The talk and laughter echoing from the banner-hung stone hushed the sounds as easily as a spell of silence might. It was so vast that there was not one Storysinger performing before the High Table, but rather half a dozen performers scattered among the revelers. It had no windows, for even an arrow slit could provide entrance to a Faun. Its ceiling was low, the better to defend them from the incursions of fairies and pixies. Gonceivis Haldil looked down the length of his Great Hall. If the sennight of the Midwinter Festival was named a time of tacit truce throughout the Fortunate Lands, here in the Grand Windsward the Midwinter Truce was more than empty words. In Snow Moon, Haldil-first among the Houses of the Grand Windsward-opened its doors in revelry and celebration to any of the Hundred Houses who wished to enter. To keep the Covenant, the Lightborn must hold sacrosanct the strongholds of their enemy, for those strongholds were the only source of their protection from that same enemy.Īt least Winter brings us some respite from the eternal battle, Gonceivis thought. Mosirinde’s Covenant demanded that the Lightborn draw their power from the Flower Forests alone, and by Mosirinde’s Covenant, Elvenkind was bound to a dreadful bargain, for the Flower Forests were home to a thousand races of Beastling: fairy and sprite, dryad and Faun, nymph and gnome and pixie. Sorcery could only be fought with Light, and so in the Grand Windsward, the Lightborn went regularly into battle. The Minotaurs slaughtered Elvenkind’s herds and flocks, and Centaurs razed their villages. Gryphons had weather magic at their command Aesalions could control the hearts of their prey Bearwards were masters of sickness and plague. Centaurs-Minotaurs-Gryphons-there was no end to their horror, the shapes they came in … or their bestial sorcery. They were monstrous and cruel, a terrible parody of Elvenkind in shape and manner. The Beastlings had been the enemy of Elvenkind since before Amretheon had reigned. Only in the Grand Windsward was it impossible, for in the Grand Windsward, the Beastlings ruled. In the West, Lightborn might enter the Flower Forests whenever they chose-save, perhaps, on the Western Shore, and there it was merely dangerous. It is a great mystery, Gonceivis Haldil mused once again, that we draw our ultimate power from a place we dare not go.
Only the Flower Forests, locked in their eternal Springtide, were exempt from snow and cold, and Elvenkind did not enter the Flower Forests.
SNOW MOON TO ICE MOON: THE END OF ALL THINGSįrom Rade Moon to Storm Moon, Winter High Queen was the true ruler of the Grand Windsward.
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