Shock tingled through Kerian’s body. “And their swords?”
“Long curved sabers that seem to have lost their guards-”
Her whoop of excitement caused everyone to flinch.
“Those are Khurish swords!” she shouted. “Did they give you their names?”
“The one leading the horse did. He speaks like a rough trooper, but gave a noble name: Ambrodel.”
“Hytanthas!”
With that, Kerian sprinted toward the rider, vaulted onto his horse’s rump, and cried, “Take me to him! I know him!”
Samar protested that the council was still in session, but Kerian ignored him. She kicked the horse into motion, and they clattered away across the square. They left Bianost by the east road then turned to cut across the burned squatters’ camp. Skirting an overgrown grove of apple trees, they galloped down a dirt path until they reached a knot of mounted guards.
“Where are the two strangers?” Kerian demanded.
The guards couldn’t see her very clearly but knew she wasn’t one of their officers. One asked her name.
“I’m Kerianseray, commander of the army of the Speaker of the Sun and Stars!”
It sounded most impressive, and every elf snapped to attention, not an easy task when mounted. They escorted her and the courier down a gully to a dry streambed choked with willow saplings. Sheltered from view by the high banks of the dry creek was a small campfire. Elves were gathered around it. Kerian slid off the horse and pushed through the elves until she reached the fireside.
Amid the polished ranks of royal guardsmen sat a particularly filthy elf. Matted hair fell across his gaunt face, but the blue eyes that looked up at Kerian were those of her young comrade.
“Hytanthas!”
He rose, too quickly, and staggered. The elves nearest bore him up.
“Commander? Lady?” He put out a thin hand as if to reassure himself he wasn’t hallucinating. Grinning widely, Kerian stepped forward and embraced him. He felt like a child in her grasp, all bones and airy sinew.
“It is you,” he murmured, amazed.
“What happened? How did you get here?”
“I might ask you the same thing, Commander,” he joked wanly. “Mostly I walked, all the way from Khur.”
He was swaying on his feet. Kerian helped him sit again and sat next to him. He gestured to his emaciated, fever-ravaged companion lying by the fire. “That’s Camaranthas. We two are all that remain of the party the Speaker sent to find you.”
As they turned to look, the elf tending Camaranthas shook his head. Hytanthas’s last comrade had succumbed. Without a word, the surrounding warriors bowed their heads, clapped their hands together twice, paused, and clapped twice again, the ancient salute to the dead from House Protector.
“He never knew we made it.” Hytanthas’s face had the dull, vacant look of one who has mourned too much already.
Kerian sympathized with his loss, but time was pressing. “You must come with me. I must hear your tale. There are important people you must speak with.” Belatedly, she added, “Have you eaten?”
He had. Alhana’s guards had given him food and water. What he needed was sleep. Camaranthas had been wounded in a goblin ambush four days earlier. Hytanthas had sworn he would find a healer and had not dared to rest, lest his comrade perish.
Kerian promised he would sleep soon in the best accommodations to be found in Bianost, but he must hold out just a little longer.
As horses were brought for them, Hytanthas said, “Lady, I have dire news. The Speaker and all our people are in grave peril!”
She suppressed an impatient sigh. “As they were when I left. As they will always be in Khurinost.”
“They’re not in Khurinost any longer!”
He explained the Speaker had begun the great trek to Inath-Wakenti with the entire nation. Swarms of nomads dogged their heels. The last news Hytanthas had gleaned from other travelers was two weeks old. It said that the Speaker and the nation were near the northern mountains. Many had died from nomad attacks. The Speaker intended to make a stand, to hold off the growing threat from the desert tribesmen.
Kerian’s impatience vanished, replaced by disbelief. Make a stand? They’d had a defensible position at Khuri-Khan, but Gilthas had abandoned it. Instead, he’d led their nation into the desert to die!
She took a deep breath, working hard to regain her composure. “Come,” she said, taking his arm and gently propelling him toward his borrowed horse.
They mounted. On the way, she explained about the council being held in the newly freed town, of the presence of Alhana Starbreeze, her guards, and several hundred town elves ready to throw off the bandit occupation.
