right, but seeing forward, I know how that mistake can be rectified.'
Tellin put aside his quill again, this time not smiling. 'Have you been making war plans, Dalamar? Isn't that better left to-'
'— to my betters?' Dalamar shrugged. 'I suppose you might think so, my lord, if you thought the heart of a servitor were not as deeply filled with love for his homeland as the hearts of lords and ladies.'
Tellin winced. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean-'
Yes, said Dalamar's cool smile, you meant just that. 'Look what my betters have wrought. Have you heard it,' he said, 'that the refugees from this war are not marching neatly to the cities on the river? People with maps thought they would do that, but people in terror simply run. These are trampling their way to Silvanost, hungry and cold and frightened. Come, I suppose, to see what the best of their betters have to say about things.'
Tellin's eyes narrowed at this impudence. Dalamar wondered whether he had pushed the cleric too far. He did not back down, though. He had been a long time considering his plan, and most of this morning looking at the maps in this very room when what he should have been doing was sharpening quills, scraping parchment clean, and laying out the lists of stores for Tellin to review and amend.
'My Lord Tellin,' he said, striving to keep a tone that wouldn't alienate his master. 'I have a lot of time to think out there in the woods where the herbs are. And I have a chance to hear what is being said in the city among the people. Lords and ladies, they don't look to see if a servant is near. We are invisible to them. And so they speak freely, and we listen freely. I know we elves held our hand too long, and now we suffer for it. We let advocates and emissaries steer our defense, as though we were in some court of law and not at war. We put our trust in treaties that Phair Caron had no mind to honor. Now we are too late to the border with too few soldiers.' Softly, he said, 'You know that as well as I, my lord.'
Tellin looked out the window again. Lynntha's voice lifted in sudden laughter. Her brother had come to escort her home from the Temple. He watched her turn and walk away, lovely on Lord Ralan's arm. Her cheeks were sun- gold. Her silver hair, caught back from her face and captured in a glittering jeweled net, hung heavy on her long slender neck. What would happen to her if the Wildrunners could not hold the border? Who would defend her and keep her safe?
Tellin shuddered and looked at Dalamar, his impertinent servant. 'Tell me,' he said, reluctant to show enthusiasm, and yet curious. 'Tell me what plan you have.'
And then what? He could not go to the Speaker of the Stars and say, 'Beg pardon, my lord king, but my servant has come up with a brilliant plan of defense.' Certainly he could not! War plans from the servant of a cleric whose duty it was to keep the records in the Temple of E'li? This was idiocy! And yet, he was curious.
Dalamar sensed that curiosity as if it were something to smell. He crossed the tiled floor and took out a map from the chest of drawers. He spread the map upon the marble table and said, 'First, my lord, let us agree that we are not at the center of the world.'
Tellin listened, growing by turns astonished, disbelieving, and finally accepting. When Dalamar had finished talking, the sunlight was long gone from the garden, having moved around the back of the Temple. Noontide services had come and gone. Somewhere out by the docks a bell tolled.
'Of course,' Dalamar said, and now he smiled a little, 'if you think this plan is good, you must take it to whomever you decide needs to hear it and say that it is your own. After all, who would heed the ideas of a servitor?'
Tellin sat back, shaking his head. Who would heed a servitor, indeed? No one. Yet, who but a mage could explain this idea? No one.
Dalamar stood in the Tower of the Stars. He looked up into the high recesses of the chamber and watched the light of stars and the two risen moons glimmering down the walls, dancing on the gems imbedded in the marble walls. Almost, he thought, you can hear that light laughing, singing the songs of the spheres. All around him he felt the ancient magic that had made this marvelous place, echoes of spellcasting done hundreds of years before. Any who chose to attend could feel the wispy remnants of that ancient magic, but none felt that tingling, that echo of mighty spellwork as a mage did. To stand here now was like hearing music drifting out from a distant window, ancient songs and old, old melodies.
