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Gildyr wandered the high-elf fortress in the company of his attendants, touring Starloft with genuine interest and wonder. Built by giants, the structure was mountainous; dominated at its center by a crystalline pillar that spanned the entire distance from base to high peak. This central prism shed a soft and continual moonlit glow that Gildyr could feel and just about feed upon.

They started at the noisy and bustling bottom level; the "Main Gallery", as one of his half-elf companions (Lora) informed him.

"The garrison is here," she added proudly, "along with the stables, kennel, falcon-loft and armory. Some lesser visitors' quarters, as well."

Lora spoke as if to a child, but Gildyr did not correct her. He had come here for information, and why stir up conflict or wrath? Instead, the druid nodded, looking around with real curiosity at everything that his dark-haired guide pointed out.

"Follow," she said, "and we'll show you the runes."

"Thank you, I'd like that," he replied gently, very aware of the difference in their accent, manners and dress. He felt very rustic alongside Lora and Randyn (a sentimental young man with mischievous eyes and ash-pale hair) ... but he did not try to match or outdo them. Just followed, observed and learned.

The two half-elves conducted him through a small city's worth of workshops and storehouses, mostly constructed of delicate wood and carved porphyry. Down here, the slick floor was sanded down or covered in acres of wood panels that clattered and thudded with constant traffic. "To keep the horses and dogs from slipping," Randyn explained.

Nothing down on this level was for sale, but he received a small paper sack of popped, spicy grains and tumblers of grog whenever he paused and showed interest. All of the half- and quarter-elf craftsmen were glad to display their skills. There were dwarves and goblins there, too, working mostly as smiths or as herbalists.

Gildyr chatted with many of them, sometimes lending a hand with the bellows or helping to sort out a basket of fragrant leaves. His patient guides did not hurry the druid, seeming pleased to be freed of their regular duties. In their company, Gildyr toured mighty Starloft… as high as the third floor, that is.

The buildings were only partly roofed, he noticed, because the weather inside was strictly controlled by resident mages. Beautiful bridges of sparkling frost or braided flame spanned the vast space overhead, creating a three-dimensional lacework of light that connected the elven platforms to those massive walls of dark stone.

They moved past the workshops at last, for there was a great deal to see. Gildyr munched spicy grains, almost spraining his neck from looking around. At one point, nearing the central pillar, they were accosted by a class of young students running ahead of their tutor, a reserved, very beautiful high-elf.

The kids crowded around Gildyr, daring each other to touch his travel-stained cloak and tanned, tattooed arms.

"You're a druid, Sir?" the eldest cried out. "Can you wild-shape for us, please? Just once, please?"

Their elven tutor sighed, but nodded slightly, giving Gildyr permission to put on a show. Happy to entertain, he reflexively faerie-pocketed all of his clothing and items, then flashed through a few basic forms. Became a fluttering sparrow, a wolf, a slim, spotted deer and a rabbit in quick succession, dashing about through the crowd of delighted children and workers.

Landed here on a shoulder, then took flight to strike ground and nuzzle a hand, then leapt gracefully over their heads to a clear patch of yard (where he nibbled on somebody's potted milk-ivy). Dropping into rabbit shape, the druid next dodged and wove through a forest of legs to rejoin his attendants, taking as final form a towering, russet-furred owl-bear.

He rose to his hind legs and stood swaying above them all, snuffing and seeing with bear and owl senses, both. Awed, the children gasped words they were not supposed to know, yet; a few of them daring enough to reach for his massive forepaws or pat his coarse and feathery hide.

When he'd returned to his wood-elf from, a small girl pled,

"Could you do a griffin, please, Sir? I've always wanted to ride on a griffin, just like Their Lordships do!"

But Gildyr shook his head no, panting lightly, all at once flustered.

"I'm… um… afraid not, Cubby. At least, not very successfully." The thought made him anxious. A little nauseous, even. "It's not a shape I've mastered yet. But, hey… I'll work on it, Cublings. Next time, for certain."

The chorus of "Awww…" that met this confession would have broken the heart of an underworld god. Gildyr felt very bad for disappointing his audience, but he gave them each a gold acorn… good for one minor boon… apiece. That cheered them up.

Their red-haired tutor bowed and smiled. (He'd gotten one, too.) Then, with a slight shooing motion, he said,

"Come little ones. Master druid is busy, and the runes are still distant. Our class time wanes as we stand here in idleness. You are to pick and sketch three of the runes, for today's assignment."

Well, that was where Gildyr and his attendants had been headed, so they tagged along. The walk took over half a candle-mark's time, even ignoring further distractions (of which there were plenty, including a pack of black-and-grey hounds just in from a hunt). Got there at last, though.

