Sanctuary ee-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  They forded the newly named Lioness Creek. Scouts met them, reporting they’d found a clearly defined path beyond a field of half-buried boulders. Leaving the archivist with the main body of the army, Kerian trotted forward to see.

  Beyond the boulders, three elves sat on horseback in the center of a wide lane thick with alluvial sand. A fourth was on his knees, digging with his hands. As the Lioness arrived, he announced, “Pavement!”

  She swung a leg over her horse’s neck and dropped to the ground. Sure enough, beneath four or five inches of blue-green soil, he’d found stone payers. The two blocks was clearly visible. Clearing a larger area revealed more payers and something even more interesting-a deep groove worn into the road. They had seen such ruts before. The grooves were made by wheels, passing over pavement in the same line year after year. This groove followed the slight downslope back toward the creek they’d just forded.

  “Someone has called this valley home,” the Lioness said. Question was, was anyone still here?

  She remounted and sent the scouts ahead. Her admonition to stay sharp wasn’t really necessary; the very brief respite they’d enjoyed at the stream was over. All were alert. When Favaronas moved up with the main body, he made note of the pavement on his sketch map.

  The paved path led northeast, into the heart of the Inath-Wakenti. The elves followed it slowly, cautiously, encountering nothing untoward until after midday, when a scout galloped back with news. They were approaching stone ruins, very old and very big stone ruins.

  Ruins dotted the continent, from Balifor to Sancrist Isle. When Kerian was on the run from the Dark Knights who occupied her country, she often sheltered in ruins in the western Kharolis Mountains, relics of a time before the Great Cataclysm. Growing up in the wild, she’d had little knowledge of ancient history. Most of what she knew had been learned from tales traded around the campfire, of the beautiful, doomed Irda race, the twins Sithas and Kith-Kanan, the decadent human empire in Ergoth. Tales stranger still were told of the realm of Istar, where magic reigned until a fiery mountain fell from the sky and destroyed the city. Where glorious, doomed Istar once stood was now the whirling maelstrom of the Blood Sea, not so far away from this place.

  The Lioness sent out more flankers to sweep either side of the road. She kept to the path, leading the main column forward. All the reports she received were negative. No quarry had been found, either of the two-legged or the four-legged variety. Not so much as a rabbit or a bird crossed their paths. The widely spaced cedars and pines seemed bare of all life.

  Irritated by the lack of progress, the Lioness decided to try a loftier view. She dismounted and walked a few yards ahead, whistling for Eagle Eye. The griffon came skimming in over the low trees to land in front of her. She slipped a strung bow over her head and swung onto the tiny saddle pad.

  “Continue down the road,” she told her officers, then elf and griffon bolted skyward.

  After years of Khurish heat, the rush of temperate air past her face was like a balm. The climate surely was better here than in Khurinost. Perhaps Gilthas was on to something.

  Consternation flooded through her. What was she thinking? Trade her birthright for a little comfort? Never! Yes, this valley was more pleasant than the sweltering sandpit outside Khuri-Khan, but so what? It wasn’t her homeland. Wasn’t, and never would be.

  She turned her attention to the terrain unrolling beneath her-clumps of trees, bramble thickets, broad stands of tall, fleshy aloe. No wonder the flankers hadn’t seen anything. She’d forgotten how much real foliage limited sight.

  The loftier elements of the ruins rose into view. At this distance they looked to be spires of white or gray stone, jutting above the trees. Not columns in the usual sense, they weren’t fluted or faceted, only simple tapering spires. As she drew nearer, remnants of walls appeared, their dimensions amazing. Each stone block was at least ten feet long and tall as a mounted warrior. In some places the wall reared thirty feet high, massive block fitted neatly atop massive block. The cyclopean stones showed clear evidence of having been smoothed and shaped by intelligent hands.

  Eagle Eye spiraled slowly down. He alighted alongside an impressively tall stretch of wall. Elf and griffon contemplated the ruins as the rest of the column arrived.

