The princess called down, "This is possible? Do the Masters not know all the routes?"
The speaker shook his head. "We know many—not all. We've long suspected that deeper, more tangled paths lay outside our lore. Now we know it is true."
"Let Janesta speak," said the princess, from where she stood as if on a mighty branch, not empty space. "From whence came these awful destroyers? Tell us, for we are kin of your kin. We will avenge your tribe's memory and defend the sanctity of the forest."
The wood elf, disoriented and pale, looked up into the sky and said in a weak voice, "They came from across a causeway—a causeway fronted by two soaring obelisks. We set our encampment nearby to study the stones, and the strange mist that so often obscured the causeway from sight and even touch."
"Tell us more of this causeway," commanded the princess when the woman faltered.
"The day prior to the attack, my friend Natal Peacethorn and I. .." Janesta choked, wiped at her eyes, then continued. "Natal and I found the causeway clear for the first time. We crossed it. On the other side we found a massive granite gate sealed against all entry. And above.. . stars wheeled in the sky, though Natal and I crossed the causeway in full daylight."
The assembled Masters looked at her with consternation, though a few nodded, as if her words confirmed a long-held conjecture.
"The gates were closed, thick with glyphs we couldn't decipher. Above the gate was scribed a single massive symbol—a white, treelike symbol surrounded by a field of flickering blue-tinged darkness."
Raidon's eyes did their best to leap from their sockets just as his jaw threatened to detach from his skull and clatter to the ground.
Yarmarion turned and fixed Raidon Kane with a measuring glance. He said, "It would seem your arrival today is not accidental, traveler."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Stardeep, The Causeway
Elven warhorses cantered down the narrow Causeway, their hooves striking thunder through the glade. Empyrean Knights sat astride them, a rush of silvery mail, righteous fury alive in their eyes. On they raced, across the narrow lane, three dozen star elves draped in pleated mithral hauberks worn over silk. Their swift steeds were sheathed in plate that glinted in the morning sun. Those in the vanguard drew down the tips of their lances, those in the rear unsheathed great swords.
Arrows burst from the boughs of the encircling forest, a rain of flint-tipped death, falling among the Knights, dealing death or mercy at random. The screams of horses and Knights marked a sudden and growing knot at the Causeway's middle—horses went down, breaking Knights beneath them, but worse, clogging the charge line.
Figures clad in green, gold, and dun broke from the eaves, light and silent, drawing bowstrings for another flight even as they ran. Astonished shouts greeted the attack, followed closely by the ring of sword on steel, axe on bow. The narrow line of the Causeway became choked at its head with grappling, hacking figures. The blood of wood elf, half-elf, and star elf mingled in the dark waters of the hidden Chabala Mere.
The Empyrean Knights were outnumbered, but despite the bloody toll exacted by their foes, and regardless of the fair-featured nature of their enemy, the defenders slashed the wood elves, split chests protected only by stitched leather, cracked wooden shields, and finally slew the Yuirwood elves to the last man and woman.
Silence descended for a beat, followed by a victory shout. The Empyrean Knights had again defended Stardeep's entrance from the latest infiltrating attack by the suddenly, unaccountably warlike wild and mixed elves of Aglarond.
* * * * *
Kiril topped a wooded rise and saw the great boulder beneath which she had once so often rested, though now it was tufted with patches of snow. A little farther, there was the old birch tree, still standing tall and regal among the conifers after so many years. Here was the narrow ravine that sheltered a small, trickling tributary to the Chabala River, which fed into the Mere—on which sat the Causeway.
"We're close," she threw back over her shoulder—her right shoulder; Xet perched on the left. Gage stiffened, as if hearing difficult news, then showed her his impish smile. Her self-proclaimed friend seemed oddly shaken since their encounter with Sathra. His jokes were few and far between, and forced. A strange melancholia gripped him. Of course, she didn't have time to worry about him now. She could be moments from finding Nangulis!
If she allowed herself, she could project herself back into the memories of her life before the events of the last decade, before she'd become merely a "swordswoman." When she had been a Keeper of the Cerulean Sign. When she had performed an important duty, one she had executed for years. She and Nangulis both—he in the Inner Bastion, she in the Outer, though no day passed that didn't allow time for them to be together, either within the guarded bulk of Stardeep, or beyond its dimensional veil in the sunlit groves of the Yuirwood.
When off duty, she and Nangulis spent more time in Faer?n than in Sild?yuir, for that realm, their home, required a longer trek than a mere stroll down the Causeway. If the Traitor were ever to escape, Stardeep's remote location would prove a buffer between the Traitor's curses and the home realm. The elders sited the dungeon in a tenuous pocket of Sild?yuir, one they further splintered in order to make it its own discrete space. To penetrate the starry realm, if he escaped, the Traitor would have to emerge, when open, on the tightly controlled Causeway, then travel overland through the Yuirwood to find the closest active menhir gate.
