The Moment
It had taken nearly three days, but the near-wolf finally let Bluestar pet her. A low whimper of pleasure rose in her throat as the cub stroked the fur under her chin, and her ears slowly perked up to a half-pricked curiosity. Then she spotted her elf-friend spying from the corner of the doorway, and she lifted her head, woofing softly.
“Her name’s Lucky,” Swift said, stepping into the alcove. “I rescued her from a human who meant to kill her.”
“She’s a near-wolf, isn’t she?” Bluestar asked.
“Her sire was a true wolf, I think. So the man believed.”
“Why did he want to kill her? Was she killing his sheep? Father’s always having to apologize to the humans in High Hope about that.”
“No,” Swift said sadly. “She… she killed his son.”
Bluestar stared at her in disbelief. “Awful accident,” Swift went on, kneeling down to stroke her wolf-friend’s fur. “The fool bought her as a playmate for his toddling child – thought they could grow up together. But he didn’t properly understand a hound’s nature, let alone a wolf’s. He kept her in the house until she was too big to manage, then he tied her up outside. One evening the child snuck out to play with her. Three years old, clumsy and shrill. And I don’t know whether Lucky took him for prey or whether she was simply playing too rough… but she snapped his neck clean enough either way. Rayek and I found the human ready to beat her to death. We… convinced him to let us have her instead.”
“I see why she’s named ‘Lucky!’”
“Poor thing. She didn’t have a very lucky start. Pined for her human pack for months… there was a time I was sure she would starve to death from grief. But the Palace is a great healer for all sorts of hurts. And Starjumper’s been so patient with her. I don’t know if we’ll ever make a proper wolf out of her, but that’s all right. I’m a little too big to ride one anyway.”
“Why did you decide to get tall? Skywise didn’t.”
Swift shrugged. “Well, once Rayek started, I had to follow. Couldn’t be looking up and up at him all the time, could I?”
“Grandmother doesn’t mind looking up at Aurek.”
“Mm, but they started out like that.”
Bluestar gnawed on his lip a moment. “What’s wrong with Grandmother? Why is she so sad?”
Swift hesitated. She supposed it was inevitable the boy would ask. Since their arrival on Thorny Mountain three nights past, Vaya had kept herself sequestered in one of the guest rooms, seeing only her lifemate and her youngest son. “She got some bad news about her own mother,” Swift said.
“Kahvi? Did someone find her spirit?”
“She… got lost. Very lost. And she can’t find her way home.”
Bluestar nodded sagely. “Like the Ghost Wolf in the howls?”
“Something like that. But as soon as the Reappearance is behind us, we’re going to go find Kahvi and bring her back.”
Bluestar looked up at the crystalline ceiling. “It’s only a few more hours, isn’t it?”
Swift nodded. The foretelling in the Scroll was consistent on that, at least. The closer they came to the moment itself, the sharper the image became: a fanciful Palace aglow with starlight, materializing just above the barren summit.
It was the image that followed that changed constantly, but Bluestar didn’t need to know that.
A sending caught Swift’s attention. Rayek was back from his latest reconnaisance flight.
“You keep Lucky company, all right? I think she’s a little sad that we can’t go for a run.” Satisfied that the cub would stay put for once, Swift jogged to the doorway. The crystal walls shimmered and dissolved just long enough to admit the airwalker, and then sealed solid once more. Seen from outside, Swift knew, the Palace was the perfect illusion of bedrock outcrop, crowned with spindly conifers and dripping moss.
Sunstream and Weatherbird were already there to greet him; they moved aside to let Swift reach him. Wordlessly, Swift extended her hand, and Rayek took it, their fingers loosely interlacing. They had shared ten thousand years together, yet in times of trial she still instinctively sought his touch.
“Have they started the advance again?” Swift asked.
“No. They seem to be fortifying their position. But….” When words would not suffice, Rayek shared an open sending with his family. Swift saw what he had seen from the air: a small camp on a rocky ledge just below the final approach, a ring of tents and armed guards encircling two of the timber-cutting machines, and a collection of strange wooden towers, easily the height of a mature pine tree.
**Ladders?** Swift asked. Their raids by night had slowed their approach enough that the Djun could never hope to reach the summit through the gentler forest path. But ladders and wooden ramps to mount the rocks could set Djunsmen on the summit within moments.
**Humans on foot pose little danger,** Weatherbird remarked. **I doubt the Firstcomers would even notice a crossbow quarrel bouncing off the Palace.**
**If they are siege towers, they aren’t putting them into position,** Rayek sent.
**What else could they be, Grandfather?**
**Never underestimate the human capacity for inventiveness, especially in matters of death-dealing.**
His fingers locked tight about Swift’s. “It is… maddening. It would be so easy to scatter the whole war host. With the Palace’s power behind me…”
“I know…” Swift murmured, squeezing back. She remembered well what Rayek could do, when he drew on the Palace’s magic. Howling Rock was still a open wound to her. Sunstream and Weatherbird wore pained expressions. They too had been there… and they too knew that powerful magic was the one weapon they could not use tonight. The Firstcomers could not sense their presence. Even one altered moment could be enough to destroy the timeline.
