Arranha nodded. “Your reasoning is clear. But for that reason I suspect it’s faulty in dealing with the life of someone who could no more reason than a cow can fly. Gird felt his way along, knowing the right as a tree knows good soil, by how it flourishes. In all my life, I never knew another like him, someone so infallible in his perception of good and evil, whose taproot sought good invisibly, in the dark. I learned from watching him that those with none of Esea’s light—inspiration, intelligence, what you will—may have another way to seek and find goodness. Because Gird, as we know and can say with utmost respect, was not a man given to intelligent reasoning. Shrewd, yes, and practical as a hammer, but incapable of guile, which comes as naturally to intelligent men as frisking does to lambs.” He laughed, shaking his head. “And I have only to think of Gird to find myself mired in agricultural images: listen to me! Cows that can’t fly, tree roots feeling their way through the soil, frisking lambs—that’s Gird talking through me, or my memory of him.”
Luap could barely manage a smile in response to that. He felt colder than the raw early-spring day. He had not felt Gird’s memory come alive while he was working on the Life; he had not felt Gird’s presence at all, since the first days after his death. And if Arranha felt it, if others felt it, was that why they did not agree on his way of telling the story? Because they felt so close to Gird, they could not understand that distant ages would not have that feeling? He could not think what to say, how to ask the questions in his mind that troubled him without taking definite form. He waited a moment, one finger tracing the floral carving of the chair-arm, then reverted to his first topic.
“So you think I should ask the elves or dwarves where that pattern took us?”
Arranha’s brows rose. “Yes, I said that. I admit I’m surprised you haven’t already done so, though I suppose you’ve been too busy…”
“I felt—I wanted to finish Gird’s Life first. But now—it will take me as long to rework it, and even then they may not like it. I just thought—”
Arranha’s smile was sweet, understanding, without a hint of scorn; it pierced him just as painfully as Arranha’s disapproval. “You just thought of your secret realm, a place of refuge. Quite natural. Yes, by all means ask them. But think of this, Luap: what will you do if they claim it as their own realm, in which we are not welcome?”
That had occurred to him before; he knew that was the root of his reluctance to ask. What is never asked cannot be refused: an old saying all agreed on. “The day I took Gird,” he said, having thought long about it, “we saw at first only two arches, which I had seen before. But another appeared—”
“Gird saw this?”
“He saw three arches; I had seen but two, and saw two when we first arrived. You saw the third that is there now, with the High Lord’s sigil upon it. When I told him there had been but two, he felt—I think he felt, for I admit he did not say it thus—that our presence, or at least his human presence, had been accepted.” Luap had no idea himself what the appearance of that third arch meant, but trusted Gird’s interpretation.
“I wonder if they’ll see it that way. But better to find out now, before you take a troop out there and find you’re intruding and not welcome. Will you ask the elven ambassador first, or the dwarves?”
“I had thought the elven. The legends say they’re the Eldest of Elders.”
“They will ask,” Arranha said, “why you did not ask them before. Gird’s will could not have withheld you past his death, not in their eyes.”
Luap knew they would ask exactly that: another reason he had not asked.
The elven ambassador arrived a few days before the Evener. Luap had never been sure why the elves chose to recognize Gird or his successors; they had not, Lady Dorhaniya told him, ever come to the court in her lifetime. But from the first year of Gird’s rule, an elf or two had come at Midwinter, Midsummer, and the two Eveners, at first asking audience with Gird, and then with the Council of Marshals Then the dwarves had begun to appear, on the same festivals, glaring across the Hall at the elves, who ignored them except to proffer an icily correct greeting. Some of Gird’s followers preferred elves, and some preferred dwarves—the dwarves, Luap had heard, made good gambling and drinking companions. He himself found elven songs too beautiful to ignore.
