This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here . . . nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is present in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the world, and it can erase all life, overwriting all with abomination.
The danger may be unleashed if this place is disturbed. Shun this place. Turn around.
The warnings were not endowed with magical force capable of steering away the curious, but danger would certainly befall any who ignored the warnings and ventured into the shadowed Grand Vestibule.
On more than one occasion in the long history of Stardeep, the gates had withstood attacks by fools loyal to the Traitor, who had discovered his prison despite all the effort of hiding his location. But neither those ancient attacks, nor all the time that had since elapsed had discernibly weakened the facade. Stardeep's entrance stood strong and patient, capable of repelling anything thrown its way.
Above the gate was scribed the massive symbol of a strangely curving tree: Stardeep's emblem. Around the white tree was a circular field that glowed and flickered with bluish fire. Though of late, to Telarian's eyes, the fire seemed darker, sootier perhaps.
Telarian watched as the commander and his men slowly filed back across the hazy land bridge, as if resolving from imagination into reality. The men didn't speak to each other, or look up to salute the Keeper, as was his due. Desolation hung in their slack postures and in their limp hold on their reins.
Telarian recognized they had followed his orders.
Commander Brathtar brought up the column's rear, his mail dimmed by a sheen of dried blood. Behind him, the Causeway faded into the encroaching mist, hidden or truly dissolved, Telarian did not know. Either way, it would return when next bidden by Cynosure or him, and again provide a connection between Stardeep and the Yuirwood.
Brathtar reined up and fixed Telarian with a glassy stare. Some indefinable essence was missing in the man; he seemed anchorless. The Keeper regretted the change he saw, but neither pity nor concern were his to dispense. Brathtar's actions had been required, an important element of his delicate plan. Sacrifices were necessary if so much more was to be saved. What was the blood of dozens compared to the souls of all the world?
Brathtar said, "The encampment is cleansed, Keeper. The dissidents who planned the attack you described are . . . no more."
"Your service is greater than you can know, Commander. Well done."
The elf commander cleared his throat, dropped his eyes for a moment. He had more to say.
"What is it?"
"As we cleaned up, one of my Knights found a trail. Someone escaped the encampment. We gave chase, but lost the track."
Telarian sensed something fall away into the suddenly yawning void of his mind. He hadn't foreseen a survivor. Over the sudden roaring in his ears he asked, too loud, "Are you certain?"
Brathtar nodded.
The noise in his ears grew louder, not unlike the horns he tested on occasion in the Outer Bastion. How . . . ? Where . . . ? But. . . Telarian fumbled for reassurance as the floor of his certainty threatened to fall away. His gloved hand found the pommel of brooding Nis.
The horns ceased. Lucidity was restored, and with it, calm acceptance as wide as the untroubled Sea of Fallen Stars.
A fey thought danced across his mind; he would tighten his grip on Nis, pull forth the blade, and reward Brathtar for his failure.
Don't be a fool, Telarian, Nis whispered. We yet have uses for our Commander. With the completion of this last task, he is now a tool broken to our hand.
The Keeper let out his breath. He drowned his concerns in the unflappable serenity that oozed up from his fingers out of the unguessed depths of the black blade.
CHAPTER TEN
Aglarond, Yuirwood Forest
Magnificent yellow pines crowded the edge of the Yuirwood. Their short, forked branches drooped under a burden of snow, instead of turning up like drakes' tails as they did during the summer. The spirelike tops created a jagged canopy above, though from the understory, all that was visible were naked branches ending in tufts of green needles. The cones were savagely spiked, curved like a bee's stinger to catch the unwary.
At ground level, melting snow mixed with the fine detritus of the forest floor, absorbing most of the runoff, but creating occasional muddy sinkholes. Kiril discovered one by stepping directly into it. She muttered a clipped stream of invectives as cold water doused her foot. Not for the first time that day.
Her heavy furs had gone from cozy and comforting in the morning chill to heavy and stifling as the day advanced. Though direct sunlight rarely touched them beneath the pine ceiling, her reckless pace contributed to what seemed an unseasonably warm morning.
Ahead, the crystal dragonet flitted from branch to branch.
Shafts of sunlight sometimes transfixed the creature, making Xet's translucent carapace glow as if afire.
Kiril was suddenly reminded of the time she'd first met the creature. After fleeing Stardeep, she lost herself amid lonely mesas in the southeast. Too much a coward to end her own life, she eked out a living trapping dune rats, working as a bodyguard, and drinking herself into oblivion each night. Eventually, she found a dwarf hermit whose heart craved solitude as much as hers, though for different reasons. Xet had been his lone companion. The recluse, a geomancer named Thormud, recognized her as a potent warrior despite her wasted life. He hired her as his lone bodyguard.
Defending Thormud, she'd rarely drawn the Blade Cerulean. That was a good decade, or as good as she could have hoped for. Alcohol fully claimed her, but she found refuge in a surly attitude and foul language.
As it always did, the world intruded. Kiril accompanied the geomancer on his last escapade, into the Desert of Desolation. Thormud followed a trace of evil infecting the earth. She and the geomancer, and a few others met along the way, cleansed that infection; an Imaskaran war relic was kept safely inactive.
That triumph had awakened something in her. It was the first truly good thing she'd accomplished since her personal downfall. Her victory, the sense she'd achieved something noble, instilled in her a seed of hope.
Hope made people act funny.
She decided she would return to Aglarond, perhaps even to Stardeep, or at least to the hidden realm of Sild?yuir where her people dwelt. She said her good-byes to the geomancer. He gave her a gift—his tiny crystalline dragonet named Xet. Xet bore the shape of a dragon, but he lacked the size and courage to match.
Kiril accepted the gift with her typical lack of grace and then departed, Xet flitting and chiming in her wake.
She headed northwest, toward Aglarond. The dragonet kept her company on the long trek, she had to admit. But as she approached her homeland, dread and shame reemerged, and the memory of her recent success faded.
Hope proved too hard to hold. Habits cultivated over a decade toppled hope's facade.
Almost at the border of the great Yuirwood, she paused in Laothkund. A few days became a few tendays, then a few months. She lost her conviction. She foundered.
Until now.