Stardeep (12 page)

No answer.

“Cynosure, please tell me where I can find my fellow Keeper.”

“He is in the Epoch Chamber.” “The what?”

“Some months ago, Telarian completed construction, with my aid, of a chamber designed to focus his precognitive talent.”

The abjurer blinked. “Why didn’t I know about this?” “The chamber lies just beyond the limits of Stardeep’s Inner Bastion.”

“So it is also outside my concern, is that what you’re implying? Everything in Stardeep is my concern, Cynosure!” Her earlier worries about the sentient idol’s faculties woke again.

“Would you like me to connect you?” Cynosure volunteered.

“You said this new chamber lies beyond the limits of the Inner Bastion. How—”

“It is close enough for me to transport you. It has no enttance of exit besides me.”

Just like the Well, she realized.

“Yes, Cynosure. Warn Telarian I’m on my way, then connect me.”

A parabola of blue light spun out of nothing, engulfing her. Her stomach lurched and darkness descended. She blinked, and her eyes readjusted. She stood within a small dome.

The floor was scribed with a star-in-circle configuration she recognized from old texts—a predictive tool prized by diviners. The floor gently rolled and pitched in an unsettling manner, as if floating on liquid. Telarian reclined at the star’s center, staring at hef, surprise evident on his face.

“Delphe!”

“Why, hello, Telarian. I see you’ve been delving new chambers within Stardeep?” She tried to keep her voice light, but was mostly unsuccessful.

Telarian raised himself to a sitting position then stood. His features resumed their normally placid countenance.

He said, “As you can see.” He gestured around. “I find the Epoch Chamber helps concentrate my talents.”

“Ah—so Cynosure informed me. And have you learned anything useful?” She gazed down at the smaller symbols scribed around the circle’s periphery and at the slowly burning incense sticks.

He squinted at her, a yearning expression briefly inhabiting his face. Then he smiled ruefully. “Not yet. But if I can look

forward far enough, I can foresee all potential escape attempts by the Traitor. Once I know of them, I can etadicate each and every possibility from the time stream.”

Her eyes widened. “Is that possible?”

He shrugged. “So I hope.”

“The Traitor tried today—I would have told you earlier, but I couldn’t find you. Did you foresee that?” “He tried today?”

“Yes—your new chamber didn’t foresee it?”

Telarian considered, frowning. Then he said, “It did not. But then, it wouldn’t, would it? You obviously foiled the effort.”

“But he mounted a genuine, credible effort! If I hadn’t stemmed the attempt… what good is your early warning chamber if—”

He put up a hand. “Why should I focus on escape attempts alteady destined to be foiled by our efforts? Interference in such events, already predetermined to proceed one way, could finish far differently. No, I’m looking for instances of probability where the Traitor successfully breaks free of all our containment efforts.”

Delphe blinked. “Successfully?”

“Yes. If I can identify those instances, how ever far in the future, I can take steps right now in the present to make certain those circumstances fail to develop and materialize.”

Delphe put a hand to the side of her head. Telarian’s voice seemed so matter of fact, so rational. But the meanings behind the words he spoke seemed unbound by reason. She spoke out, “How far do you look?”

He smiled. A note of pride crept into his voice as he explained. “Before I crafted this chamber, I could see only moments, perhaps days at most. Now I can see years. The misty edges of a century ahead are becoming clear to me ,..

Telarian broke off, frowning. “And you’ve seen… what?”

He plied her with anothet gauging look. Finally he said, “I’ve seen worrying images…”

She grasped his shoulder, squeezing. “What? What did you see?”

He frowned again, said, “I’m too close to the edge of temporal resolution; I can’t be sure. I’m working to increase the clarity of that vision so the details will firm up.”

“You must have seen something—I can tell by your expression you hold something back. From your fellow Keeper!”

“Delphe, until I could be relatively certain, I didn’t want to commit all of Stardeep to a plan that might be unnecessary. I—”

She squeezed harder. “Describe the images you saw.”