  Conversation died. Everyone stared in awe at the mysterious monuments, wondering who built them, and how long ago. The lack of decoration gave the stones an air of great, indefinable age.

  Favaronas noticed something else. The stones were completely free of lichen. All the boulders and rocky outcroppings they’d seen in the valley borne healthy coatings of lichen or moss. The ruins showed none. The stones stood stark and clean against the blue sky and blue-green soil.

  “Have you ever seen stonework like this before?” Kerian asked.

  Favaronas shook his head. “But judging by the size, perhaps it was the work of ogres.”

  She found that difficult to believe. Ogres built their dwellings in a rough fashion; they didn’t waste effort carving or finishing the stones. None of the elves could think of any race, ogre or otherwise, which could move blocks as enormous as these. Two soldiers measured one of the largest stone blocks at the foot of the wall; it was twenty-nine feet long and eleven feet high.

  Ahead and on the right, shouts and whistles arose, Qualinesti cattle calls. Many of Kerian’s best scouts were former cow herders. She took flight, leaving Favaronas and the rest gawking at the ruins.

  The griffon headed straight for a pair of huge standing stones still capped by a massive lintel. With Kerian leaning low over his neck, the creature sailed through, wingtips brushing the pillars on either side. He warbled low in his throat, sounding so smug she couldn’t help but chuckle.

  The road they’d followed to the ruins continued ahead, bound on both sides by a wall. Scouts wove in and out of the trees to Kerian’s right. They were harrying something on foot. All she could see was a patch of pale brown darting through the brush.

  The fleeing figure passed briefly into the clear. It was an antelope, the mountain breed with unbranched horns curving back over its head. She swooped down, shouting for it to halt, and it turned to look up. She glimpsed large brown m eyes before the antelope’s legs got tangled in the creeper and it went sprawling in the thick undergrowth. The Qualinesti giving chase converged on the spot.

  By the time the Lioness landed and ran to where the beast had crashed, there was nothing but a rat’s nest of torn vines. Two of the scouts, dismounted, were probing the foliage. The creature was gone. She helped them look, but it was obvious an animal that size couldn’t be hiding here. Backtracking out of the bed of vines, they found its tiny hoofprints. Those at least were real.

  Other scouts rode up and explained how they originally had flushed the antelope. They’d been riding past a thin line of aloes and stunted pines when the creature suddenly bolted from behind them. Hungry for fresh meat, the elves had given chase.

  “It came out after you passed?” Kerian said.

  “Upon our oath,” said one of the Kagonesti scouts, knowing it seemed illogical.

  No wild creature, having secreted itself and avoided detection, would then squander its coup by dashing out before the hunters were gone. Just as difficult to believe was that savvy scouts would miss a full-grown antelope in the first place.

  The Kagonesti scout put a hand to his heart and vowed, “It wasn’t there, General. I rode right through the spot. There was no antelope there. I swear it.”

  “We were in the high desert a long time,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Maybe the sun baked our brains.”

  They didn’t laugh. The silent heaviness of the valley’s atmosphere was affecting even the veteran Kagonesti. All were looking around warily, as though uncertain what else might suddenly spring up from beneath their feet. Kerian, who had knelt down to study the hoofprints, stood quickly and admonished them for their foolishness.

  “We have enough problems to face without making up new ones. Next thing, you
’ll be telling me the creature was a spirit!”

  They looked struck by what she had meant as a jest; Kerian could’ve bitten her tongue. The rest of the column was moving up, so she left the scouts and went to send Eagle Eye aloft.

  Voices were hushed, as though the elves were passing through a holy place. When Favaronas arrived, on foot, Kerian was seated on a low section of wall. She gestured for him to join her. He touched the stone gingerly, as if expecting to find it hot. Satisfied, he sat down.

  She told him of the quarry that had eluded them. “It appeared to be an antelope, but whatever it was, it disappeared right in front of us.”

  He didn’t seem surprised to hear this. “The old chronicles speak of strange forces at work here. The manuscripts I’ve read don’t mention clear dangers. Of course,” he added wryly, “clarity is not their strong suit.”

