Destiny

pinnacle at the extreme end of the ledge. It was fully six feet long and covered with dark reddish-brown fur. The upright ears of a cat were oddly mixed with the muzzle, brow, and liquid eyes of a canine. Its forelegs were half again as long as its stubby rear legs. Adala’s approach set it to snarling, revealing long, yellow teeth.

“Kill it,” Adala commanded.

The archer loosed. The arrow was tipped with a hunting point, shaped like two miniature swords crossed. It flew straight and true at the creature’s chest. The beast held its place until the arrow was an arm’s length away then snatched the shaft from midair. Shocked by its uncanny speed, the nomads only then saw that its front paws were articulated like fingers.

The men uttered oaths, Adala did not. “Spears!” she ordered. “Spit that monster!”

Riders crowded forward. Half a dozen iron spear points bored in. The creature dropped the arrow and lowered its chin to the stone.

“Do… not… “it rasped.

The attackers halted in shock.

“Did you speak?” Adala demanded.

Black tongue lolling, the beast nodded, a bizarrely human gesture. “Do… not… kill… me,” it said, brown eyes never leaving Adala’s face.

Mother of the Weya-Lu was not known for indecision. Summoning the strength of her maita she ordered the men to fall back. Tamid protested, but she cut him off.

“Withdraw, I say. Those on High will not allow me to be hurt.”

Grumbling all the while, the men turned their horses and moved to the far end of the ledge. There they halted. Despite her urging, they would go no farther. Several kept bows in hand, arrows nocked, just in case.

“You have faith,” the beast said. It spoke slowly, each word seeming to require great effort.

“Who are you?”

The creature slunk off the pinnacle. Crawling on its belly, it halted five feet from Adala. Little Thorn trembled violently but did not bolt. Adala heard bowstrings creak to full draw behind her, but she kept her attention fixed on the creature. She repeated her question.

The creature answered, and Adala’s mouth fell open. “How did this come about?” she demanded.

The beast stared at her for a long moment then rubbed its head on the ground. Its frustration was pathetic. Clearly it speaking abilities were not up to answering her question. Once more she made a swift decision.

“You will come with us. If you behave as the person you claim to be, all will be well. But if I find out you’re lying, I’ll have you skinned alive.”

The nomads at the other end of the ledge stared in amazement as she approached, passed, and descended the steep hill with the weird monster tamely loping at Little Thorn’s heels. Despite all they’d been through with her, Adala Fahim still had the power to amaze. Her maita was indeed more powerful than any wicked spell. They trailed her back to camp under a sky aflame with sunset. High clouds covered the western third of the sky, and they blaze ruby and gold, strange to nomad eyes accustomed to the pristinely clear vault over the deep desert.

None of them could know the whirlwind of questions that raged behind the serene face Adala allowed the world to see.

The new wonder had set her mind spinning. Why had Those on High delivered into her hands a monster claiming to be Shobbat, Crown Prince of Khur?

Chapter 3

Far into the night, Gilthas listened to scribes reading from ancient chronicles of the elf kingdoms. He couldn’t yet make out the whole story of Inath-Wakenti. Like a mosaic viewed from too close, those fragments of truth he had wouldn’t resolve into a pattern. Every time a pattern seemed to be emerging, it fell apart when examined too rigorously.

He lay on his pallet, back propped against a rolled rug, listening to the Leaves of the Sacred Grove of E’li. Although Silvanesti, not Qualinesti, was the first of the elf nations, the clerics of E’li in Qualinost had in their archive some of the oldest records of the elf race. They had been carried out of Silvanost at the end of the Kinslayer War, when Kith-Kanan led his followers westward to found Qualinesti. Kith-Kanan’s brother, Speaker of the Stars Sithas, was furious when he learned the ancient scrolls had left his realm. Wars had been started over less, but Kith-Kanan, newly anointed Speaker of the Sun, sent back the documents to appease Sithas’ anger. As Kith-Kanan had hoped, his twin never noticed the returned scrolls were copies. Kith-Kanan had kept the originals in a special archive. The yellowed parchment scrolls were a thousand miles from either country, being read to first king of the combined elf nations. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars had abandoned much on the march to Inath-Wakenti, but not the ancient annals of his race.

Gilthas had charged one scribe with the sole duty of keeping a list of the Speaker’s ideas on the subject. Eventually, Gilthas was sure, answers would appear.

“Varanas,” he said to that scribe, “read back my list of questions.”

The elf held the scroll up to the wavering lamplight. “ ‘First: Inath-Wakenti has a connection to the gods. Is it where some of them first set foot in the world? Is it where they dwelt? Second: The Chronicles of Silvanos say the five dragonstones were buried in the Pit of Nemith-Otham in the northern mountains. Is Inath-Wakenti the location of this pit, and might residual magic remain, though the stones themselves are gone?’”

The dragonstones containing the essences of the five original evil dragons, had been buried after the First Dragon War. Dwarves dug them up, inadvertently releasing the dragons and starting the Second Dragon War. The scribe Varanas swallowed hard. The notion that even the dregs of such evil might lie beneath their feet was extremely unsettling.

Gilthas prompted him to continue.

“‘Third: Neither the first nor second proposition explains the valley’s hostility to animal life or the identities of its ghosts. Fourth: Are the will-o’-the-wisps the valley’s defenders or its last inhabitants, and is there a way to nullify or eliminate them?’”

Gilthas lifted a hand, and Varanas to ponder what he had heard.

None of the old histories mentioned the strange will-o’-the-wisps. But other annals recounting past ages of elf greatness did contain references to spirits set to guard enemies of the state, enemies too well connected to kill. Speaker Silvanos would exile them to distant points in his realm, and they would be watched over by ever-vigilant sentinels created and maintained by magic.

Two of the most famous exiles in Silvanos’s time were Balif and the wizard Vedvedsica A dark scandal had rocked the latter days of the Speaker’s reign. Vedvedsica a retainer of Lord Balif, the commander of the Speaker’s armies, had been tied to unnatural and horrifying doings and was sent away to a northern outpost-perhaps Inath- Wakenti? After Sithel succeeded to the throne, Lord Balif left Silvanesti under a cloud and Vedvedsica returned. His presence was kept secret, but Sithel consulted him on matters of the gravest import, such as when the queen gave birth to twin sons.

Many questions remained unanswered. Gilthas had no one among his followers with the skill and power of a sorcerer such as Vedvedsica. After the fall of Qualinost, the Knights of Neraka had made a special point of eliminating priests and sages of the highest rank. Assassins from the Black Hall had roamed occupied Qualinesti, killing elves who had magical knowledge and ability. The only sages remaining in Gilthas’s service were lesser clerics, natural healers (such as Truthanar), and a handful of learned scholars. And the very best of those, the royal archivist Favaronas, had vanished with the rest of Kerian’s original expedition to the valley.

A different cause denied Gilthas any sages from Silvanesti. The occupying minotaurs suppressed them but took no special pains to root them out. Long before the bull-men landed on the sacred shores, Silvanesti priests and magicians had been driven underground by the Chaos War. As far as was known, they remained underground, hidden in the green fastness o the woodlands.