"Fire-Heart: Darkness Comes to Lyffes" by A.R. George

A Paladin's life was boring.

Lórannon had reached that disappointing conclusion just seven weeks after arriving at the little Paladinic Chapter of Lyffes, and was busy reflecting on it again as he swept out the dormitory – busier reflecting than sweeping, in fact.

It wasn't his fault. There was a lot of sweeping involved in becoming a Paladin, and Lórannon hated sweeping. He couldn't see the point of it – in the Great Woods he'd never had to sweep, since the forest floor wouldn't benefit much from the act, and he was damned if he could see how it benefited a Paladin. Perhaps Paladin-Initiates were supposed to beat demons to death with their brooms before they became fledged Paladins and got swords.

Mindless, pointless, repetitive physical exertion, he concluded. Father would love it.

Father wouldn't love the wooden broom-handle, though. Handling dead wood in such a callous, disrespectful fashion would have given the uptight hunter some manner of seizure. It even bothered Lórannon somewhat – a nagging in the back of his mind – although he was slowly becoming more accustomed to seeing and handling the cut timber around him. Still, it was tiresome being the only Wood Elf in the tiny country chapter ...

"Lórannon? Have you finished yet?"

Lórannon swore in his own language as one of the chapter's Paladins peered into the dormitory. It was Master Athelwych, the bushiest of these humans, and the biggest proponent of sweeping.

"I am still not used to the wood, sir," Lórannon said automatically in Common, making a demonstrative face at his broom.

Master Athelwych frowned slightly, dark eyes sober under thick, dark brows. He was, like all the Paladins, a very decent man, but slightly more resistant than most to Lórannon's labour-dodging. "Still not used to it?"

"I am sorry, sir. This wood –" Lórannon gravely lifted his broom – "your people could have cut from a soultree. This wood could be my second cousin's arm."

Master Athelwych muttered something and retreated.

Lórannon snorted to himself and went back to trailing bristles half-heartedly in the dust. That was another thing. None of these Paladins had a proper sense of humour. Of course his broom wasn't soultree wood, bound to a Wood Elf – he'd know, and there was no way he'd touch such a monstrous thing!

Swish.

Swish.

I hate being a Paladin-Initiate.

Swish.

Swish.

Why did I come here?

Swish.

Swish.

It's Rian's fault. That stupid boy ... why'd I come with him?

As if called by thoughts, a familiar voice suddenly lifted outside the dormitory, just audible amidst a gaggle of other human voices.

"- Absolutely shredded! What a day!"

"If I never walk another step again, it'll be fine by me! –Targest's tongue, Rian, look at your boots!"

"That's what I said – absolutely shredded! Feels like Master Athelwych marched us over glass!"

Eight chattering, dark-haired Eastern youths tramped into the dormitory, their tatty robes of Paladin-Initiate's grey clearly showing the miles they'd walked that morning. Without hesitation they each made beelines for their pallets and flopped down, letting out explosive sighs.

"Here's Go-Lightly Lórannon," grumbled the almost-baritone of young Thelyd, Lórannon's least-favourite fellow initiate. "Maiden's mercy, the masters excused you for sweeping and you didn't even finish that!"

"I could hike for a whole day and not come back mewling about my feet," retorted Lórannon coolly. "And I would not wear those silly shoes as I did it."

A groan came from Rian's pallet, and the boy himself sat up with an effort to look at Lórannon's feet. "Lórannon, get your boots on! You know the masters will take you to task again!"

"Probably what he wants, to get out of walking again," snorted Thelyd.

He glared at Thelyd's boots, not having a clear sight of the prone initiate's face, and then glared at Rian. But it was never satisfying to glare at Rian. Rian's face was an open, friendly moon beaming with patient goodwill, and he received all anger and hostility with an even-tempered shrug.

Lórannon found this polar opposite maddening, particularly on days like today. Swearing profusely in Wood Elven again, he stomped over to his hot, uncomfortable boots, stamped his bare feet into them, and clomped back to his sweeping.

