winter it was destroyed. There was much foulness, and some were sickened. Just lately, Flessinathlin arrived in haste, and in haste descended to view the progress made by those she hired.” The dragon paused. “She was displeased, because work had scarce begun on rebuilding. Words were spoken by elf and kapristi, and none would share blame with the other.”
“How do you know all this?” Arian said. “Where do you live?”
Another gust of hot, iron-smelling air. “I live where I please,” the dragon said, “and where it does not please me for all to know. As for how I know what I know … I have a relationship with the hakkenen and kapristi, and so they speak to me.”
Arian felt her brows rise. Before she could think how to ask, the dragon spoke again.
“It is not a matter that concerns you,” it said. “What does concern you, Half-Song, is that the Lady of the Ladysforest is below, and cannot emerge without aid. The kapristi resented her words, and left, sealing the rock behind them.”
“How did she get down there?”
“By a—” The dragon uttered a sound that had no meaning for Arian, but a picture built in her mind, a pattern similar to other elven patterns of power she had seen. “The kapristi thought it just to deny her the use of it to return outward. I disagree, though I also do not approve what she said, or her failure to foresee the results of her words and actions.”
“But she has the taig—she can move with it anywhere, in an instant—”
“Not there, not now. She went under stone, into the realm of the rockfolk, and her power is with the living world, out here.” The dragon looked at her. “But you are Half-Song; you have some strengths she does not. Especially when I lend you mine. Can you still see that pattern I drew in your heart?”
Arian reflected. It was there, clear and crisp as if graved in stone. Stone? She glanced at the dragon.
“Yes, stone. You need to go there, and repair the pattern the kapristi altered, so that she and her people can use it to return to the surface. If I go down, I will disrupt the work, possibly destroy it. It would be better, indeed, if she agreed to rebuild on the surface, and stay within her own realm, returning that below to the rockbrothers. But you are the one to tell her so.”
“She hates me!” Arian said again. “She doesn’t want Kieri to marry me! She could cast a glamour—”
“If you save her life and aid her to save the forest taig, she may change her mind,” the dragon said. “But even if she does not, at least you will have saved the taig. If it concerns you.”
“Of course it does!” Arian felt as if she were arguing with her mother. “But how can I go down, if she cannot come up?”
“Ah. Well, it will be another strange journey. Are you ready?”
Clinging to the roof of the dragon’s mouth while it pierced earth and the rock ceiling of the great hall—carefully, to cause the least damage—and then riding the dragon’s tongue down and down into the silvery elf-light to confront a very angry elven queen—would not have been Arian’s chosen activity for the day, but she had no choice.
Arian caught only a few details of the glittering mosaic in the upper part of the great hall, simulating the leaves of an early-summer forest, or the great columns like tree trunks, before the dragon’s tongue set her down and withdrew. At one end of the long hall a dais rose four steps from the smooth stone floor, and there the Lady stood, surrounded by attendant elves.
“You!” said the Lady, as if everything were Arian’s fault. Her anger, thick with enchantment, pressed on Arian’s mind. Everything she could think of to say sounded ridiculous. The Lady’s own escort and the elves who had been working underground formed a solid mass behind the Lady herself. All glowered at her. “You traitor,” the Lady said. “You figured out some way to trap us here—”
“No,” Arian said. “You trapped yourself by your rudeness to the rockfolk.” She could hardly believe those words were coming out of her mouth, or that she held off the Lady’s enchantment so easily.
“How could you—?”
“We have little time,” Arian said. “The taig needs you, Lady, and I must repair the … the pattern.” She could not make the sound the dragon made.
“You can’t; it’s broken. It was not of my making.” The Lady drew herself up and folded her arms.
“I can repair it.”
“You’re only a half-elf, daughter of a—” The arms came down; the Lady scowled.
Arian kept her own voice level. “You have said you do not know the pattern: I do. Will you sulk here under stone and let your forest burn?”
“It will not burn—I would know if—”
“It is burning now,” Arian said. “The Pargunese brought scathefire from stolen dragon eggs.”
The Lady swayed where she stood; Arian could see the shock on all the elves’ faces. “I didn’t know—how could I not know? I can’t reach it—”
Arian felt a grim satisfaction: the Lady now felt what she had imposed on Arian. “Will you come, or no?”
“If you can repair the pattern—do so!” one of the other elves said.
The Lady moved aside, and Arian came forward. Once the dais had been inlaid with patterns done in mosaic, some purely elven in origin, but the most important—for the moment—the one the dragon had shown her. Now that pattern—and those within an arm’s length of it—were gone, revealing rough gray stone. Heaps of colored stone chips, each heap a different shade of blue or red or green, filled the back of the dais.
“They left us these,” the Lady said, gesturing at the piles. “Taunting us … for only rockfolk, they said, had the stone-wit to know how to place them and bind them in stone so they would stay if I stood on them. Can you repair what full-born elves cannot?”
“Yes,” Arian said, once more surprising herself. Was she that sure? It must be the dragon’s aid. “But Lady, you must be prepared to return this place to those who made it and those who gave you stone-right.”
“I cannot!” the Lady said. “It is the elfane taig!”
