The Fauns, and a banner of palest green.
The Minotaurs. A black banner.
The War Mages of Armethalieh, men and women together, in bright armor and gray robes, bringing a banner as golden as the sun.
We will come in whatever hour. Who holds our token holds our pledge. Our consent is freely given.
The vision faded.
As Idalia opened her eyes, she saw most of the banners crumble away to dust. The peoples who had given those pledges were not here to redeem them now. Only the Lostlanders, Wildlanders, and Mountainfolk; the Centaurs, the Fauns, the Shining Folk, the Elves, and the Armethaliehans remained of those who had pledged that day.
But the banner of Armethalieh burst into flame.
She jerked back from the flames with a startled cry, and grabbed the first thing that came to hand—the bowl of water she had used for scrying—to throw upon the flames. But it did no good. The banner continued burn, even in the pool of water, until every scrap of it was utterly consumed.
Armethalieh was Tainted.
Jermayan came forward, hauling her to her feet, pulling her away from the spreading mess of water, dust, and the still-burning banner. He looked as shaken as she felt, even though, she knew, he had not shared her vision. In a normal scrying spell, the vision could be shared, if two were standing over the bowl together. But Jermayan had been standing several feet away, and Idalia had combined the spell with another, changing the spell to a certain degree
“It would be good to know what you have seen,” Jermayan said, obviously striving to be calm as well.
She shook her head, struggling to clear her thoughts.
“I saw how these banners were created,” she said slowly. The Armethaliehan banner—the banner of the War Mages—had consumed itself utterly at last, leaving behind nothing more than scraps of greasy ash floating in the water on the floor. “They were meant to be used just as I intend to use them. They are pledges of aid against the Shadow. The ones that are … gone … belong to the races that They destroyed in the War, so what I saw must have happened a very long time ago.”
“Yet one burned,” Jermayan said.
“Armethalieh’s,” Idalia said.
She didn’t need to say anything else.
“So,” she added, a few moments later, carefully picking up the five banners that were left—Men, Elves, Centaurs, Fauns, and Shining Folk—and rolling them together. She set them aside and went to get a broom to sweep away the dust, ash, and water. “It appears we have what we need. And I know where I need to go. It’s a long way from here, and I need to be there by midnight tomorrow.”
“Midwinter,” Jermayan said. “Ancaladar and I can take you wherever you need to be—but I confess it would be helpful if we knew where it was.”
ONCE, the whole land had been starred with Places of Power where the binding strings that held the world together converged, nine for each of the races who had given the banners to Andoreniel’s ancestor.
Most of them were … gone. The conflict that had reduced most of the land and waters once inhabited by score of races to lifeless rock had erased them, as it had erased those who had once called upon them.
The ancient Shrines were largely forgotten, even by the Elves and the Wildmages. For a thousand years there had been no need of the great magics and Summonings that could only be done in such places. Even where the information about the locations of the Shrines survived, knowledge of what could be done at them was gone.
Idalia only knew of six that had survived the Great War. Two were inaccessible to humans: One was deep beneath the sea, another was buried in the heart of a volcano deep in the southern desert. Of the remaining four, at the one that had once been the Bearward Shrine, the Mountainfolk now offered to the Huntsman and the Forest Wife. Since it now resonated to their power, it was useless to her. The one in Centaur lands had been incorporated into the middle of a village; to do magic there would do too much damage. The third was in the Delfier Valley.
The fourth was her destination.
Places of Power were tools, as neutral in themselves as the Wild Magic. They could be used for good or ill—they were simply wellsprings of Power; as old as the Earth itself, taking on the characteristics of their surroundings. This was why she could not use the Mountainfolk Shrine; even though the Mountainfolk Wildmages no longer had any true notion of what it was, their Shrine had been shaped by centuries of intent into a focus for the energies of the Huntsman and the Forest Wife.
But the place to which Idalia and Jermayan flew now was the sole surviving Elven shrine. It had always been a place of power for the Elves, tuned by thousands of years of use to their particular perception of the world, always a force for Good. Essentially, the Elven Shrine, at least, functioned as a supremely powerful land-ward.
And so it would be perfect for what she needed.
She hoped.
It was far to the north of Lerkalpoldara, nearly at the border of the Elven Lands themselves. Beyond those borders lay nothing but a cold barren desert wasteland stretching to the end of the world. Yet this shrine, Idalia knew, had once marked the center of the Elven Lands, not their edge.
Normally they would be in great danger just being here. The north, so Cilarnen had assured them, was long since overrun by the creatures of Shadow. Frost Giants and Ice Trolls, long enemies of the Elves, walked the once-inviolate Elven Lands openly, destroying anything they choose. Fortunately, they were still hundreds of miles away from Ysterialpoerin.
For now.
And even though enemies were everywhere, because of the nature of the Shrine, they would come nowhere near it. They might not even know why they were avoiding it, or that they were. But they would.
And Idalia could use its power to fuel her Greater Summoning.
She had told Jermayan very little about what she intended to do here, in part because she did not know. To call Vielissar Farcarinon’s ancient Ally for help against He Who Is, absolutely. But how she would do it, and what form that help would take, Idalia was not entirely certain. She expected the Wild Magic to provide her inspiration when the time came.