Stupid Paladinic rules again! What's so important about wearing big buckets of leather over perfectly serviceable feet -?

"Lórannon, you shouldn't curse."

"I am speaking in my language, Rian," Lórannon said through his teeth. "How do you know I am cursing?"

"It's obvious, Goldenlocks," grunted Thelyd. "Stop it before a Paladin gets you doing laundry for a week – again."

"Thank you for your concern, Bigboots."

Thelyd's admittedly large feet shifted self-consciously at the end of his pallet.

"We shouldn't throw names at each other, either," Rian reproached.

Lórannon looked into the calm, forthright brown eyes of his one friend and restrained himself from punching one or both, it being another Paladinic Shouldn't. So many tiny, pedantic, pointless rules! Don't say this! Don't do that! He'd left his home village to escape just that kind of nonsense – but the Paladins were no different, as it turned out. If anything, they were worse.

The Wood Elf dropped his broom on the floor and went to lie down on his pallet.

"Lórannon, you –" Rian began.

"Shouldn't," finished Lórannon wearily. "I know."

---

This is more than another tantrum. This is more than another spoiled-brat stunt. When you leave the Great Woods, you can only return a visitor ...

Lórannon groaned in his half-sleep and swatted a nagging mosquito with his pillow, which was little more than a rag-stuffed bag. In his dreams he'd smelled the dry, fresh scent of the ferns he'd once slept on ...

They were prickly, thought the Wood Elf dismissively, and rolled over to try to drop fully into sleep again.

Be more than 'sure' before you go, you ignorant, selfish child. Be certain. To be born a child of the forest is a gift that most cannot imagine ...

What if ...

What if Elder Halénne hadn't used such strong words? What if Lórannon's father hadn't used the same words hours previous?

What if Lórannon hadn't lost his temper then?

But you always lose your temper. That's your name – Lórannon, Fire-Heart, the uncontrolled, unpredictable, unreasoning, incomprehensible, destructive –

Lórannon ran out of uncomplimentary Wood Elven descriptors for that ancient enemy, fire. In the Great Woods, they used only magic for light, heat and cooking. Fire was nothing but a natural obstacle, something to be beaten back and dealt with ...

"Eels! Eels, sir!" burst out the sleepy, frightened voice of young Gwyll, startling Lórannon out of his crackling thoughts.

"You're dreaming, Gwyll," he said, but Gwyll had already rolled over onto his other side, snoring peacefully. Irritated, Lórannon grabbed at his pillow again and lobbed it at Gwyll, sitting up on his pallet as the other initiates kept snoring on.

There'd be no sleep tonight, either. It was a good thing he didn't have to sleep as long as these logs of humans ...

---

Morning prayers in the schoolroom were a good time to catch up on sleep.

It wasn't Lórannon's fault. Master Athelwych's voice was flat as a quiet lake as it droned on about virtue and honesty and all the other things he'd slept through back home in his village.

"Lórannon!"

Go away, you irritating little saint, growled the Elf inwardly.

A foot started kicking at his chair. Thump-thump.

"Lórannon!" Rian's whisper hissed. "You're sliding off!"

I'm one-and-twenty summers, boy. You're five-and-ten. I'll decide when I'm sliding off.

Thump – thump – thump – crack!

Lórannon's eyes snapped open just in time for the broken leg of his chair to spill him backwards, thumping his head on the floor and affording him a good view of the little schoolroom's rafters. Rian's mortified face leaned over into view, but Master Athelwych beat him to speaking.

"Boys! Are you paying attention?"

Lórannon crawled up from the wreckage in the front row, preparing a stinging indictment of the dangers of the establishment's unnatural wooden chairs –

"It was my fault, sir. I kicked Lórannon's chair. I'm sorry."

Rian had stood up from his seat, ramrod-straight, to deliver the apology, his patient eyes on Master Athelwych.

"You only kicked it to wake Goldenlocks," muttered Thelyd audibly next to Rian.

"Yes, my head is fine, thank you for worrying!" Lórannon flared waspishly.

