an echo of the Yuirwood itself spun into starshine and dusk through mighty craft of old.
Since the creation of Sild?yuir, the star elves had slowly slipped farther and farther from Faer?n, leaving the daylight world to its own devices. Some still traveled through the old elfgates and roamed Aglarond or the Inner Sea, but they passed themselves off as elves of other regions, and did not speak of their homeland to strangers. And of the star elves that remained in Sild?yuir, only a fraction cared enough for the Cerulean Sign to take up its practice. Had his mother been one?
The monk considered the moment, tendays past, when he'd fought Chun, a member of the Nine Golden Swords, in the Shou Town streets. His mental discipline allowed him to perfectly picture the moment he'd retrieved the daito from Chun's limp grasp. He'd clutched his grandfather's blade, raising it in a salute. On that day the honor of his family had been restored. And on that day he quit his old life, lest Nine Golden Swords vengeance find him.
If he hadn't retrieved the daito but instead turned his back on family honor, as would have been the far easier road, Shou Town would yet be his home. Perhaps he would even now be called master by fledgling students in Xiang Temple, and by old Shou merchants in the colonnaded bazaar he walked past each day. A safe life, if honorless. A familiar life, if without meaning or purpose.
Looking back, he couldn't find a time when he'd pondered the two possibilities, then decided between them. He'd never considered not reclaiming the daito. And once free of Shou Town, on what course other than finding his vanished mother could he have embarked?
From Raidon's perspective, he rode a narrow river of fate. On it he rushed, sometimes through rapids, other times on calm water, but always too swiftly for him to pause. While it was his grandfather's daito that seemed to precipitate his exit from Telflamm, he suspected the origin of his current circumstance was his mother's forget- me-not. He'd learned it possessed a mysterious power. Perhaps that power had reached out and guided the threads of his destiny.
Now fate was drawing him toward a realm few knew existed, a realm Kiril claimed was synonymous with eldritch beauty, a land of perpetual twilight illuminated only by glittering stars. She said the star elves dwelled there in glass citadels. He looked forward to seeing that.
Then there was his forget-me-not. Not merely a reminder of maternal affection, but apparently an object whose power could prove useful against monsters. Was it fate, serendipity, or cruel chance that pulled him into an age-old conflict? A conflict in which the enemy was shrouded in an evil so cruel it eclipsed the Nine Golden Swords as a mountain overwhelms a pebble.
They'd spent a bitterly cold night sheltering from another snowfall beneath the downward branches of a mighty conifer. Adrik had gathered several cones and exclaimed over their novelty. Only Xet seemed to care.
Today they'd walked only a few miles when Kiril said something in a language he didn't know.
The swordswoman stood at the base of a snowy slope crowned with evergreens and massive boulders. The confluence of boulders and boles created, from a particular perspective, an inviting cavity.
'This is an entrance to Sild?yuir,' said Kiril.
'I thought all the gates were magically scribed menhirs,' pondered Adrik.
The woman shrugged, 'Stab me if I know. This one isn't.' Raidon and Adrik followed as she headed up the slope. She paused when she stood between two of the veined, snow-dusted boulders.
'How does this damn thing function again?' Kiril muttered. With uncertainty writ plainly across her features, she traced a series of geometrical signs in the air as she spoke several words unfamiliar to Raidon.
'Something's happening,' reported Adrik, his hands out before him. 'A magical charge comes into alignment. .'
Kiril finished speaking and a silvery light flared in the cavity between the boulders. 'The gate is open. Welcome to the realm of the star elves.' She walked into the gap, Xet sitting quietly on her shoulder. As she moved, whirling shadows leaped and spun from the boulders. As the shadows proliferated, she became harder to discern, while her tracks in the snow became shallower by the step. When Kiril reached the center of the hollow, she was nothing but a fading shadow, and a moment later, completely absent.
Raidon and Adrik looked at each other. Adrik yelled, in fear or exultation, Raidon could not determine, and plunged into the hollow. Gone.
The monk, surprised to note a faint tinge of nausea, walked forward.
A handful of heartbeats passed in silence. Of those who had walked ahead and disappeared from the Yuirwood, no sign remained. A two-legged shadow slid from behind a boulder and dashed into the hollow, one hand bare, the other gloved with a bound demon.
To Raidon, it seemed day plunged into night's darkling gates. In the extravagant sky revealed, cloudless and crystal clear, all the stars of the cosmos seemed crowded. Heaven's span glittered with a million points of sparkling light, diamond white, ruby red, emerald, sapphire, and citrine. He saw circular clusters and bands of light that, when he focused on them, revealed themselves as millions of yet tinier brilliant points. Streamers of glowing nebulae poured and frothed across the firmament, mingling within them all the colors of existence.
The monk gasped, realizing he hadn't drawn breath for many heartbeats as he stood transfixed, staring upward.
The dragonet darted above them, diving and soaring, chirping bell-like tones of wonder. When it occluded a star, its crystalline body flashed sapphire, green, or red. Xet's antics broke the spell, and Raidon dropped his gaze from the entrancing heights.
Raidon stood in a half-forested valley whose opposing ridges spread away from each other as if the land itself had thrown wide arms to embrace the glorious sky. A pearl gray glow clung to the horizons, as if promising the first hints of dawn. A promise that would never be met, according to Kiril. The valley, glimmering and dreamy in the brilliant starlight, had left winter behind, or perhaps had never known it. A stream burbled through the valley, sparkling.
He breathed and smelled an odor not unlike dawn's promise, rich with growing things. It was cool, but not cold.
'Incredible!' repeated Adrik every few heartbeats. The sorcerer was turning in a slow circle, his head bobbing up and down as he sought to absorb it all.
Kiril said, 'Enough sightseeing. Take it all in as we walk. We have a fair march ahead of us.'
The sorcerer asked, 'Will we see a glass castle? And meet any star elves? I mean, besides you?'
The swordswoman merely grunted, 'Could be. There're fewer of us than there used to be.' She walked toward a far ridge, paralleling the stream.
The monk yearned to demand an answer to Adrik's question. Instead he concentrated on finding his focus. The shock of bodily traveling to this alien place, coupled with the thought that his mother might be close.. well, truth to tell he was too much in the grip of the moment, not apart from it. He wrapped the lessons of Xiang around himself and followed. Adrik skipped along behind, stopping every ten heartbeats to marvel at some newly revealed celestial phenomena, then running to catch up, jabbering with a child's unrestrained wonder.
As he walked, Raidon was mostly successful in keeping his gaze below the trees' crowns, away from the captivating sky. The otherworldly landscape was somehow bound to the Yuirwood; he could see the connection in the way the starry realm's forests and hills matched the landscape he recalled from the snow-speckled forest they'd left behind. The congruence was not perfect. Here the trees were taller and wider, and more majestic, silver- trunked with little undergrowth. Their smooth boles stretched in elegant lines, supporting a silvery green canopy.
Adrik's voice rang out, calling more questions after the swordswoman who stalked ahead. 'How wide a realm is Sild?yuir?' The sorcerer seemed oblivious of the dangerous mood that enveloped their new-met companion since they'd arrived.
Raidon saw the woman's hands clench, then loosen. She threw back over her shoulder, 'As large as the Yuirwood, no bigger.'
The sorcerer's brows knitted as he muttered something under his breath. Then, 'Nearly three hundred miles?'
Kiril made no reply. Instead she raised her hand and pointed at a stone bridge silvered with moss, and a partly paved path. Here and there, silver-green grass burst up through the loose paving stones, indicating the road's
