She turned her attention to the terrain unrolling beneath her-clumps of trees, bramble thickets, broad stands of tall, fleshy aloe. No wonder the flankers hadn’t seen anything. She’d forgotten how much real foliage limited sight.
The loftier elements of the ruins rose into view. At this distance they looked to be spires of white or gray stone, jutting above the trees. Not columns in the usual sense, they weren’t fluted or faceted, only simple tapering spires. As she drew nearer, remnants of walls appeared, their dimensions amazing. Each stone block was at least ten feet long and tall as a mounted warrior. In some places the wall reared thirty feet high, massive block fitted neatly atop massive block. The cyclopean stones showed clear evidence of having been smoothed and shaped by intelligent hands.
Eagle Eye spiraled slowly down. He alighted alongside an impressively tall stretch of wall. Elf and griffon contemplated the ruins as the rest of the column arrived.
Conversation died. Everyone stared in awe at the mysterious monuments, wondering who built them, and how long ago. The lack of decoration gave the stones an air of great, indefinable age.
Favaronas noticed something else. The stones were completely free of lichen. All the boulders and rocky outcroppings they’d seen in the valley borne healthy coatings of lichen or moss. The ruins showed none. The stones stood stark and clean against the blue sky and blue-green soil.
“Have you ever seen stonework like this before?” Kerian asked.
Favaronas shook his head. “But judging by the size, perhaps it was the work of ogres.”
She found that difficult to believe. Ogres built their dwellings in a rough fashion; they didn’t waste effort carving or finishing the stones. None of the elves could think of any race, ogre or otherwise, which could move blocks as enormous as these. Two soldiers measured one of the largest stone blocks at the foot of the wall; it was twenty-nine feet long and eleven feet high.
Ahead and on the right, shouts and whistles arose, Qualinesti cattle calls. Many of Kerian’s best scouts were former cow herders. She took flight, leaving Favaronas and the rest gawking at the ruins.
The griffon headed straight for a pair of huge standing stones still capped by a massive lintel. With Kerian leaning low over his neck, the creature sailed through, wingtips brushing the pillars on either side. He warbled low in his throat, sounding so smug she couldn’t help but chuckle.
The road they’d followed to the ruins continued ahead, bound on both sides by a wall. Scouts wove in and out of the trees to Kerian’s right. They were harrying something on foot. All she could see was a patch of pale brown darting through the brush.
The fleeing figure passed briefly into the clear. It was an antelope, the mountain breed with unbranched horns curving back over its head. She swooped down, shouting for it to halt, and it turned to look up. She glimpsed large brown m eyes before the antelope’s legs got tangled in the creeper and it went sprawling in the thick undergrowth. The Qualinesti giving chase converged on the spot.
By the time the Lioness landed and ran to where the beast had crashed, there was nothing but a rat’s nest of torn vines. Two of the scouts, dismounted, were probing the foliage. The creature was gone. She helped them look, but it was obvious an animal that size couldn’t be hiding here. Backtracking out of the bed of vines, they found its tiny hoofprints. Those at least were real.
Other scouts rode up and explained how they originally had flushed the antelope. They’d been riding past a thin line of aloes and stunted pines when the creature suddenly bolted from behind them. Hungry for fresh meat, the elves had given chase.
“It came out
“Upon our oath,” said one of the Kagonesti scouts, knowing it seemed illogical.
No wild creature, having secreted itself and avoided detection, would then squander its coup by dashing out before the hunters were gone. Just as difficult to believe was that savvy scouts would miss a full-grown antelope in the first place.
The Kagonesti scout put a hand to his heart and vowed, “It wasn’t there, General. I rode right through the spot. There was no antelope there. I swear it.”
“We were in the high desert a long time,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Maybe the sun baked our brains.”
They didn’t laugh. The silent heaviness of the valley’s atmosphere was affecting even the veteran Kagonesti. All were looking around warily, as though uncertain what else might suddenly spring up from beneath their feet. Kerian, who had knelt down to study the hoofprints, stood quickly and admonished them for their foolishness.
“We have enough problems to face without making up new ones. Next thing, you’ll be telling me the creature was a spirit!”
They looked struck by what she had meant as a jest; Kerian could’ve bitten her tongue. The rest of the column was moving up, so she left the scouts and went to send Eagle Eye aloft.
