“No,” said the dark and wizened Child of Enhyl. “The Prophet of Enhyl has foreseen your coming. We know who you bring with you, and the ambition you serve. The House Traianum oversaw generations of encroachment into our territories. We see no reason to believe that this scion of that House will be any different.”
Stunned silence fell over the party.
A prophet. A prophet of the gods had come to the Children of Enhyl. It had been suspected, given the way that the Draddial had regrown as the uurnigath retook their lands from the Vencari loggers and settlers. But to suspect and to know were different things.
The last prophet that I knew of was the Prophet of Venthiir, nearly five hundred years ago. I did not doubt the old man’s word. That prophet had descended the River Venn, meeting with scholars and artificers in each city he had passed, from the Great Sump in the farthest north of rrotran territory until he stopped in Vencar City, where the river emptied into the Great Crystal Lake. He had refined the designs of architects and engineers, whispered secrets of the cosmos to philosophers, presented himself to the dwarven king and elven queen, instructed city mothers to erect shrines along the waters, taught wizards secrets of language they might never have found on their own. They had held court outside Vencar City for a generation, taking students from across the Vencari Empire, and their disciples and descendants had gone on to found many of the great philosophical schools and wizard orders of the modern world.
The Black Mask, of course, admitted to less illustrious origins.
At the edges of my senses, I heard murmurs echoing through the crowd.
“The Prophet has forbidden our passage?” Derrek asked, carefully. “May we petition the Prophet to revoke their forbiddance?”
“No,” said the old man, again. “The Prophet has warned us of your coming. Sense has barred your passage.”
More whispers. Translators, I realized. The whispers were too synchronous to be mere heckling. There were a half-dozen uurnigath translating the speaker’s words for the assembled audience. How long had Derrek said he had spent here? How many had he taught to speak the language of the Compact?
“I have been your friend,” said Derrek. “I can offer –”
The old man cut Derrek off with a hiss. I wished that I could see them better, but I was sitting behind the prince and her knights.
“You can offer nothing,” said the old man. “You are not the leader of this hunt.”
Was it my imagination, or was the silence that fell after that proclamation more charged, more dangerous, than the last?
“Your huntleader and packleader sit behind you. Let the Crown Prince of Vencar speak for herself.”
Another long pause. One beat. Two. Three.
Derrek stood, and stepped aside.
“Packleader Songlover,” he said. “Allow me to present to you Elana Traiana, the deposed Crown Prince of Vencar, and leader of this hunt.”
If anyone was leading this hunt, it was, in fact, Derrek, but he understood the uurnigath better than us. Hopefully he understood them well enough to navigate this situation.
Elana stood, looking less regal than she had before the fight. Her arms were still in bandages. There were bloodstains on her tunic and scratches on her breastplate. She was sticky with the sweat and dirt of two days in the woods, our northward journey not quite outpacing the transition of spring into summer.
“Your grace,” Derrek went on, “Crown Prince Elana Traiana, soon to be the fourth of your House to sit the Rorgoth Throne, allow me to present to you Songlover, shaman and packleader of the Black Ears Pack of the Children of Enhyl.”
“Well met, Songlover,” said Elana.
Songlover nodded.
“Well met,” he said.
Without waiting for permission, Elana sat where Derrek had been sitting. Derrek removed himself slightly to the side, and sat down once more. With Elana’s move, my view was greatly improved, and I could see Derrek Rowan sliding his wizard’s claw onto his hand. The danger, clearly, had not passed.
===
I first met Crown Prince Elana Traiana on the Great North Road, a week out from The City of Towering Groves, known to the Compact as Tanirinaal. I was travelling alone and light, my heart eager for opportunity and adventure. She was travelling in disguise as a passenger in a trade caravan. I approached her where I found her, sitting at a cook fire, enjoying a bottle of wine with Veralar Tann. Rennin and Orland had hovered nearby, posing as simple caravan guards.
