2 To Light A Candle.13 (50 page)

"Safe," Kellen said with relief, as his spell-sight faded. Only then did he notice that a sort of conduit led from the spring, along the wall up the stairs. Well, he guessed it beat having to walk down all the stairs he was about to walk up again every time you needed water for tea.

"Your Magegifts have told you this," Tyrvin said. It was not a question.

"No one can truly say what future fruit the blossom of the moment may bear," Kellen said. It was one of Morusil's favorite sayings. Idalia said it was the Elven way of saying "Don't press your luck."

"He learns quickly," Jermayan said, a note of pride in his voice.

"Quicker than you learned to counter that low attack to your left side, when you were in my training," Tyrvin said.

"Ah, Master, I thought those bruises would never heal," Jermayan agreed ruefully. "Alas, that I have been unable to give Kellen ones to match them."

Tyrvin glanced at Kellen, and for a moment there was cold speculation in the Elf's dark eyes. Then he smiled. "Alas, that we do not have time this day for sport. I will show you the top of the tower, and then I think it will be time for you to depart to your duties. Remember us, on the field of battle."

"Remember us, among the children," Jermayan answered, and Kellen had the sense that he'd just witnessed one of those side-slips into an almost sacred formality that he guessed you'd have to live as long as an Elf to understand.

Him, he was just Kellen, a human Knight-Mage who (according to Jermayan) couldn't brew tea and fought like a firesprite—whatever that was. He wondered if asking Jermayan would get him any answers he could understand.

They stopped back at the room where they'd shared tea to collect their heavy fur cloaks and gloves. Kellen was sweating by the time they'd climbed yet another several sets of stairs to a room so small the four of them could barely squeeze into it. In order to make room for them, the two guards who had occupied it needed to retreat down the stairs to the landing below.

"This door," Tyrvin said, "opens onto the top of the tower of the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. There are always two sentries posted there, and as you have seen, two inside. In this weather, their watch is short. But the door is barred from this side, and can be barred from the other at desperate need. Should the sentries on watch here lose track of the time, or sleep, or fail of attentiveness, those without will die, for should they cry out, or hammer at the door, it cannot be heard from within."

Trust. That was the hidden message in Tyrvin's words. Each Elf—and unicorn—here at the fortress trusted every other to hold their lives as dearly as their own.

That was the Crowned Horns' true defense. Not sword and stone—the Demons could break through that if they came in strength. But Their greatest weapons were tricks of bribery and persuasion, of tainted promises. Kellen was sure now that any attempt to gain a foothold here by those means would fail.

Tyrvin unbolted the door. It thrust inward fiercely, pushed on an icy blast of wind.

"Hold to the guide-ropes!" he shouted over the howl of the wind, and stepped out onto the tower roof.

The "guide-ropes" were thick cables of twisted metal. Kellen grabbed for one instinctively. Without it, he would be pushed along the roof as if he weighed no more than an autumn leaf.

The rooftop was far too small for a dragon to land upon. Walls half the height of an Elf's body surrounded it, and at each corner was a strange five-pronged blossom standing twice that height—one prong sticking straight up, two curving outward, two curving in. From a distance, they probably gave the top of the fortress the look of a crown. All were sharp.

The surface of the tower floor was not smooth and open, either. Tall spikes were placed at intervals. The cable Kellen clung to was strung between them, making a virtue of necessity. Here, at the highest exposed point in the Icefang Mountains, the icy wind was punishing. It battered at Kellen like a living thing, making his flesh ache even beneath the heavy furs and his insulating Elven armor.

He saw the two sentries, groping carefully along the ropes, their gaze turned outward, toward the surrounding mountains and the sky. Tyrvin moved past him, going to each of them in turn and sending them inside.

Kellen groped his way to the parapet, or as near as he could get without letting go of the guide-rope. If he let go, the wind would take him over the side, unless he was quick enough to fling himself flat. This was a dangerous place.

But he was close enough to see the arrow-slits in the walls. They were clotted with ice now, but through them, a kneeling Elven archer could rain down destruction on an enemy. Or even stand to fire, for the range of Elven bows was long.