Master Athelwych's mouth twitched somewhere from the depths of his bushy brown beard. "You appear to be in good enough health to stand and raise your voice, Lórannon, as usual," he observed. "Rian, please give Lórannon your seat in case of a dizzy-spell, and sit on the floor yourself."

Both parties obeyed, with Lórannon still prickling, glaring at Thelyd as he sat next to him.

Master Athelwych returned to his monotonous prayer recital. Lórannon gave up on his napping to gaze around the room, reasoning that his command of Common did not yet extend to these formal, complicated devotions in any case.

The schoolroom was a small, bare box of wood hung with maps and stacked with aging chairs hinting at the Lyffes chapter's former capacity – several dozen. Through one of the little windows Lórannon could see the rest of the little chapter complex: the grassy drilling field and paddock directly outside, the low-roofed dormitory, the dirty-thatched mess hall and kitchen, the stone chapel and chapter offices now manned by just three chapter caretakers – busy Master Athelwych, skinny Master Oweyn and hawk-nosed Master Trebeld, the only Paladin not born an Easterner.

And then there was a small glimpse of the Fence.

Lórannon hated the Fence – hated it even more than sweeping. It was a tall wooden palisade around seven feet high, cutting off the chapter from the rest of the tiny settlement of Lyffes. Granted, Lyffes wasn't a very interesting place, but Lórannon resented the imposition of the Fence with all his Wood Elven being.

It was such a human idea. In the Great Woods, the only places one didn't go were the places one couldn't go.

The Woods, somewhere beyond the wrinkles of the lesser-forested hills cradling Lyffes, deep and serene and alive with every tingling breath and whisper ...

Sleepy and boring and full of sleepy, boring people, Lórannon fired back at his treacherous brain, angry to feel such a severe, stabbing pain of loss. He jerked his gaze back from the window, blinking to chase pesky motes of dust from his eyes, and looked back to droning Master Athelwych.

I was born there, fine. But I didn't think the same as everyone else. I didn't want to sit and bob to the Elders and take occasional pot-shots at lost outsiders. The Woods weren't my place. Just think how they named me – for destructive, unwelcome fire!

Lórannon blinked harder. The dust in this place really was terrible.

I don't feel I should be here either.

He stamped on the thought. Quiet. Pay attention.

You can't go back to the Woods anyway, once you leave ...

Can't hear the trees any more ...

"Lórannon?" Rian again! "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" Lórannon answered Rian's whisper with a considerably more vocal shout, startling all the initiates and Master Athelwych as he stood up sharply. "I hate this stupid ... dust!"

Silence muted the schoolroom as he threw his chair aside and ran out.

And he couldn't help but realise it was the same silence that had followed him out of his village, mute disbelief in place of a real farewell.

---

Lórannon was good at hiding. Even his father, a formidable hunter amongst a people already famed for such skills, had taken the better part of an evening to find him when he really wanted to disappear.

So he perched in an alcove under the eaves of the little stone chapel, where he Shouldn't go, and listened to the others looking for him.

"Goldenlocks," he heard Thelyd grunt. He was getting better at making out Thelyd's mumbling, compared to the others' slightly more distinct renderings of the Common Tongue. "I'm tired of hunting high and low every time he throws a tantrum and bolts. It's too cold. We should just let him come back when he wants – if he wants."

"It's getting dark," reproached Rian's wobbly tenor. "We can't leave him out here. And it's cold, as you said."

"You're not being terribly charitable for a Paladinic aspirant, Thelyd," added the light voice of the oldest initiate, Llias.

Another grunt from Thelyd. "It's true, though. All he ever does is dodge duties and complain. Why's he even here?"

"He came all the way here from the Great Woods to help me," returned Rian instantly. "The only reason I'm alive is because of him. If he hadn't stood for me when I tried to shortcut through Wood Elven lands ..."

Lórannon snorted to himself, still simmering. He'd only chosen to wander out and talk to the human trespasser stumbling through the trees because he'd been bored ... and he'd only chosen to challenge the Elders, after they'd taken the boy, for the sake of making trouble, overbearing old sticks that they were ...