He swallowed, then spoke. “Alliances. The Traitor retains alliances with those outside Stardeep, outside even the hidden realm of Sildeyuir. I’ve seen visions of wood elves unearthing old tomes, old journals, and becoming ensnared. But the seeds of cotruption have already been cast, or soon will be. If we do not act in relatively short order, I fear that wood elves will find this cache.”

Delphe released Telarian’s arm and stepped back. She said, “You are certain?”

“No, not certain. But I am making preparations, gathering resources, sending out agents.”

“Is that why you sent Empyrean Knights across the Causeway?”

His eyes narrowed but he nodded in agreement. “Yes, that’s tight. I sent them to reconnoiter a wood elf encampment established a fair distance from the Causeway. If the Knights reach the secret cache I saw in my vision first, the wood elves will never know the soul-corrupting danger, they were saved from unearthing.”

“Telarian, once more, explain why you’ve learned so much, taken so much upon yourself, without informing me.”

Now it was his turn to grasp her shoulder, but she pushed him back. She considered asking Telarian to explain the significance of Brathtar’s strange summons, but decided to keep that information in reserve.

Telarian paused, said, “If this all turns out to be a mad fancy, I wouldn’t want to waste your time and thought on it. You’re the Keeper of the Innet Bastion, the Watcher of the Well. Your duties are immediate and vital.”

“But—”

“Trust me, Delphe. If this reconnaissance mission to the wood elf encampment confirms any of my visions, however slight, I shall instantly and immediately inform you. That was and remains my plan. Please don’t make more of this than what it is—a foray to gather information, and perhaps to save a few elves from their own curiosity—nothing more.”

A thought struck Delphe. “The appearance of strange elves in the armor of the Empyrean Knights could reveal the presence of Stardeep to the wood elf encampment.”

The old twinkle returned to Telatian’s eyes as he explained. “The Knights are not unskilled in woodcraft. They are abroad to observe only, not interact. Anyhow, Brathtar may not have to go anywhere near the village to find the cache.”

Powdery snow accumulated across boughs, between pine needles, and across saplings and the dark ground under the great boles. Bit by bit through the night, it formed a curving white blanket covering the sleeping forest.

When Janesta Leafgrace emerged from her double-hide pavilion, she laughed as she shook the snow out of her hair that plopped down from above. She breathed in the crisp air that came with the newly laid covering. After snowfall, the woods

took on the aspect of a fey wonderland that called her to explote a terrain transformed. Without distutbing anyone in her pavilion who reclined in remembering trances, she was away.

The snow was smooth and pristine, save for the elf-light ttacks she left behind. The murmuring pines and hemlocks had fallen quiet under their newly made garments of white. Yes, even the sad, old voices of the so-called “elder druids” of the forest were speechless in the mornings wonder. Or so Janesta fancied.

And—

She spied a set of lone prints! Another early explorer, like her. Not a fellow from the encampment—it was a wildling of the forest.

She pursued the trail uphill, skirting an icy boulder field, staying beneath the canopy of oak branches. The prints were only partly familiar; certainly a big cat, but one new to the area, or at least new to het. The snowfall made following easy, but Janesta still practiced her forestcraft; she examined broken foliage, measured the length between prints, moved as quietly as she was able. When she saw a patch of disturbed snow, she dug up a shallowly buried cache of spoor.

It was a cougar after all, one from eastern Yuirwood. It had wandered close to the encampment. Janesta decided to stay on the trail to see if she could track it to its lair, if it had one. She suspected it might be a female, hungry to feed new cubs. If so, perhaps she would bring down a bird to help supplement its diet.

As she examined a spot where it had circled a stump, probably to mark its scent, she heard the first horns.

High, piercing, strangely thrilling… but ominous for their unfamiliarity. They sounded like something described in a shaman’s tale, something that warlike humans beyond the Yuirwood might produce on their metallic instruments. She frowned and turned toward home.

The sudden cries and screams that broke under the calling horns jolted Janesta into a run.

When the hunttess reached her village under the snow-bowed canopy, she couldn’t understand what transpired before her eyes—the scene was too far outside her experience for comprehension.

