To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  FOUR days later, the Elven army marched on the cavern of the Shadowed Elves.

  Idalia had done her best to try to detect other encampments of the creatures using the Wild Magic, but had had no more luck than on previous occasions, and Vestakia’s power did not work at any great distance.

  Atroist had made the attempt as well, both using the scrying bowl, and using an instrument new to Kellen and Idalia, something he called a hanging-crystal. When not in use, he wore it on a cord about his neck: it looked to Kellen like a clear, teardrop-shaped keystone, the narrow end wrapped with silver wire to make a loop for the cord to pass through.

  But apparently it could be used to find things.

  Atroist demonstrated in Idalia’s pavilion. It found, in succession, a set of her hair combs, Kellen’s dagger, and a pair of Vestakia’s gloves, all hidden in various places about the tent as a test. When the crystal was working, it would point directly toward the object, even if it had to hover horizontally at the end of its cord to do so.

  Then they turned to the map. Without difficulty, and with perfect accuracy, the hanging crystal located Ondoladeshiron, Sentarshadeen, Armethalieh, and the Wildwood.

  But it was completely unable to locate any of the Shadowed Elf enclaves, even the one they already knew about.

  “Well,” Idalia said with a sigh, “we tried. I guess it’s up to you, Vestakia.”

  Vestakia nodded grimly. None of them were happy about this, but none of them were surprised, either.

  Just once, Kellen thought, as he made his way back to his tent, just once it would be so nice to be pleasantly surprised about something in this war.

  THE Elven Knights of five cities marched in force, though not all of them would make the descent into the caverns. Once the caverns themselves had been cleansed, Kellen knew, Redhelwar intended to reclaim the bodies of their fallen comrades and fellow Elves lost in the attack upon the caravan from Sentarshadeen.

  The Unicorn Knights rode nearly a mile ahead of the main army, functioning as its scouts and trailblazers, following a trail Kellen had last ridden less than two moonturns before.

  At the end of six days of traveling, the Unicorn Knights reached the battlefield. They’d seen no sign of coldwarg, ice-trolls, or frost-giants, and Ancaladar had reported that the skies were clear of Deathwings. From here it was only two days to the Shadowed Elf caverns, at the speed the army traveled.

  To the unaided eye, everything was pure and pristine, the bodies buried beneath several feet of new snow, but no one thought of it that way. This was a haunted place, drenched in blood and sorrow, and would remain so forever in the memories of the Elves.

  Ancaladar and Jermayan circled low over the field, the wind from the dragon’s wings stirring the loose surface-snow into dancing veils. A second circle, and Ancaladar headed westward again.

  “It looks as if they’ll find us a place to lay our heads tonight,” Gesade said, stretching out her long elegant neck and shaking it. “Useful things, dragons.”

  “I have never said dragons weren’t useful,” Petariel said to his mount. “And if you could fly, Gesade, there’s a faint possibility you might someday be of some use as well.”

  The unicorn snorted and did not reply.

  THE campsite Jermayan and Ancaladar had found was, Kellen judged—perhaps three hours’ ride from the caverns, in a sheltered valley surrounded by towering pines. It was a large enough open space to hold their entire force, and far enough away from the cavern that their arrival should not alert the Shadowed Elves.

  Once the army and the supply train arrived, and the camp was in place, Redhelwar called his commanders—and Vestakia and the Wildmages—to the command tent to make his final dispositions for the attack, and to make certain that all the commanders had the opportunity to review the maps that Kellen and Idalia had prepared.

  Vestakia would be going into the caverns with them. Kellen was worried about that. While Tandarion had made her a fine suit of Elven armor to protect her—with goldwashed vermilion enameling the precise shade of her skin— she did not have either fighting skills or Wildmagery to protect her further.

  But she was the only one who could sense the presence of the Shadowed Elves.

