Firelight glowed on rich polished oak, making Lord Ralan's desk seem to be crafted of gold. It warmed the mahogany of chairs to deep red, and the crystal carafe looked as if it had been cut from one whole ruby, so deeply did the fire's light shine in the wine. Outside, the world hung gray, pouring with rain beneath a sky the color of lead. Inside, ah, inside the study of Lord Ralan, things were far more pleasant.

Lord Tellin Windglimmer had been standing awhile, unattended in Ralan's study, but the wait was not an unpleasant one. Warm by the fire, he passed the time looking around at the high ceiling of his host's study and the tapestries on the walls, each depicting a scene from Silvanesti history.

Upon the grandest of those hangings Silvanos was shown, a king in his kingdom. He stood in the midst of a circle of towers, each tower representing one of the Houses of the people. In that tapestry even an elf child could read the history of his people and know how in ancient days Silvanos gathered together all the tribes of elf-kind and imposed upon them an order, a structure of Houses that survived even to this day. The head of each house, the Householder, became a member of the Silvanos Council, the Sinthal-Elish, and from them the king and all kings who followed sought advice when he wanted it or endured it when his council insisted he hear it.

First, the ancient king anointed House Silvanos, which people now knew as House Royal. He then ordained House Cleric, among whom lived the priests, temple-keepers, and those who maintained the records of the nation. The defenders of Silvanesti were men and women of House Protector. In his wisdom, Silvanos had gathered to himself magic-users, and he created for them House Mystic, giving to them the charge of training mages. He said to them, and they swore to him, that the magic of red Lunitari, which existed for its own sake, and that of Nuitari, which existed in darkness, would be forbidden. No other magic would be done in the kingdom but that of Solinari-white magic, the magic of Good. It had ever been so, and what shoots from that mystic branch that had tried to grow toward the magic of Lunitari's neutrality or Nuitari's darkness were ruthlessly pruned. They were taken to the Temple of E'li, accused and judged in the dread Ceremony of Darkness, then cast out from the kingdom and the company of their kindred to survive as best they might among the outlanders, humans and dwarves and minotaurs. The exiles were named dark elves, for they had fallen from the light. They did not have a long history of survival, those dark elves, for there were few Silvanesti who did not view life among outlanders as life among madmen in lands of chaos. When they died, they most often died by their own hands.

Great Silvanos also created other castes: House Metalline for the miners; House Advocate, where tradition was kept and law was made; House Mason of the stone-wrights; House Gardener, whose folk grew the food that fed a kingdom; and House Woodshaper, whose folk had the magic of wild spirits sparkling gently in their blood. One other house the king made, and that was House Servitor. This creation of his did not turn out to be what he'd hoped, for he had first called to him the elves of the Elderwild, that strange clan of hunters and explorers who seemed, perversely, to thrive in the hinterlands away from others of their kind. Silvanos, seeing no worth in their wild ways, sought to fit them into his caste structure as servants. The leader of that clan, Kaganos the Pathfinder, defied the king's will and took his people out from Silvanesti Forest. He would not condemn them to serve in the halls of others when he could lead them to a place where they could live free as hunters and practitioners of their own strange kind of wild magic. And so, Silvanos, who would not constrain those who wished to leave, no matter how mad-minded their choice seemed to him, created House Servitor from all those left un-housed, those whose menial jobs and skills fit nowhere else.

Every elf child knew this. Tellin had known it from the cradle, for his was a family of record-keepers, and history ran in his veins as blood.

"Good day, my Lord Tellin-good, if you like rain." Lord Ralan came into the study, flushed, a little harried, or perhaps, Tellin thought, somewhat impatient. "Forgive me for keeping you waiting. A matter having to do with a servant."

"Please, do not apologize," Tellin murmured. "I have been enjoying the wait."

Ralan nodded to the tapestry. "My mother's family had it for generations. She brought it to her marriage, and it is said that this is an accurate depiction of Silvanos, for it was made only decades after his death by one who actually knew him." He smiled, the quiet contented expression of one who is certain of his truths.

"It is lovely," Tellin said, though he did not think the tapestry had so grand a history as Ralan or his family imagined. He said no such thing to his host, however. Instead he murmured, "But I wonder why we don't see the Tower of the Stars there, only the towers representing the various Houses."

Ralan pursed his lips and frowned, thinking. History was no favorite study of his. "I think my father once said that's because Silvanos himself was our tower, our tower of strength, our Tower of the Stars." He shrugged. "Or did he say that the tapestry was woven in the time before the Tower was built? Ah, well, I don't recall. Either makes a good story."

Tellin smiled, agreeing that either did. Ralan was a good host, a good friend to the Temple of E'li, generous to a fault, and, if truth were told, devoted to the Dragon's Lord, blessed with a simple faith that never wavered. "We are the best beloved of the gods of Good," he often said, "the first-born, the people who never gave up faith." Ralan, like many elves, took great pride in his faith and comfort in the belief that the gods of Good must love elves better than all other folk. How could they not? After the Cataclysm, outlanders went searching for gods to replace those they believed gone from the world, elevating mortals, praying to who knew what, but the elves had never lost faith.

Ralan filled glasses from the crystal decanter, one for him and one for his guest. Tellin accepted the wine, and when he saw Ralan settled into his good mood, he hitched up his courage. In the pocket of his robe a small gift lay, a prayer-scroll. Somewhere in this house was Lady Lynntha, Ralan's sister. Perhaps she stood watching out a window, her silvery hair the same color as the rain falling, her eyes gray as the storm-sky. Perhaps even now she lifted a lovely hand to trace an idle pattern upon the windowpane, in the mist her sweet breath laid there. They had known each other as children when Lynntha came to worship in the Temple of E'li and Tellin was a boy wondering how closely his fate would be tied to the same temple. When they had entered adolescence, they had not moved in the same circles. How could they? Tellin lived in his books, and Lynntha was the daughter of a House whose strictest tenet forbade the mingling of Woodshaper blood with that of any other House, even House Royal. It was a magical bloodline, one that carried down through the generations talents of earth-heal and woodshaping no other elf shared.

And yet… and yet he had not forgotten Lynntha, her smoky eyes, her silvery hair. He had not forgotten how sweet was the curve of her cheek or the sound of her voice. Lynntha yet lived in the family home, an estate beyond the city, and though her parents were five years dead, she remained unwed. The matter, of course, was in her brother's hands now, and Tellin had heard no whisper that a marriage was in the offing. What did he hope? That he would trot out the old formula, the strange and lovely words of another time, and say to Ralan, "I would that I might take your sister to wed, my lord, and I trust you will grant me your weal and your blessing to pursue my suit with her." Did even his wildest dream imagine that Ralan would suddenly look at the traditions of his House and see them as nothing, or that Lynntha herself would do that? Yes, he hoped these things, and he was a fool for hoping, but he didn't know how else to be.