The Elven (50 page)

With the crossing into Albenmark, Farodin awoke. Lashing out wildly all around, he jumped to his feet. It took him a long time to realize where he was. He did not want to say a word about what had taken place inside the Nightcrags. He moved to the bow and gazed out over the ocean.

It was not as cold in Albenmark. A steady wind filled their sail, and two days after they passed through the gate, they reached Reilimee, the white city by the sea.

Landal took them into his home there, and all of the survivors swore an oath not to reveal to Emerelle that Farodin and Mandred had returned to Albenmark.

With every day they spent in the white city, Farodin’s restlessness grew, but the severity of Mandred’s injuries made it impossible for them to leave the city quickly. And Mandred enjoyed the peace. Every day, crooked Nardinel came to see that he was well. She had recovered from her arrow wound with astonishing speed. Her healing hands reset his bones with great skill, and she did more. Mandred had never met an elf woman like Nardinel. In the boat, she had warmed him with her body when the cold was too much for him, and in Reilimee, too, she often shared his billet. She said little, and until the day of his departure, Mandred was unable to explain the source of her feelings for him.

Two weeks after his arrival, when he set off again with Farodin to return to the human world, she found no words of farewell, no good-bye. In silence, she pushed into his hand an armband made from her own long black hair. Then she turned away and was soon lost in the hustle and bustle of the harbor.

Her strange kind of love left Mandred feeling restless. He looked forward to returning to his own world, where he understood the women at least some of the time.

Dareen

N
uramon had the feeling that an eternity had passed since he’d last stood in this place and solved his part of the puzzle. In front of them, set in the rock wall, were the precious stones: diamond, quartz, ruby, and sapphire.

Alwerich could read the text above the quartz crystal and intoned the words. “Sing the song of Dareen, O Child of the Night! Sing of her wisdom with your hand in the darkness! Sing the words that you once spoke, and enter side by side.”

“What do your words say?” Nuramon asked.

“They say, ‘On a quiet autumn night, like the Alben, the stars in the grotto, clearer than ever before, come into being.’”

“Do you remember my words? ‘You came to us. Your voice rang. You showed us the stars. They sparkled. We could see them.’ Both languages mention the stars. It’s a clue. ‘You showed us the stars.’ ‘The stars in the grotto.’ Do you see what I mean?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We have to combine our verses and then sing them together. Then it must be ‘You came to us on a quiet autumn night. Your voice rang like the Alben. You showed us the stars in the grotto. They sparkled clearer than ever before. We could see them come into being.’”

A smile crossed Alwerich’s face. “Make two songs from one. Now I see.” He laid one hand on the quartz crystal. “Come. We will sing the key song together.”

The key song. The dwarf had found the right term. It was the key to the oracle’s gate. Nuramon raised his hand to the diamond and exchanged a brief look with Alwerich, then the two began to sing.

Their words had barely faded when the diamond and the quartz crystal began to glow. From the diamond poured the gleaming light that Nuramon had seen once before, while from the quartz crystal shone a leaden glow that streamed through the furrow toward the ruby in the center. In the red stone, the two lights met and joined, then flowed together in a glittering cascade to the sapphire, opening out inside it. The blue stone lit up and pulsated, as if a heart of light were beating within.

Without warning, the precious stones, the furrows, and the inscriptions disappeared. Alwerich, in surprise, took a step back. Nuramon looked at his hand, which now touched no more than bare rock. But the rock suddenly felt so soft that he could press his hand into it. His fingertips had already disappeared inside the wall. When he pushed his arm into the rock, he realized that Alwerich had returned to his side. The dwarf looked in amazement at Nuramon’s arm, then summoned his courage and pushed his own hand into the rock and out of sight.

Nuramon turned to Felbion, who had remained some distance away. “Come with us.”

But instead of coming closer, the horse turned away. Felbion preferred to wait where he was, that was clear. Such behavior was not like the normally curious steed.

“Let us go through before this strange door closes again,” cried the dwarf.

Side by side with Alwerich, Nuramon stepped into the rock.

Was this how the Alben of old traveled their Albenpaths, with eyes wide open, through the elements?

Nuramon felt the moment when he crossed the threshold of the Albenstar. Their surroundings changed, the pale stone transforming to reddish brown. Two steps farther on, Nuramon’s face emerged from the stone. In front of him was a passage flanked by two cinnamon-colored walls. They were in a narrow chasm where no more than a feeble ray of sunlight penetrated. The floor of the gorge was sand with a pattern of ripples. At some time in the past, it may have been a creek bed, but no one had walked over it for a very, very long time.