  The two of them speculated on the odd lack of wildlife. But for the phantom antelope, they had seen no animals at all, not even insects. A day had passed since they’d drunk from Lioness Creek, and no one had reported any ill effects, so the water supply seemed fine. Was there something else in the Vale of Silence inimical to life?

  Kerian knew Gilthas would be sorely unhappy should his scheme to transplant the elves fail. She was sorry for the disappointment he would feel, but at the same time she was freshly annoyed at him. He seemed convinced that the time had not yet come for them to liberate their ancestral lands. But if the valley proved unsuitable for their people, then what? Were they to continue in Khurinost forever, penned in their squalid tents, relying on the favor of the human khan?

  “I wonder who could have built these great monuments?”

  Favaronas’s voice cut across her growing anger. The archivist had left his perch on the wall and was studying the wall further down the line.

  “An excellent question, Master Archivist,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “How long would you need to find out?”

  He looked across the vast meadow of stone ruins and shook his head vaguely. “I couldn’t begin to say. It would depend on what we discover. I see no obvious hints of the builder’s identity.”

  “But someone raised these standing stones, someone powerful. Long dead and long gone, I presume.”

  “The former, yes,” he muttered. “The latter, perhaps not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You touched on it yourself, speaking of the vanishing antelope.” She gave him a blank look, and he added, “Ghosts. Spirits of the dead may still walk the ruins.”

  Obviously her Wilder brothers weren’t the only ones whose thoughts moved in that direction. They were all letting this weird valley and its massive stone sentinels play tricks on their minds. With a dismissive snort, she jumped down from the wall and gave the archivist a friendly slap on the shoulder.

  “Try to figure out who built this, Favaronas. And don’t worry; we can leave any time we need to.”

  She knew this last was probably a lie. An unknown number of armed nomads was likely poised outside the valley, just waiting for the elves to return. Getting out of the Inath-Wakenti might prove even more difficult than getting in bad been.

  Scouts returned. They reported the ruins went on for miles-there seemed no end to them-and still they’d found no signs of any living creatures.

  It was late afternoon, and they’d kept going without stopping the night before, so the Lioness decided to make camp, here among the ruins. The warriors were glad enough of the rest, but Favaronas was distinctly nervous about the choice of campsite. Still, in this strange valley, one spot was likely as good (or worrisome) as the next.

  Another courier, this one a Qualinesti was dispatched to Khurinost. The Lioness knew he would need the cover of the coming night to slip past any nomads camped outside the valley, so there was no time to compose carefully detailed reports. The messenger carried a hastily written letter in which she thanked Gilthas for sending Eagle Eye, promised to put the griffon to good use against their enemies, and outlined the bare essentials of the valley’s nature.

  They made camp in the lee of a sarsen that reared forty feet high. While the warriors tended their horses, spread bedrolls and gathered kindling for fires, Favaronas busied himself at the base of the towering monolith. He built a lean-to out of pine branches, then laid a small campfire. Fed with dry juniper twigs, the flames sent a sweet aroma into the cloudless sky. Equipped with fire and shelter, the archivist unpacked his case of manuscripts and began reading. He updated his sketch map and, on spare scraps of parchment, made notes for the Speaker about what they’d seen in the valley.

  Kerian was pitching her own tent-a few yards from the archivist’s fire, since she’d assigned herself the task of watching over him-when foragers returned. They brought only unwelcome news. There was no game to be had.

  “You found nothing to eat? Nothing at all?” she asked.

  “A few bitter roots and pine seeds, General,” said one. Another added, “I haven’t seen so much as a gnat or fly in this valley.”

  “Khur is the kingdom of flies and every other noxious insect. Why are there none here?”

  “Something drove them out,” Favaronas murmured.

  Kerian turned. He was seated by his small fire, engrossed in his papers. She asked him to explain his comment. He looked up, blinking slightly as his eyes focused on her rather than the manuscript so close to his face. She asked again.

  “I can’t name what has no name,” the archivist replied, unhelpfully, then returned to his studies.