What’s worse? Swift wondered. To be erased from history or to be rewritten completely? Would she rather step outside the Palace to find a world without elves… or a world of strangers. Either way, friends and family would be lost to her. Her daughter… brave, stubborn Venka, refused to abandon her duty as chieftess to take refuge inside the Palace. If the time threads were not cut, but merely rewoven, would Swift find a stranger wearing her daughter’s face? And what of the elves inside the Palace? Would they find twisted reflections of themselves wandering the World of Two Moons: a Rayek who had never mastered the Palace – a Tam who had never borne the name Swift? Just thinking about it made her head ache. Oblivion, at least, was a simpler path.
Even the High One was not immune to the horror of all these possibilities. Timmain had spent the last three days in the Scroll Chamber, her search through the collected elfin memories growing more and more frantic. For all her calm platitudes about what was meant to be, she was showing signs of strain and fear as she struggled to calculate the likelihood of disaster.
“The humans seem to making camp,” Weatherbird said reasonably. “And why not? They don’t know the Palace is coming tonight.”
“They’ve been racing for the summit since the snows melted. Why slow now?”
“I wonder…” Sunstream held a hand to his temple. Rayek looked at his son, alarmed.
“Don’t be foolish. No long-range sendings – we agreed!”
“Just putting my ear to the ground,” Sunstream insisted. He shifted his head, listening. Suddenly his eyes snapped open, his pupils shrunk to pinpricks. “Oh…” he whispered. Then he began to scream.
“Sunstream!” Swift and Rayek raced to his side, holding him up as he staggered, his legs turning to water. He let out a long, anguished wail as he struggled to cover his ears. “No… no… make it STOP!”
“I can’t block it,” Rayek said, as he tried and failed to raise a shield that could block the sending. Sunstream was down on his knees down. His cries were bringing the other elves to the antechamber. His lifemate Quicksilver saw his state and screamed as she ran to his side.
“Curse it, we need Venka!” Swift exclaimed.
Weatherbird touched the wall of the Palace, and power flooded into her, making her short silver hair rise with static. A visible aura shimmered over her skin as she took Sunstream’s head between her hands and extended a sending shield over them both.
“I have him,” she said, and her voice sounded altered – pitched deeper than her usual birdsong chirp. “Breathe, child.”
Sunstream sagged limply against his parents. Gently they eased him back on his heels, Quicksilver supporting his back. Slowly, he lifted his head and gave a bleary-eyed nod. “Uhn… my thanks, Winnowill.”
“What was that?” Skywise demanded.
“Kahvi.” Weatherbird released him, then cocked her head to one side, as if listening. “Fascinating…. the corrupted starstone is trying to resonate in time with the Palace. But it cannot quite match the frequency… no wonder the poor brute has gone mad. You don’t suppose… yes, of course. You’re quite right, I would be glad to.”
Rayek gave an impatient huff. “Winnowill? Could you speak sense today, please?”
Winnowill blinked with Weatherbird’s eyes. “Ah, Rayek. Forgive me. Yes, she is screaming quite loudly right now. I have closed Sunstream’s mind to her, but now that she has us in her sights, she is likely to lash out again. If you’ll permit, I will remain in control of this body until the crisis has passed. Weatherbird feels you might have need of me.”
Quicksilver chuckled wryly as she helped Sunstream to his feet. “Oh, Cheipar’s going to love that. You with us, lifemate?”
Sunstream nodded. “I could hear it,” he murmured. “Like… a swarm of insects buzzing in my head. And then… singing… this music like… like the memory of a thousand voices, each singing a different tune, one on top of the other. Too much, too loud. It was like the Cry of the High Ones, but... worse. Poisonous.”
“It’s the starstone that sings,” Winnowill said. “The fragments of countless memories, echoes of all the spirits who have ever passed through the Palace. I even thought I could hear my own voice in there…” a fleeting smile passed over Weatherbird’s lips. “But the starstone is corrupted, drained of almost all energy. Like any living thing, it sought to heal itself – first by turning on Kahvi, siphoning her energy… and then by seeking to re-establish a link with the Palace. But its song is off-key. It cannot bond properly with either starstone or elf.”
“But it just keeps singing,” Sunstream finished. “And Kahvi can’t stop hearing it.”
“I am not sure we can properly call her Kahvi anymore,” Winnowill said. “The starstone has fused with her completely. Consumed her, body and soul. It is using her, like a parasite burrowed deep into its host. The… being that assaults my sending shield even now may bear Kahvi’s shell, but the elf you knew is lost. Likely forever.”
“No.”
