He had heard his mother speak with longing, regret, and sorrow of the beauty of her homeland. He remembered as a child when he and his exiled parents were hiding in some cave with danger all about them, his mother would tell him tales of Silvanesti to quiet his fears. He would close his eyes and see, not the darkness, but the emerald, silver and gold of the forest. He would hear not the howls of wolf or goblin but the melodious chime of the bell flower or the sweetly sorrowful music of the flute tree.
His imagination paled before the reality, however. He could not believe that such beauty existed. He had spent the day as in a waking dream, stumbling over rocks, tree roots, and his own feet as wonders on every side brought tears to his eyes and joy to his heart. .
Trees whose bark was tipped with silver lifted their branches to the sky in graceful arcs, their silver-edged leaves shining in the sunlight. A profusion of broad-leafed bushes lined the path, every bush ablaze with flame-colored flowers that scented the air with sweetness. He had the impression he did not walk through a forest so much as through a garden, for there were no fallen branches, no straggling weeds, no thickets of brambles.
The Woodshapers permitted only the beautiful, the fruitful, and the beneficial to grow in their forests. The Woodshapers’ magical influence extended throughout the land, with the exception of the borders, where the shield cast upon their handiwork a killing frost.
The darkness brought rest to Silvan’s dazzled eyes. Yet the night had its own heart-piercing beauty. The stars blazed with fierce brilliance, as if defying the shield to try to shut them out.
Night flowers opened their petals to the starlight, scented the warm darkness with exotic perfumes, while their luminescent glow filled the forest with a soft silvery white light.
“What do you mean?” Silvan asked. He could not equate evil with the beauty he’d witnessed.
“The cruel punishment we inflicted on your parents, for one, Your Majesty,” said Rolan. “Our way of thanking your father for his aid was to try to stab him in the back. I was ashamed to be Silvanesti when I heard of this. But there has come a reckoning. We are being made to pay for our shame and our dishonor, for cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, for living beneath the shield, protected from the dragons while others suffer. We pay for such protection with our lives.”
They had stopped to rest in a clearing near a swift-flowing stream. Silvan was thankful for the respite. His injuries had started to pain him once more, though he had not liked to say anything. The excitement and shock of the sudden change in his life had drained him, depleted his energy.
Rolan found fruit and water with a sweetness like nectar for their dinner. He tended to Silvan’s wounds with a respectful, solicitous care that the young man found quite pleasant.
Samar would have tossed me a rag and told me to make the best of it, Silvanoshei thought.
“Perhaps Your Majesty would like to sleep for a few hours,”
Rolan suggested after their supper.
Silvan had thought he was dropping from fatigue but found that he felt much better after eating, refreshed and renewed.
“I would like to know more about my homeland,” he said.
“My mother has told me some, but, of course, she could not know what has been happening since she. . . she left. You spoke of the shield.” Silvan glanced about him. The beauty took his breath away. “I can understand why you would want to protect this”—he gestured to the trees whose boles shone with an iridescent light, to the star flowers that sparkled in the grass—“from the ravages of our enemies.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Rolan and his tone softened. “There are some who say that no price is too high to pay for such protection, not even the price of our own lives. But if all of us are dead, who will be left to appreciate the beauty? And if we die, I believe that eventually the forests will die, too, for the souls of the elves are bound up in all things living.”
“Our people number as the stars,” said Silvan, amused, thinking that Rolan was being overly dramatic.
Rolan glanced up at the heavens. “Erase half those stars, Your Majesty, and you will find the light considerably diminished.”
“Half” Silvanoshei was shocked. “Surely not half!”
“Half the population of Silvanost alone has perished from the wasting sickness, Your Majesty.” He paused a moment, then said,
“What I am about to tell you would be considered treason, for which I would be severely punished.”
“By punished, you mean cast out?” Silvan was troubled.
“Exiled? Sent into darkness?”
“No, we do not do that anymore, Your Majesty,” Rolan replied. “We cannot very well cast people out, for they could not pass through the shield. Now people who speak against Governor General Konnal simply disappear. No one knows what happens to them.”
“If this is true, why don’t the people rebel?” Silvan asked, bewildered. “Why don’t they overthrow Konnal and demand that the shield be brought down?”
“Because only a few know the truth. And those of us who do have no evidence. We could stand in the Tower of the Stars and say that Konnal has gone mad, that he is so fearful of the world outside that he would rather see us all dead than be a part of that world. We could say all that, and then Konnal would stand up and say, ‘You lie! Lower the shield and the Dark Knights will enter our beloved woods with their axes, the ogres will break and maim the living trees, the Great Dragons will descend upon us and devour us.’ That is what he will say, and the people will cry, ‘Save us! Protect us, dear Governor General Konnal! We have no one else to turn to!’ and that will be that.”
“I see,” said Silvan thoughtfully. He glanced at Rolan, who was gazing intently into the darkness.
“Now the people will have someone else to turn to, Your Majesty,” said Rolan. “The rightful heir to the Silvanesti throne. But we must proceed carefully, cautiously.” He smiled sadly.
“Else you, too, might ‘disappear.’ ”
The lovely song of the nightingale throbbed in the darkness.
Rolan pursed his lips and whistled back. Three elves materialized, emerging from the shadows. Silvan recognized them as the three who had first accosted him near the shield this morning.
This morning! Silvan marveled. Was it only this morning?
Days, months, years had gone by since then.
Rolan stood to greet the three, clasping the elves by the hand and exchanging the ritual kiss on the cheek.
The elves wore the same cloak as did Rolan, and even though Silvan knew that they had entered the clearing, he was having a difficult time seeing them, for they seemed to be wrapped in darkness and starlight.
Rolan questioned them about their patrol. They reported that the border along the Shield was quiet, “deathly quiet” one said with terrible irony. The three turned their attention back to Silvan.
“So have you questioned him, Rolan?” asked one, turning a stem gaze upon Silvanoshei. “Is he what he claims?”
Silvan scrambled to his feet, feeling awkward and embarrassed. He started to bow politely to his elders, as he had been taught, but then the thought came to him that he was king, after all. It was they who should bow to him. He looked at Rolan in some confusion.
“I did not ‘question’ him,” Rolan said sternly. “We discussed certain things. And yes, I believe him to be Silvanoshei, the rightful Speaker of the Stars, son of Alhana and Porthios. Our king has returned to us. The day for which we have been waiting has arrived.”
The three elves looked at Silvan, studied him up and down, then turned back to Rolan.
“He could be an imposter,” said one.
“I am certain he is not” Rolan returned with firm conviction. “I knew his mother when she was his age. I fought with his father against the dreaming. He has the likeness of them both, though he favors his father. You, Drinel. You fought with Porthios. Look at this young man. You will see the father’s image engraved on the son’s.”