Rrii`aa’s chambers were in a different corner of the complex than mine, adjacent to the other Sisters of Amalai, and near to the spaces that had been set up with altars to Amalai and the other divine children of Es, where we celebrated feast-days together, and other communal rituals. The Sisters of Amalai had not come to join Elana’s war of succession the way the rest of us had. They cared even less about human politics than they did about our own Queen. The Sisters were healers and councilors who served the elven people and their goddess, and they came to care for us who had come to aid the prince.
If the goddess Amalai had any analogue among the human gods, I did not know of them. She was a the demigod daughter of our divine father Es, one of the beloved wives of the Prophet of Es who had come in the days of the Withering Plague, and where the prophet and the rest of her marriage circle had devoted the majority of their time and attention to those who would be the first Queen and Council, Amalai had devoted herself to the rest of the elven people: giving council, teaching the healing arts, matchmaking, and giving comfort with her own body, where needed.
The Sisters of Amalai continued her work. They served as councilors, listening to our woes, both great and small, offering advice where they could and compassion where it was needed. They served as healers and midwives, tending our bodies with medicine and massage, and sometimes even magic, and brining our children into the world with gentle hands. And they offered us solace against the pains of long bachelorhood, and the grief of widowing: offering compassion and companionship with their whole bodies when counsel alone was not enough.
Each Sister had her own specialty and expertise. Each gave in accordance with her gifts. Some were famously wise counselors. Some were great sorceresses. Others were healers of great renown. Still others were legendary lovers. Many retired to be professional matchmakers. Most did some of each.
The colors of the Sisterhood were white and red, and those of us who relied on them had done our best to fill their quarters with those colors. Great swaths of cloth, gifted to us by the prince and probably intended for clothing, had been given to the Sisters to brighten their halls. Wooden masks, painted with elaborate patterns of white-on-red or red-on-white, hung where cloths did not: votive offerings to the goddess they served, carved and decorated by both the Sisters and their clients, represented Amalai, herself, the ancestral spirits of past Sisters, and we who came to be comforted. In generations past, it had been customary to wear such a mask when seeking the comfort and counsel of the Sisters – not because anyone was ashamed of such need, but to avoid making a spectacle of it. It was less common, now, but still acceptable. We llamenan wear masks for any number of reasons.
I wore no mask when I went to see Rrii`aa. There was no want or need or possibility of anonymity among the not-quite hundred elves who had come to fight for Prince Elana. We had our conflicts and rivalries and differences, but we had all left home on this mad venture, and we were all comrades if not kin.
I rang the string of bells at the curtain that marked her room, then entered immediately rather than block the hall. I was expected, and I found Rrii`aa waiting with a small tea service. Rrii`aa was much shorter than I, shorter even than the prince, with walnut brown skin and chestnut red hair and golden-brown eyes that shone like polished agates and an impish grin that constantly threatened mischief. She was soft and round and voluptuous, except for her hands, which were small and delicate. Those hands were never, ever still, and they were much, much stronger than they looked. She wrapped me in a warm embrace as soon as the curtains fell closed behind me.
“Khanaarre,” she said, always putting more warmth into my name than I ever expected. “Welcome. I am glad to see you home safe and victorious.”
She had not been able to set aside the whole day for me, but she had time that morning for a cup of tea, and to lay me down on her table and to massage away the aches and pains of more than three weeks in the saddle. We talked little while she worked: the knots and bruises in my thighs and back were tight enough that I could only cry and gasp in alternating pleasure and pain as she undid them with finger, thumb, elbow, and palm. I was embarrassed, but not surprised, that I fell promptly and deeply asleep when she was done, and needed to be roused to depart before her next client arrived.
Rrii`aa only laughed, and cupped my cheek in her hand.
“I will have time enough, soon,” she said, “to welcome you back properly. And you have not been gone that long.”
I blushed. And laughed. And left her to her work.
We did, indeed, have more time together in the days followed. As much as I could – companionable lunches and dinners, as well as more formal appointments – I went back to her for the pleasure of her company and conversation. I told her of the journey to Renner, and the gate-town where we had found our Great Wizard. I told her of the battle, and the way the Heart’s Guard had tried to use the villagers as hostages, and how that had been what convinced Derrek Rowan to join our cause. I told her of our journey back, and my frustration with the endless testing questions he had thrown my way, and how Elana had mostly left him to my care. I confessed how, after the fight in So’renner, I was even more afraid than I had been of the war that would follow in the wake of this victory. And, when she had time and energy and inclination between her other friends and other clients, she invited me deeper into her chambers for more intimate conversations, and to massage away the loneliness of bachelorhood and of being seen as an alien among my own people.
