To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

They reached the top of the causeway. There were massive bronze gates—crusted with winter’s ice. In fact, the ice was so thick upon them that it was obvious they had not been opened in months. Shentorris led them around the edge—a pathway even narrower than the causeway, with a sheer drop to the rocks below—to a smaller door, also bronze. The walls looked as if they were made of a single piece of stone; there was nothing here that would burn or decay. The smaller door was barely large enough to admit one person at a time. It was closed. Shentorris knocked, and after a pause, it was opened. Kellen entered first, then Jermayan, then last of all Shentorris.

  Kellen was used to Elven architecture being spacious, airy, and open, bringing the outdoors in so artfully that sometimes it was hard to tell where Nature ended and Elven craft began. This was beautiful, too, as all the work of the Elves was, but it was beauty of an entirely different sort. It was as if he’d suddenly stepped back through time, to meet a wholly different race of Elves—a race of warriors, not artisans.

  The corridors were narrow, the ceilings low. Kellen had the sudden sense that this fortress was also a labyrinth, designed to confuse any invaders who got this far. Defenders would hide and attack, knowing the territory well, while their enemies circled about in confusion.

  And the children who lived here now would find it a perfect playground, never realizing, as they played, that they were learning the skills that would keep them alive in the ultimate extremity.

  Leaf and Star, Gods of the Wild Magic, let that day never come, Kellen thought fervently. If the Enemy broached this citadel, then all hope was truly gone.

  There were no windows, of course, though the walls were painted with scenes of cities and forests that had not existed in a thousand years, and depictions of animals that Kellen had no name for. A sort of four-legged eagle, and something that looked more like a two-horned unicorn than it looked like anything else. A horse with wings—now surely that was wholly imaginary? A kind of a Centaur with a cat body instead of a horse body, and wings as well.

  Kellen stopped trying to decide what was real—or might have been real—once—and simply followed the others. He wasn’t lost—no Knight-Mage, as he’d discovered down in the caverns, could actually get lost—but unless he spent enough time here to learn the entire layout of the fortress, the only route he’d be able to take back to the door was the one he was following now.

  “And here we come to what has—in times past—been the dining hall,” Shentorris said, opening a door.

  Kellen quickly understood the reason for Shentorris’s odd phrasing, for it was obvious that the room was no longer a dining hall, and had not been used as one for quite some time.

  It was now filled with children. All the children of the Nine Cities—except, Kellen supposed, for the very youngest, like Kalania, who were off in a nursery somewhere, and some of the oldest, like Alkandoran, who were probably continuing their knightly training.

  But all the rest were here.

  It was the largest room in the fortress. The floor had been marked with the elaborate patterns of children’s games, the walls were lined with large tubs in which green plants grew, scenting the air with the perfume of growing things. High above, hanging from the rafters, were ancient war banners, an incongruous martial note in these surroundings.

  There were fewer than fifty children here, yet Kellen knew that these were all the children of all the Elven Lands. But Elves lived for centuries, and children were rare among them.

  Kellen watched as they ran and played together. Most of them had already been here for sennights. Long enough to get used to the idea of seeing so many others near their own ages. He wondered what kind of a difference it would make to them later.

  The newest arrivals weren’t here yet. Still getting settled in—and warmed up, Kellen thought, with a longing glance toward the enormous fireplace that filled one end of the great hall.

  Shentorris caught the direction of his gaze. “But come. We will take tea. You shall meet Tyrvin, who is the Master of the Crowned Horns. He will be eager to hear the news of the outside world.”

  Shentorris conducted his two guests to a smaller room. Like every chamber Kellen had seen so far here in the fortress, it was windowless, but it had the look of a place that someone had tried very hard to make resemble home. Cushioned benches lined the walls, and there were low tables carved and inlaid in colored woods set here and there about the room. A tiled stove in the corner radiated a pleasant heat. But the walls were hung with weapons. Not weapons for show, but weapons that could be grabbed at a moment’s notice, and borne in defense of the precious treasure these walls contained.

