He plied her with another gauging look. Finally he said, "I've seen worrying images . . ."
She grasped his shoulder, squeezing. "What? What did you see?"
He frowned again, said, "I'm too close to the edge of temporal resolution; I can't be sure. I'm working to increase the clarity of that vision so the details will firm up."
"You must have seen something—I can tell by your expression you hold something back. From your fellow Keeper!"
"Delphe, until I could be relatively certain, I didn't want to commit all of Stardeep to a plan that might be unnecessary. I—"
She squeezed harder. "Describe the images you saw."
He swallowed, then spoke. "Alliances. The Traitor retains alliances with those outside Stardeep, outside even the hidden realm of Sild?yuir. I've seen visions of wood elves unearthing old tomes, old journals, and becoming ensnared. But the seeds of corruption have already been cast, or soon will be. If we do not act in relatively short order, I fear that wood elves will find this cache."
Delphe released Telarian's arm and stepped back. She said, "You are certain?"
"No, not certain. But I am making preparations, gathering resources, sending out agents."
"Is that why you sent Empyrean Knights across the Causeway?"
His eyes narrowed but he nodded in agreement. "Yes, that's right. I sent them to reconnoiter a wood elf encampment established a fair distance from the Causeway. If the Knights reach the secret cache I saw in my vision first, the wood elves will never know the soul-corrupting danger they were saved from unearthing."
"Telarian, once more, explain why you've learned so much, taken so much upon yourself, without informing me."
Now it was his turn to grasp her shoulder, but she pushed him back. She considered asking Telarian to explain the significance of Brathtar's strange summons, but decided to keep that information in reserve.
Telarian paused, said, "If this all turns out to be a mad fancy, I wouldn't want to waste your time and thought on it. You're the Keeper of the Inner Bastion, the Watcher of the Well. Your duties are immediate and vital."
"But—"
"Trust me, Delphe. If this reconnaissance mission to the wood elf encampment confirms any of my visions, however slight, I shall instantly and immediately inform you. That was and remains my plan. Please don't make more of this than what it is—a foray to gather information, and perhaps to save a few elves from their own curiosity—nothing more."
A thought struck Delphe. "The appearance of strange elves in the armor of the Empyrean Knights could reveal the presence of Stardeep to the wood elf encampment."
The old twinkle returned to Telarian's eyes as he explained. "The Knights are not unskilled in woodcraft. They are abroad to observe only, not interact. Anyhow, Brathtar may not have to go anywhere near the village to find the cache."
* * * * *
Powdery snow accumulated across boughs, between pine needles, and across saplings and the dark ground under the great boles. Bit by bit through the night, it formed a curving white blanket covering the sleeping forest.
When Janesta Leafgrace emerged from her double-hide pavilion, she laughed as she shook the snow out of her hair that plopped down from above. She breathed in the crisp air that came with the newly laid covering. After snowfall, the woods took on the aspect of a fey wonderland that called her to explore a terrain transformed. Without disturbing anyone in her pavilion who reclined in remembering trances, she was away.
The snow was smooth and pristine, save for the elf-light tracks she left behind. The murmuring pines and hemlocks had fallen quiet under their newly made garments of white. Yes, even the sad, old voices of the so-called "elder druids" of the forest were speechless in the morning's wonder. Or so Janesta fancied.
And—
She spied a set of lone prints! Another early explorer, like her. Not a fellow from the encampment—it was a wildling of the forest.
She pursued the trail uphill, skirting an icy boulder field, staying beneath the canopy of oak branches. The prints were only partly familiar; certainly a big cat, but one new to the area, or at least new to her. The snowfall made following easy, but Janesta still practiced her forestcraft; she examined broken foliage, measured the length between prints, moved as quietly as she was able. When she saw a patch of disturbed snow, she dug up a shallowly buried cache of spoor.
It was a cougar after all, one from eastern Yuirwood. It had wandered close to the encampment. Janesta decided to stay on the trail to see if she could track it to its lair, if it had one. She suspected it might be a female, hungry to feed new cubs. If so, perhaps she would bring down a bird to help supplement its diet.
As she examined a spot where it had circled a stump, probably to mark its scent, she heard the first horns.
High, piercing, strangely thrilling . . . but ominous for their unfamiliarity. They sounded like something described in a shaman's tale, something that warlike humans beyond the Yuirwood might produce on their metallic instruments. She frowned and turned toward home.
The sudden cries and screams that broke under the calling horns jolted Janesta into a run.
When the huntress reached her village under the snow-bowed canopy, she couldn't understand what transpired before her eyes—the scene was too far outside her experience for comprehension.
Humans—no, elves . . . elves! Not wood elves like her tribe, or high elves she'd glimpsed on the Yuirwood's borders, nor even half-elves. Strange, steely eyed elves on mailed steeds. They were everywhere, surrounding the village, cantering through the center circle, sweeping down the side avenues. Resplendent in mail so fair it could only be mithral, the newcomer elves assailed her home without mercy.
Surprised and beset on all sides, wood elves died.
She saw friends taken in the back by scything swords. Others were pushed from high bowers by cruelly aimed arrows. A group that sought to flee beneath the boughs was ridden down by flashing hooves. Slender blades cut screaming throats. Dying children cried out to their parents, husbands to their wives. Janesta saw her friend Natal Peacethorn pulled from his home, shrieking. Her brother's wife Sarana was felled with two arrows. The monument stone that had stood three full tendays since the encampment's hopeful founding was toppled and smashed. Five hunters attempted to drag away wounded, but they were ridden down for their efforts.
Janesta was witnessing a heartless slaughter, nothing less. What courage she always assumed was hers failed; she shrank back into the undergrowth, all strength stolen from chilled, clammy limbs.
She turned, swearing, crying, hating herself, and ran blindly through the snowy woods, careful to keep her feet light and sliding, leaving as little sign as her snowcraft allowed. If she were to survive the annihilation of her home at the hands of these strange, steel-eyed elves, cowardice was her only option.
At first she ran without goal, holding no thought other than escape. As the heat of her exertion warmed her, a seed of fury blossomed, burning at the loss through which she labored. She adjusted her direction and set her course. She was bound for Relkath's Foot, one of the largest communities of wood elves in all the Yuirwood. There she would tell her story, pour out her anger, and gather a force. Only vengeance could sate her loss.
She would go to Relkath's Foot and alert the Masters of the Yuirwood.
The image of stern-faced elves in shining, blood-slicked mail maddened her. The kin-slaying elves hadn't dropped from the sky, nor were their horses lathered as if from a long ride. They had appeared from somewhere not far from the encampment. After she put a few miles of forest behind her, thinking all the while, Janesta was pretty sure from where.
* * * * *
On the edge of a pocket reality, a massive gate loomed, cold and gray, a lattice of strange script and tiny cracks bespeaking hundreds of years of weathering.
Telarian waited for Brathtar just inside the great stone gates that opened onto the mist-shrouded Causeway. Telarian often stood thus, year in and year out. The chiseled granite of the gate's face was as familiar as a friend. The Keeper knew every edge, every crack, every discoloration. Moreover, he was more than familiar with the inscriptions, sigils, and glyphs so prominently displayed. They warned of danger and death for any who entered uninvited, in a variety of tongues and alphabets:
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.