To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  Not elegant. But a wand of living ashwood. If it wasn’t polished smooth with virgin beeswax and bound in fine silver, those things shouldn’t matter.

  “Eleph. Vath. Kushon. Deeril. Ashan.”

  The sigils every first-year student committed to memory. The building blocks of the High Magick. Cilarnen traced them in the winter air, whispering their names under his breath.

  They hung before him, perfect shapes of colored fire.

  Cilarnen let out his pent-up breath in a sigh of relief.

  THE difficulty with finding the next lair of the Shadow Elves was that it might, literally, be anywhere. Or nowhere. This might have been the only enclave of the creatures—or the Elven Lands might be riddled with them. No one knew—and they dared make no assumptions.

  And Vestakia was the only one who could find them.

  If the Elves knew that, then Shadow Mountain must know it as well. Her life was in constant danger, for without Vestakia, their only alternative was to seek out every cave in the Elven Lands—and even the Elves weren’t quite sure where they all were—and search them all blindly. And such a task could take an Elven lifetime to complete.

  And that was time they did not have.

  Not knowing where the next enclave of the Shadowed Elves might be, Redhelwar made the decision to regroup at Ondoladeshiron. The rest of the Elven Knights would have arrived by now, and the wounded could be better cared for there.

  The army moved more slowly on its retreat, handicapped both by its burden of wounded and by the bitter winter weather. The only mercy was that none of the horses or unicorns had been hurt in the battle—Kellen didn’t think he could have borne that.

  Idalia, Jermayan, and Atroist worked tirelessly among the injured—the sword cuts were bad enough, but these were things that the Elven Healers were used to dealing with, and they were masters of the healing arts. But the wounds caused by acid and poison were resistant to everything the Healers could do, and there the skills of the Wildmages made all the difference.

  Here Kellen faced a great dilemma. It was not that he was unwilling to help his friends and companions in every way he could, though no Knight-Mage would ever be as good a Healer as a true Wildmage—but the Wild Magic exacted a price for every spell, in the form of a task the Wildmage must complete in payment. What if one of those tasks somehow ran counter to doing what needed to be done here?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Idalia told him, when he brought the question to her. “I don’t know of course, but I’m pretty sure the Gods of the Wild Magic want Shadow Mountain out of the way as much as we do. They aren’t likely to set you a Mageprice that will interfere with that. And you need the practice. Someday you might be the only Healer around, and what then?”

  So at the end of each day, Kellen joined the others in the Healers’ tents, doing what he could. Some of the prices he incurred were small and relatively easy to discharge, like going to comfort one of the unicorns whose rider had been slain. Some of them he could not discharge for years to come, if ever—like the order to visit the homeland of the Selken Traders.

  And some were simply odd, like being told to forgive one whom he thought of as an enemy.

  That was puzzling. Kellen didn’t have any personal enemies. Armethalieh had banished him, but even he had to admit there was nothing personal about it. He was trying to exterminate the Shadowed Elves, but again, it was because they were Tainted, not because he hated them personally. He didn’t get along with every single Elf in the army, or in Sentarshadeen, but as far as he knew, he didn’t have any enemies in either place.

  Still, if a personal enemy showed up, Kellen supposed he’d keep his Mageprice in mind and do his best to forgive whoever it was. Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill that person, but he’d forgive them as well.

  Between the long days of riding, and working half the night as a Healer, he was nearly always tired, and the icy conditions didn’t help. It was hard to get to sleep at night, shivering in his blankets, and harder to wake up sooner than he wanted. He learned to get by on less sleep than he would ever have imagined possible, to both eat and sleep in Shalkan’s saddle, and—somehow—stay alert for danger through it all.

  WHEN they reached the Gathering Plain, Kellen saw that the encampment had grown, even without the presence of most of the knights from Ondoladeshiron, Sentarshadeen, Windalorianan, Deskethomaynel, and Thultafoniseen. He recognized the banners of Lerkalpoldara, Valwendigorean, Realthataladon, and Ysterialpoerin: the four northernmost of the Nine Cities had arrived.