They turned to see Vaya standing under an archway. No one knew how long she had been listening. Aurek and Cheipar, Littlefire and even young Bluestar were crowding around behind her, equally aghast.
“I don’t believe that,” Vaya said. “I won’t. Kahvi despised magic. She fought anything she couldn’t control. And she would never let herself be… consumed by a shard of starstone. Kahvi would keep fighting… she would never give up.”
“What I don’t understand is why she’s working with the Djun,” Swift spoke up. “Why did she lead them here? Drukk it, where is Timmain?”
“Still at the Scroll,” Savin said, her voice thick with disapproval. “Didn’t even flinch when Sunstream started screaming.”
“Great,” Swift rubbed the bridge of her nose irritably. “All right, Winnowill. This all seems to make sense to you – what’s Kahvi’s game?”
“She is being called to the Palace.”
“But if she wanted the Palace she could have walked to the Great Holt years ago! She had long enough to get around to it.”
“Not our Palace alone.”
“Both of them, together for an instant,” Sunstream breathed. “Yes. She’s feeling the pull of the two of them… of the moment of the Reappearance.”
“But why?” Swift pressed. “Does the Palacestone want to… what? Merge with its mother stone? Where does that leave Kahvi?”
“A salmon swims upstream to reproduce. We know the journey leads to death. But it does not think beyond the moment.”
“You are saying she is being driven by instinct,” Rayek said. “But instinct does not compel her to invite humans and their war machines to our doorstep.”
“She’s out there?” Vaya asked Winnowill. “With the Djun?”
“Yes.”
“Beloved, we should–” Aurek began, but Vaya shrugged off the gentle touch to her shoulder and bolted for the door.
“I’m going out there.”
“You can’t–” Rayek objected, but Vaya beat her fist on the wall until it parted and let her through. All the elves looked around in confusion, trying to understand what had just happened.
“I didn’t know she could command the walls,” Quicksilver said.
“She can’t,” Aurek said darkly. He narrowed his eyes at Weatherbird. Winnowill sensed his furious glare and smiled mildly.
“A child needs its mother. I learned that lesson the hard way.”
“Curse it, Winnowill. She’s not Two-Edge. And Kahvi’s not you!”
Cheipar heaved an audible sigh and retreated back down the hallway out of sight. Bluestar looked from one elf to another, utterly lost.
“Wesh, Kit, could you take Bluestar to the kitchen and find him something to eat?” Aurek said.
“I’m not hungry. I want to stay with Mother.”
“Your mother is a little busy right now, child,” Winnowill said. “She’ll come back and play with you later.”
“I don’t want to play – I’m not a baby! I can help.”
“Then you’ll need to keep your strength up,” Littlefire said reasonably.
“But I want to–”
“It’s us or the Preserver!” Littlefire’s voice turned firm, and he began to march Bluestar towards the kitchens. They were halfway across the antechamber when Cheipar returned, bow and quiver slung over his shoulder.
“Father?” Bluestar asked. “Where are you going?”
“To get your grandmother.” He stopped beside Weatherbird’s body and levelled her a stern gaze. “We’ll talk. Later.”
“Are you addressing me or your lifemate?” Winnowill asked.
“Both!”
Winnowill rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what she sees in you.” She looked away and waved her fingers, and the door opened up again.
* * *
Vaya raced through the trees. She broke onto the rocky slope within a dozen paces. To her left lay the short jog to the bare summit. In front of her, the mountainside fell away in a steep cliff. She could smell torch-smoke from the human encampment downhill.
**Kahvi!** she sent with all her strength. **Mother! Answer me! I know you are out there!**
She waited, hearing nothing but her own ragged breaths. Then the singing began… a distant melody that grew louder and louder with each moment. One voice, two, three – then too many to count – each singing a different tune. The voices crowded in her head until pain bloomed behind her eyes. Her vision blurred. She felt her legs give out. For a moment, the world turned dark. When she came to, the voices had stopped and she knelt on the bedrock, staring in horror as a spindly form hauled itself up over the cliff’s edge.
“Mother…”
She was so thin… her proportions seemed elongated like a High One’s. Had the magic stretched her frame like it did in many of the Palacedwellers? Or had she simply lost all her muscle mass? She stood too far away to tell.
Kahvi had always been a hard elf, and now her face had lost even the vaguest hints of softness. An old scar cleaved the flesh on her jaw, and her hair was shorn close to her head – the proud chief’s braids gone. Her cheeks were stained with purple tracks, like tears of dreamberry juice, and her eyes had taken on the same color. There was no life in them.
The elf stared at her blankly, unrecognizing.
“Kahvi! It’s me, Vaya. Your daughter.”
Kahvi’s brow knit suspiciously.
**Please, let me help you!**
Kahvi clenched her jaw, and Vaya cried out as the terrible chorus rang between her ears again. But this time one voice rose louder than the rest.
