Alliances

Chapter 13

Gilthas stood on the extreme edge of the plateau, inches from a thousand-foot drop. Warm air rose from the desert, stirring his hair. The wind of the previous day had raised a mighty cloud of dust into the sky. The sun, shining through the haze, was a dully glowing scarlet orb, like an iron left in a forge fire.

A branding iron, he thought, gazing at the morose sky.

Spread on the plateau behind him were hundreds of his kith, captured by the nomads then released. They had been returned without the water, food, weapons, and tools that had been with them on Lesser Fang. Already supplies were reaching critical levels, and this added burden made the situation all the more difficult. There wasn’t even the compensation of a renewal of their fighting strength. The nomads had maimed every male elf.

Just when Gilthas thought he had plumbed the lowest depths of injustice and suffering, the bottom of the abyss was lowered again. So many elves purposefully maimed, not even the Knights of Neraka had stooped to such tactics. It was a blow worthy of a dragonlord, only none had ever thought of it.

Was the choice of the left hand intentional? Did the nomads know that most elves, unlike the majority of humans, were left-handed? Or had they considered themselves merciful, branding the lesser-used hand?

Gilthas nearly choked on the thought. In the end, it didn’t matter. The honor of the deed made such fine distinctions irrelevant.

The nomads who escorted the freed elves to the foot of Broken Tooth kept assuring the elves that they were not responsible for the branding.

“You bear the mark of the Weya-Lu,” they said. “We of the Mikku and the other tribes did not do this.”

So all was not harmonious among the various tribes. That might be useful later.

Hamaramis arrived at Gilthas’s vertiginous perch. The old general was followed by a group of young warriors. All were dusty and burned by sun and wind, and all burned just as fiercely with a desire for revenge. The expressions on their faces prompted Gilthas to cut Hamaramis off before he even started speaking.

“I will not hear plans for revenge, General. If you have other military matters to discuss, I will listen.”

Hamaramis’s face worked for a moment, then he burst out, “Sire, something must be done! Every elf on this summit knows what happened, and every one expects us to strike a blow for justice and for honor!”

He sounded like Kerian. Gilthas felt a great weariness drag at his limbs. With as much patience as he could muster, he said, “All that would accomplish is more death. Find another option.”

Hamaramis’s lieutenants openly seethed with resentment but did not speak.

“Our situation grows ever more dire, Great Speaker. If we don’t fight our way off this peak, we’ll never leave here alive.”

That was only too true. They were fundamentally weaker than when they’d first scaled Broken Tooth and could not remain much longer in idle safety. The nomads were displaying unusual staying power, keeping out of reach yet remaining close enough to menace any force that dared descend to the desert. The capture of Lesser Fang had infused the Khurs with new confidence and weakened the resolve of many elves.

It would be all too easy for Gilthas to lead his warriors off the peak, crying, “Let us die fighting!” And that is exactly what would happen: the soldiers would die in battle and the civilians left behind would perish of heat and thirst. Thus would end the most ancient race in all the world. The flame of Kith-Kanan, of Silvanos, would go out.

As he stared at the hazed vastness of the Khurish desert, Gilthas’s hands clenched into fists. His face stiffened with anger, and his sun-bleached brows lowered in a ferocious frown. He would not allow it to happen! His people would not die here, not while there was breath in his body.

He turned away from the precipice. “There is always another way, General,” he said harshly. “To die starving or die fighting are not the only answers. Find me another!”

His injunction met only blank stares. His chin lifted. Despite the threadbare garb and matted, unwashed hair, Gilthas Pathfinder suddenly was every inch the Speaker.

“Let the word go forth,” he said, using the terminology of a royal decree. “The Speaker of the Sun and Stars will go amongst his people and ask one question: How shall our nation be delivered off this rock?”

The warriors were skeptical, but they saluted their sovereign and hurried to carry out his command.

As sunset washed its usual scarlet and gold brilliance over the cloudless sky, Gilthas put on his best remaining robe—not a Khurish geb, but a gown of forest green silk with narrow bands of yellow at neck and wrists—and made himself as presentable as a comb and dry cloth allowed. With his councilors and highest-ranking warriors in tow, he set out to talk to his people. Stopping at every tent and bedroll on Broken Tooth was not practicable. Instead, he would visit the shared campfires that dotted the plateau.

The sentiment for peace, he quickly learned, was widespread. Even the elves who’d been brutally branded by the Weya-Lu voiced a great longing for peace.

“We’ll find it,” Gilthas vowed, “in the Inath-Wakenti. The problem is how to survive to get there.”

