"Poison runs in your veins," declared Raidon. "Hold still." So saying, he tore away Adrik's shredded sleeve and used it to tie a tourniquet around the sorcerer's arm above the elbow. He cinched it tight, making the man wince. He hoped it was tight enough to slow the venom. Better the loss of a single arm than death.
The swordswoman walked up, her sword already tucked in her belt. Her blade had surprised Raidon with its incredible display. He wondered why the sword had been so ineffective when he'd first met Kiril at the Mere.
In her arms, Kiril carried the tiny creature she called Xet. Its iridescent color was slowly returning, and its wings flexed. The swordswoman cradled it with a tenderness Raidon hadn't guessed belonged to the elf.
He observed, "You said before that 'threats' wandered Sild?yuir. Are these what you spoke of?"
Kiril said, "Yes. The nilshai. Damned monsters that wield formidable sorcery. They are recent invaders, only becoming a nuisance in the last few years. Word of monsters in the lonelier stretches of the forest circulated, though most thought these 'nilshai' stories were jokes."
The swordswoman scowled at the burnt cinder that was once Moonveil Citadel. "Soon enough, we realized the nilshai were all too real. We discovered they were poisoning Sild?yuir for years."
"Poisoning?" asked the monk.
"They kill our children and steal away tracts of land that are never seen again."
Concern clutched Raidon's stomach. He had discovered his mother's home realm only to find it under attack by vicious invaders. Was she safe?
Adrik looked up from his ravaged, darkening arm. He asked, his teeth gritted against pain, "Where do they come from?"
Kiril gazed at the burning citadel. She said, "No one ever knew. Our sages said they hailed from a spectral reality that underpins our own. But Sild?yuir was disjoined from cosmology when it first took shape. It has always puzzled my folk why the nilshai exert so much effort to enter here, when Faer?n is far easier to reach."
Kiril paused, then continued. "But I know the truth, now. If any of my people were around to hear it, I would explain that the blood-flecking nilshai are agents of the Traitor, adherents who worship, as he does, the gods-damned aberrations of the primeval world. They are servants of the cursed Lords of Madness who seek to regain the realm denied them by the first gods."
Adrik grunted and said no more. Raidon took it as a warning, considering that the voluble sorcerer typically would have launched into a dozen questions. The monk tapped Kiril on the shoulder and said in a quiet voice, "This man requires a healer's craft."
Kiril frowned and hesitated, but she said, "Aid can be petitioned from a place near here."
Adrik smiled despite his pain.
They crested another ridge. Raidon supported the ailing sorcerer. Before them stood an elegant tower of pale white stone and glass. A sturdy granite wall ringed the structure. Blue lamps gleamed from the windows and the treetops surrounding the tower.
"Healing can be had in Tower Aerilpe," murmured Kiril. "Also, Lord Ilsevele has shown sympathy to the Keepers of the Cerulean Sign in the past. Now that the nilshai are unmasked as agents of the Traitor. . everyone needs to know."
They followed the path down the silvered slopes of the grassy hillside, crossed a river on a bridge of luminous stone, and stood before the mithral gates piercing the wall surrounding the tower. The gates were closed, and in the high weeds that had sprung up around the entrance, they found the rotting bodies of the half-dozen elf guards, still in knee-length hauberks of white scaled armor. All were missing their eyes.
Kiril's hands tightened into fists as she looked at the slaughter. But all she said was, "I was wrong-we have no time."
Raidon said, "What about Adrik's arm?"
Kiril said, "We are days away from the next closest keep I know of in Sild?yuir. The sorcerer's best hope remains with us. One of the Cerulean Order keeps watch on the gate leading to Stardeep's forgotten underpassages. He knows healing arts."
Raidon replied, "Then let us make haste. Adrik wouldn't be here but for me."
He didn't give voice to his growing anxiety. How safe was his mother in a place that grew less sylvan and more like a war zone with every mile they traveled?
They went afoot for miles, heedless of the shining stars or the pearly gray glimmer that ringed the horizons. They halted for rest only when Adrik collapsed. After that, Raidon supported the sorcerer as they walked.
They passed over dry stream beds on crumbling bridges whose stones, once white, seemed discolored and bruised. They traversed empty crossroads, places where dim ways led to unknowable destinations beneath sagging silver trees. Now and then, murky windows of lonely spires fixed the travelers with blank, empty stares as they passed, unwelcoming and quiet. No lights burned from within those towers; all were dark and still, as if long abandoned.
"These seem as if they've been vacant longer than mere months or years," observed Raidon, who bore more and more of Adrik's weight as their journey wore on.
Kiril grunted, "The star elves have been in decline for the last millennia."
Raidon cocked his head, hoping for more explanation, but the swordswoman walked on. Further explanation would not alter the land's affliction, but understanding the situation might help stem his apprehension. The monk mentally took hold of his mind's reins and attempted to meditate on tranquility. What will be, will be.
With a day or more of travel behind them, they paused at the lip of a shallow dell. A silver-gray mist flowed sluggishly through the hollow and across the road, like a low fog. The stars above seemed strangely dull.
Kiril said, "We should go around."
Adrik detached himself from Raidon's help and mumbled a few arcane syllables, then said, "Good idea. The fog rebuffs my attempts to identify it. What is it?"
"A sign we draw close to Sild?yuir's edge, where the realm is not stable. Such intrusions have become prevalent since the nilshai's arrival."
The sorcerer said, "You're saying that the mist is. . what? A crack in existence?"
"Perhaps. One you don't want to fall into." So saying, she turned and walked away from the road and up the side of a hill. Raidon supported the sorcerer, whose spell noticeably weakened him.
But the initial misty streamer, easily bypassed, was a herald of more sightings, occasionally in the distance, other times as barriers thrown across their path. Sometimes long misty arms twisted through the trees to their left or right, paralleling their path like a hungry predator. Other times they were forced to backtrack when their route was cut off by broad swaths of the gray miasma.
Finally the forest thinned and they moved into clear land. A barren, rocky plain sloped down to a flat expanse, as if to the sea. But what lay beyond the stagnant coast was not water. It was a shoreless ocean of gray mist, cold and perfect.
Alone on the beach stood a lean figure. They approached and saw it was a tall, lordly star elf dressed in black robes on which was emblazoned the symbol of a white tree on a field of blue. Raidon recognized a fellow initiate of focus and self-discipline in the man's ramrod straight posture, though he suspected the elf's mastery lay over magic instead of the physical arts. The elf had eyes of milk white, with no hint of an iris, and his graceful features were graven with the weight of long care. A platinum circlet clamped his shaved skull. Without hair, his elven ears seemed more sinister than fey.
A circle of dead nilshai lay about the elf's feet. Blood smudged his face and hands, and dirt stained his clothing. But he was unbowed. He watched calmly as they picked their way down the cruel slope. Raidon nearly carried Adrik when they joined the figure before the silent ocean where reality frayed to nothing.