At his suggestion, they decided to take some of the cylinders back with them. Favaronas discarded his torch and laid two scrolls in the crook of each arm. Glanthon also took four, but bore all in one strong arm so he could keep his torch.
The elves were walking back down the long tunnel to the entrance when they heard alarm trumpets on the surface. Struggling under the burden they carried, warrior and scholar hastened to the waiting rope lift. The warriors above shouted for them to hurry. They stepped onto the shield platform and were hoisted back up. More horns sounded as they neared the surface.
Glanthon dumped his four cylinders on the ground as soon as he cleared the opening. “Where’s the trouble?”
“We saw lights among the ruins, over there!” A Wilder elf pointed northeast. “The Lioness has gone to investigate.”
She had left behind only enough elves to watch the hole and pull the two explorers out. The rest of her shrinking command had galloped off with her. Once Favaronas was safely out of the hole, Glanthon left a warrior behind with him and ordered the rest to horse.
Sitting on the ground, Favaronas watched them gallop away. The single elf with him also stared after his departing comrades, the look on his face eloquent of his desire.
“Go with them,” Favaronas said, waving a hand. “I’ll be fine.”
The warrior shook his head. “You’d be alone.”
The archivist sighed. “The trouble, whatever it is, is out there, not here.”
With only a little more prompting, the elf rode away. By the light of the torches that ringed the hole, Favaronas studied one of the cylinders. Glyphs were incised into the soft stone. In the uncertain light, his sensitive fingertips gave him a better idea of their shape than his eyes could. The writing was Elvish, or at least the characters were Elvish, the old writing used in Silvanost on monuments, palaces, temples, and public buildings. He sounded out the syllables his fingers detected.
“Ba-Laf-Om-Thas, Hoc-Sem-Ath.”
It made no sense. Perhaps this was some ancient dialect. But it seemed to confirm the notion that Silvanesti elves had inhabited this valley long ago. What of the apparition in the tunnel below? What was it, and why had it appeared to him as a catlike, female creature, and to Glanthon as a faceless human?
Less than a mile away, the Lioness galloped through the tall monoliths and cedar trees. Ahead was her quarry—a pair of glimmering green lights, flying at saddle height above the ground. Some of her warriors were strung out behind her, trying to keep up. Others had split off in smaller bands to chase different lights.
She was convinced these lights were flesh and blood riders, carrying hooded lanterns to lure the elves into an ambush. That must have been what happened to her missing warriors. A local tribe of humans was playing a deadly game, and she intended to put a stop to it tonight.
The twin green lights slowed. She reined back, not wanting to rush into a prepared trap, and waited for the soldiers trailing her. Once they caught up, she directed them to ride out wide on either side, then sent her horse ambling forward.
The green glimmers retreated, keeping the distance between themselves and her always the same. As she emerged from a copse of juniper trees, she glimpsed dark shapes close to the two lights.
Triumph sang through the Lioness. She was right! There were people out there!
She secured the reins to the pommel of her saddle and braced her bow. In seconds, she’d sent an arrow speeding toward the right-hand light. The missile flew true. The light shook violently, then was still. The left-hand light moved off swiftly, leaving its comrade behind. Crowing with satisfaction, she loosed her reins and cantered forward.
Her arrow was embedded in the trunk of a thin tree and one of the lights was impaled on the shaft. The fist-sized green glow was fading fast. By the time she’d freed the arrow and brought it close enough to study, the light was gone. Her gloved hands felt nothing foreign on the shaft.
Shouts from flanking riders told her the other light had been found. She rode toward them. A curving expanse of gray wall loomed. A band of mounted elves waited beside it. Kerian spotted Glanthon in the group.
She hailed him. “How was your crawl underground?” she asked.
“Like a sorcerer’s nightmare, General, but right now, we seem to have an intruder trapped.”
He gestured at the wall behind them. Massively thick, its top was at eye level to the mounted elves. No structures showed beyond it.
Kerian shook her feet free of the stirrups. Crouching on her saddle, she sprang atop the wall. Glanthon and eight other elves joined her on the broad stone barrier.
The wall was a perfect circle, enclosing a paved area forty yards across. In the center of the pavement was a raised platform ten yards across and four feet high. Great wedges of gray stone had been fitted together to make the round platform. Drifting over it, like leaves wafting on an autumn breeze, were four glittering lights: one each of green, red, yellow, and blue.
Kerian dropped to the pavement inside the wall.
“Our quarry has slipped away and left these will-o’-the-wisps to keep us busy,” she said. “I intend to take one back to study.”
“Wait! We don’t know what they are!” Glanthon warned, gathering himself to leap down and follow her.
She told him to stay where he was, and kept going.
When she neared the center of the platform, the lights abandoned their aimless paths and began to circle her. Faster and faster, they whirled in ever-tightening circles. Remembering how the sand beast had disappeared when the lights touched it, Kerian didn’t wait for the inevitable. She threw herself flat on her stomach. The lights crashed together above her and vanished in a silent burst of greenish light.
By the time Glanthon and the others arrived, she was sitting up. “Well, that’s one mystery solved,” she said, accepting Glanthon’s hand to help her stand.
The Lioness thought it likely the lights were responsible for the mysterious disappearances among her warriors. Where the elves had been taken, and why, remained unknown, however, and she couldn’t risk searching any further.
“We’re getting out of this valley. Now.”
The ride to Khuri-Khan would become legend. After Prince Shobbat’s messenger departed, Adala’s people hurriedly broke camp and began the journey south to the city of the Great Khan. Clouds, rarely seen over the high desert, blew in from the sea, piling up like brilliant white dunes in the sky. The heat of the wasteland caused the clouds to writhe and twist, forming fantastic patterns of light and shadow on the ground below. Shade was an experience few nomads ever had while crossing the burning sands. They rode with faces turned skyward, watching the spectacle with a mixture of fascination, awe, and not a little fear.
Adala swayed across the wind-driven wastes on the back of stolid, faithful Little Thorn, dozing when the glare of the sun became too intense. The frowning clouds were to her a portent of things to come. She saw in them the boiling anger and pride of the laddad, rising from their squatters’ camp to try to frighten the children of the desert and turn them away from their holy purpose. Like the masses of clouds, the bluster of the laddad was impressive to behold but without substance.
Two days away from the Valley of the Blue Sands, just after sunrise, scouts brought word that a large mounted force was approaching from the west. Alarmed, the desert warriors unslung their bows and shields, forming themselves to receive an attack. Adala’s warmasters and clan chiefs gathered around her, drawn swords resting on their shoulders.
Wapah, seated behind Bilath, speculated that the laddad had heard of the Weya-Lu approach and come out from Khuri-Khan to meet them, away from their vulnerable camp.