To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  The rooftop was far too small for a dragon to land upon. Walls half the height of an Elf’s body surrounded it, and at each corner was a strange five-pronged blossom standing twice that height—one prong sticking straight up, two curving outward, two curving in. From a distance, they probably gave the top of the fortress the look of a crown. All were sharp.

  The surface of the tower floor was not smooth and open, either. Tall spikes were placed at intervals. The cable Kellen clung to was strung between them, making a virtue of necessity. Here, at the highest exposed point in the Icefang Mountains, the icy wind was punishing. It battered at Kellen like a living thing, making his flesh ache even beneath the heavy furs and his insulating Elven armor.

  He saw the two sentries, groping carefully along the ropes, their gaze turned outward, toward the .surrounding mountains and the sky. Tyrvin moved past him, going to each of them in turn and sending them inside.

  Kellen groped his way to the parapet, or as near as he could get without letting go of the guide-rope. If he let go, the wind would take him over the side, unless he was quick enough to fling himself flat. This was a dangerous place.

  But he was close enough to see the arrow-slits in the walls. They were clotted with ice now, but through them, a kneeling Elven archer could rain down destruction on an enemy. Or even stand to fire, for the range of Elven bows was long.

  He caught Tyrvin’s eye and nodded. He’d seen what he needed to see. Though if he wasn’t in danger of freezing solid, he would have been happy to linger. The mountains were spread out below them in a breathtaking vista—in spring, in sunlight, this must be a beautiful place.

  The Master of the Fortress of the Crowned Horns led them carefully inside, and waited until the next four sentries—two outside, two inside—had taken their places. Then he brought them all back to what Kellen now realized must be his private rooms.

  “The posts that you saw are not only for show. There are charms of unicorn hair attached to the top, renewed every spring. So none of Them will dare to try us,” Tyrvin said with grim satisfaction.

  Kellen thought carefully before he spoke. “I am not sure the Deathwings could land there, but they would not need to. They could come low enough to drop whoever they carried in their claws—or to carry someone away. They are small enough, and nimble enough, for that. And when spring comes—what are the winds like then? Are they constant, or do they soften or stop altogether? The Deathwings can fly by day, but they will be better still at night—and in a fog, or in the clouds, would any see them until it was too late?”

  Tyrvin sighed. “Yet we must keep watch.”

  “Find another way,” Kellen said bluntly. “Every time you open a door—any door—in this fortress, you expose a weakness. Close and bar it. Confronted with this fortress, if I were contemplating an attack, I would never even consider a frontal assault. I would try treachery, I would try stealth, and I would try by ones and twos, not by thousands. One or two can open the door to thousands, if they come at the wrong time and place. You cannot assume the Enemy to be less cunning than I am. Count your people. Count them constantly—”

  At least here he could be single-minded. There was only one duty before these Elves. This was their posting and it was all they needed to concentrate on. Whether or not the attack on the children had been part of a ruse was of no moment to them. So Kellen, too, could be single-minded in his advice.

  “And pray to Leaf and Star that someday we may open our gates again,” Tyrvin said, agreeing. “It is good counsel, Kellen Wildmage. It is a great pity you were not born one of us, yet had it been so, you would not be what you are, and we have need of that.”

  “SOMETIMES you terrify me,” Jermayan said conversationally, as they stood at the foot of the causeway, waiting for Ancaladar to arrive. Jermayan said it would only be a matter of a few moments.

  “I only said what had to be said,” Kellen said. He knew he sounded a little sullen, but he couldn’t help it. Even Tyrvin seemed to be waiting for the Endarkened to show up as a massed army with banners—not sneak in at the changing of the guard and start slaughtering people. Which Kellen thought was far more likely, if they meant to attack the fortress at all.

  “Someday you will say it to the wrong person,” Jermayan said. “Leaf and Star! To speak so to Master Tyrvin!”

  “He wants to keep those children alive. And so do—”

  But Ancaladar had suddenly made his appearance, falling through the clouds like a black thunderbolt, fanning his wings wide at the last minute and making a graceful landing in a spray of snow. The dragon’s great weight made him sink deeply into the snow, so that the saddle was only a few feet above Kellen’s head.

