"We'll find the child," the old elf asserted, his voice thin and wavering in the torchlit alcove. "By Reorx and the lamps of the eye, we shall find that poor creature!"
With pickaxe and dagger, they moved slowly and delicately through the ragged volcanic rock. The frail voice called to them faintly from somewhere behind the baffle of stone and darkness, the child begging for water, for her mother . . . finally, for Branchala and the Sleep He Brings.
When Spinel heard the hymn begin, the low bird-like keening that heralds the stonesleep of the Lucanesti, his orders became urgent. Intently, his hand on Tourmalin's shoulder, he guided the three diggers through convoluted layers of rock.
Steady, he told himself. Do not lose faith or judg shy;ment or the faint sound coming from somewhere beyond that wall of stone.
Barely audible, the stonesong continued. For a moment, Tourmalin seemed to gather strength. Muttering a mild oath, she redoubled the speed of her digging, and her companions followed her example, the corridor ringing with the sound of metal on stone, the shallow breathing of the four miners.
Yes, we are breaking through, Spinel thought as the sound of the pick took on a new resonance. Only a matter of minutes now, and if the child survives, if we can bring the poor innocent to air and light…
"Faster!" he commanded through clenched teeth.
And then, Tourmalin's hammer crashed through the last layer of rock. Exultantly, Spinel surged by his younger companions, reached for the new pas shy;sageway, his torch aloft…
But another wall of rock, not two feet behind the breakthrough, blocked his passage. He swore, scrab shy;bled at the hard stone with his nails, pushed madly against it with his shoulder …
As somewhere in the deep recesses of the earth, the stonesong of the child dwindled.
Spinel rested his forehead against the cold, divid shy;ing wall and wept. The years would take the child's bones and transform them. Someday, perhaps, descendants of those who dug for the babe in vain would find the form-small, curled, and glowing, in the midst of the rock that had swallowed her and made her its own.
"Opal," Tourmalin breathed, the light of compas shy;sion fled from her eyes. Her callused, pale hand touched the new, dividing wall. "Glain opal."
So they all would come to glittering dust, in the heart o.f this indifferent place.
Above the rocks and the rubble and the sorrows of elves, miles away in the city of Istar, the Kingpriest's armies watched and waited in boredom and uneasy readiness.
The Shinarion approached-the great festival of gaming, industry, and trade, the great time of com shy;merce and coincidence. Istar and all its tributaries came together to celebrate the glory of the goddess who, it was said, watched over the vast, interwoven economies of the region. As usual, the city was adorned with silk and gold leaf, the inns were swept and strewn with fresh rushes, and throughout the narrow streets of Istar, everyone-from the gray-robed, exclusive diamond merchants to the painted bawds and nimble pickpockets-readied their wares and skills for the coming week.
Even the Temple of the Kingpriest prepared spe shy;cial ceremonies in honor of Shinare. Jasmine incense billowed in the great square, and the tower bells chimed in the dawn carillon that dedicated each morning to the goddess.
It seemed that nothing was amiss in Istar-that the great business of ritual and trade continued gracefully and quietly, as though there were no nasty, ill-starred wars erupting in the desert. The mourning banners had come down in the noble houses, and the black cloth on the doors of the poorer dwellings had been replaced by the bright reds and yellows of Shinarion. The fallen soldiers, buried scarcely a week ago, were forgotten.
But the guards on the walls still watched ner shy;vously, the cavalry stopped and inspected all of the caravans, and in the high temple towers a thousand eyes turned regularly and apprehensively south. There were rumors that the rebel commander, the Water Prophet, stalked the city like a wounded lion.
He was coming, the rumors said. In a month's time, if not sooner. Fordus Firesoul was headed north, torch in hand and wading ankle-deep in Istar-ian blood. His goal was the city and the temple itself, its ornate walls to be ransacked and stained with still more Istarian blood.
For the first time in memory, the city was hum shy;ming with the threat of invasion.
Yet the Shinarion would take place as it always had. So the Kingpriest had decreed. Daily life would not give way to panic; the city would not become an armed camp.
