Dragons of the Fallen Sun

Chapter Four A Strange Awakening

Silvan’s arm was on fire. He couldn’t put out the blaze, and no one would come help him. He called out for Samar and for his mother, but his calls went unanswered. He was angry, deeply angry, angry and hurt that they would not come, that they were ignoring him. Then he realized that the reason they were not coming was that they were angry with him. He had failed them. He had let them down, and they would come to him no more. . . .

With a great cry, Silvan woke himself. He opened his eyes to see above him a canopy of gray. His vision was slightly blurred, and he mistook the gray mass above him for the gray ceiling of the burial mound. His arm pained him, and he remembered the fire. Gasping, he shifted to put out the flames. Pain lanced through his arm and hammered in his head. He saw no flames, and he realized dazedly that the fire had been a dream. The pain in his left arm was not a dream, however. The pain was real. He examined the arm as best he could, though every movement of his head cost him a gasp.

Not much doubt. The arm was broken just above the wrist.

The flesh was swollen so that it looked like a monster arm, a strange color of greenish purple. He lay back down and stared around him, feeling sorry for himself, and wondered very much that his mother did not come to him when he was in such agony. . . .

“Mother!” Silvan sat up so suddenly that the pain coiled round his gut and caused him to vomit.

He had no idea how he came to be here or even where here was. He knew where he was supposed to be, knew he had been dispatched to bring help to his beleagured people. He looked around, trying to gain some sense of the time. Night had passed.

The sun shone in the sky. He had mistaken a canopy of gray leaves for the ceiling of the burial mound. Dead gray leaves, hanging listlessly from dead branches. Death had not come naturally, as with the fall of the year, causing them to release their hold on life and drift in a dream of reds and golds upon the crisp air.

The life had been sucked from leaves and branches, trunk and roots, leaving them desiccated, mummified but still standing, a husk, an empty mockery of life.

Silvan had never seen a blight of this kind attack so many trees before, and his soul shrank from the sight. He could not take time to consider it, however. He had to complete his mission.

The sky above was a pearl gray with a strange kind of shimmer that he put down to the aftereffects of the storm. Not so many hours have passed, he told himself. The army could hold out this long. I have not failed them utterly. I can still bring help.

He needed to splint his arm, and he searched through the forest undergrowth for a strong stick. Thinking he’d found what he sought, he put out his hand to grasp it. The stick disintegrated beneath his fingers, turned to dust. He stared, startled. The ash was wet and had a greasy feel to it. Repulsed, he wiped his hand on his shirt, wet from the rain.

All around him were gray trees. Gray and dying or gray and dead. The grass was gray, the weeds gray, the fallen branches gray, all with that look of having been sucked dry.

He’d seen something like this before or heard of something like this. . . . He didn’t recall what, and he had no time to think.

He searched with increasingly frantic urgency among the graycovered undergrowth for a stick and found one eventually, a stick that was covered with dust but had not been struck with the strange blight. Placing the stick on his arm, gasping at the pain, he gritted his teeth against it. He ripped off a shred of his shirt-tail and tied the splint in place. He could hear the broken ends of the bone grind together. The pain and the hideous sound combined to nearly make him pass out. He sat hunched over, his head down, fighting the nausea, the sudden heat that swept over his body.

Finally, the star bursts cleared from his vision. The pain eased somewhat. Holding his injured left arm close to his body, Silvan staggered to his feet. The wind had died. He could no longer feel its guiding touch upon his face. He could not see the sun itself for the pearl gray clouds, but the light shone brightest in one portion of the sky, which meant that way must be east. Silvan put his back to the light and looked to the west.

He did not remember his fall or what had occurred just prior to the fall. He began to talk to himself, finding the sound of his voice comforting.

“The last thing I remember, I was within sight of the road I needed to take to reach Sithelnost,” he said. He spoke in Silvanesti, the language of his childhood, the language his mother favored.

A hill rose up above him. He was standing in the bottom of a ravine, a ravine he vaguely remembered from the night before.