He caught Tyrvin's eye and nodded. He'd seen what he needed to see. Though if he wasn't in danger of freezing solid, he would have been happy to linger. The mountains were spread out below them in a breathtaking vista—in spring, in sunlight, this must be a beautiful place.

The Master of the Fortress of the Crowned Horns led them carefully inside, and waited until the next four sentries—two outside, two inside—had taken their places. Then he brought them all back to what Kellen now realized must be his private rooms.

"The posts that you saw are not only for show. There are charms of unicorn hair attached to the top, renewed every spring. So none of Them will dare to try us," Tyrvin said with grim satisfaction.

Kellen thought carefully before he spoke. "I am not sure the Deathwings could land there, but they would not need to. They could come low enough to drop whoever they carried in their claws—or to carry someone away. They are small enough, and nimble enough, for that. And when spring comes—what are the winds like then? Are they constant, or do they soften or stop altogether? The Deathwings can fly by day, but they will be better still at night—and in a fog, or in the clouds, would any see them until it was too late?"

Tyrvin sighed. "Yet we must keep watch."

"Find another way," Kellen said bluntly. "Every time you open a door—any door—in this fortress, you expose a weakness. Close and bar it. Confronted with this fortress, if I were contemplating an attack, I would never even consider a frontal assault. I would try treachery, I would try stealth, and I would try by ones and twos, not by thousands. One or two can open the door to thousands, if they come at the wrong time and place. You cannot assume the Enemy to be less cunning than I am. Count your people. Count them constantly—"

At least here he could be single-minded. There was only one duty before these Elves. This was their posting and it was all they needed to concentrate on. Whether or not the attack on the children had been part of a ruse was of no moment to them. So Kellen, too, could be single-minded in his advice.

"And pray to Leaf and Star that someday we may open our gates again," Tyrvin said, agreeing. "It is good counsel, Kellen Wildmage. It is a great pity you were not born one of us, yet had it been so, you would not be what you are, and we have need of that."

"SOMETIMES you terrify me," Jermayan said conversationally, as they stood at the foot of the causeway, waiting for Ancaladar to arrive. Jermayan said it would only be a matter of a few moments.

"I only said what had to be said," Kellen said. He knew he sounded a little sullen, but he couldn't help it. Even Tyrvin seemed to be waiting for the Endark-ened to show up as a massed army with banners—not sneak in at the changing of the guard and start slaughtering people. Which Kellen thought was far more likely, if they meant to attack the fortress at all.

"Someday you will say it to the wrong person," Jermayan said. "Leaf and Star! To speak so to Master Tyrvin!"

"He wants to keep those children alive. And so do—"

But Ancaladar had suddenly made his appearance, falling through the clouds like a black thunderbolt, fanning his wings wide at the last minute and making a graceful landing in a spray of snow. The dragon's great weight made him sink deeply into the snow, so that the saddle was only a few feet above Kellen's head.

"I trust that your visit went as you would have it go," the dragon said.

"It went as it went," Jermayan answered dismissively.

Ancaladar didn't linger a moment longer once Kellen and Jermayan had secured themselves in their seats, but bounded quickly into the air.

He had probably been trying to take things easy back at Sentarshadeen for the sake of his young passengers, and the air there had certainly been quieter. Kellen was glad he'd had that experience to prepare him for this one, because this takeoff was nowhere near as gentle as the one that had preceded it. The mountain winds flipped and spun Ancaladar through the air as if he were one of Sandalon's toy boats upon Great Twovanesata, with Ancaladar taking expert advantage of every opportunity they granted him to gain height.

At last they broke through into the sunlight and comparative stillness of the upper air, and Ancaladar was able to spread his wings wide and level out.

"Everyone still there, I trust?" the dragon asked.

"It was… fun," Kellen answered. It actually had been, in a weird way. He'd been sure—fairly sure, anyway—that he wasn't going to fall off, and if he had, he had no doubt at all that Ancaladar would catch him before he could hit the ground. But all the same, he was just as glad it hadn't gone on too long.

"You have the oddest notions of fun," Jermayan said.

