To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Not yet. Soon. He told me to rest,” Kellen added, trying to make a joke of it.

  “As if you would,” Idalia said, handing him a waterskin. “Are you hurt?”

  Kellen shook his head, and drank. The water was warm, but it was unicorn-pure. He felt better afterward.

  “I think they threw most of what they had at us. Some of them got away, though. We’ll have to find them,” Kellen said.

  “That will be my job,” Vestakia said bravely.

  “Come on, then,” Kellen said gruffly, sounding far more brusque than he wanted to. But he couldn’t help it. He felt as if he had no energy to spare for anything.

  Idalia and Vestakia followed him back into the cavern.

  Celegaer and several of the others were waiting for them just past the end of the bodies. All of them had the faintly stunned air of grief about them that Kellen had noticed before.

  “Vestakia,” Celegaer said, seeing her. “Are you well?”

  “Well enough to do what you ask of me,” Vestakia answered steadily.

  “Then find our foe,” Celegaer said.

  Without hesitation, Vestakia pointed—not along the corridor, but at the corridor wall.

  “The corridor curves,” Idalia said. “That’s the direction of the cavern village. There will be females and young there,” she warned.

  “We can leave none alive,” Celegaer said wearily.

  “I know,” Idalia said gently.

  “Celegaer,” Kellen said. “If I can suggest … now we know where the village is, and Vestakia is too valuable to risk. Send her outside to wait with Adaerion until we think we have cleared the cavern, then bring her in to check to see if we have missed anyone.”

  “No!” Vestakia protested.

  “Yes,” Celegaer said. “An excellent suggestion, Kellen. Padredor, escort Mistress Vestakia back to Adaerion, and order the rest of the knights to come forward. Idalia Wildmage, will you also withdraw?”

  “No,” Idalia said, taking a moment to consider. “I think I can be useful here.”

  Fourteen

  Blood and Sorrow

  Soon they were moving forward again. Only about half their original force remained. There were not many dead, considering the savagery of the battle, but there were many wounded, and though some of the wounds were minor, Celegaer had not wanted to take wounded Elves into battle.

  We’re too spread out, and there’s no way to avoid it in these tunnels. All the advantage is theirs, Kellen thought. We’re going to have to figure out how to fight this kind of battle—fast—in order to win it.

  At last the tunnel widened out into the great cavern that Idalia had described, with the narrow pathway leading around the rim, and the stairs going down to the village below. The cavern was so vast that the Coldfire coronas of the assembled army did nothing more than light their immediate surroundings. All they could see of what was below was the faint glow of the central firepit.

  With a flick of her hand, Idalia sent her ball of Coldfire out to hover over the cavern. The light was faint, but enough to show that the crude stone village below was silent and still.

  “Ambush,” Kellen said with utter certainty.

  “You can sense them?” Celegaer asked with surprise.

  “No,” Kellen said. “But I know they’re waiting for us all the same. Or waiting for us to go away”.

  “Either course would gain them a victory, of a sort,” Celegaer answered. “So we go down. But not unwarily. Archers—to the rim.”

  Once the archers were in place, the Elven Knights began descending the stair. It would have been the perfect place for an ambush, but the Shadowed Elves did not take advantage of it. When the first group of Elves was at the bottom of the staircase, their combined Coldfire illuminated the cavern, giving Kellen a good look at it for the first time.

  It was as large as Merryvale—the entire village could have been dropped down neatly inside it, walls and all. There were scattered small huts, and along the cavern wall, Kellen could see holes—they reminded him uncomfortably of very large rat-holes—in the rock.

  The Elves stood, silent, motionless.

  What are they waiting for? Kellen wondered. He wasn’t looking forward to this any more than they were, but it wouldn’t get any easier—or any better—if they waited.

  And where were Jermayan and Ancaladar?

  He looked toward Celegaer.

  Celegaer met his gaze, and there was despair in the black eyes. After a moment, Celegaer spoke.

  “Search every structure, every hole. Find them all, down to the smallest infant. Kill them all. No survivors. No prisoners.” The Elven commander’s voice was harsh.

