Ciarrah's Light

by Lou Hoffmann

  “But The White is different,” Henry said. “I mean, it has no true form, human or animal. Right?”

  They’d reached the cliff face, and Talon turned left, walking right up against it. “There’s a passage through,” he said.

  Henry followed, stepping carefully through the moonlight and shadows. Phosphorescence in the lichens along the cliff and on the branches of some of the woody brush added lights among the shadows, but they only served to disorient him, and he lagged behind. He wondered why Talon was so willing to show him this hidden path. The safety of the aerie might sometimes depend on secrecy.

  “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take anybody to the aerie—not even another shifter,” Talon said, as if reading Henry’s mind. “Because then we’d have to take steps to make sure they never told anyone. But as I said, we’ve got folks here from all over the world trying to figure out what to do about this ailment, so it’s no secret now. We’re clearly going to have to relocate once we get through this.”

  He disappeared into the wall, or so it seemed until Henry took a few more steps and came even with the hidden crack that formed a cave entrance. He ducked in and caught up with Talon on the way through a gallery of glowing stalactites and stalagmites—a beautiful place that reminded him of a similar cavern in Black Creek Ravine, the one his people called the Road Between. That passage led to what he now knew as a Portal of Naught—the way to get to Ethra. This one exited onto a cliff with a long ledge indented with a series of alcoves overlooking a precipitous drop of probably thousands of feet.

  The aerie was a subdued but heavily populated place at the moment. Henry felt vulnerable, being human and up so high, though the nesting sites could all be traversed easily on two legs. If he’d been in condor shape, he would have felt right at home—condors often claim abandoned eagle’s nests for their own. It appeared that here each family had its own nesting alcove, but unlike eagles in the animal world, the shifter families gathered into a gregarious neighborhood.

  Eyes followed Henry’s progress, but nobody met his gaze, and overall the clan didn’t seem too surprised that a stranger had come into their midst. Most likely, that was because, if what Talon had said was true, many others had already come. Or maybe, they were simply too absorbed dealing with trouble to bother about a stranger, because trouble was something they had plenty of. Many of the eagle shifters had partially transformed. Some had mixed-up traits that left them helpless, and were attended by family members or friends who stood by with helping hands.

  Henry’s heart grew heavier and heavier with empathy as he followed Talon along a twisting and turning path that interconnected the small homes. Eventually they came to a natural stair leading to a flat-topped false summit several hundred feet down. A waterfall followed alongside the stair, cascading into a shaded pool at the back of a grassy meadow. Roughly rectangular and about the size of a football field, the green sward backed into the cliff so that it was walled on three sides, with an open drop on the other. The atmosphere here was different, but no more relaxed, no more joyful.

  The plateau was teaming with shifters, all in human form—as etiquette demanded when attending a conclave. Attending as humans allowed many different species to communicate, discuss, argue, and agree. For each group of shifters here, though, Henry assumed they’d left others behind who’d either been too incapacitated to make the trip or had stayed behind to care for those who were.

  Such an epidemic could lead to the extinction of dozens of morphanthropic species—in other words, all kinds of shifters. The human world in Earth had little real knowledge of shifters, but if the species were lost, it would leave important holes in the fabric of diversity, and some things shifters did to maintain the earth would be missed, even if humans never knew why the changes happened. It would be bad for everybody.

  But shifter species usually stuck to their own kind for good reason. It’s difficult to group a variety of predators together under stressful circumstances and avoid aggressive behavior. The tension in the makeshift campground was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “As you can tell,” Talon said as he led Henry to a small amphitheater-like depression where several serious-looking people were already gathered, “this gathering isn’t like the usual conclave. Unless, maybe you don’t know. Have you ever been to a conclave?”

  “No,” Henry said. “My grandfather was the last of our family to attend one—you might know as condors we don’t really tend to hang out with other species—but he made sure I knew the basics.”

  “Then you probably know it’s usually only leaders who meet. This time, some leaders brought family members—those who were well enough. A lot of us think this is literally a disease—contagious—and if they could keep some of their kin from catching it…. Everyone had to pledge to keep the gathering peaceful, but that’s easier said than done, even with the best intentions. You’ll see some of my strongest young folk circulating, paired up with some of my wisest elders. They’re doing a fair job of defusing things before disasters happen, but we’ve had some close calls.”

  A few yards farther on, they came to a fire circle where serious-looking people were talking, their voices low but earnest. Talon didn’t hesitate when all eyes turned their way and talking stopped.

  “This is Henry George,” Talon said. “Condor, and the last of his kind, he says.”

  Around the circle a few people smiled or nodded in greeting, but most just continued to stare at him with what looked like a challenge in their eyes.

  “I found him out on the preserve this afternoon. He was half-shifted and looked funny as hell. But we all know it isn’t really funny, and here’s the thing. He was stuck between forms, but he isn’t now. I watched him force a shift to condor and then to human. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I think he’d better teach us how he did it.”

