Just a mile from the village, a low row of hills abutted the Moon Stream on the east. The year Cald had turned six, a heavy rain, a mud slide, and two dislodged trees had combined to block the stream. The churning flood waters had dug several large, shallow caves in the hillsides. When the stream had dug itself a new path, the caves had been left dry and comfortable. The mouths of the caverns were wide. Thick, flowering vines draped the entrances, giving a sense of shelter without reducing the fresh air. Cald had often played there, and occasionally the elves used the caverns for storage.
Saelvam escorted the halflings back to their temporary camp to pick up their few belongings before leading them across the Moon Stream. Most of the elves returned to Reilmirid.
Eyrmin, Relcan, and Glisinda, with Cald stalking in the shadows, waited until the others had disbursed before the prince faced the goblins. Glisinda, as Speaker of Lore, addressed them. It was her right, as she was responsible for knowing all elven law and rules of honor.
“You saved the lives of Prince Eyrmin and Relcan, who is also of royal blood. For this you have our gratitude. We owe you an obligation. You are free to return to your people.”
The goblins traded long looks and shook their heads. Bersmog made a great show of scratching, first his stomach and then his neck.
“You say about obligate,” he said. “This plenty strange but maybe is good?”
“An obligation is a debt owed,” Eyrmin said. “We are indebted to you for saving our lives.”
“You pay debt by letting us live?” the goblin pressed.
“We have said so,” Relcan snapped. “You’re free to go.” And under his breath he muttered, “The sooner the better.”
“Making us leave not paying debt,” Bersmog said.
“We go, we die,” Stognad added.
Eyrmin frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“We with hunting party. Our job to look after young Gotwart on his first hunt,” Stognad explained. “Him last son of Chief Splitear. Last son. All the others dead.”
“Now Gotwart dead. Chief be plenty mad,” Bersmog continued the explanation. “We go back before tribe has new chief, Splitear take skin off bodies while we still alive and feeling it plenty. We stay here. Elves no hunt for meat, so plenty food in woods.” They both nodded with wide, fang-toothed grins as if, with their needs taken care of, nothing else mattered.
“Goblins, living in Sielwode?” Relcan looked ready to explode, and Eyrmin shook his head as if the idea was too much for even him.
“We’ll discuss it later,” the prince said. He led the way back to the village. Relcan walked beside Eyrmin, throwing angry looks at the prince. Twice he spun to walk away, thought better of it, and returned to pace the prince again. His tense movements manifested his anger and frustration, made worse by indecision.
Glisinda trailed them, and Cald brought up the rear, wondering what was wrong with the prince. Eyrmin had something on his mind. Not even the suggestion of repeated openings of the portal to the Shadow World had really intruded into that shell of thought. Not even the thought of goblins living and hunting in Sielwode mattered.
Cald was determined to learn the source of the prince’s distraction, but still a youngster and also a human, he was often excluded from the more important discussions. Relcan and Glisinda also noticed the prince’s preoccupation, and Cald had no doubt Eyrmin would take them into his confidence. Cald was determined to share those secrets.
Reilmirid was more a grove than a village, a grove of sielwodes for which the forest was named. In the exact center of the village stood an ancient monarch. The base of its trunk measured three hundred fifty feet in circumference, and it soared thousands of feet into the sky.
The elves called it Grove Father. Surrounding it were thirty-two of its children. They, too, were huge when compared with the more common trees of Aebrynis. The smaller ones had trunks forty feet in circumference; some would measure sixty feet, but they were still dwarfed by the parent tree. They grew close together with intertwining limbs connected by small bridges and short stairs.
Three pathways at three different levels circled the Grove Father and connected the dwellings of the village. Other, thicker limbs provided the foundations for the elven dwellings. Reilmirid, which in Sidhelien meant Watcher’s Home, was to Cald the epitome of perfect adventure.
Humans scoffed at the idea that the elves could really feel a bond of friendship with their forests. With the exception of Cald, no human believed in the exchange of communication the elves claimed to have with the individual trees. Cald had often seen the elves silently communing as well as singing to the denizens of Sielwode. Eyrmin had told him the elves sang to the Sielwode saplings for three centuries, asking them for a certain plan of growth.
In later years, Cald would understand that the bond between the elves and the forest was an innate magic peculiar to elves alone, one buried so deep in elven psyches that they themselves did not recognize it as such.
The result was a village barely noticeable from the ground. Bole bridges partially encircled the trees and provided access from one limb to another. Spiral stairs led to limbs on which dwellings had been built, close to the trunks of the trees.
Two lemdair, stair-gates in the elvish tongue, gave entry to Reilmirid. Not gates like those of ground-built cities, they were long stairways designed to be raised in the event of siege.
Cald hung back, then followed the elves up the eastern stair. When he reached the first and lowest of the village “paths,” he turned left while the others went right. The elf songs had caused the limbs of the sielwodes to grow level and straight, with many branches paralleling the arms of their neighbors. The boy trotted along these high paths on limbs six to ten feet thick. He sprinted up and down the stairs and around the bole bridges.
Darkness had come early that evening, and torches were being lit. The elves never burned wood. In autumn, they harvested dry grass from the plain of Markazor and braided it into loglike shapes for fires, and tight ovals that fitted into the metal guards at the tops of the torch poles.
Cald raced by the light standards, where the growing wind whipped the flames horizontally until they looked like glowing war banners before a battle.
Between the three main tree trails, numerous limbs provided shorter paths to the elven dwellings. They created dead ends among the trees, and Cald turned back on one. He retraced his path and climbed down a vine to perch on a support of the dwelling he shared with Prince Eyrmin.
Through a chink in the wall, he could see into the main room of the house. There he waited, wondering if he had been wrong. Perhaps the three leaders of Reilmirid were not planning a private discussion.
From his position, he looked out over what he could see of the tree village. Even though he was anxious to learn what had so disturbed the prince, he could not look out across Reilmirid without being filled with joy.
The limbs and trunks of the sielwodes grew straight as arrows, but everything else was angled or curved. The elves never cut into a living tree, and depended on the attrition of nature to provide their building materials. They used trees struck down by lightning or limbs broken off during storms. Every scrap of wood was carefully preserved and put to the best possible use. Sometimes they spent years considering how to use a piece to best advantage.
No dwelling in Reilmirid had straight walls or ridge poles, or square windows. They curved and bowed with individual grace and form that was an art exclusive to the elves. The shingles of the roofs and sides were overlaid with tinier shingles like fish scales. With more than fifty varieties of wood to chose from, the elves carefully worked the different types into patterns. As the shingles weathered, the changing hues brought out scenes of the forest in ever-sharpening detail.