They fell silent again, moving on, winding through the defile, which admitted barely enough moon and starlight for them to see the way ahead. It might once have been a path, but numerous falls of rock had made it a treacherous passage now. In the skies, they could hear the occasional beat of wings and a screech as of something hunting, but they were not attacked.
They were far along the road when Cellester finally agreed to a rest, taking the first watch. Vaddi slept fitfully. He jerked to wakefulness as the first spars of sunlight cut through from above. He turned to find that Cellester had not slept, remaining on guard. Behind him, curled up like a discarded bundle of rags. Nyam snored as sonorously as though he were tucked up in an inn.
Vaddi could not help but laugh. “I wish I had his nerve.”
Cellester grunted and shook the peddler.
Nyam came awake slowly, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He gazed up at the two figures standing over him. “Now what?” he grumbled. “I’ve only just got to sleep.”
“You’ve been asleep for hours,” said Vaddi.
Nyam sat up reluctantly. He rummaged in his sack and produced half a loaf and a chunk of cheese. They ate in silence then moved on.
Although they had a constant sense of being studied, as if the rock walls had eyes and ears, they heard nothing all day. The path wound tightly onward, rising up into the mountains. Although Cellester seemed uneasy, he was committed to this journey. They spoke little, pausing only to eat and sip from the occasional fresh spring that welled from the naked stone.
Slowly, every limb aching, they made their way up the mountain. Cut between two peaks, their path seemed more suitable for goats than men. Dust or rock falls choked it in places. It seemed long abandoned, but they remained on their guard.
Just as evening fell once more, Nyam found something on the smooth face of the rock wall ahead. Etched into it were runes—clearly the work of elves, though they seemed as old as the rock itself.
“This is indeed the way to Taeris Mordel. There will be a division in the path. Our way rises steeply.”
“Let us make haste,” said Cellester. “Our enemy has followed us, as I knew he would. We must be utterly silent. This whole region is like a living entity. The sorcery that spawned Voorkesh has seeped out far into the very earth. Our every breath will be reported back to Caerzaal.”
The path divided and they took the fork that became a steeply hewn stairway. It twisted like the burrow of a worm almost perpendicularly at times, until at last they were out on the open mountainside. A fresh breeze gusted. Clouds scudded across the heavens, shutting out the moonlight. Something stirred in them, shapes that flitted to and fro, ever hunting.
“There!” said Nyam, pointing. “Look at the highest point of the range, Taeris Mordel, the Eye of the North.”
Vaddi could see across the void to where a tall finger of rock had been sculpted into what must be the promised watchtower. It stood out from the upper crags around it, black and lifeless as bone.
Nyam grinned, evidently much relieved to see it. “The elves carved it from the peak during the height of the Last War, when they fought bitterly against Karrnath.”
“There are more runes here,” said Vaddi, studying what he had found on another slab of rock. “Elven runes. I can read some of them. They speak of alliances between elves and men.”
“Long ago, many elves fled to Aerenal,” Nyam said. “In the War they founded a separate home in Valenar. Taeris Mordel was their window on the north and on the cursed lands around Voorkesh.”
They spent another hour traversing the path. Rounding a tight bend, they saw below them the path leading to a wide bridge, its sides studded with carvings and statues of giants, heroic figures cast in warrior-like mould, swords and shields clasped, faces fierce, alive almost with the war-cries frozen into the stone.
Nyam pointed to the statues and columns that rose up on the opposite peak. “That is our goal. It is both a temple and watchtower. We should be safe there.”
“It is abandoned?” said Cellester.
“The elves may use it from time to time,” said Nyam, “but I see no watchfires up there.”
As they peered up into the darkness, something flapped by above, its raucous cry making them all duck down. Cellester urged them down the path to the bridge. They scrambled forward, made reckless by their urgency. Smaller night creatures flitted to and fro in the air around them, as though they had disturbed a colony of bats within the rock walls. As they approached the span across the yawning chasm below. Vaddi knew that their enemies were closing fast. Behind them, on the path, they could hear shrill cries and the fall of rocks.
They came to the bridge. It looked solid enough for all its age. Beyond it, Taeris Mordel rose up, its wall like polished marble, its high doors shut, equally as smooth.
Uneasily they began the crossing. As they went over the bridge, Vaddi could see to his right a deep cleft in the mountains that afforded a view over the far Blade Desert, awash now with sudden brilliant moonlight. By day the view from here must be breathtaking. He had little time to appreciate it now, for a murmur of voices behind him made him swing round. At the foot of the path they had just quilted, a rush of movement alerted them. In the glow of the moons a body of undead were coming in pursuit, boots crunching on the stone of the bridge.
Cellester waved his companions forward, but Vaddi felt a stab of despair. How were they to get into the tower? Its tall doors, their huge iron hinges choked with rust, looked as if they had not been opened for a thousand years.
They reached little over the halfway span when the air hummed about them, as if alive with fresh sorcery. Three arrows sliced through the night air and embedded themselves deep in the stone at their feet. Vaddi realized with another surge of horror that they had been fired from the temple above.
Vaddi pulled up sharply. “We are defenseless! That was a warning volley.”
The vibrations of the bridge testified to the pursuit. The undead were closing. They drew up in force no more than a dozen yards away, dead faces expressionless but assured of their triumph. From those ranks a familiar, cold voice shouted its challenge.
“Death awaits you that way. No one has ever entered Taeris Mordel and emerged alive.”
Vaddi turned to see the tall, haughty figure of Caerzaal striding toward them.
“Return to me. I promise you something far more fulfilling.”
Part Two
In the Lands of the Elves
8
The Watcher in the Tower
Cloaked in the shadows of night high above the gorge, the soarwing tilted to pass between rock pinnacles, its unerring instinct guiding it through the high walls beyond the lone tower of Taeris Mordel. Its undead rider could discern the bridge to the elf watchtower below, limned in the moonlight. In that ethereal glow he could see figures upon it. He urged his mount down, swooping closer to the bridge.
Vaddi was the first to realize what was happening. The vampire was no more than a few feet from him, but as Vaddi brandished his dirk in a vain effort to defend himself, he sensed the coming of the huge shadow-shape.
Caerzaal turned, teeth barred in a bestial snarl, to see the huge soarwing gliding down the gorge. The vampire ducked down and called to his servants. They came forward, and an arrow embedded itself in the neck of the nearest, its force catapulting the vampire from the bridge and over its edge. Beside Caerzaal, the next of his servants suffered the same fate.
Caerzaal staggered back a few paces, sword flaring in his hand as the soarwing closed with the bridge. Its rider brought the creature’s rush to a halt, hovering briefly over the span before landing on it, its massive form coming between the vampire and the three fugitives. The head of the soarwing dipped down to the bridge and the dark mouth opened. Caerzaal sprang back, his sword cutting through the air, seeming to dance with bloody fire. The soarwing ducked its head to one side. Caerzaal screamed to his guards. As one they moved back across the bridge.