Natac was conscious of the other woman’s eyes on him, cool and appraising. He flushed with shame, sensing that this was a friend of Miradel’s-surely she must be blaming him for the doom that had fallen upon the druid. Yet he could discern little emotion in those wide, almond-shaped eyes. Despite his embarrassment, he stared back, realizing that there were other things that were unusual about this woman.
Her ears were pointed in the lobe, he saw, like Fallon’s. That cascading array of white-gold hair was bound by a circlet of silver wire, and her face seemed unusually narrow-though she was unquestionably beautiful to behold. Yet, despite the fact that he had now seen humans with faces of fur, and with skin of darkest black or pale white, there was something different about this person.
He wondered if it was her lack of emotion, and decided that was it. Miradel’s breath had caught in her throat at the sight of Belynda, and Natac saw the trembling of her shoulders, knew the druid was fighting to suppress an expression of her feeling. Belynda was making no such effort-in the frank examination of Miradel’s lined face, or her cool appraisal of the warrior whose summoning had thus aged her, she looked as though she might have been examining something of utterly no import.
“Warrior Natac,” Miradel said, stepping back to look at him. He saw the emotion in her eyes, was startled to recognize it as pride. She was proud of him! Again he felt that staggering weight of guilt, unworthiness-why?
“This is my friend Belynda of Argentian… She is a sage-ambassador of the elves.”
“I greet you, Belynda of Argentian,” Natac said with a bow, even as his mind digested the news. So she wasn’t human after all-she was an elf! And Fallon was too, of course. The word had some intrinsic meaning to him, merely because of his familiarity with his new language, but he resolved to ask Miradel many more questions when he had a chance.
“And you, Warrior Natac,” Belynda replied, still in that cool, distant tone. “I can only hope my friend has chosen wisely.”
“I hope the same thing, lady,” he replied sincerely.
“Natac has encountered Fionn and Owen,” Miradel said. “In fact, he got them to stop brawling long enough to have a conversation.”
“A brief conversation,” Natac amended.
“I think this warrior may be different from the others,” the druid said, again with that sense of pride that made him squirm.
“I see.” Belynda looked into Miradel’s eyes. “Why did you do it, my friend? When you knew the costs, and the risks… and you know the spell has been forbidden by your own council?” It was as if Natac weren’t there as she sought for an answer. Yet he listened intently, at least as anxious for the answer as was the elfwoman who asked the question.
“I will tell you,” the druid said. “Tell you both… but before I do, there is something that I would like to discuss with you.”
“What is it?”
“We all felt the world shake a few days ago. I am convinced that was just a symptom of much greater disturbances. And so I ask you, my friend: What have you heard of unusual trouble in the Fourth Circle?”
It seemed to Natac as if Belynda’s pale skin got a touch whiter. “The sage-enchantress Caranor… she died by fire in her home. And then an interval later the sage-enchantress Allevia was killed the same way!”
Miradel gasped. “Allevia dwelled in the Lodespikes, did she not?”
“On the fringe of the mountains, yes… in a high valley overlooking the Greens.”
“The Greens,” the druid repeated seriously. “It is there I feel the danger lies.”
“There are a lot of people there,” Belynda countered, though she didn’t speak with a great deal of conviction. “Surely we would have heard something in Circle at Center about trouble? Or you druids… Can’t you look there with your viewing glass?”
“That’s part of the problem,” Miradel said. “For a long time, now, the Greens have been masked to our magic. Druids have gone there, talked to centaurs and giants and faeries… and though they haven’t learned anything suspicious, it is not uncommon for them to encounter unusual secrecy. And that was before Debyra’s visit, just last year.”
“What did she learn?” Belynda asked.
“Nobody knows… she was never heard from again.”
“That is bad enough-but can you be certain?”
“Not yet… not about everything. But Cillia has been watching, and she has told me what she’s learned.” Miradel looked at Belynda curiously. “Did you know that there are now many elves living in the Greens?”
“No!” The sage-ambassador blinked, for her a dramatic expression of surprise. “I always knew of a few renegades, restless souls who never seemed to fit in. But there are no realms there!”
The druid shrugged. “There are more than a few, and perhaps it is right to call them renegades. They seem to be content to live in the wilderness, away from the sanctity of borders and councils.”
“Perhaps that’s where they’re going,” Belynda mused softly.
“Who?” probed Miradel.
“It’s just… for some years now, an unusual number of elves have been leaving Argentian. And no one seems to know where they go. Just this morning I learned that the same thing is happening in Barantha and Kel’sos.”
“All realms within a hundred miles of the Greens,” the druid observed.
“And such migration is unquestionably a change… an unusual one, in the annals of Nayve. But even so… what harm is done? Where is the trouble?”
“I believe that there is something dangerous there,” Miradel informed her friend, and took in Natac’s eyes with a brief glance.
“Dangerous elves?”
“Elves… and others. Centaurs and giants, I’m certain. But there is something holding them together, driving them… and it is a force that resists even detection by druid magic.”
“But stay-I admit that you are making me think,” declared the elfwoman, her hand trembling slightly as she raised it before Miradel’s aged face. “Now explain something: You were going to tell me why you brought this warrior here.”
The druid took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I did it for your people,” she said to Belynda.
“For the elves? Why in the name of the Goddess would you do that?”
“Because,” Miradel said, and now her dark eyes turned to Natac, “you are needed to train the elves in the ways of battle… to teach them how to fight a war.”
F lames rose high around him and he saw Satan writhing against a desperate onslaught. The demon twisted and shrieked, helplessly suffering the torture of his righteous punishment. Slowly, inexorably, the valiant knight pressed forward with sword and staff… victory was there! And then that triumph slipped away from him in a gust of wind and a waft of smoke. The fiend had made his escape, and the knight was left alone, facing the enemy horde…
The dream had its own form, and it followed the pattern each time it tormented his sleep. Constructed from the events of Sir Christopher’s past, centuries distant, it wove a tale of temptation and failure, and it left alive the hope of redemption and triumph.
It always began with the same disaster: The Saracens attacked from ambush, striking from both ridges above a parched, arid valley. They caught twelve Knights Templar by surprise, slaughtering many of Sir Christopher’s companions with their short, lethal arrows. Only three of the twelve reached the great portals, the gates to sacred Jerusalem herself.
But the Saracens cut them off before they could enter the safety of the great fortress-city. Finally Sir Christopher stood alone, hacking to right and left, slaughtering his enemies for the glory of God. He prayed aloud, calling the names of his slain comrades, praising the bravery of his loyal, perished horse. Thirst was a claw at his swollen tongue, talons of fire ripping at his parched throat. His shield, emblazoned with the red cross of the Templars, was torn and broken under the onslaught of a hundred weapons.
His red blade was knocked from his hands. A Syrian lance pierced his flesh, slicing into his heart and lungs. In that instant he knew he was dying, and he commended his soul and his being to Heavenly Paradise. His life flowed away, spattered in crimson blood across the rocks of the Holy Land. In the last glimmer of awareness, he reached upward, sought and anticipated the welcoming embrace of God.