  Being able to see in the caverns was the major problem. Idalia and Atroist had bespelled all the tarnkappa so that they granted darksight, but they had only a couple of dozen of them; such things were major Workings, and even with so many willing to share the Mageprice, there had been a limited amount of time to make them. And the problem with tarnkappa was that they concealed you from friend as well as foe.

  Lanterns and torches were a possibility. But they could be easily extinguished by the enemy.

  “Magelight,” Idalia said. “It’s a simple spell, and not very costly. And nobody will have to worry about carrying lanterns, either.”

  “Magelight?” Atroist asked, looking puzzled.

  “This,” Jermayan said. He cupped his hands, holding them a little apart. The space between them grew misty, then began to glow, and in seconds he was holding a small blue ball of light. He spread his hands, and it floated up over his head.

  “Ah,” Atroist said. “In the Lost Lands, we call that Coldfire. Yes, Idalia, an elegant solution.”

  “It would be well to know that enough can be made in time,” Redhelwar said.

  “It can be done,” Jermayan said. “I will do it, so that there is no cost. There will be prices enough to pay for all by the time we are done.”

  ANCALADAR had told them that the Shadowed Elves moved by night, so Redhelwar made plans for a midmorning attack, hoping to take them by surprise. Ancaladar said there were only two ways into the caverns—the way he and Kellen had taken to rescue Idalia, and the way she had taken to bring out the children. Based on the descriptions of both, Redhelwar elected to send the army in through the latter. Jermayan and Ancaladar would go around by the “back way,” meeting up with the main force as quickly as they could.

  Redhelwar elected to divide his force into four groups: one, the main force that would enter the caverns and mount the attack. Two, a small force that would wait just outside the cavern mouth to secure it Three, a mobile force situated halfway between the caverns and the camp to secure the line of retreat, and which could be called up quickly at need. And four, a sufficient force left behind to guard the camp in case the Enemy was only waiting for them to leave to attack it.

  Considering the information they had available—which was very little—Kellen could find no fault with Redhelwar’s dispositions. He thought it would be more tactful to keep quiet about that fact, though.

  THEY left the camp an hour after sunrise, heading for the caverns. Each of them had a ball of Coldfire hovering over his or her head like a peculiar nimbus, the radiance only a faint shimmer in the winter sunlight It would remain until Jennayan—or another Wildmage—dispersed it again.

  Kellen was grateful that Shalkan didn’t ask him if he was nervous. He hardly knew whether he was or not. His mind was filled with everything that could go wrong and a dull frustration that he hadn’t thought of suggesting that someone—him—do a thorough scouting expedition of the caverns before they went in with their entire force.

  But pulling back now would do more harm than good; what information they might gain would be offset by the damage to the morale of the army. And deep down, Kellen wasn’t entirely certain that Redhelwar would have taken his suggestion.

  That was the real problem. The Elves honored him. They respected him. But Kellen didn’t set policy for the Nine Cities. He didn’t plan strategy for the army. And he didn’t have a real voice in the tactics it would use.

  Yet.

  Yet?

  The sudden thought—no, realization—startled him so much that he tensed all over. Shalkan craned his head around to gaze curiously at him, but Kellen shook his head wordlessly, and Shalkan went back to gazing at the path ahead.

  Yes, yet. There would come a time—there needed to come a time—when the army did
what Kellen said, not what Redhelwar said. But—he remembered the lesson of the Crowned Horns—you couldn’t command that sort of trust. You needed to earn it.

  He needed to earn it.

  And fast.

  Then Andoreniel would give him the army. Redhelwar would step aside without anger. The army would follow him.

  If he was good enough. If he could prove he could lead an army, and keep it alive, and win. If he could prove that being a Knight-Mage made him understand strategy as instinctively as he understood fighting one-on-one.

  One single moment of blind panic touched him. I don’t know how to do that!

  But he did. Gan had taught him. Xaqiue had taught him. Master Belesharon’s story songs had taught him. Win a battle. Command a troop—and win. Command a larger detachment—and win.

