Richard Baker: Farthest Reach

A temporary effect of the rite? he wondered. Or something more permanent?

Ilsevele looked at Maresa and said, “I don’t expect he would be able to see it. Do you have a mirror?”

“Oh. Of course.” Maresa hurried over to kneel by her pack, rooting through her gear for a moment. Then she returned with a hand-sized mirror, and without a word she handed it to Araevin.

Araevin felt his companions watching him, and with a little trepidation he raised the mirror to his face. He saw the cause of their consternation at once, and almost dropped the mirror in surprise.

His eyes were blank, shining orbs of pearly silver without a hint of iris or pupil. Faint streaks of emerald, rose, and sapphire danced within, slowly changing as he watched. And his face was young, even more so than might be expected of any elf. He looked as he had when he was twenty-five or thirty, in the first bloom of an adulthood that would last for centuries. Light, promise, and vitality had left his face free of the small marks and habitual expressions he’d accumulated over his long life.

What did the eladrin’s kiss do to me? he wondered.

“Araevin…” Maresa said quietly. “You’re not… dead, are you?”

“No,” he answered. “No, I’m not. I am not entirely sure what has befallen me, but I know I am not dead.” He looked back to Ilsevele. “How long was I inside Morthil’s sanctum?”

“It’s hard to judge time here,” Ilsevele replied, gesturing at the lightless hall pressing in on the small company. “But I would guess twelve hours, perhaps more. We have repelled the nilshai or their monsters several times since you left.”

“Did you find what you were seeking?” asked Donnor. “Can you defeat the daemonfey with the lore you’ve mastered?”

“Yes, I found what I was seeking. As for the daemonfey, we will have to see.”

Araevin closed his eyes, thinking back to what he had seen when he stood in the Burial Glen of the ancient city and looked on its mythal’s secrets. The wards were old and treacherous, much damaged by the city’s fall and the centuries that had passed. Burning wheels of magic turned in his mind, sweeping arcs and crackling fonts that geysered from the ground. He found that he could set names to things he had not known before, and understand more of things he had previously glimpsed only in part.

With a sudden shock, he perceived the true peril that was rising in the heart of Cormanthor. Doors, he thought. A thousand doors. And they are open wide.

He shook himself free of Ilsevele and stared toward the west, or what would be the west if nilshai-poisoned Sildeyuir were a place where such things mattered, trying to peer through the deadly gloom of Mooncrescent Tower to distant Myth Drannor.

“Aillesel Seldarie,” he breathed. “It cannot be!”

“What, Araevin?” Ilsevele demanded. “What is it? What do you see?”

“We must return at once,” Araevin said. He looked around at his friends, his eyes glowing like fire opals, luminous and alive. He saw their confusion and fatigue, but he pressed on. “There is a graver threat at hand than the daemonfey, a threat to all Faerun. We must destroy the Last Mythal of Aryvandaar, or everything is lost. Everything.”

It was a peaceful spot, a grassy sward high on a hillside, with the cool waters of Lake Sember glinting through the trees a short distance below. The wind sighed in the treetops, and the forest creaked, rustled, and breathed around Fflar, warm and alive with the summer. Insects buzzed and chirped in the noontime sun, and lances of golden daylight splashed the forest floor through hidden gaps in the canopy overhead.

At his feet a smooth stone marker showed the place where Sorenna’s spirit had been burned free of its mortal frame, five hundred years ago. She had outlived him by a century and a half, it seemed, there in the restful forests of Semberholme. Still, that was too young, was it not? She would have been a little more than two hundred years in age, with centuries ahead of her still.

Someone might have known her here, he thought. A few of the older moon elves who lingered in Cormanthor after the Elven Court Retreated. I hope it was a peaceful life. So much strife befell our city in the last decades, so much horror in the years of war. It would please me to think that she passed the rest of her days in peace. If I bought her a hundred years of life in Semberholme by spending my last days fighting on without hope, I would count it a bargain.

Fflar’s eyes strayed to the marker beside Sorenna’s stone, and he felt his heart break for the hundredth time that day. It was not his son. That would have been hard, but he would have been content that his child had lived with his wife even for a short time in Semberholme. But there was nothing there for Arafel, and he could only guess that their son had gone on to live out his days in some other place. He hoped so, anyway.

The second marker in the glade was the stone for Sorenna’s husband, Ildrethor. He laughed softly at himself, even as tears gathered in his eyes.

“I would have told her not to mourn me,” he said to the clearing. “I would not have wanted her to be alone for the rest of her days. But now I see that I wouldn’t have meant it.”

The strange thing was, he could almost remember a glimpse of Arvandor in his heart. He had been with her there, hadn’t he? And he had not known jealousy, or resentment, or anything other than love in the eternal glades of the Elvenhome… or had he?

He looked up into the daylight streaming down through the trees, and his tears ran freely.

“Is that why I came back?” he asked. “Is this the thing I am supposed to make right, Corellon? I am a warrior. That is all. Why have you done this to me?”

He stood there for a long time, trying to make sense out of something so strange, so bittersweet and sorrowful that he could not begin to fold it within his heart. But after a time his heart did not ache so much, and the sunlight on his face felt warm and good.

He looked down at the stone markers again, and he understood that his former life was no more. He had been given a new one, and he could not use it to live the old, could he? Not after six hundred years.

With a sigh, Fflar turned his back on the silent stones. The Crusade, battered and bloodied but still intact, was encamped not far off, and he would be missed before much longer. He picked up Keryvian and slung it over his shoulder, and he left Sorenna’s glade forever.