The Elves of Cintra (17 page)

“I am grateful, High Lord,” she told him, and meant it.

He nodded. “I am granting you a latitude I would normally deny. But I want this matter resolved. If Kirisin can help, then I want you to find out how. Do whatever you feel you must.”

He rose and gestured to the members of the High Council. “Enough discussion for tonight. This session is adjourned.”

A
S
A
NGEL AND
A
ILIE
followed Maurin Ortish out of the chambers and into the hallway beyond, Angel heard the King ask the members of the Council to stay for a few moments more to review what they had just heard. Angel understood immediately what that meant. The King would wait until they were safely out of earshot, and then declare privately what he felt the Council really needed to do. It rankled her that he would do this when there was so much at stake. But Ailie had warned her that the Elves mistrusted all humans, and no matter her exalted title as a Knight of the Word, she was first and foremost a human. If the Elves believed that she was a detriment to their safety, no matter how much she might argue otherwise, they would probably try to find a way to remove her from the picture.

What she wondered was whether they were capable of doing her harm when she had done nothing to provoke it.

“Did you hear? They intend to work behind our backs,” she whispered to Ailie as they stepped outside the Council buildings and into the cool night air. Ortish had gone on ahead, beckoning to Simralin, who stood waiting in the shadows to take them back to their quarters.

“It is much worse than you think,” the tatterdemalion whispered back. Her eyes were depthless black pools as she bent closer to Angel, and her voice dropped farther still. “The Elves are already compromised.”

Angel stopped where she was. “What do you mean?”

“There was a demon in the Council chambers.”

“You saw it? I sensed nothing!”

Ailie shook her head. “I did not see it, but I smelled its stench. It wears an Elven disguise, so I cannot tell which of them it is. Apparently it is talented and clever enough to hide its presence from a Knight of the Word, but it cannot hide from a Faerie creature.”

The tatterdemalion shivered suddenly, as if the admission chilled her to the bone. “It was there. It was one of them.”

TEN

K
IRISIN SLIPPED BACK
through the underground tunnel steps behind Erisha and Culph, each of them lost in thought. They kept silent for two reasons—to avoid risking discovery, and to give space to ponder what they had just heard. They would talk of it later, when they could do so safely. Kirisin kept thinking that what hadn’t been said was almost as important as what had. Erisha’s father had been very careful not to disclose that he had both discouraged and delayed Kirisin’s efforts to act on what the Ellcrys had asked. He had also been very careful not to reveal anything about his daughter’s involvement. None of it felt right to him now, reflecting back. Everything he had heard made him uneasy.

When they reached the Belloruus home, he said good night to the other two, slipped back out the door, and headed home. It was too dangerous for him to remain longer when it was likely the King would be returning. They couldn’t afford to do anything that would risk giving away what they were up to. He would see Erisha at sunrise when they rose to fulfill their daily duties as Chosen, and they would talk then.

Even so, Kirisin thought about nothing else as he walked back through the trees toward his house. The coming of the Knight of the Word and the tatterdemalion was all the proof he needed to confirm that the Ellcrys was not mistaken in believing that she and the Elves were in danger. If there was one thing of which Kirisin was now convinced, it was that he needed to act swiftly on her plea for help. Especially pressing was the need to find the missing Elfstones. They had seemed so close to doing so only hours earlier—he and Erisha and old Culph, searching Ashenell—that he could not bring himself to believe it had been wasted effort. A fresh start was needed, a new approach perhaps, but giving up at this point was out of the question.

He pondered again the King’s reticence, trying to divine its source. There was something happening with Arissen Belloruus that none of them understood, something that was making him act in a way that was foreign to his character. That he was suspicious of Angel Perez was not surprising; most Elves were suspicious of humans. But his reaction in this instance seemed wildly against reason. That the tatterdemalion had confronted him with the truth about what he knew—about Kirisin, in particular—was the only reason he had revealed anything. All this time, the King had kept everything Kirisin had told him to himself; he had not discussed it with a single member of the High Council. Nor, it appeared, had he acted on it in any way.

The wind gusted sharply across his heated face, causing him to flinch at the contact. There was a chill in the air that didn’t belong to the season, one that mirrored the chill in his heart. Despite himself, he glanced around uneasily. This was his home, the only home he had ever known. He had spent his entire life here. He knew all of its roads and trails, most of its families, and many of its secrets. There was nowhere he could go that he would not feel he was in familiar territory.

Yet tonight Arborlon seemed a strange and unwelcoming place; he, an intruder who did not belong and might even be at risk.

He trudged on, hunching his shoulders, glancing left and right into the shadows, searching for things that he knew were not there, but that his instincts warned him might appear anyway.

When he reached his home, lights shone from within and Simralin was back on the porch steps, waiting. She was not alone. Angel Perez and the tatterdemalion, Ailie, were waiting with her.

He brushed his windblown hair from his eyes, gathered himself for what he already knew lay ahead, and marched up to his sister. “Kind of late for visitors, Sim,” he said.

“Later than you think,” she answered, stony-faced. “But they have something to say that you need to hear. Come up and sit down.”

He did as she asked, settling himself in one of the old high-backed wicker chairs facing across the porch to where the Knight and the tatterdemalion sat. He remembered how the latter had looked at him with such intensity several hours earlier, the way she had seemed to recognize him even though they had never met. Now, as Angel repeated everything that had taken place in the Council chambers, he was reminded of it. Ailie had known that the Ellcrys had spoken with him, that he had been asked to provide her help. Otherwise, she could not have used his name before the King as she had.

