The Road Home
Part One
“Bring up the Djun’s woman,” Korik commanded.
The guards returned to the throne room with the pregnant woman in tow. Korik studied her in silence a moment. He remembered when the Djun had first spotted her at a fair in Port Bane. She’d been a pretty thing then, full of life. Now she looked sickly and pale. Her belly was obscenely large under her silk gown.
“Lady Algifa, greetings. You may remember me. I am Korik Tarstang, once Minister of War for His Dominance.”
She saw him sitting in the throne that had once been her husband’s, heard the meaning in his words. “The Djun,” she murmured, eyes downcast. “Is he…?”
“Dead,” Korik said. “Killed by the elfin sorcerer-king in clear defiance of the Pact.”
Algifa stared at the floor, waiting.
“The Djun had negotiated the construction of a new highway through the Haunted Mountain. He made many concessions to the elves in exchange. We have treaties signed by both men and elves. The forms were followed – it was the elves who declared war, not us!” he insisted hotly.
The woman nodded. “As you say, sor.”
Korik scowled. He had been expecting questions, accusations. He had prepared a long defense against any widow’s ravings. He was almost sad to be denied the chance to use them.
“What… becomes of me?” she dared to ask after another long awkward silence. “May… may I go home now?”
Korik smiled thinly. “But this is your home, Lady Algifa. Surely you do not wish to leave. You cannot leave. Not while you carry the Djun’s heir.”
Algifa looked up. Fear glazed her eyes. “Please, sor. It’s almost my time. Let the baby be born. If – if it’s a boy, y-you do what you must. But a girl… a girl is no good to you. I could take her and go home and no one would ever need know–”
“When all of Port Bane saw the Djun order you into his war-coach? I think not. Even a girl could be used by those who seek to take up the Djun’s throne.”
“Then… my baby must die no matter what.” She said it with a note of finality, acceptance. “M-must I die too? Please, sor – Dominance–”
“Peace. You and your baby are in no danger from me.”
She stared at him uncomprehending. Korik laughed. “What – do you think me a turncloak? The Djun is dead, but his line continues. Soon you will be delivered of a healthy boy, and I will serve as regent until such time as your child is old enough to rule.”
Algifa blinked. “What if it’s a girl?”
Korik smiled. “Well, you’re big enough to have twins in there. But you will bear a boy, make no mistake. Did the Djun speak at all of names?”
“Names?”
“What would he call his son?”
“Uh… he had mentioned… ‘Angrif’.”
“Angrif. Excellent. Now I shall ensure you are left well-attended and left in peace as you await your time. You look very tired.”
Puzzled, still frightened as ever, Algifa let herself be marched out by the soldiers. Korik’s mind was at ease now; this broken woman was no threat to him. She would do anything to save her skin. He would see to it she gave birth surrounded by the best midwives, armed with the strongest of birthwines. If she died in the process, it was no great loss. If she lived, he was confident she would dutifully suckle whatever infant he handed to her.
Korik knew he could not become a djun himself. He had neither the family nor the wealth. But he had a good reputation in High Town, and he had the loyalty of the army. All he needed was a figurehead.
He had already ordered soldiers into the lower levels, to find no fewer than twelve heavily pregnant women. One of them would give birth to a healthy son. One way or another Grohmul Djun would have an heir, and Korik would have perhaps as many as twenty good years as ruler in all but name.
* * *
Skywise examined the remnants of the carcass. The raccoon had been picked clean; all that remained was skin and bones – the longer bones broken open for the meager scrapings of marrow.
“The tracks are all over here,” Teir said from his vantage point on the tree branch overhead. “Either a human child or an elf.”
“Well, the wolves say elf,” Skywise replied. Actually, Starjumper had referred to the scent trail as ‘rotten elf’ in his wolf-sendings, but Teir did not need to know that.
He rose and wiped his hands on his leathers. He didn’t understand. Kahvi claimed to want to die, yet she continued to feed herself. And she continued to run, but where?
They had tracked her for eight days, all the way from Thorny Mountain to the Citadel Mound and beyond. She moved as fast as a horse at full gallop and seemed to need no rest, just a few small animals torn open and consumed on the run. They found the remains once or twice a day.
