The History of Krynn

The Age of Dreams

Volume 1

All stories © 1984 TSR, Inc.

© 2012 Wizards of the Coast LLC

“Aurora’s Eggs” – First published in The Dragons at War 1996

The Dragons – First published October 1996

The Irda – First published June 1995

Children of the Plains – First published September 2000

Brother of the Dragon – First published August 2001

Sister of the Sword – First published May 2002

The Kagonesti – First published January 1995

Cover and ebook design by Dead^Man

Cover pictures used for this collection are from various sources around the net. Sorry, most sites do not credit the original artists. Thank you for the wonderful art, whomever you all may be.

These ePub  and Mobi/K8  editions v1.0 by Dead^Man December 2012

First release December 2012

Table of Contents

Copyright

The Foundation (ca. 9000 PC - 5000 PC)

Aurora’s Eggs

The Dragons

PART I

The Irda

The Dragons

Part I (continued)

The Time of Light (ca. 5000 PC - 2000 PC)

Children of the Plains

Brother of the Dragon

Sister of the Sword

The Kagonesti

The Dragons

Part I (continued)

Introduction

For almost thirty years our journeys to and research on the far off lands have led to the production of these works.

Runes explored, artifacts examined, languages learned; volumes read and hundreds-of-thousands of scraps of paper searched through and repaired to find the bits and parts to reveal the incredible history of these unknown and new-found continents.

For many decades there were attempts to reach the far away places where we thought the dragons went. The technology was not there to travel so far until our level of technology and magic improved and the great ships where created to support such a long journey. What was finally discovered will change the way we think and our course in history forever...

According to many of the recovered texts, dragons frequently spoke and interacted with the lost-people; our “dragons” have never spoken a word to anyone, and have only kept to themselves for the most part. One hundred and ninety-eight years ago the events of the Big Destruction occurred here (we now know) due to the events that occurred on the far side of our world – events that led the first researchers to start the expeditions to those far off lands. One hundred and ninety-eight years ago dragon populations grew enormously – suddenly – and this was also the time when the dragons spoke for the first time to some villagers in the town of Katoon (please refer to your local map-room for location). The short conversations with these new, tired dragon refugees, revealed the far-away magical lands contained not only the homes of the dragons, but the homes of a great many new races as well. We, having only a few races on our continents, were again energized and increased our efforts to reach the lands and to attempt contact any surviving people. Although the dragons stated that none they knew (of the lower races) survived the “last cataclysm” – as they call it. One green mentioned that they “have not been everywhere though”. (refer to the texts of Hardon, Part III, The New Dragons for the complete transcripts of these events) The dragons stayed for only a short while to regain their strength, then flew off again to keep to themselves in the Great Range.

Up until this time, our “side” of the world was fairly peaceful with only a few minor wars between clans and cities (in the last few centuries at any rate). The Big Destruction caused great upheavals in our lands – as is well known – raising the lands and leveling cities and towns and killing many hundreds-of-thousands of people (refer to any historical volume on these events). What caused this devastation is what drove the old researchers to search out across the oceans to look into what had happened, for they knew this time of horror was not caused locally. What was found was more than anyone would have believed without the discoveries that were returned.

Here we attempt to put together a complete history of those far away lands. Tales and stories from many tellers have been studied and translated by the Nexus collages. Although all attempts to put the timelines in proper order have been done, there are many discrepancies in some of the tales that can lead to slightly incorrect dates and times. Some stories even tell of traveling to times from their future to their past! I tend to pass these off as simple bards-tales that were recorded by the listeners. The students from the collage insist they are actual events, and cannot be discarded as fables due to the the magical nature of the rest of the peoples of those lands. These tall-tales of fiction have been left in the time-area where the people claim to have started their respective adventures.

Then there is Magic! Great, incredible magic they possessed. Either the truths of the story tellers has been greatly exaggerated, or they are simply far and beyond any of the minor-magics some of our own peoples can accomplish. For this reason I include the time-altering stories as – if they are to be believed – their magical talents just might possibly be more advanced than we can even comprehend.

Professor Dee Emm

Campus of Draem,

Northern New Mount

In the year 2219

Notes

The Age of Starbirth is referred to several times throughout the histories, but there are no known texts during the events of these times. The earliest texts start after this time period, which is where these volumes begin.

Research is still being done on a certain story where a particular fellow flew off of the world on a boat and past the moons! Unbelievable, yes. Only texts remain of his time on the planet. If (doubtful) he did spend any time off-world, there are no texts to tell of what he may have experienced. This story, in the end, may be a confirmed fiction...

Disturbing new research reveals shocking stories of the entire world having been taken away by a powerful deity from those lands! This has led our researchers to delve back into our histories for clues into these dramatic changes. Bringing to light also some old fables and bed time stories that now have the ring of truth to them (All volumes of Gramms Fables). The volumes containing these new stories will be released throughout the new year after the releases of the Ages of Dreams, Might and Despair. This new age is referred to as The Age of Mortals.

The collage heads have also stated the original texts will be released (in copied form of course; the originals have been protected) as they state the originating writers of the tales. They will be released shortly after the release of each collection of encyclopædia. The smaller stories we will collect into appropriately themed books, one Master calls Anthologies.

Aurora’s Eggs

(ca. 9000 PC)

In an age when stars were born and dreams began, the gods of light and darkness gave to the world their children, the first dragons. These regal serpents soared in the skies over Krynn, numbering but ten in all – five favored daughters of Paladine, and five more bold sons of Takhisis.

The dragons of the Platinum Father were creatures of light and goodness, formed of the metals that brightened and gave strength to the world. They were gold and silver, brass and bronze and copper. Females all, the quintet of serpentine sisters made their lairs in the west of Ansalon and dwelled there for countless eons, singing praises of Paladine among the vast swath of peaks that would one day be called Kharolis.

Arrayed against them were the five sons of the Dark Queen, wyrms of implacable evil arrayed in the colors of their matriarch: red, blue, black, green and white. They spread wickedness and destruction in the name of Takhisis, each serpent a blight of chaos and waste upon a great section of the world. Ultimately, like the daughters of Paladine, these chromatic dragons settled, making their lairs in the great mountains of central Ansalon. This smoldering, volcanic region would later be known as the Khalkist.

For the better part of an era, the number of the ten dragons remained constant. ancient beings, they did not age beyond their full maturity, but neither did they procreate. Naturally, Paladine and Takhisis each wished for wyrmlings born of their mighty offspring, that all Krynn might be populated with dragonkind.

But for the timeless millennia of prehistory these godly efforts failed, until at last the world came to a cusp of growing history, and ogres and elves came forth upon the land. Each of these folk laid claim to realms, allying with the mighty wyrms or taking them as foes. They worshiped the Platinum father and the Dark Queen, but called them by new names – Paladine was E’li to the elves, and the ogres knew Takhisis as Darklady.

Ultimately, with the aid of mortal sacrifice and cosmic sorcery, Paladine and Takhisis both discerned the secret of spawning – the creation of eggs. Each of the gods bred with the offspring dragons; their efforts brought forth a clutch from the Dark Queen herself, and a smaller nest from each of Paladine’s daughters.

At last the Dark Queen had hope for her ultimate domination – the answer to her schemes would be war! A trumpet call of fury rang through the skies of Krynn, summoning the chromatic dragons to their task. Her foe’s descendants would be slain, and evil would rule the world.

In those days the ogres were mighty, and with their help the dragons of Takhisis struck with swift lethality. In short order, the wyrms of silver, bronze, brass and copper were surprised, ambushed, and slain. Knowing that but one of her enemies remained, Takhisis planned for her ultimate mastery....

*

Everywhere black smoke spewed into the air, dozens of billowing plumes rising from a shattered landscape to form a forest of vaporous, impossibly lofty trees. Tortured, churning trunks merged into glowering overcast, an oppressive blanket shrouding the breadth of Krynn.

At least, across that portion of the world within Furyion’s vision. The red dragon flew high, skimming the underside of the heavy stratus, banking easily around the pillars of ash and smoke, riding the expulsive updrafts of heat. The volcanic mountains of central Ansalon were the source of the massive black columns. From his soaring vantage Furyion could see a hundred peaks spewing their fiery guts into the sky.

Deep chasms and canyons scarred the ground. In some of these raged the white ribbons marking turbulent streams, while others glowed dangerously with the crimson fire of flowing, liquid rock. Steep cones rose from lifeless bedrock to form a jagged skyline of dark-stone peaks, often clustering in a massif of six or eight well-defined summits, spewing smoke, lava, and steam from an assortment of craters. Other mountains rose far above their neighbors, pyramids of hardened magma surrounding calderas many miles across.

Furyion flew past one such massive summit, skirting the rim of the high crater. With detached interest he admired a gridwork of fiery cracks amid darkened slabs of cooler lava, the pattern that crisscrossed the floor of the vast caldera. In moments the dragon’s flight carried him beyond the sight, great strokes of his scarlet wings pressing downward in a slow, measured cadence. Updrafts of scalding heat that would have seared the scales off of Akis, the white dragon, merely lifted the mighty red higher, saving him the straining of his mighty wings.

Now the greatest of mountains came into view, the massive peak dwarfing even the mightiest among the lesser summits. Rising as a cone of massive, primordial rock, this was a volcanic matriarch that could obliterate the entire range if she should unleash her might against the world. Black along the lower slopes, where cliffs plunged into shadowed gorges on all sides, the mighty peak’s color merged toward a rusty red on the higher elevations. A series of jagged ledges jutted like shoulders from the massif, barren outcrops on an otherwise sweeping expanse of steep mountainside.

Despite the mountain’s great size, the crater at the summit was uncharacteristically small, giving the peak the appearance of a sharp point that nearly grazed the underside of the black stratus. Unlike many of the volcanoes, the crater spewed neither ash, smoke, steam, nor fire from the deep shaft. Yet heat glowed there, the crimson glow of fundamental fire forming a circle of light against the clouds.

Once before, Furyion had actually flown above the great crater to confirm this fact. So intense had been the blistering emanations of raging heat that the ancient red dragon had been forced to veer away at the very edge of the caldera, knowing he would certainly have perished if he flew any farther into the searing updrafts. Yet even in that quick glance he had seen enough to know that this mountain plunged an unimaginable depth toward the heart of Krynn.

Furyion’s eyes gleamed as he lighted on a lofty ledge, one of the highest on the cracked and barren mountainside. He spread his jaws, extending a scarlet-scaled neck to its full length before bellowing a great cloud of flame into the sky. Wisps of oily fire scorched the mountainside, hissing and burning with a sound like thunder as the mighty red made bold announcement of his arrival.

The sharp crack exploded from a nearby ledge, a perch only slightly lower than Furyion’s, and a bolt of lightning speared the sky. Arkan, the ancient blue, uncoiled from his own vantage and dipped his head in acknowledgement of his red brother’s arrival. Furyion bowed too, his yellow eyes bright. Jealously, the crimson wyrm eyed the necklace of silver scales gleaming on Arkan’s blue neck. It was a trophy, symbol of the blue dragon’s triumph over Paladine’s dragon of silver.

The stink of noxious gas stung Furyion’s nostrils and he looked down to see a greenish-yellow cloud drift along the sloping mountainside. Korril, the wyrm of emerald green, raised his head to regard Furyion. Leathery lids hooded the green’s dark, deceptively gentle eyes, and wisps of poisonous breath still rose from the twin gaping nostrils as the green glared impassively at the two higher serpents.

Furyion was further inflamed to see brass scales dangling in a chain around Korril’s neck. So the green, too, had met with success in the war against Paladine’s daughters.

Turning his eyes to the sky, Furyion sought signs of other arrivals. Next to fly into sight was black Corrozus, gliding around the shoulder of the great volcano to come to rest on a well-scoured outcrop of rock. The black dragon announced his presence with a spew of dark acid, spitting a river of the burning, sizzling liquid that spilled far down the slope of the peak, until at last the churning, corrosive flowage dissolved itself into the porous rock. Even from his much higher perch, Furyion noted that a circlet of copper scales ringed Corrozus’s snakelike neck.

Finally Akis, the massive white, came into view, soaring as far as possible from the flaming peaks. As he approached his own ledge, farther down on the mountainside, Akis blew a great cloud across the rocks, leaving them frost-lined and cool. Only then did the colorless serpent settle to his perch. Raising the wedge of his head, Akis blasted another cloud of frost into the air, let the sweep of the breeze carry the chill back across himself.

Bitterly Furyion saw that even the swift-flying Akis, whose discomfort in these hot regions was well known to his cousins, bore a symbol of triumph. His throat was surrounded by an array of bronze scales, proof of another kill.

“Be comfortable, my brother,” urged Furyion, more than a hint of mockery in his voice as he addressed the drooping white.

“Bah!” sneered Akis. “The heart of the Khalkists lies too far from realms of ice and snow. You would not speak so —”

“Silence!” barked Arkan, the command echoing across the mountainside. Furyion whirled upon the insolent blue, enraged by the interruption, but the azure wyrm hissed a more compelling warning. “Our mistress speaks!”

The mighty red fell silent, poised to listen and heed as rumbling within the mountain grew to a palpable shuddering in the bedrock. The vibration forced Furyion to grip the outcrop of his perch with powerful talons lest he be shaken from the ledge. Rocks broke free, tumbling from the summit and slopes, but the thrones of the five dragons had been chosen with care. Landslides spilled and roared past each, but none of the rubble flew far enough outward to strike any of the five sons of the Queen.

Smoke and ash abruptly exploded from the crater, billowing into the sky, swirling downward to encircle the serpents nearest the summit. Tongues of fire lashed through the enclosing murk, and bits of fiery lava spattered onto the rocks, hissing and spitting with infernal fire. Again pale Akis spewed his cloud of frost, miserably trying to hold the heat at bay. The other dragons simply squinted against the mild assaults, knowing by the size of the eruption that the summons of their mistress Queen was of tremendous importance.

For a long time Furyion huddled in the haze of ash and smoke, feeling the stinging burn in his nostrils, blinking his leathery eyelids over flakes of powdered rock. He thought with amusement of Akis, knowing that the white must be suffering tremendously – despite the fact that his low perch marked his lesser status, but also allowed him to avoid the worst of the Queen’s vented fury.

Finally the ash and smoke gave way to pure fire, a blossom of blue flame shooting straight upward from the volcano’s maw. The pillar burned away the clouds, boring a passageway straight through to pale sky, sending waves of shimmering heat rising relentlessly to the heavens. The cloaking overcast surrounded the gap, like a cylinder of murk enclosing a heat-scoured chimney.

The Dark Queen’s glory cleansed with its killing heat, sweeping the ash and debris away, raising a mighty wind across the face of the mountain. Still Furyion and his brothers clung to their perches, turning faces away from the stinging gale, looking upward to witness the glory of their mighty mistress.

Only when the fire had nearly burned itself out, when the hole in the dark cloud mass began to close, did the words of the Queen become known to her children.

“Welcome, mighty sons... know that your actions have been pleasing to me. Your courage, your cruel and relentless violence shall be well rewarded.”

“Greetings, Mother Queen,” murmured Furyion, in cadence with the other wyrms. He felt a rush of warmth and affection for the great, chaotic goddess who had given birth to his brothers and himself.

“Our eggs, the precious orbs that each of you has given me, are nurtured in the heart of the Abyss. They thrive and prosper... and someday, they will yield handsome offspring. Then shall our children populate the entire face of Krynn.”

Furyion shivered in delight at this word of the spawning, and bowed his crimson head in abject worship. “We are unworthy of your grace, Mother Queen,” he rasped, spewing steam and fire from his nostrils. “The red dragons shall rule the world in your name!”

“Aye, my boldest, my mightiest son. The wyrms of blue and black, of green and white, shall aid and serve them – but it is my desire that the dragons of fire be the masters of my world!”

Crowing, Furyion raised his face to the cloudy sky, bellowing a great fireball of searing, sizzling heat.

“But know, too, my children, that there is still danger in Krynn.” The cautionary words came as the other four serpents regarded the mighty red, their expressions carefully masked to conceal the emotions of envy and displeasure that lurked in their wicked thoughts.

“But mistress —” It was Arkan, the mighty serpent with scales of turquoise blue, who spoke up next. “I myself have slain the silver dragon. See, I bear a necklace of scales, ripped from that wretched wyrm’s rotten corpse.”

“Aye, my son.”

“And I!” Green Korril was not to be outdone. “The wyrm of brass perished in the crush of my bite and the rending talons of my claws. I, too, wear a necklace of hated scales, proof that our great enemy has been slain.”

“Hear of my own trophy, Mother!” cried Corrozus, shaking his supple neck and setting the ring of copper-colored scales jangling. “I, too, have slain a wyrm of Paladine.”

Next it was Akis who boasted, brandishing his own circlet of bronze scales.

“I see your triumphs, my sons – and my pride showers you like the warmth of fire from the sky.”

Four dragons bowed, accepting the praise. Only Furyion looked on, envy and rage vying for mastery of his seething emotions.

“But still there is danger, and it is for this reason that I have gathered you.”

“We know that Aurora, the gold, still lives,” Arkan assured the Queen of Darkness. “But surely she cannot long evade us.”

“No, but there is further danger, my sons. The dragons of Paladine have worked to deceive us – even as they were slain, one by one, by my loyal sons.”

“How?” demanded Furyion, secretly encouraged by the suggestion that his brothers’ efforts might have resulted in a clumsy failure.

“As her sisters were slain, Aurora herself remained aloof – and all the time she was coiled around the future of her race.”

“Mean you that Paladine’s dragons, too, have eggs?” Corrozus hissed. The other serpents fell silent, chilled by his suggestion.

“Aye, my black one. They have eggs, and have commissioned Aurora with the task of guarding them.”

“Are the spawn in the far plane of Paladine?” Furyion asked the question, but dreaded to hear the answer. They were so close to ultimate victory, making themselves and their spawn the unchallenged masters of the world. Yet if the Platinum Father was guarding the eggs, much as Takhisis had secured the spawn of evil dragonkind in the Abyss, their plans could yet be thwarted.

“Here they have made their mistake,” stated the Queen. “They have allowed the eggs to remain upon Krynn.”

“Where we can reach and destroy them!” Furyion pledged, determined that he would gain that necklace of golden scales.

“Yes, my sons. You must slay Aurora, and eradicate the clutch of metal eggs. Only then will our future be safe, freed from the threat of Paladine’s dragons.”

“The gold is a daydreamer – she will be easy prey!” boasted Corrozus. “It shall be my pleasure to rot the gilded scales from her flanks with the spittle of my breath!”

“We fly at once, my Queen!” promised Furyion, with a flexing of his broad, sail-sized wings. The red was annoyed that his black cousin had been quicker with the boastful promise.

“But tell us,” inquired Akis. “Where may the eggs of the metal dragons be found?”

“You must search, my sons. They are concealed in the western mountains, and I bid you, all five of my mighty children, fly there, find the clutch, and destroy it – utterly and completely. Succeed, and the dragons of metal shall be forever banished from the world!”

Five proud bellows challenged the sky as the wyrms of Takhisis raised their heads. Jaws spread wide, they spewed deadly breath – fire and lightning, acid and frost and deadly gas, all churning together, rising in a pillar of evil might.

In the sudden silence that descended, Furyion trembled, on the brink of his lofty ledge. The western mountains were far away, across the broad plain that was central Ansalon. Yet he knew that he could cross that distance in a matter of a few days. Once above the distant range, he could use magic, or perhaps merely his keen eyesight, to discover Aurora and the clutch of eggs.

Arkan and Akis flung themselves into the air, crying in martial fury. Furyion tensed, then halted as the voice of his mistress came into his mind.

“Wait, my crimson son... I would have words with you, alone.”

Tingling, Furyion paused, watching as Corrozus and Korril took wing. He waited, taut with anticipation, as the black and green wyrms trailed their brothers along the swooping gorges leading to the west.

“I desire, Furyion, that you shall win the greatest triumph in this battle. All have heard me decree that the red dragons shall be lords of the world – but you need this trophy, this proof, to hold above your brothers, to show them the rightness of my choice!”

“Aye, Queen Mother.” Furyion was grimly certain of this same fact – he had already determined that he would do whatever was necessary to slay Aurora himself. “I shall wear the scales of the golden wyrm around my neck, a trophy that will herald my greatness through the ages! My talons, my fangs shall rend her to pieces!”

“Brave words, and true. But heed: Do not make waste of your magic, my son. I have granted you the mightiest of spells, the most potent enchantments within my power. Use them!”

Already the red dragon had pictured the brute violence he would deliver against golden Aurora, but here again he heard the Queen’s advice. He would paralyze her with magic, then squeeze the life from the idle serpent of gold before she knew that she was attacked.

With a bellow of challenge and triumph, Furyion spread scarlet wings to catch the upward drafts, leaping into the air and winging westward toward the destiny that would decide the future of the world.

*

There were no seasons, then – nothing like the passing of months or years. In places the world was cold, and cold it remained; in other realms, warmth was the ruling condition, and such climes held sway with the passing of hundreds, of thousands of sunrises.

Yet still time passed, and one being sensed this more keenly than any other. Like a band of gold she encircled the finger of a spiked mountain peak, following her master’s command, waiting with immortal patience through the passing of countless days for the arrival of her sisters.

Still she waited, as time and events took shape upon the world. And at last she knew:

The others would never return.

*

Aurora coiled near the summit of her lofty peak, holding her golden head upraised, keen eyes searching the eastern horizon as they had searched it for days uncounted. The sky was cloudless, the sun high above, yet no glimmer of brightness speckled along that distant horizon.

The knowledge that she was alone grew in the mighty gold dragon slowly, like a gradual awakening from a deep and profound slumber. When it took solid root, she knew the truth: her sisters were slain, victims of the Dark Queen’s treachery.

A lesser being might have given way to despair, even fear; to Aurora this was simply a problem that required her full concentration. Thoughts of many things drifted through her ancient, timeless mind as she turned toward this new, discomforting reality.

For a time her thoughts wandered, as they had done during more peaceful times. In truth, what did it mean to be really, truly alone? Aurora had always been a solitary creature, disdaining the petty concerns of Paladine’s other serpents. Brass, copper, and bronze had been full of petty jealousies, even greed, and the impatient silver had been too shortsighted and active for more than a few days’ pensive conversation.

Solitary life suited Aurora, for it gave her plenty of time to think, which was her favorite pastime by far. She was content to pass the days with considerations of poetry and history and all forms of knowledge marching in steady progression through her awareness. And of course, there was also the matter of her magic – she delighted in weaving enchantments, and Paladine had bestowed upon her a remarkable gift for arcane power. Already Aurora had mastered many spells, but with sorcery, as with life itself, one could never have too much time to study, to meditate, and to think.

For that matter was she, even now, really alone? In truth, no, for there were the eggs in the great cavern below, secured in the vault that arched over a vast, underground sea. The secret trove lay in the heart of this mountain ridge, beneath a mile of solid rock. It had only one clear point of access – the Valley of Paladine. That vale lay in clear view of the gold dragon’s current vantage, where she had remained for an uncountable number of days.

That thought reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in some time. She looked for some sign of prey in the game-rich valleys below. Something moved, far down the slope of the mighty peak, and Aurora became more keenly aware of her hunger. Unwilling to waste time in a long pursuit, she decided to use magic in the aid of her hunt. The golden body shifted under the influence of a polymorph spell, shrinking, the metallic scales of her breast merging into the plumage of a proud eagle. Leathery wings of shining membrane became the feathered limbs of a mighty soaring bird. Keen-eyed and shrewd, the gliding predator moved away from the mountain, circling easily, gradually spiraling lower.

The source of movement was clear to Aurora, now – a herd of elk grazed through a meadow of tall grass. The proud bull stood alert while his does nibbled at lush clover. Several of the great, shaggy deer gathered around a small spring, heads lowered to drink.

Diving lower now, the eagle that was Aurora veered to the side, ensuring that the bull did not take alarm. When the tops of the trees skimmed just below the bird’s feathered belly, she stroked her wings, speedily approaching the meadow where the herd sought sustenance.

Breaking from the cover of the trees, Aurora shifted into her true shape. Golden wings abruptly cast half the clearing in menacing shadow, and drew a bugling bellow of alarm from the great bull. Immediately the elk stampeded, scattering in every direction toward the shelter of the surrounding woods. But the gold dragon had already selected her victim, a doe with the gray muzzle and stiff, clumsy gait of an elder. The elk limped after the younger members of the herd, braying in shrill panic as the massive, winged shadow eclipsed her flight.

