To Light a Candle

by Mercedes Lackey

  Rochinuviel bowed, stepping forward. The Vicereign was gowned as elaborately as she had been on the day that she had greeted the Unicorn Knights on the Gathering Plain. Diamonds and moonstones glowed and glittered in her long black hair, and she wore a cloak of thick white fur over a gown of white velvet banded in ermine and satin as bright as ice. But despite the fact that she was dressed for Court in a pavilion full of men and women wearing armor and coarser furs, she did not look out of place. She was simply Rochinuviel, as inviolate as the snowcapped peaks.

  “Your words honor me, Redhelwar. The words of Andoreniel will bring change to the Elven Lands. It is, as I am sure you expect, a hard counsel, but wise, and in time of danger, new ideas must not be set aside merely because they are new. Andoreniel’s words are these: the Lostlanders must come south, every man, woman, and child of them, every goat and sheep, every household chattel. No living thing which they value is to be left behind. They will be granted safe passage through the Elven Lands, escorted by our own people, all the way to the lands of Men. Then shall their Wildmages fight among us against the Shadowed Elves, and those of their young men who are willing as well. All of the Lostlanders who take up arms in honor of the ancient treaties shall be our valued allies, and all the rest shall be safe in the Lands of Men, and all who aid them there shall have the gratitude of the Elves. So says Andoreniel, Lord of the Nine Cities.”

  Atroist let out a deep sigh of relief, bowing his head.

  “I shall tell them this at once, Lady. You are more than generous.”

  “It is not I who am generous,” Rochinuviel said, rebuking him gently, “but Andoreniel, who speaks through me. I have given his words, and now I will go, and leave you to see to the matters of war. You will tell Andoreniel when he may expect your people to arrive.”

  She drew her white cloak more firmly around her and walked from the tent. Her escort—another Elf, dressed almost identically, but in shades of palest grey—followed silently.

  “To know this thing will make good hearing,” Redhelwar observed, in the silence that followed.

  “I can speak to Drothi today,” Atroist said. “With help it will be easier, but—”

  “Of course we’ll help,” Idalia said firmly, glancing at Jermayan and Kellen. “Just tell us what you need.”

  “Ah.” Atroist smiled. “Then when Drothi tells me how soon the folk can be ready to move, I can tell you, Lord.”

  “Useful,” Redhelwar observed, to no one in particular. “Now. We will discuss the Battle of the Cavern, and what we may learn from it in order to be able to fight more efficiently in future battles.”

  FOR the next several hours there was a brisk discussion—both among those who had been at the battle at the cavern in the Mystral Mountains and those who had just arrived on the Gathering Plain—about the sort of fight the Shadowed Elves had put up, and whether they could expect the same sort of battle the next time. Kellen found himself having to tell the story of what he had done and what he had faced over and over again. There were things he wished Vestakia didn’t have to hear, but there was no help for it. It was no consolation to hear the others who had also been in the caves echo his story from their own perspectives. The memories were still hard and painful ones.

  What was clear to Kellen was that they dared not risk another such battle as the one they had just fought. Though their losses had been comparatively small, they’d been far too high when one remembered that this was only the start of the campaign against the Shadowed Elves—and that they had the Endarkened still to fight.

  “Perhaps that was the only enclave of the creatures,” an Elven Knight named Belepheriel suggested, when the battle had been gone over from every possible aspect.

  “It is true that we do not yet know the location of other enclaves—or, indeed, if they exist at all,” Redhelwar agreed reluctantly. “Therefore, we must wait until Vestakia has discovered another nest of the creatures to see what we must do. But it is best to be prepared, for I do not think that They would lead us so easily to the only infestation of our enemy. They are not in the habit of bestowing such rich gifts upon Their foes.”

  And with that grim assessment, everyone present had to agree.

  REDHELWAR dismissed his commanders soon thereafter: the meeting had been for the purpose of providing everyone there with information; soon, he told them, he would want to hear strategies for dealing with the special problems of invading the Shadowed Elves’ underground lairs.

  The four Wildmages and Vestakia left together, intent upon their more immediate concerns.

  “What is it that we have to do to help you send your message to Drothi?” Idalia asked.

