“I must prepare,” Keirasti said, setting down her wooden mug. “And hope not to freeze on the return journey.”
She got to her feet, picking up two bulky packs that lay at her feet. “I thank you for these, Idalia. Our Healers were running low on supplies.”
“At least you won’t have to cross the Mystrals on horseback again soon,” Idalia said. “Safe journey to you.”
“Leaf and Star be with you all.”
IDALIA and Vestakia rode out to see Jermayan and Keirasti off. Jermayan had ridden down into the camp on Valdien, who was once again stabled up at Ancaladar’s ice-pavilion. Keirasti was riding pillion behind Idalia, since her destrier was still with her command.
“Be safe,” Idalia said to Jermayan.
“I shall keep him so,” Ancaladar promised.
“It should be a simple matter,” Jermayan said. “At least as simple as anything involving the Shadowed Elves is.”
“If only I had known sooner!” Vestakia said.
“Then all would have happened just as it has,” Jermayan told her. “We must clear those caverns to fit them to our own use, and we would have sent just such a force to do it. Kellen is hardly a novice at this work. I will bring him your warning, and he will proceed with care.”
Vestakia nodded, looking miserable and unconvinced.
Jermayan stepped up into Ancaladar’s saddle, and reached down to help Keirasti into the saddle behind him. The packs she was taking back to her command, which had been lashed to Valdien’s saddle, were already tied in place. The two riders began to buckle themselves in.
“Come on,” Idalia said, setting her foot into Cella’s stirrup and taking Valdien’s reins with her. “The horses won’t like getting a faceful of snow when Ancaladar takes off, and neither will we.”
The two riders backed off a little distance as Ancaladar began his takeoff run. In moments the dragon was skyborne, circling over the camp in an ascending spiral and then heading westward, his black wings outstretched.
“Back to camp, then,” Idalia said.
WHEN they returned to the Healer’s Pavilion, Cilarnen was up and dressed.
“By your leave,” Cilarnen said, when he saw Idalia. “I’d better go back to my own camp. Since we’re moving, I have packing—a lot of packing—to do. And preparations to make. And there’s no one to do it but me.”
Idalia regarded him critically. Rest and food had done much to restore his vitality. The trouble was, she didn’t really trust him to take care of himself.
“If you work yourself until you drop, you’ll be no use to anyone. And I’ll have no choice but to treat you to a selection of my strengthening cordials. And I warn you now, they taste incredibly vile.”
“Your point is well taken,” Cilarnen said with a faint smile. “Still, the work must be done, or I will be of no use to the army anyway. I promise to be careful. Elven tea is vile enough. I would hate to risk the experience of any more of your cordials. Kardus will help me. And perhaps Vestakia will come also.”
“Fine. She can keep an eye on you. If she agrees?”
“If you don’t need me down in camp, I’d be happy to keep an eye on Cilarnen,” Vestakia said, with a faintly wicked smile. “And he can tell me more about Armethalieh.”
Cilarnen bowed again. “That I shall be more than happy to do. It was once the most beautiful place in the world, and the Eternal Light grant that it shall be so again.”
Eleven
To Live in the City of Distance
ANCALADAR SPED THROUGH the great halls of the upper air, his wings barely moving. The wind whistled over the armor of his two riders, making a monotonous, atonal song.
“Redhelwar orders the army south,” Jermayan said.
“Yes,” Keirasti agreed.
“So Kellen would have advised him, and so I said to him,” Jermayan said. “And yet I wonder at the timing of it.”
“And so you must, until you speak with Kellen,” Keirasti said implacably.
Jermayan sighed. “And so I shall.”
And when he spoke to Kellen, he would discover what Kellen had learned that was of such terrible urgency that he had needed to send Keirasti north to deliver the information to Redhelwar at all costs.
Though the flight back to where Keirasti had left Maredhiel and the rest of her command was just as long as the one away from her, it seemed shorter, for this time they knew exactly where they were going, and Ancaladar had no need to search every inch of the crags below for traces of a party in distress.
