Sanctuary ee-1

by Paul B. Thompson

  Hytanthas wasted no time. As soon as the magical force let him go, he hurled himself to one side, rolled, and came up running. Clad only in mail shirt, leggings, and sandals, he was unarmed and helpless. Once determined to take Faeterus back to the Speaker, he would have to settle for bringing word of the mage’s whereabouts. If he survived!

  Behind him, he could hear the creature’s advance. Chunks of masonry flew, date palms snapped, and broken walls burst apart as the sand beast kept coming. Its aim was uncanny. Either it could see very well in the dark or it had some other way of sensing Hytanthas’s whereabouts.

  The elf turned to see where it was. In that brief pause, the sand beast jumped at him.

  Hampered by injury, the creature came up short, but one foreclaw swiped across his mail shirt. Once more his armor saved Hytanthas from death, but even the glancing touch of the metallic claws was enough to tear through the mail as though it was linen.

  The sand beast was thrown off balance. It crashed to the ground and rolled down a short slope.

  While the monster floundered in a rocky, weed-choked area that once had been a stone-lined pond, Hytanthas made good his escape. He clambered up the shell of the gatehouse and dropped inside. Loose rubble shifted beneath his feet and he landed awkwardly, slicing his leg on a sharp limestone block.

  Swallowing a groan of pain, he listened for sounds of the sand beast’s pursuit. Instead he heard human voices, men’s voices. A tiny ember of relief flickered inside of him. Perhaps Sahim-Khan’s soldiers had heard the uproar in the Harbalah and come to investigate.

  A new fire burned in the air over the villa grounds. No magical orb, it was a flaming arrow. Its light fell on the sand beast, dedicatedly gnawing off its own wounded leg, and something else: five mounted men. They cantered through an opening in the villa’s outer wall. One had a long lance couched under his arm. The rest carried swords or bows. Their armor was Nerakan, not Khurish.

  Hytanthas had no intention of cowering in safety while others battled that horror. He hunted through the debris in the gatehouse and found a length of lead pipe, corroded but heavy. With his makeshift weapon in hand, he slipped out to wait for the riders to reach him.

  The sand beast gave up trying to sever its injured leg and dragged itself onto the cracked payers of the road to wait for the oncoming riders. It was breathing hard, its nostrils sending clouds of white vapor into the cooling night air.

  The five riders drew abreast of Hytanthas and rode on by. The one in the center, carrying the lance, was Lord Hengriff, the Dark Order’s emissary to Khur. The five charged the wounded sand beast. Hengriff’s lance pierced its broken hips. The monster roared in pain and whirled, snapping the lance shaft but leaving its head buried. One foreclaw raked through the air, and a horse went down. It and its rider had been shredded; neither rose again.

  Circling away, Hengriff drew a two-handed sword. Hytanthas couldn’t imagine wielding such a weapon with only one hand while on horseback, but the big Knight handled the sword with practiced ease. With his three surviving men guarding his flanks, he galloped straight at the sand beast. He rose in the stirrups and swung the sword, using all his size and strength to drive the blade in up to its hilt behind the monster’s shoulders. His men loosed arrows at its head from only a few feet away. Two pierced its eyes before the beast shuddered and fell like a poleaxed steer. The ground shook from the impact, nearly knocking the approaching Hytanthas off his feet.

  Hengriff, dismounted, leaning against the sand beast’s ribs. He was slumped forward over the pommel of his sword, which he still gripped in both hands. His eyes were closed, his head bowed, and Hytanthas thought the breath had been driven from his lungs. The elf cleared his throat to speak.

  “Shh,” Hengriff said. “The heartbeat is fading.”

  Understanding came, and Hytanthas shuddered. The Knight wasn’t recuperating from the mighty blow he’d landed, he was listening to the creature’s life slip away. The young elf said nothing, conscious of the three other Dark Knights sitting on horseback around him.

  “That’s it.” Grunting, Hengriff worked his sword free of the monster’s carcass. Cleaning the blade on a scrap of leather, he angled a considering look at Hytanthas. “The kill would’ve been more satisfying had it been at full strength. How did you manage to wound it, elf?”