  He turned away, striding toward the nearest hut.

  The Elves fanned out, spreading across the cavern floor.

  For a moment there was silence.

  Then Celegaer screamed, and the cavern exploded in a harsh babble of barks and whines.

  Kellen ran in the direction of the scream. He was too late. Celegaer was dead, his face and the front of his armor eaten away by a liquid thrown at him by a Shadowed Elf female who had just come out of the stone hut. The archers on the rim had filled her body with arrows, but they had been too late to save their commander.

  Celegaer’s troops were staring down at him in shock and horror.

  “Search the hut!” Kellen ordered. “Keep your shields forward—we know they use poison as a weapon—now we know they use acid, too.”

  He moved on quickly, heading for the next hut. The doorway was low; he had to duck to get inside.

  It was one room, windowless, and it stank. It contained a pile of furs and three small children.

  I can’t do this, Kellen thought in sick horror. He knew they weren’t children—they were Shadowed Elves—but they were young things. Very young. They hissed at him, cringing back from the light.

  Then suddenly all three of them shrieked and sprang at him. There was no fear in their bulging pale eyes, only the berserker madness of cornered rats. They swarmed up his body, scrabbling for every purchase, clawing and biting at everything they could reach.

  Reflexively, Kellen knocked them away, but they kept coming back. He could see their glistening, needlelike teeth, smell their rank, poison-tainted breath. No matter how many times he flung them away from him, they sprang up and lunged for him again.

  Then one of them pulled Kellen’s dagger free of its sheath.

  It was an Elven dagger, made of deadly Elvensteel and designed to pierce any opening or weakness in the Elven armor’s defenses. Seeing the length of gleaming steel in the young thing’s hands made all of his battle-honed instincts rouse at once. They weren’t children anymore—they were the enemy.

  With a gasping cry, he struck the Shadowed Elf child as hard as he could, then grabbed the other two and flung them against the walls of the hut, stunning them.

  Then he took his sword and killed them all.

  Bile rose in his throat as he retrieved his dagger, and Kellen breathed deeply, trying to center himself again. But the self-forgiveness he sought would not come. He had killed children. How could he accept that?

  I will have to find a way. Or not. And whether I can or not, finding out if I can will have to wait. Because my comrades are dying now.

  Gritting his teeth, Kellen left the hut.

  All around him, the battle was going badly. There weren’t as many of the enemy this time, but the Elves were taking terrible losses. They simply couldn’t bring themselves to attack and kill what they saw—despite everything—as women and children.

  And it was costing them dearly.

  Suddenly the cavern was ablaze with light—as bright as the noonday sun at midsummer. Kellen looked up, and saw that the entire roof of the cavern was glowing with bright blue Coldfire.

  Jermayan and Ancaladar had arrived.

  “Pull back. I’m going to burn the huts.” Jermayan’s voice spoke quietly, as if in his ear, and Kellen could tell by the startled expressions on the fac
es of the Elves that everyone else had heard it too. They began to retreat.

  But it was easier asked than done, especially when they had to protect their wounded and recover their dead, and it was several minutes of hard and bloody fighting before that could be accomplished.

  The Shadowed Elves fought viciously, as much like animals—or insects—as like thinking beings. They did not seem to care if they sacrificed any of their own—down to the smallest infant—if it brought them a greater chance of killing one of the Elves. In cold disbelief, Kellen saw the Shadowed Elf archers using their own young as shields, saw children younger than the ones he’d killed springing upon Elven warriors, armed with jars of acid like the one that had killed Celegaer. He dragged one of the Elves out of the way just in time, striking his young attacker dead. The spilled liquid fumed and bubbled over the corpse, smoking and stinking.

  The Elves were barely clear of the huts, fighting their way toward the staircase, when suddenly every stone structure within the cavern save for the staircase burst into flame.

  That isn’t possible, thought Kellen in awe. Any Wildmage or High Mage could summon Fire—but only to burn what would burn naturally. But this … ? The stone itself was burning as if it were seasoned wood drenched in lamp oil. In seconds, a roaring wall of heat separated the combatants from their prey.

