“The particular quality of this sword, its most valuable quality, is its loyalty,” Xaeland said. “As long as I live it will serve only me, and if I should die, it will serve no enemy of mine, but will avenge me against my slayer. For this reason Thaurim’s guards did not slay me outright, for they hoped to take my sword for themselves. But not even Thaurim’s shard could turn Grasp away from me, for it is not an animal, but a demon. He would have needed Couris, the lost shard that controls the spirit.” He paused, then with a glance at Heao, added, “The other power of this sword, Grasp, is that its handle shifts forms into a hand—to extend its reach, to fit its master’s hand, or to manipulate things, like keys.”
“Awesome!” exclaimed Heao.
“Sir,” spoke up Piachras, drawing closer, “was Thaurim’s sword also a demon, then?” A number of the others had also drawn closer to listen in.
“Not fully,” Xaeland scowled.
“What could it do?” Heao asked.
“Burn you up with a flick of the wrist,” Xaeland said. “Igneis was possessed by a fire drake’s soul. Fortunately, it is only broken shards now.”
“Are there any other swords like that in the world?” Heao asked.
“Only one,” said Xaeland, “cursed by Morin’s father in secret before the Stone was broken—foul perversion of nature and spirit at once in one steel depravity.” He spat.
“And...what...what does it do?” Heao asked—but Xaeland made not the slightest attempt to answer this last question.
“There is one other enchanted sword,” spoke up Stuart. The others turned to him.
“If so,” said Xaeland, “it came not from the power of the Stone.”
Stuart replied, “This weapon was woven by the wizard Caimbrand in the days of the birth of Ristoria...long ago. It was said to be unbreakable and endowed with many powers of the light.”
“If only it were here now, in the hands of Caimbrand’s heir,” Sianna sighed.
They stopped only briefly for lunch, for all were eager to move, and the rest of the day they encountered no sign of anyone else. A little before evening Stuart called a halt and took Xaeland aside. By this time, eager as they were to go on, everyone welcomed food and rest.
“If we see no one on the way,” Stuart consulted Xaeland, “how do you plan to track our boy?”
“I hope to see someone,” Xaeland replied. “I wonder if the Therians evacuated the frontier prior to the battle.”
“The Therians are not easily frightened,” Stuart answered.
“Not easily or otherwise,” Xaeland remarked. “But if we see no one, we should head for Aerisia.”
“Aerisia!”
“If we can stay obscure, it may be our only chance to relocate him. If we lose him, what is your plan?”
“Then—if that occurs—we shall return to the army at Taravon’s Haven. Then...I know not.”
They turned back to the group, where Haleth and Piachras were passing a little food and a canteen of water amongst the others as they lounged in the clumps of plains-grass growing between the rocks. “I hope this is not all of dinner,” Heao moaned.
“Eat lightly,” Xaeland remarked.
“We continue from here till it is dark,” Stuart declared. “There will be a little more before bed. This is elven food and rich, and while it may be little, it will replenish you fully.”
The fortress-town of Anther on the Therian border hung waiting in the descending evening fog. Two horsemen had ridden out at dawn, but no word had yet returned. Two sentries occupied the watch-tower over the gate. Watch-fires burned on the ridge above the wall, marking the outer perimeter. Scouts kept watch beside the fires or, where there were too few soldiers, crept in the darkness from fire to fire.
One rider pounded into town. The gates were lifted ponderously, a thick stockade of southern logs fastened with heavy iron bands, grey with age. People moved in agitation; torches hurried back and forth. One watch-fire winked out.
From the watch-tower a battle-horn sounded—Marshall J’lendhith’s horns, by their pitch: three shorts, one long, three shorts, pause, repeat. The town listened, tense; a father drew his two young daughters to his sides; a sentry on the wall started to bite down on his lips; time slowed for it.
The scouts slowly retreated toward the city walls. Strings of flame slid out over the grass, connecting the watch-fires into a steady band. The fires seemed to flicker slower and slower. An arrow might have been seen flicking through the air.
