Destiny

by Paul B. Thompson

  Kerian choked on a mouthful of water. “Favaronas? He’s here and alive?”

  “He was two days ago, when the prints were made.” Robien was surprised that the Lioness knew Favaronas. He’d thought Favaronas an itinerant scholar.

  “He’s the Speaker’s archivist! The question is how do you know him?”

  They had met weeks before, Robien said, by the creek near the entrance to the valley. Scholar and bounty hunter traveled together for a time, and when Faeterus left Robien to die in the grip of the strangling sand, he’d kidnapped Favaronas. From the signs Robien had deduced that Favaronas was doing all he could to delay the sorcerer’s progress to Mount Rakaris, even though he must think Robien dead and there was little hope of aid.

  Kerian brought the discussion to an abrupt end, telling Robien to take the lead. Once they reached the trail left by Favaronas, she quickened their pace. Hytanthas struck up a conversation to talk with Robien, eager to compare their experiences in the tunnels. The two of them led, with Taranath and Kerian close behind. The Lioness mentioned the part Favaronas had played in her first expedition to Inath-Wakenti. She’d thought him lost with the rest of her unlucky band after its departure from the valley. Robien’s news amazed her. Tough, battle-hardened veterans perished, but the inexperienced, comfort-loving librarian survived.

  Fate was strange.

  * * * * *

  Huddled inside their makeshift shelters, the elves listened in terrified silence to the slow, muffled footfalls outside. Lamps were extinguished lest their light attract attention. Some elves, braver or more curious than their fellows, peered out through small tears in the fabric and beheld a prodigious sight. Illumined by only starlight, the dead walked among them.

  The ghosts were gaunt, clad in plain shifts or kilts. Faces were greenish pale, with dark holes where eyes should be. They walked with measured tread, heads turning slowly right and left, as though seeking something. Standing outside the tent flaps closed firmly against them, some sobbed and groaned, wringing their hands. Others shook fists at the night sky, or scratched at the tents with spectral hands. A few crawled along the ground, clawing at the dirt to drag themselves forward. Although the elves heard the thud of numerous footfalls and the scrabbling of those who crawled, none of the spirits left any prints in the dust.

  Now and then one shrieked loudly, like a victim receiving a deathblow. The blood-chilling screams sent them hurrying away from spy holes and back to the center of their shelters, where they clung to each other for comfort. The nation that had borne the wrath of the nomads of Khur was paralyzed by an army of ghosts.

  Round and round the apparitions tramped. As the priestess had hoped, they could not enter a closed tent, but neither would they give up trying. The assemblage of living souls drew them as a feast draws starving folk.

  Accidents occurred. Several tents collapsed when the frightened occupants knocked down the support poles. By the time the tents were up again, the ghosts were inside. They reached out with gray hands, their icy touch straight from the grave. Some elves fled their fallen shelters only to face more spirits outside. Others, frozen into immobility by terror, simply sat in horror as the ghosts clustered more and more thickly around them, crying, wailing, holding out pleading hands.

  Up close the specters displayed strange features. Despite having the upswept ears characteristic of full-blooded elves, some had thick tufts of hair on faces and arms. Others had only three or four fingers on each hand or bizarrely shaped ears—not even round like a human’s, but triangular and set atop their heads, like the ears of a dog or cat. Long, pointed teeth framed lolling black tongues. Elves who challenged the invaders with sticks, stones, and tools quickly regretted their courage. Ghosts who met defiance seemed to grow stronger and become more solid, and they returned violence with violence. Elves attempting to defend home and family mobbed, buried beneath raving, laughing apparitions. No elf could bear such torment. The fortunate ones lost consciousness. The rest went mad.

  In the Speaker’s tent, everyone gathered close around their king. The fire in the central hearth burned brightly. Gilthas ordered it built higher, that they should not be cowering in darkness. A terrible scream split the air. No ghostly wail, that sound had been wrung from a living throat, and it brought Hamaramis and the other warriors to their feet, hands going to sword hilts or reaching for bows.

  “This is not a threat weapons can defeat,” Gilthas said. Although outwardly composed, he, too, found the anguish of his people nearly impossible to endure. His own physical suffering he’d born with silent fortitude. His nation’s pain cut at his very heart.

