To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  This was Cilarnen’s first visit to this particular warehouse, but even he could see that it was emptier than it ought to be. There were empty spaces upon the shelves, stacks of barrels that weren’t quite even, a sense of vacancy that made him faintly uneasy.

  “More incense, boy,” Thekinalo said curtly.

  Cilarnen hurried to dip several carefully-measured spoonfuls of powder onto the glowing coals, chanting the appropriate spell under his breath.

  “It’s hardly a surprise,” Thekinalo said, continuing the conversation. “They see a chance for profit now that they are free, and so our warehouses empty, and the farmers’ pockets fill with Golden Suns. And the price of a baker’s loaf has doubled in the last moonturn, may the Light defend us.”

  “From Lord Volpiril and his policies,” Juvalira agreed, raising his wand again. “And from the Commons, should they ever discover the reason bread is so dear.”

  His partner simply laughed, and lowered the sword to the floor once more.

  “SOMEONE must do something,” young Lord Gillain said earnestly.

  At the end of their daily duties, many of the Apprentices gathered at a tea-house at the edge of the College. The Golden Bells sold nothing stronger than kaffeyeh, teas, and fruit juice, of course, but it was a place where Apprentices and the younger Journeymen could gather together and socialize, free of the constraints of their elders. And providing their elders approved, of course.

  Cilarnen shook his head minutely, saying nothing. Gillain was a fool. His rash speech would get him into trouble someday—and soon, no matter that his grandfather sat on the High Council.

  “What do you suggest?” Flohan asked, with a touch of sarcasm. “Do we petition the High Council? My cousin says that half the farmers in the valley are already doing that. The Council won’t change its mind and take them back.”

  “Its tiny mind,” Gillain said, and there was laughter from the young men gathered around the table—some genuine, some merely nervous.

  Only two didn’t join in the general amusement. Cilarnen, and a Journeyman named Raellan.

  Raellan had been coming to the Golden Bells for several sennights now. He was a quiet man, having little to say, but when he did speak, it was always sensible and to the point.

  “I think that if someone wanted to change the Council’s mind about its policies,” Raellan said now, looking straight at Cilarnen, “he would have to be very brave, and very dedicated to the good of the City.”

  “This is getting too deep for me,” another Entered Apprentice named Viance said hastily. “Let us talk of pleasant things. Who has tried the Phastan Silvertip that has just come in?”

  The talk quickly turned to tea, and the moment passed.

  CHIRED Anigrel—known in the Golden Bells, and in a few other select establishments in the City as Master Raellan—left the teashop a few chimes later, well pleased with the evening’s work.

  Few would recognize his face there and elsewhere, and to baffle those who might, the smallest and most subtle Cantrip of Misdirection cast over his features before he left his rooms ensured that he would not be recognized.

  If Lord Lycaelon needed a reason to dispense with Volpiril’s services, Anigrel would give him one.

  As well as the opportunity to rid himself of all other Mages who might prove to be—inconvenient.

  IF the specter of Shadow Mountain hadn’t been hovering over events, Kellen would undoubtedly have been happier than he’d ever been in his entire life.

  He got up each morning while the dawn mists still filled the valley of Sentarshadeen, dressed, and, carrying his breakfast with him, walked to the House of Sword and Shield, eating as he walked. Sometimes Shalkan came with him, and the two friends talked of nothing in particular. The weather—it continued to rain, but Kellen was getting used to it. How Vestakia was settling in.

  When Kellen arrived at the House, he would either change to his working clothes (he wore a distinct shade of green—not his signature color, either—a hue which had been arrived at after a great deal of debate, apparently) or into his armor, depending on what he was to work at that day.

  Kellen was learning things that Jermayan had lacked the resources to teach him. To attack, and to defend himself against multiple attackers. And more—he was learning to keep the choices in every combat in his own hands, so that he could kill or not as he chose. Under Master Belesharon’s guidance, he was learning to trick an attacker, to stun or disarm him, to simply be elsewhere when the blow fell.

  It was more than simple misdirection, far more than the feints and dodges that Jermayan had tried to show him. It was—well, if he had to put a name to it, it was a new state of mind. Part of the battle-mind, to be sure, but a state in which he could choose to be like a fish in the water. He could see where the fight was going, the way a fish could sense a rock in the stream ahead of him, and he could move with the fight, or around it. When he finally got the trick of it, it had all come at once; suddenly, the sense was there, and he’d slipped aside from every blow that the four other knights were trying to land on him, without needing to counter any of them. And the state of mind he had been in was so uncannily peaceful—as if it was a kind of meditation! It was only when Master Belesharon had called a halt to the fight and he dropped automatically out of that mental state that the exhaustion hit him.

  “I would not toy with that, if I were you,” Master Belesharon said, neutrally. And Kellen had readily agreed. Useful that might be, if he were surrounded by attackers that he dared not strike at, but the effort this state took was greater than actually defending himself.

  With his Knight-Mage gifts to guide him, Kellen learned fast, but there was always more to learn. There was the theory of war itself, not of knight against knight, but of armies in the field.