**Enditenditenditendit end it end it END IT!!**
“Agh! Stop! What do you want?!”
Kahvi tore at the coarse tunic she wore, baring her collarbone and the hideous veins of purple light radiating up from her breastbone. When she spoke, her voice was so hoarse and twisted that Vaya could barely make out the words.
“Kill them! Kill them all! Elves – beloved of Threksh’t – destroy them all!”
She lunged towards Vaya. Vaya drew back, trying to rise, but tripping over her limbs and falling flat on her back. She looked up at the charging, mad elf who had been her mother. She tried, at the last moment, to cross her arms to shield her face.
An arrow caught Kahvi in the chest, halting her attack. She swayed on her feet, frowning at the sudden loss of inertia.
The second arrow hit her square between the eyes.
Vaya screamed. She twisted around to see Cheipar calmly lowering his bow.
“WHY?” she demanded. But Cheipar wasn’t looking at her. His gaze stayed fixed on Kahvi, and slowly his eyes widened, while his jaw slackened in surprise.
Vaya looked back at her mother. Kahvi was still on her feet. Her eyes crossed as she focused on the arrow pinned to the bridge of her nose. She reached up and pulled it loose. No blood flowed, only an oily purple liquid that turned solid then seemed to evaporate, leaving behind a glossy new scar.
She pulled the arrow from her chest. It came free just as easily.
Cheipar scowled, and prepared a third arrow. Kahvi laughed and spread her arms wide, inviting the blow. “Come on! Fire can’t end me! Ice can’t end me! All the playthings in the Djun’s dungeons can’t end me! And you want to try your little bee-stinger? Well, do it!”
Cheipar loosed the third arrow. Kahvi let it take her clear in the eye.
It should have sunk itself deep inside her skull. But the arrowhead barely pierced her flesh. A hard shake of the head knocked it loose. Purple oil filled the wound, but when Kahvi wiped it away irritably, her eye had already healed.
“You think I haven’t tried every way to end this?” Kahvi jeered. “Don’t you see?” She beat her breast. “It won’t be silent!” Her expression turned pleading. “Night and day… year after year… it just keeps singing! I can’t stop it! Nothing can stop it!”
Cheipar rushed to his mother’s side and helped her up. He pulled on her arm, trying to drag her back to safety, but Vaya dug her heels in.
“Come with us, please! If it’s death you seek, we can help you find it–”
Kahvi laughed hoarsely. “Death? Death is another beginning. I want an end! I want a never-will-be!”
“Oh High Ones…” Vaya moaned as she understood. Again Cheipar pulled at her arm, and this time she turned to run with him.
They were halfway back to the trees when Kahvi began to scream: a high-pitched wordless yowl that echoed off the mountain summit.
* * *
Grohmul Djun heard H’saka’s cry. He turned to catch Karkapetch’s eye, and he nodded.
“Prepare the trebuchet!” Karkapetch ordered, cracking his whip for emphasis. “The assault begins!”
* * *
“Timmain, you have to wake up!” Skywise begged. But the High One was locked in a trance, her eyes wide, pupils shrunk to pinpoints, lips slightly parted. The Scroll continued to turn, revealing hazy images Skywise could not identify – uncertain memories of unfamiliar faces.
**Timmain, please! Your memories are no good if you don’t share them with us!**
Timmain’s lips moved. Skywise strained to hear the words. “We must go forward… backward in the spiral… so many lives… so many deaths… tonight – why? Why?”
“You know why!” Savin snapped irritably. “You’ve been here before, Timmain! You’ve done it already!”
“But she can undo it,” Skywise murmured. “Save her dearest ones… rewrite all their stories.”
“And write us out of the story!”
“If you’d lost us all – me and ’Silver and both our families – all those elves who mean the most to you… and if you knew you could bring them back…” Skywise bit his lip. “At the cost of… High Ones know how many others. It’s selfish, of course. But lately…”
**Fahr? What is it?**
**I don’t know. All these years spent stuck at the Scroll, trying to keep count of all these possibilities! It makes me think of all the lost chances… all the ways our lives could have gone differently.** He smiled sadly. **Nimh, we have been so blessed… while others have been so cursed. And our lives… in the end, they’re nothing but accidents.**
He held out his hands to her. “I think of the night I was born, and I wonder what would have happened if Mother had labored alone in Tallest Tree like she wanted. Would she have died? Would I have died? And then I think I of you, following Sunstream’s call and Recognition halfway across the New Land, and I wonder – suppose we had decided to go back to the Homeland instead of setting up a holt. Would you have died out in the wilderness from Recognition denied? Would we have met hundreds of years later – would we have missed Recognition’s call? Would Quicksilver never have existed, or would she have come along as she is, just a little younger – or as someone else entirely?”