She was precisely the second human that I had ever met, and she happily regaled me with tales of Imperial splendor. The pleasure boats on the Great Crystal Lake. The view of the city’s countless spires and skybridges from the top of the Three Spires Hotel. The sensual luxury of the public baths: steaming hot, lukewarm, or freezing cold, according to taste. The culinary excess of nine-course banquets boasting game from across the compact, elaborate pastry delicacies, exotically seasoned fruits and vegetables, and endless decanters of wine. The music and dancers that accompanied those banquets. The danger and drama of the Imperial Arena, of which Veralar had once been champion.
I regaled her in turn with my Aunt Neriishai’s best stories of life among the sorceresses of the Queen’s court. The enormous home-trees, cultivated by generations and generations of treesingers and gardeners, and the endless webs of rope bridges and living branches that joined them. The great hunts and the feasts that followed them. The nights of music and dancing and poetry and philosophy. The endless dance of courtship and romance and jealousy among the sorceresses and the sorcerers, and the sorcerous contests that so often served as public proxies for more personal rivalries. The great beasts of the wild – giant spiders, such as those whose webs we cultivated for silk, and forest cats and the great red deer – that hunters and sorceresses tamed and kept as pets, even mounts.
Veralar was amused by all of our tale-spinning, and conceded to tell some stories of her most challenging duels in the arena. Not being a fighter, I understood little of it except the drama and her passion, but I did recognize one name: she had danced to the drum-beet of the infamous half-elven bard, Dano`ar, son of a half-dragon princess, herself the daughter of the terrible Avhaar Dragon, Malthrankulranor the Red.
We travelled together for four days. By the end of that time, it was clear to me that there was more to Elana’s caravan than they had told me. There were too many guards, and no one who really looked like a merchant, and everyone deferred to Elana or ignored her too intensely. I left her at a guest-house, where the landlady took her in with an intensity of courtesy that belied her disguise as a common traveler, with a promise to visit in the coming days.
For most of my life, my Aunt Neriishai had lived in `Aasmiir, the nearest city to our ancestral home. Shortly before my apprenticeship began, she had moved to the capitol. She had never fulfilled her ambition of joining the Sorceress’ Council, who advised the Queen, but she had made friends on the council and a home near the Court. My family and I had standing invitations to visit her, and I had thought to take advantage of that offer before going south and trying to claim my master’s estate and place in the Order of the Black Mask.
I had to ask directions several times, and was nearly chased away on account of my poor clothing, but I eventually found the guest-house where my aunt had been staying for the last fifteen years. The landlady was tall and elegant, dressed in a gown the likes of which I had never seen. She seemed a little skeptical when I introduced myself, but she set me up in the parlor with a glass of wine and went to fetch Neriishai.
“Khanaarre!” Neriishai called as she descended the shaped and polished stairs from the upper rooms. “What a delightful surprise!”
We talked well into the night, trading stories of the court for stories of my family.
“And you and your sister are still unwed,” she said, touching my face with a sigh.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Though I have finished my apprenticeship, and have some hopes that Llaariiah will go to a matchmaker soon. She may even be on her way to `Aasmiir now, gods and ancestors willing.”
Neriishai nodded sagely.
“The sacrifice you made for your sister is beautiful and noble,” she said. “And I wish you the best of luck in the search for your own fortunes.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Tell me,” she went on. “How have you found the human sorcery? Is it compatible with our own?”
“Compatible enough,” I said. “Which is to say that I have mastered it. If there were parts that came to me more easily than a human student, or less, my master concealed that from me. I have not yet discovered any arts that I can perform without the drawing of blood, which is the heart of wizardry.”
Again, Neriishai nodded.
“I am proud of you,” she said. “You have mastered magic, as your grandmothers before you, even if you had to search outside our people’s traditions to do it.”
“Thank you, Aunt Neriishai,” I said. “I hope to continue to do them proud.”
There was a room free at the guest-house, and Neriishai convinced the landlady to put me up for the week or two I intended to stay. She was reluctant, at first, but warmed when I presented her with one of my puzzle boxes as a host-gift. It was a simple thing, crafted from wood and brass and mossy agates, emitting colored lights when any side was pressed, and casting the illusion of a waterfall on a bright summer’s day when the sides were pressed in the correct order – but it was utterly unique, which was the most valuable thing that a host-gift could be.
