(Very long author’s notes).

A/N: Posting of a new Arcadian novel here. Hopefully I’ll manage more regular updates with this one than I did with More Than Glory Abounds .

This novel is set considerably before most of my other work, in the Age of Stars and the Age of Song. It has some connections with events in the Herran Turnlong story Harper of Glory Forerunning, but you don’t have to have read that one to understand this (since this novel was actually written first). It does concern Elwens, as just about all the Arcadian novels do.

If you want to know how to pronounce the Elwen names:

Elian Alian (el-ee-AYN ah-lee-AYN). His first name means "son of the stars," and is a very common name among Elwens, the equivalent of John in English. His last name means "son of the rising sun."

Telandre (tehl-AHN-dray). Her name means "superiority of the mind."

Virita (veer-EE-tah). Means "born of the swaying trees."

Anadrel Cytheriao (ay-NAY-drel sigh-THAYR-ee-AY-oh). Her first name means "epiphany,"
and her surname "of Cytheria."

Kaada (ka-AY-dah). Means "eagle."

Rian (REE-ayn). Means "river, magical river."

And on we go.

Prologue

"Must you go?"

Elian turned slowly away from the window to look at Telandre. She stood very close to him, her silver eyes uplifted to his face and glimmering with tears. One hand rested lightly on his, although she did not embrace him. That would have been too much. He was supposed to be on a mission of hope, and the good wishes of all Starchasers were supposed to go with him, the last of the Starseekers. There must be no regrets.

He drew her into an embrace of his own accord, and stooped to plant a chaste kiss on her forehead. "I must go," he said softly. "But I will return. Virita assures me there is no more danger in this than there is in an ordinary journey."

"She may not know." Telandre turned her head so that she was deliberately looking away from him. "The last one who Departed never returned."

"He had a different time Elwen doing the Departure," said Elian, gently taking her arm and leading her down the hall in which they had stood for some ten minutes now. Huge, and hugely expensive, triangular glass windows, inlaid with silver and tinted glass in patterns of stars and whirlwinds, flashed past them as they walked, letting in the light of the setting sun. The carpet beneath their feet, thick and silver as starlight, muffled their footsteps to nothingness. The pale walls glimmered like the ghostly insides of-

A cage.

Elian could not pretend too much to himself that he regretted this. Lately, the Elicalara, with the ever-growing despair among the Starchasers, had begun to feel like a prison. Elian could make no move without it being watched and questioned; his every decision was regarded as water from a drying fount of wisdom. It irritated him. Simply because he was the only Elwen who had been found in the last thousand years to possess the strength of Starchaser gifts that would let him become a Starseeker-

But, of course, it was serious. The land Elwen city of Corafur, which sheltered and supported the Elicalara, had come to depend on the Starseekers and the unique healing only they could do, the questions only they could answer, the beautiful illusions and deceptions that only they could create. Sometimes, they seemed to believe that the essence of Elwenity itself would die if there were no more Starseekers left.

Thus, the Departure.

Elian could feel his blue eyes brighten as he considered it. He was careful to keep his face turned from Telandre, his betrothed, who would see his joy and recognize it, but not understand. She was firmly convinced that a journey back in time to discover why the Starseeker gift had abruptly begun to disappear could not be anything but dangerous.

Well, perhaps it could not be. But there were other things that Elian thought of when danger came to mind. Excitement. Adventure. Difference.

A change.

He was returning to a time in his own Age, carefully set before his birth, when he would not be the only Starseeker, or even the only one with the abilities of both Starseeker and Lordsinger; when he was not an irreplaceable resource. He could explore and ask questions that genuinely interested him. He could hear songs written then for the first time, as they were meant to be, not imprisoned in notes on a page. He could do things, in other words, that an ordinary Elwen could do.

He had never been ordinary. He was looking forward to the chance.

"Elian?" Telandre's voice was wary. "What are you humming?"

Elian started and glanced down at her guiltily. He had begun to hum the opening notes to an old battle-song in the Primal Tongue that declared the glory of fighting for freedom. He could see by the silver flush that mantled her cheeks that she knew it.

But he met her eyes without flinching away. He had never been the sort to flinch away. Perhaps that, too, would change, his rebellious mind thought, refusing to think of the anguished face of the girl in front of him.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "But you know that I-"

"Yes." Telandre looked away, folding her arms across her chest as if she were cold. "But couldn't you pretend?"

Elian shook his head, even though she was no longer looking at him, and began walking again. She followed slowly, her head bowed so that her long hair, golden as the strings of a well-kept harp, trailed down over her eyes.

