Once A Hero (27 page)

Our years of association allowed Aarundel to pick up on the fact that I had just lied through my teeth. "I have seen it. Neal is quite good at it, in fact."

Finndali shook his head. "Man-dances mean nothing. At your wedding the torris will be danced. The torris includes touching, therefore Neal will harm Larissa, therefore he must die."

My head came up. "The dance includes touching? What if we were to dance it without touching?"

Finndali's eyes widened at my suggestion. "You might slip."

"But I tell you that I will not. I tell you that I have no intention of slipping."

"If you touch her, you will harm her."

I smiled. "But you may slay me beforehand only
if
you know I intend to do Larissa harm. I have told you that I do not intend to do her harm. I know my place. I understand your laws. I would not hurt her because it would hurt my friend and his family to have her exiled." I thumped my right fist against my chest. "I'd sooner rip my own heart out than harm her."

Finndali's eyes smoldered. "If you touch her,
I
will rip your heart out."

"And I will bare my breast to you to do so." I pulled myself up to my full height, "That is all immaterial, however, because you cannot kill me for intentions I do not harbor. That is your law."

The legislatorium erupted in a legion of Sylvan voices. I heard a lot of things, including Lomthelgar's chuckling, but above them I heard Aarundel's voice as he shouted down the opposition to his wedding plans. "There, you have all heard it from Neal's own lips. He is a Man and he knows his place. Yes, he is my friend, and I have proclaimed him Custos Sylvanii, but he is not so unwise as to arrogate himself. He would never think himself worthy of any sylvanesti, let alone my sister. He understands and respects the gulf between us, he respects our culture as we should respect his. Do not let your prejudice blind you or make him into a monster who would despoil our sylvanesti. He is a Man, a wise Man, and would not dare dream of dragging one of us down to his level by visiting abominable acts upon her."

Aarundel's words sank arrowlike into my heart and pinned it painfully to my spine. I understood everything he said, and I knew how he meant it, but somehow I had never expected to hear such things from his lips. In the time we had traveled together—an eye blink for him, but my entire adult life—I had grown closer to him than any other living being, even my brother. We had shared good times and bad. We had fought side by side, staunched each other's wounds, and done insane things to save each other from situations that were beyond reasonable hope.

If I had a sister, I would have thought nothing of marrying Aarundel off to her. The person I knew him to be came first, his race came later. I did not think of him as an Elf, but as my friend, my confidant, my co-conspirator. I would have been proud to have him in my family, and for that reason, I was filled with pride when we set off on our journey to Cygestolia.

Because I thought of him as my equal, I assumed the reverse was true.

His curiously split attitude slammed me in the face. Here he was willing to put his reputation and his honor on the line in arguing before the Consilliarii that I should be allowed to be his vindicator. In doing that he openly proclaimed me his best friend, a person in whom he had no doubts. He trusted me and honored me with the selection, and that honor and trust I held dear.

Yet, at the same time, among his own people he set me apart. He held me at arm's length. He praised me and honored me above all of the Sylvan Nation by his choice, yet he still felt it was right and suitable to point out that I was still just a Man.

More's the pity, he likely did not know he had done anything to hurt me.

Worse yet, I was thinking, I held similarly conflicting views of other Men, including some in my command.

Calarianne stood. "The argument offered by Lomthelgar is correct and persuasive. We are not the Reithrese. We do not revel in morbidity. Executing the Man for a crime he has not committed and has no intention of committing would be an act of veneration for the Dark Goddess. We shall not be party to such action."

She looked over at Aarundel. "Your selection for vindicator stands. You will be well represented."

Lomthelgar popped up from his crouch and spryly stepped closer to the center of the chamber than where I stood. "Listen well, for this is the First Time: as another's voice, he speaks for himself."

That announcement, which I could not understand, started a new debate, and I found myself wanting to be away from all the noise and the voices. I worked my way to the right to where—as I had seen from above when entering the legislatorium—I could gain access to a stairway spiraling down the massive oak that held the seat of Sylvan government. I wanted very much to be alone, and, by chance or out of fear, I met no one as I traveled to the ground.