  Silence reigned, and Henry didn’t feel inclined to put anything into the middle of it. Talon’s introduction put him smack on the spot, and he didn’t like that place at all. He didn’t like the demand, he didn’t like having himself displayed to strangers, and he didn’t like not knowing if he could do what was being asked of him, even if he tried.

  An older woman with big eyes, small ears, and one side of her head still feathered like a snowy owl asked in a chiming voice, “Has he agreed to this, Mr. Bastien?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Talon said. “He has something that might save us—a way to force the shift. He will damn well share that knowledge.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Khalisehl’s Shadow

  MARCHING NEAR the front of a long line of soldiers in loose formation, Zhevi felt a kind of dread creeping up on him as he drew closer to the mountain where he’d been held captive last fall. He hadn’t been there long, less than a day, but the prison caves had been gruesome—perhaps they’d left their mark on him, because he felt them like a weight hung around his neck growing heavier with every step closer.

  The late morning sun was mellow-warm rather than stifling as it brightened the valley they were moving across, but Zhevi couldn’t enjoy it. It was too much of a contrast to his dark memories. He felt like the world was lying to him, trying to make him believe it was a safe place, when in truth it was full of hazards and hateful people like the ones who had stolen all those children, locked them up, and then worked the lucky ones to death. What they did to the unlucky ones didn’t bear thinking about.

  The columns of infantry had veered off the road to shorten the distance, heading straight for the mountain, which punctuated the line of low hills in the distance with its peak, a cap of rounded black stone untouched by the snow that even in summer powdered its high flanks. It had nowhere near the height of Gahabriohl, but in Zhevi’s mind it cast twice the shadow, and its broad footprint seemed poised to squash the valley’s gentle fields.

  Despite his trepidation some part of Zhevi’s mind stayed detached and clear, helped along no doubt by the way Luccan’s dog, Maizie, checked on him every once in a while and insisted on an
encouraging pet—pet for her, encouraging for him. In that quiet corner, he saw her unexplained faith and wondered what she knew that he didn’t. He also wondered at his fear. The magnitude of it seemed out of balance. It was natural for him to get scared going into a fight just like any other soldier—maybe more so, because at eighteen, he was still inexperienced. He’d only been in one real battle. But even though that had been his first action, and he’d been in a whole other world at the time, and some really strange magical crap had been going on, he had simply shoved the fear to the back of his mind and done what he was supposed to do.

  Maybe that was the trouble, or part of it anyway. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do—on this march, or even once they got to the caves. In the battle outside Isa’s tower in Black Creek Ravine, he’d been the standard bearer for Shahna’s Rangers. Sitting on a horse holding the flags during a battle may sound like doing nothing, but in reality, the job involved more. He’d been trained to the duties for months before he was trusted with the Rangers’ standard. During battle, the flag he held flew as the unifying symbol to those in the thick of the fighting, both symbolically and practically, letting them know where to find their officer during the fray. Sometimes, the standard served to signal the troops about a new action or location. If the commanders moved, the standard bearer must stay with them at any cost, unless he was instructed differently.

  Zhevi’d had to take an oath swearing to defend the standard by every means, even with his life—and in the middle of combat, with arrows flying, swords flashing, and magical weapons doing their worst, to die defending it was a very real possibility. He’d been scared, but he’d been proud. More to the point, unlike on this ride to the cruel mountain, he’d had something to do with his hands and his brain.

  All he could do now was think about how L’Aria wasn’t there.

  I’m just not going to think about her, he decided, since I can’t change the situation.

  And I’m also not going to think about the caves under that mountain until we get there.

  He succeeded in keeping his mind busy for a few minutes, calculating how long it would be until they arrived. They’d been on the road a day and a half, so maybe a couple more hours, he figured. The officers would call a halt before then. Partly, it would be a break for the troops so people would be refreshed and ready when they went in. But also, that’s when the plan of action would be refined and laid out. In a way, the detachment of foot soldiers had set out from the Sisterhold garrison with little real intelligence about what they’d find at the mountain or how to go about accomplishing their goal—defeating the captors and bringing the children back to the Hold.

  Although Han had told Zhevi he’d go along as a guide, truthfully none was needed. The mountain had a name and appeared on all the maps. Though Han hadn’t been familiar with the area when they were there last year—and they’d arrived via a roundabout, cross-country route—after a study of charts and maps, he’d realized the tunnels could only be the ones created in distant, mythical times under Mount Khalisehl. Roads to it were well marked, and if not heavily traveled, they were at least more direct and would make it possible to move a body of soldiers quickly—especially with a little magical assistance provided by a couple of university students on internship at the Sisterhold.

  Zhevi had been present when Han briefed the officers mainly because it was hoped he’d have something to add about the caves, but honestly, Zhevi’s memory of the place, except for their stealthy exit, was almost nonexistent. L’Aria probably could have helped more, but both he and Luccan had mostly responded to Han’s and Lieutenant Olmar’s questions with blank looks.

