CHAPTER FOUR

A single, haunting voice soared over the dark waters of the lake, sending the opening bars of the Lament for the Dead to meet the rising moon. Amplified by the water and the stillness of the night, the sound seemed to rise out of the silver light of the moonbeam itself.

Two thousand and more Elves stood strung along the shoreline, yet the silence was unbroken but for that clear, sorrowful voice. Féolan let the music wash through him. It sank into them all, linking soul to soul so that when at last the lament swelled with the voices of the full choir it was as though the pain and the beauty were pouring forth from every person there. Long they sang. The moon rode high in a sky full of stars before the haunting music died away, leaving behind one liquid line of melody that floated out over the water and faded into the night.

Though many faces shone with tears and some among the bereaved sobbed openly, the silence held. The naming of the fallen, the paying of respects, had all been seen to earlier. But it was the lament that most truly spoke their sorrow and most deeply comforted. Now, as they made their way back along the shadowy pathways of Moonwash settlement, none wished to break the spell it had woven.

Féolan walked with his parents to their dwelling. They had much to speak of together—but not this night. He embraced them wordlessly and slipped off to bed, to his own memories and dreams.

THE NEXT MORNING Féolan began the long retelling of his adventures. “But I will say before I start,” he said, “that the story ends in a betrothal, and that the match is not so ill as it will seem at first.

“Nay, you must have patience!” he laughed, staying his mother’s questions. “I tell you this only to forestall your fears, but I will not go so far as to make a mishmash of my tale. If you want to know, you must listen all the way through.”

They were settled into deep reedweave chairs on the verandah that in good weather became a sun-dappled extension of the house. A bold chipmunk made a foray under their feet, searching for stray crumbs. It dashed off in alarm when Shéovar tossed it a crust, only to freeze mid-flight, return, and stuff the morsel into its cheeks. Féolan watched the saucy creature absently as he gathered his thoughts.

He began with the scouting foray into the mountains—nearly a year ago now—and the unexpected discovery of the Gref Orisé camp. “Really, there was no reason to even go that way, except that a couple of the scouts had an urge to see the high country,” he confessed. “We never expected to encounter a soul.” Then came his journey with Danaïs down the Gamier Road and then cross-country south through Verdeau, the disastrous boar attack that ripped open his companion’s thigh, and their desperate arrival at Castle DesChênes. “And that’s where I met Gabrielle,” he concluded. “I will need another cup of this tea to tell the next part.”

Step by step it unfolded: their growing love, Gabrielle’s appalled refusal of him when she learned of the difference in their life spans, his reckless spying mission into Gref Oris. By the time he told of the Elvish raid on the Gref Orisé war camp and how they had unwittingly rescued Gabrielle, the day was warm and Lunala was dabbing at her eyes. As Féolan’s story wound to a close—the successful alliance of the Elves with the Human forces, and Gabrielle’s discovery, in Stonewater, of her true ancestry—she came to him and kissed him on both cheeks, her gaze warm and joyful.

“Brave hearts, both, to walk through such fire and find each other at journey’s end,” she said. “I am glad beyond words for you, my son.”

But Shéovar did not speak, and his eyes were troubled.

“So then, Father, what is it?” asked Féolan. “I promise you will like her.”

“I doubt it not,” said Shéovar. “I like her already, from your words alone. But Féolan, she is not yet thirty.”

“I know. I know, but she seems older. Remember, she has been a full adult in Verdeau for a decade—and that is much longer to Humans than to us. Though she is half-Elven, her...what?...her frame of reference, you might say, is entirely Human. Father, if you are suggesting we wait to wed, she will not wish it. Among men, she is nearly past the age of marrying!”

Shéovar looked skeptical. The swift cycle of Human life was difficult for one who had not walked among Humans to understand.

“Féolan, there is another thing that worries me, and it is not easy for me to say this to you. From what you tell me, you are the first Elf she has ever known. I see how deeply you love her and that you are resolved to bear the heartache of her early death. But is it fair to claim her pledge now? I cannot but wonder: might not a young girl feel herself in love with a stranger who sweeps into her life and strikes a deep chord of recognition, understands her perhaps in ways no one else ever has? If Gabrielle were to discover, in time, that it was not you in yourself, but the deep pull of our race that called her, if she came to realize that another could have matched her heart better, none could blame her. Yet it would be a sorrow to you both, nonetheless.”

The very thought was harrowing. Féolan could find no words to answer his father. Almost he hated him for having raised such a specter. And yet...forcing himself to look square at the thing, uncolored by his own desire, it was an obvious concern. It shamed him that he had not once questioned how circumstances had pushed Gabrielle into his arms.

She is no moonstruck girl, he told himself. She knows her own heart. But the doubt remained.

There were no answers in the depths of the translucent tea cup, nor in the compassionate eyes of his parents. Féolan rose to his feet abruptly, half-raised his hand to ward off further words. “I need a walk,” he said and strode off toward the water.

DISGUSTING. DERKH EYED the pork scraps and potato skins floating on the viscid surface of the washtub, dipped them out with his fingers and flung them into the garbage. The royal family had, by the looks of it, fed a mighty number of people after the memorial services for Verdeau’s dead, and grief had not dinted the guests’ appetites. His dishwater had grown tepid and gray with grease, the washing running ahead of the hot water supply. He would have to wait on the fire. Derkh dragged the tin tub out the door and across the dirt yard to the ditch, where he tipped out the old dishwater. Pushing the sweaty hair off his forehead, he let the evening breeze play on his hot skin.

“Derkh.”

He looked up. It was the cook, and her sharp eye made him feel instantly guilty.

“Sorry,” he said, embarrassed as always by his awkward speech. “I wait for the new water.”

“That’s all right. I was going to say, why not run off now and let Jonas finish up? By the time he’s done with the floor, the water will be hot.”

“I can finish,” he protested, but she cut him off.

“It’s Jonas’s job. It’s good of you to help, and the heavens know we can use you, but you don’t have to stay till moonrise. That’s for the likes of us as gets paid to do it.”

Should he insist, or did she want to be rid of him? He couldn’t tell. Nodding abruptly, Derkh did as he was told. But he wasn’t about to go back to his room, not until the hallways were empty for the night. He didn’t want to meet up with anyone on the day of the Verdeau memorial.

Instead, he hopped the ditch, climbed the rail fence that closed off the kitchen and laundry yard and crossed the wide lawn behind the castle. A small unattended door in the stone wall that enclosed the castle grounds led to a footpath that wound up into the hills. Broad and gentle at first, it soon narrowed and rose steeply. Derkh climbed hard, pushing himself to go faster until his breath grew ragged and painful and the flesh behind his scar flared in protest with each step. By the time the late spring sun began to dip behind the line of hills, he was high enough to see the land for miles around glow under the last glances of rosy light and then darken into shadow. But he did not see, because he was crying—sobbing hoarsely with each gasping breath as he hadn’t since he was a child on his mother’s knee. Finally, legs, belly and lungs all burning with exertion, he flung himself on the ground and gave himself up to it.

He cried for his own dead: for all the men he had trained, lived and fought with, if not befriended; for the father he had feared and sometimes hated and loved with all his heart. He cried from the constant strain of being an outsider, and although he did not cry with longing for his homeland, by the time the tears were spent he had decided. He did not belong here. He would go back to Greffier.