“Ilsevele…” he said.
He started to tell her that it was not true, that he simply had not been paying attention, but he realized that she was right. He hadn’t spent much time around many other elves since coming back from Sildeyuir, so he had not noticed the distance he truly felt. The communion elves shared with each other, the bond that tethered the hearts of the People together, was almost entirely lost to him. He felt as if he were hundreds of miles from Ilsevele, sensing her presence only as a dimly glowing ember, when he should have felt her sorrow and her fear for him as strongly as anything in his own heart.
You will count this a great gift for now, yet you will also know regret. This was the price of the eladrin’s kiss.
Ilsevele looked up to his eyes again. “I felt this moment approaching for a long time, Araevin. It is not simply your… transformation into a high mage. I believe that we have been following different paths for a long time now.”
He gazed at her in silence for a while. Finally he said, “We have been promised to each other for almost twenty years.”
“The custom of our people,” she said, with a wistful smile. “But I think if we were ever going to marry, it should have been long before now. We lost the passion, the wonder, of our first years together. It vanished into… familiarity. I served the queen in Leuthilspar, and you returned to your studies in Tower Reilloch, and our thoughts, our hearts, turned to the things that kept us apart.” She reached out and took his hand. His golden skin was faintly luminous in the gathering dusk. “When I first began to harbor doubts, I regarded our long betrothal as a mistake. I thought that if we had married sooner, we would not have had so long to grow apart. But now I see the wisdom of the custom. Better to find out whether a marriage can stand the centuries we are given before the vows are spoken.”
He frowned, considering her words. That first summer in the woods and glades of Elion… nothing had mattered to either of them except the moments they could spend alone. In the years since, they had found glimmers of that memory, but nothing that ever equaled it. Had he asked for her hand in marriage because he sensed that distance growing and hoped to overcome it? Or was it simply a matter of doing what was expected of him?
Still caught up in that thought, he asked, “Who is he, Ilsevele?”
Now she looked away. “Starbrow,” she said. “I know it is sudden. I do not know what to make of it myself.”
Araevin closed his eyes. At least it was not anything she had tried to conceal from him. After all, she had only met the moon elf a few months ago. He was reasonably sure that even in their first travels with Starbrow, when they had explored the daemonfey portals beneath Myth Glaurach, nothing more than friendship had passed between them.
“At least I am in good company,” he muttered to himself. “I hope you find happiness with him, Ilsevele. You deserve it.”
“I think you mean that, Araevin. And I thank you for it.”
He sat in silence for a while, his hand in hers. It was not just the change brought upon him by the telmiirkara neshyrr. She was right. They had started to grow apart years ago. There was a moment only a few months ago when he brought Ilsevele to Faerun for her first time, and the wonder of the wide lands in her eyes rekindled something of their old passion. But it seemed that had been little more than a glimpse of a memory.
“I should not have stayed in Reilloch all those years,” he murmured.
“I do not believe that,” she said. “You have done what you were intended to do, Araevin. You have become a high mage. And who can say what might have happened this year if you had not?”
He took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. She was beautiful in the moonlight, and his heart ached with a deep, hot hurt. But he could not say that she was wrong.
“You will always be dear to me,” he said.
“And you to me,” she answered. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. “I hope you can forgive me, Araevin.”
He essayed a sad smile of his own. “I hope I can forgive myself,” he managed.
Then they both stood, and found their way out into the warm night.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
22 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms
Shortly before dawn, Araevin and his companions joined Seiveril by the forest manor. The Knights of the Golden Star surrounded them, along with the surviving Moon Knights and a chosen guard of bladesingers, spellarchers, and mages. Araevin felt keenly awake and alert despite the restlessness of his night. In Reverie his memory had insisted on wandering in places that he had shared with Ilsevele. Sometimes he envied the oblivion of human sleep. He knew that humans dreamed too, but they did not long remember their travels, did they?
With a few whispered commands, Seiveril and his captains led the gathered warriors into the dark of the morning. The great company moved through the forest in silence, broken only by the small rasp of steel and leather or the occasional footfall on the forest floor. From time to time Araevin glimpsed jagged shadows against the dark sky-the broken towers of Myth Drannor rising above the trees.
They came to a clearing in the forest, on the outskirts of the city itself. Araevin studied the spot, searching for the intangible presence of the mythal. After a moment, he nodded. “This will do,” he said.
Seiveril held up his hand. The rustling around Araevin grew still as the elves and Dalesfolk who accompanied his small band stopped moving and melted into the shadows beneath the trees.
“Good luck, Araevin,” he whispered.
Araevin narrowed his eyes, willing the unseen currents of magic to become visible to him. Slowly the majestic weaving of the city’s mythal ghosted into view-a great edifice of tangible magic, golden and alive, crackling with unimaginable power. Sildeyuir and the Waymeet itself were the only things Araevin had seen that even began to compare. The mythal’s field descended in a great curve from the sky over the center of the city and plunged into the ground not far from Araevin’s feet like a vertical wall of swirling golden light… golden light that was shot through with venomous strands of reddish copper, interwoven through the living magic.
“Be ready to protect me,” Araevin told his friends. “Sarya will sense me as soon as I begin, and I cannot believe that she will allow me to go about this without some opposition.”
“Do what you must,” Nesterin told Araevin. “We will guard you.”
Araevin drew out the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, and balanced the heavy stone in one hand, cupping his fingers around its points. The device glowed a brilliant violet-white, strengthened by the proximity of the mythal. He attuned his thoughts to the crystal in his hand, and he stepped into the shimmering light.
Sarya’s defenses woke at once, lashing about him like whipcords of furious magic. But Araevin was ready for that. He shielded himself with the crystal, deflecting the daemonfey’s spell traps. Then he carefully invoked the crystal’s power. From his outstretched hand a shrieking column of violet-white energy shot into the mythal field, brushing aside the locks and wards that kept him from the mythal itself.
The city groaned in reply. A wild wind sprang up in the forest, roaring through the treetops, and the ground trembled under his feet. Araevin felt the strength of the crystal mounting higher, doubling and redoubling on itself, as the device sought to master Myth Drannor’s ancient mythal. Tiny fissures of purple light began to appear in the conjoined crystal, and the shards vibrated in his hand.
“Araevin! The crystal!” Maresa shouted. “It’ll shatter!”
“Not if I can help it!” he answered.
He threw his willpower at the crystal, reining it in, arresting the wild power of the device as it surged toward release. For a moment the contest hung in the balance, and Araevin feared that he had allowed the crystal to channel too much power into the mythal-but then he managed to mute it, smothering the device in his iron determination.