“Someone either climbed or fell down into the ravine,” he said, eyeing a crooked trail left in the gray ash that covered the hillside. He smiled ruefully. “My guess would be that someone was me. I must have taken a misstep in the darkness, tumbled down the ravine. Which means,” he added, heartened, “the road must lie right up there. I do not have far to go.”

He began to climb back up the steep sides of the ravine, but this proved more difficult than he’d supposed. The gray ash had formed a silt with the rain and was slippery as goose grease. He slid down the hill twice, jarring his injured arm, causing him almost to lose consciousness.

“This will never do,” Silvan muttered.

He stayed at the bottom of the ravine where the walking was easier, always keeping the top of the hill in sight, hoping to find an outcropping of rock that would act as a staircase up the slippery slope.

He stumbled over the uneven ground in a haze of pain and fear. Every step brought a jolt of pain to his arm. He pushed himself on, however, trudging through the gray mud that seemed to try to drag him down among the dead vegetation, searching for a way out of this gray vale of death that he grew to loathe as a prisoner loathes his cell.

He was parched with thirst. The taste of ash filled his mouth, and he longed for a drink of water to wash it away. He found a puddle once, but it was covered with a gray film, and he could not bring himself to drink from it. He staggered on.

“I have to reach the road,” he said and repeated it many times like a mantra, matching his footfalls to its rhythm. “I have to go on,” he said to himself dreamily, “because if I die down here, I will turn into one of the gray mummies like the trees and no one will ever find me.”

The ravine came to a sudden end in a jumble of rock and fallen trees. Silvan straightened, drew in a deep breath and wiped chill sweat from his forehead. He rested a moment, then began to climb, his feet slipping on the rocks, sending him scrabbling backward more than once. Grimly, he pressed on, determined to escape the ravine if it proved to be the last act of his life. He drew nearer and nearer the top, up to the point where he thought he should have been able to see the road.

He peered out through the boles of the gray trees, certain the road must be there but unable to see it due to some sort of strange distortion of the air, a distortion that caused the trees to waver in his sight.

Silvan continued to climb.

“A mirage,” he said. “Like seeing water in the middle of the road on a hot day. It will disappear when I come near it.”

He reached the top of the hill and tried to see through the trees to the road he knew must lie beyond. In order to keep moving, moving through the pain, he had concentrated his focus upon the road until the road had become his one goal.

“I have to reach the road,” he mumbled, picking up the mantra. “The road is the end of pain, the road will save me, save my people. Once I reach the road, I am certain to run into a band of elven scouts from my mother’s army. I will turn over my mission to them. Then I will lie down upon the road and my pain will end and the gray ash will cover me . . .”

He slipped, nearly fell. Fear jolted him out of his terrible reverie. Silvan stood trembling, staring about, prodding his mind to return from whatever comforting place it had been trying to find refuge. He was only a few feet from the road. Here, he was thankful to see, the trees were not dead, though they appeared to be suffering from some sort of blight. The leaves were still green, though they drooped, wilting. The bark of the trunks had an unhealthy look to it, was staring to drop off in places.

He looked past them. He could see the road, b\lt he could not see it clearly. The road wavered in his vision until he grew dizzy to look at it. He wondered uneasily if this was due to his fall.

“Perhaps I am going blind,” he said to himself.

Frightened, he turned his head and looked behind him. His vision cleared. The gray trees stood straight, did not shimmer. Relieved, he looked back to the road. The distortion returned.

“Strange,” he muttered. “I wonder what is causing this?”

His walk slowed involuntarily. He studied the distortion closely. He had the oddest impression that the distortion was like a cobweb spun by some horrific spider strung between him and the road, and he was reluctant to come near the shimmer. The disquieting feeling came over him that the shimmering web would seize him and hold him and suck him dry as it had sucked dry the trees. Yet beyond the distortion was the road, his goal, his hope.

He took a step toward the road and came to a sudden halt. He could not go on. Yet there lay the road, only a few steps away.

Gritting his teeth, he shoved forward, cringing as if he expected to feel sticky web cling to his face.

Silvan’s way was blocked. He felt nothing. No physical presence halted him, but he could not move. Rather, he could not move forward. He could move sideways, he could move backward. He could not move ahead.

