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  Bair ran his fingers through his long, silvery hair. “Just this, Amicula Faeril. .”

  4

  Wolf and Falcon

  NEXUS

  LATE AUTUMN TO EARLY WINTER, 5E1010

  [THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]

  Through fall-yellow grass and past brown-leaved thickets and over the rolling hills of Adonar sped the Draega, the Silver Wolf as large as a pony. High above and sailing across the azure sky a dark falcon flew. Around the ruff of the running ’Wolf dangled a stone ring on a chain, an ebon inset gleaming. Something as well glistened about the neck of the falcon above, the bird itself black as night, the glisten as from silver and glass, though it was a crystal instead. A small blue stone on a leather thong rested beside the glisten. And wherever the Draega ran, the falcon above followed, for they were travelling together, or so it seemed.

  Through patches of forests the Silver Wolf wove, and it dodged around hoary old moss-laden trees and splashed across swift-running rills, while the falcon above rode the chill breeze blowing o’er the land. Not once did they slow their pace, league after league after league, until evening drew nigh, that is, and then the falcon above gave a skree, and veered leftward, the Draega below pausing to watch the dark bird above.

  Along the edge of a woodland the falcon soared, and then winged over in a tight turn, and sailed down to land high up in an oak, its brown leaves rustling in the wind forerunning the oncoming winter. The Silver Wolf loped toward the broad-limbed tree where the dark bird had settled, and the moment the Draega arrived, the falcon once again took to the air.

  After lapping up water from a nearby small burbling stream, the ’Wolf, yet panting, its ears pricked alertly, lay under the oak and watched as the bird shuttled back and forth above the tall grass in the field. And in but moments the falcon stooped, its wings nigh folded, the tips alone guiding its plummeting dive, and but a bare distance above the ground it flared its pinions and extended its talons and disappeared into the grass.

  Up the Draega sprang, and loped to where the bird covered the fat coney it had downed. The ’Wolf whuffed, and the falcon, its wild eyes glaring, for a moment did not move, but at the second whuff, the bird released its prey and leapt into the air again.

  The Draega snatched up the rabbit and loped back to the streamside oak, arriving just as the falcon came to ground. The ’Wolf dropped the coney, and from a flash of platinum light and a blooming of darkness, Aravan and Bair emerged: Aravan from the light; Bair from the dark.

  It was but a year or so agone that Aravan, working with shape-shifting Bair and a winged Phael-a Hidden One named Ala-and a powerful being whom all of the Phael called the Guardian, learned to evoke the inherent power of a crystal, one with a falcon incised within, a crystal that now depended from the chain Aravan wore about his neck.

  It was a crystal given some twenty-four years past to Faeril by Riatha, who told the damman of the scrying powers of such. At the time Faeril received it, no falcon was incised within. Faeril tried her hand at ‹seeing ›, using that selfsame crystal, and once she succeeded, almost to her doom. Much later and within a ring of Kandrawood she met the oracle Dodona, and he took her spirit within the pellucid stone itself. Dodona showed her many things, and told her that all shapes were possible within the crystal. That was when Faeril had said she had always wanted to fly like a falcon, and of a sudden she shifted to the form of that bird, again nearly to her doom. But Dodona rescued her from permanently becoming a thing wild. And when Faeril finally returned to herself, the incised form of a falcon lay inside the crystal clear.

  Upon her return to Arden Vale, Faeril mounted the crystal on a platinum chain and gave it to Bair as a birth gift.

  On his quest with Aravan to find the yellow-eyed murderer Ydral, Bair had worn the crystal into the Jangdi Mountains, where the Guardian and the Phael and Bair, working in concert with Aravan, had taught the Elf to master this token of power, which allowed him to assume the form of a black falcon.

  As a black falcon and a Draega, they had managed to run down Ydral, where he had holed up in a Foul-Folk-infested black fortress on Neddra, a bastion that lay at a nexus of four in-between crossings. Respectively, three of the in-betweens connected Neddra to Mithgar, to Adonar, and to Vadaria; the fourth one they knew not where it led-perhaps to the Hidden Ones’ world of Feyer or to the Dragon world of Kelgor, or somewhere else entirely-for at that time only the bloodways were open, and Bair, in spite of his stone ring, could not make that crossing: he had not the blood in his veins that would allow him to do so.

