by Mark Anthony
“Do you see the differences between the bat and the sparrow, then, Tanis?” Miral asked. His breath smelled of bay leaves.
“I think so,” Tanis said. He traced the fragile lines of the bat’s wing with a finger. “In the bat, the wing is made of skin stretched between the finger bones, which have grown very long, except for the thumb.” He turned his attention to the sparrow lying still on the desk. “And in the bird, the fingers are lost, and the wing is fashioned of feathers springing from the arm.”
“Good,” Miral said gravely. “I suspect that’s enough for today. I wouldn’t want you to get ideas about flying, yourself.”
Tanis smiled with Miral. “I’m afraid if I tried that, my fate would be the same as these poor fellows.” He looked wistfully at the animals lying still on the desk.
“Life and death are both part of the cycle of nature,” Miral said, catching his expression. “And if we can learn from death, then so much the better.” He moved the tray aside, and poured a cup of wine for each of them to sip as they talked. “Now, I think there’s time left for another story. What shall it be?”
“You,” Tanis replied. “I want to hear your life story.”
The shadows in the room deepened again as the mage’s clear eyes took in the half-elf’s serious expression. The stone floors seemed to radiate a chill, and the half-elf shivered. Miral appeared to come to some decision, took another sip of wine, and asked, “What tale of myself is there for me to tell?”
“What about all of your journeys?” the half-elf pressed.
Miral turned away from the table. “The aimless wanderings of a foolish young elf, that was all,” the mage said with a shrug. “My life was of little importance until I finally had the sense to come to Qualinost.”
Tanis took another swallow of wine, then another, gaining a weak form of courage. “How did you get here? You say you are Silvanesti. Why come to Qualinost, then?”
“It’s early afternoon. Aren’t you late for your archery lesson?”
“You said we have time for another story,” Tanis said stubbornly.
Miral sighed. “I see you will not leave this until I satisfy you with some explanation of a middle-aged mage’s life. Come, then. Let me walk with you to your session with Tyresian. We can talk along the way.”
They drained their goblets, and Tanis followed Miral into the hallway, the mage careful to set the lock in the door. At Miral’s request, the corridor outside his chambers was always dimly lit. A guard was never present, also at his request.
“What do you know of me, Tanis?” Miral asked as they stepped slowly along the corridor.
Tanis matched his gait to that of the mage. Both made little noise as they walked, the half-elf because he wore leather moccasins, the mage because he shod his feet with padded slippers. “I know that you were a friend of the Speaker’s brother, Arelas. And that you came here when I was a child.” Tanis flushed, hoping that the mage would not say the half-elf was a child still.
The mage, however, appeared engrossed in examining the gray veins in the marble floor as the pair progressed along the hallway. They’d gone far enough from the mage’s quarters that the wall sconces again held torches for light; they stepped from one circle of light into darkness and then into the next illuminated circle. Finally, Miral spoke, his voice seeming to come from deep within his hood.
“We were longtime friends,” the mage said hoarsely. “You know that Arelas grew up away from court?”
Tanis nodded, then realized that Miral could not see to the side as he walked, hooded, facing forward. “Yes, of course,” he said.
“Arelas was the youngest of the three brothers. Solostaran was eldest, of course. Kethrenan was many years younger, and Arelas was only a few years younger than Kethrenan. Arelas was sent away from court as a very young child—some say because he was frail and could not thrive here,” Miral said. “He was sent to a group of clerics near Caergoth, several weeks’ travel north of here, through mountains and across the Straits of Schallsea. Shortly before that, I had come to the same area as an apprentice with a group of mages.
“You would think two elves living in a human city would become friends easily, purely out of loneliness,” Miral continued. “But such wasn’t the case. We lived near the same city for long years, passing each other in the marketplace, nodding but never speaking. He never went home to Qualinost. I never went home to Silvanost.” He paused, and Tanis practically heard his friend groping for the correct words. As they passed one doorway, Lord Xenoth, the Speaker’s elderly adviser, emerged with a swirl of his silver-gray robe, but passed without acknowledging the pair.
