Between clenched teeth, the black-haired youngster gritted, “Come on, Pip, come on. You can do it.” Yet the worried look on his face said otherwise.
The eld buccan stood stock-still and muttered under his breath, “Wait for it, bucco. Wait for it.”
And the trees swayed upright, the rope drawing tight, and in that moment, from the pine on the right, a fair-haired stripling ran out on the line. Across the space he dashed, but just ere reaching the far end, a misplaced foot gave him pause, and he teetered precariously, and in that same moment a gust caught the Warrow and the trees. Even as the buccan fell, the rope drooped and swung away. Wildly he grabbed for the line, but missed. And he plummeted down and down, to land in the net far below.
“Rats!” spat the chain-wrapped Warrow. He sighed and, with a lock pick, began probing the innards of his left-foot shackle.
The oldster trudged across the space and to the net, to find the fair-haired buccan lying on his back and looking at the swaying rope above.
“Well, lad?”
“I would have made it, Uncle Arley, but for a stupid wrong step.”
“You would have, at that.”
The youngster turned over and made his way to the brink of the net, where he grabbed the edge and somersaulted over to land on his feet on the ground.
“It’s no easy task, Pipper,” said the eld buccan. “But it’s one to be mastered, for there might come a day when you’ll have no net whatsoever.”
Pipper nodded and sighed and said, “I’ll give it another go.”
Uncle Arley grunted his assent.
“How’s Bink doing?” asked Pipper.
“I dunno,” said Arley, looking back toward the chain-wrapped stripling. “He hadn’t even started until after you fell.—Binkton worries about you, you know.”
“I know. But it’s Bink I worry about. I mean, that thing with the chains and the knives and the breaking links . . . well, it just gives me the blue willies.”
Arley smiled, and then turned and started toward Binkton, as Pipper trotted to the right-hand pine and began climbing.
With the smile yet on his face, Uncle Arley slowly walked toward where Binkton sat. Though they had much left to learn, the lads—Pipper, now at fourteen summers, and Binkton, three moons older—were making good strides toward the professions Arley would have them master. Not that he hoped they would follow in his own footsteps; oh, no, that would be too perilous. Yet they were deft, and skill would come, for both had quick hands, especially Binkton, and they were very agile, especially Pipper. And they were exceptionally good with sling and bow and arrow. Why, just last year they had tried to join the Company of the King, and perhaps would have run away to do so, but for the blizzard.
As Arley came upon Binkton, that stripling had managed to get his feet freed, and now he was working on the shackle at his left wrist. Perhaps within a year or two, Binkton would be quit of all locks and chains in but a heartbeat or three; even so, and at this time, he was quite skilled for one of his young years.
Arley nodded at the dark-haired buccan, then turned and looked toward the tall swaying pines again, with the rope strung between.
3
Opening of the Ways
ARDEN VALE
MID SUMMER TO MID AUTUMN, 5E1010
[THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]
Three months after the end of the Dragonstone War, and four days after returning to the Elvenholt of Arden Vale, a young giant of a man—a tall, gangly youth, some six-feet-ten in height—took it upon himself to confront yet another god. The young man’s name was Bair, son of an Elf and a Baeran—Riatha and Urus their names. Bair was no ordinary being, for he was the Impossible Child, the Dawn Rider, the Rider of the Planes. And just like his father, Bair was a shapeshifter, but into a Draega—a Silver Wolf—rather than into a Bear.
Though he was yet a youth, the lad had a storied past, for he and the Elf named Aravan had recovered the long-missing, legendary Silver Sword from the bowels of the Black Fortress at the Nexus on Neddra. Together they had used the weapon to save not only Mithgar, but all of creation as well; to do so they had slain the god Gyphon with that very same sword.
Bair arose from bed in the middle of the night and made ready to go on the mission he had set for himself, and as he stepped from his chamber the aroma of freshly brewed tea was on the air, and from the shadows Riatha said, “Wouldst thou have a cup with me?” She brushed her golden hair from eyes such a pale grey they seemed almost silver, and looked up at her son. At a slender five-feet-six she was tiny by comparison.
Bair nodded and sat, and she poured. As the lad took up the earthenware mug, Riatha said, “Thou art dressed as if to hie on a journey, and I deem I have seen in thine eyes a lingering from the war.”
Bair nodded. “Ythir, the mission I took up with Aravan is not yet fulfilled. There is still that which must be done, perhaps as important—or even more so—than that which we have done so far.”
Riatha raised an eyebrow, and Bair plunged on. “I need to speak with Adon Himself.”