I swear on my tree I'll see him out of the Great Woods! You can't go against that without killing me – one of your own!

He hadn't expected things to go so far.

'One of our own'? You throw that sacred bond about very lightly, child, for one who respects it so little!

It was cold outside tonight.

Really? You don't think I'm one of your own?

We said no such thing, idiot boy –

Let's make it official! I won't just see the human out of the Woods, I'll leave with him! I'm leaving!

Just one milder word and he'd have backed down.

Even after all the shouting, he'd been waiting for them to tell him they wanted him there ... but they'd never really believed that he'd actually leave ... and they'd made him so angry ...

Fire-Heart! Stupid, mindless, random, fierce-tempered ...

"... Just because he got you out of the Great Woods didn't mean he had to sign on as a Paladin, too," Thelyd's practical argument was continuing down below. "Why didn't he just go home?"

"I don't know," replied Rian with finality. "Perhaps he may, eventually. But until he does, he's one of us."

"Hear, hear," muttered light-voiced Llias. "So let's just find him, shall we? It's freezing!"

It was freezing as the sun slowly sank below the distant, wooded hills. Lórannon started shivering in his alcove under the chapel eaves, softly cursing to himself after the others' voices had drifted away.

Icy cold spread down his arms and legs.

Then, slowly, but so surely that it could not be imagination, it started pouring down his throat and pooling in his heart.

Terror seized Lórannon. He didn't know why, couldn't see any danger – but the chill fear swamping his chest was impossible to resist, shaking him like a rat in a woodcat's teeth. Wildly he looked around, unable to see anything but the roofs of the chapter enclave and the dusk-quieted outer buildings of Lyffes beyond. There was nothing there!

In his village, he would have set one hand on the nearest trunk and asked the wakeful soultrees what was wrong ... here, he was alone.

The Elf had no idea how long he hunched, flattened against the chapel, unable to draw a full breath, but at last he couldn't withstand the fear any longer – he leaped up, ran down the slope of the roof, leaped down onto the lower roof of the Paladins' offices and scrabbled his way down the spindly pine growing beside Master Trebeld's window.

On the ground, the ice in Lórannon's chest was frigidly painful. He collapsed with a gasp after just two running strides, scrambled up on shaky hands and knees and crawled – not with a destination in mind, but just away, blindly fleeing like the tiniest, quaking fieldmouse.

His thoughts were no longer clear, shrieking one frantic command to his body – escape! escape! escape! – and they did not alert him to the presence of the Fence until he had almost struck his head against it.

Lórannon spun and slammed his back against the wooden palisade, squeezing up against it as if he could ooze straight through the timber pores. The night was quiet and clear.

Time slowed as Lórannon stayed frozen against the Fence, each raw breath seeming to come and go like swells of erratic autumn winds.

There.

Down by the gatehouse.

In a shroud of black, ghosting in the breeze, it stood. Lórannon couldn't describe form or height as his throat choked up and his skin seethed with jabbing sparks of pain – he was looking at bodied midnight, night given form.

And all he could do was cower against the palisade.

A breath in.

A breath out.

If that apparition so much as looked Lórannon's way, he knew he would die.

A breath in.

A breath out.

A breath.

A breath.

A breath.

"Lórannon!"

Lórannon's vision swam in and out, in and out. After a while he realised he was no longer looking at living darkness, but the hawk-nosed, purse-lipped face of Master Trebeld.

"I hate ... the Fence," Lórannon mumbled to the anxious Paladin, and fainted.

---

Lórannon woke up on a pallet indoors, from the feel of it, but he didn't open his eyes right away. It was an old habit – always better to listen and see just how much trouble he was in.

"Poor lad," came Master Trebeld's quiet voice. That was promising.

"He had no business running out of the schoolroom like that," Master Athelwych's flat, rather less promising voice responded. "Or staying outside after dark."

"We've had no reason thus far to accuse the lad of calm forethought," chuckled Master Oweyn's younger voice.

