with a brief glance.
“Dangerous elves?”
“Elves… and others. Centaurs and giants, I’m certain. But there is something holding them together, driving them… and it is a force that resists even detection by druid magic.”
“But stay-I admit that you are making me think,” declared the elfwoman, her hand trembling slightly as she raised it before Miradel’s aged face. “Now explain something: You were going to tell me why you brought this warrior here.”
The druid took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I did it for your people,” she said to Belynda.
“For the elves? Why in the name of the Goddess would you do that?”
“Because,” Miradel said, and now her dark eyes turned to Natac, “you are needed to train the elves in the ways of battle… to teach them how to fight a war.”
F lames rose high around him and he saw Satan writhing against a desperate onslaught. The demon twisted and shrieked, helplessly suffering the torture of his righteous punishment. Slowly, inexorably, the valiant knight pressed forward with sword and staff… victory was there! And then that triumph slipped away from him in a gust of wind and a waft of smoke. The fiend had made his escape, and the knight was left alone, facing the enemy horde…
The dream had its own form, and it followed the pattern each time it tormented his sleep. Constructed from the events of Sir Christopher’s past, centuries distant, it wove a tale of temptation and failure, and it left alive the hope of redemption and triumph.
It always began with the same disaster: The Saracens attacked from ambush, striking from both ridges above a parched, arid valley. They caught twelve Knights Templar by surprise, slaughtering many of Sir Christopher’s companions with their short, lethal arrows. Only three of the twelve reached the great portals, the gates to sacred Jerusalem herself.
But the Saracens cut them off before they could enter the safety of the great fortress-city. Finally Sir Christopher stood alone, hacking to right and left, slaughtering his enemies for the glory of God. He prayed aloud, calling the names of his slain comrades, praising the bravery of his loyal, perished horse. Thirst was a claw at his swollen tongue, talons of fire ripping at his parched throat. His shield, emblazoned with the red cross of the Templars, was torn and broken under the onslaught of a hundred weapons.
His red blade was knocked from his hands. A Syrian lance pierced his flesh, slicing into his heart and lungs. In that instant he knew he was dying, and he commended his soul and his being to Heavenly Paradise. His life flowed away, spattered in crimson blood across the rocks of the Holy Land. In the last glimmer of awareness, he reached upward, sought and anticipated the welcoming embrace of God.
Instead, he found himself in the arms of Hell’s Harlot, a beautiful temptress who touched him shamelessly, bringing arousal from his traitorous flesh. At first he fought against her obscene advances, twisting and kicking fruitlessly in an attempt to escape her tender fingers, her soft lips. But his blows passed through her without effect, while her own gentle touch produced a pronounced reaction in the knight. His soul weakened, his flesh yielded, and the witch used him for her obscene pleasure.
And he, in that foggy weakness, he enjoyed the same carnal gratification. He ravished her as if she were the whore of Babylon, and he relished each salacious convulsion of his loins. Only when at last he lay exhausted, and she fell sound asleep, did he realize that he had been tested by God.
It was a test he had failed.
In his surging grief he strangled the harlot, but he knew that his vengeance was too late to cleanse his soul of sin. He staggered from her lair and found himself in a world of blasphemy… a world in which he had struggled and labored for more than three centuries.
And once again he awakened, and God’s work lay before him.
But now he had a tool, a talisman that would make that work so much more effective. As he did every morning, he reached to his breast, found the stone there, still suspended on its golden chain. He looked at the pearl, at its crimson cross, and understood again that he had been chosen for an important task. The red sigil on the stone was not a perfect cross, since all four of the lines were the same length. Even so, his discovery of the talisman in the possession of the heretical witch Caranor had convinced him anew that his work was here.
And so he emerged from his tent, ignored the stirring of his small army, and raised the stone toward the already bright sun.
“Come to me, Children of God,” he whispered, his fingers clenched around the pearl. “Come to me, and join my new crusade.”
7
The Road to Argentian
Coast of metal,
Silver crest,
Sweetwater stream and glade eternal.
Towers tall gardens blessed-
Argentian!
A home, a source a nest.
Despite the planned early departure, the homebound Argentian delegates needed most of the afternoon to cross the long causeway from Circle at Center to the lakeshore. Tamarwind wasn’t surprised that the homesick elves of his pastoral realm were ultimately reluctant to take leave of the city’s splendors. Indeed, the scout surprised himself with his own regrets, wistful thoughts centered on the woman with the delicate frame and the strong face. He had known her for centuries, had given her the seed that had created offspring, and yet during the last tenday she had made him feel like a giddy youth. The emotions were strong and unusual, but he liked them.
After the long causeway ended at the shore of the lake, the Avenue of Metal became the Metal Highway. Here Wiytstar, the chief delegate, suggested that the party find rooms in the splendid lakeshore inn. Though a long time remained until the Hour of Darken, the other Argentians quickly agreed. Ulfang, similarly being in no particular hurry, was content to swim in the pond among the birds that had given the hostelry its name.
The Blue Swan Inn rose above its own harbor. The place was a sprawling building of rough-hewn wood, with many lofty towers and beautiful gardens of blossoms and sculpted trees. Though of course it was run by elves, it was popular with druids, many of whom maintained boats in the anchorage. Just before the Hour of Darken Tamarwind enjoyed the sight of a dozen of these craft, each propelled by magical wind gusts, racing toward the lighthouse at the mouth of the harbor.
The next day they had a leisurely breakfast and started out by midmorning. The road quickly entered a large, straight tunnel, and the lake-with its island of green trees, marble buildings, and the Worldweaver’s Loom-slowly vanished into a small circle of daylight behind them.
Not that the tunnel was dark, of course. Globes of white light, enchanted balls created by sage- enchantresses a thousand years ago, floated just below the peak of the tunnel’s arched roof. These balls were spaced about once every hundred paces, but a full dozen of them seemed to attach themselves to the elven party and float overhead as they walked along.
“This tunnel was carved by goblins, two millennia ago or longer,” Tam explained to Ulf, who had commented on the generally smooth walls and straight pathway.
“Goblins?” Wiytstar overheard. “Aren’t they terribly dangerous when you get a large group of them together?”
“Not really,” Tamarwind replied. “They’re clannish, of course, but they can be very hard workers. Give them
