Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

Yet her face, drawn by cares, and the gray streaks that had begun to silver her hair reminded Kith of his grandmother, in the years shortly before her death. It was a revelation that disturbed him deeply.

“Sit down, Mother,” Kith said quietly, leading her back to her chair. “Are you all right?”

Nirakina looked at him, and the son had trouble facing his mother’s eyes. So much despair!

“Seeing you does much to bring my strength back,” she replied, offering a wan smile. “It seems I’m surrounded by strangers so much now.”

“Surely Sithas is here with you.”

“Oh, when he can be, but there is much to occupy him. The affairs of war, and now his child. Vanesti is a beautiful baby, don’t you agree?” Kith nodded, wondering why he didn’t hear more pleasure in his mother’s voice. This was her first grandchild.

“But Hermathya thinks that I get in the way, and her sisters are here to help. I have seen too little of Vanesti.” Nirakina’s eyes drifted to the window. “I miss your father. I miss him so much sometimes that I can hardly stand it.” Kith struggled for words. Failing, he took his mother’s hands in his own.

“The palace, the city—it’s all changing,” she continued. “It’s the war. In your absence, Lord Quimant advises your brother. It seems the palace is becoming home to all of Clan Oakleaf.”

Kith had heard of Quimant in Sithas’s letters and knew his brother considered him to be a great assistance in affairs of state.

“What of Tamanier Ambrodel?” The loyal elf had been his mother’s able aide and had saved her life during the riots that rocked the city before the outbreak of war. Sithel had promoted him to lord chamberlain to reward his loyalty. His mother and Tamanier had been good friends for many years.

“He’s gone. Sithas tells me not to worry, and I know he has embarked upon a mission in the service of the throne. But he has been absent a long time, and I cannot help but miss him.”

She looked at him, and he saw tears in her eyes. “Sometimes I feel like so much excess baggage, locked away in my room here, waiting for my life to pass!”

Kith sat back, shocked and dismayed by his mother’s despair. This was so unlike the Nirakina he had always known, an elf woman full of vigor, serene and patient against the background of his father’s rigid ideas. He tried to hide his churning emotions beneath a lighthearted tone.

“Tomorrow we’ll go riding,” he said, realizing that sunset approached quickly.

“I have to meet Sithas tonight to make my reports. But meet me for breakfast in the dining hall, won’t you?”

Nirakina smiled, for the first time with her eyes as well as well as with her lips. “I’d like that,” she said. But the memory of her lined, unhappy face stuck with him as he left her chambers and made his way to his brother’s library.

“Come in,” announced Sithas, as two liveried halberdiers of the House Protectorate snapped to attention before the silver-plated doors to the royal apartment. One of them pulled the door open, and the general entered.

“We wish to be alone,” announced the Speaker of the Stars, and the guards nodded silently.

The pair settled into comfortable chairs, near the balcony that gave them an excellent view of the Tower of the Stars, which rose into the night sky across the gardens. The red moon, Lunitari, and the pale orb of Solinari illuminated the vista, casting shadows through the winding passages of the garden paths. Sithas filled two mugs and placed the bottle of fine wine back into its bucket of melting ice. Handing one mug to his brother, he raised his own and met Kith’s with a slight clink.

“To victory,” he offered.

“Victory!” Kith-Kanan repeated.

They sat and, sensing that his brother wanted to speak first, the army commander waited expectantly. His intuition was correct.

“By all the gods, I wish I could be there with you!” Sithas began, his tone full of conviction.

Kith didn’t doubt him. “War’s not what I thought it would be,” he admitted.

“Mostly it’s waiting, discomfort, and tedium. We are always hungry and cold, but mostly bored. It seems that days and weeks go by when nothing happens of consequence.”

He sighed and paused for a moment to take a deep draft of his wine. The sweet liquid soothed his throat and loosened his tongue. “Then, when things do start to happen, you’re more frightened than you ever thought was possible. You fight for your life; you run when you have to. You try to stay in touch with what’s going on, but it’s impossible. Just as quickly, the fight’s over and you go back to being bored. Except now you have the grief, too, knowing that brave companions have died this day, some of them because you made the wrong decision. Even the right decision sometimes sends too many good elves to their deaths.”

Sithas shook his head sadly. “At least you have some control over events. I sit here, hundreds of miles away. I sent those good elves to live or die without the slightest knowledge of what will befall them.”

“That knowledge is slim comfort,” replied his brother. Kith-Kanan told his brother, in elaborate detail, about the battles in which the Wildrunners had fought the Army of Ergoth. He talked of their initial small victories, of the plodding advance of the central and southern wings. He described the fast-moving horsemen of the north wing and their keen and brutal commander, General Giarna. His voice broke as he related the tale of the trap that had ensnared Kencathedrus and his proud regiment, and for a moment, he lapsed into a miserable silence.

Sithas reached out and touched his brother on the shoulder. The gesture seemed to renew Kith-Kanan’s strength, and after drawing a deep breath, he began to speak again.

He told of their forced retreat into the fortress, of the numberless horde of humans surrounding them, barring the Wildrunners against any real penetration. The wine bottle emptied—it may as well have been by evaporation, for all the notice the brothers took—and the moons crept toward the western horizon. Sithas rang for another bottle of Thalian blond as Kith described the state of supplies and morale within Sithelbec and talked about their prospects for the future.

“We can hold out through the winter, perhaps well into next year. But we cannot shake the grip around us, not unless something happens to break this stalemate!”

“Something such as what? More reinforcements—another five thousand elves from Silvanost?” Sithas leaned close to his brother, disturbed by the account of the war. The setbacks suffered by the Wildrunners were temporary—this the speaker truly believed—and together they had to figure out some way to turn the tide.

Kith shook his head. “That would help—any reinforcements you can send would help—but even twice that many elves would not turn the tide. Perhaps the Army of Thorbardin, if the dwarves can be coaxed from their mountain retreat . . .” His voice showed that he placed little hope in this possibility.

“It might happen,” Sithas replied. “You didn’t get to know Lord Dunbarth as did I, when he spent a year among us in the city. He is a trustworthy fellow, and he bears no love for the humans. I think he realizes that his own kingdom will be next in line for conquest unless he can do something now.” Sithas described the present ambassador, the intransigent Than-Kar, in considerably less glowing terms. “He’s a major stumbling block to any firm agreement, but there still might be some way around him.”

“I’d like to talk to him myself,” Kith said. “Can we bring him to the palace?”

“I can try,” Sithas agreed, realizing how weak the phrase sounded. Father would have ordered it, he reminded himself. For a moment, he felt terribly ineffective, wishing he had Sithel’s steady nerves. Angrily he pushed the sensation of doubt away and listened to his brother speak.