Gildyr stepped past the last row of dwellings to find himself on a mile-wide circle of polished red granite. Here, the crystal prism arose, towering far out of sight. And here, deeply inscribed on the floor at its base, were runes of a type that the druid had never seen before.

Incised about ten feet into the rock, spanning some twenty feet in length, the marks looked oddly pointed and spiky. Some resembled a ship, a hand or a sun, but most were utterly foreign.

"What do they mean?" Gildyr asked Lora, his chief guide. She spread her hands helplessly.

"I cannot say, friend Druid. We are told that the Silmerana alone knows their true meaning, and that he can use them for transport, at need."

Cut in Randyn, eagerly,

"My guess would be, it's the name that the giants used for this place, along with… so to speak… its transport address. Don't know how you'd pronounce it aloud, though. They surely did not call it 'Starloft', which isn't an elvish title."

"It's human," clarified Lora. "Thought up by High Lord Galadin's consort, on first finding the place, when all this was wilderness."

Gildyr nodded, looking up and around at a hollowed-out mountain being lived in by elves as ants might claim a vast, empty barn. Some of the runes were out of sight behind the pillar, so his guides conducted him all the way around, weaving through busily sketching young students. One of the runes pulsed with soft light, about halfway along the prism's east side.

"The glow shifts from rune to rune over time," said Lora, "but it isn't regular. At least, I've never worked out a pattern."

Neither had Randyn, who was anxious to put in his bit.

"Stay around for a while and you may see it shift… or not," he said, shrugging. "Sometimes the cycle takes months, sometimes just a few days, and it doesn't always light up the next glyph in line. I've been watching the things since my own classroom days, and it's still a mystery. Much cannier sights on the next two floors, though. Better food, too."

They reached the next level by using a magical lift, stepping onto a disk of pale light that whisked them up through the air and onto a series of arching rainbow and frost spans. Here, too, the pillar shed radiance as it passed through concentric, whirling stone rings. There was sunlight as well, shining in from windows the size of great oaks.

"There's nothing much on this level but soldier's quarters, the council hall and a public kitchen," said Lora, glancing around from their perch on a bridge of crackling frost. The crowds here were thinner. More quietly purposeful, Gildyr noticed. The guards, more alert. Not all of them in uniform or elven-shape, either. Here, too, he caught his first sight of a griffin-mount.

Very young, it was; all tawny hide and flaring red plumage, maybe ten feet from its snapping, curved beak to whipping, scaled tail. Its training flight didn't seem to be going well, as the juvenile monster shrieked and writhed in midair to pluck off its rider.

It flung her spinning away, then banked and dove to attack her, its screams and hers combining in shrill, ringing harmony. Gildyr shifted to sparrow-shape, meaning to dive at its golden eyes and distract the furious beast.

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Fortunately, the plummeting groom used an escape spell, leaving her cursing fellows to recapture the screeching young rebel. Nets and compliance charms did the trick, but it was a very near thing, in which Gildyr secretly cheered for the griffin-cub.

"They're almost impossible to ride if they haven't bonded to you," sighed Randyn, gazing upward with wide, wistful eyes. "Once you connect with one, though, it's said to be the grandest feeling in all the world."

Lora gave him a head-clearing shove, nearly tipping her partner… who'd leaned out after a lone, drifting feather… off of the icy bridge.

"Not for the likes of us, Randy," she chided. "Only the nobles ride griffins, you know that. The rest of us make do with horses, or walk."

"I know," he grumped, tucking away his caught wing-feather. "But no one can stop me from dreaming."

By this time, Gildyr had resumed his own shape. He patted the half-elf's slim shoulder. Having a heart-friend of his own, the druid well understood Randyn's longing. They moved on to the third level, then, where… according to Lora… everything really important was located.

"This is the Pillared Hall," she told Gildyr, waving a hand around at a floor that was over a mile in diameter. "Here, you'll find the formal dining hall, the High Seat of the Tarandahls, two ballrooms and the Mall. Best part, if you ask me."

"The officers live here, along with diplomats and some of the lesser nobility. Lord Lerendar…" Randyn hesitated, as though unsure whether or not to keep talking.

"Well, it's common knowledge," said Lora, frowning a little. As they wove their way past kiosks and shops selling everything under the sun and the fey-wild, she added, "His Lordship's consort being human… Well, she doesn't live up above with the noble family, nor does their child, Lady Zara."

"So, no more will Milord, who is a good sort, and won't stay where they cannot," put in Randyn, lowering his voice and looking around a bit nervously.

