To Light A Candle

“I know that your fortress is not impregnable. I know it can be attacked. I know how, and by who. I don’t know when, or if,” Kellen said. “But I know how I would do it, had I the resources of the Enemy.”

That got the full attention of all three Elves.

“Tell me, Knight-Mage,” Tyrvin commanded, all business now.

“I don’t think it will be soon. Perhaps not at all. But let me go back to the beginning, and tell you everything, and then you will know all that I know.”

Carefully, Kellen began at the very beginning: the attack on the caravan that was to have brought Sentarshadeen’s children to the Crowned Horns; with the frost-giants, ice-trolls, and coldwarg—and their allies, the giant Deathwings.

“They can carry a full-grown Elf safely, and they follow orders. I don’t know who ultimately controls them, but I know they’re creatures of Darkness that can, nevertheless, fly by day. I know Ancaladar said he can’t land on top of the fortress, but I don’t know what the top of the fortress looks like, so I can’t say what could land there.”

“You shall see it. Go on,” Tyrvin said.

Kellen told the whole story, from the moment Calmeren had arrived at Sentarshadeen to the moment the rescue party had returned to it. He omitted no detail, whether he suspected Tyrvin knew it already or not. Whatever Tyrvin knew, he did not know the events as Kellen had experienced them.

“The Shadowed Elves weren’t just using the cavern as a temporary camp, either. They had a whole city there, and Ancaladar said they’d been living there for a very long time. Since they… seem… to have Elven blood, the land-wards don’t react to them.”

There was a long silence. Jermayan knew all this, of course, but it was new to Shentorris and Tyrvin, and neither Elf was happy to hear it.

“How far do these caves go?” Tyrvin asked at last, with blunt War Manners.

“No one knows—yet. Not even Ancaladar. Andoreniel intends to wipe out the Shadowed Elves. He’s calling up the levies in Ondoladeshiron.” While Kellen had been telling the long tale of the rescue of the children, tea had been brewed and poured, and now he took a long sip of spicy Black Winter Tea to soothe his raw throat.

“The Fortress of the Crowned Horns is built atop a mountain of solid granite,” Shentorris said, speaking at last.

“For the moment,” Jermayan said. He needed to say nothing more.

“We will hear them if they dig. I will post listeners on the lowest level, where the spring that nourishes the fortress is—every hour of every day,” Tyrvin said. “They will assist Ronethil in her work. But you say you do not think They mean to attack us, Kellen Wildmage?”

“I think Their plan was to lure us into a war with the Shadowed Elves—to make us commit all our resources into a battle to destroy them, as we shall. If we attack them in their caverns, we’re at a disadvantage. If they attack us here, in our place of greatest strength, they’re the ones at a disadvantage. I don’t think they’re after the children; I don’t think that the children were ever their real target.” He tried to choose his words with utmost care. “This is why: They didn’t attack us to get them back once we’d rescued them, and until we met up with the second rescue party from Sentarshadeen, we were quite vulnerable. Nor did they attack any of the caravans that followed Sandalon’s. The whole point seems to me to have been to allow us to discover the existence of the Shadowed Elves in a way that would make us determined to wipe them out.” He knew he sounded puzzled, and he was, because he could not imagine what could possibly come next.

“An odd way of running a war,” Tyrvin said. “Still, unless they can find a way of coming at us here in force, I am confident that if they do attack, we can hold them off—though your news is hardly calculated to help me to rest easy at night. But come. I will show you the rest of our defenses.”

—«♦»—

THE tour took the next several hours. Tyrvin showed Kellen over what seemed as if it were every inch of the fortress—though he saw no more of the children.

There were rooms filled with weapons: arrows and bows, the most fragile and easily-expended items of their defense; spears, swords, shields. Enough to arm and rearm every defender of the fortress a dozen times over.

There were other rooms filled with food: grain, both fresh and parched, dried fruit, dried meat, herbs and teas, spices. Enough to feed an army for years.

Everyone Kellen met—and there were female knights as well as male among the defenders—was in good spirits. No one here doubted the importance of their task, nor was inclined to grow soft and inattentive simply because one day passed seamlessly into another with no sign of overt threat. The Elves were a patient people.