For a heartbeat, Danaer was tempted to speak the truth, but prudence held his tongue. He heard himself saying, "I have an errand."
Shaartre leaned forward in the saddle, taking a friendly, confidential tone. "Remember that the Captain has ordered muster for the first candle-mark."
"No fear. I will be back by then." UnwiQingly, Danaer recalled waking from a sound sleep, driven forth from his unit mates by a sumumons he dared not name, not even to Shaartre.
"They say it is a long journey to Siank, and you know Yistar's temper as well as I, youngling." Shaartre's kindly concern touched Danaer, and he was about to reply when the older man added, "Of course, the Captain would not refuse you the chance to bid farewell to your Destre friends in the Zsed ..."
"I have no friends in the Zsed." Danaer had spoken sharply, too curtly. Indeed, there was none of his tribesfolk he wished to see. Yet he must do this thing. To allay Shaartre's curiosity, he said, "Rest easy.
When Straedanfi calls muster, you will have the unit's full complement, including this scout."
Shaartre's broken-toothed grin flashed when Danaer referred to the commandant by that epithet. "Long-Fang he is! And Yistar will sink his fangs in you, youngling, if you keep him waiting. Well, then, about this errand of yours. But quickly now." He wheeled his mount and bellowed orders to the detail to rouse them from their laziness.
An ominous mood clung to Danaer despite that parting jest. Moving more quickly now, as if he could outrun the chill in his bones, he hurried down the pasture slope.
Only a few times in his life had he been so wakened, and each time the divine will had seized him, just as it did now. He must obey, though he be tense with apprehension and pious wonder.
The smoking mountain grumbled and the earth shifted slightly beneath him. Danaer did not break pace, reflexively compensating for the quaking sensation. He glanced up at the plume of vapor trailing from the peak and muttered a prayer. "Bind Bogotana fast in his deep realms of fire, Argan—goddess, grant it." After a few moments, the shaking stopped.
Now and then he slapped rumps or flipped the trailing hem of his narrow mantle to shoo horses from his path. He regarded these animals with mild contempt, for they were the army's preferred stock. These sturdy, sleek-coated black horses were prized by the people of The Interior. No doubt they were useful for pulling mine carts and plows. But in Danaer's judgment, the black was ill-suited for duty on the Vrastre Plains, the territory the soldiers of Fort Nyald must patrol.
At the far end of the pasture stood two quite different horses, and Danaer headed straight for them, chirruping and speaking the Destre tongue these animals knew best. These were his scout roans—shaggy, big-headed brutes his fellow soldiers scorned and called half wild.
Lulled by Danaer's voice, the skittish beasts permitted him to draw close, though the roans watched
him warily, their stubby Httle ears moving constantly and their eyes following his every step. Danaer grasped the larger horse's nose and slipped a leather loop over the lower jaw, then swung up onto the bare back. The roan bucked and reared, sending the other animals shying away. Danaer clung to his mount without difiBculty, and when the roan had vented the worst of its friskiness, it bore his weight without further complaint, obeying the guidance of his knees and the single-rein.
The sentries at the outer perimeter of the fort gave Danaer no more challenge than had those at the palisades or caravan. He had barely passed the gates before they lapsed back into dozing. These men, like all the others, took their duty lightly, and with reason. All serious threat of attack lay in the past. The Nyald Destre-Y who once raided this town and fortress were a broken people, their power crushed, perhaps never to be restored to former vigor.
Danaer soon turned aside onto a steep trail crawling along the face of the mountain. This path circled below the fortress rock, descending to the backwater of the town's river, the Bhid.
It was a watercourse originating high in the mountains of The Interior, amid snow and ice and fiery volcanoes. For countless generations the melt had fed rivulets and waterfalls and rushed down to slake the thirst of Nyald and the mighty Vrastre Plains beyond. Then, some twenty springs ago, that flow had ebbed. The horses of the Destre-Y and the motge herds which grazed the plains died of thirst, and then the Destre-Y themselves thirsted and starved, then: land becoming dust between their hands. When plague had struck, a weakened people were its easy prey.
Now the snows had returned and the Bhid ran full again with life-giving water. But the Vrastre was slow to recover from the drought.
