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
The abbreviations had eluded Favaronas’s attempt at translation. Faeterus calmly provided it.
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.”
Chapter 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 lie 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 be 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 be 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, be 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, be 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
