was no fit company for an Elven Prince.
'Those greys, that shade of brown… with your coloring; unsuitable. You should wear warm clear colors: blues and ambers to waken the color of your hair and eyes. Perhaps red, though I think that would be too daring—though you have good skin, if you will only take care of it, and not allow the sun to age and damage it. Violet, perhaps, though it would have to be the proper shade of violet. I will see what I have in my stores. Green, if you must have it, though every fool of a human forester will insist that only green may marry with brown, as if folk were trees. I would not dress you in green, myself.' She shook her head firmly.
Where had all this come from? And why all this business about colors and skin now1. 'I'm sorry?' Kellen said. 'I don't quite understand…'
Sandalon was hungry, and bored by the conversation as well. He went to the back of the water cart, where food was being handed around. Now he came back with two full silver tankards, both much too large for his small hands, carrying them with intent concentration. Kellen saw what he was doing, and intervened in time to prevent disaster. Sandalon smiled up at him, relieved.
'You give one to her,' he told Kellen in confidential but clearly audible tones. 'She's older.'
Kellen handed one of the tankards to the Elven woman, who accepted it gracefully. He looked at Sandalon again, still holding the second tankard. Sandalon was a child, but he was also a royal Prince, and no one who'd grown up in the Golden City could be ignorant of the way rank and privilege worked.
'And you keep the other one, because you're older than me,' the boy said helpfully. 'I'm only five. You're lots older than that.'
Kellen kept the tankard, though it didn't seem quite reasonable to be waited on by an Elven Prince. He glanced back at the Elven woman, and saw her trying very hard to stifle a proud smile.
'And you are wondering who I am,' she said. 'Why, I am the woman who made what you are wearing now, as I made for your sister and all who pass through our lands as guests. It is a challenge I enjoy, the crafting of garments for those I have never seen, and may never see. But now I have seen you'—her expression turned fierce and stern—'and I will not permit this mismarriage of form and cloth to be seen about Sentarshadeen any longer. Tomorrow morning you will come to the shop of Tengitir, Kellen Tavadon, bringing all your clothing with you, so that I may determine what will best suit you.'
Kellen would rather have argued with Shalkan than with Tengitir, he decided—though, if he were in the middle of a drought and facing annihilation, he thought he'd be able to find better things to worry about than the color of somebody's clothes. He nodded meekly, hoping that whatever she was willing to give him to wear tomorrow, it wouldn't be the sort of skintight things the Elves themselves wore. And that the visit wouldn't take too long or be too embarrassing.
But maybe she'd be willing to talk about something other than cloth and colors while she was working. All the Elves seemed to know something about magic and their own history, and maybe Tengitir would know something about Armethalieh's history as well, or know someone who would. At least this time he'd have all night to figure out some questions-that-weren't-questions.
IT took a few more hours of hard work before the water cart was filled. The team was brought back from its grazing and hitched to the wagon again, and the cart started moving slowly back down the path.
'Do they do this every day?' Kellen asked Sandalon. It was nice having at least one friend in Sentarshadeen that he didn't have to watch every word with.
'Three times a day,' Sandalon said proudly. 'It goes all kinds of places, but most of the time, people just bring smaller ones like that—'
He pointed, to where another pair of Elves were approaching the spring. They were pulling a light two- wheeled cart, similar to the ones Kellen had seen in Armethalieh, where a running man pulled a single-seat carriage for one of the rich and powerful to ride in.
No one was riding in this cart, however. It contained a large water barrel, like the ones outside the poorer houses in Armethalieh for catching rainfall. But even the rain barrels here (if that's what it was) were as beautiful as the fine furniture in rich men's homes back in human lands.
'But there's running water in the houses,' Kellen said, baffled. 'Why are they coming here for water?'
'You can't water everything from your house!' Sandalon said, in tones that suggested everyone knew that.
'I guess not,' Kellen admitted meekly.
'Come on,' Sandalon announced. 'Let's go see the unicorns! I'm not supposed to come out here alone, but you're with me.'
Kellen agreed. He couldn't imagine that anything harmful could manage to find its way into the Elves' canyon home, and if it did, either the unicorns would deal with it, or the two of them would have the sense to run from it before it could catch them.