“Xenoth disliked me from the start,” Miral murmured. “Why, I don’t know. I’ve never done anything against him. I certainly am no threat to his position at court, which is all he seems to care about.”
As they passed by a window, a vertical slash in the quartz, Tanis sidestepped a freestanding planter overflowing with ferns. “Yet you and Arelas eventually met,” he prompted.
Miral turned right and headed down wide stone steps to the courtyard. “We met through my magic. One day in the Caergoth marketplace, Arelas took ill. He was ever a frail elf. I was nearby and rushed to his aid. I know many spells for easing minor ills, although I am not an accomplished healer, as you well know.” Tanis rushed to disagree, but Miral waved aside his polite assurances with one of his characteristic gestures, and the half-elf fell silent again. Miral, in fact, was only a minor mage, but his friendly personality and willingness to share his time had made him relatively popular.
“At any rate,” Miral said, “I was able to ease Arelas’s pain, and in the days afterward I visited him often. At last, we became friends.”
They had arrived at the double doors that opened from the Speaker’s palace into the courtyard. The doors were fashioned of polished steel—making them particularly valuable in an era when the constant threat of war made steel, used for weapons, worth more than gold or silver. Each door stood as high as two elves and as wide as one, although the precision of the elven craftsmen meant that any elf, regardless of strength, could set the doors swinging open. Tanis opened one, enough to see Tyresian lounging arrogantly against a pillar forty feet outside the door. Miral stepped back into the shadows, and the half-elf let the door swing shut again.
“How did you end up in Qualinost?” Tanis asked. “And what happened to Arelas?”
Miral pulled his hood back from his face. “Perhaps this should wait for another time. It is not the kind of tale to be tossed out as two friends part.” But at Tanis’s look, he continued. “Arelas decided to visit Qualinost, and he asked me to accompany him. I had always wanted to see the western elven lands, so I agreed. We could have sent to Qualinost, to court, for an escort, I suppose, but Arelas wanted to enter Qualinesti anonymously—why, I never did discover. In so many ways, he was a secretive sort.
“It was in the unsettled times in the early centuries after the Cataclysm. Bands of brigands were not uncommon on the highways. But Arelas assured me that we’d be safe in the small group that we traveled with.”
Miral dipped his head and seemed to be struggling to breathe. Tanis was fascinated by the narrative, yet he wished he had not asked the mage to relive what was obviously a painful experience.
Finally, the mage sighed. “Arelas was wrong. We sailed safely from Caergoth to Abanasinia, and we traveled inland without incident for a week. Then, a day’s ride out of Solace, near Gateway, our small group of fellow travelers was attacked by human brigands. We killed one of the highwaymen, but they slew the guards who traveled with us.”
“Arelas?” Tanis asked. Through the door, he heard impatient footsteps; he could only guess it was Tyresian, come to get him for archery lessons.
“There was an … an explosion,” Miral said softly, stepping back another pace as the door began to open. “Arelas was badly hurt. I did what I could. He told me to come here, that his brother would find a place for me in court. You see, even Arelas, fo
nd friend that he was, knew that I wasn’t a good enough mage to find a position on my own.”
At that moment, Tyresian crashed through the door, shouting, “Tanthalas Half-Elven! I have waited …” He saw the two and stopped, then evidently dismissed the mage as beneath his notice. “You are late!” he snapped at the half-elf.
Tanis ignored the angry elf lord for the moment. “And so you came here,” the half-elf said to Miral.
Miral nodded. “And I’ve been here ever since. I’ve been happy—happier than I would have been in Silvanesti, I suspect. I do miss Arelas. I still dream about him.”
As Tyresian fumed silently behind him, Tanis watched in sympathy as the mage padded back up the steps.
“Keep your head up,” Tyresian snapped. “Hold this arm straight. Plant your feet thus. Don’t look away from the target while you’re aimed at it. By the gods, do you want to kill someone?”
