Destiny

Epilogue

Emissaries arrived before summer ended. They came from Solamnia and Ergoth, Sanction and Schallsea, and numerous other cities across the land. The soldiers among the delegations noted with practiced eyes the great wall being erected across the mouth of the valley. The design was typically elven: elegant and clean with soaring buttresses and high towers whose slender shapes belied their great underlying strength. Behind the outer wall, a second had been started, and beyond it lay the foundations of a third. The mountains ringing Inath-Wakenti were rich in granite. No effort was being spared to make the walls high and thick. It would be some time before the defenses were complete, but when they were, no army could hope to force the passage.

The visitors were conducted along a road of finely crushed blue granite to the budding city in the center of the valley. There they were received by the Speaker of the Sun and Stars in a palace complex being built atop the largest single slab of stone any of the visitors had ever seen. None knew the significance of the Tympanum, but all wondered at the broad crack bisecting it.

Before winter claimed the outer world, a special emissary arrived from Khuri-Khan. General Hakkam led a party of forty high lords from the court of Sahim-Khan. All were attired in the panoply of Khur, a splendid display, if barbarous to elf eyes. Clan totems were rendered in gold atop broad-brimmed helmets. Every shoulder, every elbow bristled with a shining steel spike, and each man’s hooded sun mantle was spotlessly white—the color of wealth in dusty Khur.

Although city-dwellers rather than superstitious nomads, the Khurish delegation still preferred not to enter the Valley of the Blue Sands. As a conciliatory gesture to his reluctant ally, Gilthas broke protocol by meeting them just inside the uncompleted valley wall. He arrived on foot, shaded from the late-autumn sun by a long canopy of flowers supported by a dozen young elves. Although large, the canopy weighed very little and rippled in the slight breeze. The canny Speaker also wore white. Even his aurochs-leather sandals were pale as mountain snow. The only touches of color were the square-cut amethysts decorating the ends of the cord tied around the waist of his robe.

Hamaramis, Taranath, and a retinue of warriors followed their sovereign. They, too, were clad in white and bedecked with flowers. The display had been carefully orchestrated, and it had just the impact Gilthas intended. As desert-dwellers, the Khurs regarded flowers and green plants with deep reverence. Presenting his people awash in blossoms—so near winter, no less-proclaimed Gilthas’s power far better than gilded raiment would have. The elves presented a pageant of wealth and success, the kind that fills bellies and swells coffers with income from trade.

The Khurish delegation halted their horses and watched with barely concealed amazement as the laddad khan approached. In lieu of a silver or gold crown, Gilthas wore a circlet of green ivy. When he stopped, the youths also halted, sending a slow undulation along the length of the floral canopy.

“Hail, Great Speaker! May you reign a thousand years!” Hakkam cried.

“Oh, not quite that long,” Gilthas replied genially, turning the Khur’s hyperbole into a subtle reminder of the long life spans of elves. Hamaramis and Taranath both bit back smiles.

Somewhat taken aback, Hakkam blinked but forged ahead.

“You are well, Great Speaker?”

“I am. How fares my friend, the mighty Sahim-Khan?”

“The Khan of All the Khurs feasts on the fear of his enemies!”

“No doubt. What news do you bring, General?”

“The mighty Sahim-Khan bade me tell you that when the autumn stars were high in the sky, he drove out the ambassador from Neraka and all his hirelings.”

“Good!” Hamaramis said. Gilthas waited a long moment to reply, silently rebuking the general for speaking out of turn, then inquired of Hakkam what had precipitated the expulsion.

The human frowned. “It is well known the over-the-mountain men have long stirred up treason against our august khan. Your Majesty sent proof of that to my master months ago.”

Gilthas had had no word from Robien on the success or failure of his embassy to the khan. He was glad to know the bounty hunter had gotten the priestess’s message through.

“Yes,” he said benignly. “Many months ago.”

Hakkam leaned on his saddle pommel, scowling at the implied criticism. “The roots of bribery and treachery were deep. It took the khan’s loyal vassals time to bring all to light.”

Gilthas offered congratulations to Sahim-Khan and his steadfast defenders. “Is that all?” he asked.

The forty Khurish lords stirred on their horses. Plainly, that was not all Hakkam had come to say, but he seemed to have difficulty choosing his words. Finally, he said, “A rebellion has broken out in the south of our country. The tribesmen have rallied around a treacherous leader.”

