A second boom sent vibrations through the stone beneath his cheek and blasted away his despair. That was no hallucination! That was real!
He hurried down the passage, seeking the source of the sound. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. He could not remain alone in this terrible place.
The sound of a voice came to his ears. It was speaking his own language! He shouted, “Hello! Hello, can you hear me?”
After a long moment of heart-pounding silence, the single voice replied, “Who said that? Where are you?”
He gave his name and rank. Another interval of silence ensued; then a different voice said, “This is the Speaker. What proof can you give that you are Hytanthas Ambrodel?”
The notion that his sovereign might also be lost in the tunnels did not dampen Hytanthas’s relief. He was so glad not to be alone, he nearly wept. He named his father and mother, sketched his service in Qualinesti and Khur, and related how he’d been transported to the tunnels by the lights of Inath-Wakenti and had been awakened by the Lioness’s voice.
“Where are you, Great Speaker?” he asked.
“A long way away.” The reply came only after a long pause.
Hytanthas didn’t believe it. The Speaker must be close since they could converse. “I’m coming to you, sire!” he cried.
He began to run. Every two dozen steps he called out to the Speaker again, assuring Gilthas he was on the way. When he tripped on the loose debris covering the tunnel floor, he picked himself up and went on, never slackening his pace. The Speaker called to him, but he ran wildly, and it wasn’t until after his third such fall that he heard the Speaker say, “Take care! I am on the surface, not underground and I fear I may be miles away from you.”
It seemed ridiculous. Hytanthas had heard of mountaineers conversing across wide valleys by using echoes, but surely this was different. He heard no echoes, only the strange delay before the Speaker’s answers. Still, he heeded the Speaker’s words and slackened his pace, trying to look around and choose his path more carefully.
“Where are you, sire?”
“On a wide stone platform in the center of the valley”—some words were lost—“Where are you?”
Rather plaintively Hytanthas explained he didn’t know exactly where he was but thought himself in one of the tunnels under the valley.
Conversing back and forth, they established that each could hear the other better now than when they’d begun. it seemed Hytanthas might be closing the distance between them. The young warrior began counting paces softly. He’d left five thousand behind when Gilthas spoke again, sounding much closer. In fact, Hytanthas could hear his sovereign’s teeth chattering.
“The air above this disk is cold indeed,” the Speaker confirmed. “Too cold to be natural.”
“How fare the people?” asked Hytanthas slumping down to rest for a moment.
Holding on, said Gilthas. Food was dwindling fast. Porthios, Alhana, and most of the warriors had departed for Qualinesti, and Lady Kerianseray had flown off to bring back Sa’ida to help ward off the ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps. Hytanthas knew the holy lady. She had aided him and Planchet when they were caught inside Khuri-Khan after the khan’s curfew. If not for her intervention, they would have been murdered by bloodthirsty Torghanists.
When the Speaker told him he’d been missing for more than a week, the warrior shook his head in amazement. No wonder he felt wrung out.
The Speaker assured him his griffon was fine, although pining for his rider. The elves had found the vast stone platform at the focal point of the valley. Standing on its center, one could hear things from all over Inath-Wakenti. Gilthas had been experimenting with the effect when he heard Hytanthas calling for help. He asked what the warrior had found in the tunnels.
“Nothing but bones.” Hytanthas explained how his discovery of the body of one of Lady Kerianseray’s warriors, as well as layer upon layer of desiccated animal bones, had led him to conclude that the animal life captured by the will-o’-the-wisps was transferred into the tunnels to die.
“Take courage, Captain,” Gilthas said. “We’ll get you out.”
Hytanthas jogged onward. After a time he reported, “Sire, I have found a body.”
The corpse was that of another elf warrior, although blind as he was Hytanthas couldn’t identify him. The dead elf was lying faceup with a dagger buried in his throat. Hytanthas’s first fearful thought was of murder, then his hand went to the warrior’s scabbard. It was empty. The blade in the elf’s throat must be his own.
Haltingly, Hytanthas described what he’d found. The Speaker was shocked the warrior would have given up on finding escape.
“Perhaps he was grievously injured before he was transported to the tunnel?” Gilthas suggested.
Hytanthas’s examination of the body revealed only the one wound. But unlike his king, the young captain could understand how the elf might succumb. Without the voice of his sovereign to buoy his spirits, Hytanthas himself might have given in to despair.
He found a crust of bread in the dead elf’s belt pouch. It fell to powder in his mouth, but he choked it down anyway. Shifting position, he put his hand down on something hard and sharp. The characteristic shape and feel told him it was a piece of knapped flint. Perhaps the lost warrior had been trying to start a fire and the stone had gotten away from him. Disoriented by the darkness, he’d been unable to locate it and had given up, though the flint lay just a few feet away.
Piling up strips of the dead elf’s cloak, Hytanthas struck the flint against the hasp of the dagger. Bright orange sparks showered onto the tinder. He nursed them carefully until they flickered to life. His triumph was quickly tempered by grief. As the feeble light illuminated the features of the dead elf, he recognized Ullian, who had been in the Speaker’s service for only a short time. Hytanthas was one of the few who knew of the human blood in his heritage, and Ullian had been a staunch comrade.
The Speaker congratulated him on his acquisition of light. Putting aside his sadness, Hytanthas tore Ullian’s cloak into strips then wrapped the strips around the end of his sword to form a torch. The tunnels were a maze, but as long as he could see, he might be able to find a way out. There was nothing he could do for his lost comrades. All he could do was try to survive.
Torchlight brought a fresh revelation—wall paintings around him leaped and danced in the flickering light. He described the frescoes to the Speaker. Beautiful scenes of gardens and parkland covered both walls. The paintings had been rendered with amazing skill, giving them an unusual feeling of depth. The colors were so fresh, they might have been painted just the day before. The only jarring notes were the portraits of lean, angular looking elves, rendered life size, interspersed with the peaceful sylvan scenes. The elves glowered balefully at the viewer.
The Speaker theorized the paintings had been done by the people who’d once lived in the valley. The very ones whose spirits still haunted it.
With the aid of his makeshift torch, Hytanthas soon found a crossing tunnel, which branched off to the right. When he reached the intersection, he halted, uncertain which way to go. The tunnels looked identical.
“Are there portraits at the intersection?” the Speaker asked. Hytanthas said there were. “Do they face any particular direction?”
Hytanthas dutifully studied the portraits. Those in his original tunnel looked toward the intersection. Those in the crossing tunnel faced away from the intersection. The news excited the Speaker.
“You should take the new tunnel! I believe the paintings face something important, like a way out.”