“You’d think if she wanted to kill herself, she could just stop eating,” Skywise murmured, before he remembered his audience. He glanced up at Teir on the rock, but Teir seemed unmoved either way by the statement.
“If it was as easy as that she would have done it long ago.”
“You think the starstone is making her?”
Teir studied Skywise curiously. “You’ve not felt real hunger in many years, have you, Palacemaster?”
“Not really, no,” Skywise said. He thought of the savory meals Savin loved to prepare over the blue flames in the Palace kitchen, of centuries of easy living on the endless bounty of the rainforest. He hadn’t gone more than a day with an empty belly since they’d founded the Great Holt.
“It’s harder than just lying down and dying,” Teir said. He hopped down from the tree branch. “I’ve seen it happen. I was young, but I’ll never forget it. Hunger is more than strong enough to drive any beast to madness. It’s a hole in you, eating you away from the inside. And the way she’s running, nothing will fill the hole for long.”
“But where is she running to? That’s the question.”
At first they had thought Kahvi was simply fleeing from them like any prey. Despite the lead she had taken from Thorny Mountain, Skywise’s pod soon caught up with her on the Blood River. For three days they followed her along the shores, veering north, then west, then dropping south to trail along the edges of human farms.
It was Aurek who had suggested they wait another full day and risk letting the trail fade, just to see what she might do. Would she return to the humans of the Citadel? Skywise would have wagered gold on it, but instead Kahvi chose to go west, running in a nearly-straight line through forest and plainswaste now that the Palace-pod was no longer harrassing her.
“The Plainsrunners?” Skywise queried aloud. “Mardu’s out west.”
Teir shook his head. “They have nothing she’d want. She barely seemed to recognize her own daughter on Thorny Mountain. I doubt she would even remember Mardu or my father.”
Skywise leaned against the tree trunk. Normally in riddles like these, he would simply turn to the Scroll, or Sunstream, to ferret out the answer. But the corrupted Palacestone had made Kahvi invisible to them both. He had to puzzle this one out without magic.
They had tried more than once – their search party sitting down together and sharing thoughts. Aurek thought Kahvi might be in search of the Palace, or a similar source of pure starstone. But the Palace had flown to the south, and the closest source of starstone was the pod chasing Kahvi – if she wanted it, she had only to stand still and wait to be found.
Vaya and Ember thought Kahvi was running on pure instinct, like a frightened animal. But a beast in retreat tended to run to holt or pack. Kahvi had neither. Teir had no suggestions, only a grim determination to find his mother and give her the release she desired. Whatever Cheipar was thinking, he chose not to share it.
“Come on,” Skywise said at length. “Let’s get back to the pod.”
One of the wolves growled. It was Memory, the buff-colored daughter of Kimo. She was the most lupine of her siblings, though her too-long legs set apart from Starjumper – half-elf in soul, but completely wolf in body.
“She smells elf,” Teir said. “Fresh elf.”
Skywise sent a greeting openly. **This is Skywise, Master of the Palace. Is anyone out there? Don’t be afraid – we’re just passing through.**
No answer came, save the expected queries from the rest of their search party. “The Plainsrunners have never been strong senders,” Teir reminded him.
“Hallooooo?” Skywise called into the woods. Starjumper and Memory joined in with full-bodied howls. A few moments later, an answering howl rose up from deeper in the woods.
“That’s just Moonstrider,” Teir said, before Skywise could get his hopes up.
The sendings from the others buzzed in his ears, demanding answers. **Mem’s picked up a new scent,** Skywise sent. **Aurek and Vaya, you’d better stay in the pod for now. Ember and Cheipar, you might as well come on over. I think between the three of them the wolves have made our presence well known.**
Soon Ember and Cheipar broke into the clearing, Ember astride Moonstrider, Cheipar on Silence. Skywise had led a good laugh earlier on the appropriateness of that pairing. Silence was the most elfin looking of the Children, and though he padded exclusively on four feet, he bore a disquieting resemblance to the visions of Timmorn Yellow-Eyes in the Scroll of Colors; a larger, black-coated Timmorn, strong enough to bear the weight of two elves. As his name suggested, he had no voice, not even to growl – for which Skywise was thankful. With his shortened muzzle and elf-like jaw, he looked as though if he had a voice it might have been an elfin one.
