His partner simply laughed, and lowered the sword to the floor once more.
—«♦»—
“SOMEONE must do something,” young Lord Gillain said earnestly.
At the end of their daily duties, many of the Apprentices gathered at a teahouse at the edge of the College. The Golden Bells sold nothing stronger than kaffeyeh, teas, and fruit juice, of course, but it was a place where Apprentices and the younger Journeymen could gather together and socialize, free of the constraints of their elders. And providing their elders approved, of course.
Cilarnen shook his head minutely, saying nothing. Gillain was a fool. His rash speech would get him into trouble someday—and soon, no matter that his grandfather sat on the High Council.
“What do you suggest?” Flohan asked, with a touch of sarcasm. “Do we petition the High Council? My cousin says that half the farmers in the valley are already doing that. The Council won’t change its mind and take them back.”
“Its tiny mind,” Gillain said, and there was laughter from the young men gathered around the table—some genuine, some merely nervous.
Only two didn’t join in the general amusement. Cilarnen, and a journeyman named Raellan.
Raellan had been coming to the Golden Bells for several sennights now. He was a quiet man, having little to say, but when he did speak, it was always sensible and to the point.
“I think that if someone wanted to change the Council’s mind about its policies,” Raellan said now, looking straight at Cilarnen, “he would have to be very brave, and very dedicated to the good of the City.”
“This is getting too deep for me,” another Entered Apprentice named Viance said hastily. “Let us talk of pleasant things. Who has tried the Phastan Silvertip that has just come in?”
The talk quickly turned to tea, and the moment passed.
—«♦»—
CHIRED Anigrel—known in the Golden Bells, and in a few other select establishments in the City as Master Raellan—left the teashop a few chimes later, well pleased with the evening’s work.
Few would recognize his face there and elsewhere, and to baffle those who might, the smallest and most subtle Cantrip of Misdirection cast over his features before he left his rooms ensured that he would not be recognized.
If Lord Lycaelon needed a reason to dispense with Volpiril’s services, Anigrel would give him one.
As well as the opportunity to rid himself of all other Mages who might prove to be—inconvenient.
—«♦»—
IF the specter of Shadow Mountain hadn’t been hovering over events, Kellen would undoubtedly have been happier than he’d ever been in his entire life.
He got up each morning while the dawn mists still filled the valley of Sentarshadeen, dressed, and, carrying his breakfast with him, walked to the House of Sword and Shield, eating as he walked. Sometimes Shalkan came with him, and the two friends talked of nothing in particular. The weather—it continued to rain, but Kellen was getting used to it. How Vestakia was settling in.
When Kellen arrived at the House, he would either change to his working clothes (he wore a distinct shade of green—not his signature color, either—a hue which had been arrived at after a great deal of debate, apparently) or into his armor, depending on what he was to work at that day.
Kellen was learning things that Jermayan had lacked the resources to teach him. To attack, and to defend himself against multiple attackers. And more—he was learning to keep the choices in every combat in his own hands, so that he could kill or not as he chose. Under Master Belesharon’s guidance, he was learning to trick an attacker, to stun or disarm him, to simply be elsewhere when the blow fell.
It was more than simple misdirection, far more than the feints and dodges that Jermayan had tried to show him. It was—well, if he had to put a name to it, it was a new state of mind. Part of the battle-mind, to be sure, but a state in which he could choose to be like a fish in the water. He could see where the fight was going, the way a fish could sense a rock in the stream ahead of him, and he could move with the fight, or around it. When he finally got the trick of it, it had all come at once; suddenly, the sense was there, and he’d slipped aside from every blow that the four other knights were trying to land on him, without needing to counter any of them. And the state of mind he had been in was so uncannily peaceful—as if it was a kind of meditation! It was only when Master Belesharon had called a halt to the fight and he dropped automatically out of that mental state that the exhaustion hit him.
“I would not toy with that, if I were you,” Master Belesharon said, neutrally. And Kellen had readily agreed. Useful that might be, if he were surrounded by attackers that he dared not strike at, but the effort this state took was greater than actually defending himself.
With his Knight-Mage gifts to guide him, Kellen learned fast, but there was always more to learn. There was the theory of war itself, not of knight against knight, but of armies in the field.
And so he was introduced to the two great Elven strategy games, gan and xaqiue.