Out of the darkness and smoke and fog, across the fire perimeter, a line of armored shadows strode into sight. One rank...two ranks...four...more: as far as the eye could see. Short, almost stunted, bristling with every kind of battle-axe and sword, heavy-helmed, thick-set. Goblins.
Marshall J’lendhith could be seen for a moment striding from the watch-tower to the wall-commandant’s station and giving orders to the archers. On the wall, the archers simply watched with sinking hearts the goblin armies marching forward, rank after rank after rank.
In the morning Heao was so sore he could barely stand. Rigel was already up and training with his sword. Piachras, always an early riser, had joined him, and their laughter became more and more boisterous as the others woke. Haleth watched them.
“Good morning, Heao,” said Jevan, who was awake but had not yet risen.
“Mmh,” said Heao. “Sir.” He looked around.
Stuart and the giant, Caelhuin, were absent. Sianna was just beginning to stir, shifting and stretching luxuriously as though on a feather mattress. Xaeland sat opposite them, but he seemed to have drifted back into sleep. He rose suddenly, shaking back his dark cloak and hair. “Break fast,” he said, taking something from one of the bags and throwing it to Heao. “We leave soon.”
Sianna sat up, unfurling a smile of delight as though waking to find a pleasant dream come true. She packed quickly and belted on her swords. Stuart and Caelhuin appeared from over the hill.
“Easy up, Heao,” Jevan said, rising and giving Heao a nudge.
“Ow, I do not think an army of goblins could move me,” he groaned, sitting up.
Xaeland flashed him a glare. “Wait till you see an army of goblins, boy. What news, Master Scribe?”
Stuart and Caelhuin reached them. “There is nothing, apparently,” Stuart said, “but the way the grass is beaten down is as though an army rode over us during the night.”
“Therians?” asked Haleth. “Marshall J’lendhith’s border guard might be this far north.”
“Possibly,” Stuart said, “but there were not the typical signs of cavalry—shoes, nails....”
“Therian cavalry leave no shoes,” Haleth scoffed.
“Neither was there discipline to the tracks,” Stuart continued.
“Which way?” Xaeland asked.
“Mostly west,” Stuart answered.
“Perhaps we shall meet them, then,” Sianna said cheerily.
No one answered to remark how lovely such a meeting would be or to say how eager they were to see it happen. Xaeland spoke up, saying, “Let us leave.” And unceremoniously, Caelhuin and he turned to leave.
Jevan helped Heao to his feet and supported him as his muscles resigned themselves to another day of walking. The hardest thing was getting up: after that the natural rebounding of youth took over. He had to wonder about Jevan and Rigel, however, who were not young.
The day passed uneventfully. The most hopeful sign was the disappearance of the fog and the vanishing of the trace snow on the grasses. The wind was icy and hard, but from this they found some slight shelter beneath the crest of the hills. By night they were all both aching and numb. And if Heao had thought it difficult to move the morning before, he compared what he felt the next morning to a lethal injection of serpent venom. He asked Jevan how it was he was able to keep going, but Jevan simply answered, “I think of Alik.”
Alik! The icy wind and aching had nearly numbed the purpose of the journey out of his mind! Alik, he thought, and struggled to his feet.
<
br /> Several days passed the same. Jevan had the feeling that he had slipped completely free of the stream of time: had fallen out of time, maybe transcended, maybe even died while the whole world sped on wildly toward its own imminent doom. There was no indication of change around him except the slow roll of many rocky hills, all the same, and waving grass, all the same, and the aching plod of feet, all the same; he could be dead—he might have imagined everything since that final onslaught on the fatal plateau; he might be only a floating soul making its way instinctively home but with the delusions of its former life lingering...but did souls ache? Maybe—maybe the pain of losing the body was such that the soul would rather mask it by transformation into delusion than admit it and thereby suffer it outright. Or maybe, he thought, that’s all physical pain really is.... He laughed at himself—but that didn’t stop his thinking.
That night they camped, as they had been camping, without a fire, though by now there seemed (to all but Xaeland) to be little danger of their being seen. Jevan was just going to sleep when Xaeland pulled him aside.