“An invisible barrier. Gray ash. Trees dead and dying,” he murmured.

He reached into the swirling depths of pain and fear and despair and brought forth the answer.

“The shield. This is the shield!” he repeated, aghast.

The magical shield that the Silvanesti had dropped over their homeland. He had never seen it, but he’d heard his mother describe it often enough. He had heard others describe the strange shimmer, the distortion in the air produced by the shield.

“It can’t be,” Silvan cried in frustration. “The shield cannot be here. It is south of my position! I was on the road, traveling west. The shield was south of me.” He twisted, looked up to find the sun, but the clouds had thickened, and he could not see it.

The answer came to him and with it bitter despair. “I’m turned around,” he said. “I’ve come all this way. . . and it’s been the wrong way!”

Tears stung his eyelids. The thought of descending this hill, of going back down into the ravine, of retracing his steps, each step that had cost him so dearly in pain, was almost too much to bear.

He sank down to the ground, gave way to his misery.

“ Alhana! Mother!” he said in agony, “forgive me! I have failed you! What have I ever done in life but fail you. . . ?”

“Who are you who speaks the name that is forbidden to speak?” said a voice. “Who are you who speaks the name Alhana?”

Silvan leaped to his feet. He dashed the tears from his eyes with a backhand smear, looked about, startled, to see who had spoken.

At first he saw only a patch of vibrant, living green, and he thought that he had discovered a portion of the forest untouched by the disease that had stricken the rest. But then the patch moved and shifted and revealed a face and eyes and mouth and hands, revealed itself to be an elf.

The elf’s eyes were gray as the forest around him, but they were only reflecting the death he saw, revealing the grief he felt for the loss.

“Who am I who speaks my mother’s name?” Silvan asked impatiently. “Her son, of course.” He took a lurching step forward, hand outstretched. “But the battle. . . Tell me how the battle went! How did we fare?”

The elf drew back, away from Silvan’s touch. “What battle?” he asked.

Silvan stared at the man. As he did so, he noted movement behind him. Three more elves emerged from the woods. He would have never seen them had they not stirred, and he wondered how long they had been there. Silvan did not recognize them, but that wasn’t unusual. He did not venture out much among the common soldiers of his mother’s forces. She did not encourage such companionship for her son, who was someday destined to be king, would one day be their ruler.

“The battle!” Silvan repeated impatiently. “We were attacked by ogres in the night! Surely, you must. . .”

Realization dawned on him. These elves were not dressed for warfare. They were clad in clothes meant for traveling. They might well not know of any battle.

“You must be part of the long-range patrol. You’ve come back in good time.” Silvan paused, concentrated his thoughts, trying to penetrate the smothering fog of pain and despair. “We were attacked last night, during the storm. An army of ogres. I . . .” He paused, bit his lip, reluctant to reveal his failure. “I was sent to fetch aid. The Legion of Steel has a fortress near Sithelnost. Down that road.” He made a feeble gesture. “I must have fallen. My arm is broken. I came the wrong way and now I must backtrack, and I don’t have the strength. I can’t make it, but you can. Take this message to the commander of the legion. Tell him that Alhana Starbreeze is under attack. . . .”

He stopped speaking. One of the elves had made a sound, a slight exclamation. The elf in the lead, the first to approach Silvan, raised his hand to impose silence.

Silvan was growing increasingly exasperated. He was mortifyingly aware that he cut but a poor figure, clutching his wounded arm to his side like a hurt bird dragging a wing. But he was desperate. The time must be midmorning now. He could not go on. He was very close to collapse. He drew himself up, draped in the cloak of his title and the dignity it lent him.

“You are in the service of my mother, Alhana Starbreeze,” he said, his voice imperious. “She is not here, but her son, Silvanoshei, your prince, stands before you. In her name and in my own, I command you to bear her message calling for deliverance to the Legion of Steel. Make haste! I am losing patience!”

He was also rapidly losing his grip on consciousness, but he didn’t want these soldiers to think him weak. Wavering on his feet, he reached out a hand to steady himself on a tree trunk. The elves had not moved. They were staring at him now in wary astonishment that widened their almond eyes. They shifted their gazes to the road that lay beyond the shield, looked back at him.