**Fahr…* *
“And then I think about Cricket… and that poor boy of his–”
**Fahr, don’t.**
“You know Weatherbird’s never been able to find his spirit? She says out of every eight-eights of spirits that can be found in sendings, there’s one that will never answer! And we’ll never know – is his spirit just sleeping? Is it stuck somewhere? Is it… burnt out like a dead star?”
“You can’t think about it–”
“No, that’s just it. You can’t. Because once you start, you can’t stop wondering ‘what-if.’ What if someone had stopped Yosha from climbing? What if Cricket had never started sharing fus with Maleen? Is fourteen years of joy with a child worth all that grief without him? Wouldn’t everyone have been happier if things had… just gone differently?”
“You don’t mean that.”
“But suppose I did. Just for a moment. And suppose I had the power to choose. Because I do, Savin. That’s the scary part – we all do! All of us Palacemasters! We can rewrite it all if we want. And I didn’t really know Cricket’s boy – not really. He’s… he’s as much a stranger to me… as we all are to Timmain! She’s been with us for ages, but who knows how she sees us. Would she even miss us if we disappeared?”
Savin shook her head. “What are you saying? That Timmain would sacrifice us all to save the Firstcomers?”
**I’m saying she’s thinking about it,** Skywise locksent. **How can she not think about it? And once you start thinking…**
Savin scowled. “The time comes when you have to just do something!”
“Choice and chance,” Skywise said thoughtfully. “There’s no better world for it than this one.” He nodded towards the entranced High One. “But when was the last time she let choice or chance touch her?”
A faint tremor ran under their feet. “The Firstcomers?” Savin asked.
Timmain suddenly awoke from her trance. “No….” She gestured and the image in the Scroll of Colors began to change. It showed the human camp: the inert timber harvesters… and the strange towers now transforming on hinges and pulleys. The long poles the elves had taken for ladders of some sort were turning horizontal… giants beams on central pivots, counterweights rising steadily, payloads being manuevered into position.
“Oh drukk me!” Savin swore. “Are those war-slings?”
Skywise waved his hand, and the Scroll Chamber’s roof turned transparent. The first stars were gathering in the twilight sky.
A great fireball rose up above them. It arced as high as Daughter Moon, then came straight down on the Palace’s roof. The flaming barrel broke apart against the crystal spire. A crack ran across the dome of the ceiling. Savin cried out and raised her hands as tiny shards came cascading down on her head.
“We need a shield up!” Skywise shouted.
Aurek, Weatherbird, Swift and Rayek came running into the Scroll Chamber. Aurek looked up at the burning tar coating the crystral roof and he understood. “I don’t think you can help me here, Winnowill,” he said.
“No.” Weatherbird’s body gave a shudder as Winnowill’s spirit left it. Weatherbird knelt down and send out a psychic call. The combined magic of all the rockshaper spirits inside the Palace rose up around her. Aurek took her hand in his, then raised his free hand to the ceiling. The walls shook as the mountain’s natural bedrock rose up around the disguised Palace, forming a solid dome over the delicate crystal. The flames went down and the ceiling turned opaque and shining again.
“Uhn… the Firstcomers might have sensed that,” Weatherbird said ruefully as she shook the spirits from her.
“It’s still less... flamboyant that a large-scale shield,” Aurek said.
Cheipar appeared a moment later, helping support a stricken Vaya. “What’s going on out there?” Skywise asked. Vaya’s face crumpled into a grimace.
“She wants… to destroy it! High Ones – she wants it to come undone!”
“The Palace?” Swift pressed.
Rayek understood. “Not our Palace. The Firstcomers’ Shell. That mad sow wants to erase us all! It’s the only way she’ll find peace.”
“Peace?” Savin sputtered. “She’ll never exist to begin with!”
“A creature can only endure so much pain before it chooses destruction,” Timmain pronounced ominously.
The walls trembled softly as another fireball bounded off the rocky shell.
“They’ve got at least three of those war-slings!” Rayek warned.
“And they’ll burn down the rest of the forest and clear a path to the summit,” Swift guessed. “And the Palace. We have to get out there and stop them!”
“No.”
Swift stared at the High One in disbelief. “What?”
“It is now too late to interfere,” Timmain’s voice was cold as ice. “The moment of choice is past.”
“Dung to that. We still have a choice. We always have a choice!”
“Then choose to bear witness with me. Or choose to look away. But none shall leave the Palace now.”
“High One!” Skywise exclaimed.
“Drukk it,” Swift made for the doorway, only to find it sealed shut into a wall of solid crystal.
“NO!” Timmain snapped, as fierce as a wolf. “I forbid it. What will happen must happen.”
“You forbid?” Rayek growled. “What gives you the right?”
“Child, you forget. This is not the first world I have visited, nor will it be the last. Your lifetime is but a blink of an eye to me. I have lived through countless turns of the spiral. And I have made sacrifices you cannot imagine. If our time on this world is erased, then you will all need to remember, and seed a new world as I once did.”
