the first place.
The Kagonesti scout put a hand to his heart and vowed, “It wasn’t there, General. I rode right through the spot. There was no antelope there. I swear it.”
“We were in the high desert a long time,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Maybe the sun baked our brains.”
They didn’t laugh. The silent heaviness of the valley’s atmosphere was affecting even the veteran Kagonesti. All were looking around warily, as though uncertain what else might suddenly spring up from beneath their feet. Kerian, who had knelt down to study the hoofprints, stood quickly and admonished them for their foolishness.
“We have enough problems to face without making up new ones. Next thing, you’ll be telling me the creature was a spirit!”
They looked struck by what she had meant as a jest; Kerian could’ve bitten her tongue. The rest of the column was moving up, so she left the scouts and went to send Eagle Eye aloft.
Voices were hushed, as though the elves were passing through a holy place. When Favaronas arrived, on foot, Kerian was seated on a low section of wall. She gestured for him to join her. He touched the stone gingerly, as if expecting to find it hot. Satisfied, he sat down.
She told him of the quarry that had eluded them. “It appeared to be an antelope, but whatever it was, it disappeared right in front of us.”
He didn’t seem surprised to hear this. “The old chronicles speak of strange forces at work here. The manuscripts I’ve read don’t mention clear dangers. Of course,” he added wryly, “clarity is not their strong suit.”
The two of them speculated on the odd lack of wildlife. But for the phantom antelope, they had seen no animals at all, not even insects. A day had passed since they’d drunk from Lioness Creek, and no one had reported any ill effects, so the water supply seemed fine. Was there something else in the Vale of Silence inimical to life?
Kerian knew Gilthas would be sorely unhappy should his scheme to transplant the elves fail. She was sorry for the disappointment he would feel, but at the same time she was freshly annoyed at him. He seemed convinced that the time had not yet come for them to liberate their ancestral lands. But if the valley proved unsuitable for their people, then what? Were they to continue in Khurinost forever, penned in their squalid tents, relying on the favor of the human khan?
“I wonder who could have built these great monuments?”
Favaronas’s voice cut across her growing anger. The archivist had left his perch on the wall and was studying the wall further down the line.
“An excellent question, Master Archivist,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “How long would you need to find out?”
He looked across the vast meadow of stone ruins and shook his head vaguely. “I couldn’t begin to say. It would depend on what we discover. I see no obvious hints of the builder’s identity.”
“But someone raised these standing stones, someone powerful. Long dead and long gone, I presume.”
“The former, yes,” he muttered. “The latter, perhaps not.”
“What do you mean?”
Obviously her Wilder brothers weren’t the only ones whose thoughts moved in that direction. They were all letting this weird valley and its massive stone sentinels play tricks on their minds. With a dismissive snort, she jumped down from the wall and gave the archivist a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“Try to figure out who built this, Favaronas. And don’t worry; we can leave any time we need to.”
She knew this last was probably a lie. An unknown number of armed nomads was likely poised outside the valley, just waiting for the elves to return. Getting out of the Inath-Wakenti might prove even more difficult than getting in bad been.
Scouts returned. They reported the ruins went on for miles-there seemed no end to them-and still they’d found no signs of any living creatures.
It was late afternoon, and they’d kept going without stopping the night before, so the Lioness decided to make camp, here among the ruins. The warriors were glad enough of the rest, but Favaronas was distinctly nervous about the choice of campsite. Still, in this strange valley, one spot was likely as good (or worrisome) as the next.
Another courier, this one a Qualinesti was dispatched to Khurinost. The Lioness knew he would need the cover of the coming night to slip past any nomads camped outside the valley, so there was no time to compose carefully detailed reports. The messenger carried a hastily written letter in which she thanked Gilthas for sending Eagle Eye, promised to put the griffon to good use against their enemies, and outlined the bare essentials of the valley’s nature.
They made camp in the lee of a sarsen that reared forty feet high. While the warriors tended their horses, spread bedrolls and gathered kindling for fires, Favaronas busied himself at the base of the towering monolith. He built a lean-to out of pine branches, then laid a small campfire. Fed with dry juniper twigs, the flames sent a sweet aroma into the cloudless sky. Equipped with fire and shelter, the archivist unpacked his case of manuscripts and began reading. He updated his sketch map and, on spare scraps of parchment, made notes for the Speaker about what they’d seen in the valley.
Kerian was pitching her own tent-a few yards from the archivist’s fire, since she’d assigned herself the task of watching over him-when foragers returned. They brought only unwelcome news. There was no game to be had.
“A few bitter roots and pine seeds, General,” said one. Another added, “I haven’t seen so much as a gnat or fly in this valley.”
“Khur is the kingdom of flies and every other noxious insect. Why are there none here?”
“Something drove them out,” Favaronas murmured.
Kerian turned. He was seated by his small fire, engrossed in his papers. She asked him to explain his comment. He looked up, blinking slightly as his eyes focused on her rather than the manuscript so close to his face. She asked again.
“I can’t name what has no name,” the archivist replied, unhelpfully, then returned to his studies.
He muttered to himself, too low for Kerian to catch the words. She gave up trying to make sense of his musings and went to walk among her warriors.
The place she’d chosen for their camp was at the intersection of two broad avenues, one aligned northeast- southwest, the other crossing at right angles and aligned northwest- southeast. Rain-washed dirt had filled in the slightly sunken roadbeds over the years, but a little digging revealed they were covered by the same large paving stones as the road that had led the elves here from Lioness Creek.
The high walls of the Khalkist meant sunset came early to the valley. Hours before the light would fade from the desert outside, dusk blanketed their camp. A chill seemed to spring out of the ground, and the elves could see their breath. Patches of mist coalesced in low-lying areas.
Kerian ordered a large bonfire built in the center of their camp, which was also the center of the crossroads. Foragers had found plenty of deadfall pine, cedar, and fir limbs, though no good hardwood, and by the time the first stars winked into sight, the blazing flames were sending sparks up to join them. The firelight only made the ruins around them seem more eerie, more strange. A rotation of mounted sentries was posted a goodly distance from camp. Each elf was given a horn to blow, and assigned a distinctive call. If anything untoward happened, the Lioness would know exactly which sentry raised the alarm.
She checked on the archivist. Whatever anxiety Favaronas felt about being in the valley, it hadn’t prevented him from sleeping. He apparently had decided against sleeping in his lean-to, however, and was snoring away in the Lioness’s tent.
She and her officers rebuilt the archivist’s little campfire at the base of the great sarsen and settled down to have their supper.
“General, now we’ve found the Inath-Wakenti, how long will we stay?” asked a Qualinesti.
She shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of beans. “I see no reason to stay. We’ll start back tomorrow.”
