He continued for over an hour, and though he wasn’t much of a storyteller, the strangeness and importance of his tale had Arien leaning forward on his throne, absorbing every word. After the captain finished, Arien sat with his chin resting in his palm, studying the travelers for several long moments, playing their story over and over in his head to test it against his own perceptions.
“It is a good tale,” he said finally. “You shall not be imprisoned, nor shall you be harmed in any way, but I insist that you be my guests for a short while.”
“May I ask what that means?” Mitchell asked.
“You are free to roam the valley, as if you were of my own people,” Arien answered. “But you may not leave the city. You would not find your way out of the mountains anyway.”
“Your judgment is more than fair,” Mitchell said, and again he bowed low.
For the third time since they had first met the Illumans, Billy and Del looked at each other in disbelief.
“What’s with him?” Billy whispered.
“Beats the hell out of me,” Del answered. “But I still don’t trust him.”
“Less than ever,” Billy agreed.
“Would it be possible for me to acquire a writing kit?” Reinheiser asked. “I wish to log our adventure now that I have the chance.”
“Sylvia will see to all of your needs,” Arien replied. “At this time I have other matters to attend.”
They understood his meaning and bowed and turned for the door.
“DelGiudice is to stay,” Arien commanded. “I have yet words to speak with him.”
Del stopped in mid-turn, surprised by the request and more than a bit apprehensive. Mitchell stopped for a moment, too, a scream of jealous rage sticking in his throat. With no other choice, though, he left quietly, as did the rest.
Only Del remained in the somber hall to face the Eldar of Lochsilinilume.
Chapter 14
Ardaz
“PERHAPS YOU WILL show me now what it is you are hiding,” Arien said in a friendly tone. He sat relaxed and calm, obviously secure that Del posed no threat.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Del stammered quickly.
“I have lived for many years,” Arien said. “I have seen the dawn of several centuries and witnessed their twilight. Two dozen and ten kings in Caer Tuatha—Pallendara—have come and gone, yet I remain.” He sat up tall and straight and his face grew stern. “Deceive me not with your words, my friend,” he warned, “for I read your eyes and they reveal the truth.”
Del dropped his head down, realizing that he was trapped. Arien knew beyond any doubt that he was hiding something, but Bellerian had trusted him to keep the scroll secret. A desperate idea popped into his head and he met the gaze of the elf-king.
“I didn’t want them to find this,” he explained, an unintentional look of relief crossing his face as he reached into his shirt pocket and produced the derringer.
“What is that?” an amazed Arien asked as he rose from his throne, surprised, but also intrigued by the small object.
“A pistol,” Del answered, convinced that his ploy had worked. “A weapon from my world.”
Arien recoiled, his wide eyes showing that he remembered all too well the tales of the terrible weapons of the ancient age of technology.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Del comforted, surprised by Arien’s unease. “It’s not loaded.” He broke open the breech, displaying the empty chamber. “See? It has no … no …” He paused in search of a word that the elf-king would understand. “No arrows.”
“Why then do you keep it?” Arien asked.
“I don’t know,” Del answered honestly. “It sort of keeps me, I guess. You can have it, if you want.” He presented the pistol before him.
Arien thrust his arms up and recoiled in horror. “No,” he snapped, and Del jumped back nervously. Arien gave a little smile and fought hard to put a measure of calm into his voice. “No, my friend, it is for you to keep,” he explained with as much compassion as he could muster. “It is a burden that has fallen upon you. Keep it safe and well hidden, for the horrors of your age have no place in Ynis Aielle.”
Del still didn’t understand the depth of Arien’s horror, but he packed the pistol back into his shirt, noting how the Eldar relaxed as soon as it was safely away.
“I commend your judgement,” Arien said. “You did well to keep that hidden.”
“I didn’t think it would be wise to let everyone see it,” Del said.
“Tell me, then,” Arien asked, “is it as important a secret as the other you hide?”