“Why do you stand there staring at me?” Silvan cried. “Do as you are commanded! I am your prince!” A thought came to him. “You need have no fear of leaving me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” He waved his hand. “Just go! Go! Save our people!”

The lead elf moved closer, his gray eyes intent upon Silvan, looking through him, sifting, sorting.

“What do you mean that you went the wrong way upon the road?”

“Why do you waste time with foolish questions?” Silvan returned angrily. “I will report you to Samar! I will have you demoted!” He glowered at the elf, who continued to regard him steadily. “The shield lies to the south of the road. I was traveling to Sithelnost. I must have gotten turned around when I fell! Because the shield. . . the road. . .”

He turned around to stare behind him. He tried to think this through, but his head was too muzzy from the pain.

“It can’t be,” he whispered.

No matter what direction he would have taken, he must have still been able to reach the road, which lay outside the shield.

The road still lay outside the shield. He was the one who was inside it.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are in Silvanesti,” answered the elf.

Silvan closed his eyes. All was lost. His failure was complete.

He sank to his knees and pitched forward to lie face down in the gray ash. He heard voices but they were far away and receding rapidly.

“Do you think it is truly him?”

“Yes. It is.”

“How can you be sure, Rolan? Perhaps it is a trick!”

“You saw him. You heard him. You heard the anguish in his voice, you saw the desperation in his eyes. His arm is broken. Look at the bruises on his face, his tom and muddy clothes. We found the trail in ash left by his fall. We heard him talking to himself when he did not know we were close by. We saw him try to reach the road. How can you possibly doubt?”

Silence, then, in a piercing hiss, “But how did he come through the shield?”

“Some god sent him to us,” said the lead elf, and Silvan felt a gentle hand touch his cheek.

“What god?” The other was bitter, skeptical. “There are no gods.”

Silvan woke to find his vision clear, his senses restored. A dull ache in his head made thinking difficult, and at first he was content to lie quite still, take in his surroundings, while his brain scrambled to make sense of what was happening. He remembered the road. . .

Silvan struggled to sit up.

A firm hand on his chest arrested his movement.

“Do not move too hastily. I have set your arm and wrapped it in a poultice that will speed the healing. But you must take care not to Jar It.”

Silvan looked at his surroundings. He had the thought at first that it had all been a dream, that he would wake to find himself once again in the burial mound. He had not been dreaming, however. The boles of the trees were the same as he remembered-ugly gray, diseased, dying. The bed of leaves on which he lay was a deathbed of rotting vegetation. The young trees and plants and flowers that carpeted the forest floor drooped and languished.

Silvanoshei took the elf’s counsel and lay back down, more to give himself time to sort out the confusion over what had happened to him than because he needed the rest.

“How do you feel?” The elf’s tone was respectful.

“My head hurts a little,” Silvan replied. “But the pain in my arm is gone.”

“Good,” said the elf. “You may sit up then. Slowly, slowly. Otherwise you will pass out.”

A strong arm assisted Silvan to a seated position. He felt a brief flash of dizziness and nausea, but he closed his eyes until the sick feeling passed.

The elf held a wooden bowl to Silvan’s lips.

“What’s this?” he asked, eying with suspicion the brown liquid the bowl contained.

“ An herbal potion,” replied the elf. “I believe that you have suffered a mild concussion. This will ease the pain in your head and promote the healing. Come, drink it. Why do you refuse?”

“I have been taught never to eat or drink anything unless I know who prepared it and I have seen others taste it first,”

Silvanoshei replied.

The elf was amazed. “Even from another elf?”

“Especially from another elf,” Silvanoshei replied grimly.

“Ah,” said the elf, regarding him with sorrow. “Yes, of course. I understand.”

Silvan attempted to rise to his feet, but the dizziness assailed him again. The elf put the bowl to his own lips and drank several mouthfuls. Then, politely wiping the edge of the bowl, he offered it again to Silvanoshei.

“Consider this, young man. If I wanted you dead, I could have slain you while you were unconscious. Or I could have simply left you here.” He cast a glance around at the gray and withered trees. “Your death would be slower and more painful, but it would come to you as it has come to too many of us.”

