Like his companion Llylance, whom he resembled as closely as a twin, Canderil was tall and slender. His silky black hair was elaborately braided, and despite that, still fell to his hips. His eyes were as black as midnight, his skin as pale as pearl, and it was clear that Elves never needed to shave (this was a matter for envy, as Kellen did need to shave, and both sharp razors and shaving mirrors were difficult to come by in the Wildwood). With his high cheekbones and faintly slanted eyes, Canderil possessed an oddly androgynous yet definitely male glamour, as exotic as it was unsettling.
He was beautiful; there was no other appropriate word for it. And worse, thought Kellen, watching him with an increasing mixture of fascination and discomfort, he was perfect. Canderil never put a foot wrong, never made a clumsy gesture or an awkward one. Even just walking beside Coalwind, he looked as if he were dancing.
Even his clothes were perfect. At first Kellen had been a little disappointed by the simple grey-and-brown costumes he and Llylance wore. They seemed too similar to what he and Idalia had worn in the Wildwood, albeit made of finer materials, and of cloth, not skins. But the longer he looked, the more Kellen realized that his first assessment had been too hasty.
The dun-colored cloth was the finest weaving he'd ever seen, a wool as soft as Shalkan's coat. It shimmered softly in the light, and against it the grey embroidery glowed, now silver, now dark, in an ever-shifting pattern that Kellen felt he could be content to gaze at for the rest of his life. And no matter how Canderil moved in it, nothing wrinkled, nothing pulled. He wore his garb like an extension of his own skin.
Kellen had been the son of the most powerful man in Armethalieh. He had despised the luxuries that went with that high office, but he was familiar with them. He knew exactly how much time and skill it took to make clothing one-tenth as fine as this—and if these were such clothes as Canderil wore for hunting in the woods, what did formal Elven clothing look like?
The Priests of the Light taught that Elves corrupted humankind and caused them to despair, and so honest folk should shun their company, should they be offered it. And Kellen supposed that in a way that was true. If just watching Canderil walk through a forest made him feel grubby and inadequate, what would seeing a whole city of Elves dressed in their finest clothes do? But one of the oldest Histories he'd read had said it better, he thought: 'The Elves have elevated mere living into a form of Art.'
'When you live for a thousand years, you have a lot of time to get things right,' Shalkan said quietly.
'Uh… yeah,' Kellen said. But he was comforted by Shalkan's assurance—and the fact that the unicorn, as perfect in his way as any Elf, had been perceptive enough to give that assurance.
'But I have been rude,' Canderil said, turning sideways to regard Kellen and Shalkan. 'In my eagerness to hear Idalia's news, I have neglected Sentarshadeen's other guests. I hope you will not think me discourteous. Perhaps there are things you would know, and I would hear your news as well.'
It would take Kellen a long time to realize that adult Elves simply didn't ask direct questions—if an Elf wanted to know something, the polite method was to phrase it as a statement, which the hearer could—just as politely— choose to disregard. Kellen simply assumed he was being asked a question, and after glancing at Idalia to see if it was all right, launched into a slightly tangled and much edited tale of how he and Idalia had come to be traveling into Elven lands. If more than a touch of bitterness crept into his voice when he spoke about what had been done to him by Lycaelon, well, he hoped that Canderil would understand.
As he spoke, the sere landscape was replaced by healthier woodland, and the empty air filled with the proper sounds of wildlife and wind-in-the-branches. They reached the edge of the trees, and Kellen got his first sight of Sentarshadeen.
The Elven city was built into the sides of a wooded granite canyon. At first Kellen didn't see the houses he knew must be there, but slowly his eyes adjusted, and they appeared, as magically as the Elven woods-guards had.
I guess the houses are just very, very good at hiding, too, Kellen told himself.
The dwellings of the Elven city of Sentarshadeen blended into their surroundings as if they'd grown there: low beautiful cottages of silvery wood, each one unique, each one set into its own garden—but too few to make up a city, and when Kellen studied the canyon wall across the valley floor, he suddenly realized that it, too, was filled with dwellings cut into the living rock itself. Every inch of the canyon wall was subtly carved, to form windows and doors and pathways that so beautifully harmonized with their surroundings that they were not immediately apparent to the eye. There must have been hundreds of them.
In fact, if Kellen had not just spent a season in a true wildwood, he would have mistaken the sight before him for untouched Nature, but it wasn't. It was Nature perfected, touched so lightly and gracefully that what had been done wasn't immediately obvious—but, like Canderil himself, everything Kellen saw was quietly perfect.
A wisp of mist trailed along the side of the canyon; faintly he heard the welcome sound of water.
It's like walking into a dream, Kellen thought in awe. All his previous misgivings were forgotten. He might not be able to live up to the Elves' standards, but he could certainly appreciate them.
Canderil led them down the trail to the valley floor, as Kellen gazed about himself in wonder. Somewhere in the distance he could hear the faint sound of wind chimes, and it seemed the perfect enhancement to this place. The rich autumn light slanted down through the trees, sculpting shadows off the canyon walls in ways that Kellen somehow knew had been planned, as though the Elven designers had taken note of how the sun would strike every inch of the rock every hour of the day in every season of the year, and shaped it accordingly. Though he looked hard to find a flaw—something hasty, unfinished, out of place—he never did in all the time he spent in Sentarshadeen. Even the stones in the dry riverbed they crossed over seemed to each have been deliberately placed to make their
