“But he mounted a genuine, credible effort! If I hadn’t stemmed the attempt … what good is your early warning chamber if—”
He put up a hand. “Why should I focus on escape attempts already destined to be foiled by our efforts? Interference in such events, already predetermined to proceed one way, could finish far differently. No, I’m looking for instances of probability where the Traitor successfully breaks free of all our containment efforts.”
Delphe blinked. “Successfully?”
“Yes. If I can identify those instances, how ever far in the future, I can take steps right now in the present to make certain those circumstances fail to develop and materialize.”
Delphe put a hand to the side of her head. Telarian’s voice seemed so matter of fact, so rational. But the meanings behind the words he spoke seemed unbound by reason. She spoke out, “How far do you look?”
He smiled. A note of pride crept into his voice as he explained. “Before I crafted this chamber, I could see only moments, perhaps days at most. Now I can see years. The misty edges of a century ahead are becoming clear to me …”
Telarian broke off, frowning.
“And you’ve seen … what?”
He plied her with another gauging look. Finally he said, “I’ve seen worrying images …”
She grasped his shoulder, squeezing. “What? What did you see?”
He frowned again, said, “I’m too close to the edge of temporal resolution; I can’t be sure. I’m working to increase the clarity of that vision so the details will firm up.”
“You must have seen something—I can tell by your expression you hold something back. From your fellow Keeper!”
“Delphe, until I could be relatively certain, I didn’t want to commit all of Stardeep to a plan that might be unnecessary. I—”
She squeezed harder. “Describe the images you saw.”
He swallowed, then spoke. “Alliances. The Traitor retains alliances with those outside Stardeep, outside even the hidden realm of Sildëyuir. I’ve seen visions of wood elves unearthing old tomes, old journals, and becoming ensnared. But the seeds of corruption have already been cast, or soon will be. If we do not act in relatively short order, I fear that wood elves will find this cache.”
Delphe released Telarian’s arm and stepped back. She said, “You are certain?”
“No, not certain. But I am making preparations, gathering resources, sending out agents.”
“Is that why you sent Empyrean Knights across the Causeway?”
His eyes narrowed but he nodded in agreement. “Yes, that’s right. I sent them to reconnoiter a wood elf encampment established a fair distance from the Causeway. If the Knights reach the secret cache I saw in my vision first, the wood elves will never know the soul-corrupting danger they were saved from unearthing.”
“Telarian, once more, explain why you’ve learned so much, taken so much upon yourself, without informing me.”
Now it was his turn to grasp her shoulder, but she pushed him back. She considered asking Telarian to explain the significance of Brathtar’s strange summons, but decided to keep that information in reserve.
Telarian paused, said, “If this all turns out to be a mad fancy, I wouldn’t want to waste your time and thought on it. You’re the Keeper of the Inner Bastion, the Watcher of the Well. Your duties are immediate and vital.”
“But—”
“Trust me, Delphe. If this reconnaissance mission to the wood elf encampment confirms any of my visions, however slight, I shall instantly and immediately inform you. That was and remains my plan. Please don’t make more of this than what it is—a foray to gather information, and perhaps to save a few elves from their own curiosity—nothing more.”
A thought struck Delphe. “The appearance of strange elves in the armor of the Empyrean Knights could reveal the presence of Stardeep to the wood elf encampment.”
The old twinkle returned to Telarian’s eyes as he explained. “The Knights are not unskilled in woodcraft. They are abroad to observe only, not interact. Anyhow, Brathtar may not have to go anywhere near the village to find the cache.”
Powdery snow accumulated across boughs, between pine needles, and across saplings and the dark ground under the great boles. Bit by bit through the night, it formed a curving white blanket covering the sleeping forest.
When Janesta Leafgrace emerged from her double-hide pavilion, she laughed as she shook the snow out of her hair that plopped down from above. She breathed in the crisp air that came with the newly laid covering. After snowfall, the woods took on the aspect of a fey wonderland that called her to explore a terrain transformed. Without disturbing anyone in her pavilion who reclined in remembering trances, she was away.