Rrii`aa was my favorite, not just of the Sisters of Amalai, but of all the llamenan who had joined Elana’s court-in-exile, in large part because she was not repulsed by my blood magic as so many of my people were, especially the sorceresses.
“One might expect it to wither you,” she had said one day, that first winter when she and I had both come to the mines, licking her fingers clean as I lay limp beneath her. The word she used, wither, was not the word for the death or poisoning of a plant, or the natural diminishing of a mortal life over time, but the withering of the ancient plague that still sapped the lives and spirits of our men. “But it does not. Your heart, your mind, your spirit … they are all as strong as any sorceress I have known. Life flows out of you when you bleed, but life also flows back in. It is … fascinating.”
In those days after our return from Georg, what time I could not spend with Rrii`aa, I spent enjoying the company of the rest of my own people. There were those who said I asked her for more comfort than was proper, but healing, council, and companionship were all a Sister’s to give as she saw fit. I was grateful that she enjoyed my company enough to attend me as she did – spirit and body, alike. I suspected that I owed many of the friendships that I did maintain here to her public approval and good word. Though I loved Elana, and enjoyed the company of Veralar and the knights, they were djuunan, not llamenan, and there was too much that could not be translated across languages and species.
I told and retold the battle of So’renner a dozen times, over dinners and drinks. I practiced my archery with the hunters, and practiced dirty tricks of wrestling and knife-fighting, and listened with attentive awe as they discussed old hunts. I had hunted my own meals for most of my life, and I had much in common with them, but they knew and I knew that I was more like a sorceress than I was like them. I watched as the fire-dancers practiced their mystic arts, calling fire from the earth and air with their rousing voices and swirling motions, tried to hear the immortal tongues in the songs of their sorcery. I was capable of greater destruction – it was what the Order of the Black Mask was most famous for – but I lacked their elegance and precision, and they flinched whenever their eyes fell on my wizard’s claw.
My mothers – sisters and cousins to sorceresses, but without a bit of magical talent, themselves – had not fully grasped the distinctions between sorcery and wizardry when they arranged my apprenticeship to Maris Pello. Elves do not dwell on that distinction the way humans do; our language does not even have a separate word for wizardry. But they are different, and humans are not wrong to emphasize that difference.
The sorcery of elves and dwarves is a thing of our minds, our bodies, and our souls. It is an expression of both unity with and separation from the material and immaterial worlds that surround us, and of the divine sparks we have inherited from our creator gods. For all that elves are most famous for Firedancing, drawing fire and lighting from the earth and the air through graceful and deadly dances, and Treesinging, the art of coaxing plants into extravagant growth and shaping them to our needs, each sorceress has her own unique gifts, no two exactly alike. I understand that it is much the same for dwarves, famous for shaping stone the way elves do trees, and for laying enchantments into metals and gems.
Legend has it that the first generation of djuunan were greater sorcerers than the llamenan and the rrotran from whom they came, but that those gifts faded quickly with each successive generation. By the time the first human histories were written, only a handful of djuunan sorcerers remained, ancient and dying, grateful to turn the guidance of their descendants over to the priestesses of Shii and the Blackguard knights of Astennuu, and their goddess-given power over the substance of shadow, a magic which has always been called sorcery for lack of a better word, but which came less from the sorcerers, themselves, than from the Shadow Veil on which they drew. But the Illustrian shadow-sorcery failed, and rent the world asunder, and brought that empire low, and was utterly lost. Lost, that is, until the Great Wizards recreated it within my lifetime, a secret they have shared with no-one else.
Wizardry, as the Vencari invented it, is something else entirely. Its roots lay in the wonder-working of mystics and priests from Illustria’s great rival, the Golden Kingdoms of a’Rasyr. The children and grandchildren and further descendants of Althaeruh Sun-Lord who had ruled the Holy Desert since before the djuunan were born taught the human suppliants who came to their territories certain glyphs and formulas to bind demons and lesser spirits of the earth and air, and to coax the laws of nature to bend to their will. Generations later, the first wizards recognized some of those same glyphs in the sky, and developed new formulas from the fragments of the immortal tongues that they coaxed, seduced, bargained, and bullied from nymphs and demigods, and learned to fuel those glyphs and formulas with their own blood to bind demons and bend natural law in ways none had previously imagined possible. Each generation of wizards since had discovered new glyphs in the stars, and learned more of the immortal tongues and their obscure grammar from which the formulas were derived, and passed those secrets on for future generations to perfect and build upon.