Del balked and said quickly—too quickly, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do indeed know what I mean,” Arien insisted softly. “My friend, play no more games with me. I am sure that you have sound reasons for secrecy, and for myself, I would trust you and let the matter drop.
“But understand my position,” he declared, and he stood up straight. “I am Eldar of my people, and for them I am responsible. I shall make no gambles on their safety. Show me now what else you hide.”
Del turned away to wrestle with his indecision. He wanted to honor his promise to Bellerian, yet realized that his entire relationship with the Eldar of Illuma might well hinge on this moment. Arien had seen right through the deception, and from the tone of the Eldar’s voice, Del knew that the elf-lord meant to get the scroll one way or another. Quickly, so he wouldn’t change his mind, Del pulled out the scroll case and tossed it to Arien.
“Ah,” Arien sighed, examining the case without opening it. “I suspected that your Captain Mitchell had left some details out of the story. Bellerian gave you this,” he stated rhetorically. “So you have met the Rangers of Avalon.”
“How could you know?” Del asked, surprised.
“Few could find their way out of Blackemara,” Arien replied. “I knew as soon as your Captain Mitchell told me of your adventure there, then stammered over his explanation of how you got out, that you had likely met up with the Rangers of Avalon. Besides, you came through their land, and none can do that without their knowledge.”
Del gave a great sigh, disappointed in himself for breaking his word to the Ranger Lord.
“Again I commend your judgement,” Arien said. “You were wise in trusting me and honoring my request.” He handed back the unopened case. “I shall not interfere in your business with the lord of the Rangers of Avalon. I have had the honor to meet the venerable Bellerian on several occasions in the past three decades, and I know him as a man worthy of respect. It is to my sorrow that Ungden’s eyes have since turned northward and prevented our friendship from growing, for now no Illuman would be safe wandering from the mountains. Someday perhaps.” A solemn look came to the Eldar’s eyes, as if he was lost in a silent prayer. He revealed to Del in that moment a deep and profound sadness. But he quickly smiled it away. “Might I ask who the scroll is for?”
“The Silver Mage,” Del replied easily, no longer afraid of the intentions of the noble Eldar.
“Of course.” Arien laughed. “For his condition.”
“Could you tell me where to find him?” Del asked.
Arien walked over to a window on the northern wall and pointed to a crack high up on the cliff face.
“Beyond that break in the mountain wall lies Brisen-ballas, the tower of the Silver Mage,” he said. “You will find him there, I expect.”
“How do I get way up there?” Del asked, scanning the unscalable mountainside.
“There is a stair,” Arien replied with a chuckle. “But you must search it out carefully, for it is invisible to the eyes of all but Ardaz.”
Del’s expression reflected his obvious doubts.
“I do not jest with you,” Arien insisted. “The stair is truly there. And fear it not, for it runs solid straight and without a break, without a devilish trap built in. You must hurry, though, for the shadows grow long and you mustn’t miss Luminas ey-n’ abraieken.”
“What’s that?”
<
br /> “You shall see tonight,” Arien answered, smiling. “Go now, and quickly.”
Del glanced all around, then bowed awkwardly. “See you,” he said, finding no appropriate words, and feeling stupid the moment he spoke. He bowed again and rushed for the door, but stopped when he reached it and turned back to regard Arien, who was still at the window. “One more thing,” he announced.
Arien turned to acknowledge, and Del was rendered speechless for a moment. Half of the elf-king’s face shone in the last rays of the day, streaming through the window, while the other half lay darkened in shadow. A fitting image of the paradox of the elves, Del thought. The same unresolvable conflict he saw within the eyes of Erinel, a mixture of the light sparkle of joyous innocence and the dark shadows of profound sadness.
“Why did Erinel get so upset when I called him elf?” Del asked. From within the depths of the twilight shadows, Arien’s eyes glowered and Del quickly qualified the term. “It’s not an insult.”
Arien seemed satisfied that Del meant no harm. “Elf,” he said with a great sigh, his voice mellow, almost subdued. “It is an old word; a name branded upon the firstborn of my race by the Calvans of Pallendara who sought our destruction.”
