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Leading
Ladies: Chieftess Kahvi
One might not guess by Kahvi’s quick tongue and thrill seeking habits that this castaway has spent her life searching for her place in the world. Her quest has taken her to a challenge against her father, battles for the Palace and the Little Palace, searching for the Egg, and even to her now and again lovemate, Cutter. She sees herself as responsible the Go-Backs’ fallen pride, and is constantly searching for ways to bring them the Palace they can’t keep and, with it, a reason to continue living and dying with their own sense of honor.
When we first meet Kahvi in book four, she is brisk and commanding, she shows little regard for death and cares for nothing more than she does for winning the Palace. This is the Kahvi everyone knows, and loves or hates at will. Her opposition with Leetah reveals much of her character as the story moves on. Leetah fights death, and being raised in a community where elves do not die of old age, it is no wonder she wants them to live as long as possible. Kahvi accepts death, challenge, and pain. In book four she said to Leetah, “A close brush with death can change an elf for the better. [...] A healthy respect for pain keeps you alert — ready for anything. Knowing a healer’s around to close every little scratch can only make you careless — or worse — soft!” [Reader’s Collection 4, Quest’s End] This is Kahvi in a nutshell; her philosophy and her way of life.
We begin to see a new light when the ice-hearted leader weeps for her dead daughter. It is not at all unbelievable that an elf would cry over a death, but this incident opens the door to a different Kahvi. The relationship between Vaya and her mother is only hinted at, but by what we can tell, they were not great friends, and Kahvi probably treated her much like she was treated by her own father — criticized and pushed to perfection. When Kahvi realizes that her pushing forced her child into an untimely and heroic death, she can do nothing but pay humble tribute to the brave mirror of herself.
The bindings of Kahvi’s hard-hearted armor loosen just as she wins the ultimate prize, the Palace of the High Ones. When she learns that the trolls were the cause of the High Ones’ crash landing, Kahvi wants to wipe the entire race out — a hint that she feels alienated on the World of Two Moons and wants a place to belong. Her long-anticipated war prize cannot provide her with that haven. She has to keep fighting and living her best — but she is running out of things to fight for.
In book seven, Kahvi gives birth to a second daughter by her onetime lovemate Rayek. The rogue’s fixation on past and future is part of what drives him away from Kahvi, who cares for nothing but today. She keeps Venka secret from him because she believes the ‘fool air-walker’ needs to be taught a lesson in arrogance by someone he’ll listen to — someone who has his own blood and his enemy’s heart.
Rayek leaves for Blue Mountain, trusting Ekuar to the care of the Go-Backs with an oath that if the rock-shaper were to be harmed, the whole tribe would pay. Yet Ekuar is captured by trolls, and in a rage beyond any he has shown before, Rayek collapses the Go-Back lodge with Kahvi, Urda, and Venka inside and drives the rest of the tribe far from their precious Palace. With a massive bolt of magic he splits the land between the tribe and their ruined home with a rift and then steals the Palace away into the sky. This act of uncontrollable anger forces Kahvi’s hatred for Rayek even deeper. She tells her tribe from the other side of the rift, “We’ve never lived without the steady tug of the Palace nearby. But we’re survivors! Dig in your claws, Go-Backs! Depend on your chief’s vow! I’ll get even with Black-Hair [Rayek] and if not me, my daughter!” [RC 7, The Cry From Beyond]
Kahvi sets out after Rayek, uncertain of where he has gone to. We can only assume that Urda died while helping Kahvi look for him, because we never see her again. Eventually, Kahvi ends up in the Wolfrider’s new holt, only to find that Rayek has taken the Palace across time itself. With no clue what to do next, Kahvi stays with the Wolfriders for probably a hundred years, raising her daughter to hate Rayek for all he had done. She becomes restless with her tribe and her Palace so far away, and her enemy possibly gone forever. She flies away with Tyldak, hoping to find the Go-Backs still alive.
Back home, Kahvi finds the Go-Backs led by Zey, who wishes to keep his chieftainship despite her return. The ice chieftess finds, to her dismay, that her beloved tribe has lost something. Whether it’s their pride, guts, or heart, she doesn’t know. But she knows they need the Palace. Her restlessness takes her on quest after quest, keeping her from her tribe for years at a time. She searches for something to restore the Go-Backs to what they were, for her tribe is her life — though she doesn’t learn that until much later.
First she tries for the Little Palace, a piece of the disappeared relic that is still in her time. The Sun Villagers refuse to part with it and it causes an actual war between the tribes. Kahvi soon gives up, something she has never done before, realizing that she is not building the Go-Backs’ pride by killing other elves. Rather, she’s tearing down whatever they had left.
Far from being satisfied, she takes off again, this time for the ruins of Blue Mountain in search of the Egg, a magic sculpture with a record of all elven history. There she meets Aurek, the keeper of the Egg, who tells her of her long-forgotten past. When Kahvi learns that her tribe is nothing but Wolfrider cast-offs from centuries before and her father the mad wolf-chief Two-Spear, she throws a tantrum, breaking pots and overturning tables.
Kahvi gets to keep the Egg, though Tyldak turns against her for taking something so important to his dead kin. Still unsatisfied, she takes off in search of her lovemate Cutter. Kahvi wants to conceive a child that can become chief of both the Go-Back and Wolfrider tribes, because Ember has been stolen to the future with the Palace and Kahvi herself, quite simply, has no heir.
There is more to her quest than that, though. She wants to claim kinship with her father’s descendants and perhaps find where she fits in. She is in for disappointment, however, when she finds that Cutter and the Wolfriders have all been cocooned by preservers to wait for the return of the Palace in the troll caves. Kahvi ends up spending at least a year in the troll caves trying to find an opportunity to steal Cutter’s cocoon and run away with it. While in the tunnels, the Kahvi we met in book four surfaces once again. She enjoys outsmarting the trolls, beating them up, and cheating them in dice games. Finally she gets a chance to snatch a sleeping elf, and in a hurry grabs the wrong cocoon. Once she’s well away from the caves she cuts it open to find Nightfall inside instead. Kahvi tells the Wolfrider her plans and is met by Nightfall’s fist. “I know what it is to want a baby,” she says, after wrestling Kahvi to the ground. “And it’s not for a trophy. You’ll neither force nor trick a cub out of a Wolfrider Especially not my chief!”
Before Nightfall goes back to her sleep, she stings the wayward Go-Back with the words that will help her find an end to her quest. “You know — maybe you are wolf-blooded after all. I’m thinking of Two-Spear. He didn’t lead. He used. So do you. A wolf-chief knows to run with his pack. Learn to be a part of your own before you claim kinbond with us — Go-Back.” [RC 9C, Kahvi]
On the long trek back home to the Frozen Mountains after loosing her stag, Kahvi finds herself her own wolf friend. When she arrives home without Cutter or a cub, she tells the tribe of their blood bond with the Wolfriders and Tyldak returns to her. It is then that everything Kahvi has fought for finally falls into place; that her tribe matters above all and can be its own answer [RC 9C]:
“Go back far enough and we’re all Wolfriders. They tossed us out in Two-Spear’s time, but we didn’t need their fires. We built our own! Do you hear me? We’ve survived to be Two-Spear’s revenge! What we’ve made ourselves into — warriors, a match for elves or trolls — That’s our Palace!"
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