  Shadowed Elves—bodies aflame—ran from some of the huts, only to be cut down by the archers, in mercy.

  The Shadowed Elves who had not been in the huts were trapped by the walls of flame. Their response to the sudden wave of magic was one of utter terror. The archers who had been holding living shields threw them down and tried to flee, but there was nowhere to go, save into the Elven army.

  It was no longer a battle, but a massacre. Some of the Shadowed Elves ran toward the flames. Kellen saw females grab struggling children and throw them into burning huts, the structures already collapsing into ash. The archers shot all they could before the flames took them.

  It was over quickly. The huts were gone, the stone burned away to ash. A wall of icy air filled the cavern, wiping away the furnace heat. The stone floor creaked and groaned, forced to cool as quickly as it had been heated.

  Ancaladar launched himself from the rim of the cavern, landing in the now-empty space.

  Kellen glanced around quickly, feeling a deep pang of relief to see that Idalia was still on her feet, though her garments were tattered and blood-soaked and her face was grim.

  All of the Elves looked stunned. They’d won the battle, but at a terrible cost, both physical and spiritual.

  Which is what Shadow Mountain wants, Kellen realized with a flash of insight. THAT’S what this war is about. It’s just another kind of drought. The last one starved the land. This one starves the spirit.

  Realizing that, he felt his own soul-sickness ease. He’d hated what he’d done here today with all his being. But it had been necessary. The Shadowed Elves were Demonic in nature. They were creatures of the Endarkened, created as a trap for the creatures of the Light. To show them mercy would be to doom the Light.

  I pity them, because I think they have no choice to be other than what they are. And I forgive them, because they have no choice. But I have a choice to fight for what I think is right, and I also forgive myself for making it.

  But the Elves—oh, it was different for them. Not only had they been killing women and children, they had been killing kin. Blood of their blood. Tainted, but still their own.

  I have to figure out how to take that guilt away from them …

  Kellen took a few steps toward Jermayan and Ancaladar.

  “It took you long enough,” Kellen said. He could sense the tension of the Elves—normal Wildmagery was one thing, but what they’d just seen went far beyond that.

  “We were hunting Shadowed Elves,” Ancaladar said in his deep soft voice. “And a way here that I could pass through was hard to find.”

  Jermayan was looking past Kellen, searching the armored figures for familiar forms. He came over to Kellen.

  “Celegaer?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Dead,” Kellen said. “Vestakia is waiting outside with Adaerion and the reserves. We didn’t want to risk her.”

  “Better she not see … this,” Jermayan said grimly.

  “Kellen,” Idalia said, coming up. Her voice echoed in the empty space. “I hate to say this, but … Celegaer is dead, Padredor is badly wounded, and so is Tinbendon. They can’t find Perchalas. And you’re a Knight-Mage.”

  Kellen looked from Jermayan to Idalia, not understanding.

  “You are the ranking officer able to command,” Jermayan said quietly. “What do we do?”

  He’d wanted the job. He just hadn’t expected to get it now.

  “Can you widen the steps to the surface? We need to transport the dead and wounded,” he said.

  “He doesn’t ask much, does he?” Ancaladar commented.

  “Yes,” Jermayan said, answering Kellen.

  Jermayan stretched out his hand. And the steps … blurred.

  For a moment Kellen thought there must be something wrong with his vision. But when it steadied again, he could see that the steps were wider than before, as broad and easy as any grand staircase in a High Mage’s house.

  Kellen stared at Jermayan and Ancaladar, his emotions in turmoil. Awe, yes, and not a little fear. Not of his friends, but … this was power but of legend, out of wondertales.

  “It comes at a price,” Jermayan said quietly.

  “Yes,” Kellen said. If no other price than the price of being set apart from everything normal and familiar by living in a world you could reshape with a thought.

  “Cover our retreat,” he said to Jermayan and Ancaladar. “Then get out yourselves. I think we got them all, but we won’t know until Vestakia tells us.”

