Echoes of the Fourth Magic (24 page)

“Why not?” Del asked. “I told the rangers, Andovar and Belexus, and they weren’t upset.”

“The rangers are wise, very wise,” Ardaz replied. “Under the eyes of Bellerian, they remember the past and they understand the power and goodness of Brielle. Most men and even many Illuman fear the witch and would shun you if they knew you had seen her. The Children of the Moon have forgotten what she did for their race back in the distant past. Hah, many have even forgotten what I, Ardaz, did for them at the beginning of their age. It is a sad time that we all live in.”

“I have to go back,” Del muttered. “To Avalon, to her.”

“If all that you tell me is true, I think she would like that, too.” The wizard smiled. “But let me think about it.

“Now go, my boy, back to the city and quickly. The moon will be rising soon. Wouldn’t want to miss the festival, would you?”

“Will you be there?” Del asked.

“I might,” Ardaz replied. “But for now, you’ve given me much to think about. Yes, very much to think about.”

D
EL MOVED OUT
from the glade and gingerly started down the invisible stair, leery at first, remembering the trouble he had coming up here in the daylight. Soon, though, he found that the darkness was his ally. The mountain wall remained easy enough to discern, towering right next to him, and his inability to see the invisible steps in the dim light didn’t blatantly contradict his logic.

When he got about halfway down, he heard singing coming from the northwestern corner of the valley. Hundreds of elves, the whole city it seemed, were joined in a singular chorus of celebration. Del couldn’t make out the words, for they sang in the strange enchantish tongue, but the tune and tempo made the emotions of the song clear to him. They sang a joyful melody, yet mysterious, almost supernatural, as if their song was for the stars and the heavens alone to understand.

When he had finally reached the valley floor—and it seemed a long while indeed—he raced to the gathering of the elves, their haunting song still rising in the evening air. He found Billy with Sylvia and Erinel. Mitchell and Reinheiser were there, too, a little way off, talking by themselves.

“Where’ve you been?” Billy asked when Del approached. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“A little business, that’s all,” Del said. “Nothing important.”

Billy didn’t press the issue. The thought of Del going off on some mysterious enterprise seemed perfectly normal to him. Billy was quite sure now that something unique had happened to his friend. Del alone among the remaining crewmen accepted this world with all his heart and soul, and Aielle and its peoples seemed to be returning the welcome. Everyone they met placed Del in high regard.

Sylvia looked at Del with an apologetic expression. “I pray that my father was not too harsh with you,” she said, and Del knew that she was truly concerned. “You must understand that this is a dangerous time.”

“Sylvia,” Del interrupted with an uncontainable grin, “your father is a perfectly wonderful elf!”

“Again you speak that word,” Sylvia protested.

“Arien doesn’t disapprove,” Del explained. “In fact, he, the Eldar of your people, has personally given me his permission to use it. Honest.”

“It’s really not an insult,” Billy added.

“I shan’t argue the point,” Sylvia said with a sigh of surrender, unable to resist their grins. “I suppose that it is the way that a word is spoken that determines its intent.”

“What’s all this singing about?” Del asked.

“Luminas ey-n’abraieken,” Sylvia replied.

Del just shrugged his shoulders.

“Abraieken means celebration, a dance,” explained Sylvia. “And the place to which we shall journey we name Shaithdun-o-Illume.” She sang softly:

Sylvia could see that her song had pleased Billy and Del, and that, in turn, brought a smile to her fair face. “We celebrate this festival each month during the three nights of the fullest moon,” she explained. “When the shelf is bright in silver light and feet dance to the song of Tivriasis! You will see, and I promise, you will enjoy.”

The crowd around them went quiet.

“Be silent now,” Erinel said to the three of them. “They are about to begin. My uncle has brought the Staff of Light.”

