The Countdown
Part One
Rain thundered down on the upper slopes of the Haunted Mountain. From the comfort of his war coach, Grohmul Djun surveyed the progress on his advance camp.
His steam-driven logging machines had harvested much of the lower mountain’s forests over the last three years. Now the Thorn Road extended more than halfway up the mountain, to the rocky saddle he’d named Grohmul’s Pass. His engineers promised him the new road would shorten travel time to the northern settlements by a whole month. But the Djun had other reasons for conquering the Haunted Mountain.
The summit still lay just out of reach, a rocky promontory beyond the treeline. Winds whipped the rocky pyramid, and the rainwater cascaded down the mountainside, turning the ground underfoot to thick mud.
“We have two hundred men at the advance camp, Dominance,” his saddle-chief reported as he stood at the coach door, his helmet scant protection from the rain. “Under Karkapetch’s command. Another five hundred await at middle camp with the harvesters and the siege engines.” He hesitated. “I… regret to report that the soldiers are not mixing well with the workers. There have been incidents. Punishments have been assigned, of course. Floggings, a few amputations.”
“Punish the workers, not the soldiers. I need my fighting men in prime condition.”
“With respect, Dominance… who are we preparing to fight? Surely not the Kwynnmen.”
“Elves, Saddle-chief. Don’t tell me you believed the lies I told my priests to spread.”
“I did… think it odd, that the Hidden Ones would relinquish their claim to their sacred mountain after so long. But surely Dominance, you would not break the Pact–”
“Fool.” The Djun spoke softly, yet the saddle-chief flinched as though struck.
“The Djun will not kneel to elves. I will take the Haunted Mountain, whether they will it or not!”
“Of course, Dominance. Forgive me, Dominance.”
“Oh, be still.” Grohmul looked away irritably. “Tell the men to work through the night. I want the harvesters and the carts ready to break new ground come daybreak.”
“But the storm…”
“To the doom-pit with the rain! There can be no delay! We must make the summit by Summerstart!”
His tone brooked no refusal. The saddle-chief licked his lips nervously. “Forgive me, Dominance, but… is it… the Revelation? Are we really so close?”
But Grohmul was in no mood to indulge him. “Be off with you,” he sneered. “You have your orders.”
“By your leave, Dominance,” the saddle-chief saluted with a fist to his chest, then retreated into the dark rain. The Djun let out an impatient huff and sat back against his cushioned travel throne.
Doom to this delay, he thought angrily. But the weather, it had to be admitted, was one thing he had yet to master.
The taunting words of the elf queen returned to him. “I promise you, you will hear the Voice in the Storm again – and it will be my voice!”
Grohmul shook his head at the memory. Feeble warnings from a toothless wolf. She had threatened him with death for breaking the Pact nearly three years past. Now he was mere days away from claiming the summit, and the worst the elves could manage was a thunderstorm.
It was another sign that he had been right all along. Humans were the favored children of Threksh’t. And when the great god revealed Himself, Grohmul intended to be the first man to greet Him.
* * *
Disguised as the rain-laden underbelly of a thundercloud, the Palace hovered a mere hundred elfspans above the humans’ advance camp. Standing atop a floor turned transparent, Swift and Rayek counted the canvas tents and the mobile siege engines.
“We’ve let this farce go on long enough,” Rayek pronounced. “The Firstcomers’ Shell is due to arrive before the first frost. At this rate, Grohmul Djun will have built a fine town to greet them.”
“I know,” Swift murmured. “But what if Venka’s right, and it’s this human hive that will attract the Firstcomers?”
“And if she’s wrong? The Firstcomers are coming in search of elves and elf-worshippers, not these savages. We have to clear them off the mountain! We should do it now!”
“And light up the sky? You think the Firstcomer scouts won’t notice?”
“Let them notice! Let them feel the power of their descendants! They’ll come here all the sooner to greet us.”
“That is not what is meant to be,” a grave voice interrupted.
Rayek whirled about. “Then tell us what is meant to be, Timmain! Tell us how we can stop past and future both from unravelling!”
