She surveyed the small mountain of pears, apples, and grapes. “Did you pay for this, uncle?”
“Pay? Why, as soon as we got to the two-legs who had the fruit, he yelled and ran away! He wanted to make us a gift of this, I am sure.”
Koth polished a dusty pear against his hairy chest and bit into it.
“Look here, uncle. You can’t let all the cousins carry on like this inside the Speaker’s house. It’s, er, causing a bit of a disturbance,” Verhanna said in a kindly tone. “Why don’t you go outdoors? There’s a great deal more room.”
He regarded her with sharp, intelligent eyes. “I think Kothlolo should live under the open sky,” he declared. “City life is making us fat!”
With a few raucous words, he rounded up his band. He spoke a bit longer, and they began to file out of the antechamber.
“You’re not angry, are you?” asked Verhanna as they headed for the doors.
“No, sister cousin. Why should I be? No uncle of mine ever went to a city. I am old and have seen more than I might have seen. I am content.”
Outside, in the square before the Speaker’s house, a group of four Kagonesti elves waited with a small, donkey-drawn cart. Tamanier Ambrodel was talking with one of the Kagonesti. When Verhanna and the centaurs appeared, the castellan approached them.
“Ahem,” he said. “His Majesty Kith-Kanan would like me to present you with this gift.”
With a sweep of his arm, Tamanier indicated the four elves and cart. “These Kagonesti are farriers. They will teach you and your people about shoeing. The Speaker thought that if your people were shod with iron shoes, you could travel farther and have less problem with worn and cracked hooves.”
Koth descended the steps to the square and approached the chief farrier. “We will wear iron, like elf horses?” he asked with curiosity.
“If it pleases you,” replied Tamanier, nervously stepping back by Verhanna.
The elder centaur lifted a horseshoe from the farriers’ cart. The four Kagonesti farriers regarded the horse-man speculatively, as if already sizing him for shoes.
All at once, Koth yelled and lifted the horseshoe over his head. He spoke a long stream of centaur talk at his band, and they raised a cheer, crowding around the cart.
The four farriers got on their cart and led the band of centaurs away to their smithy. The Kothlolo followed with shouted good-byes and boisterous waves, except for one. A lone centaur remained behind. It was the dapple-gray lady centaur who had carried Rufus from the mountains to the city.
She approached Verhanna. “Sister cousin,” she said slowly, as if searching for words in the unfamiliar Elven language. “Please thank for me littlest cousin Rufus!” She smiled triumphantly but Verhanna lifted puzzled eyebrows at her.
“Thank him? For what?” asked the warrior maiden.
In reply, the lady centaur patted a yellow sash she’d wound around her muscular human waist. After staring at it for a few seconds, understanding dawned on Verhanna. It was the same sash Rufus had used as a centaur harness on their wild ride to the city. The lady centaur had admired it, and the kender must have made her a present of it.
Verhanna smiled and nodded her agreement. The lady centaur whirled in a tight circle, her long white tail swishing out behind her, and trotted off to catch up to her comrades.
The warrior maiden stared after her. For some reason, she found herself wishing she could go back to the plains or the high mountains with them. They had no worries, no responsibilities, and ran wherever the wind took them. In the wilderness, you could fight your enemies with a sword, something Verhanna understood. Here in Qualinost, foes were not so clearly defined, and the weapon of choice was words. She had never mastered that form of battle.
Verhanna sat down on the steps. There were a few people moving across the square, and she watched them go about their daily affairs. To her left, the great spire of the Tower of the Sun glinted brightly. The dark stripe that was the tower’s shadow crept across the square away from the Speaker’s house. In a few hours, at sunset, it would blanket the entrance of the Thalas-Enthia, She wondered how long her father and Silveran would have to argue and maneuver with the crafty senators there. It could be hours or days…perhaps even weeks.
Yes, sometimes the simple life of the wilderness seemed very appealing.
When the meeting broke up, the news radiated outward from the senate hall in ever-widening circles, so that by a few hours after sunset, the entire city knew that the senate had accepted Kith-Kanan’s testimony that Silveran was his true son. The last bit of convincing evidence presented to the senate had been the testimony of the scribe Polidanus, reading from the copied archives of Silvanos the tale of the elf noble Thonmera. Thonmera was one of the original members of the legendary Synthal-Elish, the council that had been the foundation of the first elven nation several millennia ago. It was written that he had been born sixty years after his mother’s official death. Apparently the sorcerer Procax had cast a spell on Thonmera’s mother because she had refused the magician’s offers of love. Procax turned the elf woman into stone. Sixty years later, when Thonmera’s father had the stone image of his dead wife moved to his newly built home, the laborers dropped it. The stone image shattered, and the living infant form of Thonmera was discovered.
The Loyalists were completely defeated. Indeed, the tale of Thonmera undercut their entire position. Senator Clovanos and his cronies had made a great show of proclaiming themselves loyal to the traditions of the elven race. What could be more traditional, Irthenie demanded, than the birth of a member of the great Synthal-Elish?
Throughout the debate, Kith-Kanan sat quietly, not indulging in the raucous verbal maneuvers. The Speaker left it to Irthenie and his other friends to put forth his case. He answered occasional questions put to him, but by and large he remained in the background.
In the end, by a vast majority, the Thalas-Enthia gave its approval to Silveran as the Speaker’s son. Kith-Kanan did not press right away for the issue of succession, though everyone in the hall had no doubt that was his ultimate goal.
The dying rays of sunlight streamed in the high window slots in the chamber as the session ended. Senators stretched and yawned, rising from their hard marble seats to go to their homes. The Loyalists filed out silently, utterly dejected. Many of the New Landers came forward to offer their congratulations to Kith-Kanan for finding his long-lost son. He remained to speak to all of them, thanking each one personally for his or her vote of confidence.
Finally only Irthenie was left. Her hands shook and her legs were weak from the long, hard afternoon’s work. Kith-Kanan put an arm around her tiny waist and supported her with his strength.
“You’re about to collapse,” he said, concerned. “Shall I send for a litter to carry you home?”
“I can carry myself home,” she snapped, jerking away from his encircling arm. The Speaker of the Sun retreated from the old elf woman’s ire. “I may be tired, but I’m not senile yet!”
“That you are not,” agreed Kith-Kanan. He watched Irthenie’s painful progress up the chamber steps to ground level, then out the open doors. A warm wind blew into the hall, flapping the Speaker’s robe and stirring Silveran’s loose, long hair.
“You’ve been very quiet,” said Kith-Kanan to his son.
“In truth, Father, I haven’t understood one word in ten.” He pressed his hands to his temples. “Never have I heard so many words spoken at one time! It makes my head reel to remember it!”
His father smiled. “The good senators do like to talk. But the wellborn and the important should talk to each other and argue their points of view. It’s far better than settling their disputes with blades, as was the case in Silvanost in my father’s day.”