The elf regarded him with that same strange intensity. “There is no way through the shield.”
“But there has to be!” Silvan retorted angrily. “I came through, didn’t I?” He glanced back at the trees standing near the road, “I saw the strange distortion. I’ll go back to the point where I fell. I’ll pass through there.”
Grimly, he started off, retracing his steps. The elf said no word to halt him but accompanied him, following after him in silence.
Could his mother and her army have held out against the ogres this long? Silvan had seen the army perform some incredible feats. He had to believe the answer was yes. He had to believe there was still time.
Silvan found the place where he must have entered the shield, found the trail his body had left as it rolled down the ravine. The gray ash had been slippery when he’d first tried to climb back up, but it had dried now. The way was easier. Taking care not to jar his injured arm, Silvan clambored up the hill. The elf waited in the bottom of the ravine, watching in silence.
Silvan reached the shield. As before, he was loathe to touch it.
Yet here, this place, was where he’d entered it before, however unknowingly. He could see the gouge his boot heel had made in the mud. He could see the fallen tree crossing the path. Some dim memory of attempting to circumvent it returned.
The shield itself was not visible, except as a barely perceptible shimmer when the sun struck it at exactly the correct angle.
Other than that the only way he could tell the shield was before him was by its effect on his view of the trees and plants beyond it. He was reminded of heat waves rising from a sun-baked road, causing everything visible behind the waves to ripple in a mockery of water.
Gritting his teeth, Silvan walked straight into the shield.
The barrier would not let him pass. Worse, wherever he touched the shield, he felt a sickening sensation, as if the shield had pressed gray lips against his flesh and was seeking to suck him dry.
Shuddering, Silvan backed away. He would not try that again.
He glared at the shield in impotent fury. His mother had worked for months to penetrate that barrier and for months she had failed. She had thrown armies against it only to see them flung back. At peril to her own life, she had ridden her griffon into it without success. What could he do against it one elf.
“Yet” Silvan argued in frustration. “I am inside it! The shield let me in. It will let me out! There must be a way. The elf. It must have something to do with the elf. He and his cohorts have entrapped me, imprisoned me.”
Silvan whipped around to find the elf still standing at the bottom of the ravine. Silvan scrambled down the slope, half-falling, slipping and sliding on the rain-wet grass. The sun was sinking.
Midyear’s Day was the longest day of the year, but it must eventually give way to night. He reached the bottom of the ravine.
“You brought me in here!” Silvan said, so angry that he had to suck in a huge breath to even force the words out. “You will let me out. You have to let me out!”
“That was the bravest thing I ever saw a man do.” The elf cast a dark glance at the shield. “I myself cannot bear to come near it, and I am no coward. Brave, yet hopeless. You cannot pass. None can pass.”
“You lie!” Silvan raged. “You dragged me inside here. Let me out!”
Without really knowing what he was doing, he reached out his hand to seize the elf by the throat and choke him, force him to obey, frighten him into obeying.
The elf caught hold of Silvan’s wrist, gave it an expert twist, and before he knew what was happening, Silvan found himself on his knees on the ground. The elf immediately released him.
“You are young, and you are in trouble. You do not know me. I make allowances. My name is Rolan. I am one of the kirath. My companions and I found you lying at the bottom of the ravine. That is the truth. If you know of the kirath, you know that we do not lie. I do not know how you came through the shield.”
Silvan had heard his parents speak of the kirath, a band of elves who patrolled the borders of Silvanesti. The kirath’s duty was to prevent the entrance of outsiders into Silvanesti.
Silvan sighed and lowered his head to his hands.
“I have failed them! Failed them, and now they will die!”
Rolan came near, put his hand upon the young elf’s shoulder.
“You spoke your name before when we first found you, but I would ask that you give it to me again. There is no need to fear and no reason to keep your identity a secret, unless, of course,” he added delicately, “you bear a name of which you are ashamed.”
Silvan looked up, stung. “I bear my name proudly. I speak it proudly. If my name brings about my death, so be it.” His voice faltered, trembled. “The rest of my people are dead, by now. Dead or dying. Why should I be spared?”
He blinked the tears from his eyes, looked at his captor. “I am the son of those you term’ dark elves’ but who are, in truth, the only elves to see clearly in the darkness that covers us all. I am the son of Alhana Starbreeze and Porthios of the Qualinesti. My name is Silvanoshei.”
He expected laughter. Disbelief, certainly.
“ And why do you think your name would bring death to you, Silvanoshei of the House of Caladon?” Rolan asked calmly.
“Because my parents are dark elves. Because elven assassins have tried more than once to kill them,” Silvan returned.
“Yet Alhana Starbreeze and her armies have tried many times to penetrate the shield, to enter into this land where she is outlaw. I have myself seen her, as I and my fellows walked the border lands.”
“I thought you were forbidden to speak her name,” Silvan muttered sullenly.
“We are forbidden to do many things in Silvanesti,” Rolan added. “The list grows daily, it seems. Why does Alhana Starbreeze want to return to a land that does not want her?”
“This is her home,” Silvan answered. “Where else would she come?”
“And where else would her son come?” Rolan asked gently.
“Then you believe me?” Silvan asked.
“I knew your mother and your father, Your Highness,” Rolan replied. “I was a gardener for the unfortunate King Lorac before the war. I knew your mother when she was a child. I fought with your father Porthios against the dream. You favor him in looks, but there is something of her inside you that brings her closer to the mind. Only the faithless do not believe. The miracle has occurred. You have returned to us. It does not surprise me that for you, Your Highness, the shield would part.”
“Yet it will not let me out” said Silvan dryly.
“Perhaps because you are where you are supposed to be, Your Highness. Your people need you.”
“If that is true, then why don’t you lift the shield and let my mother return to her kingdom?” Silvanoshei demanded. “Why keep her out? Why keep your own people out? The elves who fight for her are in peril. My mother would not now be battling ogres, would not be trapped—”
Rolan’s face darkened. “Believe me, Your Majesty. If we, the kirath, could take down this accursed shield, we would. The shield casts a pall of despair on those who venture near it. It kills every living thing it touches. Look! Look at this, Your Majesty.” Rolan pointed to the corpse of a squirrel lying on the ground, her young lying dead around her. He pointed to golden birds buried in the ash, their song forever silenced.
“Thus our people are slowly dying,” he said sadly.
“What is this you say?”Silvan was shocked. “Dying?”
“Many people, young and old, contract a wasting sickness for which there is no cure. Their skin turns gray as the skin of these poor trees, their limbs wither, their eyes dull. First they cannot run without tiring, then they cannot walk, then they cannot stand or sit. They waste away until death claims them.”