Nuramon looked around. Alwerich was not with him. Alarmed, Nuramon turned full circle, searching, when, suddenly, a sheepish, grinning face emerged from the rock, and Alwerich stepped out.

“Where were you?” asked Nuramon.

“If this is the gate, then I think I was in the guardroom. And I found this in there,” Alwerich said, and he opened his hand. On his palm lay a small figurine of a dragon made of green stone. “It’s a dwarven jade amulet, a lucky charm.”

Nuramon shook his head. The dwarf, who just a moment before had shied away from the gate, was now moving around in it as if it were a corridor in his own home.

Alwerich ran his hand over the walls of the chasm. “I’ve never seen rock like this before. Where are we?”

Nuramon could not be certain. The air was as clear as in the mountains in the world of mortals, but not as pure as in Albenmark. “I’d say we’re still in the human world, but I don’t know for certain.” Nuramon stopped speaking at the sound of something in the distance. He looked up. He heard cries of some sort penetrating into the gorge from far away. They sounded like animal noises. “Wherever we are, let’s hope Dareen is also here.”

They followed the narrow chasm. Nuramon moved ahead. The sand here was so fine that even he left tracks in it. He was reluctant to destroy the harmony of the fine pattern of ripples as he went, but when he looked back, he realized that his tracks were nothing compared with the deep imprints left by Alwerich’s boots. The dwarf seemed not even to notice what he was doing to the sand.

Gradually, the path climbed. Overhead, in a blue sky, a large bird circled. Nuramon did not recognize the species, but it was something like a falcon. This was definitely not the Shattered World. There was too much life here for that. It had to be a place in the human world.

The chasm soon opened into a small basin. On the right, close to the rock wall, was a lagoon, in the middle of which a stone with water bubbling out of it rose above the water. Around the shore of the lagoon grew grass, trees, bushes, and shrubs with star-shaped flowers. On the other side of the valley, in the sheer wall, yawned the mouth of a cave. That might be where the grotto of the stars was, the one mentioned in the song.

Saying nothing, Nuramon and Alwerich moved closer. They did not want to disturb the oracle unnecessarily. Nuramon looked at the lagoon. He wondered where the water flowed and thought of Noroelle’s lake and the special magic it possessed.

So this was the home of Dareen. Nuramon had never visited an oracle before, although there were several in Albenmark. Few sought them out, for they had grown remote and taciturn. He wondered how Dareen might look. She might belong to one of the races that still dwelled in Albenmark. Perhaps she was an elf, a faery, a water nymph, maybe even a centaur.

They had just begun to walk away from the lagoon when an elf woman appeared at the mouth of the cave, wearing a plain sand-colored robe. Raven hair fell in long waves over her shoulders. She stood there motionlessly and watched them.

In some trepidation, Nuramon and Alwerich approached her. Even when they were standing in front of her, Nuramon did not dare say a word. The elf woman’s eyes, coal-black and fascinating, seemed to bore into him.

“I see the children of light and shadow hand in hand,” she said in a clear voice. “It has been a long time since you came to visit me. I am Dareen, the oracle.”

Nuramon looked down at his companion, who was gazing at the elf woman as if spellbound. When he turned back to Dareen, he was shocked to suddenly see a dwarf woman standing before him, although she bore some similarity to the elf who had been there a moment earlier. “I show myself to the Albenkin in a number of guises. I will make it easy for you.” For a moment, nothing happened, but then Nuramon blinked and the dwarf woman suddenly changed into another kind of Albenkin, one who could have passed for either a short, stout elf woman or a very slim dwarf.

“What is your true form?” Nuramon asked.

The oracle laughed gently. “What is
your
true form, Nuramon? Is it the one standing before me? Or is it the warrior you saw just a few days ago? Maybe it was the body of the first who bore your name. But it may also be that your true form is still waiting for you. So I ask you, what is yours?”

“I don’t know. Please excuse my question.”

“Don’t ask for forgiveness. I am here to answer questions. And if I answer with a question of my own, then it is only because by doing so, I might open up your spirit. I do have a true form, but it would seem strange to you and would tell you far less than this body.” She turned to the dwarf. “Come, Alwerich. Follow me back to the star grotto.” But she said to Nuramon, “Wait here. You can refresh yourself at the lagoon.” Then she turned and walked back into the cave, and Alwerich followed.

Nuramon remained behind. He felt dizzy. He went back to the lagoon and drank a little of its water. It was cool and sent a shiver through his body. The dizziness passed.

When he looked at the surface of the lagoon, he thought of Noroelle’s spring. He took her pendant from around his neck and dipped into the cool water the almandine that his beloved, through Obilee, had given him. The red-brown stone sparkled there as all the other stones once had in Noroelle’s lake.

