Destiny

Chapter 6

Dawn brought good news. No elves had vanished during the night. Gilthas accepted that news with quiet satisfaction. Perhaps the valley was learning to accept them, he said. Kerian’s view was less rosy.

“Whatever lurks here is not stupid, Gil. It learns from its mistakes. We puzzled it last night, probably because there were so many of us. It will adapt, and people will disappear again. That’s what happened to us the first time we came here.”

He frowned. “It? Who or what is ‘it’? The ghosts? I always heard spirits were moved by an unresolved need for revenge or justice. Are the ghosts here of a different order?”

“How should I know? I’m no mage. But whatever it is, it will learn.”

They’d been climbing slowly all morning and were crossing a forested plain. Unlike the majestic trees of their homeland, these were spindly evergreens, pines and cedars mostly, and widely spaced. Gilthas traveled in his palanquin and Kerian walked at his side. A few hundred yards ahead rode a squadron of cavalry led by Taranath. The mounted elves combed through the sparse woodland, keeping an eye out for trouble. All they found were more megaliths, each as inexplicable as the last. These here on the plain had a somewhat different character than the ones left behind in the lowlands near Lioness Creek. The lowland monoliths were square-cut, cyclopean blocks. The upland stones had rounded contours. Vertical stones tapered to blunt points, looking for all the world like enormous teeth growing out of the ground. Riders found cylinders, and even perfect spheres twenty feet in diameter. One feature they shared with the lowland monoliths was their seemingly random arrangement. It was as if they’d fallen from the sky with no more plan than raindrops.

A warbling cry caused Gilthas to look up. The two griffons, Eagle Eye and Kanan, wheeled overhead. Eagle Eye was a mature adult and the younger griffon’s attempts to match his flying prowess afforded Gilthas a welcome distraction from the lifeless terrain. When Eagle Eye executed a particularly deft turn and roll, placing himself above and behind Kanan, the latter flared his wings and screeched. In flight against the cloudless blue sky, the creatures were a beautiful sight and offered a measure of reassurance. If danger lurked nearby, the griffons would spot it before the elves did.

Pulling his attention earthward once more, Gilthas said to Kerian, “You’re no wizard, that’s true. So look at Inath-Wakenti with your warrior’s eye and tell me what you see.”

“I see a valley where no one lives, No cities, no crops, no herds. It’s completely empty, yet defended against all corners. Who is defending it?”

“The ghosts of its long-ago inhabitants.”

“I don’t think so.” She eyed a towering, hourglass-shaped block of white quartz ahead. “There are at least two stories here. First are the ghosts, the tunnels, and the giant stones. They’re connected to each other somehow.”

Her expedition had found the tunnels after accidentally upending a monolith. Beneath it was an entrance to the underground passageways. And the ghosts seemed to enter and leave the tunnels at will.

“But I believe the will-o’-the-wisps are different,” she added.

When similar lights had claimed Kerian on the battlefield outside Khuri-Khan, she thought she was destined for oblivion, like the warriors who’d vanished during her initial trip to the valley, instead, she found herself dumped into the loathsome Nalis Aren, the Lake of Death, in Qualinesti, her adventures with Porthios, Alhana, and the griffons followed. Why the lights had transported her away from Khur remained a mystery but she’d decided they were different from the lights here. Inath-Wakenti’s will-o’-the-wisps flew meandering, irregular courses, drifting and dawdling until their target was lulled into a false sense of safety. The lights that had kidnapped her were larger, faster, seemingly more direct of purpose. Their source, she felt, was different from whatever drove the valley lights.

“They are attracted to living creatures,” she reasoned. “Over the centuries, they’ve eliminated every living animal from this valley, right down to the flies and fleas.”

“What does that suggest?”

“They’re guarding the valley—not only to keep people out, but to keep the residents in.”

Gilthas nodded slowly. “The inhabitants of the valley were not intended to have contact with outsiders. I imagine they never did. One by one they died, as we all die, and their spirits haunt the land. They don’t present a threat like the lights. If we could find a way to persuade the will-o’-the-wisp to leave us alone, we’d be a long way toward making this place home.”

“Maybe you can talk to them,” Kerian said dryly.

Whatever he intended to say was swallowed up by a furious bout of coughing. So wracked was he by the spasm, Kerian ordered his chair lowered and the healer summoned. Truthanar brought more of his palliative drink, but Gilthas could swallow very little.

“Great Speaker, you must rest!” Truthanar declared. “If you continue on like this, I will not be responsible for the consequences.”

Gilthas’s answer was some time coming, but at last the coughing subsided and he wheezed, “I’m in a chair already. How more rested must I be?”

Blood oozed from his nose. Kerian, kneeling at his side, carefully wiped it away with her fingers.

“Sire, you must lie in a warm bed and sleep,” Truthanar insisted.

