It was hot, yet somehow it managed to smell of the cold purity of ice. The paradox was so odd, that it actually distracted him from his ever-present anxieties. Kellen sipped cautiously.
It wasn’t a tea for drinking carelessly, like Winter Spice. This was a tea that had to be paid attention to, almost like listening to music. It was herbal, like most of the Elven teas, and there were flavors of grass and metal in it—it sounded unpleasant, but it wasn’t, not really. And over all, the sense of winter combined with the heat of the tea seemed to offer a promise that no matter how cold the day or how deep the snow, spring would always come.
“It is a riddle,” Kellen said, setting down his cup after several sips. “It’s hot— but there’s ice in it, somehow. Snow—and green things.”
Dionan exchanged a pleased look with Redhelwar. “I did suggest that perhaps the brewing would not be wasted on him, Master.”
“I admit I had my doubts, but you have convinced me,” Redhelwar said. “Yes. Winter Mountain Ice is one of Teamaster Thenandelet’s most subtle creations, the recipe for its creation passed down in my family for many generations. When you have finished, we will pour something that requires less attention, and speak of necessary things.”
Kellen finished his cup slowly, still trying to figure out how something so hot could make him think of cold. He didn’t quite manage to solve the riddle before the cup was empty.
Dionan removed the cups, and replaced them with larger ones. Kellen caught the familiar comforting scent of Winter Spice Tea. Good. At least it wouldn’t distract him from what he had to say.
“Dionan mentioned that you wished to speak of matters touching upon the Wild Magic, and of the Wildmage Atroist,” Redhelwar said, when the new tea had been tasted.
“As you know already, he left this morning for the Lost Lands,” Kellen said. “Last night, he spoke with Drothi, another Wildmage there. She said she will bring everyone south as quickly as possible, and that because of the great trouble in the Lost Lands, it will not be difficult to convince them to come.”
“Go on,” Redhelwar said.
“Drothi told Atroist—it was as if I were actually in her presence, and could see her and hear everything she said—that Their raids on the Lostlanders have continued through the winter, and in addition, monsters have begun appearing in the Lost Lands. I did not recognize all of them from her descriptions, but Jermayan did. He said that there are coldwarg, icedrake, shadewalkers, and serpent-marae in the Lost Lands, and the Lostlanders have seen the Deathwings that attacked the caravan near the Crowned Horns as well. The coldwarg have destroyed two villages in the Lost Lands, but she was not clear about where the others were, only that they are close enough to the villages to be a constant, and urgent, threat.”
And please, please, someone make the Elves understand that urgent means urgent!
Redhelwar sat and thought for several minutes after Kellen had finished speaking.
“This is fell news, but good to have,” he said at last. “I shall send troops west to support the rangers Andoreniel has sent to conduct the Wildlanders to the eastern border. If these creatures follow the Wildlanders toward the Elven Lands, it may be that our ancient land-wards will not stop them all, nor do I wish to witness a slaughter just outside our protection. But perhaps you will favor me now with your views on why these creatures should have so suddenly appeared in the Wild Lands, where they were not before.”
This is a test. Kellen knew it, with a sudden cold shock of intuition. A test, as—in its way—Kellen’s opinion of the tea had been. Redhelwar was testing him. But for what? After the Battle of the Cavern, Redhelwar already knew how well he fought.
He chose his next words with great care.
“Drothi hasn’t given us much information to go on, but it seems clear to me, from what she said last night and from what Atroist has said before, that They have long considered the Wild Lands their special private hunting preserve. I think that now They’re using it as a place to breed up and collect these creatures in great numbers. Jermayan said most of them hadn’t been seen since the Great War, and that he’d thought most of them were extinct. Drothi said the Wildlanders only knew them from ancient story-songs.
“It seems to me, from the tactics we’ve seen Them using so far, that They are not anxious to meet us on a battlefield. They did that in the Great War, and They lost. If They intend to try it again at all, I think They want to make sure we’re very weak before They do. So They’re using tactics of attrition. First They struck at your water supply, and that failed, but if They can strike at crops and flocks— and game, in the case of the Mountainfolk of the High Reaches—They don’t need to meet us on the battlefield. They can starve us to death.”
There was a long pause after Kellen had finished. Both Redhelwar’s and Dionan’s faces were expressionless, in the way that Elven faces often were. At last Redhelwar spoke.
“And all of these are creatures of cold. If they are stopped by the landward barriers, they will simply follow the mountains until they come to a place where they may pass, and enter into human lands,” the Elven general said grimly. “The coldwarg and the icedrake must stay in the realms of cold unless they are spell-guarded, but the serpentmarae and the shadewalker may roam where they will.”
“Unless those who have created them are keeping them back to use later,” Kellen said. “We won’t know until it happens.”
“As with all things in war,” Redhelwar agreed. “A reasonable analysis, given the scant information that we have… and I admit, I have found Their continued reluctance to take the field against us somewhat puzzling. Nevertheless. There is another matter that it is in my mind to speak to you of today.
“As a Knight-Mage, you fight for the Elves, and your valor is unquestioned, but you are not truly of my command. I would change that, were you willing. It is in my mind that you might be one of my alakomentaiia. You would lead a troop under my orders, and work as one with the other alakomentaiia.
