Atlantis disappeared beneath the sea, wore silks in pastel colors that clung to her body, embroidered all over with vines and leaves, with trailing sleeves and a train that covered the tiny flowers for yards behind her. All three were blond, of course, for Seleighe Sidhe favored blond hair, but the first had hair like a ruddy sunset, the second like a field of ripe corn, and the third, like Aleneil, pale as moonlight.
"My teachers," Aleneil said simply. "Now come and look into the Mirror."
He stood where she directed, and she beside him. The three other ladies raised their hands, and a glow of power lifted about the crystal lens.
"Here is the nexus of our future," said the one in the dress of ancient Greece, and a mist seemed to pass over the surface of the lens. A moment later, the surface cleared, but within it, Denoriel saw the image of a human infant, red-haired and scowling, swaddled in fine, embroidered linen and lace . . . and glowing with power. The babe was being held by a figure that Denoriel recognized—the mortal king of England, Henry, who was the eighth of that name.
"And here are glimpses of the future when this child comes to reign in Great Harry's stead," said the lady garbed as a mortal of that court. The lens misted again, and scene after scene played out briefly before him—briefly, but enough to show him a future very bright for the mortals of England, a flowering of art, music, and letters, of freedom of thought and deed, of exploration and bravery. Oh, there were problems—twice, if Denoriel read the signs aright—Spain sent a great fleet against England, only to be repulsed at minimal cost. But the troubles were weathered, the difficulties overcome, and the result was nearly an age of gold.
"And this—" said the lady of the ancient ways, "is what will come to pass if that child does not reign."
Fires . . .
Image after image crowded the lens, and even Denoriel, not unaccustomed to pain and terror, winced away from the appalling scenes. Black-robed Christian priests, grim-faced and implacable, brought scores, hundreds of victims to the Question, torturing their bodies until they would confess to anything, then burning what was left in front of silent onlookers. Others, whose intellects burned as brightly as the flames, did not need to be tortured; they confessed their sins of difference defiantly, and were burned. In place of a flowering of art and science, came a blight. Darkness fell over the land, pressed there by the heavy, iron hand of Spain and the Inquisition.
Then the lens cleared, and the ladies stood quietly, watching him. "Interesting," he said at last, forcing his breathing to be steady and even and swallowing the constriction in his throat. "But I fail to see what relevance this has to us."
It was the last of the ladies to speak who addressed him, her brows raised, her voice patient, as if she addressed a particularly stupid child. "What happens to them has always been relevant to us, Denoriel. Britain is bound to Logres, and Logres to Britain; it has always been so, and will always be. Think! Have you never heard of Elfhame Alhambra, of Elfhame Eldorado, and what became of them when the hounds of the Inquisition were set loose upon the land of Spain?"
He stiffened; no elf liked to be reminded of the darkened, deserted halls of the great palace of Alhambra, of the silent gardens of Eldorado, both haunted by things it was better not to meet. If anyone had told him why the elves had fled those elfhames, it had not stuck with him. But the word had been enough to give him the clue . . . Inquisition.
The lady of the Greek peplos stared at him in rebuke. "If dark times come upon the mortals of Britannia, they will come to us. Death and cruelty feed our Unseleighe kin, as creativity and joy feed us. If that comes to Britain at the hands of the Inquisition—the gates to Logres will be open to the Unseleighe Underhill."
Her eyes flashed angrily at him, and he stepped