Chapter Text
Fen’Harel remembered the first time he witnessed a joining.
He remembered the way the magic gathered in the room. How it had felt on his skin, like gentle lightning tickling the hairs on his neck. The sharp smell of rain filled the air. The light in the room seemed to soften, and within the stone walls of the palace small wisps of light had winked, white and green and blue, almost like stars pulled down to earth.
The visiting noble was driven to his knees by the weight of the spell on his skin. His fine silks were crumpled under his shuddering form. He crushed his hat in his hands, and all stood back in a respectful circle as the spell was wrought. Blue fire spread across his face, but he did not cry out. He trembled, and Fen’Harel remembered watching his tears drop to the floor.
Then the fire had faded. The scent and sensation of the most ancient of Elvhen magicks seeped away, returning the world to normal. The man had stood and tried to fix his hat with shaking hands.
“Well joined, Ser,” Mythal had announced, and a cheer rose from the crowd.
He had left that night on the fast steed Mythal had gifted him, along with a dozen soldiers from her retinue to see him safely to his love.
He had left with the blood magic mark like the triumphant spray of a griffon’s wing over his cheek, eyes, and brow. A stunning mark, and one now shared, somewhere, by the heart that lived outside his body. Fen’Harel had snuck to the ramparts of Mythal’s bower and watched the company ride out. Their mounts thundered from the yard, the noble’s cape billowing behind him as he charged where his heart’s song led him. Halfway down the path he veered up a hill. He leapt into the Eluvian standing at the crest of the hill and the soldiers followed behind him two abreast. Each horse jumped as it passed into the mirror, white hooves and black tails flying. The company disappeared into the Fade. Fen’Harel watched the surface of the mirror ripple for a long time. It shimmered with the gold and red of the sunset.
He remembered gripping the stones so hard that his hands were stiff and cold when night fell, and he couldn’t feel them on the ladder as he snuck back down to the main hall.
Tradition allowed three years for the mark to manifest once a person entered their joining season.
Those who did not manifest the mark leading the way to their heart served in the retinues of the Honored Elders; Evanuris and Forgotten Ones, the kings and queens who ruled all of Elvhenan.
A woman whose skin bore no sign could find her strength instead in service to Mythal as a warrior of the arcane arts. The scholars of Elgar’nan’s retinue were all postulants who had waited only a year into their season before anxiously devoting their lives to study. For whom among the People could be trusted to devote themselves with whole intention to the Evanuris? Only those whose hearts lived within them. Only a person whose soul was not split with another.
Three years after the advent of their joining season, all Elvhen lacking their mark were brought before the Honored Elders to be devoted to their service. Once the mark of the Honored was cast by magic across their skin, a person’s heart could never sing for another. In reverence to the monarchs of the kingdoms of Elvhenan, postulants knelt and chanted hymns of praise while the mark of the ruler they honored was writ in blood upon their brow: by this sign, these incomplete elves at last became whole.
Fen’Harel had never questioned the practice as a child. When he was young and still untested in battle he sat on the ground at Mythal’s knee while her newest servants had accepted the geas of her mark.
Now, many hundreds of years later, Fen’Harel knelt at the edge of the great ice sea and listened to the glassy crinkle of the shore.
He had been so certain as a child that when his joining season came upon him, his mark would manifest at once. He would have his love in his arms that very day. He would braid their hair and show them Mythal’s palace, hugging them close in dark corners. And perhaps, tilting up their chin, he would gaze at their lips…
His mind never wandered much further than that, not when he was a boy. He had been curious, but had mainly only dreamt of how warm it must be to be held by another. Mythal was the only person who might have held him. As he’d grown older he’d realized that she regarded him more as a valuable commodity than as any true adopted son; the intrigues of court had been her affections. When she touched him it was always to correct, to punish, or control. He wondered very much what it would feel like to be held and to hold another in his arms.
His joining season had come and the three years had gone.
As a prince of the Forgotten Ones, there had been no mere tradition that could bind Fen’Harel into the service of another monarch. And no royal had ever passed their joining season without manifesting a mark. His skin remained bare, and he continued to hope.
Then three centuries had gone. Finally ascending to the throne of his kingdom, without a mark of joining Fen’Harel could not be allowed rule - these were the machinations of Anaris, who was loathe to relinquish the power she had enjoyed during Fen’Harel’s childhood as a changeling prince in Mythal’s care. Anaris arranged to rule the lands of Fen’Harel by proxy while Fen’Harel remained in Mythal’s bower.
Fen’Harel commanded an army under Mythal, but having no mark himself he refused to mark his postulants with any geas of blood.
The centuries crept by. Fen’Harel could have despaired. He could have accepted that he was never meant to share his life with another, that his soul was wholly his and would never be split; his heart would never take the shape of someone he could reach out and touch.
Instead, the morning was still pale overhead as Fen’Harel knelt beside the sea, naked in the dawn and filled with hope.
He had removed his armor and it was set in a tidy circle around him. Chainmail, underclothes, cuisse, greaves, fur, plate, medals of command, and a richly-adorned pauldron. The sharp leaves of a weed dug into his leg. He bent and studied his body.
Hands first, because they were easiest. Arms and legs followed. Then the use of a small mirror to examine his skull; he lifted away his hair to check his neck. Then he continued looking down his back. It was as he peered over one shoulder, struggling to view the base of his spine from a different angle, that he heard a voice behind him.
“Ah, Wolf. You know it is not that kind of mark.”
“And yet there will be a sign,” he insisted, quickly masking his surprise. “Some mark on my skin.” He continued his examination with a more considered show of dignity.
“Your soul would sing out to its mate, little Wolf. I would hear it, if none other.” Wisdom smiled and Fen’Harel felt a familiar jolt of irritation at her patient tone.
“What would you know of it?” He asked. He strained to see a lower place, mistaking for a moment a scar from a recent battle for something else. His flash of hope was quickly followed by disappointment.
“I was there when the first of your kind sent their song into the world, Wolf. He pulled her from the sea with his melody. It was agony to witness. She parted the waters on the back of a great serpent. Her eyes were like the ice that roars at the sun and she understood his rage; and so, she could cool it. They were held together from that day.”
Fen’Harel set the mirror down. His inspection was complete, and the result was as it ever was.
He had known what he would find when he’d set out to his task. On the warmest days he always found himself drawn to this place, but he never found the mark for which he searched, the mark that would draw him to his heart-outside-himself. The mark that would guide him to the side of his vhenan.
Still, he always thought, perhaps the spell was wrought while I slept, and he catalogued every freckle and scar to ensure he had missed no sign. One more day alone, he thought, and stood and brushed his knees. Imprints of the grass mottled his skin.
He looked at Wisdom. The spirit’s form was plain, the only things setting her apart from the People her blunt ears and the glow of green power rooting out of her legs and feet to the earth. She mirrored him, denuded. She looked at him with her usual quiet patience.
Fen’Harel sighed. “She cannot cool his rage any longer,” he said.
“She must return to the sea,” Wisdom agreed.
“No.” He shook his head and bent to retrieve his underclothes. “Not that. She is needed.”
“She seems to think so,” the spirit conceded, and then lapsed into silence, slowly mimicking him as he donned his armor. Chain, breastplate, then the cloak fastened with its silverite clasp. She pulled the garments out of the air, practicing changing her form as he dressed. He motioned for her to stop, and she did, as he wrapped the the fur about his shoulders.
They stood facing one another.
In the distance, the horns sounded.
“To battle,” he said.
“To war,” Wisdom sighed.