  His disguise in tatters, wrung out by fear and fighting, Hytanthas had no strength left to fence with the Nerakan. “I didn’t,” he said bluntly. “It arrived like that.”

  An absent nod, then Hengriff spoke to one of his men. “Goldorf, that lance broke too easily.”

  “Time was short, my lord. I had to improvise.”

  “What of Faeterus?”

  This question was directed at Hytanthas. The elf told the truth: The mage had disappeared when the sand beast arrived.

  “I know you,” Hengriff said, eyes narrowing. “I’ve seen you before. Ah, yes! You were in the Speaker’s honor guard, when he had his audience with Sahim-Khan.”

  Hytanthas had been only one of fifty elves in the honor guard. Impressed by the Knight’s memory, but striving not to show it, Hytanthas inclined his head, confirming his identity.

  “So, you came here hunting Faeterus? You’re triply lucky, elf. Lucky the mage’s wards didn’t get you, lucky his ugly pet didn’t gut you, and lucky we came along to deal with the sand beast”

  Hengriff sent his men on to the ruined villa. “I came hunting the mage, too,” he said. “He was pursuing his own course, raising the nomads against the elves and the Khan, sending this creature out to kill that she-dragon Kerianseray. I wonder how it ended up back here.” He shook his head. “Things have a habit of doing that around Faeterus. Appearing or disappearing without warning.”

  “Have your men been sent to kill the mage?”

  Hengriff didn’t answer, but he didn’t really need to. Hytanthas doubted the Knights would have much luck. Faeterus didn’t seem the sort to linger where danger threatened.

  The elf was losing strength, swaying on his feet, exhausted, thirsty, and injured from his battles with manticore and sand beast. It seemed he was always tired or injured or thirsty, these days. Perhaps he’d been that way for years, for all the years of his exile. Stupid not to have planned better, brought food and water. He’d not expected to have to wait so long for Faeterus. Certainly hadn’t expected to battle a human-headed manticore and a wounded, enraged sand beast.

  Hytanthas realized Hengriff was speaking to him. He had no idea what the human had said. Worse, he’d completely forgotten the Nerakan was here, had forgotten everything but the miasma of fatigue and privation that enveloped him. He forced his slumping shoulders to straighten and gripped the lead pipe more tightly.

  “I’m leaving,” he announced. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  A wolfish smile appeared on the Knight’s face. “Go back to your people, elf, before you drop where you stand and another of Faeterus’s creatures has you for dinner.”

  Before he departed, honor demanded one last thing of Hytanthas. “Lord Hengriff,” he said with formal precision. “You saved my life. Thank you.”

  “That was today. Don’t expect a like outcome next time.” Hengriff mounted his horse and cantered away, heading up the hill to the villa.

  Hytanthas went in the opposite direction, beginning the long trek back to Khurinost. The world was indeed a crazy place, when a soldier in the Speaker’s host was saved from death at the hands of a rogue elven wizard by a Dark Knight of Neraka.

  Chapter 11

  Chanting to synchronize their efforts, a gang of elves hauled away on the ropes. A timber frame rose off the ground, wavered a bit, then climbed higher as the warriors continued to pull.

  “Easy! Easy there!” Kerian called Out. If they pulled too quickly, the frame would topple forward on them.

  The early twilight had come to Inath-Wakenti. By torchlight the scene resembled a nightmarish dream. All the soldiers of the Lioness’s command were mustered around the hole that had opene
d up when they pushed the monolith over on the sand beast. Some were on horseback, others on foot, but every one was armed and ready. The reason for their increased wariness could be found in their dwindling numbers.

  Two nights had passed since the vanishing of the sand beast. The Lioness’s original vow to leave the valley quickly was set aside after this event. She decided they would remain an extra day to search for the elusive monster. They hadn’t found it. Instead, several of her warriors had gone missing. All were sentries, riding guard duty alone on the perimeter of the camp. Then, just past noon on this day, five more elves had vanished. The five were on foot, foraging for roots and nuts, no more than twenty yards from the site of the overturned monolith. When they didn’t return, a search was conducted.

