“The chair is empty.”
The familiar voice jolted through her like a bolt of lightning. She turned. Standing a short distance away was her husband. Face pale, white hair blowing in the breeze, Gilthas resembled nothing so much as one of the ghosts of Inath-Wakenti.
The Lioness covered the distance between them in three long strides and seized him by the arms. He was no ghost. He returned her bruising grip and pulled her close for a kiss so fierce, it left both of them shaken.
“You’re alive,” he whispered, and she laughed through tears, so perfectly had he echoed her own thoughts. She touched his face to reassure herself.
Standing straight and proud, all signs of suffering gone, for the first time in a long time, Gilthas was himself. The only lingering physical trace of his brush with death was his hair. Rather than returning to its natural blond shade, it was snowy white.
He took half a step back from her, the mantle of kingship descending on him again but his eyes remained warm and loving.
“Your mission was a success?”
“So it would seem,” she said wryly.
A frown touched his face. It lasted only a moment. There would be time enough later to learn exactly what had happened. He gestured at the multitude around them. “As you see, we endured.”
“You always do,” she said, and it was the elf nation she meant.
He held out a hand to her. “Well, someone has to look after you-you and the next Speaker within you.”
Chapter 21
The camp was a shambles. But if their worldly goods had suffered, every elf felt reborn.
All had been restored to excellent health. Wounds from the war in the desert and injuries acquired from the harsh, daily battle for survival healed outright. Sicknesses endemic to the population since the fall of their homelands-afflictions such as pox, ague, and consumption-were banished. Even greater miracles were recorded. Lost faculties returned. Deafness and blindness were cured. So were madness and despair. Oddly, elves who had lost arms and legs fighting the nomads did not have these restored, but those who lost eyes to arrows or to the poisonous flies so common in the desert found those organs grown anew. The great healing followed a logic and law of its own. Many tried to fathom the Great Change (as it came to be called), but no one understood it.
Eager to explore the new-made valley, Gilthas sent scouting parties out on horseback and afoot immediately. Most were charged with finding food, and they returned quickly, their hampers overflowing. Apples, pears, grapes, and berries of every sort grew in abundance, as did wild onions, various greens, and many kinds of nuts. Sage, rosemary, basil, and other herbs grew in broad swaths like green lakes. A profusion of crops, which naturally ripened at different times during the year, had been created instantly. Mounted hunters brought back venison, rabbit, and squab and reported sighting bears, although the creatures had been extinct in central Ansalon since the First Cataclysm. One band of warriors returned driving a shaggy aurochs before them. The presence of wild oxen in the valley meant there would be not just meat, but leather too.
Water birds proved especially abundant. Flocks of geese and pintail darkened the sun as they passed over the camp. Swans and loons populated the lakeshores. Ponds and streams teemed with fish. Honeybees swarmed the fields of blossoms. Soon there would be wax, honey, and later, mead.
Other finds, seemingly less dramatic, were of equal import. Flax was discovered growing wild. The elves would be able to make linen again. The valley was filled with tall, sturdy hardwoods of the most useful species, including oak, walnut, ash, and yew. In the shade beneath the trees sprouted fantastic mushrooms, twice normal size. Every variety, from the delicate pink shell mushroom to the rare subterranean blacknut, was as common as weeds in a summer garden. The more widely the elves searched, the greater the bounty they discovered.
The valley’s riches were being catalogued by Varanas and the scribes. Vixona Delambro, who had demonstrated her mapping ability in the tunnels, was commissioned by the Speaker to map the entire valley. Gilthas intended to send a warrior with her, to aid in her work and protect her from wild animals. Before he could designate an elf for the task, however, one volunteered: Hytanthas Ambrodel. In the months to come, the two would be gone for days at a time, either on horseback or mounted on Hytanthas’s griffon, Kanan. It surprised no one when warrior and scribe eventually married.
To Kerian, the change wrought in Gilthas was more amazing than the entire litany of wonders they had found thus far. Every trace of the horrible disease had been cleansed from his body, leaving him thin but vigorous.
An equally vigorous appetite soon returned the flesh to his bones. It was almost as though, having been more ill than anyone else, he was granted the greatest healing. He positively glowed with vitality. It shone from him like some invisible aura. He seemed unaware of it, but Kerian found it nearly unbearable. When he was near, his presence intoxicated her like a draft of the most potent nectar. When he touched her, she felt almost sick with love. Even the slight contact he considered proper in public left her shaken.
They were in public at that moment, awaiting the arrival of the human prisoner Jeralund. The setting had been carefully staged. A light canopy had been erected near the northern bank of Lioness Creek, in a meadow awash in bluebells. All the newfound bounty of the valley was piled beneath the canopy. In the center of it all, the Speaker of the Sun and Stars sat in a tall wooden chair. Although hastily finished and intended as only a temporary throne, the chair was strikingly beautiful, made from a single piece of ash and embellished by carvings of intertwined oak and ash leaves. Elves skilled in wood shaping had invested each detail with loving care, relishing the chance not only to serve their king, but to practice their art for the first time in years.
Kerian watched her husband twirl an ash twig in his fingers. The shield-shaped foliage reminded her of the falls of leaves they had encountered in Khur on more than one occasion. For a long time, the presence of Faeterus had colored her view of any magic they encountered. Finally she understood the sorcerer was only one of the sources of magic that had been at work around them. The falls of ash leaves had been caused by another. Gilthas had told her of the strange rain of edible ash leaves which had saved the nation from starvation in the desert. The powerful force that had intervened to save Alhana’s life at Redstone Bluffs may have been a third. Whatever their source, the different magics seemed to have counter-acted each other, allowing the elves to win through.
Gilthas let the ash twig drop from his hands as the human prisoner arrived. Jeralund gaped at the bounty arranged around the throne.
Gilthas ordered his bonds removed then asked politely, “Are you well?”
Jeralund said he was. The Great Change had healed his relatively minor injuries too.
“Have you any reason to complain of your treatment here?”
“No, Speaker.”
Gilthas leaned back in his chair and gestured for Jeralund to help himself from a nearby bowl of fruit. Drink was brought. Soon the sergeant was sipping rich red berry juice.
“Although you were the consort of an assassin, I have chosen to parole you.”
Jeralund choked on a mouthful of juice. Gilthas had had his suspicions about the human-plainly a soldier and not the type to enter Inath-Wakenti on his own. Kerian’s description of the killing of Faeterus smacked of a Nerakan plot. The sergeant’s reaction confirmed that theory. Exactly why the Order wanted Faeterus dead, Gilthas didn’t know.
“I release you for one purpose: to return to your masters and tell them what you have seen here.”
Jeralund wiped juice from his lips. He regarded the Speaker thoughtfully for a moment then repeated, “Tell them what I have seen?”
“In every detail. I wish it known in Neraka that we have recovered from our time in Khur. Tell them of our new strength and our new riches; then tell them to darken our doorstep no more.”
With freedom in his hands, Jeralund did an odd thing. He spoke the truth.
“Why should the lords of Neraka heed your command, Speaker?” he said. “Why shouldn’t they gather their armies and seize this fertile land for themselves?”
Gilthas glanced at Kerian. The Great Change had healed her griffon’s eye, and Eagle Eye stood like a fierce