The site was easy to spot, for in the handful of hours—less than a full day—that Keirasti had been gone, the Knights had set up a full camp and picketed the horses. Ancaladar banked once over the ring of tents, the looked for a suitable landing place. It was easily found, for the mountain valley was filled with sweeps of smooth snow.
“Easy enough to land,” the dragon grumbled, as he set his wings for his final descent. “Harder to get airborne again.”
Jermayan patted Ancaladar’s neck in sympathy. Left to himself, the dragon would make his flights from high places, such as the tops of mountains, where he had strong winds to bear him up, and hundreds of feet of free air below him in which to maneuver. Though he could take off from a level plain—and had, many times—as Ancaladar said, it was more work.
The landings were not things of ease, either.
At the last moment, Ancaladar fanned his wings backward—hard—and stood almost upright in the air, hitting the deep snow hind feet first. The backwinging in the air slowed his already greatly-diminished forward speed, but not enough to keep him from digging a deep trench through the heavy powdery snow. On solid ground, draconic landings were light and elegant things, but the uncertain surface of the snow often did not permit such grace.
At last Ancaladar settled his belly into the snow and folded his wings.
“We’re here,” he said unnecessarily.
Keirasti began to unbuckle her straps.
Maredhiel was already riding out toward them, leading Orata.
Keirasti glanced toward the sky. “You have only an hour of light more at best. It would please me should you choose to stay with us for the night and journey on in the morning.”
“This is familiar territory to us,” Ancaladar replied. “And the winds over the plains ahead present no challenge. If my Bonded agrees, we will fly on.”
“Then let it be so. When you see Kellen, tell him I will be with him before another sennight passes.”
She slipped down from the dragon’s back, grunting as she found herself waist-deep in snow, and began untying the nearer pack from Ancaladar’s saddle. Jermayan reached back to loose the one she could not reach, handing it across to her.
By the time they were both free, Maredhiel had reached them.
“Alas that you rejoin us so speedily,” the Elven Knight said cheerfully. “I had thought we were to have at least a moonturn’s recreation here in this garden spot.”
“So much for your dreams of ease, lazy one,” Keirasti said to her Second. “Take this pack up with you; it is filled with Idalia’s medicines. Tomorrow we begin to rejoin the army.”
Whatever message Keirasti had carried, Jermayan reflected, Maredhiel obviously had no inkling of it. She accepted her parcel readily, with no indication that she was burdened by more-than-ordinary cares.
He waited for the two Knights to ride away.
“Soon we can ask Kellen,” Ancaladar said.
“Yes,” Jermayan answered. “Soon.”
IN the end, it came down to the simple work of butchery.
They outnumbered their enemy ten—a hundred—to one, and the Shadowed Elves had no place to run to. Some of them fled through the passage that led to the surface; Kellen’s battle-sight showed him that Churashil’s force made short work of them there.
But far more remained in the caverns below. Some had managed to evade Kellen’s force, but Umerchiel and the others waited in the chamber beyond, and there were no other exists from it.
So they, too, were accounted for.
Many of the Shadowed Elves in the river gallery had thrown down their weapons when the caverns began to shake; it became a matter of finding those that were still alive, driving them up against the walls of the gallery, and cutting them to pieces.
Sometimes the Shadowed Elves would hide among the mounds of their dead. After the first one had attacked from such a hiding place, Kellen ordered all the Shadowed Elf corpses checked. They found more survivors. Two Elves would hold the victim while a third slit the captive’s throat.
None of the swimmers reached the far shore alive.
By the time the Elves had finished their bloody work, the Angarussa had begun to run normally, washing the bodies of the floating dead that had fallen into its waters away with it.
After he had disposed of the Shadowed Elf sortie that had reached the surface, Churashil had sent scouts down into the caverns, and received new orders from Kellen. Braziers had been brought to warm the river-gallery, and a steady stream of wounded were being evacuated to the main camp.