  It turned up no signs of struggle, no torn ground, no dropped possessions. The elves were simply gone, together with everything they carried.

  As Favaronas was the nearest thing to an expert on the valley, Kerian asked him what he thought was happening.

  “I don’t know, General,” he said, shivering with the fear that had become his constant companion.

  Glanthon said, “You’ve mentioned ‘strange forces’ at work in the valley. What do you mean?”

  “Just that. Strange, unnatural things happen here. I myself have-” Favaronas broke off, coloring in embarrassment. Kerian had no time for niceties of feeling. She insisted he hold nothing back, and he admitted having seen apparitions himself, just the night before. He described them as white shapes, vaguely elven in form, drifting through the stone ruins.

  “Patches of mist!” Glanthon scoffed.

  “No, they moved against the wind,” the archivist insisted.

  The Lioness cut the air with an imperative hand. “We’re not here to collect ghost stories, Favaronas! I want to know who’s taking my people!”

  “I don’t know! Perhaps”-he gestured vaguely at the fallen monolith-”the same force that carried off the sand beast?”

  After that discussion, with no other conjecture to test, Kerian decided to investigate the hole beneath the stone spire. Rocks dropped into it revealed the bottom to be at least twenty feet down. Their hollow-sounding impacts hinted at a chamber of some size.

  As the sun lowered itself behind the western peaks, trees were felled, trimmed, and lashed into a frame to support ropes lowered into the hole. Kerian intended to descend herself, but her officers wouldn’t hear of it. None doubted she was prepared to do anything she might ask of her warriors, but Glanthon reminded her she did not have the luxury of taking such risks. As General of the Speaker’s Army, her life was too valuable to risk unnecessarily.

  It finally was agreed that Glanthon would enter the hole. To Favaronas’s dismay, he was tapped to accompany Glanthon.

  “Me? Why me?” the archivist said, his face pale even in the firelight.

  Kerian said, “You’re the scholar. There may be things down there you can recognize.”

  Her phrasing was unfortunate. Favaronas blanched even whiter at the notion of “things down there.” So, Kerian un- buckled her own sword and fastened the scabbard around his waist. “If you see any ghosts, give them steel. If they’re flesh and blood, they’ll feel it.” She smiled. “And if they’re not flesh and blood, they can’t hurt you.”

  He did not look reassured.

  A pair of stout ropes was tied to the handles of a small round shield that would serve as a platform. Glanthon and Favaronas climbed on, holding tight to the ropes. With the whole command looking on, they were lowered into the hole. The opening wasn’t much wider than the shield on which they stood.

  As their feet sank into the black aperture, Favaronas said, “Tell me again why we’re doing this?”

  “To find clues to our comrades’ disappearance,” said Glanthon stoutly. “And to carry out the Speaker’s command to learn all we can about this valley. Aren’t you curious?”

  “Not any more.”

  Their heads disappeared below the surface. They entered a square shaft lined with stone. The air cooled rapidly. Only eight feet below the surface, their breath streamed out as white vapor.

  “All right?” the Lioness called, sounding very far away.

  “We could use a light!” Favaronas said, his voice rising.

  Glanthon assured him torches would be dropped down the hole after they reached bottom.

  “Seems backward to me.”

  “No sense announcing our coming.”

  “Announcing? Announcing to whom?” Favaronas’s voice was a squeak now.

  Their shield footrest, which had been lightly scraping the sides of the shaft, entered open air. They swung back and forth a few times, then bumped into a solid floor.

  “Step back,” Glanthon said. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he shouted, “Torch!”

  A flaming brand crackled down the shaft. Where it caromed off the walls, showers of sparks fell on them. Favaronas yelped and leaped backward, but Glanthon caught the falling torch deftly in one hand. A second followed it. Favaronas didn’t attempt to copy the warrior’s action; the second torch hit the ground and went out.

  The floor was ankle-deep in thick white mist. It was cold and damp, but caused them no apparent harm. Glanthon retrieved the second torch, lit it from his own, and handed it to the archivist.

  “Merciful ancestors,” Favaronas breathed, holding the brand high. “What is this place?”