“Soon, noble healer. Soon.”

Kerian followed Truthanar as he returned to his place in the milling throng. “Tell me plainly,” she said in a low voice. “What is his condition?”

The aged Silvanesti was blunt. “He is burning his candle at both ends, lady. Even if he took to a bed right now and kept warm and quiet, his life still would be measured in months.”

She had known her husband’s health was bad, but hearing the prognosis aloud was still a shock. Returning to the palanquin, she found Gilthas had succumbed to the medicine and was slumped in the chair, sleeping, chin on his chest. The cup had fallen from his slack fingers. Kerian picked it up and handed it to one of the Speaker’s aides.

“Follow the scouts,” she told the bearers, gesturing at Taranath and the cavalry. The bearers lifted the chair and resumed walking. They were not the same four who had carried the palanquin at the beginning of the journey. Every hour or so, a new quartet replaced those carrying the chair. It had required Kerian’s intervention to put such a rotation in place. The bearers were volunteers, and none wanted to give up his or her place. If Kerian hadn’t insisted, they would have carried on until exhaustion dropped them in their tracks.

When the palanquin resumed its progress, the crowd of elves behind it picked themselves up too and continued their steady tramp toward the center of the valley. None knew what, if anything, might be there, but it was the Speaker’s will they go, and for him, they would walk into the Abyss.

While Gilthas slept, Kerian decided to reconnoiter ahead. She whistled loudly and Eagle Eye, circling above her, landed a few yards away. She swung into the flat saddle and urged the griffon aloft Kanan followed them but a sharp scream from Eagle Eye sent the younger beast back.

They flew northeast, just above the low trees. The late-morning sun was in their eyes, and their combined shadows chased behind. The cavalry waved as griffon and rider flashed over them. Kerian easily picked out their leader, although he wore nothing to set him apart. Taranath was out in front, as usual.

The mountains ringing Inath-Wakenti were high and very rugged. Shreds of cloud drifted over their peaks, pushed by an east wind. The air was warmer aloft than on the ground. One of Inath-Wakenti many oddities was the chill of its soil. The elves quickly learned the ground drew off the heat of their bodies, so they slept on padding made of whatever was at hand-blankets, spare clothing, pine boughs. Fires died quickly too, and the embers went cold faster than normal. Cruising five hundred feet over Inath-Wakenti, Kerian was warm for the first time in days.

White monoliths crouched among the low trees or towered impudently above them. There still seemed no rhyme or reason to their placement. Favaronas had told her the stones were not native to the valley, so they must have had been hauled in for a purpose. What weird, useless purpose she could not imagine.

The farther she flew, the more numerous the monoliths became. At last night’s campsite, the sarsens had been ten to twenty yards apart. Now, only a handful of yards separated them. The stunted trees thinned, then ended. Abruptly the ground below Eagle Eye’s driving wings was solid white, like a plain of snow. The griffon reared back, hovering, startled by the blinding reflection of sunlight from the enormous field of dressed white stone.

Kerian turned the griffon’s head and they flew along the edge of the pavement. It was perfectly circular, at least a mile in diameter, and from this height, featureless. Grass and weeds grew up to its edge, but as with all the other stone structures, nothing encroached on the pristine surface. The assemblage of monoliths stopped thirty yards or so from its edge, leaving clear ground in between. Judging by the position of the mountains and the distance the elves had come, Kerian realized she must be looking at the center point of Inath-Wakenti.

Her circumnavigation of the enormous disk complete, she steered Eagle Eye toward the center. He balked, tossing his head and fighting the reins. She couldn’t blame him. A wave of cold air rose from the pavement and hit the soles of her shoes. When she let the griffon have his head, he flapped hard to get back outside the perimeter of the stone pavement. She had him land a few yards from its edge. He lay down facing away from the circular slab, and she proceeded on foot.

The pavement was knee high, its edge cut square, but worn by the elements. Although white like the monoliths, it wasn’t made of snowy quartz, but a denser rock. A series of tremendous pie-shaped wedges had been neatly joined to form the mile-wide disk. Gingerly she climbed onto the platform. The flow of cold air she’d felt aloft was discernible at ground level too. Air temperature atop the platform was noticeably colder than the usual chilly feel of the valley.

On closer inspection, the stone wasn’t unmarked after all. The surface was covered with carved lines. Weathering had softened them, but their intricate patterns of curlicues and flowing curves was still visible.

Her journey to the center of the platform took a while, and the farther she went, the more isolated she felt. The mass of featureless, flat stone seemed to steal her sense of direction and distance. When she checked her position relative to her sleeping griffon, she realized she’d been walking in a circle. She sought one of the radial joints between the wedge-shaped slabs and used it as a guide to the center.

Sounds of whispering came to her ears, and she stopped immediately. In a silent land infested with ghosts, every noise was significant. Unfortunately, the sounds were too faint for her to understand, so she resumed her trek.