  He turned and went back to the others.

  “Gather up the dead. Prepare the wounded for transport. We’re leaving.”

  Kellen had learned by watching that a good commander gave an order and left the details to his subordinates. He did nothing to interfere with the arrangements for departure. He was busy enough helping to bandage the wounded. Neither he nor Idalia dared to risk any healings—though everyone there would have been willing to share the price, they had been fighting all day, and it would have been cruel to ask it, nor did either Wildmage dare to risk deeper exhaustion and incurring Magedebt themselves.

  But Jermayan was not so bound. He moved among the injured, Healing the worst of the injuries until Kellen saw him stagger with weariness as he rose from beside a supine body.

  A dragon’s power might be inexhaustible. But a Mage was not

  “Stop it,” Kellen said quietly, going over and putting a hand under Jermayan’s arm. “We need you to be able to fight if you have to. That’s more important.”

  “More important than their lives?” Jermayan demanded in an anguished whisper.

  “They’ll be with the Healers soon,” Kellen said. “And if you cannot fight when we need you, we may all die.”

  He did not know where the words were coming from. They were harsh and brutal, but they seemed to be the right thing to say, for Jermayan nodded slowly and walked back to where Ancaladar waited.

  The Elves began moving up the newly-broadened staircase, carrying those too injured to walk—and the dead—in makeshift slings formed of cloaks and surcoats.

  They carried the Shadowed Elf dead with them as well, all that they had been able to recover. Kellen was surprised at that, but had said nothing. He would never, he realized, truly understand the Elves, even if he lived among them for the rest of his life.

  Kellen was the last up the stairs. At the top he stopped and looked back. The cavern was utterly empty save for Jermayan and Ancaladar, and a fine coating of grey ash upon the floor.

  IT was twilight by the time Kellen stepped into the open air again. The corridors through which he had passed had been utterly empty. The Elves and the Shadowed Elves were gone, and only
spilled blood remained.

  The army had moved more slowly as the corridor narrowed, and the slower Kellen moved, the more it seemed he could feel exhaustion dragging at his limbs. When they reached the narrow corridor to the outside, he simply stopped, leaning against the wall and resting until Idalia came back for him.

  “We thought you might have gotten lost,” she said, handing him a wooden cup.

  Kellen shook his head wordlessly. The cup held hot cider. He drained it in a few quick gulps.

  “Vestakia?” he asked.

  “She doesn’t sense any Taint from where she is, which is good. Redhelwar wants her to go down to be sure, but that can wait until tomorrow, if you agree.”

  If I agree? When had Redhelwar started consulting him?

  “She doesn’t sense anything? How close is she?” Kellen asked.

  “Right outside,” Idalia said. “She said she could feel it when …” Idalia stopped.

  “When we’d killed all of them down in the cavern,” Kellen said gently. “Maybe she should go up to the other entrance now and check there, just to be sure. But I don’t think any of them ran.”

  “Come on, then. You’ll need to make your report.”

  THE reserve force had been brought up, and transport wagons were being used to carry away the wounded. The dead, to whom time no longer mattered, lay in neat rows in the snow, waiting to be carried away in their turn. Kellen looked away—there would be time enough later to find out who had died today.

  Globes of Coldfire, interspersed with more conventional lanterns, flickered over the landscape, lending the twilight an ethereal, insubstantial quality, as if he were in a waking dream—or a nightmare.

  Idalia led him toward Redhelwar. The general was seated on his bay destrier, Vestakia at his side on a cream palfrey. Her eyes widened in horror at the sight of him.

  “I will not ask you for a detailed report now, Kellen Knight-Mage,” Redhelwar said, “but I will need a preliminary one.”

  “We entered the cavern village,” Kellen said. “It was occupied by females and young, as well as by the survivors of the first attack—mostly archers, I think. They hid until we entered the village and started going into the huts. They attacked us with acid and poison weapons. Jermayan and Ancaladar arrived and set fire to the village, and we … did what we’d set out to do. Celegaer is dead, two of his lieutenants were badly injured, and the third is missing. So we left.”