The High One’s face was expressionless. “For three years you have harried me with the same questions, child. And my reply remains unchanging. The Firstcomers sensed evidence of our kind, but only second-hand. As if cousins of ours had come and gone long ago, leaving nothing but old bones and a lingering scent. No fresh tracks. No echoing song. This world drained the Firstcomers’ powers… and I suspect it masks what little we can manifest here and now. Like bittergrass hiding a scent. But if you strike at the humans here as you did at Howling Rock–”
“You will not make me regret that!” Rayek snapped.
“I intend no judgment, only truth. If you strike with the power of the Palace, Adya will sense it. We will divert our shell to Abode ahead of schedule. Perhaps we will make our descent before the trolls rebel. And if the trolls do not overwhelm the navigators at the moment of landing, we will not lose our way in the time spiral. And all of this will never come to pass.”
“And how can you be so drukkin’ calm about that thought?” Swift demanded. “You’ll disappear too!”
“Not while we shelter within the Palace walls. As well you both know.”
“So what? You’re saying you don’t care what happens here, as long as you survive? I’d expect that from Haken, but not you!”
“Don’t misunderstand me, child. It would grieve me dearly to lose all my children. Yet even were we to count all the elves and trolls ever born on this world… in the scope of the All-That-Is we are but a handful of insignificant lives. Our kind’s existence here is precious to you. To the universe at large, it is a mere knot in one of many time-threads. Every moment gives rise to a multitude of possibilities. And if we are wiped from time’s flow, All-That-Is will not even notice. Perhaps it will even be improved by our absence.”
Swift glared at Timmain in exasperation. When she looked to Rayek for support, he could only smile sardonically. “Don’t look at me. She’s your High One.”
Swift considered her options. “All right. Let’s think this through sensibly. The tree-cutters and the road-builders are no threat to the Palace, agreed?”
“Agreed,” Rayek nodded. “It’s the Djun and his war machines we need to destroy.”
“Or divert. I say we head back to the Citadel. It will be midsummer in another moon-dance – and the Djun’s shamans do love their festivals. If we can disrupt one of their little bonfires, I’d bet Grohmul would have to take his war men and march for home.”
“We could level his Citadel mound. That would serve to get his attention.”
“No fresh tracks, remember? The Palace stays as dark as possible.”
Timmain nodded. “The softest tread. It should be easy for you. You are called Airwalker, are you not?”
“Fine,” Rayek hissed. “We go to the Citadel. We have four months until the Reappearance. Even with my hands bound, I should manage to create a suitable diversion by then.”
* * *
Swift hated the scent of the human herd. It was a small consolation that she had long ago lost her wolf’s nose; her memories of her mortal life were hazy at the best of times, but she was certain that if her senses had been sharper then, so the humans stench had been duller.
It wasn’t even the smell of their sweat and oils; a reasonably-groomed human was no more offensive than a healthy deer or ravvit. But these modern humans seemed incapable of keeping themselves clean or healthy; they reeked of excrement – their own or that of their captive animals, it made little difference – and the slow rot of countless illnesses. Decaying teeth, open sores, fresh pus and old mold… and a writhing cover of tiny vermin. Swift could hardly begrudge a human a few fleas – they were a Wolfrider’s constant companions, after all. But humans had fingers just as dextrous as any elf’s: did they really have to put up with a head full of lice and clothes all but crawling with the pests? Swift shuddered to think how many parasites she’d picked up in her short walk through High Town. She’d need to spend the better part of a night in a light-shower to burn all the invaders off her skin.
And this was were the chiefs among the humans lived! The clothes that were so saturated with the stench of decay were the finest moth-fabrics and silk-furs.
On the other hand, the humans’ penchant for filth and sickness made camouflage incredibly easy. All an elf needed were some dung-stained clothes, several lengths of dirty bandages, the kind humans touched by “the Rot” wore about their hands and face to prevent contagion.
Of course, being branded as “Rotters” meant Swift and Rayek were forced to the very back of the crowd, too far from the stage to see much. But the priests had build the bonfire high enough that the flames were always in view. The black smoke of burnt sacrifices billowed up into the night.
“H’saka! H’saka!” the crowd chanted, ever louder, as if trying to drown out the bleats of the dying beasts.
**Are those shamans going to say anything new?** Rayek demanded. **Or is this simply to be another pointless howl at the moons?**
The chief priest was intoning the Words of H’saka. Swift could hear only snatches of words over the chanting “…Threksh’t made the world… three great kingdoms… the firstborn… the crippled sons… the youngest of Threksh’t’s…. those closest in form to him.”