The center of the great disk was marked by nothing more than the simple confluence of all the joints, but as she drew near it, the voices became louder and more distinct. She kept going but slowly, turning her head left and right, alert for she knew not what. When her foot touched the center point, the voices instantly became comprehensible. They were nothing more than mundane conversations—about fresh water, clean clothing, the health of the Speaker.

Kerian was amazed. She wasn’t hearing ghosts, but the voices of her own people as they advanced across the wasteland! Whether by magic or the strange effect of the valley’s shape, voices from many miles away were reaching her with perfect clarity. By shifting her position slightly, she could bring even individual conversations into focus. But however much she tried, she couldn’t locate Gilthas’s voice in the welter.

“Gilthas, can you hear me?” She stopped, frustrated.

Instantly the muddle of conversations died. Hard on this silence came ten thousand variations of “who said that?” Not only could Kerian hear them, but they could hear her! The peculiar effect worked both ways.

She demanded quiet. When the amazed chatter died, she identified herself and called for her husband again.

Hamaramis answered, “The Speaker sleeps, lady. Where are you? We can’t see you.”

She told him, provoking another cacophony of questions. She shouted them to silence again.

“Is It safe for us to proceed there?” Hamaramis asked.

“It seems so. Just continue north-northeast, and you can’t miss it.”

She seated herself at the center of the disk. As her people advanced, she spoke to Hamaramis and Taranath as easily a if they were standing beside her. When Gilthas awoke, she regaled him with the tale of her discovery. By midafternoon the first riders appeared beyond the distant edge. They cam to her on foot; their horses liked the cold, white pavement n more than Eagle Eye had.

“Welcome to the navel of the world,” she hailed Taranath. The warriors laughed, but her old comrade in arms frowned.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“As well as ever, Taran.” She grimaced. “Actually, my legs have cramped. Give me a hand.”

Pulling her upright, he exclaimed, “You’re cold as ice!”

She put a hand to her face, but felt nothing untoward. Yet her legs had stiffened and her arms were bloodlessly pale, her fingernails blue. She and the others returned quickly to the pavement’s edge. Jumping off the stone to land on the grass, Kerian felt as though she were entering a steam bath, such as the plainsmen enjoyed. After a few hours on the great platform, the cool air of Inath-Wakenti felt positively hot.

Taranath offered her a flask from his belt. She pulled the stopper, recoiling at the sharp odor. The flask contained fluq.

The Khurish beverage was distilled from the fermented juice of the corpse cactus, so called because its fleshy, pale blue fronds resembled the limp hands of the dead. The flavor was unbelievably bitter, almost metallic, but the liquid flooded Kerian’s veins with heat.

When she’d caught her breath again, she ordered everyone kept off the platform. “It finally occurs to me (thank you, fluq) that if you all could hear me talk, then so could anyone else in this blasted valley.”

Taranath swallowed fluq and nodded. It would be poor tactics to announce their plans and position to all and sundry, but he wondered whether there was anyone in the valley to hear them.

“We’re surrounded, remember?” she said. “Despite the Speaker’s hopes, the ghosts in this valley are not our friends.”

The only thing worse than pursuing Faeterus across the eerie valley was traveling with him. Favaronas was accustomed to Robien’s swift step.

But however persistent the Kagonesti was, he wasn’t heartless. He moderated his pace to accommodate the scholar’s needs, and he halted a few hours each night for sleep. Faeterus did not. His progress wasn’t terribly rapid, burdened as he was by heavy robes and by Favaronas, but he never rested, not even for a moment.

At first Favaronas thought him preternaturally alert and magically attuned somehow to his surroundings but gradually came to realize a more fundamental process was at work. Faeterus was afraid, and Favaronas did not know why. Poor Robien was no longer a threat. The arrival of the Speaker and the elf nation, although imparting a sense of urgency to the mage’s as-yet unknown master plan didn’t seem the cause of the deep fear Favaronas sensed. He couldn’t decide whether he should be glad or worried about whatever it was that terrified Faeterus. Humans had a saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In this case, the enemy of Favaronas’s enemy might simply kill them both.

By dragging his feet, failing, and veering off course at every opportunity Favaronas hampered their progress as much as he dared. He had little hope of rescue or escape, but if Faeterus wanted haste, then Favaronas would do all he could to delay. His tactics finally goaded the increasingly anxious sorcerer into action.

Mount Rakaris was no more than a day’s march away when Favaronas took a calculated tumble into a dry ravine. Faeterus stood on the edge, fists on hips, and raged at him.

“Torghan save me! Get up! Get up, or I’ll give you frog’s legs to stand on!”

In trying to protect his bundle of stone scrolls during the fall, Favaronas had earned himself a bloodied upper lip.

