When Darkness Falls

by Mercedes Lackey

  The winter weather, comparatively mild south and west of the Mystrals, continued to favor them, though the Wildmages said another storm was coming. That was one of the reasons Kellen had pushed the army as hard as he had—that, and his desperate need, now, to reach Sentarshadeen and Andoreniel. Once he was in Sentarshadeen, he could send a message by unicorn to Redhelwar, and recall Keirasti. With luck, the riders could catch her before she reached the mountains themselves. He’d left her barely six days ago, but his troops had gotten a good rest at Ondoladeshiron and he’d pushed them hard through the lowlands. He didn’t intend to tarry at Halacira, either—a quick check to make sure the caverns were safe, then he’d leave Artenel and a reserve force there to begin the work of readying them to become a fortress, and move on to Sentarshadeen. In summer, the caverns were a day and a half’s ride from the Elven royal city—the journey might take twice that time in winter.

  What he would do once he reached Sentarshadeen, he wasn’t sure yet. He wished Idalia was here. He was no great Healer, and that was what Andoreniel needed most of all.

  If the Elven King weren’t already dead.

  If he was, it would be a disaster for the Allies. Kellen could not imagine the Elven Council acting with quick decision, and Ashaniel wasn’t here. He didn’t know if Redhelwar would act at all without orders, nor could he imagine the Elven Lands divided by civil war.

  The Wild Magic will not let that happen, he thought to himself, and even he was not sure whether that thought was a certainty—or a prayer.

  THE last time Kellen had come this way, he had not approached the caverns themselves. Umerchiel, who knew this area well, led the army off the War Road—through the high road leading between Sentarshadeen and Ondoladesh-iron was not really as wide or as flat as some of the larger avenues in Armethalieh, it counted as a main thoroughfare in Elven terms—in the direction of the caverns.

  Before they reached the caves, they came to the Angarussa.

  Even at the height of the Great Drought, the river had still run strongly, and with the torrential rains it had once more become one of the greatest rivers of the Elven Lands. But the cold that had followed the rains had been long and bitter, and the river that Kellen now saw was completely concealed beneath a thick shield of ice.

  He called for Artenel.

  “It would be good to know if the ice will bear our weight,” he said to the Elven Artificer.

  Artenel nodded, and rode out onto the middle of the river. There he dismounted, and peered down into the ice. Next he took a slender metal rod from his horse’s pack and knelt upon the ice, tapping at it gently and listening intently. After a few moments he rode back.

  “The ice is quite thick,” he reported. “The army may cross safely. But not all at once, and not all in one place. It is my recommendation that you choose several crossing-places.”

  Kellen nodded.

  He prepared to give the order for the first units to cross, and stopped.

  This was where he’d seen the Tainted starflowers, the first time he’d been here.

  “Get the maps of the caverns.”

  PART of him seethed with impatience at wasting precious time—he was almost entirely sure that there was nothing at Halacira besides the jewel-mines Jermayan had once described to him. But another part had learned hard lessons in too many battles. Those starflowers had to have been a warning.

  And for once, going into a cave, they had complete and accurate maps. The Elves had been working the caves at Halacira for centuries.

  “Churashil, Thenalakti, Arvaruth, Farathirian, Merioniach—I want you to cross first. Take your troops and ride ahead to these secondary entrances that I see marked on this map. Guard them closely. I wish nothing to escape from these caverns. If you see any sign of movement, sound your horn, but no one is to leave his position. I will leave a reserve force outside the main entrance that will come to your aid.”

  Although how quickly such a force could reach the trouble spot, when the entrances his sub-commanders must guard were scattered over several miles, was a troubling question.

  “If it is possible, and seems good to you, block the entrances that you find.”

  “Yes, komentai’i,” Churashil said. The others nodded.

  The Knights began to move off. By the time the rest of the army was across and in position near the Main Entrance, the five groups guarding the entrances should be in position.

  He turned to his Wildmages.

