On that crisp autumn morning he wore his sword and carried his bow, hoping the prince would tire of walking and he would be able to practice his skills. He thought he had perfected the moves of an intricate parry and cross-block that he had seen the prince use in practice. He refrained from asking for a bout, knowing Eyrmin and the half dozen warriors who walked with him would be communing with the ancient trees of the Muirien Grove.
Eyrmin had told him most humans believed that all elven magic was intrinsic to their race and could be used only by elves. Cald was perhaps the only human who knew that particular belief was untrue. Some of their arts were learned; he had cause to know because Eyrmin had been teaching him what he could absorb.
Only one other elf knew the human boy was learning to use elven magic. Glisinda, a warrior and the village Speaker of Lore, knew of the lessons. She also knew that the prince believed Cald would one day return to his people, and the knowledge he took with him might help to bring more understanding between the races of Cerilia.
Glisinda had kept the secret, entirely in sympathy with the beliefs of the prince. She was dedicated to learning and remembering, and used elven magic to draw to the forefront of her mind knowledge that spanned thousands of years. To her, teaching was as sacred as learning.
Cald had one failing in developing elven skills. He was unable to emotionally blend with the trees, unable to understand their thought. When he touched the trees and concentrated, he could sense life, but to know a thing lived was not the same as communicating with it. His only success had been in the Muirien Grove, but the experience had not been pleasant; he had sensed hostility and knew at least this portion of Sielwode did not accept him.
When the tale and the conversation ended, he fell back to walk behind Eyrmin and took care to tread silently. They entered the grove. Like the elves, Cald was both repelled and fascinated by the ancient gnarled trees. They were thick boled and twisted, but of no great height; some had huge rents in their trunks as if the tough wood had not been able to withstand the forces it faced. Limbs as thick as Cald’s body lay on the ground. Few rotted away in the strange atmosphere of the grove. They made walking treacherous. High in the trees, the jagged boughs they had broken away from still looked raw, and jutted to the sky with accusing splinter points.
The elves collected fallen limbs in other parts of the forest. They carefully preserved every usable scrap for building, calling them the gifts of Sielwode. But they never touched a fallen branch from the grove.
The monarchs of the grove were somehow out of time with the rest of the forest. Other trees in Sielwode dropped their leaves in the fall and sprouted new ones in the spring. In contrast, the monarchs of Muirien Grove made no concession to the annual change of seasons. They had their own timing, different from each other and the world in general. Once every eighteen to twenty-five years, they shed their musty old leaves in preparation for sprouting new ones, as a few were doing now.
The elves stopped by a gnarled and twisted monarch that had dropped most of its foliage. Since the trees of the grove recognized no season but their own and dropped their leaves only to sprout new ones, the elves raised their voices in the traditional song of spring:
“Awake, feel life in all your limbs.
Your sap rises in your bole.
Greet Sidhelien. The new year begins,
And with it, life.
Greet Sidhelien….”
The song continued through many verses. Cald repeated the words with his mind and delighted in the lilt of elven voices. Since he felt the grove resented his presence, he did not defile the purity of the elven song with his own voice, which, in comparison to theirs, was loud and rasping.
The elves sang for every tree that showed signs of renewing itself. Later they would sing to the others, hoping to wake them to renewal. No saplings sprouted among these ancient monarchs, and the elves were afraid the grove was dying.
At midday, they paused to sit beneath an ancient tree that had not yet begun to shed its leaves. They had brought flasks of elven wine—Cald’s, in deference to his age, had been watered down considerably—and waybread, their customary traveling rations. They ate their meal, and over their wine they talked, speculating on the grove and its place in the history of Sielwode.
It had always surprised Cald that the elves were ignorant of the reason the trees of the grove behaved as they did. They could recite the history of nearly every inch of land within their domain. They knew when each patch of ground had been an orchard, and later a meadow, and in which century it was taken over by saplings to become a forest again. Even so, mystery surrounded the Muirien Grove.
Elves all over Cerilia believed that tales of ancient honor and bravery strengthened the hearts of living warriors, and the elves of western Sielwode used the same principle on the trees. When they visited the grove, they told stories of their own making, of great deeds and heroes who had inhabited Muirien, hoping to raise the consciousness of the trees and bring them back to good health. Saelvam was just ending such a tale of the grove, one made entirely from his own head.
“So, Tune, the giver and taker of life, looked down on Ciesandra Starshine. He knew her heart was true, and she would keep her vow to wait for her lover’s return.
“He wept, knowing her wait was long, and shortened it for her, placing her in the grove, where a score of years in the rest of the world would seem only one.”
Cald, still too young to understand the poignancy of unrequited love, had been more interested in the imaginary lover who had traveled to a distant land to fight a great but undisclosed evil. The elven warriors were touched and sat quietly for a few moments. Then young Dralansen blinked away a tear.
Eyrmin smiled at the story, and then glanced down at Cald.
“You are developing a good voice for tales. Have you none of the grove?”
Since he felt Muirien resented his presence, Cald did not want to presume, but he knew it would break the mood of the afternoon to say so.
“No, I make up stories about the Star Stair,” Cald replied, pointing north to where a series of natural stone spires rose hundreds of feet into the sky. Their uneven heights gave them the appearance of being a stair to the sky. Since the elves had never told a tale of them, they were a curiosity to the young human boy.
The words were hardly out of Cald’s mouth when he noticed the discomfort around the circle of listeners. Relcan, who usually looked away when Cald spoke, snorted his contempt. He jerked his head around to glare at the boy and turned a mocking gaze on the others as if to say, “See? I was right when I said he did not belong.”
Eyrmin, with a sober gaze, shook his head. “No tales of the mind’s imagining can be told of the Star Stair.”
“Then you know its history?” Cald sensed he should not ask, but curiosity overran his discretion.
“It is lore better not spoken of,” Eyrmin said gently. “Instead we will…” His eyes flickered as he looked beyond Cald. Quicker than the eye could follow, he was on his feet, sword in hand.
“ ’Ware goblins!” he shouted.
Cald grabbed his bow and was scrambling to his feet when he saw the humanoids. Two large goblins walked ahead of a clutch of others. They wore badly tanned, sleeveless leather coats with rusty metal disks sewn on as a type of armor. They carried large axes with crooked, badly shaped handles, mere tree limbs that had been skinned of bark. Behind the first two, four others marched, shouldering long poles from which dangled the carcasses of two slain deer.