And he was one of the ones to survive. Skywise was afraid to ask about the cubs who had not. Seeing what the merging of elf and wolf could do, he was infinitely grateful that Starjumper had inherited a pure wolf’s body.
“Are we sure it’s not Kahvi?” Ember asked, when Skywise and Teir had filled her in.
Memory looked at Ember pointedly, and Skywise could imagine a private wolfsending rich with indignation, for Ember quickly dropped her eyes submissively and muttered, “Sorry.”
**I sense a presence nearby…** Aurek’s sending touched them. **Possibly several… just out of range. Are you sure you do not need us?**
**No need to scare them off,** Skywise sent back. **Sit tight. We’ll be back soon.** “All right, Mem, you got the scent? Let’s go make a friend.”
“A friend, not food!” Ember snapped, when her own wolf huffed and tensed for a run.
They let Memory lead the way through the underbrush. The forest was gradually beginning to thin, with large clearings between copses of trees. Rocks the size of the Palace-pod littered the forest floor, impeding further growth. It was perhaps an hour before sunset, and enough light remained that they could all see clearly, even under the trees. Skywise whistled a cheerful tune, so they would not startle the elf they were tracking. Every hundred paces, he sent out another greeting, and each time it went unanswered.
The wolves stopped at a pool to drink. Skywise looked around as they waited. A thick layer of moss on the trees and boulders seemed to absorb all sound. Yet Starjumper’s ears twitched constantly. Skywise wondered if he would hear more with wolfblood. Probably, though it was so hard to remember the time before. He remembered being very confused by the transition, as he adapted to a new world, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had so confused him.
All the places in me that used to be Wolfrider went dark long ago, he decided. Then the stars filled them up.
He wasn’t sad. He couldn’t quite remember what it was to see the world as a wolf, but he had learned how to see the world as a High One. A hard choice for some, perhaps, but well worth the price for him.
Still, when he heard the branch snap behind him, he yelped like a frightened human.
“Hold!” Ember shouted when the wolves would have torn into the underbrush. “ You hold, Moon, poke it!”
“Hello?” Skywise called. He heard a rustling in the shadows, behind one of the smaller moss-covered boulders. “Come out, we won’t hurt you. We’re friends – or we’d like to be.”
They heard scuffling, and the creature appeared on the top of the boulder. For a moment Skywise took it for a sickly wolf, all shaggy gray hair and scrawny limbs. But then the creature sat back on its heels and a heavy fur hood fell away to reveal an elfin face.
A maiden, dressed in wolfskins, watching them with dark owl-eyes. A combination of suspicion and curiosity played out across her long face.
“Hello,” Skywise repeated. “I’m Skywise. These are my friends.”
The elf-maid cocked her head to one side, studying them. Her hand, Skywise saw, had fallen to her hip, where a brightmetal dagger was strapped about her thigh.
“Are you with one of the Plainsrunner clans?” Skywise attempted.
The maiden blinked. When Skywise took a step towards her, she sprang to her feet, ready to flee. “No, please, stay!” Skywise held up his hands. “We won’t hurt you. We just want to talk with you.”
The elf shook her head once, as if to banish a fly.
“You can’t speak?” Teir asked.
**Can you send?** Skywise asked.
The elf gave no sign she heard him. Her hand tensed about her dagger.
“Maybe if we made a show of setting down our weapons…” Skywise mused. The maiden was staring hard at Ember now. “Ember… take off your spear and sword. Put them down on the ground.”
Ember hesitated a moment, then obeyed. Teir and Cheipar followed. Finally Skywise unclasped his belt and set his sword and scabbard down. “See?” Skywise spread his arms wide. “No danger. No hurt, yes? Come down now?” He mimed an action with his hand. “You – me – us – we be friends?”
Cheipar gave a snort of derision. Skywise swung around. “What?”
**She’s mute. She’s not a halfwit.**
“You got any ideas, be my guest.”
Cheipar whistled, a single shrill note of the kind a human might use to summon a horse. The elf looked at him quizzically. Cheipar whistled three more notes in quick succession, and the maiden’s face broke out into a delighted grin.