  Regardless as to where that fourth crossing led, it was the black fortress that concerned Bair and Aravan’s current mission, for it controlled vital in-between ways that would allow Foul Folk access to Free Folk lands.

  Bair and Aravan had returned to Adonar to make certain all was ready and to set in motion the final stage of Bair’s plan. They had found the Elven host assembled and eager, and so the order was given to march to the in-between. And now the two fared ahead of the army to ensure that their even more powerful allies had assembled as well.

  In moments Aravan had dressed out the rabbit and had set it to roast above a small fire.

  “Kelan,” asked Bair, “how far to the in-between, do you reck?”

  “Thirty leagues, I deem,” answered Aravan.

  “Then nigh the mark of noon on the morrow, neh?”

  “Aye, elar. Wouldst thou could run as fast as I can fly; then ’twould be midmorn.”

  “Ah, you’re just anxious to get to Aylis, I ween,” said Bair, grinning.

  Aravan laughed. “There is that.”

  They sat without speaking for long moments, watching the coney sizzle above the flames. Bair’s mind recalled the last time he had seen Aylis, and the stratagem she proposed. Alamar had quickly accepted it, but he wanted another Seer to accomplish the deed. Yet Aylis would have none of that, saying it was her plan and she would be the one to carry it out. Finally, Bair said, “I am both sad and glad that she has decided to join in the battle.”

  “As am I,” replied Aravan. Then he sighed and added, “Not that either of us could have prevented it; she’s quite reckless at times, you know. ’Tis one of the things I love about her, and one of the things I most dread.”

  As fat sizzled and dripped, Bair slowly turned the spit. He glanced across at Aravan and said, “She surprised me with her plan.”

  “Aye,” said Aravan. “Still, it will let us know what we are up against and perhaps tell us the best time to attack.”

  Bair nodded and turned the spit. “Before Aylis made her proposal, I had thought a Seer would give the best aid by peering into the past and noting when guards change and when the sentries are most likely to be lax, or by looking into the future and telling us the moment to launch.”

  Aravan nodded and said, “I am told looking ahead is quite difficult, with many forks to winnow among.”

  “Forks?”

  “Points of decision,” said Aravan. “Where deciding one way causes this, and deciding a different way causes that. And with each person involved, the possibilities grow. In the venture before us, with hundreds upon hundreds involved, the possibilities are beyond reckoning, or so I would think.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Bair.

  It was just after the mark of noon and snowing in Adonar when Bair crossed the in-between, with Valke on his shoulder, Aravan’s falcon shape. Bair bore the Elf in this form to ease his way to Neddra, for the best time to cross into that world was at the mark of midnight, just as the best time to leave that Plane was in the strokes of noon. And so, for Aravan to make that crossing at a different time would have been difficult for him; but the stone ring on a chain about Bair’s neck seemed somehow to ease the lad’s way through, no matter the mark of day or night. And so, Aravan had shifted to falcon shape, sealing most of his own ‹fire› in the crystal he wore; and captured in Bair’s own aura, the lad had borne the falcon and the token of power across with ease, from the High Plane to the L
ow.

  With Neddra’s bloodred sun shedding precious little light down through an umber overcast, snow fell in this world as well, the white flakes bearing a faint yellow-brown hue as they drifted from the dismal, sulfur-tinged sky.

  Bair cast Valke into the acrid air and shifted in darkness to Hunter, his Silver Wolf form. Then Draega and falcon raced in a wide arc to the north and east, heading for the crossing to the Mage world of Vadaria.

  Out of view of the black fortress they sped, that bastion a league and a mile up the vale from the western crossing. And flying high above the running ’Wolf, Valke remained silent, for no pursuing Spawn did he spy-no Vulgs, no Ghuls on Helsteeds, no Rucks, Hloks, or Trolls giving chase-hence no warning did he cry.

