"Komentai'i," Keirasti answered uncompromisingly, "We will travel fast."
Chapter Nine
A Lifetime in a Moon
IT HAD BEEN nearly three moonturns since Vestakia had begun her attempts to communicate with the Crystal Spiders, and the knowledge of failure was growing in her soul like a poisoned wound she could not heal.
If only she could make sense of what the Crystal Spiders were trying to tell her!
Since she had begun her work, she had risen each day at dawn, breakfasted, and gone with her guards down into the caverns. She was grateful for their presence, for Vestakia never forgot, not even for a moment, that her Endarkened father would do anything to get her back and the Endarkened had many allies.
For the last several sennights she had divided her time between the Main Camp and the caverns, for with the steady influx of refugees from the now-abandoned Elven Cities farther north and the outbreak of plague both in the temporary city and in Ysterialpoerin itself every Healer was needed to tend them. And though Vestakia preferred not to go among strangers who would be shocked by her Demonic appearance, her assistance in the Main Camp could free another Elven or Wildmage healer to go among the sick and injured civilians and skilled hands were always needed to compound medicines.
And her work here at the Further Caverns seemed to be going nowhere.
Though both Kellen and Idalia had spoken of how confusing communication with the Crystal Spiders was, Vestakia had hoped her Wildmage heritage and the odd gifts it brought with it would make things easier for her, but her hopes had been dashed on the very first day, when Kellen had brought her down into the caverns.
Of course she had learned much about learning to communicate with an alien mind, and even see through its eyes. Linking with the Crystal Spiders was an easy thing now, and sorting through the mind-pictures they sent her no longer caused Vestakia the sickness and disorientation it had at first. And oddly enough, though no magic was truly involved, the skills at perception and concentration that she honed in the caverns were useful elsewhere: Not only had she become far more expert at diagnosing the ills of her patients or telling the minds of most of the people around her, in fact simply from the way they looked and held themselves but she could read the mood and intention of the mute beasts around her, and even her equestrian skills had improved remarkably as a result.
There was no doubt about it. When all of this was over, she would be an excellent goatherd, if that was what she chose to do. That was how she had begun her life, after all: as a goatherd, tending the herd of goats her mother Virgivet and her aunt Patanene had taken away from their home village with them into exile deep in the Lost Lands to provide them and later, Vestakia with food, shelter, clothing, and even trade-goods. Until Kellen, Shalkan, and Jermayan had found and rescued her, the goats had been her closest companions, and though she had learned much since of Healing, it was always good to know that she still had her first skills to rely on.
Assuming, of course, that all of this was ever over in a way that allowed for the herding of goats.
But no matter how much work there was for her at the main camp, her sense of duty drew her back, over and over, to the Further Cavern, and her frustrating communion with the Crystal Spiders.
By now Vestakia felt she knew everything about the location that she sought except where it was. The mind-pictures the Crystal Spiders sent her during their communications were still blurred and fragmented, the kaleidoscopic images of a world seen through eight eyes multiplied dozens of times over, but by now she was used to that. She was even used to seeing images of things that could not be, for by now she knew that the Crystal Spiders could create artificial images to communicate, as well as simply transmitting images of things they had seen.
Jewels and water. Jewels and water. A riddle she could not solve.
Even Cilarnen could not solve it with his Armethaliehan magick. They had all hoped, once he had found a source to power his spells, but… not only did the High Magick require a great deal of preparation for many of its spells, but they had to be done at specific times as well. And if that were not enough complication, the divination and scrying that Idalia and the other Wildmages took so much for granted was nearly absent from the High Magick, or so Cilarnen said. The forms of distance-seeing the High Magick did possess required that the Mage already have a link with what he wished to see, either of familiarity, or through a tangible object.
And what use is that? If you already know what it looks like, or where it is, why do you need magic to take a look at it? Vestakia had wondered irritably when he'd explained. But she hadn't said anything aloud. Cilarnen was already doing everything that he could and much more than he safely could to help their cause.
But it was frustrating.
Late this morning Vestakia had returned from three days spent at the Main Camp. The Healers were desperate to keep the plague from spreading to the army or from claiming any more lives than it already had among the others and though a Wildmage-infused cordial was having a certain amount of effect in treating it, a great deal of the stuff was needed, and preparing the cordial for charging was painstaking work.
But it was also vital work.
The Elves called the plague Shadow's Kiss, from the characteristic dark scars it left behind on all of its victims. If one survived most diseases, Vestakia knew, one was safe from them forever that had been true of the goat-pox she had contracted as a child.
But if one survived Shadow's Kiss, it was still possible to get it again, and no one who got it a second time survived.
Or perhaps, Vestakia thought with a sigh, the second plague was a completely separate disease that only struck those who had been exposed to the first plague. The symptoms were very different: a quick high fever lasting only a day, followed by death. Unlike the original plague, it didn't seem to be contagious.