The snow was smooth and pristine, save for the elf-light tracks she left behind. The murmuring pines and hemlocks had fallen quiet under their newly made garments of white. Yes, even the sad, old voices of the so-called “elder druids” of the forest were speechless in the morning’s wonder. Or so Janesta fancied.
And—
She spied a set of lone prints! Another early explorer, like her. Not a fellow from the encampment—it was a wildling of the forest.
She pursued the trail uphill, skirting an icy boulder field, staying beneath the canopy of oak branches. The prints were only partly familiar; certainly a big cat, but one new to the area, or at least new to her. The snowfall made following easy, but Janesta still practiced her forestcraft; she examined broken foliage, measured the length between prints, moved as quietly as she was able. When she saw a patch of disturbed snow, she dug up a shallowly buried cache of spoor.
It was a cougar after all, one from eastern Yuirwood. It had wandered close to the encampment. Janesta decided to stay on the trail to see if she could track it to its lair, if it had one. She suspected it might be a female, hungry to feed new cubs. If so, perhaps she would bring down a bird to help supplement its diet.
As she examined a spot where it had circled a stump, probably to mark its scent, she heard the first horns.
High, piercing, strangely thrilling … but ominous for their unfamiliarity. They sounded like something described in a shaman’s tale, something that warlike humans beyond the Yuirwood might produce on their metallic instruments. She frowned and turned toward home.
The sudden cries and screams that broke under the calling horns jolted Janesta into a run.
When the huntress reached her village under the snow-bowed canopy, she couldn’t understand what transpired before her eyes—the scene was too far outside her experience for comprehension.
Humans—no, elves … elves! Not wood elves like her tribe, or high elves she’d glimpsed on the Yuirwood’s borders, nor even half-elves. Strange, steely eyed elves on mailed steeds. They were everywhere, surrounding the village, cantering through the center circle, sweeping down the side avenues. Resplendent in mail so fair it could only be mithral, the newcomer elves assailed her home without mercy.
Surprised and beset on all sides, wood elves died.
She saw friends taken in the back by scything swords. Others were pushed from high bowers by cruelly aimed arrows. A group that sought to flee beneath the boughs was ridden down by flashing hooves. Slender blades cut screaming throats. Dying children cried out to their parents, husbands to their wives. Janesta saw her friend Natal Peacethorn pulled from his home, shrieking. Her brother’s wife Sarana was felled with two arrows. The monument stone that had stood three full tendays since the encampment’s hopeful founding was toppled and smashed. Five hunters attempted to drag away wounded, but they were ridden down for their efforts.
Janesta was witnessing a heartless slaughter, nothing less. What courage she always assumed was hers failed; she shrank back into the undergrowth, all strength stolen from chilled, clammy limbs.
She turned, swearing, crying, hating herself, and ran blindly through the snowy woods, careful to keep her feet light and sliding, leaving as little sign as her snowcraft allowed. If she were to surviv
e the annihilation of her home at the hands of these strange, steel-eyed elves, cowardice was her only option.
At first she ran without goal, holding no thought other than escape. As the heat of her exertion warmed her, a seed of fury blossomed, burning at the loss through which she labored. She adjusted her direction and set her course. She was bound for Relkath’s Foot, one of the largest communities of wood elves in all the Yuirwood. There she would tell her story, pour out her anger, and gather a force. Only vengeance could sate her loss.
She would go to Relkath’s Foot and alert the Masters of the Yuirwood.
The image of stern-faced elves in shining, blood-slicked mail maddened her. The kin-slaying elves hadn’t dropped from the sky, nor were their horses lathered as if from a long ride. They had appeared from somewhere not far from the encampment. After she put a few miles of forest behind her, thinking all the while, Janesta was pretty sure from where.
