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  Kerian was amazed. She wasn’t hearing ghosts, but the voices of her own people as they advanced across the wasteland! Whether by magic or the strange effect of the valley’s shape, voices from many miles away were reaching her with perfect clarity. By shifting her position slightly, she could bring even individual conversations into focus. But however much she tried, she couldn’t locate Gilthas’s voice in the welter.

  “Gilthas, can you hear me?” She stopped, frustrated.

  Instantly the muddle of conversations died. Hard on this silence came ten thousand variations of “who said that?” Not only could Kerian hear them, but they could hear her! The peculiar effect worked both ways.

  She demanded quiet. When the amazed chatter died, she identified herself and called for her husband again.

  Hamaramis answered, “The Speaker sleeps, lady. Where are you? We can’t see you.”

  She told him, provoking another cacophony of questions. She shouted them to silence again.

  “Is it safe for us to proceed there?” Hamaramis asked.

  “It seems so. Just continue north-northeast, and you can’t miss it.”

  She seated herself at the center of the disk. As her people advanced, she spoke to Hamaramis and Taranath as easily as if they were standing beside her. When Gilthas awoke, she regaled him with the tale of her discovery. By midafternoon the first riders appeared beyond the distant edge. They came to her on foot; their horses liked the cold, white pavement no more than Eagle Eye had.

  “Welcome to the navel of the world,” she hailed Taranath. The warriors laughed, but her old comrade in arms frowned.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  “As well as ever, Taran.” She grimaced. “Actually, my legs have cramped. Give me a hand.”

  Pulling her upright, he exclaimed, “You’re cold as ice!”

  She put a hand to her face, but felt nothing untoward. Yet her legs had stiffened and her arms were bloodlessly pale, her fingernails blue. She and the others returned quickly to the pavement’s edge. Jumping off the stone to land on the grass, Kerian felt as though she were entering a steam bath, such as the plainsmen enjoyed. After a few hours on the great platform, the cool air of Inath-Wakenti felt positively hot.

  Taranath offered her a flask from his belt. She pulled the stopper, recoiling at the sharp odor. The flask contained fluq.

  The Khurish beverage was distilled from the fermented juice of the corpse cactus, so called because its fleshy, pale blue fronds resembled the limp hands of the dead. The flavor was unbelievably bitter, almost metallic, but the liquid flooded Kerian’s veins with heat.

  When she’d caught her breath again, she ordered everyone kept off the platform. “It finally occurs to me (thank you, fluq) that if you all could hear me talk, then so could anyone else in this blasted valley.”

  Taranath swallowed fluq and nodded. It would be poor tactics to announce their plans and position to all and sundry, but he wondered whether there was anyone in the valley to hear them.

  “We’re surrounded, remember?” she said. “Despite the Speaker’s hopes, the ghosts in this valley are not our friends.”

  * * * * *

  The only thing worse than pursuing Faeterus across the eerie valley was traveling with him. Favaronas was accustomed to Robien’s swift step.

  But however persistent the Kagonesti was, he wasn’t heartless. He moderated his pace to accommodate the scholar’s needs, and he halted a few hours each night for sleep. Faeterus did not. His progress wasn’t terribly rapid, burdened as he was by heavy robes and by Favaronas, but he never rested, not even for a moment.

  At first Favaronas thought him preternaturally alert and magically attuned somehow to his surroundings but gradually came to realize a more fundamental process was at work. Faeterus was afraid, and Favaronas did not know why. Poor Robien was no longer a threat. The arrival of the Speaker and the elf nation, although imparting a sense of urgency to the mage’s as-yet unknown master plan didn’t seem the cause of the deep fear Favaronas sensed. He couldn’t decide whether he should be glad or worried about whatever it was that terrified Faeterus. Humans had a saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In this case, the enemy of Favaronas’s enemy might simply kill them both.

  By dragging his feet, falling, and veering off course at every opportunity, Favaronas hampered their progress as much as he dared. He had little hope of rescue or escape, but if Faeterus wanted haste, then Favaronas would do all he could to delay. His tactics finally goaded the increasingly anxious sorcerer into action.

