Culaehra's face went impassive as conflicting emotions warred within him.
Lua saw, and said quickly, “That is not to say that we do not like you.”
“You have every reason to hate me!”
Yocote's face turned thoughtful and he shook his head. “Odd, but I find that I do not, Culaehra—not anymore.”
“You have, after all, helped us all at the cliff face, and against the fuchan,” Kitishane reminded him.
“And you?” He turned with an intense stare. “Do you no longer hate me?”
She blushed and turned away, muttering, “Certainly not.”
His gaze lingered on her, then turned back to Lua. “And you, gnome-maiden—you have more reason to hate me than any!”
“Oh, Culaehra, of course I do not!” Lua cried with a huge outpouring of sympathy. She flung herself high to clasp him about the chest, then fell because her arms were far too short.
He caught her and lowered her to the ground again, smiling. “No, you would not, would you? You are far too good for that.”
“Aye, too good for a rogue like him!” Yocote stepped up beside Lua, pain showing in his face for a moment, then as quickly masked. He glanced up at Culaehra, puzzled by his own emotions. “Your pardon, Culaehra.”
“None needed,” the outlaw assured him. “I am a rogue.”
“Were,” Kitishane corrected.
“No, is.” At last Illbane stepped forward. “A rogue is one who goes apart from the herd. In men, rogues are usually regarded as being dangerous, for they do not live by the herd's rules, and are therefore as apt to turn on their fellows as to aid them.”
“But are therefore as apt to save them as to harm them,” Yocote said thoughtfully.
“They are unpredictable.” Kitishane's gaze lingered on Culaehra. “Yes, I could say that of you.”
Culaehra returned that gaze till it made him uncomfortable, then grinned. “Unpredictable now. Not so long ago, you could be quite sure of what I would do next.”
She returned his grin. “Aye—beat and bully.”
Culaehra was amazed to realize that was no longer true. He was not sure he liked it.
“Good, bad, likable, or detestable, we had to save you so that you might someday save us,” Kitishane went on. “What matters to me is that you were trying to save me—never mind the reasons.”
“Why never mind them?” Culaehra demanded with intensity.
“Because they are as likely to be good as bad,” Yocote retorted, “and none of us are sure what they are anyway, least of all you!”
Kitishane smiled, amused. “You are part of our little herd now.” Then she turned to the gnomes in surprise. “So are we all, come to think of it.” She pivoted to Illbane. “When did that happen?”
“Over the last six months,” he told her, “but you need not think of yourselves as a herd—rather, as a very small army.”
Yocote grinned. “Very small indeed! But why did you not aid us sooner, Illbane?”
“Do not tell us there was no need this time!” Culaehra said forcefully.
Illbane shook his head. “For a time I thought there might be none—that you might manage on your own. Even when I did aid, I only struck a few blows, then added the strength of my own magic to Yocote's spell.”
“It is you who have done it!” Culaehra accused. “You have welded the four of us into your own little army! But for what battle?”
“Why, to save humankind, of course,” Illbane said lightly, then nodded to the gnomes. “And all the other younger races, too.” “Don't jest with us now, old man!” Culaehra snapped. “Against what foe shall we fight?”
“Bolenkar,” Illbane said.
They stared at him, appalled, and the wind blew chill about them again.
Kitishane said slowly, “Bolenkar is in the south. You are leading us north.”
“I did not say you were ready to fight him yet,” Illbane replied.
“Then where do we march?” Culaehra demanded.
“To find the Star Stone,” Illbane told him.
That night, around the campfire, he told them of the Star Stone.
“You have heard me speak of Lomallin and Ulahane,” he said, “and of the War Among the Ulin.”
“Yes, and we heard it often enough from our shamans as we grew,” Culaehra grumbled.
Kitishane nodded. “Lomallin was all that was good and right, and Ulahane all that was evil and wrong.”
“Ulahane was all that, and more,” Illbane agreed, “for it was his determination to slay all the younger races that brought Lomallin to lead a band against him.”