  As to the fortress itself, it sat atop a high-rising hill in a long vale, a basin surrounded by crags. Roughly square it was, the bastion, an outer wall running ’round, some twenty feet high and three hundred feet to a side and fifteen feet thick at the top, wider at the base, with bartizan after bartizan along its length full about, some fifty feet in between any given pair. To the south a barbican sat atop a gate midmost along that outer wall, a smaller barbican at the north, with a road running up in a series of switchbacks to the main gate of the central stronghold, and a like road ran down from the postern gate opposite. Between the bulwark ringing ’round and the inner fortress itself, there lay an open space, a killing ground for any who had won their way up the hill and had breached the outer wall.

  Centered within, the black bastion stood: some sixty feet high it was and also built in a square, two hundred feet to a side with a great courtyard in the middle, towers and turrets and a massive wall hemming the quadrangle in.

  Within the courtyard was a broad stable, wherein scaled Helsteeds shifted about, indicating the presence of Ghulka in the mainstay below.

  Two outer and two inner towers sat in a small, close-set square and warded the passageway into the dark fortress, with great outer and inner gates and portcullises barring the way. At the northern wall of the bastion, likewise another tight cluster of four turrets warded the rear entry as well.

  With a tower at each corner of the main fortress and towers midmost along each of its walls, defenders could bring great power to bear against any and all assailants who sought to claim the stronghold as their own.

  And the walls warding the central fortress were well patrolled-Hloks and Rucks at each corner with a small rout slowly walking the rounds.

  All this did Valke see as he soared above Hunter loping below.

  Four leagues and a mile did the Draega run, circling wide of the dark stronghold and into the steeps in the north. Up he ran and up, the falcon sailing above. And then the ’Wolf came to a sharp rise, and up this he sped, and he topped the slant to trot onto a circular flat, and ahead and curving three-quarters ’round to the sides towered the hard face of a sheer stone bluff, trapping the small plateau in its looming embrace. To the midpoint fared Hunter, Valke spiraling down from above. And darkness enveloped the Draega, from which Bair emerged.

  The lad stretched out his arm, and Valke landed on the padded leather sleeve.

  Bair glanced to the south, where a league and a mile away stood the black fortress, central to the four in-between crossings-central to the nexus-for equidistant to north and west and south and east respectively lay the way to Vadaria, to Adonar, to Mithgar, and to a land unknown.

  Bair shifted Valke to the pad on his shoulder. Then, gripping the ring in his left hand, Bair began chanting, canting, pacing, turning, pausing, singing, gliding, while Valke on his shoulder glared down at the distant dark bastion, rage in the black raptor’s eye. .

  . . And then they were gone from Neddra, their disappearance witnessed only by the yellow-brown snow drifting down from the umber-clad sky.

  5

  Vadaria

  NEXUS

  LATE AUTUMN TO EARLY WINTER, 5E1010

  [THE FINAL YEAR OF THE FIFTH ERA]

  Yet stepping and chanting the rite of the crossing, Bair and Valke emerged onto a nearly identical stone plateau to the one they had left on Neddra; but, unlike the brown-tinged air of that world, here the chill atmosphere was pellucid and bore the faint aroma of the clean-smelling pine forest drifting up from the vale below. Snow lay upon the crests all ’round and along the slants ’neath, the white winging scintillant glitter to the eye in the light of the bright sun above.

  Valke sprang up toward the cerulean sky, while darkness enveloped Bair, from which Hunter sprang forth to run. Down the slope and across the vale he sped and toward a distant knoll, snow cascading in his wake, Valke above following, watching, warding. They were heading for a mountain cabin in which a Seer dwelled-Aravan’s beloved, Aylis.

  And in and about that cottage an assembly had gathered, Magekind all, and they waited for a falcon and a Draega to appear. Some rested before their tents, while others ranged the slopes, and a foursome sat at an oak-wood table out beside the steep-roofed cottage. But all watched the skies for the appearance of a black raptor.

  And as they did so, bearing a tray of steaming mugs, Aylis stepped out from the cabin. Reed slender she was, and dressed in brown leathers. Her light brown hair was cropped at the shoulders and seemed shot through with auburn glints in the bright sunlight warming the day. Her complexion was fair and clear, but for a meager sprinkle of freckles high on her cheeks, and her eyes were green and flecked with gold. She was tall for one of Magekind, the top of her head but a hand or so less than six feet. She bore the tray to the table.

