Paul Thompson - Destiny

It seemed ridiculous. Hytanthas had heard of mountaineers conversing across wide valleys by using echoes, but surely this was different. He heard no echoes, only the strange delay before the Speaker’s answers. Still, he heeded the Speaker’s words and slackened his pace, trying to look around and choose his path more carefully.

“Where are you, sire?”

“On a wide stone platform in the center of the valley”—some words were lost—“Where are you?”

Rather plaintively Hytanthas explained he didn’t know exactly where he was but thought himself in one of the tunnels under the valley.

Conversing back and forth, they established that each could hear the other better now than when they’d begun. it seemed Hytanthas might be closing the distance between them. The young warrior began counting paces softly. He’d left five thousand behind when Gilthas spoke again, sounding much closer. In fact, Hytanthas could hear his sovereign’s teeth chattering.

“The air above this disk is cold indeed,” the Speaker confirmed. “Too cold to be natural.”

“How fare the people?” asked Hytanthas slumping down to rest for a moment.

Holding on, said Gilthas. Food was dwindling fast. Porthios, Alhana, and most of the warriors had departed for Qualinesti, and Lady Kerianseray had flown off to bring back Sa’ida to help ward off the ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps. Hytanthas knew the holy lady. She had aided him and Planchet when they were caught inside Khuri-Khan after the khan’s curfew. If not for her intervention, they would have been murdered by bloodthirsty Torghanists.

When the Speaker told him he’d been missing for more than a week, the warrior shook his head in amazement. No wonder he felt wrung out.

The Speaker assured him his griffon was fine, although pining for his rider. The elves had found the vast stone platform at the focal point of the valley. Standing on its center, one could hear things from all over Inath-Wakenti. Gilthas had been experimenting with the effect when he heard Hytanthas calling for help. He asked what the warrior had found in the tunnels.

“Nothing but bones.” Hytanthas explained how his discovery of the body of one of Lady Kerianseray’s warriors, as well as layer upon layer of desiccated animal bones, had led him to conclude that the animal life captured by the will-o’-the-wisps was transferred into the tunnels to die.

“Take courage, Captain,” Gilthas said. “We’ll get you out.”

Hytanthas jogged onward. After a time he reported, “Sire, I have found a body.”

The corpse was that of another elf warrior, although blind as he was Hytanthas couldn’t identify him. The dead elf was lying faceup with a dagger buried in his throat. Hytanthas’s first fearful thought was of murder, then his hand went to the warrior’s scabbard. It was empty. The blade in the elf’s throat must be his own.

Haltingly, Hytanthas described what he’d found. The Speaker was shocked the warrior would have given up on finding escape.

“Perhaps he was grievously injured before he was transported to the tunnel?” Gilthas suggested.

Hytanthas’s examination of the body revealed only the one wound. But unlike his king, the young captain could understand how the elf might succumb. Without the voice of his sovereign to buoy his spirits, Hytanthas himself might have given in to despair.

He found a crust of bread in the dead elf’s belt pouch. It fell to powder in his mouth, but he choked it down anyway. Shifting position, he put his hand down on something hard and sharp. The characteristic shape and feel told him it was a piece of knapped flint. Perhaps the lost warrior had been trying to start a fire and the stone had gotten away from him. Disoriented by the darkness, he’d been unable to locate it and had given up, though the flint lay just a few feet away.

Piling up strips of the dead elf’s cloak, Hytanthas struck the flint against the hasp of the dagger. Bright orange sparks showered onto the tinder. He nursed them carefully until they flickered to life. His triumph was quickly tempered by grief. As the feeble light illuminated the features of the dead elf, he recognized Ullian, who had been in the Speaker’s service for only a short time. Hytanthas was one of the few who knew of the human blood in his heritage, and Ullian had been a staunch comrade.

The Speaker congratulated him on his acquisition of light. Putting aside his sadness, Hytanthas tore Ullian’s cloak into strips then wrapped the strips around the end of his sword to form a torch. The tunnels were a maze, but as long as he could see, he might be able to find a way out. There was nothing he could do for his lost comrades. All he could do was try to survive.

Torchlight brought a fresh revelation—wall paintings around him leaped and danced in the flickering light. He described the frescoes to the Speaker. Beautiful scenes of gardens and parkland covered both walls. The paintings had been rendered with amazing skill, giving them an unusual feeling of depth. The colors were so fresh, they might have been painted just the day before. The only jarring notes were the portraits of lean, angular looking elves, rendered life size, interspersed with the peaceful sylvan scenes. The elves glowered balefully at the viewer.

The Speaker theorized the paintings had been done by the people who’d once lived in the valley. The very ones whose spirits still haunted it.

With the aid of his makeshift torch, Hytanthas soon found a crossing tunnel, which branched off to the right. When he reached the intersection, he halted, uncertain which way to go. The tunnels looked identical.

“Are there portraits at the intersection?” the Speaker asked. Hytanthas said there were. “Do they face any particular direction?”

Hytanthas dutifully studied the portraits. Those in his original tunnel looked toward the intersection. Those in the crossing tunnel faced away from the intersection. The news excited the Speaker.

“You should take the new tunnel! I believe the paintings face something important, like a way out.”

With no better alternative, Hytanthas did as the Speaker suggested. After being so long deprived of company, the young captain felt miraculously refreshed and talked almost nonstop as he walked. The Speaker listened silently, now and then prompting him with questions. Hytanthas reported the thinning of the debris on the floor. Fewer and fewer bits of bone crunched beneath his boots. Then he saw something more interesting to report.

“Sire, the tunnel ahead slopes down. And a white mist swirls near the floor.”

His voice had taken on a hollow quality, as though he spoke inside a large, empty room. The Speaker asked about the frescoes. They were gone. Where the tunnel began its downward slope, the frescoes ended.

He was seeking the surface, not a passage to take him farther down. Still, the tunnel might level out and begin to climb. He told the Speaker he would scout ahead. If the passage continued to slope downward after a hundred steps, he would go back.

The tunnel walls were plain gray stone, unadorned by paintings of any sort. The white mist filled the passage from side to side. First curling about Hytanthas’s ankles, it deepened as he advanced until it reached to his chest. It was cold and clammy, and remarkably cohesive. He swept a hand through it, and the mist rippled like water rather than flying about like fog. The air grew steadily colder. Hytanthas’s garments sagged with damp. Water dripped from his hair down his back. Reaching another branching of paths, he halted. The intersection was very wide, at least twenty feet across. A sense of unease filled Hytanthas. He couldn’t see anything untoward, but he sensed danger nearby.

Gilthas urged him to go back, but Hytanthas drew his dagger and moved forward slowly. His caution was well founded. The toe of his left boot suddenly found open air rather than solid rock.