alacrity. A wave of one hand knocked the archivist flat on his back.
“What do you know of such things?” Faeterus hissed.
“Only the legends any elf knows of the Pit, master,” gabbled Favaronas. “The Pit of Nemith-Otham.”
The hood regarded him for several heart-pounding seconds then turned away. “You know nothing. And you have no need to think. Only to do as I say.”
Faeterus turned away and began rolling up the long scroll. Marveling that he still possessed his limbs and senses, Favaronas sat up. He wanted desperately to beg the sorcerer to release him. The stone scrolls were dust. Favaronas wouldn’t be needed to read them. Faeterus had what he wanted, his key to the valley’s secrets. What possible use could Favaronas be to him? What possible threat could one exhausted, starved librarian pose? None and none. Perhaps if he asked in just the right manner, with enough groveling deference, perhaps Faeterus would let him go.
“I’ll not be letting you go,” Faeterus said, and laughed at Favaronas’s expression. “Discerning your thoughts hardly requires a seer. They are written on your face. I have one final use for you, elf spawn. Every good conjuration requires a test subject. You shall be the first to feel the effects of my new power the first to be destroyed. Then I will know I have succeeded.”
Fresh horror coursed through Favaronas. Up until that moment he’d told himself Faeterus would release him when his usefulness had ended. That comforting fiction could no longer be maintained. He was marked for destruction. There was nothing left to lose.
Favaronas turned and ran.
Faeterus watched, all emotion lost beneath the smothering layers of his robe. He waited until Favaronas was within a few yards of the edge of the Stair then lifted his hand. Favaronas’s legs jerked together, his ankles fused, and down he went, rolling over and over. When he fetched up against a low outcropping of stone, he discovered his mouth was sealed.
Gravel crunching underfoot warned him of Faeterus’s approach. Even from twenty yards, the sorcerer’s voice carried with astonishing clarity.
“Don’t be so impatient to meet your destiny, elf spawn. You cannot change your fate.”
Tears coursed from Favaronas’s eyes. Faeterus had left him his sight, and he watched in abject terror as his tormentor slowly closed the distance between them.
“It would be easy to let you die on your belly here. But your death can serve a higher purpose. I wish I could exchange you for the Speaker of the Sun and Stars, but he’s unlikely to put himself in my hands. You are the only elf spawn I have, so you will have to do.”
A careless wave of one hand freed Favaronas’s legs, and he was commanded to stand. “Clear away the stones and branches that held the scroll. Prepare a fire. I will not rest until I have penetrated the meaning of the key.”
And so it went. Faeterus sat with the scroll on his lap. He unrolled a portion, studied it, then advanced it to peruse a new section. They had no water, and Faeterus didn’t partake of his disgusting victuals. He simply sat and studied the scroll. Favaronas collected wood for a large campfire. Deliberately he kindled it near the front edge of the ledge so the flames and smoke would be more easily visible in the valley, and he loaded the fire with green wood and rotten windfall branches to thicken the smoke. If Faeterus recognized his prisoner’s stratagem, he did nothing about it.
Usually Faeterus avoided direct sunlight, keeping to the shadows like some hulking insect, but not today. He remained where he was, hunched over the parchment as the sun rose higher, bathing the Stair in heat. Often Favaronas could hear him mumbling and muttering, and occasionally he would burst out with sudden vigor, shouting unintelligible phrases, then lapse back into more subdued gibbering. Favaronas could make no sense of any of it. The words sounded like Elvish but larded with unintelligible phrases and garbled by a truly barbarous accent. Favaronas couldn’t tell whether Faeterus was reading the foul-sounding stuff from the scroll or simply talking to himself. Frankly, he no longer cared. His lust for knowledge and his resolve to stop Faeterus had died beneath the sorcerer’s effortless cruelty. All he wanted was to escape and warn his people. Perhaps the Speaker could send his warriors to overcome the sorcerer. Maybe it was already too late. For all Favaronas knew, Faeterus could be reciting his final conjuration at that moment.
As he struggled to yank dead wood from a narrow roc crevice, he tried to remember the verse Faeterus had recite from the ancient scroll. He had an excellent memory, trained by decades of practice. He ceased trying to free the piece
Did the first line mean the release of the valley’s power had to take place after sunset?
“Sun’s black eye” sounded like an eclipse, but there were no eclipses expected for many months.
Favaronas shuddered. That certainly sounded like a goal Faeterus would embrace.
More obscurity. If the Holy Key was “broken” (whatever that meant), would life be restored or forever blotted out?
Although Favaronas didn’t know it, his theories about the valley were running along the same lines as his Speaker’s: that it was the location of the Pit of Nemith-Otham, where five dragon- stones containing the essence of five evil dragons had been buried. The stones had been dug up later, but Favaronas thought it logical that their power could infect the area where they had lain.
The walk back to the bonfire was a long one. Every strike of his heel jarred like a blow. Faeterus had stopped mumbling. He sat silent, chin on his chest. Favaronas’s footsteps slowed, grew more stealthy. If Faeterus were asleep, he might have a chance to get away. He circled wide of the unmoving sorcerer and wondered how to dispose quietly of the wood cradled in his arms.
“Put it on the fire.”
He jerked in surprise, dropping several pieces of wood. He snatched them up and deposited the entire bundle next to the fire.
“Fall down,” Faeterus said, quite matter-of-fact, and all feeling left Favaronas’s legs. He dropped flat on his back. His legs weren’t fused together, but they were paralyzed. Unable to sit up, he rolled over onto his stomach and began dragging himself across the rock ledge. Faeterus chuckled.
“Save your strength. Before the sun sets again, you will see the greatest release of power since the Cataclysm. You wouldn’t want to miss that. As a royal archivist of Qualinesti, surely you want to witness firsthand the final obliteration of the elf race?”
The paralysis in Favaronas’s legs was creeping upward. His belly went numb. With a last, desperate heave, he rolled himself onto his back so he might see the brilliant sky before all went dark.
