Martan intercepted him outside and guided him to a tent only a few feet away. Ruttu was tied up outside. Two soldiers stood guard. Inside, a brazier glowed, a sleeping pallet was laid out, and a camp table held food and drink. “Someone will be outside in case you need something. Both armies wait in this awful rain for the other to make a move. The Maggan will sleep even if it is night, although it’s so bleak and gray during the day it might as well be night.”
“Where is Mishan?”
“Who is Mishan?
“The scout.”
“I saw no one.”
“I need to think. Wake me in four hours,” said Clarian. He pulled off his muddy boots and lay down on the pallet, drawing a blanket over him, ignoring the food. After a few minutes of racing thoughts, he drifted off into a troubled sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Clarian dreamed of carrying travelers on the ferry with his father, pulling on the heavy rope lines that linked the ferryboat from one side of the river to the other. They had to pull hard on the ropes to get the craft moving and then the current would do the work and push the ferry to the other side. His father grinned at him as they toiled. “Pull, Clarian, pull!” The sunlight bright in a blue sky, the river milky blue and frothy beneath the ferry, and the wind grabbing at his hair, he laughed joyfully with his father at the thrill of it all.
Now he was awake. He didn’t know at first what had awakened him. Then he realized that he couldn’t hear the rain falling. It had stopped. He sat up in his pallet and pulled the blanket back. The brazier had almost gone out, and it was cold and dark inside the tent. A bit of light shone through the tent walls from a fire outside. He could hear soldiers talking softly, although he couldn’t make out their words. He got up and piled some charcoal into the embers in the brazier and blew on them to get them started. Just then, Martan pulled back the flap and looked in.
“We have work to do tonight,” Clarian announced.
Ferman sent everyone away and now sat under a canvas awning, one side attached to his wagon, stretched out to protect him from the rain. Wrapped in a blanket, he dozed for several hours, dreaming of when he was a young boy learning to plow behind a horse. He could smell the fecund richness of the earth as the plow turned it over. He felt the joy of the starry sky above, and the breeze through the trees carrying scents of the forest and flowers. When his legs tired out behind the plow, his father would seat him on the big horse, and they would continue plowing through the night.
His memory drifted to the fateful day when he was a teen. He stood beside his father in full battle armor facing the Karran arrayed across the field. His father reassured him that they would win the day and drive the hated Karran into retreat. The horns sounded, and they began to run toward the Karran lines. In moments the clash of swords rang out as the armies clashed.
“Stay close, my son!” shouted his father, as he leaped into the fray swinging his big sword. The fighting seemed to continue endlessly. Ferman swung his sword against surging, shifting enemies. He was trying desperately to stay alive as he was driven back and almost lost contact with his father. He was terrified, and the fear caused him to swing wildly at Karran soldiers. He stumbled into his father. His father sagged and reached out to him as he fell, a Karran soldier standing over him, piercing him deeply with a lance. Ferman cried out in frustration, dread, and pain as his father crumpled to the ground, dead.
He heard his father calling him again and again, and somehow he couldn’t answer. The face of his father faded away, but his voice kept calling.
“Ferman! Ferman! Ferman!”
He started awake and stared up at a disheveled messenger with a bandage around his head.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Karran, carrying torches, have approached the line. They ask for you.”
Ferman gathered his black cloak about him and stood up, his wound sore and his back aching. “Call my commanders.” Within a short time, his commanders were gathered at his tent. He noticed that the rain had stopped, but the night was cloudy and overcast. He looked them over, his eyes swollen and fretful.
“The Karran have come to talk. About what I am not sure, so I will go and speak with them. I do not think this is a trick. But we’ll see. Just to be sure, I want everyone to be at their posts and prepared for anything.”
