Dennis McKiernan: City of Jade

“But what is it that you would say to Him?” asked Urus.

“Just this: things have been done which now need undoing, the Sundering of the Planes for one.”

Riatha gasped, and then said, “Oh, Bair, if the ways between the Planes were opened, then we could. . we could all once again. .” Her eyes filled with tears.

Urus reached out and took her hand and stroked it, and then said to Bair, “I deem she would have you do so.”

Bair nodded and then said, “I will ask Aravan to go with me, for as I say, this is but a continuation of the same mission we took on times past, he much longer than I.”

Bair and Aravan were gone from Mithgar for nearly three months, elar and kelan travelling to the Ring of Oaks in the Weiunwood to cross the in-between, Aravan in the shape of a black falcon and borne across by Bair. And when they returned, a host of Elves came, too-Daor and Rein among them, Riatha’s dam and sire-for the ways between the Planes had been made whole again. .

“What?” Riatha looked at Bair in puzzlement.

“I said, Ythir, that the ways to and from Neddra have been made whole as well, and the Ban has been rescinded.”

“But why?”

“Oh, don’t you see, Ythir? Any interference subverts free choice, free will, not only for us but for all.”

Bair looked toward the black-haired Elf who lounged against the wall. Like all Lian, he was slender, but at six feet he was a bit taller than most of his kind. “Help me out, kelan,” said Bair.

“His argument was quite eloquent,” said Aravan, fixing Riatha with his sapphire-blue gaze, “and in the end he not only persuaded Adon, he persuaded all who attended: Lian, Dylvana, and the gods.”

Riatha turned to Urus. “But to free the Foul Folk to work their will. .?”

“Mayhap without Gyphon and His agents driving them,” said Urus, “they will be less inclined to do their ill.”

“For that, Bair has a plan,” said Aravan, grinning. “One with which I am in hearty accord.”

“What?” asked Faeril-the damman Warrow-who had served as a loving aunt to Bair from the very day he had been born. “What is it?”

Bair ran his fingers through his long, silvery hair. “Just this, Amicula Faeril. .”

NEXUS

LATE AUTUMN TO EARLY WINTER, 5E1010

[THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]

Through fall-yellow grass and past brown-leaved thickets and over the rolling hills of Adonar sped the Draega, the Silver Wolf as large as a pony. High above and sailing across the azure sky a dark falcon flew. Around the ruff of the running ’Wolf dangled a stone ring on a chain, an ebon inset gleaming. Something as well glistened about the neck of the falcon above, the bird itself black as night, the glisten as from silver and glass, though it was a crystal instead. A small blue stone on a leather thong rested beside the glisten. And wherever the Draega ran, the falcon above followed, for they were travelling together, or so it seemed.

Through patches of forests the Silver Wolf wove, and it dodged around hoary old moss-laden trees and splashed across swift-running rills, while the falcon above rode the chill breeze blowing o’er the land. Not once did they slow their pace, league after league after league, until evening drew nigh, that is, and then the falcon above gave a skree , and veered leftward, the Draega below pausing to watch the dark bird above.

Along the edge of a woodland the falcon soared, and then winged over in a tight turn, and sailed down to land high up in an oak, its brown leaves rustling in the wind forerunning the oncoming winter. The Silver Wolf loped toward the broad-limbed tree where the dark bird had settled, and the moment the Draega arrived, the falcon once again took to the air.

After lapping up water from a nearby small burbling stream, the ’Wolf, yet panting, its ears pricked alertly, lay under the oak and watched as the bird shuttled back and forth above the tall grass in the field. And in but moments the falcon stooped, its wings nigh folded, the tips alone guiding its plummeting dive, and but a bare distance above the ground it flared its pinions and extended its talons and disappeared into the grass.

Up the Draega sprang, and loped to where the bird covered the fat coney it had downed. The ’Wolf whuffed, and the falcon, its wild eyes glaring, for a moment did not move, but at the second whuff, the bird released its prey and leapt into the air again.

The Draega snatched up the rabbit and loped back to the streamside oak, arriving just as the falcon came to ground. The ’Wolf dropped the coney, and from a flash of platinum light and a blooming of darkness, Aravan and Bair emerged: Aravan from the light; Bair from the dark.

It was but a year or so agone that Aravan, working with shape-shifting Bair and a winged Phael-a Hidden One named Ala-and a powerful being whom all of the Phael called the Guardian, learned to evoke the inherent power of a crystal, one with a falcon incised within, a crystal that now depended from the chain Aravan wore about his neck.

It was a crystal given some twenty-four years past to Faeril by Riatha, who told the damman of the scrying powers of such. At the time Faeril received it, no falcon was incised within. Faeril tried her hand at ‹seeing ›, using that selfsame crystal, and once she succeeded, almost to her doom. Much later and within a ring of Kandrawood she met the oracle Dodona, and he took her spirit within the pellucid stone itself. Dodona showed her many things, and told her that all shapes were possible within the crystal. That was when Faeril had said she had always wanted to fly like a falcon, and of a sudden she shifted to the form of that bird, again nearly to her doom. But Dodona rescued her from permanently becoming a thing wild. And when Faeril finally returned to herself, the incised form of a falcon lay inside the crystal clear.

Upon her return to Arden Vale, Faeril mounted the crystal on a platinum chain and gave it to Bair as a birth gift.

On his quest with Aravan to find the yellow-eyed murderer Ydral, Bair had worn the crystal into the Jangdi Mountains, where the Guardian and the Phael and Bair, working in concert with Aravan, had taught the Elf to master this token of power, which allowed him to assume the form of a black falcon.

As a black falcon and a Draega, they had managed to run down Ydral, where he had holed up in a Foul-Folk-infested black fortress on Neddra, a bastion that lay at a nexus of four in-between crossings. Respectively, three of the in-betweens connected Neddra to Mithgar, to Adonar, and to Vadaria; the fourth one they knew not where it led-perhaps to the Hidden Ones’ world of Feyer or to the Dragon world of Kelgor, or somewhere else entirely-for at that time only the bloodways were open, and Bair, in spite of his stone ring, could not make that crossing: he had not the blood in his veins that would allow him to do so.

Regardless as to where that fourth crossing led, it was the black fortress that concerned Bair and Aravan’s current mission, for it controlled vital in-between ways that would allow Foul Folk access to Free Folk lands.

Bair and Aravan had returned to Adonar to make certain all was ready and to set in motion the final stage of Bair’s plan. They had found the Elven host assembled and eager, and so the order was given to march to the in-between. And now the two fared ahead of the army to ensure that their even more powerful allies had assembled as well.

In moments Aravan had dressed out the rabbit and had set it to roast above a small fire.

“Kelan,” asked Bair, “how far to the in-between, do you reck?”

“Thirty leagues, I deem,” answered Aravan.

“Then nigh the mark of noon on the morrow, neh?”