Perhaps a little food before questions wouldn’t hurt.
The Green Man’s common room shimmered with tiny gleaming lanterns that hung as if strung from a garland along the rafters and walls, then twined down the living wooden supports. The light picked out long-legged figures attired in golds, greens, and browns. Most held long-stemmed goblets in one or both hands, others held instruments, and at least a few grasped graven pipes from which fragrant smoke emerged.
A forest beast turned on a spit in the fire; it was the source of the mouth-watering odor. A woman, a half-elf no doubt, stood in the center of the common room, surrounded on three sides by a sturdy bar of living wood. Dozens of long-stemmed goblets hung bowl-down above her. She smiled a welcome at Raidon when he entered. Adrik received a puzzled nod. “Is he with you?” she called to Raidon.
The monk blinked, nodded. Again he was struck with surprise—to the residents of Relkath’s Foot, he was of elf blood. Of course, he was a half-elf; his heritage was twined with the blood of his mother. But growing up in Telflamm, he considered himself to be Shou first and last, nothing else.
“Then welcome to the Green Man, travelers,” said the barkeep, her smile returned. “What is your pleasure?”
They crossed the room to stand before the bar.
“We’d like to try the rootweal?” said Adrik, his voice uncertain as he looked around the room. He was the only human in the Green Man’s common room.
“You have heard about our specialty, I see. Are you sure you are up to it? The draught is potent for one not of … someone not used to it.”
The sorcerer ducked his head and said, “If it’s all right, I’d like to try it.”
“Of course! And the same for you, traveler?” She looked at Raidon.
“None for me—please, could you prepare a pot of tea?” he responded.
The woman cocked her head and a few nearby patrons glanced quizzically at Raidon.
“I am most sorry, but we do not serve ‘T’ in the Green Man. I have a few wines, including the rootweal of which you speak. I can offer you a pipe, packed with any of a variety of leaf harvested and dried with an eye toward quality. We also have boiled mushrooms, a multitude of fresh berries, baked biscuits, and roasted venison.”
“Venison sounds perfect, with a few mushrooms? And, very well, I would like to try the wine, too. Rootweal.”
“You shall find none better, traveler.”
In short order, Raidon and Adrik sat opposite each other at a high table. Steaming platters were set before them, heaped with all manner of food, hardly any of which Raidon recognized. But it was all delicious.
The rootweal was oddly compelling. Raidon expected it to be too sweet, too sour, or too much like drinking vinegar—such was the extent of his experience with wine. The rootweal, a wine the color of red silk, was smooth and full, and tasted … of something for which he had no name. If pressed, he would have to say that it tasted like a forest meadow alive in the glad light of the sun.
As they ate and drank, listening to the musicians, Adrik’s face grew redder and redder. His smile widened and his laughter grew more frequent and louder. Raidon found a smile on his own lips as he listened to the musical anecdotes.
A bard strumming a lyre launched into a song describing the founding of the city. The four central trees, he sang, sprouted from the buried foot of the ancient god Relkath of the Numberless Branches. This god, claimed the lyrics, walked the woods primeval along with several other mysterious powers who predated the elves. Several stanzas described unlikely adventures featuring Relkath, and the song ended with the god deciding to rest.
The bard wrapped up the song with a flourish of twanging strings and announced, “Relkath yet sleeps beneath the forest’s soil, someday to awaken when the people of the Yuirwood need their ancient gods once again.”
Everyone in the Green Man raised a goblet, pipe, or whatever was handy high in the air, cheered, and drank.
Raidon followed suit. Adrik sighed, “Tha’ wa’ nice,” and toppled from his chair.
Several half-elves nearby laughed, their eyes glinting with festive glee. One said, “Your friend sleeps well tonight, if a bit early.” More chuckles. Raidon looked beneath the table. His sorcerous traveling companion was curled beneath the empty chair, already snoring the sleep of the over-intoxicated.
The monk, familiar with similar antics from Shou not pledged to Xiang Temple, nodded. If the truth were told, he was surprised he hadn’t followed the Commorand sorcerer to the floor. Never before had he consumed wine in such quantity.