  “I trust that your visit went as you would have it go,” the dragon said.

  “It went as it went,” Jermayan answered dismissively.

  Ancaladar didn’t linger a moment longer once Kellen and Jermayan had secured themselves in their seats, but bounded quickly into the air.

  He had probably been trying to take things easy back at Sentarshadeen for the sake of his young passengers, and the air there had certainly been quieter. Kellen was glad he’d had that experience to prepare him for this one, because this takeoff was nowhere near as gentle as the one that had preceded it. The mountain winds flipped and spun Ancaladar through the air as if he were one of Sandalon’s toy boats upon Great Twovanesata, with Ancaladar taking expert advantage of every opportunity they granted him to gain height.

  At last they broke through into the sunlight and comparative stillness of the upper air, and Ancaladar was able to spread his wings wide and level out.

  “Everyone still there, I trust?” the dragon asked.

  “It was … fun,” Kellen answered. It actually had been, in a weird way. He’d been sure—fairly sure, anyway—that he wasn’t going to fall off, and if he had, he had no doubt at all that Ancaladar would catch him before he could hit the ground. But all the same, he was just as glad it hadn’t gone on too long.

  “You have the oddest notions of fun,” Jermayan said.

  “Nevertheless, I do not think we will repeat it,” Ancaladar said, a note of amusement in his soft deep voice. “The air over Sentarshadeen is calm and clear—I can feel it from here.”

  “So can I,” Jermayan said, an odd note in his voice.

  THE rest of the journey was almost a mirror of the first, though this time the sun was westering, treating Kellen to a spectacular show as it tinted the clouds with a thousand shades of gold. He missed the clouds when they left them behind, and was surprised to see that though here they were still in sunlight, the land below was already touched with twilight shadows.

  Ancaladar landed in the unicorn meadow near the House of Leaf and Star, but only long enough for Kellen to dismount. With Jermayan still in the saddle, he launched himself into the sky again, heading for his home canyon.

  Kellen stamped and stretched, working the stiffness out of his cramped muscles. It had been a beautiful flight, but still a cold one.

  “And did you enjoy your day?” Shalkan asked, materializing out of nowhere. The unicorn was hard to see—Kellen realized it was almost dark; well after lantern-lighting time.

  “It was instructive,” Kellen said. “And cold. But the children are safe at the fortress now.”

  “And likely to remain so?” Shalkan asked.

  Kellen regarded his friend broodingly. “Unless They try something I can’t imagine … yes.” Or until they starve to death waiting for us to defeat Shadow Mountain. Resupplying the fortress would be an easy matter come spring—but each time its doors were opened, all who were within were exposed to danger from an attack by treachery and stealth.

  “But you’re still not happy,” Shalkan said, falling into step beside Kellen as the young Knight-Mage began the long walk toward home. “And after you got to ride Ancaladar, and meet Master Tyrvin. Such gratitude.”

  Kellen made a rude noise. “‘I am duly grateful for all the mercies and benefits visited upon me,
’” he said, quoting one of the sentences of the Litany of the Light that he’d had to recite each Light’s Day back in Armethalieh. “I just think I’m forgetting something.”

  “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to try to remember it on the ride to Ondoladeshiron,” Shalkan said cheerfully.

  THE journey to Ondoladeshiron took a sennight and a half, for not only did they move through deep winter, but they were restricted to the pace of the supply wagons that they escorted. These wagons held immense quantities of food and weapons, as well as much of the store of Wild Magic-infused articles that Idalia had crafted.

  For the first time, Kellen traveled with an Elven army in formal battle array. Although he was certainly battle-seasoned, he had not yet won his spurs in the House of Sword and Shield, and even though he was a Knight-Mage, he was also Shalkan’s rider, so for purposes of Elven battle protocol he rode under the orders of Petariel, Captain of the Unicorn Knights, as a junior knight.

  Kellen found it instructive; he kept his eyes and ears open, and began to learn a great deal about the bonds of camaraderie that other Unicorn Knights had with their mounts.