“I had not even fallen asleep,” Jevan murmured groggily.
“No point talking to a sleeper,” Xaeland answered. “Tell me now of Alik.”
“I do not know what you wish to hear,” Jevan answered. But he began anyway, starting with what he knew by experience, then going to what he knew by way of others, finally explaining Stuart’s theories. Xaeland seemed to filter out the most incredible facts of the story and ignore everything else, but when he noticed this and began shortening his accounts, the other unfailingly asked him to elaborate on some point or other. Finally it became clear: all Xaeland’s questions were aimed at Alik’s origin. Jevan told him what he knew—Alik’s father’s name, his mother’s, the time of their arrival on the isle and whence they came, what little was known of his parents up until their gruesome deaths. He also added Stuart’s evidence for believing Alik to be the heir of Caimbrand.
“Stuart has always set too much faith in prophecy—an elven trait,” Xaeland said.
“You seemed convinced before,” Jevan replied.
“I’m convinced the boy is the key to our survival. That’s reason enough to find him. I’ve heard his speech, I’ve seen his command over the shards. There’s no one else—unless it’s Morin—who can do what he can. That’s clear already—but his ancestry has shown how it came to be.”
Jevan nodded unsurely. Xaeland asked, “You said his parents are Calar and Mirias? That they arrived from ‘the east’ in the year eight hundred eighty-four...fifteen years ago?”
“Yes,” said Jevan, “but no one ever knew exactly from what country in the east. They were reclusive, as I said. A little paranoid even. Only a few people, including the father of our boy Heao, ever saw them.”
“She had long, dark hair,” Xaeland said. In the darkness his eyes stared off into the distance. From somewhere out there came a strange, guttural cawing noise...like a giant crow with a cold. “A tan complexion,” Xaeland went on; “modest dress, medium height. She came from Brolethiria. She had a sorrowful look, I think.”
Jevan nodded, “That agrees with what I have heard...but....”
“I will tell you a story,” Xaeland said. “There were two cousins, the descendants of Travvis I. The first, named after his great sire, was Travvis II; the other was my father, Lantarrev, son of Landrith, of the lineage of the sons of Laran.”
“Then you are a cousin to Taravon, the guardian prince?”
Xaeland nodded. “My father fell in love with a dark-haired woman in Brolethiria: my mother. I was the second son—I rely on my brother’s memory to describe her to you, for when I was only three, the Northern armies under General Krythar moved against Brolethiria. The emperor of Brolethiria was betrayed and his wife and children strewn across the court. He himself was forced into submission to the forces that had destroyed them.
“The war raged hotly but to a quick end after that. What forces remained independent followed Travvis II and Lantarrev through the mountains and fields of Brolethiria. They wreaked havoc on the enemy against hopeless odds, even to the point of civil war. At last Lantarrev was killed not by the enemy, but by the dust fever. What was left of his band scattered in fear, barely escaping the enemy at great cost. His wife was rescued by a soldier named Calar, a good man and honorable. She was Mirias; that is where she comes from. For her to have returned to her children, who were waiting in the palace of the emperor, would have been death. So they left for the west, for more peaceable lands, and left her children to grow up in the custody of the emperor of Brolethiria to replace the sons of his flesh who had been murdered by the North.”
“But Sir,” Jevan asked, “Brolethiria was not conquered in the War of Assassins...was it? Travvis II went on to route the Northern armies at Durthang, not far from here. And he outlived the war to become a great promoter of peace and unity throughout the free lands.”
“The enemy’s conquest went deeper than Krythar’s brute takeover,” Xaeland replied. “Krythar is a devil but he lacks the cunning of a true strategist. The true evil was worked by another—a prince of the North steeped in the age-old traditions and learning of a people so warlike that they pushed back the Snow Elf Nation into obscurity and ransacked the Goblin Empire, ending its reign.”
“Sovanov—of Tomeria,” Jevan said.
Xaeland nodded. “He was the mastermind of the Assassin’s War.”
“It was Sovanov, in cooperation with Tryphallia, who took the isle,” Jevan shuddered.