  A kettle in the shape of a fat-bellied faun stood heating on the stove, and from the cabinet beside the stove Shentorris took down a pot and a tea canister. While he was hesitating among the teacups—for Elves took the selection of the proper teacup nearly as seriously as they did the selection of the proper tea—Master Tyrvin entered the room.

  He was not nearly as old as Master Belesharon, but Kellen could instantly see why he had been chosen as the guardian of the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. The same aura of absolute mastery of his craft enveloped him like an invisible cloak. He was, very simply, the best Andoreniel had to send.

  Kellen faced him and bowed, the deep bow of respect, Student to Master.

  Tyrvin looked surprised. “They told me you were a Knight-Mage,” he said.

  “I am still learning my craft,” Kellen said honestly. “You have mastered yours.”

  “You should, at least, have learned not to flatter Elves in your time among us,” Tyrvin said brusquely, moving to take a seat with his back to the door.

  “I am not particularly good at flattery,” Kellen answered simply, “but I have learned that Elves honor truth, and that respect is due to those who have earned it.”

  Jermayan and Shentorris both laughed. “The point goes to Kellen, Tyr,” Jermayan said cheerfully. “And flattery is not the only thing he is bad at, I assure you. He cannot speak of the weather save to tell you whether it is wet or dry, and if his man did not dress him, dogs would run howling from the streets whenever he appeared. Nor can he brew tea that I would use for anything but killing parasites in my garden. He does not dance. But the children love him, Master Belesharon thinks well of him, and he fights like a firesprite whose nest has been burned. And he is Shalkan’s rider.”

  “Well indeed.” Tyrvin sounded surprised and somewhat mollified at this odd catalogue of Kellen’s abilities—or disabilities. As for Kellen, he thought it was a peculiar sort of endorsement—especially coming from his oldest friend among the Elves.

  But it was obvious that these three Elves were old friends, and an old friend among Elves was a very old friend indeed. So he tried not to take any of Jermayan’s comments to heart, since certainly they were true—and probably pretty important from an Elven point of view. But why should his being Shalkan’s rider be important to anyone but him and Shalkan?

  Besides, he liked the tea he brewed just fine. He’d just remember not to offer any of it to Jermayan anymore. Or to politely suggest that Jermayan might like to brew his own.

  “I suppose then, that if I wish to hear what has been going on in Sentarshadeen these last moonturns, it would be well to cast aside all vestige of dignity and manners,” Tyrvin said, but there was a twinkle in his eye when he said it.

  “Indeed,” Jermayan said, taking a seat on one of the benches. “Though I am told that his speeches to Andoreniel’s Council are memorable things.”

  Kellen sighed inwardly, sitting down as well and shrugging out of his heavy furs. He was being teased. He recognized that now, and resigned himself to it. It was better—much!—than being disliked. And he found that he very much wanted Master Tyrvin to like him.

  “I only told them what they needed to hear. They didn’t like it much,” Kellen said, assuming a counterfeit air of innocence.

  That startled another bark of laughter from Master Tyrvin. “The Council never wishes to
hear what it needs to hear. And now Jermayan—perhaps, if he annoys me, I shall tell you what a difficult pupil he once was to me—has brought you to me so that you can tell me what I need to hear. And you think I shall like it as little as the Council did.”

  Kellen inclined his head, acknowledging that what Master Tyrvin said was the truth. He took a deep breath. He might as well give them the blunt truth they expected from humans, and he didn’t really know any way that would render it palatable.

  “I know that your fortress is not impregnable. I know it can be attacked. I know how, and by who. I don’t know when, or if,” Kellen said. “But I know how I would do it, had I the resources of the Enemy.”

  That got the full attention of all three Elves.

  “Tell me, Knight-Mage,” Tyrvin commanded, all business now.

  “I don’t think it will be soon. Perhaps not at all. But let me go back to the beginning, and tell you everything, and then you will know all that I know.”

  Carefully, Kellen began at the very beginning: the attack on the caravan that was to have brought Sentarshadeen’s children to the Crowned Horns; with the frost-giants, ice-trolls, and coldwarg—and their allies, the giant Deathwings.

