The spot to which Favaronas was banished was a narrow spire of rock a few yards above the Stair. It was still in deep shadow. He shivered, hugging his arms close. The western mountains were gilded by sunlight. Above, the sky changed from indigo to dark rose to pale blue, and was streaked with high, dry clouds. Faeterus stood atop the pedestal, arms raised high. The sleeves of his robe slid back, revealing narrow wrists and forearms tufted with red-brown hair. Favaronas looked away. Like all full-blooded elves, he had no body hair and found the sight repellant. Faeterus recited a brief conjuration then crossed his arms over his chest and bowed toward the valley.
The sun peered over the mountain behind them. When half its disk was showing, golden light struck the array of monoliths. They glowed steadily as the sun cleared the peak. Faeterus was shouting, flinging ancient Silvanesti words skyward in rapid succession. Favaronas had to avert his eyes from the brilliance of the monoliths, so he stared at the parchment. He couldn’t make out any changes to the long tail of paper, but Faeterus continued his exhortation until the monuments lost their fire completely. Then he climbed down off the pedestal and gestured curtly for Favaronas to descend as well.
Drawing near the parchment, Favaronas could see black streaks had formed on its pristine surface. They resembled scorch marks, and he could feel a faint heat coming off the scroll. Even as he stared, the diffuse marks focused and became more distinct.
“Don’t touch it!” Faeterus barked, and Favaronas, who’d had no intention of touching the scroll, quickly backed away.
The sorcerer moved sideways along the length of the parchment, studying the darkening marks. He held his ragged robe close to his body to keep the fabric from touching the scroll. Although his face was buried in the robe’s deep hood, his gasps and exclamations as he beheld the metamorphosing parchment made his satisfaction plain.
“What does it mean?” asked Favaronas, keeping his voice low and deferential.
“I can’t say yet. The result requires study.”
“But what is it for, master?”
“You call yourself a scholar! You know nothing, like the rest of your kind!” Faeterus made a sweeping gesture, still careful not to touch the parchment. “This is the secret of Inath-Wakenti, the testament of the Lost Ones. When I have deciphered it, I shall acquire the ultimate power of this place!”
“Power left by the dragonstones?”
Hardly had the words left his lips than he wished them unsaid. Faeterus advanced on him with unexpected alacrity. A wave of one hand knocked the archivist flat on his back.
“What do you know of such things?” Faeterus hissed.
“Only the legends any elf knows of the Pit, master,” gabbled Favaronas. “The Pit of Nemith-Otham.”
The hood regarded him for several heart-pounding seconds then turned away. “You know nothing. And you have no need to think. Only to do as I say.”
Faeterus turned away and began rolling up the long scroll. Marveling that he still possessed his limbs and senses, Favaronas sat up. He wanted desperately to beg the sorcerer to release him. The stone scrolls were dust. Favaronas wouldn’t be needed to read them. Faeterus had what he wanted, his key to the valley’s secrets. What possible use could Favaronas be to him? What possible threat could one exhausted, starved librarian pose? None and none. Perhaps if he asked in just the right manner, with enough groveling deference, perhaps Faeterus would let him go.
“I’ll not be letting you go,” Faeterus said, and laughed at Favaronas’s expression. “Discerning your thoughts hardly requires a seer. They are written on your face. I have one final use for you, elf spawn. Every good conjuration requires a test subject. You shall be the first to feel the effects of my new power, the first to be destroyed. Then I will know I have succeeded.”
Fresh horror coursed through Favaronas. Up until that moment he’d told himself Faeterus would release him when his usefulness had ended. That comforting fiction could no longer be maintained. He was marked for destruction. There was nothing left to lose.
Favaronas turned and ran.
Faeterus watched, all emotion lost beneath the smothering layers of his robe. He waited until Favaronas was within a few yards of the edge of the Stair then lifted his hand. Favaronas’s legs jerked together, his ankles fused, and down he went, rolling over and over. When he fetched up against a low outcropping of stone, he discovered his mouth was sealed.
Gravel crunching underfoot warned him of Faeterus’s approach. Even from twenty yards, the sorcerer’s voice carried with astonishing clarity.
“Don’t be so impatient to meet your destiny, elf spawn. You cannot change your fate.”
Tears coursed from Favaronas’s eyes. Faeterus had left him his sight, and he watched in abject terror as his tormentor slowly closed the distance between them.
“It would be easy to let you die on your belly here. But your death can serve a higher purpose. I wish I could exchange you for the Speaker of the Sun and Stars, but he’s unlikely to put himself in my hands. You are the only elf spawn I have, so you will have to do.”
A careless wave of one hand freed Favaronas’s legs, and he was commanded to stand. “Clear away the stones and branches that held the scroll. Prepare a fire. I will not rest until I have penetrated the meaning of the key.”
And so it went. Faeterus sat with the scroll on his lap. He unrolled a portion, studied it, then advanced it to peruse a new section. They had no water, and Faeterus didn’t partake of his disgusting victuals. He simply sat and studied the scroll. Favaronas collected wood for a large campfire. Deliberately he kindled it near the front edge of the ledge so the flames and smoke would be more easily visible in the valley, and he loaded the fire with green wood and rotten windfall branches to thicken the smoke. If Faeterus recognized his prisoner’s stratagem, he did nothing about it.
Usually Faeterus avoided direct sunlight, keeping to the shadows like some hulking insect, but not today. He remained where he was, hunched over the parchment as the sun rose higher, bathing the Stair in heat. Often Favaronas could hear him mumbling and muttering, and occasionally he would burst out with sudden vigor, shouting unintelligible phrases, then lapse back into more subdued gibbering. Favaronas could make no sense of any of it. The words sounded like Elvish but larded with unintelligible phrases and garbled by a truly barbarous accent. Favaronas couldn’t tell whether Faeterus was reading the foul-sounding stuff from the scroll or simply talking to himself. Frankly, he no longer cared. His lust for knowledge and his resolve to stop Faeterus had died beneath the sorcerer’s effortless cruelty. All he wanted was to escape and warn his people. Perhaps the Speaker could send his warriors to overcome the sorcerer. Maybe it was already too late. For all Favaronas knew, Faeterus could be reciting his final conjuration at that moment.
As he struggled to yank dead wood from a narrow rock crevice, he tried to remember the verse Faeterus had recite from the ancient scroll. He had an excellent memory, trained by decades of practice. He ceased trying to free the piece of dead wood and closed his eyes, allowing the words to echo again in his memory.
The sun’s eye grows dark. No moon loves him. The stars sleep and answer not the night. Until The father holds the key in his hand,
standing before the Door
And reads the Holy Key.
Did the first line mean the release of the valley’s power had to take place after sunset?