Ferman began walking toward the front lines, joined by Neevan and several other senior officers. Ferman and the Maggan didn’t need torches as they could see quite clearly in the dark. As they approached the front lines and the barriers of brush and logs, they saw the Karran torches flickering and a group of Karran soldiers waiting several hundred paces off. They stepped through an opening in the line and sloshed across the muddy ground toward the waiting Karran.
“I think somebody is coming,” said Martan.
“You’ve got better eyes than I,” answered Rokkman.
Clarian, Martan, and Rokkman waited, along with two soldiers holding torches, and they finally saw the light from their torches reflect off the metal of the Maggan swords as Ferman and his group approached.
At a hundred paces, Ferman stopped and spoke in hushed tones to Neevan. Neevan then advanced several feet and called out, “Who calls for Ferman?”
“I, Clarian, call for Ferman.”
Neevan walked back and had a whispered exchange with Ferman. Neevan strode forward again.
“Ferman will not speak to Clarian. He sends another.”
“Come forward, then, and I will meet the other halfway,” answered Clarian.
Clarian sloshed forward through the mud leaving the torches behind. The ground was a swamp, and the air was thick with the smell of wet grasses and old fires. Behind Ferman’s group, Clarian could observe the fires of the Maggan soldiers reaching back as far as he could see down the valley. Wearing the violet cloak, he trudged toward the darkly dressed figure walking toward him. They halted a few feet from each other. The light from the torches behind him was dim but enough that Clarian thought the woman before him looked familiar. But how could that be?
“You are Clarian?” she said.
Then he remembered the night in the forest at the Maggan camp when he first viewed the Maggan and inadvertently bumped into this woman.
“I am.”
“I am Neevan.”
“I remember you.”
“And I remember you.”
Neevan wore a black tunic and trousers, black boots, with a sword at her hip. Her blue-black, shoulder-length hair was now matted from the rain. Clarian could see her green, catlike eyes gleam in the dark from the reflection of the torches behind him. She stood tall and straight.
She could see Clarian clearly with her night eyes. He looked tired and stern and somehow older than when they had met in the forest. She took in the wound and the bloodstained tunic. He had a grim smile on his lips as he struggled to see her in the dark.
“They say you are called the Chosen One,” she said.
“I’m glad you have survived this war,” he answered, “so far.”
“You attacked our homeland.” Her tone was accusatory.
“As you attacked ours.”
“We came for the Flame.”
“I know.”
“You wanted to speak to Ferman?”
“I would like to make him an offer,” he said.
“Yes?”
“We will end the war now. I will let your army go unmolested back into the forest.”
“We can go back to the forest whenever we choose.”
“Unmolested.”
“And what do you want in return?”
“You will leave Ferman here with me.”
Neevan didn’t say anything for several moments. Then she gave a short laugh. “You must be crazy. Give you Ferman?”
“Go and tell him and then come back and give me his answer, Neevan.”
&nbs
p; She spun on her heel and walked back to where Ferman waited. Ferman seemed eager for her words.
“Yes? What did he say?” Ferman asked.
“We can leave, and the war ends now. But he has a condition,” Neevan said.
“Well, what is it, woman?” Ferman snapped.
“We leave you here to Clarian.”
The others in the group sucked in their breath. Ferman’s face clouded with anger and rage.
“Who has a bow?” he asked.
“You cannot kill him now, Ferman,” Neevan said.
“Would you leave me here to the Karran’s vengeance, woman?”
“Yes, I would. My friends are dead. Our city is burned and destroyed, and our families are turned out into the forest without food. I don’t know if my mother is alive. Yes, I would give you up,” she said.
“What about the rest of you? Do you want to see me die at the hands of these daylighters?”
No one answered.
“Let us not forget why we came here. We came for the Flame!”
“And instead we die in the mud,” Neevan said.
“Shut up!”
A senior officer who had said nothing up to this point now looked Ferman in the eye. “I followed you in the Great War, and I followed you here, but we are beaten again. We are not going to abandon you to the Karran, but we have to end this war. I want to see what’s happened to my family. I want to go home to Minteegan.”