It occurred to Raidon that his relative clarity of thought was more evidence of his mother’s blood.
The monk set down his wine and pulled forth his forget-me-not from beneath his clothing. The white, treelike symbol in the center was haloed in night’s darkness. Night, where sky blue once winked.
Raidon stood and held the stone on its silver chain high above his head. He called out, “Who knows the meaning of the symbol on this amulet, an amulet given me by an elf who hailed from these woods?”
Those nearby laughed, perhaps thinking he posed a riddle. But riddle or no, they were game, and all wanted to take a look. He allowed the amulet to be passed around to those interested in handling it directly, though he kept an anxious eye on it.
While the treelike symbol drew most of the interest but no recognition, an elder wood elf named Yármarion seemed more interested in the cramped, overlapping inscriptions that crusted the sides and rear of the stone. He sat alone, smoke curling up from the pipe clamped in one corner of his mouth. He turned the amulet over and over, squinting hard at the miniature text. Yármarion said, “These writings are in an ancient tongue, one no longer spoken in the world.”
“What, the language used by sleeping Relkath?” called the bard who’d sung about the resting god.
Another chimed in, “Would that make it the language of sleep? Sleep that is denied us, which others enjoy so much?” He pointed to the sorcerer’s snoring, smiling figure beneath the table. Merriment erupted, but the wood elf holding the amulet slowly nodded, his face a study in consideration.
“Perhaps,” Yármarion replied. He leaned back in his seat and glanced toward the rafters. “The inscriptions remind me of the text I saw once in an old book. Where was I? Oh yes, a library of Mystra near Calimport, right before the agents of Old Night burned it to the ground. What was it about? Something to do with the theft of sleep, ensuring the first mortals would never discover the truth in their dreams.”
Several patrons laughed and toasted, “To the first mortals, whoever they are!”
Raidon broke in. “Will dreams show the way to my mother?”
Yármarion squinted at the amulet and shrugged, “How could elves like us ever know?” He tossed it across the room to the monk. “Sorry, traveler, I have never before seen the primary symbol. But I can tell you this—a potency lies within that stone, slumbering.”
“A potency?”
“Powerful magic is wound deep within your amulet. I am not so old that I can’t sense sorcery, especially of such strength.”
“What kind of sorcery?” Raidon whispered, suddenly wondering if he were channeling Adrik’s relentless manner.
Whatever explanation Yármarion might have provided was lost in clear, shrill cries of clarions. The clamor sounded from outside.
The bard exclaimed, “The Masters’ summons!” The elves and half-elves in the Green Man immediately set down their instruments, their pipes, and their goblets; they moved as one to the exit. Raidon followed, asking, “Who are the Masters?” Someone yelled, “The Masters of the Yuirwood, of course!” The explanation did nothing to lessen Raidon’s confusion.
Thin, elegant figures streamed into the square from all sides, and on the boughs above, hundreds of elves looked down into the tumult, pointing and gesturing, trying to make sense of the chaos. A shining white figure emerged from the Royal Hall high above. The princess, presumably, though Raidon didn’t spare her a glance.
He gracefully navigated the congestion and push of bodies, judging and using its tumult to unerringly propel himself, first widdershins and then the other way, to the square’s center, where the horns yet sounded. Yármarion followed in Raidon’s wake. The elderly elf was more spry than he looked. Raidon worried briefly about Adrik, then shrugged. Nothing was likely to befall a man sleeping on a tavern floor worse than burglary.
A half-elf woman in ragged, blood-stained clothing stood at the square’s center, accompanied by elves clad in militaristic outfits of green, gold, and dun. Their clothing was resplendent. From the way the patterns on their clothes shifted and changed, Raidon guessed the colors would blend perfectly into forestlike hues and textures should one of them step into the pathless wild.
Raidon touched Yármarion on the sleeve. “Are those the Masters of the Yuirwood?”
“Yes. But not the woman. I’ve never seen her before.”
Three of the Masters continued to blow long, shrill notes on brass horns.
“Masters—are they called that because they rule this forest?”