  Sitting at the board were Alamar and Dalor and Branwen, all of whom had been at the in-between crossing when Bair and Aravan had first come on Winterday a full year past, with Valke terribly wounded nigh unto death. Dalor the Healer had managed to keep the bird from dying, and Branwen the Animist had discovered how to change the unconscious falcon back into an Elf, after which Dalor had saved Aravan.

  As Aylis began handing out the steaming mugs, “A Silver Wolf, a Draega, you say?” asked the fourth one sitting at the table-a somber-faced Mage. “The boy a shapeshifter?”

  “Aravan, too, Sorcerer Cadir,” said Aylis, “though he does not come by it naturally, as does Bair.”

  “‹Wild-magic› for one and a token of power for the other,” said Dalor, the short and portly Mage accepting a cup from Aylis.

  “I don’t know why we have to wait for them,” said dark-haired Alamar, an irritated glint in his green eyes. “I mean, we are assembled and ready to strike, and so should just get on with it ourselves.”

  “Father,” said Aylis, “Bair’s plan is well thought out.”

  “She’s right,” said Branwen, stirring a dab of honey into the tea.

  “Pah!” snapped Alamar. “Why, I alone can destroy that fort.” He gestured toward the Mages downslope. “Any one of a dozen of us could.”

  “Ah, but what if it is teeming with Black Mages?” asked Dalor. “Then who would take on the Foul Folk while we do battle with our kind?”

  “Black Mages are not our kind,” growled Alamar. “Besides, if it came to it, as I said before, we could simply destroy the fort.”

  Aylis sighed and said, “Father, the mission is not to destroy the fort but to capture it intact.”

  “I know that, daughter,” snapped Alamar. “I am merely saying we could . Nay, but even so, I think we need no Elven aid to capture that stronghold undamaged.” Then he grinned. “After all, I am to be commander when it’s in our hands.”

  “Co-commander,” said Cadir, “or am I wrong about this captain of the Elves? Um. . what is his name again?”

  “Captain Arandor, I believe,” said Branwen.

  “Yes,” said Aylis. “Arandor has agreed to be co-commander of the Black Fortress.”

  “Captain of the guard, you mean,” said Alamar.

  “And co-commander, Father,” replied Aylis.

  “Yes, yes, but you see-”

  “Falcon!” came a cry, and both Dalor and Branwyn turned to see. High above and spiral
ing down the dark bird glided.

  Although Aylis knew Valke’s sight was keen beyond reckoning and he could find her in any crowd, still she would separate herself from the others to make it a bit easier for him to espy her. And so, she rose up from the table and coolly walked to the doorstone of her cottage and stood upon it waiting, her heart leaping with joy.

  “Draega!” called another voice, and bursting forth from the pine trees came a great Silver Wolf running, clots of snow flying in its wake.

  But the bird reached the cottage first, and even as it landed a silvery light bloomed, out of which stepped Aravan, and he took Aylis in his arms and kissed her long and deep.

  Some of the gathered Mages laughed, while others applauded, and Alamar snorted and said, “Canoodling.”

  The Draega came loping to the doorstone, and from a blooming of darkness Bair emerged. And he stood waiting until at last Aravan and Aylis released each other. Then Bair hugged the Seer and kissed her on the cheek.

  As Bair did so, Aravan’s deep blue gaze swept over the assembly, lighting at last on Alamar, who sat and sipped tea at the outdoor table, along with Dalor and Branwen and a Mage Aravan did not know. Nodding their way, the Elf turned to Bair and said, “Alamar sits yon.”

  Smiling, Bair handed Aylis over to Aravan, and set off to speak with the Mage, the Elf and the Seer following after. When they reached the board, Bair paused a moment and surveyed the gathering along the slopes, then turned to Alamar and said, “It appears Magekind is ready.”

  Alamar looked up at the sixteen-year-old whose plan they followed. “Of course it is, you young whippersnapper. After all, I am in charge.”

  “Still crotchety, I see,” said Bair.

  Dalor and Branwen whooped in joy, and Aylis giggled and Aravan grinned, though Cadir gasped in astonishment.

  Alamar leapt to his feet. “Now look here, boy, just because you faced down a god-”