Before Skywise could ask Cheipar to explain, the maiden tipped her head back and let loose a series of vocalizations – not quite a howl, not quite a hum – but a bubble of sound that sounded like fox-chatter and birdsong. She locked eyes with Cheipar once more before turning and disappearing back in the shadows.
“Dung chips,” Teir chuckled softly. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”
Cheipar turned to Skywise and swept his arm in the direction of the fleeing maiden, as if to say, After you.
“You gonna explain that?” Skywise asked.
Cheipar glanced towards his uncle. “Plainsrunner hunting whistles,” Teir said good-naturedly. “In essence, he asked for a parley. And I’m guessing she just called in the clan.”
Cheipar gave Skywise a consoling pat on the shoulder as the Palacemaster passed him.
“Don’t we know her?” Ember asked Teir. “She reminds me of someone… and did you see the way she was looking at me?”
“We’ve been lone wolves too long, K’Chaiya,” he murmured.
The elf maid sang to them from the trees, in a tone that suggested they hurry up. The elves followed the string of notes towards the forest’s edge. At last the trees fell away and they caught sight of the elf once more. The sun had set, and the sky over the Plainswaste smoldered in shades of red and mauve. A line of riders on horses waited on a ridgeline several hundred paces distant. Skywise counted perhaps twelve silhouettes. The elf maiden whistled sharply and three horses left the line to canter towards the elves. The lead rider called out “Ayoooah!” in a passable imitation of a Wolfrider’s greeting howl.
“High Ones…” Ember’s steps faltered, and she gave out a weak moan. Skywise looked back to see Teir steadying the huntress.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Ember protested weakly.
“You can,” Teir insisted.
The chief rider reined up in front of them. She was dressed in deerskin and troll-forged ringmail. A long tail of dark brown hair swept down her back. Gray eyes stared straight past Skywise at Teir and Ember.
“You’ve come back!”
“Halcyon…” Ember whispered.
Halcyon bounded down from her horse and ran up to embrace her parents.
“Mother – Father! You’ve finally come home!”
* * *
Halcyon’s escort was a mere dozen elves and some twenty ponies – “My honor guard, the humans call it,” she explained to Skywise with a smile. They had set up camp on the ridgeline at midday, and now several neat little tents surrounded a central firepit, lined with rocks and hosting a roaring blaze. The tents were silk and canvas now instead of hide, but otherwise little had changed since the first days of the Wild Hunt.
In contrast to Halcyon’s joyous greeting, Dunecat approached Ember and Teir nervously, like a skittish pony. Skywise wasn’t sure whether the lad himself was unsettled, or was afraid to overwhelm his mother. But after a moment of hesitancy, mother and son embraced, and with tears and bittersweet laughter Teir joined in.
Halcyon’s lifemate showed no such restraint. “Well, we had sent Mika to rustle up some food in the woods, but I suppose you lot will have to do,” Kirjan said with a grin, upon greeting Teir with a rib-crushing hug. “By the Great Ice Wall, where have you been all this time?!”
“Mika?” Ember stared at the mute huntress, who paced nearby restlessly, always keeping Dunecat or Kirjan between her and the newcomers.
“The coast mountains, mostly,” Teir answered. “The last eighty years or so we’ve been haunting Thorny Mountain – you remember the old dens of the Yellow Creek Pack? Dom’s clan?” he prompted when Kirjan drew a blank.
“Drukk, that’s right, they used to live down there! It’s been so long since they moved up to Willow Camp–”
“Oh, it is you!” Ember exclaimed, upon further study of Mika. “Bruma’s little girl – you were only… what? Eight-and-two, when…” she trailed off awkwardly, then tried again. “I thought we’d lost you along with your mother – I almost couldn’t believe it when Halcyon sent that you’d been found. Do you remember me?”
Mika grew increasingly uncomfortable under Ember’s scrutiny. She nodded, then looked to Dunecat for help. He made a gesture towards the fire, and she ran off without a backward glance.
“What happened to her?” Ember asked. “She was always a little quiet, but–”
“Long story,” Dunecat said. “And not the best one to start with.”