  And so he was introduced to the two great Elven strategy games, gan and xaqiue.

  Gan was played on a square board divided into 864 tiny squares. There were 144 counters, divided into six suits, and up to six players could play, though usually only two or three did. The simple object of the game was to be the last person with counters on the board. The complex object of the game was to win beautifully and with style. An opponent’s counters could be removed from play either by surrounding them, or by forcing them to the edge of the board.

  So far Kellen had lost every gan match he’d played. But he was starting to lose more slowly.

  Xaqiue bore a faint resemblance to shamat, which was played in Armethalieh. In shamat, there were two armies of playing pieces, each of which could move only a certain way, and the object was to capture the other player’s City.

  Xaqiue was similar—in that one of the points of the game was to capture the opposing player’s pieces. But in xaqiue, captured pieces remained on the board, in the service of whoever captured them last, and the moves each piece could make changed depending on how many moves it had already made and what other pieces were nearby.

  Kellen found xaqiue fiendishly complicated.

  “It is no more complicated than a battle,” Naeret would say, when Kellen had been forced to resign yet another game in the middle, hopelessly tangled in a welter of moves and countermoves, and having managed to forget which pieces still belonged to him. “Yet you would remember that well enough.”

  “I could get killed in a battle,” Kellen muttered.

  “Yet all life is war,” Naeret said, setting the pieces out once again. “Perhaps it is all worth considering equally seriously.”

  BETWEEN sword exercises and games—though Kellen suspected that the Elves did not think of “games” in quite the same way he did—there were the lectures (though he supposed “instructions” might be a better word). Seen simply, these were tales of ancient battles—and just what he’d wanted to hear ever since he’d realized there had been ancient battles.

  Seen another way, they were histories, or chronicles, or even guidebooks of a sort, filled with instructions and warnings.

  Kellen shared these lectures w
ith the novices, of course, for he had never had the opportunity to hear these stories before. He was fascinated to discover that they were not only stories of the Great War—what the Elves called among themselves the Second War—but the First War as well, fought so long ago that humans had not yet been civilized. It was oddly sobering to realize that the gentle, supremely cultivated Elves—so polite that they considered a direct question to be the height of barbarian rudeness—had been a warrior people since before his own folk had discovered fire. But perhaps that was the very reason why they placed so high a value on peace and civilization.

  Most afternoons were spent with Deyishene, and Kellen was already a much better rider than he had been when he began. He’d ended up being introduced to the Elven lance after all. Though there was little likelihood Kellen would ever use it under combat conditions, learning to handle it—without breaking it—taught grace, balance, and concentration. Kellen had already broken half a dozen.

  When he wasn’t actually busy at the House of Sword and Shield, Kellen was mindful of the promise he had made to Sandalon, and spent as many hours with the young Prince as he could. He even brought him to visit at the House of Sword and Shield—after obtaining Master Belesharon’s permission, of course—and showed him all around. There was no reason, according to Jermayan, that Sandalon should not someday train as an Elven Knight if he chose to.

  Someday. If he ever gets out of that fortress before he’s got a long grey beard. If Elves grow beards, that is.

  Ashaniel had broken the news to Sandalon that he would be going away to the Crowned Horns with the rest of the Elven children not long after the meeting at which the plan was decided, and for a few days the boy had been upset and unhappy. But Sandalon was very young, and as the leave taking didn’t happen immediately, after a sennight or two the young Prince seemed to forget the matter entirely.

  But today, when Kellen went out to the stables to Deyishene, he found Sandalon and Shalkan both there, waiting outside her stall.

  The young Prince had obviously been crying, though his tears were under control now, and he smiled dolefully when he saw Kellen.

  “I am to go—the day after tomorrow!” Sandalon blurted out, obviously unable to contain the unhappy news one moment longer than necessary.

  “Oh.” There didn’t seem to be very much to say, but Kellen tried. “But there will be children from all the Nine Cities there—perhaps you will make new friends. I am sure that there will be at least one person who is almost exactly your age, and there may be more. Think, Sandalon, how good it will be when there are several others around you who want to do the same things that you do, and play the same games that you like!”

  Sandalon was too well mannered, even at five, to contradict Kellen, but his face plainly said that he found the possibility highly unlikely.

  “Will you … there will be a great many Knights riding with us. And unicorns, too! Maybe—”

  But Kellen was already shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Sandalon. I’m just starting to learn all the things a proper Knight has to know. I still have a lot more to learn before I get to do something that important.”

  Oddly enough his answer—meant in all honesty—sent Sandalon off into a fit of the giggles, and even Shalkan swiveled his ears and coughed, indicating the unicorn was trying very hard not to laugh out loud.

  After a moment, Kellen realized why, and grinned sheepishly.

  A short time ago he’d destroyed the Black Cairn, just about single-handedly, and now he was saying that something as simple as convoying a bunch of kids through peaceful territory to a well-defended stronghold was too difficult for him. And put that way, it did sound ridiculous, but a job like that was a lot more complicated than just riding off with Jermayan and Shalkan into the unknown. And Kellen couldn’t afford to spend the time away from his lessons.

