Chapter 3
The sun shone several days, then the clouds that had been lurking on the mountaintops like a pack of gray wolves swept down into the Valley of the Falls. A damp mist clung to every surface in Yala-tene, and when the feeble sun set, the dew turned to ice.
Repairs on the foundry came to stop. Stone blocks grew too slick to handle safely, and visibility fell to just a few paces. Amero and his workmen tried to carry on, but the cold made their fingers stiff and clumsy, so Amero called a halt, dismissing the men with a sigh. He soon stood alone in his ruined workshop.
Lately life was so full of delays. None of his recent projects had come to fruition. The town wall, though well advanced, should have been finished a year ago, and his bronze experiments could not resume until the foundry was repaired.
When he was younger, it seemed he had all the time in the world to solve the questions that surrounded him. Now there was little time for anything but daily work.
Shaking off his gloom, Amero resolved to visit Unar, the man whose eye had been injured when the furnace blew apart. He left the shattered building and stepped out into the frosty night.
Finding a house in the warren of streets wasn’t easy, even on a bright, sunny day. To identify themselves, most householders painted their family’s totem symbol on their doors. Amero came at last to the door with the hook-billed turtle and knocked on the worn cedar panel.
The door opened. Highlighted by fire was a face he knew well. It was Unar’s widowed sister, Lyopi. She held a flaming brand.
“Amero,” she said. She was one of the few people in the village who called him by his given name.
“I’ve come to see Unar.”
“He’s sleeping, but you’re welcome.” Lyopi stood aside, and Amero entered the warm interior of the house.
The ground floor was a single large room, as in most houses in Yala-tene. A dull red fire crackled on the hearth. As Lyopi dropped the burning stick onto the fire, Amero saw Unar was propped on a heap of furs, a soft willow poultice on his injured eye.
“How is he?” Amero whispered.
“The eye is lost,” Lyopi replied. “Old Memmet the healer removed the stone chip, but could do nothing for his eye.”
He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry. Better it should be my eye.”
“Don’t say foolish things.”
She pulled free of his grasp and moved to the dark periphery of the room. Without a word, Amero followed.
Lyopi seated herself on a stool by the wall. Not seeing another chair, he sat on the floor at her feet.
For almost a year, Amero and Lyopi had been together, as intimate as mates but still undeclared to the rest of the village. Some gossips believed he was taking advantage of a lonely widow, but in fact, it was Lyopi’s choice that they remain apart. By custom, to be Amero’s mate, she would have to live in his house and give back her first mate’s property to his kinsmen. Because Lyopi did not want to relinquish her home, she and Amero remained friends and occasional lovers — a situation that suited her fine and Amero found tolerable.
She pulled the thick, loose braid of her chestnut hair over her shoulder and leaned back against the stone wall. Her brown eyes, usually so warm and full of life, were dull as they regarded her injured brother.
The silence stretched for several long seconds, until Amero asked, “Why so sad, Lyopi? Unar’s strong. He’ll live.”
Her gaze shifted. “Yes, but what will he do? A one-eyed man is a poor hunter.”
“There are other things a man can do besides hunt.”
She uttered a short, bitter laugh. “We’re still plainsmen, Amero. Hunters. Living inside a pile of rocks hasn’t changed that.”
“Unar will always have a place in my workshop, if he wants it.”
She made a quick gesture, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Even in summer?” she asked, knowing he usually employed helpers in his shop only during the idle months of winter.
“Even in summer. Unar’s not the only one who doesn’t hunt, you know.”
Lyopi offered a fond smile, which soon faded. Leaning her head against the cool stones behind her, she closed her eyes.
Thinking she looked very tired, Amero rose to leave. She reached out and caught his hand. “No. Stay.”
Suddenly embarrassed, he replied, “I didn’t come here for that.”
Sometimes she seemed to read his mind almost as well as Duranix. “I know,” she told him, putting a hand to his bearded cheek. “Stay anyway.”
So he did.
Across the fog-shrouded village, another light burned far into the night. Tiphan lived with his father in a modest one-story house close to the Offertory. Like everything else in his life, Tiphan’s home was as tidy as he could make it. Sensarku acolytes cleaned it for him daily, just as they cleaned the Offertory grounds.
Tiphan sat at the one table in the house, peering closely at the document before him. For five nights he’d yearned to study the arcane manuscript he’d bought from Bek the bookseller, but every night his father had stayed awake, talking, prowling around the house, and generally making himself a nuisance. Finally tiring of the delay, Tiphan had sprinkled yellow tane pollen on Konza’s dinner. Soon the old man was snoring away on his pallet.
Once Konza was asleep, Tiphan removed the prized manuscript from his secret cache. By the light of a fat lamp, he puzzled over his newest acquisition.
Behold the Way to Bind the Sun, it began. To command the stars, the beasts, and the flowering things, know this: As embers carry the fading heat of the fire, so do certain stones, gems, and wood of trees carry the dying light of heaven. When the gods a wakened in the Age of Twilight Sleep, they rose by their natures into three realms — Good, Neutral, and Evil.
Tiphan’s fingers grew stiff from tracing the line of ornate script. He flexed his hands, closed his eyes briefly, then resumed reading.
Each did claim the spirits then living, and they fought a great war over who should rule the spirits of life. At first Evil was strong, and dealt Good many a blow. The Neutral lords saw this, and said, “Let us aid Good, that Evil will not next try to destroy us.” So the alliance was forged, and Evil subdued. Yet, as are all gods, Evil is immortal, and perished not. The minions of Evil turned to living stone by the servants of Good and Neutrality, inhabit the world to this day.
Tiphan paused. He was beginning to see where the treatise was heading.
These stones are Power, and the sage who finds them may use their Power to effect all manner of change — the sun to go dark, the summer to yield snow, the dead to rise and walk among the living. All this and more is possible.
Next to this last sentence was another’s handwriting in scarlet ink: Circle of standing stones, ten leagues east of the mountains, between the headwaters of Thon-Thalas and Thon-Tanjan.
If Bek had spoken truly, this was the hand of the great elf priest Vedvedsica. To the Silvanesti, “the mountains” were the very range where Yala-tene was located. The two rivers named were known to all plainsmen. A great battle had once been fought there by a Silvanesti host, led by the warlord Balif against the nomad warriors of Karada, sister of their own Arkuden.
Tiphan’s hands trembled. To think there might actually be such a circle of powerful stones so close by! With such stones, could he have power like the great Vedvedsica?
Konza snorted and mumbled in his sleep. Tiphan cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The old man soon settled down, his breathing deep and even.
Tiphan tiptoed to the hollow in the wall where he hid his cherished manuscripts. He had two other tomes, spellbooks really, describing in cursory terms how certain spells were to be cast. Also in the hole were fragments of various
Silvanesti works — treatises on astronomy, herbalism, even animal husbandry and metallurgy, subjects that