Such a gibe was almost enough to make Lórannon sit up and say something indignant, but before he could move he felt a sudden flash of surprise. What were all three of the busy chapter's Paladins doing here?

They were worried about that demon, he thought, and felt himself shiver before he could try to suppress it. He already knew what it was.

"Look – the boy's cold, or still dream-plagued," interrupted Master Trebeld. The weight of a very musty blanket dropped over Lórannon – his own, he realised. Perhaps he should have done his laundry as asked. "Maiden's mercy, my heart nearly stopped when I saw him on the ground."

"He's very lucky that his didn't," Master Athelwych said grimly, "if she really was our visitor."

A sigh from Master Oweyn. "She was, Athelwych. Who else would pay us such a visit?"

"Not 'us'," Master Trebeld said quietly. "Me."

This was an interesting enough juncture for Lórannon to flutter his eyes open, trying to look properly weak and shaken for the three Paladins' benefit. Only when he reached up to pull his blanket down did he realise that his hand truly was trembling like an old man's.

All three of the masters turned as Lórannon moved, looking down at him with honest concern – even Master Athelwych. Beyond their anxious, tired faces he could see the wooden rafters of the initiates' dormitory, which seemed – for the first time in his experience – comforting.

"Ach, sorry to have woken you, Lórannon," apologised Master Trebeld, his eternally pinched lips almost invisible today. "Don't get up yet. How do you feel?"

"A little strange, sir," Lórannon replied, after deeming 'hungry' an inappropriate response. "Shaky. But I feel well."

Master Oweyn nodded, looking as always like a dark scarecrow next to burly, bushy Master Athelwych. "The other initiates are cleaning the chapel –"

"- Well, but really quite shaky," qualified Lórannon.

Master Athelwych's thick eyebrows raised, and Master Oweyn's thin face twitched as he apparently fought back a chuckle. "I'm not telling you to join in, lad. I'm just telling you where they are. We'll all be going there as soon as you feel hale enough, and probably staying there for a little while."

"Staying in the chapel?" Lórannon did his best not to wince. "Why?"

"Because Darkness cannot go where the Maiden is watching," said Master Trebeld quietly.

For some foolish reason, the thought that the black figure from the previous night might return hadn't even occurred to Lórannon. A breath in, a breath out, a breath –

"Steady, lad, steady." Master Athelwych's hairy hand gripped Lórannon's shoulder as he suddenly found himself gasping, short of air. "You're in no danger here."

"Thank you, sir, I know," he panted, trying to catch his breath. "Who is she?"

There was a moment's silence. Finally Master Oweyn sat down at the foot of Lórannon's pallet, looking even more tired. "When you lived in the Great Woods, Lórannon, did you ever see a Dark Elf?"

Ai-ya, the Woods! Lórannon would have given anything in that moment – an eye, an arm – to be back under the powerful spread of the soultrees' branches, warded by their watchful presence and the lethal, Dark-hating arrows of his own folk. "No, sir, I didn't. But I already know what she is, sir. I asked who she is."

"Let's go to the chapel, Lórannon," Master Trebeld said with a gentle smile. "It really is much safer there, and you won't need three country Paladins to look after you."

"You're clearly already hale enough to be wagging your tongue again," put in Master Athelwych a little pointedly.

"He's certainly got his own share of Wood Elven mettle," Master Oweyn chuckled.

Lórannon bristled a little more at all the condescension flying about, but wasn't exactly sure how to respond, particularly since he hadn't a clue what 'Wood Elven metal' might be. Any further consideration was rudely disrupted as Master Athelwych suddenly picked Lórannon and his blanket right up off the pallet, one arm under Lórannon's shoulders and one arm under the crooks of his knees.

"No, I can walk! I can walk!" the Elf exclaimed, wishing his voice hadn't come out so close to a squawk. He could just imagine what Thelyd and the other initiates would say if Master Athelwych carried him in like a rag-dolly.

"Yes, I rather thought you could," observed Master Athelwych, while the other two Paladins masked obvious smiles. "Show us, then."