As it always did.
And because all her Prices were all now paid, the cost of the spell would be nothing more than her own physical energy—and despite her wish—no, stronger than that, her need—to tend to the plague-afflicted of Sentarshadeen, she had forced herself to do little but sleep and eat for the last twenty-four hours. Kellen’s supply-wagon had arrived right on schedule, bringing Tadolad and Kannert, the other two Wildmages, and for the moment, Sentarshadeen had as much Charged medicine as it could possibly use, and three Wildmages to tend the sick.
And now she would strike at the root of the problem.
ANCALADAR landed, and simply slid. His great heavy claws made squealing noises against the thick sheet of wind-polished ice. It was scoured to glass-slickness by the unrelenting wind.
At last he managed to stop, fanning his wings wildly, and stood, feet splayed and claws dug in.
They had landed upon the center of a plain at the top of the world. They were so high that there were not even mountains to see, assuming they would even be visible at night. In all directions, the world was … flat. Water and cold and the eternal blowing wind had created a surface unnaturally flat from what Idalia guessed might well be a rolling grassy meadow at the height of summer. Now, at Midwinter, it was as flat and even as a stone floor. In places, it gleamed like a mirror, reflecting the veils of multicolored lights that danced through the sky.
“Pelashia’s Veils,” Jermayan said, looking up. “The unicorn’s valley is named for them.”
He dismounted with care, though once Idalia had told him where their destination was, he had taken care to wear spiked sabatons over his heavy leather flying boots, and she had done the same, so the icy surface presented little difficulty to them. Ancaladar folded himself, belly-down to the ice, and Idalia lifted down their panniers of supplies before dismounting.
Ancaladar raised hi
mself up again, folding his wings tightly to keep from being blown about like a draconian ice-boat. “I won’t be going anywhere,” he assured them. “There’s nowhere to go.”
Idalia laughed briefly.
She looked around. Pelashia’s Veils stretched across the sky, a shimmering veil of orange and blue and red, spread across the cloudy scarf of stars that filled the heavens above it, a few brighter stars caught in its folds. The moon was near-ing midheaven, marking midnight, when her spell must be cast.
But down below, the gleaming level plain, blue-white with unblemished ice, extended flat and unmarked for a thousand leagues in every direction.
Or nearly so.
A few hundred yards away stood the shrine markers of their destination.
THEY would be easy enough to miss. Three standing stones, half-buried in ice at this season, set so as to mark the points of a triangle, and between them—completely covered in ice just now—a third flat stone.
That was all. The Shrines merely marked a place, after all, and what was done with it and its power by those to whom it belonged, for good or ill, did not seem to matter to the ancient Earth Power that welled forth here. In the echoes of her borrowed memories, Idalia seemed to remember some of the Shrines being enclosed in elaborate temples, their stones painted and ornamented; some venerated in simple woodland glades; some ignored entirely.
This one had simply been … forgotten.
She knew that the Elves continued to venerate the powers of Leaf and Star, but wherever they did it, they certainly didn’t do it here. And a good thing, too—if They had had any idea of the importance of this place, They would certainly have done Their best to find and desecrate it.
She had never been so cold in her life. The wind was like liquid ice. Every exposed inch of skin—and thank the gods of the Wild Magic there wasn’t much of it—seemed to not only freeze solid where it felt the touch of the wind, but to be able to transmit the cold through her blood to the rest of her that was warmly swathed in wool, fleece, leather, and furs. Heavy furs.
She picked up one of the two panniers that Ancaladar had carried, and began walking toward the Shrine. Jermayan lifted the other and followed.
When they reached the shrine, she dumped the contents of both baskets upon the ice and then began building a balefire at the center of the three posts.
Vilya—Alyon—Namarii—Oak—Ash—Blackthorn—Willow—Quince—Larudrall—nine woods of ancient virtue and power. When she was done, the mound nearly filled the space between the pillars, and stood as high as her chest.
So far Jermayan had not asked any questions—even of the indirect Elven sort, though Idalia could tell his curiosity was nearly killing him. Well, all his questions were about to be answered. It was nearly Midwinter Midnight.
“Now I summon the Starry Hunt,” she said. “I hope. If I’m right—and they’ll come—they should certainly be a match for He Who Is.” She turned back to her balefire.
JERMAYAN stared at Idalia’s back in astonishment not untinged with horror. He would turn her from her course if he could, save for the fact that their situation was too dire.
He understood, now, why she had not named the Ally she intended to summon.
The Starry Hunt! A legend barely remembered among the Elves, something from ancient days indeed, from before the founding of the Nine Cities, from before the Great Pact, when Elven Wars were not bloodless wars of flowers. The Endarkened had not been all the Elves had fought. In the morning of the world, before humans were ever born, the Elves had fought each other: House against House, family against family, sister against brother …
Perhaps so that when the Endarkened came, they would be the most perfect warriors the world had ever seen. A match for creatures of blood and pain and death.
In those days, the Powers the Elves cried out to as they lived and died were not powers of joy and harmony and balance.
