The lake and keep within Eьlean's memory.
Bright red-orange fires burned atop its four corner towers, and Chap smelled decay and death for the first time. It stung his insides as well as his nose.
They circled halfway around the shore, until the keep stood on their left in the lake and the city houses were visible beyond it. Brot'an waited silently as Eillean cradled Chap in one arm and pulled a silver mirror from inside her vestment. She looked up, and Chap followed her gaze to the bright moon free of night clouds.
Eillean caught the moon's light upon the mirror, then angled the bright surface toward the lakeshore. It seemed impossible to Chap that the moon provided enough light, but she continued flashing the mirror until three answering sparks appeared in one house's upper window. The same house Chap had seen in her memory. Not long after, soft footsteps approached through the forest.
A young elven woman appeared in dark breeches and shirt beneath a charcoal cloak. Her resemblance to Eillean was clear to Chap. White-blond hair hung loose around her tall, narrow frame. Her amber eyes were as hard as her mother's. Eillean held Chap out, speaking in their native tongue.
"Cuirin'nen'a, my daughter… for the boy."
Cuirin'nen'a-"Water Lily's Heart"-took Chap, and he felt a difference in her hands from those of her mother. She pulled him carefully to her chest to warm him. Hidden tenderness in her touch belied her cold gaze, and this tenderness deepened as Chap caught the daughter's memory of her own son. She had another name for the boy-Leesil.
"Thank you," she said. "A companion may keep him whole in the face of what we must do to him."
"He has a task ahead in his life," Eillean answered sharply. "One for which he cannot be influenced by our people's ways. This pup is small compensation, but spare Leshil nothing in training. There is no room for compassion if he is to learn the ways of his father and those of our caste."
Chap's ears perked up. He did not understand what was behind these words. There were images that lashed through Cuirin'nen'a's thoughts, but she crushed them so quickly that Chap saw little. No more than bone, blood, stained blades, and silence in the dark. Chap remained quietly still.
These three were anmaglahk, yet they spoke of a plot unknown to the rest of their own kind. Subversion seemed a strange and unfamiliar thing for the guardian caste of the elves.
"I am not so certain," Brot'an added quietly.
Eillean turned on him. "I stood for you, when it came time for you to join us in this… to be a part of our plan. We need a better way than that which Most Aged Father demands in his fear. If you had doubts, you should have said as much before we allowed you among us."
"Mother, enough," Cuirin'nen'a said. "He only voices the doubts we all have at some time. And no matter what the necessity, it is my son we prepare like a tool. I will never stop aching for him."
Eillean shook her head slowly and gave her daughter no reply.
"Most Aged Father has waited many years," Brot'an said to Cuirin'nen'a. "He grows suspicious of the reasons we bring him for why you have not dealt with Darmouth by now."
"My reason remains the same," she answered. "It is true that Darmouth's death would throw his province into turmoil, but the other War-lands provinces still fear facing one another in open war. And open war is what Most Aged Father wants, not just an internal conflict over who will rule in one province."
"There may come a time when Most Aged Father will not settle for this answer," Eillean said.
"Then keep him distracted with his plans elsewhere," Cuirin'nen'a replied. "If war among the humans is to be seeded here, then Darmouth must die at a time of unrest throughout the Warlands. Otherwise he will be quickly replaced by one of his own scheming nobles."
Brot'an shook his head. "We have already counseled this-"
"Then do so again," Cuirin'nen'a snapped. "Let Most Aged Father continue to think that turning humans upon one another is the only way.
He is intent upon crippling them, for fear that they will be the waiting forces and minions of this ancient beast he believes will come again."
"Perhaps he is right," Brot'an added. "I only wonder if a choice between his way or ours is necessary. Weakening the humans might be wise as well."
"So we hack at an unseen monster's body," Eillean spit at him, "instead of severing its head? We have been over this countless times before you were even among us! We must train Leshil to take that head!"
"We can see the monster's body," Brot'an replied, "in the human hordes spreading across this world. We have yet to see its head. We know nothing of this ancient adversary Most Aged Father dreams of."
"Only because he refuses to tell us," Cuirin'nen'a finished. "And the rest of our caste still follow him in blind faith."
Chap began to tremble. These three planned to kill an unseen enemy from the deep past, though they had no concept of what they sought. Only that their patriarch feared its return and that the humans would be its engine of war. Chap understood what they toyed with in their ignorance.
It was the Enemy. Chap had taken flesh to seek out and steal its creation, the sister of the dead. It was now clear he was not the only one trying to use Leesil for a hidden purpose. Perhaps his own scheme would at least save the boy from a hopeless fate at his own mother's hands. Chap squirmed and whined.
Cuirin'nen'a looked down, folding her arms closely about him.
"The reason Darmouth still lives remains the same," she said to the others. "It is not the correct time… and Most Aged Father must have enough patience to accept this."
Brot'an took a slow breath, then finally nodded. Eillean reached out and touched her daughter's cheek in farewell.
Cuirin'nen'a carried Chap into the stifling city of dark smells and dark corners. She took him to the house on the shore below the stone keep. She fed him goat's milk and shredded partridge. After, he lounged in her lap near the kitchen hearth as she stroked his back. And Chap waited.
When dawn arrived, a bleary-eyed young Leesil came down into the kitchen and saw Chap in his mother's lap. There was so much delight in his face that he tensed with a shudder, as if such a feeling were rare and startling. Chap forcefully wagged his tail, not allowing mother or son to know that he was anything more than a new playmate. Leesil wrestled with the pup upon the kitchen floor under his mother's silent and watchful gaze. Chap's heart eased a bit. He had not lost a mother and siblings after all. He had a brother to watch over-to guide. And in the years that followed Leesil's flight from home, Chap kept hidden the few hints he had of Nein'a's plans.
Lying sleepless in Wynn's room, he wondered again at the reappearance of Brot'an. Leesil must never meet this man.
But Chap also wondered over the fate of the mother who had taken him in.
Nein'a should not be his main concern, as his own path was crucial to the world as a whole in guiding Magiere and Leesil. But he could not turn from this search, as Nein'a's fate mattered much to Leesil. It mattered to Chap, as well.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wynn sat on the floor of her room late the next morning, examining the drawings Leesil had brought her. She was still annoyed he had not shown them to her the night before. And there was something more he was keeping from her, of that much she was certain. She could not believe how obtuse Leesil acted regarding this entire situation. Or perhaps he did understand the implications and did not care.