“That I will gladly teach you,” Mackeli said. He shivered with excitement. “In all my life, I have never seen the Forestmaster! There were times I sensed her passing, but never have I been so close!” He grasped Kith-Kanan’s hand. “Come! Let’s hurry. I can’t wait to tell Ny about this!”
Kith-Kanan glanced at the spot where the Forestmaster had stood. Flowers had burst up where her hooves had touched the ground. Before he could react, Mackeli had jerked him into motion. At breakneck speed, the sure-footed boy drew Kith-Kanan deeper into the forest. The undergrowth got thicker, the trees larger and closer together, yet Mackeli never faltered. At times he and Kith-Kanan had to wriggle through gaps in the trees so tight and low they had to go on hands and knees.
Just before sunset, when the crickets had begun to sing, Mackeli reached a large clearing and stopped.
“We are home,” said the boy.
Kith-Kanan went to the center of the open space, more than forty paces across, and turned a circle on one heel. “What home?” he asked.
Mackeli grinned, the effect weirdly emphasized by the red lines of paint dabbed on his cheeks. Jauntily he walked forward to the base of a truly massive oak. He grasped at a patch of relatively smooth bark and pulled. A door opened in the trunk of the tree, a door made from a curving section of oak bark. Beyond the open door was a dark space. Mackeli waved to Kith-Kanan.
“Come in. This is home,” the boy said as he stepped into the hollow tree.
Kith-Kanan had to duck to clear the low opening. It smelled like wood and spice inside, pleasant but strange to his city-bred nose. It was so black he could barely make out the dim curve of the wooden walls. Of Mackeli he could see nothing.
And then the boy’s hand touched his, and Kith-Kanan flinched like a frightened child. “Light a candle or a lamp, will you?” he said, embarrassed.
“Do what?”
“Light a—never mind. Can you make a fire, Mackeli? I can’t see a thing in here.”
“Only Ny can make fire.”
“Is Ny here?”
“No. Gone hunting, I think.”
Kith-Kanan groped his way along the wall. “Where does Ny build his fires?” he asked.
“Here.” Mackeli led him to the center of the room. Kith-Kanan’s foot bumped a low hearth made of rocks plastered together with mud. He squatted down and felt the ashes. Stone cold. No one had used it in quite a while.
“If you get me some kindling, I’ll make a fire,” he offered.
“Only Ny can make fire,” Mackeli repeated doubtfully.
“Well, I may not be the stealthiest tracker or the best forester, but, by Astarin, I can make fire!”
They went back out and gathered armfuls of windblown twigs and small, dead branches. A weak bit of light cut into the hollow tree through the open door as Kith-Kanan arranged the dry sticks in a cone over a heap of bark and shavings he had whittled off with his dagger. He took out his flint and striker from the pouch at his waist. Leaning on his knees on the stone hearth, he nicked the flint against the roughened iron striker. Sparks fell on the tinder, and he blew gently on them. In a few minutes he had a weak flicker of flame and not long after that, a crackling fire.
“Well, boy, what do you think of that?” the prince asked Mackeli.
Instead of being impressed, Mackeli shook his head. “Ny’s not going to like this.”
Lightened by the fire, the interior of the hollow tree was finally visible to Kith-Kanan. The room was quite large, five paces wide, and a ladder led up through a hole to the upper branches and the outside of the tree. Smoke from the fire also went out through this hole. The walls were decorated with the skulls of animals—rabbit, squirrel, a fierce-looking boar with upthrust tusks, a magnificent eight-point buck, plus a host of bird skulls Kith-Kanan could not identify. Mackeli explained that whenever Ny killed an animal not killed before, the skull was cleaned and mounted on a peg on the wall. That way the spirit of the dead beast was propitiated and the god of the forest, the Blue Phoenix, would grant success to future hunts.
“Which of these did you kill?” Kith-Kanan asked.
“It is not permitted for me to shed the blood of animals. That’s Ny’s work.”
The elf boy slipped back his hood. “I talk to the animals and listen to what they say. I do not shed their blood.”
Kith-Kanan sat down on a pallet filled with moss. He was weary and dirty and very hungry. Mackeli fidgeted about, giving the prince frequent looks of displeasure. Eventually, Kith-Kanan asked Mackeli what was wrong.
“That’s Ny’s place. You must not sit there,” the boy said irritatedly.
Kith-Kanan heaved himself off. “This Ny has more privileges than the Speaker of the Stars,” he said, exasperation clearing his voice. “May I sit here?” He indicated the floor of the hollow tree, which was covered with pine needles. Mackeli nodded.
Soon after that exchange, Kith-Kanan asked for something to eat. The elf boy scampered up the ladder and, leaning out to the center of the hollow space, pushed aside various gourds and skin bags that hung by thongs from the ceiling. He found the one he wanted and brought it down. Sitting cross-legged beside Kith-Kanan, Mackeli bade the prince hold out his hands. He did, and the boy filled them with roasted wild chestnuts, neatly peeled.
“Do you have any meat?” Kith-Kanan asked.
“Only Ny eats meat.”
The prince was getting tired of the litany of things only Ny could do. Too tired, in fact, to dispute with the boy, Kith-Kanan ate chestnuts in silence. He was grateful for whatever he could get.
“Do you know,” he said at last, “you’ve never asked me my name?”
Mackeli shrugged. “I didn’t think you had one.”
“Of course I have a name!” The elf boy rubbed his nose, getting yellow paint on his fingers. “My name is Kith,” the prince said, since Mackeli obviously wasn’t going to ask.
Mackeli shook more chestnuts into his paint-stained palm. “That’s a funny name,” he noted and popped a chestnut into his mouth.
5 — Five Weeks Later
“Lady Nirakina, wife of the Speaker,” announced the maidservant. Hermathya looked up from her mirror and nodded. The servant opened the door.
“Time is short, Lady,” Nirakina cautioned as she entered.
“I know.” Hermathya stood motionless in the center of a maelstrom of activity. Servants, dressmakers, and perfumers dodged and weaved around her, each trying to make final, finishing touches before the wedding ceremony began.
“You look beautiful,” Nirakina said, and she was not merely being polite to her daughter-to-be. The finest creators of beauty in Silvanost had labored for weeks to make Hermathya’s wedding gown and to compound the special oils and perfumes that would be hers alone.
The gown was in two parts. The first was an overdress in sheerest linen, too light to be worn alone and maintain modesty. Beneath this, Hermathya was wrapped in a single swath of golden cloth, many yards long. Six members of the Seamstress Guild had begun the winding Hermathya wore at her neck. A huge drum of gold was slowly wound around her, closely over her breasts and torso, more loosely over hips and legs. She had been forced to stand with her arms raised for two hours while the elf women worked.
Her feet were covered by sandals made from a single sheet of gold, beaten so thin it felt and flexed like the most supple leather. Golden laces crisscrossed her legs from ankle to knee, securing the sandals.
The elf’s hair and face had been worked over, too. Gone were the maidenly braids framing her face. Her coppery hair was waved, then spread around her shoulders. In the elven custom, it was the husband who gave his new wife the first of the clasps with which she would ever after bind her tresses.
The bride’s skin was smoothed of every roughness or blemish with aromatic oils and bone-thin soapstone. Her nails were polished and gilded, and her lips were painted golden. As befitted her noble rank and wealthy family, Hermathya wore sixteen bracelets—ten on her right arm and six on her left. These were all gifts from her parents, her siblings, and her female friends.