  “They can carry a full-grown Elf safely, and they follow orders. I don’t know who ultimately controls them, but I know they’re creatures of Darkness that can, nevertheless, fly by day. I know Ancaladar said he can’t land on top of the fortress, but I don’t know what the top of the fortress looks like, so I can’t say what could land there.”

  “You shall see it. Go on,” Tyrvin said.

  Kellen told the whole story, from the moment Calmeren had arrived at Sentarshadeen to the moment the rescue party had returned to it. He omitted no detail, whether he suspected Tyrvin knew it already or not. Whatever Tyrvin knew, he did not know the events as Kellen had experienced them.

  “The Shadowed Elves weren’t just using the cavern as a temporary camp, either. They had a whole city there, and Ancaladar said they’d been living there for a very long time. Since they … seem … to have Elven blood, the land-wards don’t react to them.”

  There was a long silence. Jermayan knew all this, of course, but it was new to Shentorris and Tyrvin, and neither Elf was happy to hear it

  “How far do these caves go?” Tyrvin asked at last, with blunt War Manners.

  “No one knows—yet. Not even Ancaladar. Andoreniel intends to wipe out the Shadowed Elves. He’s calling up the levies in Ondoladeshiron.” While Kellen had been telling the long tale of the rescue of the children, tea had been brewed and poured, and now he took a long sip of spicy Black Winter Tea to soothe his raw throat.

  “The Fortress of the Crowned Horns is built atop a mountain of solid granite,” Shentorris said, speaking at last.

  “For the moment,” Jermayan said. He needed to say nothing more.

  “We will hear them if they dig. I will post listeners on the lowest level, where the spring that nourishes the fortress is—every hour of every day,” Tyrvin said. “They will assist Ronethil in her work. But you say you do not think They mean to attack us, Kellen Wildmage?”

  “I think Their plan was to lure us into a war with the Shadowed Elves—to make us commit all our resources into a battle to destroy them, as we shall. If we attack them in their caverns, we’re at a disadvantage. If they attack us here, in our place of greatest strength, they’re the ones at a disadvantage. I don’t think they’re after the children; I don’t think that the children were ever their real target.” He tried to choose his words with utmost care. “This is why: They didn’t attack us to get them back once we’d rescued them, and until we met up with the second rescue party from Sentarshadeen, we were quite vulnerable. Nor did they attack any of the caravans that followed Sandalon’s. The whole point seems to me to have been to allow us to discover the existence of the Shadowed Elves in a way that would make us determined to wipe them out.” He knew he sounded puzzled, and he was, because he could not imagine what could possibly come next.

  “An odd way of running a war,” Tyrvin said. “Still, unless they can find a way of coming at us here in force, I am confident that if they do attack, we can hold them off—though your news is hardly calculated to help me to rest easy at night. But come. I will show you the rest of our defenses.”

  THE tour took the next several hours. Tyrvin showed Kellen over what seemed as if it were every inch of the fortress—though he saw no more of the children.

  There were rooms filled with weapons: arrows and bows, the most fragile and easily-expended items of their defense; spears, swords, shields. Enough to arm and rearm every defender of the fortress a dozen times over.

  There were other rooms filled with food: grain, both fresh and parched, dried fruit, dried meat, herbs and teas, spices. Enough to feed an army for years.

  Everyone Kellen met—and there were female knights as well as male among the defenders—was in good spirits. No one here doubted the importance of their task, nor was inclined to grow soft and inattentive simply because one day passed seamlessly into another with no sign of overt threat. The Elves were a patient people.

  Tyrvin even took him down to the deepest levels of the fortress, where the spring was. If Kellen had not been so intent upon learning all the citadel’s secrets, it would have been an honor he would gladly have done without, for the way was long, down a winding stair that seemed to go on forever. He had the sense that the lanterns the Elves carried to light the way were mostly a courtesy to him.