Del noted how the Eldar’s jaw clenched with the undeniable pain of the legacy of his people, and Del, too, felt the sincere sorrow of his new friend. He mumbled an apology quietly and opened the door to leave.
“Wait!” Arien called. Del turned back to find that the anger and sadness had cleared from Arien’s face. “Elf,” Arien said again, in a louder, more affirmative voice. “From your not unkind lips, it is not such a bad word. You, DelGiudice, may call me elf, and my people elves,” he declared with a broad smile. “So say I, and so shall it be done.”
“I am honored, Lord Arien Silverleaf, Eldar of Lochsilinilume!” returned Del with due respect. He bowed low and slipped from the room, setting out to find the hidden tower of the Silver Mage.
Del wove his way through the curious glances of many elves to the base of the northern wall, noting with relief that almost all of the looks he received were friendly. Ryell’s angry comments had made him unsure of the elves’ feelings toward him and his companions, but any worries were dispelled by the time he neared the wall. Half doubting, but filled with anticipation, he worked along the stone in search of the invisible path. His shin cracked into something hard, something very tangible.
“No kidding,” he gasped as he eagerly felt along the unseen object. Indeed, it seemed to be a staircase.
He started up, cautiously testing each subsequent step before trusting his full weight to it, and hugging the visible mountain wall. He had to climb less than seventy feet, but it took him a long time to ascend that unnerving stair. Normally Del wasn’t afraid of heights, but he couldn’t escape the logic that overruled his heartfelt desire to believe in the magic. His eyes told him that he was standing in midair and should be falling.
He was relieved when he reached the entrance to Ardaz’s home. It had seemed no more than a split in the stone from below, but now Del saw that the left wall was actually a few feet back from the ledge, and overlapped behind the right to form a corridor. The passage went just a short distance and turned a sharp corner, and Del found himself in a small, circular glade carpeted with the same thick grass as the valley floor. High stone walls surrounded it, keeping it ever in shadowy dimness though it was open to the sky. In the west end stood a small telvensil, and carved into the north wall, like a gigantic bas relief, was a singular mica-strewn tower with two thin windows flickering from the firelight within like the watching eyes of a dragon.
The tower’s great wooden door was banded by silver and decorated with the carvings of many arcane runes. Even as Del admired its craftsmanship, it banged open and out hopped a wiry old man in a dark blue robe and a broad silver belt. A great and pointed wizard’s cap—much too large for him—kept flopping forward over his hairless face, leaving only his long nose and his mouth, which was constantly in motion, uncovered. He kept thrusting his hands into the countless pockets of his garment, and he grew ever more flustered as his searches brought forth roots and herbs, frogs and snakes, even an occasional bat, all of which he tossed aside with a frustrated stamp of his booted foot. He seemed to be addressing the silver tree with his unbroken stream of words, and his volume increased with his excitement.
“Desdemona, Desdemona, where is it? Oh, where? Oh, where? I know I had it—I did, I know I did, but where has it got to? Did you take it? I bet you did, you silly puss. Love to tease me, don’t you?”
“Rrow, meow,” came a reply from the tree. Following the sound, Del discovered a smiling black cat relaxing on a branch, licking its paws.
“Oh, don’t tell me that!” the old man rambled. “You beastly tease! I know you did it. I should, you know I might, turn your tail into a mouse, ha-ha, and watch you chase it in circles forever and ever and ever. Wouldn’t like that a bit, would you, Desdemona? No, no, not a bit, I dare say! Ha-ha!”
“That’s Shakespeare,” Del interrupted.
The old man froze in his tracks and grasped the brim of his hat in both hands. Slowly he slid it back over his pale blue eyes and gaped at Del. “What?” he asked.
“Shakespeare,” Del repeated. The old man’s face remained twisted in astonishment. “The name, I mean. Desdemona was a character in Shakespeare.”