Silvanoshei thought this over as best he could through the throbbing of his head. What the elf said made sense. He took the bowl in unsteady hands and lifted it to his lips. The liquid was bitter, smelled and tasted of tree bark. The potion suffused his body with a pleasant warmth. The pain in his head eased, the dizziness passed.

Silvanoshei saw that he had been a fool to think this elf was a member of his mother’s army. This elf wore a cloak strange to Silvan, a cloak made of leather that had the appearance of leaves and sunlight and grass and brush and flowers. Unless the elf moved, he would blend into his forest surroundings so perfectly that he would never be detected. Here in the midst of death, he stood out; his cloak retaining the green memory of the living forest, as if in defiance.

“How long have I been unconscious?” Silvan asked.

“Several hours from when we found you this morning. It is Midyear’s Day, if that helps you in your reckoning.”

Silvan glanced around. “Where are the others?” He had the thought that they might be in hiding.

“Where they need to be,” the elf answered.

“I thank you for helping me. You have business elsewhere, and so do I.” Silvan rose to his feet. “I must go. It may be too late...” He tasted bitter gall in his mouth, took a moment to choke it down. “I must still fulfill my mission. If you will show me the place I can use to pass back through the shield. . .”

The elf regarded him with that same strange intensity. “There is no way through the shield.”

“But there has to be!” Silvan retorted angrily. “I came through, didn’t I?” He glanced back at the trees standing near the road, “I saw the strange distortion. I’ll go back to the point where I fell. I’ll pass through there.”

Grimly, he started off, retracing his steps. The elf said no word to halt him but accompanied him, following after him in silence.

Could his mother and her army have held out against the ogres this long? Silvan had seen the army perform some incredible feats. He had to believe the answer was yes. He had to believe there was still time.

Silvan found the place where he must have entered the shield, found the trail his body had left as it rolled down the ravine. The gray ash had been slippery when he’d first tried to climb back up, but it had dried now. The way was easier. Taking care not to jar his injured arm, Silvan clambored up the hill. The elf waited in the bottom of the ravine, watching in silence.

Silvan reached the shield. As before, he was loathe to touch it.

Yet here, this place, was where he’d entered it before, however unknowingly. He could see the gouge his boot heel had made in the mud. He could see the fallen tree crossing the path. Some dim memory of attempting to circumvent it returned.

The shield itself was not visible, except as a barely perceptible shimmer when the sun struck it at exactly the correct angle.

Other than that the only way he could tell the shield was before him was by its effect on his view of the trees and plants beyond it. He was reminded of heat waves rising from a sun-baked road, causing everything visible behind the waves to ripple in a mockery of water.

Gritting his teeth, Silvan walked straight into the shield.

The barrier would not let him pass. Worse, wherever he touched the shield, he felt a sickening sensation, as if the shield had pressed gray lips against his flesh and was seeking to suck him dry.

Shuddering, Silvan backed away. He would not try that again.

He glared at the shield in impotent fury. His mother had worked for months to penetrate that barrier and for months she had failed. She had thrown armies against it only to see them flung back. At peril to her own life, she had ridden her griffon into it without success. What could he do against it one elf.

“Yet” Silvan argued in frustration. “I am inside it! The shield let me in. It will let me out! There must be a way. The elf. It must have something to do with the elf. He and his cohorts have entrapped me, imprisoned me.”

Silvan whipped around to find the elf still standing at the bottom of the ravine. Silvan scrambled down the slope, half-falling, slipping and sliding on the rain-wet grass. The sun was sinking.

Midyear’s Day was the longest day of the year, but it must eventually give way to night. He reached the bottom of the ravine.

“You brought me in here!” Silvan said, so angry that he had to suck in a huge breath to even force the words out. “You will let me out. You have to let me out!”

“That was the bravest thing I ever saw a man do.” The elf cast a dark glance at the shield. “I myself cannot bear to come near it, and I am no coward. Brave, yet hopeless. You cannot pass. None can pass.”

“You lie!” Silvan raged. “You dragged me inside here. Let me out!”