Humans—no, elves… elves! Not wood elves like her tribe, or high elves she’d glimpsed on the Yuirwood’s borders, nor even half-elves. Strange, steely eyed elves on mailed steeds. They were everywhere, surrounding the village, cantering through the center circle, sweeping down the side avenues. Resplendent in mail so fair it could only be mithral, the newcomer elves assailed her home without metcy.

Surprised and beset on all sides, wood elves died.

She saw friends taken in the back by scything swords. Others were pushed from high bowers by cruelly aimed arrows. A group that sought to flee beneath the boughs was ridden down by flashing hooves. Slender blades cut screaming throats. Dying children cried out to their parents, husbands to their wives. Janesta saw her friend Natal Peacethorn pulled from his home, shrieking. Her brothet’s wife Sarana was felled with two atrows. The monument stone that had stood three full tendays since the encampment’s hopeful founding was toppled and smashed. Five hunters attempted to drag away wounded, but they were ridden down for their efforts.

Janesta was witnessing a heartless slaughtet, nothing less. What courage she always assumed was hers failed; she shrank back into the undergrowth, all strength stolen from chilled, clammy limbs.

She turned, swearing, crying, hating heiself, and ran blindly through the snowy woods, careful to keep her feet light and sliding, leaving as little sign as her snowcraft allowed. If she were to survive the annihilation of her home

at the hands of these strange, steel-eyed elves, cowardice was her only option.

At first she ran without goal, holding no thought other than escape. As the heat of her exertion warmed her, a seed of fury blossomed, burning at the loss through which she labored. She adjusted her direction and set her course. She was bound for Relkath’s Foot, one of the latgest communities of wood elves in all the Yuitwood. There she would tell her story, pour out her anger, and gather a force. Only vengeance could sate her loss.

She would go to Relkath’s Foot and alert the Mastets of the Yuirwood.

The image of stern-faced elves in shining, blood-slicked mail maddened her. The kin-slaying elves hadn’t dropped from the sky, nor were their horses lathered as if from a long ride. They had appeared from somewhere not far from the encampment. Aftet she put a few miles of forest behind her, thinking all the while, Janesta was ptetty sure from where.

On the edge of a pocket reality, a massive gate loomed, cold and gray, a lattice of strange script and tiny ctacks bespeaking hundreds of years of weathering.

Telarian waited for Brathtar just inside the great stone gates that opened onto the mist-shrouded Causeway. Telarian often stood thus, year in and year out. The chiseled granite of the gate’s face was as familiar as a friend. The Keeper knew every edge, every crack, every discoloration. Moreover, he was more than familiar with the inscriptions, sigils, and glyphs so prominently displayed. They warned of danger and death for any who entered uninvited, in a variety of tongues and alphabets:

This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is present in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the world, and it can erase all life, overwriting all with abomination.

The danger may be unleashed if this place is disturbed. Shun this place. Turn around.

The warnings were not endowed with magical force capable of steering away the curious, but danger would certainly befall any who ignored the warnings and ventured into the shadowed Gtand Vestibule.

On more than one occasion in the long history of Stardeep, the gates had withstood attacks by fools loyal to the Traitor, who had discovered his prison despite all the effort of hiding his location. But neither those ancient attacks, nor all the time that had since elapsed had discernibly weakened the facade. Stardeep’s entrance stood strong and patient, capable of repelling anything thrown its way.

Above the gate was scribed the massive symbol of a strangely curving tree: Stardeep’s emblem. Around the white tree was a circular field that glowed and flickered with bluish fire. Though of late, to Telarian’s eyes, the fire seemed darker, sootiet perhaps.

Telarian watched as the commander and his men slowly filed back across the hazy land bridge, as if resolving from imagination into reality. The men didn’t speak to each other, or look up to salute the Keeper, as was his due. Desolation hung in their slack postures and in their limp hold on their reins.

Telarian recognized they had followed his orders.

Commander Brathtar brought up the column’s rear, his mail dimmed by a sheen of dried blood. Behind him, the

Causeway faded into the encroaching mist, hidden or truly dissolved, Telarian did not know. Either way, it would return when next bidden by Cynosure or him, and again provide a connection between Stardeep and the Yuirwood.