“Then you’ve given up hope?”
Gyaidun said nothing. Durja set to cawing again, and at the sound a sudden image, a memory, filled Amira’s mind.
The field after battle. The sun gone in the west but an angry light still burning in the sky. The air thick with the buzzing of flies and the call of ravens. The stench was the worst. Blood she could handle. But in dying, stomachs were cut open, skulls split, bowels emptied, and spells burned both grass and flesh. For once Amira did not push the image away.
“Despair is for the dead,” Amira said. “You are still alive, Yastehanye.”
“As is your son,” said Gyaidun, though there was no offer of comfort in his voice. Only bitterness. “What of my son?”
“I don’t know. But if there is no hope for him, there is always vengeance.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Endless Wastes
No dreams—good or bad—troubled Jalan’s sleep the night of the massacre of the Tuigan nomads. He slept beside the fire, but with no one to tend it, the fire was nothing but cold ashes by morning. And still Jalan slept. His mind and body wrung out by fear and exhaustion, he did not even turn in his sleep as the thing in the ash-gray cloak fled the coming dawn and buried itself under blankets and hides inside one of the Tuigan yurts. Most of the pale northerners and their wolf mounts slept, scattered throughout the carnage.
Around midday the high slate-colored canopy of clouds fell lower and thickened, deepening to the color of charcoal. The guard pacing near Jalan stopped and, smelling snow in the air, smiled.
Behind the tapestry of clouds, the first edge of the sun was setting in the west when the first spark of awareness stirred within Jalan. Not wakefulness, for his body still slept, his breath even, and his heart beating slow. But something deep within Jalan, something buried far beneath conscious thought, was waking up.
Shadows deepened in the camp, the last of the day’s light gathering to a colorless glow in the west. Both wolves and their riders began to stir, the beasts blinking and yawning, the pale northerners kicking their blankets away and setting to packing.
Disturbed by the activity around him, Jalan moaned and woke, though he did not open his eyes. Why bother? He could feel the damp cold in the air, and even with his eyes closed he knew the day was over and they would soon be leaving. More than anything, he wished to fall back into the oblivion of sleep. Lying there hoping for sleep only strengthened his wakefulness, but with it his awareness sharpened and he noticed something. Still he felt hollow, as if the horror of the past few days and the crushed hope of being rescued only to be taken again had scraped his insides clean, but now … now floating in that emptiness was … something. He couldn’t put a name to it. Not light exactly, nor warmth. But there was something very much alive inside him, both a part of him and separate.
Be not afraid. He remembered the words from the dream, the voice amidst the song.
Jalan focused his thought on that something within him and formed a single thought. Vyaidelon?
Nothing. No answer, no music, no voice. Still, it did not go away.
Night fell around him. Though he still lay with his eyes closed, Jalan sensed its coming—not the night, but the one who came with it. He was always there, that dark, cold thing, aware of him. Watching. Studying. But in the daylight, the awareness spread out, still there but stretched thin. With the coming of night it pressed upon him again, sharp as new frost.
Jalan, knowing he was coming, squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could.
He heard the flap of the nearby yurt torn away, wrenched off its wood-frame hinge. Either by dread curiosity or reflex, Jalan started and his eyes opened. The thing in the ash-gray cloak stepped out and straightened to his full height. The air seemed to thicken and become brittle, and Jalan could sense the thing’s anger.
The leader paced round the immediate area, moving from space to space in quick bursts of speed then standing still as the shadows themselves. He sniffed at the air, opened his mouth wide, inhaled, then flinched as if bitten.
He looked down at Jalan. “What are you doing?”
Jalan said nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and huddled inside his cloak. The something, that odd presence inside of him, trembled, but it was not from fear. It was as if a bell had been struck, and the more the thing in the ash-gray cloak exerted his will, the stronger the chime sang within Jalan.
“Stop that,” said the leader.
“I … I …”
“I said stop!” The leader wrenched Jalan up and pulled him close. “I sense what you are doing. I hear it in your heart’s beating. Stop now or I’ll bleed it out of you.”
