Destiny

Chapter 9

Kerian reckoned the flight to Khuri-Khan would take about ten hours. Departing Inath-Wakenti an hour or two after sunrise would put her in the Khurish capital after dark, which would be advantageous to her stealthy mission. Her leaving was not meant to be a secret, but neither did she announce it. Hamaramis knew and Taranath was told just before she left. The Speaker’s many councilors were not informed.

Gilthas would not be seeing her off. He’d passed a restless night, only consenting to swallow a sleeping draft when he realized his anxiety was keeping Kerian awake and hovering nearby. Afterward he slept deeply. The draft was a mild one, but Truthanar said all the Speaker’s energy was engaged in fighting the disease inside him. He had none to spare to turn over or even dream.

After assembling her scant baggage for the trip, she conferred with Truthanar. He met her outside the Speaker’s tent.

“I will make all possible speed,” she said. “You must keep the Speaker with us until I return.”

“Of course, lady. The human priestess is a skilled healer, I hear.”

His tone carried more than a hint of wounded pride. He had worked tirelessly to help Gilthas, and Kerian had no wish to shame him. Many were the nights he’d sat awake by his patient, trying to ease Gilthas’s suffering. He had few medicines or common comforts at his disposal, and little expertise fighting an ordinarily human disease such as consumption. Yet he had persisted with art and courage, as befit a member of his ancient fraternity.

“Do not feel slighted,” she said. “No one could have served the Speaker better. He has asked me to bring the holy lady to counter the curse hanging over Inath-Wakenti, not to replace you as his physician. But if she can—”

“Lady, if she can make the Speaker well again, I shall be the first to bless her efforts.” It was a difficult admission for a proud Silvanesti.

“Keep him well, Truthanar. Tie him to his pallet if you must, but keep him well until I return.”

Taking leave of him, Kerian went outside the elves’ hastily erected barricade to the open ground where Eagle Eye awaited her. She secured her few bags to his saddle. Her baggage comprised an assortment of weapons, a tiny hoard of gold and steel to smooth the way in Khuri-Khan, and a little food for Eagle Eye. Hamaramis had urged her to take rations for herself, but she refused. With food so scarce, she would eat in Khuri-Khan.

The sound of pounding hooves announced the arrival of Taranath and Hamaramis. They dismounted a short distance away, and Taranath jogged up to the waiting Lioness. Old Hamaramis approached more slowly.

“Commander, I…” Taranath began. His voice trailed away, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable. The veteran warrior, formerly a commander in the Qualinesti royal guard, had been her second-in-command in Khur for the past five years. They had not always agreed—the Lioness had little use for fawning favor-seekers—but they were comrades, united by service to their Speaker, bound together by the terrors and triumphs of many battlefields.

Kerian held out her hand. Taranath clasped it warmly in both his own.

Hamaramis’s farewell was gruff and brief. Then he added, “I’ve been thinking we should build a temporary citadel—a place where we could take shelter if things go badly. Barricades between the standing stones are hardly adequate.”

“What would we build it of?” Taranath wanted to know.

“There’s plenty of stone lying about. We can put it to good use.”

Kerian mounted. “Good idea. Remember to stay off the circular platform. There’s no telling how far that thing throws voices. Till we meet again!”

She tapped Eagle Eye’s flanks with her heels. The griffon spread his broad wings and, with two mighty bounds, took off. Before she could turn his head to Khuri-Khan, a high-pitched cry captured Kerian’s attention.

Kanan had taken flight from the far side of the camp. The riderless griffon arrowed straight for Eagle Eye.

“No, no!” Kerian shouted. “Go back!”

The young beast paid her no heed but did take notice of Eagle Eye’s more forceful comment. The Royal griffon screeched twice. Kanan’s answering chirrup sounded quite forlorn. Head drooping, Kanan descended to the camp.

Kerian urged Eagle Eye higher. She spared a last glance over her shoulder. The camp buzzed with activity, but all was still around the Speaker’s tent. Truthanar was making certain the Speaker’s repose was undisturbed.

