warriors, as well as layer upon layer of desiccated animal bones, had led him to conclude that the animal life captured by the will-o’-the-wisps was transferred into the tunnels to die.
“Take courage, Captain,” Gilthas said. “We’ll get you out.”
Hytanthas jogged onward. After a time he reported, “Sire, I have found a body.”
The corpse was that of another elf warrior, although blind as he was Hytanthas couldn’t identify him. The dead elf was lying faceup with a dagger buried in his throat. Hytanthas’s first fearful thought was of murder, then his hand went to the warrior’s scabbard. It was empty. The blade in the elf’s throat must be his own.
Haltingly, Hytanthas described what he’d found. The Speaker was shocked the warrior would have given up on finding escape.
“Perhaps he was grievously injured before he was transported to the tunnel?” Gilthas suggested.
Hytanthas’s examination of the body revealed only the one wound. But unlike his king, the young captain could understand how the elf might succumb. Without the voice of his sovereign to buoy his spirits, Hytanthas himself might have given in to despair.
He found a crust of bread in the dead elf’s belt pouch. It fell to powder in his mouth, but he choked it down anyway. Shifting position, he put his hand down on something hard and sharp. The characteristic shape and feel told him it was a piece of knapped flint. Perhaps the lost warrior had been trying to start a fire and the stone had gotten away from him. Disoriented by the darkness, he’d been unable to locate it and had given up, though the flint lay just a few feet away.
Piling up strips of the dead elf’s cloak, Hytanthas struck the flint against the hasp of the dagger. Bright orange sparks showered onto the tinder. He nursed them carefully until they flickered to life. His triumph was quickly tempered by grief. As the feeble light illuminated the features of the dead elf, he recognized Ullian, who had been in the Speaker’s service for only a short time. Hytanthas was one of the few who knew of the human blood in his heritage, and Ullian had been a staunch comrade.
The Speaker congratulated him on his acquisition of light. Putting aside his sadness, Hytanthas tore Ullian’s cloak into strips then wrapped the strips around the end of his sword to form a torch. The tunnels were a maze, but as long as he could see, he might be able to find a way out. There was nothing he could do for his lost comrades. All he could do was try to survive.
Torchlight brought a fresh revelation-Wall paintings around him leaped and danced in the flickering light. He described the frescoes to the Speaker. Beautiful scenes of gardens and parkland covered both walls. The paintings had been rendered with amazing skill, giving them an unusual feeling of depth. The colors were so fresh, they might have been painted just the day before. The only jarring notes were the portraits of lean, angular looking elves, rendered life size, interspersed with the peaceful sylvan scenes. The elves glowered balefully at the viewer.
The Speaker theorized the paintings had been done by the people who’d once lived in the valley. The very ones whose spirits still haunted it.
With the aid of his makeshift torch, Hytanthas soon found a crossing tunnel, which branched off to the right. When he reached the intersection, he halted, uncertain which way to go. The tunnels looked identical.
“Are there portraits at the intersection?” the Speaker asked. Hytanthas said there were. “Do they face any particular direction?”
Hytanthas dutifully studied the portraits. Those in his original tunnel looked toward the intersection. Those in the crossing tunnel faced
“You should take the new tunnel! I believe the paintings face something important, like a way out”
With no better alternative, Hytanthas did as the Speaker suggested. After being so long deprived of company, the young captain felt miraculously refreshed and talked almost nonstop as he walked. The Speaker listened silently, now and then prompting him with questions. Hytanthas reported the thinning of the debris on the floor. Fewer and fewer bits of bone crunched beneath his boots. Then he saw something more interesting to report.
“Sire, the tunnel ahead slopes down. And a white mist swirls near the floor.”
His voice had taken on a hollow quality, as though he spoke inside a large, empty room. The Speaker asked about the frescoes. They were gone. Where the tunnel began its downward slope, the frescoes ended.
He was seeking the surface, not a passage to take him farther down. Still, the tunnel might level out and begin to climb. He told the Speaker he would scout ahead. If the passage continued to slope downward after a hundred steps, he would go back.
The tunnel walls were plain gray stone, unadorned by paintings of any sort. The white mist filled the passage from side to side. First curling about Hytanthas’s ankles, it deepened as he advanced until it reached to his chest. It was cold and clammy, and remarkably cohesive. He swept a hand through it, and the mist rippled like water rather than flying about like fog. The air grew steadily colder. Hytanthas’s garments sagged with damp. Water dripped from his hair down his back. Reaching another branching of paths, he halted. The intersection was very wide, at least twenty feet across. A sense of unease filled Hytanthas. He couldn’t see anything untoward, but he sensed danger nearby.
Gilthas urged him to go back, but Hytanthas drew his dagger and moved forward slowly. His caution was well founded. The toe of his left boot suddenly found open air rather than solid rock.
There was a great hole in the floor, nearly as wide as the tunnel. He dropped a bone chip into the hole. His keen ears never heard the chip hit bottom.
As he turned to go, the air around him trembled once then again. A loud boom echoed down the passageway.
The Speaker heard it as well and demanded to know what was happening. A wind had begun to blow, Hytanthas told him. The mist was being drawn down the pit. The pull was strong. it tossed Hytanthas’s long hair and dried the dampness from his clothes. When all the mist was gone, the wind ceased.
“I see light in the hole!” Hytanthas exclaimed. Deep within was a pale white glow. It showed him the sides of the shaft were polished smooth and free of embellishment.
When a minute passed with no other occurrences, Hytanthas turned and retraced his steps to the crossing tunnel.
He had no idea what might be in the deep hole, but as he walked, a more pressing question came to his mind. The rush of air suggested the tunnels had been unsealed somewhere. The last time that happened, he had heard the Speaker’s voice. Who knew what had been admitted into the tunnels?
Chapter 11
Caressed by the soft light of ten thousand stars, the stone scrolls softened, opening one by one like exotic flowers. Never before had Favaronas laid them all out at once. A trained librarian never opened books he knew he would not have time to read because even the finest vellum inevitably cracked with use. The scrolls were even more delicate than most, despite their rock-solid appearance. He had no way of knowing how many times the stone could soften, open, and harden again. Overuse might destroy them. But Faeterus wasn’t concerned with such niceties. He’d ordered all the cylinders placed where starlight would work its magic on them.
The climb to the Stair had proven too much for them to complete in a day. They were still several hundred yards short of their goal when Favaronas collapsed. As the sorcerer’s hand was still joined to Favaronas’s arm, Faeterus dropped with him. The archivist’s exhaustion was no ploy; he couldn’t go a step farther without rest. Food and water would have strengthened him, but Faeterus offered none. He did sever their unnatural bond. As Favaronas slid into sleep, he was grateful for that small blessing.
Awakening after nightfall, Favaronas found the sorcerer’s manner much changed. Having rid himself of Sahim-Khan’s bounty hunter, destroyed (so he thought) an elf griffon rider, and with the Stair of Distant Vision in reach, Faeterus was more relaxed, even expansive. When he asked Favaronas to read from the scrolls his voice sounded much less arrogant than usual. Favaronas was emboldened to ask, with all deference, why Faeterus didn’t read them himself.
“Their meaning is shielded from my eyes by a very old and potent ward.”