Jalan heard the rustle of robes and the soft whisk of a blade being drawn. He opened his eyes and tears streamed out. Jalan gasped for air and almost gagged at the stench of the thing holding him.
“Heed me, whelp,” said the leader, and he pressed the edge of his knife against Jalan’s cheek. The metal was so cold it burned. “I need you alive. Not unscathed. Stop what you are doing now.”
“I … can’t,” Jalan said. “I—”
The knife shifted, the point coming toward Jalan’s left eye. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pull away, but the thing holding him was too strong. He could feel the point of the blade resting against his clenched eyelid, but he could pull away no further.
“Stop,” said the leader, almost a whisper. “I will not say so again.”
Jalan’s fear had so filled his thoughts that he’d almost forgotten about the thing inside him, that indefinable livingness stirring within. The terror emptied his mind of all else, and in that instant the thing within him resounded, growing from a rhythmic hum to a battle cry. Almost of their own accord his eyes opened. The blade filled his vision, as if all the world had funneled into the knife hovering just beyond his tears. Jalan took the great thing inside of him and focused it there.
The blade blazed. A pure orange light glowed outward, but the blade itself was white as the center of the sun.
The thing in the ash-gray cloak shrieked and hurled Jalan and the knife away. Jalan rolled into the cold ashes of the fire, and the knife, still blazing like the noonday sun, tumbled into the grass.
The howling and frightened whines of wolves filled Jalan’s ears as he pushed himself to his hands and knees. He saw a pale blur coming at him—one of the northern barbarians—but he was too stunned to move. The boot caught him in the side, and he went down. Darkness and light and a hundred dancing colors filled his eyes, and his body seemed to squeeze in on itself, craving air but finding only pain.
He took deep, choking breaths, his side clenching. When he could hear and see again, the camp was in turmoil. The huge wolves were running around, many growling and snapping at their fellows. The pale northerners rushed to calm them, and their cloaked leader sat in the grass, huddling away from the light and barking orders in a language that Jalan could not understand. His voice sounded stretched and thin. Desperate.
One of the pale men ripped the outer felt covering off a yurt. He dragged it to where the dagger still blazed like a piece of the sun fallen to earth and threw the thick felt over it. The glow winked out, and darkness fell on the camp again.
The cloaked leader stood, his robes falling around him like tides of night, and bore down on Jalan.
Jalan raised his hands before his face, fearing another dagger or a blast of cold—or worst of all that sharp awareness boring into his mind. Instead, the leader’s fist emerged from the folds of his cloak. Jalan saw it, a pallid blur streaking toward his face, then a cold blackness took him.
Akhrasut Neth
The howling had not subsided. In fact, it seemed to Amira that even more wolves had come, and the sounds of their singing came from every direction. Full night had fallen, bringing with it a thick, clinging fog that dampened Amira’s cloak and made her hair cling to her scalp.
The belkagen had not returned to camp, and Gyaidun just sat there in the shadows, staring off into nowhere.
&nb
sp; Amira heard something approaching through the trees and caught her breath. She hoped it was the belkagen, but she feared it might be Haerul. She could hold her own against this barbarian chieftain no matter what the old elf said, but like it or not she needed their help, and she knew she needed the belkagen’s assistance to navigate all the intricate customs and proprieties of these people.
Besides, she’d had a few encounters with werewolves before. None of them pleasant. If Amira was right and Gyaidun’s account of the Vil Adanrath matched with her own recollection of the lythari, she knew she had little to fear. If the accounts she’d read were true, the lythari were not afflicted monsters like other werewolves.
Still, she recalled the belkagen’s words to her. They are a people of pride and honor, and their chief, Haerul, has pride and honor like none I’ve ever seen. Scratch it at your peril. She’d already seen Lendri angered, and war wizard that she was, remembering the gaze he’d fixed upon her still sent a shiver up her spine.
Amira huddled in her elkhide blanket next to the fire and kept her eyes fixed on the direction from which she heard the sound. More than one person was coming, but she’d only just noticed the second. Both moved with a furtive grace and quiet she’d seen only among animals.
A wolf emerged from the shadows between the trees, bounding through the brush to approach the fire with no hint of fear. Amira recognized Mingan, and Lendri came into view not far behind him. Despite the chill, he wore only a loincloth, and he carried no weapons.