Without really knowing what he was doing, he reached out his hand to seize the elf by the throat and choke him, force him to obey, frighten him into obeying.

The elf caught hold of Silvan’s wrist, gave it an expert twist, and before he knew what was happening, Silvan found himself on his knees on the ground. The elf immediately released him.

“You are young, and you are in trouble. You do not know me. I make allowances. My name is Rolan. I am one of the kirath. My companions and I found you lying at the bottom of the ravine. That is the truth. If you know of the kirath, you know that we do not lie. I do not know how you came through the shield.”

Silvan had heard his parents speak of the kirath, a band of elves who patrolled the borders of Silvanesti. The kirath’s duty was to prevent the entrance of outsiders into Silvanesti.

Silvan sighed and lowered his head to his hands.

“I have failed them! Failed them, and now they will die!”

Rolan came near, put his hand upon the young elf’s shoulder.

“You spoke your name before when we first found you, but I would ask that you give it to me again. There is no need to fear and no reason to keep your identity a secret, unless, of course,” he added delicately, “you bear a name of which you are ashamed.”

Silvan looked up, stung. “I bear my name proudly. I speak it proudly. If my name brings about my death, so be it.” His voice faltered, trembled. “The rest of my people are dead, by now. Dead or dying. Why should I be spared?”

He blinked the tears from his eyes, looked at his captor. “I am the son of those you term’ dark elves’ but who are, in truth, the only elves to see clearly in the darkness that covers us all. I am the son of Alhana Starbreeze and Porthios of the Qualinesti. My name is Silvanoshei.”

He expected laughter. Disbelief, certainly.

“ And why do you think your name would bring death to you, Silvanoshei of the House of Caladon?” Rolan asked calmly.

“Because my parents are dark elves. Because elven assassins have tried more than once to kill them,” Silvan returned.

“Yet Alhana Starbreeze and her armies have tried many times to penetrate the shield, to enter into this land where she is outlaw. I have myself seen her, as I and my fellows walked the border lands.”

“I thought you were forbidden to speak her name,” Silvan muttered sullenly.

“We are forbidden to do many things in Silvanesti,” Rolan added. “The list grows daily, it seems. Why does Alhana Starbreeze want to return to a land that does not want her?”

“This is her home,” Silvan answered. “Where else would she come?”

“And where else would her son come?” Rolan asked gently.

“Then you believe me?” Silvan asked.

“I knew your mother and your father, Your Highness,” Rolan replied. “I was a gardener for the unfortunate King Lorac before the war. I knew your mother when she was a child. I fought with your father Porthios against the dream. You favor him in looks, but there is something of her inside you that brings her closer to the mind. Only the faithless do not believe. The miracle has occurred. You have returned to us. It does not surprise me that for you, Your Highness, the shield would part.”

“Yet it will not let me out” said Silvan dryly.

“Perhaps because you are where you are supposed to be, Your Highness. Your people need you.”

“If that is true, then why don’t you lift the shield and let my mother return to her kingdom?” Silvanoshei demanded. “Why keep her out? Why keep your own people out? The elves who fight for her are in peril. My mother would not now be battling ogres, would not be trapped—”

Rolan’s face darkened. “Believe me, Your Majesty. If we, the kirath, could take down this accursed shield, we would. The shield casts a pall of despair on those who venture near it. It kills every living thing it touches. Look! Look at this, Your Majesty.” Rolan pointed to the corpse of a squirrel lying on the ground, her young lying dead around her. He pointed to golden birds buried in the ash, their song forever silenced.

“Thus our people are slowly dying,” he said sadly.

“What is this you say?”Silvan was shocked. “Dying?”

“Many people, young and old, contract a wasting sickness for which there is no cure. Their skin turns gray as the skin of these poor trees, their limbs wither, their eyes dull. First they cannot run without tiring, then they cannot walk, then they cannot stand or sit. They waste away until death claims them.”

“Then why don’t you take down the shield? “Silvan demanded.

“We have tried to convince the people to unite and stand against General Konnal and the Heads of House, who decided to raise the shield. But most refuse to heed our words. They say the sickness is a plague brought to us from the outside: The shield is all that stands between them and the evils of the world. If it is removed, we all will die.”

