"Your wife," the magician said dryly "is no longer herself is she?"
Bevarden only stared at J'role.
Subsisting on plants and insects, they traveled a few hours a day, enough to keep increasing the distance between them selves and Blood Wood, but slow enough to give themselves a chance to rest and heal. After five days the wounds had scabbed, the fevers had passed, and it looked as if no elves had followed them. With a clear sky above, they walked a half day south toward Throal, and then traveled another full day after that. Each time they topped a hill all they could see waiting ahead were more dry, rolling hills.
J'role never lost his desire to get the ring, but kept telling himself he no longer needed it.
It was the only way to resist the impulse to abandon the others and return to Blood Wood.
He also reminded himself that it was the dwarfs who built the stones for the city, and if the stones were the source of the magic, then the dwarfs might have the answer to rescuing the city. And his ultimate goal was, of course, to find the city.
"If they built it four to five hundred years ago, as the elf queen said, it would have been just before the Scourge began," Releana said. She spent more and more time talking about the mystery of the ring, chipping away at the ring's puzzle, trying to find the one crucial crack that would reveal all. She moved her hands the whole time, as if drawing elaborate diagrams in the air for future reference. “Let's go over it again. The ring makes you want to find this city …"
J'role nodded.
"Was it ever really there? I mean, were you seeing something from-I don't know, another plane? — or was it a city that used to be there, and you were seeing its ghost?"
J'role thought about it. The words he had spoken did not seem to paint a picture of a city the Horrors might have built, though of course he could not be sure. But he held up two fingers, indicating the latter possibility.
"Second … You were seeing a ghost. Then where did it go? Cities don't die. They don't haunt places. Also, you spoke to people, describing this city when you wore the ring?”
J'role nodded.
"But from what you've indicated to me, this city is tremendous. The Therans are the only other people who have achieved that scale of architecture and magic."
"Therans," Bevarden echoed to himself.
"And why has no one heard of the city? You said the ork thought the magician-
Mordom-knew something about it. But I've never heard of it. And neither have you.”
J 'role stopped, furious. He felt her taking away his hope. He grabbed Releana by the shoulder, and pointed at his eyes.
"No, no. You saw it. I believe you. But why does no one remember-"
He made the symbol for the elf queen.
"That's right. You said she remembered."
He nodded vigorously, still angry. Then he recalled that it was in holding the ring that the elf queen's memory of it suddenly returned. And it was only after wearing the ring that she had remembered the name of the city. Parlainth, she had said. He raised his hand, indicating a stop in the conversation, then shook his head.
"She didn't?"
He shook his head, then mimed putting the ring on, then nodded.
She said, "The ring made her remember."
He nodded.
"But it doesn't make sense that she wouldn't remember it before. If she helped make the ring …"
"Hide what you hold most dear," Bevarden said.
Releana and J'role stopped walking, but Bevarden continued placidly along, looking sometimes at the clouds above and sometimes at the flowers that struggled to crack the surface of the dirt.
Releana raised her hands to her head and rubbed her fingers against her temples. "Oh, my."
"They hid the city," Role thought.
"From the Horrors," Releana said. "They hid the city from the Horrors."
J'role felt the creature slide across his thoughts, but it said nothing.
"The entire city," Releana whispered. "And then Hey made everyone forget about it.
There may have been records of it. Maybe they used magic to wipe away all records of it."
The implications sent vertigo through J'role's body and mind.
"They removed all traces of themselves, not only moving their home somewhere else, perhaps to another plane, but even taking away all thoughts and memories. Not only would the Horrors be unable to find the city during the Scourge, but neither could they possess some person outside the city and find out that the city was hidden by reading the person's thoughts. Safe. Very safe."
"But what about the ring?" wondered J'role, and he formed his fingers into an O. their symbol for the ring.
Releana paced in a tight circle. "That's it!" she said excitedly. "That's the key. Maybe to get the magic to work there was one big, magical cost: they couldn't get back by them selves. They and the city were trapped wherever they are. Only someone on the outside can bring them back. But no one on the outside knows what happened. Doesn't even know about them, for reasons of security. If they told someone four hundred years ago,
'Come get us when the Horrors are gone,' the secret could have been exposed. So they had to come up with a subtler way of getting 'rescued' from their hiding place."
"The ring of longing," J'role thought.
"Whoever touches the ring wants to find the source of the longing. They'll work to solve the mystery, just like you did. And the ork. And the magician. It'll be slow going at first, but they'll work to do it."
J'role smiled. He was going to rescue the city.
Releana saw his smile and smiled back. "Much better," she said.
The happiness left J'role within a few hours. He kept his concerns to himself as they walked, his face a neutral mask. But inside his thoughts he asked the thing in his head,
"Am I leading you to the city? Is that why you want to help me find it?" Although the Scourge had ended and most of the Horrors had gone away, many of the creatures, like the one in J'role's thoughts, remained. Would they attempt to attack the city if it returned to the world?
The creature said nothing. J'role knew it did not matter. Would he have believed the thing no matter what it said?
And did it matter? If Horrors still roaming the world were to locate the city-Parlainth-
wouldn't the city have enough power to beat them back? After all, the people of Parlainth had successfully hidden themselves from the all out assault, not just a few monsters.
J’role comforted himself with that thought. Thinking any other way might make him want to give up searching for the city. And if he did that, the people of Parlainth would not be grateful to him for saving them, and they would not help him remove the creature from his thoughts. Then where would he be? He needed to move forward and hope or else the creature's prompting of suicide would take its toll.
A mist had settled over the land by the time J'role woke. A thin layer of water covered his skin, while an endless barrier of gray spread out in all directions. He got up and woke the others, and soon they were on their way, eager to get moving and warm up their bodies.
The mist dissipated as the sun came up. On they walked, a little further until they realized they were approaching the lip of a valley. Across a broad emptiness they saw land covered with green trees and grass. Bushes and plants dotted the ground where they walked.
When they reached the lip of the valley they were met by an astounding sight. The ground sloped down, rushing toward the base of the valley. Trees and grass covered the sides of the valley, but J'role was delighted to see that the greenery was not as dense and writhing with life as in Blood Wood.
At the center of the valley ran a chalk-blue river at least a mile across. Hovering above it was a thin layer of mist that coiled its way through the air like myriad wary snakes. To the right and to the left the river ran on, winding out of sight as the valley curved tightly in either direction.