by Alex Irvine
Behind them, the tieflings sang. Biri-Daar looked at them with hate plain on her face. When they had caught their breath, though, she led them away and would say no more about their passage across the Bridge of Iban Ja.
Not even when Kithri tried to provoke her. “You weren’t quite yourself out there, paladin,” she said lightly after they had walked a few hours into the woods. “Shouting, demonstrating …”
“It got those tieflings into a frenzy, that’s certain,” Lucan added.
Biri-Daar raised a hand, palm out toward them. “Do not try to bait me. If Iriani’s death is on my head, I will know it. I will repent of it. Keverel, I would speak with you a moment.”
The cleric followed her a little way apart from the group. The rest of them walked in a loose group. They had no horses, no packs; they would be living from what they could forage until the next settlement, and none of them knew where that settlement might be. “When I passed through here some years ago,” Lucan said, “there was a trading post near where the Crow Road emerged from these woods.”
“Bring on the dancing girls,” Kithri said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.
“Your tongue is somewhat dulled of late,” Lucan said. “I fear for your health.”
“I fear for yours if you don’t hold your tongue,” she snapped.
Remy saw the stresses pulling at the group. He said nothing. It was not yet his role to have something to say. He walked. They all walked, in small groups that shifted and broke and reformed as they rose away from the Gorge of Noon into the highland forest on its eastern rim. None of them had much to say because each of them had much to think. Iriani, dying, weighed on their minds.
“These woods are touched,” Lucan said sometime later, when dusk was nearly total and they had resigned themselves to a night of sleeping rough.
“Feywild?” Keverel said softly.
Lucan nodded, looking around. “They will show themselves when they wish to,” he said.
Which was just at the moment of full dark, when Remy could no longer see a trace of color in the woods around him or on his own clothes. “Travelers,” came a voice from the trees to their left. “It is forbidden to traverse this part of the road without the permission of the Lord of the Wood.”
Lucan answered first. “I can see you, elf. And you can see me. Come out and let us talk like civilized beings.”
“You know you don’t belong here,” the elf said, appearing at the side of the road. “The stink of the city is in your clothes.”
“I belong where I choose to go,” Lucan said.
“No. You may choose to go anywhere. But you may not choose whether the people already there decide you belong.” The elf winked at them, sporting cruelty in his smile. “Same for your half-breed who didn’t make it this far. It’s the curse of mixed blood, I’m afraid.”
There might have been blows exchanged then. On both sides hands fell to sword hilts and eyes locked, gauging defenses and reflexes and—most importantly—intent. More elves appeared from the trees.
Then another figure on horseback spoke, and everyone else present realized that he had been there for the entire exchange even though none of them had heard him approach. “Easy, Leini. They’ve lost a friend,” he said. “They shouldn’t have to endure your baiting after that.”
“This is none of your business, Paelias,” the elf Leini said.
“I believe it is. These travelers, who have spent their day fighting the tieflings and killing off the cambion magus of the old bridge, deserve better than your hostility.” Paelias turned to Biri-Daar. “You may stay until your companions have healed enough to go on. But we want no traffic with the wars of the outside, or the hatreds of this world. You survived the bridge; for that we offer you respect, and a meal, and a dry place to spend the night. Please don’t ask for more. Even if,” he finished, glancing at the sharp-tongued Leini, “he provokes you.”
He dropped from his horse to the ground, executing a bow and flourish in the same motion. “Paelias is my name, as perhaps you have overheard,” he said. “This is Leini and these are his associates. They live in these woods and I have traveled, which means that my manners are superior to theirs and that I am more handsome, despite our common heritage. Leini and his kin live in these woods and dispose of the tieflings who stray within its boundaries, but—as your elf companion noted back down the road—there is a bit of the Fey in this forest as well. It is my home, at least when I am not somewhere else … and you would not be shocked, I think, to know that other eladrin reside here.”