Many of the elves present immediately thought of Porthios. But he’d gone to Qualinesti. He should be nowhere near Khur.

“Who is this leader?” Gilthas asked.

“He who was Shobbat.”

Despite his surprise, Gilthas made careful note of that phrasing: not “Crown Prince Shobbat” nor “His Highness,” but only “Shobbat.” He expressed his regret at the turn of events, saying “Family wounds are always the deepest.”

Hakkam drew a short, rolled scroll from inside his gauntlet. Taranath rode forward to convey it to Gilthas.

“My master, the mighty Sahim-Khan, proposes an alliance. In that document are his terms. If the Great Speaker would care to read—”

“I shall.” Gilthas tucked the scroll into his belt. “When I have done so, I will give you my answer.”

He turned away. The canopy bearers about-faced. Hamaramis and the warriors turned their horses, and the entire entourage departed the way it had come. The Khurs were left fuming. All Hakkam could do was lead his own delegation back beyond the unfinished walls where they would make camp and await the Speaker’s answer.

Gilthas returned alone to his tent—not the large, open structure in which he conducted the daily affairs of state, but a smaller habitation that would serve as his private quarters until the new palace eventually was completed. The focus of construction in Inath-Wakenti was on humbler structures than the palace, by Gilthas’s own decree. More important to him was that his people have strong roofs over their heads. When those were done, then work would resume on the Speaker’s royal residence.

Within, he found Kerian reclining in a sling chair. Her face had taken on a rosy flush, and her hair had grown long enough to brush her shoulders. Her pregnancy was well advanced, and she did not bother trying to rise when he entered.

The gestation had gone much more quickly than usual. Truthanar believed the Great Change had somehow sped up the process. All the elf women in Inath-Wakenti who were pregnant were much further along than normal. An odd but popular belief was that the souls of those warriors lost to the will-o’-the-wisps were returning in the bodies of newborn babes. Kerian openly scoffed at the notion, but Gilthas could not. His own losses were severe enough that he would never deny solace to others. He knew he would grieve the deaths of his mother and Planchet for the rest of his days.

“How was old Hakkam?” she asked, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.

“Piratical as ever.”

He went to a small sideboard and poured them both some fruit juice. As he handed her a cup, he pulled the scroll from his belt. “He gave me this. Sahim wants an alliance. Shobbat’s rebellion is gaining ground.”

“What are you going to do?”

He sat down facing her and placed a hand on her belly. “Talk to my son.”

“We don’t know it will be a boy.”

“Truthanar says so.” Gilthas closed his eyes. Hello, son. How are you today? If you are well, give us a sign.

Whether Gilthas was communing with their child or not, the baby did kick his mother quite vigorously. Opening his eyes, Gilthas smiled broadly. Kerian shoved his hand away, but a grudging smile lightened her expression.

“Stop teaching her bad habits.” Growing serious again, she said, “You remember our bargain?”

He sighed. “You still intend to hold me to it?”

“Yes!”

“And what of our child? Can you leave him alone so easily?”

“Alone? Gil, there’ll be scores of elves vying for the chance to tend him!”

“A child needs his mother.”

“And his father. And a homeland.”

It was an old argument, given new urgency by a stream of news from the west. Word had come from Alhana that the revolt in Qualinesti was stalled. The Army of Liberation had landed on the east coast in midsummer and driven inland, swiftly cutting the country in two. Samuval’s army was pushed back over the border into Abanasinia. It seemed the end of the bandits’ reign, but local Nerakan forces south of the Ahlanlas River counterattacked, breaking the siege and freeing Samuval’s army. A vicious back-and-forth war raged: one side would take a town only to lose it the very next week. Central Qualinesti had become uninhabitable, full of abandoned villages and despoiled farms. The cruel impasse served no one, as thousands of Samuval’s troops battled hunger as well as the elves. Kerian was determined to join the fight, and she’d struck a bargain with Gilthas. Once the baby was born, she would fly to Qualinesti. He had agreed, believing that when the time actually came, she wouldn’t be able to leave their baby. He’d been berating himself for a fool ever since. When had the Lioness ever shown herself unwilling to join a fight, whatever the cost to herself?

Argument was pointless, but he still had to try. He took her hand. “Can you really leave us?”