This elf he recognized: Varhiel, he had said, was the closest human tongues could come to his real name. He stood taller than Luap, as most elves did, a being of indeterminate age whose silver-gray eyes showed no surprise at anything. He greeted Luap in his own tongue and Luap made shift to answer in the same. He had discovered a talent for languages, both human and other; he particularly enjoyed the graceful courtesies of the elves. When the preliminaries were over, Luap felt his heart begin to pound. He should ask now, before he changed his mind…
“When Gird was alive,” he said, “I found a place which might have been elven once.”
Varhiel raises his brows.“Once? What made you think it is not still elven ?”
“I found no elves there, or sign of recent habitation,” Luap said. His palms felt sweaty. Why was this so hard?
Varhiel shrugged. “Perhaps it is a place we do not frequent; perhaps you came between habitations… but I doubt a place once ours would be abandoned.” He picked a hazelnut from the bowl on Luap’s desk and cracked it neatly between his fingers. “Where did you say this was?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Luap took a hazelnut himself, cracking it on his desk. He pushed across a basket for the shell fragments. “It’s a long story…”
“Time has no end,” the elf said He leaned back in his seat with the patience of one who will live forever, barring accidents.
Luap wondered what it would be like to feel no hurry, no pressure from mortality. He pushed that thought aside, and began his tale. Necessarily, since the elf could not be expected to take an interest in minor human affairs, he left out much of it. He told of his first visit to the cave, of his discovery of his mage powers, and of the later discovery that the cave and those powers transported him somewhere.
“Say that again!” The elfs gray eyes shone. “You travelled—?”
“Somewhere,” Luap said, nodding. For a moment he felt he had been saying that word forever, telling one after another that he went somewhere, to meet the same incredulous response each time. “I don’t know where. That’s why I’m talking to you.”
“Say on.” The elf’s wave of hand was anything but casual. Luap tried to read the elfs expression as he described the great hall in which he had arrived, the arches out of it… and then Gird’s journey.
“You took another there before asking our permission?” Luap had never seen an elf angry, but he had no trouble interpreting that.
“Gird was my… lord,” he said. “He held my oath; all I learned went to him first.” Then he realized that “there” had been said with complete certainty. “You know where it is?”
“Of course I know. And it is not a place for you latecoming mortals. You must not go again.” The elf looked hard at him. “Or have you been more than those two times?”
“When Gird came,” Luap said, side-stepping the question, “another arch appeared. One with the High Lord’s sigil on it—”
“No!”
“—And thus Gird said our presence was accepted.”
The elf stared at him. “Another arch… appeared?”
“Yes.”
“When Gird came?” At Luap’s nod, the elf sat back. “A mage-born human blunders into that, which we have kept inviolate for ages longer than your people, Selamis the luap, have existed… it is a clangorous thought.”
“Gird walked through that arch,” Luap said warily. He felt he must say it, but he did not know why he felt so. “He walked through, and then up the stair—”
“I hardly dared hope you had seen only the hall,” Varhiel said. “And Gird would, yes—would have no doubt that he could walk through any arch he wished, or climb any stair, and I suppose he opened the entrance fo
r you, did he? What was it like, your first view of that land?”
“It was blowing snow,” Luap said. The memory could still make him shiver. Varhiel laughed.
“I’m glad. It is unseemly, but I take pleasure in the thought that at least one protection held against invasion. Now, I suppose, we must go to the trouble of destroying the patterns.”
“No,” said Luap. The elf’s look reminded him he had no rights to argue. “Please,” he said more softly. “Please listen—let me tell you the rest.” As smoothly as he could, he told of his later visits, of the need for a place where the mageborn could train their powers to good, of Arranha’s approval, and the Autumn Rose’s. “They felt—we all felt—the holiness of that place, the great power of good that lies in it. This I’m sure would prevent any misuse of our powers, as our people learn to use them well.”
“It is impossible,” the elf said. “It is not your place; you did not make it; you do not understand those who did.”
“But it is so beautiful,” Luap said. He could feel tears gathering in his eyes, and blinked them back. Never to taste that pine-scented air, that cold sweet water? He could not bear that. Varhiel stared at him.
