What nonsense are you talking about now? She sighed and shifted in her saddle, but there wasn’t any position she could get into that would alleviate her discomfort.
The consort said “might” and “possibly” yesterday, Eva said. She hung with Calondir all these years, seems she could be more definite about whether or not the man would like it if you showed up on his doorstep. It’s possible he might not be as pleased as he could be. If the Numenlaurians arrive while you try to get his attention, you might be knocking yourself out like this for nothing.
She scowled. She hadn’t considered any of that. It had sounded to her like Beluviel was just being polite. Great. She grumbled, Just once I’d like you to say something I really want to hear. Besides, that’s all the more reason to push hard to get there. I need to try to talk with Calondir while I’ve got the chance.
Point, Eva admitted.
They rode for a while in silence. Just ahead, Miguel and the young Elven girl were sniping at each other again. Pia watched them as she thought. She asked Eva, Do you know anything about the prehuman war among the Elves?
You mean a civil war? Eva said, lifting her eyebrows.
Yes.
The captain shook her head. Before my time, princess.
Pia snorted, and a grin played at the corners of Eva’s mouth. Apparently there was one, and it was big and nasty. Dragos said it changed the landscape of the Earth, caused the Elves to scatter and eventually gave birth to the Light and the Dark Fae.
Shew, what a lot of drama, said Eva. The captain paused. If Numenlaur is the “old country,” then that’s where the war began?
Sounds likely, Pia replied.
Eva remarked, Makes me curious why they coming to visit Calondir and Beluviel.
Pia said, Me too. Keep your eyes and ears sharp in case you get the chance to overhear something, will you?
You bet. I’ll pass the word to the others to do the same.
Silence fell again between them, and that was the last they spoke for a while. Wowzer, thought Pia, after her and Eva’s rocky beginning, it seemed almost peaceful.
The light was beginning to wane when one of the Elves broke away from the group and ran ahead. Pia hoped that meant the Elf was taking word of their arrival to Calondir, and their destination was close at hand. She had long since stopped trying to talk with anyone and rode in a cloud of increasing tiredness.
She must have fallen into a doze, because the next thing she knew a shout of greeting sounded up ahead. She jerked into alertness.
Those at the front of the party passed around a huge age-darkened granite boulder. She looked up at the massive stone. As she neared, what had appeared at first to be random bulges and hollows aligned into an Elven face with noble features and an inscrutable expression. It was impossible to tell if the face was male or female. The sculpture held her mesmerized until she came too close to discern it, and then the stone became just a stone again.
“Will you look at that,” Eva whispered.
“What?” She glanced at the captain who was staring forward, and she looked in that direction too. At first she didn’t notice anything that might cause Eva’s wonder. The travelers from the front of the group had stopped in a clearing at the foot of a rocky waterfall, the fast-flowing, turbulent river ribboning into the trees. Elves dismounted with smiles of pleasure. They called out to others who came to greet them.
Then her perspective shifted as it had with the massive stone face, and she saw the building. It spanned the top of the waterfall, by some trick of architectural genius seeming as if suspended in the air. The building had several levels, its lines modern and ultra-plain. The outside walls were covered in plain sheets of reflective glass so that it all but disappeared from sight.
Once she saw it she couldn’t look away, and she only dismounted when Eva nudged her knee. Beluviel approached, looking as fresh and bright as she had that morning. The consort said simply, “Welcome to our home.”
Pia blinked and forced herself to concentrate on the other woman. “Thank you. It’s stunning.”
Beluviel regarded the building with the same inscrutable expression from earlier when they had talked about the tree table. “We loved the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Pennsylvania, Fallingwater, so much we chose to emulate something of that style. We finished rebuilding in the 1970s.”
She and Eva walked with Beluviel to the wide, winding staircase that had been carved into the stone by the fall, while the other Wyr gathered their packs from the horses and followed close behind. Pia forced her strained, quivering thigh muscles to work and matched the consort step for step.