The prince lifted his lance and watched the green rag tied to the shaft as it fluttered in a vagrant breeze. He wore this rag from his wife's cloak for his token, as jousters on the tourney fields wore a lady's favor. The pennon was soaked now in more blood than that which had stained it when she had used it for a bandage.
Who'd worn that bandage? Had she? Was the first layer of crimson Elansa’s dear blood on the rag? Or had it been torn from her to bind another’s wound? Was it, then, an outlaw’s blood?
Well, if it was an outlaw’s blood, more would spill. Like rivers it would run.
"Do you think she's alive, Keth?"
The prince looked up, startled. No one asked that question, not ever. Captains, commanders, simple warriors, no one Wondered-or not aloud-whether after all these months the princess yet lived. Not even Lindenlea had wondered aloud until now.
"It’s been a long time, Keth. Do you think-?"
"She is alive," he said, as he always did, with iron conviction.
Elansa was alive. Stolen from her home, his gentle woodshaper wife was alive. He knew things about her that others did not. Others saw her and thought she was a girl sweet and fair, a creature of gilded courts and shimmering woodland glades, a ‘gentle healer whose sighs were like the breath of wind through the trees. Kethrenan knew her, and he knew the strength of her.
On the day she had left Qualinost, she was going to lift an illness from the elms of Bianost, take it into herself, and banish it so that the trees might return to health. Elansa Sungold knew how to wield a god's talisman. She knew how to speak to the elements of the world.
"She’s alive, Lea."
She is alive, he thought, if she is not murdered. And if she has been murdered the stones of Pax Tharkas will run red with blood.
"She’s alive."
Lindenlea went back to her pacing, to her anger. Lindenlea rode with his army, ever strong at his side, her sword like lightning, her war cry pealing across the stony plain like battle horns as they harried the goblins, trying to catch them before they gained the mountains and Pax Tharkas. At that, they had no success. Gnash held them off with warriors he didn't mind losing and with fire. He built walls of fire and fists of flame to reach out and snatch an elf from his horse's back and burn him to death. On the battlegrounds, goblins howled for victory against their enemies, and they named their hobgoblin Master Shaman. In the midst of the battle, Gnash cloaked himself in fire, and no arrow could reach him.
A burning madman, Keth thought when he recalled the hob. An insane creature maddened by pursuit, wild for only one thing: to reach Pax Tharkas. But something had changed. Today something had been different in the fighting.
Little flames crackled in the campfire, Lindenlea paced, and the prince closed his eyes, remembering.
They had engaged Gnash and his army twice since the prince had returned. Once had been a rout, the elves scattered by fire. It had been a shameful running for which he could blame none of his warriors. No soldier could be ordered into fire. But they had come back, his army, they had come back, and their hearts could not be said to be afire with rage. N0, fire was Gnash’s. The elves’ hearts had changed to steel, and Kethrenan had taken them and pursued the hob again, running across the barren land with the mountains always in sight, their peaks gleaming with snow. The plain stretched out flat and far, Gnash and his army like a dark blight upon the earth. Kethrenan wouldn't come in running. He had divided his army and sent them up into the hills, half and half. In that way they'd surprised the hob, falling on him from the high ground and tearing through the sleeping goblin army in bloody slaughter.
The elves had not prevailed. Gnash had come and lifted up his fire-staff to fend the matter. But they had hurt him. They'd reduced his army by a third, and they had seen-Lea herself had been the first to discern-that Gnash’s love affair with the flame was not doing well for him.
Kethrenan listened to his cousin pace. He listened to the little settling sounds his own small campfire made, the sigh of wood consumed and collapsing. He opened his eyes and looked at the wood, ashy scales and a beating heart of ember. Gnash had looked like that, consumed from within.
Kethrenan thought of Elansa again, of her blue sapphire, her phoenix. It charged a toll, the magic of the phoenix stone. All magic did. It wanted your strength, your heart. It wanted your soul sometimes. Magic always wanted something. He was no mage, but he knew that much. It might be that the fire-staff Gnash wielded could burn forever. Gnash himself could not.
Kethrenan, the warden of Qualinost, had commanded a king’s army for many long years. He knew how to recognize a chink in a foeman’s armor, and he was not one to need a second look. He took his plan and made a few changes.
He imagined this was the source of Lindenlea’s anger. She did not like his new plan, and she could not convince him of her thinking. Nevertheless, this night, half of Kethrenan’s warriors would go from him. By the light of the red moon and the silver and all the stars they would ride hard in the night, wide around the goblin encampment, and head for Pax Tharkas. Let the goblins run to the old fortress. Kethrenan and the forces remaining would escort them right into the arms of the elven warriors who would be waiting outside the gates of Pax Tharkas.
Between them, the two forces of elves would smash the enemy as though they were sea and cliff and the goblins hopeless shipwrecks. Then Kethrenan would lead his army into the fortress and take back his wife. This was a fine plan, and one Lindenlea didn't like, for she didn't like to split the army.
"Lea," said the prince when he'd grown weary of her walking. "Lea, do you want to have the discussion again?"
She stopped, but she was a moment before looking up. "About the division of the army? No. We've had that discussion."
"Then what, cousin? Tell me."
"Keth," she said, and the softness of her voice startled him. "Keth, you believe Elansa is alive. Maybe it is the strength of your own will keeping her so." She twisted a grim smile. "We know about the strength of your will, cousin. Sometimes I think not even gods would dare it, if gods were here to dare. I doubt luck or fate would. But have you considered how you might find her, if you find her alive?"
He'd asked himself this question, in dark hours when he took his turn at watch. He answered the question the same way each time: If Elansa were still alive and in the hands of the outlaws, she remained unharmed, untouched. She would have killed herself before letting one of the humans violate her. She would have taken up a knife and killed herself. She was an elf. She was a princess. She was, after all, his wife.
"What if you're wrong?" Lindenlea asked, seeing the answer in his eyes. "Keth, what if she is alive, and she begs the gods every night for mercy, and begs them every morning that this be the day we come to take her home?"
But he wasn't wrong, this he knew. Elansa Sungold was Qualinesti, and she was a princess. She was a woodshaper, and hers was sacred blood, rarely shared with princes and never shared with those not of elvenkind. He said this to his cousin, and he added, "You know that if she is alive, she is well. You know, Lea, that you'd never let one of those human scum touch you, that if you couldn't kill him, you'd kill yourself."