I had never in my life imagined that I would see a prophet. To have stood before one, to have spoken to her, and been spoken to, to have my worth judged … It left me reeling for days. I did my best to hide my discomposure, but I know that Songlover noticed. So did Crescent. And I think Khanaarre did, too, which was its own discomfort.
I do not believe that any of the Prince’s Fighters were unaffected. If Sirs Rennin and Orland were less awestruck by the divine presence than wracked by the realization that they had been utterly powerless to protect their liege from the Children of Enhyl, whom they still saw as monsters more than people … well, that was understandable.
For her own part, Elana had retreated into quiet contemplation. That first evening, when we had returned to our borrowed hut after Songlover’s tour of the Black Ears pack compound, she had simply sat next to Rennin. When he had tried to plan, she had taken his hand and squeezed gently until he had fallen into silence. It was a small intimacy, but one which spoke volumes. Vencari eschewed public displays of such sentimental tenderness as fervently as the Georgi and the Namorans eschewed public sexuality.
The signs of the prophet’s effect on Veralar were more subtle. I doubt that any but myself noticed how her attention wavered as we walked the village. When we returned to the hut, she excused herself to practice her forms outside, and was gone somewhat longer than usual.
Of our company, only Khanaarre seemed to have found some deep comfort in the encounter. That was not entirely a surprise. Urassarrain of Liddarn had spoken highly of her. But I knew little of elven theology or praxis beyond the most public devotions to their father god, Esthraal, and I could only wonder what the encounter meant to her.
When Shadow came for us in the morning, the sun barely peeking over the horizon, we were all eager and ready to leave. We slipped out of the village unnoticed by any save the half-dozen pony-sized wolves who guarded the front gate. I recalled from my time here, before, that while there would be hunters up before us, they would already be in the woods, and the rest of the village might not rouse before noon.
Shadow was eager to try speaking through the spell. Unfortunately for us all, it required us to speak to him, first, and of all of us, Shadow most particularly wanted to speak to Veralar. His fascination, bordering on infatuation, was clear across the language barrier. I couldn’t blame him, exactly. Veralar was a good-looking woman and a legendary warrior. But if she had any sexual proclivities, she had kept them very much to herself and they likely did not include an affair with a younger man of another species.
To my surprise, it was Rennin and Orland who took most to Shadow, inquiring about local wood lore and asking for help identifying edible plants to augment our dry stores and the game we stopped to hunt every other day. As on the road through the Compact, Khanaarre joined the hunts, bringing back dinner more often than the knights, though not quite as often as Shadow. I followed those conversations as best I could. I had some knowledge of and interest in wood lore, and an intense curiosity about what Shadow might reveal of himself in the process.
This region of the Wolfwood was dominated by massive old-growth trees. The underbrush was thin, giving us wide false roads of rotting foliage to cushion our steps. The forests we had passed through when we had first crossed the river had been denser, younger, magically regrown by the prophet as they and the Children of Enhyl had reclaimed the territory from Vencari settlers. These trees had never known the touch of axe or saw.
“I am surprised that you have not brought one of your wolves with us,” Rennin said one afternoon, asking a question that I suspect was on all of our minds.
Shadow had shrugged.
“My first wolf friend died of years, two summers past,” he said, his accent horrific and his grammar obscure. I winced internally, knowing that I had sounded just like him, once. “I have not yet bonded anew.”
There was more information expressed and implied in that sentence than Songlover had let slip on the subject of the wolves in the fifteen months I had spent among the Black Ear Pack. I grinned, wondering what other gems he would drop, and if the Children of Enhyl might not regret letting such a hot-blooded youth guide us.
If Veralar did not reciprocate or encourage Shadow’s infatuation, neither did she shun him. She permitted him to watch, morning and night, as she went through her daily practice – the painfully slow movements which looked more like dance than fighting, but which required and perfected astounding physical strength, and which at full speed were the most deadly fighting art known among humankind. She answered his questions, showed him a little of how she wielded her sword, though she warned him that her curved katana longsword techniques would not work with his shorter hooked kopis blade. Rennin and Orland joined the conversation at that point, and thereafter took turns instructing Shadow in the Vencari styles of sword fighting. Shadow was a quick study, though the concept of orthopraxy was lost on him.
Khanaarre and Elana watched all this with the same curious interest as I did.
Our northward travel had bought us an extra week of spring, but we were definitely into summer, now. The days were hot and the nights warm, even in the full shade of the thick forest canopy. Khanaarre traded her coat for a sleeveless tunic. I considered doing the same, and I was extremely grateful that I was not trapped in a steel breastplate, like Elana and the knights. Veralar, of course, showed no signs of being affected by the heat. Perhaps the Tann monastery was in the Namoran Badlands. Or perhaps she was just a Shan Khul master, and largely immune to the elements.