  “Wirance, Kerleu, you must go to the others and tell them I need enough Coldfire to crown at least two hundred Knights. I would also like some of you to follow us into the caverns and cast Coldfire on the walls as we go.”

  Wirance regarded him, eyebrows raised. “Expecting trouble, are you?”

  Kellen smiled without humor. “No. I’m just planning for it.”

  He wished—and not for the first time since he’d left Ysterialpoerin—that Vestakia were here. Not simply because he missed her company, but because right now she would have been incredibly useful to have around.

  He didn’t know that he was facing trouble across the river. In fact, it was likelier than not that he wasn’t, and he was wasting precious time here when he could have been doing a quick reconnoiter of the caverns and heading quickly on to Sentarshadeen.

  But he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—let his impatience cost lives. His information from Rochinuviel was already more than a sennight old. Whatever would happen in Sentarshadeen might have already happened. It was beyond his control. This wasn’t.

  He owed all those who had already died, and those who trusted him now, his very best efforts.

  And part of him—a very tiny part, all things considered—felt a spark of pride. Even a moonturn ago he would not have had the experience—and, yes, the wisdom—to organize something like this. To think three and four steps ahead of the enemy—even an enemy he wasn’t quite sure was there.

  Why, he might even be able to beat Idalia at xaique now.

  IT was a couple of hours past noon by the time the sledges crossed, the last elements of the army. By then the surface of the ice was starting to show signs of strain, though Artenel assured Kellen it would hold.

  He waited on the far bank, watching as the slow heavy sledges made their way, one by one, across the surface of the frozen river.

  “Fun, isn’t it?” Shalkan asked.

  “In a weird way,” Kellen answered honestly. “It would be a lot more fun if there were no possibility that anyone could get hurt.”

  “I suppose that’s why the Elves have Flower Wars,” the unicorn said thoughtfully.

  “I don’t suppose you could go on to Sentarshadeen and see what’s going on there?” Kellen said hopefully.

  Shalkan snorted rudely. “And leave you here to fend for yourself? You’d probably get lost in the caverns and never come out. Though I understand they’re worth an extended look.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like I have time for sightseeing,” Kellen grumbled. “I just wish I could be everywhere at once.”

  “That, unfortunately, is beyond even the power of a Knight-Mage,” Shalkan said repressively. “Though you might manage something close to it if you Bonded to a dragon.”

  “No thanks,” Kellen said briefly. Leaving aside the fact that there weren’t any dragons either available or willing, the idea of shortening the lifespan of an immortal creature to a few brief decades would make him feel horribly guilty. It seemed utterly unfair. At least with Jermayan, Ancaladar would have centuries.

  “It’s time to go,” Shalkan said.

  “Wish me luck,” Kellen said.

  “Good hunting,” the unicorn replied.

  FIRARETH quickly passed the ox-drawn sledges as Kellen rode up to the head of the line. Pale nimbuses of Coldfire shimmered around the heads of many that he passed, testament to the Wildmages’ tireless labors. Around him, units reorganized into marching order as the remains of the column reformed, several groups dropping back to guard the vulnerable supply-cart
s. Just because they hadn’t been attacked yet didn’t mean they weren’t going to be. Both unicorns and scouts from Sentarshadeen should be patrolling the woods this far east, but by now Kellen took nothing for granted.

  Another hour’s march brought them in sight of the cavern’s mouth.

  Even if he had not known what this place was, there would have been no mistaking it for anything but an ancient and well-loved place of the Elves.

  The opening of the cave had been shaped. Not made perfectly symmetrical—that wasn’t the Elven way—but improved, so that it was somehow more vivid than something that had been left untouched. In contrast, the rock face that flanked the entrance had obviously been painstakingly engineered, for in this season, the cavernmouth was surrounded by a lacy webwork of ice, as delicate as spun sugar, created when streams of water arching into the air had frozen. They sparkled in the sunlight, giving back all the colors of the rainbow.

