pale dusk that was cool and perfect. The sky above the tree crowns was a soft pearl-gray, as if the sun had set a short time ago and still brightened the world somewhere beyond the horizon, but in Sildeyuir there seemed to be no west or east. In any direction Araevin looked, the skies glimmered along the hillcrests and forest-tops with that same sourceless illumination. But as the eye roamed upward into the sky and approached the zenith, the skies darkened into true night, and countless brilliant stars danced in the firmament.
He stood motionless for what seemed to be hours, drinking in the eldritch beauty of the place, his companions likewise silent beside him. Jorin Kell Harthan simply waited with a small smile on his handsome face, allowing them to sate their wonder.
Araevin didn’t need his magesight to tell that they stood on another plane, a world that lay beyond the world he knew, and yet somehow remained bound to it. The starry realm’s forests and hills matched the landscape he remembered from the Yuirwood’s sunny glade almost perfectly. The forest was not as dense, taller and more majestic, but they stood in a starlit clearing instead of a sun-warmed one, and the ancient ring of standing stones seemed exactly the same. He looked again at the forest; the trees were tall and silver-trunked with very little undergrowth, a great living colonnade that stretched as far as the eye could see. Strange phosphorescent lichens clung like shelves to the trunks, and a sweet, rich odor hung in the air. The trees reminded Araevin of the mighty redwoods of the Forest of Wyrms, but how could they grow so tall and perfect with no sunlight?
He finally found his voice, and glanced at Jorin. “I never suspected…” he managed. “It’s extraordinary. Not even Evermeet itself compares. How far does this realm extend?”
“Sildeyuir is about the size of the Yuirwood, though direction and distance are a little hard to judge here.” Jorin tilted his head to one side, thinking. “Perhaps two or three hundred miles from end to end?”
“End to end?” Maresa glanced up at the pearl aura of dusk above the treetops. In the twilight, her pale white skin seemed to shine like the moon. “It just stops somewhere?”
“Not really. At the borders the forest grows thicker and thicker, and any track you care to follow-or make for yourself, for that matter-simply bends back on itself. There isn’t an edge you can fall off.” Jorin paused, and added, “I know that it is eldritch and wondrous and beautiful, but I must warn you all: Sildeyuir is not as safe as it looks. Strange monsters wander these forests, creatures that you do not find in the sunlit world. Do not relax your vigilance here.”
“Have you been here often?” Ilsevele asked Jorin.
The Aglarondan shook his head. “Only a couple of times, and the last was ten years ago or more. Finding a stone circle that will let you reach this place is hard, because not all circles work all the time.” He gazed into the woods, but beneath his bemusement there was wariness in his eyes.
“Now I understand what was meant by the note on my map,” Araevin told Ilsevele. “‘Here of old was Yuireshanyaar, which now is hidden.’ The star elves removed their kingdom from the Yuirwood to this twilit plane alongside the forest.” He turned to Jorin. “Are they still here? Can you take us to them?”
“Yes, they are still here. But it is a wide land, and not many star elves remain, and I do not know where we are.” Jorin shrugged, a look of embarrassment on his face. “I am afraid I have no better plan than to pick a likely direction and start walking.”
“I may be able to help,” Donnor Kerth said. He handed the reins of his warhorse to Ilsevele, and drew a golden medallion out of his tunic. He raised Lathander’s holy symbol in his powerful hand; the gold gleamed softly in the shadows. “Pick a direction, Jorin.”
The Aglarondan studied the forest for a moment then indicated a trail that led away from the stone circle into the shadows of the trees.
“I suppose I’m inclined to head that way first,” the guide said.
Kerth peered down the path, and closed his eyes as he carefully spoke the words of a prayer to Lathander. Araevin felt the warm glow of divine magic suffusing the air, and the human opened his eyes and held up his holy symbol.
“Lord of the Dawn, aid me! Will this path lead us to those whom Araevin must find, or should we go another way?”