Aurora dropped like a pouncing cat, bearing the elk to earth and breaking the muscular neck with a single, crushing bite. By the time the rest of the herd had scattered, she crouched over the fresh meat, the odor of blood making her belly rumble. The clearing was pleasant, with the fragrance of many blossoms soothing to the gold dragon’s nostrils. The pastoral surroundings of lush pines and the placid waters of the spring made a splendid framework for a meal.

But there were the eggs, Aurora’s sole responsibility. She could not see the Valley of Paladine from here, so she knew that she could not linger in the pleasant low-land. Seizing the carcass in her jaws, she gave a powerful downstroke of leathery wings, hurling herself into the air. The golden serpent flew at a gentle incline, circling toward high altitude, gradually working her way back toward the lofty summit.

The sun had neared the western horizon by the time she reached the slopes around her peak. The body of the elk dangling from her jaws, Aurora warily looked over the mountain, and the surrounding skies, before coming to rest on the exalted height. Crouching over the still-warm carcass, the gold dragon was about to tear into the meal when she hesitated. Blinking, then staring intently, she detected a trace of movement in the sky, a winged creature approaching from the north.

The flyer was clearly larger than any bird, yet the brownish, indistinct coloring was too dull for a dragon. Propping the fresh meat firmly between two boulders, the golden serpent lifted her head, squinting into the shadows between the mountains, trying to discern the nature of the approaching creature.

Soon Aurora recognized the powerful body and the broad, feathered wings of a griffon. Because the hawk-faced predators generally avoided dragons, she was surprised to see this one coursing steadily closer to her high peak. She waited with the patience of the near-immortal, watching the griffon strain for altitude, laboring toward the sanctified rocks of the lofty summit. Now she could see the black and white pattern of the griffon’s wing feathers, the hooked hawk-beak of the proud face. The griffon’s body was like that of a great cat, powerful paws and muscular legs coming to rest on an outcrop of rock a short distance below the gold dragon’s perch.

“Greetings, Honored ancient,” declared the griffon politely. The creature spoke in its own language, but Aurora was familiar with the tongue – as, indeed, she understood the speech of every intelligent being across the breadth of Krynn.

“Welcome, Feathered Hunter,” the gold dragon replied with formal correctness. She was silent then, patiently waiting to learn the griffon’s business.

“The skies are empty, for many miles across the plains,” the sleek predator noted vaguely. When Aurora made merely a noncommittal rumble in reply, the hawk-faced creature continued. “I grieve for the loss of your bold sisters.”

“You speak with a certainty that goes beyond my own knowledge,” admitted the gold dragon – though she had guessed at this truth.

“One by one, the dragons of metal have been savaged by the Queen’s wyrms,” related the griffon, with a sad shake of the hawklike head. “Now, my cousins tell me that the serpents of Takhisis have taken wing from the Khalkist. They seek the last of their enemies.”

Aurora’s filmy eyelids half-lowered as she considered this information. The words of the griffon clearly placed a certain urgency on her situation, compelling action. The dragons of the Dark Queen would no doubt move swiftly – she knew that they had little use for a proper interval of meditation and philosophical discussion. And the gold dragon also knew that her enemy’s actions must be faced with firm choices and decisive responses of her own. Perhaps the time for thinking was past, at least for now.

With a wrenching twist, Aurora pulled a rear haunch from the elk. She reared upward with the limb in one forepaw, and gestured to the remainder of the meaty carcass.

“You are welcome to food... and I thank you for your news,” she informed the hawk-faced flyer.

The feathered cat bowed low, wings extended to honor the gilded serpent. “I thank you for your generosity, ancient One. My cubs have been hungry for some days, now.”

“Let them eat well.” With a glint of sunlight on golden scales, Aurora took to the air, leaving the pleased griffon to tear the carcass into portable pieces. The dragon circled her lofty peak, studying the skies to east and north, reassuring herself that the wyrms of Takhisis were not yet on her doorstep. In mid-flight, she devoured the haunch of fresh meat, then tucked her broad wings and dove toward the Valley of Paladine.

She steered past sheer walls that plunged thousands of feet into the narrow, shadowed vale – a place inaccessible to landbound creatures, fully encircled by those lofty precipices. At the valley floor, Aurora settled to the ground, tucking her wings to enter the black, jagged opening that gaped in the mountain wall.

The tunnel within extended for a very long distance, but shortly past the entrance it widened dramatically. Again Aurora took to the air, spreading her wings to glide toward the great cavern in the depths of the mountain range.

Arrival always came as a shock – one second she veered through the winding cave, and the next she was in the great chamber. Below her lapped the placid waters of the vast, underground lake. Like an enclosed piece of sky, the vast ceiling lofted far overhead, encircling a body of water so broad that, at some distant point in the future, it would count no less than five teeming cities along its shores. Now it was home only to millions of bats, and to a very precious nest.

The gold dragon’s flight was direct and purposeful. She flew toward a lofty pillar that rose from the center of the lake to merge with the high, arched ceiling. Aurora banked, circling the shaft, until she neared a wide ledge in the precipitous surface.

Settling to that platform, Aurora tucked her wings and passed through a shadowy niche barely wide enough for her sinuous form. Within, the moist air of the grotto soothed her nostrils; immediately she felt the sense of benign well-being that was the hallmark of this sacred cavern.

In the center of the circular chamber she saw the nest – a huge, bowl-shaped basket made from an array of massive gemstones hewn together by combined blasts of fire and frost, gold and silver dragon breath. The eggs within glowed subtly, illumination reflecting in myriad facets from ruby and emerald, and from a hundred tiny waterfalls on the grotto walls, where sparkling water trickled down the slick, reflective rock.

Aurora knew that there were twenty eggs here, four of each color – bright spheres of brass and bronze, the deep purity of copper, silver with a shine like pure light, and the perfection of deep, burnished gold. The latter had emerged from Aurora herself; the others had been born of her four sisters, some ageless time before their deaths. Fathered by Paladine himself, these eggs represented the hope for a future that included the metal dragons of the Platinum Father.

How would the world be changed, should the wyrms of Takhisis reach the grotto and destroy this precious clutch? This was a question that Aurora could have pondered for a very long time indeed. Yet she realized, with a glimmer of regret, that the time for philosophizing was past – now, she must be a warrior worthy of her kind. She would rely upon talon and fang, wield her fiery breath and powerful sinew with deadly force.

And meet the enemy with her magic. She knew that the banked fires of enchantment within her – wells of abiding power, capable of great force and violence – represented her best hope of victory.

Emerging from the grotto, flying over the water again, Aurora began to make her plan. She would meet the wyrms of the Dark Queen with her spells, and with all the formidable weapons inherent to her body. She must have discipline and patience, while at the same time her enemies, she devoutly hoped, would be governed by the chaotic influences of their immortal mistress.

Finally she passed through the long tunnel and was outside the mountain again, rising on the evening breezes toward her summit. She settled there at midnight, chilled by a sense of impending danger. Turning her eyes toward the plains, she called upon the power of magic, chanting softly, weaving the spell of true sight.

Immediately she saw them, five specks of evil color, tiny across the northeastern horizon. The white came first, speed carrying him ahead of the others. She could see, too, that the red and black flew as a pair, some miles behind the pale, ghostly serpent. The blue and green strained after, straggling far to the rear.

Aurora moved slightly down the face of her summit, on the slope facing her enemy’s approach. Looking over a smooth cliff, she chose a perfect place for her next spell. The mirage arcana was a complicated casting, but the gold dragon spoke the sounds, called upon the magic with precision and care. Following her command, a false picture grew on the mountainside – a scene so real that, certainly, an eager and hasty white dragon might be fooled. Her magical weaving completed, Aurora admired the scene she had created, then climbed back to her summit, curling behind the crest of rock where she could observe the white’s approach without being seen herself.

That ghostly serpent winged onward with frantic speed, reaching the foothills of the Western Range before dawn. By sunup, he was visible to Aurora’s eyes, even unenhanced by magic. The gold watched carefully, masking herself with an invisibility spell to augment the almost-complete concealment offered by the mountain wall.

The spell proved superfluous, as the white’s eyes remained fixed upon the mirage arcana. Silently, pale lips curling into a cruel smile, that evil wyrm tucked his wings, arrowing into a powerful and speedy dive. The creature plunged toward the image on the mountainside, and Aurora could sense the serpent’s vicious eagerness as it swept toward the thing that it saw there – the vision of a gold dragon on a wide ledge, slumbering unconcernedly.

So intent was the white on his intended victim that the wyrm never hesitated, diving with long neck outstretched, anxious to drive long, sharp fangs through golden scales. When the serpent met the unseen mountainside he was flying at full speed, augmented by the momentum of a steep dive. Even far above, Aurora heard the crunching of vertebrae and the heavy thud of a massive body, already lifeless, smashing down the length of the smooth cliff.

The gold dragon swept outward, spiraling beside the precipice, sweeping over the massive, pale corpse sprawled across the talus at the base of the cliff. With a deep cry that echoed through the halls of the mountain valleys, Aurora confirmed her enemy’s death, then tilted narrow wings to sweep upward.

Climbing above the ridge again, she now saw the red and black dragons, clearly distinct as serpentine, long-winged forms. Farther away, the blue and green strained for speed and altitude over the foothills. Commencing the next phase of her plan, Aurora glided above the highest crest of the Kharolis skyline, in clear view of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

Immediately, the red and black serpents banked toward Aurora. The trailing blue and green, meanwhile, veered along the course of a long, deep gorge – a route that would allow them to circle around the great mountain without climbing to the gold’s lofty height.

Aurora’s glide carried her toward a southern sub-peak of the great massif, allowing the closer pair of her foes to quickly close the distance. Barely a mile separated her from the enemy when she dove, vanishing from view down the western slope of the towering mountain. Her eyes fixed upon the Valley of Paladine, she flew close to the descending ground, veering upward or banking sharply to avoid the outcropping peaks and knobs that rose in her path.

Soon she heard the cries of fury from above, knew that the red and black had crossed the ridge and seen her. Without wasting speed on a backward look, Aurora sensed that they followed her dive – and soon another shriek, considerably closer than the first, confirmed her suspicion.

Pure, unrestrained fury underlay the red’s cry. Knowing that her enemy’s rage could work to her own advantage, Aurora resolved to be patient, to allow that savage hatred to reach an unmanageable level. This was not the time to turn and offer battle to the crimson serpent, her largest and most powerful foe. Yet the gold dragon knew that, among all of the Dark Queen’s wyrms, the red was also the most potent wielder of magic, and that was a threat she was determined to counter immediately.

She held to her plan, finally lighting to the ground before the familiar tunnel mouth. Her heart caught at the thought of the treasure within, but she allowed herself no hesitation as, with a flick of her golden tail, Aurora raced into the tunnel.

Almost instantly she turned, another spell forming in her mind. She stared at the circle of daylight beyond the cavern, knowing what she would see very soon. Red scales flashed and then the crimson dragon crouched there, ready to pounce after his golden foe.

Aurora spat her spell of the feeblemind, a weaving of magic that struck the red in his seething, magical center. The enchantment rocked the crimson wyrm backward with deceptively subtle force. In the instant of its effect the spell wiped clean the slate of the red dragon’s awareness of magic, causing every arcane casting to vanish from the monster’s memory.

With a bellow, the enraged serpent instead spewed a crackling, hissing ball of fire into the runnel. Aurora, who had turned to flee as soon as her spell was cast, was slightly singed at the tip of her tail. Like her blood-colored foe, however, the gold dragon could suffer no great harm from the normally deadly inferno of a dragon’s breath.

She raced through the lightless passage with all the speed of long familiarity and keen, dark-sensitive eyes. After a hundred steps she entered the expanded section of the cavern, turning about again to face the narrow bottleneck. She felt the approach of her enemies, evil surging down the narrow cave.

But still it was not the time to fight. Instead Aurora whispered the incantations of another potent spell, felt the magic flow from her body, infusing the very bedrock of the mountain. That surface flexed and buckled, then churned upward from the floor and down from the ceiling, merging to form a wall of stone completely blocking the passage. The gold dragon listened for long heartbeats, hoping for the sound of a heavy body crashing into that wall, that the red’s fury and headlong flight would cause it real harm.

Instead she heard a bellow of frustration and felt the wall grow warm under the onslaught of fiery breath. No matter, that – Aurora knew that the wall would withstand any heat the crimson serpent could belch forth.

And two of the Dark Queen’s wyrms were thwarted, at least temporarily. The circumstance might give her enough time to deal with her other enemies, if she reacted quickly – and was blessed with good luck. Assuming that the green and blue still winged along the deep canyon, Aurora tried to picture their exact location. Her teleport spell was a simple word, uttered sharply, and before the echo returned from the enclosing cavern walls the gold dragon was poised in midair, high above a churning river that gouged ever deeper into the bedrock.

Immediately before her, and some distance below, the green dragon soared on widespread wings, unaware of his enemy’s sudden appearance. A quick glance showed Aurora that the blue was far ahead, and, like the green, apparently hadn’t noticed the gold’s instantaneous arrival. Aurora plunged, wings swept far back for maximum speed – and to minimize the sound of her purposeful flight.

Nearing her target, Aurora saw a spot of pearly light floating above the green dragon’s tail, like some kind of large, flying gem. As she opened her jaws for a breath of killing fire, she felt an uncanny tingle of alarm – there was something unnatural about the bauble, something strongly suggestive of magic. Closer still, the gold saw the staring pupil in the circled whiteness of the magical orb, and knew that she’d been observed.

The green’s curling turn was startlingly quick, emerald jaws darting back to face the onrushing Aurora. Warned by his wizard eye, the reptilian flyer twisted through a steep, desperate loop, roaring around as fiery pressure welled in the gold dragon’s belly, spewing from Aurora’s jaws into a blast of searing, hissing flame. At the same time, she felt a cloud of noxious vapor surround her, toxins stinging the membranes of eyes and nostrils, cutting into tender nerve ends with jarring pain.

Amid the cloud of fire and gas, the two mighty serpents collided. Choking and gagging, Aurora sought to fasten her fanged jaws around the green’s neck. Her enemy’s charred wings cracked away, turning to ashes under the raking slash of the gold dragon’s claws – but then she recoiled in sudden pain as emerald claws ripped her own flesh. Aurora twisted, barely avoiding the rending belly-slash of her enemy’s fangs. Finally the golden jaws found their target, closed around the neck, and with a crushing bite, ripped away the green dragon’s life.

Releasing the bleeding, charred corpse to tumble toward the river, Aurora extended her wings and stroked for altitude. She blinked remnants of gas from still-bleary eyes, trying to locate the blue. She saw that the azure serpent had wheeled about at the sounds of battle and now winged toward her, closing the distance fast.

Abruptly the blue dragon vanished, and Aurora wondered for a precious second if her enemy had used a spell of invisibility. The truth came an instant later – but that delay was almost fatal. The gold whirled with instinctive speed, seeing that her foe had copied her own tactic, teleporting into perfect attack position. Shrieking at the image of the blue diving straight toward her, Aurora tried to draw a breath through the choking remnant of the green dragon’s gas, to again fill her belly with the killing fire of dragonbreath. A spasm of coughing was the only result.

The bolt of lightning spit from the blue’s mouth, ripping away a golden wing in a blast of searing, flesh-charring power. Aurora flailed at the blue’s tail as the dragon swept past and then immediately banked out of his plunging dive. Canting drastically to the side, the gold instinctively stroked with her good wing – but this only sent her spinning crazily, tumbling out of control into the canyon depths.

Aurora trimmed her wing, pulling the leathery membrane back to her side as she arced neck and tail to bring herself out of the spin. Another spell fell from her lips, a single word of magic, and the power of levitation brought her plunge to a halt. Slowly the golden body started to rise, drifting gently back toward the sky. The blue dragon howled triumphantly, growing larger in her view as he winged straight toward Aurora. Azure jaws gaped, another cruel lightning bolt forming within.

The gold dragon saw utter doom, for herself and for all of her kind, in that merciless maw – and she knew that she could not afford to fail. She had hoped to save her most powerful spell until the end of the fight – or to not use it at all, because it tapped into black reaches that reeked more of the Dark Queen than the Platinum Father. Yet now she had no choice, and with a verbal quickness to match the speed of her decision, Aurora spat a dark and killing word full into the face of the onrushing wyrm.

The death spell seized the blue dragon by the guts, coiling the serpentine body into a wriggling ball. The lightning bolt died, unspat, as the pulse of vitality withered and perished in the azure belly. Plunging downward, the dragon’s corpse followed its green brother, vanishing into the raging turbulence of the mountain river.

Forcing herself to ignore the pain flaming through the nub of her left wing, still airborne on the power of the levitation spell, Aurora summoned another incantation. This time the magic brought a gust of wind, swirling air pushing her buoyant body toward the mountain. The gust circled the mighty peak, whisking its mighty passenger toward a high shelf of rock on an otherwise inaccessible cliff.

Coming to rest on the ledge, Aurora slumped to the ground, a momentary wave of weakness spasming through her golden body. Knowing that urgency allowed no delay, she painfully dragged herself across the flat surface of rock toward a jumble of boulders piled against the wall of cliff. Moaning unconsciously, pain wracking her flesh, the gold dragon pulled away huge boulders with her foreclaws.

Soon she had revealed a cave mouth, one of several secret entrances leading to the vast chamber beneath the mountain. Crawling along a rubble-strewn passageway, she soon reached a ledge where dark space yawned into the distance and the waters of the subterranean lake glistened darkly a hundred feet below.

Without hesitating, Aurora dove straight from the ledge, plunging into deep, chill waters. With strong kicks of her rear legs she swam, stroking with her forelegs to steer toward another shadowy passage on the periphery of the vast chamber. Despite the strain of hard, repetitive movement, the cool water felt good against the gold dragon’s wounds, and she swam to her destination with unflagging determination.

At the base of the cliff, she rose from the water with the force of levitation magic. Water flowed off her body and back to the lake like a series of waterfalls. As she floated upward, coming to rest at the mouth of a long, familiar tunnel, Aurora could only hope that the wall of stone was still intact, still blocked the red and black from this sacred cavern.

Yet as she reached the access tunnel and started through the darkness, an oily and reptilian scent assailed her nostrils. With a stab of fear Aurora knew the truth – and made up her mind not to waste time going all the way to her arcane barrier. The stench told her that the two wyrms of the Dark Queen had already passed. Clearly they had battered down the wall of stone, and now were somewhere within the watery cavern.

Again Aurora hurled herself into that cold liquid, diving below the surface and stroking toward the center of the lake. She forced herself not to think about the eggs, so vulnerable in their pristine grotto. She reminded herself that the entrance was well-concealed, and she could only hope that the Dark Queen’s wyrms had not yet found the treasured clutch.

Finally the great pillar of stone loomed overhead, rising from the lake like a precipitous mountain, merging fully into a dark and jagged sky. Peering through the shadows, Aurora unsuccessfully sought evidence of the black or red dragons. Once more the power of levitation pulled her upward, carrying her past the cliffs of the lofty column as she rose toward the ledge. She drew a breath, felt the fires of killing heat seething within her belly as she pivoted in a spiral, seeking any sign of movement in the shadows. Again she had been forced to make noise, and certainly the evil wyrms must have heard.

Still, the black came at her so quickly that Aurora barely saw the monster against the darkness – only the white teeth, gleaming like bony daggers in a gaping mouth, gave hint of the monster’s approach. Her reaction was instantaneous, and the dark space thrummed and boiled, filled with the searing, orange-red explosion of Aurora’s breath. Steam hissed, and the black dragon’s shriek of pain rang through the darkness, echoing from the far walls around the underground sea.

A stream of searing acid spumed from that fireball, splashing along Aurora’s flank, burning and corroding through her golden scales. Veering to escape the crackling fire, the midnight-dark wyrm tumbled below his foe, and Aurora dropped, catlike, onto the creature’s back. Swiftly her jaws found the ridged backbone at the base of the neck, and with a crushing, bone-snapping bite the gold dragon severed her enemy’s spine.

Leaving the lifeless body to splash into the water, Aurora used her tail to pull her still-levitating body to the edge of the grotto’s ledge. Scales flaked off of her side as the acid hissed deeper into her flesh, scoring fiery rivers of pain. Crawling slowly, her left foreleg virtually useless, she poked her head into the softly phosphorescent illumination of the grotto.

She felt weak with relief as she saw, in the center of the circular chamber, that the gem-studded nest was undisturbed, the precious globes of the eggs still gleaming metallic and pristine.

*

Furyion glided through the vast cavern, soaring near the ceiling. He was enraged by the gold’s trickery, the enchantment that had wiped his own arsenal of spells from his mind. Frustration grew within him as he sensed that the nest of metal eggs was close, but remained unable to find it.

Still, he knew now that victory was imminent.

He had seen the white fall, and heard the slaying of the black. From the gold’s lengthy absence he deduced that Arkan and Korril, too, had suffered from Aurora’s deadly strength.

Yet now the mighty golden serpent was badly wounded – the scent of blood, and of charred, lightning-ravaged flesh, was acrid in the air, clear proof of Aurora’s many hurts. She was weakened, vulnerable, and close; he could see her now, stretched exhausted on a narrow ledge, high above the black waters of the lake.

Furyion pictured those golden scales, imagined how the necklace would dance and jangle as his heart swelled with pride, absorbed the many praises of his Queen.

He would wear that trophy around his neck forever, he resolved, tucking his scarlet wings and diving toward the helpless gold.

*

With pain wracking her crippled limbs and scarred, ravaged body, Aurora turned her gaze outward. She knew that the red could not be far away, and was not surprised as a bellow of fury echoed through the chamber, signaling the monster’s approach.

The crimson form, sleek and powerful, unwounded and fresh, plunged toward Aurora from above. Embers of fire still surged in her belly, but the gold knew that against this enemy her killing fireball would have little effect.

Her deadly spells all but exhausted, wings rended and wounds bleeding across her body, Aurora knew that she faced an attack she could not defeat. With a bleak moan she thought of the eggs... they were certainly doomed if she should perish and leave the crimson serpent to plunder and kill.

The red dragon bored in, jaws gaping, foreclaws extended to rip into the golden body. In the instant before collision, a plan sprang into Aurora’s mind, compelling action without consideration of regrets or misgivings. There was no time to philosophize – she knew what she had to do.

The gold dragon sprang as the red swept to the ledge. Aurora reached out a strong foreleg to clasp her enemy in a firm embrace. The wyrm of Takhisis, not expecting the tactic, smashed violently into his foe, and the two serpents were instantly entangled in a web of tails, talons, necks and legs. They teetered at the brink of the precipice, then toppled toward the water below.

Even as they fell Aurora felt shock and dismay at the red’s strength. The cruel wyrm twisted and squirmed, struggling to escape from her clasp – and in seconds he would inevitably succeed.

“You will be mine,” the red hissed furiously, his tone shrill and commanding. “My trophy! I will wear your scales about my neck!”

Aurora’s mind worked frantically. She had but a single spell left. She dared not risk it against her enemy, for success against a squirming, resisting target was far from assured – whereas, if she cast it upon herself the impact would be immediate, inevitable... and fatal.

She remembered the red’s words – a ring of her scales, he would wear. With a whiplike slash she gave him his wish, wrapping her sinuous neck in tight coils around the crimson throat. Chanting a word of power as still, dark water rushed upward, Aurora felt her consciousness depart, replaced by the bleak coldness of self-inflicted death. Powerful magic coursed through her serpentine body, turning golden-scaled flesh into lifeless, solid stone.

Stiff spirals of rocky tail still wrapped the red’s torso, and immovable limbs and neck of solid stone enclosed the evil dragon’s throat in a permanent necklace. The golden serpent, daughter of Paladine, had turned herself into immovable stone, useful only as a statue, a decorative structure, a permanent monument...

Or, perhaps, as an anchor.

Aurora never felt the cold water surround her, couldn’t sense the wriggling, writhing body of her drowning enemy as the two monsters plunged into the lightless depths of the subterranean lake. Nor did she sense the final expulsion of hateful breath, fire sizzling in momentary steam, then doused in chill water. Still squirming, sinking steadily deeper, the crimson serpent at last gave up his own life, joining his foe in a clasp of stony permanence on the bottom of the secret sea.

And even in the lightless depths, its seemed that the stony scales glowed with just the barest trace of gold.

*

The nest of eggs glowed in the muted light of the grotto. Water trickled down the walls as it had for eons, and would continue for centuries to come.

Within the enclosure of fused gems, the metal spheres shed gentle illumination. The pale wash of light revealed a ghostly figure coiled protectively about the nest. The encircling image was a light, ephemeral form – yet even so, the platinum hue of the smoky surface was clear.