Danaer's roan picked its way cautiously down the precipitous trail. Cliff-crawlers and bats returned from their nightly hunts chittered at him from the crevices amid the rocks. An ecar kit, busy robbing eggs from a mossy nest, hissed and spat as the horse's hooves
made pebbles rattle along the slope. As the roan reached the sparse copses at the base of the cliff and emerged onto the marshy flats, Danaer looked toward the sunrise and inhaled a fresh wind. Bitterness for the ruin of his people was an acrid taste on his tongue. Wind and water and game-had all returned too late.
With a sigh, he nudged the roan across the boggy backwater area. Here and there tiny fissures, birthings of the volcano, let boil through sulfurous smokes, a stench that mingled foully with the stagnant pools left by the river floods. It was not a good place to camp, but those who dwelt here had little choice. Nyald tribe must now be beggars at the feet of the army of The Interior.
Here was all that remained of Nyald Zsed. Zsed? Danaer winced to think that such a term could be applied to a ragged cluster of lean-tos and bony roans and hstless people. When he was a babe, this zsed had been a strong nomadic community, ever ranging across the face of the Vrastre grassland in pursuit of wild herds and rich caravans. Nyald Zsed had been the heart of a people famed as the scourge of the southern plains. Now only a few hunters were able to track the motge herds, doggedly following a weak Siirn. These people were too plague- and hunger-ravaged to accompany those few hunters on the quest and must camp here, waiting, existing on the army's charity, utterly dependent upon that soldiery which once had fled from Destre lances.
Grain was heaped at the edge of the Zsed, with a few torn sacks nearby branded with the fort's mark. Sad-eyed women and big-bellied children picked through the kernels, gathering their day's ration. They were too spiritless even to look up as Danaer passed them. But a warrior, dragging about on the stumps of his legs, let grain dribble through his hands and stared hard at the soldier. Captain Yistar permitted Danaer to wear his Destre mantle. He set his belt knife aslant, in Destre fashion, and the thongs of his tribesman's sling were hanging visibly near that sheath. But these few marks of his origins could not blot out the rest of his army garb.
He did not meet the crippled warrior's eyes. Soon the man's empty belly made him drop his glaring and return to pawing through the grain. The food had been Yistar's idea, a gift coaxed from the King's begrudging ministers. Yistar was no nobleman, but a townsman's son; and he knew the grim realities of survival on the Vrastre. He had convinced the ministers that food would buy continued peace on the southern frontier. It was a tactic that had worked well. Bit by bit, the pitiful remnants of a bandit horde had become like the fort's herds of blacks and woolbacks—property.
Try though he might, Danaer could not avoid seeing some of the misery and contrasted it against his own life in the fort, with pain. Why had he come here? What did the goddess demand of him? She had roused him with a dream and bade him return to the Zsed ere he left Nyald with his comrades in arms. Was there some penance he must make, some sacrifice to perform?
Noxious smoke, tinged with the fire-god's breath, curled about his roan's ears, making man and horse choke. Trees were bent and gnarled and leafless, and would remain so despite the warming of the season, for the fumes of the fissures had destroyed them. In this place of misery and reeking smoke, the Zsed seemed but little apart from tales of the realm below, prisoners of the fire-god himself, forever c
ursed.
At last the invisible goad which had driven him here made Danaer draw on the single-rein, stopping at one of the meanest of the tents. An old woman sat beside a fire, and another woman, not quite so elderly, sat a short pace away, watching the first. That crone by the fire raised her head and peered at Danaer, though her eyes were covered with a milky film that shut out the world. In a quavering voice she said, "Welcome, Danaer, kin of my sister's blood. Step down and attend me at my dying."
When last he had seen her, shortly before winter's storms had come, Danaer had not thought the old woman could live till spring. Now she was totally blind and appeared not to have stirred from this spot for days. Yet Keth at the portal of the gods had not
claimed her aged body, though she had known eighty full turns of the year's seasons.
Danaer threw a leg over the roan's withers and dropped to the muddy earth. He glanced at the woman to one side, his kinswoman's companion. She shook her head mutely, her expression morose.
"Welcome," the blind crone said once more.
"Osyta," he said with careful respect, "how did you know it was I?"