“So we just give up on those left outside?” Skywise demanded. “No! We won’t. I won’t! We are the Masters here! I and Rayek and Sunstream! The choice is ours, not yours!”
“You cannot–”
Skywise waved his hand and the door opened. When Timmain raised her hand to counter his command, Skywise slapped it down sharply.
Swift made no further move towards the door. She was transfixed by the standoff. So was everyone in the Scroll Room. Of all the Palacemasters, Skywise had always been the slowest to anger, and the first to give ground in an argument – especially with the High One. While Sunstream might debate and Rayek might curse, Skywise had never once defied Timmain. Until now.
Timmain gave a frosty smile, but the furrow at her brow betrayed her unease. “I raised this ‘Palace’ from the soil of my homeworld. You think your claim greater than mine?”
“YES!” Skywise snarled, his voice echoing in the Scroll Chamber. “You’ve lived countless turns of the spiral – but what have you done with this one? You’ve spent more than half of it running wild as a wolf. The rest of the time you’ve either been in the Scroll Room or at the Egg, sitting and watching. You’ve lived in memories and regrets. While we reclaimed the Palace, while we learned to make it fly again, while we bound all your scattered children together! This is our Palace now, and our world – our past and future! Don’t you dare tell us we have no say in it!”
Timmain stared down at the stargazer, wide-eyed in the face of his anger. Aurek and Rayek looked equally dumbstruck. Swift’s expression was the half-grimace of a smile that could not quite be supressed. Savin hadn't bothered to supress her grin, gazing at her lifemate with a smitten wonder reminiscent of fresh Recognition.
Skywise steadily stared back at Timmain, until she turned her gaze away. “Right,” Skywise said. “Rayek, target those fire-slings. Swift, Savin, let’s go hunt some Djunsmen. Cheipar – can you?”
Cheipar nodded, unshouldering his bow.
“I’m going too,” Vaya said. She set her jaw determinedly. “Kahvi may have stopped fighting, but I’ll be thrice-cursed if I ever do!”
Swift bared New Moon and flashed a lupine grin. “Then let’s go. We’ve got until Mother Moon rises to clear the summit of these rats!”
* * *
They emerged into the nightmare.
The treeline was on fire: great orange flames raced up the dry pines, fueled by puddles of burning oil. Firebombs exploded on the rocky pyramid, a short sprint from the summit itself. And the Djunsmen swarmed over the rocks, the advance guard with their weapons drawn, the support troops struggling with ladders and cumbersome spear-launchers.
**Cheipar, Weatherbird – get to the high ground!** Swift commanded. The archers quickly complied, taking up position to provide covering fire. Rayek flew overhead, out of range of the human crossbows, blasting a carefully targeted path path through the horde with his magic, as Swift, Skywise, Vaya and Savin waded into the fray, swords bared. They leapt over and under the night-blind vanguard, their cuts clean and sparing, their targets the support troops and the war machines.
Savin sprang onto one ballista and slashed the ropes before the humans could react. Skywise hamstrung an archer trying to target Rayek. Vaya cut her way through the vanguard in a kind of madness, ignoring the pain of many minor wounds. Swift sprang away as another firebomb came crashing down on the rocks. The Djunsmen beside her weren’t as quick, and they screamed as the flames rose up to consume them.
Rayek rose high enough to target the closest of the trebuchets. He channeled just enough of the Palace’s power to blast the counterweight off its beam. Unbalanced, the trebuchet tipped back and the burning payload exploded. The heat and the noise panicked the soldiers around it.
Still the Djunsmen came, struggling over the rocks, screaming curses at the elves. Soon Weatherbird and Cheipar had exhausted their arrows. The humans had the advantage by sheer numbers.
Vaya went down as a sword-tip sliced her side open. Cheipar screamed her name. Swift paused for breath, scanning the fiery battlefield. All she could see were flames and shadows. The air rippled with heat. Blood dripped into her eye from a cut to her forehead she could not remember taking. Where was Vaya? Where was Rayek? For the moment she had lost her bearings completely, and she was terrified.
A human lurched through the flames, screaming and burning and yet still raising his sword overhead. Swift staggered back, raising New Moon to block his downward swing.
Wolf howls rose over the sounds of screams and crackling flames. A great shadow fell over Swift as she stumbled over the rocks. The human faltered in mid-attack, and barely had time to turn his head before the wolf’s massive jaws closed around it.
The immense wolf did not even break stride. A rider sprang from its back and pulled Swift to her feet.
She blinked, trying to make out her rescuer’s face by the shifting light of the fire. The elf was the color of fire herself: bronze skin glowing with sweat, hair like a torch, eyes the blue of the hottest of flames.
Swift’s mouth moved uselessly for a moment before her stunned mind provided a name.
“Ember…?”
“DEMONS!” the humans screamed.
More wolves sprang out of the burning forest, monstrous in size and ferocity. One bore a rider, who dove right into the thick of the fighting. Djunsmen panicked and fled. When the wolf emerged again from behind the flames, it bore a second elf on its back.
