Destiny

by Paul B. Thompson

  Kerian believed a wise warrior made her own luck. If Sa’ida wouldn’t come willingly, Kerian would get her by hook or by crook. Once the holy lady was in Inath-Wakenti, once she saw their suffering, she would understand how great was their need and would forgive her rash act. The Lioness drew her sword as Sa’ida turned toward the entrance. She would have to choose her moment carefully.

  Kerian counted to three, and Sa’ida threw open the door. A wall of bright blue light surrounded the temple. In the courtyard beyond that protective barrier skulked a gang of masked Khurs armed with clubs and daggers. As the women emerged, the Khurs set up a shout.

  “Don’t worry,” Sa’ida said. “We can pass through the barrier, but they cannot.”

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than Kerian grabbed her wrist and dashed through the shimmering blue wall. They were on the other side before Sa’ida could catch her breath.

  A Torghanist attacked with a club. Kerian parried high, swept under his upraised arm, and thrust through his chest. A second man stepped in, aiming a dagger at her belly. A heartbeat later, his severed hand, still gripping the knife, lay on the ground. Shocked by their comrades’ quick defeat, the Khurs edged back but continued to pace the women as Kerian made for her griffon.

  Sa’ida hissed, “You know you cannot force me! Let me go!”

  “I’m sorry. In the valley you will see.”

  The priestess’s wrist seemed to turn to smoke. One moment, she was in the Lioness’s grip; in the next, she was free. Before she could flee, a Torghanist ran up behind her, dagger raised high. Kerian lunged, knocking the woman out of the dagger’s path. Her sword caught the Khur in the throat, but the need to shove Sa’ida out of the way had thrown off her aim. Rather than a killing stroke, she scored a bloody line across his neck. He drove his own weapon’s point toward her shoulder.

  Her reflexes saved her life, but the dagger pierced her high on the right arm. Kerian aimed a backhanded stroke at her attacker, and the Khur’s head went flying from his shoulders.

  More than two dozen Torghanists swarmed into the courtyard. Judging by the torches outside the wall, even more were gathered in the street. Their spies must have summoned every loyal Son of Torghan in the city.

  Sa’ida sat on the ground, dazed. Blood trickled from a cut on her forehead. Kerian hauled her to her feet.

  “If you want to keep living, come with me!”

  The woman was too dazed to answer. Kerian whistled shrilly and was answered by a loud and even more piercing cry. Following the sound, the Lioness spotted Eagle Eye on the far side of the courtyard. The four foolish Torghanists who had tried to subdue him lay torn and bleeding at his feet. Catching sight of Kerian, he reared and rent the air with another shriek. He came galloping to her, awkward on the ground but too fearsome to be stopped.

  He bent his forelegs to allow Kerian to heave Sa’ida aboard.

  A weak, “No, no,” came from the priestess.

  The Torghanists were converging on them. Griffon or no griffon, they knew the penalty for allowing their prey to escape. An arrow flickered past Kerian’s nose. She wrapped the reins around her fist as a group of men entered the gate in the wall. They weren’t Khurs. They wore western clothes. One was tall and gray-bearded. The others carried crossbows. Nerakans!

  The bowmen suddenly turned their faces away, and Sa’ida cried, “Your eyes!”

  The warning came too late. A tremendous flash filled the courtyard, and an unseen force slammed into Eagle Eye, knocking him onto his side and spilling his passengers to the pavement. A mass of shouting Torghanists rose up like a black wave and engulfed them. Dazed, blind from the flash, Kerian felt her sword snatched away. A rough burlap sack was dragged down over her head, her hands bound in heavy cords. Blows rained down on the sack, and the fight was over.

  * * * * *

  Hytanthas lay still, cheek pressed to the cold tunnel floor. A dull boom had awakened him, and he wondered whether it was real or yet another hallucination. Wandering in the tunnels, he had found himself prone to all sorts of imaginings. He’d heard approaching footfalls, the clatter of rocks, whispering voices, even the clang of metal on metal. All proved to be unreal.

  For a time he’d kept the light globe burning constantly. Each time it went out, he struck it to rekindle its light, but the resulting glow was weaker and weaker. Inevitably he struck it too hard and the outer shell cracked. Whatever volatile spirit had been held inside escaped, the stream of faintly luminescent purple smoke flitting away down the tunnel. When it was gone, the darkness again closed in.

