"I have some questions," she said. "And I really don't have anyone else to ask. I hope you don't mind."
"I always enjoy talking to you," Ancaladar answered. "You don't look happy, though."
For a moment Vestakia felt like bursting into tears. She'd never felt less happy in her life, even on the plain facing the Black Cairn.
"I've been having bad dreams," she said, though the words seemed terribly inadequate, compared with the images in her mind.
"Come," Ancaladar said, lifting his wing so she could settle beneath it. "Tell me about them. I, too, have had bad dreams in my time."
Vestakia settled herself against Ancaladar's massive scaled ribs. The dragon's body felt like a sun-warmed cliff, and his calm solidity lent her strength. She wondered if any of them would ever see summer again. She would like to see a summer in the green and pleasant lands of the south. It must be a glorious sight.
In halting sentences she told Ancaladar what she had already told Kellen: that the increased Demonic presence in the world, combined with her sennights of straining to read the minds of the Crystal Spiders, seemed to have allowed her increased access to her father's mind. That she now had glimpses of what he saw and felt not large ones, fortunately for her sanity and much of what she could see and understand still baffled her.
"But last night I heard something clearly, because he fears it so. The Queen of Shadow Mountain is calling… something from outside the world. Something that can only be called by terrible sacrifices. When it comes, she will have unstoppable power, and he is afraid that… something… will happen then. Something he does not like!" She shuddered, and wrapped her arms around herself.
"He is afraid that he will die, for she will not need him anymore," Ancaladar said, after thinking for a moment. "They are immortal, and filled with treachery.
If he wishes to become the King of Shadow Mountain, he must kill her in order to rule in her stead, and he cannot do that if she becomes as powerful as he fears. And she, knowing his intent for it is the intention of any member of Their royal house will certainly kill him, the moment she has no further use for him."
"That," Shalkan said, settling down beside her on the other side, "is typical both of Their kind and of a certain nasty sort of human that I hope you will never meet. No wonder the Prince is having nightmares."
He nudged at her shamelessly until she began to rub behind his ears.
"Come to hear the gossip, have you, Shalkan?" Ancaladar asked.
"You can't expect me to spend my time down there in the camp, can you?" the unicorn replied. "Besides, this is far more interesting. And useful. Do go on."
The dragon heaved a gusty sigh, and after a moment, took up his tale again.
"As for what she summons, to give her such power… I am afraid I know. Jermayan has told me that the Wildmages' spells seem weakened. I know how they were made strong. Long, very long ago, at the time of the First War, before I was alive, or my grandsire, or his grandsire, before the race of Men was as it is now, there was no Wild Magic as you now know it at all. Then, as now, the Elves fought against Them and They nearly won, for in those days, Their Creator was able to reach into the World of Form to aid his creation. But Great Queen Vielissar Farcarinon made the ancient pact which brought the Wild Magic into the world and bound it to the use of humans as yet unborn, and sealed He Who Is out of the World of Form."
"And a good thing, too," Shalkan commented, twitching his tail.
"That binding came at a heavy price. The Elves gave up their magic. And we… we paid too, for Vielissar Farcarinon had bound us into her Price by our own consent. The magic which had once been the birthright of the Elves passed to humankind, and we waited together through the long centuries for your race to grow old and wise enough to take up the keeping of the Balance."
"But we never did, did we?" Vestakia said softly. Shalkan rubbed his head against her cheek.
"I think you did well enough, when the Dark Times came again," Ancaladar answered. "Little though any of us wished them to come at all. By then you had built cities, befriended the Elves and the Shining Peoples "
"And the unicorns," Shalkan interrupted.
"And the unicorns," Ancaladar agreed, "and learned the truths of the Wild Magic. And when They struck again, Their Creator could not reach into this world to aid Them."
"But now he can," Vestakia said. Her voice shook slightly.
"Not yet," Shalkan said firmly.
"But soon, if the Queen of Shadow Mountain has her way," Ancaladar answered. "This is what you must tell the others. But I warn you now, they will not wish to hear it."
"Tell them anyway," Shalkan said.
Vestakia reached up and stroked the soft skin of the dragon's jaw-hinge. "Is there anything we can do to stop it?"
"I hope so," Ancaladar answered. "But I do not know."
"They'll think of something," Shalkan said. "Humans always do."
* * * * *
VESTAKIA only hoped Shalkan was right, but she suspected the unicorn might only have been trying to bolster her spirits. She suspected that Ancaladar was right, and the others would hardly wish to know that they had even more bad news to deal with than they had before.
She supposed it was better to know than not.
She found Jermayan and Kellen in the newly-constructed dining hall. Several pavilions had been taken apart and remade to form a canopy and sides over a frame of raw timber; it was crude by the standards of the Ysterialpoerin camp, but braziers heated it to a temperature several degrees above the air outside and storage chests lined up in neat rows provided a place to sit.
And, as always, there was tea.
"I must talk to you both," she said, as soon as she approached them. "And to Cilarnen, too, I think. I have been talking to Ancaladar. He says that I have news for you that you will not like."
Kellen sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.
"Let us go find Cilarnen, then. I have asked him to prepare to look for trouble from Them, and he says he must move away from the camp to do it, so I suppose he is packing again."
* * * * *
CILARNEN was, indeed, packing, and using words over it that Kellen was willing to bet he had never learned at the Mage College of Armethalieh. He had to shake the bell-rope at the door of Cilarnen's tent several times before he was rewarded with an irritable cry from within:
"Oh come in or go away just leave off that accursed jangling!"
Kellen poked his head through the tent flap. "I assume you mean 'enter and be welcome'?" he asked.
"Oh. It's you. I can't find my Lesser Goetia, and I'm sure I packed it. I have to have it I haven't memorized all the spells in it yet, and it's important."
"Is it this?" Kellen noticed a book half-buried in Cilarnen's sleeping furs and picked it up.
Cilarnen's face relaxed with relief as he took the book. "Yes. Thanks. It's got the keys for the Ars Tabularum, you see, and "
Kellen held up a hand. "You'll never make a High Mage of me, Cilarnen. and I beg you not to try. Now. May we come in? Vestakia has something to say. and she says it's important."
"Oh. Yes. Of course. Enter and be welcome."
Jermayan and Vestakia entered the tent, and Cilarnen found them all places to sit.
"We need to be private," Kellen told him.
But instead of the series of elaborate sigils with his wand that Cilarnen had drawn before, he simply sketched one quick gesture in the air, and said a single word. There was a sudden flurry of light and color, spreading out in a ring around them and dissolving into the fabric of the tent itself before fading away. Kellen wasn't quite sure, but he thought they were the same figures Cilarnen had drawn before.