Sorcery is inborn, a native ability like perfect pitch or storytelling or any other art – something which any elf might learn a bit of, but which can be truly mastered only with the right combination of talent and training. The training acquired is freely readily available to any with sufficient talent; lesser talents, such as myself, must find and convince a sorceress to take them on, a courtship much like that which precedes a marriage.
Wizardry, so far as anyone can tell, requires only a faculty for languages and a particular kind of arrogant will. Each wizard and wizard’s order has their own methods of choosing and training apprentices. Some take only the children and niblings of members. Some sell apprenticeships for coin. Some choose by methods more obscure. And, despite the best efforts of various orders, the world is littered with copies of the experimental notes and spellbooks of early wizards which the truly brash and fortunate can find and use to teach themselves.
Failing to understand all these distinctions, my mothers bought me an apprenticeship with Maris Pello, exiled master of the Order of the Black Mask. I enjoyed my studies, and I looked forward to proving my mastery. I was proud to count myself as a friend and ally to Prince Elana Traiana, and to serve in her resistance. But I could not help but wonder, at times, what my life would look like if I had found a sorceress to apprentice to, and wonder if I might someday learn my own people’s magical arts, as well.
===
The distance between my old master’s tower – now mine – and the home I had shared with my mothers, father, and sister was not great. The early spring weather was still chilly, but bright, and though I felt some urgency that feeling did not translate into hurry.
The most difficult part was fording the River Venn in its spring flood, and I had mastered a system for that years ago. No mortal could swim the Venn, but boats traversed it regularly. I had no proper boat – not yet – but I had become quite skilled at raft-building, and had long ago determined how far upstream I needed to drag my raft before setting out to cross.
I approached my family’s tree-home from the south and east. Coming from downwind I thought I might catch them by surprise. And I almost did, but the spring wind shifted abruptly, bringing my scent to my sister where she hung from one of the rope-bridges that connected the central home-tree to the lesser buildings of our compound. Llaariiah raised her head, looking around, and smiled when she saw me. She slipped through the ropes of the bridge with ease and dropped to the ground with casual grace.
Llaariiah and I did not look as alike as some sisters. She was taller, with darker, browner skin to my medium red, and hair that looked like wildfire where mine was night-black. But we both bore the stamp of our father in our too-large eyes and too-long ears.
We embraced fiercely but silently. Ill-chosen words had caused too much trouble between us over the years.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. “You are home earlier in the season than I expected. How long will you be with us? I know your master does not like to be without you for long, these last few years.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” I said. “I will be here for a while, if you all will have me. Perhaps the season. My master has succumbed to his years, and no longer has wants or needs.”
“Oh!” she said. “I am glad to have you, but I grieve for your loss.” She hesitated. “Was your … training complete?”
“Complete enough,” I shrugged. “I will have to work harder to prove myself to the world. But that’s a story for later, perhaps over dinner. Are our mothers home?”
Llaariiah nodded.
“Over dinner, yes. Maosee and Nallaro are out hunting, even now. Khiilitir is watching over Volalli. He is ill, this week.”
I nodded back, solemnly. Our father was often ill. It was unlikely, we thought, that he would live to see either of us wed.
“Go in,” Llaariiah said after a pause. “See them. I must finish these repairs, but I will join you soon.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
We exchanged another quick embrace, and Llaariiah returned to the bridge. Six steps. A graceful leap and swing, and she was back atop the bridge. I had lost some of that strength and grace, living with my human master in his tower on the ground. I would have to work to regain it.
Our central home-tree was a wonder of artful magic and cultivation, from the days before the treesinging gift had abandoned my family. Six living oaks, planted together as saplings, and coaxed to grow together into a single massive organism with a half-dozen chambers within, for our then-larger family to reside in. Khiilitir, my birth mother, had grown up here under the watchful eye of her mother’s sister Neriishai, the last treesinger of our line. The tree-home, which Neriishai had disdained in favor of taking her own children to live in the nearby city of `Aasmiir, had been Khiilitir’s contribution to her marriage circle’s dowry.