“Perhaps they are right,” Silvan said, glancing back through the shield, thinking of the ogres attacking in the night. “There is no plague striking down elves, at least none that I have heard of. But there are other enemies. The world is fraught with danger. In here, at least you are safe.”

“Your father said that we elves had to join the world, become a part of it,” Rolan replied with a grim smile. “Otherwise we would wither away and die, like a branch that is cut from the tree or the—”

“—rose stripped from the bush,” Silvan said and smiled in remembrance. “We haven’t heard from my father in a long time,” he added, looking down at the gray ash and smoothing it with the toe of his boot. “He was fighting the great dragon Beryl near Qualinesti, a land she holds in thrall. Some believe he is dead-my mother among them, although she refuses to admit it.”

“If he died, he died fighting for a cause he believed in,” Rolan said. “His death has meaning. Though it may seem pointless now, his sacrifice will help destroy the evil, bring back the light to drive away the darkness. He died a living man! Defiant, courageous.

“When our people die,” Rolan continued, his voice taking on increasing bitterness, “one hardly notices their passing. The feather flutters and falls limp.”

He looked at Silvan. “You are young, vibrant, alive. I feel the life radiate from you, as once I felt it radiate from the sun. Contrast yourself with me. You see it, don’t you: the fact that I am withering away? That we are all slowly being drained of life? Look at me, Your Highness. You can see I am dying.”

Silvan did not know what to say. Certainly the elf was paler than normal, his skin had a gray tinge to it, but Silvan had put that down to age, perhaps, or to the gray dust. He recalled now that the other elves he had seen bore the same gaunt, hollow-eyed look.

“Our people will see you, and they will see by contrast what they have lost,” Rolan pursued. “This is the reason you have been sent to us. To show them that there is no plague in the world outside. The only plague is within.” Rolan laid his hand on his heart.

“Within us! You will tell the people that if we rid ourselves of this shield, we will restore our land and ourselves to life.”

Though my own has ended, Silvan said to himself. The pain returned. His head ached. His armed throbbed. Rolan regarded him with concern.

“You do not look well, Your Highness. We should leave this place. We have lingered near the shield too long already. You must come away before the sickness strikes you, as well.”

Silvanoshei shook his head. “Thank you, Rolan, but I cannot leave. The Shield may yet open and let me out as it has let me in.”

“If you stay here, you will die, Your Majesty,” said Rolan.

“Your mother would not want that. She would want you to come to Silvanost and to claim your rightful place upon the throne.”

You will someday sit upon the throne of the United Elven Nations, Silvanoshei. On that day, you will right the wrongs of the past. You will purge our people of the sins we elves have committed, the sin of pride, the sin of prejudice, the sin of hatred. These sins have brought about our ruin. You will be our redemption.

His mother’s words. He remembered the very first time she had spoken them. He had been five or six. They were camping in the wilderness near Qualinesti. It was night. Silvan was asleep.

Suddenly a cry pierced his dreams, brought him wide awake. The fire burned low, but by its light he could see his father grappling with what seemed a shadow. More shadows surrounded them.

He saw nothing else because his mother flung her body over his, pressed him to the ground. He could not see, he could not breathe, he could not cry out. Her fear, her warmth, her weight crushed and smothered him.

And then it was allover. His mother’s warm, dark weight was lifted from him. Alhana held him in her arms, cradling him, weeping and kissing him and asking him to forgive her if she hurt him. She had a bloody gash on her thigh. His father bore a deep knife wound in his shoulder, just missing the heart. The bodies of three elves, clad all in black, lay around the fire. Years later Silvanoshei woke suddenly in the night with the cold realization that one of those assassins had been sent to murder him.

They dragged away the bodies, left them to the wolves, not considering them worthy of proper burial rites. His mother rocked him to sleep, and she spoke those words to him to comfort him. He would hear them often, again and again.

Perhaps now she was dead. His father dead. Their dream lived, however, lived in him.

He turned away from the shield. “I will come with you,” he said to Rolan of the kirath.