Skywise returned to the Palace pod on Starjumper’s back, then flew it and Aurek and Vaya onto the plains to rejoin Halcyon’s band. By the time everyone got re-acquainted and settled in front of the fire, the sky had gone dark, and bellies were rumbling. The riders brought out several haunches of smoked meat, and Skywise unwrapped their reserves of preserved rainforest fruits.
“We were down in the south visiting Pricklehide Clan when we got word the Reappearance was happening early,” Halcyon explained as they shared out the food. “Now we’re on our way up to Solstice.”
“Going to see the Mother of Horses, eh?” Skywise asked with a smile.
Halcyon nodded. “Years ago I called for all the clans to send one of their own to Solstice Lodge to meet up after the Reappearance. So I can run all our memories against Sunstream’s in that big head count of his and Savin’s, to make sure no one got lost in the time-thread tangling. When I got word the night had changed, I ‘went out’ to all the clans I could, but a few don’t have long-range senders.”
“The Palace could have helped with that,” Skywise offered. “Stars, it’ll be a tight fit, but I think I can get the pod big enough to fly you all up there tonight if you’d like.” There was only a little selfishness in his offer – he always relished an excuse to see his old friend Mardu.
Halcyon made a dismissive wave. “It’s only a two-month ride to Solstice from here. Besides,” she grew solemn. “You have your own quest to worry about. Father told me what happened to Kahvi.”
“Don’t know if any of us can say what really happened to her,” Skywise said. “We just know she needs to be found. After that…” he trailed off uncomfortably. They hadn’t really discussed the endgame yet, and he was not about to bring it up.
“She needs to be killed,” Teir said without hesitation.
“Well, let’s not be hasty. We can cocoon her for a start–”
“Wrapstuff cannot suppress magic indefinitely,” Aurek remarked. “And the corrupted starstone has given Kahvi powers to rival a High One.”
“I’m sure if we all put our heads together we can find some way to heal her–”
“No,” Vaya spoke up. It was the first time she’d opened her mouth all evening; she had greeted the Plainsrunners in subdued silence, and eaten her portion of meat without a sound.
“The only healing for her is death,” she said firmly. “It’s what she wants. It’s the only thing we can do for her.”
“We don’t always make the right choices–”
“It is the only choice,” Vaya insisted. Her gaze into the fire was pitiless. “She tried to destroy us – wipe us all out of existence. Given the chance, she would try it again. Given the time, she might find a way to succeed.”
“Whatever remains of Mother’s soul deserves freedom,” Teir agreed.
“And the monster wearing her skin must be destroyed,” Vaya confirmed.
Skywise looked to Aurek and Cheipar. Cheipar looked somber but resolute. Aurek caught Skywise’s gaze and nodded slightly. **Only death could gentle the Black Snake’s soul. Only death will free Kahvi from her starstone chains.**
A grim silence fell in the wake of the pronouncements. At length Halcyon spoke. “Our clan will ride with you. Our mounts and our spears are yours.”
“No,” Ember said. “I won’t see you and yours dragged into our mess again. You have your own life now.”
“And you are my parents! Did you really think I would abandon you when you need me?” A hint of reproach hung on her words.
“The other clans need you too,” Teir said. “The Gathering–”
“Can wait. Kahvi threatens us all! No arguments – the Wolf-Daughter’s Pack rides with you!”
A heartsick smile tugged at Ember’s lips. “Is that what you call yourselves?”
“You and Father will always be the Wild Hunt,” Halcyon said. “I thought it was high time I made a name for myself.”
* * *
The riders broke camp the next day, and turned west, following the traces of Kahvi’s trail. Kaldan sent up his hawk to scout the lands ahead, while the Palace-pod followed high above, disguised as a heat shimmer in the air.
They continued towards Sun-Goes-Down for another five days, riding from dawn to dusk at a steady pace. At night Skywise guided the pod down onto the Plainswaste, and they all feasted together on dried meat and bulbs, and whatever fresh prey the hunters could flush out of the golden grass.
Skywise slept in the pod on the travel furs he had brought from the Palace. So did Aurek, Vaya and Cheipar. But as before, Teir and Ember preferred to sleep outside with their wolves. At first they bedded down well outside the circle of tents, refusing the offer of the chief’s tent. But by the third night they moved their sleeping furs into the circle.