  Mount Rakaris was no more than a day’s march away when Favaronas took a calculated tumble into a dry ravine. Faeterus stood on the edge, fists on hips, and raged at him.

  “Torghan save me! Get up! Get up, or I’ll give you frog’s legs to stand on!”

  In trying to protect his bundle of stone scrolls during the fall, Favaronas had earned himself a bloodied upper lip.

  “You go too fast,” he complained, putting a plaintive whine into his voice (it wasn’t difficult). “Why such haste? The bounty hunter is finished, and the Speaker’s warriors are nowhere near.”

  “I wasted too much time playing cat and mouse with Sahim’s hired killer. I intend to be there by first light.” It was midafternoon. “Whether you are still alive then is entirely up to you, elf spawn!”

  He’d used that epithet once before, and it still made no sense to Favaronas. Of course he was the spawn of elves, as was Faeterus. But perhaps one of the sorcerer’s parents had been a human. That would explain a lot. Favaronas had heard half-breeds were anxious, cruel creatures.

  Painfully, he climbed back up the steep bank. When his eyes reached ground level, the sorcerer’s deteriorating, rag-wrapped sandals were only inches from his face, giving him a clear view of Faeterus’s left foot. He gasped.

  The foot had only four toes. Each ended in a thick, down-curving yellow nail. No elf had such an appendage. Nor did any human Favaronas ever heard of.

  Faeterus jerked his foot back beneath his robe. He extended a bony finger, pointing at Favaronas. Immediately, the archivist felt his lips close together. One hand flew to his face, and he gave an inarticulate cry. His fingers found only smooth skin between nose and chin. His lips weren’t simply sealed, they were gone!

  “Unless you want to lose your ears as well, be silent. And keep up.”

  Turning, the sorcerer plunged through a waist-high growth of wild sage. With Robien’s death, there was no reason to conceal his tracks or walk atop the greenery.

  Scrabbling at the edge of the ravine, the scholar hauled himself out and hurried to catch up. His breath whistled through his nose. His teeth and tongue were still there but sealed away. Horror threatened to overwhelm him, but he told himself that what the sorcerer took away he could restore. He claimed he wanted Favaronas to read to him from the stone scrolls but had not asked for that. His haste to reach the eastern mountains superseded all else.

  As if reading his captive’s thoughts, Faeterus pointed at him again, and just like that, Favaronas’s mouth was restored. The sorcerer commanded him to read as he walked.

  Favaronas stretched his jaw wide and licked his lips. “The scrolls will never open in such strong sunlight,” he warned.

  “You’re a scholar. I’m sure you have transcriptions.”

  Favaronas had indeed begun to make a handwritten copy of the text. He pulled a sheaf of pages from an inner pocket in his bag. The parchment was covered with the miniscule script he had mastered during his years in the Speaker’s service.

  He began with an explanation. “The cylinders are numbered, but they’re not in sequence. The lowest number I have is 594. The text begins in midsentence: ‘our most gracious lord, Om.hed.thon.dac (the Father Who Made Not His Children), stood upon the, um, mountainside to say farewell. He could not touch the soil of the place without provoking death. “My children,” said he, “bear this exile in good grace. Do not make this an island, but a fortress. In time I will return and free you.’ �
�

  “He never came back.”

  Faeterus did not amplify on this bitter comment but did halt long enough to conjure a path ahead of them. The sage had become so dense, their progress had slowed to a snail’s pace. When the sorcerer spread his hands, the thick bushes split apart as if cleared by a scythe. They set out again and Favaronas continued.

  “ ‘The Father rose on the wind and departed to the—’ ” Favaronas frowned. “Southland? Homeland? ‘The place on which he stood was named Ro.bisc.ro.pel.’ ”

  The abbreviations had eluded Favaronas’s attempt at translation. Faeterus calmly provided it. “Rothye biscara rolofassos pelmany.”

  Pelmany meant stair. Favaronas muttered, “Stair of Distant Vision?”