Ordinary elves had only vague notions about their enemy. They saw the nomads as marauders, thundering on horseback across the blazing sands, with swords upraised. The politics of Khur, the religion of the desert tribes, and the meddling of the rogue mage Faeterus were not common knowledge. Many elves, when asked by their king how best to save the nation, said, “Could we not talk to the humans, Great Speaker?” The Khan of Khur had allowed the elves to dwell outside his capital for five years, in exchange for steel and trade goods. Surely the world-renowned eloquence of elf diplomats could negotiate passage to the valley.

It was a notion Gilthas promised to consider. No one had tried to parley with the nomads since the departure from Khurinost. The Khurs’ rage was so extreme and so unfathomable, no one on the elves’ side had considered talking to them. Perhaps the time was coming for that to change.

Some elves had no interest in negotiations. They wanted to defeat the Khurs in battle. Otherwise, they said, the sacrifice of all those who had died thus far would have been in vain. The nomads had shown themselves to be treacherous, irrational, and unbelievably cruel. No one could talk to an enemy like that.

Around midnight, when many of his entourage had given up from exhaustion, Gilthas was still moving from campfire to campfire, still listening. As he passed the tent of a well-born Silvanesti named Yesillanath, he was seized by a fit of coughing. Yesillanath and his wife, Kerimar, invited him inside. The coughing did not abate, and when blood began to trickle from the Speaker’s lips, the two Silvanesti shouted for his escort.

Planchet burst in and found the Speaker sinking to the ground, his slender frame wracked by spasms of coughing, his face deathly pale. Planchet knelt, supporting his king against one knee. General Hamaramis arrived as Kerimar was offering the little wine they had left. The general asked for something stronger. Yesillanath handed him a vial of clear liquid. Hamaramis’s eyes widened as he read its label, but he opened it and passed it to Planchet.

“Drink, sire!” Planchet urged.

Gilthas did, and it was his turn to look surprised. The vial contained Dragon Sweat, a distilled liquor mainly used in medicines. It was so potent Gilthas lost his breath completely for an instant, long enough to break the cycle of coughing. Planchet would have lowered him to the rugs spread out over the rocky ground, but Gilthas said no. It was easier to breathe where he was, sitting up against his friend’s knee.

“You are ill,” Planchet said reproachfully.

“Merely a cough.”

The blood speckling the front of his robe belied that comment, as did Kerimar’s bloodied linen kerchief, which Gilthas still clutched in one hand.

“This is no simple cough, sire!” said Hamaramis. “Tell me, is it consumption?”

Gilthas nodded, but insisted he had the problem in hand. Hamaramis listened to him with all deference then asked for a healer to tend the Speaker. Yesillanath said Truthanar, a Silvanesti, was the most skilled healer available. The general went out to dispatch warriors to find Truthanar.

Planchet carefully wiped the blood from his sovereign’s lips. “Planchet, I must continue,” Gilthas whispered.

“No, sire.”

His tone and firm grip on Gilthas’s shoulder brooked no argument. Gilthas smiled weakly. “Mutiny.”

“Yes, sire.”

A chill seized Gilthas. His teeth chattered and cold sweat beaded his forehead. Planchet laid him on the ancient rugs that covered the floor of the small tent and pulled a thinner rug over his shivering body. The carpets once had graced the halls of Yesillanath’s mansion in Silvanost. Four hundred years old, they were the work of a master and worth a fortune. Gilthas commented on that, and Yesillanath shrugged.

“Out here, a rug is a rug, sire,” he said. “And it is better to sleep on a rug than a rock.”

Gilthas became delirious soon after, drifting in and out of consciousness. He mumbled, spoke nonsense to Planchet, conversed with friends long dead, and more than once said his wife’s name, his tone hopeless and sad.

Planchet chafed at the delay, asking Hamaramis why it was taking so long to find the healer. Broken Tooth wasn’t that large an area to search.

As if in answer, the rush of footfalls sounded outside the tent, but the relief of those within was short-lived. Hamaramis’s warriors had returned alone.

“General, we bring strange news,” panted one. “A nomad claiming to be related to the leader of all the tribes has surrendered himself to us!”

Not wanting to disturb the Speaker’s troubled rest, Hamaramis kept his voice low, but fury throbbed in every syllable. “Where is the healer, fools? He’d better be on your heels, or by Chaos, I’ll throw the lot of you off this cursed mountain myself!”

The second soldier assured him their comrades were bringing the healer. “But this human, my lord, he insists he can lead us off the peak and away from the nomads!”

Silence descended in the small tent. Gilthas plucked at Planchet’s arm, and the valet helped him sit up. “What is this human’s name?” he rasped.

“Wapah, Great Speaker.”

“It’s a trick, sire. They seek to tease us off our summit.”

“The nomads are not so sly, General. I will speak with this nomad.”

Two more soldiers arrived, bringing the Silvanesti healer, Truthanar. “Who sends soldiers to fetch me? I was treating branding victims!” the aged Silvanesti grumbled.

