Chapter 2
The tournament was nearly called off after the tragedy of the morning, and the tensions now rampant – for no true reason – between the dragon people and the griffon people, but the knights had all travelled a long way, and were less than thrilled at the prospect of returning all the way home without so much as brandishing their weapons in less serious conflict.
There was a two day pause to attend the funeral of the two kalmei, as each nation mourned in the way that they felt most appropriate; most of them through dance, some at noon, some at night. The dragon and griffon each were sent home, utterly unconsolate and still potentially vengeful. But after this, the tournament went on.
The sun was shining brightly, nearly dispelling the feeling of gloom that had settled over the camp the previous days. Gyoriing, Zela, and Flaer were all sparring at one point or another, and Zela took to wandering off at random times to practice by herself. Flaer found her before her first match, dancing in full armour, her sword humming around her in glittering circles. His breath stuck in his throat and he remembered the day he had first seen her.
“Do you want to spar with me?” Zela asked, coming to a halt and smiling.
He ignored the shadows around her eyes as he answered. “Shouldn’t you save your energy for the fighting later? There are much more difficult opponents than me, you know.”
“I’ll be fine. I don’t care if I win or lose-“
“Well, that’s not true,” Flaer interrupted, eyes twinkling. “I know you.”
“Very well, but I still want to spar with you.”
“I’m no match for you, but as you like,” answered the prince, smiling easily, unsheathing his own sword.
Zela came at him with a leap and a bound, and he found himself hard-pressed to defend against her.
After only a few minutes, they fell apart again in separate heaps of laughter.
“I wish everything could always be like this,” Flaer said suddenly.
Zela cocked her head quizzically at him. “Are you still upset about the day before yesterday?”
“Everyone is,” Flaer answered softly. “It’s only when I’m concentrating very hard that I can forget, like when I’m duelling…”
Gyoriing appeared from behind a tent. “Flaer! What have you been doing? It’s time for the first match! Hello, Lady Zela. Come, both of you!”
“I’m coming, we’re coming,” Flaer sighed with amusement. “Gyoriing’s better than my mother.”
“What was that?” Gyoriing asked.
“Nothing important,” Flaer answered. Zela shook her head.
The rest of the week passed in gleaming silver and the meditation of combat. But the sadness was not forgotten, nor the anger that each of the families felt. On the surface, everything looked normal, if a little more serious than usual. But underneath, the Dragonland people and the Griffonland people, even subconsciously, distrusted each other now.
The representatives from families of both the fallen showed up at the Moonland castle the day after their return, however. It was customary to choose a judge from another country for disputes, though there had never been a dispute as serious as this one. Flaer went to talk to the Dragonland family, and his younger brother Lyrestan went to talk to the Griffonland people.
“But how can you ask for punishment?” Lyrestan asked the brother of the murdered elf. “The Dragonland people have lost their brother as well.”
“Suicide is not a punishment,” the brother said angrily. “We want them to pay for what he has done to us.”
“They already pay,” Lyrestan said earnestly. “They grieve for their brother as well. He’s dead! You can’t bring him back and kill him again. That’s impossible and, were it possible, it would be wrong!”
“We still want reparation! It is not enough to say that everyone is very sad. We want justice as well!”
“There is nothing they can give you!” Lyrestan answered, trying not to raise his voice.
He felt a blow on the cheek and was knocked to the floor.
“What was that for!?” he demanded, picking himself up slowly, rubbing his cheek where he had been hit, and then pushing his long golden hair out of his face. He was still very young, hardly more than a full-grown boy.
The brother of the fallen elf towered over him. “It’s no good arguing with you. I lost my temper, Prince. We would like to speak to your brother or your father. Perhaps they will be more willing to listen to reason.”
“My brother is speaking to the family of the elf who killed himself. My father and mother are already occupied in annual city planning.”
“I don’t want to speak to you, you stubborn brat!” the elf shouted, winding up for another punch. His sisters and cousins watched impassively, though two of his three sisters and one of his two cousins looked distressed. But they did nothing, and Lyrestan was forced to duck. “I notice you weren’t at the tournament! No one in your family knows anything about strength or justice. You and your family should not be rulers of the Moonland!”
At that, the two sisters winced, and the cousin looked shocked. The other sister and cousin nodded, though. Lyrestan ducked another punch, turned, and grabbed a curtain pole. “I don’t need to take that kind of talk, sir. My family are true upholders of justice. Just because they choose not to fight doesn’t mean they’re weak!” He began blocking the attacks of the other elf with the pole.