Gyaidun rose to greet him and they embraced, exchanging words in their own language. Lendri gave Amira a small bow, then said, “The Vil Adanrath have come.”
“You convinced the omah nin?” said Gyaidun. “I did little more than offend my brother and rouse my father’s ire anew. It was the belkagen who convinced Haerul to come. They are camping on the other side of the spring.” A wry, almost mischievous smile broke the elf’s grim countenance. “My father has heard you are here.”
“He won’t even come to greet his daughter’s husband?” said Amira.
Gyaidun said nothing, but the look Lendri gave Amira made her wish she’d held her tongue. “Our ways are not your ways, Lady Amira,” he said.
“You need not tell me that.”
“He does, however, send greetings to the War Wizard of Cormyr and bids you well come to his lands.”
“His lands?”
“Akhrasut Neth is sacred to the Vil Adanrath. As the omah nin, Haerul’s word is now law here, and he welcomes you as his guest.”
Amira didn’t know whether to be offended that he hadn’t greeted her himself—at the very least with a summons—or thankful that he hadn’t ordered her captured for sharing a fire with a man he’d outlawed. She remembered her mother’s words, pounded into her from childhood—When you don’t know the proper words, courtesy serves best—and so she simply said, “Thank you. Tell him thank you.”
“My father’s words to me are the last he will speak,” said Lendri. “And even those he gave only at the belkagen’s urging. No more will his honor permit. You wish to thank him? Thank him yourself. He has sworn to kill me if I speak to him again.”
“How many has he brought?” asked Gyaidun.
“Forty hunters arrived with us tonight,” said Lendri. “He has summoned more, but I do not think he’ll wait for them. A great hunger and rage fills him. Please do not provoke anything, Brother. The omah nin is thirsting for blood. Give him no excuse to spill yours.”
Gyaidun opened his mouth to say something, but Durja cut him off, flapping his wings and cawing. Despite the noise, Amira thought she caught the sound of larger wings alighting in one of the trees just outside of camp, and by the time the raven had quieted, settling in atop Gyaidun’s shoulder, the belkagen was walking back into the light of the fire.
The old elf held his staff in a firm hand, and he looked grim, reminding Amira of a lord about to pronounce grave judgment on a vassal. He spared Lendri and Gyaidun a glance, then fixed his gaze on Amira.
“It is time, Lady.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Akhrasut Neth
The belkagen led the way, threading a winding path up Akhrasut Neth through ravines filled with thousands of years of shattered stone and sand. Low trees with thick, twisted roots clung to the rocks, and even this late in the year their small, waxy leaves were thick and vibrant.
Amira followed the belkagen, staying close, for neither of them carried a torch, and with the canopy of cloud hiding the moon and stars, the night was dark. She knew Lendri and Gyaidun were following—the big man carrying the deer—but she heard them more than she saw them.
In the almost total darkness, her surroundings were little more than varying shades of murk. She stumbled several times and would have fallen once had she not had her staff to steady her. She cursed herself, knowing what a terrible racket she was making, though the others moved with little more noise than the breeze through the brush. Amira knew elves could see like owls in the dark, and even Gyaidun seemed to be having little trouble.
Now and then she heard others following as well—the turning of a stone, gravel sliding under stealthy feet, a branch sliding over a passing body—but she never saw who was trailing them. The belkagen seemed unconcerned, so she followed his lead.
About halfway up, they walked out of the fog. Amira could still see no better, but the darkness didn’t seem as thick, and the air that came to her lungs had a dry bite. By the cold, she knew there’d be a thick coating of frost by morning, and if those clouds chose to release their burden, they’d have snow.
The ground grew steeper, the trees smaller and farther between, and Amira soon found herself climbing more than walking, pulling herself over jagged boulders and up shelves of rock. Though she was quite warm in the clothes the belkagen had given her, climbing the rocks made her fingers stiff and cold. She was about to swallow her pride and call for a rest when their trail entered another ravine, and this time there were jagged steps cut into the rock. Though they were cracked and weathered with age, Amira knew they were far too straight and regular to be natural. Someone had carved these.