“They all must hear what you have told me,” she finished.
“Then will we return to Khur? That was my mission, to bring you back to the Speaker.”
She looked away, toward the torchlit town. “If what you heard is true, Hytanthas, there is no Speaker anymore. No elf nation, either.”
Chapter 9
Rising out of the vast expanse of Khur’s northern desert were a series of rocky pinnacles. Before the First Cataclysm they were part of the Khalkist range to the north, connected to those mountains by long ridges that projected into the arid southern plain like great bony fingers. Time and catastrophe had eroded the fingers, leaving only the isolated pinnacles. There were six of them, known to the nomads as the Lion’s Teeth. Individually, from northwest to southeast, they were called Pincer, Ripper, Great Fang, Chisel, Lesser Fang, and Broken Tooth. Great Fang was the tallest; Pincer, the smallest. Broken Tooth covered the largest area and sported a wide, flat top.
Distributed around the bases of these spires were thousands of elves, survivors of the exodus from Khurinost, their tent city under the walls of Khuri-Khan. In six months the ponderous column had progressed barely sixty miles. Apart from the massive logistical problems of moving so many people, their possessions, and their livestock across the inhospitable terrain, the elves had been dogged every step of the way by growing numbers of Khurish nomads.
The desert tribesmen had always resented the presence of outsiders in their sacred land, but they had largely ignored the elves until Adala, female chieftain of the Weya-Lu tribe, awakened to the special danger the elves posed. It was not their trespass (considered a grave sin among nomads), nor their trampling of Khurish traditions that provoked Adala to action. As long as the laddad remained in their squalid tent city, Adala could ignore them. The spur that finally caused her to raise her people against them was their Speaker’s decision to lead his people away from the Khurish capital to settle in a valley on the northern border of Khur. The elves called it Inath-Wakenti, the Vale of Silence. City-dwelling Khurs knew it as the Valley of the Blue Sands and considered it little more than a fable.
Nomads knew better. To them, the valley was Alya-Alash (Breath of the Gods), the home of Those on High when They dwelt on the mortal plane. Strange forces lay quiescent in its cool, misty recesses. Disturbed by interlopers, the powers might leave their mountain haven and wreak havoc on the desert peoples. The world itself might come to an end if the sacred silence of Alya-Alash were broken.
Those on High had filled Adala with Their holy purpose. Her maita, her divine fate, was to unite the people of the desert against the intruders. Maita and the grace of Those on High would allow the nomads to overcome the subtle ways and superior warcraft of the laddad. Unfortunately, maita was no one’s servant, to be commanded at will. Adala had gathered six of the seven tribes of Khur to her cause, and they had won several victories, but the final destruction of the elves eluded them. Protected by the khan’s army, the laddad had escaped from Khurinost and begun their journey northward. With both Sahim-Khan’s formidable troops and elf cavalry arrayed against them, the nomads could do little more than harass their enemy. As the miles increased, the khan’s soldiers turned back home, and nomad attacks on the laddad grew stronger, more determined.
In the shadow of the Lion
’s Teeth, nomad horsemen struck the left side of the elves’ formation while it moved slowly, steadily north-northwest. The hard-riding men of the Weya-Lu and Mikku tribes sliced a bloody swath through the terrified elves, driving warriors and civilians back upon the center of the column. Panic-stricken civilians hampered the warriors’ efforts to re-form and counterattack. A rout seemed inevitable. The elves would be scattered across the sun-baked wasteland and slaughtered.
Traveling in the midst of his footsore nation was Gilthas Pathfinder, Speaker of the Sun and Stars. When the fighting reached him, he halted his horse amid the backwash of his terrified people. An iron ring of warriors formed around the Speaker, trying to hold off the nomad horde.
“Great Speaker, you must withdraw!” said General Hamaramis, commander of the Speaker’s private guard. Blood streamed down his forehead.
Warriors and ordinary elves alike added their pleas to withdraw, but Gilthas would not remove himself to a place of safety. Even as nomad arrows flicked past him, he remained where he was.
