To Light A Candle

Horns.”

“I,” Ancaladar announced, “am going in search of clear air and sunlight. Call me when you need me.”

The dragon took a few bounding leaps through the snow and was airborne. Jermayan and Kellen followed Shentorris up the causeway into the fortress.

—«♦»—

EASILY defensible, Kellen noted on his way up. The removal of a few key blocks of stone would take down a substantial part of the causeway, isolating the fortress completely—assuming this was the only way in. Ancaladar had said that dragons couldn’t land on the top of it—but Kellen suspected that the Deathwings that had destroyed the caravan that had originally been supposed to bring Sandalon here could, and they already knew that the Deathwings could carry a person. So… how many of them were there, and who controlled them?

And were there caves beneath the fortress that the Shadowed Elves controlled—or could reach?

He sighed inwardly. There were things he had to say to Shentorris—or whoever was in charge of defense here—that would not make good hearing, as the Elves would say. He hoped that Jermayan would take the lead in that, but if Jermayan wouldn’t, he’d have to.

They reached the top of the causeway. There were massive bronze gates— crusted with winter’s ice. In fact, the ice was so thick upon them that it was obvious they had not been opened in months. Shentorris led them around the edge—a pathway even narrower than the causeway, with a sheer drop to the rocks below—to a smaller door, also bronze. The walls looked as if they were made of a single piece of stone; there was nothing here that would burn or decay. The smaller door was barely large enough to admit one person at a time. It was closed. Shentorris knocked, and after a pause, it was opened. Kellen entered first, then Jermayan, then last of all Shentorris.

Kellen was used to Elven architecture being spacious, airy, and open, bringing the outdoors in so artfully that sometimes it was hard to tell where Nature ended and Elven craft began. This was beautiful, too, as all the work of the Elves was, but it was beauty of an entirely different sort. It was as if he’d suddenly stepped back through time, to meet a wholly different race of Elves—a race of warriors, not artisans.

The corridors were narrow, the ceilings low. Kellen had the sudden sense that this fortress was also a labyrinth, designed to confuse any invaders who got this far. Defenders would hide and attack, knowing the territory well, while their enemies circled about in confusion.

And the children who lived here now would find it a perfect playground, never realizing, as they played, that they were learning the skills that would keep them alive in the ultimate extremity.

Leaf and Star, Gods of the Wild Magic, let that day never come, Kellen thought fervently. If the Enemy broached this citadel, then all hope was truly gone.

There were no windows, of course, though the walls were painted with scenes of cities and forests that had not existed in a thousand years, and depictions of animals that Kellen had no name for. A sort of four-legged eagle, and something that looked more like a two-horned unicorn than it looked like anything else. A horse with wings— now surely that was wholly imaginary? A kind of a Centaur with a cat body instead of a horse body, and wings as well.

Kellen stopped trying to decide what was real—or might have been real— once—and simply followed the others. He wasn’t lost—no Knight-Mage, as he’d discovered down in the caverns, could actually get lost—but unless he spent enough time here to learn the entire layout of the fortress, the only route he’d be able to take back to the door was the one he was following now.

“And here we come to what has—in times past—been the dining hall,” Shentorris said, opening a door.

Kellen quickly understood the reason for Shentorris’s odd phrasing, for it was obvious that the room was no longer a dining hall, and had not been used as one for quite some time.

It was now filled with children. All the children of the Nine Cities—except, Kellen supposed, for the very youngest, like Kalania, who were off in a nursery somewhere, and some of the oldest, like Alkandoran, who were probably continuing their knightly training.

But all the rest were here.

It was the largest room in the fortress. The floor had been marked with the elaborate patterns of children’s games, the walls were lined with large tubs in which green plants grew, scenting the air with the perfume of growing things. High above, hanging from the rafters, were ancient war banners, an incongruous martial note in these surroundings.

There were fewer than fifty children here, yet Kellen knew that these were all the children of all the Elven Lands. But Elves lived for centuries, and children were rare among them.

Kellen watched as they ran and played together. Most of them had already been here for sennights. Long enough to get used to the idea of seeing so many others near their own ages. He wondered what kind of a difference it would make to them later.