  One young warrior strode to the heavy tapestry covering the opening. Sa’ida warned him not to open the flap. The elf whirled to face her, hand gripping his sword hilt so tightly the knuckles showed white.

  “What do they want?” he cried.

  “What we all want. To live.”

  “But they’re dead!”

  The priestess nodded. “They do not know that. Or they do know but are fighting against that truth.”

  Obeying the Speaker’s quiet request, the young elf returned to the fire. The others gathered around as Sa’ida told what she knew of ghosts. They are, she said, souls trapped on the mortal plane by magic, by the power of a curse, or by their own unspent desires. So numerous a legion of specters in Inath-Wakenti hinted at a great conflict in ages past. Those exiled here had been imprisoned by magical controls so strong that even their souls were not allowed to leave. Like Gilthas before her, the priestess sensed loneliness from them. Being more attuned to such things than he, she went further, explaining that over the centuries, the spirits’ loneliness had hardened into a terrible rage, a thirst to be revenged for their suffering. She shivered and rubbed her arms as if chilled.

  “Perhaps they’ll depart now that their masters, the will-o’-the-wisps, have gone?” Gilthas suggested.

  A scream caused all of them to flinch. Something heavy hit the canvas wall of the tent and caromed off. Sniffling sounds followed then slowly faded away.

  Varanas dropped his broken stylus, which he’d snapped in two at the sound of the scream. “I cannot bear this!” he said. “Will it go on all night, lady?”

  “The dead have motives the living can scarcely comprehend,” Sa’ida answered. She repeated her hope that sunrise would disperse the ghosts.

  “Here’s to the dawn,” said Hamaramis, downing a swallow of potent fluq. The Speaker and Sa’ida echoed the sentiment, lifting their small cups of kefre in salute.

  A reddish glow brightened one side of the great tent, and the smell of burning canvas filled the air. Warriors, attendants, and scribes were on their feet in an instant. They couldn’t let the camp burn down around them!

  Gilthas rose, leaning heavily on his staff. “Lady?” he said, offering an arm.

  A high priestess could not lose face before the laddad. Exiled and humbled they might be, but theirs was a civilization stretching back millennia. The Speaker, a young adult by the standards of his race, likely had seen more summers than the most aged Khur alive. His eyes, shadowed by travail, regarded her with steady confidence.

  With great dignity, Sa’ida took his thin arm.

  He smiled. “There. Whatever befalls me, I shall have a healer close at hand.”

  The fire was subsiding. By the time the slow-moving Gilthas passed through the door, it was almost out. A neighboring tent, belonging to the high-born Silvanesti clan of Kindrobel, had been reduced to ashes. On each side of the destroyed tent, the lane was full of pallid apparitions. Slowly, their attention shifted to Gilthas, standing in the open doorway of his tent.

  He stepped outside. Embers drifted down. Sa’ida brushed stinging coals away from his face. He drew a deep breath.

  “Specters of Inath-Wakenti, listen to me! You have no business with us. Begone! Leave us in peace!”

  The ghosts started shuffling forward, converging on him.

  “I don’t think they’re listening,” Sa’ida murmu
red.

  “They hear me very well.” He raised his voice. “The force that held you captive is gone. Can’t you sense it? You can go to your long-denied rest!”

  A dry, sighing sound filled the air, as though hundreds of voices all whispered at once.

  “I can’t understand you,” Gilthas told them patiently.

  Despite his calm demeanor, Sa’ida, holding his arm, felt his pulse racing. The Pathfinder was good at dissembling, but he was frightened. So was she. She had never been among so many spirits before. The longing, the desperate greed for life emanating from the bleak assembly took her breath away. Waves of cold broke over her like showers of ice. Her magical training caused her to feel it more strongly than the elves but also equipped her to deal with it. Still, she knew a fierce, primal urge to flee.

  “You’re hurting my arm,” Gilthas whispered. Embarrassed, she eased her grip.

  Behind them, Hamaramis begged the Speaker to return inside. The advancing spirits were only yards away.

