Looking into the Notch, into Qualinesti beyond, Brand believed that before long, the balance of power would shift in the borderland. It would tip in his favor, and the tipping would be sweeter than anyone might think, sweeter even than one-eyed Char might imagine, and the dwarf knew more of Brand's tale than most.
Chapter 2
There! There it was again.
Within the shadows of her hood, Elansa Sungold lifted her head. Tendrils of curling golden hair spilled onto her cheeks and shoulders. Absently, she tucked them back behind her long tapered ears. Disturbed by the motion, the small leather pouch hanging from her belt shifted. The homey scent of dried herbs drifted, wolfsbane and chamomile and slippery elm bark, these and more in little packets neatly wrapped and marked. These were healer-herbs, the kind any well-versed herbwife knew how to use.
Elansa cocked her head, listening for the soft slithering sound. She heard only the dull thud of hooves in the dusty morning stillness of the forest. Before her rode ten warriors, weaponed and lightly mailed; behind came ten others. They were, she believed, a sufficient force, for before the paths went deep into the forest, they wended round the stony lands along the edges of the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. There, in the outlands, brigands ruled the roads, competing bands of outlaws both human and goblin haunting the hills and the stem mountains.
Elansa’s mare snorted, tugging at the rein, impatient with the slow pace. This one was bred to run in the fields and meadows around Qualinost. She liked the wind in her mane more than she liked the quiet forest trails. A skilled rider with a firm seat and strong grip, Elansa steadied her mount, then leaned a little forward to whisper a calming word in the beast’s ear. Like a child who hears her mother's voice, the mare grew quiet again.
The cool sapphire phoenix sometimes moved against her breast as she rode, or the silver chain slid on her neck. Here was her god, her Blue Phoenix, and what other god would she have than he who rises, falls, and rises again each new year from the ashes of the old? Once, a long time ago when she had been a girl, Elansa had longed to dedicate her life to the god, to become his cleric and live in his temple, but her father had other plans for her.
"The gods are gone, Elansa," he'd said. "We honor their memory, but let us not delude ourselves that it is anything more."
Against all custom, Paras Sungold had made for his only child a marriage to a prince of the royal house, to Kethrenan who was the youngest brother of Solostaran, the Speaker of the Sun.
"Marry the prince," he said, and they both knew he commanded. "Hurry to make yourself the mother of a child of his. Solostaran has sons, and they look to be fit enough, but it never hurts to be in place."
Indeed, thought Elansa then, and now. In place for what? A plague to take Solostaran’s house? A rash of tragedy to sweep away her nephews, the elf king's children? She had not said so to her father, but she felt his greedy glance measuring her belly each time they met. As for Kethrenan, her prince, he had the patience to wait, and he didn't ever complain about the trying. Nor did she; he was an attentive lover.
Kethrenan, ah, handsome Keth. He had the wit and the skill to rule Qualinesti. Elansa, though she never hoped to love him, liked her husband well enough to know and understand him. She realized, as perhaps even he didn't, that given the chance Kethrenan wouldn't find it hard to summon the will to rule. Yet, with the Speaker's children so full of health, it wasn't likely that he would ever have the chance, and so all that wit and will Keth channeled into other streams. He was fiercely loyal to Solostaran, and in the Speaker's cause he spent his wild recklessness, determined to keep safe for his brother and his brother's heirs what he could not have for himself. In these days when the borders of the Qualinesti Forest were seldom crossed by elves, even less often by human or dwarf outlanders, Kethrenan was their dogged keeper. From Lauranost in the west by the Straits of Algoni to the abandoned fastness of Pax Tharkas in the mountains of the south and east, Kethrenan’s warriors were a well-known presence, loved by elves, feared by all others.
Bronze leaves, fallen from autumn, whispered on the path as Demlin, Keth’s serving man, walked beside Elansa, leading his own mount. The rusty gelding had come up lame an hour before, stumbling as they’d crossed a stream. A stone had lodged in the tender quick of the hoof.
"Not but a small bruise," Elansa had said, passing her hands over the injured hoof. "Let him walk unburdened for as much of today as you can, and he'll be right tomorrow."
She'd spat into her hand, added a small amount of dried root of wolfsbane from one of the packets in her leather pouch, and made a paste, which she applied to the hoof.
Demlin was content to walk until the horse could carry him again. "And it’s not like anyone will be leaving me behind, Princess."
He looked up the trail, the stony way rising. Glimpses through the thinning foliage showed the first gleams of the snowy shoulders of the Kharolis Mountains. Dim in the sky, the two moons, Solinari and red Lunitari, early risers, hung like ghosts above the mountaintops. Between those mountains and into the woody border of Qualinesti lay foothills strewn with piles of boulders. So wide and tall were those piles that some individual boulders had been given names, long ago in the days when the borders of Qualinesti and dwarven Thorbardin marched side by side like two friends. Stone Castle, Granite Tower, Hammer Rock, Reorx's Anvil. In those years after the Cataclysm, the dwarves had pulled their borders closer to Thorbardin, but the names of the stones yet remained, known to all who traveled the steep rising trails at the edge of the Qualinesti Forest.
There! Elansa lifted her head. There, she heard the slithering sound again, like a snake winding through the leaves.
One eye ahead, another on the ground to avoid the mess the horses left behind, Demlin didn't seem to have heard what Elansa did. His face, plain and long, was a study in composure. To see him now, a stranger would not imagine he had another thing on his mind besides taking care to keep his handsome leather boots clean. Elansa, however, was no stranger to this man. She didn't think Demlin was deaf to what she'd heard.
Elansa lifted her hands and slipped her hood back, the sage-colored wool falling to her shoulders. High up in an oak, a jackdaw chattered, sounding like a kender laughing. Another joined in, and then a third. One of the horses ahead snorted, tossing its head so that the bridle rang. Behind, one of her escorts murmured. A deep male voice chuckled, the sound low and comfortable. In the next instant, his laughter fell dead, killed by sudden silence.
"Listen," said the warrior to his companion. Then, after a beat, "Did you hear something?"
Demlin lifted a hand to take the bridle strap of Elansa’s mare, the glittering of his long green eyes a warning. He mouthed the word, Hush!
A hawk's screech tore through the forest. Thus, the silence, Elansa thought, the wood was falling quiet, striving to become invisible in the face of the raptor. She relaxed a little. Demlin did not. In the pressing silence, Elansa heard again the sound of following, only now the slithering came not from behind. It came whispering from the right, from the left.
Elansa got a good grip on the reins but kept the pressure of her knees light so as not to frighten the mare. A sword hissed from its sheath. The smell of lanolin and lamb’s wool from the scabbard’s lining tickled Elansa’s nose. Pulse beating high and swift in her throat, she freed her legs of the length of her cloak. Through tight woolen trousers, even through the high leather boots, cold nipped. Demlin’s hand tightened on the mare's bridle-strap, then loosened. He turned to look at Elansa, breath drawn, a word on his lips. In the space between one beat of her heart and the next, Elansa saw his eyes widen, and color drained from his face.