The prince’s hair was the same pale flax as his sister’s, but his eyes were very different. While Grae’s were the emerald of the forest, the prince’s were the blue of a brilliant summer sky, and quite suddenly Karigan was shaken by images of another Eletian whose eyes had been strikingly similar.
The prince regarded her steadily, while Karigan stood paralyzed by the eyes of Shawdell.
“Ari-matiel Jametari,” Grae introduced, “prince of Eletia.”
The prince rose. No crown did he wear, no jewels, nor did he carry a scepter—nothing to indicate station or power. It was all in his bearing. He wore only a simple silvery-blue tunic tied with a cord about his waist, and loose trousers. He seemed to pull starlight to him and reflect it, so that it almost hurt Karigan’s eyes to look upon him.
His contempt, however, was plain to see, his scrutiny worse than Grae’s, for now Karigan felt herself not only an object to be viewed, but an object of disdain.
“If there is a reason you have brought me here,” Karigan said, “I’d like to hear it.” As a representative of Sacoridia, her disrespect was inexcusable, but so was their haughty treatment of her, and the passing of each second drew her patience closer to its limit. Whether or not they called her a guest, she felt more like a criminal.
Those blue eyes met hers, proud and chilling. “I would see you for myself.” His voice was a melodious echo of Shawdell’s.
“Why?”
“You sent my son to his death.”
“Shawdell.”
“Yes.” The prince stood there, his eyes holding her captive. Accusing her? Assessing her? Eletians were too unknown a quantity, their minds too alien for her to guess what went on there. Had she been brought before the prince for some form of judgment or retaliation?
The prince broke eye contact, returned to his chair, and sat. Then the blue eyes captured her again.
“Can you comprehend an eternal life, Galadheon?”
“No.”
The prince nodded. “A wise response. Death is a rare occurrence among my kind, though once many died during the Cataclysm.”
Karigan waited for the prince to accuse her of murdering his son, for ending an eternal life, but the words of accusation did not come. His eyes merely became great wells of grief, and this was accusation enough.
“What do you know of times past; of the times beyond what you call the First Age?” he asked.
His question took her off guard. “Very little.”
“Your folk have not the long memories of mine,” Prince Jametari said. “Yours is fragmented and faded by the discontinuity of mortal lives. Our folk have seen the building of mountains and the encroachment of ice, and its melting into the sea. We’ve seen the birth of stars and the gathering of moons. We’ve watched forests grow and spread.”
Karigan realized she listened to a voice of the ages.
“The tiendan brought you to me not simply because you ended my son’s life. That is of little matter at the moment. No, they brought you because there are things that must be said. Things of the past, things of the future.” He tilted his head and the moonstones turned his eyes into tiny silver mirrors, and he smiled, mystery sealed behind his lips. “You are not unknown to us, and not only for your vanquishing my son.”
Telagioth emerged from the shadows of the clearing, and Karigan realized there were others of the tiendan standing along its perimeter in their milky armor. Spines protruded from the shoulders of one figure, and she shuddered.
Telagioth brought forward a translucent and delicate bowl. He held it reverently and said, “Greetings, Galadheon. So we do meet again.”
“How did you know we would?”
Telagioth smiled. “The prince is most wise.”
Prince Jametari left his chair and took the bowl from Telagioth. He sat cross-legged on the ground and placed it before him in the grass. He indicated with a gesture that Karigan should join him. Grae and Telagioth drifted away to the fringes of the clearing.
Karigan dropped to the ground beside the prince, the starlight that gathered around him hurting her eyes in such close proximity. She blinked and looked away, wishing he’d just get on with whatever he wanted to discuss, but she gathered that with Eletians, everything was a dance. A mystery.
“Our people are diminishing,” the prince said. “The flames of our lives are on the brink of disappearing from Everanen, the Earth, for all time. We are in danger of becoming but echoes of memory in tales and song, among the mortals, who have spawned in great numbers across the lands. Our decline began long ago.
“First we shall speak of the past, so you might understand our plight.” His expression fell distant as though he traveled in a daydream. “In the time before your counted ages, preceding even the Black Ages, Eletians were the power of Everanen. It was our age, for the element of magic, which flows from all living things, was plentiful. We understood it, and harnessed it for good.
“Mortalkind, the bestial beings they were in those days, revered and feared us for it, though they, too, possessed rudimentary skills with magic, but did not recognize it as such. Abilities to heal or foretell the weather were seen as the works of their gods, not as something that came from within. Never did we expect your kind to grow in strength and knowledge—and cunning. We underestimated your ambition.
“And thus came the Black Ages, with war upon the Eletians, and the wars the mortal tribes committed upon one another. Truly we wished mortalkind would exterminate itself, but we also underestimated the tenacity of your kind, your will to survive and exist.