But it was uncounted thousands of years since the First War.
Those Powers had slept long.
Had—must have—changed with the land and its inhabitants.
Idalia lit the balefire with a wave of her hand. The wood kindled with a great rush of flame. Fire washed over the tall white pillars of the marking stones, its warmth holding the bitterness of the wind at bay.
Then she began to speak.
It was as if she was talking to a friend, though her words were in no language Jermayan understood. It was the most ancient form of the speech of the Elves, the tongue that they had abandoned long ago to speak the speech of men.
Slowly her voice grew louder, more rhythmic. Now she no longer spoke, but chanted. Her voice rose and fell in a cadence as old as the wind and the stars, and as it did, Jermayan felt the first breath of Power wash over him.
He was the most powerful Mage to walk the world in a thousand years. The spells he could summon through his bond with Ancaladar were—nearly—the equal of the Endarkened’s. In single combat, spell to spell, he might even be the equal of the Prince of Shadow Mountain.
Yet the Power wakening here was so far beyond his own as to render him the merest child in comparison.
The Starry Hunt had slept. But it was not gone.
He was no coward. Since they had first discovered what it was they fought, Jermayan had expected to lay down his long years upon the battlefield against their monstrous foe, forfeiting all his future for the barest chance at even delaying Their victory.
But in the face of the Allies Idalia now summoned, he wanted nothing more than to turn and flee.
Her cries were wilder now, her words whipped away by the wind as soon as she uttered them. The flame of the balefire changed, its flame going from yellows and oranges to a clear blue-white. Idalia flung the bundle of banners into the flame.
Suddenly they were here.
It was as if the sky itself was torn open by their arrival. A host of gigantic Riders stood against it, their star-shod steeds ramping and jostling for position.
He could not look upon them.
Jermayan fell to his knees, bowing his head in utter submission.
THEY were crowned with stars.
Stars gleamed from their horses’ harnesses. Their horses’ bodies were the color of the night sky. Their armor was the gleaming silver of moonlight and midnight and the winter air itself.
There were hundreds of them. Thousands. As many as the stars in the sky.
Too many to count.
Too beautiful to look upon, and too terrible.
“Who summons me?” the Lord of the Starry Hunt demanded. His voice was voice of the stars themselves.
The power of the Shrine poured through her, making her whole body tremble. Idalia no longer felt the cold, nor anything she recognized as fear. It was if she had become nothing more than a voice for the Shrine, a tool to focus and channel its need through her own human desire.
“The Land calls you,” Idalia answered steadily. “The People call you. I call you. He Who Is would return to the world, and so we summon you.”
“And will you spill your own blood to save the land?”
In answer, Idalia pulled off her glove. She slashed the palm of her hand deeply with her knife and held it out to him. The blood welled up, and dripped to the ice at her feet.
The Lord of the Starry Hunt laughed. His laughter was the roaring of the wind.
He raised his warhorn, and blew a long wailing call. The sound of it shuddered through her body with a terrible sweetness verging upon pain, taking all her strength away with it.
“We ride!” she heard dimly, as consciousness left her. “We ride!”
WHEN she came to, Idalia was in a different place entirely. The light of earliest dawn streamed through the windows of a small house, and Jermayan was making tea.
The homely reality of such familiar surroundings anchored her to consciousness as nothing else could have. Nothing could have been more different from the last thing she remembered: the night, the frozen plain, the starry spectral riders. Those memor
ies were already fading, as hard to hold on to as a dream. All that remained was the certainty that she had done what she had intended to. But the Power that she had summoned, though of the Light, was as inhuman in its way as the Endarkened were, and thoughts of it were as difficult for mortal minds to retain.
It was not hard to understand, now, why the Elves had let the memory of their Shrine slip away.
Her body was heavy with the weakness of utter exhaustion. Simply casting the spell of Summoning had exacted a high price. She could not imagine any way to have paid Mageprice for such magic, assuming one had been set.
“I was about to wake you. We are in Windalorianan, and I am preparing tea,” Jermayan told her, once he saw her move. “It was the nearest place I could think to bring you, but it is not safe to stay here long.”
“Not that I would wish to, in any event,” Idalia answered.
She sat up. Several hours’ sleep had given her the strength for that, at least.
Though Windalorianan had been abandoned in good order by its inhabitants, it had not been possible for the refugees to bring away every possession, and obviously Jermayan had spent some time scavenging the ghost-city as she slept. The stove of the little house—from the look of it, a guest-house, similar to the one she and Kellen shared in Sentarshadeen, if a little smaller—was stoked to warmth with charcoal disks, and she had slept before it wrapped not only in her own cloak, but in an assortment of furs and blankets.
“I am astonished to discover that they left tea behind,” Idalia said, stretching.
“Not the tea, but the teaservice,” Jermayan said, correcting her. “I always carry tea.”
His words were light, but his dark eyes looked haunted. The Elves were a supremely civilized folk—had been so before Idalia’s own distant ancestors had learned to clothe themselves. The Powers she had summoned up and set loose last night, the Powers Jermayan’s own ancestors had once sworn fealty to, were anything but civilized. No wonder he looked so haggard.
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