“All the younger races?” Lua looked up in surprise. “But Ulahane is called the human-hater!”
“He hated all the younger races; the humans were only the most numerous of them,” Illbane assured her. “He would have slain the gnomes, too—when he had finished with the humans and the elves and the dwarfs.”
Yocote, too, stared in shock. “The shamans were wrong, then?”
“They were right so far as they went,” Illbane told him, “but they did not know all of the story.”
“What of Lomallin? Was he truly the human-lover? Was he truly the Shaman of the Gods?”
“He loved all the younger races, as he loved everyone, even the wicked,” Illbane answered. “As to being a shaman, though—no. The Ulin had none—and in any case, Lomallin's knowledge went far beyond the catalogue of shamanry. He was more a sage than a warrior, though he could fight at need.”
Yocote frowned. “But he fought the scarlet god and slew him!”
“Not while he lived,” Illbane told them. “In life, he met Ulahane the human-hater at a stone ring, an ancient temple humankind had raised to the Ulin, and fought him there.”
“But our shaman told us that Lomallin slew the Scarlet One!” Lua cried.
“His ghost did, when Ohaern and Dariad pursued their hopeless war against the human-hater,” Illbane told them. “When the Scarlet One was about to strike them down, Lomallin's ghost appeared between Ulahane and Ohaern and slew the Scarlet One. But Ulahane's ghost sped into the sky, and there the Ulin fought, shaping stars into weapons. Ulahane broke Lomallin's spear, and a fragment of it sped off to the north, falling to earth as a shooting star. But Lomallin forged another weapon and slew Ulahane's ghost, obliterating it.”
“So not even a ghost is left of Ulahane?” Yocote asked, eyes huge.
“Not even that—but his memory lives on in his half-human son Bolenkar, who seeks to finish his father's work.”
“You mean that Bolenkar truly seeks to destroy humankind?” Kitishane asked.
“He does indeed, but he lacks the power—he is only half Ulin, after all—so he works to pit one breed of humans against another, one nation against its neighbor, one tribe against its kin-tribe. In this he has enlisted all the other Ulharls that Ulahane begot, who work to turn gnome against elf, dwarf against giant, all the younger races against one another—and humanity against them all. His plan is easy to read: let them slay one another in a frenzy of blood lust. Then, if any survive, he will doubtless lead the Ulharls to slay them all.”
“But he cannot bring back the Ulin!” Yocote exclaimed. “He cannot raise the dead! ... Can he?”
“No, but it is yet possible for the few Ulin left to beget more of their own kind—if Bolenkar can stimulate their interest in the project.” Illbane frowned, then repeated, “If. It is far more likely for him to save out a few human women for breeding stock, and persuade the male Ulin to make more Ulharls. Many more,” he said darkly.
“And there shall be no more humans, only Ulharls?” Culaehra cried. “No, Illbane! We must not let that happen!”
“It is for you to say,” Illbane said, locking gazes with him.
Culaehra stared back at him, realizing the import of his words, and turned chill inside—but he searched his heart, and found that his determination did not lessen; it was no mere bravado. He would not surrender the world to Bolenkar and his kind! “Ho
w can I stand against one so mighty?” he whispered.
“With a magical sword in your hand, and a brave band of companions by your side,” the sage told him.
“Where shall I find a magical sword?”
“I shall forge it for you, for I was a smith before I was a sage, or even a shaman.”
Yocote started, and stared at Illbane with sudden dread.
“But I must have magical iron from which to forge that blade,” the sage said.
“The Star Stone,” Yocote breathed.
“The Star Stone?” Kitishane glanced from him to Illbane. “Is that the fragment of Lomallin's spear that fell to earth in the north?”
“It is,” Illbane said quietly.
“A fragment of a god's spear!” Even Culaehra stared at the enormity of it. “By all the heavens! That would be iron of power!”
“It would indeed,” Illbane agreed.
“And that is why Bolenkar set sentries to keep us from it!” Kitishane cried.
