“I—no!”

“When?” Kieri demanded. Some part of his mind told him to fight the rage, but he did not want to listen to it. Not with the memory of Tamar, of the children—

“Peace,” said a voice. Kieri managed to turn away from the king, and realized only then he had grabbed the man’s shoulders and held him down. “Peace,” the voice said again, and calmness filled Kieri’s mind even as the glow of elf-light filled the room. His grandmother stood in the doorway, watching him. He bowed.

“You have a strange way of seeking peace,” she said. “I could feel the taig flinching from my own home and came to see what was afoot.” She turned to the king in his chair, now rubbing his shoulders with both hands. “And you,” she said. “You boasted of never having seen an elf, did you not?”

“Who are you?” he asked. And then, jerking his chin toward Kieri, “He hurt me.”

She chuckled. “Hurt your pride, maybe, but not your body. Kieri, grandson, you will introduce me to this man.”

Kieri realized then that he had never asked the king’s name, and fell back on titles. “The king of Pargun, my lady. And this is the Lady of the Ladysforest, the ruler of that elvenhome kingdom.”

The king stood and bowed. “My lady. I do not know the correct address—”

“No matter,” the Lady said. “I suppose you are come chasing your wild daughter?”

“Er … yes.”

“She will not go with you. She does not trust you.”

“She must, or my people will come and burn the forest with scathefire that does not die.”

The Lady seemed taller and brighter. “That will not happen,” she said. She turned to Kieri. “Was it for this threat, and to save the taig, that you frightened the taig into retreat?”

“No,” Kieri said. His anger felt cold and hard now, a cold ember of the fire before, but still solid in his mind. “He follows Achrya and I believe he planned the deaths of my wife and children years ago, with her help.”

Her brows went up. “Well, king of Pargun? What say you?”

Before the king could speak, Kieri saw the thread of elf-light that coiled around him. The king would be compelled to speak truth.

It came out in Pargunese, in a rhythm that sounded more chant than speech. “When we came up the river, fleeing the magelords’ slavers, the Earthfolk granted us landright from the river to the hills that lay between the forests and the horsefolk fields to winterwards. They said go not beyond the great falls, for there demons reign. But the slavers came and harried the river shore, and some of our people were taken. Beyond the falls the slavers could not go, and beyond the falls we went, only to be safe from harm. Then came the Lady, the Weaver, and gave us patterns of power for our women’s looms, so the cloth of our sails never rots nor tears in the wind’s grip. We could live there, She said, and worship what gods we would, as long as we did her bidding from time to time. It was her land first, she said.” At first, he said, she had asked little, but king by king she had entered into the councils more and more … and yet she had brought peace and prosperity mostly, until the magelords came from the south. “And then was war, and blood like water, and bones like stones in the ploughed ground, and without Her aid, we would have perished. So are the words I learned from my father, and he from his, and he from his, all the way back to the beginning of our time.”