Whenever possible, we camped by water – especially on days when we were stopping to hunt – so that we could all bathe and cool off. To my surprise, Veralar seemed to have truly given in to Vencari immodesty. We did, sometimes, take turns by sex, as Veralar had always preferred, but as often as not we drew straws, or went down to the river in whatever order we finished our camp chores. She blushed a great deal, particularly when bathing with the knights, but she found her ease. None of us failed to notice – or deigned to comment – that Elana and Rennin went to bathe together with increasing frequency, or how close they sat together around the fire, despite the heat.
Shadow did not lead us due east, but on a meandering east-by-southeast path that skirted the edges of a dozen pack territories, and avoided the hunting ranges of nymphs and satyrs who might take too keen an interest in travelers. Game trails and water led us north or south, at times. At one point, we went three days out of our way to avoid signs that Shadow identified as a monstrous chimaera’s territory. I made a mental note of it for future adventures, should I survive this one. I had always wanted to see a chimaera in person, but now was not the time. In the same sense, I was glad that we were too far south to see rock wyverns.
We were twenty-two days out from the Black Ears Pack clanhold when I first felt the land begin to change. There were no material signs that I could detect, at first, but I could see that Khanaarre sensed it, too: the world was brighter here, more alive. Everything trembled with potential.
Late the next day, the signs became more apparent. Thick creeping vines with luridly colored flowers snaked across the ground. The trees became thicker and taller with each mile we walked. The water, when we stopped to rest and bathe, was clear and bright and sweet, and restored us like a fresh-cooked meal.
“We are close, now,” Shadow told us.
I nodded.
“We should find a good camp,” I said, “and take an extra day of rest. The crossing may be grueling.”
I could feel the Veil looming. We were, in a sense, already there. If I were willing to shed another’s blood to generate the power for the gateway, we could cross over right here. I had not suggested that possibility to the prince’s court, though, and I would not suggest it now.
To our great fortune, and my immense gratitude, we soon found a cool, rocky grotto, much like the one we had been shown by the Flint Knife pack, though without the geothermal pool. With the full heat of summer upon us, that lack was a blessing.
“Can you tell us more about what we are looking for?” Elana asked as we all relaxed into that pool after dinner. “What we can expect?”
It was time for that, I supposed.
“The Eastern Veil is a fault line,” I said, “like the upthrust earth where we crossed the Wolf River and found the hot springs, except that it is where our mortal world rubs up against the Holy Land. Another day to the east, perhaps a day to the south, if my reconning is correct…” Here, I paused and looked to Shadow, who nodded. “…we will find a gate where others have crossed before and erected markers to aid themselves in crossing again.”
“Others?” Elana interrupted. “What others?”
“The half-elven bard, Dano`ar was the last that I know of,” I said. “He found the gate and the markers already standing, and bartered with the guardian he found there to aid him in crossing. The journals of the great diviner Arcmedus seem to indicate that he crossed into the Holy Lands in the late fourth or early fifth century, but without the aid of a gate or guardian. Perhaps he crossed at another point, or perhaps the gate had not yet been built. I do not know.”
Elana reeled in the face of those implications. Rennin provided a germane question.
“Did the great bard give any details about the guardian?”
“No,” I shook my head. “He was pointedly vague. I take heart, though, from the knowledge that the guardian can be bargained with.”
Khanaarre asked the next obvious question.
“Shadow,” she said, “do you know anything about the guardian?”
He shifted uncomfortably, his eyes suddenly everywhere but at us.
“There is nothing that I am permitted to say,” he said after too long a pause.
“Hey, now, lad,” said Rennin, bristling a little.
“Mine is to guide you to the gate and wait for as long as the guardian permits me for you to return, and then to seek out the prophet, wherever they may be, whether or not you return.” He sighed and looked up at the sky. His accent had improved over the weeks we had travelled together. There would probably always be a bit of growl to his gutturals, but that was just the shape of his voice. His grammar, however, remained obtuse and archaic. The knights were partly to blame for that: they had taken to quoting the great poems at him. And Elana had found it absolutely adorable. “I know that you are all very clever, and have probably gleaned secrets that I was meant to keep from my careless words. But of the guardians I was specifically commanded to keep silent. I will not break my trust.”
Rennin grumbled, but Elana held up her hand.
“We bargained for passage,” she said. “We were promised no secrets.”
Rennin grunted and nodded.
“What do we know of the land beyond the gate,” asked Rennin.
“My two credible sources,” I said, “are Dano`ar and Arcmedus. Immediately across the Veil, both reported verdant green forests thick with both game and predators. Dano`ar went north from the gate and found the Lightning Plains. Arcmedus went east, and found a great canyon, where nothing lived or grew, littered with the detritus of an ancient battle and lined with the tombs of heroes. One of those tombs belongs to Xadaer, son of Horaath, son of Althaeruh, and bears his enchanted sword and armor.”
“You have said that you seek a magic sword,” said Shadow. “What did those men seek?”
“Dano`ar sought adventure,” I said. “Arcmedus was looking for the land from which he believed that the prophets had come.”
Shadow looked at me thoughtfully.
