Mercedes Lackey - To Light A Candle

But in this case, it seemed his willingness to sacrifice his life had been enough. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the cost had been his willingness to live and endure.

If you can call this living , he thought, as he rode along behind the others in the direction of home. His injuries had been so severe that it had been a sennight before he’d been able to ride at all, and his burned hands were so heavily bandaged that he couldn’t possibly wear his armored gauntlets, much less hold a sword. Any protecting that was going to be done was going to have to be done by Jermayan, and maybe Shalkan, and possibly Vestakia; he was strictly along as baggage.

He had become so used to pain that now he could hardly remember a time when he had lived without it as a constant presence. And underneath the pain was fear, fear he never openly expressed, but was constantly with him. The fear of what was underneath those bandages.

He would much rather dwell on the minor misery of the rain.

His heavy hooded oiled-wool cloak was soaked through. His heavy silk sur-coat was wet. The unending rain had managed to make it through both of those layers and even through the tiny joins and chinks in the delicately-jointed Elven armor that he wore, soaking the padding beneath.

It wasn’t that he was cold—he wasn’t, even with winter coming on. All the layers he wore saw to that. But he’d never felt so soggy in his life.

He rested the heels of his hands—wrapped in goatskin mittens to keep the bandages dry, and medicated to the point where the pain was only a dull nagging—against the front of his saddle, gazing around himself at the transformed landscape. Everything looked so different now! On the outward trip, they’d been navigating mostly by his Wildmage intuition to find the direction of the Barrier; his sister Idalia, who was a much stronger Wildmage, hadn’t been able to locate it by scrying, and until he and Jermayan had linked up with Vestakia, they’d had no way of sensing it directly. So for the first part of the trip, they’d been traveling mostly by guess… and through a far different countryside than this.

The rain had changed everything about the landscape that had once been so parched and barren. There were lakes where none had been before, meadows had become impassable swamps, trickling streams had become rivers, and all the landmarks he’d memorized on the outward trip were gone. On their return passage, they’d had to rely on Jermayan’s familiarity with the Elven lands and Valdien’s and Shalkan’s instincts to find them a route that wasn’t underwater or under mud.

“Are we there yet?” he muttered under his breath.

“Sooner than you think,” Shalkan answered.

Kellen sighed. He hadn’t thought Shalkan would be able to hear him over the sound of the rain. But by now, he should know better than to underestimate the keenness of the unicorn’s hearing.

“How long?” he asked.

“Less than an hour. We’ve already passed the first scouts from Sentarshadeen. They’ve probably gone back to warn the welcoming party to be ready to greet us.” The unicorn’s voice was bland, but Kellen’s stomach clenched in a tight knot of tension. He’d lost all track of how long they’d been traveling, and hadn’t had any idea they were so close. Now the aching of his body was joined by the clenching of his gut. They had gone out a party of three. They were returning a party of four. And one of the four was not going to be welcomed with open arms by the Elves.

“Does he know?” Kellen asked. He nodded to where Jermayan rode on Valdien, with Vestakia—thoroughly bundled up, of course—sitting behind him on the destrier’s saddle. At the end of a long tether, the cream-colored pack mule ambled along behind Valdien, every inch of her covered with the black mud splashed up from the road. At least once they were back in Sentarshadeen it would be someone else’s job to try to get her—and Valdien—clean.

“He saw them, I imagine,” Shalkan said, without adding the obvious: that naturally Jermayan would recognize exactly where he was, even if Kellen didn’t. And that Elven senses were much keener than Kellen’s. Especially now, when most of Kellen’s awareness was wrapped in pain.

Almost home—at least, as much home as Sentarshadeen was. Dry, out of the rain, and a chance to sleep in a proper bed again. And most of all, a proper Healer to deal with his hands and anything else that was wrong with him. Kellen tried to look forward to those things.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of things about their welcome home that he wasn’t looking forward to. And unfortunately, he was not really certain that a Healer would be able to set his hands right again.

—«♦«♦»♦»—

EVEN at the beginning of winter, the Elven valley bloomed. The silver sheen of the unicorn meadow had turned to deep emerald when the rains came, and the parched city had come back to life.

Released from their desperate hopeless task of attempting to irrigate the forest lands surrounding their canyon home, the Elves had resumed their patrols of the deep woods and the extended borders of their homeland, for now, more than ever, it was vitally necessary, with their ancient Enemy roused to life once more. And only a short time ago, one of those scout-pairs—a unicorn and his rider— had brought word to Queen Ashaniel that Kellen and Jermayan had been sighted upon the road.

Idalia had been about to scry for news of them when the Queen’s message was brought to her. She had immediately gone to the House of Leaf and Star, both to thank the Queen for the news and to hear more of it than the scouts had brought to her.

Though the House of Leaf and Star was—in every sense that humans understood the word—the palace of the King and Queen of the Elves, it was not even as grand as the house Idalia had grown up in. Elven buildings were not meant to be imposing, but to be suitable , and although the House of Leaf and Star was one of the largest structures in all the Elven Lands, it still managed to look welcoming and homelike. It was a low, deep-eaved house built of silvery wood and pale stone, and age and strength radiated from it as from an ancient living tree.

By the time she had crossed the long roofed portico, her cloak and wide-brimmed Mountain Trader hat had shed most of their burden of water, and her boots had dried themselves upon the intricate design of slatted wood with which the portico floor was inlaid—crafted for just that purpose, as all the works of the Elves managed to combine beauty and practicality with flawless ease.

She was not surprised to see the door open before she reached it.

“I See you, Idalia Wildmage,” the Elven doorkeeper said politely.

“I See you, Sakathirin,” Idalia answered with equal politeness. Elvenkind was both an ancient and a long-lived race, and except under extraordinary circumstances, its members were unfailingly courteous and unhurried. Part of the courtesy was the assumption that a person might not wish to be noticed; the greeting I See you was meant to convey acknowledgment of one’s presence, with the implicit right being that one did not have to respond if one wished to be left alone. “I have come to share news with the Lady Ashaniel, if she would See me as well.”

“The Lady Ashaniel awaits you with joy,” Sakathirin said gravely. “Be welcome at our hearth.” He stepped back to allow Idalia to enter.

The rain pattering down on the skylight echoed through the tall entry-hall, its music a counterpoint to the splashing of the fountain that once more bubbled and sang beneath it. Idalia smiled, seeing that reflecting pool was once again filled with fish, their living forms mirroring the mosaic they swam above, that of fish swimming in a river. The Elves delighted in this form of shadowplay, combining living things with their copies so expertly that it was often hard for mere humans to tell where Nature ended and Elven artistry began.