One of the four spirits took a step forward and spoke-at least, the words seemed to come from it.
“Is he one of you?” The spirit answered in the affirmative. “Who is he?”
More whispers filled the air. Other spirits, less solid-seeming than the first four, had materialized above and below Favaronas. His escape blocked, the scholar gave in to curiosity and crept toward his immobile captor. The knotted rag that held the hood tight around Faeterus’s throat finally yielded to his trembling fingers. He pushed the hood back and beheld the sorcerer’s face for the first time.
Faeterus had implied that be was thousands of years old. Favaronas might have disbelieved his claim to such an improbably great age, but the sorcerer’s hands were those of a very old elf, with prominent knuckles, so he expected to see a wrinkled, withered visage. Not so-the sorcerer’s face was smooth and unlined. His forehead was high, his chin sharp, and his ears rose to the expected points. His white- gold hair was short and curly. He looked like an elf in the very prime of life.
Or did he? When Favaronas looked more closely, certain oddities became apparent. The ears were not quite right; their peaked tips were too long and pointed not up, but back. The nose, though long and narrow as was common among Silvanesti, was dark around the nostrils. What Favaronas had taken for pale skin was in fact a coat of downy hair, No true elf grew such hair on his face. It wasn’t even a beard such as humans or half-elves wore. Fine, white hair covered Faeterus’s entire face from forehead to chin. To confirm the evidence of his eyes, Favaronas put out a tentative finger and touched the sorcerer’s cheek. The hair was soft as velvet.
Stranger still, a shadow under Faeterus’s nose proved to be a faint scar, as though his upper lip had been split in two and sewn back together.
Favaronas backed away, still staring. The more he looked, the weirder the face appeared. The sorcerer’s tongue, just visible between his parted lips, was dark as sandal leather. His eyebrows seemed to meet over his nose, or was that a trick of the light? Taken as a whole, the face seemed somehow animal-like, as though a beast had tried to transform into an elf and failed.
“Why do you walk the mortal plane? What do you want?”
With a sinking heart, Favaronas glanced up the slope beyond the four specters. Distance and the steep angle reduced the Stair of Distant Vision to nothing more than a horizontal band of dark rock. “Why? What’s up there?”
The crowd of apparitions vanished, leaving only the first four. They wavered like an image seen through desert heat. Desperate, Favaronas repeated his questions.
The four blinked out of existence.
“Wait! What does that mean?” he cried, the scholar in him already puzzling over the words.
“It means,” said a voice behind him, “time is short.”
Icy defeat lanced through Favaronas as he turned on leaden feet. Faeterus was himself again, sitting up. The sorcerer put a hand to his head, realized his concealing hood was askew, and cast a venomous glance at his captive.
“Well, elf spawn what have you learned?” His voice was weak, but hatred dripped from every syllable.
“Nothing, master. The more I hear, the less I know!” the archivist gabbled.
Faeterus held out a hand, silently commanding assistance to stand. As soon as Favaronas drew near, the sorcerer grabbed his attn and jerked him off his feet. Favaronas quickly realized he could not move away. Faeterus’s hand, clamped onto Favaronas’s bare arm, adhered as though grafted flesh to flesh.
“Now we are one. Until my work is done, you’ll not wander off or talk to the dead again.”
The archivist stared down at the unnatural bond, nausea rising in his throat. Their skin appeared to have melded together-did the link go deeper? Did the tainted blood of the creature called Faeterus mingle with his own?
He turned away from the hooded head that was much too close and struggled to his feet, awkwardly pulling the sorcerer upright as well. Favaronas took a step, then another, dragging the weakened sorcerer along with him. The ledge seemed as distant as the sun. Faeterus’s sustenance might be vile, but at least he’d eaten recently. Favaronas could scarcely remember the last food or water he’d had.
As he climbed, outwardly resigned, he distracted himself from his misery by concentrating on the many questions raised by the encounter with the spirits. What exactly did they want-to put off their half-life and rest or to rejoin the mortal plane? How did having their betrayer here help them? And what was the key he was supposed to seize?
Favaronas was widely read, but he was no sage. All he knew of magic were the few basic concepts he’d gleaned from ancient manuscripts. The stone scrolls might contain further clues. The conundrum was how to peruse them without alerting Faeterus to his intentions.
His thoughts continued to wander until Faeterus rapped him sharply on the head. “Watch your step!” the sorcerer snapped.
Unthinkingly, Favaronas had taken them to the crumbling lip of a ravine, Two steps more and they would have tumbled a hundred yards onto toothy rocks. For a moment he considered rushing forward and taking those steps.
“Don’t assume what kills you will harm me,” Faeterus said. “Remember the griffon rider’s fate.”
Favaronas resumed the climb. So Faeterus thought the griffon rider dead? The scholar knew better. After the mage had fallen unconscious, Favaronas had seen the griffon circle briefly then continue south. No sooner had the thought entered his mind than he drove it away, filling his head with stanzas of a particularly dull Silvanesti epic poem. Joined as they were, the sorcerer might be able to read his thoughts. No sense giving away everything.
Pairs of mounted elves rode through the stunted elms and oaks littering the eastern half of the valley. They were part of the Speaker’s widened patrols, desperately seeking sustenance in the barren landscape. So far they’d found nothing. Even the trees were sterile. Oaks bore no acorns; elms did not scatter winged seeds before the breeze. Given the strange climate of Inath-Wakenti, it was impossible to tell how old the trees might be. An eight- foot tree might be a young sapling or a mature plant a thousand years old, forever arrested by the weird influence of Inath-Wakenti.
The morning was still fresh when flankers came riding in to Taranath to announce a strange find. Not food or a water source, but an elf.
“Alive?” Taranath asked.
“It seems so. But you’d better come see. it would be easier than explaining!”
The two riders led him nearly a mile south of his original line of march, to a clearing containing three tall standing stones. Four more mounted warriors were drawn up around one of the monoliths, the elves staring at something on the ground. Taranath started to dismount. The soldiers advised him not to draw too near. After admonishing them not to be so fearful, the general got down and between two horses. He beheld the strangest of many strange sights he’d witnessed of late.
A mound of blue-green sand was humped up by the base of the white monolith. Buried upto his mouth in it was an elf with tanned skin and dark hair cut short. His eyes were closed as if in death, but his nostrils flared ever so slightly. He was breathing.
Even more remarkable, the dirt mound was covered by live bats. Taranath could hardly his eyes-living creatures in Inath-Wakenti! The bats reacted not at all to the approach of elves. They were clustered so thickly, their wings completely hid the surface of the mound. The seated elf was encased from toes to lips. The bats covered only the portion illuminated by the rising sun. As he stared, another bat flew squeaking by his head and landed near the bottom edge of the living mass. The newcomer spread its wings and positioned itself just where the line of sunlight was starting to creep downward on the entombed elf’s torso.
“Careful, sir,” said one of the warriors, breaking the stunned silence. “The sand is alive.”
Something skittered over the surface of Taranath’s boots, and he looked down. Streams of turquoise colored