Either that, or travel the ancient dungeon tunnels beneath Stardeep, where the mazelike passages, dug by no star elf, were black mystery. A mystery, except that if one traveled their labyrinthine twistings all the way through, one might find a way back to the realm from which Stardeep was calved. When she'd first come to Stardeep, Kiril thought the connection was myth. But upon becoming a Keeper, she'd learned such a path indeed existed, but it was a path possible only for those possessed of great power. Dire threats menaced all who attempted that dim path. In any event, a trip to Sild?yuir was not a simple process, whether you were a Stardeep escapee or a Stardeep Keeper.
Ahead, the trees thinned, revealing the edge of a broad pond. A thin sheen of ice coated its surface. The far side was lost in a low mist that clung thick, heavy, and impenetrable to the water's surface. Kiril walked to the edge and squinted into the edgeless white.
"I don't see the land bridge you described," Gage groused. The man was uncommonly out of sorts. Moody, quiet at turns, then accusatory.
Kiril said, "Like"—she decided not to tell Gage about Sild?yuir and cleared her throat—"other realms beyond this world, Stardeep can be reached only when a way is opened. When the portal is not open, only a mist-drenched marsh is apparent. When open, a causeway—the Causeway—is visible."
"All right, let's . . . hold up. There's been a fight," said Gage, standing back among the trees, his gaze low and intent on something in the brush.
The swordswoman scanned the edges of the Mere, recognizing disturbances in the ice and the telltale sign of erased tracks in the newly disturbed soil. "I see signs of recent activity, but a fight? That seems unlikely."
"Come over here," replied the thief in a subdued voice.
Kiril turned and joined Gage among the trees. He used a dagger to scrape away a recently piled mound of earth. More digging revealed a shallow grave in which lay an ashen wood elf, wearing a uniform of green, gold, and dun.
"Blood!" exclaimed Kiril. The wood elf had been hewed nearly in two.
"The ground's been disturbed all through here. It was a big fight, with many deaths."
"Many deaths?"
The thief held out his gauntleted hand, the one with the disturbingly toothed cavity. He said, "My gauntlet can smell many more corpses buried all through the area, though this one was the most lightly covered."
They dug up a few more—each was an elf or half-elf, and all wore the same colors. None of the elves were star elves, Kiril was relieved to discover. "These colors indicate some sort of uniform, I think," said Kiril. "I'm not familiar with the rangers of Yuirwood. Why did they attack Stardeep?"
Gage shrugged.
Kiril shook her head, looked down at the blade sheathed at her side. No more idling. She returned to the Mere's edge and tried to recall the access keys. Only one Stardeep function extended from the dungeon's core to the edge of the Mere, and Keepers were trained in accessing it. She mentally probed across the water, calling on skills she'd forsaken a decade earlier. Contact! Though Stardeep lay across a planar veil, she could trigger a connection ...
The mist churned and rolled away from the Mere's center. A narrow land bridge slowly resolved, as if always there beneath the mist. Perhaps it always was. The blue sky above slowly darkened, and stars came out, strange to the sky of Yuirwood forest, but familiar to Kiril. She'd memorized those constellations as a child.
A horn sounded, pure and glorious. Xet chimed, dug his crystal claws painfully into her shoulder, then launched himself straight up. Kiril jerked her gaze down from the darkening sky to see chargers plunging across the Causeway—Empyrean Knights! The defenders of Stardeep. Not a danger, despite Xet's swift departure—merely a welcoming committee.
She raised both hands and waved, yelling. The Knights were a doughty crew, if formal. Their training demanded no less—theirs was a duty every bit as demanding as a Keeper's. Despite her anxiety over Nangulis, her spirits rose at seeing the Knights in their flashing hauberks and military poise. The Knights in the lead, halfway across the narrow bridge, lowered their lances to point. Their speed did not slacken.
The swordswoman frowned and called, "It is me, Kiril Duskmourn, a Keeper. Slow your steeds!"
The full-throated braying of horns split the air. The forest boughs rang with the echo. Arrows burst from the rear of the charging column. Most clattered harmlessly from Kiril's mail, their force spent and tips blunted or shattered. A few, however, bit flesh. The swordswoman let out a wounded howl, as much in pain as disbelief.
The Knights didn't recognize her, didn't believe her, or didn't care. Kiril dodged left, just avoiding the barb-tipped lance of a scowling Knight.
She scrambled to avoid falling backward into the Mere, spewing obscenity. "Pox-faced rats on a bender! What the Hells are you doing? Look at me! I'm a Keeper, gods roast your blood-flecked souls!"
Five elves on horseback charged off the end of the narrow causeway, wrenching their mounts around in a tight arc to face her. The two in the lead, who'd nearly skewered her, dropped their lances as they wheeled their mounts. Kiril's back was to the dark, wintry Mere.