A timeless stretch later, the surfaces of two of the eggs pulsed. A golden membrane parted with a moist rip, revealing a pointed snout of the same color; frantically, a wyrmlike body wriggled through the aperture, blinking and stretching with the awkwardness of first steps.

Soon thereafter, the silver orb ruptured, and another snout pushed forth. Even then the platinum image barely moved, merely shifting a sinuous neck, a vaporous head rising to hover pridefully over the precious offspring.

“I name thee Aurican,” whispered a deep voice, the sound coming from a place beyond the world, swirling like a gust of wind around the golden wyrmling. The puff of air twisted next to the silver form, and in another throaty word, tiny Darlantan received his appellation.

And dragons of metal and goodness were born again to Krynn.

The Dragons

Note: The stories of The Dragons takes place over several millennia, and have been inserted into the timeline at their appropriate times in the History.

Prologue

FIERY BEGINNINGS

(ca. 8500 PC)

Crematia awakened to yearning, an awareness of a deep and fundamental need. She twitched, driven by knowledge that she lacked something … something essential to her comfort, even her life. Slowly, over a measureless span of time, that longing coalesced into a specific desire.

Fire.

Compelling but terribly distant, a blaze of heat called from somewhere beyond her tightly restricted universe. Seductive and alluring, powerfully radiant, the sensation tantalized her, until she knew without understanding that she had been summoned.

She reacted by pure instinct, driven by an urge ingrained into every fiber of her being. Lashing out in sudden anger, Crematia pushed and struck the resistant barrier of her world, initial frustration only increasing her desperation. She stiffened her neck, straining mightily toward the draw of magnificent warmth.

But still that radiance was masked by her enveloping barrier. With growing agitation, she pushed and prodded, squirming and flexing her supple body, then recoiling as the constraints of her universe pressed her back.

And in that frustration, Crematia learned the power of fury. A snarl rattled her tiny body as rage gave her strength. She struck blindly, snapping, clawing, frenzy infusing the cramped, squirming body with irresistible determination.

Pushing now, Crematia flexed, straightening her long neck, driving against the pernicious barrier. The front of her head was a sharpened beak, and when she pressed this hooked cutter against the leathery membrane, she felt the surface yield slightly. Compelled to new efforts by her fury, she swept against the barrier with her forelimbs, finding that, like her snout, her paws were equipped with sharp edges that tore and ripped at the stubborn impediment.

And then that glorious heat was there, radiating against her face, warming her eyes and caressing her nostrils. But that teasing suggestion of life only made the enclosing barrier that much more infuriating. Desperately, frantically, Crematia clawed, pulling the tough fabric out of the way, widening the gap. Finally her head pushed through, and wonderful warmth stroked her neck, kissed her shoulders with the promise of full and immediate immersion.

With a final push, driving with her rear limbs and clawing with her forelegs, the serpentine creature wriggled through the gap, leaving a hollow leathery sphere collapsing behind her. She blinked, straining to observe and study her surroundings, to clear away the film of murk that coated her eyes. At the same time, she stretched, feeling a glorious freedom, a lack of constraint that allowed her to extend her supple neck, to twist and lash her tail.

The environment was cloaked in shadow, but everywhere Crematia felt magnificent warmth against her scales. Twisting instinctively, curling about, she let the heat wash over her, bringing a trembling vibrancy to her slender reptilian body. Awkwardly she stretched as wings still gummy from the egg slowly, stickily unfurled. The sensation of space was exhilarating, though almost immediately she sensed a new discomfort, a gnawing ache in her belly.

As yet she could see nothing of shape or color, but she discerned a flaring brightness that she knew intuitively was the source of that wonderful heat. Deeply attracted, she hobbled toward the light. Her feet were unsteady beneath her, and she slipped, stumbling and jarring her chin painfully against a hard surface.

Jabbing with instantaneous fury, she snapped her jaws on the obstacle. The bite was painful, but the expression of rage deeply satisfying. Again she lunged toward the bright flickers, her vision clearing with every heartbeat. She saw tongues of orange heat rise, waver, disappear, to be replaced immediately by more of the dancing flares. The bright tendrils encircled her, rising in a protective curtain, shimmering and pulsing with relentless infernal energy.

A dark shape moved across the curtain of light, bringing another vigorous growl from Crematia’s chest, causing her scarlet scales to shiver. Feeling anew the hollow pain in her gut, she froze, sniffing, staring. She saw a round form, smaller than herself, covered with smooth fur. A pair of bright spots glowed, widening as her sharp snout jabbed forward.

The furry creature shrieked when Crematia’s beaklike jaw stabbed through its soft pelt. A wonderfully intoxicating aroma engulfed the huntress, and she sensed the elixir mingled her enemy’s pain and its pathetic fear. As the dying form twitched a few times and then lay still, she knew with a thrill of anticipation that much of her life would be devoted to the re-creation in countless victims of these twin talismans of suffering.

Warm wetness flowed across Crematia’s nostrils, and she discovered another tool of her body – a tongue, supple and forked, that could curl from her mouth to lick that wetness. The taste was sweet, so succulent that the serpentine body shivered in anticipation. Jabbing forward again, chewing and tearing, Crematia relished the tender meat and sweet blood of her first kill.

There was very little meat in the tiny corpse, but in her hunger, she greedily swallowed the small, warm heart and crunched the frail bones, sucking the marrow from each. Shaking drops of blood and fur from her jaws, she lifted her head, peering around with increasingly sensitive eyes, ready to kill again.

Crematia was vaguely aware of other shapes all around her, serpentine, scaly bodies emerging from a great nest of bones. With talon and fang they pulled ahead, climbing and clawing over each other, each striving instinctively to move beyond the others. In an atmosphere of seething intensity, hunger seemed to fill the air, driving the red dragon female with growing urgency. Uncertain why, she knew beyond doubt that as the wyrmlings explored outward, continued to move away from the nest, she would have to go first!

She saw another huddled furry shape scuttle past, and her hunger flared anew. Pouncing quickly, she slashed with lightning-fast claws and brought the little four-legged creature to a halt. Each squirming twist of the body, each keening cry brought another shiver of pleasure through her body. Again there was that intoxicating scent of blood, and she tasted the sweet liquid, relished the struggles of the creature in her talons. Crematia was vaguely saddened when those struggles grew still, when the little heart ceased to pulse forth its crimson nectar.

Once more she ate, this time focusing on the tastier morsels – flesh, heart, and brain. She left the bones and entrails behind, knowing that there would be more prey, more killing, just ahead. The food was good, warm and fulfilling in her belly, but she wanted – no, she needed – more.

In a frenzy, she dashed after another of the creatures as the little furball scurried away in panic. Abruptly a green and scaly shape, similar to Crematia but a trifle smaller, darted in front of her, reaching talons toward the prey. But the red wyrmling caught her emerald nestmate by the rear foot, twisting the leg, sinking her fangs into the twitching thigh. With a hissing, hateful shriek, the emerald serpent thrashed on the ground. Ignoring the weakling, the crimson killer leapt ahead of her nestmate to bear the bundle of flesh to the ground.

Again she was patient, investigating the wriggling creature, enjoying the sound of its plaintive, terrified bleats. Crematia quivered in pleasure as she took one of the stubby, kicking legs and twisted it off to a new crescendo of wailing. She snapped another leg and tore at the moist flesh with her jaws, holding the still breathing and trembling creature pinned with one of her forepaws.

Then, deliberately, she gouged out the bright little eyes, savoring each as the pathetic being wriggled frantically. Only after the struggles had faded almost to nothing did the red jaws dart outward and pull chunks of meat from the dying torso, swallowing until she had her fill. The green wyrmling still wailed plaintively, crawling on her three good legs, dragging the limb mangled by Crematia until she reached the gristly waste left from the red’s feasting. The emerald serpent tore into the remains with greedy abandon.

The crimson female loped forward on increasingly sturdy legs, circling a great pile of wriggling bodies and leaking, colorful shells. Chromatic dragons slithered over each other, while more sticky wyrmlings emerged in the midst of the massive bones that framed the nest. A low hissing rose from that tangled thatch, and it pleased Crematia to know that she listened to the hunger of many frantic nestmates.

Dozens of little forms wriggled from the tangle of bones and webbing, dropping to the ground, trying to shake the muck of their birthing away. Serpents of black and green, white and blue – and a few more of red – crept forth, killing and devouring the furry creatures when they could, snapping at nestmates who dared venture too close.

Slow-witted prey moved with desperate, waddling steps away from the deadly wyrmlings, but the creatures were unable to escape the vicinity of the nest. With the initial frenzy of starvation past, many of the serpents had, like Crematia, discovered the pleasure of torture, of a slow and leisurely kill. The survivors tried to get away but were trapped by a void of space, a precipice on all sides of the nest. Shrieks and wails echoed, drowning out the dull hissing of emerging wyrmlings.

Crematia bulled forward, head high, chest outthrust, and everywhere her siblings gave way, forked tongues flickering along the ground before the red dragon’s feet. The illumination she had earlier observed now flared anew, rising higher and faster and brighter than ever, and the red wyrmling – followed by the creeping pack of her fellow nestlings – prowled closer. Her hunger sated, she sought to satisfy her curiosity.

The tongues of fire resolved themselves into individual dancing pillars. Each was huge, rising from a chasm that Crematia perceived as a gulf completely encircling the lofty pillar supporting the nest. It was that same chasm that trapped the teeming pack of the hatchlings’ prey, holding the creatures together with their lethal hunters atop the spire. The flames leapt from the bottomless gulf surrounding the nest, soaring high into the air and shedding blistering heat across the newborn dragons.

Crematia sensed a white sibling blinking, cowering away from the heat, and a sense of superiority curled her leathery lip into a sneer. The heat was a welcome embrace to her, and it was strange to contemplate that to this pale, colorless dragon, it seemed to be a discomfort.

But now her eyes began to focus on images even beyond those lofty flames. She saw a dark landscape, scarred by peak and chasm, stretching into the smoky distance beneath a lightless sky. In places, flares leapt upward from an abyssal crevasse, or streams of liquid fire flowed and spilled and gathered into bubbling, hellish lakes. This was a vast expanse, and immediately Crematia wanted to see it all, to fly over it, to claim the entire realm as her own!

A form took shape in the near distance, just beyond the circle of fire, and the scarlet serpent felt an awakening of new emotions – awe and fear. A massive, serpentine image writhed there, looming ever higher into the air, growing more distinct and omnipresent as vaporous tendrils of flesh came together, solidifying. The writhing pillars separated, twisting into supple sections.

As the shape surged higher and closer, the wyrmling saw monstrous heads illuminated by the fire. Four … no, five great necks rose, each supporting a crocodilian head. The body below these heads was lost in the darkness of the chasm, but even so, the shadowy shape rivaled some of the distant mountains in size.

Already Crematia perceived that the central, the mightiest of these visages was as pure a red as her own crimson scales. This awareness puffed out her chest with another dose of pride, and she lifted her head arrogantly above the huddled mass of her fellow hatchlings.

“Welcome, my wyrmlings … my children,” came the whispered, rasping voice emerging from the scarlet jaws. “It pleases me to see you kill – to learn the rapture of bloodletting, and of terribly lethal might.”

A green head beside the mighty red lowered, eyes blinking lazily as it regarded an emerald-colored wyrmling, the newt Crematia had mangled in the pursuit of her prey.

“Weakness will not be tolerated.” The words dripped like venom from the crimson jaws while the green dragon head licked forward, the tongue hissing a soft sound.

Immediately the crippled wyrmling uttered a yelp of pain, thrashing through a circle as its jaws snapped, claws swiped at an unseen enemy. Abruptly it froze, trembling, the tiny mouth gaping soundlessly, frothing with bubbles. The little dragon shrieked for a long moment until it vanished in an explosive shower of scales, flesh, and bones.

“Mercy is weakness – and weakness is death!” hissed the green head.

The wedge-shaped image of crimson drifted lower, leathery lids drooping lazily over the hot embers of twin eyes. Yet Crematia sensed that there was nothing sleepy, nothing but keen alertness, in the deceptively casual inspection. When the cruel jaws parted again, when more words rasped out, the red wyrmling tensed, as if the mighty being’s speech was directed at her alone.

“You must never show mercy! Remember this, my wyrmlings: Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death!”

“Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death!” The echoes came in harsh whispers as a hundred vibrant wyrmlings, profoundly moved, repeated the words of their mistress.

Again came the rumbled lesson, and Crematia shivered to a thrill of learning. It was a teaching that she knew she would never forget.

“Remember, my children … be strong!” hissed the crimson jaws. “For in strength shall you gain mastery, and in mastery shall come your vengeance!”

Crematia’s mind flared at the thought of vengeance. She knew intuitively that it was a goal worth one’s whole being, one’s very life.

“I am your mother and your queen,” continued the soft but forceful voice. “My will is your command; my pleasure gives reason to your lives. And my whim is instant death.”

Abruptly the blue head darted toward a pair of white wyrmlings who twitched restlessly at the fringe of the pack. Mighty jaws gaped, and in an explosion of brightness, a crackling bolt of energy shot from the dragon’s mouth, sizzling into the distracted newborns, spattering them into a drifting haze of white scales.

“You must be ruthless – always!” The voice dropped to a soft, almost gentle whisper, but there was no wyrmling who did not grant the queen full attention.

“When you go forth into the world, your task will be to find your strongest enemy and kill him. When that foe is slain, you shall again find your strongest enemy and kill him. For every enemy that you slay, another will appear – and that one, in turn, must die.”

The monstrous head inhaled, a measured drawing of breath that roared like a cyclone. After a long pause, the crimson jaws spoke again. “This shall be the course of your lives, my wyrmlings … knowing your foes, finding them, and bringing about their utter destruction.”

“I will find my enemy and kill him,” Crematia murmured, a sense of destiny growing within her, seething and boiling into instinctive hatred, a fury that would provide passion and purpose to her life.

All of the monstrous heads swung back and forth, five pairs of fiery eyes glittering with ambition and cruelty. Crematia shivered with joy at the power she beheld there. Once more the red dragon head rose above the others, fixing its penetrating gaze on the wyrmlings of the same color.

“Your father was Furyion, mightiest of my sons,” rumbled the Queen of Darkness, and Crematia knew the words were meant for her and her crimson siblings. “He was tricked by the cunning of a gold dragon, lured to his death by the one known as Aurora. And though he claimed Aurora’s life with his last act, there will come to be children of the metal dragons.

“Know this, my precious ones: These children, the metal wyrms of Paladine, are your enemies. Much time will pass before you journey to Krynn, but when you go there, you will do my bidding, seeking and slaying your enemies.” Another blast of fire exploded from the gaping jaws, a beautiful inferno raging, crackling in the air, slowly melting away.

“Remember,” growled the queen, “mercy is weakness!”

“And weakness,” Crematia echoed, her voice mimicking the Dark Queen’s menacing tone, “is death.”

PART I

CHAPTER 1

A REST IN THE BROTTO

(ca. 8000 PC)

In a place unimaginably far from the Abyssal home of the Dark Queen’s brood, a different world took shape, gradually emerging from the chaos of godly dreams. This was a realm of sunlight and water, of jagged mountain ranges, vast oceans, and verdant forests. Beneath one of the mightiest summits, within the bedrock of a stony massif, was hidden another, quite different nest. The eggs sheltered here gleamed in the colors of precious metals, remaining undisturbed for a timeless expanse.

Finally movement stirred, metallic shells rupturing to allow scaly wyrmlings to emerge. Every bit as hungry, as keenly intelligent as Crematia and her kin-dragons, these creatures were also as different from the chromatic dragons as were the icebound mountains from the placid sea.

From the beginning, there were thirteen in all, bright serpentine creatures of glistening metallic colors, pushing through the minor encumbrances of filmy metallic shells. Lazily stretching, uncoiling, curling gracefully, the wyrmlings clustered in the comfort and warmth and security of the nest. An aura of peace sheltered them, a soothing essence lingering from the great females, the five metallic matriarchs who had been dead for centuries.

Here brass jaws gaped in a long, unconscious yawn, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. There a copper body stretched with lean, instinctive grace, perching with precise balance on the edge of the nest even as it continued to slumber. A wyrmling of bright bronze scales, squat and muscular, slowly pulled itself through the mass of the others, rising to curl in the midst of the mound of metal-colored scales and shimmering, folded wings.

The thirteen included serpents both male and female, examples of copper and brass, silver, bronze, and gold. All were vigorous, active and strong, and with growing animation, each carved out a space for itself within the confines of the sheltering bowl that was their birthplace.

Still, there was never any question but that Darlantan and Aurican would vie for mastery within the nest. Silver Darlantan’s lightning pounce killed the bat that was the hatchlings’ first prey, but it was Aurican’s audacious grasp that stole that morsel, allowing the golden serpent to enjoy the first feast. Then together the two quick, graceful serpents showed their nestmates how to snatch the elusive mammals from the air. It was a splendid game – a leap and grab as a great cloud of the fliers swept into or out of the grotto brought down a squirming, squeaking bundle of meat and blood. The hunting was easy and nearly always successful. Copper Blayze, with his lightning speed, soon became even more adept than Darlantan and Aurican, though poor, bronze Aysa never quite got the hang of it at all.

Later it was Aurican who discovered that the water trickling onto the shelves of the grotto walls was the purest and sweetest to drink. But it was Darlantan who learned that a sharp tug on the tail would bring the precariously perched drinker tumbling down in a hissing bundle of scales, fangs, and claws. Thus was the first game created.

Aurican was also the one who learned that they could pry gems loose from the nest. All the wyrmlings were fascinated by the bright, multicolored baubles that had been embedded into the finespun metal wire. Most of the nestmates played games, throwing the stones back and forth, but the golden male preferred simply to hold a single large gemstone, caressing and admiring it for a long period of reflection.

These awakenings, gradual discoveries of sustenance and fellowship and competition in the grotto, were gradual things, occurrences that would be measured over many lifetimes by human standards. But to Darlantan, the wyrmlings were just here, within this grotto surrounding the deep nest of gemstones and finespun wire. Eating when they needed to, sleeping often and for long intervals, the nestmates passed the time and slowly grew.

But as their size expanded, they also became more powerful, faster and keener of understanding. Curiosity grew as alert minds began to consider the possibilities of things other than bats, water, and the nest. The brass male, Smelt, was the first to voice these questions.

“What’s there?” he wondered, straining to study the stalactites dangling from the ceiling. “Or down here?” when he scratched at the floor. Sometimes he scrutinized the shadowy tunnel leading away from the grotto. “And what about in there? Is it just the Darkness Beyond? Does somebody live in there? And where do the bats go when they fly out of here?”

Of course, since Smelt persisted in asking questions for which his nestmates had no answers, they tended to regard him as a rather chatty pest. Still, chirping incessantly at any of the wyrmlings who would listen, the brass was always ready for a conversation.

Together the thirteen nestmates explored over a timeless, sunless era, working their way through the wondrous springs, rivulets, rocks, and holes of the grotto. To the newtlings, the cave was a universe, a world of unparalleled adventure and timeless wonder. A soft glow permeated the air, arising in pale incandescence from the nest. The grotto was pleasantly warm, and the stony floor was lined in many places with beds of plush moss. No fewer than a dozen springs trilled splashing water down the walls, and this steady flowage filled numerous pools before the overflow drained away through niches and cracks in the floor.

A lone passageway connected the grotto to a place the wyrmlings knew only as the Darkness Beyond. The corridor was wide and lofty, but cloaked in sinister shadows. Compared to the moist, airy grotto, the place seemed forlorn and frightening, and for a long time, neither Auri nor Dar dared to venture there.

Naturally none of the other eleven had any inclination at all toward blazing such a new trail. For one thing, there was no water in this winding tunnel, and the entire brood delighted to play in and drink from the pools and trickles of clear liquid that sparkled throughout the grotto. But even more than this, the Darkness Beyond seemed a peculiarly uninviting place, and for the first span of their lives, the wyrmlings were content to remain in their cave.

Of course, this span would be measured in centuries by human standards, but the serpentine neophytes had no such form of reckoning. To them, life was the unchanging, eternal grotto, and it was good. There was plenty to eat, for the bats dwelt all along the roof of the cave, and the serpents quickly became adept at upward pounces and deliberate, crawling stalks. Lightning-fast Blayze, the copper male, could even flip onto his back and snatch two bats with his forepaws – and, with luck, one or two more with the rear!

Frequently Burll, an ever-hungry bronze male with more brawn than brains, waited for Blayze to perform his trick. Burll then jumped upon his copper nestmate, snatching as many bats as he could, fending off the enraged Blayze until the bronze wyrmling could gulp down his stolen morsels.

Often Darlantan and the others killed bats for the sheer joy of the hunt, for the thrill of the fatal, spine-cracking bite. The silver male sometimes took more than he could eat, though hapless Aysa was generally ready to help finish off any surplus. Aurican, unlike his silver brother, was always more precise. He killed a bat and ate it, then killed and ate another, inevitably completing his repast without waste.

Frequently the bats departed, swirling through the tunnel into the Darkness Beyond, their keening cries fading only slowly into the distance. Sometimes when their prey was gone, one or more of the dragons would suffer from gnawing hunger, going to the cavern entrance and waiting anxiously for the return of the bats. Inevitably the flying pack returned sooner or later, in a great, shrieking cloud of wings and fur.

Upon these returns, the bats brought scents and tastes with them, clues that triggered in Darlantan’s mind the notion that perhaps there were things beyond the grotto worth knowing. A moist and loamy must sometimes coated the muzzle of a bat that the silver wyrmling slew, and it was a spoor that particularly intrigued him. He determined that one day he would follow the bats and learn the nature and origin of this scent.

But that time remained some vague, unmeasurable interval in the future. For now, there were brothers and sisters to tug from the walls, games of stalk-and-tag around the looming, gem-studded bowl of the nest, and a growing measure of clicks, barks, woofs, and hoots, sounds that were becoming increasingly recognizable to one another.

All thirteen of the metallic wyrmlings were active, killing and feeding with increasing frequency as larger bodies required ever greater supplies of meat. Their competition was fierce and instinctive – often a metallic scale or two flaked to the floor, pulled loose by a jealous slash or protective swipe. Aurican perfected a clever trick, pointing his snout in one direction while he was actually watching somewhere else from the corner of his eye. Lulling his nestmate into a false sense of security, he was frequently able to snatch away a bat or interrupt the drink of an unsuspecting sibling.

The wyrmlings were finding that they had to eat many bats in order to keep from going hungry. For the first time, Darlantan became aware of a strange sensation: It seemed that this perfect enclosure, their paradise, was becoming too confining. Frequently he wrestled with this sensation, feeling it rise to a new level of urgency on one occasion when he crouched impatiently, waiting for the return of the bats, who had swarmed forth on one of their regular forays.

“We’ll get some food soon?” squawked Aurican in the chirping dialect in which the nestmates conversed. The golden wyrmling padded up to Darlantan’s side. Auri’s proud head was upraised as he peered irritably into the shadowy tunnel.

Darlantan looked, too, understanding exactly the sounds his brother had made. “Let’s stay here and listen,” he squawked in reply. “Bats will come.”

Woofing, Aurican indicated his impatience, and Darlantan nodded, suddenly sharing a gnawing hunger that, before his brother’s suggestion, had been nonexistent. Together the two wyrmlings crept toward the yawning shadow, the winding tunnel leading outward from the grotto. Darlantan wasn’t really that hungry – and he knew the bats would be back soon, because they always came back – but for some reason, he suddenly pounced, landing with a rattling growl in the very mouth of the dark corridor.

Aurican would not be outdone. He raced along the far wall, head and body held low against the floor, shimmering wings tight across his spiny back. Tongue flickering, tasting the air, he scuttled forward, belly low against the smooth floor while the golden wyrmling’s yellow eyes glittered brightly in the murky shadows.

Then the grotto was a fading presence behind them. As chilly darkness settled around them, Darlantan realized he could still see, but there was a cloudy vagueness to this place that was very different from the cavern of the nest. That strangeness was not so much frightening as it was exciting, enticing. Auri was still a bright snake of color, darting along the base of the wall, then freezing, sniffing and tasting with a tongue that was like a flash of golden foil.

The other side of the cavern was too far away from his brother, so Darlantan crept down the center of the passageway. Though the ceiling was high and the walls far apart, after the vaulted spaciousness of the grotto, this place seemed strangely confining. He crouched low, studying each gentle curve as they approached it, then charging forward in a clatter of claws on stone and finally halting, seeking sounds and scents.