She smacked her lips, drooling senilely. Then she seemed to puzzle over his question, much disturbed. "I ... I do not know. Perhaps . . . ai! It is the will of Argan, kinsman. The goddess sent you to me." Her wrinkled features twisted into a tired smile. "It is her doing. I must die soon, and I would give you my blessing, you who are the last of my kindred. I must give it now, and Argan knows this, for she fathoms the way of all Azsed."
"Kant, prodra Argan," Danaer whispered, echoed by the second old woman. Again they looked at one another, awed. Truly Osyta spoke aright, for it was so that those on the threshold of death often were gifted by the goddess and would bequeath some special foretelling to their inheritors.
"Argan, Argan, most mighty goddess . . ." Osyta crooned, rocking back and forth. Her healmg skills had availed little against the terrible plagues which had wracked her tribe. Companions of her childhood were all gone, save the one woman who now cared for her needs, gently trying to tidy her disarrayed garments.
Danaer watched with mingled fear and pity. Those blank eyes seemed to be glistening with new wisdom, a final touching of Osyta's spirit by the goddess, ere death took her.
Despite her venerable years, the herb-healer wore the fawn-colored breeches and shirt and leather vest of a warrior woman. She had ridden on caravan raids with the boldest of Nyald Zsed, tending wounds and drawing the enemy's blood, as need be. No half-skirt marked her garb, for she had never bound herself to a man nor borne a child. Her eiphren, that faith-jewel
she had received as a girl, dangled from a frayed rawhide thong and rested between her scraggly gray eyebrows.
Quite abruptly, she reached out, seeking to explore Danaer's face. Her skinny hands groped across his tunic and at the hilts of his belt knife and his army sword. With surprising strength, she clawed down along his left arm until she touched his eiphren, the simple gemstone he wore on his mid-finger. More boldly, she probed ribs and biceps and patted at his belly. At last she sat back on her heels and said, "There is more flesh on you than I remember, kinsman. You begin to resemble your sire in the fullness of his years, when he fought in the Kakyein wars, fought for the honor of Nyald Zsed."
"He died for that honor," Danaer said somberly. "But my honor is pledged to the army of The Interior. I am a warrior of Nyald Zsed no longer, Osyta."
"And soon you will journey to Siank, to join the great battle that is to come." The herb-healer pointed toward a sunrise she could not see, and Danaer shuddered. Perhaps her mention of Siank had been only a shrewd guess, a copying of some gossip she had overheard, for the army caravan's destination was no secret. But her speaking of a great battle . . . Whence came those words?
"Siank," she repeated in a wistful voice. "I shall never know Siank now. But you will, blood of my blood. You shall ride out Nyald and unto Siank."
Without warning, Osyta began to keen a death prayer. Danaer pulled his mantle more tightly about his shoulders to shut out a, cold far deeper than that of the fading night. The herb-healer's friend wept quietly as Danaer's kinswoman sang, readying her path to Keth's holy portals.
At long last, the sound trickled away on the sulfur-ous air and Osyta's lips slackened. Visibly, she brought herself back to the earth of the living. "Ai, warrior, you carry the pride of Nyald Zsed with you to Siank."
Danaer grimaced and said with studied patience,
"Search your mind, old one. Remember that I am now Captain Yistar's scout."
"Ai! He is your Siim, since you rode into his fort and took oath unto our fire-haired enemy, that Straedanfi." Osyta's leathery face creased in a cryptic smile. "Straedanfi, who never takes his fangs from our throats until we surrender, then feeds us from his hand, like his pets. A most worthy Siirn, this Straedanfi, my kinsman. You were wise to follow him, in the time of death."
Against his will, led by her words, Danaer's thoughts turned back through the cruel seasons.
Choose.
Eight years had gone by smce he had made the fateful decision. Then he had been but a youth, mounted on a staggering and half-dead roan. Danaer's belly had been empty, his tongue parched, and his heart had been drained of hope. In his mind's eye he saw himself approaching Captain Yistar, dropping his weapons, lifting his hands in supplication, seeking the oflBicer's mercy. What honor was it to die to no point in the clan wars or to starve or suffer the torments of disease when plague struck less severely in the town and fort and there was food aplenty? Better far for a young Azsed to offer his meager talents to Yistar, to that Straedanfi, who had been a brave and respected foe and had so often bested the bloodiest warriors of Nyald Zsed.
