Lord Tellin sat in utter stillness, quiet in body, quiet of speech, quiet-Dalamar was certain-in heart and soul. Sitting beneath a tall aspen, beneath leaves gone golden, the cleric was like a statue, something hewn from the raw strong stone of the earth, unmoved and unmoving. He sat but a hand's breadth from a fall that would have killed him if he moved too swiftly or the wrong way, a long stony tumble to the floor of a narrow glen.
Did he breathe? Dalamar looked up from his work of sorting spell components and squinted at Tellin. Faintly, the sweat-stained cloth of his white robe rippled over Tellin's breast. He breathed, but only barely.
The Windriders on griffins had long since flown away north, gone in the night under cover of darkness to take their positions for the battle. Dalamar didn't miss them. The odor of lion's musk and bird mustiness was not a pleasant one. He looked up at the sky where storm clouds hung low. Beneath them the aspen leaves glowed like a king's hoard of gold. All around them, mages and Wildrunners sorted themselves out into two groups, the sound of them like the rattle of swords, the rumble of storms soon to come. Tellin, though, sat at peace beneath the branches of a lone aspen, and didn't seem to hear them. Upon his knee lay a scroll containing the Dawn Hymn to E'li, but he had a keener eye for the embroidered scroll case than for the scroll itself. It might be argued that he knew the hymn by heart, but if it were, Dalamar wouldn't be the one arguing. If Lord Tellin had any prayer in his heart now, it was that all the barriers of tradition and law fall before a returning hero, that Lord Ralan would grant a cleric his sister's hand.
Dalamar bent his head over his work, checking to see that the oils he had brought-of heliotrope, mimosa, and sandalwood-remained safely stoppered in their earthen vials. He had sealed these with wax from candles on the altars of E'li. So Ylle Savath had commanded all her mages to do. He lifted each and smelled, scenting nothing on the wax and so knowing the seals were true. He examined each small pouch of herbs, flax seed, rowan bark, and elf dock. All these were sound, no pouch had become torn or uncinched in the northward run.
A damp wind rose up, chill here in the north of the kingdom, smelling of rain and sorrow. Aspen leaves rattled, sounding like regret, and on the wings of the wind came the faint trace of smoke. Tellin looked around frowning, then shook his head, realizing the truth of the smoke. It didn't come from this encampment of Wildrunners. Lord Konnal, Garan's second and the commander of his ground forces, had firmly forbidden fires. They were too close to the border for that. This smoke was old and heavy, the smoke of a large burning that had happened some time ago.
"A village," Dalamar said.
Tellin nodded. The smoke was the death-flag hung above one of the villages or towns that had fallen to Phair Caron's raiding parties. They'd seen too many of those on the way north, ghost-villages where the land lay black, where trees stood staggering with their bark burned off and others lay felled by axes for the savage joy of killing when there were no more elves to murder. And there had been murder done, great murder and terrible killing. The proof lay in the wolf-picked bones littering the villages, the empty-eyed skulls gleaming white in the moonlight. By sign of clothing, it became sickeningly clear that reports of selective killing-of the murder of men and women of fighting age only-were true. The dragonarmy was depriving the elves of defenders and leaving the weak and hungry to drain resources.
Voices rose, then hushed suddenly, the sound of the Wildrunners getting ready to depart. Lord Garan had made his plans so that the city of Sithelnost would not be caught between two armies, so that it would not find itself on the fall-back route if-gods forbid-his army should have to retreat. So the Wildrunners and the mages now sat at the stony edge of the forest, west of the Thon-Thalas and well north of Sithelnost. The Trueheart Mines lay but ten miles outside the western bounds of the forest itself, the high tors where Phair Caron had her base camp less than half that distance north and east. Most of the soldiers would continue north to the border, there to wait word to begin the attack on Phair Caron's army. All but a few of the mages would stay here, hidden below in the glen. Protected by a guard of Wildrunners posted high on the glen's walls, the mages would be able to work their magic in reasonable safety. Those of the mages who went with the bulk of the army were strong in the skills of mindspeaking so that they could relay Lord Garan's commands back to Ylle Savath.
Ravens spun out, black over the glen, cawing and rasping and sailing down low. Something lay dead down there, and the raucous ravens rejoiced.
Lord Tellin said, "You wish you were going with the Wildrunners, don't you, Dalamar?"
Dalamar shrugged, head low as he replaced the pouches and vials into his leather scrip. Never looking behind to the drop below, to the ravens calling the feast, Tellin came and sat beside Dalamar, his erstwhile servant.
"It doesn't seem fair, does it? That you have to stay here when you want to be there."
Again Dalamar shrugged. He hadn't yet become used to Lord Tellin's keen eye, quick questions, and the uncomfortable insight. Sometimes it seemed the cleric could look right into a person's heart and see the joys there, the fears, and the sorrows. Others among the army liked that, Wildrunners coming to a cleric for comfort and assurance in these days before the battle. Dalamar didn't like it at all. He was too used to his privacy and well content to keep to himself. And, were truth to be told-though this truth must never be!-he found little comfort in the idea of E'li's abiding love. Each time he heard the phrase or listened as some cleric spoke of the god as the Dragon's Lord, the Defender of Good, he felt like one hearing the hollowness of a lie.
Where was E'li the Defender while young elves were being killed by the legions of Takhisis? Where was the Dragon's Lord while warriors on dragonback drove old men and women and children out onto the road to starve and die? Not here, certainly not here.
The wind grew damper, cooler still. "It's all right," Dalamar said, breathing the smoke of a cruel burning. "I'm here, my lord, and taking my part in the plan."
It was a small part, though perhaps only he thought so, for Dalamar, who had conceived this bold plan Lady Ylle and Lord Garan had scorned and Speaker Lorac had embraced, was not chosen to stand in the enspelled chain of mages, bound hand and heart to each other and dedicated, body and soul, to the weaving of those powerful spells of illusion that would confuse the Highlord's army and give the Silvanesti their chance to rid their borders of the threat that had so long brooded there. No, he was to be a minor part of his own idea's execution, in the web of the magic but standing only to support the working mages with his own strength so theirs would not fail. What, after all, could a mage do in such a strong weaving of magic if he had but simple apprentice skills? Nothing, nothing. And yet, murmured a bitterness in his heart, he was not what they thought him, was he? He had more skill than they might imagine, those skills acquired and nurtured in a darker place than any school Ylle Savath permitted.
"Come on," Dalamar said, cinching his scrip tight and standing to stretch his long legs. "Let's see if we can find ourselves a place in the ravine before every mage around starts crowding in."
"Ah," said Lord Tellin, "I'm not going into the ravine. I'm going north with the Wildrunners." He twisted a wry smile. "They say it's all very nice to have a cleric with the army, but better if he earns his keep. I'm going to be one of the runners between the commanders of the ground troops. But I'll walk down with you. There's a Wildrunner down there who wants me to bless a medallion. Come on, let's