On the edge of a pocket reality, a massive gate loomed, cold and gray, a lattice of strange script and tiny cracks bespeaking hundreds of years of weathering.
Telarian waited for Brathtar just inside the great stone gates that opened onto the mist-shrouded Causeway. Telarian often stood thus, year in and year out. The chiseled granite of the gate’s face was as familiar as a friend. The Keeper knew every edge, every crack, every discoloration. Moreover, he was more than familiar with the inscriptions, sigils, and glyphs so prominently displayed. They warned of danger and death for any who entered uninvited, in a variety of tongues and alphabets:
This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here … nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is present in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the world, and it can erase all life, overwriting all with abomination.
The danger may be unleashed if this place is disturbed. Shun this place. Turn around.
The warnings were not endowed with magical force capable of steering away the curious, but danger would certainly befall any who ignored the warnings and ventured into the shadowed Grand Vestibule.
On more than one occasion in the long history of Stardeep, the gates had withstood attacks by fools loyal to the Traitor, who had discovered his prison despite all the effort of hiding his location. But neither those ancient attacks, nor all the time that had since elapsed had discernibly weakened the façade. Stardeep’s entrance stood strong and patient, capable of repelling anything thrown its way.
Above the gate was scribed the massive symbol of a strangely curving tree: Stardeep’s emblem. Around the white tree was a circular field that glowed and flickered with bluish fire. Though of late, to Telarian’s eyes, the fire seemed darker, sootier perhaps.
Telarian watched as the commander and his men slowly filed back across the hazy land bridge, as if resolving from imagination into reality. The men didn’t speak to each other, or look up to salute the Keeper, as was his due. Desolation hung in their slack postures and in their limp hold on their reins.
Telarian recognized they had followed his orders.
Commander Brathtar brought up the column’s rear, his mail dimmed by a sheen of dried blood. Behind him, the Causeway faded into the encroaching mist, hidden or truly dissolved, Telarian did not know. Either way, it would return when next bidden by Cynosure or him, and again provide a connection between Stardeep and the Yuirwood.
Brathtar reined up and fixed Telarian with a glassy stare. Some indefinable essence was missing in the man; he seemed anchorless. The Keeper regretted the change he saw, but neither pity nor concern were his to dispense. Brathtar’s actions had been required, an important element of his delicate plan. Sacrifices were necessary if so much more was to be saved. What was the blood of dozens compared to the souls of all the world?
Brathtar said, “The encampment is cleansed, Keeper. The dissidents who planned the attack you described are … no more.”
“Your service is greater than you can know, Commander. Well done.”
The elf commander cleared his throat, dropped his eyes for a moment. He had more to say.
“What is it?”
“As we cleaned up, one of my Knights found a trail. Someone escaped the encampment. We gave chase, but lost the track.”
Telarian sensed something fall away into the suddenly yawning void of his mind. He hadn’t foreseen a survivor. Over the sudden roaring in his ears he asked, too loud, “Are you certain?”
Brathtar nodded.
The noise in his ears grew louder, not unlike the horns he tested on occasion in the Outer Bastion. How …? Where …? But … Telarian fumbled for reassurance as the floor of his certainty threatened to fall away. His gloved hand found the pommel of brooding Nis.
The horns ceased. Lucidity was restored, and with it, calm acceptance as wide as the untroubled Sea of Fallen Stars.
A fey thought danced across his mind; he would tighten his grip on Nis, pull forth the blade, and reward Brathtar for his failure.
Don’t be a fool, Telarian, Nis whispered. We yet have uses for our Commander. With the completion of this last task, he is now a tool broken to our hand.
The Keeper let out his breath. He drowned his concerns in the unflappable serenity that oozed up from his fingers out of the unguessed depths of the black blade.
