hired them at great expense as guides and augurers.
Dowsers.
But they were paid well, and the insulting name had become a badge of curious pride. Over the years, though, water had become taken for granted by the wood elf and high elf, native to river lands and watery forests. The scant influence of the Lucanesti dwindled. They were ignored at the high council of the elves, mocked as vagabonds and ruffians.
The old names returned. 'Dowsers.' 'Hedge elves.'
In the midst of such scorn and contempt, the opals came to them like a favor from the gods.
Water and rock, it was again, for those stones were formed over thousands of years in which water and rock commingled beneath the Istarian mountains. What it was that led the Lucanesti underground had been forgotten under the tide of centuries, but the maze of cubicles in the opal caverns beneath Istar were evidence that they had mined the roots of the city for ages.
And yet they remained a people of open country, of fresh winds and the high arrangement of stars. Their sojourns underground were brief and efficient, the white lucerna of their eyes attuned to the water in the opals, their digging precise. The mining took its toll and changed them, their skin hardening with age and silica and water, until the old elves were translucent, shimmering, opalescent like the stones they hunted. They used the change to their advan shy;tage, masking their presence against intruder and predator, fading into the rubble where they stood breathless, indistinguishable from surrounding stone.
When they were old enough-two thousand years, or maybe less-the opalescence had its inevitable way, and they entered the stonesleep, unable to return from the dark, encrusted dream.
But while they were young, there were opals to mine and riches to gather. And the Lucanesti mined and gathered, bringing the stones back to the sur shy;face. Soon what had been a poor and marginal tribe flourished with disproportionate wealth.
A wealth that drew the attention of cities, of the Kingpriest.
Of the venatica, the hunters and spies in the hire of Istarian clergy.
Soon the Lucanesti were observed. Then accompa shy;nied-in what the venatica called 'the interest of geologic science,' though it was really an armed surveillance. Observation and accompaniment changed slowly, like a stone in the swim of under shy;ground water, and the elves found more and more of the red-robed Istarians as companions, advisors. .
The 'cooperative' venture turned into slavery one day when Spinel and a party of followers made for the surface, for fresh air and light, but were stopped by a squadron of Istarian swordsmen.
The mining Lucanesti never saw the surface again.
Still, the Kingpriest's request surprised none of them, really. After all, relocation had been the death sentence for a thousand innocent peoples since the dawn of the planet, and the mountains and plains around the spreading, marbled city were littered with abandoned villages, burned hamlets, and the moldering relics of swallowed civilizations.
It was the way of Istar to finish what greed had started.
Now, in his waning years, the opalescence spread shy;ing and constant on his pale arms, Spinel could only guide as his companions combed the rubble for the missing child.
'I never thought it would come to this,' he said. 'Scarcely a century under the city, and the children are dying.'
Heedlessly, the two younger elves continued at their task. They were spela, what the Lucanesti called the generation born and raised in the caverns under Istar. They remembered no sun, no paired moons in the starry sky. Many, fancying that their greatest ene shy;mies were the crumbling rocks and the nagas that lurked therein, had no recollection of the Istarians.
Spinel pitied them. They were as buried as the child they sought.
The older of the two spela, a young female named Tourmalin, held aloft a dark, shining stone.
'Glain,' she said tersely, extending the gem to the older elf. 'At least we will bring something home.'
Reluctantly, almost ashamedly, Spinel took the opal from her and placed it in a pouch on his belt. Another stone to crush into powder for the King-priest's mysterious rituals.
'We'll find the child,' the old elf asserted, his voice thin and wavering in the torchlit alcove. 'By Reorx and the lamps of the eye, we shall find that poor creature!'
With pickaxe and dagger, they moved slowly and delicately through the ragged volcanic rock. The frail voice called to them faintly from somewhere behind the baffle of stone and darkness, the child begging for water, for her mother. . finally, for Branchala and the Sleep He Brings.
When Spinel heard the hymn begin, the low bird-like keening that heralds the stonesleep of the Lucanesti, his orders became urgent. Intently, his hand on Tourmalin's shoulder, he guided the three diggers through convoluted layers of rock.
Steady, he told himself. Do not lose faith or judg shy;ment or the faint sound coming from somewhere beyond that wall of stone.
Barely audible, the stonesong continued. For a moment, Tourmalin seemed to gather strength. Muttering a mild oath, she redoubled the speed of her digging, and her companions followed her example, the corridor ringing with the sound of metal on stone, the shallow breathing of the four miners.
Yes, we are breaking through, Spinel thought as the sound of the pick took on a new resonance. Only a matter of minutes now, and if the child survives, if we can bring the poor innocent to air and light…
'Faster!' he commanded through clenched teeth.
And then, Tourmalin's hammer crashed through the last layer of rock. Exultantly, Spinel surged by his younger companions, reached for the new pas shy;sageway, his torch aloft…
But another wall of rock, not two feet behind the breakthrough, blocked his passage. He swore, scrab shy;bled at the hard stone with his nails, pushed madly against it with his shoulder …
As somewhere in the deep recesses of the earth, the stonesong of the child dwindled.
Spinel rested his forehead against the cold, divid shy;ing wall and wept. The years would take the child's bones and transform them. Someday, perhaps, descendants of those who dug for the babe in vain would find the form-small, curled, and glowing, in the midst of the rock that had swallowed her and made her its own.
'Opal,' Tourmalin breathed, the light of compas shy;sion fled from her eyes. Her callused, pale hand touched the new, dividing wall. 'Glain opal.'
So they all would come to glittering dust, in the heart o.f this indifferent place.
Above the rocks and the rubble and the sorrows of elves, miles away in the city of Istar, the Kingpriest's armies watched and waited in boredom and uneasy readiness.
The Shinarion approached-the great festival of gaming, industry, and trade, the great time of com shy;merce and coincidence. Istar and all its tributaries came together to celebrate the glory of the goddess who, it was said, watched over the vast, interwoven economies of the region. As usual, the city was adorned with silk and gold leaf, the inns were swept and strewn with fresh rushes, and throughout the narrow streets of Istar, everyone-from the gray-robed, exclusive diamond merchants to the painted bawds and nimble pickpockets-readied their wares and skills for the coming week.
Even the Temple of the Kingpriest prepared spe shy;cial ceremonies in honor of Shinare. Jasmine incense billowed in the great square, and the tower bells chimed in the dawn carillon that dedicated each morning to the goddess.
It seemed that nothing was amiss in Istar-that the great business of ritual and trade continued gracefully and quietly, as though there were no nasty, ill-starred wars erupting in the desert. The mourning banners had come down in the noble houses, and the black cloth on the doors of the poorer dwellings had been replaced by the bright reds and yellows of Shinarion. The fallen soldiers, buried scarcely a week ago, were forgotten.
But the guards on the walls still watched ner shy;vously, the cavalry stopped and inspected all of the caravans, and in the high temple towers a thousand eyes turned regularly and apprehensively south. There were rumors that the rebel commander, the Water Prophet, stalked the city like a wounded lion.
He was coming, the rumors said. In a month's time, if not sooner. Fordus Firesoul was headed north, torch in hand and wading ankle-deep in Istar-ian blood. His goal was the city and the temple itself, its ornate walls to be ransacked and stained with still more Istarian blood.