  “I’ll not be shut in by them. Either they must go or we must.” A flash of his old strength, the strength of his illustrious ancestors, straightened Gilthas’s back and he shouted, “And we aren’t going!” He turned and thrust a finger at the nearest ghosts. “You are dead! Your time in this world is long over. Go now! Return to the realm of peace and eternal rest!”

  To the surprise of all, including Gilthas himself, the advancing apparitions faltered. Their whispering subsided. Gilthas turned to the spirits on his left and repeated his command. The creeping advance halted.

  Sa’ida no longer watched the ghosts; her attention was on her patient. Such power she felt from his starved, diseased frame! It burned in him like a beacon, unquenched despite his many ills.

  “I am the Speaker of the Sun and Stars. I know great wrongs were done to you. You were imprisoned here by my ancestor long ago. I don’t know what crimes you committed, and I do not care. I absolve you of any guilt. You have walked the mortal world too long. It’s time for you to go.”

  From the assembled spirits flowed a wave of melancholy so strong Sa’ida felt tears prick her eyes. They did not weep or wail, but their grief was manifest to the sensitive priestess.

  “Your chains are broken. The door has been opened. Nothing holds you here but ancient pain and rage. Let them go. Cease your struggles. The inexorable tide of time will bear you away. You have only to cast away your hate, and go.”

  The night darkened as the last embers of the burned tent winked out. Even so, it was clear to the high priestess and the elves crowded in the door of the Speaker’s tent that the ranks of ghosts were thinning. Several spirits had vanished completely. Others were so attenuated as to be barely visible.

  Gilthas sighed deeply. The arm Sa’ida held trembled. “I am tired,” he declared, still addressing the spirits. “But I cannot rest until I know my people are safe. What you had is gone, but no one can hurt you now, and you must not hurt in return. Farewell to you all. Gilthas, son of Tanis and Lauralanthalasa, bids you good-bye. Rest well.”

  They went. One by one, the doleful spirits faded away until only darkness remained. When every single one was gone, Gilthas gave up his own struggle. Hamaramis arrived in time to help Sa’ida catch him when his knees buckled. Two warriors lifted him.

  “Wait,” he commanded, voice hoarse from his oration. “General, inspect the camp for damage and casualties.”

  Hamaramis watched him carried back inside the tent. The old general tried to comprehend what he had just witnessed. He had seen many things in his long life—terrible things such as the destruction of Qualinost and wondrous things such as the Speaker leading his people down a desert mountain and away from murderous nomads in the dead of night. The Speaker’s stand outside Inath-Wakenti against raging nomads had left Hamaramis amazed and awed. But it paled in comparison with the night’s events. He led a company of warriors through the camp. They found not one ghost remaining, and still he could not grasp what his sovereign had accomplished. With only the power of his words, the Speaker had exorcised hundreds of malign spirits from the land they had haunted for centuries.

  None of them could know with certainty whether the spirits would return, but in his heart Hamaramis believed Gilthas Pathfinder had banished the ghosts forever.

  * * * * *

  Favaronas also witnessed the departure of the will-o’-the-wisps. Lying on his side, still paralyzed from the chest down, he was trying to find release from constant terror in sleep when a flash brought his eyes open. The great fountain of light swirling up and away from the elves’ camp reminded him of gnomish fireworks he’d seen once in Zaradene. He stared in amazement until Faeterus strode before him, blocking his line of sight.

  “There is another here. The Watchers have been dispersed,” the sorcerer said.

  Favaronas felt hope flicker in his heart. The Speaker had magical assistance! Perhaps all was not lost. If the new mage was powerful enough to send away the lights in the valley, he might be potent enough to forestall Faeterus.

  The sorcerer had been staring out toward the now-dark valley. He chuckled, an unpleasant sound, and said, “When I am done, that spectacle will seem like a child’s game.”

  Although Favaronas watched the sky, nothing further happened. Trying to hold on to the ember of hope, he allowed exhaustion to claim him.

  Hope did not last long. When he awoke again, the sky was pale gray with the coming dawn, and disappointment chilled him more surely than the cold rock beneath him. Whoever had banished the lights, he hadn’t come to defeat Faeterus. The sorcerer was still there, Favaronas was still paralyzed, and this was very probably the last day of his life. If Faeterus had his way, it would be the last day his entire race would ever see.