He knew how to deceive her. He had played as if he loved her as much as she did him, as if their betrothal were anything more to him than a breeding marriage to increase the number of children born with Starseeker gifts. Perhaps it would have been kinder to have told her the truth, but she had learned it on her own before he could find the courage to tell her. And she did not ask him to tell; she wanted the deception to go on. He had never understood why.

It startled him a little to realize that the betrothal itself had become a cage, and was one of the reasons he was glad to be Departing.

They came more quickly than they might have to the room where the Departing shell was held. It resembled nothing so much as a conch shell, separated into two great gleaming white halves hinged at the back and gaping like a mouth. A faint, crackling, swimming aura of magic hung over it, forcing Elian's eyes away and to the side, where stood the woman who would send him on this mad journey.

Virita was a tall and stately time Elwen; she had the ungainly limbs of all her kind, but she looked like a heron rather than a stork. Her green hair, matching the color of her skin, was bound back out of her face, not for prettiness but for practicality. She spun around as they entered and then was still for a long moment, her great, unfathomable golden eyes locked on Elian's face.

Then she nodded very slightly, and began to recite, in a singsong chant, the information he already knew. He stood as still as possible, and did his best to keep his eyes on her face.

"You, Elian Alian, will be returning to the second year of the Age of Stars, in an effort to learn what was different among the Starseekers then. You may not try to change anything except the events that will, of course, be changed by your presence. Time is a sealed loop. Any interference that you may cause is already part of history, kept in Rareth's tome. You cannot change anything else. You may not try."

Of course, of course. Elian nodded.

"You may not reveal your Starseeker gift to anyone there; keep up the barriers that will hide you.

"You may not stay in that time.

"You may not bring someone back from that time, or become friends with anyone."

Elian nodded, and Virita seemed to have finished at last. She turned towards the shell and lifted her arms. The air itself seemed to hum.

Telandre turned to cling to him.

Elian gently kissed her on the brow again, and opened his mouth. He meant to say farewell. But it seemed to be a day for painful truths; what came out were the words really in his heart, not the comforting ones that he wished he could speak for her sake.

"There are worlds beyond our own, and I am going to see them someday."

Telandre stared up at him open-mouthed, then whirled and fled the room, weeping.

Elian stared after her, deeply troubled, one hand rising to touch the muscles of his throat. They showed no inclination to rebel now, lying quiet no matter how he ran his fingers over them. But for a moment- one damning moment- they had escaped his control, and as much as told a young innocent the truth: that he hoped he would never have to return.

But he had already promised that he would. He must.

He shook his head and turned to the shell, just in time for Virita to look him in the face again, turning her head as slowly and deliberately as an owl's. The force of her golden eyes struck him like a blow to the head.

They were ancient beyond measure, those eyes. Time Elwens, triltnai, were not like any other people in the world. They existed in all times and all places, save the times and places beyond their own deaths. They could remember everything they had ever seen, heard, felt, or experienced. Virita was wise even by the standards of her people. She had incarnations in every year back to the creation of the world, so many millions of years ago that they defied numbering. She was right when she told him that he could not stay; of course she was right.

But, just now, she was finding it necessary to warn him again.

"You cannot stay there."

Elian swallowed back the thickness in his throat. "I know," he whispered. He really did not wish to leave his time forever. He had a father and a sister here whom he loved. He had Telandre. He had all the work of the Starchasers, the training that only he could give, as the last Starseeker in existence. The only reason he was leaving was on a quest for those who loved him. Why should he not wish to return?

Why should he feel as if every tie to this time was a chain clasped around his heart, dragging him down?

"It is time," said Virita suddenly.

Elian bowed his head and stepped into the shell, curling his body as comfortably as he could in the lower half. It was not really cramped, but it had been built for time Elwens, for someone much longer of limb and less thick around the torso.

The top half of the shell swung down to enclose him. He was surrounded by physical darkness and silence, and the hum of magic that did not quite ring in his ears. He closed his eyes, concentrating on an image of his Age, seventh in the world's time, and on the second year of it.

He felt the transition begin. The hum of magic deepened, and then something seized him and threw him through time.

Elian had been warned that this might happen, and for a long moment, he felt such wild exhilaration that it was a struggle to hang onto his image. He was riding a river leaping over rapids, a long, running fall of notes in his mind, a sweet music-

Something struck him so hard that pain flared throughout his body.

The song turned sour. The river was no longer rapids, but a waterfall, tossing him out into space without caring whether or not he found a handhold.

Elian made frantic movements, though he knew it was no use, worse than useless. He could not grab onto anything. He was suffocating, he was dying, he was-

A pair of golden eyes gazed into his face, strange eyes shaped like half-moons. He thought he heard a mournful cry.

Then he hit stone, and was sent into darkness, his last thought that Virita must have died, to have something this horribly wrong happen.