The three sisters all nodded, in their own ways.
'While mere young, vigorous brutes watch,' Florin added. 'Seeing through his dignity.'
Merith gave his friend a sidelong look. 'Not so much of the 'vigorous,' there. I'm feeling a touch weary, myself. Perhaps 'tis all this listening to high-tongued jabber.'
'Perhaps,' Storm agreed, a familiar twinkle in her eyes. 'Tea, anyone?'
'Tea?' The Queen of Aglarond twisted that word into a dripping symphony of disgust. 'Is that all you can offer?
After I destroyed nigh on a hundred liches, the replacement of which should keep Old Shadow-wits busy for a few decades at least?'
'I can manage wine if Merith and Florin yet have strength enough to stagger down to my cellar, and soup if you've patience to wait till 'tis ready,' Storm chuckled. 'But as to something more substantial, I fear Torm and Rathan have taken to dining here every evening in your absence, on the pretext of being ready-to-hand upon your return, and there's not a joint of meat nor a barrel offish left in my larder.'
The Simbul frowned, sighed, and frowned a little harder. And an entire roast boar-spit and all-sizzled and dripped onto the beans, floating in midair right in front of her.
She smiled in triumph, spread her hands in a flourish, and reeled. The boar sank, and Dove flung an arm around her shoulders to steady her. The Simbul winced and shuddered, white-faced.
Storm's hair stirred around her shoulders like a whirlwind, and the boar's descent halted. 'I suppose you'd be offended if I asked where you thieved this from?'
Leaning into Dove's shoulder, the Simbul gave her sister a dirty look and muttered, ' 'Tis mine. From my kitchens, I mean, and taken with a spell that tells my cooks whose hand removed it.'
Dove examined her own fingernails, and said to them, 'My, working in your palace must be fun.'
The Simbul rolled her eyes. 'Don't bother fighting to win a throne, and defend it by slaughtering Red Wizards year in and year out,' she told Florin, straightening and stepping away from Dove's arm with a determined effort. 'See the respect it wins you?'
'Lady Queen,' the ranger replied, offering her his arm like a grave courtier, ' 'twas not foremost in my personal plans, no.'
With a smile, the Simbul leaned on him. She was surprisingly heavy, but Florin saw no safety in commenting on that or even betraying his realization of it. With stately tread he led her along one of the garden paths in Storm Silverhand's wake.
Behind him, Jhessail shook her head. 'Sunrise, sunfall, and as inevitably, here we go again!'
'What,' Merith chuckled into her ear, 'there're more liches? Where?'
'Oho ha hearty ha,' she replied. ' want tea, if no one else does. I'll stay for that soup, too. Right now, I could eat a-'
'Boar?' Merith suggested.
'The problem with elves,' the Witch-Queen of Aglarond observed from behind him, 'is how easily their clever senses of humor rule them.'
Storm Silverhand turned in her kitchen doorway, eyes dark and twinkling, and said, 'Ah, no, sister, there you have matters wrong. That's not the problem with elves. That's their glory.'
THE BLADESINGERS LESSON
Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)
Daried Selsherryn prowled through the warm green shadows of the ruined palace. Cold hate gleamed in his perfect eyes. He was attired for battle in a long shirt of golden mail so fine that it might have been made of snakeskin, and in his hand he carried a deadly elven thinblade imbued with potent magic. He was strikingly handsome, even by the high standards of the sun elves, but in his wrath his fine features darkened into the image of an angel wronged.
He measured the damage he could see-the black scars of an old fire, the ruined courtyard, the broken windows and holed roof-and slammed his sword back into his sheath without a flourish. He simply could not see the reason for it, and that angered him until his head swam with bright rage.
'They have made a ruin of my home!' he snarled, then he took a deep breath to compose himself.
Seventy summers ago he had left the old manor of his mother's family warded by strong spells against weather, time, and thieves. But it seemed that his careful labor had been for nothing. His spells had been broken, and strong young trees stood in the overgrown courts and halls amid thick undergrowth and the damp smell of rotten wood.
Root and rain had wreaked their damage on the old manor, but that was the way of growing things and fleeting seasons. What was the point of finding fault with nature's work? No, he would be wiser to save his anger for the plunderers and looters who had battered down the ancient doors his grandfather had made, dispelling the enchantments woven to preserve the Morvaeril palace for the day when once again an elf s foot might tread its marble-floored halls.
Daried turned in a slow circle, studying the manor's empty rooms. Nothing to do now but learn the extent of the damage and try to piece together what happened in the long years the house had stood silent and empty in the forest. The tale of the front hall was easy enough to descry. The strong old doors had been battered down. The beautiful carvings of his grandfather's hand had been bludgeoned and dented by the impact of a rough-hewn timber that still lay just outside the entranceway. Nothing remained of the improvised battering-ram except for a ten-foot long outline of rotted wood, but the splintered doors were just inside the hall.
'How long for a fresh-hewn tree to molder so?' he wondered aloud. 'Forty years? Fifty?'
Evidently, the thieves had come not very long after he and his family had Retreated, abandoning Cormanthor for the green haven of Evermeet. He would have hoped that a few generations might pass before the humans set about despoiling the old places of the People. But patience had never been a human virtue, had it?
Daried followed the old signs into the house. The front hall itself had been turned into someone's stable, at least for a time. Low heaps of rich black compost showed where straw bedding and animal dung had been allowed to fall. Thick greasy soot streaked the wall above a haphazard circle of fist-sized stones, telling of campfires long ago. Daried poked around in the old ashes, and found charred bits of bone, the remains of a leather jack, a wooden spoon carelessly discarded. Human work, all of it.
He straightened and brushed off his hands. Then he followed the trail of damage deeper into the house. Each room showed more of the same. Not a single furnishing remained in the old elven manor; everything had been carried away.
He came to the steep stone stair that led to the vaults below the house, and there Daried smiled for the first time in an hour. One of the old invaders had fallen afoul of the house's magical guardians. The chamber had been warded by a living statue, a warrior of stone animated by elven spells. The statue itself lay broken into pieces nearby, but against one wall a human skeleton slumped, blank eye-sockets gazing up at the holed roof overhead. One side of the skull had been staved in-the work of the stone guardian, Daried supposed.
'At least one of you paid for your greed,' he told the yellowing bones. 'But it seems your comrades didn't think enough of you to bury or burn you. You had poor luck in choosing your friends, didn't you?'
He knelt beside the skeleton and examined it closely. A rusty shirt of mail hung loosely over the bones. Beneath the mail a glint of metal caught his eye, and he carefully drew out a small pendant of tarnished silver from the dead man's tunic. A running horse of dark, tarnished silver raced across the faded green enamel of the charm.
I've seen that emblem before, Daried realized. Some of the Riders of Mistledale wore such a device. In the fly-speck human village not far off from the Morvaeril manor, there stood a rough and grimy taphouse with that symbol hanging above its door.
'Dalesfolk pillaged my house?' he muttered. He tore the pendant from the skeleton's neck and stood with the tarnished charm clenched in his fist.