“Shakespeare?” the old man mumbled, scratching his chin and rolling his eyes as if trying to recall something. Del remembered then that Shakespeare was a writer of a different age, a long-forgotten time. He tried to think of a way he could explain it to the old man without totally confusing him, but it was the old man’s turn to surprise Del.
“Shakespeare!” he exclaimed. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes, the Bard, the Bard! A jolly old chap, don’t you agree? Why, yes, yes, Othello actually, and a strange bird—”
The cat growled.
“Sorry, Des,” the old man said. “And a strange cat she was, you know. Don’t you agree?”
Del stood dumbfounded.
“Well, don’t you? A strange cat, eh?”
“Who?” Del asked.
“Why, Desdemona … yes, yes, we were talking about her, weren’t we? She was a strange cat, she was, she was, but then, ha-ha, they all are, I daresay, I do daresay!
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, no, no. But where, oh, where did I put it? You don’t have it, do you? No, of course you don’t! I don’t even know you, how could you—” He stopped short and bounded over to Del, the jerky movements again dropping his hat down to the tip of his nose. He didn’t bother to lift it; he just tilted his head back and peeked at the stranger from under the brim. “Who are you?”
“Jeff DelGiudice,” Del replied with a laugh. “Call me Del. You’re Ardaz, the Silver Mage?”
“Yes, yes, of course I am. You have a strange name, my son; yes, very strange indeed! Del-joo-dis. Why, it is a name I might have used from the other—”
Suddenly the old man began trembling and his breath came in short gasps. “You knew Shakespeare,” he squeaked, and he pulled up his hat above his hairless brow, that he could study Del more closely. The cut of Del’s uniform and its synthetic material were familiar to Ardaz, vague memories of clothes he had worn many, many years before, before the dawn of Aielle. This man in front of him was of the older world!
“The ancient ones walk the land!” Ardaz shrieked with a leap, and he threw his hands high up in the air.
Then, realizing that it should not have been proclaimed so loudly, he slapped his hands over Del’s mouth and went, “Sssh! Sssh!” It took him a few seconds to remember that he was the one who had yelled, and he let go of Del.
“Well, well, Ardaz at your service, Del, and very pleased to meet you I am! Ha-ha! I do daresay! A walking tale in my own yard! How very grand!”
Del tried to change the subject, hoping it might calm the frenzied wizard. “What are you looking for?”
“Looking for?” Ardaz echoed, again scratchin
g his chin. “Who?”
“You,” Del said.
“Looking for me?” Ardaz cried, more confused than ever.
“No!” Del groaned. “When I first got here, you were looking for something.”
“I was?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, yes, looking for! Why, a feather, of course. An eagle’s feather.”
“What on earth for?”
“Earth?” echoed Ardaz. “I know that word. Earth.” He scratched his chin. “Hmmm … oh, well, it will come to me. To move that infernal rock, of course.” He pointed to a large stone resting on the eastern end of the glade. “Why else would I need a feather?”
“How can you move a rock with a feather?” Del exclaimed, growing ever more ready to pull his own hair out.
“You can’t, of course.”
Del moaned and slapped his hand across his forehead.
“Excitable chap, aren’t you?” the wizard said dryly, bringing a second moan from Del. “I need the feather for a spell. What else? What else? To levitate the rock out of my yard, of course.”
Del’s eyes lit up. “Magic?” he said, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “That I’d like to see. Maybe you could find the feather if you took off that hat. It’s way too big for you.”
“Too big for me?” Ardaz gawked. “Too big for me! Why, it’s my hat, how can it be too big for me? Of course it wasn’t, no, no, not when I had some hair, it wasn’t. But then the fire went ‘poof,’ and poof, no more hair, and you say my hat is too big for me. What nerve!”
“I didn’t know,” Del apologized. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes, yes, you are that, ha-ha! But then, of course you didn’t. How could you, after all?”
“I’d really like to see some magic,” Del said, trying hard to keep the old man focused. “Is there another way?”