The gestation had gone much more quickly than usual. Truthanar believed the Great Change had somehow sped up the process. All the elf women in Inath-Wakenti who were pregnant were much further along than normal. An odd but popular belief was that the souls of those warriors lost to the will-o’-the-wisps were returning in the bodies of newborn babes. Kerian openly scoffed at the notion, but Gilthas could not. His own losses were severe enough that he would never deny solace to others. He knew he would grieve the deaths of his mother and Planchet for the rest of his days.
“How was old Hakkam?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.
“Piratical as ever.”
He went to a small sideboard and poured them both some fruit juice. As he handed her a cup, he pulled the scroll from his belt. “He gave me this. Sahim wants an alliance. Shobbat’s rebellion is gaining ground.”
“What are you going to do?”
He sat down facing her and placed a hand on her belly. “Talk to my son.”
“We don’t know it will be a boy.”
“Truthanar says so.” Gilthas closed his eyes. Hello, son. How are you today? If you are well, give us a sign.
Whether Gilthas was communing with their child or not, the baby did kick his mother quite vigorously. Opening his eyes, Gilthas smiled broadly. Kerian shoved his hand away, but a grudging smile lightened her expression.
“Stop teaching her bad habits.” Growing serious again, she said, “You remember our bargain?”
He sighed. “You still intend to hold me to it?”
“Yes!”
“And what of our child? Can you leave him alone so easily?”
“Alone? Gil, there’ll be scores of elves vying for the chance to tend him!”
“A child needs his mother.”
“And his father. And a homeland.”
It was an old argument, given new urgency by a stream of news from the west. Word had come from Alhana that the revolt in Qualinesti was stalled. The Army of Liberation had landed on the east coast in midsummer and driven inland, swiftly cutting the country in two. Samuval’s army was pushed back over the border into Abanasinia. It seemed the end of the bandits’ reign, but local Nerakan forces south of the Ahlanlas River counterattacked, breaking the siege and freeing Samuval’s army. A vicious back-and-forth war raged: one side would take a town only to lose it the very next week. Central Qualinesti had become uninhabitable, full of abandoned villages and despoiled farms. The cruel impasse served no one, as thousands of Samuval’s troops battled hunger as well as the elves. Kerian was determined to join the fight, and she’d struck a bargain with Gilthas. Once the baby was born, she would fly to Qualinesti. He had agreed, believing that when the time actually came, she wouldn’t be able to leave their baby. He’d been berating himself for a fool ever since. When had the Lioness ever shown herself unwilling to join a fight, whatever the cost to herself?
Argument was pointless, but he still had to try. He took her hand. “Can you really leave us?”
“Only with your blessing.” She gripped his hand hard. “Do I have it?”
Misery filled his eyes, and she pulled him close. What use was there in wishing her to be other than what she was? Would he change her if he could? Of course not. But a part of him couldn’t help wishing she would give up placing herself in danger.
Burying his face in her neck, he whispered, “Whatever you choose to do, you have my blessing.”
He was proud of her courage and, ultimately, shared her desire to regain the lands they’d lost. But he didn’t have the luxury of following that dream. At moments such as this, he hated being Speaker, unable to deny the higher cause of his country in favor of his own family. Such was the price of kingship.
Their child was born on the first day of the new year. Naming a son was a father’s privilege, and Gilthas chose the name Balifaris, meaning “Young Balif.”
Hamaramis, standing in as the mother’s father, held Kerian’s hand through the delivery. Afterward, he swore it was more painful for him than it had been for her. His hand did indeed sport a bandage, but Truthanar assured him the breaks would heal cleanly.
Soaked in sweat, Kerian held her son close. Mother and child had drifted off to sleep. In a whisper, the old general asked the Speaker the significance of the name he had chosen.
“Balif, although cursed and cast out, forged a new nation. I hope my son can do the same.” His strange hallucination while at the brink of death had left Gilthas with a feeling of kinship to the long-dead Silvanesti.
Kerian was a loving if plainspoken mother. She was also true to her word. Three months to the day after Balifaris was born, she bade son and husband an emotional farewell, mounted Eagle Eye, and flew off into the late-afternoon sky.
When she and her griffon were lost from sight, Gilthas felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his old archivist, Favaronas.
Since the Great Change, the Speaker’s favorite librarian had been little seen, spending all his days writing down his strange experiences in the Silent Vale. His close association with the sorcerer Faeterus had left him with startling conclusions about the origin of Inath-Wakenti and its power. Dragonstones and godly magic were not behind the valley’s weird nature, he believed. For centuries before and after the founding of the first elf realm, Speaker Silvanos, supplemented by a corps of powerful mages, had worked to suppress all clerical opposition to the throne. Mage by mage, enemies of the Speaker had their powers stripped away and sealed into the standing stones of Inath-Wakenti. The Brown Hood Society of wild sorcerers were wiped out to the last elf, for example. Later, the mage Vedvedsica tried to create his own race, using arcane magic to transform animals into the semblance of elves. The transformations did not last. Exposed as abominations, his creations were confined in Inath-Wakenti for all time, together with their maker. Vedvedsica was “the Father Who Made Not His Children” mentioned in the scrolls.
Floating lights were set to guard the valley, keeping the beast-elves in and all other animals out. But one creature escaped, perhaps with Vedvedsica’s help, and with illicit longevity spells kept himself alive so he might one day avenge the treatment of the exiles. That sole escapee was Faeterus, who loathed the elf race and plotted its obliteration.
With his chronicle complete, Favaronas had accepted a new role, that of tutor to the Speaker’s son.
“Come, sire,” he said softly. “It’s time for the child’s lessons to begin.”
Pulling his attention from the clouds that had swallowed his wife, Gilthas regarded him with surprise.
“But he’s only an infant.”
The scholar shouldered a large bag of scrolls. “Yes, sire. And he has so much to learn.”
At the empty volcanic shell that once had housed the Oracle of the Tree, an old man sat on the sand, his back against the black stone spire. He’d found the guise an excellent one. Being old—visibly old, like a human—conferred many advantages. Listeners were respectful. They didn’t fall on their faces and cower, nor did they expect him to perform impossible feats with a snap of his fingers. He came and went mysteriously, gave suitably obscure advice, and gently guided the affairs of mortals rather than directing them. It was a most satisfactory arrangement.
Was.
For his interference in the elves’ fate, he had earned a severe punishment. As autumn painted the forests of old Qualinesti in every shade of gold, russet, and red, he found himself plucked up and judged. The sentence was five hundred years’ banishment, the loss of his divine powers, and (a twist he considered particularly ironic) confinement in the feeble body he once had used only as a disguise. As of today, he had four hundred ninety-nine years and ten months to go.