He came closer still. All that kept her from making good on her threat was his unarmed state. He was as bad as Gilthas. What was wrong with them? Did they think the world was so in awe of their royal blood that they didn’t need to bear arms? Damn all high-born idealists anyway!
Voices put an end to their confrontation. One was shouting for the Lioness. She shouted back. A pair of guards, spear-armed civilian volunteers, hurried up. One sported a dented bronze buckler, and the other wore a once-elegant (but now badly corroded) Silvanesti helmet. Both elves were out of breath not from exertion, but from excitement. There was a disturbance in the food cache, they reported. An intruder could be heard moving about inside, but he returned no answer to their challenges. Warriors of the regular army had been sent for and were surrounding the cache.
On went the sword belt again. Kerian was certain the strap had worn a permanent groove in her hip.
A single griffon and rider wheeled above the cache, trying to spot the intruder. The low stone wall protecting the food supply was surrounded by two dozen warriors. The officer, one of Alhana’s Silvanesti guards, gave Kerian a whispered report. Movement had been heard from within, but no one had yet entered to investigate.
Kerian drew her sword. Any place else, the intruder would probably have been nothing more mysterious than a wild dog. Khur was full of them, permanently lean creatures who usually hunted by night. A pack could surround and kill a good horse or drag away an imprudently sleeping elf. But they’d seen no signs of any such animals in Inath-Wakenti, and with their food supplies so low, they could ill afford any loss.
Two guards pulled aside the entry barrier and Kerian ducked in. Crates, barrels, and wicker bundles of provisions were stacked in head-high piles arranged in neat, concentric circles. An all-too-familiar rustle of old cloth told her Porthios had slipped in behind her. She ordered him out.
He pulled a chalk pebble from a pocket and drew a thick white smudge on his masked forehead. “If you see anything without this mark, kill it,” he said and melted away.
For a moment, she could only stare after him. Minutes ago, he’d seen her ready to draw steel on him. Now he was going up against an unknown intruder, unarmed, and with only Kerian to protect him should it come to a fight. Whatever else she thought of him, she must credit him with courage.
A metallic clatter sent her jogging around the outer ring of provisions until she came to an opening. A pale shape flashed across the gap. It was slight but stood erect on two legs—not a wild dog. Kerian called a challenge and gave chase. It darted away sharply right and disappeared into the next ring of provisions. She sprinted after—
—and crashed into a solid wall of crates.
Where in the name of Chaos had the thing gone? She began to climb. From atop the crates she spotted the gray-clad intruder in the path below her. It stood facing Porthios.
She shouted for Porthios to grab him, but he didn’t move. She jumped down and started to put her sword to the intruder’s back but realized the gray figure was translucent. She swept her blade back and forth, but it was like slashing at smoke. The figure had no substance at all.
She moved around to face it. Its eyes were dark holes and its mouth a narrow line. The shape was vaguely elflike, upright, with two arms and an indistinct head.
“Who are you?” she demanded. The gray figure immediately vanished, as though the sound of her voice had chased it away.
Porthios still had not spoken or moved. He seemed rooted in place, staring at the spot where the ghost had been.
“What’s the matter? Did it hurt you?” she asked sharply.
When he didn’t reply, she grabbed his arm. He flinched hard and jerked free.
“It called me … ‘Father,’ ” he whispered.
For an instant she was taken aback, but common sense quickly reasserted itself.
“These ghosts have been here for thousands of years, Porthios. It might as easily have called me ‘Father.’ There’s no logical reason to think it was your son.”
“Yet I felt as though I knew him.”
His expression was hidden by the mask, but the gloved hands knotted together at his waist were an eloquent sign of his agitation. Silvanoshei, son of Porthios and Alhana, had died at the end of the War of Souls, killed by his lover, Mina. That she had been an agent of the evil goddess Takhisis was well known; less clear, at least to Kerian, was just how deep Silvanoshei’s betrayal of his people had gone. Whatever his sins, Silvanoshei had paid for them with his life. Kerian could only imagine the pain Alhana and Porthios had faced, losing their only child.