  “This is the lowest level of the fortress,” Shentorris said, when they stood in the center of a great room hollowed from the living rock. In the center of the floor stood a deep round pool.

  The others had stopped upon the stairs, letting Kellen go first, and now he knew why.

  A unicorn stood beside the pool. Her coat was the grey of winter storm, and her horn was the clear shining brightness of winter’s ice. As he approached, she bowed her head and touched her horn to the pool, and for a moment, the water shone blue.

  “Yes,” she said, “it is a spring, called from the depths of the Earth by magic in ancient times. But nothing of the Dark may try these waters and live—not while I, Ronethil, am here, or those who guard this place with me.”

  Without conscious thought, Kellen shifted to spell-sight. He looked down into the pool, saw where it flowed up through a crack in the stone so narrow that nothing of any size could pass through it. Nor could it be poisoned or bespelled, while Ronethil stood guard. Beneath that was rock. Nothing but solid rock.

  He reached out, to the roots of the whole fortress, in the way a man might check his horse for soundness before he mounted. But he felt nothing. All was untouched. Nothing had come—yet—to try the citadel’s defenses, at least from this direction.

  “Safe,” Kellen said with relief, as his spell-sight faded. Only then did he notice that a sort of conduit led from the spring, along the wall up the stairs. Well, he guessed it beat having to walk down all the stairs he was about to walk up again every time you needed water for tea.

  “Your Magegifts have told you this,” Tyrvin said. It was not a question.

  “No one can truly say what future fruit the blossom of the moment may bear,” Kellen said. It was one of Morusil’s favorite sayings. Idalia said it was the Elven way of saying “Don’t press your luck.”

  “He learns quickly,” Jermayan said, a note of pride in his voice.

  “Quicker than you learned to counter that low attack to your left side, when you were in my training,” Tyrvin said.

  “Ah, Master, I thought those bruises would never heal,” Jermayan agreed ruefully. “Alas, that I have been unable to give Kellen ones to match them.”

  Tyrvin glanced at Kellen, and for a moment there was cold speculation in the Elf’s dark eyes. Then he smiled. “Alas, that we do not have time this day for sport. I will show you the top of the tower, and then I think it will be time for you to depart to your duties. Remember us, on the field of battle.”


  “Remember us, among the children,” Jermayan answered, and Kellen had the sense that he’d just witnessed one of those side-slips into an almost sacred formality that he guessed you’d have to live as long as an Elf to understand.

  Him, he was just Kellen, a human Knight-Mage who (according to Jermayan) couldn’t brew tea and fought like a firesprite—whatever that was. He wondered if asking Jermayan would get him any answers he could understand.

  They stopped back at the room where they’d shared tea to collect their heavy fur cloaks and gloves. Kellen was sweating by the time they’d climbed yet another several sets of stairs to a room so small the four of them could barely squeeze into it. In order to make room for them, the two guards who had occupied it needed to retreat down the stairs to the landing below.

  “This door,” Tyrvin said, “opens onto the top of the tower of the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. There are always two sentries posted there, and as you have seen, two inside. In this weather, their watch is short. But the door is barred from this side, and can be barred from the other at desperate need. Should the sentries on watch here lose track of the time, or sleep, or fail of attentiveness, those without will die, for should they cry out, or hammer at the door, it cannot be heard from within.”

  Trust. That was the hidden message in Tyrvin’s words. Each Elf—and unicorn—here at the fortress trusted every other to hold their lives as dearly as their own.

  That was the Crowned Horns’ true defense. Not sword and stone—the Demons could break through that if they came in strength. But Their greatest weapons were tricks of bribery and persuasion, of tainted promises. Kellen was sure now that any attempt to gain a foothold here by those means would fail.

  Tyrvin unbolted the door. It thrust inward fiercely, pushed on an icy blast of wind.

  “Hold to the guide-ropes!” he shouted over the howl of the wind, and stepped out onto the tower roof.

  The “guide-ropes” were thick cables of twisted metal. Kellen grabbed for one instinctively. Without it, he would be pushed along the roof as if he weighed no more than an autumn leaf.