And the city would profit, above all. Most impor shy;tantly, the metal from Thoradin, the silks from Ergoth, the grain from the Solamnic plains, would not have to go elsewhere to be sold.
Already the caravans had embarked for Istar, laden with expensive and exotic goods, and as the time approached, the first of the merchants arrived and the first booths and bazaars went up in the rapidly filling city. By the end of the week the num shy;bers would be greater still. Balandar claimed that the population of Istar doubled during the Shinarion.
Hidden by a carved screen, Vincus watched the arrivals from his master's library window. As wine steward for the Kingpriest's Tower, Balandar was busy all the time now, and Vincus was often left to his own devices. He divided his time between secretly reading obscure manuscripts and nosing through the crowded Marketplace, watching the preparations for the festival.
In most years, the arrivals were exotic-almost enough to make the young servant believe that the city did not go on forever-that the legendary lands that travelers described were actual and true.
The acrobats had come, and the fortune-tellers and dancers. A band of dwarven musicians was expected on the festival eve, and rumors even had it that Shardos, the fabled blind juggler, would attend and entertain.
But this year the first arrivals were somehow dis shy;turbing. Vincus wandered the Marketplace, seem shy;ingly casual, but totally observant. The acrobats, huge and hulking, practiced their stunts badly, the dancers seemed surly, and the fortune-tellers tight-lipped and private. The dwarves and the juggler were long overdue and the young servant began to suspect that the more famous, legitimate acts would not perform this year.
He saw few rehearsals, and the fortune-tellers' predictions, when they came, were tentative and vague:
Today is your lucky day.
You are more insightful than ordinary folk.
Your future is bright.
Not legitimate. That was it, Vincus was sure. The arrivals were impostors.
At first, Vincus was hesitant to bring up the matter to the druid. Vaananen, preoccupied with his rena garden, had little love for acrobats and dancers- they did not suit his austere western ways.
But finally, two nights before the festival was scheduled to begin, Vincus slipped through the druid's window. Vaananen did not stir. He crouched, as usual, in the rena garden, drawing a rairfglyph.
The rena garden had grown, Vincus noted. Vaana shy;nen had dismantled one of the wooden walls that kept the sand in place, and now it sprawled onto the floor, spreading like a creature with volition of its own. The druid had added another stone and a squat green barrel cactus to the stark, mysterious arrangement of objects in the sand, and two new glyphs adorned the far walled edge of the garden.
Then Vaananen noticed him, rose and turned, his meditations over.
"What have you brought me, Vincus?" he asked with a weary smile.
Vincus's dark hands flashed the first of four elabo shy;rate signs.
Vaananen laughed. "Impostors? Why, Vincus, all fortune-tellers are impostors."
Vincus shook his head, his fingers a blur.
Vaananen turned back to the garden. "You have tried hard," he announced. "Thank you."
Vincus shrugged, scratched beneath his silver col shy;lar. Perhaps he was wrong after all. He rose and turned toward the window, stepped to the sill…
And climbed out into the close Istarian night, leaving the druid to contemplate the cactus, the stone, the shifting shapes in the sand.
* * * * *
Vaananen might dismiss the suspicion, might laugh it away in his quiet meditation. But there was something different about the city-something strange and curiously out of line. Vincus was accus shy;tomed to watching the streets, to sensing with eye and ear and an insight more subtle than the senses when something had shifted, when something was not right.
And it was that feeling, that insight, that took him back to Balandar's library.
Always before, the library had been a place of peace for Vincus-a maze of sanctuary amid tower shy;ing shelves, with its powerful smells of mildew and old leather emanating from the long-neglected vol shy;umes. As a slave boy, illiterate at first, sold to the tower to repay his father's debts, he had taken books down from the high, obscure shelves to pore over at night after his master was abed. Slowly, his intelli shy;gence had matched the illuminated drawings in the margins of the ancient texts with the shapes of let shy;ters. It was like reading glyphs, this long process that had translated indecipherable scrawls into meaning, into things and ideas.
It had taken all of a year, but he had taught him shy;self to read in the shadowy, candlelit room.
Each time he returned he felt the same absorbing calm and quietude. This time he came as an intruder, a spy, gathering intelligence.