Porthios had stepped into the space where the apparition had stood. By his very silence and immobility, he seemed oddly vulnerable.
“Nothing more than a trick of the night, I’m certain,” Kerian said.
He gave no reply, so she turned to go.
“Say nothing of this to Alhana,” he said. “Her wounds are too deep.”
For once she was happy to do just as he said. Soldiers called for her from elsewhere in the enclosure, and she left Porthios to go to them.
The warriors showed her discarded cheesecloth bags. The bags once had held haunches of meat. Kerian ordered the soldiers to scour the cache. “Look for footprints, handprints on the containers, anything unusual,” she advised. She did not mention the apparition that she and Porthios had seen. Specters did not steal meat.
While the soldiers searched, she examined the bags more carefully. They weren’t torn and the neck of each bag was still tied, the wax seal on the knot unbroken.
The soldiers found no traces of any intruder. Carefully folding the empty cheesecloth bags, Kerian tucked them into her sword belt. Her sun-browned face wore a grim expression.
There seemed no doubt their losses of food were due to the valley’s weird influence. Mere theft or hoarding couldn’t explain the sealed, empty bags. She must tell Gilthas. His plan to cross Lioness Creek and take possession of the valley would have to wait.
* * * * *
The eastern half of the valley stayed light a little longer than the west because of the shadows cast by the western mountains. As the sun slipped below the peaks, two elves walked through waist-high marlberry and olive bushes toward the eastern side. The elder was a Qualinesti, his body haggard and thin from long privation. Favaronas, formerly the archivist of the Speaker’s library in Qualinost, was unaccustomed to such strenuous exercise.
“Less haste, if you please,” he gasped.
His companion, a Kagonesti years younger, halted only briefly. He sported hunter’s togs and hair closely cropped after the fashion of some humans.
Robien the Tireless was a bounty hunter hired by Sahim-Khan to capture Faeterus, a mage formerly employed by Sahim. After years of service to the khan, Faeterus suddenly abandoned Khuri-Khan and had caused Sahim no small amount of trouble before leaving, Sahim-Khan was not a forgiving man. Robien’s charge was to find the rogue sorcerer and return him to Khuri-Khan to face his former master’s wrath. He said, “I want to find open ground before nightfall. I don’t want those lights popping out of the brush so close we can’t avoid them.”
He was right. Favaronas had been in Robien’s company only a short time but had come to realize Robien usually was right. Exhausted, perpetually fearful, Favaronas did not find it an endearing trait.
Favaronas had encountered the hunter after a chance meeting with Faeterus back at Lioness Creek. Desperate for aid and ignorant of Faeterus’s identity, the archivist had agreed to work with him in trying to fathom the valley’s secrets. Once Robien revealed what he knew of the magician’s past crimes in Khuri-Khan, Favaronas found himself caught between the two, wishing to confide all in Robien, but cowed by Faeterus’s threats. The hapless scholar did what he could to aid Robien’s quest, never at all certain the Kagonesti was capable of capturing the sorcerer before Faeterus destroyed them both.
Robien pushed on, breaking trail for Favaronas. It was heavy going. Marlberry branches were slick but clinging. They
constantly wound around Favaronas’s ankles and threatened to trip him. Olive bushes, not to be confused with the noble olive tree, had spiky leaves that seemed determined to poke out his eyes. Favaronas’s hands and face were streaked with tiny cuts. He could hardly credit Robien’s assurance that their prey had passed this way. Faeterus was a mysterious sorcerer, but hardly a vigorous person. Far older than Favaronas and burdened by the heavy robes he wore, how could he have traversed such a terrible thicket?
Robien pointed to faint marks on the highest branches. “He walked up here.”
Favaronas squinted at the marks, barely visible to him even once he knew where to look. The sorcerer had walked on top of the brush? Swallowing hard, Favaronas the inveterately curious decided that knowing a thing was sometimes far more unsettling than not knowing it.
