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Shocked and dismayed by his disclosure, Ryana fled to the temple tower, where she began a period of solitary meditation.
That was when Sorak appeared before High Mistress Varanna and told her he was going to leave the convent. He felt his continued presence would only bring heartache to Ryana, whom he cared for very deeply, but could never have. The vows taken by villichi priestesses did not permit them to have mates, and even if they had, his female personas would never have allowed it.
Though he had lived with the villichi sisterhood, he was never one of them, and as an adult male living among them, he knew he would only be a source of discord. He thought that by leaving, he would free Ryana from the burden of loving him.
Instead, she forsook her vows and followed.
* * *
Now, freed of his multiple personas, Sorak was able to accept her as a lover at long last, and that made all the difference. The harsh light of morning softened in his eyes as he looked down upon Ryana, sleeping below. In Sanctuary, they had made love for the first time, and they vowed that they would always be together, no matter what the future brought.
He pulled the broken blade from his belt. It might still have made a useful knife, even though the tip resisted all his efforts to sharpen it into a tapering point. Useless, though it yet sparked faintly with a crackling discharge of blue energy, like a guttering candle.
So much for the legend of the Crown of Elves, he thought. A broken blade, a broken people, scattered throughout Athas in small desert-dwelling tribes or living in the cities, where they performed the most menial of labor or eked out lives as gamers and merchants in the squalid, overcrowded elven quarters. A legend, perhaps, would give them some small hope for their future. Those who still believed in it, at any rate. But if they met with the reality, then they would see only a nomadic wanderer with a broken sword, not a fabled blade borne by an elven king. Why shatter their illusions, as the touch of a defiler had shattered the steel of the blade?
Why shatter more lives? Sorak’s ancestors had done enough of that already…
* * *
The Sage, his maternal grandfather, was the only family Sorak knew. He did not know if his paternal grandfather, the halfling chieftain Ragna, still lived, but hoped he was dead. If Ragna lived and Sorak found it out, the halfling would live no longer.
Sorak would never understand what sort of father could condemn his own son to death by fire for mating with a female of another race. Ragna had meant for him to die as well, and but for a chance casting of a spell, Sorak had survived.
Ragna’s commission to the Faceless One was to cast a spell to slay every last elfin the Moon Runner tribe. Sorak had been spared only because he was not a full-blooded elf. He was a half-breed, born of two races that were natural enemies. The spell cast by the Faceless One had failed to strike him down, as it had struck down all the others, and though he was a sworn enemy of all defilers, Sorak despised the Faceless One above all others. He knew nothing of the wizard but his name, yet somehow, somewhere, he would find him. And then his father and his mother and her tribe would be avenged. Death to the sorcerer, and to the grandfather who commissioned him.
It was a cold and ruthless resolution. An unsettling thought.
And there were so many thoughts streaming through his head these days. He could not get used to the curious feeling of being all alone in there.
He was having trouble sleeping. When he was a tribe of one, Sorak could rest by letting one of his other personalities come to the fore and take over. He would fade back and “go under,” as if sinking down into warm darkness, sometimes aware of what was happening outside and sometimes not, while his body remained awake and in the control of one of his other personalities.
Now that he was just alone, he had to learn to fall asleep the way that everyone else did. Sooner or later, he grew tired, and then sleep would come. However, being part elf and part halfling meant his body possessed immense physical reserves. Since leaving Sanctuary, he had found he could go for days without sleep. He would lie down to rest, as he had done the previous night, but while Ryana quickly fell asleep, he remained awake, his mind relentlessly active as if it sought to fill the void left by his other personalities.
It was a new life, a new way of being, and he was not yet accustomed to it.
Often, at night after Ryana fell asleep, he would start talking to himself, a habit many people had, but Sorak would half expect to hear an answer. He would start to speak to one of his personalities aloud, as he had often done before, and when no answer came, he would remember again there would be no answer, and then the crushing loneliness would descend on him like an immense weight on his chest.
* * *
Sorak felt the warmth of the dark sun as it slowly rose on the horizon. Soon, Ryana would awaken, and they would fill their waterskins from the oasis pool and set off once again, en route to North Ledopolus, one of two dwarven villages located on opposite banks of the Estuary of the Forked Tongue, roughly thirty miles southwest. From there, they planned to cross the estuary to South Ledopolus, through which the caravan trade route ran from Altaruk to Balic.
Neither he nor Ryana had ever been to that part of the world, and all they knew of it was what Sorak’s grandfather had written in his journal, a copy of which Sorak carried with him. However, it had been written many years ago, and they had no way of knowing if the information it contained was still accurate.
According to the journal, the dwarves of South Ledopolus were trying to build a causeway to Ledo Island, a long-dead volcano that rose in the center of the estuary
. At the same time, the dwarves of North Ledopolus were trying to do likewise, thereby hoping to meet in the middle and connect the two villages with a bridge that would open a shorter caravan route from Gulg and Nibenay to Balic and the other cities south of the Tyr region. The bridge would benefit both villages and increase the traffic coming through them.
But the giants who lived on Ledo posed an obstacle. They had no desire to see their island become a connecting point between two dwarven villages, with the increase in traffic, and so they kept tearing down the causeway that the dwarves were building. Constant battles raged between the giants and the dwarves, and Sorak had no idea if there would be a bridge across the estuary when they reached it or not.
The dwarves had ferries that plied the estuary, above and below Ledo Island, but the giants often attacked these, as well. The dwarves therefore navigated with great care, taking ferries across the deepest parts of the estuary to avoid the giants. But the silt shifted on the bottom, and it was difficult to gauge the estuary’s depth, so any ferry crossing was a gamble.
Even so, Sorak knew they had to take that course. The only other alternative was to head north across the Great Ivory Plain and take the trade route along its northern boundary. They had crossed the plain once already, and Sorak was not anxious to repeat the long, arduous journey.
Once they had crossed the estuary and reached the caravan trade route that ran past South Ledopolus, Sorak had no idea which way they would go. He had expected to receive some sign from the Sage, but as yet, there had been no message from his grandfather. He knew only one thing—wherever they were bound, they would be going toward trouble, not away from it.
Throughout Athas, in the larger city-states, the dragon kings held sway. In the smaller towns and villages, their defiler minions were always active, seeking to extend and consolidate their power. The preservers were outnumbered by defilers everywhere, so much so that preserver adepts and their supporters had been forced underground.
They functioned as small, semi-independent groups collectively known as the Veiled Alliance. To be exposed as a member of the Alliance meant certain death, so members functioned in great secrecy, working against the power of the defilers in whatever ways they could.
