The work proceeded day and night. When one person grew too weary to continue braiding or cutting, when someone’s hands grew too stiff or blistered, another would take over. After dark, the coils of rope that had been made during that day were smuggled out of the tunnels to be stowed away inside elven homes, inns, taverns, shops and warehouses. Elven mages went from place to place, placing enchantments on the rope. Sometimes the erratic magic worked, other times it did not. If one mage failed, another would come back and try later.
Above ground, the Dark Knights carried out the orders they had been given to rid the city of Qualinost of its inhabitants. They dragged elves out of their homes, beat them, and hauled them off to the prison camps that had been established outside the city. The soldiers threw furniture into the street, set homes ablaze, looted, and pillaged.
Beryl’s spies, flying overhead, saw all this and reported back to Beryl that her orders were being faithfully followed. The spies did not know that the elves who huddled in terror in the prison camp by day were released by night, dispatched to different homes, there to be “arrested” again in the morning. If the spies had been careful observers, they might have noted that the furniture that was tossed in the streets blocked major thoroughfares and that the houses that were set ablaze were also strategically located throughout the elven city to impede the advance of troops.
The one person Medan had not seen during this busy time was Laurana. Since the day the Queen Mother had assisted him so ably in fooling Beryl’s pet draconian, Medan had been occupied with planning the city’s defenses and innumerable other tasks, and he knew that she must be busy, too. She was packing up her household and that of the king’s, preparatory to traveling south, although, from what he had seen, she had little left to pack. She had given all her clothes except those on her back to be cut up for rope—even her wedding gown.
She had brought the gown herself, Medan heard, and when the elves had protested and told her she must keep that, if nothing else, she had taken up a pair of shears and cut the beautiful, silken fabric into strips with her own hands. All the while she told stories of her wedding to Tanis Half-Elven, making them laugh at the antics of the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, who had wandered off with the wedding rings and been found upon the verge of trading them to a street urchin for a jar of tadpoles, and how Caramon Majere, the best man, had been so flustered that when he rose to make the toast, he forgot Tanis’s name.
Marshal Medan went to look at that particular coil of rope. He held the strand made up of the glistening silk that was the color of hyacinths in his hand and thought to himself that this length of rope needed no additional magical enchantment of strength, for it had been braided not with cord but with love.
The Marshal was himself extremely busy. He was able to snatch only a few hours of sleep every night, and these he forced himself to take, knowing well that he could not operate efficiently without them. He could have taken time to visit the Queen Mother, but he chose not to do so. Their former relationship—that of respectful enemies—had changed. Each knew, when they parted after that last meeting, that they would not be the same to each other as they had been in the past.
Medan felt a sense of loss. He was under no illusions. He had no right to her love. He was not ashamed of his past. He was a soldier, and he had done what a soldier must do, but that meant that he had the blood of her people on his hands and that therefore he could not touch her without staining her with that blood. He would never do that. Yet he sensed that they could not meet comfortably as old friends. Too much had happened between them for that. Their next meeting must be awkward and unhappy for both of them. He would bid her farewell, wish her luck in her journey south. When she was gone and he would never see her again, he would prepare himself to die as he had always known he would die—as a soldier, doing his duty.
At the precise moment when Gerard was eloquently but futilely pleading the cause of the elves before the Knights’ Council in Solanthus, Marshal Medan was in the palace, making preparations to hold a final meeting of officers and commanders. He had invited the dwarf thane, Tarn Bellowsgranite; King Gilthas and his wife, the Lioness; and the elven commanders.
Medan had informed the king that tomorrow would be the last day the royal family could leave the city with any hope of escaping the enemy armies. He was concerned that the king had lingered too long as it was, but Gilthas had refused to leave earlier. This night, Medan would tell Laurana good-bye. Their farewells would be easier for both of them if they could do so when there were other people about.
“The meeting will begin at moonrise,” Medan told Planchet, who would be carrying the messages to the elven commanders. “We will hold it in my garden.”
His excuse was that the elves in attendance would not be comfortable in the thick-walled, stifling headquarters, but, in reality, he wanted a chance to show off his garden and to enjoy it himself for what would probably be the last time.
Naming off those who were to come, he said, almost offhandedly,
“the Queen Mother—”
“No,” said Gilthas.
The king had been pacing up and down the room, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back, so lost in meditation that Medan had not thought the king was paying any attention to him and was considerably startled when he spoke.
“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty?” Medan said.
Gilthas ceased pacing and came over to the desk that was now covered with large maps of the city of Qualinost and its environs.
“You will not tell my mother of this meeting,” said Gilthas.
“This meeting is one of vital importance, Your Majesty,” the Marshal argued. “We will be finalizing our plans for the city’s defense and for your safe evacuation. Your mother is knowledgeable in such matters, and—”
“Yes,” Gilthas interrupted, his voice grave. “She is knowledgeable. That is the very reason I do not want her to attend. Don’t you understand, Marshal?” he added, bending over the desk, gazing intently into Medan’s eyes. “If we invite her to this council of war, she will think we expect her to contribute that knowledge, to take part...”
He did not finish the sentence. He straightened abruptly, ran a hand through his hair, and stared unseeing out the window. The setting sun slanted through the crystal panes, shone full on the young king. Medan gazed at him expectantly, waiting for him to finish his sentence. He noted how the tension of the past few weeks had aged the young man. Gone was the languid poet, gazing listlessly around the dance floor. True, that mask had been put on to deceive the king’s enemies. But they had been deceived because part of the mask was made of flesh and blood.
Gilthas was a gifted poet, a man of dreams, a man who taught himself to live much of his life internally, because he had come to believe he could not trust anyone. The face he showed the world—the face of the confident, strong and courageous king— was as much a mask as the other. Behind the mask was a man tormented by self-doubt, uncertainty, fear. He concealed it masterfully, but the sunlight on his face revealed the gray smudges beneath the eyes; the taut, tight-lipped smile that was no smile; the eyes that looked inward into shadows, not outward into sunlight. He must be very like his father, Medan thought. It was too bad his father was not here to counsel him now, to put his hand upon his shoulder and assure him that his feelings were not a symptom of weakness, that they did him no discredit. Far from it, they would make him a better leader, a better king. Medan might have said these words himself, but he knew that coming from him they would be resented. Gilthas turned away from the window, and the moment passed.