Now Riatha’s silver eyes flew wide. “Speak with—”
“Adon, Ythir. Adon.”
Riatha took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled, and she calmly asked, “About . . . ?”
“About Durlok’s staff and Krystallopŷr and the Dragonstone. About prophecies and auguries and redes. About a stone ring and an amulet of warding and a falcon crystal. About tokens of power fashioned long past with destinies set to come to fruition in these days. About a debate long ago concerning free choice versus control. And about what Redclaw said to Dalavar concerning Adon, the Drake naming Him Adon Plane-Sunderer, Adon Meddler, Adon Falsetongue. For all those things I have named and more do I need to speak to Him.”
Riatha turned up both hands. “But why?”
“To take Him to task.”
Riatha leapt to her feet. “What?”
“To take Him to task,” repeated Bair. “Oh, don’t you see, Ythir? Redclaw was right, but only partly so.” Bair threw out a hand to forestall Riatha’s objections. “Hear me out, Ythir: no matter Adon’s intentions, the full of the tale is, we have all—all Elves, Hidden Ones, Warrows, Baeron, Dwarves, Humans, Dragons, Mages, Utruni, and even the Foul Folk—we have all been used as mere pieces in a vast tokko game played by those we name gods. And it’s time it stopped.”
“But, Bair, surely thou canst not believe—”
“But I do, Ythir. I do. Look, if Adon and Gyphon had settled this between themselves long past—by combat to the death, if necessary—then we wouldn’t have been mere pawns in that long-played game.”
Now Riatha did frown and sit again, her look thoughtful. She sipped her tea and then said, “What thou dost say is in part true, but let me ask thee this: if it had come to combat to the death, and if Adon had lost, then what would the world be like under the heel of Gyphon?”
Bair’s eyes widened, for clearly he hadn’t thought of such. And from a doorway to the side, Urus said, “Mayhap, lad, mayhap all the things you name, the things which you and Aravan and we and many others did, in this time and in the past, mayhap that was Adon’s and Gyphon’s combat to the death, and only by Adon using us could Gyphon be defeated.”
Bair turned to his sire. Like all Baeron, Urus was a large man, some six-feet-eight and well muscled and weighing in at twenty-two stone, and much like the creature he at times became he had brown hair, grizzled at the tips, and amber eyes.
As Riatha poured a third cup of tea and set it before Urus, Bair fell into deep thought. But at last he said, “Nevertheless, Da, I need to speak to Adon still, for I am the only one who can do so and return.”
“But what is it that you would say to Him?” asked Urus.
“Just this: things have been done which now need undoing, the Sundering of the Planes for one.”
Riatha gasped, and then said, “Oh, Bair, if the ways between the Planes were opened, then we could . . . we could all once again . . .” Her eyes filled with tears.
<
br /> Urus reached out and took her hand and stroked it, and then said to Bair, “I deem she would have you do so.”
Bair nodded and then said, “I will ask Aravan to go with me, for as I say, this is but a continuation of the same mission we took on times past, he much longer than I.”
Bair and Aravan were gone from Mithgar for nearly three months, elar and kelan travelling to the Ring of Oaks in the Weiunwood to cross the in-between, Aravan in the shape of a black falcon and borne across by Bair. And when they returned, a host of Elves came, too—Daor and Reín among them, Riatha’s dam and sire—for the ways between the Planes had been made whole again. . . .
“What?” Riatha looked at Bair in puzzlement.
“I said, Ythir, that the ways to and from Neddra have been made whole as well, and the Ban has been rescinded.”
“But why?”
“Oh, don’t you see, Ythir? Any interference subverts free choice, free will, not only for us but for all.”
Bair looked toward the black-haired Elf who lounged against the wall. Like all Lian, he was slender, but at six feet he was a bit taller than most of his kind. “Help me out, kelan,” said Bair.
“His argument was quite eloquent,” said Aravan, fixing Riatha with his sapphire-blue gaze, “and in the end he not only persuaded Adon, he persuaded all who attended: Lian, Dylvana, and the gods.”
Riatha turned to Urus. “But to free the Foul Folk to work their will . . . ?”
“Mayhap without Gyphon and His agents driving them,” said Urus, “they will be less inclined to do their ill.”
“For that, Bair has a plan,” said Aravan, grinning. “One with which I am in hearty accord.”
“What?” asked Faeril—the damman Warrow—who had served as a loving aunt to Bair from the very day he had been born. “What is it?”
Bair ran his fingers through his long, silvery hair. “Just this, Amicula Faeril . . .”
