The commander turned his horse’s head back toward camp.
Despite the encounter with the bounty hunter, the real story of the night was the success of Sa’ida’s blessed water. General Hamaramis must be told how well it had worked. The riders followed their leader out of the grove of monoliths.
The water was meeting with similar success in camp. Even after the liquid soaked into the ground, the barrier persisted. Will-o’-the-wisps approached the camp, came to the line drawn in the soil, and halted. They meandered up and down, left and right, but none could advance an inch farther. Everyone was delighted and the children acted upon their jubilation. Standing safely inside the line, they flung stones and dirt clods at the will-o’- the-wisps. The lights were not easy targets, dodging nimbly away from the projectiles, but when a lucky child did connect, the will-o’-the-wisp staggered in flight.
Hamaramis was drawn by the children’s loud cheers. To their disappointment, he ordered an end to their merriment.
None knew how long the spell would work, he said sternly, and there was no sense antagonizing the lights. He could not be everywhere, however, and the teasing and harassment of the will-o’-the-wisps continued all around the camp.
As the night progressed, more and more lights arrived. By midnight, hundreds drifted around the camp beyond the invisible barrier. Word spread, and elves were roused from sleep to witness the spectacle. The lights represented every color of the rainbow, from deepest purple to pale green to fiery red. White was the commonest hue, and those tended to be the largest will-o’-the-wisps. The lights ebbed and flowed along the barrier like schools of bright fish. Sometimes a pair would put on a burst of blinding speed and chase each other skyward in an ever- tightening spiral. At the apex of the spiral, the pair would collide, and only one would survive. The other disappeared.
The noise in camp roused Sa’ida. Blinking against the torchlight, she emerged from her tent. The festive atmosphere did not please her. After donning her cloak, she stopped the first warrior she saw and demanded to be taken to Hamaramis. The old general was on the east side of camp, halting yet another group of children from throwing pebbles at the lights.
“This must stop!” Sa’ida said, hurrying up to him. “It’s very dangerous!”
He gave her a look of deep frustration. “We’ve been trying to stop it. The children-”
“Never mind the children! The lights are massing for a reason. They’re trying to overcome the ward placed around camp!”
“What can we do?”
Sa’ida brushed the tangled hair from her face. “Is there any of the blessed water left?”
Three clay pots set aside for late-night patrols were brought to her. She asked that more water be drawn for her to bless. Hamaramis sent out the order then accompanied the priestess and two dozen warriors to the monolith the Speaker had overturned.
Most of those responding to Hamaramis’s call fanned out to search the camp for extra water, but three elves, thinking to save time, took up buckets and rushed toward the spring. Unfortunately it lay outside the warded area. The celebratory air in camp had caused them to forget the very real danger posed by the will-o’-the-wisps at night. Standing atop the toppled monolith, Sa’ida saw their peril and shouted a warning, but the three had already stepped outside the barrier and they were swarmed by dozens of lights. All three disappeared instantly, without time even to cry out. Shocked, the noisy crowd fell silent.
“No one goes across the line!” Hamaramis roared. It was not an order he had to repeat.
Sa’ida had sent for straw brooms. These arrived, and the two dozen warriors were ready. Veteran soldiers, bronzed by the brutal sun of Khur and bearing the scars of combat, they felt faintly ridiculous facing a foe armed only with brooms. Sa’ida made it plain their task was serious. The overturned monolith was near the edge of camp and, thus, near the protective barrier. Each warrior dipped a broom in the water and swung it in a wide arc, flinging droplets at the will-o’-the-wisps massed only yards away.
The first salvo claimed a dozen lights. They vanished in a flare of sparks. The others ceased moving, hanging utterly still in midair. Many emitted a faint buzzing sound.
Sa’ida called for the warriors to resume their efforts, and I the motionless lights were easy targets. They succumbed in great numbers. More water arrived. The buckets and ewers were handed up to Sa’ida to be consecrated to Elir-Sana. While she worked, the noise from the will-o’-the-wisps intensified. All were buzzing and the sound grew so loud, it distracted the priestess. She had to begin her incantation all over again.
The soldiers continued flinging water at the lights. The largest, brightest lights ceased buzzing. First one, then a handful, then dozens soared into the night sky, blazing brightly. When they’d ascended several hundred feet, the remaining lights joined them, and the entire assemblage shot upward until it disappeared among the stars.
A profoundly stunned silence blanketed the elf camp. Then a single voice shouted, “Long live Sa’ida! Long live the high priestess!” Thousands took up the cry.
Robe soaked (one of the water pots had spilled) and looking more harassed than heroic, Sa’ida was as amazed as anyone by the departure of the lights.
“Are they
She nodded. By her special sense of such things, the priestess knew that not a single will-o’-the-wisp remained in Inath-Wakenti.
A group of elves raised a clamor at the foot of the overturned monolith. They were kin of the three who had disappeared while trying to reach the spring, and they wanted the tunnels searched immediately for their lost loved ones. The frame still stood above the hole at the base of the monolith, and despite a guard’s efforts to pull him back, the brother of one of the newly vanished elves clung to the frame and shouted frantically down into the hole.
Hamaramis was trying to address the elves’ demands when the sentinels guarding the camp’s perimeter raised a warning.
The ghosts were coming.
Sa’ida had seated herself on the other end of the monolith. She jumped up with creditable agility and hurried to Hamaramis’s end of the slab. Looking west, she could see ranks of pale, translucent specters appearing from the cover of trees and other monoliths. The spirits were no more numerous than usual, but they moved with slow determination directly toward the camp.
“I feared this,” Sa’ida murmured. She held her hands down to the warriors standing by the monolith. Two soldiers helped her descend. “General, without the guardians, the spirits are free to roam at will. They’re drawn to the living. They’ll move among us, bring panic, melancholy, even madness, if we allow it.”
Hamaramis paled. “Allow it? What can we do? More water-?”
“The dead are beyond the goddess’s blessings.”
“Then what?” he demanded.
The beloved of Elir-Sana responded to his frightened anger briefly and with formidable calm. When she’d finished explaining what must be done, the old general dispatched warriors to ride through camp and spread the word. Everyone was to retire inside their tents, close the flaps, and admit no one. The dead couldn’t enter a home closed to them unless they were invited. That was the prevailing theory, anyway. Sa’ida couldn’t be certain it would hold true for flimsy tents and the spirits inhabiting the “Refuge of the Damned,” as Inath-Wakenti was known in the texts of her goddess.
“How long?” the general asked.
“Until sunrise. I pray the new light of day will banish the spirits, at least until night falls again.”
Hamaramis insisted she must pass the night with the Speaker’s household. Her lone tent was too exposed. She accepted the invitation and urged haste. Leading elements of the ghostly horde were halfway to the camp.
The sides of the Speaker’s tent had been drawn down. Only the main door flap remained open, and the last members of Gilthas’s household were hurrying inside. Hamaramis delayed to watch as elves hurried into shelter. Warriors led their horses into corrals. Parents scooped up straggling children. In moments the camp’s many paths were deserted.
The old general held back the heavy tapestry that served as the door flap to the Speaker’s tent and gestured for Sa’ida to precede him.
“What exactly will they do?” he asked.
“What ghosts always do. Haunt us.”
