Night came again. The elves camped near the huge circular platform amid the dense gathering of monoliths. A defensive perimeter was created by filling the gaps between standing stones with barricades of brushwood. Kerian and the professional warriors thought it futile to erect barriers to keep out ghosts and flying spirit lights, but the rest of the elves took the effort seriously. Barricades and bonfires had kept the phantoms at bay before. The civilians trusted they would do so again.
The elves tried cutting sod to strengthen the barrier, but the sandy soil fell apart on their spades. Turning the dirt revealed the soil’s strange sterility. No worms wiggled in the cuts, no pill bugs turned armored carapaces to the intruding light. For its top three inches, the dirt was blue-green and very sandy. Below that was black loam of the finest sort. Elves who had been farmers in Silvanesti and Qualinesti grew quite excited when they saw that. Kerian crushed a handful of dirt in her fist.
“How will you grow anything without insects to pollinate it?” she asked.
“Some things do grow here,” Gilthas countered. Vines and bushes propagated through their roots, and trees could pollinate with the wind. Still, her point was a valid one. A lack of insects would make it difficult to grow fruitful crops.
Before all light had left the valley, strange shapes could be seen flitting among the standing stones beyond the barricade. They were not at all like the somber, staring figures Gilthas had spoken to, but four-legged creatures that bounded between stones. They seemed so solid and real, hunters begged for permission to go outside the wall.
“If you do, you’ll never be seen again,” Kerian warned.
One elf insisted he’d seen a rabbit. With a few questions, Gilthas determined that for the creature to be visible at such a distance, it would have to be at least three feet tall. The animal was only another apparition. The disappointed hunters tightened their belts and departed, turning their backs on the “animals” still cavorting from one shadowed thicket to another. Some of the creatures were four legged; others bounded along on two.
Alone with his wife, Gilthas watched the display.
“Perhaps we should have a look around out there,” he murmured.
Exasperated, she reminded him of what she’d just said to the would-be hunters. “They’re nothing but the same ghosts we’ve seen before,” she added.
“Can we be certain? Your expedition didn’t penetrate this far, did it?”
Kerian shook her head and looked away, toward the capering shadows. Her earlier visit and the subsequent loss of nearly her entire command was still a very sore subject for her. None of the eight elves who survived blamed her for the deaths of the others. She’d believed the Speaker to be in grave danger and had acted to protect him. No warrior would have expected any less. Kerian knew she could not have done other than she had-yet she felt guilty. The memory of those who’d perished in the desert would never leave her.
“Come,” Gilthas said, holding out a hand. “Let us take a stroll in the twilight.”
She tried to laugh, but there was more exasperation than amusement in the sound. “Do you have a death wish?”
“Do you want to live forever?”
Her breath caught as if a hand had squeezed her heart. The teasing tone sounded so like the Gilthas of old, utterly at odds with the emaciated figure before her, but the irony of his condition.
He recognized the direction of her thoughts. The pain on her face was reflected briefly in his eyes, but his hand didn’t waver. Kerian took it. sword at her hip, bow and quiver of arrows slung across her back, she walked at his side with bemused pride. She could only marvel at the indomitable will that burned inside him.
A gate in the barricade had been fashioned under a soaring trilithon. Casks filled the gap between the upright stones. Hamaramis was there with his lieutenants When the old general heard the Speaker intended to leave camp with only the Lioness as his escort, he protested vigorously.
Gilthas wasted no breath in discussion; he merely waited for the general’s exclamations to run down.
“The Speaker will do as he will,” Kerian told Hamaramis. “I’ll try to bring him back alive.”
Those nearby spread the word. While the casks were being rolled away, scores of elves crowded the rough wall, anxious to see their sovereign challenge the valley’s ghosts.
As the royal pair passed through the trilithon, a fit of coughing staggered Gilthas. Kerian supported him with one arm. He tried to pull away, protesting she could hardly use bow or sword while holding him up.
Her grip tightened. “Don’t worry. If it comes to that, I’ll drop you like a hot rock.”
With a nearly soundless chuckle, he straightened. They started across the open ground between the camp and the stunted forest. Gilthas glanced back.
“I’m evolving a theory about this place,” he said. “I think—”
“Long live Gilthas Pathfinder!” cried a voice from the camp.
