Margaret Weis - Dragons of the Fallen Sun

“Well spoken, Prince Silvanoshei,” said Samar. “Yet the elves have a saying, ‘A sword in the hand of an untrained friend is more dangerous than the sword in the hand of my foe.’ One does not learn to fight on the eve of battle, young man. However, if you are serious about this pursuit I will be pleased to instruct you at some later date. In the meanwhile, there is something you can do, a mission you can undertake.”

He knew the response this would bring and he was not wrong. Alhana’s arrow-sharp anger found a new target.

“Samar, I would speak with you!” Alhana said, her voice cold, biting, imperious. She turned on her heel, stalked with rigid back and uplifted chin to the rear of the burial mound. Samar, deferential, accompanied her.

Outside were cries and shouts, horns blasting, the deep and terrible ogre war chant sounding like war drums beneath it. The storm raged, unabated, giving succor to the enemy. Silvan stood near the entrance to the burial mound, amazed at himself, proud but appalled, sorry, yet defiant fearless and terrified all at the same time. The jumble of his emotions confused him. He tried to see what was happening, but the smoke from the burning hedge had settled over the clearing. The shouts and screams grew muted, muffled. He wished he could eavesdrop on the conversation, might have lingered near where he could hear, but he considered that childish and beneath his pride. He could imagine what they were saying anyway. He’d heard the same conversation often enough.

In reality, he was probably not far wrong.

“Samar, you know my wishes for Silvanoshei,” Alhana said, when they were out of earshot of the others. “Yet you defy me and encourage him in this wild behavior. I am deeply disappointed in you, Samar.”

Her words, her anger were piercing, struck Samar to the heart and drew blood. But as Alhana was queen and responsible to her people, so Samar was also responsible to the people as a soldier.

He was committed to providing his people with a present and a future. In that future, the elven nations would need a strong heir, not a milksop like Gilthas, the son of Tanis Half-Elven, who currently played at ruling Qualinesti.

Samar did not speak his true thoughts, however. He did not say, “Your Majesty, this is the first sign of spirit I’ve seen in your son, we should encourage it.” He was diplomat as well as soldier.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “Silvan is thirty years old—”

“A child—” Alhana interrupted.

Silvan bowed. “Perhaps by Silvanesti standards, my queen. Not by Qualinesti. Under Qualinesti law, he would have attained ranking as a youth. If he were in Qualinesti, he would already be participating in military training. Silvanoshei may be young in years, Alhana,” Samar added, dropping the formal title as he did sometimes when they were alone together, “but think of the extraordinary life he has led! His lullabies were war chants, his cradle a shield.. He has never known a home. Rarely have his parents been both together in the same room at the same time since the day of his birth. When battle called, you kissed him and rode forth, perhaps to your death. He knew that you might never come back to him, Alhana. I could see it in his eyes!”

“I tried to protect him from all that,” she said, her gaze going to her son. He looked so like his father at that moment that her pain overwhelmed her. “If I lose him, Samar, what reason do I have to prolong this bleak and hopeless existence?”

“You cannot protect him from life, Alhana,” Samar countered gently. “Nor from the role he is destined to play in life. Prince Silvanoshei is right. He has a duty to his people. We will let him fulfill that duty and”—he laid emphasis on the word—“we will take him out of harm’s way at the same time.”

Alhana said nothing, but by her look, she gave him reluctant permission to speak further.

“Only one of the runners has returned to camp,” Samar continued. “The others are either dead or are fighting for their lives. You said yourself, Your Majesty, that we must send word to the Legion of Steel, warning them of this attack. I propose that we send Silvan to apprise the knights of our desperate need for help. We have only just returned from the fortress, he remembers the way. The main road is not far from the camp and easy to find and follow.

“The danger to him is small. The ogres have not encircled us. He will be safer away from camp than here.” Samar smiled. “If I had my way, my Queen, you would go back to the fortress with him.”

Alhana smiled, her anger dissipated. “My place is with my soldiers, Samar. I brought them here. They fight my cause. They would lose all trust and respect if I deserted them. Yes, I concede that you are right about Silvan,” she added ruefully. “No need to rub salt in my many wounds.”

“My queen, I never meant—”

“Yes, you did, Samar,” Alhana said, “but you spoke from the heart, and you spoke the truth. We will send the prince upon this mission. He will carry word of our need to the Legion of Steel.”

“We will sing his praises when we return to the fortress,” said Samar. “And I will purchase him a sword suited to a prince, not a clown.”

“No, Samar,” said Alhana. “He may carry messages, but he will never carry a sword. On the day he was born, I made my vow to the gods that he would never bear arms against his people. Elven blood would never be spilled because of him.”

Samar bowed, wisely remained silent. A skilled commander, he knew when to bring his advance to a halt, dig in, and wait.

Alhana walked with stiff back and regal mien to the front of the cave.

“My son,” Alhana said and there no emotion in her voice, no feeling. “I have made my decision.”

Silvanoshei turned to face his mother. Daughter of Lorac, ill-fated king of the Silvanesti, who had very nearly been his people’s downfall, Alhana Starbreeze had undertaken to pay for her father’s misdeeds, to redeem her people. Because she had sought to unite them with their cousins, the Qualinesti, because she had advocated alliances with the humans and the dwarves, she was repudiated, cast out by those among the Silvanesti who maintained that only by keeping themselves aloof and isolated from the rest of the world could they and their culture survive.

She was in mature adulthood for the elves, not yet nearing her elder years, incredibly beautiful, more beautiful than at any other time of her life. Her hair was black as the depths of the sea, sunk far below where sunbeams can reach. Her eyes, once amethyst, had deepened and darkened as if colored by the despair and pain which was all they saw. Her beauty was a heartbreak to those around her, not a blessing. Like the legendary dragonlance, whose rediscovery helped bring victory to a beleaguered world, she might have been encased in a pillar of ice. Shatter the ice, shatter the protective barrier she had erected around her, and shatter the woman inside.

Only her son, only Silvan had the power to thaw the ice, to reach inside and touch the living warmth of the woman who was mother, not queen. But that woman was gone. Mother was gone.

The woman who stood before him, cold and stem, was his queen.

Awed, humbled, aware that he had behaved foolishly, he fell to his knees before her.

“I am sorry, Mother,” he said. “I will obey you. I will leave—”

“Prince Silvanoshei,” said the queen in a voice he recognized as being her court voice, one she had never used to him. He did not know whether to feel glad or to weep for something irrevocably lost. “Commander Samar has need of a messenger to run with all haste to the outpost of the Legion of Steel. There you will apprise them of our desperate situation. Tell the Lord Knight that we plan to retreat fighting. He should assemble his forces, ride out to meet us at the crossroads, attack the ogres on their right flank. At the moment his knights attack we will halt our retreat and stand our ground. You will need to travel swiftly through the night and the storm. Let nothing deter you, Silvan, for this message must get through.”