“Tomeria and Tryphallia together?” Xaeland asked. “This is a story I have not heard yet. You must tell me, sometime.” He laid back and drew his cloak around him as though to go to sleep, but Jevan paused.
“Sir...then you are Alik’s half-brother?”
“Mph,” came the response.
“I see,” said Jevan. “Are you all right for the watch?”
“Yes. But there’s nothing....” As he said it a racket of roaring caws broke out in the near distance. Xaeland rocketed to his feet and stared into the darkness. “That was close!”
“What?”
“Shh!” Xaeland dropped back down and pressed his ear to the earth. For nearly a minute he remained there; then he rose long enough to order Jevan to stop shuffling his feet and fell back down.
At last he rose. “It’s interesting,” he said. “Two miles off. There’s said to be a dragon in Caranis; this might be it, but it seems too small—and too far away.”
“Have you seen a dragon before?”
“Once only.” He started off in the direction the sound had come from and motioned Jevan to follow.
“Should we not waken the others?” he asked.
“If there’s trouble Caelhuin will wake them,” Xaeland said.
“How can Caelhuin wake them unless....”
“Caelhuin does not rely on sight or sound or any other normal sense, but on the senses of the mind,” said Xaeland. Seeing that Jevan did not grasp this, he elaborated, “He sees in telepathy—that is his sense. He can read minds, and especially mine. That is how he can fight, and fight with superiority, even without seeing.”
“Oh,” Jevan nodded—and whether or not he understood, he was sufficiently awed. They set off.
Almost at once Jevan was reminded of just how tired he had been before, but he said nothing. The walk lengthened until he had nearly forgotten the excitement of their purpose. The night was clear and the stars were coldly visible—they twinkled from behind their little star-blankets as though just to keep warm against the winter chill. And as they traveled something like a low thunder in the hills became louder and louder until Xaeland did not even have to listen to the ground to know which way to go. At last, over the crest of a low ridge, it came into sight.
In the fold of the land below something like a small dragon or a giant eagle was crashing up and down around a small, dark object. The moon had sunk and everything was shadow on shadow. “Get down!” hissed Xaeland. He drew his sword and it glow
ed a tingly red.
“Xaeland, wait,” Jevan whispered—but Xaeland was already leaping over the crest of the ridge and down the hill. Jevan scrambled after him but almost lost sight of him before he took two steps. The flying creature turned; its flinty eyes locked onto Jevan and missed Xaeland as he froze, covering his sword. The beast, whatever it was, launched into the air straight for Jevan. Jevan’s mind raced—“Run! Flee! Do something!” Stony shadows beat the air; the whoosh of air came louder and faster; the claws appeared.
Suddenly an arc of molten flame sliced through the dark. The creature bellowed and veered upwards, Jevan still gaping at the air where it had been. There was a fluttering of black against black and then an earth-shattering crash.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Xaeland demanded. Jevan felt the man’s hand grasp his. He stuttered something but was stopped—“No matter, come on.”
“Is it gone?”
“Barely nicked it,” Xaeland answered. “Bloody well!” He dragged Jevan to the bottom of the depression to the spot the monster had been circling. The ground was beaten and littered with rock; every blade of grass was smashed. “That has got to be the creature Alik rode,” Xaeland muttered. “That means he’ll be on foot.” He stooped to the ground over the formless thing the flying beast had been after. He turned it over and it became apparent: the body of a girl.
She woke partially; light and darkness blurred in her eyelashes; hands felt the aching bones of her legs, and there was pain. Voices: a noble elven male voice, “The bones mend.” A high-sounding, self-assured elven female voice, “She has chanced much still to have survived.” A deep, chivalrous elven male voice, “There is a tale of much woe written in her—these breaks and bruises, this sooty burn, these shoes worn through the soles.” A fatherly hand touching her forehead as she came awake.
A mild, crow-footed eye gazed down out of the dull blue sky. The sun was high; her eyes drifted weakly down into the cotton grey of a cloak and the floating green of the Therian Plains.... Therion, Therion.
“Child, can you speak?” Jevan asked her.
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