He began to climb back up the steep sides of the ravine, but this proved more difficult than he’d supposed. The gray ash had formed a silt with the rain and was slippery as goose grease. He slid down the hill twice, jarring his injured arm, causing him almost to lose consciousness.
“This will never do,” Silvan muttered.
He stayed at the bottom of the ravine where the walking was easier, always keeping the top of the hill in sight, hoping to find an outcropping of rock that would act as a staircase up the slippery slope.
He stumbled over the uneven ground in a haze of pain and fear. Every step brought a jolt of pain to his arm. He pushed himself on, however, trudging through the gray mud that seemed to try to drag him down among the dead vegetation, searching for a way out of this gray vale of death that he grew to loathe as a prisoner loathes his cell.
He was parched with thirst. The taste of ash filled his mouth, and he longed for a drink of water to wash it away. He found a puddle once, but it was covered with a gray film, and he could not bring himself to drink from it. He staggered on.
“I have to reach the road,” he said and repeated it many times like a mantra, matching his footfalls to its rhythm. “I have to go on,” he said to himself dreamily, “because if I die down here, I will turn into one of the gray mummies like the trees and no one will ever find me.”
The ravine came to a sudden end in a jumble of rock and fallen trees. Silvan straightened, drew in a deep breath and wiped chill sweat from his forehead. He rested a moment, then began to climb, his feet slipping on the rocks, sending him scrabbling backward more than once. Grimly, he pressed on, determined to escape the ravine if it proved to be the last act of his life. He drew nearer and nearer the top, up to the point where he thought he should have been able to see the road.
He peered out through the boles of the gray trees, certain the road must be there but unable to see it due to some sort of strange distortion of the air, a distortion that caused the trees to waver in his sight.
Silvan continued to climb.
“A mirage,” he said. “Like seeing water in the middle of the road on a hot day. It will disappear when I come near it.”
He reached the top of the hill and tried to see through the trees to the road he knew must lie beyond. In order to keep moving, moving through the pain, he had concentrated his focus upon the road until the road had become his one goal.
“I have to reach the road,” he mumbled, picking up the mantra. “The road is the end of pain, the road will save me, save my people. Once I reach the road, I am certain to run into a band of elven scouts from my mother’s army. I will turn over my mission to them. Then I will lie down upon the road and my pain will end and the gray ash will cover me . . .”
He slipped, nearly fell. Fear jolted him out of his terrible reverie. Silvan stood trembling, staring about, prodding his mind to return from whatever comforting place it had been trying to find refuge. He was only a few feet from the road. Here, he was thankful to see, the trees were not dead, though they appeared to be suffering from some sort of blight. The leaves were still green, though they drooped, wilting. The bark of the trunks had an unhealthy look to it, was staring to drop off in places.
He looked past them. He could see the road, b\lt he could not see it clearly. The road wavered in his vision until he grew dizzy to look at it. He wondered uneasily if this was due to his fall.
“Perhaps I am going blind,” he said to himself.
Frightened, he turned his head and looked behind him. His vision cleared. The gray trees stood straight, did not shimmer. Relieved, he looked back to the road. The distortion returned.
“Strange,” he muttered. “I wonder what is causing this?”
His walk slowed involuntarily. He studied the distortion closely. He had the oddest impression that the distortion was like a cobweb spun by some horrific spider strung between him and the road, and he was reluctant to come near the shimmer. The disquieting feeling came over him that the shimmering web would seize him and hold him and suck him dry as it had sucked dry the trees. Yet beyond the distortion was the road, his goal, his hope.
He took a step toward the road and came to a sudden halt. He could not go on. Yet there lay the road, only a few steps away.
Gritting his teeth, he shoved forward, cringing as if he expected to feel sticky web cling to his face.
Silvan’s way was blocked. He felt nothing. No physical presence halted him, but he could not move. Rather, he could not move forward. He could move sideways, he could move backward. He could not move ahead.
“An invisible barrier. Gray ash. Trees dead and dying,” he murmured.
He reached into the swirling depths of pain and fear and despair and brought forth the answer.
“The shield. This is the shield!” he repeated, aghast.
The magical shield that the Silvanesti had dropped over their homeland. He had never seen it, but he’d heard his mother describe it often enough. He had heard others describe the strange shimmer, the distortion in the air produced by the shield.
“It can’t be,” Silvan cried in frustration. “The shield cannot be here. It is south of my position! I was on the road, traveling west. The shield was south of me.” He twisted, looked up to find the sun, but the clouds had thickened, and he could not see it.
The answer came to him and with it bitter despair. “I’m turned around,” he said. “I’ve come all this way. . . and it’s been the wrong way!”
Tears stung his eyelids. The thought of descending this hill, of going back down into the ravine, of retracing his steps, each step that had cost him so dearly in pain, was almost too much to bear.
He sank down to the ground, gave way to his misery.
“ Alhana! Mother!” he said in agony, “forgive me! I have failed you! What have I ever done in life but fail you. . . ?”
“Who are you who speaks the name that is forbidden to speak?” said a voice. “Who are you who speaks the name Alhana?”
Silvan leaped to his feet. He dashed the tears from his eyes with a backhand smear, looked about, startled, to see who had spoken.
At first he saw only a patch of vibrant, living green, and he thought that he had discovered a portion of the forest untouched by the disease that had stricken the rest. But then the patch moved and shifted and revealed a face and eyes and mouth and hands, revealed itself to be an elf.
The elf’s eyes were gray as the forest around him, but they were only reflecting the death he saw, revealing the grief he felt for the loss.
“Who am I who speaks my mother’s name?” Silvan asked impatiently. “Her son, of course.” He took a lurching step forward, hand outstretched. “But the battle. . . Tell me how the battle went! How did we fare?”
The elf drew back, away from Silvan’s touch. “What battle?” he asked.
Silvan stared at the man. As he did so, he noted movement behind him. Three more elves emerged from the woods. He would have never seen them had they not stirred, and he wondered how long they had been there. Silvan did not recognize them, but that wasn’t unusual. He did not venture out much among the common soldiers of his mother’s forces. She did not encourage such companionship for her son, who was someday destined to be king, would one day be their ruler.
“The battle!” Silvan repeated impatiently. “We were attacked by ogres in the night! Surely, you must. . .”
Realization dawned on him. These elves were not dressed for warfare. They were clad in clothes meant for traveling. They might well not know of any battle.