“Yes, but you should not be alone now.” He sent the Squire to arrange an escort and someone to stay with Lady Tolmaric for a day or so. As soon as Lady Tolmaric and the two servants headed back to her rented house, Kieri went on to the salle.

CHAPTER TWO

There he found Arian with her father’s body. Dameroth’s bloody clothes had been removed, his body washed and clothed in white. Arian sat on a low stool, one hand on his forehead. As Kieri walked toward her, she looked up but did not speak. One of his Squires fetched a stool for him, and he sat beside her.

Arian crooned some tune he did not know, but he could feel power being used. She reached her other hand out to him, and he took it. He glanced around. The other dead elf, the one he did not know, had also been dressed in a white robe. Elves were still working over the Lady’s body, wrapping her in silvery lace with fresh flowers woven through it.

Arian’s song stopped. He glanced at her. “I knew him so little,” she said. “When he quit coming … the years passed, and I was busy, and then my mother died. I did not even know all of his name or all of mine. Or why I was not told before. He said he would tell me later.”

“I’m sorry,” Kieri said. He could think of nothing else to say.

“At least I had him when I did. More than you had of your parents.” She drew a deep breath and faced him squarely. “I sent one of my Squires to Lady Tolmaric, when I found she was not in the palace.”

“That was well done,” Kieri said. Tolmaric’s contorted form, now sewn into a shroud, lay against one wall of the salle. “She wanted to see him. I convinced her to go back and sent servants with her as well.”

“What will you do for her?”

“Find out if they have a good steward, and if not, find her one. Make sure she has land to plant.”

Arian was looking at her father’s face again. “I cannot believe he is utterly gone, that there is no place for their spirit to dwell. They are so alive when they are alive—”

“We are not like you, lady,” Amrothlin said. Kieri had not heard him come in. Amrothlin looked at Kieri. “It is time to return them.”

“At night? Will you not wait until dawn?”

“No. In our custom, as soon as it may be, it must be. For the sorrow of their violent deaths, we clothe in white, but still it must be swift, the return to the taig. And—lord king—I know I said yes when you suggested they be laid on the mound in the King’s Grove, but—but that is not right.”