“Only with your blessing.” She gripped his hand hard. “Do I have it?”

Misery filled his eyes, and she pulled him close. What use was there in wishing her to be other than what she was? Would he change her if he could? Of course not. But a part of him couldn’t help wishing she would give up placing herself in danger.

Burying his face in her neck, he whispered, “Whatever you choose to do, you have my blessing.”

He was proud of her courage and, ultimately, shared her desire to regain the lands they’d lost. But he didn’t have the luxury of following that dream. At moments such as this, he hated being Speaker, unable to deny the higher cause of his country in favor of his own family. Such was the price of kingship.

Their child was born on the first day of the new year. Naming a son was a father’s privilege, and Gilthas chose the name Balifaris, meaning “Young Balif.”

Hamaramis, standing in as the mother’s father, held Kerian’s hand through the delivery. Afterward, he swore it was more painful for him than it had been for her. His hand did indeed sport a bandage, but Truthanar assured him the breaks would heal cleanly.

Soaked in sweat, Kerian held her son close. Mother and child had drifted off to sleep. In a whisper, the old general asked the Speaker the significance of the name he had chosen.

“Balif, although cursed and cast out, forged a new nation. I hope my son can do the same.” His strange hallucination while at the brink of death had left Gilthas with a feeling of kinship to the long-dead Silvanesti.

Kerian was a loving if plainspoken mother. She was also true to her word. Three months to the day after Balifaris was born, she bade son and husband an emotional farewell, mounted Eagle Eye, and flew off into the late-afternoon sky.

When she and her griffon were lost from sight, Gilthas felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his old archivist, Favaronas.

Since the Great Change, the Speaker’s favorite librarian had been little seen, spending all his days writing down his strange experiences in the Silent Vale. His close association with the sorcerer Faeterus had left him with startling conclusions about the origin of Inath-Wakenti and its power. Dragonstones and godly magic were not behind the valley’s weird nature, he believed. For centuries before and after the founding of the first elf realm, Speaker Silvanos, supplemented by a corps of powerful mages, had worked to suppress all clerical opposition to the throne. Mage by mage, enemies of the Speaker had their powers stripped away and sealed into the standing stones of Inath-Wakenti. The Brown Hood Society of wild sorcerers were wiped out to the last elf, for example. Later, the mage Vedvedsica tried to create his own race, using arcane magic to transform animals into the semblance of elves. The transformations did not last. Exposed as abominations, his creations were confined in Inath-Wakenti for all time, together with their maker. Vedvedsica was “the Father Who Made Not His Children” mentioned in the scrolls.

Floating lights were set to guard the valley, keeping the beast-elves in and all other animals out. But one creature escaped, perhaps with Vedvedsica’s help, and with illicit longevity spells kept himself alive so he might one day avenge the treatment of the exiles. That sole escapee was Faeterus, who loathed the elf race and plotted its obliteration.

With his chronicle complete, Favaronas had accepted a new role, that of tutor to the Speaker’s son.

“Come, sire,” he said softly. “It’s time for the child’s lessons to begin.”

Pulling his attention from the clouds that had swallowed his wife, Gilthas regarded him with surprise.

“But he’s only an infant.”

The scholar shouldered a large bag of scrolls. “Yes, sire. And he has so much to learn.”

At the empty volcanic shell that once had housed the Oracle of the Tree, an old man sat on the sand, his back against the black stone spire. He’d found the guise an excellent one. Being old—visibly old, like a human—conferred many advantages. Listeners were respectful. They didn’t fall on their faces and cower, nor did they expect him to perform impossible feats with a snap of his fingers. He came and went mysteriously, gave suitably obscure advice, and gently guided the affairs of mortals rather than directing them. It was a most satisfactory arrangement.

Was.

For his interference in the elves’ fate, he had earned a severe punishment. As autumn painted the forests of old Qualinesti in every shade of gold, russet, and red, he found himself plucked up and judged. The sentence was five hundred years’ banishment, the loss of his divine powers, and (a twist he considered particularly ironic) confinement in the feeble body he once had used only as a disguise. As of today, he had four hundred ninety-nine years and ten months to go.

He put back his head and laughed. The sound rang off the stone spire at his back and carried across the empty sands until distance consumed it. He was banished, confined to a weak and pain-riddled form, but the elf race would survive.

It was worth it.