Their shadows stretched farther and farther in front of them as they traveled. Based on the archivist’s theory that Faeterus was seeking a high spot from which to oversee the entire valley, Robien had deduced that a peak called Mount Rakaris was his goal. The trail did seem to be leading directly there. Favaronas believed the valley’s monoliths weren’t the remains of a long-deserted city, but formed some sort of map or sigil. Viewed as a whole, from a high vantage, their meaning would become plain to Faeterus, allowing him to tap into the hidden power of Inath-Wakenti. What form that power might take, Favaronas did not know, but he was certain Faeterus must not be allowed access to it.
Not until the last sliver of sun was slipping behind the mountains did Robien at last take pity on the struggling Favaronas and consent to make camp. At the archivist’s urging, they diverted to a clearing dominated by a trio of standing stones.
The stones were sixteen feet high but looked even taller perched on a low mound of the valley’s usual blue-green soil. Favaronas staggered out of the hateful brush and dropped on his hands and knees. Robien went to the stones. He touched the nearest one lightly, staring up at its squared-off top. His enchanted spectacles could detect any trace of living beings, and they showed him that no one had touched the stone in a very long time.
The eastern mountains were still far away, two, perhaps three days even at Robien’s pace. Numerous ledges and plateaus were visible on the steep granite slopes. Any one of them might serve for viewing the valley, but Favaronas believed the monolith builders had created one specific place where the grand plan of the scattered stones would be plainly visible. He was certain Faeterus was seeking that spot and that spot alone. The sorcerer’s trail would lead them to it.
Tracking wary prey and avoiding the ghostly lights that haunted the valley required stealth, so Robien allowed no campfire. Favaronas resigned himself to another meal of dried fruit and venison jerky, and another night spent shivering beneath his meager blanket. He shrugged the heavy sack from his shoulder. It fell over and the three stone cylinders inside rolled out onto the ground.
Robien looked up from his own small pack. “The way is difficult enough for you, scholar. Why are you carrying rocks?”
Favaronas hastily shoved the cylinders back into the sack. He muttered something about “interesting mineral formations,” and Robien seemed content to leave it at that.
The strange cylinders weren’t rocks at all, but scrolls. Magically petrified, they unspooled only when exposed to filtered sunlight. Favaronas had discovered them in a tunnel while a member of Lady Kerianseray’s original expedition to the valley. By the time he puzzled out some of the text they contained, the expedition was leaving the valley. He had slipped away from the others and returned to the valley alone. He was still working to decipher the ancient books. The writing inside them was a severely abbreviated form of Old Elvish in which each word was reduced to a single syllable, such as om.hed.thon.dac, a phrase he recently had worked out to mean “the father who made not his children.” This epithet was used frequently in the texts and referred to the leader of those who had built the standing stones. Whether these builders had been colonists or prisoners, Favaronas was unsure.
He’d unlocked only a small portion of the scrolls’ meaning, but the implications of even that much were terrifying. His surreptitious return to Inath-Wakenti had been fueled by the desire to harness a great power and help his beleaguered people. Now all he wanted was to bury the knowledge as deeply as possible. No one must learn what he knew. He hadn’t told even Robien of his connection to the Speaker’s household and his acquaintance with Lady Kerianseray. Simpler if the bounty hunter thought him no more than an unimportant, wayward scholar. Fortunately, Robien was concerned only with capturing Faeterus. He showed little interest in anything that did not directly affect his search.
Robien settled down with his back against a monolith and braced his short, recurved bow. It was his nightly ritual. He never lay down to sleep without the bow, complete with nocked arrow, on his lap. Favaronas had heard it said that the best Kagonesti hunters could hear a leaf bend under a grasshopper’s foot. Close association with Robien taught him that was no fanciful tale. Robien could detect impossibly faint sounds and smells, and his eyesight, even without his enchanted glasses, was far more acute than that of any other elf Favaronas had known.
Favaronas lay down a few feet away, in the center of the triangle formed by the three stones. The scholar found the valley’s enormous silence very wearing on his nerves. The lack of night sounds made it difficult for him to fall asleep. To fill the void, he made conversation, asking Robien how long he’d been tracking Faeterus.