Almost a dozen beasts tore through the human lines now, scattering the Djunsmen, chasing them into flames and off cliff edges. Ember’s battle-hardened face showed a cruel satisfaction.
“The Wild Hunt is here for you, chieftess.”
* * *
The giant wolves savaged the line of soldiers. “Hold your ground!” Grohmul Djun bellowed. He mounted his warhorse and brandished his sword high. “Are you women, to be frightened by dogs? Threksh’t is with us! We will triumph!”
The moment was near, and he was meant to be there when Threksh’t revealed Himself. And when the great glowing god appeared… he meant to destroy him.
In the years to come, it would be said the Djun alone controlled the forces of nature and conjury alike.
* * *
Aurek peeled back walls of bedrock and crystal, and wolf and riders bounded inside the Palace. Cheipar followed closely on their heels. Teir dismounted and gently laid Vaya down on the Palace floor. Working fast, he unbuckled her blood-stained tunic to reveal the wicked gash to her side. Teir swore and pressed a handful of soft doeskin against the wound.
Littlefire arrived out of breath. He let out a shriek of horror at the sight of his mother bleeding out onto the crystal floor. Bluestar was close behind him. The child hung back in terror as he watched his family gather around Vaya’s broken body.
“A little help would be appreciated, Winnowill!” Aurek shouted.
Without Weatherbird to channel her spirit, the healing was harder. Vaya bucked and thrashed as Winnowill’s magic enveloped her. Aurek and Littlefire worked together to hold her still while Teir kept pressure on the wound.
**You can take the Go-Back out of the fight…** Winnowill’s acid sending echoed openly. **Truly, Aurek, I’d have thought you would have tamed this beast by now.**
Despite the tension in the air, Aurek chuckled softly. “It’s not for lack of trying, I promise you. I’ve found her quite… indomitable.”
“Shut… up, both of you,” Vaya grounded out through clenched teeth. Then she cried out and went limp.
**Finally,** Winnowill grumbled, and the magic glow around Vaya intensified until her family had to look away. In the tense silence that followed, Cheipar locked eyes with Teir.
“Well?” he asked at length, pointedly.
“We’ve been… hunting,” Teir murmured.
Cheipar’s narrowed eyes said everything for him. Teir gave an awkward shrug, acknowledging the inadequacy of the answer. “I know it’s been a while.”
“Three hundred years. What were you hunting?”
“A healing.” But he knew that wasn’t enough of an answer either. “Forgiveness.”
Aurek spoke: “Howling Rock wasn’t your fault. Nor was it Ember’s.”
Teir nodded. “And in time… I hope she believes that.”
The magical glow had spread to the walls. Vaya was fully healed now, yet still the magic was growing. The whole room seemed to be shining twice as brightly. Littlefire was the first to feel the tremor under their knees.
“Another fire-stone?” he asked.
“No…” Aurek murmured.
“Does… does anyone else hear music?” Bluestar called from the doorway.
“It is time.”
The elves turned to see the High One standing behind Bluestar. Her face bore a look of bleak resignation.
Littlefire heard the song next – a faint whisper of voices, growing steadily clearer. The walls began vibrating until the crystal itself hummed audibly. Aurek covered his ears with a hoarse cry. Teir winced at the buzzing in his head. Vaya sat up abruptly, gasping for breath.
“Wait!” Bluestar cried. “Where’s Mama?”
* * *
Chaos reigned on the mountaintop. The wind had picked up, and the flames were converging into great walls of fire. Most of the Djunsmen had broken formation and fled, but one trebuchet was still firing. Swift crouched down and hugged her head as a firebomb exploded off the summit peak, hurling rocks in all directons. **They’ve got blast-rock!** she sent. **Rayek!**
**On it!** Overhead, Rayek changed course, abandoning his pursuit of the fleeing Djunsmen to fly towards the final trebuchet. With the winds against him and strong magic forbidden, he couldn’t risk blasting the war machine itself, but he could strike the humans manning it.
**I can’t see anything!** Weatherbird sent. **The fire–**
**Fall back to the Palace,** Swift commanded. **We’ve done all we can.** She cast one last glance back over the battlefield, smoking rocks and sheets of flame, and bodies lurching through the carnage. Somewhere a wolf yowled in agony. Somewhere insects were buzzing.
No… it wasn’t a buzz, it was a hum… like wet clearstone singing under a fingertip…
**FALL BACK!!!** Swift sent. **Into the Palace - NOW! We’re out of time!**
Above the flame wall, Rayek flew towards the last trebuchet, sitting slightly askew on top of a harvesting machine. The fires and smoke make it hard to get a clear shot at the men who were hastily resetting it. Rayek harnessed his magic and directed a shockwave at the base of the rolling treads. The harvester lurched but did not topple. A sudden change of wind drove flames in Rayek’s path and he was forced to pull up.