Yármarion replied, “They do not rule. But their order is elite. They are afforded great respect because they keep the ancient Yuirwood free of evil influence. Without their efforts, the forest’s slow retreat would proceed all the faster. The Yuirwood once covered all the peninsula.”
“They must know many things.”
“They lay claim to ancient lores, and know all the secrets of the menhir circles that dot the Yuirwood deeps.”
The Masters gave one last long tone, then stowed the instruments at their belts. One of the regally accoutered half-elves stepped forward. A great yew bow was strapped on his back. He projected, “Invaders threaten our forest borders! This wood elf, called Janesta, witnessed their terrible attack, and is the lone survivor of her tribe!”
The assembled audience, which hadn’t completely quieted when the Master had started speaking, now hushed as one.
The speaker continued. “The attack was launched from within the eaves of the Yuirwood. The attack was carried out by strange, kin-slaying elves. And no, I do not mean our long-sundered brethren, the drow.”
The silence was broken by gasps, protestations, and cries of surprise. The man spoke over the turmoil. “It is true—Janesta describes her attackers as steely eyed elves more noble and terrible even than gray elves, mail-clad, and astride mailed steeds. Her description matches the likeness of the long-vanished Yuir elves who ranged these woods when the trees ruled all. Whatever nobility they once possessed, it is clear some surviving splinter of that race lives still, old, corrupt, and senile with age!”
A voice rang out from above—the princess. She asked, “Where have these stagnant Yuir resided all these centuries without our knowledge, we who now claim the wide woods?”
“They linger behind the wood, we guess, in a veiled space to which the menhir paths lead for those who know the route.”
The princess called down, “This is possible? Do the Masters not know all the routes?”
The speaker shook his head. “We know many—not all. We’ve long suspected that deeper, more tangled paths lay outside our lore. Now we know it is true.”
“Let Janesta speak,” said the princess, from where she stood as if on a mighty branch, not empty space. “From whence came these awful destroyers? Tell us, for we are kin of your kin. We will avenge your tribe’s memory and defend the sanctity of the forest.”
The wood elf, disoriented and pale, looked up into the sky and said in a weak voice, “They came from across a causeway—a causeway fronted by two soaring obelisks. We set our encampment nearby to study the stones, and the strange mist that so often obscured the causeway from sight and even touch.”
“Tell us more of this causeway,” commanded the princess when the woman faltered.
“The day prior to the attack, my friend Natal Peacethorn and I …” Janesta choked, wiped at her eyes, then continued. “Natal and I found the causeway clear for the first time. We crossed it. On the other side we found a massive granite gate sealed against all entry. And above … stars wheeled in the sky, though Natal and I crossed the causeway in full daylight.”
The assembled Masters looked at her with consternation, though a few nodded, as if her words confirmed a long-held conjecture.
“The gates were closed, thick with glyphs we couldn’t decipher. Above the gate was scribed a single massive symbol—a white, treelike symbol surrounded by a field of flickering blue-tinged darkness.”
Raidon’s eyes did their best to leap from their sockets just as his jaw threatened to detach from his skull and clatter to the ground.
Yármarion turned and fixed Raidon Kane with a measuring glance. He said, “It would seem your arrival today is not accidental, traveler.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stardeep, The Causeway
Elven war-horses cantered down the narrow Causeway, their hooves striking thunder through the glade. Empyrean Knights sat astride them, a rush of silvery mail, righteous fury alive in their eyes. On they raced, across the narrow lane, three dozen star elves draped in pleated mithral hauberks worn over silk. Their swift steeds were sheathed in plate that glinted in the morning sun. Those in the vanguard drew down the tips of their lances, those in the rear unsheathed great swords.
Arrows burst from the boughs of the encircling forest, a rain of flint-tipped death, falling among the Knights, dealing death or mercy at random. The screams of horses and Knights marked a sudden and growing knot at the Causeway’s middle—horses went down, breaking Knights beneath them, but worse, clogging the charge line.