There weren’t many. Only a tiny fraction of the company of Elves Kellen had brought into Halacira had actually engaged the enemy in the Shadowed Elf attack.
And most of them had drowned.
Eventually Kellen’s people would have to try to dredge the river to recover the bodies.
Kellen tried to think of what he could have done differently, had he known Halacira had become an Enclave of the Shadowed Elves before he’d entered the caverns. But he could think of nothing. He would still have had to go down into the caves with his Knights to find them. The caves would still have been entrapped. The Shadowed Elves would still have flooded the caves.
If he had gone alone, he might have gotten out the way he’d come. Or he might have died. If he’d come down with a smaller force, they might all have died, for it was their overwhelming numbers that had kept so many of them alive today.
As brutal as it was, despite the losses they had suffered, this was the best outcome they could have hoped for.
It didn’t feel right.
And they were still going to have to search the caves thoroughly, because they could not allow even one of the Tainted creatures to survive.
“Did the day go as you wished it?”
Wirance walked over to the nearest brazier and held his hands out to its warmth. The Wildmage looked exhausted. Lines of weariness etched his weather-beaten features.
“What are you still doing here?” Kellen demanded. “I told Umerchiel to send all the Wildmages up to the Healers as soon as the passage was clear.”
“Aye, well, as to that… I stayed with Kerleu. I have to say, I thought we were going to bring the whole place down on us when the spell ran. But the mountain’s bones run deep.”
Kerleu stayed too? But all the wounded should have been evacuated hours ago.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Kellen said.
“A life was the Price, a life freely given,” Wirance said. “We all agreed to pay it. He had a valiant heart, but crossing the Mystrals too often will weaken it. It could well have happened without the spell.”
But it didn’t.
Kellen drew a deep breath. “He is no less a casualty of war than Ambanire, or any other who fell in battle here today. He will be so honored.”
Wirance clapped him on the shoulder. “All goes as the Huntsman wills, lad. Kerleu goes to the Forest to be born again to the Wife. He’ll be back, sure as flowers in the spring.”
Kellen nodded, though spring—and Wirance’s easy certainty that it would come—seemed very far away.
“And the day?” Wirance said again.
“We won,” Kellen said slowly. “In a day or two, I suppose we’ll know whether the caverns are clear. And Artenel and his people can get to work rebuilding them to make them into a fortress.”
“So no one who died here died for nothing,” Wirance said, sounding satisfied. “And now that I’ve got a little heat in these old bones, I’ll get back to Kerleu.”
“I’ll go with you.”
MUCH of the main force of the army was still in the selkie-chamber and the mining-cavern beyond it. Kellen searched until he found Isinwen. His Second was battered—and, of course, soaking wet—but alive and well.
“It’s going to take forever to move everyone out across the causeway,” Kellen said once greetings had been exchanged. “Is there any chance now of getting out through the main entrance?”
For one thing, it was closer to the camp. That meant dry clothes, fires, and food—something all of them needed. Churashil had brought horses and wagons around to the river cavern entrance to transport the wounded, and the Knights that had so far made their way to the surface through that exit, but the sun was setting, and to move all the horses around to that entrance and ride back again would take a long time—and they’d be even colder than they were now.
“The main entrance should be clear by now—if damp,” Isinwen said after a moment’s thought.
“Take a party and see.”
THOUGH several of the side-galleries had collapsed—due to either the Shadowed Elves’ work or the Wildmages’ spell—the route to the surface was clear, and Kellen immediately began evacuating his army through the larger entrance. He would leave no one behind in the caves tonight, not even the dead. Guarding the exits would have to be enough.
