The white-haired elf simply stared, though his dark hazel eyes sparkled. Iydahoe sensed that he had heard every word, but still the ancient figure made no movement, no reply.
"Do you hear me, Grandfather?" he asked.
"I hear-but do you, wild elf?" The stranger's voice was strong and resonant, a surprisingly forceful sound emerging from that frail chest.
"What should I hear?" Iydahoe was puzzled.
"You offer me help, but you cannot help me. Nor can I help you."
"Is there any help, any hope?" asked the warrior.
"You call me Grandfather, and this is wrong. Seek him, wild elf. Seek the true Grandfather of us all. Know the legends, and you shall know where to find him."
Iydahoe blinked, surprised by the elf's words, and by the serene confidence with which they were spoken. As he tried to formulate a reply, he realized that, in the space of his blink, the ancient hermit had disappeared.
"Did you see where he went?" he asked Vanisia, who emerged from the cave to look around. She shook her head, and he crossed the village clearing to look behind the great oak. Not only did he see no sign of the stranger, but the muddy ground where the elf had stood was bare of any footprint.
"When did you first see him?"
"He was here when I woke up."
"He never moved?"
Vanisia shook her head. "No. He stayed by this tree for as long as I watched him." Her green eyes probed his face, and Iydahoe felt something terribly important, a piece of knowledge that he must, somehow, grasp. "What did he say to you?" she asked.
"He said… seek the Grandfather, 'the true Grandfather of us all.' He means the Grandfather Ram."
"But seek him? Where…?"
Something in Iydahoe's face froze Vanisia's question in her throat. Abruptly the warrior saw with abrupt, crystalline clarity what he had to do-and he feared that, already, he was too late.
"Each of you, pack a bedroll!" ordered the warrior, addressing the young elves who gaped, wide-eyed, from the mouth of the cave. "Everybody take a bundle of jerky-as much as you can carry-and a full waterskin. We're leaving here. Now!"
None of the young elves paused to question his directive. Instead, they scrambled to clean out the wreckage of the dozen small lodges of the village, and within minutes had gathered bundles of their most treasured belongings. Bakall, Kagwallas, and Dallatar helped the youngest while Iydahoe and Vanisia filled large rucksacks for themselves.
The warrior never questioned his certainty, his conviction that they were doing the right thing-and that they desperately needed to hurry. He remembered the legends-there was only one place they could go.
The Grandfather Ram had lived in the highest places of Ansalon, that much he knew from the ancient tales. The aged elf had urged him to seek the places of the Grandfather, and finally Iydahoe understood.
The Kagonesti needed to climb for their lives.
In quiet urgency, he led the tribe up the steep slopes leading out the back of the sheltered grotto. Beyond rose the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, with the snowcapped summits themselves looming into sight just above the nearer crests. These massifs came into full view as, working steadily upward, they soon topped the precipice.
Iydahoe was surprised to see that many of the summits beyond had lost their nearly permanent mantles of snow. Dark, sinister clouds spewed upward from numerous peaks, and though Iydahoe had occasionally observed smoking mountains far to the north of here, he had never seen so much of the noxious vapor, nor had it ever been this close to his home. Now it curled through the peaks like an ugly, pervasive blanket of gloom.
"The mountains look dangerous," Vanisia said as she and Iydahoe waited for the last of the children to come up behind them.
"It may be that they will kill us," he replied simply. "But if we stay here, I believe that we are certainly doomed."
Iydahoe kept his eyes skyward as they climbed. Clouds seethed in ways he had never imagined-not in his worst nightmares. He felt as though he looked into the surface of a vast, bubbling caldron that was somehow suspended upside down and that covered the entire sky.
Several of the younger Kagonesti began to whimper, slipping and skidding on the steep slopes, unable to maintain the pace. Iydahoe took Faylai, the littlest girl, on his shoulders, bidding her to cling tightly to his neck. With each hand he took the tiny fist of another, leading them toward the element of safety, however small, that they might find above. The Silvanesti female also took the hands of younger elves, and Bakali, Kagwallas, and Dallatar aided their smaller tribemates.
They climbed through the long day, and when night fell, Iydahoe shouted and cajoled, convincing the elves that they needed to keep going. The clouds blocked even the pallor of the green sky, but the elves could see enough to scale the ascending slopes as the ghastly night filtered toward an eerie, still dawn.
Dawn of the thirteenth day, Iydahoe remembered.
Still they kept climbing, crossing the lower mountain ridges now, many thousands of feet above the sprawling forest lands and plains of Vingaard. High summits beckoned to the northeast, but Iydahoe steered the tribe due east, where the mountains flattened into miles of rolling, forested plateau. These woodlands had many trails, while the warrior knew that the summits to the north became a maze of canyons, cliffs, summits, and gorges.
"Look!" cried Bakali, suddenly crying out in horror as he jx)inted to the northeastern sky. The little tribe was filing across a clearing-a place incongruously studded with wildflowers-amid the pine forest of the plateau.
Iydahoe saw the wave rippling along the bottom surface of the oily cloud, as if a great stone had been plopped into the caldron of liquid he had earlier imagined. The eerie sky showed through that gap, an even more sinister shade of befoulment than before. The ground began to tremble, huge rocks cracking free from the higher cliffs. The elves staggered, riding a buckling carpet of supple, boulder-strewn turf, ground lacking all solidity and form.
Abruptly the sky shot through with brightness, green paling to blue and then to a harsh white light that seared Iydahoe's eyes and caused Vanisia to moan in pain. Children began to cry, but the warrior could only grip their hands tightly.
The subsequent explosion was impossibly, incredibly violent. The rocky ground convulsed, pitching them into the air. Iydahoe clutched the hands of his young tribe- mates, the group of them tumbling madly, momentarily weightless. He felt as though they could fall forever, and it was a strangely peaceful sensation.
The smash into the bucking ground brought him back to reality with cruel force. Stone gouged Iydahoe's face, and splitting pain racked his skull. He heard the youngsters crying, but for several agonizing moments his eyes brought him only a blur of bright lights and swirling colors-the images of his own pain, he knew.
Then came the onslaught of full, numbing fear-the knowledge that he had failed, that his tribe was doomed. How could he fight against this kind of power, world- racking might that could rock the very fundament of Krynn? Surely most of his tribe had been killed by this blast! He knew that he, himself, was broken, his body smashed to pulp.
"Let's go. Get up, Iydahoe!" He heard Vanisia pleading, but he couldn't move. Why should he? There was no hope.
He heard more crying, then-the terrified sobbing of many young voices. They came from all around him, and Iydahoe blinked. With a supreme effort, he lifted his head, seeing Kagwallas, Bakali-each cradling a pair of crying youngsters. Vanisia knelt beside Iydahoe, and when he moved, she reached out to touch his face.