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.“Lost now,” Galladel replied, “but I, too, have read the work, centuries ago when those runes were not so uncommon.I could decipher them still, if I had the mind and the time to do so.”“You did not think to awaken the trees?” Elbereth asked his father in disbelief.Galladel’s glare bored into his impertinent son.“You speak of that act as though it were some simple magical spell.”“It is not a spell,” Cadderly put in, “but a summons, a calling to awaken the powers of the forest.”“Powers that are no more,” Galladel added.“How can you-“ Elbereth began, but Galladel cut him short.“This is not the first war that has come to Shilmista since I began my reign,” the elf king explained.He seemed suddenly old and vulnerable, his face pale and hollow.“And I read the account of Dellanil’s battle, as you have,” he offered sympathetically to Cadderly.“Like you, I was filled with hope on that long ago occasion, and filled with belief of the magic of Shilmista.“But the trees did not come to my call,” the elf king continued, drawing nods of recognition from two other aged elves sitting by his side.“Not a single one.Many elves died repelling the invaders, more than should have, I fear, since their king was too busy to join in their fight.”It seemed to Cadderly as if the aged elf’s shoulders sagged even lower as he recalled that tragic time.“That is a summons for another age,” Galladel said, his voice resolute once more, “an age when the trees were the sentient sentinels of Shilmista Forest.”“But are they not?” Shayleigh dared to interject.“Hammadeen bade us to hear their warning song.”“Hammadeen is a dryad,” Galladel explained, “much more attuned to the flora than any elf ever could be.She would hear the song of any plant anywhere in the world.Do not allow her cryptic bidding to bring you false hope.”“We have few options,” Elbereth reminded his father.“The summons will not work,” Galladel insisted, his tone showing clearly that he considered the conversation at an end.“You do have our thanks, scholar Cadderly,” he said, somewhat condescendingly.“Your efforts have not gone unnoticed.”“Come,” Danica whispered into Cadderly’s ear, pulling him by the hand back out of the glade.“No!” Cadderly replied, twisting from her grasp.“What will you do?” he snapped at Galladel.He approached the elf king, sitting directly across the glade, pushing right by the shocked Elbereth on his way.“I have heard many admit that the force opposing Shilmista is too great for the elves to defeat,” Cadderly went on.“I have heard that no help will arrive in time or in sufficient numbers to save the forest.If all that is true, then what will you do?”“That is what we have gathered here to discuss-privately,” the elf king replied sternly.“What have you who have gathered here decided?” Cadderly shot back, not backing down in the least.“Are you to run away, leave the forest for the invaders?”Galladel stood and met Cadderly’s determined stare with one equally unyielding.Cadderly heard Danica rushing to corral him, then heard, to his surprise, Elbereth intercept her.“Most will go,” Galladel admitted.“Some”-he spoke the word callously and looked pointedly at Elbereth as he uttered it-“wish to stay and fight, determined to hinder and punish the enemy until they have joined their elven kin in death.”“And you will go… to the Edificant Library?” Cadderly asked.“Then away from there, to Evermeet perhaps?”Galladel nodded gravely.“Our time in Shilmista has passed, young priest,” he admitted, and Cadderly could see that the words pained him deeply.Cadderly was not unsympathetic, and he did not doubt the truth of Galladel’s claims, but there were other ramifications to their actions that the elves apparently had not considered, most prominently the fate of the region.“As an emissary of the Edificant Library, I can assure you that you and your people will be welcomed there for as long as you wish to stay,” Cadderly replied.“But as one who has seen what befell the library, and now Shilmista, I must beg you to reconsider your course.If the forest falls, then so, too, shall the men of the mountains, and of the lake region to the east, I fear.The enemy must not be allowed so easy a victory.”Galladel seemed on the verge of exploding.“You would sacrifice us?” he growled, his face only inches from Cadderly’s.“You would give the lives of my people, that a few men might survive? We owe you nothing, I say! Do you believe it is with light hearts that we surrender our homeland? I have lived in Shilmista since before your precious library was even constructed!”Cadderly wanted to argue that Galladel’s own claims proved that Shilmista, then, was worth fighting for, and that every possibility, even the attempt to awaken the trees, should be exhausted before the elves fled their homes.The young scholar couldn’t, though.He could find nothing to throw against Galladel’s outrage, nothing to diminish the elf king’s ire
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