  The Unicorn Knights, of necessity, rode apart from the main army. By Elven standards they were all quite young, though they would have been grandmothers and grandfathers among humans. All of them were still mourning the loss of their comrades, both Elven and unicorn, in the Shadowed Elf ambush, for the community of Unicorn Knights was a small, close-knit one. Not every Elven fighter was even remotely interested in bonding with a unicorn.

  Oddly, it was a community that Kellen had never really been a part of, until now. He wasn’t a “real” Unicorn Knight—his bond with Shalkan was part of a Mageprice lasting a year and a day. That wasn’t the same thing as choosing a unicorn for a companion—or being chosen by one. And what happened when the Elf fell in love with another Elf? He—or she—would never see their unicorn friend again. Not up close, anyway.

  “You’re thinking like a human, again,” Shalkan observed, when Kellen confided some of these thoughts to him.

  “I am a human, in case you haven’t figured that out yet,” Kellen said. It felt good to discuss—for a change—something that had nothing in particular to do with Shadow Mountain.

  Shalkan snorted eloquently. “As if I could forget. Humans think the whole world revolves around them—but we have lives of our own, too, you know. The partnership of knight and unicorn is a fine thing, but in most cases both of the beings involved realize at the start that it’s only going to be an episode—a relatively short one—in what will be long lives for them both. A year and a day probably seems like a long time to you—well, for most of these knights, their partnership won’t seem to last much longer.”

  Uh-huh. That sounded awfully cold-blooded to Kellen. Maybe an Elf—who was going to live several centuries—could manage it Or …

  “How long do unicorns live, anyway?” Kellen asked.

  “Longer than you’re likely to if you keep asking foolish questions,” Shalkan answered quellingly.

  Ah. Evidently there were some things even Kellen wasn’t supposed to know.

  KELLEN didn’t spend all his time with the Unicorn Knights. Fortunately, a Knight-Mage could go where he pleased, and Kellen took full advantage of that freedom.

  Jermayan was flying with Ancaladar, doing most of the long-range scouting for the little army, but naturally he had brought Valdien with him. Under Deyishene’s tutelage, Kellen’s equestrian skills had improved to the point where—with Jermayan’s permission, and after a proper introduction to Valdien to assure the destrier that it was, indeed, all right—he could take Valdien out of the horse-lines and ride the great storm-colored destrier among the main body of the troops.

  He saw things there that greatly disturbed him.

  He knew already that Elves were creatures of great respect for tradition. He saw now that the tradition extended to the organization of their army. The equivalent sons and daughters of these same Elven households had probably ridden in exactly these positions a thousand years ago, the last time the Elves had gone to war.

  Which meant, Kellen thought with a frown, that when the Elven armies gathered to face Shadow Mountain, the Demon horde would know exactly who and where everyone was. Idalia had told him that the Demons weren’t merely long-lived, like the Elves, but truly immortal. So it wasn’t impossible that there were actual Demon generals out there that had faced the Allied and Elven armies last time.

  He might not know everything about the Art of War yet, but he did know that it wasn’t a good idea for the enemy to know what the entire disposition of your troops was going to be in advance. And if the Elves were as much creatures of Tradition as they appeared—which Kellen had no reason to doubt—Shadow Mountain already knew every possible battle formation they would use.

  Not good.

  Individually, the Elves were unstoppable fighters—and individually they were perfectly capable of improvisation if they put their minds to it And they were smart enough to realize within seconds of an encounter that they were no longer playing by the same rules as they once had been. For some of them, that was fast enough to save them. But the larger the group, the more unwieldy and Tradition-bound it became.

  The easier to defeat.

  He’d identified another problem, Kellen realized with an inward sigh. It was just too bad he couldn’t come up with a solution to it as easily. The Elven Commanders weren’t going to throw out several thousand years of the “proper” way of doing things just on his say-so. And their tactics had worked the last time.

  That’s the root of the problem. It worked twice before. They know it did. So why shouldn’t it work again?

