“Four days!” Silvan was skeptical. “Can so much be accomplished that fast?”
“In the days when we fought the dream, we kirath could send a message from the north of Silvanesti into the far reaches of the south in a single day. I am not exaggerating, Your Majesty,” Rolan said, smiling at Silvanoshei’s obvious skepticism. “We accomplished such a feat many times over. We were highly organized then, and there were many more of us than there are now. But I believe that Your Majesty will be impressed, nevertheless.”
“I am already impressed, Rolan,” Silvanoshei replied. “I am deeply indebted to you and the others of the kirath. I will find some way of repaying you.”
“Free our people from this dreadful scourge, Your Majesty,”
Rolan answered, his eyes shadowed with sorrow, “and that will be payment enough.”
Despite his praise, Silvanoshei still harbored doubts, though he kept them to himself. His mother’s army was well organized, yet even she would make plans, only to see them go awry. Ill luck, miscommunication, bad weather, anyone of these or a host of other misfortunes could turn a day that had seemed meant for victory into disaster.
“No plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” was one of Samar’s dictums, a dictum that had proven tragically true.
Silvan anticipated disasters, delays. If the boat Rolan promised even existed, it would have a hole in it or it would have been burned to cinders. The river would be too low or too high, run too swift or too slow. Winds would blow them upstream instead of down or down when they wanted to travel up.
Silvan was vastly astonished to find the small boat at the river landing where Rolan had said it would be, perfectly sound and in good repair. Not only that, but the boat had bee? filled with food packed ill waterproof sacks and stowed neatly ill the prow.
“As you see, Your Majesty,” Rolan said, “the kirath have been here ahead of us.”
The Thon-Thalas River was calm and meandering this time of year. The boat, made of tree bark, was small and light and so well balanced that one would have to actively work to tip it over. Well knowing that Rolan would never think of asking the future Speaker of the Stars to help row, Silvan volunteered his assistance. Rolan at first demurred, but he could not argue with his future ruler and so at last he agreed and handed Silvanoshei a paddle. Silvan saw that he had earned the elder elf’s respect by this act, a pleasant change for the young man, who, it seemed, had always earned Samar’s disrespect.
Silvan enjoyed the exercise that burned away some of his pent-up energy. The river was placid, the forests through which it flowed were green and verdant. The weather was fine, but Silvan could not say that the day was beautiful. The sun shone through the shield. He could see blue sky through the shield.
But the sun that shone on Silvanesti was not the same fiercely burning orb of orange fire that shone on the rest of Ansalon. The sun Silvan looked upon was a pale and sickly yellow, the yellow of jaundiced skin, the yellow of an ugly bruise. It was as if he were looking at a reflection of the sun, floating facedown, drowned in a pool of stagnant, oily water. The yellow sun altered the color of the sky from azure blue to a hard metallic blue-green. Silvan did not look long at the sun but instead shifted his gaze to the forest.
“Do you know a song to ease our labors?” he called out to Rolan who was seated in the front of the boat.
The kirath paddled with quick, strong strokes, digging his paddle deep into the water. The far-younger Silvan was hard pressed to keep pace with his elder.
Rolan hesitated, glanced back over his shoulder. “There is a song that is a favorite of the kirath, but I fear it may displease His Majesty. It is a song that tells the story of your honored grandfather, King Lorac.”
“Does it start out, ‘The Age of Might it was, the Age of the Kingpriest and his minions,’” Silvan asked, singing the melody tentatively. He had only heard the song once before.
“That is the beginning, Your Majesty,” Rolan replied.
“Sing it for me,” Silvan said. “My mother sang it once to me on the day I turned thirty. That was the first time I had ever heard the story of my grandfather. My mother never spoke of him before, nor has she spoken of him since. To honor her, none of the other elves speaks of him either.”
“I too, honor your mother, who gathered roses in the Garden of Astarin when she was your age. And I understand her pain. We share in that pain every time we sing this song, for as Lorac was snared by his own hubris into betraying his country, so we who took the easy way out, who fled our land and left him to do battle alone, were also at fault.
“If all our people had stayed to fight, if all our people—those of House Royal to House Servitor, those of House Protector, House Mystic, House Mason—if we had all joined together and stood shoulder to shoulder, regardless of caste, against the Dragonarmies, then I believe that we could have saved our land.
“But you shall hear the full tale in the song.
Song of Lorac
“I can understand why my mother does not like to hear that song,” Silvan said when the last long-held, sweet, sad note drifted over the water, to be echoed by a sparrow. “And why our people do not like to remember it.”
“Yet, they should remember it,” said Rolan. “The song would be sung daily, if I had my way. Who knows but that the song of our own days will be just as tragic, just as terrible? We have not changed. Lorac Caladon believed that he was strong enough to wield the dragon orb, though he had been warned against it by all the wise. Thus he was snared, and thus he fell. Our people, in their fear, chose to flee rather than to stand and fight. And thus in fear today we cower under this shield, sacrificing the lives of some of our people in order to save a dream.”