  “There must be a Speaking Circle,” Atroist answered. “We use them to pass messages over long distances in the Lost Lands. Drothi will be awaiting a Sending from me, though she knows not when one may come. It is a thing best done with”—he glanced around at the bustle of the camp—“perhaps some privacy.”

  “Well, if Jermayan’s going to help, it needs to be someplace where Ancaladar can be close by anyway,” Idalia said in practical tones. “There’s an old orchard out behind the Flower Forest—you remember the place, Jermayan. We can meet there.”

  “Sounds cold,” Kellen muttered. It was hard to remember at the moment the last time he’d been really warm.

  “It won’t be when I’m done with it,” Jermayan said with a smile. “Perhaps you will tell me, Atroist, what you require for this Speaking Circle.”

  “A place to build a fire—a small one—where we can gather around,” Atroist said simply. “I have brought all else I need with me.”

  “Then let us meet there at dusk. Ancaladar and I can go now to prepare the place, and Idalia can bring the two of you, if that is amenable to all of you.”

  “I thank you for your aid, Wildmage,” Atroist said, bowing.

  Jermayan nodded and walked away, leaving the others behind.

  “I’d better go check back with Petariel to see what else needs to be done at the Unicorn Camp,” Kellen said. He glanced at the sky. The day was overcast, but it was still possible to mark the position of the sun through the clouds. “We have a few hours yet.”

  “And Vestakia and I will have a few things to do among the Healers,” Idalia agreed. “Meet us at the Healers’ tents an hour before sunset. It’s a bit of a walk to the orchard.”

  Sixteen

  Ghosts upon the Wind

  Just at dusk they arrived at the old orchard. The trees were bare and black with winter, but Kellen barely noticed them.

  Jermayan had indeed been busy.

  A pavilion of ice stood at the spot where they would need to do their work. It was all of a piece, as seamless as Magecrafted stone and as transparent as glass. The light of lanterns gleamed from within, making the whole structure glow softly in the fading twilight.

  A human Mage would probably have made a simple square building and let it go at that, but Jermayan was an Elven Mage. He had created a replica of Redhelwar’s pavilion—the available interior space, of course, would be much smaller, because the ice walls needed to be thicker for the pavilion to stand—but the exterior was exact in every detail, down to the fringe and tassels along the upper edges of the walls, the folds in the “fabric” of the tent, the stakes and peg-ropes, even the pennons hanging from the centerpole and from each of the four corners. Even the door-flaps that stood pinned back from the entrance—they would not close, of course, being made of ice, but they were so detailed that they looked as if they could.

  “Oh, my,” Idalia said, mirth bubbling in her voice.

  “Do you like it?” Ancaladar asked, appearing out of the Flower Forest to their right and moving quickly through the winter orchard toward them. He cocked his head, inspecting the ice-pavilion. “The boy shows promise.”

  “It’s … not something you see every day,” Kellen said weakly.

  Here, as in the Shadowed Elf village, being confronted with the sheer scope of the magical power his friend coul
d command gave him a moment’s pang. It was not that he coveted it for himself—Gods of the Wild Magic forbid. it!—or that he did not trust Jermayan utterly. It was just that there seemed something almost unnatural about it.

  It was true that to a non-Mage, there would seem to be very little difference between what he and Idalia could do, and what Jermayan could do. But Kellen saw a very great difference. What he did, at least, was just—almost—an intensification of what an ordinary man might do, or what the natural world did on its own. He could make the healing process go faster, but he could not call back the dead. He could see things invisible to others, but that was because his Gift gave him the power to understand tiny clues that they could not see, and showed him the results in visions. He could call fire, but he could not burn things that a natural flame would not burn. He could not reshape stone with a thought.

  But he had seen Jermayan burn stone as if it were oil-soaked kindling, and shape granite as if it were clay on the potter’s wheel. And now this—calling ice out of thin air to make a place for them to work in.

  Was the only difference between what Kellen could do and what Jermayan could do that Jermayan had Ancaladar’s power to draw upon? Was it that Jermayan was an Elven Mage and Kellen was human?

  “Is this what your Wildmages do in the south?” Atroist asked, sounding stunned.