The three Paladins all kept close around Lórannon – Master Athelwych at his left, Master Oweyn at his right, Master Trebeld at his back – as he left the dormitory and started walking down the dirt path to the chapel. The tense alertness of his guards and the obvious seriousness of the situation left Lórannon with mixed feelings of apprehension and rather perverse excitement. This was much better than sweeping, provided he didn't have to deal with Dark Elves again!

The chapel was looking a lot cleaner than usual, Lórannon noted, as he and the three masters approached. Someone had been scrubbing lichen from the mortar between the granite blocks; it still remained thick in the mortar above arm's reach, but at least the effort had been made. Someone else had been attacking the lichen flourishing in the panels of the small chapel doors, and had even vainly tried to clean rust from the door-hinges ...

Lórannon broke off his observations. The doors were closed! He'd never seen them closed before, even in foul weather; the resultant puddles and drifts of leaves inside the chapel were what Paladin-Initiates were for, after all. At first Lórannon felt an uncomfortable surge of anxiety, but only for a moment – the lively voices of the other initiates were quite audible, if slightly muffled, behind the doors.

Master Oweyn moved forward to strike on a door-panel with his curled fist, raising his clear, alto voice. "Open up the doors, boys!"

Someone immediately began to scrape the old door-bolts open. Lórannon spared a brief skyward glance; why could no-one else here appreciate the opportunity of a locked door and three masters standing outside it?

At last, the doors had been pushed wide enough – by Rian, of course, and Llias – to let everyone in. Lórannon looked around the chapel as he stepped inside, marvelling at the new heights of tidiness.

It was usually in fairly good order, all spiderwebs banished and all pews swept with the aisle, but this morning it was altogether gleaming. The murals of the five Elementals themselves had been lightly cleaned – look, Siannath of the Fire is actually red again! – and the five bright-coloured pillars of the Elementals had been freed of all dust. Thelyd and Gwyll were currently on ladders, doing their precarious best to wash the small, high windows.

"Are you all right, Lórannon? You saw them, didn't you?" Rian exclaimed, drawing Lórannon's thoughts away from the chapel with a clap on the shoulder. This seemed to be a cue for the other boys to come rushing up, even Gwyll and Thelyd, who abandoned their ladders more than readily.

Every face was curious and worried – Lórannon suspected they'd been shepherded to the chapel with very little in the way of explanation. He was just about to launch into his own account when Master Oweyn spoke up first, addressing the nervous initiates gravely.

"Quiet a moment, boys, quiet. This is very important. You need to listen –"

"It was Dark Elves, wasn't it, sir?" interrupted Gwyll.

"No mistake! I've felt their Darkness before!" Thelyd put in fiercely. "And so has Rian!"

"Are they going to attack Lyffes, sir?" Llias asked.

"Boys, quiet!" Master Oweyn held out both hands and shook his head, waiting for them all to hush. "Stay calm. ... Yes, those were Dark Elves in the night."

"I knew it!"

"Thelyd, I won't warn you again! It's very important that you listen. There were Dark Elves at our doors last night ... not many, not enough for a raiding-party. The messages that came to us from Lyffes suggest that the Elves did no harm in the town."

"Dark Elves!" put in Lórannon hotly, but no-one seemed to be listening.

"That doesn't mean, however, that we're completely safe," continued Master Oweyn. "One of the Dark Elves was nobly born."

The thin young Paladin paused for a slow, heavy breath. "I know that some of you boys have had sad experience with Dark Elves before. And I know that all of you are aware of the cold fear that accompanies their presence. But I doubt that you have ever seen a Dark Elven noble before. They are deadly creatures."

"What does this one want?" queried Llias nervously.

"That's what we want to find out, Llias. That's what we're going to find out today. We'll be leaving you boys on your own – just until nightfall – and when we come back, we'll have a clearer notion as to what should be done."

"All three of you are leaving, sir?" Rian exclaimed.

The three Paladins shared a long look. "It's the only way to find a fast answer, Rian," Master Athelwych said in a grim voice. "But don't be afraid. None of you are in any danger while you stay inside the chapel. And we will be expecting you to stay inside the chapel. Is that understood?"

