It had been weeks since we had fought Lynqxaemass. That her friends and allies were still waiting for us spoke either of the degree of their enmity, or of their certainty of our survival. I suspected the latter, which meant that they had diviners, which we should have assumed, given Lynqxaemass’ citing the stars. That, in turn, almost certainly meant that they knew roughly if not precisely when we would return to the gate. Which meant that they knew that we were here, now, but were not actively hunting us. It was possible, even, that they had let Khanaarre and Rennin see them and then escape to report. All of which meant that it was our crossing, here and now, that concerned them more than vengeance.
Again and again, my thoughts circled back to Lynqxaemass’ claim that the fate of the world hung in the balance. What was Aemillian doing, and what might Elana or her heirs do, that so concerned the dragons and the gods they served? Whatever it was, I couldn’t imagine it.
We took the remainder of that day to deal with the shock and gather our wits. None of us lost our composure as completely as Khanaarre, and I thought less of all of us for that. Nor did any of us – save, perhaps, Elana and Rennin – have much else to say to one another. We each picked our corner of our encampment to pray, panic, sulk, brood, or whatever combination of those best suited us.
Myself, I hiked upstream and prayed for most of the afternoon. After dinner, I retreated to my tent where I did my best to divine an overland course. My crystal ball was damaged, and every attempt to use it both damaged it further and put me at risk of the kind of injury I had told the others Veralar suffered, but I had no time to repair it and the risk of continuing without divination seemed greater still. I made no attempt to contact Aemillian, or to divine the fate of Veralar, and was grateful that he could not seem to sense my work from the far side of the veil. I wanted no distractions from the task of assuring our survival and return to the mortal world.
The next day, after the rains had passed, we broke camp and turned northward. Just as they had when we had set off eastward from this same camp, weeks ago, Rennin took point under my direction, with Khanaarre at his side, helping him to choose a trail and keeping ever vigilant both for predators and for game. Elana and Orland trailed behind, scared, sullen, and suspicious.
As suspicious as they were of me, it was a rational suspicion. No attempt was made to lay blame for the dragons at my feet. Nor did they seem to hold me personally responsible for the route of our detour. They were so horrified at the thought of crossing the demon-haunted Lightning Plains of their imaginations that it never crossed their minds that I might prefer this route to an attempt to pierce the veil at some other point.
If they knew the truth of where I came from, it might have been different. Who knew what they might suspect or accuse me of, if they knew? But I had kept that secret even from Aemillian, and if I knew of any way to pierce the veil at another point without stooping to human sacrifice, I would have preferred that to this, which would almost inevitably lead to that revelation.
So, rather than accusing, the Vencari grew subdued. No more did they huddle close, dreaming of what they would do when Elana ruled. Instead they turned to Khanaarre and I for reassurance.
“You said that the bard, Dano`ar came this way before us.” It was Orland who asked the question out loud, late that first afternoon, but I was sure that I’d heard them all whispering about it the night before. “What more can you tell us?”
It was a fair question. More than fair. And I appreciated the effort that it represented.
“As I said before,” I began, “the Great Bard crossed the veil in search of adventure. Why he turned north, I can only speculate.”
I spoke slowly, wracking my memory for the precise words of his songs. I did not wish to admit to more knowledge than I should have. Not yet.
“He spoke of a dry flat land, punctuated by pillars of stone and wracked by thunder and lightning. He spoke of ruined cities, abandoned by their people and overrun with monstrous creatures. He spoke of a road that wound through those cities, north by northwest, that ultimately led him to the headwaters of the River Venn, by which he returned to the lands of the Compact.”
Rennin and Khanaarre slowed their trailblazing to hear what I had to say. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Elana and Orland had drawn near. I continued.
“The monsters he described included giant lizards, which he called drakes, and rock-colored hunting cats, probably the same sort of creature we found in the river valley on our way east from the pyramid. I’m not sure what kind of game he hunted, but he made no comments on scarcity.”
Then I turned to Khanaarre.
“Dano`ar the Dragon Bard spent more time among your people than he did ours,” I said. “I imagine that you know a great deal of him that I do not.”
She smiled, then shrugged.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Though I don’t know how much of what I know is of any use to us. Dano`ar is known in Vencar for his travelogues, and for reopening trade with Shendryl beyond the Great Southern Desert. In Tanirinaal, he is better known for his parentage.”
That won a laugh from Elana, probably intended. I did not entirely understand the friendship between the prince and her favorite wizard, but I had no doubt of its sincerity.
“Who then,” Elana asked, “were his parents?”
“His mother was – is, I assume that they both still live – the half-dragon Rusyara, whose legend I presume you know. In addition to her many more exciting travels, she came north and made her home among the llamenan for some years. She was favored by the Queen and the Sorceress’ Council.”
Khanaarre sighed.
“You are all educated folk,” she said. “You know that my people still suffer the aftereffects of a curse laid upon us in the first days when we settled at the foot of Mount Kashrin. Many of our boy children are stillborn, or die young. Almost all of those who live into adulthood are weak and sickly. It is one of the reasons we have marriage circles instead of the monogamy that you humans ostensibly prefer.”
Another pause, this one more maudlin.