  Han hadn’t pressed—it seemed to Zhevi he hadn’t really expected much out of him, and that the reason he’d been included in the march at all was only because either Thurlock or Han guessed the truth Zhevi wasn’t talking about—he needed to be part of saving the children, and he also needed to take his mind off L’Aria, though he wasn’t likely to succeed at that except in the middle of hand-to-hand combat.

  Like an underscore on how unnecessary his help really was, at that meeting in his office Han had unrolled the map on the conference table and showed everybody a road to Khalisehl much straighter than the chase through the woods Zhevi and Luccan, and later Han, had taken.

  “You could probably get there in less than a full day with a forced march. I don’t recommend that, however. The troops should be rested before you go in—I probably didn’t need to tell you that—but since you’re not starting off as early in the day as we’d hoped, perhaps go at an easier pace. As long as you get to the mountain before dusk, you can likely get it all done on the second day.

  “One thing to remember,” he continued, pointing to an area to the west of the mountain, there was a town here, or at least a collection of ramshackle buildings and some unpleasant human inhabitants. But nothing like that is marked on the map, so apparently our knowledge of the area is out-of-date. You’ll want to send scouts out so you know what’s there. You’ll be calling the shots in the field, Lieutenant Olmar, but my recommendation is if you can get in and out of the mountain without approaching or alerting those people, that would be best. Our objective is rescue, so we want to keep the action as small as possible—no use striking a hornets’ nest if it’s avoidable. It could jeopardize the mission.”

  But the scouts came back after the halt had been called, while the troops were at rest. Zhevi had stayed near the expedition’s command, as he’d been instructed, so he was present when they reported that, although the rough buildings were still standing, after a fashion, the town seemed deserted. The scouts had also checked along the river, around the other side of Khalisehl, where Han, Luccan, L’Aria, and Zhevi had exited the caves.

  “No one home,” the scout named Sol had said, his growling voice barely understandable. “No boats. No new trash. Couldn’t hear nothing from inside the mountain, neither.”

  The lieutenant looked thoughtful and then asked Zhevi, “Do you remember if you could hear noises from inside once you were out?”

  Zhevi thought about it, the fingers of one hand drumming his thigh in an old habit that seemed somehow to move the gears of memory in his brain. “No, sir,” he said. “I don’t think we could. Even inside, it’s not so much that the noise was loud as that it was… disturbing. And it echoed. But even standing right out on the porch step, so to speak, I don’t think I could hear anything from inside the caves.”

  “Hm,” said Olmar. “So we can’t assume, just from the lack of noise audible from outside, we’ll be unopposed.” He squatted down and unrolled the map on the ground, a thick square of canvas under it to keep the parchment clean. He told his second and the three noncommissioned officers to gather around and said, “Here’s how we’re going to approach.”

  Being asked a question and having information that actually made a difference snagged a pretty good-sized chunk of Zhevi’s attention away from pining over L’Aria’s absence, and he listened to the briefing with something more like his usual practical-minded focus. When the lieutenant asked if anyone had questions, Zhevi spoke up.

  “Sir, it’s not a question, but well, having been inside those caves, I see a potential problem with the plan.”

  After a moment, during which he’d apparently been waiting for Zhevi to continue, Olmar said, “Well, what is it, soldier? Speak up.”

  “Sir, you’ve got people coming in from two directions, and we’re supposed to do a sweep and then sort of meet in the middle, right?”

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  “But those caves are a maze, sir. And it’s a pretty big area. I think… well, you know, even if we raised the standard, no one would see it from any distance in there—it’s dark. And the way the corridors run this way and that, it could be a long time before one half runs into the other by chance—and people could even get lost from their own group, especially if there’s hand-to-hand fighting.”

  The lieutenant nodded and muttered a “hm
” or two, so Zhevi decided to take a chance and offer a possible solution. They had two wizarding interns with them on the mission, a brother and sister about a year older than Zhevi. Their best magic resembled the sister magic Rosishan and Liliana did—or used to do before Liliana went wrong—but certainly, Zhevi thought, they also had a command of basic wizardry, which might be just what the mission needed.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Zhevi?”

  “I, um, have an idea for how to solve the problem.”

  Olmar raised his eyebrows in surprise, but said, “Let’s hear it.”

  “Rami and Bradehn, sir, the two wizards? Each could raise a light, maybe a different color, for their patrol to keep tabs on to help them stay together, and for the opposite patrol to use to set their direction toward each other when it’s time… maybe?”

  “Good idea, Zhevi,” Olmar said. “I think we’ll do it. I see why Commander Han thinks so highly of you.”

  “He does?”

  The lieutenant looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  “Sir. I mean.”

  “Yes,” Olmar said. “He does.”

  Within an hour the officers briefed the soldiers and got them ready to go. They set out to march to their separate entrances, the patrol on the near side allowing time for the other to get in place before entering. Zhevi was with the lieutenant’s group, which would be going in on the near, landward side. They concealed themselves in a thicket very near the cave entrance, settling in to wait the agreed-upon hour before going into action.