The song of bells drifted in the air, silvery and rhythmic, dancing to the jogging pace of a lady's pretty mare as she rode through the dark orchards. Her horse, up ahead, looked ghostly gray as the sky. Laughter pealed, and beyond a garden wall children chased the fat heavy flakes of snow drifting down. The first snow of the season fell upon Qualinost, sifting through the black sketch of naked tree branches. The city's graceful buildings, homes, shops, the far-famed Library of Qualinost, temples, and smithies would glow quietly, like faithful hearts beating. Even the barracks, stark and stern, seemed softened, if not by the quiet light, by the mantle of snow on their shoulders.
Beyond the buildings and the naked orchards, four tall watchtowers stood, each lined with burnished silver, each stronger than it looked. Slender bridges, spans which seemed so delicate one might imagine a fallen leaf would collapse them, sketched out the rough square bounds of the city by connecting the towers north to east, east to south, south to west, and west back to north again. Within those gleaming towers contingents of Kethrenan’s warriors were quartered, men and women who kept a strict rotating schedule of duty to insure that no tower ever went unmanned. Upon each of those arching bridges a regular guard walked its rounds. From the founding of the kingdom, the company who kept this watch was known as the King’s Own, the guardians of his very walls. The names of past commanders of this guard decorated elven legend. These days, the King’s Own was Lindenlea’s to command. The honor was a considerable one for Kethrenan’s cousin, and deserved.
The guard on the bridges, hard-eyed soldiers, looked always outward to the broad ravine surrounding the city. That cut in the earth, deep stone plunging down to rushing water, was the first line of Qualinost’s defense. The second line were the troops who patrolled there, mounted squads whose first order in time of conflict was to bum the wooden bridges at the sight of enemies, whose next was to die to the man to keep all invaders away from the city itself.
Dark across the sky, crows sailed, their raucous shrieks damping the laughter of bridle bells. Kethrenan looked up, tracked them, and lost them in the snowy veil.
"What do you hear, Lea, from the watches at the ravine?"
"Only that it’s quiet. ‘Dull as dirt,‘ this morning's messenger said." She shook her head, for the messenger had been a youth, over-eager, untried, full of fancy and ancient songs. The first battle he saw and survived would disabuse him of the notion that a quiet watch was a boring one. "He'd be wise to be grateful for that."
Kethrenan agreed.
Lindenlea slid him a quick glance. "I don't think you're much different from that eager boy, cousin." "Vastly different. I have a dozen more scars, have seen comrades die in battle…."
She laughed.
"What?" he said, frowning.
"You. You sound like an old man. Old," she said, grinning, "and forgetful. Or is it really hard to remember the days when you used to long for the chance to fight in a battle and live to hear the songs bards would write about your adventures?"
Kethrenan snorted, dismissing a question flown too close to the mark. He could not dismiss her truth, though, and he didn’t try.
Snow sighed, silencing the city. In windows, lights gleamed like eyes smiling for the warmth and the shelter. No birds flew, and few people were about, only the watch on the wall.
Kethrenan lifted his head and looked south, past the tall Tower of the Sun where his brother Solostaran held court, where he and Elansa lived. He thought about her, his wife, and he wondered how she fared out in Bianost. Did the snow keep her from her work? He didn’t imagine it would. They'd had no chance to talk before her leaving, but he didn’t need close conversation to know that Elansa had gone willingly, blight’s enemy sallying forth in the golden autumn. No elf lived who didn’t love the forest. So much could even be said for the Silvanesti kindred who tamed their wildwood into gardens. Yet to woodshapers it sometimes seemed that the trees of the wood were but another tribe of souled beings, the tribe breaking down into clans-Elm-clan, Oak-clan, Birch-clan, Rowan-clan, and Pine-clan….
Woodshapers saw things differently than most elves. Elansa, his wife, was a stubborn girl who would not be put off by mere winter if her healing skills were needed. She would commune with her beloved trees as easily in snow as in sun. He pictured her walking among the naked trees, cloaked in fur, the snow glittering in her golden hair. The sapphire phoenix would sit heavily upon her breast, the stone glittering, the phoenix’s wings spread as though the bird itself would leap from her and fly away.
