“Muster fifty soldiers in the street,” he said evenly. “Lightly clad, with spears only.”
“My lord,” said an elder digger, “what is it?”
“Something is happening,” Mors replied. “I can see it.” For the first time in many years, he strode out of a room without staff or elf to guide him. The assembly stirred with curiosity. What was afoot?
Mors followed the light out to the street. Somehow he knew where it was-he could feel it as well as see it. Though his surroundings were as invisible to him as ever, by following the flickering light he avoided all obstacles. He simply knew where to put his feet. The light beckoned him on. The tramp of soldiers' feet told him that his escort had arrived.
“Who is in command?” Mors asked.
“I, my lord, Prem,” said the elf officer.
“Do you know the great temple of our ancestors?”
“The haunted temple?” asked Prem.
“The same. We will go there at once, but only I will enter. Is that clear?”
“Certainly, my lord. What is going on?”
“I don't know yet,” Mors replied firmly. “I fear-” He did not finish. How could he say it? How could he tell them his fear that the blue glimmer was caused by Li El. Dead Li El.
Mors led them across the ruined fields. The flickering glow grew stronger and steadier. The soldiers jangled along in close formation. Mors was consumed by curiosity and dread. A hundred days had passed since the deaths of Li El and Vvelz. No magic had occurred in Hest since then. Both brother and sister had been burned on funeral pyres. Nothing of them remained. And now this…
After two hours' quick march, the warriors scrambled up the broken rocky path to the temple. As they gained the plateau where the temple stood, they stopped dead in their tracks. Mors heard their footsteps cease. He sharply demanded a reason.
Prem said, “There's a light in the temple, my lord!”
“You see it, too!”
“We all do.”
“Form a line!” Mors barked. “I'm going inside. I don't want anything to get out, understand?” The warriors formed a half-circle facing the vast entrance to the abandoned temple. They watched in awe as Mors advanced up the worn steps into the field of azure light.
A feeling of gentle beneficence wrapped around Mors like a blanket. Part of him was aware this was a magical effect, perhaps not real, but it was such a profound feeling that he lost most of his apprehension. The blue glow intensified until his eyes began to burn. A groan escaped his lips, and he lifted his hands to his face. He saw the rough, thickened tips of his fingers. His groan of pain changed to a strangled cry of astonishment. He dropped his hands and staggered back against a massive, fluted column.
Mors could see. Before him was the floor of the temple, littered with broken columns and other debris. He saw all of it with startling clarity. He really could see.
The light still called him forward. He walked among the lordly columns until he came upon the source of the brilliant blue light.
Floating a foot off the rutted floor was the upright figure of an elf woman, eyes closed, arms tight against her sides. She was clad in the black shift of a Hestite digger, but the copper cloth was torn and the black paint chipped and scratched. A few inches in front of the woman, hovering vertically, was a magnificent staff of sapphire. The blue light emanated from it.
Mors went down on one knee. “Who-who are you?” he whispered.
Listen, said a fluting voice inside his head. Hear me.
Tears formed in his newly cleared eyes. Mors asked again, “Who are you?”
I am the one your ancestors knew as Quenesti Pah.
Mors inhaled sharply. “The goddess?”
This woman of your race I return to you. She has striven mightily in the cause of good. To save her from madness and death, I have brought her back home.
“Who is she, divinity?” Mors asked.
Her name is Di An.
“My little eyes! An Di-” He started to rise, but the goddess spoke one final time to him, and the strength of her voice drove him back to his knees.
Let this place become sacred again. Keep my laws, and the bounty of health and healing shall be yours. This woman shall be my priestess, and through her I will make myself known to all your people.
Mors bowed his head. “It shall be done,” he vowed.
“Thank you, divinity, for restoring my sight.” But the goddess was gone.
The blue aura vanished next, leaving Di An standing on the floor. Finally, the sapphire staff disappeared, too. Di An wavered like a sleepwalker. Mors moved quickly to her side and braced her up.
Her eyes opened slowly. “Mors? Is that you?” she asked weakly.
“It is. You have changed, little digger.”
“I've grown up. Are you… angry that I went away?”
“I was, but no longer.”
Di An thought that it was strange to feel Mors's arm around her waist. Strange, but good. She asked, “Did you hear the words of the goddess, too? Did you see her sacred staff?” When Mors nodded, she added, “I dwelled in the realm of the gods. For how long, I don't know. Riverwind and I were trying to escape from the dragon, and there were men like lizards-”
“Dragon!” Mors exclaimed. “Men like lizards? Are you sure your head is clear?”
Di An fixed him with a startling stare. Her formerly dark eyes were now a brilliant blue, the same color as the staff of Quenesti Pah. “My head is quite clear, Mors.” She thought of poor Catchflea, dead at the hands of the draconians. She saw Riverwind burning with fever-was he safe? “And my heart is quite heavy.”
Mors and Di An went out to the waiting warriors. He could hardly believe this cool, ethereal woman was the barren child who had led him around during his darkest days.
“I shall always try to lead you well,” Di An said in a confidential tone. Mors blinked. She'd read his thoughts. “After all, I would not be here now if I hadn't followed you-even as I led you.”
Mors presented Di An to the warriors, and they saluted her by raising their spears high. That done, Mors was at a loss. He asked Di An what she wanted to do.
She looked out over the smoky, poisoned cavern. She thought of all the barren children laboring in the fields and mines. Though she could now remember the surface world without fear, she knew she belonged in Hest, with her own people. As her bright gaze took in the hazy vista, Di An said, “I want to heal this place. And, perhaps, heal myself.”
Somehow Riverwind managed to make it to the base of the mountains. One foot after the other, he plodded through a day and a night and a day. His decision to throw himself down the shaft drove him. Though other methods of death threatened him-hunger and thirst among them-he was obsessed with the notion that he must die in the shaft. Somehow that would be right.
Riverwind felt baked hard from the fever heat inside him, so the discovery of a spring of sweet water in a cleft of the rocks was as great a gift as he ever thought to receive.
His thirst slaked, the hunger that tightened his belly into a knot returned. Riverwind had no bow and hardly expected to take any game with his bare hands. He found some pine nuts growing in clusters around some of the taller boulders. He ate hundreds of the tiny, thready seeds. That helped a little, but he couldn't live on them. As night fell again, he lay atop a gently rounded boulder, the peaks of the mountains looming over him. He would never make it up the mountainside in his weakened condition. He would fail in his resolve to die in the shaft. I can't even carry that quest through, he thought bitterly.
The stars came out. He saw the broken scales of Hiddu-kel, the bison head of Kiri-Jolith, the black hood of Mor-gion. Beside Morgion, just peeking over the tops of the mountains, was the constellation Mishakal. Like the steel amulet he'd given Goldmoon, the stars of Mishakal formed two joined circles. “The Endless Chase,” his father had called it. If you traced the loop with your finger, you never reached the end.