  By then Hytanthas hardly cared. Prowling the endless dark was leaching away his sanity and his resolve. Once he had been hungry and thirsty. Those appetites had dulled. He no longer wondered at his strange inability to see in the dark. Time itself was meaningless. He had no idea how long he’d been down here. Perhaps the exit he sought did not exist. Perhaps he was dead and did not realize it yet. Was that how the apparitions in the valley had come to be? Was he just another of those spirits, doomed to roam the blackness for all eternity?

  A second boom sent vibrations through the stone beneath his cheek and blasted away his despair. That was no hallucination! That was real!

  He hurried down the passage, seeking the source of the sound. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. He could not remain alone in this terrible place.

  The sound of a voice came to his ears. It was speaking his own language! He shouted, “Hello! Hello, can you hear me?”

  After a long moment of heart-pounding silence, the single voice replied, “Who said that? Where are you?”

  He gave his name and rank. Another interval of silence ensued; then a different voice said, “This is the Speaker. What proof can you give that you are Hytanthas Ambrodel?”

  The notion that his sovereign might also be lost in the tunnels did not dampen Hytanthas’s relief. He was so glad not to be alone, he nearly wept. He named his father and mother, sketched his service in Qualinesti and Khur, and related how he’d been transported to the tunnels by the lights of Inath-Wakenti and had been awakened by the Lioness’s voice.

  “Where are you, Great Speaker?” he asked.

  “A long way away.” The reply came only after a long pause.

  Hytanthas didn’t believe it. The Speaker must be close since they could converse. “I’m coming to you, sire!” he cried.

  He began to run. Every two dozen steps he called out to the Speaker again, assuring Gilthas he was on the way. When he tripped on the loose debris covering the tunnel floor, he picked himself up and went on, never slackening his pace. The Speaker called to him, but he ran wildly, and it wasn’t until after his third such fall that he heard the Speaker say, “Take care! I am on the surface, not underground, and I fear I may be miles away from you.”

  It seemed ridiculous. Hytanthas had heard of mountaineers conversing across wide valleys by using echoes, but surely this was different. He heard no echoes, only the strange delay before the Speaker’s answers. Still, he heeded the Speaker’s words and slackened his pace, trying to look around and choose his path more carefully.

  “Where are you, sire?”

  “On a wide stone platform in the center of the valley”—some words were lost—“Where are you?”

  Rather plaintively, Hytanthas explained he didn’t know exactly where he was but thought himself in one of the tunnels under the valley.

  Conversing back and forth, they established that each could hear the other better now than when they’d begun. It seemed Hytanthas might be closing the distance between them. The young warrior began counting paces softly. He’d left five thousand behind when Gilthas spoke again, sounding much closer. In fact, Hytanthas could hear his sovereign’s teeth chattering.

  “The air above this disk is cold indeed,” the Speaker confirmed. “Too cold to be natural.”

  “How fare the people?” asked Hytanthas, slumping down to rest for a moment.

  Holding on, said Gilthas. Food was dwindling fast. Porthios
, Alhana, and most of the warriors had departed for Qualinesti, and Lady Kerianseray had flown off to bring back Sa’ida to help ward off the ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps. Hytanthas knew the holy lady. She had aided him and Planchet when they were caught inside Khuri-Khan after the khan’s curfew. If not for her intervention, they would have been murdered by bloodthirsty Torghanists.

  When the Speaker told him he’d been missing for more than a week, the warrior shook his head in amazement. No wonder he felt wrung out.

  The Speaker assured him his griffon was fine, although pining for his rider. The elves had found the vast stone platform at the focal point of the valley. Standing on its center, one could hear things from all over Inath-Wakenti. Gilthas had been experimenting with the effect when he heard Hytanthas calling for help. He asked what the warrior had found in the tunnels.

  “Nothing but bones.” Hytanthas explained how his discovery of the body of one of Lady Kerianseray’s warriors, as well as layer upon layer of desiccated animal bones, had led him to conclude that the animal life captured by the will-o’-the-wisps was transferred into the tunnels to die.

