he was still not done grieving. For the time being, he preferred to be alone.
Late in his second day of walking, he came to a particularly rugged headland and turned off the track, following an overgrown trail above a precipitous drop to the rocky strand below. At the end of the path stood a battered lodge, a rustic place of fieldstone and carved cedar beams. Many of its rooms were cleverly sculpted balconies and open colonnades that rambled over the southeast side of the headland, open to the weather. Higher up on the hillside a living spring gave rise to a swift rill that rushed through the center of the house in a moss- grown waterfall. Humans might have built the place of similar materials, but they never would have managed to conceal it so well among the rock and the forest of the headland.
'Glad homeagain,' Araevin said softly, but the wind and the surf made no answer.
Araevin had not set foot in the House of Cedars for the better part of thirty years. When he was in Evermeet, he usually stayed in the apartments set aside for him at Tower Reilloch. The elements had been hard on the house. Water stains marked the woodwork, the cedar beams were gray and split, and some of the fieldstone walls had buckled and crumbled with thirty winters of freezing and thawing. He dropped his rucksack to the flagstone floor, and leaned his staff against the lintel with a sigh.
The house seems half a ruin already, he thought. Has it been so long? We are so changeless, but the world is so impermanent.
'Well, I can't say I expected to find anyone here,' he said aloud.
Few of the Teshurrs remained, after all. His mother and father had passed to Arvandor a hundred years past, and his sister Sana lived in the open, sunny meadows of Dregala at the other end of the island with her husband, children, and grandchildren. Still, he would have hoped that someone-at least his cousins Eredhor or Erevyella, or their children-might have made the House of Cedars into a summer home, a hunting lodge, or simply a place to go to escape their daily cares.
Araevin spent the next few days repairing the place as best he could. He had no skill to replace the great timbers-ancestors wiser than he in the ways of living wood had crafted much of the house-but he was able to coax the ancient spells sleeping in the beams back to life, and he had some hope that they would slowly heal themselves in time. Cleaning out the house and redressing the fieldstone was a matter of simple physical labor, which he did not shy from. He opened several of the storage rooms and brought out a few of the old furnishings in order to make the place more comfortable, though he had to resort to magic to dry out and restore many of them. He also spent hours each day clambering all over the headland, wandering the paths he'd haunted as a child while he considered what he wanted to do next.
On returning to the house from one such walk, a tenday after he'd left the Tower, he found a fine gray destrier grazing on the thin grass just outside the house's front door. A light saddle, blanket, and pair of saddlebags worked with a swan design lay nearby, alongside a large leather bow case.
'Well,' said a clear voice from behind him, 'I was wondering if you were going to turn up.' 'Ilsevele!' Araevin exclaimed.
He turned and found her watching him from the doorway. She was lissome and pale, a sun elf with copper-colored hair and a graceful figure, and she wore a simple green and white riding outfit. Even among elves she was thought to be strikingly beautiful, and it had never ceased to amaze Araevin that her heart had turned to him. He had no gift for songs of love or dances beneath the stars, not compared to a dozen other noble-born lords and princes who had wooed her, and yet she had promised herself to him. The sun falling on her shoulders brushed away his melancholy, and he laughed out loud in pure, unintended delight.
'Ilsevele! What are you doing here?'
'Looking for you, of course. You might have taken the trouble to tell your betrothed where you were going before vanishing from the Tower without a word to anyone. Fortunately, my father divined your whereabouts for me. I really should be angry with you, I suppose.'
'I didn't mean to be away for long,' he said. 'Without even thinking about it I found myself here. The house needed caring for, so I tarried to do what I could.'
'And to escape some weighty matter of the Tower, I am sure.'
'Well… yes. I suppose I wanted to slip away for a while and think of something besides the affairs of Tower Reilloch.'
Ilsevele set her hands on her hips and said, 'You needed to escape the Tower for a time, but you didn't think to come visit me? Now I think I am growing angry.'
'I thought you would be busy with your duties in Leu-thilspar. I did not want to trouble you.'
'We are to be married, in case you've forgotten. You are not a trouble to me… unless I find myself riding all over Evermeet looking for you, because you were not at your lonely little Tower when I chose to slip away from my post to surprise you.' Ilsevele poked a finger in his chest. 'Next time, send word to me! For some strange reason, I sometimes wonder where you are when we are apart.'
Araevin bowed, spread his arms wide, and said, 'Lady Miritar, I offer my sincerest apologies.'
'Hmph. Well, that must do for now, I suppose.' Ilsevele swirled away, gazing at the old house around her. 'So this is the place where you were born, all those many ages ago?'
Araevin smiled. The difference in their ages was a standing jest between them. He was almost a hundred years older than she. Of course, among elves there was really no such thing as a winter-and-spring match, as his human friends might have called it. Once an elf was older than a century or so, age really did not matter much- except to high mages, he reminded himself. He stepped ahead of her and led her inside.
'You are gazing on the House of Cedars, ancestral seat of the Teshurr clan, my lady,' he said. 'I suppose it is not much to look at right now.'
'You suppose wrong,' Ilsevele said. She ran her hand along a rich cedar balustrade centuries old, admiring the work. Sunlight and shadow dappled the waters of the broad cove below. 'This place is beautiful. The sea, the cliffs, the forest… to sit in Reverie every night with the sound of the sea in your ears. It's perfect, Araevin.'
'My family was content here for a long time.'
'Maybe they will be again,' Ilsevele said.
'Oh, we've all gone our different ways now. My sister lives in-'
'I wasn't speaking of your sister, you dunderhead.' Ilsevele glared at him. 'I thought mages of your rank were supposed to be brilliant, Araevin. Honestly, you're as thick as a post sometimes. No, I was thinking of our family.'
Araevin glanced around the house, as if seeing it for the first time, and said, 'I hadn't ever thought of it that way.'
'We are to be married in only three years, Araevin, if you haven't forgotten our promises. We will need a place to dwell, won't we?' Ilsevele smiled at him. 'I have no intention of taking up residence in an unused corner of your workroom in Reilloch. We will need a place that is ours, dear one, and with a little work, I think this might do quite well.'
Araevin stared at her in bemusement. They'd been promised to each other for almost twenty years, and of course their wedding was almost upon them. Yet when he was immersed in his work in the Tower, or traveling across Faerun, the fact that he was betrothed to a beautiful and clever lady of high family had a way of escaping him. Ilsevele was right. He was thick as a post sometimes.
Ilsevele watched him as if she could follow the course of his thoughts. In truth, Araevin would not put it past her.
'Now-what dire challenge drove you away from the Tower, anyway?'
He started to wave off the question, but then thought better of it. Instead, he sat down beside her.
'The high mages met with me,' he said. 'I will be permitted to study the high lore.'
'Araevin, that's wonderful! I know you have hoped for this.'
'In fifty years.'
'Oh.' Ilsevele frowned. 'Well, everyone knows that high mages must have a lifetime of experience before they can safely study the high magic spells.' She thought a moment, then her expression brightened. 'Perhaps it isn't so bad. That will give us plenty of time to get started on our family.'
'There is that,' he admitted.
'But?'
'But I find myself wondering what I am to do with myself between now and then.' Araevin stared at his hands. 'For so long I have always felt that I needed to master one more spell, find one more old book and read it,