  “I’d have to say that Jermayan isn’t exactly a typical Wildmage,” Idalia said comfortingly.

  “Come,” Jermayan said, stepping out of the ice-tent’s entrance. “Be welcome.”

  The three of them crunched through the heavy snow and in through the entrance of the “tent.”

  It was warm inside, even though the structure was made of ice. The walls were smooth and featureless, save for brackets of bronze in the shapes of wyverns that were set into the walls. The lanterns illuminating the space hung from their jaws. The floor of the tent was hard-packed snow, providing cold—if certain—footing. Jermayan’s pack was tucked into a corner, and the inevitable brazier was already brewing water for tea.

  “It looks very much as if you’ve done this before,” Idalia commented, looking around as she shed her pack. Kellen and Atroist quickly followed suit.

  “As Ancaladar does not wish to be treated as a pack animal—yes, I had to find a way of making shelter on my journeys, since I could not carry it,” Jermayan agreed.

  “Pack animals walk,” Ancaladar said simply, poking his nose into the doorway of the tent. “I fly.”

  “That you do,” Idalia agreed, squatting down in front of the dragon and reaching out to rub his nose, gradually working her way up to gently scratch the brow-ridges above his eyes. The huge black dragon closed his eyes with pleasure.

  Atroist was busily working through the three packs—all of which contained his supplies—and laying them out in the center of the tent. He made a circle of what Kellen recognized as keystones, though very large ones—so that was why the pack he’d carried had been so heavy!—two rings of them, with a third set balanced upon the first two, and, at the center of the ring, a carefully woven pyre of sticks and small logs, all black and tarry with resin.

  “So long as the fire burns, I. can Speak with Drothi,” Atroist said. “This is the wood of the ghostwood tree. I will call the fire away when we are finished, in case I need to speak again—I have not seen ghostwood here in the south.”

  “You have not been to the Flower Forest,” Jermayan said. “We call these trees namanarii. We use the sap in medicine; it sends healing dreams. I did not know that they grew any longer in the lands of Men. If you need more of it for your spells, send to Andoreniel for permission to take what you need, and you may have it from any of the Flower Forests in the Elven Lands.”

  As he had been speaking, Jermayan had been brewing tea. He paused now to pour it out and to hand the filled cups to each of them.

  This was a set of cups Kellen had never seen before. They were tiny, holding no more than a sip or two—the sort of cups the Elves used for “polite” occasions. They were Elvenware, delicate as moonlight, and of a color Kellen had never seen before: black.

  But their surface shone with a red fire, like flames, and somehow it seemed as if he could see a black dragon dancing through those flames. Kellen thought he’d gotten used to the beauty the Elves could create, but this was truly the most exquisite piece he had ever handled.

  “They are for drinking out of, not looking at,” Jermayan reminded him gently.

  Kellen grinned, and sipped the tea.

  It was bitingly hot. He tasted woodsmoke and fruit—the tea was some kind he’d never had before, and a stronger flavor than most of the Elven blends. It was odd, but he liked it.

  “Oh, Jermayan, I didn’t think you had any of this left,” Idalia said, her eyes going wide as she tasted it.

  “Very little,” Jermayan admitted. “But it is a good tea for this time and place.”

  “Take pity on a poor round-ear who can’t be trusted to boil water,” Kellen pleaded.

  “The tea is called Auspicious Venture,” Idalia said. “It’s made with the fruit of the vilya, among other things. It’s very rare, because the vilya is always in flower, but it fruits only once a century. So you see.”

  “Maybe,” Kellen said cautiously. He sipped the tea slowly, trying to make it last, but trying to finish it before it cooled. The flavor seemed to change with every sip. He guessed he’d better not get to like it too much, if it was as rare as Idalia said.

  Jermayan finished first, and to Kellen’s horror, dropped his exquisite teacup to the snow and ground it to shards underfoot.

  “Things of beauty are not meant to be guarded at the expense of more important things,” he said. “We cling to them at our peril. Only when we release them are they truly ours—and are we truly free.”

  Idalia finished her tea, dropped her cup, and did as Jermayan had done.