“You’ve done your best, General. Now we must help you push back this attack,” he said then turned in the saddle to address his people. “Elves of the two nations! We have been driven from our homelands, persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered. This may be our last trial. Let us go no further. Let us meet our fate as true descendents of Silvanos and Kith-Kanan, and never bow to the murderers’ blades!”
The elves let out a roar, and Adala’s fickle maita ebbed. Elves of every stripe-nobles, commoners, artisans, farmers, male and female-surged forward around the Speaker’s horse. Armed with anything that came to hand, they fell upon the nomads. Astonished Khurs were dragged from their saddles or had their mounts pushed over. The enormous mass of elves pressed in on two sides, squeezing the Khurs between them. Many elves fell to nomad swords, but the momentum of the whole nation could not be stopped. Like a slow flood rising over a sandbar, they wore away the ranks of nomads and threatened to engulf them completely.
Some Khurs in the rearmost ranks gave way. More followed, and more still. Robbed of impetus, the nomads’ deadly thrust collapsed. When at last their line broke, their spearhead-several hundred warriors of the Weya-Lu tribe-was surrounded by elves. Hamaramis called for the humans to surrender.
Their reply was blunt and rude. Regretful but unyielding, the general signaled his re-formed cavalry and left the nomads to their inescapable fate.
Gilthas had saved his people, but the cost was high. Hundreds were killed, hundreds more wounded, and irreplaceable supplies were lost in the mad rush to fend off the nomads. Carts were overturned, and oil, water, and other precious liquids soaked the pitiless sand. Foodstuffs carefully preserved and hoarded were trampled.
While the elves marveled at their survival, despite the high cost they had paid, the dispirited nomads returned to their hidden camps. For an entire month, they’d marshaled their forces, gathering together far-flung tribes and clans from every corner of Khur. That was to have been the decisive battle, the final defeat of the laddad pestilence, and it had failed. Their supreme effort had been repulsed.
Some of the clan chiefs and warmasters spoke openly of quitting. The valley to which the laddad were headed wasn’t really part of Khur after all. No nomads lived there. No nomads even visited there. Why not let the laddad go to the valley and be cursed by the forces within it? Why sacrifice more Khurish lives to hasten the death that surely awaited the laddad?
The chiefs and warmasters gathered around their leader. Their sturdy desert-bred horses were shorter than the war-horses ridden by elves, but still towered over Adala’s donkey.
Known as the Weyadan, Mother of the Weya-Lu, but more frequently called simply “Maita” by her followers, Adala sat on Little Thorn’s back beneath a square of black damask supported by four tall poles. As always, her hands were busy. She was darning holes in the robe of one of her kinsmen. Months ago most of the Weya-Lu women and children had been slain in a night raid on an unprotected camp. The atrocity was blamed on the laddad, who had a warband in the vicinity. Since then Adala had taken on various domestic tasks for the surviving wifeless men. Chief of the Weya-Lu and anointed leader of the temporarily united desert tribes she might be, but she also sewed, mended, and cleaned as necessary to support her loyal warriors.
“What say you, Maita?” asked Danolai, warmaster of the Mikku. “Why waste our lives against a departing foe?”
“The blood of our people is still hot upon the sand,” Adala replied evenly. “Who would not avenge his kinsmen, wrongly slain?”
The men looked away. Adala’s youngest daughters, Chisi and Amalia, had been among those slain in the treacherous night raid. Adala had always been certain the laddad were behind the terrible crime. Her followers had been less sure until the tracks of shod horses were discovered nearby. Nomad ponies wore no shoes.
“They are too great for us, Maita.”
It was obvious most of the men present agreed with Danolai. Adala looked at him, her eyes hard.
“Then go home,” she said. “If you think the laddad are greater than you, then you are nothing. Take the other nothings and go, but leave your swords in the sand. You have no right to bear arms.”
The men blanched. A nomad’s sword, narrow bladed and bare of guard, was as vital a part of his identity as prowess on a horse or skill as a storyteller. He could experience no greater shame than to have his sword taken away and driven pointfirst into the sand. The gesture implied every degree of cowardice.