  “Take courage, Captain,” Gilthas said. “We’ll get you out.”

  Hytanthas jogged onward. After a time he reported, “Sire, I have found a body.”

  The corpse was that of another elf warrior, although blind as he was Hytanthas couldn’t identify him. The dead elf was lying faceup with a dagger buried in his throat. Hytanthas’s first fearful thought was of murder, then his hand went to the warrior’s scabbard. It was empty. The blade in the elf’s throat must be his own.

  Haltingly, Hytanthas described what he’d found. The Speaker was shocked the warrior would have given up on finding escape.

  “Perhaps he was grievously injured before he was transported to the tunnel?” Gilthas suggested.

  Hytanthas’s examination of the body revealed only the one wound. But unlike his king, the young captain could understand how the elf might succumb. Without the voice of his sovereign to buoy his spirits, Hytanthas himself might have given in to despair.

  He found a crust of bread in the dead elf’s belt pouch. It fell to powder in his mouth, but he choked it down anyway. Shifting position, he put his hand down on something hard and sharp. The characteristic shape and feel told him it was a piece of knapped flint. Perhaps the lost warrior had been trying to start a fire and the stone had gotten away from him. Disoriented by the darkness, he’d been unable to locate it and had given up, though the flint lay just a few feet away.

  Piling up strips of the dead elf’s cloak, Hytanthas struck the flint against the hasp of the dagger. Bright orange sparks showered onto the tinder. He nursed them carefully until they flickered to life. His triumph was quickly tempered by grief. As the feeble light illuminated the features of the dead elf, he recognized Ullian, who had been in the Speaker’s service for only a short time. Hytanthas was one of the few who knew of the human blood in his heritage, and Ullian had been a staunch comrade.

  The Speaker congratulated him on his acquisition of light. Putting aside his sadness, Hytanthas tore Ullian’s cloak into strips then wrapped the strips around the end of his sword to form a torch. The tunnels were a maze, but as long as he could see, he might be able to find a way out. There was nothing he could do for his lost comrades. All he could do was try to survive.

  Torchlight brought a fresh revelation. Wall paintings around him leaped and danced in the flickering light. He described the frescoes to the Speaker. Beautiful scenes of gardens and parkland covered both walls. The paintings had been rendered with amazing skill, giving them an unusual feeling of depth. The colors were so fresh, they might have been painted just the day before. The only jarring notes were the portraits of lean, angular-looking elves, rendered life size, interspersed with the peaceful sylvan scenes. The elves glowered balefully at the viewer.

  The Speaker theorized the paintings had been done by the people who’d once lived in the valley. The very ones whose spirits still haunted it.

  With the aid of his makeshift torch, Hytanthas soon found a crossing tunnel, which branched off to the right. When he reached the intersection, he halted, uncertain which way to go. The tunnels looked identical.

  “Are there portraits at the intersection?” the Speaker asked. Hytanthas said there were. “Do they face any particular direction?”

  Hytanthas dutifully studied the portraits. Those in his original tunnel looked toward the intersection. Those in the crossing tunnel faced away from the intersection. The news excited the Speaker.

  “You should take the new tunnel! I believe the paintings face something important, like a way out.”

  With no better alternative, Hytanthas did as the Speaker suggested. After being so long deprived of company, the young captain felt miraculously refreshed and talked almost nonstop as he walked. The Speaker listened silently, now and then prompting him with questions. Hytanthas reported the thinning of the debris on the floor. Fewer and fewer bits of bone crunched beneath his boots. Then he saw something more interesting to report.

  “Sire, the tunnel ahead slopes down. And a white mist swirls near the floor.”

  His voice had taken on a hollow quality, as though he spoke inside a large, empty room. The Speaker asked about the frescoes. They were gone. Where the tunnel began its downward slope, the frescoes ended.

  He was seeking the surface, not a passage to take him farther down. Still, the tunnel might level out and begin to climb. He told the Speaker he would scout ahead. If the passage continued to slope downward after a hundred steps, he would go back.