“Did they find what they sought?”
I shrugged.
“Dano`ar did,” I said. “But adventure is easy to find for anyone who looks hard enough. As for Arcmedus … I do not believe so. If he did, he was sworn to secrecy.”
“Secrecy?” Elana asked. “Why would he be sworn to secrecy?”
I shrugged again.
“To protect the secrets of the gods. To discourage other mortals from seeking out such holy places.”
“Is it not said,” asked Orland, “that the Illustrians traded with a nation of giants beyond the mountains of the north? That the giants gave the Illustrians the secret of steel to spite the dwarves? But that the traders were bound by a geas to speak of nothing that they saw or heard save the price of the goods?”
I nodded.
“So it is said,” I agreed.
Rennin scoffed, but Khanaarre spoke up.
“It is said,” she said, “and it is true. The giants beyond the Great Ice Wall are ruled by the sao`ashan, who once held llamenan and rrotran alike as slaves, before we escaped and fled down the river Venn to settle on and within Mount Kashrin. And they did bind the Illustrian traders to secrecy.”
“Did the Illustrians welcome you when you came,” asked Elana.
“No,” said Khanaarre. “Humans and Illustria come much later.”
I wondered if Elana would corner Khanaarre into being more specific. It wasn’t a secret, exactly, but the truth of human origins was a matter of great embarrassment to the elven and dwarven peoples, and a matter of theological delicacy with most human religions. So it was usually danced around so that everyone could save face.
But the hour was growing late, and with more critical matters settled, Elana’s curiosity was idle. Nor did anyone else rise to pursue the matter. One by one we slipped out of the pool, into our smallclothes, and from there to our bedrolls.
Khanaarre and I were the last to retire, sitting in companionable silence as we watched each other from opposite sides of the water. She had let her hair free of its braids to be washed, and the long, dark tendrils floating across the moonlit water created a scene of artistic intimacy that belonged better in a painting than my life. She smiled, and her eyes caught the fading light like a cat’s.
We took our day of rest, lounging in and around that cool grotto. Elana and Veralar spent the day helping Khannaarre redo her not-quite-sorceress’ braids. Orland once more helped Rennin shave his head, and the two knights taught Shadow more Vencari poetry, epic tales of ancient heroes and romantic lays of pastoral nymphs and satyrs. I withdrew my sword from my wizard’s chest, and went over the notes that I had prepared for when we would come to the Eastern Veil. And, come morning, we resumed our travels.
It was, exactly as I had guessed, a day east and a half day south before we came to the gate. There was no real sign or sense of it in advance. We merely rounded a knoll and there it was.
The soft cushion of loamy earth under rotten and rotting leaves and twigs gave way suddenly to hard-packed earth and stone. A massive cairn had been erected in the north corner of the clearing, opposite a deep and fast-running creek with a wide sandbar at the southern edge. And, there in the east, stood a raised platform and two rune-encrusted pillars of the same pale limestone as the cairn.
Khanaarre and I approached the pillars. Rennin, Orland, and Veralar secured a perimeter. Elana and Shadow stood in the clearing and waited.
The characters on the pillars were overwhelmingly Heavenscript, of course: the ideographic language of the celestial gods – of Althaeruh and Shiithaia and their children, of Ün the Starry Serpent and Tal Thannuu Storm Lord, for all that sun-cultists like Elana and Rennin called them demons. I had learned to read it first, of all the Immortal Tongues, even before I had come to the lands of the Compact. The translation would have been relatively simple, had I a chance to begin the work.
Khanaarre and I had barely gotten out our notebooks when the alien, trumpeting sound – something like the biggest crocodile of the Naam river swamps and the biggest lion of the east Vencari plains and the wrath of the very gods themselves – echoed through the forest. I froze. Khanaarre, just out of arm’s reach, did the same. I’m surprised that I didn’t void my bowels.
Behind us, I heard Shadow announce: “The guardian comes.”
Into the utter, unnatural silence that followed came the thunderous sound of vast leather wings. Wind buffeted us, hard enough that I staggered. Khanaarre fell. I struggled to remain upright, to turn to face what I could scarcely imagine. Then the wind died as abruptly as it had risen.
I turned, and nearly fell over, again, just from shock.
The beast was green and black and gold. Its body was twice as big around as the biggest ox I had ever seen, and half again as long. It stood on four legs, more like a cat than a lizard, despite the scales. From its back grew impossibly enormous wings. Its head was vaguely horselike in shape, though I could as easily compare it to a long-beaked bird or an improbably elegant alligator, and stood atop a neck as long as I was tall. The tail that curled around the cairn upon which it had landed was easily twice as long as the neck.
A dragon.
The guardian of the Eastern Veil was a fucking dragon.
My heart hammered in my chest. My knees turned to liquid. For a moment, I almost forgot language. I almost greeted it in the tongue I had spoken among the priestesses who had raised me.
It was the dragon who saved me, speaking a single word in the language of the Compact.
“Greetings,” it said.
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