“Sorcerers tend to be healthier, if they survive to adulthood,” she went on, “but there are still too few of them. So by ancient law, dating back to those earliest days, sorcerers are forbidden to marry. They are considered already wed to every living sorceress. And, while it is no longer practiced for reasons which I hope are obvious, the law still states that any sorceress, and only a sorceress, may claim a sorcerer for her bed at her whim.”
Elana coughed.
“Expedient, that,” she said.
Rape-y would be my word, I thought, but expedient would do.
“Indeed,” said Khanaarre. “I would emphasize that while the law still technically stands, the practice is long abandoned … except that sorcerers rarely marry, and that they are still generally seen as fit companions only for sorceresses. But Rusyara flouted those traditions. She seduced and ran away with Andosaar, the Queen’s lover and the greatest sorcerer of their generation. And Dano`ar is their son.”
“Did Rrallashyl ever forgive her?” Elana asked.
“Not publicly, no,” said Khanaarre. “So while Dano`ar is well known in the Queen’s Court of Tanirinaal, his mother is anathema and his father is effectively exiled. Legend says that they live in the Namoran Badlands, or in the Tusker Rough, south of Namora.”
The conversation might have continued in that vein, but we came to another cleft in the earth. This one ran west to east, as well, with a trickle of water along the bottom, but it was more mud than rock. Navigating the edge was difficult and dangerous, and it took us a mile or two of eastward travel to find a place dry and rocky enough to safely descend and ascend.
We stopped on the far side for lunch – half celebration, half much-needed and well-deserved rest. By now we were very well acquainted with what plants and fungi were and were not edible, and took full advantage of the large patch of the surprisingly hearty and flavorful mushrooms that we found there, with some bark and berries for texture and variety.
“It’s Dano`ar’s tales that guide us now,” Elana said as we gathered ourselves to resume travel, “but it was the journals of Arcmedus that led us all to our prize. In truth, I know him only as the Great Blasphemer. What more can you tell us of this man whose footsteps we followed?”
I paused to consider. It was a dangerous question, but an important one, and there was probably no place safer for her to ask or for I to answer than a literal world away from the priests and scholars whose professions demanded silence on the subject. I decided to be as academic as possible.
“Arcmedus der Allan,” I said, “was one of the greatest minds of the first age of wizardry, probably one of the greatest wizards to ever live. Though we have learned a great deal about mundane divination since his day, his gift for prophesy and clairvoyance has never been matched.”
I paused there, partly out of a sense of drama, but mostly because I had to scrabble over a fallen tree that Khanaarre, in her elven dexterity, had deemed insignificant. I waited for the prince and her knights to follow before resuming both the trail and the tale.
“He was an ascetic and pious man who lived and worked in the last years of the third century and the first decades of the fourth. He was a member of no Order, they were not as entrenched then, and we know little to nothing about the master under whom he studied. We know even less about his family, or how he came to amass enough wealth to pursue his magical ambitions.” There was so much to say about that great man, it was hard to choose where to stop or start. “Among his many accomplishments, he made significant advances in mapping the characters of Heavenscript to the placement of stars in the sky and pioneered the use of crystals to focus divinatory intent.”
I spoke slowly, making sure not to fall out of earshot or sight of Rennin and Khanaarre, but also to not leave the prince and Orland behind.
“As I’m sure you all know, he is most famous for his attempts to divine the origins of the world.” And the origins of the peoples of the world, which … did I want to go there? Yes, I decided. “But it was not just the origins of the world he sought, but the origins of everything in it. He divined the origins of humankind, of elves, of dwarves, of dragons. He was the first to propose that each coming of the prophets changed the people that they came to, which was what led him to the question of where the prophets came from. The pursuit of that question brought him to the Holy Lands, and to the tombs from which we brought the Blade of Xadaer.”
Travelling west to east had been so easy. The ground, itself, had almost pushed us that direction. Travelling north was proving harder. We were hiking perpendicular to the slope of the land. Keeping to level ground required drifting east and west by turns, and our footing was never easy. Rivers and creeks ran east by southeast.
“Did he find the answer,” asked Elana. “Did he find where prophets came from?”
“No,” I said. “He concluded that they had abandoned the cities and the grave sites that he found, and had moved to places less haunted by death and the Leviathan.”
“Did he find the origin of elves?” Khanaarre asked, her voice a little tight.
“I believe so,” I said. “But I would have to consult my library. I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I was looking for when I last read the treatises.”
Actually, I could not recall what I had read in Arcmedus and what I had been taught by the priestesses who raised me. Oh, she was going to be so mad when she learned who had raised me.
“Do elves not know?” Elana asked.
“No,” said Khanaarre, her voice deep with sorrow. “We know almost nothing of who we were before we were enslaved by the sao`ashan.”
“The sao`ashan,” Orland mangled the pronunciation. “Who live north of the Great Ice Wall, and rule the giants who traded steel to the Illustrians.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And this road we’re looking for,” said Rennin, his voice carrying back from up ahead, “that takes us across the Lightning Plains to the Great Ice Wall. Does it run through their territory?”
“Almost certainly,” she said. “If they still live.”
“Derrek?” There was an accusation in the way Elana said my name. “Did you know of this?”
“There was no mention of giants in Dano`ar’s travelogue,” I said. “But I guessed, from what Khanaarre said before. And, as she said, no one has seen or heard from them since the fall of Illustria.”
The silence that fell was as accusatory as the question. I could not tell if this new accusation fell on Khanaarre, as well, or if mine was the burden of all blame.
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