Ferman glowered but said nothing. Neevan turned and walked back across the muddy field to where Clarian waited.
“We cannot give you Ferman. But we want to end the war.”
“I cannot let your army go unscathed only to reassemble and attack us again when we least expect it,” Clarian said.
“I can almost see the forest from here. We can force our way past you. Once we are in the forest, we will be back in our own element, Clarian. You cannot stop us here for long.”
“I would ask Ferman to sign a peace treaty, but he already did that. It didn’t mean anything to him.”
Neevan didn’t answer. A breeze blew, and it was cold. The smell of campfires and cooking drifted to them. It was morning for the Maggan—and breakfast.
“Do you have a family, Neevan?”
“Only my mother.”
“Was she in the caverns?”
“Yes. And what of your family?”
“My mother and aunt live far out on the Grasslands.”
Neevan was silent, and in that silence Clarian knew in his heart that this conflict was far from over and that they might have to defend themselves again at some future date. “Let me confer with my officers.” He turned away and walked back to where the Karran group waited.
He approached Rokkman and Martan. “I have asked that they give me Ferman. But they have refused.”
Rokkman gripped Clarian’s sleeve. “The Flamekeeper asks you to end this now. They will never give up Ferman. Would you give up the Flamekeeper?”
Clarian wasn’t so sure about that, but he acknowledged that there was little left to do but let the enemy pass. “This is a mistake, Rokkman. Remember this day.” His boots squished in the thick sludge as he walked back to Neevan.
“Well, Clarian?” From Clarian’s demeanor, Neevan sensed that the Karran commanders or whoever was their leader no longer wanted to fight, although Clarian did. She saw her opportunity. “We will leave now, Clarian. But you must say the words. I will advise Ferman to remain at peace, but I am only one of his commanders. I will try. And know that we hunger for the Flame. For generations, we have pledged to have the Flame returned to us.”
“It is not mine to give. Nor is it right for you to take it by force.”
“What is the answer? We yearn for the Flame with all our being.”
“Do so many have to die for this? There must be another way.”
Clarian had grave misgivings, but he would not disobey the Flamekeeper. He shrugged and pulled his cloak closer around his shoulders. He looked into the strange eyes of this woman who was his deadly enemy, but he felt no hatred toward her.
“You may pass. This war ends,” he said, his voice tired and husky.
“Good. Now you can go back to the Citadel, and I can go home to Minteegan to see to my mother.”
“I go home to the Great Grasslands. I love no other place.”
Neevan smiled faintly. Clarian reached out and offered his hand. She pulled off her glove and grasped his hand. Her hand was warm and strong, with long fingers. A current of electricity seemed to pass through both of them.
Neevan held his hand, a calloused, powerful hand, for what seemed like minutes. “Until I see you again, and in peace,” she said. “May the Flame be with you, Clarian.”
“May the Flame be with you, Neevan.”
In the shadows, Ferman’s sharp eyes pierced the darkness. He saw the handshake. He clucked to himself.
Only paces away across the muddy field, Rokkman stepped close to Clarian as they trudged together back to their lines. Rokkman could see the slump in Clarian’s shoulders and knew Clarian was deeply disappointed in the Flamekeeper’s decision. But Rokkman felt the Flamekeeper was correct in that the war was over. Let everyone go home. Why couldn’t Clarian see the wisdom of it?
“Clarian,” Rokkman called.
Clarian ignored the overture.
“Clarian. This is best. Many have died, and many more are wounded. Let us take this as a victory. The Maggan are broken. It could be years before they recover.”
Clarian halted abruptly and spun toward the priest. “That’s just it! They will recover, and then it will be war again. You and the Flamekeeper can’t seem to grasp the fact that I could have destroyed the enemy for all time. Now it slips away. Next time we might not be so fortunate.
“I know you feel that way, but I think you are wrong. And you need to mend your relationship with the Flamekeeper.”