The whole gathering remained hushed, and all the torches were extinguished. In front of them, on a rock pedestal, stood Arien Silverleaf, barely more than a silhouette in the starlight. He held a crooked staff before him in one hand and rubbed its knobbed top with the other.
“Illu lumin-bel,”
he commanded the staff. Gradually, the top began to glow, increasing in intensity until Arien was bathed in soft light. Then he clasped the staff tightly in both hands and presented it to the crowd, which responded in unison with,
“Illu lumin-bel!”
At once the staff obeyed their joined will, its top bursting into bright light.

Arien handed the staff to Ryell. Behind them, on the mountain wall, loomed the blackness of a tunnel entrance.

The Eldar waited for the commotion to die down, then addressed the gathering. “Four guests shall join in our dance tonight,” he declared. “Men who have come to us from a far-distant place.” Predictably, whispers arose throughout the gathering.

“Silence!” Arien commanded them. “The moon will be rising soon; we do not have much time. Shaithdun-o-Illume awaits. Let us find our places!”

With laughter and songs, the elves bustled about into the ritual line that signaled the beginning of the celebration.

“Take my hand, DelGiudice,” Sylvia said, “and stand behind me. And you, Billy Shank, take my other hand and go before me.” And so it went all up and down the group, the elves forming one long chain with joined hands. Arien led the way with the Staff of Light, Ryell directly behind him. There was one break in the chain this time, though, for Mitchell stood behind Del and would not accept Del’s hand, something that Del recognized as clearly childish and unbefitting this man who claimed leadership.

They went into the tunnel with only the staff to guide them. Just a few places back from Arien it was difficult to see, and for those a hundred steps back, or two hundred, the winding tunnel loomed pitch-black. This was a time of joining for the elves, a time of communication and trust in each other. Finding the way around rocks or up unevenly carved stairs depended solely on the person, the link to the light, directly ahead. Just a few feet into the blackness, Mitchell realized the futility of his stubborn anger and grabbed Del’s hand.

The tunnel went only several hundred yards into the mountain, but the slow pace and the winding way made the journey seem much longer. Especially for Del, continually assaulted by Mitchell’s unending stream of grumbles and complaints.

“Shaithdun-o-Illume!” Arien finally called, for far up ahead loomed a lighter spot, and the elves renewed their songs and cheers.

Suddenly the outline of a man appeared at the tunnel exit, and Arien stopped short in surprise.

“Who could it be?” a frightened Ryell asked. Many strange things had happened recently, not the least of which was the arrival of the ancient ones, and Ryell, like so many others, was certain that Illuma was heading for a crisis that threatened the very existence of his people. “No one entered
the tunnel before us and there is no other way to the shaithdun.”

“Well, I daresay it’s about time you got here!” came a familiar voice, dispelling all fears. “A bit past time, I should say!”

“Pray no,” Ryell groaned. “The jester awaits.”

“If you wished to join the celebration, you should have come in with the line,” Arien said to the wizard, approaching the tunnel exit. “The customs should not be ignored.”

“Join the celebration?” the confused mage echoed. “Oh, no no, not for that, not for that! I mean, there isn’t going to be any celebration, so why would I come to join it, after all?”

“What do you imply?” Arien asked gravely, his suspicions heightening all the more as Ardaz stepped in front of him, blocking his exit from the tunnel.

“Get out of our way, old fool!” Ryell snapped indignantly.

“The Staff of Light must stay in the tunnel!” Ardaz retorted in a suddenly sober and deadly serious tone. “And there shall be no celebration this night!”

Ryell spouted in protest, but Arien, reading the danger in the wizard’s eyes, silenced him at once. For the Eldar knew well the moods of Ardaz, and turned back to him with genuine concern. “Is there trouble afoot?

“Ungden’s spies are in Mountaingate,” Ardaz replied grimly. “I am sorry, but a party on the shelf would certainly be visible down there.”

“How do you know they are there?” Ryell growled, ever doubting the wizard. “If this is one of your games—”

“I know!” Ardaz retorted, and Ryell was knocked back by the bared power in the wizard’s voice.

“Never before have they come this far,” Arien muttered.