It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. In the three years since Grohmul Djun had introduced her to this newest human god, she had heard this howl enough to know the notes by heart
“Youngest of all…. H’saka… cast into the doom-pit on the eighth day of creation… crawled out on the twelfth…”
“H’saka via!” the crowd thundered. “Che sa H’saka via!”
“Hmm,” Swift murmured.
**What?**
**Those words – they don’t mean anything in any human speech I know.**
**Nor I, but what of it? The humans have so many different jabbers.**
**You know… it almost sounds elfin. Or that dirt-elfin they try to pass off as our tongue.**
**It does?**
“Tal H’saka via! H’saka via!”
**Listen. Doesn’t that sound like ‘Tyl che ashkevi?’**
** Perhaps. As you said, dirt-elfin. If so, their goddess is well named. Gift of Rage.**
“She comes now… as the sun sets on the world… the Night of Nights.”
“The Night of Nights!” the crowd chanted back.
“She calls to her Dread Father… set the world alight…”
“The Revelation!”
“The sky will burn… and the Voice in the Storm will speak at last!”
**Let’s go, lifemate. There’s nothing new for us here.**
**No, this is different! They’ve never sacrificed at these fires before.**
**Burning live goats and fowl. The humans of your Homeland used to do that too, did they not?**
**No. They bled them first, before they offered them up to Gotara. They started with beasts, then moved on to elves.**
The mob began screaming even louder, wordless and frantic. “What’s happening?” Rayek grunted, as he stretched on tiptoe to see over the headdresses in front of him. Tall as a Glider, he was still a little shorter than the well-fed humans of Djunshold. **Curse it, when did humans get so big? I knew I should have grown the extra handspan!**
**Just don’t start floating. Your robe isn’t long enough. What can you see?**
**They’ve brought something else out.**
**Another goat?**
**No… something bigger…**
Swift craned her neck; and object of some sort was being held aloft by the priests of Threksh’t. It looked at first glimpse like a human bound to a chair, but it seemed too small, too easily lifted. **Give me a boost,** Swift sent, and Rayek obligingly bent his knee and held out his hands so she could plant her foot on his palms. He held her up as best he could without magic and Swift got a clearer look.
It seemed to be an effigy of some sort – sackcloth stuffed with straw and crudely shaped in human form. A hideous mask of painted straw and metal shards crowned the lump of cloth that made up its head. **It’s just a scarecrow,** Swift sent.
“Let the fire come!” the chief priest howled. “Let the Witch be burned away! Let the unworthy die and this world be cleansed!”
“Let the Witch be burned! Let the Witch be burned!” the hundred-odd humans in the square agreed, pumping their fists.
Chair and scarecrow rose even higher, as the porters prepared to hurl it into the flames. As the bundle turned, Swift caught sight of a pair of small white hands clenching the wooden chairframe.
Bound… four-fingered hands.
**It’s an elf under there! Oh High Ones!**
**What?** Rayek nearly dropped Swift in his surprise. “Drukk it,” he cursed, and seized’s Swift’s wrist. The crowd had pushed them back against the wall of a building, and now Rayek used just enough magic to float them up onto a pair of bricks jutting out of the plasterwork. Perched above the crowd, they could clearly see the stage, and the bound elf being tossed into the great bonfire.
A great roiling cheer from the humans drowned out Swift’s shriek of horror. She clutched Rayek’s filthy robes in her fists. Flashes of sending sparked between the pair **Are you sure –** **I saw–** **A doll?** **No! It was an elf, it was real!**
But if the sackcloth effigy was alive, it didn’t utter a cry as the flames swallowed it up. The only screams came from the crowd, jubilant in triumph.
**What sort of mad beasts want to destroy their own god?** Rayek demanded.
Swift struggled to find her footing on the brick outcropping. One foot slipped and she clung to Rayek even more tightly. She turned her gaze down to the brick underfoot, and so she didn’t understand why the cheers suddenly turned a great collective hiss of breath.