  He muttered to himself, too low for Kerian to catch the words. She gave up trying to make sense of his musings and went to walk among her warriors.

  The place she’d chosen for their camp was at the intersection of two broad avenues, one aligned northeast-southwest, the other crossing at right angles and aligned northwest- southeast. Rain-washed dirt had filled in the slightly sunken roadbeds over the years, but a little digging revealed they were covered by the same large paving stones as the road that had led the elves here from Lioness Creek.

  The high walls of the Khalkist meant sunset came early to the valley. Hours before the light would fade from the desert outside, dusk blanketed their camp. A chill seemed to spring out of the ground, and the elves could see their breath. Patches of mist coalesced in low-lying areas.

  Kerian ordered a large bonfire built in the center of their camp, which was also the center of the crossroads. Foragers had found plenty of deadfall pine, cedar, and fir limbs, though no good hardwood, and by the time the first stars winked into sight, the blazing flames were sending sparks up to join them. The firelight only made the ruins around them seem more eerie, more strange. A rotation of mounted sentries was posted a goodly distance from camp. Each elf was given a horn to blow, and assigned a distinctive call. If anything untoward happened, the Lioness would know exactly which sentry raised the alarm.

  She checked on the archivist. Whatever anxiety Favaronas felt about being in the valley, it hadn’t prevented him from sleeping. He apparently had decided against sleeping in his lean-to, however, and was snoring away in the Lioness’s tent.

  She and her officers rebuilt the archivist’s little campfire at the base of the great sarsen and settled down to have their supper.

  “General, now we’ve found the Inath-Wakenti, how long will we stay?” asked a Qualinesti.

  She shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of beans. “I see no reason to stay. We’ll start back tomorrow.”

  Astonishment showed on every face. According to the information she’d given them (which she’d gotten from Gilthas’s map, the valley was at least a dozen miles long. Shouldn’t they explore further? There might be dangers they hadn’t discovered or other ruins or-

  “What of the nomads? On the honor of my sword, I’ll wager they’re waiting for us.”

  This came from Glanthon, one of the few remaining officers left from the royal Qualinesti army, and younger brother to Planchet, the Speaker’s valet. Glanthon was as talkative as
Planchet was taciturn, and Kerian had no doubt he would expound upon his theme, so she forestalled him.

  “We’ll slip out quietly, avoiding the nomads as much as possible.”

  A fighter by nature, the Lioness would’ve preferred to punch her way out, thrashing the fanatical tribesmen on the way. But her elves were too few. If a single battle went wrong the entire command could be lost, and she was determined to carry the truth of the valley back to Gilthas in person. The Inath-Wakenti was not a new homeland for their exiled people. A mild clime and scenic, yes, but something here was hostile to all animal life. She put no stock in the archivist’s remark about ghosts, yet there was no denying the total absence of living creatures.

  “We’ll ride east, to the mountains, and look for another way out,” she announced. “There’s got to be something-goat track, deer trail, something.” She smiled wryly over her beans. “All the animals had to go somewhere.”

  “There’s no other way out.”

  Favaronas stood at the edge of the firelight, by the door flap of Kerian’s tent. The Lioness and her officers stared at him.

  “I studied the Speaker’s map down to the smallest detail,” he said, coming closer. “The ancient cartographer was very precise, and he shows no other way out.”

  Kerian asked, “Then where did all the animals go? Did they die out?”

  Favaronas admitted he didn’t know the answer to that question. He sat between her and Glanthon, accepting a plate of beans and a loaf of flat Khurish bread. Since he seemed to have nothing more to contribute, the warriors fell to talking about their clash with the nomads, dissecting the tactics and fighting skills of the Weya-Lu. All agreed that if the nomads had better weapons, they might not be sitting here now.

  A horn sounded, far away. The discussion broke off, the officers alert and listening. The sound was a long, wavering note, the signal assigned to a Silvanesti scout named Camthantas. His patrol area was northeast, further along the same road they’d followed since crossing the creek.