One of the last tasks they’d completed before leaving Inath-Wakenti was to make a small lap table for Favaronas. Thin planks of yellow pine were pegged together into a surface that allowed the archivist to write and read while on horseback. A hole near the top center of the board fitted over his saddle pommel. This stabilized the lapboard and kept it from sliding off the moving horse. Favaronas shortened his stirrups and balanced the lapboard across his drawn up knees. In this way, he could work on his report to the Speaker even as they were on the move.
Without nomads to fight, Glanthon soon grew bored and came back to ride alongside Favaronas and distract him with a discussion of the valley. Glanthon believed a system of tunnels underlay the ruins. He was certain the secret of the ruins lay underground. Had time permitted, he would have sought permission from the Lioness to search further in the tunnels they’d found, looking for signs of their missing comrades and more evidence of previous civilizations.
“You think our missing warriors are in the tunnels?” Favaronas said.
“Where else?” Glanthon reasoned.
“With magic involved, there’s no limit to where they might have been taken. The next valley over, or even to the stars themselves.”
Favaronas’s testy response silenced the talkative warrior, but only briefly. Glanthon changed the subject, asking whether Favaronas had learned anything about the odd stone artifacts they’d removed from the underground chamber.
The archivist sighed. “Not very much,” he admitted. Each of the eight stone cylinders bore a brief inscription engraved on one side. Favaronas was convinced they’d once been real books, but had been changed to solid stone.
“I have deciphered the labels, at least partly. They are not, as I first thought, a forgotten dialect of Old Silvanesti. Instead, each syllable is an abbreviation of a longer word or phrase. The first is marked
“What does that mean?”
“I wish I knew.” The archivist recalled the discussion at the Speaker’s dinner, the night before they’d begun this journey. The cartographer Sithelbathan had said the furthest outpost of the ancient elven kingdom, Balif’s Gate, was supposed to have been located in or near the valley.
Glanthon looked over his shoulder at the three mountains, Torghan’s Teeth, receding behind them. “You think those stones are the ruins of that outpost? You think Silvanesti made them?”
“Not necessarily.” The imprecision of it all plainly made the archivist unhappy. “But I’m beginning to think the valley was visited by followers of General Balif, probably after the First Dragon War, thirty-five hundred years ago. We know from ancient tradition that Balif left Silvanesti under a cloud, or a curse, and eventually helped found the kender nation of Balifor. Some authorities claim he became a kender himself, but there’s no evidence for that theory.” He sighed. “Many relevant records are still in the temples of Silvanost, closely guarded. Others were lost in the First Cataclysm.”
“Perhaps these cylinders contain the true history of Balif!” Glanthon exclaimed.
Favaronas drew his geb close around him as if feeling a chill despite the desert heat. “Perhaps. One other possibility has occurred to me, but it’s really too frightful to contemplate.”
Glanthon had to prompt the scholar, reminding him of his duty to the Speaker, before he would continue. Even then, Favaronas looked around furtively, making certain no one was eavesdropping.
“Do you know much about the history of our race?” he asked.
Glanthon’s education didn’t extend much beyond reading, writing, and simple mathematics, He admitted his lack of scholarship.
Briefly, Favaronas described the founding of the first elven nation under Silvanos Goldeneye, first Speaker of the Stars. The land claimed by the elves, the land that would one day be Silvanesti, was then occupied by powerful dragons. Conflict ensued, the First Dragon War, in which Balif led his griffon riders to victory. The triumph was not Balif’s alone. The gods of magic sent a trio of mages to aid the elves. The mages were armed with five powerful dragonstones. Balif and the mages set a trap for the dragons, luring them into a final battle, then capturing their souls within the dragonstones. The dragons’ empty bodies were transformed to ridges of stone, and became part of the Khalkist range; they were part of that mountain range still.
Like all elves, Glanthon knew Silvanos had founded the nation that bore his name. But hearing the story, thrilling even in abbreviated form, left him open-mouthed.
“What happened to the dragonstones?” he asked.
