Sanctuary

services were worth. Something would have to be done about that. Soon.

Some distance away, atop the citadel, near where he’d loosed the amazing arrow, Shobbat watched the elves depart and Khurish soldiers drag the dead sand beast away. The smell of corruption reached him even at this height. He turned away, holding a perfumed cloth over his nose.

“Potent smell, isn’t it?”

Shobbat flinched. Faeterus was there, where he had not been an instant before.

“I didn’t send for you!” the prince gasped.

“I wanted a good vantage point for the spectacle.” The hooded mage went to the edge of the balcony and peered down, resting his long fingers on the parapet. “Ugly creature. I wonder how it got from the desert to the city? Surely someone ought to have noticed it wandering through an open gate.”

“It appears to have come here from the Valley of the Blue Sands in a single night,” Shobbat said, rubbing his hands together. They were unaccountably cold. “It came straight to you. Did you summon it?”

“Certainly not. The stupid creature wanted to kill me. This incident will bear some study.”

“Don’t come here again, Faeterus. It’s too dangerous for me.”

The hood turned away from the distant view. “Yes, it is,” Faeterus agreed, and then was gone.

Shobbat’s legs were trembling. He sat abruptly on the sandstone bench at his back. The mage was out of control, coming and going from the palace at will. Something would have to be done about that. Soon.

Still, he had every reason to feel confident. The elves had made it to the valley, but they’d not stayed. Surely this would overturn the Oracle’s prophecy. He had rid himself of Hengriff, who first bribed him, then blackmailed him about the bribery.

The memory of Hengriff’s death brought a small smile. In some ways that had been a trial run for the removal of his father. Murder behind closed doors was no good. It aroused opponents, and gave traitors the mantle of pursuing justice. The best assassinations were carried out in public, with loyal supporters standing by. Many of Sahim-Khan’s guards were already in Shobbat’s pay. More would follow. Then Shobbat would strike.

Soon.

Chapter 14

Favaronas awoke with a start.

The monstrous creatures of his nightmare were still vivid in his mind, and he ached as if he’d been wrestling a legion of attackers. Three hundred sixteen years he had lived, and here he was sleeping in the desert, dodging murderous nomads, and prowling haunted tunnels. The lovingly shaped halls of Qualinost were far away, in time and distance. How he missed his old life there! The measured pace of the royal library, the smell of venerable parchment, the dust of time collected on the wisdom of the ages. He feared all of that was lost forever.

Profoundly thirsty, he sat up slowly and reached for a handy waterskin. The collar securing the spout was a ring of polished tin. It made a small but perfect mirror. In its mirrored surface he glimpsed something on his reflection that brought a gasp of shock.

Across his neck were four deep, parallel scratches.

He cried out, dropping the leather waterskin and clutching his throat. The wounds did not hurt, but he could feel the beads of clotted blood clinging to them. It had not been a dream! The bloodthirsty shapechangers were real. He had to tell Glanthon at once.

The sun was just peering over the featureless horizon. Its light was faint, as the sky was layered with dull white clouds.

Scrambling up the hill to Glanthon’s tent, Favaronas found himself caught by the sight. He’d not seen an overcast sky since coming to Khur. It actually looked as though rain was possible. He glanced back at his bedroll, to make certain his parchments were covered.

One of the stone cylinders had unfurled.

Favaronas hurled himself back down the slope, his need to find Glanthon forgotten. Muted sunlight dappled the book. He touched the page. It was cold, stiffer than natural parchment, but no longer stone. It felt like heavy vellum, the sort usually reserved for covers, not text pages. With great care, he unrolled the curled page. It was covered in writing, a neat scribal hand, the ink copper-brown against the yellow vellum. The words were the same abbreviated Elvish as the labels on each cylinder. He couldn’t simply read off the contents but would have to decode the abbreviations.

He ransacked his meager supplies for ink, pen, and paper. He must transcribe the writing, get it all down, and worry about deciphering it later.

While he was engrossed, the sun continued its slow rise, the filtered orange light traveling across his bedroll. When the light fell upon the second and third cylinders, they also softened into readable scrolls, the tightly furled pages loosening with a soft whish. Favaronas’s heart thudded in his chest. What was happening here? The cylinders had been exposed to sunlight before and had not opened. Was it because the clouds were screening the normally harsh sunlight? Was it the first light of dawn? Could it have something to do with his dream that was not a dream?

Just now it did not matter. The mysterious books were open!

Around him, the warriors stirred. A sparse meal was prepared and eaten. Horses were watered and fed. Whenever a warrior passed by, the archivist found himself shielding the open scrolls from view. Without knowing why, he felt a need to keep this development to himself.

When the sun was more fully up, beams of stronger light reached out through gaps in the clouds and fell upon the scrolls. One by one, they curled up again, turning white and hard, becoming stone once more. Favaronas tried to stop the process by shading the books, but the transformation was inexorable. Barely an hour after he noticed the first book opening, all were stone again. He’d managed to copy out only a third of the first tome.

“Good morning!”

The archivist convulsed like a guilty lover. Glanthon had arrived, bearing his gear on one shoulder. “What?” Favaronas said, looking up. “Oh, yes. Good morning.”

Glanthon squinted at him. “Are you hurt? What are those marks on your neck?”

Favaronas’s hand went to his throat. “This? Nothing. I rolled over on a stone while sleeping and scratched myself.”

Glanthon could see no such stones in the immediate area of Favaronas’s bedroll, but if the Speaker’s archivist didn’t want to parade his problems Glanthon would not press the matter.

“We’ll be moving out soon. It’s two days to the caravan I road. I want to keep clear of Kortal itself. Too many Nerakan spies.”

Favaronas nodded. What he wanted most right now was for Glanthon to go about his business, so he could begin translating the writing he’d taken down from the first open scroll. He feigned a headache and asked to be left alone until the company actually departed. Unsuspecting, Glanthon wished him better health and left.

The camp grew noisier as the warriors curried their horses, saddled them, and stowed their gear. Favaronas broke his fast with a bag of dried vegetable chips and a cup of water, and tried to make sense of what he’d written.

The writing was like the labels, line after line of abbreviations, without break, punctuation, or capitalization, and only a small tic of the scribe’s pen separating each syllable.

Who would record valuable records in such a difficult fashion? Still, if each syllable represented a word in Old Elvish, he should be able to read the entire document. But it would take time. The first line was nat.hat.om.bar.sem.hoc.ved. Nat could stand for many things, from the word for rooster (nathi) to the verb meaning “to behead” (natcar).

By the time the company was ready to depart Favaronas had translated four lines, and those only roughly. The book on which he was working was apparently volume three of a longer work. It began in mid-sentence, not unusual in documents from ancient times: “. - - he commanded [us?] to raise the stones as part of the sacred star [or pattern?] that the powers of heaven had buried. [?] might be enhanced in this place. - -.“ There followed