Gilthas was not blind. He, too, had bristled at Porthios’s comment. But unlike his volatile wife, the Speaker of the Sun and Stars was accustomed to keeping his reactions private. He was quite aware of Porthios’s insolence. It was always present, like a thorn constantly pricking him, yet never obvious enough that Gilthas could confront him about it.

Gilthas ordered the griffon riders to stand down. Watch would be kept for Hytanthas, but they couldn’t risk losing more riders in a futile search. The will-o’-the-wisps had never yet given back a victim.

“Food and water are waiting for you in my tent,” Gilthas told his wife.

She nodded but excused herself to tend her griffon first. If Porthios’s tone tended toward insolence, Kerian’s held no emotion at all. Gilthas knew she would defend him against anything. But what she thought of him and still felt for him, he had been unable to divine.

Porthios followed him as he traversed the crowded camp on his way to his tent. Elves of all stations greeted their Speaker with warmth. Porthios trailed behind, as unheralded as a shadow. No one spoke to Porthios lightly.

Qualinesti and Silvanesti alike had an ingrained horror of disfigurement, making Porthios’s return to prominence all the more discomforting. Bathed by dragonfire, Porthios should have died. Instead, he emerged from the forest of the land he’d once ruled to launch a rebellion against the occupying forces of the bandit lord Samuval. Anonymous behind his mask, Porthios freed a Qualinesti town with only a handful of followers and sparked revolts all over the country. Elves as disparate as the displaced Kerianseray, Alhana Starbreeze and her Silvanesti guards, and a loyal cadre of Kagonesti had rallied to his cause.

When Hytanthas Ambrodel arrived bearing news of the elves’ imminent destruction in Khur, Porthios left the revolt in the hands of a Kagonesti lieutenant. Then he, Alhana, and Kerian led a small band of newly-made griffon riders to Khur and saved the exiled elf nation from annihilation.