This Scepter'd Isle Read Online Free

rather than dead black.
    Silver lanterns, like miniature moons, hung among the branches at intervals along the path, and he passed from light, into shadow, back into pearly light again. At length the path opened up into a round meadow, ringed with witch lights; the grass was studded with huge, white moonflowers, and at the center stood the Gate.
    There was but one destination this Gate held—Elfhame Avalon, the mystic heart of Seleighe lands Underhill, and as a consequence, the Gate was guarded by Oberon's most trusted knights and warriors. Once, one of them had been Denoriel's father . . . 
    The knights on duty at the Gate to Avalon did not bear their usual arms and accouterments; they wore instead a uniform style of armor and the High King's livery. With their helms down and closed, Denoriel could not recognize any of them, but they recognized him.
    Recognized who he was supposed to be, at any rate. The Knights of the Gate were also magicians of power and took no chances. Denoriel felt the shiver of a spell pass across his skin, like the caress of icy silk, as one of them cast a magic that would dispel any illusion over him.
    "Welcome, and pass on, Denoriel Silverhair," said a hollow voice that sounded as if it came from somewhere over his head, rather than from any of the knights. The two nearest him parted enough to allow him to take his steed between them, and onto the white marble platform of the Gate.
    Gates took many forms, according to the whims of their creators. This one was an arched dome of opal lace, rising above the eight fluted pillars of chalcedony that supported it, its floor a platform of the whitest, blue-veined marble. Miralys's hooves rang on the stone as the elvensteed paced slowly across the marble to pass between the two closest pillars and under the arch.
    And the moment that Denoriel reached the center of the dome, the very air shivered, he felt a moment of unsettling disorientation—
    And he was no longer beneath opal lacework, but under the interwoven boughs of eight trees wrought of solid silver, and beneath the hooves of his steed, not marble, but a pavement-mosaic of an eight-pointed star, formed of thousands of pearly seashells, each smaller than the nail of a newborn baby's finger.
    His twin sister, Aleneil Arwyddion Ysfael Silverhair, waited for him at the edge of the pavement, bathed in the blue twilight of Underhill, her eyes grave, but welcoming. Denoriel swiftly dismounted and strode toward her, hands outstretched to catch hers.
    As always, he felt that shock of familiarity, that unsettling feeling of staring into a mirror that somehow inverted his gender. The same eyes, Elven-green with slitted pupils, were common to High and Low Court, Seleighe and Unseleighe—but hers were the exact shape of his. The arch of her brow duplicated his, the sharp curve of cheekbone was the same that his own fingers traced, the barely tilted nose, one he had lamented in his own features, but which her suitors called "adorable," was also the same. Differences—there were those. Her hair was longer than his; hers swept the ground behind her, unbound, covered only by a tiny, heart-shaped cap, while his was neatly trimmed at his shoulder blades. And she wore a gown, not a tunic or doublet, fitted in the bodice with a low, square neckline, spreading as to the skirts. Today she wore a gown, tomorrow it might be doublet and hose; Elven women were free to wear or not wear whatever they chose. But Aleneil not only chose the sweeping skirts, she chose them in the current human mode, not the antique garments of another century, nor the curiously wrought robes favored by the most traditional of their kin.
    "I'm here, as you asked," he said, meeting her eyes and seeing trouble in them. "But you didn't tell me—have you asked me as sister, or as FarSeer?"
    "FarSeer first; then as your sister. It is as FarSeer that I must show you something of grave import; it is as sister that I will then ask something of you