they found men and women like no others. The forest had hidden them, like creatures caught on a island. They lived and worshiped alone, until the Tel'Quessir arrived.'
The elven men, the Moon elf sage, the Gold elf, and the younger servant, averted their eyes when the old woman spoke. They did not agree with her, Alassra thought, but they weren't about to disagree in front of humans. The Simbul seized her chance to exploit elven reticence.
'After they arrived, did the Tel'Quessir conquer the Yuir folk and their gods?'
The Gold elf answered quickly, 'The Tel'Quessir do not commit conquest.'
'Not by intent,' the Moon elf corrected. Alassra studied him from the corner of her eye. She'd judged him the least sympathetic, but perhaps she'd judged wrong. More likely Zandilar and the Yuirwood had been a sore point with Faerun's elves for a very long time. The latter notion seemed true when the Gold elf threw his attention at the Moon elf, not her.
'Relkath, Magnar, Zandilar! They were wild gods,' he hissed across the circle. 'Those who worshiped them were wild, too, or became wild. If they had tamed themselves… But that went against their nature. Another path had to be secured before the Tel'Quessir lost their way in the Yuirwood.'
The sages lapsed into a discussion in archaic elvish, full of names and events that meant nothing to Alassra. The words meant something to Alustriel. Though the High Lady of Silverymoon listened as still and silent as Alassra, barely perceptible changes in her expression betrayed her interest and surprise as the sages debated what had happened long ago.
The Moon elf blamed the forest, saying it was too old, too wild for the Tel'Quessir. 'We were wrong to go there, more wrong to stay. The Yuirwood shaped the Yuir, not the other way around. We should have left it to those who were there when we came.'
'Aye,' the Gold elf retorted, with all the subtle scorn elves could cram into a single, small word. 'Aye, and if we left it… if the coronals had shirked their duty or our gods had shirked theirs, then what, Stiwelen? Would you rather others had come to take our place? They were a lesser folk with lesser gods. They were bound to be overtaken.'
Stiwelen, the Moon elf, scowled. He fondled the gem-stone pommels of his knives and said nothing.
Undaunted by the silence among the elves, Alassra entered the discussion. 'There was an elven Time of Troubles?' she suggested, referring to the turbulent years, recently passed, when the gods of humanity had warred among themselves in mortal time and mortal form. The elves said nothing; Alassra took that for agreement. 'And the Sunglade circles commemorate the Seldarine taming the old, wild powers of the Yuirwood?'
The old woman raised her head. 'It was done,' she said and stared at the Simbul.
'The Tel'Quessir Seldarine enlightened the old ones and adopted them, as parents to children,' the Gold elf added.
'As cousins at a wedding,' Stiwelen corrected, a needling smile on his lean face. Alassra was starting to warm to him, though perhaps it was his knives. 'There was enlightenment-if you choose to call it that-in all directions.'
The Gold elf made a fist and opened his mouth, but the old woman spoke faster. 'It was done,' she repeated her earlier statement. 'The old ones accepted the Tel'Quessir. The Seldarine accepted the old ones. The Yuirwood accepted the elves; they accepted the Yuirwood. It was all done.'
'But it didn't last. Humans came to the land they named Aglarond, and the Yuir elves began their own Retreat.'
'Not a Retreat,' Stiwelen said bitterly. 'The Yuir elves couldn't Retreat. They'd bound themselves to the forest. They doomed themselves.'
Alassra hid her surprise. She'd always assumed-the Cha'Tel'Quessir themselves assumed-that the Yuir elves had Retreated from the forest to Evermeet. 'Doomed? They aren't…? They all died?'
Stiwelen nodded; Alassra looked to the Gold elf for a contradiction and got it.
'They are part of the Yuirwood. They had accepted the forest; it had accepted them. There was no other way. They understood that. When the humans came into the Yuirwood, they accepted them, too, and the Cha'Tel'Quessir were born.'