“Of course, you would need to take a destrier as your mount, and for this I am truly sorry. If Shalkan consents, it is also in my mind that Mindaerel is without a rider, and grieves at her loss. You might take her, did you find favor in one another’s eyes.”
Kellen sipped his tea without answering, glad that the rules of Elven formality allowed him time to gather his thoughts before he answered. The alakomentaiia were sub-commanders. The Elves didn’t use a lot of ranks; there were generals, commanders, and sub-commanders, and everything else was just “understood” by people who had known each other and worked and trained together for centuries. As far as he could figure out, he’d have equivalent rank to Petariel, but below Adaerion.
And the root word komen—which was Old Elven—didn’t really mean “commander” or anything like it. It meant—as close as you could come to it in non-Elvish—“brotherhood.” Try to translate the whole thing, and what you got—besides a headache—was “the servant of the brotherhood.” What Redhelwar was proposing was as much an adoption as it was a military promotion.
But… give up Shalkan? Kellen wasn’t stupid or dense enough to think this was nothing more than a polite suggestion on Redhelwar’s part that he could lightly decline. He wouldn’t be with the Unicorn Knights anymore, and he wouldn’t have the protections against the Demons that riding Shalkan undoubtedly gave him. But it would give him a visible and acknowledged place—not only in the army, but in the War Councils as well.
“Nothing would please me more than to accept your generous offer,” Kellen said, thinking hard. “And I believe it would be for the good of all. But as you know, Shalkan and I are bound together by an unfulfilled Mageprice. It would not be wise or appropriate for me to answer without consulting him.”
“A proper answer. Do so,” Redhelwar said, rising to his feet to indicate that the interview was finished. “Then make matters known to Dionan. And Leaf and Star guide and counsel you.”
Kellen rose to his feet and bowed.
—«♦»—
ELSEWHERE in the vast camp—it was as large as the larger Elven cities, by now—Jermayan sought out Vestakia on an errand that would, he knew, require all his arts of tact and persuasion.
If they were to find the rest of the enclaves of the Shadowed Elves quickly— or determine with reasonable certainty that there weren’t any, something Jermayan doubted was likely—the only efficient method was for Vestakia to search for them from dragonback. It would certainly be the safest method as well, for in that way he and Ancaladar would be able to protect her from nearly anything that might seek to harm her.
All he had to do was manage to obtain Vestakia’s agreement to the plan— and he knew the child was terrified of flying.
There were only a limited number of places she might be; having tried the more obvious places to no avail, Jermayan tracked her down at last in the Flower Forest. Vestakia would have been shy of crowds even without the added handicap of her Demonic appearance; having spent the first seventeen years of her life with little more company than a herd of goats, she sought solitude whenever she could.
Before the First War, the Flower Forests had covered all the world, and before the Great War they had still been thick upon all of the Elven Lands and much of that terrain that was now bleak and sterile wasteland. Now all that remained of the great Elven forests and their vast diversity of species existed only in the lesser woodlands that adorned the Elven cities. It was said that one day, when the Endarkened were utterly defeated, the Flower Forests would begin to spread once more, but Jermayan wondered if perhaps that day was not meant to come.
It was winter, but at every season the Flower Forest was lush. Jermayan followed the faint tracks in scattered snow and blown leaves deeper into the forest until he found Vestakia moving carefully through the wood. Her gathering basket was already half-filled—Idalia or one of the other Healers must have sent her here for supplies and some much-needed solitude.
She stooped to gather a handful of winter mushrooms from the base of a tree, then rose to her feet, turning to face him.
“Jermayan,” she said. She sighed, and her shoulders slumped. “I know why you have come,” she said forlornly.
“I suppose you must,” Jermayan said. “Yet I would not even ask, were the need not so grave. And I shall do no more than that.”
“But the others—they would think I was such a dreadful coward, if—if I did not do it!” Vestakia burst out. “And it’s true, of course—if I were just to fly over the Elven Lands, and see if I could sense the Shadowed Elves, everything would be much faster. It might be the only way! But it is so very high—and I could fall, and—”
She was speaking very fast, and her voice had gone thin and high with fear. Jermayan stepped over to her, took the basket from her arm and set it on the ground, and gripped her shoulders gently.
“Vestakia. It is very high. But you will not fall. Neither Ancaladar nor I will permit it. Nor is it the only way. Ancaladar and I believe it to be the safest, but that matters not if it will not work. You must be calm and easy in your mind to be able to sense the Shadowed Elves, and I do not believe that will be so if you are in fear of falling from my Bonded’s back.”
Vestakia managed a weak giggle. “No. I guess not. But…” She hesitated for a long moment. “Maybe we should just go look at him?”
“Indeed,” Jermayan agreed, picking up her basket. “We shall go and look at Ancaladar.”
—«♦»—
THE dragon was waiting beside the ice-pavilion that Jermayan had created two nights before, his great body dwarfing the structure completely. For a few moments Vestakia’s attention was distracted by the glittering structure of ice, but she knew why she was here, and her attention quickly returned to Ancaladar.
She’d seen him before, of course, but that was before she’d actually considered getting on his back.
“He’s very tall,” she said faintly.