  The only bright spot in things—no more than a faint glimmer, really, to be honest—was that Kellen doubted whoever was running the Demon side of this war had any interest at all in engaging in a series of formal battles. As for the battle against the Shadowed Elves, it wouldn’t be a traditional form of warfare at all, so it would rely on the Elves’ strengths, not their weaknesses.

  It was almost as if they were certain to win … and their victory didn’t matter to Shadow Mountain’s ultimate strategy. But if they ignored the Shadowed Elves, knowing them for the trap that they were, Shadow Mountain would mercilessly exploit that weakness in the Elven Lands’ defenses.

  We’re trapped either way, Kellen thought, in grudging admiration for the unknown Demon general. We have no choice but to do exactly what they want us to do. For now.

  Thirteen

  Ondoladeshiron at Last

  Sentarshadeen was a hidden city, a city of forests and canyons. Ondoladeshiron stood in the middle of a vast plain at the foot of a mountain range—Kellen recalled that Idalia had turned from a Silver Eagle back into human form here; if his memory was right, Ondoladeshiron was also where she’d met Jermayan.

  The buildings of the Elven city echoed the rise and fall of the surface of the plain, and evoked the towering strength of the mountains behind them as well. Like the Elves themselves, Ondoladeshiron had the ability to hide in plain sight: though it should be easy enough to see a large city in the middle of a plain, especially in winter, Ondoladeshiron eluded the eye, deceiving one into thinking it no more than a natural tumble of stones. The buildings looked nothing like buildings of any kind; it was impossible to see anything that didn’t look as if it had been formed entirely by the chaotic action of weather, wind, water, and time. Yet Kellen knew that whatever the Elves were doing to hide their city, they were doing it entirely without magic, merely the skill honed by centuries—millennia!—of observing the natural world.

  One thing that assisted Ondoladeshiron to hide itself was the presence of the Elven army camped at the city’s outskirts on the Gathering Plain. The encampment was as colorful as the city was circumspect, drawing the eye toward itself. At this distance, all Kellen could see was rows of pavilions in colors like the flowers in a spring meadow, and the horse herd beside it. Kellen wondered just how many of them there
were: he, Idalia, and Vestakia had ridden here among nearly two hundred knights, all Andoreniel could spare from the patrols around Sentarshadeen.

  Of course, like every Elven city, Ondoladeshiron also had its Flower Forest In this season, it was the only spot of natural color in the snow-covered landscape. Though the trees at the outer edges of the forest were covered in snow, all were in leaf, and some were in flower.

  “Courage, brother,” Idalia murmured as they neared the encampment.

  “What?” Kellen asked. He was riding Valdien today, and the destrier was (for the most part) behaving himself. Unfortunately, Jermayan’s mount knew that Kellen’s horsemanship wasn’t the equal of his master’s, and Valdien had all Jermayan’s dry sense of humor. He liked to pull tricks on Kellen at odd moments, and then pretend he’d done nothing at all. It took all of Kellen’s attentiveness to remain in the saddle sometimes, though it was doing wonders for his riding skills. It occurred to him that the destrier was giving him the equine equivalent of Belesharon’s lessons in swordsmanship.

  Idalia gave him a strange look. “You’re the first Knight-Mage born in a thousand years. Don’t you think a few people are going to want to meet you? Including other Wildmages?”

  “Oh.” Oh. “But nothing I should worry about, right?” Kellen asked with a crooked smile.

  “Right,” Idalia answered, smiling back.

  ONCE again, being Shalkan’s rider worked in Kellen’s favor. Though the rest of the knights were grouped by the city of their residence, the Unicorn Knights’ pavilions were all bunched together at the very edge of the camp, so that their mounts could come to them easily. By the time Kellen had turned over Valdien to the Sentarshadeen horse-master and found out where he was supposed to be, Petariel already had the wagons with their gear separated out from the rest, and he and the other Sentarshadeen Unicorn Knights were unloading them, while others that Kellen didn’t recognize—even if all Elves looked fairly similar, even to Kellen, the armor of an Elven Knight was highly distinctive—were marking out the places where the pavilions were to be erected.