  Win, always. Plan—and show them his plans were better than theirs. And make the Elves see him as a Knight-Mage first, and a young human second. Better yet, get to the point where they looked at him and saw only the Knight-Mage, and the young human not at all.

  And the first thing he needed to do to accomplish all that was to get through today.

  “Here we are,” Shalkan said.

  The Unicorn Knights who had been chosen for the assault had ridden a little ahead of the main body of fighters. Now they dismounted to allow their mounts to get clear of the main army.

  The cavern mouth was empty, and there were no footprints on the snow that lay before it. Kellen shifted to battle-sight for a moment, but saw no sign of a trap.

  That didn’t make a lot of sense. The Shadowed Elves must know their lair had been discovered. Any sensible. creature would have posted guards, or blocked the entrance somehow.

  But they hadn’t.

  “Is everything well?” Petariel asked.

  “Much too well,” Kellen answered grimly. “It’s as if they can’t imagine we could possibly ever come back.”

  “Maybe they left,” Petariel suggested. “Vestakia will tell us soon enough.”

  Adaerion was at the head of the force that arrived a few moments later. Redhelwar was waiting with the mobile force—the General of the army was too valuable to lose. Vestakia rode beside him, and Kellen could tell with just one look at her posture—uncomfortably hunched over—that the Shadowed Elves had not left.

  “They’re still there,” he said.

  “Ah,” Petariel said, following the direction of Kellen’s gaze. “Well, I should hate to have ridden all this way for nothing.”

  THEY formed up in the way they had planned at the War Council the night before. Kellen and an Elf called Celegaer, Adaerion’s lieutenant, would go first, with Vestakia and Idalia directly behind them. Vestakia would give warning the moment she sensed the presence of the Shadowed Elves.

  “Leaf and Star be with you all,” Adaerion said gravely.

  Kellen nodded, forcing himself to wait until Celegaer took the first step toward the cavern before following. He kept himself from looking toward Vestakia and Idalia—or any of his comrades from the House of Sword and Shield. Barring a miracle, this was the last time some of them would see the light of day. This was a war. Fighters died in war.

  Get used to it.

  Kellen walked into the dark.

  The Magelight seemed to glow brighter the further they went along the passage, until it was the only illumination. The Elves moved silently, but he could hear the faint rustle of Idalia’s clothing, and every sound that Vestakia’s armor made.

  Suddenly Vestakia gave a gagging whimper. “They’re here—ahead—” she choked out.

  “The passage widens just ahead,” Kellen said quickly to Celegaer. “Hurry—we can’t let them trap us here!”

  Without waiting to hear Celegaer’s reply, he ran forward.

  At the end of the passageway, wider corridors opened out to the left and right, just as Idalia had described. They were crowded with the Shadowed Elves—too many to easily count—and this time the creatures were armed, not to capture a dragon, but to fight.

  The Shadowed Elves wore bits and pieces of looted armor lashed to their bodies with strips of leather. But ragged and mismatched as their armor was, their weaponry was in gleaming earnest. Swords and shields—spears—

  And bows.

  Kellen dropped into battle-mind. Without thought, he raised his shield, and the first of the small deadly arrows fired out of the dark glanced off it.

  The Shadowed Elves swarmed—there was no other word to describe their movement—forward. They obviously didn’t like the light, but they weren’t blinded by it as some of the Elves had hoped. Kellen cut down the creatures before him and pressed forward, he and Celegaer trying to clear the way for the Elves that were moving up behind them.

  But he quickly realized that their tactics weren’t working.

  Individually the Shadowed Elves were comparatively frail. But they were attacking in enormous numbers, taking advantage of the cramped tunnels—and what was worse, they weren’t limited to the floor of the caverns.

  They climbed along the walls and ceiling, dropping into the middle of their foes to bear the Elves down by sheer weight of numbers. By ones and twos it was nothing to kill them, but they weren’t attacking by ones and twos.