Gilthas cleared his throat. “I apologize, good healer. It was not my order, although I am the patient you have been brought to see.”

Truthanar bowed and commenced his examination immediately. He peered in the Speaker’s eyes and mouth, listened to his chest, and applied oiled mitrum leaves to Gilthas’s forehead. By calculating the time it took for the leaves to dry and fall off, Truthanar could determine his patient’s temperature. The diagnosis did not take long.

“Consumption, without a doubt. Aggravated by exhaustion, privation, and I dare say heartache. Your fever is high, sire, but as yet your lungs are not too greatly affected. A month from now, unless things change, it will be much worse.”

“Don’t worry, Master Truthanar. A month from now we shall all be in a better place.”

Hamaramis feared the Speaker meant they’d all be dead, but Planchet knew his liege better. He wasn’t surprised when Gilthas added, “Bring me the human Wapah. His help may be the difference between life and extinction for our entire nation.”

Favaronas squatted on the west bank of the wide, shallow stream he knew as Lioness Creek and dipped a hand in the water. In his other hand, he held a bunch of wild watercress. The greens were bitter, but starvation was worse. If he was going to cross the haunted valley, he would need all the strength he could get.

A librarian by training, Favaronas had accompanied the Lioness’s survey expedition to the mysterious Valley of the Blue Sands, hoping to find a new home for the elf nation. Although the valley was indeed a mild clime and green, they quickly discovered all was not well. The place known in Elvish chronicles as Inath-Wakenti, the Vale of Silence, contained no animal life at all, not even insects. Its only occupants were massive stone ruins and strange globes of light that roamed the valley by night and whose touch caused warriors to vanish. Beneath the ruins they found a network of fantastically painted tunnels and chambers.

After the Lioness had a vision of danger stalking her husband, she departed for Khurinost on her griffon, leaving the remaining soldiers to follow on horseback. Before leaving the valley, Favaronas had made an astounding discovery: the odd stone cylinders he’d found in a tunnel beneath the valley were actually scrolls. A brief glimpse of the knowledge they contained convinced him that tremendous power lay untapped within the valley, power unknown in the world since the Age of Light. If he could learn to use it, he could save his people and vanquish those who had invaded their homelands. At the first opportunity, he sneaked away from the warriors and returned to Inath-Wakenti.

For many fruitless months, he had dwelt in the valley, learning frustratingly little. The phantom lights, so numerous while Lady Kerianseray and her warriors were present, suddenly were nowhere to be seen. The entrance to the underground chambers was lost. Favaronas was certain of its location, at the base of an overturned sarsen, but although the huge stone remained, nothing marked the hole but a shallow pit. He dug down a ways but found only the blue-tinted soil for which the valley was named.

His efforts to map the extensive stone ruins likewise had been fruitless. The ruins were maddeningly irregular. Up close, the progression of wall, column, and monolith made superficial sense but, considered as a whole, added up to nothing. There were no traces of lesser structures between the cyclopean stones. If they were the remains of a city, then the city had no plan he could discern. It was as if an enormous ceremonial site had been begun and never finished.

Just the night before, when Favaronas had begun to fear he’d traded his old life for an unobtainable dream, he had a revelation. As he idled by the creek, using small pebbles to model some of the stone ruins he’d mapped that day, he suddenly realized the ruins were not ruins at all. The monoliths weren’t the remains of larger structures. They were, taken all together, some sort of code or symbol. The problem wasn’t recognizing what they had been, but what they were supposed to represent. The only way to do that was to see the whole, rather than the scattered parts. He needed an eagle’s eye view of the field of stones.

The eastern mountains were the only accessible high point. To the west, the peaks rose sheer from the valley floor, like the walls of a forbidden fortress. The slopes of the eastern mountains were more gradual. Getting there posed a severe problem, though. He would have to leave the relative safety of Lioness Creek. The nightly apparitions and will-o’-the-wisps never came beyond the creek, so Favaronas made certain he returned each evening to its western shore. To reach the eastern mountains, he would have to travel several days on foot across the widest part of the valley.

With much trepidation, he resolved to do it. He had little choice. His habit of remaining within a day’s walk of the creek meant he was stripping the land thereabouts of its meager provender. If he was going to discover the secret of Inath-Wakenti before he starved, he had to forsake safety and go to the eastern mountains.

He ate raw watercress and pondered how to carry the water he would need for his journey. It was a cool day, with a bright blue sky quartered by white cloudbanks. As he watched the clouds sail in stately fashion from east to west, he became aware of movement nearby. He’d spent so much time alone, he was very sensitive to the slightest motion. Lowering his eyes, he saw someone standing on the eastern shore of the stream. Favaronas recoiled so hard he fell backward.

The morning sun was brilliant behind a figure wrapped head to toe in layers of dusty dark cloth. The robes were so bulky, the stranger hidden so completely by them, he could be elf, human, or draconian.

