Elven Nations - The Kinslayer Wars Part 31

"Some shadows are more easily caught," observed Quimant acidly. "The human women, for example."

Parnigar leaped to his feet, knocking his chair over backward and lunging toward the lord.

"Enough!" The Speaker of the Stars reached out and pushed the warrior back toward his chair. Even in his rage, Parnigar heeded his ruler.

"Your insulting remark was uncalled for!" barked Kith-Kanan, staring at Quimant.

"True," Sithas agreed. "But neither would it be invited if you and your officers kept your loyalties a little more clear in your own heads!"

Kith-Kanan flushed with anger and frustration. Why did it always come down to this? He glared at Sithas as if his twin was a stranger.

A noise at the tent flap pulled their attention away from the conference. Vanesti, Ulvian, and Verhanna, the children of the royal twins, erupted into the tent with impertinent boldness. Hermathya followed.

Kith-Kanan met her eyes and froze, suddenly numb. By the G.o.ds, he had forgotten how beautiful she was! Furious and guilty, he nonetheless watched her furtively. She cast him a sideways glance, and as always, he saw the beckoning in her eye that only

furthered his pain. Never again, he knew, would he betray his brother. And now there was the matter of his own wife.

"Uncle Kith!" Vanesti irritated his father by running directly to his uncle. The young elf stopped quickly and then pantomimed a formal bow.

"Come here. Stop acting like the court jester!" Kith swept his nephew into an embrace, keenly aware of the eyes of his own children upon him. Ulvian and Verhanna, though younger than Vanesti, had matured much more quickly because of their half-human blood. Already young adults, they looked disdainfully upon such adolescent outbursts of emotion.

Perhaps, too, they sensed the bitter contrast in their relations.h.i.+p with their own uncle.

There had never been an "Uncle Sithas" or a "come here, children!" between them. They were half-human and consequently had no place in the Speaker's royal family.

Perhaps they understood, but they didn't forgive.

"This reminds me of a final matter for discussion," Sithas said stiffly. He relaxed when Vanesti left Kith's side to stand with Ulvian and Vehanna beside the open door flap of the tent.

"Vanesti is due to begin his training in the warrior arts. He has disdained the academies in the city and has prevailed upon me to make this request: Will you take him as your squire?"

For a moment, Kith-Kanan sat back, acutely aware of Vanesti's hopeful gaze. He couldn't suppress a surge of affection and pride. He liked the young elf and felt that he would be a good warriorgood at whatever he attempted, for that matter. Yet he couldn't entirely ignore another feeling.

The proposition reminded him of Ulvian. Kith had sent his son to Parnigar, as squire to that most able soldier. The young half-elf had proven so intractable and s.h.i.+ftless that,

with deep regret, Parnigar had been forced to send him back to his father. The failure had stung Kith-Kanan far more than it had disturbed Ulvian.

Yet when he looked at the young form of Vanesti, so much like a younger version of Kith-Kanan himself, he knew what his answer must be.

"It would be my honor," Kith replied seriously.

The aging woman watched the image of the elf in the mirror. The gla.s.s was cracked and patched, with several slivers missing. It had, after all, been reconstructed from shards. Five years earlier, she had hired a legion of skilled elven artisans to take those broken pieces, guarded by Suzine for years, adding crafts of their own to restore the gla.s.s to some measure of its former power.

It seemed that, with the distance that had grown between herself and her husband, she had little left to do in life but observe the course of things around her. The mirror gave her the means to do so, without forcing her to leave her carriage and be exposed to the subtle humiliations of the Silvanesti elves.

Suzine flushed as she thought of Hermathya and Quimant, whose cutting remarks had hurt her decades earlier when she had allowed them to penetrate her emotions. Yet even those barbs had been easier to take than the aloof silence of Sithas, her own brother-in-law, who had barely acknowledged her existence!

Of course, there was goodness to be found in elvenkind, too. There was Nirakina, who had always treated her as a daughter, and Tamanier Ambrodel, who had offered friends.h.i.+p. But now age had impaired even those relations.h.i.+ps. How could she feel like a daughter to Nirakina when the four-centuries old elf-woman seemed like a spry young woman beside the aging Suzine? And her hearing made conversation difficult, so that

even Tamanier Ambrodel had to shout his remarks, often repeating them two or three times. She found it less embarra.s.sing to simply avoid these two good souls.