"Makes things awkward, as Lord Valerian's mate is not elvish, either," mused Lora.

"No, but she is of the fey," Randyn argued, defending Valerian. "An air sprite of some sort, said to be lovely, with no memory of her past. She is allowed in the family compound, but Honorable Beatriz must remain down here… along with His Lordship and wee Lady Zara."

Gildyr nodded, head whirling with high-elf politics. Things were so much simpler back home in the Greenwood, where a life-mate was a personal choice, and you dwelt in whichever tree would put up with your bother and noise.

Up in the Mall there were cafes serving everything from daybrew to icewine; offering delicacies that the druid had never seen or imagined.

"Some of it comes from other planes," Lora told him, over the Mall's gentle, tinkling music.

"And a lot of it's more fashionable than delicious," finished Randyn. "But you have got to try the cloud-cream. One taste of that and you'll not eat for days, so's not to spoil the memory."

Gildyr smiled.

"I can't wait to try it," he said to the half-elves, who'd been subtly angling him along so that the next sight came as a total surprise.

There was a magically ported river on the third floor, cascading like a waterfall from just under the ceiling to ten feet over the floor. A river, complete with serpents, fish and occasional naiads who flashed past in slithering silhouette. It made a soft rushing sound as it fell through the air, scattering mist and cool, gusting wind.

Gildyr stopped walking to stare. Maybe he looked like an utter rube, like an antlered druid at court, but that was amazing. Lora and Randyn nudged each other and smiled, enjoying his open wonder. Later, as they sat outside a cafe, watching the River Aradyne tumble past, Gildyr ate cloud-cream flavored with moonlight and pine. And, yes, it was like nothing he'd ever tasted; too good for mere senses of flesh.

"It's all so peaceful," he wondered aloud. "So…"

Unburned. With no tremors or screeching, hungry undead. No world-ending floods or invading dark gods. No sign of Chaos, at all.

"It's wonderful, all right," agreed Lora, pausing with her spoon halfway to her mouth. "Just… sort of frozen. Like ripples on a pond that never reach shore."

"Like something keeps on not happening," added Randyn, shamelessly licking the inside of his dish. His cloud-cream had been flavored with nectar and spice-bark; Lora's with toasted bay-nuts and grated fruit.

Gildyr leaned forward.

"That's what I'm here to find out," he confided, lowering his voice. "This sense that we get just so far, then keep looping around again and again, over and over. Things build up, there's one perfect day and then… poof… it's back to the start."

The half-elves considered his words. After a moment, Lora said (very quietly),

"Does anyone else have terrible visions, sometimes?"

Randyn huddled on his cushioned red chair; for once, not smiling at all.

"Like getting torn apart by a chuul, trying to shove my little sib through a door?" he asked. "Last thing I heard was Anya, screaming my name."

Lora shuddered delicately.

"Earthquake," she said. "Great timbers and rocks fell, crushing me as the fire… as… I couldn't…"

She shook her head and stopped talking. They were quiet for a time, till Gildyr ordered more cloud-cream and wine.

"I don't want to stir Chaos back up again," he assured his guides, when their human-fey waiter buzzed off. "But Order can't mean that we just keep repeating the same things over and over again, can it? There must be a safe way to move onward."

"That's a matter for the great ones, not us," Lora decided. "I don't want to die in a fire, hearing the people I love screaming for help all around me. Not again, Druid. Not ever again. If you brought that back, I'd track you down and kill you, myself."

"I'd help," replied Gildyr, who'd lost his mind, lost himself, turning into a griffin. "But I have to find out what's gone wrong, and how we can fix it."

It was just about then that Lord Reston turned up, stepping out of a gate that opened right by their table. As everyone got to their feet with a clattering screech of chair legs on stone, Reston snapped,

"The tour is concluded. Lora, Randyn, you will return to your posts." Then, as the servants bowed and shot off. "Druid, you are commanded to dinner tonight in the grand hall. Before that event, you must be suitably dressed and prepared. There will be no trouble from you. No disorder. I will not permit it. Are we clear?"

Most male half-elves shaved off their facial hair, attempting to seem more like their elven parent. Not Reston Tarandahl, who sported a trim beard and had cut his grey hair at the shoulders.

Gildyr inclined his own head, causing his topknot to shed a few twigs.

"I did not come to cause problems, Lord Reston," he soothed. "I came to find an old friend and work out what's happened. Nothing sneaky or dangerous, I promise."

"For your sake, I hope so, Druid," said Reston stepping aggressively close to the slender wood-elf. "I am this family's defender, and I will let nothing and nobody harm them."

For Reston had visions, too.