  And there were other tents—non-Elven tents—besides.

  “Mountain Traders,” Petariel said cheerfully. Though his leg was still stiff, the combination of Healer skill and Wildmagery had him back in the saddle once more. “I’m glad they’re here. We can use more Wildmages. Oh, not that you’re not very efficient, Kellen,” he added teasingly.

  “I think you said at the time that you’d rather be healed by a snow-bear than let me anywhere near you,” Kellen reminded him with a grin. “And if Gesade hadn’t threatened to stand on you and hold you down, I might have gone and found a snow-bear.”

  “I should have let you,” the unicorn said consideringly. “It would have been fun to watch. And we could have skinned it afterward, and the stubbornest Elf in the Flower Forest would have had a lovely new cloak.”

  “Only if I could have left the bear in it to share it with him,” Kellen said.

  Petariel’s injury—a spear through the knee—had looked bad enough at first, but it was only a day or two later that the Healers had realized how serious the Shadowed Elf poison could be. Nothing they’d been able to do had stopped the spread of the infection that ate the flesh from within. Not even the touch of Gesade’s horn had been able to purify it. Only a Healing Spell had been able to lift the Taint from the wound so that the Healer’s drugs could take effect. By the time Kellen had been called to Petariel’s side, the Unicorn Knight had been delirious with pain and poison … and a very bad patient.

  KELLEN unharnessed Shalkan before seeing to anything else, but by the time the wagons carrying the rest of their gear got to the Unicorn Knights’ encampment, a messenger had arrived as well. It was Dionan, a junior member of the General’s staff.

  “I See you, Kellen Knight-Mage,” Dionan said, bowing.

  “I See you, Dionan,” Kellen said. He returned the bow as best he could with his arms full of Shalkan’s armor.

  “You’re wanted in Redhelwar’s pavilion in two hours,” Dionan said. “He’s gathering all the commanders, and everyone with special experience in fighting the Shadowed Ones.”

  That would be me, Kellen thought with an inward pang. “Thank you. I’ll be there.”

  Two hours would barely give him enough time to change into the cleanest clothes he had—and maybe, if he was lucky—get some tea. His stomach growled. Food, unfortunately, was going to have to wait.

  He set Shalkan’s armor in a convenient location and went looking for his packs.

  IDALIA left her palfrey with the horse-tines—someone else would untack Cella and turn her out with the herd, then clean her tack and bring it to Idalia’s tent. There was little deference to rank among the Elves—at least not in the same way there was among humans—but the work of the Healers was hard and often dangerous, and that brought them a few privileges.

  With Cella seen to, Idalia went off toward the Mountain Traders’ camp to see if she could find some old friends and catch up on the gossip.

  The wind here on the Gathering Plain was sharp and piercing—Idalia, having spent a winter in Ondoladeshiron several years earlier, had dressed for the weather, but even in fur-lined garments, with a heavy fur cloak over everything, she shivered in the wind. The Mountainfolk probably thought this was no more than a brisk spring day, though—it snowed early in the High Reaches, and spring thaw came late. Because of this, the Mountainfolk did very little farming, hunting and trading for most of their needs. They worshiped the Greater Powers in the form
of the Huntsman and the Forest Wife, and were careful to do nothing to offend Them, lest They should withdraw the game and the fruits of the forest.

  The tents of the Mountainfolk were designed to withstand the heaviest of snows, being low domes constructed of waxed canvas with thin rods sewn into the fabric to stiffen it. Once unfolded and staked into place, no amount of snow could collapse them, nor wind overset them. In fact—Idalia could see as she approached their encampment—all of the dun-colored tents had been edged around with high-packed snow for added warmth and stability, so that only the very tops protruded from the mounds of glistening white.

  “Hail, stranger.” A man anonymous in winter furs greeted her as she approached. “Are you lost?”

  “Looking for old friends,” Idalia answered, pushing back the hood of her cloak so he could see her face.

  “By the First Frost—Idalia! Come to give me my mule back, have you?”

