Several of the younger Kagonesti began to whimper, slipping and skidding on the steep slopes, unable to maintain the pace. Iydahoe took Faylai, the littlest girl, on his shoulders, bidding her to cling tightly to his neck. With each hand he took the tiny fist of another, leading them toward the element of safety, however small, that they might find above. The Silvanesti female also took the hands of younger elves, and Bakali, Kagwallas, and Dallatar aided their smaller tribemates.
They climbed through the long day, and when night fell, Iydahoe shouted and cajoled, convincing the elves that they needed to keep going. The clouds blocked even the pallor of the green sky, but the elves could see enough to scale the ascending slopes as the ghastly night filtered toward an eerie, still dawn.
Dawn of the thirteenth day, Iydahoe remembered.
Still they kept climbing, crossing the lower mountain ridges now, many thousands of feet above the sprawling forest lands and plains of Vingaard. High summits beckoned to the northeast, but Iydahoe steered the tribe due east, where the mountains flattened into miles of rolling, forested plateau. These woodlands had many trails, while the warrior knew that the summits to the north became a maze of canyons, cliffs, summits, and gorges.
'Look!' cried Bakali, suddenly crying out in horror as he jx)inted to the northeastern sky. The little tribe was filing across a clearing-a place incongruously studded with wildflowers-amid the pine forest of the plateau.
Iydahoe saw the wave rippling along the bottom surface of the oily cloud, as if a great stone had been plopped into the caldron of liquid he had earlier imagined. The eerie sky showed through that gap, an even more sinister shade of befoulment than before. The ground began to tremble, huge rocks cracking free from the higher cliffs. The elves staggered, riding a buckling carpet of supple, boulder-strewn turf, ground lacking all solidity and form.
Abruptly the sky shot through with brightness, green paling to blue and then to a harsh white light that seared Iydahoe's eyes and caused Vanisia to moan in pain. Children began to cry, but the warrior could only grip their hands tightly.
The subsequent explosion was impossibly, incredibly violent. The rocky ground convulsed, pitching them into the air. Iydahoe clutched the hands of his young tribe- mates, the group of them tumbling madly, momentarily weightless. He felt as though they could fall forever, and it was a strangely peaceful sensation.
The smash into the bucking ground brought him back to reality with cruel force. Stone gouged Iydahoe's face, and splitting pain racked his skull. He heard the youngsters crying, but for several agonizing moments his eyes brought him only a blur of bright lights and swirling colors-the images of his own pain, he knew.
Then came the onslaught of full, numbing fear-the knowledge that he had failed, that his tribe was doomed. How could he fight against this kind of power, world- racking might that could rock the very fundament of Krynn? Surely most of his tribe had been killed by this blast! He knew that he, himself, was broken, his body smashed to pulp.
'Let's go. Get up, Iydahoe!' He heard Vanisia pleading, but he couldn't move. Why should he? There was no hope.
He heard more crying, then-the terrified sobbing of many young voices. They came from all around him, and Iydahoe blinked. With a supreme effort, he lifted his head, seeing Kagwallas, Bakali-each cradling a pair of crying youngsters. Vanisia knelt beside Iydahoe, and when he moved, she reached out to touch his face.
'Who's hurt?' he groaned. 'How badly?'
He forced himself to look around, seeing past the white spots that still lingered in front of his eyes. The young elves of the tribe were scattered around him in the meadow. Some sat up while others huddled on the ground, crying. Two, the boy Dallatar and a younger girl, lay perfectly still amid the churned sod and rocks.
Then the girl, Tiffli, moaned and rubbed a hand across her face. Iydahoe and Vanisia went to Dallatar. The lad showed no sign of awareness, though his chest rose and fell weakly. In desperation, the warrior crawled to the frail form, while Vanisia and Bakali helped Tiffli to her feet.
But the forest stretched all around them, trees leaning crazily. The bleak clouds had closed in, concealing any view of the horizon or the sky. Which way should they go? There were no heights in view, no clue in the tangled woodland or shattered clearing to indicate where they had been headed before the quake had struck.
Iydahoe, for the first time in his life, was lost.
With that knowledge, he released the tiny shard of hope he had grasped-there was no way to escape this disaster. The tribe had no Pathfinder. He had tried to fill the role, had tried to be that which they needed him to be. He had desperately strived to perform tasks for which he was not prepared.
And he had failed.
Chapter 30
Despair wighed on Iydahoe, pinning him to the ground, a physical weight that overwhelmed his puny strength. Cataclysm had come to Ansalon, and he and his tribe would die as surely as any insects on a lightning- struck log. If another earthquake wracked the ground, the convulsion would kill the battered elves. Even if the ground remained still, Iydahoe was lost-how could he seek the heights of the Grandfather Ram when he lay directionless on this ruined plateau? Around them stretched a tangle of quake-racked forest. Progress would be painfully slow, perhaps impossible, in every direction.
Abruptly a glimmer of white showed through the chaos of broken trees. The brightness caught Iydahoe's eye-it seemed the only pure and wholesome thing in this nightmare of a day. Straining to rise, the wild elf found that his muscles worked again. Grimly, desperately, Iydahoe staggered to his feet and took several steps toward the wood.
'What is it?' asked Vanisia, while Bakali and Kagwallas looked at him curiously.
'There!' he croaked, as the white patch showed again.
Then he saw the head-huge, with the broad forehead a swath of alabaster fur. The huge, round eyes, soft and luminescent, studied him with a wisdom and compassion that moved Iydahoe to tears. Glowing pale yellow, those eyes touched him in a way that made him stand more steadily, helped him to swallow his fear and clear his head.
Only then did he notice the horns, spiraling to either side of that great head. Triple circles, each of them, culminated in the proud, curling points of a mountain king.
'What are you looking at?' cried Vanisia, stepping after him, touching his hand. Iydahoe knew then that only he could see the Grandfather Ram-and even as he realized this the animal turned, with a flick of its snowy tail, and vanished into the woods.
'Come. Gather the children. I know which way to go.' He stooped and picked up Dallatar. The young elf's breathing was shallow, his eyes rolled back in his head, but he still lived.
Iydahoe led them into the forest, picking a route through the felled timber that best followed the elusive white figure. He discovered that, by walking along on the trunks instead of the ground, the Kagonesti could make fairly rapid progress. Gradually the plateau sloped again, a gentle incline signaling the beginning of another ascent.
They broke from the trees onto a grassy slope that extended more steeply upward. The wrenching earthquake had torn numerous fissures in the soil, but Iydahoe had no difficulty finding a straight, smooth path between these frequent chasms. Soon they arrived at a ridge extending from the north to the south, seeing a deep canyon and then lofty, rugged mountains beyond.
Vanisia instinctively turned north, toward the highest mountains of the Khalkist range and the heart of the smoking inferno that racked the world. Beyond those heights, hundreds of miles away, lay Istar.
To the south, the mountains were not so high, rounded summits and sheltered, tree-lined slopes. In the far distance beyond them lay the southern lowlands of Silvanesti. Iydahoe stared in that direction and felt the warming comfort of a soothing, return embrace of wisdom. Were those luminous eyes gazing at him from somewhere in that distance?
'Wait,' Iydahoe said, looking at the seething wave of the cloud. The highest ground lay to the north, but he felt strangely drawn to the south. 'Follow me. We'll go this way,' he declared, trusting his instincts. Still carrying