“You go too fast,” he complain, putting a plaintive whine into his voice (it wasn’t difficult). “Why such haste? The bounty hunter IS finished, and the Speaker’s warriors are nowhere near.”

“I wasted too much time playing cat and mouse with Sahim’s hired killer. I intend to be there by first light.” It was midafternoon “Whether you are still alive then is entirely up to you, elf spawn!”

He’d used that epithet once before, and it still made no sense to Favaronas. Of course he was the spawn of elves, as was Faeterus. But perhaps one of the sorcerer’s parents had been a human. That would explain a lot. Favaronas had heard half-breeds were anxious, cruel creatures.

Painfully, he climbed back up the steep bank. When his eyes reached ground level, the sorcerer’s deteriorating, rag-wrapped sandals were only inches from his face, giving him a clear view of Faeterus’s left foot. He gasped.

The foot had only four toes. Each ended in a thick, down-curving yellow nail. No elf had such an appendage. Nor did any human Favaronas ever heard of.

Faeterus jerked his foot back beneath his robe. He extended a bony finger, pointing at Favaronas. Immediately, the archivist felt his lips close together. One hand flew to his face, and he gave an inarticulate cry. His fingers found only smooth skin between nose and chin. His ups weren’t simply sealed, they were gone!

“Unless you want to lose your ears as well, be silent. And keep up.”

Turning, the sorcerer plunged through a waist-high growth of wild sage. With Robien’s death, there was no reason to conceal his tracks or walk atop the greenery.

Scrabbling at the edge of the ravine, the scholar hauled himself out and hurried to catch up. His breath whistled through his nose. His teeth and tongue were still there but sealed away. Horror threatened to overwhelm him, but he told himself that what the sorcerer took away he could restore. He claimed he wanted Favaronas to read to him from the stone scrolls but had not asked for that. His haste to reach the eastern mountains superseded all else.

As if reading his captive’s thoughts, Faeterus pointed at him again, and just like that, Favaronas’s mouth was restored. The sorcerer commanded him to read as he walked.

Favaronas stretched his jaw wide and licked his lips. “The scrolls will never open in such strong sunlight,” he warned.

“You’re a scholar. I’m sure you have transcriptions.”

Favaronas had indeed begun to make a handwritten copy of the text. He pulled a sheaf of pages from an inner pocket in his bag. The parchment was covered with the miniscule script he had mastered during his years in the Speaker’s service.

He began with an explanation. “The cylinders are numbered, but they’re not in sequence. The lowest number I have is 594. The text begins in midsentence ‘our most gracious lord, Om.hed. thon.dac (the Father Who Made Not His Children), stood upon the, um, mountainside to say farewell. He could not touch the soil of the place without provoking death. “My children,” said he, “bear this exile in good grace. Do not make this an island, but a fortress. In time I will return and free you.’”

“He never came back.”

Faeterus did not amplify on this bitter comment but did halt long enough to conjure a path ahead of them. The sage had become so dense, their progress had slowed to a snail’s pace. When the sorcerer spread his hands, the thick bushes split apart as if cleared by a scythe. They set out again and Favaronas continued.

“‘The Father rose on the wind and departed to the—’” Favaronas frowned. “Southland? Homeland? ‘The place on which he stood was named Ro.bisc.ro.pel.’”

The abbreviations had eluded Favaronas’s attempt at translation. Faeterus calmly provided it. “Rothye biscara rolofassos pelmany.”

Pelmany meant stair. Favaronas muttered, “Stair of Distant Vision?”

Faeterus swung around to face him. Although the front of the hood was only a few feet away, Favaronas could make out little more than a faint suggestion of the face within its deep shadow. “That is our destination.”

“Are you him, the Father Who Made Not His Children?”

“No. He passed out of this world long ago.” The hood shifted and Favaronas glimpsed two dark eyes within. “I was the only one to escape. I have come back to claim the heritage of the Lost Ones, my people.”

Favaronas shivered, If the sorcerer were telling the truth, then he was unbelievably old. Recalling his own ghostly encounters with the valley’s half-animal inhabitants, Favaronas blurted, “Then you’re not an elf!”

“Thanks be to the Maker! For fifty centuries I have lived in the shadowy edges of the mighty elf race. I found Father’s writings, and learned how to prolong my life until the day of retribution. That day has finally come! Your people’s power is broken. I shall complete their destruction. When I stand on the Stair of Distant Vision, the key to unlocking this valley’s power will be revealed to me. I will make that power my own and use it to work my will!”

The sheets of parchment fell from Favaronas’s hand. He finally understood the danger awaiting them all.

The hooded head turned away from him, but the sorcerer’s pointing finger sought him out again. Favaronas’s slack mouth closed with a snap, and his lips once more vanished.

“Pick up your notes and follow,” Faeterus said. “What you know, you will never tell.”