Rayek did. He summoned his floating magic and pulled Swift back upright. **Lifemate… look…**
She looked. She saw the form gathering inside the crackling fire. She watched as it slowly resolved into a body with two legs and two arms, a head crowned in burning straw and a throbbing purple light in place of a heart. She stared open mouthed as the elf strode out of the fire, flesh charred and peeling – but already healing rapidly!
The crowd began to scream again, this time in rage and anguish. A purple glow surrounded the elf, banishing the last of the flames. The magical light dimmed, but did not die out entirely. It continued to pulse about the elf’s core. The elf reached up and tore off the remnants of the burning mask and the hundred-odd humans all fell to their knees as one in their haste to worship their War Witch.
“Who…?” Swift murmured. Her thoughts seemed hobbled. She knew that face – the harsh angles, the blunt features. And yet the multitude of scars and the dark stripes under the eyes, like tracks of bloody tears… she didn’t recognize those at all.
The elf-woman stood gowned in tatters of sackcloth. Her breasts were bared to the night, as was the glowing purple gem that nestled between them, the size of an elf’s fist. At first Swift took it for a piece of jewelry, but she as she looked closer she saw that the stone was embedded in the elf-woman’s skin. Faint veins of purple extended in all directions across her torso, like some hideous starburst.
The War Witch held up a fist and howled a long string of sounds into the night.
“Tayl tche-ah-kah-vi-a!”
“Tal H’saka via!” the crowd thundered back.
“Who…?” Swift repeated dumbly.
Rayek’s thoughts moved faster. “It’s Kahvi! Drukk… what has happened to her?”
Even the name itself eluded Swift for a moment. Then she remembered: a snowslide… a missing body and a piece of degraded starstone… a mystery unsolved for some seven thousand years.
**Kahvi!** Swift sent openly. **Kahvi, it’s Swift! The wolf chief! We’re here – we can help!**
Kahvi’s head turned, her glowing eyes slowly focused on the rear of the crowd. She pointed a finger at them. And she screamed.
“DEMONS!” she cried in the human tongue.“Filthy elf-spawns! Beloved of Threksh’t!”
Every single human turned to stare at the pair of bandaged beggars perched on the wall.
“Kill them!” Kahvi commanded. “Kill them all!”
**Kahvi?** Swift sent in disbelief.
“Well, that’s that,” Rayek grunted, before he turned a hand towards the crowd and blasted the closest humans with a bolt of energy. Swift cried Kahvi’s name as the humans cried for blood. Rayek shrugged off his filthy robe, and wrapped one arm tight about his lifemate’s waist. He floated them both high into the air, as bottles and boots and other crude projectiles chased them up. Then the guardsmen recovered their wits and loosed their arrows on the pair.
The arrows bounced harmlessly off his shield. Swift scrambled to climb onto Rayek’s back as he raised both arms over his head. “You’ll have to do better than that, round-ears!” he laughed harshly, before he unloaded two volleys of lightning into the crowd.
“Well come on!” Rayek jeered. “I am waiting!”
A bright flash of light was their only warning before a burst of magic slammed into Rayek’s shield, tossing him and Swift both like leaves on the wind. Swift clawed for purchase, but with her hands still wrapped under bandages, she could not hold on. “Rayyyyyyyyek!” she cried as she felt herself fall away.
His magic caught her before she could fall far. His shield extended around them both as another bolt of sickly purple light struck them. This time Rayek was prepared. The force spun them around, but did not disrupt his magic.
“That cursed sow!” Rayek swore. “She’s drawing on the power of the Palacestone!”
Swift managed to untangle her hands from the bandages. She wrapped her arms tight about her lifemate’s shoulders, and wound her legs about his waist for good measure.
“We fall back!” she ordered.
“I can take that piece of wasted meat!”
**Now, Rayek!**
Grumbling, Rayek floated them ever higher, out of range of the magic bolts.
* * *
Though the storm continued to rage over Thorny Mountain, the skies were clear over the Citadel. Without the cover of cloudbanks, the Palace couldn’t answer their call, so Rayek had to fly them well outside the limits of the Citadel’s lights. Finally, in a empty pasture some ten leagues northwest of the Citadel, an exhausted Rayek dropped down to the ground.