  “Go ahead, laugh at me, both of you,” Kellen said good-naturedly. “But Master Belesharon would not think I was a very good student if I asked to be released from my lessons just because something more interesting came along. I have a lot to learn right here. But I don’t think he would mind too much if we took tomorrow off to go exploring, just the four of us.”

  “The four of us?” Sandalon asked doubtfully.

  “You, and me, and Shalkan, and Vestakia. I thought I’d ask Vestakia to come with us—if you didn’t mind, of course.”

  He’d seen very little of Vestakia since he’d begun training at the House of Sword and Shield—of course, Kellen had seen very little of anyone but his fellow students. Idalia had assured him that Vestakia was doing perfectly well, and understood the reason for Kellen’s absence.

  But he missed the easy comradeship they’d shared on the road, and wanted to see for himself that she was okay. A picnic should be the perfect opportunity. And nothing could go wrong with Shalkan there to play chaperon.

  “Oh, no,” Sandalon said happily. “Vestakia’s nice. And she isn’t nearly as bossy as Lairamo is.”

  “Then it’s settled, providing your nurse and my Master both agree,” Kellen said, though he doubted Master Belesharon would have any objections to Kellen spending a day making Sandalon feel a little better about being sent away. “Now, want to come watch me practice? You might be doing this yourself someday, after all.”

  “I will!” Sandalon said enthusiastically. “I’m going to become a Knight just like you and Jermayan, and win all the Flower Wars, just like he does!”

  LATER Kellen would look back at the day he spent roaming through the hills beyond Sentarshadeen with Shalkan, Vestakia, and Sandalon as the last truly serene day he was to spend for a very long time, but at the time he only thought of it as his farewell to Sandalon, and a way of making the child’s departure less painful. Though Idalia had told him that there was to be “a break in the weather,” in fact it had rained most of the day, but none of them had minded. When Vestakia had left him at the end of the day, Kellen had been unsettled by more than the strain of the thoughts forbidden by his geas, though Shalkan had kept him from getting into any real difficulty.

  As he took Deyishene back to the stables, he found himself wondering if—and hoping he was going to have—a future that included Vestakia. He found himself simply wanting her company, quite apart from anything else. She was simply the best friend he had ever had: she was clever, she was kind, she knew how to have fun, and how to make it too.

  But with the storm clouds of Shadow Mountain gathering on the horizon, he couldn’t quite make himself believe that any kind of future, much less a peaceful one with Vestakia in it, was ever going to exist. He wasn’t used to thinking that far ahead and he wasn’t used to feeling this—grim—about things. Idalia was the dour introspective one—and all Kellen’s attempts to try and get a grip on the situation only left him feeling troubled for no reason that he could put his finger on.

  Fortunately Shalkan interrupted his thoughts before he sank too deeply into depression.

  “The caravan will be leaving from the House of Leaf and Star tomorrow before dawn. You’ll want to be there.”

  “I don’t know,” Kellen said, surprised at the suggestion. “Elves aren’t much on big going-away ceremonies, I thought.”

  “No,” Shalkan agreed. “But you’ll want to see it, just the same. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re here in plenty of time.”

  THE next morning the unicorn routed Kellen out of his cozy bed in what seemed to be the middle of the night. It was still dark when the two of them made their way through the sleeping city back to the House of Leaf and Star, but the convoy was already gathered.

  Most of the supplies that the evacuees would need at the Fortress of the Crowned Horns had already been sent on ahead. These wagons would only carry supplies for the journey, and the people themselves.

  There were two wagons for the children and their attendants to sleep and travel in. They looked like houses on wheels, down to the softly-glowing colored lanterns hung from each corner, and were drawn by four mules each. Four m
ore wagons carried what Kellen supposed must be supplies and camping gear for the rest of the party, and each of those had six mules hitched to it.

  Kellen assessed the caravan with a newly practiced eye, seeming to feel Master Belesharon standing over his shoulder. It was true that a herd of thirty-two mules was a lot to take care of—and carry feed for—and certainly both the carts and the wagons could be drawn by fewer. But if some went lame on the road, there would be no place to get replacements. Better, Kellen supposed, to start with more animals than you needed than have to turn back.

  Then there was a sudden drumming of hooves, and Kellen saw the real reason Shalkan had brought him here.

  The Elven Knights had arrived.

  And only some of them were riding horses.

  The unicorns danced—there was no other word for it—as if the earth could not hold them down. They sprang forward, ahead of the horses, circling the wagons once as if to make sure all was well, then trotting off to stand in an easy formation a little ways off in the meadow while the equestrian Knights distributed themselves closely around the wagons.

  “I thought you’d like to see that,” Shalkan commented.

  The doors of the House of Leaf and Star opened. Kellen was too far away to hear what was said—he’d come only to see, not to intrude—but he saw Andoreniel and Ashaniel standing there, bidding a last farewell … not as Sandalon’s parents, Kellen realized, but as the rulers of the Elves.