Aedan was only six years old then, but he already knew his duty. He had understood that the tiny, wrinkled creature lying nestled in its mother’s arms would become the most important person in his life.
He had bowed his head and gone down to one knee before the empress, who was lying propped up
by pillows in the large, canopied gilt bed. He could still recall how radiant and beautiful she looked, with her long, golden hair hanging loose around her shoulders.
“What is my lord’s name, Your highness?” he had asked.
The empress had smiled and said, “Michael.”
“Michael,” Aedan murmured softly to himself, repeating the name now as he had then. Almost as if in answer, a sudden gust of wind blew in through the window and the candles flickered.
Sensing a presence in the room behind him, Aedan turned from the window.
In the dim glow of the flickering candlelight, he saw a tall, dark, and slender figure appear in the center of the chamber.
His full-length, hooded cloak billowed in the dissipating wind of his arrival, then settled down around him, giving the brief impression of wings being folded back.
“Am I intruding on your vigil, Lord Aedan?”
The voice was unmistakable. It was deep, musical, and resonant, with the old, familiar, lilting elvish accent.
“Gylvain!” said Aedan. “By Haelyn, is it really you, or am I dreaming?”
The elven mage pulled back the hood of his dark green, velvet cloak, revealing handsome, ageless features. His thick, silver-streaked black hair fell almost to his waist and framed a striking face. His forehead was high and his eyebrows thin and delicately arched. His nose was fine and blade straight; his cheekbones high and sharply pronounced, typical of elven physiognomy. The long hair partially concealed large, gracefully curved and pointed ears; the
mouth was wide and thin-lipped; the strong jawline tapered sharply to a narrow, well-shaped chin. His eyes, however, were his strongest features, large and almond-shaped, so light a blue that they were almost gray, like arctic ice. With his dark coloring, they stood out sharply, and the effect was magnetic.
Aedan stared at him, and the years seemed to fall away.
“The world of dreams is no less real than the waking one,” Gylvain replied. “However, I take it your question was rhetorical.”
“You have not changed,” said Aedan with a smile.
“How long has it been? Twenty years? No, by Haelyn, more like thirty.
Yet you are still as I remember you, even after all this time, while I
… I have grown old and gray.”
Aedan turned and glanced into the full-length gilt-framed mirror mounted on the wall. Behind him, Gylvain Aurealis stood reflected, looking just the same as he remembered him. By contrast, Aedan had changed enormously. His hair, cropped short as he had worn it since his midthirties, when he began to lose it, was a grizzled, iron-gray stubble. His thick, full beard was streaked in shades of gray and white. His face was lined with age and scarred from battle. The stress of his responsibilities had given him dark bags below his eyes, and years of squinting through a helm into glaring sunlight had placed crow’s-feet at their corners. There was a weary melancholy in his gaze that had not been there only a few short years before. Once shin and muscular, he was thicker in the waist and chest now, and in the perpetual dampness of the castle on the bay, his old wounds pained him.
Gylvain’s reflection smiled. “You will never seem old to me. I shall always see you as you were when we first met: a shy, ungainly, coltish youth, with the most earnest and serious expression I have ever seen on one so young.”
“Your elven vision is far more acute than mine,” said Aedan wistfully.
“I have looked for that young boy in my reflection many times, but I no longer see him.” He turned to face the mage. “Is it too late to ask for your forgiveness?”
Gylvain cocked his head and stared at him with a faintly puzzled expression. “What was there to for give?”
“Is it possible you have forgotten?”
“I must confess, I have,” Cylvain replied. “What cause had I to take offense?”
“Sylvanna,” Aedan said.
“Oh, that,” said Gylvain with a sudden look of comprehension. “I never took offense. I merely disapproved.”
“Of me,” said Aedan.
Gylvain shook his head. “No, of the situation, not of YOU.”
Aedan turned, biting his lower lip, and stared pensively out the window.
“How is she?”
“Well.”
“As beautiful as ever?”
“She has changed but little.”
Aedan stood silent for a moment. “Does she ever speak of me?”
“Yes, often.”
“Truly?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
Aedan turned. “No, you never have. You were always a true friend. But I had thought I crossed the boundaries of our friendship with Sylvanna.”
“True friendship knows no boundaries,” Gylvain replied. “The only boundaries you had crossed were those of reason. I tried to make you see that, but you were thinking with your heart and not your mind. It was the only time I ever knew you to be just like Michael.”
“Had you told me that back then, I would have considered it the greatest compliment,” said Aedan.
“I wanted so to be like him.”
“Be grateful you were not.”
Aedan snorted. “There was a time I would have bridled at a remark like that,” he said, “but now I understand. Michael and I were like two sides of the same coin. Each stamped differently, but meant to complement the other. I feel my worth diminished by his …
absence.” He shook his head. “But I am being a poor host.
May I offer you a drink?”
“Anuirean brandy?”
“But of course.” He poured them each a gobletful from a decanter on his writing table, then handed one to Gylvain. “What shall we drink to?”
“Why not absent friends?” said Gylvain.
Aedan nodded. “To absent friends,” he toasted.
They drank,