“Leave me alone, priest.” Clarian hurried off into the darkness.
Ferman pulled at Neevan’s arm as she returned from her conference with Clarian.
“Would you have given me up?” asked Ferman, his voice tight with emotion.
“We were never going to do that. But that is what Clarian wanted. To kill you, I’m sure. But I don’t think that whoever makes the decisions for the Karran wanted to continue the war. They are as exhausted as we are.”
“They think that because they destroyed our home, we are beaten,” he said.
“We are beaten. Can’t you see that! Our army is in disarray, and we have lost great numbers of warriors. You were overconfident when this war started.”
“It is not your place to chastise me, woman. It was misfortune that caused our setback. But that is all it is, a setback.”
“What is it you really want? Why are you so driven to fight the Karran to the death?”
“I saw my father die before my eyes. I loved my father so dearly. He died at the hands of the Karran. I want to erase them forever in my father’s name. Call it revenge. I call it righting a wrong. And I want the Flame. We, as a people, have waited and endured eons of time without the Flame. I want to be the one who liberates the Flame and brings it home to our temple. And kill Clarian.”
“And what of all the dead?” asked Neevan.
“Don’t talk of the dead. They served their Flamekeeper, and they will live on in the Land of Dreams.”
The armies disengaged, and the Maggan soldiers and their columns hurried unimpeded into their forest. Clarian refused to meet with the Flamekeeper to report the situation and sent Rokkman in his stead. The Karran army was ordered to begin the trek back to the Citadel. The Flamekeeper demanded Clarian’s attendance in a meeting. Once he got there, Clarian was surly and failed to bow or look the old priest in the eye.
The Flamekeeper, in disgust, was abrupt with him and dismissed him w
ith a wave of his hand. Rokkman, caught between his duty to the Flamekeeper and his admiration for Clarian, could do nothing to return harmony to their relationship.
Clarian, refusing to trust the Maggan, set up scouting posts along the road from the forest. At the Citadel, Clarian resigned his office, much to the dismay of the Flamekeeper, and upon Clarian’s recommendation, Martan was appointed as commander over the Karran forces. Thousands of Karran soldiers streamed back across the land, returning to their homes and farms. The war was over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sun was hot on Clarian’s shoulders as he urged Ruttu to complete the last leg of the journey home. She knew she was going home, and her pace was brisk. The long, silver-green grass on either side of the road swayed and rustled in the strong breeze. Birds, startled by his presence, burst out of the foliage with a flutter of wings. The Great Grasslands stretched in every direction, all the way to the horizon, with hardly a tree in sight except where a stream cut through the land. There, willows lined the banks and followed the graceful curves of the waterways.
He listened now over the clopping of his horse’s hooves and thought he could hear something on the wind. There it was. Baying. The dogs had picked up his scent or the vibrations of his horse’s hooves. He dipped down into a swale and up a higher rise, and there he could see his home, whitewashed and sparkling in the sun. The bell began clanging—the bell that travelers would ring to call the ferryman. But it was either his mother, Ranna, or his aunt, Helan, ringing the bell this time.
He could see his mother and aunt standing on high ground waving. Beside them stood two soldiers in blue tunics—the soldiers who had been assigned to guard the ferry. The dogs were racing down the road toward him at great speed, baying with joy. He nudged his horse into a canter, his cloak flapping behind him, and waved his arm merrily in greeting. Home at last.
When the Maggan found the massacre at the camp, there was great anguish among the soldiers who had lost so many friends. Even Ferman, for once, kept silent, and his eyes had the haunted look of someone who had lost everything. They spent the night burying the dead and rested the next day during the sunlight hours, although it was dark beneath the tall trees of the forest. At nightfall, they rose from their rest and broke camp, moving en masse down the road toward their home. Ferman sent riders on ahead to determine the damage and to see whether any Karran were still in the forest.
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