Aloft, the air was cold. Kerian had brought a heavy cloak for the journey. She pulled its hood up over her head. Her golden hair, which she’d hacked off during her stay in occupied Qualinesti, had grown out but still didn’t cover her neck. She was grateful for the cloak’s deep hood.

The southern mountains, lowest of those encircling Inath-Wakenti, were her first goal. The three snow-capped peaks that marked the entrance to the valley were in fact ranged along the sides of the pass, two to the east and one westward, so she wouldn’t be required to skirt their broad slopes. Morning sun glared off the western peak and colored the mountainside in golden light.

The stark landscape below, untouched as yet by the sun, unrolled with a monotonous sameness: widely scattered cedars, pines, and rock maples; vines engulfing boulders and filling ravines; flows of light-colored gravel from the slate hillsides. The standing stones appeared gray in the shade cast by the high mountains and looked even more enigmatic than usual with the last ribbons of mist curling around them. Kerian longed to see a deer or wild goat on a lonesome crag. An eagle or vulture sailing on the rising air would have been a revelation.

She saw none of those things, of course. The Silent Vale was as devoid of animal life as ever, but eyes of a different sort were watching her in flight.

Faeterus and Favaronas had reached Mount Rakaris late the night before and begun the long climb to the Stair of Distant Vision. They had covered no more than a third of the distance before a dozen will-o’-the-wisps materialized higher up the mountainside and drifted down toward them. Despite Faeterus’s forceful commands, the lights closed in, forcing him to fend them off individually. Favaronas clung as close to the sorcerer as he dared, hoping he would be protected. Faeterus dispatched each light with arcane gestures and shouted words that were unintelligible to the archivist. These efforts reduced each will-o’-the-wisp to a smoky dot, gray-white in the darkness, which finally disintegrated and vanished.

By the time the last fireball was banished, the sorcerer was reeling with exhaustion. He collapsed but retained enough presence of mind to put Favaronas to sleep with a wave of his hand before succumbing. The two passed the night where they dropped.

The griffon’s cry as it rose from the camp roused Favaronas and sent a thrill of hope through him. A griffon meant the Speaker and his loyal warriors could not be far away. He hauled himself to his knees, shading his eyes against the bright sky, searching for the source. But Faeterus had awoken as well. A stoppered gourd was slung over his shoulder on a thong. The sorcerer pulled it forward, uncorked it, and thrust its long neck deep into his hood. He drank, swallowing more and more quickly as the liquid revived him. The smell coming from the gourd made Favaronas’s stomach clench. He knew that reek. The sorcerer was drinking blood and not very fresh blood either.

Revived, Faeterus stood and looked skyward. He intoned a long sentence. A prickling sensation washed over Favaronas’s face. it felt as if every hair on his head were standing on end. The sorcerer pressed his palms together. When he drew them apart again, a bar of white-hot fire stretched between them. Favaronas threw himself facedown on the ground, arms covering his head. A heartbeat later a crack of thunder assaulted his ears, and a blast of heat scorched his back.

Kerian didn’t see the lightning bolt coming, but Eagle Eye did. His huge raptor eyes could see in almost a complete circle for miles around him. The flash was far away but bright and strong, rising from the ground on the griffon’s left rear quarter. Without waiting for guidance from his rider, he banked steeply away. Taken by surprise, Kerian pitched sideways. She threw her arms around the griffon’s neck and protested loudly.

Her complaints died when the sizzling bolt of lightning roared past them. Kerian yelled as the metal gear she wore burned through her clothes. Eagle Eye continued his maneuver, making a complete roll and coming right side up. Although griffon and rider had turned away just in time, Kerian’s eyes were dazzled by the blast. When she’d blinked her vision clear again, she saw Eagle Eye’s left wingtip was singed, and fur on his left hindquarter was scorched and smoking.

“Well done!” she praised him, patting his feathered neck. Uncharacteristically, the griffon flinched as she patted him.