“Never before has Ungden been this determined,” Ardaz replied grimly. He didn’t have to speak his further thoughts, that something far worse and more dangerous than Ungden the Usurper was behind this latest attempt to
discover the whereabouts of Illuma, for he knew that those fears were shared by every member of Lochsilinilume.

Obviously distressed at canceling the celebration, Arien was wise enough to nonetheless heed the words of his wizard adviser. “Have this passed back down the line,” he instructed Ryell, handing over the Staff of Light. “Now is the time for our people to make preparations; the celebration will have to wait.”

“Arien,” Ryell moaned, “surely you’re not going to ruin this night on the words of that one.”

“Instruct the people to go back to the city,” Arien calmly and unshakably continued.

Ryell swung around angrily on his heel and started down the line, but Arien wasn’t through with him yet.

“Summon the nine second-born and accompany them to the shaithdun. It is time for a council, I believe.”

“Do you wish anything else, my lord?” Ryell grumbled with pouting sarcasm.

“I do,” Arien retorted sternly. “Have my daughter and Erinel bring our visitors. This trouble may concern them as well.”

   Arien waited at the exit to the tunnel to greet the others as they arrived. “Our council may be grim,” he said to Del and Billy, “but at the least you have come at the right time to see Lock-sh’Illume, the Moon Pool, at its height of beauty.”

The pair stepped onto the shelf and saw that the Eldar had not exaggerated in the least. They stood on a flat ledge of a bowl-shaped gorge surrounded by high mountain walls of mica rock that funneled out wider to embrace the evening sky as they rose. The walls below the ledge remained vertical, though, dropping straight down for hundreds of feet to a deep, cool mountain pool. A stream rushed out from a hole in the rock face a few yards to the left of the tunnel and dove headlong down the chasm. This was Tivriasis,
ever singing her haunting notes that conjured images of heroic adventures and mystical lands as she danced across the rock walls on her journey to the darkness of the water below.

The southern side of the gorge showed the only break in the mountain wall, starting as a crack down by the pool, but widening as it rose so that all of the southlands opened to the viewer. In daylight, Mountaingate and Avalon were clearly visible, but in the night, only the shadowy forms of the southern mountain range and an occasional light on the wide Calvan plain beyond could be seen.

No torches were necessary on the shelf except on the darkest of nights, for even by the stars, the abundant mica reflected enough light to see by. On a night such as this, with a clear moon rising, the ledge gleamed bright with ghostly silver.

As Del stood mesmerized by the beauty before him, an old man came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. At first Del didn’t recognize the man, for though he wore a hat and robe similar to those of the wizard Ardaz, he had a long white beard, bushy eyebrows, and flowing white hair that trailed well below his neck. A large raven perched comfortably on his shoulder. It was Ardaz, of course, as Del realized when the wizard pointed to his beard and winked.

Astounded, Del gave the beard a slight tug, and the wizard cackled with amusement and twirled away to greet the others as they exited the tunnel onto the shelf. Del gave a laugh of his own and followed, glad that Ardaz had come, and wondering what manner of magic the wizard had used to gain the ledge before them. Perhaps he had been a bird, like the one now perched on his shoulder. Or maybe he had a broomstick, like some witch of old Halloween tales.

   When the last of the council group had exited the tunnel, Arien sat down with his back against the mountain wall and bid them all to sit in a semicircle about him. The Eldar hardly noticed as the others sorted themselves out,
his eyes transfixed on the southern gap in the mountains and his mind drifting back across the centuries. He had been the firstborn of the second generation of Illumans, the first elf born of elven parents, and the first child born in Illuma. He remembered the time when he had stepped out onto the shaithdun and first viewed Loch-sh’Illume. Through this same gap in the mountain wall, young Arien Silverleaf had also seen the wide southlands that day and had realized that there was indeed much more to the world than Illuma Vale and the Crystal Mountains surrounding it. His father came to him then and told him of mighty Pallendara, the city the elves call Caer Tuatha, and of wondrous Avalon, Clas Braiyelle, and of all the wide lands in between.