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He retreated until broken rock scratched and stabbed at his back, but there was no escape through the unyielding stone. No way back where he'd come from. Meanwhile, that tattooed woman kept moving forward, picking her way through outcrops of volcanic rock and clumps of tall grass. Her sing-song voice and twittering words were meant to be soothing, he guessed, but she smelt of power gone sideways and bad. She smelt, he thought, like a witch.

Should have known what to do about that, but nothing sprang to mind except fire and steel, which felt wrong against one lone, slightly stooped older woman. Confused, he didn't react in time when she gestured and snapped out a hex, creating something like a twisted, barbed cage in the air that tightened and shrank on his body. Worse, it sank in, and all at once he was caught. Had just a moment to thrust his sword… away, somehow, as if deep in an unseen pocket. There, but out of his reach, and hers.

Then there was no more edging aside. No more anything. All he could do was stand there enslaved, awaiting her orders. And that was the start of a very bad time.

Laughing, the witch hurried forward to prod and slap at him, producing small bolts of lightning just to be sure he was thoroughly under control. The shocks hurt, as did the barbs of that choking-tight spirit cage, but he didn't cry out. Didn't matter. She fed upon anger and pain like a corpse fly; sensing all that he would have kept hidden.

The witch was interested in the mark on his chest, poking at it and muttering questions. Was very displeased to learn that he did not speak her language and could not understand her commands. She had to seize his wrist and drag him back to her lair, which was no more than a hole in the bank of a sluggish brown river. Just a couple of earthen-walled rooms with a storehouse in back, it was filled with roots' ends, insects and constantly dripping water.

The roof sagged low, and the whole place stank of dark magic. Once inside, the witch threw an armful of rags and torn blankets onto the floor in one corner, snapping something that might have meant "sit". Next thrust a mixture of clothes at him, along with a shred of flat bread. Almost, he didn't eat it. Only, someone had said, "You eat when you can to keep going, Milord, because sometimes, things could get better." Just a whisper of thought. A quiet voice from someone he'd lied to. Still, he listened and ate and kept going.

Time passed, sparking an odd sort of war.

The compulsion was strong to obey, only he was never quite sure what the witch really wanted, making possible a hundred little rebellions, delays and mistakes. Paid for that over and over with lightning, acid, drowning and paralysis, but maybe he didn't deserve any better. As a servant, though, he wasn't much help. Carried things for her, and sometimes killed bandits, but mostly just got in the way.

There were two villages within a day's walk of her lair. One had been turned all to stone by some awful calamity. People, buildings, animals, plants… everything. She would go there, making him follow, to break off pieces of petrified leaf and crystalline fruit for her potions. Sometimes, laughing, to shatter a helpless stone villager. It was the sort of joke she enjoyed.

The other village still lived. She only went there when the moon was full, and everyone huddled indoors. Just a cluster of wattle-and-daub huts with a log wall and spiked wooden gate, the town had one muddy street and twenty-some terrified residents.

The gate presented no barrier, as the witch simply charmed it wide open, despite all the hex-bans inscribed on its surface. Once inside, she cursed the town's well and its shrine, seizing offerings which had been put out (he thought) to appease her. No good, as her magic swirled like a whirlpool of squawking black runes, entering houses and sheds to blight and despoil. Some of those fluttering marks he could block a little, earning her wrath, yet again.

On their fourth night-raid, he stood in her path when the witch prepared to fire a small, shuttered cottage. It was the best in the village, and there were people inside. He could hear them, trying hard to quiet a weeping child.

"Shhh, Jazra, Shhh!"

The witch laughed at that, then summoned a ball of fire that sizzled and spat; barely the size of her fist, but enough to touch off the dry thatch above. Seeing what she intended, he pulled the fire into himself, causing the mark on his chest to flare with sudden red light. Part of it, anyhow. The spiral part curled even tighter, which he could feel like something moving just under his bruises and scars.

Angry, the witch pointed at him and snapped a command: "Agrash!" Then, she lit up a second blaze. This one, too, he absorbed; earning a furious curse and the feeling of thorns ripping his hide off in long, curling strips. Did not clearly recall the walk back to her lair, except that she battled the whole way to keep him under control. He fought her, pressing hard against curses and spells and the barbs of that magical slave-cage. Didn't break free. Not quite, but scared her pretty badly. Spent the night outside on the riverbank, half in the water; paralyzed by one of her poisoned knives.

He was awake and aware, but unable to move when fish slithered by or when animals snuffed at his clothing and hair. Nothing tried for a meal, maybe because the mark on his chest was still glowing. Maybe because she intended to kill him herself.

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