Greetings were exchanged. Leini and his companions were barely civil, but they did not challenge Paelias directly. “Follow us,” said Paelias. “Even elves with Leini’s manners would not refuse hospitality to tiefling-killing strangers.”
“And cambion magus-killing,” Kithri said.
“Very good,” Paelias said. He winked and even Remy could see that in his eyes was something of the color of starlight. “For that we might even be able to find some wine.”
Eladrin, Remy thought. If he had always thought of orcs as creatures of story more than life, he had been certain that eladrin were figments of storytelling imagination. They were said to be celestial knights, walkers of the planes, emissaries of divine powers, kin to the elves though not entirely elf. Yet here was one, tall and magnificent, pouring him a goblet of wine around a fire that warded off the chill of the highland woods. “One needs these wood-dweller elves to kill off the demonic riffraff,” Paelias was saying. “They aren’t much for company, though. I watched part of your engagement at the bridge today. You might be much better company.”
“You watched …” Biri-Daar broke off and nodded to herself.
“That’s why they didn’t follow us,” Kithri said.
“Well, it wasn’t just me. The tieflings know that any elf in these woods will hunt them down and send them back across the bridge without their skins.” Paelias drank. “But enough about these woods. What’s the news from across the gorge?”
He looked at Remy. “You’re a young one. Where do you come from and how did you get tangled up with this motley band?”
Remy told the story, leaving out the details of what he carried and who had sent him. Paelias watched him as he spoke, and listened carefully, and by the time he had told the story Remy was sure that Paelias knew not just that Remy had lied but what he had lied about and why. There was something in the demeanor of an eladrin—or this eladrin, anyway. The star elves, as they were called in Remy’s childhood fables, were mighty figures, passing where they wished among different planes and able to see through the deceits of mortal and immortal alike.
“A fine tale,” Paelias said. “And you, paladin. What has Karga Kul for you—except a homecoming?”
Biri-Daar frowned. “How would you know where I was hatched?”
“All dragonborn wear a bit of their birth shell somewhere on their bodies,” Paelias answered. He drank again. “But as far as I have heard, it is only the dragonborn of Karga Kul—the descendants of the mighty Knights of Kul—who dangle their bits of shell in the air as a remembrance of the Bridge of Iban Ja.”
Remy saw the dangling earring in Biri-Daar’s right ear. He had never paid attention to it before, but now Paelias’s words had opened up an entirely new understanding of the dragonborn paladin and her demeanor out on the bridge.
“You have heard accurately,” Biri-Daar said. “Many stray bits of lore have stuck to the inside of your head, Paelias.”
“Not all of it is stray,” the star elf answered. “I practice the magical arts, and as you can see, I am eladrin and therefore not entirely welcome among these elves.” Paelias walked a coin across his fingers and back before flipping it into the air, where it disappeared. “The Feywild is a little too much of sameness for me. Here, in the mortal world … I find the change exciting, the living and dying, the way that every being here knows of its mortality. Karga Kul …” Paelias mused. “I have never seen the cities of the Dragondown
Coast, although there are cities across the ocean where my name might still be remembered.
“But you are tired and I am keeping you up for my own amusement. You must sleep, and grieve in what ways your traditions demand on the first night of a loss. In the morning we will talk further of Karga Kul. And,” he finished with another wink in Remy’s direction, “of messengers rescued in the desert.”
In the morning Remy woke feeling more refreshed than he would have thought possible. The forest air, the clean bed … the longer he was apart from civilization, he thought, the more he desired its trappings. Perhaps the adventurer’s life was not for him. Coming out of the cabin where Paelias had decreed they be put up for the night, Remy passed a group of elves gambling with what looked like ancient arrowheads as chips. He nodded to be polite, but expected no response and got none. Across the cleared center of the camp, he saw Paelias sitting with the rest of the group.
“You slept late,” Kithri said. “The rest of us have already been to Karga Kul and back.”
