Nancy Berberick: The Inheritance

In the coffers of the elf king, in Solostaran’s deep chests, lay many treasures-gold plate, rings of sliding silver, necklaces from which fantasies of jewel-work hung. His walls wore tapestries whose weavers lived in the years before the Cataclysm. He trod upon floors of white marble inlaid with black, of black marble inlaid with rose, of rose marble with gray, and all the work of dwarven craftsmen who commanded the worth of a royal ransom for their fee.

In Solostaran’s treasure houses lay weapons of finest steel, swords hilted with gold, the grips made from the whole of a precious stone, of emerald and ruby and sapphire and diamond. For his most glittering ceremonies, he had helms of silver, plated in gold and wondrously bejeweled. He was no poor king, Solostaran of the Qualinesti. Yet, in the estimation of Elansa Sungold, his sister-in-law, the wife of Prince Kethrenan, his brother, the most extraordinary and valuable of all the things housed in the Tower of the Sun did not belong to Solostaran himself. This treasure belonged to Elansa, and she counted nothing owned by Solostaran or his royal kin as fair or valuable.

The Risen Phoenix, wings spread, triumphant, a wonder of sapphire and silver, cherished and jealously guarded, was Elansa’s, handed to her by her mother, who'd received it from her own mother, and that mother from hers. Down the misty roads of time it had come, from the dawn of the Age of Dreams to mother then to daughter, never fallen from the kindred, never gone from the clan, bearing its magic and hope on flashing wings across the ages. A day would come when Elansa would put the treasure into her own daughter's hands.

Today, though, Elansa had no prospect of handing off the talisman as she stood in the chill darkness of the hour between night and dawn. Not even the first bird had risen to sing in the garden outside her window. Few lights shone in the city, and those that did were in the barracks beyond the orchards. The lights gleamed like fireflies, seeming to wink as the breeze stirred the naked branches between.

Elansa stood a moment, looking at those lights. She wondered where her husband was, Prince Kethrenan who was lord of all those scouts and warriors that kept their people safe. Out upon the border somewhere, far away in the cool western wood by the Straits of Algoni, or on the banks of the White-rage River, in the south near the bitter mountains… away with his warriors, a shining, armed presence on some border.

Elansa turned from the window. She had dressed for a journey, geared herself for riding through the forest in fine boots, warm trousers, and a flowing silk shirt. She wore her honey-colored hair over her shoulder, twined through with scarlet ribbon. Her green woolen cloak lay across her bed, the hem of it half concealing a small rosewood box. At her belt she wore a little knife, but that was no weapon, only a decoration to complete her costume. A princess abroad in her kingdom attended by twenty warriors, she would need no weapon. She needed now only one thing, and then she could leave. She needed the phoenix.

Elansa moved the rosewood box from beneath her cloak She lifted the lid and caught her breath in wonder. The Risen Phoenix gleamed upon a bed of gray velvet. It appeared to be cut from one whole sapphire, shaped with wings wide, triumphant. Elansa, who knew the history of it, knew it hadn't been cut at all. It had been discovered, uncovered like a living thing trapped in stone. A whole sapphire shaped like a phoenix, with wings spread wide, the dwarf who'd found it had never again seen anything so wonderful, and he'd lived a long, long time. He freed it from its rocky prison, chipping away the clutching stone until the sapphire itself stood free, a phoenix risen again to life. No more had he done but polish it and hang it from a chain of silver, the links so tightly woven they ran like liquid.

He'd rid himself of it, so the story said, as quickly as he could get a good price for it. Dwarves don't like magic, not at all, and this winged sapphire beat with magic the way a heart beats with life: quietly, steadily.

Here was the sigil of Elansa’s god, the Blue Phoenix whom those not elves named Habbakuk, the lord of the natural world, of the unstoppable cycle of life and death and life again. These cycles Elansa knew as well as she knew the tides of her own body. She was a woodshaper, born with the ability to know and love the very soul of the forest, to tend its health and keep it well. Legend whispered that the blood of the woodshapers had long ago mixed with that of nature spirits, and some believed that was more than folklore speaking, for it had long been the custom, seldom breached, that woodshapers would marry none outside their own clans, unwilling to dilute their ancient heritage.

Now and then, though, when the negotiations went well and enough was offered to make all parties happy, that rule bent. For a royal marriage and a seat in the places of power, Elansa’s father had done the bending and given her to Prince Kethrenan. The prince and his brother the king were as pleased by the prospect of having that pure woodshaper blood come into their royal clan as though it were dower goods.

Elansa lifted the phoenix from the rosewood box. It was not large. It fit in the palm of one hand, the chain flowing over her fingers. It breathed, or seemed to, and the beat of its power was the beat of her pulse, strong and sure.

There was, beyond the city and past the shining bridges, an illness in the forest. A blight, gray and scabby and quick to kill, had touched the elms in little Bianost, shriveling the heart of the trees, in only a matter of weeks rendering them bent and leafless.

"Send us a woodshaper," cried the people. "Send us the princess whose magic can heal."

Elansa had no magic. She was neither mage nor cleric. She had this talisman, and this the people cried for, praying for the princess to bring them the healing grace, for this was the truest virtue of the artifact. With the talisman in hand, what natural skill a woodshaper possessed was transmuted. The world became as a living being to her-earth and sky, fire and wind and water, she spoke to them as she would to kin.

Elansa closed her eyes, slipped the necklace over her head, and whispered a welcome to the god. In the courtyard of the tower, out beyond her garden, she heard the jingle of bridles, the stamping of hooves. Her escort had come. She slipped on her cloak, spoke a word to a startled, sleepy servant in the corridor outside her suite, and went alone into the waking day.

The phoenix hung around her neck. Let the elf-king keep his fat coffers. She knew no better treasure than this stone warm against her breast. Every beat of her heart found an echo in the living magic of the stone, an easy rhythm with the phoenix, as though one beat were hers and the other magic's. Perhaps, she thought, the echo of a god's. So comfortable was that rhythm that she'd not gone as far as the courtyard before she ceased to be aware of it. She wouldn't feel it again until she stood in the presence of the trees of Bianost. There, with the magic to aid, she would touch the souls of the wounded trees, speak to their hearts, and infuse them with her own will and strength. Upon the wings of a phoenix rising, their illness would change into health.

Wind spilled down the sky in waves, tossing the tops of the trees, coming just like the sea, tumbling and leaping. High on the cold cliff, in the borderland between the Qualinesti Forest and the Kharolis Mountains, a tall, broad-shouldered man stood, watching the wind run. Brand felt its fingers in his shaggy hair and beard. He heard the sky’s voice hissing, just like the voice of the sea. He'd seen the sea, once long ago, when he was a boy of ten years. It was as far away from this bitter borderland as he'd ever been.