Leaving the caves went a good deal faster than entering them had. He was glad of that much. There were a number of blessings to be counted, if he cared to: no duergar had lurked anywhere in the unlighted depths of the caves to draw any of his troops farther in. The Shadowed Elves had not summoned any of the Shadow’s other allies to aid them—if the Elves had faced Frost Giants and Ice Trolls here in Halacira, as well as Shadowed Elves and rising water, their situation would have been unwinnable.
But the Shadowed Elves had been willing to die to the last soul to destroy their enemy, and perhaps their allies had not. Or perhaps they simply had not been able to reach them in time.
Finally the last band of Elves prepared to ascend to the surface. Kellen wrapped his borrowed—dry—cloak around him and followed.
AS the day dimmed, Jermayan and Ancaladar saw no trace of Kellen’s army, though as they neared Halacira, they saw signs of their passage in plenty, for the trees had kept the snow from eradicating the marks of the horses and wagons completely.
“He cannot have moved the army this fast,” Jermayan groaned.
“He has,” Ancaladar answered simply.
It was—barely—possible. For a master general, in complete command of his forces, driven by a necessity Jermayan could only wonder at. He could only hope that Kellen had stopped to rest for a day or two in camp before going down into the caverns.
But in his heart, he began to suspect he might already be too late.
When they flew over the Angarussa, he saw that its surface was cracked and marred by the passage of thousands of Elven Knights. His worst suspicions were confirmed when he reached the camp. It was fully set, but not fully tenanted. There was a deep path beaten in the snow between the campsite and the main entrance to the caverns. Near the trees, he could already see a few bodies wrapped in white.
“I will find a place to land,” Ancaladar said.
The clearing Ancaladar found was a little distance from the main camp. After unsaddling Ancaladar, it took Jermayan a good half hour to make his way through the snow to the edge of the camp.
Artenel greeted him.
“I See you, Jermayan.”
“I See you, Artenel. I expected to find you still upon the road for Halacira.”
“Come, take tea. We might well have been, but we have made good time. And just as well, else the Shadowed Elves that Kellen encountered in the caverns below would have had more time to complete their work, and the day would have gone more wretchedly than it has. I would have welcomed the opportunity to have studied the engines they used to flood the caverns, but I believe they have now been smashed beyond all d
iscerning.”
“It will please me to hear all that you can tell. I came to warn Kellen that there was an Enclave here—but I see my warning comes too late.”
If he had flown here directly the moment Idalia had told him of Vestakia’s visions—
If he had not stopped to bring Keirasti back to Redhelwar, or put off his flight to the Crowned Horns—
“Our losses were light, so I am told,” Artenel said simply. “The Wild Magic warned him that there was Taint in the caverns below, but we did not suspect that our poor brothers would be able to call the river into them. Umerchiel believes we have slain them all this time, but it will be many days before we are certain.”
Artenel’s words did much to reassure Jermayan, but little to comfort him. He had simply forgotten how fast Kellen could move when he decided there was a need to hurry.
And Jermayan still didn’t know what it was.
“I am grateful for your offer of tea, but I must speak with Kellen as soon as I can,” Jermayan said.
“Then you should go to the cavernmouth. Go first to the horse-lines. Casanilde is there, and will find you a mount to take you swiftly.”
“My thanks to you,” Jermayan said.
A few minutes later Jermayan was riding toward the horse-lines along the beaten path through the snow. Along the way he passed groups of weary riders heading back from the cavern mouth, and Elves leading more strings of horses back to the entrance to mount those yet to depart.
When he reached the cavernmouth, Jermayan saw that a series of hasty shelters had been erected, offering shelter and tea to those who had just come up from the depths. Kellen stood beneath one awning, holding a mug of tea in one hand and leaning over a flaming brazier.
Jermayan felt a deep pang of relief. Kellen looked exhausted, but uninjured.
“You’ll burn yourself if you stand any closer,” Jermayan said.
Kellen glanced up, first looking pleased to see his friend, then wary at the possibility of bad news.
“I bring no ill tidings,” Jermayan said quickly. “I came to bring you warning. I see now that it is too late.”
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