To Light A Candle

“Leaf and Star!” Adaerion said. He inspected Kellen closely. “It would please me to hear how Belepheriel fares, if you would care to oblige me in the telling.”

Elves. I will never understand Elves, Kellen thought. Do they think I’ve killed him?

“He looked well when I saw him, and when I left him,” Kellen began cautiously. Well, if they were going to be as straightforward as any human, then he would take the rare opportunity to do likewise! “Isinwen told me when I awoke that Belepheriel wished to see me. I went to see him. I apologized for being rude to him. I told him how Imerteniel had died, and what happened to his body. It and those of the other scouts were taken by Shadowed Elves. About the Challenge… he told me I had won it. I don’t understand that, because we didn’t fight. I asked him to just forget it had ever happened, because we don’t need to fight among ourselves. He gave me the sword, and the spurs, and said he wished it known that he would have given them to me no matter what happened between us. I apologize if my brevity offends,” Kellen added, for good measure.

There was a very long pause. Adaerion and Dionan looked at each other, then back at him. Both of the Elves were watching him as if he might faint, or explode… or turn into a dragon right before their eyes.

“Kellen,” Adaerion said, speaking slowly and carefully, “do you understand that by winning the Challenge, you had the right to take Belepheriel’s place in rank? And that you gave it up to him by your words to him?”

Oh. Oh. No wonder everyone had been acting so oddly. And no wonder Adaerion had felt it necessary to speak so bluntly now. Kellen knew enough by now about how Elven gossip ran to know that everyone in camp must have a pretty clear idea of what had happened between him and Belepheriel in Redhelwar’s pavilion that night. And it looked like running off the way he had hadn’t changed his position particularly—at least, it seemed his so-called rights under the “Challenge” would still have been honored. Everyone must have been expecting him to take over Belepheriel’s command the moment he was on his feet again.

Kellen shook his head.

“Adaerion, Dionan… you both know that I want Redhelwar to… listen to my counsel, when I have something to say that is given to me by the Wild Magic. To say that I don’t want what Belepheriel has would be a lie. But I wish to earn it—not to take it away from someone else. Not by—” He was about to say “playing children’s games” and stopped. “Not this way,” he finally said. “Earning it would be right. Having it because we have lost a commander, and I was needed would be right. Taking it would be wrong.”

“You would renounce being a commander of hundreds because it did not suit you?” Adaerion asked.

“No! No, nothing like that. I renounce being a commander of hundreds because I do not yet have those skills,” Kellen said frankly. It was true; he could command a smaller force in the field easily now, and certainly he could advise Redhelwar about what he thought the army should do, but as for being able himself to think of and give the orders on such a scale—those skills he still lacked.

“I must learn all that you, and Dionan, and Redhelwar—yes, and Belepheriel—can teach me about the use of an army. And quickly.” He let out a breath he had been holding in without realizing it. “And I honor Belepheriel. It would be wrong for all of us for me to claim what I cannot properly govern. It would be as if I had been foolish enough to claim the Light at the Heart of the Mountain when I did not even know the use of a dagger.”

And I have to figure out what Shadow Mountain is really after. All of this with the Shadowed Elves, bloody and dangerous as it is, is just delaying tactics. There has to be something Shadow Mountain wants—and doesn’t have yet. When it has it, the real war will start. And if we can’t fight it properly, we’ll lose.

He already knew that. The Elves might be able to bring more fighters into the field, but to do so would be to utterly strip their cities of protection. Shadow Mountain was waiting for that, he was sure. The Demons themselves might not be able to enter the Elven Lands, but many of their creatures could. Even when the Elves destroyed the last of the Shadowed Elves, they wouldn’t be safe from the other creatures of the Endarkened.

The Centaurs, the Mountainfolk, the Herdingfolk Wildmages, the Wildlander farmers—all of them would add to the army’s numbers, perhaps even double its size, but that wasn’t enough to gain them victory. Not without an enemy who would stand and fight. And against the Demons… It would still be suicide. “Then your decision is made,” Dionan said.

Kellen nodded. He wasn’t sure if he’d made a terrible mistake and insulted everybody, or done exactly the right thing. It felt right to him, that was all he knew.

“Then perhaps you will wish to see what Artenel can do to replace what you have lost,” Dionan said. “At the third hour past noon, it would please Redhelwar to drink tea, and hear your thoughts on tomorrow’s attack upon the farther cavern.”

“Yes,” Kellen said, getting to his feet. “Of course. It would please me greatly to drink tea with Redhelwar.”

He exited Dionan’s tent with a feeling of intense relief.

—«♦»—

FORTUNATELY, it was nearly impossible to get lost in an Elven war camp once you’d learned the disposition of the tents. Kellen found the tents of the armorers without difficulty.