I spent the next day resting from my journey, and then two days exploring the great city. On my third full day in Tanirinaal, my aunt came to me with an invitation.
“The Queen has been meeting with the lost heir of the deposed Vencari man-Queen,” she told me. “Tomorrow, she is expected to formally hear the heir’s request for aid. All the sorceresses in the city have been invited to bear witness, and I have secured entry for you, as well, if you would come.”
“Aunt Neriishai!” I was astounded. “Of course I will come!”
I had no particular interest in the Vencari succession, of course, but I would be a fool to refuse an invitation to the court for any reason, let alone for such a potentially momentous one!
“Good,” she said. And then she and the landlady took me in hand, and went about finding me something appropriate to wear.
“I have been making inquiries about your hair, as well,” said Neriishai as we were being examined by one of the clothiers she had befriended during her years in the city. “You cannot wear a sorceress’ braids, of course. But when I put your case before my friends on the Council, one noted that the codification is a recent one, and that there is another style of braiding, once favored by the firedancers, that you might consider.”
I was uncomfortable with the notion that I had been discussed by the Sorceress’ Council as “a case”, but I held my tongue and listened. A proper sorceress’ braids, of course, are woven tight to the scalp in tidy rows until they fall down the back from the base of the skull. Until that day, I had worn my hair in a single braid down my back – efficient, linguistically recognizable, but visually unmistakable for a sorceress’ braids. What my aunt proposed to me – a multitude of small braids, each distinct and tidy, falling loose around my head or tied back with a ribbon, followed the same logic, but felt more like a sorceress’ style.
I considered that while Neriishai’s clothier brought out a handful of garments that she thought would suit each of us. I considered, further, as she insisted on making a gift of the robes I selected.
“I was never as charitable or as kind to you or your mothers as I should have been,” she said. “I am now in a position to make some small recompense for that. Please allow me.”
And so I attended the Court of Queen Rrallashyl, dressed in such finery as I had hardly seen, let alone worn, with my hair newly braided in countless narrow strands that fell around my face and ears and down my back.
And I was shocked to see there, in the center of the court, kneeling at the feet of the Queen, the young woman with whom I had come to Tanirinaal. She was more finely dressed, of course, and wore a golden tower of a wig over her short brown hair. But I knew that stubborn brow, and I knew the men at arms who flanked her, and most assuredly I knew the Shan Khul Master Veralar Tann.
Elana Traiana did not speak long, but she did speak eloquently. She spoke of the friendship between Vencar and Tanirinaal, and of the friendship and gifts exchanged between the Queen and her own fallen father. She spoke of Aemillian Solirius’ impiety, and his clearly signaled imperial ambitions. She spoke of her need – moral as well as logistical – to reclaim her throne as not a lone rebel, but as a representative of rule of law upheld by the international community. In the end, though, it was all for naught.
“We do not have standing armies,” said the Queen. “We have never gone to war as a nation against another, and – by the mercy of the gods – we never will. If the new emperor invades Georg, we will come to their aid. If he invades us, we will expect the same. But we will not provoke it by lending the weight of our crown to your cause.”
From my place in the wings, I could see Elana bow slightly, a motion exaggerated by the height of her wig.
“But this we can do for you, and will do,” the Queen went on. “We will stay our hand. Any one of my people – any sorceress or hunter or artisan – who is so moved, I say that they are free to join your cause.”
Perhaps had the Queen granted Elana the aid she requested, there would have been festivities to follow. She had not. There were not. As slowly as it had filled, the court emptied itself. I had a great deal of time to watch and to listen and to think.
I was a journeyman wizard in search of a quest. No less than one year. No more than seven.
I had liked Elana Traiana, even when I had had no clue of who she was or what her true mission might be. I had liked Veralar Tann, and the guardsmen Rennin and Orland.
