Alhana doted on her son, more so now that his father appeared to be lost. Silvan’s feelings toward his mother were more complex, although he had but an imperfect understanding of them. Had anyone asked him, he would have said that he loved her and idolized her, and this was true. Yet that love was an oil floating upon the surface of troubled water. Sometimes Silvan felt an anger toward his parents, an anger that frightened him in its fury and intensity. They had robbed him of his childhood, they had robbed him of comfort, they had robbed him of his rightful standing among his people.
The burial mound remained relatively dry during the downpour. Alhana stood at the entrance, watching the storm, her attention divided between worry for her son—standing bareheaded in the rain, exposed to the murderous lightning and savage winds—and in thinking bitterly that the rain drops could penetrate the shield that surrounded Silvanesti and she, with all the might of her army, could not.
One particularly close lightning strike half-blinded her, its thunderclap shook the cave. Fearful for her son, she ventured a short distance outside the mound’s entrance and endeavored to see. through the driving rain. Another flash, overspreading the sky with a flame of purple white, revealed him staring upward, his mouth open, roaring back at the thunder in laughing defiance.
“Silvan!” she cried. “It is not safe out there! Come inside with me!”
He did not hear her. Thunder smashed her words, the wind blew them away. But perhaps sensing her concern, he turned his head. “Isn’t it glorious, Mother?” he shouted, and the wind that had blown away his mother’s words brought his own to her with perfect clarity.
“Do you want me to go out and drag him inside, my queen,” asked a voice at her shoulder.
Alhana started, half-turned. “Samar! You frightened me!”
The elf bowed. “I am sorry, Your Majesty. I did not mean to alarm you.”
She had not heard him approach, but that was not surprising. Even if there had been no deafening thunder, she would not have heard the elf if he did not want her to hear. He was from House Protector, had been assigned to her by Porthios, and had been faithful to his calling throughout thirty years of war and exile.
Samar was now her second in command, the leader of her armies. That he loved her, she knew well, though he had never spoken a word of it, for he was loyal to her husband Porthios as friend and ruler. Samar knew that she did not love him, that she was faithful to her husband, though they had heard no word of Porthios or from him for months. Samar’s love for her was a gift he gave her daily, expecting nothing in return. He walked at her side, his love for her a torch to guide her footsteps along the dark path she walked.
Samar had no love for Silvanoshei, whom he took to be a spoilt dandy. Samar viewed life as a battle that had to be fought and won on a daily basis. Levity and laughter, jokes and pranks, would have been acceptable in an elf prince whose realm was at peace—an elf prince who, like elf princes of happier times, had nothing to do all day long but learn to play the lute and contemplate the perfection of a rose bud. The ebullient spirits of youth were out of place in this world where the elves struggled simply to survive. Silvanoshei’s father was lost and probably dead. His mother expended her life hurling herself against fate, her body and spirit growing more bruised and battered every day. Samar considered Silvan’s laughter and high spirits an affront to both, an insult to himself.
The only good Samar saw in the young man was that Silvanoshei could coax a smile from his mother’s lips when nothing and no one else could cheer her.
Alhana laid her hand upon Samar’s arm. “Tell him that I am anxious. A mother’s foolish fears. Or not so foolish,” she added to herself, for Samar had already departed. “There is something dire about this storm.”
Samar was instantly drenched to the skin when he walked into the storm, as soaked as if he had stepped beneath a waterfall.
The wind gusts staggered him. Putting his head down against the blinding torrent, cursing Silvan’s heedless foolery, Samar forged ahead.
Silvan stood with his head back, his eyes closed, his lips parted. His arms were spread, his chest bare, his loose-woven shirt so wet that it had fallen from his shoulders. The rainwater poured over his half-naked body.
“Silvan!” Samar shouted into the young man’s ear. Grabbing his arm roughly, Samar gave the young elf a good shake. “You are making a spectacle of yourself!” Samar said, his tone low and fierce. He shook Silvan again. “Your mother has worries enough without you adding to them! Get inside with her where you belong!”
Silvan opened his eyes a slit. His eyes were purple, like his mother’s, only not as dark; more like wine than blood. The wine-like eyes were alight with ecstasy, his lips parted in smile.
“The lightning, Samar! I’ve never seen anything like it! I can feel it as well as see it. It touches my body and raises the hair on my arms. It wraps me in sheets of flame that lick my skin and set me ablaze. The thunder shakes me to the core of my being, the ground moves beneath my feet. My blood burns, and the rain, the stinging rain, cools my fever. I am in no danger, Samar.” Silvan’s smile widened, the rain sleeked his face and hair. “I am in no more danger than if I were in bed with a lover—”
“Such talk is unseemly, Prince Silvan,” Samar admonished in stem anger. “You should—”
Hunting horns, blowing wildly, frantically, interrupted him.
Silvan’s ecstatic dream shattered, dashed away by the blasting horns, a sound that was one of the first sounds he remembered hearing as a little child. The sound of warning, the sound of danger.
Silvan’s eyes opened fully. He could not tell from what direction the horn calls came, they seemed to come from all directions at once. Alhana stood at the entrance of the mound, surrounded by her knights, peering into the storm.
An elven runner came crashing through the brush. No time for stealth. No need.
“What is it?” Silvan cried.
The soldier ignored him, raced to his commander. “Ogres, sir!” he cried.
“Where?” Samar demanded.
The soldier sucked in a breath. “All around us, sir! They have us surrounded. We didn’t hear them. They used the storm to cover their movements. The pickets have retreated back behind the barricade, but the barricade. . .”
The elf could not continue, he was out of breath. He pointed to the north.
A strange glow lit the night purple white, the color of the lightning. But this glow did not strike and then depart. This glow grew brighter.
“What is it?” Silvan shouted, above the drumming of the thunder. “What does that mean?”
“The barricade the Woodshapers created is burning,” Samar answered grimly. “Surely the rain will douse the fire—”
“No, sir.” The runner had caught his breath. “The barricade was struck by lightning. Not only in one place, but in many.”
He pointed again, this time to the east and to the west. The fires could be seen springing up in every direction now, every direction except due south.
“The lightning starts them. The rain has no effect on them. Indeed, the rain seems to fuel them, as if it were oil pouring down from the heavens.”
“Tell the Woodshapers to use their magic to put the fire out.”
The runner looked helpless. “Sir, the Wood shapers are exhausted. The spell they cast to create the barricade took all their strength.”