Voices of another kind drifted down into the audience chamber from the gallery, ashy whispers with no tones to let him determine one from the other. Beside him, Lord Tellin tried to keep a calm, respectful stillness in this place of power, but the cleric could not hold quiet for long.
Tellin looked around in the great audience chamber, eyes darting here and there, from the magic-wrought walls to the silk-woven tapestries to the nine steps leading to the broad high dais where King Lorac's throne sat, a magnificent high seat of emerald and mahogany. Upon the mahogany where the king's shoulders rested, words of inlaid silver gleamed in the starlight: As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne a table stood, its surface made of rose glass, and upon that rosy surface an ivory sculpture of cupped hands, empty hands.
Dalamar looked down at the floor and his sandaled feet, and he drew in all his thoughts, gathering them, stilling them, and keeping them safe and private in the quietness within himself. Those empty hands touched him deeply. The eloquence of their beseeching matched a feeling he'd had all his life. Fill me up! Enlighten me! Grant me what I need and deserve! He would not look at the empty hands again. It was enough that he felt the ache of their yearning.
A footstep sounded on the stairs above. Three shadowy figures came down the long winding staircase, their way lit not by torches but by two glowing spheres of magic-made light. The king, Ylle Savath of House Mystic, and Lord Garan of House Protector descended from the gallery to the audience hall. Their robes rustled, whispering to the stone steps-Lady Ylle's green robe of damasked silk, the king's brocaded violet robe, Lord Garan's unadorned robe of rusty gold samite. Dalamar caught his breath, in spite of himself impressed, for these three wore upon their backs more wealth than any servitor might hope to possess in all his life.
When the elf-king's foot touched the floor, the two young men, mage and cleric, each dropped to one knee. Tellin lowered his gaze and then his head. His hands, white-knuckled, were still, but just barely. His face shone whiter than the king's, whiter than his robes. His lips moved, perhaps in prayer. These things Dalamar saw out the corner of his eye, his head only a little lowered.
Soft like the sigh of wind through the aspens, Ylle Savath spoke a word to dismiss the spheres of light. Now only the light of torches shone, and shadows leaping all around the hall as she said, 'My lord king, here is a cleric and his servant who have requested audience of us all. The cleric is Lord Tellin Windglimmer. You might remember his grandfather who was head of the Temple of Branchala in the years when I was a child.'
The Speaker made a sound of assent.
'And his servant,' said Lady Ylle, 'is Dalamar Argent, whose mother was Ronen Windwalker and whose father was Derathos Argent of House Servitor.' She lifted her head, regarding Dalamar from beneath hooded lids. Her voice was as cool as winter frost. 'He is magic-taught.'
Lord Garan moved restlessly, reacting to the news that the servant kneeling here in the Tower of the Stars was a mage. Steel rang, chiming faintly. Garan wears mail beneath that rich robe! Dalamar thought.
'Him?' Garan whispered to Ylle Savath. 'He is trained in magic? Could they find nothing else to do with him?'
Was there no other way to handle the embarrassment of a servant so inconveniently born with magic singing in his blood? Dalamar felt his cheeks begin to flush. He closed his eyes, willing the blood to retreat from his face, willing himself to keep still.
In the quiet, a footfall, slow and light on the marble floor. Lorac Caladon walked into the hall. He put a hand on Tellin's shoulder to bid him stand. He put another on Dalamar's and said, 'Rise, young mage.'
Dalamar lifted his eyes, and when Lorac offered the barest twitch of a smile, he mirrored it not because he felt it, but to let his king know that he appreciated the courtesy.
'Lord Tellin,' said Lorac, his pale eyes growing keen and cool, 'I have heard that you wish to come and speak to me of the war.'
Tellin lifted his chin, and he held his king's gaze. 'I do, my lord king. I am not,' he said, bowing to Lord Garan, 'one who studies war, and I know there are others who-'
Dalamar glanced swiftly from the king to his counselors and to Tellin mouthing courtesies and compliments and spending his words telling the king how much he did not know about the matter he'd come to lay before them. It would not do.