The cavern was long, and the two dragons paced each other around numerous bends. Despite the chill, Dar’s heart pounded with increasing exhilaration, his body trembling as they alternately lunged and froze, advancing in tandem with steadily increasing confidence.

Awareness of a change grew gradually, until the pair abruptly came to a simultaneous, awe-stricken halt. Darlantan stared upward at such a gulf of shadowy space that he scarcely dared to breathe. For a brief moment, he felt dizzy, forcibly resisting an urge to spring forward, to launch himself into that void. He trembled in place for many heartbeats until, once more, curiosity allowed him to move. Again Auri hurried to keep up.

Dar’s nostril’s itched suddenly, and he sneezed with a burst of sound that brought both of them to a halt.

It was a good thing, too, because the gulf of space he had observed above also extended downward. The cavern floor ended abruptly about a half-pounce ahead of where the two dragons now crouched, once more overcome by awe.

The space around them was as dark as the cavern they had just traversed, but it was also unspeakably, infinitely huge. Darlantan knew without a moment’s questioning that they had discovered the Darkness Beyond. If there was a surface, any object out there, he couldn’t see it.

Looking up, he discerned that the connecting cavern emerged from the side of a rock surface, and the cliff arched outward, an unclimbable overhang looming into the distant shadows. To the right, the face of sheer stone curled away, bending back out of sight in a short distance. To the left, it did the same, though in that direction the shelf upon which they stood curved along the face of rock, offering a path along a wide, smooth ledge.

Once again the silver nostrils twitched, teased by a tickling sensation, but this time Darlantan ducked his neck and shook his head, stifling any outburst. At the same time, he realized that the tickling sensation was caused by a smell, although it was an odor with a tangible presence unique among the many aromas in the nest.

“Look!” Auri hissed, inclining the wedge of his head in a subtle pointing gesture.

The odor was coming from around the cliff, in the direction of the continuing ledge. Darlantan was startled by an impression that he could actually see this scent – at least, he perceived a wisp of whitish vapor trailing through the air. When he blinked and stared again, it was gone. Still, he felt certain he had seen something.

“The smell is from there,” he hissed in certainty, and Aurican nodded.

“Be quiet – and be careful,” the gold replied.

Side by side, heads low and bodies taut, the two dragons started along the ledge leading away from the cave mouth. The shelf of rock was mostly flat, though it sloped dangerously near the edge and was barely wide enough for the two to move without touching wings. Darlantan, on the outside, felt a vague sense of menace in having the Darkness Beyond so close at his side. He took care to place each foot with precision, gripping tightly with his needle-sharp claws.

The wonders of this exciting excursion were not over. Darlantan squinted suddenly as the brightest light he had ever seen flared before him. Sparks trailed downward as the spot of brilliance remained poised in the air, then began to move very slowly.

“Fire!” Auri gasped, and Darlantan knew the word was right.

Instinct dropped filmy inner lids across the dragons’ eyes, and they stared in wonder and awe, but even now, as newtlings, neither felt any glimmer of fear. Instead, Dar’s heart pounded with anticipation. He felt an urge to leap forward, to gulp down that source of flame, but he resisted.

The fire, Dar could see now, was on the end of a long, thin object. As the flare of first brightness faded, he discerned that the stick was in turn connected to another thing – and that thing was a creature! It radiated an inner warmth that reminded Darlantan of a bat, though it was much, much bigger than any of the winged fliers.

The stick, with its flaming end trailing brightness through the air, moved up toward the being’s face. There the fire came to rest over a hooked protuberance, a curling stem that ended in a blunt, upturned bowl. Fire surged brightly again, and Dar sensed that it was being drawn into the protuberance. Moldy leaves seemed to smolder there, and vapors rose from the bowl in that tangible smell that Darlantan again realized he could see!

Abruptly a huge cloud of that visible smell emerged from the being, and then the creature turned to regard the two serpents with eyes that were luminous in their own right – not like the fire, but possessing a certain soft brilliance that in a sense was even hotter. And in that gaze, Darlantan saw a kinship, an abiding intelligence that reached out to touch him deeply.

Below those eyes was a snout. This was not nearly as magnificent a muzzle as a dragon’s, to be sure, but impressive enough. It hooked outward from the being’s face, curving forward to terminate in two massive, flexing nostrils. Darlantan watched in fascination as those twin apertures gave vent to additional puffs of the gray odor.

Beneath the snout was a flexible hole where the curved, leaf-burning protuberance was attached – clearly a mouth, though the opening was pathetic and shriveled compared to a dragon’s maw. The rest of the creature’s front, so far as the silver wyrmling could see, was a cascade of wiry bristles, a shaggy mat similar to bat’s fur, only longer and bushier. This thick coating draped far down the being’s chest.

Abruptly the smoking horn detached from the creature’s mouth, held in some sort of crude claw, a paw that lacked any talons, so far as Darlantan could see. That limb swept into a gesture, as if embracing the two dragons, drawing them forward with growing wonder.

“Hello, little newtlings,” said the being. “I was wondering when you would get here. …”

CHAPTER 2

PATERSMITH

(ca. 7500 PC)

“There should have been twenty of you,” Patersmith explained, his shoulders slumping in a posture of uncharacteristic sadness.

The bewhiskered tutor stood at the rim of the jeweled nest, gazing at the seven tarnished orbs that remained within amid the litter of scraps and shells. For a moment, the sturdy, short-legged figure stood still, as if he had forgotten the attentive audience on the grotto floor.

Darlantan and his nestmates were gathered in a circle about their tutor, who often addressed them from the height of the nest. Yet now Patersmith’s attention was turned inward, staring into the soft depression where the hatchlings had been protected for so long. The thirteen wyrmlings waiting to hear his next words might have been all but forgotten, so far as the silver male could tell. He remembered the spheres within that enchanted nest, knowing that there had been one each of gold, silver, and brass, and two of copper and of bronze. Long ago those eggs had resembled the brilliant metallic sheen of the wyrmlings’ scales. For some time, however, they had shriveled and dried, until now they were merely wrinkled balls in different shades of brown.

“It is a sadness beyond measure that these wyrmlings never had the chance to live,” declared Patersmith.

“But why didn’t they come out with the rest of us?” Smelt asked.

“I cannot say for sure, but I suspect the cause is the fading of spell magic from Krynn. There was enough of your mothers’ sorcery left to protect the thirteen of you, but not the rest.”

“But what is this magic? How did it protect us?” probed Aurican alertly.

“You should have had your mothers here when you were born … but that was not to be. Instead, they wove this nest and cast their spells of sustenance and protection. It was all they could do.”

“What is spell magic, and where did it go?” asked Aurican, perplexed as he tried to follow the lesson with his usual careful concentration.

“Much of it is a mystery, vanished with the great queen dragons. Their spell magic was a thing of wonder, a power that could transcend the laws of the mortal world – until it disappeared. Perhaps this is another legacy of the Dark One’s lingering hatred.”

“What is the Dark One?” queried Darlantan, shivering under an involuntary sense of menace.

“She who is hated by Paladine and all goodness.”

“Teacher, what is hate?” asked Aurican.

“That is a good question, but not an easy one to answer. In truth, it requires another tale.”

“Then tell us, please!” clamored Oro and Mydass, golden sisters who, like their brother Aurican, had an apparently endless appetite for stories, ballads, and legends.

“I have a tale!” chirped Smelt. “When I was hunting a bat, it —”

“Shhhh!” hissed Dar and Auri, anxious to stop the brass dragon before his story wandered into its inevitably complex and pointless course.

Sulking, Smelt hung his head while Patersmith sighed and drew deeply on his pipe.

“You dragons are the favored ones, the sons and daughters of Paladine himself. The Platinum Father watches over you. It was he who bade me come here to teach you.”

“If we are the favored of the Platinum Father,” inquired Aurican pointedly, “that would indicate that there are those who are not so favored. Who are these others?”

“Ah, always with the questions, my golden pupil. You will learn that Krynn is peopled with a multitude of lesser creatures, slow-witted, weak, and short-lived for the most part. Still, they strive to exist on the world, and when at last you come forth into daylight, you shall share the land with them.”

“But who are these creatures?” Darlantan asked, trying to picture a being that was neither dragon nor bat nor Patersmith. At the same time, he tried to imagine what daylight was like. Patersmith had told the wyrmlings about the sun, and though Dar found the concept terribly intriguing, it was also almost impossible for him to imagine.

“Perhaps first you will meet the griffons who glide through mountain skies. Of course, you are mightier than they and could make them your prey or your slaves. But perhaps you will have the wisdom to treat them with dignity and honor and will find that their service, rendered willingly, can be far greater than anything compelled.”

“So long as the griffon doesn’t take my bats!” declared copper Blayze, with a hissing growl.

“Ah, my quick-tempered one. I suspect that, when at last you fly above Krynn, you shall find yourself amazed that you once ate bats.”

“But surely we will still need food,” growled Burll, drawing his bronze brows into deep furrows along the foreridge of his thick-boned skull.

“Surely indeed, my hungry one,” said Patersmith with a deep chuckle. “It’s just that you have, as yet, no real awareness of the incredible banquet that awaits you. And this is the source of our lesson.”

“More food?” Burll inquired hopefully.

“No … more variety. You will learn that the diversity of the world is its greatest strength, just as it is among yourselves.”

“You mean like the color of our scales?” probed Aurican, who, as usual, was a thought or two ahead of his nestmates.

“That is an example, albeit a minor one. More to the point are the things that make you different, for these are the things that make you all, as a clan, strong.”

“Like Aurican wondering about magic all the time?” Dar suggested. “He’s the only one who does that.”

“Aye – or Smelt, who talks more than all the rest of you put together. Or you yourself, Darlantan. Always you must be doing something, going somewhere, stretching your legs. I can only imagine what it will be like when you learn to fly. And Blayze, so fast. Ever do you leave your nestmates behind.” The tutor’s gentle eyes smiled at the copper male and chuckled. “And with your temper, speed can be a useful attribute, as least while you live among bigger, stronger dragons.”

“Am I different, like everybody else?” inquired Burll plaintively.

“Look at your strapping shoulders, the muscles that pulse beneath your bronze scales. Is there another of your nestmates so strong?”

“No,” concluded the bronze, with a pensive nod of his head. “I guess not.”

“He’s even got muscles inside his skull!” cackled Blayze, provoking Burll to spit a sharp spark of lightning.

Immediately the copper flew at his nestmate, spattering acid from his own jaws, until Aurican and Darlantan pulled the hissing, slashing serpents apart. Stiff-winged and growling, the two combatants settled back into their places while Patersmith cleared his throat sternly.

“What other creatures shall we meet, teacher?” asked Aurican, impatient with the diversion.

“Ogres are the oldest. They have erected mighty cities across the world. From these, they have gone forth to enslave humankind, perhaps the shortest-lived and most wretched of the two-legs.”

“Are the humankinds like bats?” asked Burll, his earlier anger forgotten as his tongue flickered across ever-hungry jaws.

“Bigger than bats,” Patersmith declared, “and more entertaining, though they are far lesser creatures than you dragons.”

“But are there other beings who dwell long lives of proper meditation and reflection?” pressed Aurican, his brow furrowed by concern.

“Ah yes. There are the elves, of course. Indeed, they are shy folk and hide in the thickest of forests. But I do not doubt you will find some common understandings with them, should you persuade one to emerge from his grove long enough to talk to you!”

“I should like that. Or perhaps I shall go into their groves instead,” Auri murmured, so quietly that only Darlantan could hear.

“But back to matters of Paladine and the dragons of metal. These eggs, here. I am afraid we shall never know what happened to the seven that remain unborn.”

“Then tell us about our mothers!” pressed Oro. “What of them and their tale?”

“Yes, a tale!” Aurican’s head rose from the scaly crowd of wyrmlings. “Will you share it with us?” The gold dragon held a large multifaceted ruby in his foreclaw. As his bright yellow eyes focused on the teacher, he unconsciously sat back and passed the bauble back and forth between his paws.

“Ah, my Auri … ever the balladeer. In the case of this tale, however, I fear it is too dark for you wee nestlings. Nay, that one shall wait until later.”

Patersmith turned back to his pupils, eyes sparkling above the cascading shower of whiskers. Pacing along the rim of the nest on his bowed legs, the tutor regarded each of the wyrmlings with a look of deep sympathy and warm understanding.

It was a look they had come to know, and to cherish, very well. Since the coming of Patersmith, the lives of the nestmates had changed significantly.

For one thing, the first tentative explorations in language had become whole volumes of words that the nestlings shared with each other and with their tutor. They had already heard of many adventures, ballads, and legends of Aurora and Argyn and their other mothers, the five matriarchs of metal dragonkind who had dwelt in peace and wisdom.

Occasionally the tales had hinted of darker realities, of wyrms named Furyion or Korrill or Corrozus. But Patersmith would turn away their questions when the wyrmlings pressed about these mysterious hints.

“Is this tale of our mothers also a tale of the chromatic dragons and the Dark One?” asked Darlantan, recognizing the tutor’s reticence.

“Yes. You see well, my son.”

“And will they come for us next?” asked Aysa, with a fearful look around the grotto.

“I should say not, for the chromatic dragons are gone … driven from the world by the heroism of your mothers. With them went the power of spell magic, and many would say the tally is fair. No, the thing that harmed these eggs is not so much the coming of an enemy as the waning of a friend.”

“And magic – that is the friend?” Auri pressed.

“Aye, and the chromatic dragons are the enemies. Though you will learn, my nestlings, that still there are many other threats, dangers and evils of which you will one day be aware.”

“What tale can you share, then, Patersmith?” asked Burll, the sturdy bronze wyrmling who was not at all shy about speaking up. Indeed, it was a good thing he was willing to question their tutor, since he often had to have things explained to him two or three times before he understood.

“Perhaps … perhaps a tale of magic.”

At his words, the brood of dragons sat as if on cue, stilling any jostling and restless shifting. For of all the tales told by Patersmith, those about magic were without fail the most entertaining.

“Aurora was your mother,” began the teacher in the ritual singsong of a proper lesson. Smith nodded to Aurican, and to his golden sisters, Mydass and Oro. “She of the golden scales and mighty power … but, too, she who had captured the wisdom and poetry of the ages within her being and her mind.

“Her magic was a wonder of the world. With a whispered word she could change her shape from dragon to eagle, soaring the skies of Krynn like a keen-eyed bird of prey.”

Darlantan had neither seen nor heard about eagles, yet the word conjured an image of a sleek, feather-winged shape gliding through air that was not black, not cloaked in shadow. It was an image that inflamed his heart and caused his fledgling wings to twitch uncontrollably.

“Ah, Dar … one day you will fly among the eagles,” murmured Smith, noticing the young dragon’s agitation. “But just as Aurican must wait for his tales of nightmare and horror, so must you spend time on the ground before you strain for the skies.”

“Aye, teacher,” Darlantan pledged, bowing respectfully. Yet his wings still stretched as he settled himself more firmly among his siblings, determined to listen. He could scarcely stand to wait – he wanted to fly right now.

One of those restless silver wings brushed against Blayze, who was still glowering at Burll through the pack of attentive wyrmlings. The copper spat, drops of acid searing into Darlantan’s wing, and the silver dragon whirled in a blur of scales and teeth. His own breath exploded, frosty ice gusting through the grotto as he hurled himself at the hot-tempered Blayze.

For several seconds, they tumbled and rolled, tails lashing, scales of copper and silver flaking into the air. Blayze was quick, but Darlantan was big and strong, and he easily pressed the copper to the ground. Silver jaws clamped over the metallic brown neck, and it was then that Patersmith stopped them with a word spoken in a hushed and soothing tone.

“Mercy,” he said, stepping down from the nest to balance on his bowed legs. He touched each of the battling dragons with his hand, and Darlantan felt the rage go out of him like an exhalation of breath.

“Mercy,” repeated the tutor. “Always show mercy to each other, and even to your enemies.”

“But does that not make me vulnerable?” asked Blayze, scowling darkly, hissing at Darlantan.

“On the contrary, mercy makes you strong, for it creates loyalty and friendship. And you will learn that he who has loyal friends has great strength.

“But I was speaking of Aurora’s magic … of her spells of fire that could raise a conflagration from a sodden forest, or hiss a small lake of water into steam.”

Again the tutor used words that the dragons had never heard, but once more their tiny minds fashioned images to the sounds and began to picture a world that was beyond the enclosure even of the Darkness Beyond.

“Aurora and her sisters used their spell magic to fashion this nest, breathing upon the most precious stones in the world, forming them into a suitable crib for their precious offspring. It was this enchantment that insured your bed was always warm, and that should have seen all of you to a birth undisturbed by dangers.

“In those days of magic, all of your mothers knew great spells. But ever was Aurora the greatest.” At the continuing words, the golden wyrmlings puffed with visible pride.

“It is said that she even caused a mountain to disappear once, bringing to death one of her mortal enemies when that dragon of white flew directly into an immovable cliff.”

“Was that a dragon of our enemies?” asked Aysa.

“Yes, my daughter. You should know that those were days of violence, for the Queen of Darkness was ever jealous of your beautiful mothers, of their metal scales and keen wisdom and, perhaps most of all, of their eternal patience.”

“And that jealousy brought war?” stated Darlantan, who had deduced many facts about the past from things that Patersmith did not say.

“That was the birth of war as such. The sons of the queen were so treacherous that even your mothers’ magic was barely enough to prevent their ultimate success.”

“But spell magic let our mothers win!” Oro asserted, glaring about with a golden glint, challenging any of her nestmates to dispute her claim.

“In the end, it did, though that struggle cost Aurora her life. Still, her spells were mighty. With them she could fly without wings, could at one time battle enemies in two different places.”

“Master, you told us that you speak of ‘those days of magic.’” The questioner was Kenta, one of Darlantan’s silver sisters. “By that do you mean those days are over?”

“Aye, my gleaming daughter. In that age of evil and dreams, when your mothers battled the five sons of the Dark Queen, sorcery was a power held by all dragons. It was inherent might that only served to prove your ancestors’ status as masters of all the world.”

“But what happened to the magic?” asked Aurican, frowning, thrashing his golden tail. He glared about the grotto, as if he would fix with his sharp stare the culprit who had worked that audacious theft. In his hands, the ruby bauble had begun to glow faintly, casting a soft, fiery light between the wyrmling’s clutching golden claws.

“Spell magic passed from Krynn with the death of Aurora,” declared Smith, with a sad shake of his whiskers and his head. “The only sorcery in the world now is that embodied by creatures such as yourselves – in the breath weapons that you spit at each other like petulant children, and in the might that will enable some of you to assume different shapes, to walk among the elves and men of the world as one of them.”

“But there are no spells?” Aurican asked again.

“No. Except, perhaps, in the tiniest vestiges – such as you yourself have brought to that piece of rock.”

Aurican looked down in surprise, blinking at the soft illumination that radiated from the stone.

“A nice trick, that – pretty to see, simple to work. But that is the extent of magic that remains in the world. There is no use in searching nor in seeking. The power of true, world-shaking sorcery has vanished, never to return. It faded with the passing of your mothers, leaving Krynn a colder, darker place.”

“Perhaps I will bring it back,” Auri mused, so softly that only Darlantan could hear, though Patersmith looked at the golden wyrm sharply as Aurican spoke more firmly.

“I will. I say this now, to my tutor and my nestmates: Spell magic will again belong to our world.”

CHAPTER 3

FIRST WINGS

(ca. 7000 PC)

Thirteen metallic shapes padded silently along the winding passageway, following the bow-legged figure of their mentor as he led them from the grotto at a surprisingly fast jog. Aurican was in the lead, of course. In fact, the sleek and golden dragon paced directly beside the tutor, his proud golden head upraised, nearly as high off the floor as Patersmith’s own bewhiskered visage.

Darlantan was right behind. He strained to see past his brother’s shoulder, succeeding because he was slightly larger than Auri. The other eleven nestlings trailed behind, loping gracefully to keep up on what their tutor had promised would be a memorable excursion.

Biting back a twitch of irritation, Dar saw Patersmith turn and speak softly to Aurican. The silver dragon couldn’t hear what was said, and he felt the familiar resentment Auri was always getting special tidbits of learning from their tutor.

Usually it had something to do with magic. All the dragons had been impressed by the stories of the sorcerous powers of their matriarchs, but none had latched on to those tales with the obsessive intensity of Aurican. Many times had he boasted to Darlantan of his intention to discover the ancient magic that had been lost with the elder dragons, until at last the silver had grown short-tempered every time he heard about his brother’s pointless wish.

Often Darlantan reminded himself of Patersmith’s lesson: Aurican’s obsession with magic made him different, and was therefore good. Even when it seemed bad, like Blayze’s temper, or Smelt’s endless chatter, these were the traits that would make them strong. At least, so the bearded tutor said.

But Dar’s musings were interrupted as the procession approached the end of the tunnel. Before him. the Darkness Beyond expanded to overwhelm his senses. He advanced and stood poised lightly at the lip of the lofty precipice.

The gulf of shadowy space had become familiar to the young dragons, and especially to Darlantan, in the vast expanse of time since Patersmith had come to join him. Whereas Auri was entranced by the tutor’s stories of magic, Dar found himself raptly listening to descriptions of the world beyond their vast but shadow-cloaked environment.

He imagined an expanse of bright skies and was desperately curious about the sun, of which he had heard much but never seen even a trace. Too, he was intrigued and fascinated by the whole idea of weather – water and ice tumbling from above, heavy clouds billowing thicker than the smoke from Patersmith’s pipe across the sky. All of that sounded suspiciously like magic, and he wanted to see, to learn for himself, if these things that the tutor was suggesting were really true.

“Darlantan, my silver son,” declared the tutor.

Now it was his turn to enjoy the smith’s favor, and Dar wasted no time in nudging Auri aside.

“You shall be the first. All the world awaits beyond, and now it is time for you to take wing.” His eyes rose and took in the rest of the brood. “Time for all of you to fly.”

Several of the dragons, Aysa in particular, gasped nervously at the prospect, but Darlantan’s wings stood stiffly to the sides, beating rhythmically as he readied himself for that first leap. His heart pounded as he looked at the vast darkness with eagerness and anticipation.

“Remember, your body will know what to do, though your mind will not. Therefore, don’t try to think. Let yourself sail through the air and fly, my children!”

Without hesitation or reflection, Darlantan hurled himself into the void and, for a heart-stuttering second, commanded his wings to beat, to carry him upward. Immediately he plunged nose downward, then flipped over onto his back, careening wildly as wind whipped past his face, lashing across his scales. He strove to bend the unwilling membranes of his wings. Only then did he remember the words of Patersmith to relax, allowing his body to direct itself without interference from his mind.

Instinct took over, and those leathery membranes, as shimmering bright as quicksilver, scooped into the air. Dar’s nose came up, and he felt the pressure of wind as his stroking wings found their natural pace. Soon he was climbing, banking, turning, feeling the air soar past with a rush of speed. He wheeled through a graceful arc, back toward the grotto’s ledge, and for the first time in his life, he regarded that sheltered cavern from a distant perspective.

The nook was burrowed into the side of a massive stone pillar, a formation that was very wide above, then tapered to a narrow shaft below, so that the column dangled like a gigantic fang from the ceiling. Only the black tunnel was visible, but he knew that within lay the sacred grotto.

Below was a giant lake, extending into the far distance of the Darkness Beyond. That darkness was much less threatening when one was a part of it, Darlantan reflected, rearing back as he approached the ledge. Flaring his wings, he landed in a skidding slide that knocked Oro and Aysa tumbling and hissing to the sides. Darlantan spun about and pranced to the edge of the cliff with the confident air of one who has just demonstrated his innate superiority.

He was giddy with a consuming sense of exhilaration. Only the cautionary raising of Patersmith’s hand held him from lunging forth and once again taking flight. But the tutor was eminently fair, and his guidance was not to be questioned. Darlantan knew it was someone else’s turn.

Gradually the silver dragon realized that his twelve nestmates regarded him with expressions ranging from awe to astonishment. Aurican’s inner eyelids lowered as his golden head swung appraisingly from the gulf of darkness to the taut, stiff-winged form of his silver Kin-dragon.

“Splendid start,” Patersmith declared, puffing on his pipe and beaming at Darlantan, whose wings fanned excitedly. “Now, who’s to be next?”

Kenta and Turq were ready and bobbed their silver heads, but it was Aurican who stepped to the rim of the cliff and sprang into space with a prodigious leap. He swept smoothly into a dive, spiraling and circling downward until he was lost in the shadows. After many heartbeats, he reappeared, slowly working his way back upward.