  Ahead and behind them stretched a tunnel, arrowing straight northwest and southeast. The ceiling had a slight arch to it and was high enough for both elves to stand erect. Favaronas’s awed comment had been inspired by the walls of the passage.

  The tunnel was covered, floor to ceiling, with the most beautiful painting either elf had ever seen. It depicted a landscape in such exquisite detail and realistic color they almost expected the trees to sway in the breeze, could almost smell the scent of the flowers, and hear the splash of the silvery river winding through the scene. The ceiling was a serene blue, with wispy white clouds. Who had painted this lovely vista? And why bury it under the ground?

  Glanthon reached out to touch the wall, but Favaronas caught his arm…

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t touch anything!” Glanthon nodded in solemn agreement.

  They walked slowly down the tunnel, the movement of their feet stirring the viscous fog. The hem of Favaronas’s robe grew dark with damp. Dew glistened on Glanthon’s boots.

  As they marveled at the unfolding work of art, Glanthon noted an oddity. There were no living creatures depicted. The scenery was beautiful and varied, but contained no people, nor any animals.

  “Like the valley above,” Favaronas said. He frowned, staring at the right-hand wall. “It seems familiar somehow.”

  Not to Glanthon. Born and raised in Qualinesti, he knew its towns, forests, and farmlands well. This painted landscape resembled no place he’d ever seen.

  “It looks older than Qualinesti somehow, and more.. Glanthon searched for the right word. “More formal. Like a lord’s garden.”

  Favaronas stopped abruptly. “Are there any Silvanesti in our company?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  He pointed to the silver-blue river that serpentined through the landscape on the right-hand wall. “They should see this. I think that’s the Thon-Thalas.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Not certain, no; I’ve never been to Silvanesti. But it matches descriptions I’ve read.”

  “Could this place have been made by ancient Silvanesti?”

  Favaronas wasn’t sure. The ruins above were without any identifying marks, yet they had none of the air of refinement associated with Silvanesti sites. The stonework was monumental but rather crude, much more reminiscent of human handiwork than elven. Yet if he was right, then whoever had painted this scene had at least visited the Silvanesti heartland.

  Glanthon suddenly grabbed his companion’s arm in a painful grip. Startled, the archivist yelped loudly. “What? Is there danger? Where?” He tried to draw
the Lioness’s sword with one hand.

  The warrior’s grip tightened further. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Look!”

  Far down the tunnel, in the darkness beyond the reach of the torchlight, something stirred. Vaguely upright, it was coming toward them.

  Glanthon’s sword was already in his hand. Favaronas managed to free his borrowed blade from its scabbard, but Glanthon whispered, “Do nothing unless I say so.”

  Nodding vigorously, Favaronas stepped closer to the warrior.

  The approaching figure was small, under five feet in height, and of indistinct shape. It resembled a person draped in diaphanous gray. Carrying no light, it came on assuredly, at a steady pace. A very faint glow, more attenuated than foxfire, radiated from the figure and the pale aura was reflected by the mist, which remained undisturbed by its passage.

  Sweat trickled down Favaronas’s neck. He was shaking so hard he couldn’t hold the sword steady. Never again, he vowed silently; never again would he leave his archive. Not even for the Speaker of the Sun and Stars would he abandon his beloved manuscripts again-if he lived to get back to them!

  The apparition seemed heedless of the two elves. As it passed between them, head lowered, it brushed Glanthon’s leg. He felt nothing. There was no sign of feet or legs; the apparition merged with the fog lining the tunnel.

  A sound like a sigh rasped down the stone-lined passage. Alarmed, Glanthon thrust his torch at the specter. The flaming pine knot passed through it without resistance, but the ghost appeared to lift its head and turn, it looked back at the elves.

  Both cried out in shock. Favaronas dropped his torch, and it went out. With that, the ghost disappeared.

  “Extraordinary!” Favaronas exclaimed, as Glanthon relit his torch. “A cat! Or an ocelot perhaps, or-”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “That thing! A long neck, pricked ears, white whiskers- yet feminine somehow! Unbelievable!”

  Glanthon stared at the archivist with mouth agape for a few seconds then said flatly, “You’re hallucinating. It looked nothing like that.”