The stairs were long, and I managed to do a lot of thinking on the trip to the island below. The island itself was deserted, and sitting there between two small rootlets of the grand tree, I managed a lot more thinking. I didn't like all of it, but I've found that when you finally sit down to do the thinking that must be done, chances are there's not much of it that will make you smile.

"I have been told what my brother said. I am grieved."

I looked up at where she stood with one hand still on the bark banister of the stairway. "Why? He said what he saw as the truth."

"But you have been hurt by it."

I gathered my knees to my chest with my arms and smiled without looking into her eyes. "The hurt was in the hearing and because of what the words have made me think about. It is difficult to discover you have been deceiving yourself."

Larissa walked away from the trunk of the tree, then settled herself on the ground two body lengths away from me. She arranged her skirts delicately, and I drank in the beauty of her until I realized how dangerous it could be. As if sensing my thoughts, she deflected me with a question. "How is it that you consider yourself deceptive, when I have heard nothing from my brother or you to indicate this is so?"

I tightened the grip of my hands on the opposite forearms. "When I left the Roclaws two decades ago, I left with nothing but the horse between my legs, the clothes on my body, and the blade at my belt. I wanted it that way. I wanted nothing—not because I was spurning my homeland or because I hated my family. I wanted nothing so that all I did, all I became would be because of me. I wanted to be different, not burdened with possessions and titles and lands. I just wanted to be Neal Roclawzi, a warrior known across the face of Skirren for the things I had done."

"An admirable goal, and one you have accomplished."

"An admirable goal, but one I have not attained." I shook my head. "I own little more than my horse, my armor, my weapons—and I thought I had succeeded. Here, however, I have learned that I have acquired many things that I didn't realize I had gathered, and I realize that I have wanted many other things."

I tipped my head back and looked up toward the legislatorium. "Up there I learned that I had acquired an inflated view of myself. I learned that I wanted to be considered an equal by your brother and your people, and I realize that I was foolish or vain enough to think I was worthy of such consideration."

"You are."

"Thank you for saying that, but yours is a minority opinion." I bit back pain. "The damnable thing is that your opinion is the only one that really matters to me right now."

I wanted to reach out to her, take her and hug her, to leech serenity and warmth from her, but I stopped myself. "Aside from wanting to be elevated to standing within an elder race, I find I also want you, but total success in that regard will be fatal."

Larissa smiled slightly and blushed, then plucked at a piece of clover growing amid the grasses. "You heap upon yourself too many burdens, Neal Roclawzi, and you do not take stock of your successes. You are the first Man ever to walk in Cygestolia. You are the first Man ever to be accorded the honor of being a vindicator. You are the first Man ever to argue within the legislatorium and the first to win a victory there."

"But all of those things are an offshoot of my being the first to visit."

"However, the fact of your visit did not bring with it any of the others. Those are mantles you have won, and no one will ever take them away from you." She closed her right hand into a fist. "Ten of your generations from now there will still be Consilliarii in the legislatorium who will remember you and your words."

She rose onto her knees and leaned forward; her long-fingered white hands sank deep in the greensward to steady her. "To you, to the rest of the world, the Sylvan Nation appears to have one mind and one voice. It is defined for you in the verses of the Eldsaga. We are a cold, superior people who place no value on Humanity. This is how most Men see us, and it is not without good reason that they do so. Half a millennium ago our troops marched forth to destroy the fledgling empire your ancestors had created. My grandfather has told me tales of that time, horrible, brutal tales. Through them I know why Men fear us, and because of them I admire your courage in coming here and your bravery in befriending my brother.