They had no way of knowing.
All they knew was that they had no way of treating the second plague. It seemed to be new the Elven Healers said it wasn't mentioned in any of the Story Songs of the Last War.
Despite the fact that they were their main source of information on how to treat many of the diseases they were facing now, both Vestakia and Idalia were getting very tired of the Elven Story Songs.
Very nearly as tired as they were of seeing people die because their medicines simply weren't working very well.
* * * * *
WHEN she'd gotten back to the smaller camp at last, the only thing she'd wanted was to throw herself down on her bedroll and sleep, but a sense of duty drove her down into the caverns.
There she had tried, yet again, to extract the information they all desperately needed from the Crystal Spiders' completely willing yet utterly alien minds, working until Khirethil the captain of the troop who watched over her while she was beneath the mountain had finally insisted that she stop.
"You gain nothing by forcing us to carry you to your bed, Vestakia," Khirethil had said, her black eyes uncompromising. "And in working yourself into exhaustion, you waste time in the end."
It was good advice, and kindly meant, and Vestakia had forced herself to take it.
In camp, under Khirethil's steady gaze, Vestakia also forced herself to eat, though the food lay heavily in her stomach. Afterward she had excused herself quickly, and gone to her pavilion.
Until she had started working here, she had not had a pavilion of her own, but shared Idalia's tent for warmth and companionship far more than safety, for among the people of the Allied army she felt accepted and, yes, cherished as she had never expected to find herself in all the years of her life. From the moment she had been born, Demonic in form but human in soul, her mother and her aunt had taught her and warned her: Trust no one. Show yourself to no one. No one will look beyond the surface and dare to believe in the human soul within.
But Kellen had. Even now, tired and miserable as she was, the thought of him brought a warm glow of happiness to Vestakia's spirit. From the first moment he had seen her, Kellen had trusted her, believed in her, without question. What had grown between them or might grow between them was very awkward, given the Mageprice that Kellen paid, but Vestakia's own mother had given up twenty years of her life so that Vestakia could be human, and Vestakia was familiar with Mageprices. And a year and a day was not forever.
But even constrained as they were not to look, not to touch, barely to take notice of one another save as comrades in the field, Vestakia wished Kellen were here now.
How he would laugh to see her pavilion!
She'd known, of course, that the Elves tended to choose a "signature" color for a person Kellen's was a very pretty green, just the color of Shalkan's eyes and she should have had fair warning when the armor that Artenel had produced for her had been enameled a cherry-red the exact shade of her skin, but she really hadn't expected to be presented with a matching tent.
It was quite a lovely color, really. And it certainly stood out against all this snow.
But since the Elves did things very thoroughly, and very single-mindedly, it turned out that nearly all of her clothes were red as well. And that made them rather hard to find, sometimes, in a red tent.
Yes, Kellen would definitely laugh.
Making certain that the braziers were filled for night, Vestakia got out of her armor and into a sleeping tunic and leggings. Curling up beneath several layers of blanket and fur coverlet, she pulled the one remaining lantern over to her and blew it out, then lay shivering in her bed as she waited for her covers to warm. Her muscles were filled with tiny tremors, and there was a nauseated, metallic taste in her mouth; she knew she was far too exhausted for sleep to come easily, no matter how badly she needed it.
Tomorrow she would think of something that would work. She had to.
The army can do nothing until it knows where the last Enclave of the Shadowed Elves is. In the dark, her mind returned to the problem that obsessed her. It did not help matters to know how much they were all depending on her to find the key. Like the other Healers, Vestakia had dealt with the Allied wounded after the two battles for the caverns, and the horrific Battle for the Heart Forest. She knew what a terrible enemy the Shadowed Elves could be. And if that weren't bad enough, the Shadowed Elves could bring other Allies of the Endarkened into the center of the Elven Lands without breaching the land-wards, as well as causing monsters such as the Deathwings and Coldwarg to do their bidding. If they were not stopped, they might attack Ysterialpoerin again or one of the southern cities.
South.
Vestakia felt a faint spark of recognition. She felt that the last Enclave must be somewhere south of here, but she couldn't say why she felt that, and she could ask no one to act upon such a vague disorganized feeling. Certainly the Crystal Spiders had no sense of direction that she'd ever figured out. So the feeling couldn't come from them.
And if it didn't, it couldn't be allowed to count.
She sighed in frustration, pulling the blankets up higher. Jermayan and Ancaladar would be rejoining them soon a sennight or two at most, Idalia had said and if nothing else, the three of them could try flying a search-grid again, though in the winter storms it would be almost impossible for Ancaladar to fly low enough for her to sense a Shadowed Elf Enclave.