The snow was smooth and pristine, save for the elf-light tracks she left behind. The murmuring pines and hemlocks had fallen quiet under their newly made garments of white. Yes, even the sad, old voices of the so-called 'elder druids' of the forest were speechless in the morning's wonder. Or so Janesta fancied.
And-
She spied a set of lone prints! Another early explorer, like her. Not a fellow from the encampment-it was a wildling of the forest.
She pursued the trail uphill, skirting an icy boulder field, staying beneath the canopy of oak branches. The prints were only partly familiar; certainly a big cat, but one new to the area, or at least new to her. The snowfall made following easy, but Janesta still practiced her forestcraft; she examined broken foliage, measured the length between prints, moved as quietly as she was able. When she saw a patch of disturbed snow, she dug up a shallowly buried cache of spoor.
It was a cougar after all, one from eastern Yuirwood. It had wandered close to the encampment. Janesta decided to stay on the trail to see if she could track it to its lair, if it had one. She suspected it might be a female, hungry to feed new cubs. If so, perhaps she would bring down a bird to help supplement its diet.
As she examined a spot where it had circled a stump, probably to mark its scent, she heard the first horns.
High, piercing, strangely thrilling. . but ominous for their unfamiliarity. They sounded like something described in a shaman's tale, something that warlike humans beyond the Yuirwood might produce on their metallic instruments. She frowned and turned toward home.
The sudden cries and screams that broke under the calling horns jolted Janesta into a run.
When the huntress reached her village under the snow-bowed canopy, she couldn't understand what transpired before her eyes-the scene was too far outside her experience for comprehension.
Humans-no, elves. . elves! Not wood elves like her tribe, or high elves she'd glimpsed on the Yuirwood's borders, nor even half-elves. Strange, steely eyed elves on mailed steeds. They were everywhere, surrounding the village, cantering through the center circle, sweeping down the side avenues. Resplendent in mail so fair it could only be mithral, the newcomer elves assailed her home without mercy.
Surprised and beset on all sides, wood elves died.
She saw friends taken in the back by scything swords. Others were pushed from high bowers by cruelly aimed arrows. A group that sought to flee beneath the boughs was ridden down by flashing hooves. Slender blades cut screaming throats. Dying children cried out to their parents, husbands to their wives. Janesta saw her friend Natal Peacethorn pulled from his home, shrieking. Her brother's wife Sarana was felled with two arrows. The monument stone that had stood three full tendays since the encampment's hopeful founding was toppled and smashed. Five hunters attempted to drag away wounded, but they were ridden down for their efforts.
Janesta was witnessing a heartless slaughter, nothing less. What courage she always assumed was hers failed; she shrank back into the undergrowth, all strength stolen from chilled, clammy limbs.
She turned, swearing, crying, hating herself, and ran blindly through the snowy woods, careful to keep her feet light and sliding, leaving as little sign as her snowcraft allowed. If she were to survive the annihilation of her home at the hands of these strange, steel-eyed elves, cowardice was her only option.
At first she ran without goal, holding no thought other than escape. As the heat of her exertion warmed her, a seed of fury blossomed, burning at the loss through which she labored. She adjusted her direction and set her course. She was bound for Relkath's Foot, one of the largest communities of wood elves in all the Yuirwood. There she would tell her story, pour out her anger, and gather a force. Only vengeance could sate her loss.
She would go to Relkath's Foot and alert the Masters of the Yuirwood.
The image of stern-faced elves in shining, blood-slicked mail maddened her. The kin-slaying elves hadn't dropped from the sky, nor were their horses lathered as if from a long ride. They had appeared from somewhere not far from the encampment. After she put a few miles of forest behind her, thinking all the while, Janesta was pretty sure from where.
On the edge of a pocket reality, a massive gate loomed, cold and gray, a lattice of strange script and tiny cracks bespeaking hundreds of years of weathering.
Telarian waited for Brathtar just inside the great stone gates that opened onto the mist-shrouded Causeway. Telarian often stood thus, year in and year out. The chiseled granite of the gate's face was as familiar as a friend. The Keeper knew every edge, every crack, every discoloration. Moreover, he was more than familiar with the inscriptions, sigils, and glyphs so prominently displayed. They warned of danger and death for any who entered uninvited, in a variety of tongues and alphabets:
This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. . nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is present in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the world, and it can erase all life, overwriting all with abomination.
The danger may be unleashed if this place is disturbed. Shun this place. Turn around.
The warnings were not endowed with magical force capable of steering away the curious, but danger would certainly befall any who ignored the warnings and ventured into the shadowed Grand Vestibule.
On more than one occasion in the long history of Stardeep, the gates had withstood attacks by fools loyal to the Traitor, who had discovered his prison despite all the effort of hiding his location. But neither those ancient attacks, nor all the time that had since elapsed had discernibly weakened the facade. Stardeep's entrance stood strong and patient, capable of repelling anything thrown its way.
Above the gate was scribed the massive symbol of a strangely curving tree: Stardeep's emblem. Around the white tree was a circular field that glowed and flickered with bluish fire. Though of late, to Telarian's eyes, the fire seemed darker, sootier perhaps.
Telarian watched as the commander and his men slowly filed back across the hazy land bridge, as if resolving from imagination into reality. The men didn't speak to each other, or look up to salute the Keeper, as was his due. Desolation hung in their slack postures and in their limp hold on their reins.
Telarian recognized they had followed his orders.
Commander Brathtar brought up the column's rear, his mail dimmed by a sheen of dried blood. Behind him, the Causeway faded into the encroaching mist, hidden or truly dissolved, Telarian did not know. Either way, it would return when next bidden by Cynosure or him, and again provide a connection between Stardeep and the Yuirwood.
Brathtar reined up and fixed Telarian with a glassy stare. Some indefinable essence was missing in the man; he seemed anchorless. The Keeper regretted the change he saw, but neither pity nor concern were his to dispense. Brathtar's actions had been required, an important element of his delicate plan. Sacrifices were necessary if so much more was to be saved. What was the blood of dozens compared to the souls of all the world?
Brathtar said, 'The encampment is cleansed, Keeper. The dissidents who planned the attack you described are. . no more.'
'Your service is greater than you can know, Commander. Well done.'
The elf commander cleared his throat, dropped his eyes for a moment. He had more to say.
'What is it?'
'As we cleaned up, one of my Knights found a trail. Someone escaped the encampment. We gave chase, but lost the track.'
Telarian sensed something fall away into the suddenly yawning void of his mind. He hadn't foreseen a survivor. Over the sudden roaring in his ears he asked, too loud, 'Are you certain?'
Brathtar nodded.
The noise in his ears grew louder, not unlike the horns he tested on occasion in the Outer Bastion. How. .? Where. .? But. . Telarian fumbled for reassurance as the floor of his certainty threatened to fall away. His gloved hand found the pommel of brooding Nis.
The horns ceased. Lucidity was restored, and with it, calm acceptance as wide as the untroubled Sea of Fallen Stars.