He caught sight of a figure standing tall on the platform – too small to be a human, wreathed in a barely-perceptible glow.
So… a rematch, is it? Rayek smiled darkly. You’re welcome to it, you waste of elfin skin!
He summoned a bolt of energy in one fist. But before he could unleash it, three sensations assaulted him at once: a high-pitching whine in his ears; Swift’s call for retreat; and an untempered black sending of pure animal rage.
He dropped out of the sky like a stone.
“Rayek!” Swift screamed as she saw him fall. A river of burning tar lay between them. Swift sheathed New Moon and sprang through the gap in the flames.
* * *
“Inside, now, hurry, run – curse you!” Aurek boomed, waving on the elves frantically. Weatherbird was first inside the door. The first of the Wild Hunt’s wolves were right behind her. The hum was growing in volume and pitch. They could hear it outside the Palace now, and Skywise staggered at the force of it. Savin pulled him back to his feet and hustled him back on course.
The flames were licking at the tar puddles just outside the Palace. Aurek knelt down and calling on the rocks to rise up and fold over the flames, making a clear path. A panicked wolf bowled over the Glider, and they both sprawled in the entryway, a tangle of limbs.
Sunstream took Aurek’s place at the door. **Here!** he sent out. **Mother, Father – where are you?**
Savin half-led, half-dragged Skywise over the threshold of the Palace. One last wolf was racing to catch up, Ember on its back.
“Where is Swift?” Sunstream demanded, as huntress and wolf made it inside the crystal walls.
“She sounded the retreat – isn’t she already here?”
**MOTHER? FATHER?!** Sunstream called urgently. **You need to–**
The hum reached a single, piercing note.
* * *
Rayek staggered to his feet. His hooded cloak was smoldering. He tore it off. He tried to summon a shield, but the whine in his ears made it so hard to focus. The heat and smoke of the fires made him squeeze his eyes closed.
“This way!” Swift pulled him away from the fire.
They scrambled over the uneven ground, half-blind, flinching from the intense heat that burned their feet through their boots, and the painful hum assaulting their minds. The starstone is singing, Swift thought. When Rayek wrapped an arm about her waist and tried to float them, the winds shifted, and a wall of flame brought them back to the ground.
“I can’t–”
“Go!” Swift shouted over the roar of the flames. “You can make it by yourself!”
“I won’t leave you!” Rayek shouted back.
The summit was in sight, but not the dome of the disguised Palace. They coughed and squinted through the haze of oil-smoke. The hum reached a pitch that make their teeth ache.
And then the Palace materialized over the summit.
Towers of crystal shimmered in the light of the fires. The Firstcomers’ Palace hovered over the mountaintop, then slowly began to descend.
**It’s not disappearing – why isn’t it disappearing?** Swift sent.
Sunstream’s sending assaulted them – one last desperate plea. They tried to make a dash towards the dome of their own Palace, but again the flames drove them back. The smoke forced them to their knees in search of clean air. A howling wind at their backs made them turn, and they saw a solid wall of fire rolling towards them like a wave.
“I’m sorry, Tam…” Rayek whispered at her ear.
She wondered which would reach them first – the flames or the great erasure?
She rather hoped it was the fire. She wanted to feel one last thing.
Out of the corner of her eye, the listing trebuchet unleashed its final payload. A burning keg of pitch and blast-rock soared through the air, arcing towards the summit and the Firstcomers’ Palace.
“Don’t look!” Rayek took her face in his hands and turned her gaze towards him.
She struggled to focus on his sweat-and-smoke-stained face. She heard a great crack, like the mountain itself was splitting in two. Windblown embers stung her shoulders.
“No!” Rayek forced her head back when she tried to look at the summit again. “Look at me.”
She swallowed tightly and stared hard into his golden eyes. She raised her hands to clasp him close, and her fingers tangled in his glossy hair. Yes, if it was all meant to end, let her last sight be of him: her mountain lion, her companion, her gadfly, her lord. The whole world seemed to shrink as she gazed into those eyes until nothing remained but the two of them. The threads of time were surely severed, for it seemed they had fallen all the way back to the sands of Sorrow’s End, when eyes met eyes for the very first time.
“Tam,” one simple sound, carrying the love of ten thousand years.
**Rayek…** she sent back, her throat too dry to speak.
When the end came, they would lose both their daughters too – Venka in the Great Holt, Gypsy Moth on the sea. But Sunstream and his descendents would live, safe inside the Palace. A part of their love would endure. There was a certain peace to be found in that thought.
And there were far worse things than dying in her lifemate’s arms.
“Tam,” Rayek breathed, as his mouth captured hers.
**I love you, I love you, I love you,** she sent over and over, determined to make it her final thought.
She squeezed her eyes closed against the blinding light, as the fire rolled over them both.
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 2015 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2015 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.