Choose.
Danaer was not the only youth who had submitted himself to Yistar and begged mercy. The Zsed had not known whether to spit on the weakness of those who surrendered or to praise their courage—for it had taken much courage to ride willingly into the stronghold of the army of The Interior. Of all those who had taken the risk, only Danaer had survived the test of Yistar's discipline and learned to accept the strange new ways of the unbelievers who now claimed his loyalty.
Choose.
He had chosen, and he had become a man between two worlds and belonging to neither.
Osyta had brooded, as if sensing what troubled Danaer and at one with his hurt and regret. But at last she spoke, without accusation. "Now you serve the King of the lit."
"I cannot deny it. King Tobentis rules from his place in Kirvii, in the mountains of The Interior. The army moves by his command, and Captain Yistar must obey him."
"Yet you keep your honor, kinsman." All else was of no matter to Osyta, as was proper for a daughter of Azsed. Truly, a Destre-Y was honor, no matter if the Siirn be an unbeUever.
Danaer forced a wan smile. "It is so. I keep my honor. Aejzad was a most worthy Siirn, in the days of my father. But my father and Aejzad are dead. Whom shall I follow now? Chikaron? He would claim to be Siirn, but no priest has judged him so. The Zsed is scattered and ruined like grass before a storm. The goddess alone knows if we will regain our strength again."
"Nyald Zsed will be renewed," Osyta announced with a sharp jerk of her little chm. "All of Destre-Y will be made powerful as it never has been. More! Destre-Y shall be one with the lit. Hear me! It will be Andaru! Andaru!"
"Andaru?" Danaer said softly. "Long have the priests spoken of Andaru, for generations—telling of the commg of a new birth for all Azsed and all Destre-Y."
"It is close upon us, kinsman! Hear me! Andaru! The Siirn Rena who rules all the tribes shall become Te Rena Azsed—lord of all Krantin from Deki on the River to the Tradyan Plains. Destre-Y and unbeliever shall be as one, shall be Krantin!" Osyta's shrill intensity made Danaer lean back, awed by the death vision that had taken possession of the hag. "Andaru! Soon! Kinsman, it will be soon, and you are to be part of it!"
As any honest warrior must, Danaer respected the prophecy, yet wished nothing to
do with the thing. The darkness Osyta had penetrated unmanned him as no enemy's sword or lance could. He stammered as he
had not since he was a boy. "How . . . how can this be, ancient one? Long has the Zsed yearned for the army of The Interior to give up the fort and vanish back into the Mountains of the Mare. But it will never happen. Every year The Interior grows stronger, and the hatred of the tribes does not abate. How can Destre-Y and lit be as one . . . ?"
"Andaru will change all that has been and will be," Osyta said. She traced patterns in the air, recounting a history Danaer had learned in childhood.
"Andaru will change us. We have changed before. Again our feet will be set on a new path, even as our ancestors set forth from Ryerdon to cross the broad Irico River and the unknown Plains of Vrastre. Generations past, we were one people—Ryerdon, dwelling where the sun rises. Ryerdon vied against great Traecheus, the empire of empires, and there was in Ryerdon neither Azsed nor lit, for we worshipped false gods then. As one people, we spanned the Irico and raised the walls of Deki, the entrance to life, forever to guard against the invasion of Traecheus, should it come."
Danaer wanted to take up the tale, reciting as he had heard it so many times from his elders' lips. Osyta nodded approval as he continued. "And beyond Deki the people encountered many testings. They journeyed through the wasteland of Bogotana's Sink and the flaming waters of the Vrastre. In the testing the holy ones separated Ryerdon and gave us unto our destiny. Those of Azsed learned the rule of Argan, and she gave unto us all the Vrastre."
"Ai! Ai! No more was there Ryerdon. There was lit, the unbelievers who bowed to Peluva and Desin, and Azsed, the Destre-Y, the people," Osyta said, eagerly resuming the narrative. "We came to hate, as Ryerdon had once hated Traecheus and rivaled her through ancient generations. Now those who dwelt in the mountains and valleys prayed to Peluva's golden orb and to the jewels and bright metal of Desin's wealth in the earth. For those who roamed the plains, the goddess of wills and fire was holy. Many seasons and years have turned, and still we hate, ever at dag-
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