“It is only elfane taig where the Lady can sense the taig and wear the elvenhome as a cloak,” Arian said. “Here, under stone, is not your domain.” She pointed to the ceiling. “There—where the taig longs for your return—is your domain and your duty.”
Arian could feel the other elves’ astonishment and dismay.
“You lecture me on my duty? You, whose father—”
“I have fought the fire you did not even know was burning,” Arian said. “Where were you when the scathefire came, when the king needed your aid? Here, under stone—not in the real elfane taig. You did not even know the taig was in peril. Did not the First Singer charge the Sinyi with its protection?”
Shocked silence answered her. The Lady, after a long moment, bowed her head.
Arian said no more, but turned to the problem at hand. The scarred stone was no longer a circle but a rough oblong. Arian took one of her arrows and—fixing the pattern in her mind—set its point to the rock and began to trace the outline of the pattern. She paid no attention to the gasps of surprise as the arrow, its tip glowing, sank into the stone and behind its motion a groove opened. She concentrated on the pattern until she had completed it. As the dragon had first shown it to her, it had been only dark lines on gray stone, but now she felt an urge to give it color: she did not know why.
The others did not move or speak as she went back and forth, colored chips flowing through her hands, each to the place she knew was right. The light and dark blue, the bright and dark red, the single green, the rare touches of gold and si
lver. Moved by another impulse, she drew her sword and traced the now-colored lines in a different order than she had originally drawn the pattern. Now the colored chips flowed together, and the pattern lay fresh, unbroken.
When she looked again at the Lady, tears marked the queen’s face. The Lady met Arian’s gaze; Arian saw great sorrow there. Then the Lady turned to her entourage. “If a half-elf can do here what we full elves cannot, it is indeed not our place. We must give it up. The blame is mine; I wasted your time, brothers and sisters, long ago and once again, and offended those to whom the Singer gave the dominion of stone. I swear to you, I did so with good intent, but good intent does not excuse ill results. We must now return to the Ladysforest and do what we may for the taig, but afterward, if it is your will, another may challenge for my place.”
“No, Lady!” Several elves protested, stepping forward. The Lady held up a hand to forestall them.
“It grieves me to say, but I was wrong; the taig is bearing the pain of my error, and the taig is—was—in my charge. Let us go quickly and spend ourselves in its defense.” To Arian she said, “I am sorry you were hurt, child, by my anger. It was wrong of me to take, even for a moment, your taig-sense from you. I wanted only the best for my grandson, who had been so cruelly hurt so young.” She stepped on the pattern Arian had made and offered Arian her hand. “Come with me, if you will, and I will do what I can to mend what I broke. Though I know you have another helper—” She glanced at the ceiling.
Go, said the dragon in Arian’s mind.
Her resentment against the Lady was less important than the taig, than Kieri. She took the Lady’s hand.
Once out of the stone, the Lady’s connection with the elvenhome Forest moved them all to the edge of a long, straight ash-colored scar through the forest. Arian saw Kieri and a small group—Orlith among them, standing on the scathefire track—turn to the elvenhome light. And to one side, the dark man with flame-colored eyes.
By the third day of the attack Kieri felt that the situation had stabilized—though he still feared the magical fire the Pargunese king had mentioned, it had not yet been used. Someone had found the bodies of the couriers the assassin had killed, and another assassin—less skilled than the first—had been caught. Though Kieri’s force was able to drive the Pargunese to the river in some places, the enemy still had a foothold on the south bank. Aliam and his remaining force would only now be hearing of the attack; it would be more than a hand of days before they could reach Chaya.
“Where is the Lady?” Kieri demanded of Orlith every day, and every day Orlith had no answer. “Why does she not come or send aid? Does she want the land burned to the bare rock as they’ve threatened? And where are the other elves?”
“I do not know,” Orlith said. The elf looked almost as tired as Kieri felt, his usual bland expression strained. “I cannot sense her anywhere. I do not think she has been killed: the taig would surely react to that.”
“The taig has enough anguish,” Kieri said.
“I know. And before you ask again, I do not know where the other elves are: your uncle Amrothlin, for instance. It is as if the Ladysforest itself were withdrawn, though I can sense it, far off near the mountains. Even if she went below—”
“Below?”
“Into the elfane taig, the stronghold—even there I should be able to sense her, but I cannot.”
For an instant, Kieri’s mind threw up the memory of Arian’s father, Dameroth, talking of Paks … of places no human should see … the elfane taig? Was that one of the places? He put that aside; it couldn’t matter now.
“Without the Lady, or the guidance of another with her powers, the taig is defenseless,” Orlith said. “If worse comes, neither of us can raise its full power.”
“At the battle on my way here, a Kuakgan raised the taig—”
“We do not speak of Kuakkgani!” Orlith said.
“We speak of death and the destruction of the taig,” Kieri said. “Surely you could cooperate long enough to save it.”
“They are an abomination,” Orlith said. “It cannot be.”
“The taig doesn’t think so,” Kieri said. “And the Kuakgan I met was a healer; I saw him heal both man and horse.”