Gan was played on a square board divided into 864 tiny squares. There were 144 counters, divided into six suits, and up to six players could play, though usually only two or three did. The simple object of the game was to be the last person with counters on the board. The complex object of the game was to win beautifully and with style. An opponent’s counters could be removed from play either by surrounding them, or by forcing them to the edge of the board.
So far Kellen had lost every gan match he’d played. But he was starting to lose more slowly.
Xaqiue bore a faint resemblance to shamat, which was played in Armethalieh. In shamat, there were two armies of playing pieces, each of which could move only a certain way, and the object was to capture the other player’s City.
Xaqiue was similar—in that one of the points of the game was to capture the opposing player’s pieces. But in xaqiue, captured pieces remained on the board, in the service of whoever captured them last, and the moves each piece could make changed depending on how many moves it had already made and what other pieces were nearby.
Kellen found xaqiue fiendishly complicated.
“It is no more complicated than a battle,” Naeret would say, when Kellen had been forced to resign yet another game in the middle, hopelessly tangled in a welter of moves and countermoves, and having managed to forget which pieces still belonged to him. “Yet you would remember that well enough.”
“I could get killed in a battle,” Kellen muttered.
“Yet all life is war,” Naeret said, setting the pieces out once again. “Perhaps it is all worth considering equally seriously.”
—«♦»—
BETWEEN sword exercises and games—though Kellen suspected that the Elves did not think of “games” in quite the same way he did—there were the lectures (though he supposed “instructions” might be a better word). Seen simply, these were tales of ancient battles—and just what he’d wanted to hear ever since he’d realized there had been ancient battles.
Seen another way, they were histories, or chronicles, or even guidebooks of a sort, filled with instructions and warnings.
Kellen shared these lectures with the novices, of course, for he had never had the opportunity to hear these stories before. He was fascinated to discover that they were not only stories of the Great War—what the Elves called among themselves the Second War—but the First War as well, fought so long ago that humans had not yet been civilized. It was oddly sobering to realize that the gentle, supremely cultivated Elves—so polite that they considered a direct question to be the height of barbarian rudeness—had been a warrior people since before his own folk had discovered fire. But perhaps that was the very reason why they placed so high a value on peace and civilization.
Most afternoons were spent with Deyishene, and Kellen was already a much better rider than he had been when he began. He’d ended up being introduced to the Elven lance after all. Though there was little likelihood Kellen would ever use it under combat conditions, learning to handle it—without breaking it— taught grace, balance, and concentration. Kellen had already broken half a dozen.
When he wasn’t actually busy at the House of Sword and Shield, Kellen was mindful of the promise he had made to Sandalon, and spent as many hours with the young Prince as he could. He even brought him to visit at the House of Sword and Shield—after obtaining Master Belesharon’s permission, of course— and showed him all around. There was no reason, according to Jermayan, that Sandalon should not someday train as an Elven Knight if he chose to.
Someday. If he ever gets out of that fortress before he’s got a long grey beard. If Elves grow beards, that is.
Ashaniel had broken the news to Sandalon that he would be going away to the Crowned Horns with the rest of the Elven children not long after the meeting at which the plan was decided, and for a few days the boy had been upset and unhappy. But Sandalon was very young, and as the leave-taking didn’t happen immediately, after a sennight or two the young Prince seemed to forget the matter entirely.
But today, when Kellen went out to the stables to Deyishene, he found Sandalon and Shalkan both there, waiting outside her stall.
The young Prince had obviously been crying, though his tears were under control now, and he smiled dolefully when he saw Kellen.
“I am to go—the day after tomorrow!” Sandalon blurted out, obviously unable to contain the unhappy news one moment longer than necessary.
“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be very much to say, but Kellen tried. “But there will be children from all the Nine Cities there—perhaps you will make new friends. I am sure that there will be at least one person who is almost exactly your age, and there may be more. Think, Sandalon, how good it will be when there are several others around you who want to do the same things that you do, and play the same games that you like!”
Sandalon was too well mannered, even at five, to contradict Kellen, but his face plainly said that he found the possibility highly unlikely.
“Will you… there will be a great many Knights riding with us. And unicorns, too! Maybe—”
But Kellen was already shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Sandalon. I’m just starting to learn all the things a proper Knight has to know. I still have a lot more to learn before I get to do something that important.”