The stairway doubled back on itself three times, and then the land flattened out. Before Amira’s eyes, the darkness bled away into bright contrasts of shadow, gray, and silver, and she looked up. A jagged tear had opened in the clouds, and the edge of the moon shone down on them. Leaning on her staff and breathing hard, Amira looked back.
Akhrasut Neth sat on a sea of fog, unbroken to the farthest horizon. Gyaidun and Lendri climbed the last of the steps, and Amira saw others behind them, the nearest just rounding the last twist of the stairs. She could not make out details in the moonlight, only pale shadows, but there were many of them, dozens at least. Some walked upright while some padded upward on all fours.
Amira turned to the belkagen, who stood watching the sky not far away. “The Vil Adanrath are coming?” she asked.
“The omah nin’s pack and a few others, yes.”
“Why?”
“They come to honor Akhrasut Neth. It is tradition.”
“What about …?” Amira looked to Gyaidun, the deer carcass still draped over his shoulders.
“They will keep an honorable distance,” said the belkagen. “Haerul knows what you do here this night. He may watch from afar, but he will not approach the exiles.”
Amira looked back down. The nearest of the Vil Adanrath had seen them and stopped on the stairway. Even as she watched, the rent in the clouds passed over the moon, and the world plunged into darkness again.
“We must go,” said the belkagen. “Midnight is not far off.”
They set off, Amira following the belkagen. Again she had to follow him more by sound than sight.
The trail wound through more trees, some of which stood beside the trail itself so they had to duck through branches to pass. After stumbling over the third root, Amira stopped and said, “Belkagen, is there some taboo against torches?”
“Taboo?” said the
belkagen. “I am sorry, Lady. I do not know this word.”
“Why am I stumbling around in the dark? My toes are bruised and my shins feel scraped raw. Is it forbidden to carry light on the Mother’s Bed?”
There was a short silence, then Amira heard the old elf chuckling. “My apologies, Lady Amira. There is no … taboo. I merely forgot the limits of your eyes. Forgive my discourtesy.”
The belkagen spoke a short incantation, and green flames began to lick up the top quarter length of his staff. They were not the pale sickly green of fire magic she’d sometimes seen dark wizards use, but a vibrant, living flame, like spring sunshine filtered through a canopy of newly sprouted leaves. Amira thought she even caught the scent of blossoms. The light they cast was meager, but in the near-total dark to which her eyes had become accustomed it seemed like a beacon.
They set off again, and Amira looked over her shoulder to Gyaidun. “How do you see so well in the dark? You’re human.”
“I am athkaraye. Elf-friend. Even though I am now an exile, the blessings remain.”
Amira remembered him speaking of this once before, of the “blessings” he’d gained in becoming Lendri’s blood brother and elf-friend to the Vil Adanrath. She knew of similar rites among elves to the west, though she’d never met one of the so-called “elf-friends.” But it would go a long way toward explaining how Gyaidun moved with such grace and stealth in the wild, how he ran seemingly tirelessly for scores of miles … and how he could see on such a dark night.
The group walked on a bit more, and soon the trees thinned as the ground rose. In the clearing, the belkagen stopped, and by the light cast from his staff, Amira saw a large fang of rock breaking through the ground. A great fissure split the stone from the ground to half its height, forming a door into darkness.
“This is it?” said Amira, her voice hushed to a reverent whisper. Even after hearing the belkagen’s history of this place, she hadn’t put too much weight in it. Every people from the crudest barbarians to the most cultured societies had their own traditions, histories, and legends. She didn’t discount any of them, but neither did she accept them without question. She had sifted through the old shaman’s tale, hoping that this might be one of Faerûn’s sites of power, that she might find some aid in rescuing Jalan. But standing there in a thick darkness broken only by the shimmering light cast from the belkagen’s staff, far from her home with shapeshifters at her back and a fell sorcerer somewhere out there, for that moment she believed. Something in her deepest heart, some buried race memory, perhaps, of a time when all men walked in fear of the ancient powers of the world … something inside Amira woke up and hummed with life at the sight of the yawning darkness in the rock.
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