Off to one side, Lady Selena laughed. She was a regal-looking elf lady with violet eyes and dusky blond hair, but there was an unsettling hardness to her features. Still, the great wealth she would inherit upon her parents’ death added a great deal to her attractiveness in many elf lords’ eyes.
Tanis had spent two hours firing arrow after arrow into several bales of hay that Tyresian had ordered set up in a block against a blank wall of the huge courtyard. “That way, we’ll be relatively sure you won’t send an arrow into some passing courtier,” Tyresian had said, prompting more laughter from Litanas, Ulthen and Selena. Porthios sat on a bench, watching his half-elf cousin with an intensity that almost guaranteed Tanis would miss the target nine out of ten times.
“Can’t you ask your friends to leave?” Tanis had asked Tyresian, whose blue eyes narrowed.
“Do you think they’ll clear a battlefield for you someday, half-elf, just so you’ll feel at ease with no critical eyes upon you?” the elf lord retorted loudly. Litanas snorted, and Tanis felt his face go red. With the exception of Porthios, the group seemed to find Tanis’s performance remarkably entertaining.
Tanis’s arm ached, and his fingers were numb. Nerveless hands dropped an arrow on the ground, and he flushed as the crowd behind him found merriment in his efforts to pluck the arrow from the moss with fingers that refused to do what he wished. Actually, what his fingers wished to do was wrap themselves around Tyresian’s corded neck and tighten, and Tanis fought to hold his temper in check. Lady Selena had a particularly irritating laugh, too—a giggle that trilled up the scale and gurgled back down to the starting note. It was enough to make his hair curl, but Litanas and Ulthen seemed to find it enchanting.
“It does little good to be skilled in defending yourself against an enemy in the distance if you are vulnerable to an enemy standing before you,” Tyresian said self-importantly.
No kidding, Tanis thought, but grimaced as the elf lord thrust a heavy steel sword into his hand. The half-elf was forced to lift it in a hasty parry against a fiercely grinning Tyresian. Deftly, Tyresian edged one foot behind Tanis’s and shoved his adversary’s chest with the flat of his sword; Tanis fell over backward in a flurry of arms and legs, narrowly missing his own sword as he landed.
He lay there, panting, stinging from the shrill laughter and the force of his fall but refusing to look at the elven nobles chortling on the stone bench.
Suddenly, Selena’s screech rose above the clamor. “He’s split his breeches!” she shrieked, and dissolved in giggles. Tanis looked down; his sword had, indeed, slit the right side of his breeches, and his fall had split it wider, leaving an expanse of unbecomingly hairy thigh exposed to the gaze of Porthios’s friends. Finally, a new voice joined the others, and Tanis saw Porthios wipe tears from his eyes as he rose and, shaking his head, led his friends back into the palace through the steel doors. Tyresian leaned over and, with one easy movement, swept up Tanis’s sword, saluted the fallen half-elf with it, and stepped after his friends. He paused at the door, however, holding it open with one strong hand.
“See you tomorrow, half-elf,” he said, and grinned.
From inside, Selena’s laughter trilled back at Tanis.
Chapter 5
A Battle of Arrows
Laurana was waiting in the courtyard the next morning when Tanis arrived with his bow and arrows, his mood matching the glower of the overcast skies. Miral had given him the morning off, and he resolved to practice his weaponry until Tyresian could find nothing to criticize.
But there was the Speaker’s daughter, attired in a hunter-green gown with gold-embroidered slippers, her long hair loose except for a thick braid on each side of her face. She sat, legs swinging, on the edge of a stone wall, managing both to hint at the alluring woman she would become and to show the indulged child she was now. Tanis groaned inwardly.
“Tanis!” she cried, and hopped down from the wall. “I have a terrific idea.”
The half-elf sighed. How to deal with her? She was only ten years old to his thirty, a mere baby compared with him; the age gap was similar to that between a five-year-old human child and a fifteen-year-old.
He was genuinely fond of the little elf girl, even though she was a touch too aware of how her cuteness affected people. “What do you want, Laurana?”
