The Dream Spheres - Elaine Cunningham [119]
Quickly he thrust this thought aside. He could not believe that of his own mother-he could barely fathom how he himself could have imagined it.
"You may hear that Elaith Craulnober had a hand in Lilly's death," he said as soon as he could trust himself to speak. "I do not deny it is possible, but I will find the truth of the matter. Until then, do not support any efforts against him." He paused, then added with difficulty. "Or any others of elven blood."
His mother was dumbfounded, speechless for the first time in Danilo's recollection. "You presume to instruct me?" she said at last.
"In a manner of speaking. Our elven heritage might be a faint and distant thing, but I want you to understand that I am proud to own it."
She shook her head in disgust. "Khelben!" she muttered, turning the archmage's name into a curse. "You must have gotten this notion from him. I must say, he picked a fine time to stop being close-mouthed and enigmatic!"
"Then it's true. Why did you never say anything?"
"Why should I? It has been forgotten for generations! There is no need to open the closets and let the skeletons cavort about."
"The Thann family fortune was built on the slave trade," he reminded her. "Are you saying that it is acceptable to have slavers as ancestors, but not elves?"
"Watch your tone," she said in a voice that simmered with anger, "and watch your step! Elaith Craulnober has overstepped, and he will pay for his presumption. Take care that you do not go down with him."
She stalked out, leaving Danilo standing alone amid the ruins of his long-held illusions.
* * * * *
Arilyn waited at the agreed-upon tavern until the moon rose and the fire burned low. Danilo came in, looking as windblown as a sailor and more desolate than she had ever seen him. He threw himself onto the bench and dashed his damp hair off his face. "I'm sorry. I was walking the Sea Wall."
She knew the spot. It was a good place of solitude. A sharp wind, laden with salt and spray and secrets, blew in from the sea on the mildest of days. Nothing provided shelter from the buffeting wind or offered much of a barrier between the path and the long, sheer drop to the icy water below. It was not a stroll for the fainthearted or those too fond of comfort. A person could walk the length of the wall at nearly any hour and not meet another soul.
"Looks to me as if you came in too soon," she commented. She tossed some coins on the table and rose. "Let's go."
He did not argue. They headed north and climbed the stairs carved into the stone wall. For a long time, they walked along the rim. The setting moon glittered on the restless waves. The receding tide exposed the expanse of barnacles desperately clinging to the wall. There was no sound but the crash and murmur of the waves. It occurred to Arilyn that she had seldom seen a more lonely, desolate place.
"I come here from time to time," Dan said suddenly. "The sound of the sea often serves to wash clean my thoughts, allows me to start anew and think with greater clarity. Tonight, it does not avail."
He related his conversation with Lady Cassandra, his terrible suspicions. "I have always felt somewhat apart from my family, but I never realized how little I knew them. I never conceived of the possibility that they could turn on their own."
"It happens," she said shortly, for Danilo's tale was too like her own early life for comfort. After a moment's hesitation, it occurred to her that he might find, if not comfort, then at least community in her story.
"My mother died when I was barely fifteen," she said. "A half-elf of that age is little more than a child. Her moonblade came into my keeping. She had always intended that it pass to me, and she had begun training me with an eye toward its demands, but as you know her time was cut short before she could tell me all I needed to know. My mother's family came to Evereska for the funeral. They were robed and hooded in traditional elven mourning. I never saw their faces, but I heard them argue about the sword and its fate.