  Flinging his hands skyward, Faeterus exclaimed in the same abbreviated ancient tongue used on the stone scrolls. Favaronas struggled to decipher the abbreviations and archaic declensions and translate the words into modern Elvish. But understanding the words did not mean he could fathom their intended purpose.

  “Awaken land, awaken sky, awaken sun! Ancient shadows long buried, awake! Come forth and blind the sun!” the sorcerer cried then called for the shadows and “forgotten eyes” to do his bidding.

  The sky had brightened to shell pink. Thus far the sorcerer’s commands seemed unavailing. His booming oratory went on a long time, until the sun cleared the peaks behind them. When light touched the outer edge of the Stair, Faeterus turned to face the new sun. As always, he was swathed in many layers of moldering cloth and Favaronas wondered how he could bear it. The hood must be stifling.

  His exhortations in the old tongue gave way to a chant. Only eight words repeated over and over, but Favaronas could not decipher them. The words were not Elvish of any era, nor the abbreviations of the stone scrolls. They sounded coarser than any elf tongue. In the oldest chronicles there were references to Kevim, the language of the gods, and Favaronas wondered if that was what he was hearing.

  The chant was remorseless. Faeterus’s voice marched up the vocal register then down. He punctuated his invocation with eight loud claps then returned to the rising and falling chant. It went on so long, Favaronas thought he would scream. The words hammered at him, bored into his skull. He was sure he would never forget them, just as he was certain he could never pronounce them. He wrapped his arms around his head, trying to shut out the sound and spare his battered ears. It didn’t help. The words continued to beat down on him like a hail of stones.

  A tremor shook the ground, then another. Faeterus lifted his arms during the chant then dropped them in the brief interval of silence. With his heavy robe flapping, he resembled some impossibly awkward bird trying to take to the air. At one point in the chant, he stamped his right foot, causing the mountain to vibrate like a hammer-struck gong. The blows of his heel sent loose stones tumbling down the mountainside.

  Favaronas lifted his gaze. He gasped.

  Above the center of the valley, a dark mass had appeared. It hovered high o
ver the Tympanum. To be visible from that distance, it had to be gigantic. With each succeeding eight-word chant, the mass grew. Soon it darkened a sizable portion of the valley beneath it. In growing horror, Favaronas realized the sorcerer’s purpose. The verse in the stone scroll spoke of “the sun’s black eye.” With no natural eclipse available, Faeterus would blot out the sun with a dark cloud of his own creation.

  There and then he resolved not to wait for whatever awful fate Faeterus had planned for him. Clawing at the stony ground, seeking a handhold, he hauled himself forward. His progress was pitifully slow, but it was progress. All he need do was reach the front edge of the plateau, fifty yards away, and roll over. His torment would end at last. As he dragged himself along, he tried to make peace with what he had done.

  Ambition was at the root of all his trouble. He should have gone with Glanthon and the warriors when they departed the valley. Instead he’d chosen to probe secrets no mortal should ever know. Faeterus was still bellowing his invocation, but Favaronas didn’t hear him. Instead, he heard Glanthon’s voice calling his name. The warrior had searched a long time before assuming Favaronas was lost in the desert and riding on without him. If he could change one single moment in his life, Favaronas would never have hidden himself away from Glanthon. He would have stayed with the warriors and traveled back to Khurinost.

  His path took him by Faeterus, but the sorcerer paid him no heed. Faeterus’ ragged robe was stained with sweat. Blood flowed from the sole of his foot as he continued to stamp the ground. A fleeting glimpse of the sorcerer’s face within the hood caused Favaronas to avert his gaze quickly. Faeterus’s eyes seemed dark holes in his alien-looking face.

  The pavers covering the surface of the Stairs were rough, worn by centuries of weather to a harsh, pebbled texture. The breast of Favaronas’s geb was ripped in a dozen places. A trail of blood stretched out behind him. His fingertips were bloody, several fingernails torn away. When his accumulation of hurts grew great enough, he faltered, resting his head on the cool stone.