"My family is not like all others here. The chamber in which you sleep was built nearly four centuries ago when Lomthelgar ordered it fashioned after the halls and castles he had seen and razed. While others crusading through the Eldsaga saw Men as half-witted beasts whose civilization was nothing but a crude imitation of our own, my grandfather felt the truth was otherwise. Others looked at the things that were similar between Elves and Men, then decried Men for being unable to match us—making us superior and consigning Men to inferiority. My grandfather looked at the differences and used them to mark Man's creativity. He fashioned your chamber in homage to what he had seen, and as physical proof of his vow to get all of us to see in Mankind what he did."

Passion and bitterness wove through her words as she explained things to me. "Though we were taught that Men were worthy of respect, that is not what made my brother respect you enough to bring you here and make you his vindicator. You earned that respect in his eyes. You have proved to him that Lomthelgar was right. In your argument in the legislatorium, you proved to many others that at least one Man is capable of thought and worthy of respect."

I nodded briefly. "But not worthy of his sister?"

Larissa clutched her hands together over her heart. "I cannot tell you that I would consider you worthy of any sylvanesti if I did not feel the love for you that I do in my heart. If my brother had come home with a woman he had won, I cannot say that I would welcome her. Inasmuch as my feelings for you conflict with how I would treat another Man and a sylvanesti being together, I know the attitudes that would condemn them are wrong. Because they are wrong, I know I must change them, but change does not come immediately.

"As much as I want to go over to you and embrace you, I will not and cannot." Frustration seaming her brow, she frowned heavily. "I know the laws that keep us apart are wrong, but to flaunt them also seems wrong and would serve no purpose but to have you terminated and me exiled. Others would point to us as an example not of an injustice, but of justice done because we proved ourselves unable to respect the laws of society."

Everything she said bored into my chest through the wound Aarundel's words had opened, but they did no more rending and tearing. They touched me deeply and awakened the part of me that I let loose only in battle. I began to reshape my perceptions along the lines of combat, spying out strengths and weaknesses along the enemy line. I ran through dozens and dozens of strategies in my mind, all the while my competitive and predatory hunger growing more and more ferocious.

I saw my situation paralleling that of the Red Tiger's war to overthrow Reithrese overlords. As I fought in his army, I did not fight for myself—I fought for others. I fought for generations of Men who would someday remember us only as characters in songs half-forgotten and best left unsung. I fought so they could live lives dictated by them, not to them.

So it was here in Cygestolia. I fought here so the whole of the Elven Nation would see in my example what Mankind truly was. Though I knew us deserving of respect, I also knew I had to earn it. That meant I had to do battle in their arena, by their rules, as much as it would hamper and hurt me.

It would be the true test of a hero, a challenge unlike any other.

A challenge before which I would not surrender.

I smiled as I stretched my arms and legs. "It is my understanding, my Lady Larissa, that as vindicator I am to be your partner in a dance—a dance in which we will not touch. Despite that handicap, I want my performance to be worthy of your people, your brother's wedding, and above all, my partner. Will you find me someone to instruct me?"

She smiled and rose to her feet. "My grandfather has already volunteered to be your teacher. You have a week in which to learn the steps to the torris."

I stood and waved her toward the stairs ahead of me. "Then let us go find him and get started. This I vow: in a week's time your people will see a dance they will never, ever forget."

My prediction almost came true in a way I had not intended.

The torris is not a simple bow-and-wheel-your-partner dance with four steps that are repeated over and over. It's symbolic of a number of things, from life and nature to Sylvan history to bits and pieces of the lives of the dancers and the lives of those for whom they dance. I know of at least three different schools of swordsmanship that contain fewer independent moves than the torris, but I have to admit that I never worked so hard to learn them as I did this dance.

The different parts of the dance were individually very difficult for me because many of them relied upon a flexibility and fluidity of motion I could not easily reproduce. Lomthelgar, with wisdom born of eight or ten centuries of life, managed to draw parallels between some of the motions and things I might do in combat. Very quickly I found the dance built up of encounters in a series of shadow-fencing duels. Not only did this approach make the whole thing possible for me to master, but also allowed me to feed my defiance directly into my lessons.