There were two large, central chambers: the summer room, above, which admitted light and residents and visitors through any of the three large windows; and the winter room, below, which boasted a cleverly constructed box of sand and slate where a fire could be built for warmth, and which was partially lit by windows filled with large blocks of translucent rock crystal. Those rooms were connected by stairs through a third room, smaller than the central chambers but larger than the three smaller rooms above, which was lit by another rock crystal window and boasted the home’s single massive table, where meal preparations were often done before any cooking was moved to the fire in the winter room.
I found Khiilitir and Volalli in the winter room, sitting in front of a fire and huddled in blankets against the mild spring chill. Khiilitir looked like an older, broader version of myself, all wide shoulders and wiry hunter’s muscle. Volalli was tall, for a man, though it was hard to see under the swaddling blankets. The firelight made him look especially pale. Still, he brightened to see me, even more than my mother.
“Khanaarre,” he said, delighted. “And so early in the season! To what do we owe this welcome surprise?”
“Maris Pello has died,” I said simply. “I will say more when Maosee and Nallaro return. For now, may I join you at the fire?”
“Of course,” said Khiilitir. “Of course! Welcome home, love.”
She scooted herself and her husband and their mountain of cushions to the side, making room for me to pull a cushion from the wall and throw it down to join them by the fire.
“How are you both,” I asked. “I hear that you are ill, father?”
“No more than usual,” he said with a shrug. “And I am blessed with wives who love me enough to keep me warm.”
“We are all well,” said Khiilitir, permitting the fiction. “And made better by your presence.”
We chatted amicably about the events of the winter. We spoke of the hunting to be had at the edge of the Wolfwood. Maosee had seen one of the uurnigath, again, and believed it was the same one that she had hunted a winter elk with some years ago. Around the winter solstice, I had found a pool of frozen fish beneath a beautiful icefall a day west of the tower. Nallaro had gone upland, daring the slopes of Mount Kashrin in pursuit of a fat sheep, and had seen the aurora borealis.
Eventually, Llaariiah appeared and joined us. She also brought lunch: nuts and dried fruits and paper-thin strips of spicy dried venison. She served us tea and said little, just smiled.
Not long later, Maosee and Nallaro returned, bragging loudly of the boar they had caught, and the mushrooms they had found in the process. They stopped mid-sentence when they saw me, and leapt on me in delight. I buried my face in Maosee’s hair and sighed, happy to be home. Maosee was the tallest of us all, and the strongest, and gave the very best hugs. She had always been my favorite mother, though one never admitted such things aloud.
When they finally let me go, Maosee and Nallaro embraced Llaariiah with only slightly more muted enthusiasm, then joined Volalli and Khiilitir by the fire. Nallaro kissed each of them thoroughly, then laid down across their laps. Maosee, in turn, laid across the middle of the floor, using Nallaro as a pillow.
“We had not expected you for some weeks,” Maosee said when they had all settled. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“Maris Pello has died,” I said again. “I must travel to `Aasmiir and send letters to his family and associates to tell them of his passing. After that, I had hoped to spend the spring, and perhaps some of the summer with you all.”
“We will be delighted to have you,” said Nallaro, a sentiment everyone else echoed. “What then? Is your training complete? Are you a full wizard of your Order?”
I sighed.
“Not quite. I could claim the title, but it would be,” I hesitated, “more proper if I were to go on a journeyman’s quest, first, and prove my mettle. My original plan had been to go to Vencar City and try to find some of Maris’ associates, but …”
For months, now, rumors of a new rebellion in Vencar had been coming north in my master’s letters from home, each more certain than the last that open war would begin this year or next. I was uncertain, though, which side of the conflict my master or his associates might choose. I was even less certain which side was in the right. And I had no desire to get caught between factions in a human civil war.
My mothers nodded.
“We have heard the rumors, too,” said Khiilitir. “Your aunt Neriishai says that the daughter of the dead man-Queen has been touring the Compact, begging for aid. Her friends at court say that she may even be coming to petition the Queen.”
===
We had been back in the mines for a week when Elana next sent for me, inviting me to join her and Veralar for lunch the following afternoon. Such invitations were one of my great pleasures and privileges as one of the Prince’s Fighters, and I always looked forward to them. For this occasion, I elected to wear one of the Vencari tunics I had been gifted, and adorned myself simply.
