Alliances

His efforts to map the extensive stone ruins likewise had been fruitless. The ruins were maddeningly irregular. Up close, the progression of wall, column, and monolith made superficial sense but, considered as a whole, added up to nothing. There were no traces of lesser structures between the cyclopean stones. If they were the remains of a city, then the city had no plan he could discern. It was as if an enormous ceremonial site had been begun and never finished.

Just the night before, when Favaronas had begun to fear he’d traded his old life for an unobtainable dream, he had a revelation. As he idled by the creek, using small pebbles to model some of the stone ruins he’d mapped that day, he suddenly realized the ruins were not ruins at all. The monoliths weren’t the remains of larger structures. They were, taken all together, some sort of code or symbol. The problem wasn’t recognizing what they had been, but what they were supposed to represent. The only way to do that was to see the whole, rather than the scattered parts. He needed an eagle’s eye view of the field of stones.

The eastern mountains were the only accessible high point. To the west, the peaks rose sheer from the valley floor, like the walls of a forbidden fortress. The slopes of the eastern mountains were more gradual. Getting there posed a severe problem, though. He would have to leave the relative safety of Lioness Creek. The nightly apparitions and will-o’-the-wisps never came beyond the creek, so Favaronas made certain he returned each evening to its western shore. To reach the eastern mountains, he would have to travel several days on foot across the widest part of the valley.

With much trepidation, he resolved to do it. He had little choice. His habit of remaining within a day’s walk of the creek meant he was stripping the land thereabouts of its meager provender. If he was going to discover the secret of Inath-Wakenti before he starved, he had to forsake safety and go to the eastern mountains.

He ate raw watercress and pondered how to carry the water he would need for his journey. It was a cool day, with a bright blue sky quartered by white cloudbanks. As he watched the clouds sail in stately fashion from east to west, he became aware of movement nearby. He’d spent so much time alone, he was very sensitive to the slightest motion. Lowering his eyes, he saw someone standing on the eastern shore of the stream. Favaronas recoiled so hard he fell backward.

The morning sun was brilliant behind a figure wrapped head to toe in layers of dusty dark cloth. The robes were so bulky, the stranger hidden so completely by them, he could be elf, human, or draconian.

“Who are you?” Favaronas called out.

He hadn’t spoken in so long, his own voice sounded strange to him. When he’d first come to the valley, he’d talked to himself, as much for company as anything, but he’d soon stopped. Somehow it seemed wrong to disturb the silence.

The robed stranger did not reply. Instead, he began to move, gliding across the water. His sandaled feet touched the surface of the creek but didn’t break through. Favaronas yelled. Before he could gain his feet and run, the stranger was in front of him.

“Rise and face me, Favaronas.” The stranger’s voice was low, its cadence deliberate.

“Who are you?”

“A seeker of knowledge, like you. Serve me, and I will protect you. I need someone who knows these ruins.”

Honesty compelled Favaronas to disclaim such expertise since he hadn’t dared venture more than a day’s walk from the creek.

The robed figure asked what he feared. That was all the prompting the desperately lonely scholar needed. He told of the ghost he’d seen in a tunnel beneath the monoliths, the colored lights whose touch caused elves to vanish, and most bizarre of all, his encounter just outside the valley entrance with four half elf, half animal females.

The stranger cried, “This is just the knowledge I need!” He withdrew his hands from where they’d been hidden within his wide sleeves and gestured excitedly. “I am a mage, Favaronas. With my protection, you can venture away from the shelter of this stream. I will defend us both.”

Judging by the shape and size of those pale hands, Favaronas felt sure he was in the presence of an elf. Somewhat emboldened, he asked the stranger’s name.

“Faeterus.”

The name was familiar. Favaronas felt certain he’d heard it in Khurinost. “Did the Speaker send you?” he asked.

A humorless chuckle sounded inside the deep hood. “I am here at no one’s behest but my own.”