“Oakhallow,” Orlith said. “He is …” He paused and shook his head. “If the Lady is indeed gone, by her will or another’s, then by the Singer’s commands it is our charge, we remaining elves, to defend and uphold the taig by any means we can.”
“So I believe,” Kieri said. He felt a tiny trickle of hope. A Kuakgan might know what this mysterious scathefire was, might know how to heal what had already burned in more normal fires.
“You could command me,” Orlith said. Kieri stared at him; Orlith, like the other elves, had made it clear that except for associating—unwillingly—with humans, he considered himself the Lady’s subject, not Kieri’s. “If the Lady lives, and returns, and I have accepted a Kuakgan into her realm, she will blame me.”
“It is my decision,” Kieri said. “And my realm, since she is not here.” Nonetheless, he had no idea how to ask a Kuakgan for help. Master Oakhallow had come from Brewersbridge at Paks’s request, but that was days away, even for a courier, and he had none to spare. That there were other Kuakkgani he knew, but not how to find one. Perhaps the Seneschal …
“Yes, Sir King,” the Seneschal said. “There are a few kuakkgannir in Chaya, though their Kuakgan has her grove in Tsaia. But there may be a way … shall I ask?”
“Yes,” Kieri said. “At the least, we must warn anyone with an interest in the taig of the danger … if that other weapon is worse than fire.”
That night the first scathefire attack came. Faster than couriers could ride, the path of purple-white flame raced down from Riverwash, near enough that the light of the flames could be seen to the north from the highest tower in the palace. Then—abruptly, just as the flickering of the flames replaced the glow, so close they were—they died. The dark returned, but the anguish of the wounded taig did not quiet. More than the trees had died.
By midday, Kieri knew that there had been two such fires, one halted farther away from Chaya but the nearer one, less than a day’s ride. “I must see it,” he said, over the objections of his Council. “If my magery can do anything to stop it, I need to know what it is before I can fight it.”
Orlith and two of the remaining elves in Chaya rode with him, along with four Squires and—to his surprise—both senior armsmasters.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been to battle with you,” Siger said. “Magic fires I don’t understand, but assassins in the bushes I do. And Carlion wants to see if my boasted ability to detect traps is real.”
As the winter afternoon waned under a skim of high cloud, they rode north to find what the fire had done. An acrid stench met them as the breeze blew steadily out of the winter sky. The taig roiled below and around; their mounts jigged, snorting and switching their tails. Kieri tried to comfort the taig and knew Orlith and the elves were doing the same, but the wounds were too great.
Well before they reached the actual site, they could see a gap in the forest ahead—light pouring in where trees, even in winter, had scattered it. Then the extent of the damage spread before them, a wide swath heading north. All within it was consumed to soot and ash; trees on the margin were blackened, limbs on one side burnt away. Kieri shuddered. All the horses shied and refused to go nearer.
“It’s like a great road leading north,” Siger said. “Wider than the Guild League roads, even … but why didn’t it spread to the side?”
“A weapon they could aim,” Kieri said. “And halt here, as a warning of what they could do.”
Carlion was off his horse, tossing his reins to a henchman, and walked ahead. “Sir King, there are tracks here. Two humans, both in boots, and some other marks I do not understand.”
“They launched it there to burn back north?” Kieri asked.
“Not with the wind we had last night,” Siger said. He, too, dismounted and
looked at the ground. “Magical flames or not, it would move with the wind, not against it.”
“Then—how did they get ahead of it to stop it?” Kieri asked. He dismounted; he wanted to see any tracks for himself.
“Someone already in place,” Siger said. “But how they stopped it, once the flames were moving like that, I don’t know.”
“There’s an arrow,” Carlion said, pointing. He stepped forward.
“Hold!” Kieri said. Carlion stopped, looking back at him in surprise. “We don’t know if the magic is exhausted: I don’t want to risk you.”
“Better me than you, Sir King. You have another good armsmaster, and the world has more of my kind than yours.” Carlion walked out onto the ash some distance and bent to pick up something. Then he whirled to face Kieri.
“Sir King! It is a King’s Squire’s arrow! One of your Squires!” He looked around. “And there’s another—and another—”
“How did the shafts survive?” Kieri asked. “It is not possible …”
“I’ll bring them all,” Carlion called. “Garris knows their marks.”
Shortly he was back, showing the five arrow shafts. “I’d think the shafts would burn, leaving only the metal tips, at most,” Kieri said. He picked up one of the shafts—scorched, indeed, but the pattern of rings that identified the archer still faintly visible on the blackened shaft. He turned it in the dimming light, trying to see … and his heart stopped, then thumped loudly before racing.
“Garris will know,” Carlion said again.
“I know,” Kieri said. It was hard to breathe. “Arian … she was coming back to … to warn …” Tears burned in his eyes; he could not blink them back before they ran down his cheeks into his beard. “She died bravely, as she would,” he said, handing the shaft back to Carlion.
“My lord—” Carlion reached out, but Kieri shook his head.
“Just—let me—” He turned his face to the north wind, struggling against the white rage that he must not indulge. White rage had brought this fire—not his, but someone’s. He had to breathe, he had to go on living, he had to be the king his people needed, and the man Arian had loved.
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