"Children," said the king, "tell me now what you have come to say."

Dalamar glanced at Tellin, as a matter of form, and when the cleric gestured, he said, "My king, it is plain to even the humblest member of my House that the courage of Lord Garan's Wildrunners will not likely stand against the greater numbers of Phair Caron's army."

In the silence following his words, he heard the Speaker's breath hitch, just a little.

Lord Garan hissed a curse. "How dare you say that, mageling?"

Dalamar ignored the insulting tone of Garan's voice and the offensive diminutive. He looked to the king and spoke only to him. "I dare say it, my king, because what I say is true. It might not be convenient that this truth is noticed by a servitor, or that a servitor has considered it and reckoned a way around it, but not the less, what I say is true."

"You have a quick tongue, Dalamar Argent." Lorac leaned forward, looking at Dalamar narrowly over the steeple of his fingers. "A quick tongue, and you would do well to use it now to tell me what plan you have made."

Fire snapped in the hearth, and ashes fell slithering into the fire bed. Dalamar's mouth went suddenly dry, and the words of an old saying came mocking to mind: Who leaps, leaps best when he knows where he will land. Of course, who doesn't leap at all, knowing or unknowing, gets to stand at the edge of the precipice until he must turn back with nothing earned but the failure to act.

Unacceptable.

"I would strike at the Highlord from behind, my king, and-"

Lord Garan's laughter snapped out, stinging. "You'd do that, eh? Haven't you heard that all the northern lands from Khur to Nordmaar are occupied by Phair Caron's army?"

"I've heard," Dalamar murmured, his eyes low, a small smile playing around his lips. He looked up again, assuming an expression of innocent frankness that fooled the Head of House Protector not at all. "No doubt you've heard, my lord, that there is a mage or two in the kingdom with skills that might facilitate my idea? Illusions skillfully cast will make our forces advancing from the south seem invisible to the eyes of the Highlord's army, while at the same time other illusions will make it seem they are being attacked from the north." He smiled, a chill twitch of his lips. "At which time, they'll turn to fight what isn't there, while the Wildrunners surround and attack them… from behind."

Ylle Savath, until then silent, lifted a hand, with the simple gesture capturing the attention of all. "My lord king," she said, "it might be well to remind this servitor that illusions are not the province of White magic. They are the province of Red magic. Here," she said, turning a glance upon Dalamar that was cold as winter and as dangerous, "here we practice constructive magic."

"And yet," Dalamar replied in his mildest tone, "it seems to me that we had better learn to construct some illusions, my lady."

Ylle Savath's eyes glinted sharp as knives. "If you are suggesting we practice any magic other than Solinari's, you come perilously close to blasphemy, Dalamar Argent."

Blasphemy.

The word hung in the stillness of the room. It seemed the flames in the hearth whispered it, once and again. At last Lorac stood, his face expressionless and masked by shadows.

"Young mage," he said, inclining his head in the only bow a king need make, that of courtesy to one of his people. "Young cleric, you have my leave to return to your homes. May E'li bless you on your way."

He lifted a hand and dropped it again. The flames in the hearth fell. The torches dimmed. Thus did the elf-king, the highest of all mages in his land, signal that there would be no more conversation here tonight, on this subject or any other.

Cardinals sang their chipping songs in the hedges of the Garden of Astarin. Late-goers, they were the last songbirds to sleep, the heralds of nightingales. The light of half-moons shone down, red and silver on the path away from the Tower of the Stars. Dalamar's blood sang brave songs, as it did when he was preparing to work magic. He had stood before the king, before Heads of Households, and he had laid out a bold plan, one he knew could work.

"It was a waste," Tellin said, "a waste of time and a waste of-"

Dalamar raised an eyebrow. "And a waste of the good will your family name gets you? Do you really think so, my lord?"

Tellin snorted. "Did you see the way Lady Ylle reacted to your idea? 'Blasphemy,' she called it. I tell you, Dalamar, you won no friends there. You won no favor with Lord Garan either, lecturing him on battleground tactics. What, by the names of all the gods of Good, makes you think either of them will second your plan to the king, even if Lorac is interested in it?"

Dalamar stopped, standing a long moment listening to the night. Wind sighed in the trees. Somewhere in the darkness a child laughed, and a woman's voice lifted in even-song, a lullaby for her baby. Lights glimmered in all the hollows and on all the hills. Towers built of marble rose up white in the starlight, some grand and high with wings of rooms reaching out from the base, others smaller and built in humbler imitation of their wealthy neighbors. A nightingale sang, and another joined in, their sweet liquid notes sounding in his heart like the very song of the nighttime forest.

"My Lord Tellin," he said, "they are talking of leaving here, the king and the Sinthal-Elish. You've heard the rumor. If things keep on as they are…" He looked away north to the borderlands. "If things keep on, I don't think it will be long before they make up their minds."

Tellin shuddered, his eyes dark in the night. Elves leave the Sylvan Land? Wasn't that, too, a kind of blasphemy? "How could they even consider it?"

Dalamar looked over his shoulder to the Tower of the Stars rising above the whispering crowns of the aspens. Light shone from windows normally dark at this hour. Yes, the king sat waking. He was thinking, turning over the plan presented him by a minor mage of a lowly House, a scheme that bore the taint of blasphemy. Of this, Dalamar was certain, for a dragonarmy savaged his northern reaches, and Lorac Caladon had no choice but to consider all options. Whether he'd choose this one or not, none could say. But he was considering.

"Desperate people, my lord, do things they might not otherwise consider."

Tellin smiled, but without humor. "So you've solved all the problems, have you, Dalamar?"

"No, my lord, not all."

In silence, he followed Tellin through the Garden of Astarin, past Astarin's temple where chanting prayers were sung, round the fragrant beds of jasmine and late wisteria, of starweed and moonflower and nodding columbine. Men and women of House Gardener worked there by the light of tall torches, watering flower beds, for such work was best done at night while the earth has respite from the thirsty sun. The earthy scent of wet dirt drifted up. Fireflies danced in the recesses of each hedge, hungry for the larvae of slugs.

It had been, indeed, love of his homeland that moved Dalamar to conceive this plan he'd put before the king-a real and abiding love such as every elf knows. He had not thought more than this moved him, not until this moment in the Garden of Astarin with the fireflies winking and the scent of jasmine in the air. As he walked, a wild hope rose again in his breast, one he'd thought banished. When his plan succeeded-and he knew it would-he would ask Lord Tellin to present his case to the mages of House Mystic, to ask that he be instructed as all other mages are, fully in the magic art. He dared hope now, for he'd stood among lords and spoken with a king who had heard him out, a king who might well heed what he heard.

When this plan proved itself, he would tell Lord Tellin that he wanted to learn all the magic he could and then one day go to the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, there to apply to the Conclave of Wizards in hope that they would grant him permission to take his Tests of Sorcery.