She twisted her face away from his foul breath and groped with one hand, seeking the dagger hidden in her bedroll. Her questing fingers found cold metal. Heedless of the pain, she grasped the bare blade and pulled the weapon closer so she could take hold of the hilt. She plunged the dagger into the beast’s neck.
Shobbat grunted in pain, but his suffocating grip on her throat did not ease. Instead, he rose up on his haunches, lifting Adala off the ground. With a single sideways snap of his wolfish head, he silenced her breathless gasps.
Immediately he released her. It felt as though the dagger had gone completely through his throat; he could hardly breathe. He managed to hook the thick fingers of one front paw around the slender cross guard and drag the blade out. Next, his blunt fingers gripped the laddad arrow. It had hit at an oblique angle and hadn’t gone deep but had scored a long bloody trail in his furry flesh.
The Weya-Lu woman hadn’t moved. She didn’t breathe. Her neck was twisted so that her open eyes gazed unblinkingly at the stony soil.
Shobbat had killed. As prince, he had ordered the deaths of others, but never had he killed anyone personally. Killing was an ugly business, but the ignorant desert fanatic was too unpredictable and too proud to be a loyal underling. Better for him if she be dead. Such were the choices of fortune.
An owl hooted nearby, and Shobbat flinched. His injuries were painful but not grievous. Already the arrow wound was clotting, and the bleeding from the knife thrust had slowed to a trickle. His beast form was strong, but more than ever he was determined to find the wayward sorcerer Faeterus and force him to lift his curse. Shobbat was Crown Prince of Khur. With the nomads defeated and their fanatical Weyadan dead, Khur would be ready for a new leader, a prince who (at least outwardly) revered the old gods and decried his father’s corruption.
He loped away through the destroyed camp. The fires had died. The pass was once more cloaked in darkness. Shobbat circled the end of the unfinished wall and trotted north, into Inath-Wakenti. The owl did not speak again. But a cloud of bats whirled overhead, squeaking like a palace full of rusty door hinges.
The elves were camped atop a knoll surrounded on three sides by titans of stone. At Gilthas’s command, bonfires had been kindled along the open fourth side and in the gaps between the monoliths. The fires would be kept burning all night. Guards on top of the stones reported will-o’-the-wisps darting in the darkness, but none came near the encampment. The light or heat of the bonfires seemed to keep them at bay, for the moment.
The first day’s trek had proceeded without incident. Since no other goal had presented itself, Gilthas had decided they would make for the center of the valley. The lifelessness of Inath-Wakenti was disrupted by the tramping of feet, by elf voices, by the bleat and snort of the few domestic animals they retained, and by the occasional calls of Eagle Eye and Kanan circling overhead. Royal griffons and Goldens were rivals in nature, competitors for territory and food, and Kerian hadn’t been sure how the two would get on. Alhana had suggested that Kanan, being young, would submit to the elder beast, and pining for his rider, would be glad of Eagle Eye’s company. She had been proven right.
Soon they came to a wall of massive white blocks. Kerian said it ran for more than a mile in each direction, northwest and southeast. Blocks up to twenty feet long and eight feet high lay end to end, but there were plenty of breaks between the blocks. Hamaramis commented on its unsuitability as a defense and Kerian shrugged.
“I don’t think it was meant to defend,” she said. “None of the ruins make sense. They don’t connect. They don’t seem to be parts of buildings, just enormous blocks of stone dropped at random.”
Gilthas let himself be carried to the wall, then ordered the bearers to rest while he left the palanquin to study one of the blocks more closely. The stones were noticeably colder than the surrounding air, neatly dressed, with precise corners and smooth surfaces worn by the passage of a great deal of time. He identified the stone as snowy quartz. Nothing marred the white surface. Normally a boulder exposed to such a climate would be studded with lichens and moss and have a vine or two wedged in its fissures. All the blocks in sight were so clean, they might have been recently scrubbed. And as enormous as each was, rising above the turquoise turf, Gilthas knew from Kerian that quite a bit of each was buried in the ground.
As his palanquin was carried through the gap in the wall, Gilthas glimpsed someone at the far end of the block he had touched. He had a fleeting impression of dark eyes, a shock of brown hair, and tanned skin, but when he turned to see better, the figure was gone. Taranath and Kerian investigated, but found no one. The general was inclined to think the Speaker had been mistaken, but Kerian disagreed.
“The ghosts in this valley are real, Taran, make no mistake. It troubles me they’re showing themselves in broad daylight. Sunlight used to keep them away.”
They were witness to even stranger things as the night wore on. Slender, luminescent forms drifted out of the trees, passing on either side of the knoll on which the elves had camped. To those on the ground they resembled nothing more than luminous fog, but the watchers on the monoliths saw them as upright, walking shapes. Like the will-o’-the-wisps the glowing ghosts did not try to enter the fire-girded camp. After midnight the lights and phantoms went away, but the bonfires were kept burning. Wood ran low three hours before sunrise. As the flames died back a bit, the elves saw the most ominous manifestations yet.
Figures appeared outside the camp, in the deep shadows beyond the firelight. In shape they were both like and unlike elves. They were shorter than an adult elf but stockier than children. Their faces were brown, like those of nomads, and their unblinking eyes reflected the bonfires in red and orange. The strangers did not move or speak. At one point Taranath and Kerian counted fifty of them. Their silent vigil cast a pall over the camp, smothering all conversation. Warriors and civilians alike nervously watched the empty faces watching them.
Gilthas’s calm voice and confident presence eased the tense silence. He moved through the camp, speaking to elves of every station, calling each by name. When he reached the place where Kerian, Taranath, and Hamaramis were keeping an eye on the phantoms he greeted them loudly.
“Has everyone decided not to sleep this night?” be said. “If so, this is the dullest party I’ve ever seen.”
“We have grim guests, Great Speaker,” Taranath said wryly.
Leaning on his staff, Gilthas looked beyond his wife’s shoulder at the far-off, vacant faces. “What sad creatures.” The others regarded him in surprise. “Don’t you feel their terrible loneliness?”
Kagonesti warrior and Qualinesti generals traded skeptical looks. Over Kerian’s protests, Gilthas had himself boosted atop a head-high monolith. From there he found the impression of sadness to be even stronger. Although the strangers said nothing, made no moves, something about them conveyed to the Speaker a desperate sense of abandonment. Their loneliness was so palpable, he was moved to address them, despite the warnings of his generals.
“Hello! We don’t mean to intrude, but we’ve come to live in your valley! We wish to live in peace! Spread the word! The elves have returned to Inath-Wakenti!”
As he climbed down, his legs betrayed him and he stumbled. Kerian steadied him.
“Do you honestly think those things understand you or care what you say?” she muttered.
“Who can know? Maybe no one’s ever tried to speak to them.”
Whatever else he accomplished, his actions broke the spell of fear on his own people. Seeing their Speaker face the ghosts on their behalf made them less afraid. Conversation resumed, hushed and tentative at first, then more and more normal. Elves gave up their worried watching, drifted away from the fire-lit ring of standing stones, and returned to their simple beds at last to rest.