“You find that beautiful, all that bare rock?”
Luap nodded. “It eases something—I know not what—in my heart. And it’s not barren—if you have not been there for years of human time, you may not know the trees that grace those narrow valleys.”
“Canyons,” Varhiel said. “That is what the Khartazh calls them, at least.” He sighed. “If you find it beautiful, I am sorry to forbid it to you—but it is not yours. Even if I had the right to permit you, I would not, for I know why it was built, and under what enchantments it lies: it is not meant for mortals, and certainly not for humans. But I have not the right; you would have to have leave of the King—our king, of the Lordsforest, in the mountains far west and north of here—and I can tell you now you would not receive it.”
“You could ask him,” Luap said, in desperation.
“Ask him! You want me to ask the King to let a gaggle of latecomer humans inhabit a hall built by immortals for immortals? So you can practice your paltry powers in safety?”
Luap felt himself flushing. What he might have said he never knew, for the Autumn Rose came in at that moment. She had clearly overheard the last part of that.
“I will ask, of your courtesy, and as you are the ambassador, whose duty it is to carry requests from Fin Panir to your lord.” Luap had not imagined that any human could approach elven arrogance, but the Autumn Rose angry came gloriously close. “Pray ask him, if you will, if he minds the corners of a deserted palace being home to those who have no other home, if they agree to be responsible for damages.”
Varhiel stood. “Damages! Little you know, lady, what you say… little you know what damages such a place might sustain, or how to mitigate them. But as you command, and courtesy requires, I will take your message, and bring back his, which I am sure I could do without the effort moving from my seat. Yet you will have what you ask: the King’s command, and speedily.” He did not quite push past the Autumn Rose, yet she felt his movement, as a tree feels the gale that shreds its leaves.
She raised her brows to Luap. “If your meekness would not work, could it hurt to try my boldness? We shall see: I suspect Varhiel is not in his king’s pocket any more than I am in yours, or the reverse. And you are a king’s son; he owes you a king’s answer.”
“But if they’re angry,” Luap said. “If they never let us return—”
“Then we will find other mountains,” she said. He wished he could believe her. He felt a cold wind sweeping through him; he could not bear to be barred from those red stone walls forever.
“Let’s go there,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go now, before he returns.”
She stared at him, eyes wide. “Luap—what is it? We can’t go haring off to the cave now, and you can’t get there by magery without those patterns… can you?”
“No. But—perhaps I could reproduce the patterns. It may not be the place, but the patterns laid there— ” He wet his finger and began to trace a design on his desk. “See… like this, and this…”
She frowned. “Luap—I’ve seen that somewhere else.”
“The design? You can’t have.”
“No, I have.” She stood motionless a moment, brows furrowed. Then she looked at him. “Luap, come with me.”
“Where?”
“Just come.” She grasped his hand, and when he asked if she wanted to find Arranha first, shook her head. Down the stairs, outside, across the courtyard, and into the High Lord’s Hall. He was halfway up the Hall toward the altar when he remembered what she was talking about. Incised in the floor just behind the altar was a pattern he had never really noticed. “That’s the same, isn’t it?”
Luap bent over it. Here he dared not bring his own light, and the shallow grooves hardly showed in the dimness. “It… seems… the same,” he said, tracing part of it with his finger. He dared not trace all of it, and vanish.
“In the old law,” the Rosemage said, “our law, the man in a house has a better chance of keeping it. But you may be right that we need Arranha.” Before he could say anything, she strode away, leaving him with his hand splayed out across the pattern as if to protect it.
Arranha, when he came, was inclined to shake his head. “It is not Luap’s place, though he found it untenanted; we knew all along someone else had made it. If they forbid, we dare not object.”
“But look at this.” The Rosemage pointed to the pattern. “It’s here, in the most important place of worship our people had in the north. You told us this was the first of Esea’s Halls over the mountains. If it is their pattern, then why is it here? If it is here with their consent, then Luap has an heir’s right to it… to its use, at least.”
