To Light A Candle

demanded.

“Jermayan can’t see the battlefield for you,” Kellen said, as his battle-sense and Wildmagery told him just how far they actually were. At the moment Jermayan and Ancaladar were far to the west of Ysterialpoerin. Kellen could locate them as easily as his own right hand. “The Deathwings have driven Ancaladar off. But I can tell you what is happening. The Shadowed Elves are breaking through our lines. And they have weapons and— something—cached somewhere between here and Ysterialpoerin. I don’t know where.”

“If you can see the battlefield, then tell me what you see,” Redhelwar ordered sharply.

Automatically, Kellen closed his eyes, responding to the command as if he’d been bespelled himself. For a moment the world seemed to spin, then everything steadied, dreamlike and impossibly tiny, a pattern in his mind, in colors that only Elves could see. As if it were nothing to do with him, as if it did not matter, he heard himself reciting the places where the line was weak, where units had been decoyed out of position—or slain entirely.

—«♦»—

THEY had assumed the numbers of the Shadowed Elves would be similar to what they had encountered in the first cavern—doubled, of course, since they were facing the warriors of two caverns here, but of the same order.

They’d been wrong.

There were far more of them here. The Shadowed Elves thrived on darkness and cold. And they’d been preparing for this battle for a very long time. If Redhelwar had fallen into their trap, and lost a third of his force in the nearer cavern, tonight wouldn’t be a battle at all. It would be a slaughter.

Redhelwar was giving orders to his messengers now, and they sped off like arrows from an Elven bow, but Kellen didn’t listen. The important thing was to see the picture and report it. Would a time ever come when he could see and fight?

“They’re behind the line,” Kellen heard himself say. “They’ve really broken through now; they’ve driven a gap in the lines.”

“Where?”

“East and north.” Not just the few dozen that the Deathwings had managed to carry over their line, but a number that could pose a serious threat to Ysterialpoerin. “A hundred, perhaps more.” He could see how they’d done it—the long perilous climb over the glacier, the bitter clash with the High Reaches warriors, then down the side of the mountain and into the night.

“Go. Find them. There’s little more you can do here,” Redhelwar said.

Kellen opened his eyes, drawing in a deep breath of icy night air, and for a moment the battle spun crazily around him before everything settled again. The world seen only through his human senses seemed oddly flat and simple.

But now urgency tightened his gut, and he had orders to follow. With a quick salute, he turned Firareth about and rode back to his men.

The fighting was heavier now, and several times Kellen was delayed, though he went as quickly as he could. By now the skirmishing units had been drawn into the fighting, called up to replace fallen comrades and to draw the ring of Elvensteel tighter around the enemy.

Kellen located Isinwen—he did not see Ciltesse—at the head of the troop. They had obviously just withdrawn from a clash with the enemy, and were looking about for fresh foes. Isinwen was not riding Cheska, but a strange destrier whose caparison and barding was drenched in blood.

“Ciltesse?” He did not want to know, yet he must ask.

“We were separated,” Isinwen replied, voice cracking and hoarse from shouting. “I have not seen him since.”

There was no time to worry about a single member of the troop. He would either be alive, or dead, and they had a job to do. “Disengage! We have orders! Come with me!”

Isinwen raised the warhorn to his lips and blew a short call. A few moments later a few more members of Kellen’s troop came riding up, their swords black with blood even in the blue light of the Coldfire. Ciltesse was not among them.

“Follow!” Kellen called. “They’ve broken through the lines! We’ve orders to stop them!”

Kellen set a hard pace, and the others followed him in the direction of where the Shadowed Elves had broken through the lines in his battle-vision. Kellen wasn’t sure what their plan was. Escape? To attack Ysterialpoerin? It didn’t matter—whatever they planned, he had to stop it. If he could do no more than warn the defenders of Ysterialpoerin, that would be enough. If this was not completely familiar land, it was familiar enough now, with the