Page 10 of Silverbow
The godsongs were rare amongst men, and those who did manifest the ability to wield spirit, earth, air, fire, or water were swept up and collected by His Majesty. Enya had never seen wielding done, but around summer campfires and winter hearths, stories were still told of those who could make earth erupt underfoot and call flame from thin air. They told of elves who could command weather like the gods, order the crops to grow, and peer into the minds of men.
Her flesh pebbled as she thought of the eyes that had bored into her and her heart set off in another frantic gallop. Perhaps he had seen all the way to her soul if he’d been a spirit wielder. The thought was enough to make her shudder.
***
Liam positively oozed envy as she told him over the stones board that evening, asking her to describe every detail of their encounter, what they looked like, the swords they carried, and the horses they rode. Enya sighed and did her best retelling, squinting at the memory, but her cheeks heated when she realized she’d paid so little heed to the other three men.
“Unnerving how?” Liam asked when she told him of the silver haired demi-elf.
“I don’t know, just...strange,” she snipped.
“Do you think they were wielders?” He asked, not for the first time.
She shrugged, and turned back to the game board. “They didn’tdoanything. They hardly looked any different than normal men at all.”
Except that they were devastatingly handsome, even the scowling one, but she didn’t tell Liam that. Enya didn’t know exactly what she expected from ademi-elf, but the men in the yard weren’t it. The stories told of elven beauty and grace, always made them seem…other. And the way he was looking at her…
“En?”
“Hmm?” She’d lost what he was saying.
“It’s your move.”
three
Enya
Enya had started keeping a mental list of all the things she’d rather do than entertain a visit from another suitor. She’d rather be set to sums or recitations of Estryian history. She’d rather sew new curtains and embroider every pillow in Ryerson House. She’d rather endure hours of instruction at the piano that mostly collected dust in the drawing room, or be forced to sing before all the stable hands.
The last made her cringe, even as her father came stalking across the yard calling her name. But she would do it, if it would spare her a single suitor. She shrank back into the shadows of Arawelo’s stall.
She’d already groomed the mare to gleam like a newly minted copper, but as she ran the brush over her coat, she just kept seeing those depthless eyes. Half the night she had mulled over every word he said, few as they were. And the other half, she spent mulling over Sana’s gift.Hergift, if the demi-elf was to be believed.Why me?
“Ah, there you are!” Her father exclaimed as if he were surprised to find her where she preferred to be. “Let’s go for a ride, shall we?”
“Who is it today?” She sighed, still refusing to look up.
“I thought we could go into Westforks to get a few things for Del and Mistress Alys, and perhaps take a ride on the beach.”
“No suitors?” Enya studied him, looking for the trap.
“Not unless you count Liam.”
Enya snorted. “Thank the light.”
A serene sort of quiet blanketed the countryside outside Westforks, punctuated by the bleats of sheep and the occasional bellow of a cow or bark of a farmyard dog. The rolling landscape sloped downward toward the sea as they rode past a patchwork of farmyards, fields, and orchards just waking in the spring sunshine. Farmers turning fields and shepherd boys tending flocks raised hands in greeting as they continued their descent. They returned friendly waves as they trotted around lumbering wagons bound for the city gates.
As they topped a final rise, the sun not yet at its peak, Westforks lay sprawling below. Beyond the houses and shops stacked atop the harbor, waves crested and broke in a dull, never ending roar all the way to where the blue bled into the horizon.
The city got its name from the river that bordered its northern edge. Swollen with runoff from Greenridge, the White Fang River split several times before it melded into the Ilbarran Ocean in a great, churning froth. The ruin of an ancient temple devoted to Sakaala, Goddess of Water, sat amidst those forks keeping watch over the waves that endlessly battered the rocky shore. To the south, a long run of sandy beach stretched before giving way to rock again.
Even from this vantage, Enya could see life bustling in the small port city. Lines of wagons formed up at the gates, and men scurried up and down the docks like ants, loading and unloading the ships that lined the docks like little ducklings. Beyond them, fishermen hauled their nets as white gulls wheeled overhead. In the upper town, carts and carriages rolled back and forth across a tangled web of streets in no particular hurry.
They continued down the easy slope toward the gate, dirt giving way to cobblestone as they neared. They joined the queue behind a farmer’s cart loaded with wool from the first of the spring shearing. The driver craned his neck to give their horses an appraising look before turning back to nudge his mismatched pair onward. When they reached the gatehouse, a gray clad guardsman lazily asked after their business.
The guard didn’t actually seem to care what their business was, hardly hearing her father’s response, before he said, “Gate closes at sundown and doesn’t open again until dawn.”
They rode forward, the horses’ steel shod footfalls ringing as they bounced off the high stone wall. Enya had accompanied her father often enough toWestforks that the towering upper city with buildings four or five stories high no longer made her gape.