  The tunnel walls were plain gray stone, unadorned by paintings of any sort. The white mist filled the passage from side to side. First curling about Hytanthas’s ankles, it deepened as he advanced until it reached to his chest. It was cold and clammy, and remarkably cohesive. He swept a hand through it, and the mist rippled like water rather than flying about like fog. The air grew steadily colder. Hytanthas’s garments sagged with damp. Water dripped from his hair down his back. Reaching another branching of paths, he halted. The intersection was very wide, at least twenty feet across. A sense of unease filled Hytanthas. He couldn’t see anything untoward, but he sensed danger nearby.

  Gilthas urged him to go back, but Hytanthas drew his dagger and moved forward slowly. His caution was well founded. The toe of his left boot suddenly found open air rather than solid rock.

  There was a great hole in the floor, nearly as wide as the tunnel. He dropped a bone chip into the hole. His keen ears never heard the chip hit bottom.

  As he turned to go, the air around him trembled once then again. A loud boom echoed down the passageway.

  The Speaker heard it as well and demanded to know what was happening. A wind had begun to blow, Hytanthas told him. The mist was being drawn down the pit. The pull was strong. It tossed Hytanthas’s long hair and dried the dampness from his clothes. When all the mist was gone, the wind ceased.

  “I see light in the hole!” Hytanthas exclaimed. Deep within was a pale white glow. It showed him the sides of the shaft were polished smooth and free of embellishment.

  When a minute passed with no other occurrences, Hytanthas turned and retraced his steps to the crossing tunnel.

  He had no idea what might be in the deep hole, but as he walked, a more pressing question came to his mind. The rush of air suggested the tunnels had been unsealed somewhere. The last time that happened, he had heard the Speaker’s voice. Who knew what had been admitted into the tunnels?

  11

  Caressed by the soft light of ten thousand stars, the stone scrolls softened, opening one by one like exotic flowers. Never before had Favaronas laid them all out at once. A trained librarian never opened books he knew he would not have time to read because even the finest vellum inevitably cracked with use. The scrolls were even more delicate than most, despite their rock-solid appearance. He had no way of knowing how many times the stone could soften, open, and harden again. Overuse might destroy them. But
Faeterus wasn’t concerned with such niceties. He’d ordered all the cylinders placed where starlight would work its magic on them.

  The climb to the Stair had proven too much for them to complete in a day. They were still several hundred yards short of their goal when Favaronas collapsed. As the sorcerer’s hand was still joined to Favaronas’s arm, Faeterus dropped with him. The archivist’s exhaustion was no ploy; he couldn’t go a step farther without rest. Food and water would have strengthened him, but Faeterus offered none. He did sever their unnatural bond. As Favaronas slid into sleep, he was grateful for that small blessing.

  Awakening after nightfall, Favaronas found the sorcerer’s manner much changed. Having rid himself of Sahim-Khan’s bounty hunter, destroyed (so he thought) an elf griffon rider, and with the Stair of Distant Vision in reach, Faeterus was more relaxed, even expansive. When he asked Favaronas to read from the scrolls, his voice sounded much less arrogant than usual. Favaronas was emboldened to ask, with all deference, why Faeterus didn’t read them himself.

  “Their meaning is shielded from my eyes by a very old and potent ward.”

  Storing away that bit of knowledge, Favaronas knelt to study the scrolls. Faeterus had forbidden a fire—no sense attracting potentially unfriendly attention—but had cast an illumination spell around Favaronas to brighten the air enough to permit reading.

  As the archivist feared, the randomly collected cylinders belonged to different chronicles. None was a continuation of any of the others. In addition to the one he’d already sampled, the second contained a record of the original inhabitants’ attempts to foil the powers that confined them. It bore the cryptic title Ten Thousand and One, and interested Faeterus greatly.

  The scroll began in midsentence. The inhabitants of the valley had employed many methods to catch and destroy the lights that patrolled the valley. The lights were referred to variously as “night wardens,” “watchers,” and “vigilants.” Many were caught in nets and other traps, but it made no difference. However many will-o’-the-wisps were caught, the next night saw no shortage. Two of the valley’s inhabitants, Stabo and Mexas, engaged in a long debate on their captors’ nature. Stabo claimed new lights were created every night, so capturing any was pointless. Mexas countered that their number was fixed, although not all appeared at any one time. If enough could be captured, the total would lessen.