“Who are you?” Favaronas called out.

He hadn’t spoken in so long, his own voice sounded strange to him. When he’d first come to the valley, he’d talked to himself, as much for company as anything, but he’d soon stopped. Somehow it seemed wrong to disturb the silence.

The robed stranger did not reply. Instead, he began to move, gliding across the water. His sandaled feet touched the surface of the creek but didn’t break through. Favaronas yelled. Before he could gain his feet and run, the stranger was in front of him.

“Rise and face me, Favaronas.” The stranger’s voice was low, its cadence deliberate.

“Who are you?”

“A seeker of knowledge, like you. Serve me, and I will protect you. I need someone who knows these ruins.”

Honesty compelled Favaronas to disclaim such expertise since he hadn’t dared venture more than a day’s walk from the creek.

The robed figure asked what he feared. That was all the prompting the desperately lonely scholar needed. He told of the ghost he’d seen in a tunnel beneath the monoliths, the colored lights whose touch caused elves to vanish, and most bizarre of all, his encounter just outside the valley entrance with four half elf, half animal females.

The stranger cried, “This is just the knowledge I need!” He withdrew his hands from where they’d been hidden within his wide sleeves and gestured excitedly. “I am a mage, Favaronas. With my protection, you can venture away from the shelter of this stream. I will defend us both.”

Judging by the shape and size of those pale hands, Favaronas felt sure he was in the presence of an elf. Somewhat emboldened, he asked the stranger’s name.

“Faeterus.”

The name was familiar. Favaronas felt certain he’d heard it in Khurinost. “Did the Speaker send you?” he asked.

A humorless chuckle sounded inside the deep hood. “I am here at no one’s behest but my own.”

Favaronas was torn. The strange elf’s confidence was reassuring, but there was something unsavory about him, something more than his bulky, uncomfortable-looking robes. It was disquieting to know he’d heard of the mage in Khurinost, yet the fellow wasn’t one of the Speaker’s advisors. Skilled mages were in very short supply, and the elf nation needed every source of power it could obtain. The Speaker’s edicts wouldn’t allow a rogue mage to practice his art openly. There were some elves in the world who did not acknowledge the Speaker’s authority. What kind of person was Faeterus?

“Follow me, Favaronas! You will learn the answers to all the questions crowding your mind.”

“And if I choose not to?”

“Then I leave you to your fate. The mysteries of this valley will claim you, and you will never know why!”

Favaronas considered a moment more, but really, what choice did he have? He would be safer with a companion than alone. “I will go with you. Not as your servant or subject, but as a colleague.”

His bold statement fell rather flat. Faeterus’s attention had been diverted by movement in the bushes farther down the creek’s western shore. Although faint, the noise was impossible to mistake. Inath-Wakenti was devoid of singing birds, chattering squirrels, or buzzing insects, but something was moving.

Whatever it was, it seemed to upset the mage, perhaps even frighten him. His lordly manner vanished, replaced by haste.

“Yes, yes. Colleagues. Now let us depart!”

Favaronas wouldn’t be rushed. He didn’t have many possessions but wouldn’t leave behind those few he owned, especially the stone scrolls.

“Very well,” Faeterus said. “Gather your things. Make for the eastern mountains. I will join you later.”

“Later? But I don’t—”

The rustling in the bushes grew louder, and the mage gave up all pretence of calm. “Remember our agreement!” he commanded then vanished. One moment he was there, ragged and bulky, the next, he was not. As Favaronas stared, even the impressions left by the mage’s feet on the bluish soil rose up and smoothed away.

The disturbance in the bushes did not worry Favaronas. The valley’s ghosts came out only at night, and they never crossed to his side of the creek. Nomads never entered the valley at all, for it was taboo in their religion. If someone was here, it could only mean the Speaker had sent another expedition, perhaps to find his favorite librarian?

He turned to retrace the route to his campsite and shrieked in surprise.

An elf stood by the bushes a few yards away.

“Who are you?” Favaronas was frightened but he was also angry. Weeks of utter solitude and two strangers appeared within moments of each other!

The fellow was no member of the royal guard. He was a Kagonesti but dressed more like a human. Eschewing the usual fringed buckskins and turquoise jewelry, he wore a leather jerkin, suede trews, and ankle-high canvas boots. Beneath a brown leather hunter’s cap, short hair framed a face bare of paint or tattoos. On his nose were perched wire-framed spectacles with bright yellow lenses.

“Peace,” he said. “My name is Robien. I mean you no harm.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m a hunter.”

Favaronas frowned. “There’s no game in this valley.”

Robien removed his odd spectacles and tucked them carefully into a pocket in his jerkin. “Oh, yes there is,” he said quite pleasantly. “You were just speaking to him.”