They weren’t the only ones who slept outside. Though the tents all had flaps that could be pinned back during the warm summer nights, Skywise noticed that Mika spent every night outside, sleeping on her wolfskin cloak. She was always the first one up, greeting the sunrise in a language all her own – blending the trills and cries of every animal on the Plainswaste. And come nightfall she was always the last one to retire, sitting up late to hum to the crickets in the grass.
“It’s easy enough in summer,” Halcyon remarked. “Depending where we camp in winter, it gets trickier. But she cannot sleep inside walls. Even if it’s pouring rain or gusting snow, she can’t bear more than a little lean-to, open on the sides. Mardu built a special perch for her at Solstice – above the snow drifts and shielded against the worst winds, but still with enough fresh air for her.”
The story came out in bits and pieces, whispered from horseback or shared on early morning hunts. Yes, Mika had been at Howling Rock when Kargref Djun had declared war on the elves. Yes, all the children were supposed to have been well outside the humans’ walls, and thus among the first evacuated when the Palace arrived. “But Mika was always headstrong – like her mother,” Halcyon explained ruefully. “She gave her minders the slip and tried to find Bruma in the fray. I think she imagined it would be easy – she didn’t reckon just how large the fort had grown, or how fierce the fighting had become.”
Later, Halcyon told them more. “Mika hadn’t learned to send yet. Not purposefully. Bruma was never a great sender herself, and she had never made much of an effort to teach her.”
They were walking along the banks of the creek, looking for a good spot to fill their waterskins before the morning’s ride. Halcyon led Skywise, Teir and Ember to a little pool, shaded from view by long reeds. They squatted down by the water’s edge as Halcyon continued the tale.
“I don’t know how she managed to stay alive in that fray. I suppose she was small enough, fast enough, clever enough. She remembered the caves in the Rock – many of them too small for humans – and she thought to take shelter in the deepest one.”
“Wise cub,” Skywise said. “So she stayed in there until the fighting was over?”
But Ember drew in a sharp breath as she foresaw the end of this story. “You mean… she was down there… when Rayek…?”
“When Rayek what – oh stars! No!” Skywise protested. He hadn’t seen the moment Rayek incinerated the Rock – he had been too focused on keeping the Palace afloat and shielded against the human projectiles. But he remembered hearing Rayek’s defense afterwards: There were no elves left alive below.
“She couldn’t send,” Teir breathed. “So she couldn’t answer Sunstream’s summons.”
“But Sunstream can sense other elves, sending or not!” Skywise said, hearing the weakness in his own argument. Exhausted, his head ringing with the sendings of dozens of frightened elves, distracted by his injured daughter and his enraged father, Sunstream had been in no shape to conduct a proper psychic sweep of the battlefield.
“She was still down there,” Ember repeated. “We all thought she was dead or lost. And Rayek burned everything.”
Halcyon nodded. “She was deep enough the light did not reach her.”
“But it did something!” Ember insisted. “The magic Rayek used – it changed her!”
Halcyon shrugged. “She wouldn’t speak of what happened… then or now. But whether the blame lies with Rayek’s magic or the things she saw in battle… we’ll never know for certain.”
“Have you tried to heal her?” Skywise asked. The Plainsrunners didn’t hold much with magic, but there were still a handful of healers scattered across the Plainswaste, and the Great Holt was only a season’s ride to the south.
“There’s nothing to heal. In body, anyway. She can speak. She just won’t. She could send, but she keeps her mind closed. You can’t force a soul to alter itself.”
No, Skywise admitted. He thought of the survivors of Blue Mountain, and the long road to healing for both living and dead. Winnowill had shed all her madness in death, but her spirit had taken centuries to reawaken fully. Two-Edge’s recovery had been slow and prone to setbacks. He thought of Kahvi, lost in her starstone dreams, unreachable. And then he thought of Ember, still so broken by the events three centuries past.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Ember asked. “Your sending said Mika was alive, but you never explained–”
“You bore enough pain over Bruma’s death – and all the others,” Halcyon said. “You burdened yourself with so much guilt you couldn’t even look at us anymore. I told you of Mika’s survival to lift your burdens!”
