Sa’ida called for the warriors to resume their efforts, and I the motionless lights were easy targets. They succumbed in great numbers. More water arrived. The buckets and ewers were handed up to Sa’ida to be consecrated to Elir-Sana. While she worked, the noise from the will-o’-the-wisps intensified. All were buzzing and the sound grew so loud, it distracted the priestess. She had to begin her incantation all over again.
The soldiers continued flinging water at the lights. The largest, brightest lights ceased buzzing. First one, then a handful, then dozens soared into the night sky, blazing brightly. When they’d ascended several hundred feet, the remaining lights joined them, and the entire assemblage shot upward until it disappeared among the stars.
A profoundly stunned silence blanketed the elf camp. Then a single voice shouted, “Long live Sa’ida! Long live the high priestess!” Thousands took up the cry.
Robe soaked (one of the water pots had spilled) and looking more harassed than heroic, Sa’ida was as amazed as anyone by the departure of the lights.
“Are they all gone?” Hamaramis demanded.
She nodded. By her special sense of such things, the priestess knew that not a single will-o’-the-wisp remained in Inath-Wakenti.
A group of elves raised a clamor at the foot of the overturned monolith. They were kin of the three who had disappeared while trying to reach the spring, and they wanted the tunnels searched immediately for their lost loved ones. The frame still stood above the hole at the base of the monolith, and despite a guard’s efforts to pull him back, the brother of one of the newly vanished elves clung to the frame and shouted frantically down into the hole.
Hamaramis was trying to address the elves’ demands when the sentinels guarding the camp’s perimeter raised a warning.
The ghosts were coming.
Sa’ida had seated herself on the other end of the monolith. She jumped up with creditable agility and hurried to Hamaramis’s end of the slab. Looking west, she could see ranks of pale, translucent specters appearing from the cover of trees and other monoliths. The spirits were no more numerous than usual, but they moved with slow determination directly toward the camp.
“I feared this,” Sa’ida murmured. She held her hands down to the warriors standing by the monolith. Two soldiers helped her descend. “General, without the guardians, the spirits are free to roam at will. They’re drawn to the living. They’ll move among us, bring panic, melancholy, even madness, if we allow it.”
Hamaramis paled. “Allow it? What can we do? More water—?”
“The dead are beyond the goddess’s blessings.”
“Then what?” he demanded.
The beloved of Elir-Sana responded to his frightened anger briefly and with formidable calm. When she’d finished explaining what must be done, the old general dispatched warriors to ride through camp and spread the word. Everyone was to retire inside their tents, close the flaps, and admit no one. The dead couldn’t enter a home closed to them unless they were invited. That was the prevailing theory, anyway. Sa’ida couldn’t be certain it would hold true for flimsy tents and the spirits inhabiting the “Refuge of the Damned,” as Inath-Wakenti was known in the texts of her goddess.
“How long?” the general asked.
“Until sunrise. I pray the new light of day will banish the spirits, at least until night falls again.”
Hamaramis insisted she must pass the night with the Speaker’s household. Her lone tent was too exposed. She accepted the invitation and urged haste. Leading elements of the ghostly horde were halfway to the camp.
The sides of the Speaker’s tent had been drawn down. Only the main door flap remained open, and the last members of Gilthas’s household were hurrying inside. Hamaramis delayed to watch as elves hurried into shelter. Warriors led their horses into corrals. Parents scooped up straggling children. In moments the camp’s many paths were deserted.
The old general held back the heavy tapestry that served as the door flap to the Speaker’s tent and gestured for Sa’ida to precede him.
“What exactly will they do?” he asked.
“What ghosts always do. Haunt us.”
Chapter 18
The eastern half of the valley had fewer monoliths, and thick foliage filled the void. It wasn’t lush, healthy verdure, but a mass of thorny creeper, trumpet vine, and barberry bushes. The ground covers were a tangle guaranteed to trip the unwary. The bushes were head high, with branches thick as an elf’s wrist and covered by i half-inch spines. Kerian and her comrades were forced to cut their way through. Arms and faces were soon covered by scratches.
Sometime after midnight Kerian halted to catch her breath. Her thoughts turned to her husband. His malady made sleep heavy but unsettled, tormenting him with fever, drenching sweats, and nightmares. As she looked back over her shoulder toward the distant camp, even more than usual she wished him pleasant dreams.
One by one her companions ceased their labors and followed her example, gazing across the starlit landscape in the direction of those they’d left behind. During their eastward trek, the land had risen slowly and they had a clear line of sight to the camp, below them. The bonfires were faint at this distance.
As the three elves watched, a great column of light suddenly blazed upward from the camp. The column resolved into a multitude of will-o’-the-wisps, streaking into the night sky, corkscrewing, crashing into each other, and washing the monoliths in frantic rainbow glory. High in the sky, the lights abruptly winked out, leaving the valley cloaked in darkness once more.
The three elves regarded each other in silent consternation.
“What was that?” Hytanthas demanded.
“The lights must have attacked the camp.”
Taranath regarded Kerian in horror. Fearing the worst, he whispered, “The Speaker?”
She reassured them both. The bond between husband and wife was so strong, she knew without a doubt that Gilthas still lived. But something extraordinary had occurred, and she was equally certain he was at the center of it.
No other displays disturbed the night, so Kerian turned her face eastward again.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Whatever it was, it’s all right.”
The mountains rose gray and massive before them. The thick growth had seriously impeded their progress. Turning their anxiety into strength, they cleared the bushes with renewed vigor. The vines and barberry gave way to wild sage, and each stroke of their swords filled the air with its heavy odor. The smell was not a pleasant one. Trust the cursed valley, Kerian thought bitterly, to warp a savory herbal aroma into a nauseating stench.
The heavy foliage ended abruptly, and all three elves stumbled gratefully into the open, breathing deeply of fresher air. The ground ahead was dotted with stunted pines and plain gray boulders rather than the usual snow-white monoliths. High, thin clouds had begun to cover the stars above Mount Rakaris.
They paused to clean their blades. Kerian had just slipped hers into its scabbard when she spotted someone sitting on a nearby boulder, watching them. She’d had no warning of his presence. When she glanced up at the clouding sky, he hadn’t been there. When she looked down again, he was. Unnerved, she barked a loud challenge. Hytanthas had his sword halfway out of its sheath, but Taranath put a hand on its hilt, halting him.
“Robien,” Taranath called. “Kerian, this is the bounty hunter we freed from Faeterus’s trap.”
Robien slid off the boulder and approached. Starlight glinted off his spectacles. He bowed to the Lioness with a sweep of one hand. “Lady Kerianseray,” he said with formal precision.