“Only in our minds, only in our minds,” Keverel said.
With a snap of his fingers, Paelias said, “That’s what planning is, going somewhere in your mind so when you get your body there you can get it out again.” He shook his head. “Karga Kul. Strange place.”
“You said last night you had never been there,” Biri-Daar reminded him.
“And you were kind enough to observe last night that I have much in the way of lore stuck to the inside of my head,” Paelias answered with a smile. “We are both correct. I would, however, like to see Karga Kul. What say you?”
“Let’s talk it over,” Kithri said.
Lucan and Paelias exchanged a glance. “Excuse us,” Lucan said.
Nodding and retreating, Paelias said, “Of course. I will be at our meeting place by the road. Yea or nay, inform me there.”
The first vote was three to two against. Remy, Lucan, and Kithri didn’t trust the eladrin. “And why should we?” Kithri asked. “He appears, wants to know our story, wants to come along at the drop of a hat … if you ask me, this is some trick because of Remy.”
“Because of me?” Remy repeated. He was confused.
“What you carry,” Lucan amended. “I agree. At least I agree that this is a possibility we must consider. Why would anyone want to come along with us when we’re probably all going to go off and die?”
“We’re not going to go off and die,” Biri-Daar said. “We have a sacred trust and we will fulfill it.”
“Except if we go off and die. Like Iriani.”
“Iriani,” Keverel said quietly, “is precisely why we could use someone like Paelias. The god provides.”
Other eladrin had ringed them in while they conversed; already Remy could tell them from the elves. The Feywild clung to them even in this world, as if they brought a bit of it with them whatever plane or region their bodies occupied. One of them stepped forward and spoke. “We do not endorse Paelias’s desire,” she said. “He is flighty and foolish and possesses powers whose extent and purpose he does not know.”
“Sounds like the rest of us,” Kithri said.
“Once before, Paelias left this wood in search of adventure,” the eladrin said after staring Kithri into silence. “When he returned, it was twenty years before he would speak of what had happened.”
“And what had happened?” Lucan asked.
“He got a number of his companions killed,” the eladrin said. “Because, as I have said, he is flighty and foolish. If you would take him with you, you must know this. We found it our duty to tell you.”
“Does anyone around here have anything good to say about him?” Kithri asked.
With a shrug, the eladrin answered, “Perhaps. But you will find no one here who would trust Paelias with his life.”
They traded with the elves before leaving, and the elves cheated them mercilessly, reserving their most ruthless bargains for Lucan. He had his eye on a pair of boots since his had been badly torn in the bridge fighting. “Oh, these boots are powerful,” the elf cobbler said. “You will move silent as a cat and your enemies will think you are a shadow.”
Lucan bought them, cursing the cobbler and the entire race of elves as he paid the exorbitant price. “This is more than your share of what we’ve won thus far. It puts you in debt to us,” Biri-Daar observed.
“Oh, fear not,” Lucan said, putting on the new boots. “I’ll work for my keep.”
Five horses and tack for the long trek ahead of them, plus replacements for gear that had worn out or been broken on the trek so far—oil, torches, flint and steel, fresh waterskins—took all the gold they had. They rode away from the elf encampment feeling cheated and still feeling the cloud of Iriani’s death. Paelias, seeing them approach the road, spurred his mount to meet them. “Let me guess,” he said. “They told stories about me and then swindled you at market.”
“You were watching,” Kithri said.
“No,” Paelias said. “That is what they do. The elves of these woods don’t like me because I come from the Feywild and they don’t like the Feywild. The other eladrin don’t like me because I like this world a little too much. Probably you voted among yourselves that you don’t want me along. That’s fine. I will ride with you for a while. You can’t stop me unless you want to fight, and if we fight it will end badly for all of us. So. Let us ride. Yes?”
The five survivors of the battle on Iban Ja’s bridge looked at each other. “All right. Yes,” Biri-Daar said after a long moment. “You may ride with us for a while.”