Adala’s cousin Wapah, sitting a horse at her side, spoke. “Our great throw did not succeed. But while we live, we can fight again.” His pale gray eyes were unusual among nomads, but common in Wapah’s Leaping Spider Clan.
“Every fight weakens the laddad. This is not their land. This is not their climate. One day their foreign ways will fail them, and they will be ours.”
Kindly folks called Wapah a philosopher. Those less charitable labeled him a garrulous gossip. But his was the only voice of reason between Adala’s unyielding belief in her maita and the chiefs’ despair. Old Kameen, the only clan chieftain from the ruling Khur tribe to join Adala’s cause, seconded Wapah’s words.
“We should be patient,” he advised. “Keep a close watch on the laddad. Gather the tribes again, and strike when the time is right.”
Adala finished her sewing and bit off the thread. “Kameen speaks wisely,” she said, folding the mended robe. “We will hang on the heels of the laddad until my maita shows us when to attack again.”
No one had a better idea to offer, and no one showed any sign of abandoning the fight. Fear of shame and a ferocious commitment to honor ran deep among the Khurs.
Several miles away, the elves were facing a crisis of their own. The damage to their dwindling supplies proved worse than first thought. One-fifth of their available water and a sixth of their edible oil had been lost in the attack. The great number of wounded meant the column could not maintain even the slow pace it had been making. Their time in the desert would be prolonged, and they did not have the supplies to meet the needs of everyone.
Planchet, Gilthas’s valet and bodyguard, arrived with General Taranath and other officers of the army. Planchet had been leading the right wing of the elves’ column. Surveying the destruction, his sunburned face paled a little. The carnage of men, elves, and horses traveled in a direct line to the Speaker. Planchet knew his sovereign well enough to realize he hadn’t retreated an inch.
Standing next to his horse, Gilthas was a thin figure clad in Khurish attire. Most elves had adopted the practical desert dress. Some, like Hamaramis and Planchet, added Qualinesti-style leggings, feeling uncomfortable on horseback without them. The Silvanesti among the Speaker’s councilors clung stubbornly to their silk robes, no matter how frayed and threadbare.
Planchet hailed his liege with great relief. “Sire, what is your will?” he said, dismounting.
“To lie in the cool shade of a birch forest with my feet soaking in a crystal stream.” Gilthas
smiled wanly at the elf who was his valet, bodyguard, sometime general, and close friend. “What do you want, good Planchet?”
Amused, Planchet nevertheless answered seriously, pointing to the distant spires of the Lion’s Teeth. “Scouts tell us those peaks are easily defensible. I think we should make for them without delay.”
“Do you propose our people climb mountains?” asked Hamaramis.
“I do. We’re too vulnerable in the open desert. Another attack like today’s, and none of us will live to see Inath-Wakenti.”
The old general scowled. “We’ll be locking ourselves in a dungeon cell. The Khurs will never let us out again.”
All the officers had dismounted. Gilthas parted their ranks with a wave and walked a few yards beyond, where thousands of elves stood, knelt, or squatted on the sand, waiting to hear what he would ask of them next. Weary and frightened they were, but each and every face wore the same trusting expression. They believed Gilthas would lead them out of the fiery crucible of the desert just as he had led them from their shattered homelands when minotaurs, bandits, and goblins invaded. They had proclaimed him Gilthas Pathfinder. Such trust was an enormous source of strength for the Speaker of the Sun and Stars. It was also an enormous burden.
Gilthas inhaled deeply the dry, overheated air. His sandaled toe nudged a broken amphora. The golden olive oil inside was gone, lost to the insatiable sand.
“How far to the nearest of those peaks?”
“Broken Tooth is nine miles away, Great Speaker,” replied Planchet.
“And how far is the last peak from Inath-Wakenti?”
No one knew. As Gilthas returned to his officers, there was a flurry of activity as maps were produced and consulted. Planchet reported, “From the westernmost peak, Pincer, the mouth of Inath-Wakenti appears to be twenty-five to thirty miles away.”
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