By then Kenta had flown, like Darlantan in a momentary tumble of silvery scales before she found her natural rhythm. Turq followed her sister with similar success, and then one after another the young dragons threw themselves into space. With varying levels of struggle they took wing, gliding over the water and then swooping upward with steadily growing confidence.

Copper Blayze, nimble as ever, swept outward with confidence. His wings stroked with keen and instinctive skill as he pressed them downward, banked easily, then climbed steadily toward the ceiling of the lofty cavern.

Smelt, in a flash of brass scales, swept past Blayze and tugged at his wing, sending the hot-tempered copper spinning toward the lake in a spitting, twisting bundle of fangs and claws. It wasn’t until very much later that Smelt even dared return to the ledge, and even then the fuming Blayze hurled himself at his nestmate, almost sending both of them tumbling toward the dark waters of the lake.

Aysa was the last to fly. Not surprisingly, she tumbled straight down from the perch. The bronze female fell so rapidly that Darlantan dived after her, certain she would smash into the waters far below. Though the silver male strained to catch up, in the end, Aysa learned on her own, spreading her wings and leveling off just a short distance above the still, inky-dark expanse of the giant pool.

Soon the wyrms had gathered back at the ledge, where Patersmith regarded them with expressions of contentment. He puffed and smoked, smiling gently, though to Darlantan, the old teacher’s eyes seemed to moisten with melancholy.

“Come with us!” urged the silver dragon. “We’ll fly throughout the Darkness Beyond!”

“Alas.” Patersmith held up his arms. “These are very poor wings. No, without magic, it is impossible for me to fly with you. But it is time that all of you soared into the world and witnessed the wonders of which you have only heard.”

“But how do we find the world through the darkness?” asked Kenta.

“There is a cave, similar to the door cave of your own grotto.” The tutor pointed into the distant darkness. “Find it and fly, my wyrmlings, and you will find yourself in the world of light and sky.”

“We go!” cried Darlantan, his wings buzzing audibly as he tensed for a leap into space. Excitement brought him to a fever pitch. It was fantastic to fly, but even more wonderful to think he would at last get a look at the sun and the sky and the whole world.

“Yes, go! You will fly to the Valley of Paladine. Beyond the darkness, you shall see this sacred place, sheltered in the High Kharolis. There you may hunt and sleep and fly, safe from the intrusions of the world.”

Darlantan led the way, though Aurican and the other two silvers flew just behind his tail. The others strung out through the darkness as the dragon followed his memory of Patersmith’s pointing finger. A light breeze moved the air of this vast place – a place that was really something far more concrete than the vague entity he had known as the Darkness Beyond. Already Dar could see the looming wall of this great, subterranean chamber. A sheet of dark rock rose from the edge of the still water, rising high overhead as it domed outward to form the cavern’s lofty, vaulted ceiling.

Abruptly Aurican veered to the side, wings straining in a visible effort to gain speed. Darlantan tried to think, to remember. … Was it possible he was mistaken in his memory of Patersmith’s indicated direction?

Then he understood: It was the wind! Aurican had sensed that breeze and known that it must originate from the passageway to the outside world.

Before the others could react, their golden sibling swept into a shadowy passage looming in the vast wall. Now it was Darlantan behind his nestmate’s tail, straining to overtake Aurican. Yet even in his frustration, he retained a measure of caution. He knew he couldn’t try to fly past Auri in this narrow passage, or more likely than not they’d both go crashing into the walls or ground.

And then they were into a realm that was so broad, so breathtakingly open that the young dragon forgot all about his petty duel. The blue of the sky was deeper, more perfect than any color Darlantan had ever imagined. Clouds puffed, impossibly white and serene in the azure vault that swept overhead. Mountain peaks surrounded the file of gliding, awestruck dragons, and these summits were etched into such precise clarity that Dar felt as though he should be able to reach out and touch each one. He saw, however, that the valley was wide, and every one of the lofty peaks was a considerable distance away.

The heights fully encircled this place. Even as they flew, the dragons looked upward to the horizon in all directions. Glaciers sparkled in the sunlight, draping the highest peaks in regal cloaks of ice. Cornices, like diamond-studded crowns, crested these ridges, and where the daylight sparkled along the summits, the gleaming reflection was brighter than fire.

Best of all, brightening the scene everywhere, glowing from the heights of the sky, shone the ball of brilliant illumination … and Darlantan knew that he had at last discovered the sun.

The Irda

(ca. 6320 PC)

Prologue

SONG OF THE OGRE

The Keeper of the History of the Ogre stood alone and unassisted on the platform, though she was as ancient as the stone walls of the castle. She had buried the bones of all her friends, of her children, and still she lived, because of the Gift, which she alone possessed.

She opened her mouth, and it came, the Gift of the gods. A voice as pure and clear, as bright and beautiful, as stars shining in the darkness of a night sky. The ribbon of sound pierced the air. The words wove the History of the World, of the Ogre, firstborn of the gods.

By the hammer of the gods, the universe was forged from chaos.

From the sparks of the anvil, the spirits were scattered,

Cast to glimmer and dance in the heavens.

From the forge of the gods, the world was wrought,

Playground of the gods.

The spirits were singing, their voices like starshine,

Shining like the gods themselves, pieces of the heavens.

The gods looked upon them and found them most wondrous.

The gods looked upon them and coveted their souls.

The world shuddered.

Battlefield of the gods.

The High God looked down upon what his god children had destroyed;

His wrath was mighty, his pain transcendent.

From the fire of his anger,

From the divine breath of Takhisis,

From the heart of the flames, the races were born.

Takhisis, Sargonnas, Hiddukel, gods of the Dark,

Made the stony Ogres.

Gifted with life, gifted with beauty,

The Ogres turned their faces earthward.

Children of the stars.

Firstborn of the gods.

Paladine, Mishakal, Those of the Light,

Made the willowy Elves.

Cursed them with goodness, cursed them with virtue.

Those of the middle, Gilean, Reorx, Gray gods all,

Made the plodding humans, set them to serve.

Watchers of the darkness are the mighty Ogres,

Cast down to rule the world from the lofty mountains.

Hair colored of the shadows, eyes like the moon,

Fairest of all and truly immortal.

Singers of starshine, masters of all created.

Rulers of the low ones; the animals, the elves, the humans.

Within our hearts, all dreams are dark.

Within our souls, all pain is pleasure.

We turn our faces upward.

Born of the stars, chosen by the gods.

Chapter 1

A GOOD AND PERFECT GIFT

“My dear, you know that magic, beyond that necessary for daily needs, is forbidden to all but the Ruling Families.”

Lord Teragrym Semi, eldest of the five Ruling Council members of the Ogres, considered by many in the royal court to be the most powerful, plucked a piece of fruit from the bowl sitting at his elbow.

“Yes, Lord, I know. But … there have been exceptions.”

Eyes cast down, the young Ogre who kneeled before him allowed her voice to trail off. Her eyes, so strange and black, stole upward, then back down too quickly to give offense.

Teragrym pretended to examine the fruit, searching the fuzzy red skin for blemishes, then tossed it back into the bowl with a sneer. He did not deem it vital to mention that the punishment for disobedience of the law was death. He assumed she was willing to risk death.

Magic danced in the air about her, well concealed but barely controlled. Powerful enough so that he could sense it without casting a “seeing” spell. Just that feeling, coming from one not of a Ruling Family, was enough to condemn her.

Her fingers twitched, and he imagined he could see the spell she was longing to cast dancing between them. It would probably be something spectacular, designed to impress. No doubt she knew more than just spells of fire and water, of mischief and play.

For a race renowned for its beauty, she was striking and exotic, dark where most of the Ogres were silvery. Pale of flesh where the norm was emerald and indigo and raven black. Her black eyes were almost elven, and there was a warmth to the gem-green paleness of her skin that reminded him of the pale-pink flesh of humans. It was an almost repellent mixture and strangely compelling.

With her billowing robes spread about her in a perfect fan, she made a fetching picture. A perfect, ripe flower, offering herself. “You are very beautiful. Young. Healthy. Well placed at court. You could make a brilliant match. Be secure. Why do you risk telling me this?”

“I can make a match for myself, yes,” she whispered. “Or my uncle will make one for me, and himself. Perhaps it would even be a brilliant one, with a well-suited family. But I do not wish to be some family’s adornment.”

Teragrym snorted, almost laughing in her face. This particular Ogre did not strike him as being malleable enough to be anyone’s adornment.

“I would never be allowed to learn magic as I wish to.” She glanced up, smiled with beguiling sweetness. “Please, Lord, families have been known to take in someone who showed promise, who could be of use … who would vow undying devotion in exchange for … considerations.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “That is true. At least, it was, before the clans were united by the council. Now …” A great many things had changed in the time since the Ruling Council had gained power and the king’s supremacy had declined. “But now, I think such a person would have to convince me that I need a mage in my household who is not of my clan.”

“My lord, you toy with me.” There was sharpness in her tone, carefully controlled disapproval. Perhaps even a hint of anger.

He responded with mild rebuke, thin-lipped lechery. “Did you expect there would be no obstacles?”

“I will meet any test you see fitting!”

He laughed, delighted in spite of himself. With a nonchalant flick of his wrist, he cast a spell. Wordlessly, so effortlessly it was mocking.

A snarling, slavering thing appeared at her elbow. A creature of shadows and decay.

She flinched, edging away from the vision. With the slightest effort, she snuffed the enchantment, using a powerful “dispel.”

Her triumph was short-lived.

“That is no proof of worthiness.”

“Lord, set me a test. I will pass it!”

“But, my dear, that is the test. Prove yourself.” Before she could protest or question, he motioned for his assistant, indicating that the interview was over.

“Send for Kaede,” he ordered the aide who scurried to his side.

She almost protested. Her long, thin fingers twitched. Her chin came up. At the last moment, with obvious effort, she bowed. “Thank you, Lord Teragrym. I will provide suitable proof.” As she rose, smoothing the folds of her robe, she said softly, “Proof of worthiness.”

He waited until the heavy stone door had slid silently closed behind her, leaving him alone in his audience hall.

The room was small but high ceilinged, ornate, plush. Teragrym breathed deeply, allowing the pleasing surroundings to relax him as he motioned his aide closer.

“Watch her,” he told the young Ogre. “I think she could be dangerous.”

*

“The Prince of Lies will speak to you,” the High Cleric said. “Or not. Accept you. Or not.”

Lyrralt nodded, not trusting himself to speak, for surely it would be unseemly to reveal his excitement, his agitation, before the altar of Hiddukel, the dark god of gain and wealth.

He had been preparing for this moment of being judged worthy or not worthy for all of his young life, for perhaps two hundred of his three hundred years.

To a human savage from the plains, it would have been many lifetimes; to the long lived elves, a fraction of a lifetime. For an Ogre, it was a pittance of time.

The High Cleric was placing the bowl of scented water before him, folding away the light robe she’d brought.

The room was devoid of furniture save for the altar, a huge block of marble bearing the broken scales, symbol of his god, and the small chest on which lay the garment, symbol of his hope. There was no carpet on the floor, no hangings on the walls to insulate the chill of stone.

Lyrralt rubbed his bare arms and stared with open envy and longing at the High Cleric, at the delicate runes marking her emerald skin. They marched from shoulder to wrist on both arms, symbols of her devotion, symbols of Hiddukel’s blessing.

The High Cleric faced him one last time before leaving him to his test. “Let Hiddukel set the runes rightly,” she said softly, bowing her head, both to him and to the altar. Then she left him alone in the cold, dim room.

He took a deep, deep breath, told himself he was not cold, then knelt on the cold marble floor and bowed low, palms open and exposed.

Lyrralt took up the silver bowl which sat at the foot of the altar, sipped of the scented water. He rinsed his mouth and spat delicately into a smaller bowl carved from bone. He dipped his fingers in the water and touched the liquid to ears and eyelids. Then he scooped a handful of the cold liquid and splashed it on his shoulder and upper arm.

Ritual complete, he was ready to ask Hiddukel’s blessing.

He closed his eyes, concentrated with all his strength, and prayed. “Please, Mighty One, Lord of Fiends and Souls, Prince of Lies, accept me as your servant.”

He paused, feeling nothing but his clammy, wet skin, then squeezed his eyes even more firmly and prayed even more fervently. He promised undying devotion, unquestioning obedience. He glanced at his shoulder. The indigo skin was unblemished, perfect.

He prayed and he pleaded. He made promises. He bowed until his forehead was touching the floor. The water evaporated from his skin, but he felt no response from his god.

It was not fair! Lyrralt rocked back on his heels and sat, palms on thighs, breathing heavily with the exertion of his entreaties. He had wanted only this for so long, neglecting his duties on his father’s estate, shirking his responsibilities as eldest son and older brother.

He had thought of little but the things he would gain as a cleric of Hiddukel. The esteem, the advantage, the wealth. Oh, the benefit the robes of the order would give him once his father was dead and he was master!

A strange, sharp sensation smote his left shoulder, so hard it knocked him to the floor, slicing into his bones.

He gasped as though his lungs had emptied of all air.

Sensations too varied, too contradictory to assimilate, flashed through his muscles, across his skin. Heat and cold, pressure from within and without, pain and pleasure. Blissful pain, as if his flesh were being peeled from his body.

Lyrralt opened his mouth wide and screamed in agony … and joy.

As quickly as it had come, it ended.

He sat up, shivering but no longer cold. He touched his shoulder. There was no pain, but his perfect skin was flawless no longer. The bone-white runes, stark against his dark complexion, marched in three rows across his shoulder.

The door opened, and the High Cleric entered, followed by others of her order, and they gathered around him, exclaiming happiness and welcome. The High Cleric sank to her knees beside him and gazed at the markings on his shoulder.

“What do you see?” Lyrralt demanded.

She smiled at his impatience and ran a fingertip across the sigils. “Many things. You have many paths you may follow, young Lyrralt. Many possibilities.”

“Tell me.”

“I see a beginning. Hiddukel shows …” She lifted an eyebrow, impressed. “The Dark Queen. Perhaps you will be called upon by the Dark One herself.”

Lyrralt shuddered to think of being honored by Takhisis herself, Queen of Darkness.

“No, perhaps it means only darkness or death to a queen. A dead queen. It is not clear.”

“But we have no queen!”

“Hiddukel will guide you,” she admonished gently and continued to examine the runes. “There is family here. Someone close. There is mischief. Revenge. Success.”

The High Cleric motioned to one of the others, and he brought Lyrralt’s robe.

As Lyrralt stood, he asked, “It’s not very clear, is it?”

“Never in the beginning, but the Prince will guide you.”

*

The lamps danced in the mine, bright pinpricks of light stabbing through darkness as thick and black as ink. The timbers that shored up the walls and ceiling creaked, and the rocks they held back groaned, singing a song eerie and sad.

“The slaves say the earth is crying for the gems and stones we take out of it.”

Igraine, governor of Khal-Theraxian, largest province in the Ogre civilization, smiled indulgently at his daughter, Everlyn. In the dim light, he could barely see her, but he knew her eyes were dilated with excitement, her deep-sea complexion darkened to emerald.

Only child, pampered, spoiled, raised in the brightness and cheer of one of the finest estates in the mountains … He couldn’t explain why she preferred the darkness, why she preferred the rocks and minerals his slaves dug out of the earth over copper and gold and polished gems.

He glanced up at the ragged rocks just inches above his nose. His race had lived in the Khalkists from the beginning of time, choosing as their rightful place the lofty mountain range that divided the northern half of the continent of Ansalon. The mountains spread downward from the Thorad Plain, home of the wild humans, to the tip of the forest of the elves.

Khal-Theraxian, built on the southernmost arm of the Khalkists, was only a few days’ ride from the heavily wooded edge of the elven forests. At one time, it had been a bustling center of trade for those dealing in stolen elven goods and elven slaves. But that was many generations ago, before the riches under the ground had been discovered, before the firstborn had realized that the good and gentle elves made poor slaves and the malleable humans made excellent ones.

Igraine’s ancestors had worked the mines of Khal-Theraxian, had perhaps even stared up at this very ceiling, for this particular passage was a very old one, just recently reopened and reused. Perhaps they, too, had stared overhead and wondered if the ceiling of rock would come crashing down upon their heads.

The tunnels were dug by humans, sized for humans, not the lofty Ogre masters who towered over them by at least three hands.

Although his nerves danced, Igraine didn’t show any worry or concern. A governor had to set an example. He didn’t quake in the face of a slave uprising, nor when caught in the midst of a mountaintop blizzard. And he did not show how the creaking and singing of the rock in the depths of his most productive mine made his skin tighten and crawl.

Everlyn glanced up at him, her even white teeth a slash in the shadows, her silvery eyes aglitter.

Despite his unease, he returned her excited smile with one of pride. Beautiful and spoiled and fearless. Her emerald skin and her willowy stature might be from her mother, but her spirit was from him. If not for her, he would never have ventured so deep into the mines.

The dark, dank place with its low ceiling was fit only for slaves, for the humans who chipped away the rock and brought out the gemstones, the best in twenty provinces. Some gems were as large as their small-boned hands, better even than those from the elven lands to the south.

“The earth sings louder and louder as we go deeper,” said the harsh, grating voice of one of the human slaves, the one who called himself Eadamm. He was a strong man, just approaching middle age for a human, perhaps almost thirty, which seemed a child to Igraine’s seven hundred years.

Igraine knew the slave because he had pale hair and eyes as blue as the summer sky and because the slave brought Everlyn samples of the rare rocks and stones of which she was so fond.

“I don’t think it’s safe.”

Igraine glanced at the slave sharply. Had there been a note of anger in his voice? Of surliness?

The human had already turned away, raising his lantern to lead the way deeper into the low tunnel. Whereas Igraine had to stoop to fit, Eadamm was able to walk with head held high and shoulders straight and tall. Even Everlyn, who was tiny for an Ogre, was bent.

“We found the bloodstone back there, Lady,” Eadamm told Everlyn, pointing toward an irregular oval of midnight blackness, a hole in the dark.

Everlyn started down the sloping tunnel toward the opening.

“Lady, it’s not safe.” Eadamm glanced back at Igraine for support. “The rock shifts and groans constantly. We’ve been bringing out the rubble and looking through it for stones.” He pointed to the littered floor.

Without hesitating or even glancing back, Everlyn disappeared into the blackness. Her voice floated back to them. “I want to see.”

With a grimace, Igraine followed. Light flared in the room ahead, blinding him for a moment.

Magic in the tunnels wasn’t wise. Besides ruining the vision of the slaves, who had spent so many years below ground they could barely see in the brightness elsewhere, there was something not quite safe about using magic so deep underground, as if the very earth were trying to spoil the magic.

He went forward quickly into the light, bumping his head on the low ceiling. “Everlyn …” His warning trailed away as he stepped through the opening. His daughter had set a small fireball to sparkling in midair, illuminating the small cavern.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” She paused to look back at him. She leaned against the far wall, pushing and prying at a large chunk of rock. “Look at the bloodstone I’ve found!”

Eadamm paused beside Igraine, blinking in the sudden brightness. “I’ll get a pick, Lady.” He set his lantern on the ground and retreated. His voice echoed back into the small chamber as he called to one of the other workmen.

His words sounded like gibberish to Igraine. Before his eyes, the fiery orb bobbled. The jumble of rocks that served as walls seemed to move with it in the flickering light. His daughter’s magic made his skin squirm.

“Ever —” The breath was sucked out of his mouth by the grinding of stone against stone. The ceiling was moving!

Everlyn screamed as the wall before her shifted, leaned inward as if pushed by an unseen hand.

Igraine leapt toward her. Pain lanced through his arm and side as something struck his shoulder, knocking him backward. Dust flooded into his nostrils, his mouth. Jagged rocks, torn from the ceiling, rained down on him. Through the crashing of stones and the creaking of timbers, he could hear his daughter crying out.

Eadamm grabbed him and pushed him out of the path of a huge crush of ceiling. His head struck hard against something as he fell out of the small room.

Sparkling dust and pebbles rained everywhere. The floor tilted. Igraine clung to the wall, feeling the stones shift beneath his fingers. He could hear Eadamm calling for Everlyn, could hear her answering, her voice threadbare with fear.

He pushed to his feet, heart pounding. As he stumbled toward the sound of Eadamm’s voice, Everlyn’s magical light went out. Her cries fell off abruptly, leaving him alone with fear.

The cries of the slaves, screams of pain from farther in the direction of the main tunnel, joined with the groaning of the earth.

A moment later, Eadamm was there, a hand under his arm, trying to help him move, his lantern casting wavering shadows through the haze of dust. Eadamm shouted for help. Slaves crowded into the passageway, pushing and shoving and crying out with fear.

The sickening scent of humans, unwashed and afraid, of blood and grit, Igraine sucked into his nostrils. His head ached, a huge throbbing alarm like bells between his ears.

“We must get out,” Igraine rasped, tasting blood and dirt. He passed his hand over his forehead and eyelids, hoping to clear his vision. His fingers came away wet and sticky.

“Lord, no!” Eadamm thrust his lantern into Igraine’s hand and snatched up a timber almost twice his own height. “She might still be alive!”

Igraine could barely hear the words the slave had spoken, but from Eadamm’s actions, he understood.

Eadamm wrestled the thick log under one of the sagging beams overhead. When he bent to pick up another timber, another slave hurried to join him.

The huge, rough-hewn log Eadamm had braced against the ceiling trembled. Pebbles and sand sifted down. The ceiling bowed with the weight of the earth above.

Another rumbling from deep in the bowels of the mine was followed by the crashing of rock. Farther down the passageway, a slave screamed.

The slaves crowded in beside Igraine were the best miners in the Khalkists. Irreplaceable. Worth too much to risk.

“There’s no time!” Igraine grabbed Eadamm and pointed up. On cue, more rock vibrated and fell. The rumbling from deep in the mine sounded again.

“Everyone out!” Igraine raised his voice to be heard above the sounds of the mine and shouted the order again. He wished for Ogre guards to help, to get the stupid humans moving in an orderly manner, but there were no guards in the mine, only a couple stationed at the exit for show. It was a matter of pride for the whole province that Khal-Theraxian’s slaves were so well-conditioned, so well-behaved.

Bobbing specks of light began to recede from the cramped passageway, back the way they had come, as the slaves began to obey. But some of the slaves stayed where they were. Under Eadamm’s guidance, they were already methodically digging away the stones that entombed Everlyn.

Igraine grabbed the nearest human and shoved him roughly toward the safe end of the tunnel. “There’s no time. Get out now! All of you.”

He led the way out of the passage, back the way they had come, climbing over boulders and rocks that had not been there before.

The long walk toward safety was a journey of darkness and fear punctuated by falling rock and death cries from behind, deeper in the mines. Igraine’s head throbbed, and his ankles protested. The tunnels through which they passed had been distorted by the movement of the earth, were twisted, jumbled, blocked. With every step he expected that the ceiling would crash down on him, blotting out the pinpricks of light from the lanterns ahead.

He stumbled and would have fallen but for one of the slaves. The man, bent and gnarled from years of toil in the mines, smelled horribly of human sweat and sweetly of human blood.

Igraine shoved away the helping hands, stood on his own. “How much farther?” he asked. Dust sifted down from above, sparkling in the lantern light.

“Just ahead, Sire.” The slave pointed.

Igraine saw that the light that was illuminating the motes of dust wasn’t from his lantern, but came from the warm yellow glow of Krynn’s sun. “Make sure everyone gets out,” he mumbled, hurrying toward the exit.

Sunlight bright as molten gold stung his eyes as he stepped into the fresh afternoon air. It seemed hours ago that he had entered the dark, gaping hole in the mountainside.

The slaves were coming out behind him, looking as stunned as he felt. A handful of the group that had accompanied him, cousins and staff and guards, saw them coming out of the mine and hastened to meet them.

It was a lovely fall day, air clear and crisp, sky blue and unmarred by clouds. His entourage wore bright splashes of color, red and blue and green silk. He could sense their agitation, hear their voices lift in excitement as they saw him.

He must be a sight: clothes torn, face bloodied, eyes hollow and distant. In a moment, they would descend upon him. He couldn’t bear the thought of facing their distress, their questions, the crying of the old aunts who had raised Everlyn after her mother had died.

He turned back to his slaves, to count how many had not escaped the mountain, to see that the injured were looked after. He realized immediately that some were missing.

“Where’s Eadamm?”

The humans nearest him shook their heads. Of those who were just emerging from the mine, who had been in the rear, three refused to meet his gaze. They stood with eyes cast down, shoulders hunched as if waiting for a blow. Finally one mumbled, “He stayed behind, Lord, to save the Ogre.”

