Destiny

of the Speaker.

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 a 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 cam to her on foot; their horses liked the cold, white pavement n 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 suroundings 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, failing, 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 complain, 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 ups 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, urn, 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.”