  Kellen looked down at the empty cup in his hands. Destroy such a beautiful thing? When would he ever see something like it again?

  “We cling to them at our peril …”

  He dropped the cup to the snow and crushed it beneath his boot. The sound it made as he broke it seemed to resonate through his entire body.

  Atroist broke his cup in turn, grinding the fragments into the snow.

  “Come,” he said, seating himself close to the ring of keystones.

  The other three seated themselves around the ring of stones as well.

  “Who will share the cost of this Working with me?” Atroist asked formally.

  “I,” said Jermayan.

  “And I,” Ancaladar said from the doorway.

  “I will,” Idalia said.

  “Me, too,” Kellen finished.

  “Then let it begin,” Atroist said, stretching his hand out toward the wood. “Walk with me.”

  The wood burst into flame, and Kellen felt the familiar sense of Presence as the shield that marked the beginning of a spell of the Wild Magic appeared.

  But nothing else was the same.

  Suddenly he was not in the ice-pavilion at all.

  He got to his feet—moving without his own volition—and as he moved, he saw he was in a small cottage. The light was dim—the illumination coming mostly from a fire that smoldered on the hearth—but his body moved with certainty, as if it knew this place.

  “Drothi.”

  It was Atroist who spoke, not Kellen, and when he did, Kellen realized that he was not truly present at all, merely hearing and seeing all that Atroist did. The illusion of presence was so real that it was strange not to be able to move at his own will, and only now did Kellen realize that although he could see the fire that smoldered on the hearth, he could smell nothing at all, not even the smoke of the burning ghostwood.

  The woman sitting at the hearth looked up. She was dressed much as Vestakia had been when Kellen had first seen her, in a long tunic of coarse homespun with wide calf-length trousers, and heavy boots of rough leather. Over that she wore a large shawl, woven in a comp
licated pattern of crossed stripes that would probably have been very colorful if there had been more light to see by. She was not a young woman; her face was seamed with the lines of age, and her eyes looked almost white in the firelight. As she gazed in his direction in an unfocused fashion, Kellen realized she could not see Atroist at all.

  “What news do you bring, kinsman?” Drothi asked. Aged she might have been, but her voice was young and vibrant with power.

  “The Firstlings beg our aid, as we knew, yet they would not deny us help as well,” Atroist said. “I have told them how it is with us, and of our struggles with the Dark Folk, and so they bid us travel to find sanctuary in the lands where the Dark Folk do not come. The Firstling King offers us safe passage through his lands for flock and herd, and for every man, woman, and child of the Folk. The Wildmages here speak of a land beyond the Firstling borders where we may settle; an empty land that we may take for our own. And the Firstling King gives his word that all who aid our people beyond the Firstling borders shall dwell in his grace, and here his word is no light thing, even in the lands of Men.”

  “Welladay,” Drothi said coolly, “so the walls of the Great Border fall at last, even for kern and chicken. It will not take so very much to persuade the people to come, I think—aye, and swiftly.”

  “What is the news?” Atroist asked, and now Kellen heard a note of fear in the Wildmage’s voice.

  “The raids, as you expected, have continued,” Drothi said simply. As she spoke, she picked up a spindle from the basket beside her and began pulling carded wool into thread with deft sure motions. “And to make matters worse, the winter has been harder than any we have seen in a long-hand of years. Had Torchen not warned us it would be so when the rains began, there would be starvation now. But that is no matter, since it has not happened. There are things that are worse.

  “The Great Wolves have come again. When the snows began to fall, the folk heard them singing at Icebridge and at Songhythe, which lie nearest to the Stone Wastes, as you know. The folk there had left their cattle to winter in the near fields, and one day they woke to find them slaughtered, every bull and cow, with nothing left behind but blood and polished bones. They knew the marauders for Great Wolves by the tracks, and did the only thing they could: they turned their flocks out as a sacrifice and fled south. This is what the survivors say. There were not many, for the Great Wolves harried them as they went, pulling them down in ones and twos, running them like the deer until the weakest dropped from exhaustion and the strongest must leave them behind or die as well. It was a cruel jest the Dark Folk played upon us that day, to leave any alive when they could have taken all so easily.”