"Nevertheless, I do not think we will repeat it," Ancaladar said, a note of amusement in his soft deep voice. "The air over Sentarshadeen is calm and clear—I can feel it from here."

"So can I," Jermayan said, an odd note in his voice.

THE rest of the journey was almost a mirror of the first, though this time the sun was westering, treating Kellen to a spectacular show as it tinted the clouds with a thousand shades of gold. He missed the clouds when they left them behind, and was surprised to see that though here they were still in sunlight, the land below was already touched with twilight shadows.

Ancaladar landed in the unicorn meadow near the House of Leaf and Star, but only long enough for Kellen to dismount. With Jermayan still in the saddle, he launched himself into the sky again, heading for his home canyon.

Kellen stamped and stretched, working the stiffness out of his cramped muscles. It had been a beautiful flight, but still a cold one.

"And did you enjoy your day?" Shalkan asked, materializing out of nowhere. The unicorn was hard to see—Kellen realized it was almost dark; well after lantern-lighting time.

"It was instructive," Kellen said. "And cold. But the children are safe at the fortress now."

"And likely to remain so?" Shalkan asked.

Kellen regarded his friend broodingly. "Unless They try something I can't imagine… yes." Or until they starve to death waiting for us to defeat Shadow Mountain. Resupplying the fortress would be an easy matter come spring—but each time its doors were opened, all who were within were exposed to danger from an attack by treachery and stealth.

"But you're still not happy," Shalkan said, falling into step beside Kellen as the young Knight-Mage began the long walk toward home. "And after you got to ride Ancaladar, and meet Master Tyrvin. Such gratitude."

Kellen made a rude noise. " 7 am duly grateful for all the mercies and benefits

visited upon me,'" he said, quoting one of the sentences of the Litany of the Light that he'd had to recite each Light's Day back in Armethalieh. "I just think I'm forgetting something."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to try to remember it on the ride to On-doladeshiron," Shalkan said cheerfully.

THE journey to Ondoladeshiron took a sennight and a half, for not only did they move through deep winter, but they were restricted to the pace of the supply wagons that they escorted. These wagons held immense quantities of food and weapons, as well as much of the store of Wild Magic-infused articles that Idalia had crafted.

For the first time, Kellen traveled with an Elven army in formal battle array. Although he was certainly battle-seasoned, he had not yet won his spurs in the House of Sword and Shield, and even though he was a Knight-Mage, he was also Shalkan's rider, so for purposes of Elven battle protocol he rode under the orders of Petariel, Captain of the Unicorn Knights, as a junior knight.

Kellen found it instructive; he kept his eyes and ears open, and began to learn a great deal about the bonds of camaraderie that other Unicorn Knights had with their mounts.

The Unicorn Knights, of necessity, rode apart from the main army. By Elven standards they were all quite young, though they would have been grandmothers and grandfathers among humans. All of them were still mourning the loss of their comrades, both Elven and unicorn, in the Shadowed Elf ambush, for the community of Unicorn Knights was a small, close-knit one. Not every Elven fighter was even remotely interested in bonding with a unicorn.

Oddly, it was a community that Kellen had never really been a part of, until now. He wasn't a "real" Unicorn Knight—his bond with Shalkan was part of a Mageprice lasting a year and a day. That wasn't the same thing as choosing a unicorn for a companion—or being chosen by one. And what happened when the Elf fell in love with another Elf? He—or she—would never see their unicorn friend again. Not up close, anyway.

"You're thinking like a human, again," Shalkan observed, when Kellen confided some of these thoughts to him.

"I am a human, in case you haven't figured that out yet," Kellen said. It felt good to discuss—for a change—something that had nothing in particular to do with Shadow Mountain.

Shalkan snorted eloquently. "As if I could forget. Humans think the whole world revolves around them—but we have lives of our own, too, you know. The partnership of knight and unicorn is a fine thing, but in most cases both of the beings involved realize at the start that it's only going to be an episode—a relatively short one—in what will be long lives for them both. A year and a day probably seems like a long time to you—well, for most of these knights, their partnership won't seem to last much longer."

Uh-hüh. That sounded awfully cold-blooded to Kellen. Maybe an Elf—who was going to live several centuries—could manage it. Or…