BOOK III
THE CROW ROAD
They emerged from the elves’ forest the next morning. The country around them was still wooded, but more sparsely. Sunlight reached the ground there, and the air was heavy with the scents of alpine summer. “Now we’re on the Crow Road,” Lucan said. He pointed up to the trees that lined the road, and Remy saw them: crows standing sentinel, one in the top branches of each tree.
Mindful of the story he had heard about how Iban Ja’s bridge had gotten the way it was, he asked, “Are those crows or ravens?”
Lucan laughed. “Most people can’t tell the difference. These are crows. But you’ll see ravens along the way. You’ll see just about everything if you travel the Crow Road from one end to the other.”
“And what is at the other end?”
“Well, that depends. Either you get off before the end and work your way through the Lightless Marsh to … this sounds strange, but there’s a place where the Lightless Marsh isn’t lightless anymore. That’s the best way I can explain it. You get to that place, and you realize that you have somehow re-emerged into the world from wherever you were before. Which, if you’re traveling the Crow Road, is everywhere. And anywhere.”
“And if you don’t get off? If you see the Crow Road through all the way to its end?” Remy pressed.
“Well,” said Lucan slowly, “then you reach the Inverted Keep.”
“The Inverted Keep?” Paelias looked amazed. “Really? I understood that to be a legend.”
“Most people in the Dragondown would say the same about Iban Ja’s bridge,” Lucan said. “But they are both real.”
“Most of them would also say it about the Crow Road,” Keverel added.
Paelias nodded and scanned the treetops for more crows. “True enough. Yet here we are.”
“Is it called the Crow Road because crows sit in the trees?” Remy asked. “They do that everywhere.”
“It’s called the Crow Road …” Kithri started, then stopped. She looked at Lucan.
“What?” he said.
“You tell the story,” Kithri said. “If you don’t, you’ll just complain about how one of us does it wrong.”
In the years before Arkhosia and Bael Turath put their stamp on the world, a great and now forgotten empire arose in the highlands between the Blackfall and Whitefall rivers. So long ago did it rise and fall that even most of its ruins are destroyed and gone, and its languages and arts, its deeds
both villainous and glorious, are lost. All that remains of this vanished empire is the Crow Road.
Ancient records of Bael Turath and Arkhosia speak of it and describe it exactly as it appears to the adventurer of today: a road whose stones no frost can heave, which even buried under mudslides centuries old looks as if it was built yesterday when dug out again. It is a road to outlast the ages.
And on it the traveler will experience things that exist on no other road.
The story is that the nameless empire contained a great builder, who wished not only to build roads across the face of the mortal world, but between the planes and other realms as well. The folklore of this people—this is one of very few things known about them—held that crows and ravens had commerce with all of the realms. Therefore, after the builder surveyed his route but before he lay the first stone, he brewed a great enchantment using all of the magical might his empire’s wizards could muster … and he taught the crows how to understand human speech.
Then he learned their secrets. “I have given you a gift, crows,” he said. “Now in return you may tell me the secret of your ability to perceive and travel to all realms, whether astral or abyssal, elemental or fey.”
But the crows were crows, and would not tell. Have you ever tried to convince a crow to do anything? To this day, when you speak in the vicinity of a crow, or a raven, be careful. Say only what you would not fear to have repeated in front of your enemies.
Great grew the builder’s fury. Eventually he reasoned that if he could not get the answers from the crows while they were alive, he would learn it from what happened when they were dead. A bounty went out through the empire, and dead crows began arriving at the castle where the builder had his plans. At first they arrived a few at a time, brought by the bored children of local farmers. Then, when word spread that the builder paid the bounty he promised, crows started to arrive by the saddlebag-full, and then in sacks large enough that mules brought them to the builder’s door. He paid, and paid, and paid. Soon the crows had learned to stay away, but they had also learned why, and from that moment forward the crows were sworn enemies of the builder and of his road.