CHAPTER TEN
Aglarond, Yuirwood Forest
Magnificent yellow pines crowded the edge of the Yuirwood. Their short, forked branches drooped under a burden of snow, instead of turning up like drakes’ tails as they did during the summer. The spirelike tops created a jagged canopy above, though from the understory, all that was visible were naked branches ending in tufts of green needles. The cones were savagely spiked, curved like a bee’s stinger to catch the unwary.
At ground level, melting snow mixed with the fine detritus of the forest floor, absorbing most of the runoff, but creating occasional muddy sinkholes. Kiril discovered one by stepping directly into it. She muttered a clipped stream of invectives as cold water doused her foot. Not for the first time that day.
Her heavy furs had gone from cozy and comforting in the morning chill to heavy and stifling as the day advanced. Though direct sunlight rarely touched them beneath the pine ceiling, her reckless pace contributed to what seemed an unseasonably warm morning.
Ahead, the crystal dragonet flitted from branch to branch. Shafts of sunlight sometimes transfixed the creature, making Xet’s translucent carapace glow as if afire.
Kiril was suddenly reminded of the time she’d first met the creature. After fleeing Stardeep, she lost herself amid lonely mesas in the southeast. Too much a coward to end her own life, she eked out a living trapping dune rats, working as a bodyguard, and drinking herself into oblivion each night. Eventually, she found a dwarf hermit whose heart craved solitude as much as hers, though for different reasons. Xet had been his lone companion. The recluse, a geomancer named Thormud, recognized her as a potent warrior despite her wasted life. He hired her as his lone bodyguard.
Defending Thormud, she’d rarely drawn the Blade Cerulean. That was a good decade, or as good as she could have hoped for. Alcohol fully claimed her, but she found refuge in a surly attitude and foul language.
As it always did, the world intruded. Kiril accompanied the geomancer on his last escapade, into the Desert of Desolation. Thormud followed a trace of evil infecting the earth. She and the geomancer, and a few others met along the way, cleansed that infection; an Imaskaran war relic was kept safely inactive.
That triumph had awakened something in her. It was the first truly good thing she’d accomplished since her personal downfall. Her victory, the sense she’d achieved something noble, instilled in her a seed of hope.
Hope made people act funny.
She decided she would return to Aglarond, perhaps even to Stardeep, or at least to the hidden realm of Sildëyuir where her people dwelt. She said her good-byes to
the geomancer. He gave her a gift—his tiny crystalline dragonet named Xet. Xet bore the shape of a dragon, but he lacked the size and courage to match.
Kiril accepted the gift with her typical lack of grace and then departed, Xet flitting and chiming in her wake.
She headed northwest, toward Aglarond. The dragonet kept her company on the long trek, she had to admit. But as she approached her homeland, dread and shame reemerged, and the memory of her recent success faded.
Hope proved too hard to hold. Habits cultivated over a decade toppled hope’s façade.
Almost at the border of the great Yuirwood, she paused in Laothkund. A few days became a few tendays, then a few months. She lost her conviction. She foundered.
Until now.
A ray of sunlight briefly flashed from one of Xet’s facets directly into her eyes, startling her out of her reverie. She excoriated the brittle-brained creature. Not that the dragonet cared. Xet seemed determined to remain with her.
Like Gage.
Behind Kiril, the man doggedly brought up the rear. She’d discouraged him, called him terrible names, and even left without telling him. But the clinging bastard discovered her plan and joined her. Her protestations didn’t move him except to produce a smile, which only infuriated her. He said he wanted to help.
Right, that’s what motivated all thieves, and she knew Gage well enough to know his profession. Still … he had returned the sword—a selfless act accomplished at some personal cost. Gage didn’t speak of it, but she sometimes caught him looking at his left hand—it had once borne a dark gauntlet nearly twin to the one on his right. Yet he stayed with her, even now. While she didn’t want to dismiss Gage’s offer of aid outright, Kiril guessed he merely craved excitement. Hadn’t the thrill of danger been the lure and glue that so often drew them both together in the taverns of Laothkund?
Though a companion on the trail wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Stardeep Page 10