In the morning, I presented myself at the guest house where I knew that Elana, the prince, was staying. She was not yet receiving visitors, not officially, but the landlady recognized me, and my name had been left on a list of people who might come calling. I presented myself, and my Black Mask, and one of the letters of introduction – which did not say I had not yet completed my journeyman’s quest – and offered my services as a wizard and a companion.
===
Now, eighteen months later, we sat in the dirt in the center of an uurnigath clanhold. This was much stranger than when Elana had petitioned Queen Rrallashyl for aid, but no less serious. The old man’s face was hard to read, hidden behind his thick facefur and the thick mane of his hair.
“I have long wondered,” Elana began, casting her eyes down, “what I could or should say to your people if ever I stood before you.”
I had watched Derrek very closely when he spoke to huntleader Briar. He had held her eyes until she had first looked away. I hoped that this very human show of courtesy did not signal a much stronger deference to the packleader than she intended, or a lack of respect for his strength and authority. There was a brief silence, then I heard the whispers of translation begin.
“There is a thing that very young people say in Vencar. Perhaps your ambitious youths say something similar. It is sometimes easier to get forgiveness than permission.” Elana swallowed, still looking down, then continued. “The first waves of Vencari who came north were this sort of young person: restless, ambitious, knowing that they pushed the boundaries, but confident that they were doing nothing truly wrong, and that they could, should, and would be forgiven. I think you understood these Vencari – I know that your people fought with some of them, but traded with others.”
Now Elana straightened her neck and her back, looking the old man in the face.
“Those who came after … many of them were less noble, less childish. These were the ones who felled your trees by the hundreds. These were the ones who, when you fought to defend your territories, hunted your wolves and put bounties out on your heads.”
The crowd shuffled at that. The translators had to speak up to be heard over a low, growling murmur.
“I cannot blame you for resenting my House or our rule. We did permit your borders to be overrun. In the end, my father even sent our armies to try to maintain the land that the settlers had claimed.”
I could see the old man sneer at that.
“I was a child, then,” said Elana. “If my father shared his reasons with me, it was an explanation intended for a child, and I do not remember it.” She paused, then went on. “Perhaps that is for the best. I doubt that his reasons are of any interest or use to you.”
That brought a strong enough reaction from the crowd that the old man had to break eye contact, now, and raise his hand in a sharp gesture, clearly calling for silence. After a moment, he nodded for Elana to continue. Rennin and Orland shifted restlessly in front of me.
“The man who took the throne from my father has withdrawn all Vencri troops to our side of the border,” she conceded, “and he has left any remaining settlers to fend for themselves. For now, he focuses his attention southward. We believe that he will invade Naal within the year. That is of no concern to you, except that when that war is over, people will have forgotten the strength and valor with which you fought to keep your territories. They will only remember their own strength and recent victory, and they will begin once more to slip over the border and build their settlements. And the Usurper will do nothing to stop them. He cares no more for your people than my father did.”
When Elana paused this time, it was clearly to let the translators catch up so that her next words could have the greatest effect.
“I do not know what Master Derrek Rowan planned to offer you, but what I can offer you is this. If you permit us to cross your lands, we will remember you always. If our quest is successful, and I regain my throne, I will freeze the northern border of Vencar where it is now, following the Wolf River. I will offer you an embassy, so that your people will always have a voice in Vencar. And if your people wish, Vencar will sponsor you for admission to the Compact of Nations.”
Now it was the old man who waited for the translators to finish, and for the murmur of the crowd to rise and then fall. He scratched at his chin with one hand and let the other rest on his thigh. At last, his face softened a little.
“Well met, Elana Traiana,” he said again. “And well spoken. You are not what I expected.”
Elana bowed slightly.
“Packleader Songlover,” she said, “you are not what I expected, either.”
That won her a laugh.
“Elana Traiana,” he said her name again. “We may or may not be moved to offer you passage into the east, but I am moved to offer you welcome. We will give you a place to rest, and to speak in private. We will bring you dinner, and we will meet with you again tomorrow.”
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