Leaning far forward, she waved her hand before his left eye. Eagle Eye didn’t blink or give any other sign he’d noticed the motion, and she realized the lightning bolt had blinded him on that side. His right eye was undamaged.

Gently, she directed him into a steep climb. High, icy cloud fingers streaked the new day, but otherwise the sky was clear, unbroken blue. None of the previous griffon patrols had encountered random lightning bolts over Inath-Wakenti. That didn’t rule it out as some strange manifestation of the valley’s hostile magic, but it was more likely someone down there was hurling thunderbolts.

Eagle Eye climbed cautiously, flying in flat, wide curves quite unlike his usual bold style. Kerian looked past the beating wings, seeking the possible source of the deadly lightning. All she saw were rocky crags spinning past.

When they had doubled their height, she set the griffon’s head south again. It was pointless to remain, inviting a second attack. Nothing more happened, but she didn’t stop looking over her shoulder until they reached the far side of the mountains. Stalwart Eagle Eye flew steadily on, head tilted to compensate for the loss of sight on his left side. Kerian forced herself to remain calm so her emotions wouldn’t agitate the griffon. But inside she was boiling mad. Someone would pay for this treacherous attack.

Had she but known, she was in no danger from a second assault. Favaronas cautiously lifted his face from the dirt and saw Faeterus sprawled nearby. The effort of hurling the single bolt had flattened the sorcerer. The breast of his robe moved, the shallow breathing his only sign of life.

Favaronas himself was unharmed, though his head reeled from proximity to so great a discharge of energy. The ground sloped steeply there. Getting to his feet required caution lest dizziness send him cartwheeling down the mountain. Still, he made all the haste he could. His chance to escape had come.

Whispering voices brought him whirling back toward Faeterus’s unconscious form. Four spirits had appeared higher up the slope. Apparitions did not manifest in Faeterus’s presence while he was awake (and he never slept). With him laid out cold, that protection was gone.

The specters regarded Favaronas with unblinking eyes. Their faces were unnervingly devoid of expression. At first they floated in midair, their bodies fading away a foot above the ground but as the apparitions solidified, their lower legs appeared. It was impossible to tell whether they were male or female. All had hollow, emaciated faces framed by long, tangled hair.

Favaronas stared in fear, falling back and sending pebbles skittering down the mountainside.

‘Don’t hurt me!” he rasped, holding out both hands to ward off the ghosts. “I mean no harm. He forced me to come!”

One of the four spirits took a step forward and spoke—at least, the words seemed to come from it.

He still lives. We cannot claim him yet.

“Is he one of you?” The spirit answered in the affirmative. “Who is he?”

Look on him yourself.

More whispers filled the air. Other spirits, less solid-seeming than the first four, had materialized above and below Favaronas. His escape blocked, the scholar gave in to curiosity and crept toward his immobile captor. The knotted rag that held the hood tight around Faeterus’s throat finally yielded to his trembling fingers. He pushed the hood back and beheld the sorcerer’s face for the first time.

Faeterus had implied that be was thousands of years old. Favaronas might have disbelieved his claim to such an improbably great age, but the sorcerer’s hands were those of a very old elf, with prominent knuckles, so he expected to see a wrinkled, withered visage. Not so—the sorcerer’s face was smooth and unlined. His forehead was high, his chin sharp, and his ears rose to the expected points. His white-gold hair was short and curly. He looked like an elf in the very prime of life.

Or did he? When Favaronas looked more closely, certain oddities became apparent. The ears were not quite right; their peaked tips were too long and pointed not up, but back. The nose, though long and narrow as was common among Silvanesti, was dark around the nostrils. What Favaronas had taken for pale skin was in fact a coat of downy hair, No true elf grew such hair on his face. It wasn’t even a beard such as humans or half-elves wore. Fine, white hair covered Faeterus’s entire face from forehead to chin. To confirm the evidence of his eyes, Favaronas put out a tentative finger and touched the sorcerer’s cheek. The hair was soft as velvet.

