Lord Tellin looked up from his pages-lists or reports or some small work of his own-past Dalamar to the garden. People stood in small groups, some just come out from service, others waiting to go in. His eye searched for one in particular, Lady Lynntha, who had been each day at the earliest service, lifting her voice in the Dawn Hymn.

"Do what?" he asked Dalamar, but absently. He saw her, tall and slender, standing a little apart from a group of other young women. She looked around idly. This had been going on since the day she'd come to return Tellin's gift. Her voice was now a regular part of the prayer services.

"Anything." Dalamar saw glances meet, Tellin and Lynntha's. Dangerous, he thought, dangerous, my Lord Tellin. "All they do is pray and feed troops up to the border."

"And these things are nothing?" Tellin reached for his pen, found the quill's tip split, and took up another.

"Yes." Dalamar turned his back to the garden and the people milling there. "Lord Garan, I think, would agree."

Tellin looked up, surprised and perhaps amused to hear so bold an opinion from a servant. He had heard one or two similar opinions in the last weeks. Dalamar had changed since he had returned to the Grove of Learning to take up his studies in magic again. He grew bolder, more confident, and it seemed to Tellin that this was both a good thing and bad. He did want a mage skilled in the healing arts, one who could put his talents to use should that become necessary. Who would not want one near who knew how to imbue a salve with magical properties? And yet… and yet there were these bold, striding opinions, which, even if they sometimes matched Tellin's own thoughts, were not seemly in a servitor.

Perhaps this, he thought, is why we don't allow them too much knowledge of art and literature and magic. They overreach. And yet, Tellin didn't think the reach of this careful and cunning servant often exceeded his grasp.

"Do you think Lord Garan would agree with you, Dalamar? Well, perhaps. But hindsight-"

"Yes," Dalamar interrupted, "it's the best sight. Still, seeing backward, I know that a mistake was made to forge treaties with Phair Caron. Another was made when the king delayed Lord Garan's hand for the sake of building up troops. The Highlord, it seems, built a stronger force than we can muster."

The words fell like the ring of steel into the room. Tellin looked away from the garden, his eyes dark and troubled. He heard the truth of what Dalamar said, and he knew that truth was being whispered in other quarters. Still, it was not right to engage in such speculation with a servitor.

"Easy enough to say," Tellin murmured, shuffling his pages to say he'd done with this talk, "now that all deeds are done."

Dalamar took a moment to decide whether he would accept dismissal. Then softly he said, "I suppose you're right, but seeing forward, I know how that mistake can be rectified."

Tellin put aside his quill again, this time not smiling. "Have you been making war plans, Dalamar? Isn't that better left to-"

"-to my betters?" Dalamar shrugged. "I suppose you might think so, my lord, if you thought the heart of a servitor were not as deeply filled with love for his homeland as the hearts of lords and ladies."

Tellin winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

Yes, said Dalamar's cool smile, you meant just that. "Look what my betters have wrought. Have you heard it," he said, "that the refugees from this war are not marching neatly to the cities on the river? People with maps thought they would do that, but people in terror simply run. These are trampling their way to Silvanost, hungry and cold and frightened. Come, I suppose, to see what the best of their betters have to say about things."

Tellin's eyes narrowed at this impudence. Dalamar wondered whether he had pushed the cleric too far. He did not back down, though. He had been a long time considering his plan, and most of this morning looking at the maps in this very room when what he should have been doing was sharpening quills, scraping parchment clean, and laying out the lists of stores for Tellin to review and amend.

"My Lord Tellin," he said, striving to keep a tone that wouldn't alienate his master. "I have a lot of time to think out there in the woods where the herbs are. And I have a chance to hear what is being said in the city among the people. Lords and ladies, they don't look to see if a servant is near. We are invisible to them. And so they speak freely, and we listen freely. I know we elves held our hand too long, and now we suffer for it. We let advocates and emissaries steer our defense, as though we were in some court of law and not at war. We put our trust in treaties that Phair Caron had no mind to honor. Now we are too late to the border with too few soldiers." Softly, he said, "You know that as well as I, my lord."

Tellin looked out the window again. Lynntha's voice lifted in sudden laughter. Her brother had come to escort her home from the Temple. He watched her turn and walk away, lovely on Lord Ralan's arm. Her cheeks were sun-gold. Her silver hair, caught back from her face and captured in a glittering jeweled net, hung heavy on her long slender neck. What would happen to her if the Wildrunners could not hold the border? Who would defend her and keep her safe?

Tellin shuddered and looked at Dalamar, his impertinent servant. "Tell me," he said, reluctant to show enthusiasm, and yet curious. "Tell me what plan you have."

And then what? He could not go to the Speaker of the Stars and say, "Beg pardon, my lord king, but my servant has come up with a brilliant plan of defense." Certainly he could not! War plans from the servant of a cleric whose duty it was to keep the records in the Temple of E'li? This was idiocy! And yet, he was curious.

Dalamar sensed that curiosity as if it were something to smell. He crossed the tiled floor and took out a map from the chest of drawers. He spread the map upon the marble table and said, "First, my lord, let us agree that we are not at the center of the world."

Tellin listened, growing by turns astonished, disbelieving, and finally accepting. When Dalamar had finished talking, the sunlight was long gone from the garden, having moved around the back of the Temple. Noontide services had come and gone. Somewhere out by the docks a bell tolled.

"Of course," Dalamar said, and now he smiled a little, "if you think this plan is good, you must take it to whomever you decide needs to hear it and say that it is your own. After all, who would heed the ideas of a servitor?"

Tellin sat back, shaking his head. Who would heed a servitor, indeed? No one. Yet, who but a mage could explain this idea? No one.

Dalamar stood in the Tower of the Stars. He looked up into the high recesses of the chamber and watched the light of stars and the two risen moons glimmering down the walls, dancing on the gems imbedded in the marble walls. Almost, he thought, you can hear that light laughing, singing the songs of the spheres. All around him he felt the ancient magic that had made this marvelous place, echoes of spellcasting done hundreds of years before. Any who chose to attend could feel the wispy remnants of that ancient magic, but none felt that tingling, that echo of mighty spellwork as a mage did. To stand here now was like hearing music drifting out from a distant window, ancient songs and old, old melodies.

Voices of another kind drifted down into the audience chamber from the gallery, ashy whispers with no tones to let him determine one from the other. Beside him, Lord Tellin tried to keep a calm, respectful stillness in this place of power, but the cleric could not hold quiet for long.

Tellin looked around in the great audience chamber, eyes darting here and there, from the magic-wrought walls to the silk-woven tapestries to the nine steps leading to the broad high dais where King Lorac's throne sat, a magnificent high seat of emerald and mahogany. Upon the mahogany where the king's shoulders rested, words of inlaid silver gleamed in the starlight: As lives the land, so live the Elves. Beside the throne a table stood, its surface made of rose glass, and upon that rosy surface an ivory sculpture of cupped hands, empty hands.