“Besides, he’s only a boy,” said one of the sisters softly. “He couldn’t have been at the tournament, Seya.”
“Your brother was beaten by his fiancée at the tournament. He’s pathetic!”
“My brother is not pathetic!”
The other elf began to draw his sword. Lyrestan paled and backed away, holding his staff with a death-grip and clearly thinking about calling for help. The sisters and cousins backed away too, suddenly afraid.
“I’ll ask for the last time. Will you let me speak to someone older than a mere boy?”
“A-are you going to try and kill me?” Lyrestan managed to squeak.
The elf looked down at the sword in his hand. “No. But I will beat some sense into you, kid.”
Lyrestan’s eyes widened, and he gave a little whimper of fright just before he blocked the first strike of the elf’s sword.
Then a dark-blue blur shot into the room and hooked an arm around the Griffonland elf’s neck, trapping his sword arm behind his back.
“What are you doing?” Zela hissed in his ear. “Why are you attacking the prince? Are you stupid?”
Lyrestan vanished out the back door of the room, his face white as a sheet. He dropped the dented curtain pole behind him.
“Lady Zela,” said the Griffonland elf coldly. “Come to defend your future family?”
“I was only passing. What were you fighting about?”
“Well, perhaps you’ll be reasonable. I doubt it, though. Who around this castle of stupid pacifists will give us reparation for the wrongs done us?”
“Keep up this kind of behaviour, and I’ll tell the prince to demand reparation from you,” Zela replied, keeping the elf pinned.
Flaer and Lyrestan entered, with Gyoriing and several guards. Lyrestan was still pale and stood close behind his brother, but more relaxed now that he was not alone. Flaer looked tired. Evidently the Dragonland people had been having similar discussions with him.
Zela released the elf and he stood still, a guard on either side of him.
Flaer took a deep breath and motioned his brother forward. Lyrestan nodded and spread his hands.
“Go home and cool off. It’s too soon to think straight. Mourn your brother! In a few years, think it over. Think whether you want revenge on a family that has lost as much as you have.”
The Griffonland elves made no reply, but at a nod from Gyoriing, left the room without arguing.
Lyrestan ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “I have no idea what just happened. Why can’t I negotiate with reasonable people?”
“Reasonable people are harder to find than you might think,” Zela said.
“I disagree,” Flaer said, sitting down; Lyrestan followed, but Zela remained standing, pacing slowly back and forth with the skirt of her dress swirling around her legs. “But I’m not happy with today’s outcome. Will they get over their anger, or will they let it become bitterness? Murder is like a poison, spreading its touch to all who even hear about it.”
“Two weeks ago, we didn’t even have a word for it,” Lyrestan said sadly. “Brother, I don’t think you’re pathetic.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Those people called you pathetic. Maybe you should practice swordfighting more.”
Flaer looked over at his younger brother. “Why should you care what they think?”
“Well, I think I can only be a diplomat as long as the people I’m talking to respect me. First I need to get older, obviously,” he said, smiling a little. “But I’m going to train with my axe until I’m as strong as anyone. I don’t need to fight anyone, and I don’t need to go to tournaments-“
“Though it might be entertaining,” Zela put in.
“But I can still be good at fighting, and that might help. Though maybe it’s already too late.”
“It’s never too late for anything,” Flaer said warmly.
Flaer and Zela were married a few years later, and Zela left her woodland home permanently to live in the Moonland castle. Yoeath followed her, but left often to return to the northern forests.
Their first son was born many short years later, and they named him Flairé, that is, Son of Valiant. Soon after his sister Flaria and his brother Menad followed. Flairé grew into an active, mischievous bundle, climbing the highest trees within the castle grounds, or chasing the wind along the walls. Flaria was much more reserved, but Menad followed his elder brother. Flairé noticed, and together he and Flaria kept their darling little brother out of trouble.
Zela and Flaer were busy much of the day, but kept their duties to separate days so that every day one of them would be with their children. Flaer instructed them in music and literature; Flaria especially would often come and curl up on her father’s lap with a book they would read together. Menad was less interested and would run and hide, playing on his own with stones and dolls, or practicing music in private, away from his father. Flairé took up playing wind instruments and percussion, though he also learned well in strings and harp. He was always playing, eager to show his father some new thing he had learned or made up.
Zela was a harder teacher. Unlike Flaer and his natural empathy, she treated everything seriously, and without much tenderness, challenging her children to strive for more and more perfection, just as she drove herself.