Stranger still, a shadow under Faeterus’s nose proved to be a faint scar, as though his upper lip had been split in two and sewn back together.

Favaronas backed away, still staring. The more he looked, the weirder the face appeared. The sorcerer’s tongue, just visible between his parted lips, was dark as sandal leather. His eyebrows seemed to meet over his nose, or was that a trick of the light? Taken as a whole, the face seemed somehow animal-like, as though a beast had tried to transform into an elf and failed.

Only he had the power to leave, and he abandoned us.

“Why do you walk the mortal plane? What do you want?”

To be away from this place. You can help. Go to the place of Distant Vision,.

With a sinking heart, Favaronas glanced up the slope beyond the four specters. Distance and the steep angle reduced the Stair of Distant Vision to nothing more than a horizontal band of dark rock. “Why? What’s up there?”

The crowd of apparitions vanished, leaving only the first four. They wavered like an image seen through desert heat. Desperate, Favaronas repeated his questions.

Seize the key before the door opens.

The four blinked out of existence.

“Wait! What does that mean?” he cried, the scholar in him already puzzling over the words.

“It means,” said a voice behind him, “time is short.”

Icy defeat lanced through Favaronas as he turned on leaden feet. Faeterus was himself again, sitting up. The sorcerer put a hand to his head, realized his concealing hood was askew, and cast a venomous glance at his captive.

“Well, elf spawn what have you learned?” His voice was weak, but hatred dripped from every syllable.

“Nothing, master. The more I hear, the less I know!” the archivist gabbled.

Faeterus held out a hand, silently commanding assistance to stand. As soon as Favaronas drew near, the sorcerer grabbed his arm and jerked him off his feet. Favaronas quickly realized he could not move away. Faeterus’s hand, clamped onto Favaronas’s bare arm, adhered as though grafted flesh to flesh.

“Now we are one. Until my work is done, you’ll not wander off or talk to the dead again.”

The archivist stared down at the unnatural bond, nausea rising in his throat. Their skin appeared to have melded together—did the link go deeper? Did the tainted blood of the creature called Faeterus mingle with his own?

He turned away from the hooded head that was much too close and struggled to his feet, awkwardly pulling the sorcerer upright as well. Favaronas took a step, then another, dragging the weakened sorcerer along with him. The ledge seemed as distant as the sun. Faeterus’s sustenance might be vile, but at least he’d eaten recently. Favaronas could scarcely remember the last food or water he’d had.

As he climbed, outwardly resigned, he distracted himself from his misery by concentrating on the many questions raised by the encounter with the spirits. What exactly did they want—to put off their half-life and rest or to rejoin the mortal plane? How did having their betrayer here help them? And what was the key he was supposed to seize?

Favaronas was widely read, but he was no sage. All he knew of magic were the few basic concepts he’d gleaned from ancient manuscripts. The stone scrolls might contain further clues. The conundrum was how to peruse them without alerting Faeterus to his intentions.

His thoughts continued to wander until Faeterus rapped him sharply on the head. “Watch your step!” the sorcerer snapped.

Unthinkingly, Favaronas had taken them to the crumbling lip of a ravine, Two steps more and they would have tumbled a hundred yards onto toothy rocks. For a moment he considered rushing forward and taking those steps.

“Don’t assume what kills you will harm me,” Faeterus said. “Remember the griffon rider’s fate.”

Favaronas resumed the climb. So Faeterus thought the griffon rider dead? The scholar knew better. After the mage had fallen unconscious, Favaronas had seen the griffon circle briefly then continue south. No sooner had the thought entered his mind than he drove it away, filling his head with stanzas of a particularly dull Silvanesti epic poem. Joined as they were, the sorcerer might be able to read his thoughts. No sense giving away everything.