“Twenty-two days and twenty-three nights,” the hunter replied evenly. “The first three nights I spent in a cistern beneath Khuri-Khan.” Leaning back against the monolith, his eyes closed, Robien frowned. “Vile place.”
“When you find him, how will you hold him?”
He gave a small shrug. “By pinning his wings.”
With that, Robien was asleep. Favaronas envied his ability to fall asleep between one breath and the next. Although Favaronas lay quietly and tried to think calming thoughts, rest eluded him. His head was filled with a cacophony of questions and fears. An hour went by, and still he was wide awake. Perhaps a drink of water would help.
The tepid liquid tasted like the skin in which Robien carried it, and Favaronas wished it were wine. On his second swallow, it was—a potent red. Astonished, he choked, dribbling wine down his chest.
“That’s your favorite vintage, isn’t it. Black grapes of Goodlund, two years old?”
Favaronas’s pulse raced. He knew that voice!
From the deep shadow of the westernmost monolith, Faeterus emerged. The sorcerer’s habitual raiment—a heavy brown robe—made him appear huge and hulking. He glided forward, feet invisible beneath the trailing robe but seeming not to touch the ground.
Favaronas darted a glance at Robien, certain the wily Kagonesti must know his quarry was at hand.
“The khan’s hireling cannot help you.”
Faeterus held out a bony hand, and a flame ignited in his palm. Its light revealed Robien to be in no shape to help anyone, not even himself. His eyes were closed, as though he still slept, and the bluish soil was rising up around him, bubbling like thick mud. The growing mound of dirt already reached his waist, immobilizing his legs. Its bottom edge, where the oozing earth met the ground, had hardened to a lapislike stone, and the effect was creeping upward. Soon Robien would be entombed alive.
“When the grains reach his lips and nostrils, they will fill him like a living hourglass,” Faeterus explained. “When the sun rises, the heat of the day will fuse the soil into hardest glass. His agony will be intense … and lingering.” The sorcerer’s cowled head turned back to Favaronas. Favaronas had never seen his face; it was always shadowed by the robe’s deep hood. “But his fate is easy compared to what I have reserved for you.”
Favaronas prostrated himself, begging for mercy, insisting he’d had no choice but to join with Robien. His flailing hand touched the sack of scrolls. Thinking fast, he shoved it forward, spilling the cylinders onto the ground. “Look, mas
ter! See what I have found!”
Faeterus uttered a surprised oath. Knobby fingers reached toward a scroll, hovering inches above its surface. “You kept these from me.” That was patently true, but Favaronas denied it anyway. The sorcerer asked if he knew what the scrolls were.
“Yes, master! They’re chronicles written by those who raised the standing stones,” gabbled Favaronas.
Prompted, he went on to relate how he had learned to open the scrolls, and that he could, with difficulty, read some of the text within. A great force grasped the neck of his robe and hoisted him into the air. The sorcerer still had the flame in one hand. The other hand he held aloft, fingers clenched.
“I accept your tribute,” he said. “You will survive this night, wretched fool, if you read to me the Annals of the Lost.”
The invisible hand dropped Favaronas onto his feet. Pale and trembling, he restored the cylinders to the sack and clutched the bundle to his chest.
As he followed the sorcerer, he glanced back once. The receding glow of Faeterus’s light showed Robien encased up to his chest. Like living creatures, grains of sand were racing up to pile themselves one upon the other around his shoulders. Favaronas turned away and trudged on. He was as helpless as the bounty hunter, both of them at the mercy of a pitiless master.
4
The Speaker’s day began with a trip to the creek. Gilthas sat on a rock between two small willow trees and drank water from a bowl. Cold, fresh water was one of the valley’s advantages—according to his wife, perhaps its only advantage. The early-morning sun painted the crests of the western mountains in golden light, but the valley itself was still in shadow. Morning mist hovered in the low places. Despite layers of clothing, Gilthas shivered. He just couldn’t seem to get warm anymore.
When the water was gone, he started to rise, to refill the bowl, but before he could do more than shift his weight, the vessel was taken from his hand. Kerian dipped the bowl into the creek and returned it to him.
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