Flairé, of all people, didn’t mind, cheerfully undergoing increasingly rigorous exercises in dance and swordplay. Often, Zela would have him practicing one series of dance steps for a whole day, and he would finish at dusk and come in from the little dance stage he had set up in a corner of the garden, exhausted but triumphant; while Flaria, who would take the time to practice her harp playing to provide music for her brother, would follow less enthusiastically, flexing her tired fingers. Flairé loved dance, even more than he loved pipe, and he tried doing both at once until he was good enough to be able to keep music going for himself, even when Flaria decided she was busy.
Menad, again, was harder to find; he often snuck off to climb trees, and Zela let him, seeing that he was growing stronger by this. Sometimes, though, he would come of his own accord and beg for sparring lessons, though he was only a little boy still, and that was the time that Zela and Menad most enjoyed.
One evening, when it was just growing dark, Flaer appeared in the door of the garden – he had just returned, from discussing the placement of a new orchard with a group of farmers, to the Lilemlen castle.
Zela was watching Flairé practicing his dancing; before, he had only done it for fun, but Zela had begun teaching him a few years ago the proper way to move, and now he spent hours a day perfecting it.
“All right; Father’s home; can I take a break?” Flairé asked, breathing heavily as he paused on the edge of his little wooden stage, twisting his head to look upside down at his mother.
“No; keep going; show Father what you have practiced today. Your sister and I will sing for you.”
Flairé sighed and let his head flop, then twisted back upright. “Yes, Mother.”
“You love it,” accused Flaria, rubbing her hands together as she came hurrying out from the alcove where she had been reading, sitting down at her harp to play.
“I do, but ten hours a day… Haven’t I learned it well enough by now? I have years ahead of me to keep perfecting it. Why does it have to be perfect now?”
“You’ll thank me later, when you can move as you want with grace and ease,” Zela told him, her eyes glinting. “It’s how I live, and I didn’t have anyone to push me along.”
“You don’t need to push him,” Flaer said gently, sitting down on the grass nearby. “He’s doing fine.”
“I agree with Mother,” Flairé said unexpectedly. “It will be super when I can go anywhere in any way, perfectly safely, because of my amazing strength.” He laughed at his own flippancy, then hid his smile as Zela raised an eyebrow at him.
“One must be prepared for anything,” she said simply.
“But where is Menad?” Flaer asked. “Is he up a tree again?”
“Here I am, Father,” called a thin, high-pitched voice from somewhere above. Flaer looked up, and saw the dark head of his second son peeking through the branches of the pine above him. “I did a little dancing, but I’d rather be up here.”
“Why don’t you come down and join us?” Flaer called to his son. “It’s nice to be together, isn’t it?”
Menad hesitated, then nodded, skittering down the tree as if he weren’t even holding on.
“Careful,” Flaer said automatically when his son reached the ground.
“I’m always careful, Father,” the little boy replied, sitting down behind Flaria. “You know me, always comfortable up a tree.”
“I know.” Flaer began to say something more, but Flairé had begun to move, and Flaria was already playing. Zela’ voice rang out strong and glad, and Flairé took off.
Spinning, leaping, the young princeling of the Lilemlen showed just how graceful, quick, and inventive he was.
Flaer applauded when he had finished.
“Now can I stop, Mother?” Flairé asked, panting even harder. “I’m hungry.”
Zela watched him with narrowed eyes, then smiled and nodded. “I suppose a growing boy can’t go without food. Come along and we’ll make supper.”
Flairé smiled happily and hopped down from his stage.
Zela looked at the sky and sighed. “And I guess you can have the evening off, too. It’s getting dark, and you’re not ready for night dancing yet. You might hurt yourself.”
“Oh, Mother, you say that every day.”
“In two months, when the night begins to lengthen, then you can start learning.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
The family had not heard of trouble in the Griffonland or Dragonland for some time. Whenever they visited either land – Zela had taken up a habit of wandering everywhere in the Adhemlenei, the Four Kingdoms, and memorizing each place as if she’d lived there for years – people seemed content and busy, making music or food or houses or ornament. The Griffonland grew the most food in the Adhemlenei, and mined jewels from their western mountains, while timber and gold and epic poetry came from the Unicornland. The Dragonland was famous for their metalworking and general craftsmanship, and the Moonland, besides its fame for music, exported fish and other jewels, and woodcarving.
Gyoriing and Layalin were still courting, each cautious about the other’s feelings, but equally sure that they had all the time in the world to find out.