  I wonder how they managed that? Kellen thought. And why? Surely no one came to the Caverns of Halacira at this time of year to see this. He wondered what the cavern face looked like in summer.

  He’d made most of his dispositions while the army was waiting to cross. He took care of the last-minute details now. He would lead the first group into the caverns; after half an hour, Umerchiel would follow with a second force. Another party would stand ready to ride to the aid of those barricading the cave-system’s other exits.

  That accounted for the disposition of nearly all of his command, save for a skeleton force remaining behind to guard the supply wagons and begin the work of setting up the camp, since Artenel’s forces would be settling into a permanent camp here, and he’d be leaving the oxen and the heavy equipment behind with most of his people while he headed on to Sentarshadeen.

  And whether there was trouble in the caverns or not, he simply couldn’t take his entire force down with him. It was bad enough—from a tactical standpoint—that he’d be leading them, but that was something he simply couldn’t forgo. As a Knight-Mage, his battle-sense would give them the advantage that could spell life or death.

  Assuming there was anything here at all.

  Warily, Kellen gazed at the cavernmouth, shifting with the ease of long practice into battle-sight, but there was nothing to see, and his Wildmage senses brought him no trace of warning.

  He blew out a deep breath, watching it turn to a plume of fog on the winter air. As was so often the case, the only way to know was to go and see.

  He cast his own globe of Coldfire over his head and loosened his sword in his sheath. Isinwen handed him one of Artenel’s glass shields. Just in case, everyone was carrying them now.

  He gave the order to advance.

  THE passage into the caverns bore the same resemblance to the caves he had been in previously as a garden did to a wild woodland. He realized that subconsciously he’d been expecting something a good deal cruder. Hadn’t Jermayan said that these were mines?

  If the Elves did mine here, they did a good job of concealing it.

  Some of the things he saw were patently artificial, like the twining pattern of Greet-the-Day vine that curled along the top edge of the walls, though it took him a few seconds to realize that the plant, with its delicate bell-shaped flowers, was carved out of the stone itself. As they got farther from the entrance, he saw that there were small niches carved into the walls, each one a perfect miniature copy of an Elven house-front, and obviously designed to hold lanterns. Every few yards there was a step down, so instead of a long steep slope into the earth, they descended by means of a series of short level terraces.

  It would not be pleasant to have to retreat up these long shallow steps fighting a holding action against an enemy, Kellen thought soberly. Nor would it be an easy matter to get carts, either on wheels or sledges, through this passage. He hoped one of the other passages was better suited for moving heavy equipment in and out.

  As they moved deeper into the earth, he ran through the details of the cavern map in his head. After the entry passageway, there was a large open cavern. Galleries led off that to the left and right, and directly ahead the main passage continued onward to the point about half a league farther on to where the An-garussa flowed through the caverns. Beyond that was one of the other exits from the cavern system.

  The caverns had several levels, and Umerchiel had told him that there were staircases between the upper and lower galleries in many places, as well as pumps, carts, and equipment to lift ore from the deepest levels of the cave systems. Without Vestakia, the caverns would take at least three days to search thoroughly, but it was a task he dared not slight. Perhaps tomorrow, if all went well today, he would bring more people into the caves to search and clear them, but for now Kellen wouldn’t be easy in his mind until he had overlooked as much as he could himself, searching with battle-sight for obvious traps.

  When they entered the first open space, he received another of those odd surprises that one had to get used to when dealing with Elves. Though the walls of the cavern had been left pretty much untouched—aside from carved niches for lanterns, now empty—the entire stone floor of the cavern had been carefully inlaid to mimic one of the carpets Kellen had seen covering the floors of the House of Leaf and Star. He glanced back toward the entrance, and saw, as he’d expected, that whatever craftsman had laid down the design had even created the tasseled fringe at the edge of the carpet, making it slightly mussed, as a real carpet’s fringe would be by the passage of feet over its surface.