While Angel spoke, mostly repeating what he already knew from eavesdropping behind the Council chamber walls, he studied her. He had heard of Knights of the Word from Simralin, knew what they did and how important it was. He had formed images of them in his mind, their physical characteristics, the strength of presence they would exude. Yet Angel was not that much older than he was, baby-faced and not very big at all. She was more girl than woman, more child than grown. She held the black staff of her order, carved end-to-end with runes, in a loose, casual fashion, yet he could not mistake the possessiveness of her grip. He found her odd, a human who seemed less so than she ought to, a Knight of the Word who seemed too young to be anything of the sort.

When Angel was finished, she asked Kirisin if he would tell them in turn what he knew. He did so, even though he had doubts about revealing that he had been hiding on the other side of the walls with Erisha and old Culph when they were brought before the King and the High Council. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the Knight of the Word to know; he was concerned that revealing their presence to anyone might in some way put his two friends in danger. It was an irrational fear, but he couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t there.

Nevertheless, he told the others everything, including what had transpired when the Ellcrys had spoken to him in the gardens. He told them how he had gone to the King in opposition to the advice of the other Chosen, how the King had lied to him, how he had subsequently confronted Erisha about what she was hiding, and how the two of them had made a pact to join forces. He told them how old Culph had discovered him with Erisha in the archives and decided to help, as well. He gave a brief description of how the three of them had searched the grave sites at Ashenell to find the marker for Pancea Rolt Cruer, where they believed from the entries in her scribe’s journal that the blue Elfstones might be hidden.

“We found nothing,” he concluded, “even after searching for the better part of an entire afternoon. But we intend to go back for another look the day after tomorrow. Maybe we will have better luck.”

“So you cannot leave Arborlon and the Cintra without the Ellcrys?” Angel asked.

“If we leave, we are abandoning her to her fate. She has no defenses against humans or demons and their weapons. She would be destroyed in the conflagration you have come to warn us about.”

“In which case, the demons trapped within the Forbidding, the ones from the old world of Faerie, would be set free?”

“If the Forbidding fails, that would happen.”

“They would join with those demons already at work destroying what remains of our world?”

He nodded. “We can’t leave her. We have to find the Elfstones that can save her.”

Angel shook her head. “I don’t understand why there is any debate about this. I don’t see why your King isn’t already out hunting for the Elfstones, doing everything he can to find them. It doesn’t matter whether he knows where they can be found; he should be doing something. What possible reason could he have for not wanting to act on what you have told him, let alone what we are asking?”

Kirisin looked down at his feet and scuffed at the porch floorboards. “Erisha and I have asked ourselves that question repeatedly. We still don’t have an answer. Not even Culph understands.”

“The King is not himself these days,” Simralin said quietly. “You said so yourself, Little K. Everyone sees that he has changed, and no one can explain the reason for it.”

“Well, we have to find a way to persuade him to do the right thing,” Kirisin insisted. “It doesn’t matter if he’s himself or not, he’s the King. Personal problems can’t be allowed to get in the way of a King’s duties. His foremost obligation is to protect his people and his city. He can’t do that if he lets anything happen to the Ellcrys.”

They were all silent for a moment, pondering the King’s behavior. Then Angel said, “There is another problem you need to know about.”

“Angel,” Ailie said in warning.

Angel nodded. “I know. We take a risk in telling anyone. But we need allies to find out who it is, Ailie.”

The tatterdemalion sat back against the side of the house, her presence wraithlike and fluid in the moonlight. She seemed more a child than either Kirisin or Angel, small and delicate and gauzy. “Tell them, then,” she said.

“There was a demon in the Council chambers tonight,” Angel said. She glanced from brother to sister and back again. “Ailie sensed its presence, even though I could not. The Elves have been compromised.”

Simralin leaned forward. “Are you sure, Ailie?”

The tatterdemalion nodded. “I am. Its stench was so strong that it permeated not only the Council chambers, but also the anteroom outside where we waited on the King.”

“Who is it?” Kirisin asked.

Ailie shook her head. “I cannot be sure. I would know if I were alone with it, but in a room full of people, I cannot separate it out. The demon wears a disguise. It is a changeling in the true sense, able to take on any appearance. Most demons possess changeling aspects, but only a few can actually transform completely. This is one.”

Again, they were silent for a moment. “Could it be the King?” Kirisin asked finally. “I know none of us wants to think it, but is it possible?”

Angel nodded. “It is. And that would be very bad. We need the King to help us if we are to succeed in our efforts to persuade the Elves to leave the Cintra.”

“But couldn’t it just as easily be Basselin?” Simralin offered. “You said he went out of his way to insist that the other ministers shouldn’t listen to anything any of you had to say. He called Kirisin a boy, and he said humans weren’t to be trusted. He was insistent about it. And as first minister, he has the King’s ear. A demon would be clever enough to persuade the King to do nothing.”

Kirisin shook his head stubbornly. “But it’s the King who has been acting strangely, who hasn’t seemed himself. If he were a demon, that would explain it. He’s been the strongest voice against doing anything. He tried to keep Erisha from talking, and then he tried to stop me, as well. He has done everything he can to keep us from getting involved in helping the Ellcrys. A demon would do that.”

“Perhaps.” Ailie’s frail form rippled against the wall, a liquid white ghost. “But above all, a demon would do whatever was necessary to hide its identity and shift suspicion to someone else. The King seems too obvious a choice.”