  Kellen fought on, moving deeper into the right-hand cavern at the spearhead of a group of Knights. Up ahead, the Shadowed Elf archers were firing with deadly accuracy. He could see the arrows glowing dull green in his battle-sight, and knew from that that the arrows were poisoned. He would have shouted a warning, but it would have gone unheard. The cavern was filled with the screams of the injured; the clash of weapons; and the hoarse howls and barking of the Shadowed Elves. Kellen shut out the noise and concentrated on his task.

  Cut, step, turn, and cut again. Block, attack, dodge. Celegaer was on his left, another Knight was at his back. One of the Shadowed Elves dropped down on him from above. Kellen grunted, bending forward with the impact, turning the move into a forward throw to dislodge the creature.

  He felt the wind of an arrow pass his cheek. There was a muffled grunt behind him. Kellen heard—and felt—the Elven Knight fall to the floor of the cavern and die.

  He killed the creature on the ground and moved forward.

  At last the Elves’ superior battle skills and heavier, more effective armor turned the tide. The battlefield opened up, and it soon became a matter of keeping the Shadowed Elves from escaping, and then it came to executing the enemy wounded and checking the dead.

  And that was when Kellen found himself just standing there, sword hanging from his limp grip, staring at an empty tunnel.

  “Kellen.” Celegaer laid a gentle hand upon his shoulder. “Go back and rest for a moment. Then ask Idalia if Vestakia is well enough to come forward.”

  Kellen blinked, feeling almost as if he were rousing from a deep sleep. He nodded, and turned away.

  He had to move carefully through the piles of corpses, and the stone was slick with blood. It soaked the bodies lying in it, staining them all, Elf and Shadowed Elf alike, the same terrible scarlet color. The blue globes of Coldfire—so many, in such a confined space—made the scene shadowless and stark.

  Grief and shame hovered over the battlefield like carrion birds. Kellen had expected the grief—there were too many Elven dead, and he knew that soon he would be mourning the loss of friends—but shame? He did not understand. They’d fought well. They’d won. There was no cause for shame.

  Was there?

  At the end of the corridor he found Petariel. The Captain of the Unicorn Knights had been wounded: a spear had taken him just behind the knee, at one of the weak points of the Elven armor. He leaned against the wall, a makeshift bandage over his wound, his helmet beneath his arm.

  And to Kellen’s astonishment, he was weeping.

  “Oh, Kellen, our poor cousins. Leaf and Star, that we should be driven to this—!” Petariel said.

  Kellen had no idea what he meant, but there would be time later to figure it out. “Come on,” he said
, getting an arm under Petariel’s shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here. Gesade and Shalkan both would have my head if I let anything happen to you.”

  Petariel laughed raggedly, but it ended on a strangled sob. “The worst has already happened,” he said softly.

  Kellen half-carried Petariel back up the passageway. He felt a deep pang of relief to see Idalia and Vestakia both there, unhurt—and quickly focused all of his attention on Petariel, lest his worry for Vestakia’s safety turn into something he must not feel right now.

  “Ah, another one,” Idalia said lightly. “The stretcherbearers will be back in just a moment.”

  “I can walk,” Petariel said grimly.

  “No you can’t,” Idalia said firmly. “Not if you want to be riding again soon.”

  Kellen helped Petariel to lie down among the other wounded. There were several Healers working in the narrow space, and a constant stream of the walking wounded were moving out toward the open air.

  Everything was moving so slowly! But that was why the Shadowed Elves didn’t bother with guards, Kellen now realized. They were sure no one could attack them in force.

  Once he was sure his emotions were under control, he risked a glance at Vestakia.

  Vomit stained the front of her surcoat, and she knelt beside Idalia, obviously dazed and exhausted by the presence of so much Taint. Kellen sighed reluctantly.

  “Celegaer needs Vestakia,” he said to Idalia.

  “Now?” Idalia asked.

  “I’m ready,” Vestakia said valiantly, raising her head. There were deep shadows beneath her eyes, and she looked haggard.