"As cousins at a wedding," Stiwelen corrected, a needling smile on his lean face. Alassra was starting to warm to him, though perhaps it was his knives. "There was enlightenment-if you choose to call it that-in all directions."
The Gold elf made a fist and opened his mouth, but the old woman spoke faster. "It was done," she repeated her earlier statement. "The old ones accepted the Tel'Quessir. The Seldarine accepted the old ones. The Yuirwood accepted the elves; they accepted the Yuirwood. It was all done."
"But it didn't last. Humans came to the land they named Aglarond, and the Yuir elves began their own Retreat."
"Not a Retreat," Stiwelen said bitterly. "The Yuir elves couldn't Retreat. They'd bound themselves to the forest. They doomed themselves."
Alassra hid her surprise. She'd always assumed-the Cha'Tel'Quessir themselves assumed-that the Yuir elves had Retreated from the forest to Evermeet. "Doomed? They aren't…? They all died?"
Stiwelen nodded; Alassra looked to the Gold elf for a contradiction and got it.
"They are part of the Yuirwood. They had accepted the forest; it had accepted them. There was no other way. They understood that. When the humans came into the Yuirwood, they accepted them, too, and the Cha'Tel'Quessir were born."
"And the Cha'Tel'Quessir are doomed as well!" Stiwelen shouted, an unseemly sound that echoed around the menhir. He rose to his feet and stalked the perimeter of the glade. "This is what comes of leaving things half-done. Are we going to let our mistakes flourish or are we going to put a stop to them?"
The Gold elf rose to his feet as well. "There have been no mistakes!"
Stiwelen laughed, a biting sound, like quarrels from a crossbow. It flushed the birds from their roosts in nearby trees. A nighthawk stooped; there was scream, then silence as it took its prey. Alustriel laid her left hand on Alassra's arm. A spell tingled in her fingertips.
Nethreene, we should leave now.
Alassra shook off the hand and the spell. Dlaertha, she used her sister's secret name, as Alustriel had used hers. Go, if you wish, but the conversation's just starting to get interesting. I think I'll stay a while longer.
Alustriel scowled and stayed.
"They are both right," the old woman whispered, as if the men couldn't hear her. "The Yuir were what we call Sy-Tel'Quessir, what you call wild elves. They held themselves apart from the coronals and the Court. They turned their backs on elegant cities, elegant philosophies. When the forest was threatened by humans, drow and their allies, the Yuir Sy-Tel'Quessir fought alone: They refused all offers of assistance."
"Offers!" Stiwelen sputtered, proving he heard and listened. "You do not offer a drowning man a rope. You dive into the water and drag him to the shore."
It was the Gold elf's turn to shatter the night's quiet with his laughter. "And you know nothing about either drowning men or the Yuir Sy-Tel'Quessir. The choice was theirs: They made it; we honored it. The trolls, the drow, and the rest of the Underdark were repulsed. They had their victory, on their terms."
"What of the humans? The Cha'Tel'Quessir say the humans fought beside the Yuir in the dark days, not against them," Alassra asked.
"The Cha'Tel'Quessir," Stiwelen spat the syllables out as curses. "Suppose we fall in love, you and I." He glared at Alassra who considered it unlikely. "We exchange vows. We live together. We have children. If I love a Gold elf or a Sea elf or even a drow, my children will be like me or their mother, but with you, our children would be neither wholly like you, nor wholly like me. A mistake? Perhaps. An exception? Certainly. The foundation of a new race? Half elf, half human forever? The Cha'Tel'Quessir? Gods help us all! They have accepted a burden they cannot hope to carry. They are children playing with fire, and they must be stopped."
"This, from the man who'd leap blindly into water to rescue the drowning. What do you do when a man is trapped in a burning house? Walk away?"
"I'd make damn sure he couldn't fall in the water or set fire to his house again! What would you do, Islywyn?"
Alassra thought there might be other options, chief among them: talking to the Cha'Tel'Quessir elders who freely admitted-to her, at least-that they knew less than they would have liked about their Yuir ancestors. She'd take care of that when she got back to Aglarond when she shared her account of this evening. But before that-lest the reason for this gathering be forgotten:
"Excuse me, I came here to learn about Zandilar, the Dancer."
"The fool," Stiwelen replied as Islywyn said:
"The traitor."
"One, the other, or both?" Alassra asked, provoking the two men in the hope of getting them to speak freely, and rashly.
But it was the old woman who answered her. "A maiden, not of the Sy-Tel'Quessir. She fell in love with the forest and it gave her one of the old names and accepted her as part of itself. Neither wizard, nor warrior, she was merely beautiful, and when the Yuirwood was attacked, she defended it with her beauty and rode to battle on a gray horse."
Islywyn strode onto the quilt. He stood in front of the old woman, towering over her. "Zandilar rode straight to the drow temples. She defended the Yuirwood by consorting with the dark god, Vhaeraun!"
The old woman rose to her feet, agile and steady despite her frail appearance. "She hoped to seduce him and take his secrets back to the Yuirwood. She was betrayed."
"The traitor herself betrayed!" Islywyn countered. "The fate of all those who treat with the drow: the seducer becomes the seduced."
"Never! She suffered, as only gods can suffer, but her true faith was never broken, even at the end."
"Here's your fool, Stiwelen," Islywyn said, staring at the old woman. "Zandilar the Martyr."
The old woman closed her eyes.
It was stand or be left out of the conversation, so Alassra stood. "What happened to Zandilar? Her name remains on a Sunglade stone. Others have weathered, but hers remains."
"That's a question to which no one has an answer," Stiwelen said softly. He leaned against the menhir, knife in hand, examining its edge. "Zandilar, as my lady says, suffered as only gods can suffer: she was subsumed, vanquished, we think, along with all the gods and demigods the Yuir venerated. They all disappeared, extinguished like so many candles. The Tel'Quessir cannot find them. The Seldarine cannot find them. As for the Yuir, they were extinguished not long after they defeated the drow and drove them back; and the trolls and their other enemies-except for the humans.
"Humans cut down the ancient trees; the Yuir fought among themselves. Humans carved farms where there had been forest; the Yuir sickened and dwindled. Humans set up camps in the heart of the forest and within a generation-a human generation-the Cha'Tel'Quessir had claimed the Yuirwood." Stiwelen sheathed his knife. "Tell me, Queen of Aglarond, do you think there was love in the air when the first Cha'Tel'Quessir were born?"
"Yes." Alassra replied.
"Then, tell me the name of your mother's mother."
The Queen of Aglarond stood mute, unable to answer, uncertain which of her mother's parents had been an elf, which had been human.
"Bethril," Alustriel answered in her sister's place, "Bethril Morningsong, daughter of Herran and Caethene. She was a Moon elf, like yourself and through Herran Morningsong she traced her lineage to Querryl and Thalleir, Elayna and-"
Alassra stopped her sister with a sad shake of her head. "Thank you, I should have asked long ago, but Stiwelen's point is well-taken. The Cha'Tel'Quessir know they are descended from the Yuir elves, but they know nothing about them, presumably because those ancestors shared nothing with their Cha'Tel'Quessir children. The Yuir and their gods were forgotten or-worse-half remembered. And the problem with anything half-done or half-remembered is that it's never the right half. Is it, Stiwelen?"