She stood, arms akimbo, in front of the half-elf, her chin pert and her green eyes sparkling with fun. “I think we should get married.”
“What?” Tanis dropped his bow. As he stooped to pick it up, the child tackled him and, giggling, pulled him to the moss. Gravely, he kneeled, set her on her feet again, and then stood. “I don’t think it would work, Lauralanthalasa Kanan.”
“Oh, everybody uses my full name when I’m in trouble.” She pouted. “I still think you should marry me.”
Tanis prepared to aim for the mutilated target, which still leaned against the high stone wall, but Laurana danced before him, getting in his way. “Do you want to get hurt?” he demanded. “Sit there.” And he pointed to a bench off to his left, the same bench that Lady Selena and the others had used yesterday. Laurana, amazingly, obeyed him.
“Why not, Tanis?” she chimed as he released an arrow that missed the target, clinking against the stone two feet above the padded hay and falling harmlessly to the ground.
“Because you’re too young.” He nocked another arrow and squinted at the target.
She sighed. “Everyone says that.” This arrow hit the hay bales, at least, though it was about three feet to the right of the dragonseye. “How about when I’m older?”
“Then maybe I’ll be too old.”
“You won’t be too old.” She spoke with stubborn force, her lower lip puckered, tears threatening like the thunderclouds overhead. “I asked Porthios how long half-elves live, and he told me. We’ll have plenty of time.”
Tanis turned. “Did you tell Porthios you wanted to marry me?”
She brightened. “Of course.”
No wonder the Speaker’s heir had grown especially chilly of late. Didn’t want the Speaker’s daughter running around telling people she wanted to marry the palace’s bastard half-elf, Tanis thought bitterly. He released the arrow without thinking, and it thunked into the canvas-covered bales mere inches from the dragonseye. Another arrow bit into the cloth between the first arrow and the dragonseye.
Laurana had been watching carefully. “Pretty good, Tanis. So, will you marry me? Someday?”
Tanis walked forward to gather his arrows. When he came back, he’d made up his mind. “Sure, Laurana,” he said. “I’ll marry you someday.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, hurray!” she chattered. “I’ll go tell everybody.” She scurried out of the courtyard.
The half-elf watched her go. That’s right, Lauralanthalasa, he thought; tell everybody. Especially Porthios.
Later that morning, as rain still threatened, Tanis encountered his “future bride” again as he neared the Hall of the Sky, seeking to clear his head after four hours of archery practice. “There you are!” the small, breathless voice said, interrupting his reverie. The
half-elf turned with a start to see Laurana scurrying across the square, hiking up her green-gold dress about her knees so that she could run toward him. The shiny material contrasted with the grayness of the midday light.
Laurana had taken to dressing less like a child lately and more like an elven woman, abandoning the soft, gathered playsuits that elven children wore. Perhaps her new mode of dress reflected the strictures of court decorum, though Laurana, to be honest, seemed to be less concerned with the intricacies of etiquette and social protocol than were elves of lesser birth. She’d probably lose that naturalness as she grew up, he thought with a sigh, feeling terribly old all of a sudden.
“We’ve got to go,” she chirped. “Gilthanas said he saw him heading for the square!”
“Saw who?” Tanis asked.
“Master Fireforge!” Laurana said, as if this should have been terribly plain.
Tanis groaned inwardly. Watching another session of the children and the toymaker was not what he wished to do right now, but Laurana’s grip on his hand was firm, and he had no choice but to stumble along beside her.
Sure enough, the dwarven smith was there when they reached the square, surrounded by laughing children; Laurana promptly dove into the fray. Tanis sighed and hung back among the trees as usual. Soon the crowd began to break up as children ran off to experiment with their new toys. Laurana was caught up in the gift the dwarf had given her, a small, paper-winged bird that really glided. Tanis shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to leave.
“All right, lad, hold it right there!” a gruff voice said behind Tanis, and he jumped, startled, as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. “You’re not getting away this time.”
