THE AIR SHIMMERED.
A light breeze blew across the valley as heat waves rose from the warmed rocks on the hillside and larks flew overhead. The afternoon sun chased away the night’s chill and bathed the grasses in a warm blanket as spring arrived in Novindus. A fox sunning herself raised her head in concern, for she smelled something unusual. Springing to her feet she turned her head left and right seeking the source. Curiosity soon gave way to caution and the vixen darted off, bounding into the shadowed woods.
The cause of her fright, a solitary figure, made his way carefully through the thinning trees. At this altitude, the heavy woodlands below gave way to alpine meadows and open reaches providing easier transit.
Any observer would think him barely worth notice. A large hat masked his features. His body appeared neither overly stout nor slender, and his garb simple travelling robes made of grey homespun or poor linen. He carried a sack across one shoulder and used a gnarled black stave made of oak.
The man paused and looked at the peaks to the north and south, noticing their bald crowns above the timberline. They were known by those who lived nearby as the Grey Towers, but he put aside his appreciation of their majesty and instead considered them in a complex evaluation of the valley’s defensibility.
A people once lived here, but invaders had driven them out. Then the invaders eventually departed, but the original inhabitants of the valley never returned. There were signs of their settlements scattered throughout this region, from the deep northern pass, beyond which a large village of dwarves resided, to the south where the high ridges gave way to the sloping hills that led to bluffs commanding the strait between two vast seas.
Like all of his race, the traveller knew little of dwarves to the north, or the seemingly numberless humans. Of those who had lived in this valley before he knew only lore and legend. What little he had pieced together had provided him with more questions than answers.
He had travelled this continent for three months, and was barely noticed by most as he passed; even when seen or spoken to, he was barely remembered. He was an unremarkable being, who may have been tall, or just average; a man of some circumstance, or perhaps of modest means. His hair could have been described as brown, or sandy, or sometimes black. The guise, created by the arts and employed by the traveller, made him difficult to notice or remember.
Looking around, to finalize his sense of the place as much as to ensure he was not being watched, the traveller reached within a belt pouch and withdrew a crystal. It was of no intrinsic value, but it was his most precious possession; his only means of returning to his people. He held tightly to the crystal and let his glamour slip away, revealing his true appearance before his return. Had he stepped through the portal in his magical guise, his death would have been immediate.
The traveller considered it strange that while he did not change physically he felt as if he were casting off clothing that was too small. He took a moment to stretch his long arms before incanting the brief spell that activated the crystal.
There was a sudden sizzling sound, like a small crackle of lightning, followed by a rip in the air that looked like a tall curtain of heat shimmer, then a portal formed above the ground: twelve feet high and nine feet across, a grey oval of nothingness. An instant later the traveller had stepped into it and vanished.
Up in the trees, a motionless figure observed the departure. It was by only the most strained of coincidences that he was in this valley at all, for it had been unoccupied since the Riftwar, but the game trails and pathways along the more northern ridges gave faster access to his destination than the more frequently used routes through the Green Heart Forest to the south. Like most of his kind, solitude or anticipation of danger didn’t bother him, but an appreciation of swift passage was keen in the messenger. Of all the mortal races, only the elves had better woodcraft skills than the Rangers of Natal.
He was a tall, lean man, with skin burned dark by the sun, though his brown hair showed streaks of red and blond from the same exposure. His eyes were dark and hooded, his high cheekbones and narrow eyes, and his straight nose gave him an almost hawk-like countenance. Only when he smiled did he lose his grim visage, something that rarely occurred outside the comfort of his home, in the company of family.
Ranger Alystan of Natal was undertaking a service for a consortium of traders in the Free Cities, in negotiation with the Earl of Carse. He carried a bundle of documents that both parties considered vital. His sun-darkened features were set in concentration, his dark eyes narrowed as if willing himself to see every detail. His dark hair was still free of grey, but he was no youth, having spent his life serving his people with stealth, speed, and sword.
He had chanced upon the newcomer’s trail just an hour earlier, spotting his fresh tracks in the spring-damp soil. He had first thought little of the traveller, perhaps a magician from the look of him and his heavy staff, but he had followed. His usually limited curiosity over a solitary nomad wandering the wilds of the Grey Towers – even should he be prove a magician – was piqued not when he first glimpsed the traveller, but rather from the first moment he had taken his eyes from the man.
Alystan could not recall what the man looked like. Was his cloak grey or blue? Was he short or tall? Each time he took his eyes from his quarry he could not recall the details of his appearance. Alystan was certain that the man was a magic user, and that he was using some glamour to hide his true visage. To his consternation, the ranger found it easier to follow the magician’s tracks than watch him. Something about doing so made him wish to turn his attention away and go about other business, so he forced himself to stalk this mysterious figure.
Then he saw the change.
In that instant every detail of the creature’s true appearance was etched into the ranger’s memory. Upon witnessing its sudden departure, he knew he now had a more important task. The last time that strangers had appeared through a rift in this valley, their arrival had heralded the coming of a twelve-year-long, bloody war. And from the creature’s appearance, history could be repeating itself.
To Alystan, it looked as if an unremarkable man had transformed himself into the tallest elf he had ever seen. He wished he had been able to move closer and note more detail, but the traveller disappeared too quickly.
From what Alystan had seen the creature stood nearly seven feet in height, with massive shoulders, but a surprisingly narrow waist, giving his upper physique a startling ‘v’ shape. His legs were proportioned like those of an elf, though more powerfully muscled. A decorative band secured his grey-shot red hair on top of his head, the rest falling below his shoulders. But it was the creature’s startling shade of red hair that had surprised him: it was not a natural reddish-brown or even the orange-tinged red sometimes seen among humans and elves alike, its hair was a vivid scarlet colour. Its brows were the same vivid hue, and seemed to have been treated with wax as they swept out and up, mimicking a butterfly’s antennae.
Alystan moved cautiously, in case other creatures waited close by, though he doubted it, this valley had remained unoccupied during the century since the Riftwar. The dark elves who had once abided here were content to remain far to the north, and Alystan had only seen the trail sign of one man. Or elf, he amended.
He continued to think about what he had seen as he made his way back up to the higher game trails. Like other elves whom Alystan knew, the newcomer had shown effortless grace as he had stepped through the magic portal. But, unlike the elves known to the ranger, this one trod with heavy feet, as if it was ignorant of wood-lore or simply didn’t care. No elf of even modest experience would have left tracks so easily followed.
There had been something else about the creature. Alystan had only caught a briefest glimpse of the creature’s face, as it had looked around before disappearing,