Cilarnen let out his pent-up breath in a sigh of relief.
—«♦»—
THE difficulty with finding the next lair of the Shadow Elves was that it might, literally, be anywhere. Or nowhere. This might have been the only enclave of the creatures—or the Elven Lands might be riddled with them. No one knew— and they dared make no assumptions.
And Vestakia was the only one who could find them.
If the Elves knew that, then Shadow Mountain must know it as well. Her life was in constant danger, for without Vestakia, their only alternative was to seek out every cave in the Elven Lands—and even the Elves weren’t quite sure where they all were—and search them all blindly. And such a task could take an Elven lifetime to complete.
And that was time they did not have.
Not knowing where the next enclave of the Shadowed Elves might be, Redhelwar made the decision to regroup at Ondoladeshiron. The rest of the Elven Knights would have arrived by now, and the wounded could be better cared for there.
The army moved more slowly on its retreat, handicapped both by its burden of wounded and by the bitter winter weather. The only mercy was that none of the horses or unicorns had been hurt in the battle—Kellen didn’t think he could have borne that.
Idalia, Jermayan, and Atroist worked tirelessly among the injured—the sword cuts were bad enough, but these were things that the Elven Healers were used to dealing with, and they were masters of the healing arts. But the wounds caused by acid and poison were resistant to everything the Healers could do, and there the skills of the Wildmages made all the difference.
Here Kellen faced a great dilemma. It was not that he was unwilling to help his friends and companions in every way he could, though no Knight-Mage would ever be as good a Healer as a true Wildmage—but the Wild Magic exacted a price for every spell, in the form of a task the Wildmage must complete in payment. What if one of those tasks somehow ran counter to doing what needed to be done here?
“Don’t worry about it,” Idalia told him, when he brought the question to her.
“I don’t
So at the end of each day, Kellen joined the others in the Healers’ tents, doing what he could. Some of the prices he incurred were small and relatively easy to discharge, like going to comfort one of the unicorns whose rider had been slain. Some of them he could not discharge for years to come, if ever—like the order to visit the homeland of the Selken Traders.
And some were simply odd, like being told to forgive one whom he thought of as an enemy.
That was puzzling. Kellen didn’t have any personal enemies. Armethalieh had banished him, but even he had to admit there was nothing personal about it. He was trying to exterminate the Shadowed Elves, but again, it was because they were Tainted, not because he hated them personally. He didn’t get along with every single Elf in the army, or in Sentarshadeen, but as far as he knew, he didn’t have any enemies in either place.
Still, if a personal enemy showed up, Kellen supposed he’d keep his Mageprice in mind and do his best to forgive whoever it was. Of course, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill that person, but he’d forgive them as well.
Between the long days of riding, and working half the night as a Healer, he was nearly always tired, and the icy conditions didn’t help. It was hard to get to sleep at night, shivering in his blankets, and harder to wake up sooner than he wanted. He learned to get by on less sleep than he would ever have imagined possible, to both eat and sleep in Shalkan’s saddle, and—somehow—stay alert for danger through it all.
—«♦»—
WHEN they reached the Gathering Plain, Kellen saw that the encampment had grown, even without the presence of most of the knights from Ondoladeshiron, Sentarshadeen, Windalorianan, Deskethomaynel, and Thultafoniseen. He recognized the banners of Lerkalpoldara, Valwendigorean, Realthataladon, and Ysterialpoerin: the four northernmost of the Nine Cities had arrived.
And there were other tents—non-Elven tents—besides.
“Mountain Traders,” Petariel said cheerfully. Though his leg was still stiff, the combination of Healer skill and Wildmagery had him back in the saddle once more. “I’m glad they’re here. We can use more Wildmages. Oh, not that you’re not very efficient, Kellen,” he added teasingly.
“I think you said at the time that you’d rather be healed by a snow-bear than let me anywhere near you,” Kellen reminded him with a grin. “And if Gesade hadn’t threatened to stand on you and hold you down, I might have
