They flew northeast, just above the low trees. The late-morning sun was in their eyes, and their combined shadows chased behind. The cavalry waved as griffon and rider flashed over them. Kerian easily picked out their leader, although he wore nothing to set him apart. Taranath was out in front, as usual.
The mountains ringing Inath-Wakenti were high and very rugged. Shreds of cloud drifted over their peaks, pushed by an east wind. The air was warmer aloft than on the ground. One of Inath-Wakenti many oddities was the chill of its soil. The elves quickly learned the ground drew off the heat of their bodies, so they slept on padding made of whatever was at hand-blankets, spare clothing, pine boughs. Fires died quickly too, and the embers went cold faster than normal. Cruising five hundred feet over Inath-Wakenti, Kerian was warm for the first time in days.
White monoliths crouched among the low trees or towered impudently above them. There still seemed no rhyme or reason to their placement. Favaronas had told her the stones were not native to the valley, so they must have had been hauled in for a purpose. What weird, useless purpose she could not imagine.
The farther she flew, the more numerous the monoliths became. At last night’s campsite, the sarsens had been ten to twenty yards apart. Now, only a handful of yards separated them. The stunted trees thinned, then ended. Abruptly the ground below Eagle Eye’s driving wings was solid white, like a plain of snow. The griffon reared back, hovering, startled by the blinding reflection of sunlight from the enormous field of dressed white stone.
Kerian turned the griffon’s head and they flew along the edge of the pavement. It was perfectly circular, at least a mile in diameter, and from this height, featureless. Grass and weeds grew up to its edge, but as with all the other stone structures, nothing encroached on the pristine surface. The assemblage of monoliths stopped thirty yards or so from its edge, leaving clear ground in between. Judging by the position of the mountains and the distance the elves had come, Kerian realized she must be looking at the center point of Inath-Wakenti.
Her circumnavigation of the enormous disk complete, she steered Eagle Eye toward the center. He balked, tossing his head and fighting the reins. She couldn’t blame him. A wave of cold air rose from the pavement and hit the soles of her shoes. When she let the griffon have his head, he flapped hard to get back outside the perimeter of the stone pavement. She had him land a few yards from its edge. He lay down facing away from the circular slab, and she proceeded on foot.
The pavement was knee high, its edge cut square, but worn by the elements. Although white like the monoliths, it wasn’t made of snowy quartz, but a denser rock. A series of tremendous pie-shaped wedges had been neatly joined to form the mile-wide disk. Gingerly she climbed onto the platform. The flow of cold air she’d felt aloft was discernible at ground level too. Air temperature atop the platform was noticeably colder than the usual chilly feel of the valley.
On closer inspection, the stone wasn’t unmarked after all. The surface was covered with carved lines. Weathering had softened them, but their intricate patterns of curlicues and flowing curves was still visible.
Her journey to the center of the platform took a while, and the farther she went, the more isolated she felt. The mass of featureless, flat stone seemed to steal her sense of direction and distance. When she checked her position relative to her sleeping griffon, she realized she’d been walking in a circle. She sought one of the radial joints between the wedge-shaped slabs and used it as a guide to the center.
Sounds of whispering came to her ears, and she stopped immediately. In a silent land infested with ghosts, every noise was significant. Unfortunately, the sounds were too faint for her to understand, so she resumed her trek.
The center of the great disk was marked by nothing more than the simple confluence of all the joints, but as she drew near it, the voices became louder and more distinct. She kept going but slowly, turning her head left and right, alert for she knew not what. When her foot touched the center point, the voices instantly became comprehensible. They were nothing more than mundane conversations—about fresh water, clean clothing, the health of the Speaker.
Kerian was amazed. She wasn’t hearing ghosts, but the voices of her own people as they advanced across the wasteland! Whether by magic or the strange effect of the valley’s shape, voices from many miles away were reaching her with perfect clarity. By shifting her position slightly, she could bring even individual conversations into focus. But however much she tried, she couldn’t locate Gilthas’s voice in the welter.
“Gilthas, can you hear me?” She stopped, frustrated.
Instantly the muddle of conversations died. Hard on this silence came ten thousand variations of “who said that?” Not only could Kerian hear them, but they could hear her! The peculiar effect worked both ways.
She demanded quiet. When the amazed chatter died, she identified herself and called for her husband again.
Hamaramis answered, “The Speaker sleeps, lady. Where are you? We can’t see you.”
She told him, provoking another cacophony of questions. She shouted them to silence again.
“Is It safe for us to proceed there?” Hamaramis asked.
“It seems so. Just continue north-northeast, and you can’t miss it.”
She seated herself at the center of the disk. As her people advanced, she spoke to Hamaramis and Taranath as easily a if they were standing beside her. When Gilthas awoke, she regaled him with the tale of her discovery. By midafternoon the first riders appeared beyond the distant edge. They cam to her on foot; their horses liked the cold, white pavement n more than Eagle Eye had.
“Welcome to the navel of the world,” she hailed Taranath. The warriors laughed, but her old comrade in arms frowned.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“As well as ever, Taran.” She grimaced. “Actually, my legs have cramped. Give me a hand.”
Pulling her upright, he exclaimed, “You’re cold as ice!”
She put a hand to her face, but felt nothing untoward. Yet her legs had stiffened and her arms were bloodlessly pale, her fingernails blue. She and the others returned quickly to the pavement’s edge. Jumping off the stone to land on the grass, Kerian felt as though she were entering a steam bath, such as the plainsmen enjoyed. After a few hours on the great platform, the cool air of Inath-Wakenti felt positively hot.
Taranath offered her a flask from his belt. She pulled the stopper, recoiling at the sharp odor. The flask contained fluq.
The Khurish beverage was distilled from the fermented juice of the corpse cactus, so called because its fleshy, pale blue fronds resembled the limp hands of the dead. The flavor was unbelievably bitter, almost metallic, but the liquid flooded Kerian’s veins with heat.
When she’d caught her breath again, she ordered everyone kept off the platform. “It finally occurs to me (thank you, fluq) that if you all could hear me talk, then so could anyone else in this blasted valley.”
Taranath swallowed fluq and nodded. It would be poor tactics to announce their plans and position to all and sundry, but he wondered whether there was anyone in the valley to hear them.
“We’re surrounded, remember?” she said. “Despite the Speaker’s hopes, the ghosts in this valley are not our friends.”
The only thing worse than pursuing Faeterus across the eerie valley was traveling with him. Favaronas was accustomed to Robien’s swift step.
But however persistent the Kagonesti was, he wasn’t heartless. He moderated his pace to accommodate the scholar’s needs, and he halted a few hours each night for sleep. Faeterus did not. His progress wasn’t terribly rapid, burdened as he was by heavy robes and by Favaronas, but he never rested, not even for a moment.