“The fuchan?” Lua asked.
“The fuchan,” Illbane confirmed, “and this ogre that you have just slain. It was one of Ulahane's nastier pastimes, to see to the forceful begetting of such monsters, to encourage their birth by magic, and to warp and distort them as they grew. It is a depraved game that his son has learned, and still practices; his magic is by no means equal to an Ulin's, but he can manage this much, though I believe it stretches his powers to their limits. There is no race of ogres; I would guess Bolenkar forced the begetting of this one by a giant upon a human woman.”
“How could a woman live through such a nightmare?” Kitishane cried in disgust.
“Most likely she did not—but the embryo did, and Bolenkar kept it growing by magic, birthed it by enchantment, then raised it with distorting spells and set it upon our trail.”
“So that is why it came upon us!” Culaehra cried. “It was set to hunt us!”
“And found us,” Illbane agreed. “It will not be the last—but there are still lands ahead where people dwell, and the hunters there may be more subtly disguised.”
“Not monsters, you mean?” Kitishane asked.
“No,” Illbane agreed. “We must look for his agents among people, my friends, and among other races. They will set up obstacles to ensnare us, they will seek to strike from hiding.”
They traded glances filled with trepidation, and only Lua seemed to have noticed that the sage had called them his friends.
“How do you know all this, Illbane?” Culaehra frowned. “How do you know that this fragment fell from Lomallin's spear?”
“Because I saw it,” the sage answered.
“You have visions?” Kitishane breathed, but Yocote stared at him in awe.
“I do,” Illbane admitted.
“You did not say that this was one of them, though,” Yocote pointed out.
Illbane turned to him with the ghost of a smile. “No, I did not,” he agreed.
Two days later they came to the edge of a lower pass and saw no more mountains before them.
“Open land!” Lua breathed. “I had almost forgotten the look of it!”
“Surely not.” Yocote smiled as he came up beside her. “It is simply that we who were reared underground have less need of such spaces, Lua.”
She glanced at him, smiling, and he returned the smile, but the goggles hid any other expression their faces might have held.
They all came up along the ledge and stared out over the valley. The foothills rolled away below them to a verdant plain cut into segments by three rivers, one flowing from the mountains behind them, another from a distant range that towered on the far side of the valley, and another that ran more or less down its length. All three met in the distance to the east, and buildings clustered at the junction, with a castle rising from a headland between the northern stream and the eastward-flowing one. The valley floor was cut into a crazy quilt of cultivated fields, in varying shades of tan now that the harvest was in. Where fields intersected, collections of huts stood.
Perhaps it was the chill, perhaps that the day was overcast, but Kitishane shivered. “I like not the look of that castle, Illbane.”
“Neither do I.” Culaehra scowled and hitched his pack a bit higher. “Let us go down and discover why.”
He started down the trail, but Yocote stopped him, holding up a hand against the rogue's knee. “Hold, Culaehra, and think!
Could this not be one of the traps that Illbane warned us against?”
The warrior frowned down at him, but Illbane nodded as he came up. “It could indeed, Yocote. That was well thought.”
“Yes, it could,” Culaehra told him, “but Illbane said 'obstacles,' not 'traps.' Let us go and overcome this one!”
He pushed on past. Yocote looked up at Illbane in astonishment. The sage could only shrug. “What can I say? He is right; I did say 'obstacles.' If we cannot go around them, Yocote, we must go through them—and these mountains prevent us from the roundward journey. Let us go.”
The gnome sighed and followed the sage, who followed the impatient warrior rushing to meet his war. The others advanced as well, without quite so much zest.
They descended through two levels of foothills that day, then camped for the night. The next morning, they gained the summit of the lowest hill and found themselves looking down on a village.