“I don’t know,” Arranha said. “If it is the same pattern, then what it might mean is that they made some agreement with our ancestors. That doesn’t explain why there were only two arches until Gird came, though.”
“We could see if it works,” she said.
“And if it didn’t?” Arranha said. “I’ve never known you to be rash, lady, before this?”
“I’ll try it,” Luap said suddenly. “If it doesn’t work, then you will have the most excellent excuse to do nothing.”
“You can’t—” the Rosemage began. Arranha looked thoughtful.
“Perhaps you should. If it works… are you prepared to meet the elves in that place, by yourself? We could come along.”
“No,” Luap said “If all three of us vanished, who would help the mageborn? We all know that I am one of the points of stress. Without me, some of our people would be quicker to forget their heritage and merge with the peasantry. If one of us must risk, I should be that one. You both have the respect of the Council of Marshals; you can do anything I could do for our people here.”
“Well said.” Arranha nodded. “Go, then, and Esea’s light guide you.” As he spoke, the pattern glowed in the shadowy hall, just bright enough for Luap to see that it was clearly the same. He stood on it, motioned them away, and thought of that distant hall.
And was there, on the dais.
But not alone. Under the arch crowned with harp and tree stood an elflord, crowned with silver and emeralds and sapphires: Luap could not doubt that this was the King, the Lord of that fabled Forest in the western mountains. Under the arch crowned with anvil and hammer stood a dwarf, his beard and hair braided with gold and silver. His crown was gold, studded with rubies. Luap could not doubt he was the king of some dwarf tribe, though he knew not which one. On one side of the hall stood a company of elves, facing a company of dwarves. All wore mail styled as their folk wore it, and carried weapons. In the center of the hall, a gnome in gray carried a great book bound in leather and slate. Varhiel faced the dais, only a few paces away.
“I told them you would come,” he said. “Without invitation, without courtesy… see now, mortal, what yo
u dare by intruding here. This is not your place: you did not make it, you do not understand it.”
Luap surprised himself with his composure. “Is that your king’s word, Varhiel?”
“You may ask him yourself,” said Varhiel; his bow mocked Luap, but Luap did not respond. He looked down that long hall at the elvenking, inwardly rejoicing to see the hall filled and alive as he had always imagined it.
But before he could speak, the elvenking spoke; his voice held a richness of music Luap had never imagined. “Mortal, king’s son you named yourself: what king claimed you?”
No human words could be courteous enough for speech with this king; Luap felt himself drowning in that power. His magery responded, seemingly of itself, and he did not suppress it, allowing his light to strengthen. “My lord, my father died while I was young; I have been told by those who knew both him and me that he was Garamis, the fourth before the last king.”
“You claim the royal magery?”
Luap smiled before he could stop himself. “My lord, the magery claimed me, when I had long thought I had none.” He felt his mind as full of light as his body; he might have been burning in some magical flame. Was this Esea’s light?
“Varhiel said you claimed that when you brought Gird here, a third arch appeared, and on that basis you claimed a right to use this place. Where is that third arch?”
Luap started down the hall. Sure enough, he saw but the two arches he had seen when he first came. He felt the sweat start on his forehead. It had been there; it had appeared with Gird and had been there when he brought the Rosemage and and Arranha. Now he could not see it. Surely it had to be there, between the others, where a blank red wall stood.
“Show us this arch,” the dwarf said suddenly. “If you are not nedross.” He did not know much of the dwarf speech, but no one could talk long to dwarves without learning something of drossin and nedrossin. He looked again, saw only the bare stone. But, his memory reminded him, the elves are illusionists. At once a rush of exultation flooded him. He walked forward, past the ranks of elves and dwarves, through the very current of their disapproval, their determination to exclude him. He walked past the gnome, who stepped aside without speaking. He thought of Gird, of how Gird had strolled down this hall as if he had the right to walk anywhere. Could he be that certain? Yes. For his people, he could.