Lindenlea’s voice cut into this thinking, sharp through the muffling snow. "Keth, look." She pointed to the eastern bridge, to a runner jogging along the silver path.
"My lord prince!" he cried. He stopped, sketched a bow, and leaned over the parapet. "A messenger has come for you, Prince Kethrenan. He waits in the king’s chamber."
Lindenlea’s eyes narrowed, and Kethrenan could almost hear her thinking. A messenger waiting in the chamber of the Speaker of the Sun carried no word of little moment. In spite of himself, the restless prince's heart rose.
Voices followed Kethrenan down marble corridors, dry whispers ghosting in his wake. A servant spoke to a servant, women in the dun robes of the kitchen. Outside Solostaran’s library, a scribe gestured to the quill-boy who'd come with a basket of freshly sharpened pens. In the shadows of the corridor, their blue robes seemed like deeper darkness as the scribe, her silvery hair the only gleam, leaned near to murmur. When they saw the prince, they looked away. That looking away spoke more and louder than any voice.
The skin prickled on the back of Kethrenan’s neck, a hunter's hackles rising. He'd been feeling that since he'd left Lindenlea behind, sending her to make certain of all watches posted in and around the city. They had seen something in the attitude of the guardsmen on the bridges to make them slide narrow-eyed glances at each other. The nearer they came to the Tower of the Sun, the more alert the warriors became.
Servants melted away before the prince, slipping into chambers and alcoves, gliding silently out of his way until, at last, Kethrenan stood in the doorway of his brother's chambers. Silent, he kept himself in the shadow, observing.
Within, Solostaran stood like a candle’s bright flame, king of the Qualinesti elves. He had his hand upon the shoulder of a thin, frail man. Beyond, two others stood close together, elves dressed in the rustic gear of one of the outlying villages. Kethrenan noted that they looked like kin to each other, and then he dismissed them.
Solostaran helped the frail man to sit in a deep, high-backed chair. They were an odd pairing, the Speaker and the man he helped. Tall for an elf, Solostaran was thinner than his brother. Kethrenan could see in him the blood of the great hero-king Kith-Kanan. It shone in the keen glance of his eye, in the strength that had nothing to do with brawn and everything to do with surety and grace. He was the flame of his people, their spirit incarnate, their heart and soul. But the other… the other looked like a beggar brought in from the gate, ragged and pale and sickly.
"Keth," said the Speaker, who knew his brother's step and didn't need to turn to see him. "Here is a sad homecoming."
In the shadows, the two strangers sighed. One glanced at the other. One slipped a hand into the other's. Brother and sister, Kethrenan thought absently. Upon the woman's cheek a small tear slid, drawn by the simple word, homecoming.
Kethrenan’s eyes narrowed. He didn't know those two and he didn't know the man his brother said had come home. Surely that was a stranger leaning upon the arm of Solostaran as the Speaker helped him to sit.
The prince narrowed his eyes against the candlelight glinting off the black and white marble tiles of the floor. Here and there, in random pattern, one or another of those tiles was marked with the shape of a lily, white on a black tile, black on a white-the sign of some ancient king's love for a woman who, in her time, embodied scandal and who now only embodied a wisp of recalled legend. The Tower of the Sun was rife with such ghosts of older times, older feuds and hatreds and loves. It was part of the luxury of the place, a luxury of history, a luxury of fable. The place also reflected a luxury of design. An extravagance of glass wall brought the orchard and the city itself into the Speaker's chamber. Oftentimes, it brought sun pouring into the room, golden and warm. This day, that wall brought only gray gloom, and the apple trees and pear trees outside the window seemed like old men and women, gnarled and twisted and angry with age. It was left to banks of tall candles to provide light in the chamber, and torches in black iron holders. This light showed Kethrenan his brother's guest.