'And the Cha'Tel'Quessir are doomed as well!' Stiwelen shouted, an unseemly sound that echoed around the menhir. He rose to his feet and stalked the perimeter of the glade. 'This is what comes of leaving things half-done. Are we going to let our mistakes flourish or are we going to put a stop to them?'
The Gold elf rose to his feet as well. 'There have been no mistakes!'
Stiwelen laughed, a biting sound, like quarrels from a crossbow. It flushed the birds from their roosts in nearby trees. A nighthawk stooped; there was scream, then silence as it took its prey. Alustriel laid her left hand on Alassra's arm. A spell tingled in her fingertips.
Nethreene, we should leave now.
Alassra shook off the hand and the spell. Dlaertha, she used her sister's secret name, as Alustriel had used hers. Go, if you wish, but the conversation's just starting to get interesting. I think I'll stay a while longer.
Alustriel scowled and stayed.
'They are both right,' the old woman whispered, as if the men couldn't hear her. 'The Yuir were what we call Sy-Tel'Quessir, what you call wild elves. They held themselves apart from the coronals and the Court. They turned their backs on elegant cities, elegant philosophies. When the forest was threatened by humans, drow and their allies, the Yuir Sy-Tel'Quessir fought alone: They refused all offers of assistance.'
'Offers!' Stiwelen sputtered, proving he heard and listened. 'You do not offer a drowning man a rope. You dive into the water and drag him to the shore.'
It was the Gold elf's turn to shatter the night's quiet with his laughter. 'And you know nothing about either drowning men or the Yuir Sy-Tel'Quessir. The choice was theirs: They made it; we honored it. The trolls, the drow, and the rest of the Underdark were repulsed. They had their victory, on their terms.'
'What of the humans? The Cha'Tel'Quessir say the humans fought beside the Yuir in the dark days, not against them,' Alassra asked.
'The Cha'Tel'Quessir,' Stiwelen spat the syllables out as curses. 'Suppose we fall in love, you and I.' He glared at Alassra who considered it unlikely. 'We exchange vows. We live together. We have children. If I love a Gold elf or a Sea elf or even a drow, my children will be like me or their mother, but with you, our children would be neither wholly like you, nor wholly like me. A mistake? Perhaps. An exception? Certainly. The foundation of a new race? Half elf, half human forever? The Cha'Tel'Quessir? Gods help us all! They have accepted a burden they cannot hope to carry. They are children playing with fire, and they must be stopped.'
'This, from the man who'd leap blindly into water to rescue the drowning. What do you do when a man is trapped in a burning house? Walk away?'
'I'd make damn sure he couldn't fall in the water or set fire to his house again! What would you do, Islywyn?'
Alassra thought there might be other options, chief among them: talking to the Cha'Tel'Quessir elders who freely admitted-to her, at least-that they knew less than they would have liked about their Yuir ancestors. She'd take care of that when she got back to Aglarond when she shared her account of this evening. But before that-lest the reason for this gathering be forgotten:
'Excuse me, I came here to learn about Zandilar, the Dancer.'
'The fool,' Stiwelen replied as Islywyn said:
'The traitor.'
'One, the other, or both?' Alassra asked, provoking the two men in the hope of getting them to speak freely, and rashly.
But it was the old woman who answered her. 'A maiden, not of the Sy-Tel'Quessir. She fell in love with the forest and it gave her one of the old names and accepted her as part of itself. Neither wizard, nor warrior, she was merely beautiful, and when the Yuirwood was attacked, she defended it with her beauty and rode to battle on a gray horse.'
Islywyn strode onto the quilt. He stood in front of the old woman, towering over her. 'Zandilar rode straight to the drow temples. She defended the Yuirwood by consorting with the dark god, Vhaeraun!'
The old woman rose to her feet, agile and steady despite her frail appearance. 'She hoped to seduce him and take his secrets back to the Yuirwood. She was betrayed.'
'The traitor herself betrayed!' Islywyn countered. 'The fate of all those who treat with the drow: the seducer