Pairs of mounted elves rode through the stunted elms and oaks littering the eastern half of the valley. They were part of the Speaker’s widened patrols, desperately seeking sustenance in the barren landscape. So far they’d found nothing. Even the trees were sterile. Oaks bore no acorns; elms did not scatter winged seeds before the breeze. Given the strange climate of Inath-Wakenti, it was impossible to tell how old the trees might be. An eight-foot tree might be a young sapling or a mature plant a thousand years old, forever arrested by the weird influence of Inath-Wakenti.

The morning was still fresh when flankers came riding in to Taranath to announce a strange find. Not food or a water source, but an elf.

“Alive?” Taranath asked.

“It seems so. But you’d better come see. it would be easier than explaining!”

The two riders led him nearly a mile south of his original line of march, to a clearing containing three tall standing stones. Four more mounted warriors were drawn up around one of the monoliths, the elves staring at something on the ground. Taranath started to dismount. The soldiers advised him not to draw too near. After admonishing them not to be so fearful, the general got down and between two horses. He beheld the strangest of many strange sights he’d witnessed of late.

A mound of blue-green sand was humped up by the base of the white monolith. Buried upto his mouth in it was an elf with tanned skin and dark hair cut short. His eyes were closed as if in death, but his nostrils flared ever so slightly. He was breathing.

Even more remarkable, the dirt mound was covered by live bats. Taranath could hardly his eyes—living creatures in Inath-Wakenti! The bats reacted not at all to the approach of elves. They were clustered so thickly, their wings completely hid the surface of the mound. The seated elf was encased from toes to lips. The bats covered only the portion illuminated by the rising sun. As he stared, another bat flew squeaking by his head and landed near the bottom edge of the living mass. The newcomer spread its wings and positioned itself just where the line of sunlight was starting to creep downward on the entombed elf’s torso.

“Careful, sir,” said one of the warriors, breaking the stunned silence. “The sand is alive.”

Something skittered over the surface of Taranath’s boots, and he looked down. Streams of turquoise colored dirt were flowing over his feet like water. With an oath, be shook free and stepped back. Fortunately, the creeping sand didn’t extend more than a few feet from the trapped elf.

The unknown elf was a Kagonesti, Taranath thought. From the look of him, he had dwelled among humans. If they didn’t free him soon, the sand would bury him completely. The presence of the bats was as inexplicable as the rest, but they must give way if the fellow was to be dug out.

He set the warriors to work. For foraging, they carried gear such as short-handled spades and vials for sampling any water they might find. Two riders got down and tried to drive the bats away by shouting and waving their spades. The bats chittered and squeaked, but stayed put. Only when Taranath probed among them with his saber did they take flight. As soon as they were gone, the sand they’d been shading ceased roiling and hardened with an audible creak. Wherever the sun touched it, the flowing soil went rigid as stone. The imprisoned elf groaned very weakly. The solidifying sand was squeezing the breath out of him.

“Break him out!” Taranath cried. “Hurry!”

The hardened sand was like glass-very hard but ultimately brittle. As they hacked at it with spades, the elves were cut by flying shards, but they kept at it. The flock of bats circled just above their heads, making a terrific din. Soon the elves had the hardened sand cleared away from the Kagonesti’s torso. His chest expanded with a great, shuddering breath, Immediately, the bats dispersed. They were gone from sight in seconds.

The warriors turned their attention to the glass encasing his legs. When they had freed his legs, two seized his arms, heaving him upward. The spell that had animated the soil was broken. The blue-green dirt lay quiet beneath their feet. To be safe, they carried the stranger a few yards away. Taranath splashed water on his ashen face.

The Kagonesti came to with a vengeance. Jerking free of the hands supporting him, he rolled away and was on his feet in a heartbeat. Elves are a dexterous and nimble race, but the Kagonesti’s quick recovery and terrific reflexes startled them all.

He didn’t reach for a weapon, only seated a pair of tinted spectacles on his nose. Peering at them through the yellow lenses, he said, “You’re not ghosts!”

Taranath folded his arms. “No, my friend, but you nearly were.”