  Faeterus swung around to face him. Although the front of the hood was only a few feet away, Favaronas could make out little more than a faint suggestion of the face within its deep shadow. “That is our destination.”

  “Are you him, the Father Who Made Not His Children?”

  “No. He passed out of this world long ago.” The hood shifted and Favaronas glimpsed two dark eyes within. “I was the only one to escape. I have come back to claim the heritage of the Lost Ones, my people.”

  Favaronas shivered. If the sorcerer were telling the truth, then he was unbelievably old. Recalling his own ghostly encounters with the valley’s half-animal inhabitants, Favaronas blurted, “Then you’re not an elf!”

  “Thanks be to the Maker! For fifty centuries I have lived in the shadowy edges of the mighty elf race. I found Father’s writings, and learned how to prolong my life until the day of retribution. That day has finally come! Your people’s power is broken. I shall complete their destruction. When I stand on the Stair of Distant Vision, the key to unlocking this valley’s power will be revealed to me. I will make that power my own and use it to work my will!”

  The sheets of parchment fell from Favaronas’s hand. He finally understood the danger awaiting them all.

  The hooded head turned away from him, but the sorcerer’s pointing finger sought him out again. Favaronas’s slack mouth closed with a snap, and his lips once more vanished.

  “Pick up your notes and follow,” Faeterus said. “What you know, you will never tell.”

  7

  There was nothing but dreamless void. He could sense nothing at all beyond himself. Then a voice spoke and nothingness became … something. The voice spoke again, and he felt himself slowly sinking in the boundless darkness. By the time he made out the words, he had fallen hard onto a cold, gritty surface.

  “—Where are you?”

  Hytanthas raised his head from the coldness beneath it. “Commander?”

  “Can you hear me? ”

  Pain thudded inside his skull. The sound of the Lioness’s voice seemed to ebb and flow with the pain. Pushing himself up onto his hands, Hytanthas called to her again. The effort of speaking loudly sent paroxysms of agony lancing through his head, and he finally gave up shouting. It was clear that although he could hear the Lioness as if she were only a few feet away, she couldn’t hear him. She seemed to be conversing with others, but hers was the only voice he could hear.

  The blackness around him was absolute. Elves are gifted with the ability to see even in lightless conditions, yet Hytanthas could see nothing at all. He feared he had been blinded. Fighting back panic, he concentrated on his other senses. His questing hands encountered hard stone arching overhead and stone walls on either side, but open air in front and behind. He was in a tunnel. He recalled the Lioness describing the tunnels her expedition had explored beneath Inath-Wakenti. The return of that memory brought the rest flooding back.

  He had been flying night patrol on Kanan. A group of will-o’-the-wisps appeared, trying to surround him. At his command the griffon dove. Down and down they plummeted, Kanan never wavering although it seemed they would smash into the blue soil. They leveled off only yards above it. The lights were left behind, and Hytanthas did a foolish thing. He relaxed, exulting in his triumph over the mysterious lights. A trilithon loomed out of the shadows, two tall, white stones supporting a third laid horizontally atop. With Hytanthas’s hands slack on the reins, Kanan chose to dive under the lintel. His rider didn’t react in time. Hytanthas’s forehead struck the stone, and he fell from the saddle, unconscious. Awakening a short time later, he saw no sign of Kanan, so he shucked his dented iron helmet and leather skullcap and prepared to walk back to camp. The instant he dropped the helmet, a will-o’-the-wisp appeared. It touched him, and next thing he knew he was here.

  Was that what happened to all the others who vanished? Were they whisked away and deposited in the maze of tunnels underneath the valley floor?

  Time enough later to worry about such things. He didn’t know how long he had been here, but his throat was parched and his belly protested its emptiness. He had only the gear attached to his person: a fighting dagger, a light grapnel with thirty feet of thin rope (commonly carried by griffon riders for retrieving messages from the ground), and a bit of hard biscuit rolled inside a bandanna. Sword, water bottle, and flint and steel had been lost with Kanan.

  The hard biscuit eased his hunger pangs, and he explored his surroundings more carefully. The wall had a slight curve, which increased the higher he explored. The ceiling curved above him. The opposite wall, some seven feet away, was exactly the same, made of small, cleanly cut blocks fitted together without mortar.