  To Idalia’s surprise and delight it was Kearn, one of her closest friends among the Mountain Traders.

  “No more than you’re here to give me my tarnkappa back, Kearn,” she responded with a grin. “I’m fond of that mule, and I traded for her fair and square. Besides, she’s back in Sentarshadeen, and I’m not going all the way there just to fetch her to you.”

  “Well met nevertheless,” Kearn said. “I’m glad you made it away from the Wildwood safely. There’s many that didn’t, so I hear.”

  “What have you heard?” Idalia asked, more sharply than she’d intended. If not for the discovery of the presence of the Shadowed Elves, she’d intended to head south into the Wild Lands this winter, to try to discover more about the aftereffects of Armethalieh’s ill-advised expansion of its Borders.

  “Come along, and I’ll tell you, then. It’s not so very cold out here, but the wind on the flat makes my bones ache. Resel, come and keep watch. The Elves are good folk, to be sure,” he said in an aside to Idalia, “but I think we understand them as little as they understand us, and a man can grow old waiting for them to come to the point when they want something. So it’s best to have someone waiting at the entrance of the camp for when they show up, so we can try to find out what they want and give it to them as quickly as possible.”

  He led Idalia deeper into the camp, back to his tent. Idalia negotiated the low entryway with ease. The space inside was roomy enough, though of course it wasn’t possible to stand upright, and dimly, though adequately, lit by a candle in a glass lantern. The sides of the lantern were thick, double-paned, and filled with water to magnify the flame—and for added safety, should the lantern break.

  Idalia sat cross-legged in a corner while Kearn lit a small spirit-stove and quickly boiled tea.

  It was nothing any Elf would have been willing to drink: black as kaffeyah, twice-boiled, and served with a generous dollop of frozen goat’s butter for seasoning. But the extra calories were welcome in the cold mountain environment that was the Traderfolk’s natural home, and the bitter salty taste was oddly refreshing. Idalia wrapped her hands around the wooden mug to warm them.

  Kearn squatted down on his heels, holding his own cup, and gazed down at the pot as if seeking inspiration for his tale. At last, when Idalia was almost afraid she’d have to prompt him, he began.

  “Last autumn, when you gave me the warning of what the City planned, I went home as swiftly as my girls would go, passing the word of Armethalieh’s encroachment everywhere I stopped. We expected that we would see Lowlander folk coming into our mountains from the Wild Lands—aye, and Otherfolk too. I cannot say that we were happy at the thought, but neither would any of us choose to turn them away, and leave them to the mercies of the City-folk. So we did what we could to prepare, and hoped that the winter would be kind.

  “At first they came in numbers. No one knew how far the City’s thievery would go, so there was much confusion. We made all welcome who came—Centaurs whose homes lay closest to the old border, it was at first, and Lowlander humans who had no taste for City rule. Fauns came too—I did not see them myself, but they spoke to those who serve the Wife, and they said that all the Lowland Otherfolk were coming to us, creatures of air and earth, of river and lake and tree.”

  Kearn stopped, staring broodingly into his cup.

  “But something went wrong,” Idalia prompted at last.

  “Oh, aye,” Kearn said. “It did that. Many that we expected—that the Centaurs expected, that the humans expected, that the fauns told the Children of the Wife to expect … they never came.

  “We did look for them, Idalia. We went down the trails—even into the new so-called City lands, for we have free passage as far as Nerendale, you know, for the trade caravans, and the City magistrates would not trouble us overmuch if they encountered us upon the road. We found a few Wildlanders still heading for the Reaches, and heard that some had decided to stay where they were and fight, though in the end the City pulled its borders back before it had even knocked upon the gates of half the villages in the Wild Lands. But the rest … ? I know no more than that. When word reached us that the City had tucked its tail between its legs and run craven, the farmers that had come to us returned home for the most part, since the children of the plow do not find our mountains hospitable. The rest are with us here, come to fight since they cannot farm. As for the Shining Ones, who can say? I think they would wish to return to their own lands if they could, and perhaps they have.”