The one in the middle elbowed the speaker hard. “He means ‘the lady,’ sir. ‘The lady.’”

“Yes, Sire, the lady. I meant no disrespect.”

Igraine backhanded the man, knocking him against the walls of the mine. So Eadamm had gone back, disobeying his orders.

Igraine, governor of the district of Khal-Theraxian, had built his reputation on his handling of slaves. On his ruthless handling of slaves. The king had given him position, land, a title because of it. Igraine never allowed a slave to break a rule, to show disrespect, to shirk his duties, to disobey an order. Examples had to be set.

His personal honor guards came rushing up the path from the meadow, exclaiming, bowing. One grabbed up the slave Igraine had struck and dangled him by his arm.

“Lord, what has happened?”

“Where is Lady Everlyn?”

“Are you harmed?”

The questions came at Igraine too fast and thick to answer, and he turned and waited until the rest of the group was within hearing distance. He didn’t want to tell what happened more than once. “There’s been a cave-in. Everlyn is … lost.” He steeled himself for the cries of anguish.

Naej, who had been mistress of his estate until Everlyn was old enough, who had been mother and mentor and friend, covered her face with her hands.

“Sort out the slaves,” he told the captain of the guard. “Make sure they see to their injured. Find the foreman and see how many are lost.” Igraine’s face hardened. “And find out how many stayed in the mine against my orders. These three knew of it. Keep them separated from the others.” If the ones inside the mine died, these three would be used to set an example.

Behind him, a feminine voice started a song of sorrow for Everlyn, a melodic sound without words that was eerily like the grating of stone against stone in the tunnel. Naej whimpered, and another voice, this one masculine, joined the song.

Igraine whipped around, intending to tell them to shut up, to leave. He knew he would have to sing, to mourn, but not yet. Not just yet.

Naej had uncovered her face, was opening her mouth to sing. Instead she cried out, the O shape of her mouth going from anguished to astonished and delighted. “Everlyn!”

He wheeled to see six figures emerging from the entrance to the mine, one tall, five short: Everlyn and the five slaves who had remained behind to save her.

She was alive! Walking, albeit unsteadily. One sleeve was missing from her tunic. The hem hung in shreds around her slender hips. Both knees, scraped and bleeding, showed through rents in her pants. Her long hair was sticking out in tangled lumps. Her dark skin, bloodied at temple and shoulder, was coated with gray dust.

Igraine had never seen a more beautiful sight.

For the second time that day, pandemonium erupted around him as his guards, his entourage, his slaves, rushed to aid those who had just emerged from the mine.

Igraine plowed through them, stepping on Ogre and human alike to get to his daughter.

She threw herself into his arms, tears streaking the dirt on her face. “I thought I would never see you again!”

He squeezed her tightly. “I thought I would never see you,” he said gruffly.

Naej, brushing at the dirt and small rocks tangled in Everlyn’s long hair, said as she had when her charge was a child, “Let’s get her home, Igraine.”

Before Naej could lead her away, Eadamm stepped forward and bowed. “Lady … This is for you.” From the front of his shirt he produced the rock Everlyn had been trying to free from the wall of the tiny room.

It was a bloodstone, smoky and black – so dark it seemed to suck in the light and hold it – and shot through with globs of carmine. It looked like huge drops of blood had been trapped inside. Too ugly for jewelry, too soft to be useful in making tools, bloodstone was mostly used by minor magicians for show. With the casting of a spell, they made the red glow and throb like fire. This piece was the size of a potato with three thumb-sized pieces like growths protruding from one end.

Everlyn laughed, taking it as gently as if it were an egg, with much delight. “It will always remind me of how I felt when I saw the light of your lantern burst through the wall of rocks.”

Eadamm bowed to her again and started away, but Igraine stopped him. He motioned for his guards to come forward.

“Put these slaves under arrest along with the other three.”

Everlyn looked up from the gray-black rock. “Why, Father?”

“They disobeyed my order to evacuate the mine.”

Eadamm met her solemn gaze without lowering his.

“I understand,” she said, softly, regretfully.

*

Igraine, governor of Khal-Theraxian, sat alone in his office, the only light coming from the glowing coals in the fireplace. He had moved his favorite chair, the one covered in elf-made cloth, next to the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked his estate.

Solinari, the silver moon, overwhelmed her sister moon, Lunitari, bathing the garden and fields and distant mountains in pale light. Igraine’s eyes saw none of the cold beauty spread before him, not the nodding heads of fall flowers, not the mountain peaks already beginning to display their snowcaps.

A tap on the door interrupted the silence. A shaft of light cut through the room as a guard opened the hall door and peeked through. “I’ve brought the slave, Lord.”

Igraine murmured an incantation, and several candles leapt into flame. A small fire hissed and crackled into life in the fireplace. “Bring him in.”

The guard gestured to the human who was waiting in the hall, then withdrew when Igraine motioned him away.

Eadamm came into the room. He was clean, wearing clean though threadbare shirt and pants. Only his hands, bruised, scraped raw, and bound with chains, showed the signs of the afternoon’s events.

Igraine regarded him in silence for several minutes, during which the human stood without moving, his gaze fastened on the windows and the view outside.

“There is something I would like to understand,” Igraine said finally, noting that the human didn’t flinch when he spoke, didn’t fidget in the silence that followed.

“I have always prided myself on being a fair master.” He saw, finally, some emotion on the face of the slave, a flitting feeling that he didn’t know human faces well enough to recognize, but perhaps he could guess.

“A fair master,” he repeated more firmly. “Harsh, but fair. My laws are harsh, but none of my slaves can say they don’t know them. Therefore, if they break them and are punished, it is their own fault.”

Again the twinge of expression, quickly suppressed.

Igraine continued. “But I understand their infractions. I understand the taking of things, for I, too, wish to have more. I understand the shirking of hard work. I understand running away. All of these are things which a slave thinks and hopes will not be discovered. I understand breaking rules when one does not expect to be caught. But what you did …”

If Eadamm understood that he was being offered a chance to respond, perhaps to beg apology, he didn’t show it.

“You knew that by disobeying my orders, you were condemning yourself.” Igraine said. There was just enough question in his tone to allow Eadamm to dispute him if he wished.

He didn’t. “Yes, Lord, I knew.”

“Then this I do not understand. A runner thinks only of the freedom of the plains, not of the capture. You knew you would be caught.”

“Yes, Lord.”

So vexed he could no longer sit, Igraine stood and paced the length of the windowed wall, then turned swiftly to face Eadamm. “Then explain this to me!”

In the face of Igraine’s agitation, Eadamm lost his calm. “If I had not disobeyed your orders, Lord, the lady would have died!” he almost shouted. Then he controlled himself. “The lady has been kind to the slaves. She has …”

“Continue.”

“She has a good heart. It would have been wrong to let her die.”

“Wrong?” Igraine tasted the word as if it was unknown to him. He had used it many times, in many ways, with his slaves. “Wrong to obey me?”

For the first time since he’d entered the room, Eadamm looked down, casting his gaze to the floor as a slave should.

Rather than being pleased that his slave was finally cowed, Igraine wished Eadamm would once again look up, that he might see the expression on the ugly human face. “You knew you could not escape. You knew the punishment would be death.”

“Yes. I chose life for her.”

Igraine sighed. He sat back down in his chair. He waved his hand in dismissal and turned back to the view of his estate. He heard the door open, then close.

As soon as it closed, Everlyn stepped into the room from the porch. She stood, flowing nightdress silhouetted in reverse against the night.

“You should be in bed,” he said gruffly.

“I couldn’t sleep. Father,” she whispered, her soft voice tearful, “could you not choose to let him live?”

Chapter 2

DESTINY’S SONG

The audience hall glittered as if it were filled with burning stars, ashimmer from gilt embroidery on fine robes, gems dripping from throats and fingers and wrists. The flames of hundreds of candles danced in glass lamps etched with the symbols of the evil gods, reflected off the gold and silver of ceremonial daggers, and still the huge room was not illuminated. Shadows clung to the corners, filled the three-story-high ceiling.

The scent of heavy perfumes from a dozen provinces plaited and twined, choking the air, battling the aromas of melted candles, spiced wine, warm sugar cakes and succulent human flesh wrapped in seaweed and baked to savory tenderness.

The clamor of a thousand voices, the ring of goblet against goblet, had quieted as the Keeper of History stepped forward to the front of the throne platform and sent the Song spiraling forth to mingle with the glitter and the scents.

Khallayne Talanador paused on the first landing of the huge southern staircase and allowed her eyes to half close so that only pinpricks of light sparkled through, a thousand-thousand, four-pointed, multicolored pricks of light dancing against her lashes.

The sweet, siren voice of the Keeper, singing the History of the Ogre race, lulled Khallayne into almost believing she stood alone instead of in the midst of the best-attended, most brilliant party of the season.

As the Keeper sang, her elaborate, flowing gown shifted and shimmered around her feet. The many scenes embroidered on it, exploits of past kings and queens, glorious battles, triumphal feasts, exquisite treachery, seemed to come to life.

Khallayne’s gown was a copy of the Keeper’s, with shorter sleeves to allow her hands freedom and fewer jewels worked into the embroidered vestrobe. But where the Keeper’s gown had a multitude of scenes, hers bore only one. The depiction of Khallayne’s favorite story danced about the hem, the tale of a dark and terrible Queen. First she was alive and vigorous, then dying, then rising up from the shards of her burial bones, her subjects quaking before her.

She had come to be known as the Dead Queen, sometimes as the Dark Queen. She had ruled in the early times, when the mountains were still new. It was told that she was more beautiful, more cunning and clever, than any Ogre ever born. Suspecting that the nobles about her were scheming, she had her own death announced, then waited in the shadows to see who would grieve. And who would celebrate. The purge was quick and glorious; the Dead Queen left few alive to mourn their executed brethren. Three of the present Ruling Council families, all unswervingly loyal to the Dead Queen, had come to power during that time, replacing those who had not sung the funeral songs quite loudly enough. Khallayne had loved the story since childhood, admiring and aspiring to such perfect cunning.

The last sweet notes of the Song ended, but Khallayne remained where she was, held in place as if mesmerized by the shimmer of the Keeper’s gown, by the old story she knew by heart.

She could remember a time when she was a child, before her parents’ death, when the Keeper had walked, albeit a little unsteadily, to her performances. The Keeper had been ancient even then. The Ogres were a long-lived race, so near immortality they were practically gods, but even they had marked limits. For the good of the whole, no Ogre was allowed to live to the point of being a burden, not even the king. None except the Keeper.

For her extraordinary talent, she was allowed a rare privilege. Now, elite honor guards carried her everywhere in a litter, waiting in the background while she sang the History of the Ogre.

The guards, puffed with pride and importance, flanked the Old One now, and escorted her through the elaborately carved private exit behind the platform.

From where Khallayne was standing, she watched the honor guard give way to guardsmen who had been standing in the shadows, just out of sight. As the last one turned smartly and disappeared, she saw that his brown tunic was emblazoned with a blue diagonal slash down the arm, the uniform of the Tenal clan.

There, whispered the dark voice of her intuition. There is the thing you seek. Khallayne touched the beaten copper crescent pinned to the lapel of her tunic.

“Thank you, Takhisis,” she whispered. “Thank you.” Her smile rivaled the glitter of the party for its brightness.

She stepped back into the pale shadow between the wall and a huge stone column and murmured softly the words of a “seeing” spell. It was a risky thing to do, casting in this room, where someone might be sensitive to a flutter of power, but she felt rash and exhilarated now – now that she knew how invincibility would soon be hers.

The roar of hundreds of voices muted to a whisper. Her vision faded until her surroundings became only a soft focus of brown and gray.

Below her, on the floor of the great hall, the pinpricks of light that were enchanted gems sparkled like embers. A hazy aura surrounded those who wore spell-enhanced finery. Such simple spells, like lighting candles and starting fires, were the kind of magic allowed anyone, regardless of position.

The auras that fascinated her were much different. She sought the magic of the most powerful nobility, the ones who were allowed to progress as far as their natural abilities permitted. Across the room, Lord Teragrym, for example – his was a seething aura of darkness, a great power.

She smiled, tasting the triumph to come.

“Looking for something, Khallayne?”

She tensed, then relaxed as the playful tone of the words was made clear through the distortion of the spell. The voice was filled with biting cynicism, yet still warm and sensual. It could only be Jyrbian.

She turned carefully, slowly allowing the “seeing” to seep away, colors and sights and sounds returning to normal. He was exactly what she required, perfect for her plans.

“Good evening,” she said.

Jyrbian bowed, smirking, managing as only he could to be both admiring and sarcastic at the same time.

“Good evening, Khallayne.” Lyrralt, older than Jyrbian, bowed more sincerely than his brother. He didn’t come forward to take her hand, but stayed back a step, his eyes tracing the fine slave-embroidered brocade of her gown.

As he stared in astonishment at her, she stared back, then broke into a wide grin.

Never were two brothers more alike in some ways, yet more different in others. Jyrbian and Lyrralt bore the same dramatic coloring, skin the dark blue of sapphires, eyes and hair like polished silver. The similarity ended there. Lyrralt was tall and lean, where Jyrbian was shorter and more muscular. He was also quiet while Jyrbian was brash, furtive where Jyrbian could be demanding, fierce and directed while Jyrbian played and joked and smirked.

Instead of his usual tunic, Jyrbian wore the sleeveless dress uniform of a soldier, form-fitting silk with bright silver trim.

As subdued as his brother was flashy, Lyrralt was wearing his simple white cleric’s robe. It was decorated with dark red embroidery that looked like drops of blood. His only adornment was a bone pin with the rune sign for his god, Hiddukel, burned into it, also in red. The formal robe, with its one long sleeve hiding the markings of his order, gave him an appearance of mystery and dignity.

“I didn’t realize this was a costume ball,” Khallayne teased.

They had been playmates in childhood, before her parents had died, before the Ruling Council had reclaimed their estate for distribution to a worthy courtier, and she had been forced to live with cousins. Since her uncle had bought a place at court for her, she had learned that the two grown-up men were very like the little boys she fondly remembered. She and Jyrbian had become friends again. Lyrralt was more difficult to gauge.

They reacted to her teasing just as she’d expected. Jyrbian grinned, spread his arms for her to better see his uniform and the strong muscles it emphasized, while Lyrralt frowned. “This is not a costume,” he reprimanded gently.

“Oh, no,” Jyrbian said with a biting tone. “My brother has been blessed by his god.”

Lyrralt tugged at his long left sleeve proudly, symbol of his acceptance as a cleric of Hiddukel. “Yes, I have, more than you know. You could have chosen this path, too. But you are irreverent to a fault. Playing at being a soldier instead of applying yourself to something useful.”

Jyrbian scowled. “I do not play, brother. Just as you do, I look to the future, and I see what is coming. I see what will be needed.”

Khallayne stepped between the two, forestalling further disagreement. It was an old argument, one she’d heard many times in many guises. Lyrralt thought his brother useless and frivolous. Jyrbian was ever scheming, jealous of all that Lyrralt, as eldest, would inherit.

She spoke first to Lyrralt. “I didn’t mean to tease. You know I’m proud of you.” Then Khallayne turned and laid her hand on Jyrbian’s bare forearm. “What do you mean? Are you implying that the clans are going to be allowed more warriors sometime soon? There’s been no increase since – since —”

“Since the Battle of Denharben,” Lyrralt supplied. “Before our parents were born.”

No Ogre house had made war on another for centuries, at least not openly, not with soldiers. Once, it had been every clan for itself. Smaller clans had been forced to ally themselves with larger ones to survive, until they grew strong enough to attack their allies. It was a perpetual cycle. But since the Ruling Council members had solidified their position with the strategic use of economic reprisals and land redistribution to their supporters, they had managed to limit the number of warriors a clan could have.

Feuding between the clans had become more subtle, and positions as warrior and honor guard had become prestigious and rare, passed down from parent to child the same as land and title. A warrior was born to status, not hired.

“There have been rumors,” Jyrbian said mysteriously.

“I should have you thrown from the parapets!” she laughed. “You know something you don’t want to tell. Besides, you’ve never really trained as a warrior.”

“No one’s trained as a true warrior anymore,” Lyrralt scoffed. “They’re all just honor guards who play with swords and pikes and practice marching in perfect rows. Even the king’s guard is mostly show.”

“You’re wrong, as usual. I’ve watched them train.” Jyrbian twined his fingers with Khallayne’s and tugged her toward the stairs, talking as he moved. “True, I haven’t practiced at marching. But I promise you, my other skills are not lacking.”

Khallayne allowed herself to be drawn away, leaving Lyrralt behind. She couldn’t imagine what gossip Jyrbian must know if he thought warriors would yet again be in demand.

Animal herders were all that were necessary for the raids on human settlements. And the raids on the elven lands, deep in the forests to the south, were easily handled by thieves. The things that could be stolen, beautiful carvings and thick, lustrous cloth, could not be matched anywhere on the continent of Ansalon, but the elves themselves, with their stoic demeanor and their unwavering devotion to goodness, made terrible slaves.

“Jyrbian …” She touched his forearm. Hard muscle rippled under his indigo skin. “Come and eat dinner with me. We’ll go up on the parapets afterward and look at the stars. I have something to tell you. And something I’d like you to help me do.”

Laughing at her with his pale eyes, Jyrbian slipped his fingers under her sleeve and stroked the soft flesh of her wrist. “You’re the most beautiful woman here tonight,” he whispered, “the most beautiful woman in Takar.”

She laughed. Khallayne knew he’d probably uttered the same words to every woman with whom he’d spoken since the party had begun at sundown; certainly he had said them to her every time they’d crossed paths for the past twenty years. And as she had answered for all those years, now she answered smugly, “I know.”

“We do make a perfect pair,” he murmured, holding up her hand, admiring the darkness of his wrist against skin the pale green of sea foam. “Like day and night. Unfortunately … I hope you will forgive my bluntness, but there are more important dinner partners in the room. As my brother is so fond of reminding me, I must be mindful of my duties – and my fortune.” He brought her hand up to his lips, kissed her knuckles, then wheeled away smartly.

“Jyrbian …!” Left standing on the stairs, Khallayne watched in disbelief as he bounded down the steps, his long silver hair, braided warrior-style, swaying back and forth across his shoulders.

Khallayne’s fingers twitched, itching to be at work in the air, inscribing some terrible spell.

“He’s trying to get a special assignment from the Ruling Council.”

Khallayne had forgotten Lyrralt was nearby. Absentmindedly, she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. “I don’t understand how you can tolerate him sometimes,” she said coolly, watching Jyrbian’s progress through the crowd. “You know sooner or later, the thought will occur to him that the easiest way to ‘make his fortune’ is to inherit it.”

Across the room, Jyrbian joined a group of Ogres standing near the steps to the throne platform. A young woman dressed in a fancy tunic immediately took his arm.

The words of a spell, one they had used when they were children, which made the skin sting as if nettled, leapt to Khallayne’s lips. She had not thought of it in fifty years, hadn’t used it in a hundred, but it would be very interesting to see whether Jyrbian could be as charming if she sent it spiraling through the air. She could almost taste the words, then forgot them as Lyrralt spoke.

He faced her with a mock look of remonstrance wrinkling his forehead. “My father’s minor nobility and wealth isn’t enough to suit Jyrbian. He’s aiming much higher these days. And so far, all it has gotten him is an errand that will make him miss the slave races next week.”

“What errand?”

The closeness of her body, the warmth of her breast against his arm had the effect she desired.

Lyrralt covered her hand with his and leaned closer, answering as if he were not aware of the words. “Some fool errand to Khal-Theraxian for Lord Teragrym.”

As he said “Teragrym,” she turned her face away, afraid that he would see the change in her expression, in her smile. Surely she must look like a wolf, ready to pounce. “Yes, I’ve heard talk,” she said, “about the governor of Khal-Theraxian. Something about a new method of working his slaves that has increased production.”

She composed her expression, molding it to a flirtatious one. Tucking her hand securely into the crook of Lyrralt’s arm and lifting the heavy hem of her robe, she started down the stairs. “Is that Teragrym’s youngest daughter with Jyrbian?”

“No, that’s Kyreli. She’s not the youngest. She’s the one who sings so well. I think Teragrym is hoping she’ll be the next Singer.”

Khallayne’s brows pulled together in a frown that had no playfulness about it at all.

The Ogres made a song for everything. They sang for happiness, for sadness, for rain, for sun, for cold, for heat. They raised their lovely voices in song for the most important thing and for nothing at all, and even the gods paused to listen. Hunters charmed the beasts with the beauty and grace of their voices; slavers lured their prey into shackling their own hands.

Khallayne was irritated by it all. For she of winsome ways, of quick mind and daring beauty, could not sing. She had hair that was like silk pouring through a man’s fingers, eyes that could beguile the most hardened heart, a magical power so natural and strong she dared not expose it. But she could not sing. Her singing voice had all the beauty, the charm, of a stone door scraping over a sill filled with grit.

Lyrralt stopped as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He leaned close and lowered his voice as if imparting a secret. “Have dinner with me. I’ve got something to tell you that’s much more exciting than rumors of warriors.”

She considered him from beneath her eyelashes. Maybe he knew something of Teragrym’s interests in Khal-Theraxian.

She smiled and took his arm once more, settling in against his warmth, and leading him toward the far end of the huge chamber that contained the dining area.

They circled the king’s table, off which nothing could be eaten. It was there purely to be savored, relished, for admiration of the “flavor of the appearance.”

“Have you ever wondered from where this curious custom comes?” Lyrralt asked as he slowly walked the length of the table, admiring the rare ghen blossoms cooked in honey and floating in wine, sea darts and other fish, brought all the way from the Turbidus Ocean, swimming in spices and gingerlike leaves.

“No, I haven’t.” Khallayne followed him, barely noticing the complementary arrangement of scent and texture and color.

As she filled a plate with juicy, broiled scrawls and bread dripping with honey jelly, she asked, “Did you notice earlier, when the Keeper left the stage, that Tenal guards were waiting in the hallway?”

Shaking his head, Lyrralt placed something on her plate that resembled a delicate blue flower.

“I was thinking that perhaps it means one of Tenal’s sons or daughters has been named as successor to the Keeper. She’s well past the age when the Song should have been passed on.”

Though he tried to cover it, she saw that Lyrralt had made the connection she’d hoped he would. He furrowed his heavy, silky brows in surprise. They found an empty table against a wall, somewhat isolated from the other tables, and dispatched a slave for wine.

“I thought it especially odd,” Khallayne picked up the thread of their conversation with false nonchalance. “Because I felt sure one of Teragrym’s daughters would be chosen. …”

“So was Jyrbian.” Lyrralt grinned suddenly. “And he’s pursuing the wrong daughter! He had big plans for tonight … I think I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell him. The look on his face will be —”

“Oh, I think we can do better than that.” Khallayne sipped her wine, savored the tartness on her tongue. “Much better.”

Lyrralt paused, goblet halfway to his mouth, staring at the gleam in her black eyes. He’d never seen an expression so wicked, so alluring. Excitement and foreboding surged within him. The runes on his shoulder burned as when they were new. “Is this why you wanted Jyrbian’s help?”

“Yes. But I think you’ll do a much better job.”

She paused. “I’ve got an idea,” she purred. “A perfect idea. It will get us both what we want.”

Lyrralt drew his chair close, leaned toward her. “And what is it you want?” He could feel the heat of her body. “It’s never seemed to me that you strived for the usual things – position, nor even gift of land or a home outside the castle walls. When Jyrbian and I heard you were coming to court, we thought you’d seek to regain your family estate from the Tenal clan. But, unless you’re even more devious than I imagined, I haven’t seen any evidence of it.”

She smiled and touched the rim of her goblet to his. “Thank you, sir. I am even more devious than you imagine. But land is not what I desire. What I have learned in my three hundred years is that land is a transitory thing, easily given, easily taken away on a whim. I seek a more permanent reward.”

“And you will tell me. Perhaps tonight as we walk the parapets?”

She stared at him, speculatively, and slipped a hand underneath the edge of his sleeve.

His eyes widened as her fingers crept upward on his skin. When she touched the edges of the runes, he trembled.

“Wouldn’t your order be extremely pleased if you obtained the sponsorship of Lord Teragrym?”

“How?” He drained his goblet without taking his eyes from the movement of her hand under his sleeve.

“Very simple. I think we can get our hands on something Teragrym wants very much. And we can do it so that Jyrbian would be blamed, in the unlikely event this … redistribution was discovered.”

For a moment, Lyrralt was too stunned to speak. All the blood had drained from his face, rendering his skin a dull grayish hue.