  Which way should he go? There seemed little difference. He felt no breeze on his face, so he chose a direction and started off, feeling his way along the wall and shuffling his feet to avoid tripping over unseen hazards. The stone wall was smoothly dressed, but his sensitive fingertips noted tiny imperfections. Like some grades of marble.

  Every now and then, he heard the Lioness; she was talking to Hamaramis and Taranath by the sound of it. Hytanthas called out periodically but never earned an answer. He had no idea why he was hearing his commander but was certain he owed his life to the sound. Her voice had brought him back from a place he suspected he might never have escaped otherwise.

  In the perfect darkness, his sense of time became confused. He seemed to have been walking for ages. At times his booted feet crunched through loose gravel or sent larger fragments skittering aside. From the lack of strain on his leg muscles, he deduced the tunnel was continuing straight and level, neither climbing nor descending.

  When a faint, purplish glimmer appeared far ahead, he feared it was no more than a mirage conjured by his light-starved brain. The glimmer persisted. Relieved beyond words at the return of light, he put aside the puzzle of his inability to see in the blackness and forced himself to hold to his slow but steady pace. He didn’t want to risk a fall.

  The glimmer was not an exit. It was another will-o’-the-wisp. The fist-sized purple light appeared to be hovering in place. Despite his approach, it never moved. He poked at it with the tip of his dagger. His probing dislodged the globe and it began to fall. Without thinking, he reached out and caught it in midair. The globe was weighty for its size, smooth and hard, and slightly warm. By its amethyst light, he saw that the column on which it had sat was extremely slender, no thicker than his finger, about three feet high, and made of some sort of polished black stone. When he bent low to study its base, he got his first glimpse of the debris on which he’d been walking. The shock caused him to drop the smooth globe.

  The tunnel floor was covered with bones. Most were the remains of large animals, but here and there he saw the tiny skeletons of birds and rodents.

  When the globe hit the floor, its light had grown brighter, changing from purple to indigo. He picked it up and carefully dropped it again. The impact brightened its light considerably, to a sky-blue shade.

  Whatever else its purpose, the light made the going easier. Resuming his trek, he ate the last of his dry bread and pondered the significance of the bones. Could they be the remains of Inath-Wakenti’s missing animals?

  He’d not traveled far when the light
illuminated something more substantial than dry bones. A body lay near the right wall. Its posture told Hytanthas the person was dead, although there was no smell at all, only the dry, dusty odor of the bones. He intended to pass the corpse quickly but pulled up short when he realized the body was that of an elf. Metal armor was easily discernible beneath the sun-bleached geb. Hytanthas crouched to see the warrior’s face.

  The dead elf was known to him—a Qualinesti named Marmanth who had ridden out of Khurinost with the Lioness so long ago to search for Inath-Wakenti. He must have been taken by the will-o’-the-wisps and left in this tunnel, just as Hytanthas himself had been. But Marmanth had died, while Hytanthas lived. Why? Did the will-o’-the-wisps sometimes kill their victims outright, or had Marmanth never awakened from the strange sleep?

  Elves dislike touching their dead, but Hytanthas steeled himself and searched the corpse. It showed no signs of violence. The debris around it had been disturbed by nothing but Hytanthas’s own footprints. It was as though Marmanth had appeared there from nowhere and never got up again.

  Hytanthas stood and resumed walking. Hungry, his throat achingly dry, he knew that if he couldn’t find a way out, he’d end up like poor Marmanth, like all the creatures trapped down there: a corpse, slowly drying and turning to dusty bones.

  * * * * *

  Night came again. The elves camped near the huge circular platform amid the dense gathering of monoliths. A defensive perimeter was created by filling the gaps between standing stones with barricades of brushwood. Kerian and the professional warriors thought it futile to erect barriers to keep out ghosts and flying spirit lights, but the rest of the elves took the effort seriously. Barricades and bonfires had kept the phantoms at bay before. The civilians trusted they would do so again.