Veralar, who had made the rare decision to dress in simple Namoran garb of soft, loose pants and coat instead of her usual skintight Shan Khul vestments, met me with a warm smile in the antechamber outside the prince’s rooms. We were admitted quickly and led to Elana’s personal sitting room, a round chamber made comfortable and intimate by vast draperies that hung down from the ceiling and along the walls, behind a circle of alternating bookshelves and narrow tables. A wooden table and elaborately carved and cushioned chairs took up the center of the room.
Elana was waiting for us, already seated at the table. She, too, had dressed simply in a modestly draped and folded peplos that left her slim but strong arms bare. A fragrant tea service was steeping, and a lunch of bread, olives, cheeses, cured meats, and fermented sauces was already arranged and waiting.
“Thank you for joining me, my friends,” she said, and dismissed her guards and servants with a gesture. When they were gone, she gestured for us to sit.
“Thank you for the invitation,” I said, taking the chair at her left hand.
“Yes,” said Veralar with a short bow. “Thank you.”
The prince poured our tea, herself, in contravention of Vencari tradition, in which that responsibility went to the lowest ranked person in the room. Whether that would have been myself of Veralar would have been an entertaining question to pose the seneschal. In either elven or Namoran custom, it was the host’s responsibility.
“I hope you have both been well,” she asked us, “now that we are back at court?”
“Yes,” I said. “Quite well.”
“As have I,” said Veralar. “I have been enjoying defeating the guards at chess.”
Elana and I laughed. Like myself, Veralar did not often attend court, and so spent her days among the Vencari guard as I did among the elven hunters. Physical contests bred hard feelings, but the various strategy games they had come up with had proven to be more even and more interesting contests. Except for chess.
“How have things been going with the court?” I asked. “And with our Great Wizard?”
“The court, as always, needs constant attention,” she said with a sigh. “Which brings us to your second question, which …”
She sighed again and shook her head.
“Has he been giving you trouble?” I asked.
“We can still kill him,” said Veralar, sipping her tea. I knew for a fact that she was less than half joking.
“He has been very helpful and straightforward,” Elana said, gesturing with a chunk of bread. “Unfortunately, none of us really like his answers.”
This time when she paused, we simply waited.
“He tells us that the only way to break the Usurper’s magical shield is to use a magic sword that only he can help us find. When pressed, he told us to do our own divination. And we have. Our diviners are getting some uncomfortably mixed results with regards to the sword, itself, but… everyone who has tried their hand has said that the quest he proposes is my only chance of reclaiming the throne.”
Veralar and I exchanged a glance.
“Quest?” Veralar asked.
“Yes,” said Elana. “A quest. Rennin and I must accompany him through the Wolfwood to what he calls the Eastern Veil, where we will cross into the Holy Lands and raid the tomb of a dead demigod hero to steal his sword. He suggests, in fact, that I bring all my Prince’s Fighters, including the two of you.”
“Sweet gods of earth and sky,” I said at the very same moment that Veralar swore, “Ancestors!”
“Yes,” said Elana. “It’s absolute madness. My priests say it’s outright blasphemy. My generals are outraged. I would not even consider it, except …”
Elana paused, and sipped her tea, and then held her head in her hands. I had never seen her so upset.
“Except,” she went on, “that we have known for a year now that Derrek Rowan is our only hope. We will never convince our allies that victory is possible without a Great Wizard of our own, and if that Great Wizard says that this is our only hope of success … that’s that. And I guess, at the end of the day, I’d rather die on an epic quest than here in these tunnels when it turns out that our enemy knew where we were all along and can cause an earthquake with the shadow-magic of fallen Illustria.”
That outburst, uncharacteristic of our prince, left both Veralar and I stunned into silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “That was impolitic of me. I invited you to lunch to inquire of your health, not blurt out my worst fear, and to ask if you would join me not just for the usual dangers we’ve faced, but a deadly quest that will make bards weep with joy to write of it.”
We agreed to go, of course. Veralar Tann lived for challenges the likes of which she had not been able to find since she left the Imperial Arena. I was a journeyman wizard, desperately searching for a quest. If we joined the prince and her knights and the Great Wizard Derrek Rowan on this quest and found victory, we would be figures of legend. Veralar would be the greatest Shan Khul Master to yet walk the earth. I would be recognized by the world as a wizard and a master of the Order of the Black Mask. Elana would have her throne. Rennin and Orland would have their emperor. Derrek would have his tower at the edge of the world.
Or we would all die horribly and never be heard from again.
Of course we would join her. What choice was there?
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