The members of the company watched as the holy symbol in Kerth’s hand grew brighter, warmer, until it seemed almost as if a small sun was caught in the cleric’s grasp, throwing out dazzling rays of radiance that lit up the dim forest around them. Then the magic faded, the golden sunburst symbol becoming nothing more than a piece of metal again. Donnor shook himself slowly, closed his eyes, and murmured a prayer of thanks. “Well?” asked Maresa. “Will it?”
The Lathanderian nodded and replied, “Yes. My divination indicates that this path will serve. But as Jorin warns, we must be careful. We will meet with danger on this road.”
The small company set off down the broad path into the forest, passing into the eerie gloom beneath the gleaming silver trunks. The cool air was a welcome change after the warmth and humidity of the Yuirwood, and the absence of dense undergrowth made for good visibility and long, open views from the trail. At times it was so still and solemn that Araevin felt almost as if he was simply lost in some enormous temple, wandering among the works of dreaming gods. At other times they caught sight of the forest’s creatures: white owls high in the branches above, silver-gray deer that vanished quickly into the gloom, black squirrels that darted along the pale trunks, and once a great gray-furred bear that snuffled and snorted at something that had caught its interest on the forest floor, a good eighty yards off the path.
Araevin soon came to realize that travel within the realm of Sildeyuir would be more than a little deceptive. The opalescent twilight that pervaded the woodland offered no hint as to how long they had traveled-it might have been an hour, or it might have been four. Gradually he noticed that the day, such as it was, had darkened somewhat, so that the purple velvet of the sky overhead had deepened into pure inky darkness, and in time a soft rain began to fall, so fine and thin that he did not even bother to draw up his hood.
After a long spell of marching, they came to a moss-grown bridge of stone that spanned a gloom-filled ravine through which swift white water rushed forty feet below.
“That’s a good sign,” Ilsevele remarked. “Someone built this bridge. I was beginning to wonder if this whole place was empty.”
“We’ve been walking for quite a while,” Araevin said, “and we began our day with a march in the Yuirwood. Maybe we should find a place to rest, and make camp for the night.”
“The night?” Maresa asked.
“Such as it is,” Araevin said. “We’ll halt a few hours, long enough for you and the others to get a good sleep. Ilsevele and I can keep watch. We need less rest than you.”
“I won’t say no,” the genasi said.
They walked a short distance past the bridge before they found a good clearing away from the path. Jorin built a small fire in order to prepare a hot meal from their stores, and Donnor unloaded his packhorse and brushed it down while Araevin took a few minutes to weave some magical wards around their campsite-spells of concealment and protection. So far they had seen nothing dangerous in Sildeyuir’s forests, but he remembered Jorin’s warning and decided to take no chances.
While Donnor, Maresa, and Jorin slept the deep and helpless sleep that Araevin had always both envied and pitied in his non-elf friends, the two sun elves sat and talked softly in Elvish or simply waited together in the comfort of each other’s company, leaning back-to-back against a young tree so that they could watch all around the small camp. After a long silence in which Araevin had actually started to slip into Reverie, Ilsevele reached back to set her hand on his.
“I am glad I came here, Araevin,” she said. “Regardless of what comes next, I do not regret the circumstances that brought me to Sildeyuir, even for a day.”
“Nor do I,” he agreed. He started to say more, but then Ilsevele squeezed his hand twice, hard and quick. Araevin froze, peering into the shadows under the trees.
“On your left, sixty yards,” Ilsevele whispered. “It will be almost behind you. Move slowly.”
“What is it?” he whispered back, slowly turning his head and letting his eyes slide farther and farther over his left shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
Carefully, Araevin allowed himself to lean just a little, getting a better look behind him-then he saw what Ilsevele had spotted. It was wormlike in shape, with a dark, glistening hide of blue-black skin, but smaller tendrils or limbs branched from its body. It slithered through the forest, passing along the path they had been following,