4
Wolf and Falcon
NEXUS
LATE AUTUMN TO EARLY WINTER, 5E1010
[THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]
Through fall-yellow grass and past brown-leaved thickets and over the rolling hills of Adonar sped the Draega, the Silver Wolf as large as a pony. High above and sailing across the azure sky a dark falcon flew. Around the ruff of the running ’Wolf dangled a stone ring on a chain, an ebon inset gleaming. Something as well glistened about the neck of the falcon above, the bird itself black as night, the glisten as from silver and glass, though it was a crystal instead. A small blue stone on a leather thong rested beside the glisten. And wherever the Draega ran, the falcon above followed, for they were travelling together, or so it seemed.
Through patches of forests the Silver Wolf wove, and it dodged around hoary old moss-laden trees and splashed across swift-running rills, while the falcon above rode the chill breeze blowing o’er the land. Not once did they slow their pace, league after league after league, until evening drew nigh, that is, and then the falcon above gave a skree, and veered leftward, the Draega below pausing to watch the dark bird above.
Along the edge of a woodland the falcon soared, and then winged over in a tight turn, and sailed down to land high up in an oak, its brown leaves rustling in the wind forerunning the oncoming winter. The Silver Wolf loped toward the broad-limbed tree where the dark bird had settled, and the moment the Draega arrived, the falcon once again took to the air.
After lapping up water from a nearby small burbling stream, the ’Wolf, yet panting, its ears pricked alertly, lay under the oak and watched as the bird shuttled back and forth above the tall grass in the field. And in but moments the falcon stooped, its wings nigh folded, the tips alone guiding its plummeting dive, and but a bare distance above the ground it flared its pinions and extended its talons and disappeared into the grass.
Up the Draega sprang, and loped to where the bird covered the fat coney it had downed. The ’Wolf whuffed, and the falcon, its wild eyes glaring, for a moment did not move, but at the second whuff, the bird released its prey and leapt into the air again.
The Draega snatched up the rabbit and loped back to the streamside oak, arriving just as the falcon came to ground. The ’Wolf dropped the coney, and from a flash of platinum light and a blooming of darkness, Aravan and Bair emerged: Aravan from the light; Bair from the dark.
It was but a year or so agone that Aravan, working with shape-shifting Bair and a winged Phael—a Hidden One named Ala—and a powerful being whom all of the Phael called the Guardian, learned to evoke the inherent power of a crystal, one with a falcon incised within, a crystal that now depended from the chain Aravan wore about his neck.
It was a crystal given some twenty-four years past to Faeril by Riatha, who told the damman of the scrying powers of such. At the time Faeril received it, no falcon was incised within. Faeril tried her hand at
Upon her return to Arden Vale, Faeril mounted the crystal on a platinum chain and gave it to Bair as a birth gift.
On his quest with Aravan to find the yellow-eyed murderer Ydral, Bair had worn the crystal into the Jangdi Mountains, where the Guardian and the Phael and Bair, working in concert with Aravan, had taught the Elf to master this token of power, which allowed him to assume the form of a black falcon.
As a black falcon and a Draega, they had managed to run down Ydral, where he had holed up in a Foul-Folk-infested black fortress on Neddra, a bastion that lay at a nexus of four in-between crossings. Respectively, three of the in-betweens connected Neddra to Mithgar, to Adonar, and to Vadaria; the fourth one they knew not where it led—perhaps to the Hidden Ones’ world of Feyer or to the Dragon world of Kelgor, or somewhere else entirely—for at that time only the bloodways were open, and Bair, in spite of his stone ring, could not make that crossing: he had not the blood in his veins that would allow him to do so.
Regardless as to where that fourth crossing led, it was the black fortress that concerned Bair and Aravan’s current mission, for it controlled vital in-between ways that would allow Foul Folk access to Free Folk lands.
Bair and Aravan had returned to Adonar to make certain all was ready and to set in motion the final stage of Bair’s plan. They had found the Elven host assembled and eager, and so the order was given to march to the in-between. And now the two fared ahead of the army to ensure that their even more powerful allies had assembled as well.
In moments Aravan had dressed out the rabbit and had set it to roast above a small fire.
“Kelan,” asked Bair, “how far to the in-between, do you reck?”
“Thirty leagues, I deem,” answered Aravan.
“Then nigh the mark of noon on the morrow, neh?”
“Aye, elar. Wouldst thou could run as fast as I can fly; then ’twould be midmorn.”
“Ah, you’re just anxious to get to Aylis, I ween,” said Bair, grinning.
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