  Elves. They’re just, I don’t know … different.

  There were four galleries on each side of the chamber. After checking each entrance for traps—or any sign that something bad had passed this way—Kellen left sentry-parties at each entrance, with orders to call for help—or simply fall back—if anything did appear. When Umerchiel’s force arrived, it would relieve Kellen’s all along his line of sortie. They needed to secure the topmost levels of the cave system before descending deeper. Fortunately, not all of the cave system involved multiple levels; the Elves had probably been worried about disturbing the Angarussa too much and ending up with an underground ocean instead of a jewel mine.

  ONCE it would have been easy to fall under the spell of this place. If he hadn’t seen Sentarshadeen, or Ysterialpoerin. Or the Fortress of the Crowned Horns. Or Pelashia’s Veil. They entered a cavern that seemed to stretch on for miles, its vaulted ceiling stretching off to the distant horizon. But his senses told him that the space he and his troops stood within was small. It was only that the walls were carved in the semblance of distant caverns, the imitation so perfect that it could fool the eye, but not the body. Only the fact that their Coldfire illuminated the deepest “depths” of the carven caverns hinted at the artifice. Kellen paused to run his fingers over the carving, almost unable to believe what his senses told him even as he broke the illusion.

  They moved on.

  As they passed into the next chamber, the temperature dropped sharply, and the air began to feel much damper. Kellen inhaled deeply. They must be nearing the Angarussa, which meant they could start to clear some of the side-passages soon. After so long in the arid cold of winter, the dampness felt good.

  This chamber, unlike the one they were leaving, was large in truth. The Coldfire illumination they all carried seemed to shrink back, burning brightly in a tight ball above their heads, illuminating the floor, but not reaching out to the walls or the ceiling.

  The floor was inlaid in a pattern of green and white squares.

  A few steps farther into the chamber, Kellen understood why.

  Here, the action of rock and water had again created tall columns of stone that stretched from floor to ceiling. But these the Elves had not left untouched. Though they remained where the random action of Nature had deposited them, of the partial columns that had been allowed to remain, each one had been carved into the likeness of a xaique game-piece. It was as if some giant unfinished game of xaique were being played out on the floor of this chamber.

/>   The moment Kellen approached the first of the carvings, he felt a thrill of unease.

  Something is wrong here.

  He did not know where the conviction came from. He had never seen Halacira before. But the feeling was strong, and he trusted it.

  And a moment later, he understood.

  One of the xaique figures—a delicate little dancer, her arms raised to offer a garland of flowers—had been smashed. The inside surface of the stone was paler than the outside; the mutilations to the statue seemed to glow in the dimness, and the chips and fragments that lay scattered on the stone floor glittered almost like ice.

  At his shoulder, he heard Isinwen draw breath sharply, and heard a low susurrus of speech as word was passed back through the waiting Elves.

  No Elf would have done this. No Elf could have done this.

  Show me, Kellen said to his magic.

  But instead of the clear vision of what-had-been that he had come to expect, it was as if a fog descended over his vision. He did not see what had gone before, nor did he see the utter darkness of the cavern without Coldfire. Instead he saw twisting shadows that slithered over each other like ink poured into water. He knew something had been here—and something Tainted, it was easy to guess—but precisely what it had been, he could not see.

  He blinked his battle-sight away and turned to Isinwen.

  “We know now that there have been trespassers here. But when they were here, and whether they remain, I cannot tell. You will oblige me by asking everyone to remain alert. And send someone to warn the sentries and Umerchiel.”

  “Komentai,” Isinwen said, turning away to pass the order.

  A lot of Shadowed Elves had escaped after the Battle for the Heart of the Forest. No one knew how many, but enough to cause serious problems for the Allies. They could be here. Something that hated Elves certainly was. If the Shadowed Elves were, it seemed to Kellen that they did not want to fight another losing battle. Perhaps they had learned wisdom in their earlier defeats. Or perhaps they knew that they were the last of their kind.