“Things aren’t going well for us, Kerian.”

“The alliance?”

He nodded. “My mother has hung her hope on an alliance with the dwarves for as many years as I’ve been alive, Kerian. It’s become more urgent now. The dragon is building her cache and her war trove. The Senate has heen told the tribute in weapons must increase.” He twisted a bitter smile. “Of course, the tribute in gold, silver, and gems must not decrease. We hear from friends outside the kingdom that the dragons are growing restless. Once Beryl gets all she needs of us, what will she do? We need a way out. All of us, Qualinesti and Kagonesti.”

A way out!

Like the sudden glint of starlight on the sword’s blade, Kerian knew her moment, the moment when something bright would be born.

“My king, my love, you need time. There is no way to truly end the dragon’s hold on us or Thagol’s grip. That isn’t the goal anymore, is it? The goal must be to confound and confuse them until Thorbardin can make up its mind.

“I have come with the coin to buy you the time you need. I have come to bring you warriors. They are few now, but the Wilder Kin in the forest have reason to appreciate us. I think this force of warriors I offer can be as many as you desire.”

Gilthas looked at her long, his face alight, his hope shining. “Who are you?” he whispered, and she thought she heard a note of superstitious wonder in his voice, as though some mage of old had cast a change-spell upon her.

Kerian took his hands in her own. “Why, I thought you knew. I am the King’s Outlaw, my love. I am your weapon, I am your warrior, and I am your lover, my lord king. Never doubt it.”

In the golden firelight he looked upon her as though upon something magical, powerful, and his.

There, in his bed, they began to speak of something no one else had ventured to discuss in all the years of the dragon’s occupation, through all the depredations of her Knights. While Senator Rashas and his fellows enjoyed the hospitality of the king they professed to honor and yet in truth despised for a weakling, the king and his outlaw began to speak of resistance to all they had until now endured.

The King’s Outlaw left Wide Spreading the next day, a freezing day of black and gray. She left with her breath pluming out before her, carried by the following wind. Gilthas had provided food and a pouch ringing with steel coins. A fat quiver of arrows hung at her hip, a fine long bow across her shoulders. In its sheath was the bone-handled knife she’d had from a dour dwarf, the sword she’d taken off a battleground.

Kerian went up into the forest with her hope rising. What she’d said to Gil about the Kagonesti having reason to be grateful to her and her fighters was true. She would try to rally them all, the elusive tribes, and ask if they would join her and make the elf king’s cause their own. First, before all, however, she would try her brother, for these were kin.

She knew the way to Eagle Flight’s encampment, though her brother had not told or shown her. She knew because Jeratt knew, for he came and went when times allowed, to see his niece Ayensha. He used to say to Kerian, “You know the way, but don’t go unless you have to,” and by that she knew that her brother would not have welcomed her. Now, this snow-threatening day, she decided she would go, and it wouldn’t be up to Dar to decide whether she should come.

When she found him, she found him standing as one who trembled on the edge of the legendary Abyss.

Kerian’s nostrils filled with the nauseating stench of burnt flesh and bone. Under an iron sky the earth Iydahar stood upon stretched out to a purling river, a great gaping blackness of ash and burning. He didn’t see her, or if he did, he didn’t care. He knelt before a pit still steaming from a great burning, grey tendrils ghosting up from the charnel pit and wolves lurking across the river, staring. He didn’t care about wolves, for he carried no weapon, not even a knife at his belt. He dipped his hand into the pit, into sooty ash, and he stood.

Iydahar turned slowly. She saw that his hands were dark with soot, as he rose and came toward her. He moved as though stalking. She wasn’t sure he recognized her. Kerian’s hand drifted to her knife, then fell away. She did not challenge her brother but took a step away to let him know she was no threat.

“Sister,” he hissed, “you’ve come to visit? Too bad, too late. Knights came before you did, with torches and swords. We stood as best we could, but…”

They were a dozen Knights with swords and maces, They were a dozen Knights and encased in armor like midnight. Their war-horses were weapons, steel-shod hoofs trampling any who resisted, and then any who got in the way. Old people, little children, they died under the steel shoes as warriors scrambled for arrows that in the end did little damaged to armor-cased Knights.

Dar gestured around the blackened ruin of what had once been the encampment of the small tribe of Wilder Elves, a winter home by the river. Looking at him standing in the ruin, Kerian heard, faint, the echoes of that killing, as though the cries of the slaughtered yet clung to the woodland and the hills beyond.

“There’s no one here but me now.”

Ayensha! Ah, gods! Bueren Rose!

“No,” he said, understanding her frantic glances around, but the sound was a growling, hardly a word. “They’re not there. My wife survived the burning, and Bueren Rose. A few others, too. They are off and away, gone to be with your outlaws.”

His hand shot out, grabbing her wrist with grinding strength. She did not pull away or force him to disengage. Dar bent She watched, fascinated, as he ran his fingers through ash and soot like a painter’s brush on a palette. He rose again, making one stroke and then another; he painted her face in patterns of soot.

Finger pressing the flesh of her face roughly, he made a mask of darkness on her, and he said, “Do you remember, Kerianseray? Or have you so far fallen that you’ve forgotten how the Wilder Folk mourn? Do you remember how to paint your sorrow on your face?”

He blackened her brow. Kerian let him. He smudged her temples. He ran a sooty thumb down her nose, and he smeared her chin with the heel of his hand. His teeth flashing in a terrible grin, he darkened her cheeks, and when he was done, he flung back his head and he raised his fists as though to threaten the sky.

“They are dead!” he shouted, to her, to the forest, to the sky where people used to turn their faces and imagine they could speak with gods. “They are dead! The children! The mothers! The fathers!”

As he turned, she saw that the strength had run out of him with the shouting. Kerian leaped. She caught him before his knees gave way. He bore them both to the ground, but she dropped first to her knees and so was able to lower him gently.

She knew how to mourn. Though she had not practiced the Wilder mourning in many long years, she had not forgotten how to grieve. They wept the grief-storm, brother and sister. They washed away all the colors of sorrow with their tears. One wept for all the people he knew, the other for all the people she would never know.

In the end, with night falling, they began to talk. Iyda-har spoke of his rage, while Kerian spoke of her mission. He told her how well and deeply he hated the Knights, how little love he had for her king.

“The boy who sold his throne. For what? A year or two to play at being king?”

Anger rose in her, flushing her cheeks till then cool with sorrow. “No, Dar, don’t speak of Gilthas that way. He’s-”

His expression grew hard. It was as though a door had suddenly swung shut. “Ah, you, Keri. No one could miss the secret you hold, girl. It’s all over you, all the time. So you keep his bed warm, do you? Aye, well,” he growled bitterly, “good for the little king, then. If he doesn’t get to rule or wield armies, he gets some of the privileges and rights of kings. “