So she remained in this enclosed coach that Kith-Kanan had given her. The large vehicle was comfortably appointed, even to the point of containing a soft beda bed that was always hers alone.

For what must have been the millionth time, she wondered about the course her life had taken, about the love she had developed for an elf who would inevitably outlive her by centuries. She couldn't regret that decision. Her years of happiness with Kith-Kanan had been the finest of her life. But those years were gone, and if she didn't regret her choice of nearly four decades earlier, neither could she bury the unhappiness that was now her constant companion.

Her children were no comfort. Ulvian and Verhanna seemed embarra.s.sed by their mother's humanness and shunned her, pretending to be full-blooded elves insofar as they could. But she felt pity for them as well, for their father had never shown them the affection that would have been due his proper heirsas if he himself was secretly ashamed of their mixed racial heritage.

Now that she was too old to ride a horse, her husband carted her around in this carriage. She felt like so much baggage, a cargo that Kith-Kanan was determined to see properly delivered before he proceeded with the rest of his life. How long could she remain like this? What could she do to change her lot in her waning years?

Her mind drifted to the enemyto her husband's enemy and her own. General Giarna frightened her now more than ever before. Often she had observed him in the repaired gla.s.s, shocked by the youthful appearance and vigor of the man. She sensed in him the power of something much deeper than she had first suspected.

Often she remembered the way Giarna had slain General Barnet. It was as if he had sucked the life out of him, she remembered thinking. That, she now knew, was exactly what he had done. How many more lives had the Boy General claimed over the years?

What was the true cost of his youthfulness?

Her mind and her mirror drifted back to Kith-Kanan. She saw him in the conference.

He was close enough to her that she could see him very clearly indeed. The elf's image grew large in her mirror, and then she looked into his eyes, through his eyes. She stared, as she had learned to do years before, into his subconscious.

She looked past the war, the constant fear that she found within him, to gentler things. She sought the image of his three women, for she was used to seeing the elf women Anaya and Hemathya there. Suzine sought the image of herselfherself as a young woman, alluring and sensual.

That image had grown more difficult to find of late, and this added to her sorrow.

This time she could find no remembrance of herself. Even the spritely Anaya was gone, her image replaced by the picture of a tall, slender tree. Then she came upon Hermathya and sensed the desire in Kith's mind. It was a new sensation that suddenly caused the mirror to glow, until Suzine turned her face away. The mirror faded into darkness as tears filled her eyes.

Slowly, gently, she placed the mirror back into its case. Trying to stem the trembling of her hands, she looked about for her coachman. Kith-Kanan wouldn't return for several hours, she knew.

When he did, she would be gone.

30.

Spring, 2177 (PC).

The lord-major-chieftain supreme of Hillrock stretched his brawny arms, acutely aware that his muscles were not so supple as they had once been. Placing a huge hand to his head, he stroked blunt fingers through hair that seemed to grow thinner by the week.

Squinting against the setting sun, he looked about his pastoral community of large one-room dwellings hewn from the rock of this sheltered valley. To the east towered the heights of the Khalkist Mountains, while to the west, the range settled into the flatlands of the Silvanesti plain.

For three decades, he had ruled as lord-major-chieftain supreme, and they had been good years for all of his people. Good years, but past now. Poking his broad tongue against the single tooth that jutted proudly from his lower gum, the lord-major exercised his mind by attempting to ponder the future.

A nagging urge tugged at him, desirous of pulling him away from peaceful Hillrock.

He couldn't put his finger on the reasons, but the hill giant who had once been called One-Tooth now felt a need to leave, to strike out across those plains. He was reluctant to answer this compulsion, for he had the feeling that once he left, he would never return.

He couldn't understand this compulsion, but it grew more persistent every day.

Finally the hill giant gathered his wives together, cuffing and cursing them until he had their attention.

"I go away!" he said loudly.

The formalities completed, he hefted his club and started down the valley. Whatever the nature of the longing that drew him to the plains, he knew that he would find its source in an elf who had once been his friend.

The conference broke up in awkward farewells. Only Hermathya displayed emotion, screaming and rebuking Sithas for his decision to send Vanesti to the battlefield. The Speaker of the Stars coolly ignored his wife, and she collapsed into spasms of weeping.

She desperately hugged the young elf, to his acute embarra.s.sment, and then retired to her coach for the long journey back to Silvanost.