Nuramon looked back to the cave entrance. He wondered what Alwerich had asked. The dwarf had not wanted to tell him anything about it on their journey here, saying instead that he had made a promise to Thorwis to keep it to himself.

Nuramon, by contrast, had been open with his companion and had told him about Noroelle. Alwerich had clearly been able to feel what she meant to him. The dwarf had followed his wife, Solstane, into death several times to be close to her in the next life. Nuramon wished it were as simple for him. Alwerich had offered to go with him for the rest of his journey, but Nuramon had turned him down. The dwarf would do better to return to Aelburin and live the life he deserved there with his wife. Nuramon had told him about Mandred’s wife, about the time lost, time that had passed for them in just a few steps. He did not want Alwerich’s life to take such a turn, even though he—unlike Mandred—would be born again.

When Nuramon placed the chain around his neck again and felt the cold almandine against his chest, he wondered what power was hidden in the stone. It had lain for so long, so many years, on the floor of Noroelle’s lake. Noroelle had told him that the gem had been nourished by the magic of the lake. It was more than just a keepsake for her lover. But Nuramon did not know how he could draw whatever special power the stone possessed out of it. Perhaps it was just that the time was not yet ripe.

When Alwerich came back from the cave, he looked stunned. The dwarf had clearly heard things he had never reckoned with. Stammering, he said to Nuramon, “You can go in now.” Then he sat on a stone by the lagoon and gazed into the water.

Nuramon did not ask what he had seen. If he had not wanted to reveal his question to Nuramon, he would hardly betray the answer now. The elf left his comrade in arms by the lagoon and, in his turn, entered the cave.

At first, he found himself in a small chamber from which three passages led deeper into the rock. From one of these, a blue glow emanated, while from the other passages came a gray light.

Dareen appeared in the passage with the blue light. Nuramon followed her in silence. The passage led straight back into a dark cave. The walls were as dark as a moonless night, but above him curved a starry sky that gave off a little light. The stars seemed so real, as if Dareen had plucked them from the night sky. So this was the star grotto.

The oracle stood in the center of the cave, where a glowing blue stone plate was set into the floor. Dareen, her voice full of empathy, immediately began to speak. “I see two desires in you, Nuramon. Of those two, I can fulfill only one. With the other, I can only show you the way. The first desire is that you recover your memory. You want to be one again with your earlier lives. Your other wish is to free the one you love. I can give you back your memory here and now, but I cannot set Noroelle free. I will only help you a little farther along your way. Which do you choose?”

Dareen’s words came as a blow to Nuramon. He was standing here just one question away from recalling his past. Here, now, he could retrieve all his earlier lives. Maybe that recollection would help him in his search for Noroelle. Still, he did not want to take that risk. Even the smallest clue about where to find Noroelle was worth more to him than the memory of his earlier lives. “I came here with the intention of asking you about the place where the woman I love is a prisoner. And I hope to be able to leave with an answer. My memory will one day return of its own accord.”

“A wise choice, Nuramon. I see in you all that has happened. And I will tell you things that will help you. I cannot tell you everything, because if you know too much, things won’t happen that have to happen. What I can show you is there.” She pointed to the ceiling directly overhead.

Nuramon looked up. Beneath the stars, a landscape appeared. A large lake, or perhaps a bay by the sea, with forests along the shore. Beyond the forests, far off, he could see a range of mountains. Not far from the shore lay an island with a small grove of trees.

“This is the place you are seeking. If you find the way from this island to the Shattered World, then you will reach the woman you love.”

“I will find this place, if I have to search for centuries,” said Nuramon, unable to take his eyes off the landscape above his head. He burned the image into his mind. He would never forget it. He literally had his goal before his eyes. And the image was very revealing. It seemed that the gate to reach Noroelle lay somewhere in the northern parts of the human world, or perhaps high up in a mountain range. He need search no longer in the desert or on its fringes or in the barren kingdom of Angnos.

Without warning, the image faded and vanished. The island, the water, the shore, all of it dissolved. Nuramon continued to stare at where it had been. He had memorized every detail.

“I will tell you something else,” said Dareen. “There are only two things that can break the spell. The hourglass or an Albenstone.”

Her words nearly knocked him over. That the hourglass and the grains of sand actually did represent a way to reach her meant less to him than her mention of an Albenstone. He had left to find a path that was easier than Farodin’s, and now he had to accept that his path was perhaps much more difficult. He shook his head. “But how am I supposed to find an Albenstone? I only know that the queen has one. But she—”