  Idalia nodded. Kearn’s story made little more sense to her than it did to Kearn, but what was certain was that it wasn’t good news. There was no way to tell now how many folk—human, Centaurs, and Otherfolk—had simply vanished, but she could make a pretty good guess at how they had vanished.

  Demons.

  Demons needed blood and pain and death to fuel their magic, and while the raids they conducted on Atroist’s people could have provided enough victims to do something like build the Black Cairn, they would have needed to replenish their store of power afterward. Armethalieh’s attempt to annex the Wild Lands had provided the Demons with a perfect opportunity to conduct secret raids among the refugees, harvesting hundreds—perhaps—of victims, all unnoticed. In all of the confusion and chaos, who would have thought to look for Demon raids?

  “You’ve thought of something,” Kearn observed.

  “Nothing encouraging,” Idalia said, taking a swallow of her bitter black tea. “And it’s not even a theory, really. Just a supposition.”

  Just then Resel poked his head into the tent’s opening. “The Elves,” he announced in long-suffering tones, “are looking for the sister of the Knight-Mage. I promised I’d look, else they’d have set the place on its horns. Do we have such an item as a sister anywhere about the camp, Kearn?”

  “That,” Idalia announced, setting down her mug, “would be me. I’d better go find out what they want. I thank you for your news, Kearn—though I’m not sure thanks is really the right word.”

  “It so rarely is these days. So much of the news is bad,” Kearn agreed somberly. “Fare you well, then, Idalia.”

  He escorted her to the edge of the Mountainfolk camp, and Idalia, tucking her cloak tightly around her against the eternal winter wind, went off to find out who wanted to see her.

  SHE caught up with Dionan fairly quickly. He had Vestakia with him, and they were searching among the Healers’ tents, obviously looking for her.

  “Idalia!” Vestakia cried, sounding breathless with relief. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  “So I discover,” Idalia said dryly. “Here I am. I See you, Dionan.”

  “I See you, Idalia Wildmage,” Dionan answered, bowing respectfully. “Redhelwar asks, if you would find it convenient, if perhaps it would please you to join him in his tent.”

  No wonder the Elves drive the Mountainfolk crazy, Idalia thought wryly. From her long experience with the Elves, she had no difficulty understanding that she had been bidden to come to the Elven General at once—whether it “pleased” her or not. But few humans without e
quivalent experience of the Elves would find Dionan’s words as easy to decode.

  “Of course,” Idalia said. “It would please me greatly,” she added for good measure.

  Dionan led her—and Vestakia as well—through the milling and confusion of the camp. Redhelwar’s scarlet pavilion was an oasis of serenity in the midst of all the apparent disorder—though nothing in an Elven camp was ever really disorganized.

  When they reached the tent, Dionan bowed them in ahead of him. Idalia entered first, and found that the pavilion was filled with people.

  Kellen was there, and Jermayan, as well as a number of the high-ranking Elven war leaders. More surprising—for this seemed to be a strategy meeting—Rochinuviel, the Vicereign of Ondoladeshiron, was there, and Atroist as well.

  Naturally, tea must be served and drunk before the business of the meeting could be discussed, though things went swiftly by Elven standards. When the delicate Elvenware cups had been collected and set aside, Redhelwar spoke.

  “We have been blooded by the foe, and he will be a difficult enemy to master,” Redhelwar said. “Yet by the grace of Leaf and Star, and with Vestakia’s aid and that of our Wildmages, we shall find the dark places in which he bides and scour his presence from the land, so that They have no foothold here, and the poor tortured spirits of our cousins can find rest at last.”

  There was a profound moment of silence, and Idalia remembered what Kellen had told her: even while they devoted every fiber of their being to killing the Shadowed Elves, their Elves never stopped thinking of them as Elves, and hating the necessity that drove them to slaughter what they considered to be their own kind.

  “Yet this is a fight that cannot be won with sword and spear alone,” Redhelwar said, continuing. “We must once more take up our alliance with those who wield the Wild Magic, as it was in the time of the Great War. To that end, Rochinuviel brings word from Andoreniel.”