Few had noted Suzine's departure late on the previous day. Kith-Kanan was puzzled by her leaving, though he a.s.sumed she had reason to return to Sithelbec. In truth, he was also a little relieved. The presence of his human wife put strain on any communication with Sithas, and Suzine's absence had made the subdued farewell banquet a little easier to endure.

Still, it was unlike her to depart so abruptly without advising him, so he couldn't totally banish his concern. This concern mounted to genuine anxiety when, ten days later, they finally arrived at the fortress and learned that the general's wife hadn't been seen.

Nor had she sent any message.

He dispatched Windriders to comb the plains, seeking a sign of Suzine's grand coach.

However, true to Kith's prediction, the spring storm season began early, and thunderstorms blanketed the gra.s.slands with hail and torrential rains. Winds howled unchecked across hundreds of miles of prairie. The search became all but impossible and had to be suspended for all intents and purposes.

In the meantime, Kith-Kanan threw himself into the ch.o.r.eogrgphy of his great battle plan. The forces of the Wildrunners mustered at Sithelbec, preparing to march westward,

where they would hit the human army before General Giarna even realized they had left the region of the fortress.

Intelligence about the enemy was scarce and unreliable. Finally Kith called upon the only scout he could count on to make a thorough reconnaissance: Parnigar.

"Take two dozen riders and get as close as you can," ordered Kith-Kanan, knowing full well that he was asking his old friend to place his life at grave risk. But he had no real alternative.

If the veteran resented the difficult order, he didn't let on. "I'll try to get out and back quickly," he replied. "We want to get the campaign off to an early start."

"Agreed," Kith noted. "And be careful. I'd rather see you come back empty-handed than not come back at all."

Parnigar grinned, then grew suddenly serious. "Has there been any word aboutI should say 'from'Suzine?"

Kith sighed. "Not a thing. It's as if the world gobbled her up. She slipped away from the conference that afternoon. I brought Vanesti back to the camp as my squire and found her gone."

"These d.a.m.ned storms will run their course in another few weeks," said the scout, "but I doubt you'll be able to send fliers out before then. No doubt she's holed up safe on some farmstead. . . ."

But his words lacked conviction. Indeed, Kith-Kanan had lost optimism and didn't know what to believe anymore. All indications were that Suzine had left the camp of her own free will. Why? And why wasn't he more upset?

"You mentioned your squire." Parnigar smoothly changed the subject. "How's the young fellow working out?"

"He's eager, I've got to grant him that. My armor hasn't gleamed like this in years."

"When we march . . . ?"

"He'll have to come along," Kith replied. "But I'll keep him to the rear. He doesn't have enough experience to let him near the fighting."

"Aye," grunted the old warrior before disappearing into the storm.

"This will do, driver. I shall proceed on foot."

"Milady?" The coachman, as he opened the door for Suzine, looked at her in concern. "The Army of Ergoth has scouts all over here," he said. "They'll find you for sure."

I'm counting on that. Suzine didn't verbalize her reply. "Your dedication is touching, but, really, I'll be fine."

"I think the general would be"

"The general will not be displeased," she said firmly.

"Very well" His reluctance was plain in his voice, but he a.s.sisted her in stepping to the ground. The carriage rested at the side of a muddy trail. Several wide pathways led into the woods around them.

She was grateful for the smoothness of the trail. Neither her eyes nor her legs were up to a rigorous hike. She turned toward the coachman who had carried her so faithfully across the plains for more than a week. Her mirror, now resting in the box on her belt, had shown her where to go, allowing her to guide them around outposts of human pickets.

The only other possession she carried was in a pouch at her belt: a narrow-bladed knife. She wouldn't be coming back, but she couldn't tell the driver that.

"Wait here for two hours," she said. "I'll be back by then. I know these woods well.

There are some old sights I would like to see."

Nodding and scowling, the driver climbed back onto his seat and watched until the woods swallowed her up. She hurried along the trail as fast as her aging legs would carry her, but even so, it took her more than an hour to cover two miles. She moved unerringly past many forks in the path, certain that the mirror had shown her the right way.

Shortly after she pa.s.sed the end of her second mile, an armored crossbowman stepped into the path before her.

"Halt!" he cried, leveling his weapon. At the same time, he gaped in astonishment at the lone old woman who approached the headquarters of the Army of Ergoth.