Two days later I followed Zirilla through the air to land in the shadow of the Skytusk, the name the elementals had given to the tallest mountain. The mountain was north of the colony, and we were on its northwestern side—more than a day’s travel, on foot.
We were choosing the spot for the new colony. Technically it was a decision for the council, but for the moment the council was mine—Mirio, Zirilla, and Valir would vote how I told them to. Even after the people voted in a more permanent arrangement, I doubted the balance of power would shift.
Because it was essentially my decision, Zirilla had been leading me around to all the places our scouts had found, but she’d already told me she was sure this was the place.
We were just above the second mist layer, perched at the edge of one of the steep cliff faces that dropped away hundreds of meters to lead into the swamp—though I could see no mountains when I looked west.
“This is, essentially, the closest point to the peak whose elevation is this low,” said Zirilla. “In every other direction, the Skytusk joins other mountains, dips down and then rises into a new peak. But here the mountains end.” She gestured toward the sea of mist to the east. “Beneath that is all swamp and the great trees. This one stretches as far as we’ve flown, so far.”
She gestured back up at the mountain. Everything we could see was between the second mist layer, where we stood, and the third layer where the snowline began. All of it—almost everything we could see—was steep, crumpled terrain that was thickly forested with pines. The forest ended just short of us: we stood on a soil-free rock ledge dotted with pink and green moss, dim in the light of the of the day-mist above us.
Bare rock was more common near the second layer, we’d learned: something in the mists likely stripped it of its soil and plants. Given that many creatures lived primarily within the mists to avoid aerial predators, it could have been any number of things.
“So we’re as close to the peak as we can be,” I said. “Plenty of wood.” I looked back down at the swamp. “I have qualms.”
Zirilla grinned. “Knew you would.”
“For one, after all your worries about flooding, you want us living on the windward side of the biggest wall of mountains we can find. Those peaks are going break storms like twigs under a child’s foot. We’ll be drenched. We’ll get more rain than any other place we could find.”
I looked past her, along the slopes. It was out of sight now, but I’d spotted a river that I could still hear about five hundred feet away, a small stream about ten feet wide that ran down from the mountains to spill over the side of the cliff. “We don’t know what season it is, here,” I said. “Who knows how much meltwater we could be getting, across time?”
“Aye,” said Zirilla. “But that’s not a problem for a permanent settlement. We settle far from the stream, dam it to make a reservoir, then let the mages do their work—any elementals that come down in a storm will be drawn there, not here. With enough effort, we can gather and harvest quite a few of them.”
“Provided we make enough observations to see that it’s safe to do so,” I said, nodding.
“Yes, yes,” Zirilla said. “Speaking of, you mentioned the swamp.”
I jerked my head toward the nearby mist. “You said it’s all swamp beneath that,” I said. “We wanted low density of life, not high. We’re more likely to meet a roaming high-level predator if we’re close to one of the swamp forests.”
“Ah, but come and see,” said Zirilla.
I followed as she took off into the air again, then dove into the mists next to the cliff. As soon as we emerged from them I saw what was really getting her excited.
The great trees rose out of the first mist layer, but in a ragged line that began almost a kilometer away. Between the sheer cliff face we’d just left and the the great trees was mostly open air, but here and there a rocky hill poked its way out of the first mist layer. The hills were covered by sparse vegetation—tall grasses, glowing moss, and the occasional twisting tree. Their steeper faces were bare white stone.
Zirillad guided me through the first mist layer. The water that flowed off the mountains had eroded deep channels as it made its way toward the great trees, leaving tall pillars of hills behind.
“Limestone,” she said, landing on an outcrop. “These hills stretch along this cliff in a thin band for as far as we’ve explored. A better survey is needed, but there’s already a few sites that we could build a quarry for the stone we need to make lime. Given that the edge of the swamp is abundant in bog iron….” She looked at me and smiled.
“This strip is a buffer,” I said. I looked over at the great trees. “Any superpredator just seeking things to eat will stick to the swamp, where life is more plentiful. Anything that’s scouring these hills will be particular to them, unless it’s just avoiding the great trees. Our cliffside mountain valley is mostly out of the way.”
“No care for the resources?” Zirilla asked. “Fine then: I’ll tell you what I like best about this spot. No caves.”
I frowned. That couldn’t be possible. “None?”
“A few shallow ones in the cliffside, but they don’t connect like most of the others we’ve seen. These hills here are full of caverns and sinkholes made by the water, of course, but that’s to be expected. I think most of the stone-burrowers in this ecology prefer direct access to the swamps. We could pick any spot along the edge of this cliff, and my [Earth Sight] detects no shallow or deep caverns.”
Now it was my turn to smile. An attack from below the ground was one of my greatest concerns. Burrowing animals were bad enough, but earth elementals were utterly terrifying—too powerful, and too hard to kill. And fire elementals could lie even deeper than those. The closer we were to tunnels, the more likely one could wander by. It wasn’t a high likelihood, but it was still a long-term danger.
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There was also the insect hive I’d run into. Living far away from any of those was a must.
“Well,” she said. “I’ve told you the whole of it. What do you think?”
“We dig down into the cliff’s edge—slice enough of it away that we’re below the mists. Then we’ll have cover from aerial predators. The mountain and the hills here provide as much cover as we can get from any powerful wandering beasts. We’re as close as we can get to the mountaintop that will serve as the point of contact between us and the air elementals, and we’re as safe as we can get from everything that lurks in the deep. Did I miss anything?”