The initiates all shared deeply anxious glances, but murmured assent. Lórannon wanted to ask more about the Dark Elven noble – whom the Paladins clearly knew a little about already – but again had no chance.

"Llias, you'll be in charge," Master Athelwych went on. "You're the oldest – yes, bar you, Lórannon – and I daresay the most sensible. If anyone gives you any trouble ..."

"They won't, sir," said Llias with a pale, uneasy sort of smile. "I've stood them all on their heads at one time or another in the past."

Master Oweyn grinned. "Well, you have full head-standing dispensation today. Sit tight, lads; we'll be back as soon as we can. Close the door behind us and don't go outside."

All the initiates clustered around the doors uncertainly as the three Paladins departed – rather like those vapid, fluffy little sheep-animals, Lórannon thought abashedly – and stood silent for a while after Llias and Rian had closed the door again.

"We should've brought something more to eat," Gwyll said at last. "There wasn't much for breakfast. I think the masters sent the cooks home."

"Let's quickly go to the kitchens," suggested Lórannon, who hadn't had breakfast at all.

Thelyd rolled his eyes. "Unplug your ears, Goldenlocks. We're not to go outside."

"The masters have only just left!" Lórannon argued. "We should get some food while it's still safe!"

The boys all looked to Llias, who looked faintly uncomfortable about it. After a moment's scratching of his dark curls he finally said, "Well, I think our instructions were pretty emphatic ..."

Lórannon rolled his eyes. Rian, ever the peacemaker, gave a diplomatic cough. "Why don't you tell us about the Dark Elf instead, Lórannon?"

"Was it the noble you saw?" added Gwyll eagerly.

"I don't know," Lórannon replied, truthfully enough.

"What did it do to you? You were all white when Master Trebeld brought you in!"

"Probably trying to get out of scrubbing the chapel," grunted Thelyd in an audible undertone. "Have you lot seen how raw my knuckles are?"

Rian reached out to give Thelyd's brown topknot an exasperated tug, which Thelyd was quick to return. Lórannon wondered anew why their particular tribes had decided that an easy grip on the crowns of their heads was a good idea.

"I really didn't see much," he said aloud, shrugging. "I climbed down off the ... from my hiding place, because I was feeling cold, and then I felt ... well, very frightened. I went to the Fence, I saw something dark by the gatehouse, and then ... nothing."

"You passed out? Went to sleep?" Thelyd asked intently.

Lórannon nodded.

"Sweet Elementals," the boy muttered. "That's a noble."

"How do you know?"

Thelyd snorted, looking oddly reluctant to speak, for once. "You've never seen Dark Elves before, have you, Goldenlocks? They can scare the nightsoil out of a headman, but only scare them. Only women and cowards actually pass out when they see Dark Elves, and you're an idiot, not a coward."

"Well, you're a –"

"How's a noble different, then, Thelyd?" Gwyll urged.

The bigger boy gave an uncomfortable, noncommittal shrug and looked to Llias.

"They're horrible," Llias said, very quietly. "When they're really close, it's worse than fear. You can't breathe."

"You faint?"

"Sometimes. And sometimes, you die."

Gwyll looked around all the older faces, this time more nervously. "Is that really true?"

"Master Oweyn was wrong, Gwyll," replied Llias. "I have seen a Dark Elven noble before. And after it had finished with my village, my uncle had to send me here. There weren't many of us left."

There was a brief silence. Several anxious glances went to the doors.

Lórannon, for his part, felt quite sick at the thought that last night's Dark Elf might well have killed him just by standing there. But he didn't like the silence or the whiteness of the other initiates' faces.

"Hah! Dark Elves," he snorted. "Even nobles die at one touch of a Paladin's sword. Even in the Great Woods, we know that. And your people and mine kill them in their hundreds every year. Instead of standing around to tell ghost stories, we should be going to the kitchens for lunch!"

"Go anywhere near that door and I really will stand you on your head!" warned Llias.

The silence broke after that. But many pairs of eyes still lingered on the doors.