To Light A Candle

Coldfire to help, that he dared take them at a hard canter. They pounded through the soft snow, a growing urgency in him, though no direction as yet.

By now he’d lost all track of time. Athan had not cast his spell until the moon had risen above the mountains, so the battle had begun several hours after sunset. At a guess, it must be after midnight now, but the clouds were denser than ever. The only illumination was the crowns of blue fire each of them carried with him, casting blurred and changing shadows over the snow and against the trees. Only the nearer trees and undergrowth had any definition at all; a few yards away, everything blurred into an insubstantial misty grey.

He carried the map of the terrain in his head—half memory of the maps in Redhelwar’s pavilion, half memory of what his battle-sight had shown him. Their path and the path of the fleeing Shadowed Elves should intersect somewhere ahead.

The forest made pursuit more difficult. Kellen never thought there’d come a time when he’d be wishing for the open icy plains that led up to the nearer cavern, but he did now. He would have been able to see for leagues there, and they could have let the destriers run all-out.

At last Kellen could sense open space ahead. He raised his hand, slowing the horses to a walk.

With the Coldfire, they didn’t have the advantage of surprise, but whatever was there, he wanted to see it before they rushed to engage. And the animals could use a breathing space, even if only for a few minutes.

They reached the edge of the trees.

Ahead of them stretched a long shallow valley. All was black, without even the shadows of trees to give it shape. In the distance, his battle-sight showed him piles of dirt-covered snow, where the Shadowed Elves had dug all the way down into the frozen ground. Two sets of ropes were attached to something beneath the surface of the snow, and the Shadowed Elves—the ones that the Deathwings had lifted over the lines earlier, he thought—were pulling with all their strength. Axes and shovels, and unused coils of rope, were scattered over the surface, discarded when they were no longer needed.

Not a weapons cache. Or if that, then more. A tools cache. But why?

What was buried here that was so important to them that they would dig down through ice and snow and frozen earth to get to it in the middle of a battle? And why now? Why not earlier?

There was something beneath the ground as well. Kellen couldn’t quite make it out, and knew he didn’t have the time to spend trying. The Shadowed Elves were trying to get to it, which meant it would be very bad for the Elves.

“I don’t know what they’re doing, but it doesn’t matter. They want what’s there. We must stop them from getting it,” Kellen said to Isinwen—and, with his heart leaping into his throat, gave the signal to charge.

—«♦»—

THEY rode down the valley toward the work party of Shadowed Elves. The second group of Shadowed Elves caught sight of them and began shouting in their strange barking language, running toward them.

“Isinwen, who has the fastest horse?” Kellen shouted, over the sound of their snow-muffled hoofbeats.

“Nironoshan’s Cerlocke is fastest,” Isinwen answered without hesitation.

“Nironoshan—ride to Ysterialpoerin—now—and tell them the Shadowed Elves have broken through our lines. They may expect company!” Kellen ordered at the top of his lungs. His party was outnumbered six to one—at least— and at those odds, it was a more than equal fight. And he dared not assume this was the only group of Shadowed Elves that had broken through Redhelwar’s careful defenses.

“I go!” Nironoshan spurred Cerlocke off at an angle from the main charge, the pale destrier he rode quickly drawing ahead of the others.

Kellen expected the Shadowed Elves to go for weapons as his troop bore down on them, but they only increased their desperate hauling on the ropes. Soon he was close enough to see them by Coldflre instead of battle-sight.

And then to slaughter them.

It was almost too easy. The only difficult thing for him and his troop was reaching them to attack, as the piles of earth and snow on either side formed a natural bulwark that made them difficult to get to. But even while they were being cut down, the Shadowed Elves would not relinquish the ropes leading down into the pit, not even to defend themselves.

And a few seconds after the last of them fell dead, the second wave of Shadowed Elves reached the pit’s edge.

Unlike the others, these were well armed: in the light of the Coldfire, Kellen could see the gleam of looted swords and daggers in their hands.