“But the others needs to know of this!” Ember insisted. “You should see Rayek – he sees nothing wrong with that he did – he’s proud of his death-light! He has to know–”
“Why?” Halcyon challenged softly. “So he’ll feel as guilty as you do? How will that help anyone?”
“She’s right,” Skywise said. “What good is it to bring it up now? And stars, what would it do to Sunstream? To know he missed an elf – a cub? We can’t put that burden on him. It would be cruel.”
“Some burdens should be borne,” Ember said.
“And some should have been thrown off long ago!” Halcyon said firmly. “You’ve held on to your grief all this time, Mother. So much longer than you had to. You’ve blamed yourself for the choices of others. Enough. I lost a daughter, a grandson, many dear dear friends. But I blame their killers for that. And I know every elf did all they could to save lives. I don’t know how many more of us would have died if it weren’t for Rayek and Sunstream – and you, Skywise! Everyone did their best – including you and Father. I could not have asked for any more.”
Ember hung her head silently. Teir lay a hand on her shoulder.
“Let go of the pain, K’Chaiya,” he urged. “We cannot change the past. Even Mika – look at her! She endured things no child should, yet she is thriving now. She has her scars – we all do. But when I hear her singing the sun up every morning, I know her life is nothing to be pitied.”
“She lives for the moment, as all Plainsrunners should.” Halcyon said. She smiled wryly. “I seem to remember my mother teaching us something called the Now of Wolf-thought.”
“Your arrows fly true, cub,” Ember sighed miserably. “As always. The peace in the Now… it’s all I’ve strived for since Howling Rock. But how can I live in the Now when all around me I see reminders of the past?”
“With patience and love,” Teir told her. He allowed himself a smile. “You may have none of the former, but you’re surrounded by the latter.”
* * *
They continued westward. Soon they left the fertile plains the Djun wished to claim for his men. Now the land grew dryer, the soil harder, the grasses short and hardy. Yet still Skywise could see hints of human settlement from his vantagepoint aboard the pod. It might be as simple as an abandoned campsite, or as substantial as a new trading post built at the intersection of dusty trails. One such post hailed them in a friendly manner, and the Plainsrunners stopped for the night to barter goods and seek out gossip. No one had seen anything unusual in the past few days, and the merchant dismissed H’saka as a superstition of the Djunsmen.
Skywise kept the Palace-pod carefully hidden during these exchanges. He was not about to test the strength of the Pact so soon after the siege at Thorny Mountain.
On the ninth day after joining up with Halcyon’s Pack, Skywise noticed something strange on the horizon: a dark shadow thrown over the landscape, as if thunderclouds were massing overhead. Yet the sky was clear.
Skywise felt a chill trickle down his spine.
Aurek joined him at the clear starstone wall. “Is that…?”
“Yes.” Of course, they should have thought of it earlier.
**Halcyon! We’re coming up on –**
**I know. Howling Rock.**
It took them half a day to reach the edge of the shadow. Skywise set the pod down and the elves all gathered on the borderline.
“By all the High Ones…” Vaya breathed, as she stared at the landscape. “I had heard… but…”
The force of Rayek’s magic had buckled the very earth, so that the land piled up at the border like a berm. One long continuous line divided the landscape in a wide arc. On one side of the ridge, grasses bloomed. On the other: nothing.
Dead earth, as black as tar, stretched out in front of them almost as far as the eye could see. The land was broken by myriad cracks and upheavals. Three hundred years of rain had carved deep trenches into the lowlands. But nothing could take root in the soil.
A passing traveler – human, most likely, had set up a scarecrow of straw and staves in the ground on the border line. A human skull with a headdress of strung knucklebones crowned the grotesque creation.
The horses would not go near the dividing line. One brave rider set a foot onto the black earth, and kicked up a fine powder that smelled vaguely of wood ash. Mika, wide-eyed and trembling, crouched down and pawed at the dirt. Her mouth opened in an anguished moan. It took Skywise a moment to hear the word hidden in her cry.
“Deeeaaad!”
Yes, he thought gravely. Kahvi had run towards what she sought most of all.
Elfquest copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.