Figures clad in green, gold, and dun broke from the eaves, light and silent, drawing bowstrings for another flight even as they ran. Astonished shouts greeted the attack, followed closely by the ring of sword on steel, axe on bow. The narrow line of the Causeway became choked at its head with grappling, hacking figures. The blood of wood elf, half-elf, and star elf mingled in the dark waters of the hidden Chabala Mere.
The Empyrean Knights were outnumbered, but despite the bloody toll exacted by their foes, and regardless of the fair-featured nature of their enemy, the defenders slashed the wood elves, split chests protected only by stitched leather, cracked wooden shields, and finally slew the Yuirwood elves to the last man and woman.
Silence descended for a beat, followed by a victory shout. The Empyrean Knights had again defended Stardeep’s entrance from the latest infiltrating attack by the suddenly, unaccountably warlike wild and mixed elves of Aglarond.
Kiril topped a wooded rise and saw the great boulder beneath which she had once so often rested, though now it was tufted with patches of snow. A little farther, there was the old birch tree, still standing tall and regal among the conifers after so many years. Here was the narrow ravine that sheltered a small, trickling tributary to the Chabala River, which fed into the Mere—on which sat the Causeway.
“We’re close,” she threw back over her shoulder—her right shoulder; Xet perched on the left. Gage stiffened, as if hearing difficult news, then showed her his impish smile. Her self-proclaimed friend seemed oddly shaken since their encounter with Sathra. His jokes were few and far between, and forced. A strange melancholia gripped him. Of course, she didn’t have time to worry about him now. She could be moments from finding Nangulis!
If she allowed herself, she could project herself back into the memories of her life before the events of the last decade, before she’d become merely a “swordswoman.” When she had been a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign. When she had performed an important duty, one she had executed for years. She and Nangulis both—he in the Inner Bastion, she in the Outer, though no day passed that didn’t allow time for them to be together, either within the guarded bulk of Stardeep, or beyond its dimensional veil in the sunlit groves of the Yuirwood.
When off duty, she and Nangulis spent more time in Faerûn than in Sildëyuir, for that realm, their home, required a longer trek than a mere stroll down the Causeway. If the Traitor
were ever to escape, Stardeep’s remote location would prove a buffer between the Traitor’s curses and the home realm. The elders sited the dungeon in a tenuous pocket of Sildëyuir, one they further splintered in order to make it its own discrete space. To penetrate the starry realm, if he escaped, the Traitor would have to emerge, when open, on the tightly controlled Causeway, then travel overland through the Yuirwood to find the closest active menhir gate.
Either that, or travel the ancient dungeon tunnels beneath Stardeep, where the mazelike passages, dug by no star elf, were black mystery. A mystery, except that if one traveled their labyrinthine twistings all the way through, one might find a way back to the realm from which Stardeep was calved. When she’d first come to Stardeep, Kiril thought the connection was myth. But upon becoming a Keeper, she’d learned such a path indeed existed, but it was a path possible only for those possessed of great power. Dire threats menaced all who attempted that dim path. In any event, a trip to Sildëyuir was not a simple process, whether you were a Stardeep escapee or a Stardeep Keeper.
Ahead, the trees thinned, revealing the edge of a broad pond. A thin sheen of ice coated its surface. The far side was lost in a low mist that clung thick, heavy, and impenetrable to the water’s surface. Kiril walked to the edge and squinted into the edgeless white.
“I don’t see the land bridge you described,” Gage groused. The man was uncommonly out of sorts. Moody, quiet at turns, then accusatory.
Kiril said, “Like”—she decided not to tell Gage about Sildëyuir and cleared her throat—“other realms beyond this world, Stardeep can be reached only when a way is opened. When the portal is not open, only a mist-drenched marsh is apparent. When open, a causeway—the Causeway—is visible.”
“All right, let’s … hold up. There’s been a fight,” said Gage, standing back among the trees, his gaze low and intent on something in the brush.
The swordswoman scanned the edges of the Mere, recognizing disturbances in the ice and the telltale sign of erased tracks in the newly disturbed soil. “I see signs of recent activity, but a fight? That seems unlikely.”
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