But Khallayne knew she had him – a fish swimming lazily along, complacently, agreeably, right into her net. His mouth was even hanging open in an oval, like a fish gasping for air.

“The runes spoke of this,” he whispered.

Her hand froze, then the tips of her fingers twitched on his skin, on the spongy runes just above his elbow. “Of what?”

He gazed at his sleeve. The runes engraved into his skin were the gift of his god, a sign that his piety had been accepted. Even more importantly, they were a gift to his god. For a race as beautiful and as proud of its beauty as the Ogres, to allow their flawless skin to be marked and scarred was a sign of absolute devotion.

The first markings were not usually shared with those outside his order. Few were privileged to view the first communications of Hiddukel with a disciple. Later, when his arms and hands were covered with markings, he would wear sleeves that exposed his forearms and wrists, as the High Cleric did.

“The runes spoke of many things. Of destiny and revenge. Of position and power. And there was a reference that I didn’t fully understand, until I saw you tonight. To a dark queen.”

“But I don’t understand. I’m not a queen.”

“Your gown, Khallayne. The decoration on your gown, of the Dead Queen. And there’s more. The runes speak of family and revenge.”

She slowly withdrew her hand from beneath his sleeve, scraping her nails along his skin as she moved. There was a humming in her mind, as of bees around a field of flowers, and a cold prickling on her skin. She whispered. “The Dead Queen … That settles it. We’re going to steal the Song of the History of the Ogre from the Keeper and give it to Teragrym.”

Chapter 3

THEFT OF HISTORY

“We’ll need something of Jyrbian’s. A bottle, a container of some kind. A charm, or a jewel. I’ll find a slave who knows in whose apartments the Keeper is staying, one we can trust not to tell.”

So easy. It had been so easy. Lyrralt, though obviously stunned, had not questioned her directions.

He had pushed away his plate of half-eaten food, followed her from the noisy audience hall, and gone, quickly and lightly, in the opposite direction, toward the southern end of the castle, toward his and Jyrbian’s apartments.

The hem of her gown whispered softly on the stone floor as Khallayne escaped the din of the party. She went down, descending into the service passageways of the castle.

As she entered the bustling kitchen, she lifted the hem of her gown off the floor, stepping over a puddle of grimy water. The room was smoky from the huge cooking hearths, humid with the steam of boiling kettles and pots, the uncirculated air choked with the nauseating scent of humans.

Not one of the slaves looked up to meet her quick scan of the room. Just as well. Their ugly pink faces were as disgusting as their scent.

Khallayne snapped her fingers at a small, scurrying slave who wore a serving dress with little grace, as if it were stitched-together cleaning rags.

The girl bobbed a quick but respectful curtsey. “Yes, Lady. May I help you?”

“I need Laie.”

The girl glanced back over her shoulder. “Laie is … occupied, Lady. May I serve you?” She dipped another curtsey, again quick and nervous, betraying her fear far more than did the quake in her voice.

“Occupied? What do you mean?”

The woman bobbed again, never raising her eyes from the tips of Khallayne’s soft leather shoes. “She is —” She glanced behind her for support and found none. “She is …”

“Stand still and tell me where the slave is!” Khallayne snapped, irritated by the bobbing woman and the overpowering smell of so many unwashed slaves.

“Lady, Lord Eneg is in the kitchen!”

Khallayne made a sound of irritation, at last understanding what the mumbling slave was trying to indicate. An Ogre would have to be an outcast to have not heard of the appetites of Eneg.

Khallayne had used Laie many times before, to spy for information, for errands she wanted kept secret. As slaves went, Laie was brighter than most, a wellspring of information, and she knew to keep her mouth shut. If Eneg killed Laie, another would have to be found and trained. “When did Eneg take her?”

“Only just a moment ago.”

Good. There might still be time. It was rumored that Eneg enjoyed playing with his victims.

Khallayne gathered the hem of her gown up above her shoes. “Take me to him.”

Still obviously nervous, the woman led Khallayne to the back of the kitchen, through a low door, and into a long, narrow, dark hallway. A supply passage, Khallayne supposed, built for the smaller, shorter human slaves. It was very different from the wide, sweeping hallways in the rest of the castle.

Khallayne had to duck as she stepped through the doorway into a room. A moldy, sweet smell of sweat and the coppery, decaying scent of human blood greeted her as she stepped over the threshold.

Khallayne spared barely a glance for the room, which was outfitted for Eneg’s sport. The important thing was, Laie was still alive, kicking and whimpering as she tried to pull free of Eneg’s grasp.

With a menacing scowl, Lord Eneg turned around as the door banged into the wall. His emerald skin was splotchy and blemished, so dark it was almost black, glistening with moisture and blood.

When he saw who the intruder was, his expression became a leer. “Have you come to join me, Lady Khallayne?”

Khallayne shrugged, shaking her head. She didn’t see how he could stomach the small, low-ceilinged room and the awful stench. The foul odor of the kitchen was a spring morning compared to the rotting air concentrated in this small space. “I require the services of this slave.”

The scowl returned. “Get another!”

Laie renewed her struggles to free herself.

Khallayne studied him for a moment, ignoring the slave, then said sweetly, “Lord Eneg, this slave belongs to me. If I had to train another, I would be very displeased.” She rubbed her fingers together, holding her hand up so he could see that the air around the tips of her fingers glowed slightly with the beginnings of a fire spell.

Eneg growled, a rumble deep in his throat so menacing that the slave in his grasp screamed and yanked her hand free. She stumbled and tripped the few feet to Khallayne and fell.

Khallayne gestured toward the whimpering woman. “Surely another slave would suit your purpose as well as this one …”

Eneg took a step toward her. The determination he saw in her face changed his mind. He waved his hand dismissively. “Take her. Send another from the kitchen.”

Khallayne swept back down the low hallway without waiting to see if the woman would follow. No doubt the slave was eager to escape from the hot, fetid room.

In the kitchen, Khallayne pointed at the first slave she saw, a young man no larger than Laie. “Lord Eneg requires your services.” She pointed back down the hallway and escaped into the passageway outside the kitchen.

Laie came stumbling behind her, trembling with fear, stinking of Eneg’s playroom and blubbering her thanks for being saved.

“Hush!” Khallayne said irritably, as the slave thanked her for the fifth time and tried to kiss her hand. Khallayne dipped her hand into the tiny pocket in the lining of her vest and produced a small coin. She held it out so that it was visible in the dim light, but pulled it back before it could be snatched by the slave’s eagerly outstretched fingers. “Do you know which apartments house the Keeper of History tonight?”

Eyes fastened on the dull copper which Khallayne turned slowly in her fingers, the slave nodded. “No, Lady, but I can find out. A tray was sent up earlier.”

Khallayne closed her fingers over the coin. “Then do so. But first, go to your quarters and wash, then meet me here. And quickly, or I’ll give you back to Eneg!”

Tense and irritable, heart thudding with anticipation, Khallayne hovered in the shadows of a cavernous doorway until the slave returned.

She was wearing a clean shift and her short, straw-colored hair was mostly combed. “The lady Keeper is staying in Lord Tenal’s guest apartments, Lady.” She curtseyed and thrust out her hand.

With a smile, Khallayne put the copper coin into her palm without touching the slave’s grubby pink flesh. “Fetch a tray of food, whatever the Keeper prefers, from the kitchen.”

The slave’s odd-colored blue eyes grew round and large with fear at the suggestion that she return to the kitchen.

“If anyone asks, say Lord Teragrym has commanded it. And if Lord Eneg chooses you again, simply tell him you belong to me,” Khallayne told her. “Remind him I don’t want to have to train another slave.”

Khallayne shook her head as Laie vanished. In the time it took an Ogre to mature from child to young woman, human slaves went from babies to old and useless. But no matter how old or young, they were worse than children. Slow and dumb and witless, even one supposedly as bright as Laie.

Lyrralt was waiting for them at one of the side exits to the audience hall, leaning against the stone wall.

“The Keeper’s in Tenal’s wing.”

Lyrralt nodded, eyeing the slave who stood half-concealed behind Khallayne.

Motioning for Laie to proceed, Khallayne and Lyrralt started along the passageway, nodding to other guests as they went. “What did you bring?” she asked.

Lyrralt patted a pouch hanging from his belt, bowed once more to an older lady as she eyed the two of them curiously. “Crystals from Jyrbian’s collection.”

Once they were upstairs, in the second-floor hall and away from the strolling party guests, they followed Laie until they rounded a corner and found her peeking around the corner at an intersection. “This is the hallway where the apartment is,” Laie whispered, pointing ahead. “There are guards.”

Khallayne smiled, both at the roundness of the slave’s eyes and at the way Lyrralt’s arm tensed under her fingers.

“Do we kill them?” he asked.

“It’s all right. I expected them.” Feeling less calm than she allowed herself to show, she drew away from him and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and, as in the audience hall, the sounds and smells of her surroundings grew blurred and hazy.

Lyrralt gasped.

Khallayne knew that he was feeling the surge of magical power she was drawing about her like a cloak. She trembled with the power of concentration, murmuring words she had wrested from the memory of a human wizard. Her hands came up, for a moment covering her face as if masking it, and she uttered the words again, lips moving silently.

Lyrralt gasped again. The slave whimpered.

Khallayne opened her eyes. Where Lyrralt had stood, now there was almost nothing, a disquieting disturbance in the air, a warm, scented breeze as if a ghost had brushed past.

“What have you done?” Lyrralt’s voice, stunned, fascinated, whispered from the nothingness.

“A spell of … of distraction, I suppose you would call it. If we make no sound, the guards won’t see us.”

“It makes my eyes hurt.”

“Yes, there is a small bit of aversion to it. It makes the illusion easier to maintain.” Turning to the slave, she murmured, “Laie?”

The woman was crouched back against the wall, her eyes so round and large it seemed they might burst from her head.

“Laie? Go down the hall. Tell the guards that Lord Tenal has ordered a tray sent to the Keeper. When they let you through the door, make sure to leave it open long enough for us to slip inside.”

With obvious effort, the slave controlled her fear. “But, Lady, what if they won’t let me through?”

“They won’t stop you. Just make sure you keep the door open. Now, go!” Khallayne, who had stepped closer to the woman, gave her a shove.

The slave almost squealed with fright, but she moved quickly, looking back over her shoulder as if she were being pursued.

It went as Khallayne had said. The guards leered. One lifted the corner of the linen napkin to inspect the tray, but they allowed the slave through. Laie paused just inside the heavy wooden door, holding it open with her foot while she pretended to balance the tray. She felt a spectral puff of air, then another, flit past.

One of the guards took the tray from her and placed it on a nearby table. “The Old One sleeps,” he whispered. “Leave it here and go.”

The slave nodded gratefully and hurried out.

The Keeper’s room was as lavish as anything Khallayne had seen since arriving in Takar. Two smoldering torches cast the only light, imparting flickering shadows more than illumination. Even in the smoky dimness, she could see the opulence of the slave-carved wood furnishings, the gleaming mirrors on walls covered with lush tapestries. She was sure, had she been able to examine it in daylight, that she would have found the thick carpet on which she trod to be elf made.

With a whispered command, the distraction disappeared and Lyrralt was visible.

“This …” she breathed, leaning into Lyrralt in the near dark, pressing her mouth close to his ear, “… this is how I will live someday.”

“Perhaps we both will.” For a moment, his hands hovered near her.

The Keeper was asleep on a low couch near the hearth.

Khallayne had never seen an Ogre so aged; most accepted an honorable death long before the years advanced to such fullness. She stared at the Old One’s face, lined and seamed with wrinkles, as Lyrralt stirred up the dying embers and started a small fire in the fireplace.

From his pouch Lyrralt produced a clear crystal sphere and two faceted crystals, one a double-pointed amethyst, the other a perfect sapphire as dark blue as his skin.

“I wasn’t sure which would be best,” he whispered, holding them out for Khallayne’s inspection.

She chose the crystal sphere, the plainest of the three.

Lyrralt would have backed away, but Khallayne caught his wrist and pulled him close to the Old One. “Kneel here.”

Lyrralt burned to ask what she was going to do and how and where she had learned such things. He watched carefully as Khallayne placed her hands on the Keeper and whispered words that to his ears were unintelligible.

Khallayne placed the sphere on the Keeper’s mouth. For a moment, it seemed as if it would roll off, then it caught and rose, floating less than two fingers above the Old One’s lips as if suspended on the soft exhalations of her breath.

Lyrralt whistled soft and low in admiration.

Khallayne moved to the end of the couch and stood over the Keeper. She fixed Lyrralt with an intense, unwavering gaze. “I’m going to try to use your energy in addition to my own,” she said. It won’t hurt you, but you may feel … tired. After I begin, make no noise, speak no sound, unless you wish to lose it forever.”

He nodded.

Khallayne cupped her hands around the Keeper’s head. She opened her eyes wide and concentrated. The currents of power flowed through the room, tugging at her gently.

She had performed the spell many times, but never before on one of her own kind. Now that she could feel the papery, withered old flesh between her fingers, she wished she’d risked the working of this one, just once, on an Ogre.

Gathering her concentration, striving for confidence that suddenly seemed to be ebbing away, she murmured the words of the spell and sent the pulsation outward. The Keeper moaned softly and rolled her head as if feeling the touch of Khallayne’s magic, then was still.

After a moment, while Khallayne held her breath and waited, a soft, throbbing light began to materialize between her hands. Careful not to allow her exhilaration to overcome her, she raised her arms slowly, tenderly, feeling the pressure against her palms, the thrill of magic coursing through her fingers and arms.

Then Khallayne pressed her palms together lightly. The incandescent light shifted, surged, began to stream into the crystal sphere.

It appeared to Lyrralt that the Keeper’s head was suddenly filled with light, flowing from her lips into the crystal poised above. Power filled the room. The air smelled like the coming of a thunderstorm.

As the crystal sphere became more radiant, filling with a golden rainbow of light, the Keeper grew darker and darker.

Even after the light had gone from the Keeper and was imprisoned in the pulsating sphere, Khallayne remained standing over the Keeper’s body for a long moment. Then she plucked the sphere out of the air and away from the Old One’s mouth.

Lyrralt felt the sudden release like a jolt to his nerves. When he was free of the tug of the spell, he felt a terrible urge to speak.

Clinging to furniture for support, Khallayne edged away from the Keeper. Though she trembled with the weight, she held the pulsating sphere up in the air.

“The Song of History,” she whispered in a tired voice as Lyrralt climbed to his feet and joined her “It’s done.”

He took the sphere gingerly, and carefully turned it in his hand, holding it up toward the fire to see the light pierce it through. “How wonderful!”

Khallayne sank onto a stool. “Yes, wonderful. This is the legacy that’s been stolen from us. Kept from us by greedy nobles.”

*

Khallayne gazed out the large window in Jyrbian’s apartment, eyes roving lazily over the twinkling lights of the city below, refracted and splintered by the beveled glass. How boring, how sad, she thought to be staring out of one of those houses, looking up enviously at the twinkling lights of the castle.

She, however, was where she belonged, and for a moment she gazed at the dozen miniature reflections of her own face in the panes of glass. The myriad Khallaynes smiled back at her wearily.

“Are you going to tell me how you did it?”

Lyrralt sat on a low stool in front of the fire. He cradled the sphere between his palms, watching the light twist and twine through it. “Are you going to tell me how you did it?” he repeated.

“Magic,” Khallayne answered, her voice unconcerned, barely conversational.

He turned and saw from her broad smile that she was teasing him.

She joined him, kneeling on the floor and taking the sphere from his fingers.

“I know it’s magic. Where did you learn to do it?”

She turned the sphere over and over in her hands, then used the edge of her vest to polish it. “From human wizards.”

“What?”

She lifted her chin defiantly. “I took the knowledge from human wizards who were slaves in my uncle’s household.”

When he offered no condemnation, she continued. “I was always much quicker to learn magic than my cousins. When they were still playing with sticks and dry leaves, I could light a fire, boil water, float objects.

“When I was ready to progress, my tutors told me I had learned as much magic as was allowed a child of my station.” The sphere lay forgotten in her lap as she balled her fingers into fists.

“I didn’t like being told no. I didn’t see why I should be restricted. There was a slave on a nearby estate. I knew she was a mage because the lord there was a friend of my uncle’s, and he had bragged that he held her there by keeping her daughter as a hostage. I made a deal with her.

“For her knowledge, I agreed to free her daughter The spell I used to steal this” – she indicated the sphere – “was one of the things I learned from her I’ve spent many years draining the magical knowledge of human mages.”

“You freed a slave!” Lyrralt gasped, more aghast a that revelation than any other.

“Of course not,” she said coolly, standing and taking the sphere to the window. “I didn’t have to, once I learned this spell.”

On the sill beneath the etched glass was a collection of crystals and spheres and rocks, all arranged neatly, sitting in brass holders or dangling from silk thread. She took a larger crystal, placed it in an empty stand, and laid the Song of History in its place. “What do you think?”

Among the grouping of more colorful rocks on the sill of Jyrbian’s window, the sphere was plain and unremarkable. He slipped an arm about Khallayne’s waist. “He’ll never know it’s there. Unless we’re discovered and have cause to reveal it.”

Chapter 4

A FRIEND OF TREACHERY

From his position on the receiving platform, Lord Teragrym motioned for Jyrbian to sit on the level below in front of him. It would not do to have the younger Ogre tower over him.

In the presence of Teragrym, Jyrbian’s joviality and brashness was dampened into watchful respect. Teragrym, who had kept his seat on the Ruling Council longer than any other because he was not careless, observed that Jyrbian bore watching.

Jyrbian sat, bowing before and after he had lowered himself to the floor, feet and lower legs folded under his thighs. With a negligent flick of his wrists, he arranged the vestrobe he wore over simple tunic and pants into a fan of cloth. The movement showed surprising grace for one so large and appeared totally unself-conscious, as if he did it without consideration for his appearance.

The audience room into which he had been received was not large, but it was opulent. Thick carpets warmed the stone floor. Painted screens and tapestries and heavy curtains left almost nothing of the stone walls visible. The furniture was sparse, consisting only of a stool for Teragrym, a low, heavily carved table at his elbow, and a writing desk farther back on the platform.

Jyrbian glanced surreptitiously about, taking in the luxury, the understated elegance. He could imagine himself quite easily in a cozy setting like this.

“My daughter has mentioned to me that, aware of my interest in what is happening in Khal-Theraxian, you have volunteered to make a visit there and report back to me.”

Jyrbian smiled, then modified the expression. “Yes, Lord. I would be pleased and honored to be of service.”

“And what would you expect in return for this service?”

Jyrbian’s pulse accelerated as the answer leapt to his throat: power, prestige, wealth, permanence, but he didn’t voice that thought. “I ask nothing, Lord. I’m honored to simply serve.”

Teragrym smiled. The younger one stared down at the patterned carpet and appeared deferential, but Teragrym knew the avarice in his soul, the envy in his heart. Teragrym, too, had been a second son, brighter and bolder and more worthy than his firstborn brother. “There is a hunger in you, young Jyrbian. It is not so well disguised as you think,” he added when Jyrbian’s head came up with whiplash speed, his silver eyes a mere hint of evil in the darkness of his face. “The journey could be dangerous.”

Teragrym was about to add, “Very dangerous,” but Jyrbian interrupted. “I know about the attacks on the mountain trails.”

“That report was for the Ruling Council exclusively. How do you know?”

Jyrbian merely shrugged. “There’s always talk.”

Teragrym’s estimation of Jyrbian increased a notch. “Very well, so you know of the attacks, which seem to be increasing in our mountains. Will you, therefore, take a company of guards with you?”

“I would not be likely to inspire the governor’s confidence riding into Khal-Theraxian surrounded by guardsmen. Besides,” Jyrbian scoffed, “I am as well trained as any guard. I will go alone. Or perhaps as one of a small party. I know someone who is acquainted with the governor’s daughter. Perhaps we might pay a social call.”

“I approve.” Teragrym nodded slowly. “Surely there is something you would ask? Such service should not go unrewarded.”

Jyrbian shook his head. He had thought it through carefully before he came. If he asked for something specific, that would be all he received. If he didn’t specify, there would be no boundaries on what he might receive, should his errand prove worthwhile. “If the lord would feel me deserving of reward, naturally I would be honored. But I would also be honored simply to be of service.”

Teragrym smiled again, almost as if he could read the calculations going on in Jyrbian’s mind. “Very well. I accept your offer to serve. And I’ll expect you to report back to me – and only to me.”

Jyrbian nodded stiffly.

“I need to know —” Teragrym paused, considering. “I need to know everything. Be observant. I want to know what Igraine is doing to increase the production in his mines. I need to know if he says anything that could be considered treasonous.”

“Treasonous?” Jyrbian shifted forward, poised eagerly for what would come next.

“That is a rumor we have heard. But whether it is exaggeration or truth …” Teragrym shrugged. “The line between acting for the good of all and the good of oneself is sometimes subtle. Sometimes it is the same thing. I must have enough information to judge for myself. I must know what is said, and what is not said.”

Teragrym waited a moment, scrutinizing Jyrbian, then dismissed him.

Jyrbian was so excited he could barely maintain his poise until he was out of Teragrym’s sight. The reward for such a task should be excellent indeed! As he exited into the hallway, he was beaming so broadly that the female Ogre who was waiting to enter paused in surprise in the doorway.

She watched him until he turned a corner, and hesitated even a moment longer.

“Kaede?”

Teragrym’s voice snapped her back to the present and into the room.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Kaede bowed and sank to her knees, knowing how Teragrym hated having someone loom over him. “Lord, forgive my unannounced arrival, but I have come to ask a favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

Kaede clasped her hands in her lap to cover her agitation. “I have come to ask your permission to right a wrong that has been done my family.”

*

Lyrralt paused inside the door of his apartment. He lit the candles with a few words and a flick of his wrist. His rooms were larger than Jyrbian’s but located on the far side of the hallway, so he was without windows.

He had spent his morning walking the cold hallways of the castle, listening in on conversations, joining groups of Ogres to exclaim in dismay at the news. The Keeper could not be awakened. She lay as if dead, but breathing, and no one had been able to rouse her. He had started for Khallayne’s rooms but wound up in his own instead. The Ogre female with whom he’d passed his night after Khallayne pleaded tiredness was gone from the room, leaving not even a trace of scent, less of memory.

He possessed no wall hangings to brighten the dark room. He owned no carpets on his floors to dispel the coldness that emanated from the very bones of the old castle. He preferred things that way. He preferred the severe beauty of the gray stone walls, the stingy light, and he filled his space with beautiful, delicate things instead of expensive ones.

On an ornately carved table against the back wall was a marble water bowl. He lifted it carefully, rinsed his mouth, and spat into a smaller bowl exactly like it. He dampened his ears and eyelids.

Shivering in the cool air, he slipped out of his long robe and replaced the garment with a sleeveless praying robe, then settled before the fire to pray, to ask for guidance, to learn what Hiddukel, God of Wealth and Accumulation, thought of his impending good fortune.

*

Khallayne was dreaming of magic, of spells so powerful that her mind could barely contain them.

“Khallayne, wake up! Wake up!”

The voice penetrated her consciousness, jarring her awake even as a hand on her shoulder shook her. “Wake up!”

She opened her eyes to the warm, golden sunlight of a fall morning.

Silhouetted in the light, Lyrralt was leaning over her, his face in shadow. “Wake up,” he repeated.

Groggily, she covered her eyes with her hand. What time was it? Had he been there all night, in her apartments? Then she remembered that he hadn’t and why he hadn’t. He had wanted to stay, but she had talked him out of it because she had wanted to distance herself from him.

“Are you awake?”

The question finally got through to her, and she sat up, pulling the down coverlet up over her breasts.

His face, now that she could see it, was a study in displeasure, brow pulled low, eyes narrowed and dark.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They discovered the Keeper this morning. It’s all over the castle.”

Her heart gave a thump. She fought the fear she felt, remembering the steps she had taken to protect herself, thinking quickly that she must order Lyrralt from her room. Get him as far away, as quickly as possible.

The last thing she had done, before they had slipped away from the Keeper’s apartment the night before, was work a “masking” spell, a kind of camouflaging of her presence. But the essence of Lyrralt, the magical scent that a really good mage could find if he or she knew how, that she had left. Just in case. “So?”

“They can’t wake her. It’s like she’s dead, but still breathing.”

“Do they suspect magic?”

“Not yet. Everyone seems to feel that it’s an illness, or that she’s simply so old. But they will figure it out, won’t they?”