**We’re here, son,** he sent.
With a sudden shimmer, the Palace appeared in front of them, a massive mountain of glowing crystal. The light disappeared just as quickly as the walls of the Palace turned inky black to fade into the nightime surroundings. A door opened, and Swift and Rayek hastened inside. Swift felt the floor lurch underfoot and she knew the Palace was aloft, traveling in the unreality between “here” and “there.” Another, gentler shift signalled the Palace had set down once again.
“Where are we?” Swift asked the walls of the antechamber. The answer came to her in pictures and scents of summoned memories: light frost, fresh pines, bright stars and a great rocky dome shimmering like opal under the light of the Two Moons.
The Egg.
Swift heard the sound of paws scrambling against the crystal floor. The familiar whines reached her ears next. Swift turned and bent down as the near-wolf came barrelling around the corner to greet her.
“Lucky!” She held out her arms and the near-wolf leapt up eagerly, lapping at her face like a puppy. “There’s my wolf-friend? How are you? Oh, you must have missed me if you can bear the stink on me!”
“Perhaps she likes the smell of human,” Rayek remarked archly. “She lived with them long enough.”
“Do you? Do you, lass?” she seized the wolf’s head and wrestled with her playfully. “Well, I’m sorry, Lucky, but I don’t love you quite enough to smell like a dung-heap.”
“Thank High Ones for that,” Rayek quipped.
Sunstream was next into the antechamber. “We’ve got a problem,” he said without preamble.
“We have many problems right now!” Rayek said shortly. “Be a little more specific, son.”
“Kahvi. While I was waiting for you to meet us, I looked for her in the Scroll.”
Rayek gave a dismissive wave. “Why bother? We’ve been looking for her off and on since she disappeared in the Frozen Mountains. We could never find her before – why would now be any different?”
“You’re right. I couldn’t find anything – not even when I called up your memories of that… that ceremony.”
“What do you mean, not even in our memories?” Swift asked. “She was there – we both saw her! If we still remember her, why doesn’t the Scroll?”
“I don’t know! We – oh,” he wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, but… you do know you both stink to Mother Moon, yes?”
“Not now,” Rayek said. “Are you saying the Scroll has no record of our encounter?”
“Oh, you’re there. Both of you. But there’s just… a hole where Kahvi ought to be. A black spot.”
“Show us!” Rayek commanded, gesturing towards the Scroll Chamber.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Sunstream said as they set off at a brisk walk.
“Oh? The Djunsmen have broken the Pact to worship an elf driven mad by corrupted starstone – and made near invulnerable by it too? An elf leading a death cult bent on the destruction of our race – a mere six months before the Firstcomers are due to arrive? There’s worse than that?”
They had reached the Scroll Chamber. Timmain, Quicksilver and Skywise were already there. Skywise had the Scroll open and turning, and an image was fixed in its glowing light.
The Palace of the High Ones – the original Palace – glowed in the night sky as it hovered over the summit of Thorny Mountain.
“The Revelation…” Swift breathed.
“We know it’s coming due,” Rayek said. “This is nothing new–”
“The trees,” Skywise said. “Look at the trees.”
Rayek and Swift looked. Skywise was right. In the past, the vision had always shown the mountain in shades of muted copper and red. Death-sleep season. But now the mountain was covered in green foliage.
“The future has changed,” Swift breathed. “Oh High Ones, it’s happening. The time threads are unravelling.” She patted her arms as if to reassure herself that she was still in one piece.
“No – no!” Rayek insisted. “The future is in constant motion. This could mean nothing.”
“Or everything,” Timmain said gravely. “Tread softly, I warned you both.”
“We were!” Rayek fired back. “It was that cursed Go-Back who lit up the night sky with her Palacestone!”
“And it has caught Adya’s attention.”
“When is this?” Swift demanded. “How much has it changed?”
“Look at the stars.” Skywise waved his hand and the image shifted to enlarge a patch of sky. The Human Hunter was on its side underneath the Great Wolf.
“Summer,” Skywise pronounced. “Whatever the trigger was, it’s made the Firstcomers notice our world three months ahead of schedule.”
“Summer – this summer? When?”
Skywise and Sunstream exchanged grave glances. “We want to ask Aurek to be sure…”
“Curse it, the pair of you! When?”
“Five days,” Skywise said. “As near as we can tell… the Firstcomers will be here in five days.”
Elfquest copyright 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2014 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.