Zirilla was smiling, but she still crossed her arms. “The resources, Aziriel! You don’t care at all?”
I shrugged. “Not as much as I care for safety. But yes: timber, limestone, iron. Which means lumber, lime, concrete, steel. With the right magical processing, of course—but nothing gets the firedancers as excited as being told how hot we need the furnaces, and the creators will adore learning that we need them to produce some essential node of whatever long production chain our mages think up.”
Then I grinned. “And you haven’t mentioned it, but we’re at the intersection of these hills, the swamp, the mountainsides, and one of the mist layers. The wildhearts will be delighted. So will the hunters—if for different reasons.”
Zirilla laughed. “The opposite reasons, you mean.”
“All right,” I said, nodding. “This will do.”
“Will do?” Zirilla asked in mock offense.
I nodded. “In a year I’m sure we’ll know enough about this place to see where we might have chosen better. I don’t know about you, but my mind is swimming with questions. I want to stop and examine every little thing, to learn as much as possible. Like these chasms, these swamps—they’re not exactly typical geography.”
“I’ve got some theories,” Zirilla said. “But they’re only theories. They occupy the places that would be natural valleys—the natural lowest elevations between the peaks. It’s as if something has eaten the stone there away, though—eaten it straight downward to create these enormous ravines. Maybe something in the water eats the stone once its settles, but I don’t know. Could be some kind of animal.” She shrugged. “But the dropoff for the cliffs often begins in the mists. Not always, but geography can change over long timespans from the activity of the elementals—it could simply be that any terrain below this second layer gets carved out.”
“Could be the trees,” I speculated, looking over toward the crowns of the great trees that rose up to the west.
“The trees?”
“Their crowns always end just below the second mist layer,” I said. I shrugged. “Maybe as they grow, they burrow downward to keep it so. Anything that size would certainly have both the power and the time to carve out these ravines.”
“Might explain why their roots are so exposed,” she said. “Counting what’s below the water, their real trunks are fifty or more meters off the ground. They might sink a little as they eat through the earth and rock beneath them, but gradually expose more of their roots. Then again—they could just stop growing right below the mist, no burrowing necessary.”
I laughed. “You’re right,” I said. “We really do know nothing of this place.”
Zirilla’s laughter was a shade darker than my own. “We know it’s drowning in power.”
I looked over at her, thought for a moment. “Don’t tell the others yet,” I said. “But I asked Lord Kalak to bring us to the safest place on the surface that he could.”
Zirilla’s eyes widened. Her mouth parted in surprise. “I see,” she said at last, her tone serious.
“It’s extraordinary, this place,” I said, looking back toward the forest. “And it’s beautiful. In time we’ll be able to appreciate it—if we could dispel just one layer of the mists around this cliff, the views would be astonishing. If we could open a window to the sky….”
“Aye,” said Zirilla. “And think of how quickly we’ll be able to build with this much mana in the air. Our earthmovers, our furnaces, our enchanters….”
I smiled. “Our people will feel better once they have work in front of them. Let’s pick a spot. My only concern now is that it should be far from the waterfall.”
“This is it, then,” Zirilla said, smiling.
I nodded and looked back at the cliff that rose into the mists beyond us. “This is it.”
A new home.
----------------------------------------
We spent another five days preparing to leave.
It was more time than I had ever wanted to spend in the cave, but it was necessary. Our journey would not be across easy terrain.
In fact, the terrain was about as bad as it could be. Traversing the swamp-filled ravines was utterly out of the question—they needed to be descended into, then ascended out of. The slopes that fell within the mist were stalked by elemental predators, and the ground above them was the hunting ground for the broadwings, the wyverns, and a multitude of huge predator birds.
The best spot for walking was just above the mists, in the place where rocky, moss-strewn slope gave way to grassy soil but before any forests. Our hunters would go ahead of us, both in the mists and out, and our flyers would deter the aerial predators.
But this was only a small piece of the problem. We were journeying through ravine-streaked mountains. The distance between the settlement site and the cave was almost eighty kilometers—but between those two points was nothing but massive ravines and mountains.
Our path was winding. Some of the ravines we could walk around, but in three cases the slopes were too steep or the path too long—our eventual plan, after much arguing, was to simply stop and spend two or more hours carrying our people across their narrowest points using windcallers and large skysails.
The ravines weren’t entirely continuous through the mountains. As we approached the Skytusk, we’d have to cross many steep slopes before we could take an easier path along the outer perimeter of the mountain, one that followed the great forest I’d found earlier.
We had to send out our elementalists—not just to carve rough steps into the mountainsides so that we could climb the peaks, but to carve out the waystations we’d need to spend our nights in. It would be a multi-day trip.
The day that it was time to leave, I rose early and did a low patrol of our path. When I returned to the cave, I could practically taste the excitement in the air—elves were not meant to live in cramped holes, and my people were more than ready to make the journey. Most of them were on their feet, backpacks already stuffed full.
“We’re almost ready to move out,” Hassina said, approaching me.
“Making good time,” I said, beaming as I looked our people over.
“Before we go, though—we’ve got something for you.”
Fireesha approached, carrying a large white bundle. She inclined her head as she passed it to me. “Lux Irovex.”
I took the bundle, and the Verse told me that it had a name:
[Aziriel’s Pale Furs]