It was very poor. The thatch of the roofs was old, dark with streaks of rot, and the daubed walls were cracked. The few trails of smoke rising were thin and small. The village “green” was bare earth—packed hard now, under the boots of a troop of soldiers who stood, pikes at guard, glaring at the cowering villagers as if angered at thoughts of rebellion. A man on a tall horse waited in their midst, wrapped in a fur cloak against the chill, watching as soldiers loaded grain from each hut into a wagon and led pigs into another, which also held coops into which they stuffed the chickens they took from trembling villagers. Two cows stood by that wagon patiently; soldiers were driving a third to join it. Another dragged a girl screaming from a hut; an older man cried out and charged the soldier, but two more leaped forward and felled him with quick blows.
“The swine!” Kitishane cried, and turned to Illbane. “Can you not stop them?”
“Yes, but it would mean a war,” the sage told her. “Have we time to fight it?”
The soldier shoved the girl up and into the wagon with the pigs, then tied her wrists to the side; her screams slackened into sobs. The man in the fur cloak gestured, and the teamsters whipped their teams into motion. The wagons pulled out of the village green, soldiers falling into place before and behind. They moved out along the town's one road, which led to the hill where stood the castle.
As they went, light winked off a golden band around the temples of the man in the cloak.
“A crown!” Yocote hissed. “He is a king!”
“If you must needs call him so,” Illbane said, with scorn. “In the cities of the south, they would scarcely call him a royal steward—certainly not a governor, when he rules only a few barbarian tribes. Belike they would call him a chieftain and let it go at that.”
Culaehra frowned. “Be that as it may, in this northern country and among us barbarians, he is a king!”
“Yes, and the land over which he holds sway is vast enough to merit the title,” Illbane admitted, “though the number of people is not—and here, in the marches of the civilized world, he and his army are all that stand between civilization and the wild peoples of the wasteland.”
“King or not, he is a villain!” Kitishane fumed. “How dare he take a maiden against her will! And look at the size of that heap of grain! He can scarcely have left the folk of that hamlet enough food to survive the winter!” She turned on Culaehra. “Can you do nothing to stop them?”
“Yes, but not by a direct attack.” The big man stood hard-faced and spoke through thin lips. “There are forty of them to our four, and all heavily armed into the bargain.”
“Then how can we save her?”
/> “Let us search for information before he answers that,” Yocote said. “The soldiers will be far along the road by the time we come to the village. Let us seek, my companions.” He started off down the hillside path, not waiting for the rest of them.
They fell in quickly enough. Lua glanced back, then looked again in surprise. “Why do you smile, Illbane? Surely it is a horrifying sight!”
“Yes, but 'companion' is a good word,” the sage replied. “Let us see what the villagers can tell us, Lua.”
The people told them a great deal by hiding at first sight of them. As they came into the circle of beaten earth at the center of the cluster of huts, Culaehra glanced around, frowning in puzzlement. “Why do they flee, Illbane? We are only four!”
“Four, but armed, and strangers,” the sage replied, “and gnomes by daylight are never seen; who knows what magic they might work? You must earn their trust, Culaehra—at least, enough to hear their tale.”
“Let me.” Kitishane touched his arm, and he stared down in surprise, but she had already turned away and was calling out to the silent huts, “Ho, good folk! We are strangers, angered by the events we have just seen transpire here! Come out, and tell us if there is more to it than there appears!”
The village still stood silent.
“Oh, come!” Lua cried, and whipped off her goggles, squinting painfully even under the overcast. “I shall not hurt you, nor shall any of my companions! Yocote, unmask!”
Reluctantly, Yocote took off his goggles and stood squinting.
“See! We have rendered ourselves nearly blind to show our faith!” Lua cried to the silent huts. “Our archer has unstrung her bow, our sage waits to hear and advise! Oh, come, and tell us what has happened here!”
The distress in her voice must have touched a heart, for an older woman stepped out of a hut. “My daughter has been taken to satisfy the king's lust. What else matters?”
“Nothing,” Kitishane said instantly, “but it might—”
“Revenge!” Culaehra said, his eyes smoldering.
The woman stared. So did Culaehra's companions. Then the woman spoke, her voice hushed and awed. “How can you have revenge upon a king?”
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