She relaxed against the pillows, the cover spilling off her shoulders, exposing her lovely skin. “What do you mean?”

His fingers clenched. He longed to drag her from the soft bed and dash her head against the wall! “You’ve done something. Something to lead them to me!”

“Of course I haven’t,” she protested immediately. “Why would you even think such a thing?”

He walked to the fireplace and murmured an incantation. Small flames licked up from the embers and rapidly grew to a small, crackling fire. The runes on his shoulder, and the new figures below on his arm, itched. “I have been warned of treachery.”

Khallayne reached for her robe, slipped it on as she climbed out of bed. The silk kimono was cool and soft on her skin and very pleasing to the eye.

Despite his anger, Lyrralt’s gaze was drawn to her, which irritated him even more.

She stretched, reaching for the ceiling. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said lazily. “We’re perfectly safe. The Keeper won’t wake. No one will ever know what we did, except Teragrym. And he will never tell.” She shrugged, watching the way his eyes followed the movement of her breasts under the loosely wrapped robe. “All the others were like this. After I took what I wanted, they slept. Then they died.”

She opened the door of a wardrobe and selected one of the tunics hanging within. “Now all we have to do is wait. After she’s dead, the History is ours to bargain with.”

He was across the room in an instant, his fingers squeezing her upper arm until he could feel the hardness of bone beneath the flesh. “That was a pretty speech, but I’m not convinced. Hiddukel does not lightly offer his counsel! Be warned, if I am suspected of this crime, I will not go to the dungeons alone! And you have more to lose than I.”

Despite the pain, she didn’t wince. He could have pinched the limb off and still she would not have allowed him the satisfaction of seeing her show pain. “But you’re being foolish to think I would risk telling anyone. There is too much to lose. Too much to gain. Be warned yourself, I do not take lightly to threats!”

She stopped and glared at his hand. A moment later, a sharp pain shot up his arm. Lyrralt snatched his hand away and stepped back.

She pushed so close he could feel her hot breath on his face. “Do not touch me so again!”

“My apologies.” He grinned, admiring her in spite of himself, shaking his hand to ease the stinging of it. He executed a mocking little bow and slammed the door loudly as he exited her bedroom.

*

The morning sun was up over the castle wall, the last of the bags loaded onto the horses, when Khallayne strode into the courtyard.

Jyrbian paused to watch her as she came down the steps and across the flagstones, leaving Lyrralt to finish checking the saddle and packs on their horses.

“Are we ready?” she asked, tossing her saddlebags across the rump of her gray gelding.

Lyrralt, squatting to check the hooves of his horse, stood up so quickly that the animal shied sideways. His gaze locked with Khallayne’s, his brow furrowing with surprise and anger.

“I’ve been ready since sunrise.” Jyrbian said. “We’ll leave as soon as everyone is here.”

Without taking her eyes from Lyrralt, she asked, “Everyone?”

“You know Briah, don’t you? She’s going, and her sister, Nylora. And Tenaj and those two cousins of hers. I can never remember their names.”

As if summoned by their mentioning, the remainder of the group came trooping down the steps, bright laughter and conversation rumbling up into the morning sky. They were a polychromatic lot, with skin tones ranging from almost as pale as Khallayne to deep sea green. All shades of silver hair, from Briah’s bright mercury to the cousins’ soft pewter, were also represented.

With Jyrbian distracted, matching everyone up with their horses, Lyrralt sidled around to Khallayne.

“When did you decide to join this expedition?” she asked, her voice cold and disapproving.

“When it occurred to me I would be safer away from the castle for a while.”

Khallayne caught up her horse’s reins. “There is no place you’d be safe if I truly wanted to implicate you!” she hissed. “I included you because I thought we shared a common interest. A common goal.”

Lyrralt smiled at the others but said to her out of the corner of his mouth, “I became disturbed when the Keeper didn’t die in a day or so, as you said she would. Now I find you leaving the city with my brother.” He held out his hand, offering to assist her in mounting her horse, thinking how much he would instead like to pitch her across the horse and watch her brains spill out onto the flagstones.

Khallayne pushed his hand out of her way and mounted without any help. “I planned since the night of the party to visit Khal-Theraxian. Jyrbian provided a convenient means to get there.”

“Are we riding, or are you going to talk all day?” Jyrbian interrupted, riding toward them on his huge stallion. “At this rate, we’ll just clear the city gates by nightfall.” He reined the horse around and headed toward the southern gate.

With a quick glance at Khallayne, Lyrralt mounted. Lagging as the others went ahead, he guided his horse close to hers.

After a moment, she sighed. “Lyrralt, the Keeper will die. No one will ever know we stole the History.

“And even if the truth is discovered, Jyrbian will take the blame.” She turned her unblinking gaze at him, her eyes as black as a starless night, yet as bright as starshine. Slanting, alien eyes. Depthless, ruthless. “I think you’d be glad to have him out of the way. I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to you.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “I’ll be watching you,” he said simply, without rancor, before he cantered ahead.

The castle of Takar was set high on a mountainside overlooking the crescent of city wrapped around its base and the open valley beyond, site of many of the Ruling Council’s estates.

Before the Battle of Denharben, Takar had been one of four cities in which the king resided. He had traveled between Takar, Thorad, Bloten and Persopholus, giving equal time and attention to each; and for a time, after the Ruling Council had solidified its position and taken power in the king’s name, its members, too, had kept up travel between the cities. But the key to their power had been the relocation of their enemies to the outlying districts, where lesser properties were located, while ownership of the best provinces and estates went to their strongest supporters. Takar had been the main seat of power ever since.

As the travelers descended through a series of switchbacks, the magnificent view of the valley and the purple mountains in the distance slowly disappeared, and they entered the city proper.

Passing through a magnificent stone archway inlaid with bronze panels depicting battles of old, they rode into what the commoners covertly called “the hostage district.” It was so called because the council, in another step toward gaining control, insisted that the families of the rich and powerful occupy their city homes year round. The homes, fashioned of stone with high garden walls of mud brick, were nearly as magnificent as the private quarters in the castle, and certainly more roomy.

Lyrralt rode ahead, joining Jyrbian at the front of the group.

The populace had long been awake by the time they rode through the city, which was filled with the bustle and noise of everyday trade. Takar’s wealth lay in commerce, the trade of riches from the surrounding areas, ore and gems from the mines, foodstuffs from the rich valley farms, slaves from the faraway plains.

Near the southern wall of the city was the huge coliseum where games and slave battles drew Ogres from miles around. It loomed, blotting out the sun, a massive bowl dropped down among the dwellings. The group shivered in its enormous shadow as they passed.

Then they were through the southern gate and into bright, golden sunlight.

For over two hours, they rode south along a ridge overlooking the Takar Valley, then they veered to the east and up sloping trails. This led them into the forests and higher ridges, where they would make camp for the night.

Their companionable chatter silenced the twitter of birds and sent small animals scurrying through the thick underbrush.

*

R’ksis emerged in stages, skittering out into the sunlight, then dipping back into darkness. Each time, she stayed out longer. Finally, clinging to the shady side of the trees, she remained above, but not far from the mouth of the cave. No disr wanted to leave the dark, cool safety of its underground home.

The world outside was thick forest. Golden leaves overhead filtered the bright light. Scrubby bushes and a thick carpet of decaying leaves lay underfoot. The boulders that hid the entrance to the subterranean home had a coating of gray-green fungus. R’ksis scraped some off with a crescent-shaped claw and stuck the appendage in her mouth.

She spat it out. Compared to the rich, moldy taste of such food from beneath, it had little taste. It was sun-spoiled. It was not what she and the others had braved the surface for, anyway.

R’ksis sniffed, testing the air. Blood. Sweat. The odor of horse and Ogres hung in the air, scenting the forest. “The Old Ones,” she nearly hissed, motioning for the males to come forward.

They stayed inside, in the comforting darkness. When she motioned again, they hissed and clicked their claws against the rock walls. “Light bright. Too bright. Hurt eyes. Sun too warm,” they protested.

With an oath, she left them, knowing they would follow.

The scent of the Old Ones thinned as she moved through the forest. She adjusted her course. By the time she’d picked up the trail once more, the ten males had caught up. They had taken the time to roll on the ground, camouflaging their pasty green flesh.

She nodded her approval, then quickly flung handfuls of leaves and dirt across her own body.

“Food,” G’hes, the oldest male, clicked and hissed, sniffing. He sounded much more assured now.

“Old Ones!” She bent, scooped up a large rock and crushed it in her claws, as she would crush the Old Ones. The Ogres were an ancient enemy, thieves who lived above, yet forced their slaves to tunnel into the mountains – not to make homes, but to rob the earth.

“Old Ones taste good?” The youngest member of the party asked eagerly. S’rk was the only one of them who had never been above before. He stood completely upright, taller than the others, his compact body taut with excitement and fear.

The others hissed their pleasure. Ogres tasted even sweeter than the tunnelers, the slaves of the Ogres.

It took almost an hour to find the source of the lush blood scent. As they walked, trees and boulders thrust up through the earth’s surface, and dense patches of undergrowth, where the sun broke through the canopy of leaves, passed by unnoticed. It was all featureless terrain to eyes accustomed to the lush darkness of the underworld, to the beauty of dripping caverns.

As the scent of the Old Ones grew unbearably thick, G’hes, the oldest male, chortled, “Tribe be pleased.”

“First, catch,” she warned him.

*

Jyrbian ranged from the front of the procession, where Lyrralt rode silent and morose, to the back, where Khallayne did the same.

He joined her for the third time in as many hours, asking the same question he had before. “Why so glum? Isn’t this a beautiful day for a ride?” Then he loped ahead once more when she refused to talk with him. Then Tenaj called, “Quiet!”

They obeyed at once, because Tenaj was the hunter of the group, the one who spent long hours on the trails, in the forests.

Jyrbian waited for Tenaj to catch up with him, motioning the others past. “What?” He mouthed the word, making not a sound.

Tenaj glanced down the trail, the way they had come, then into the forest. Except for the unnatural quiet, which could easily be caused by their passing, everything appeared normal.

Except for that sense of someone – something. Not watching exactly, but waiting.

Tenaj shook her head. “Something,” she said quietly. “I don’t know.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Maybe I should ride back a ways, just to check things out.”

“Not too far, okay? There’ve been a couple of attacks on hunting parties on this trail. I don’t think we should get too spread out along here.”

Nodding agreement, Tenaj reined her stallion around.

She kept her hand on her sword as she rode toward Takar. The forest was too still, showing no signs of life, even though the party had passed by several minutes before. It made her jittery, and her horse, already half-wild, skittish.

Then she went around a turn, and there was the reason. Disr, four of them, on the trail! They blinked their pale, watery eyes. Dirt and leaves stuck to their slimy flesh. Probably more of them in the shade beyond, she thought. For a second, they gazed at her, eyes blazing with hatred and hunger. Then there was noise from the forest, and the dense, compact bodies moved in unison.

Tenaj turned and ran. “Disr!” she screamed, as soon as the others were in sight. “Disr! At least five of them!”

Khallayne was in the rear. She slowed her horse as she heard Tenaj yell and half-turned in the saddle.

From the left, something hit Khallayne’s arm. Something dense, but slick and large. Her breath left her lungs. She felt numbness shoot through her shoulder and arm. She cried out as the ground came toward her face with startling speed!

She struck the hard, packed earth, then glimpsed something dank and dense, with claws and a compact body, moving impossibly fast. Horses’ hooves danced near her eyes. Pain shot through her thigh, as if a knife had just ripped the flesh.

Screams sounded from above and in her own throat. Fear, warning, pain! An even more frightened scream came from a horse. The slimy thing, smelling of vinegar and rot, was upon her, tearing at her flesh. Everywhere it touched, pain.

Through the confusion, she heard someone scream her name. She heard a war cry, terrible yet reassuring. There was frenzied movement above her. Then away from her.

*

The Old One surprised them! The scent had been so strong, they hadn’t sensed the Ogre female on the trail. At a hiss from R’ksis, the group divided, scuttled back into the forest, and pursued, dropping to all fours for speed.

As they flanked the Old Ones, the scent of food was overpowering. The voices of their prey were raised in alarm, the hooves of their mounts sending a fear-filled vibration through the packed earth.

Leading her group, R’ksis attacked first, using the momentum of her speed to launch herself at the first Old One she encountered. The Ogre’s body was knocked from the saddle, falling heavily to the ground.

With the battle lust of the young, S’rk was upon the stunned Ogre in an instant. He ripped at the leg of the creature, opening the flesh. Ripped again with his jagged fangs.

The Ogre screamed, flailed weakly at her attacker, then collapsed. To R’ksis, the sound of her enemy’s pain was as welcome as home; the scent of the warm, steaming blood was sweet.

A terrible screech rent the air as S’rk reached again for the fallen Ogre. R’ksis glanced up to see a large Old One leap to the ground. A male, from the looks of it, drew his sword as he jumped. Another Ogre, the one from the trail, joined him.

The very sight of them infuriated her. Meal forgotten, R’ksis jumped up to meet them. Her nostrils flared as she caught the scent of Ogre sweat, of fear. And then the Ogres were upon her!

R’ksis swiped at the bigger one, claws extended to their full range. But her reach couldn’t match that of the Ogre’s sword. The blade struck her a glancing blow, bouncing off the natural armor plates covering her shoulders.

The Ogre attacked again, swinging his sword in a low, whistling arc. R’ksis rolled and dove between the two attackers, slashing at their legs. They wheeled with her, and the female’s blade sang in the air above R’ksis’s head. She backed away as they split, trying to flank her.

All about her were the sounds of battle. The hissing and clicking of attacking disr. The scream of a wounded animal. The hiss of a dying disr.

The Ogres attacked in unison, and R’ksis ducked beneath the swinging weapons. The female changed her tactic, lunging forward with one foot and thrusting with her sword. R’ksis stumbled back, falling out of range of the sword.

Two of her males were dead, their bodies crumpled in the sunlight. But across the path, G’hes was closing in on a female Old One, his long, sharp tongue tasting the air in anticipation.

S’rk joined the fight, leaping in from the side.

R’ksis heard the female Ogre’s sword bite into the thick covering on S’rk’s back. He rolled and came to his feet, eyes clenched with pain.

R’ksis met their assailants alone, protecting S’rk with her body. She stumbled backward, avoiding a sword thrust, would have fallen but for S’rk. His hands were trembling. She could smell the sharp odor of disr blood.

“Run, youngest! Run far!” She pushed him, just as the male Ogre swung. The blade, wicked and gleaming, missed her, missed S’rk. Then, incredibly, reversed its direction, slicing back. The edge, as sharp as disr claws, bit into S’rk’s throat. The youngest one gurgled, gazed up at her as he fell.

Just as she saw the life dim in S’rk’s eyes, she heard G’hes’s death cry, saw him fall, clutching at his chest. Before the Ogres could attack again, she screamed a wordless warning of retreat to those of her pack still standing. Then she blended into the forest, so quickly that the Ogres couldn’t respond.

*

Topsy turvy, the sky tilted, trees growing sideways.

Khallayne saw Jyrbian battling a nightmare, a thing with armor plates on its rubbery, four-legged body, with eyes as red as Lunitari. It reared up on its hind legs and stood as an Ogre, met him with hissing and clicking, like a beetle.

Jyrbian swung with his sword. Blood, as red and thick as any Ogre’s, spurted from the creature’s neck. It choked and crumpled. Another creature, standing near Tenaj, darted a panicked glance about, then melted back into the forest.

The sky tilted sickeningly again. Khallayne remembered no more.

She woke with dirt clogging her nostrils and the smell of something rotten mixed with her own blood. The hands that were turning her over were not gentle, and pain throbbed dully in her shoulder, thigh, and arms. Voices, warped and only vaguely recognizable, filtered through to her mind.

“Careful.”

“How bad is it?”

“Don’t touch the slime around the bites! It’s poisonous.”

“Tenaj, Levin, stand guard.”

“We need to get moving. There may be more.”

This voice she recognized as Briah’s, and she struggled to sit up. But hands held her down.

“How bad?” another voice insisted again.

“Can you heal her?”

“Yes.” The hands probed the wound on her thigh, sending bursts of pain like glass shards rocketing up her leg. “But there will be a price.”

She gasped aloud with pain.

“Do you understand, Khallayne? Do you agree? There is always a price from the gods for a healing.”

At last, she knew the voice, knew the hands. She opened her eyes and stared into the face of Lyrralt.

“I can heal you if Hiddukel grants it, but there will be a price. Sooner or later, he will ask something of you and you will have to give it. Do you understand?”

“Just do it, Lyrralt!” Jyrbian snapped. “Do you think she has any choice?”

Now Jyrbian’s face, shining with sweat, eyes glazed, exhilarated with battle lust, came into view. “That thing ripped her leg open almost to the bone. If she doesn’t bleed to death, the disr poison will kill her. Get on with it.”

Khallayne caught the sleeve of Lyrralt’s tunic, remembering the feel of the runes on his skin. To whom would the price have to be paid? “I agree.”

He laid his hands on her and raised his eyes to the sky, lips moving. He twitched. His fingers tightened, then relaxed.

The pain surged, worse than anything she’d ever dreamed. As she opened her mouth to scream, she felt her flesh ripple, join, torn edge against torn edge, and begin to knit.

Chapter 5

PASSING OF THE GIFT

The estate of Lord Igraine, called Khalever, after his daughter, was different from any Jyrbian had ever seen.

“What is it? Do you feel it?” he murmured to Khallayne, who rode behind him, her arms linked around his waist.

The creature in the forest had killed her horse, and since no one had wanted to turn back, they had been taking turns riding double.

Khallayne shook her head. “I don’t know.” Peace, quiet, contentment were the words that came to her.

There were sounds aplenty, wind in the trees, bees, birds, a door slamming, the nickering of their horses, and the welcoming neigh of one of Igraine’s animals, but quiet was still the sense of it. Quiet … but something missing … She looked about uneasily, puzzled, as her fingers clutched Jyrbian tightly.

At the end of the long drive stood the main house, tan stone decorated with insets of pinkish shale around the sparkling windows. Gently rolling fields of grain stretched away toward the hills, verdant and lush in the summer sun.

Lord Igraine, governor of Khal-Theraxian himself, came out onto the wide porch to greet them. He was small for an Ogre, a good two hands shorter than Jyrbian, and simply dressed. His skin was a rich green. His eyes crinkled as he smiled, welcoming them to his home. “It is always a pleasure to have visitors from Takar. How was your trip? What is the news of court?”

Nylora and Briah both spoke at once of the attack in the forest and Jyrbian’s bravery in dispatching the danger, of the death of Khallayne’s horse and the hardship of riding double, of the Keeper’s sudden sleep.

Igraine smiled through all of it, turning his head from person to person, seemingly fascinated.

As he listened to each person in turn, Igraine gave them such attention that each felt all-important. His demeanor was compelling. Jyrbian had to study the technique, for surely anyone could learn to feign such intense interest.

“How terrible!” Igraine pulled a sad, shocked face when told of the Keeper. And, “I hope you are not too badly shaken,” when told of what had happened to Khallayne and her horse.

The group grew silent as they waited for Khallayne to respond. Though nothing had been said, the silence between Khallayne and Lyrralt had grown increasingly uncomfortable over the last three days.

“I’m fine,” she said, then, because everyone still waited, she added, “Lord Lyrralt healed me.” She could barely say the disgusting words.

“A healer!” Igraine’s gaze settled on Lyrralt, on the robe with one long sleeve. “A cleric of Hiddukel. Honored Sir, you are welcome in my home.”

Lyrralt’s expression was smug.

Jyrbian’s frown drew his brows almost together.

Igraine made an expansive gesture that included his house and the surrounding areas. “You are all welcome in my home.”

The chatter started immediately, Nylora and the cousins exclaiming at the loveliness of Igraine’s estate and about parties and such at court. Khallayne cut through the babble without raising her voice. “You are the news of the court, Lord Igraine. Everyone is talking of your new prosperity and wondering how such a thing is possible.”

The crinkles around Igraine’s eyes grew even deeper as his smile broadened. “Lady, I should be glad to tell you all.” He bowed low over her hand as she passed by him and entered the large foyer.

Jyrbian glared at the back of her head and imagined his fingers closing around her lovely neck. It wasn’t that he minded her bluntness with the governor, but that she had said such things in front of all the others! Such matters should be discreet. And he wanted to be able to report back to Teragrym, without word-of-mouth stealing his thunder.

At the same time he admired her agile mind, her smooth tongue. He wished he could extract both from her head, slowly, painfully. “I, too, would be interested in hearing your story,” he said quickly, wiping the perturbed expression off his face for the benefit of his host.

“Yes, of course. Come inside.” As Igraine turned, a lovely young woman, tiny for an Ogre and unusually delicate, stepped into his path. He caught her hand and drew her through the door. “Meet my daughter, Everlyn, who is really the beginning of and the reason for my tale.”

Jyrbian knew his eyes widened and his smile came alive, but he was unable to control his reaction to the sight of Everlyn.

She was as delicate as a flower, as bright and unblemished as the purest of crystals. Her eyes were the silver green of sunlight sparkling on a clear water, her shining hair almost too thick against her small face. Though she was at least two hundred fifty years old, he guessed, fully grown, the top of her head barely reached his chin. Even more intriguing, she smiled with an expression unlike anything he had ever seen in his life, an enigma he could not solve.

Jyrbian bowed low. “If I hear no story at all, this trip will not be a loss.”

Instead of the ardent response he expected, she smiled mysteriously and glanced away from the intensity in his eyes, murmuring a thank you for the compliment.

Playing the part of gracious host, Igraine led them into a large, cool room outfitted as an office. With its heavy oak walls, it would have been dark but for the gallery of tall windows that looked out over the back of the estate. The ceiling was painted the color of the night sky, and silver had been worked into it in the pattern of the constellations of the gods.

As everyone exclaimed at the beauty of the room and asked how the slaves had created the decoration, Khallayne strolled along the windows and gazed out toward the mountains that ringed the perimeter of Igraine’s property.

Careful to make sure she was unobserved, Khallayne whispered the words to a “seeing” spell, shivering as the power rose up and skittered along her nerves. As the power took hold, she realized what it was about Igraine’s estate she found so disquieting. Her mouth fell open.

“What is it?” Jyrbian asked. He had Everlyn’s hand tucked firmly through his arm and was leading her along the windows, admiring the view. He had come up behind Khallayne.

Khallayne was so surprised, so astounded, she spoke without taking note of Everlyn. “Where are the wards?” She gestured outside, toward the estate. “There are no wards, nothing, to prevent the escape of the slaves. There aren’t even any guards!”

Jyrbian scanned all that was visible through the tall windows, but he didn’t really need to confirm her news. She was right. That was what felt so odd about the place! No guards.

Although Igraine’s personal wealth originated from inheritance, it was well known that the largest part of his income came from his mines, which lay north of his estate. The majority of his guards would naturally be stationed in the mountains. But Jyrbian still expected to see at least a handful of guards around the grounds. Honor guards in fancy dress, if nothing else. Or slave guards, especially near the slaves’ quarters. Yet there were none. None as far as he could see.

Another oddity. The slaves’ quarters were not usually so close to the main house. But he could see the stone huts of the slaves – with glistening thatched roofs, not the miserable, ugly hovels he expected. These were clean, almost picturesque, set against the backdrop of slate-gray mountains, green fields, and blue sky. Beside several of the dwellings, humans worked with rakes and hoes in tiny gardens. Human children, their grotesque little bowed legs bare, played in the nearby dirt. A snatch of human song, low and unlovely, carried on the breeze.

It seemed almost profane.

“You are admiring my estate?” Igraine spoke from behind them.

Jyrbian started, wondering how long the Ogre had been standing there, how much of their observations he had overheard. “We were noticing that you do not guard your slaves, neither with wards nor sentries.”

“Because my slaves are happy here. They do not require wards, magical or otherwise.”

“Happy?” Khallayne sampled the word on her tongue. Slaves were not happy or unhappy. They were simply slaves. “How is this unusual state achieved?”

“It has been the best kept secret in our world.” Igraine laughed. “I will share what I have learned if you truly seek knowledge. But I caution you, what I say will not be easy to understand at first. It will go against many of the things you have been taught, many of the things you believe. You must be willing to listen with an open mind. An open heart.”

He looked first at Jyrbian, then at Khallayne, waiting for their signal to continue.

Jyrbian wanted to learn all he could for Teragrym and then shut his ears, hear no more. He nodded for Igraine to continue, as did Khallayne.

“Very well. What I have learned is this.” Igraine pushed open the tall windows before them, and a breeze cooled by high mountain snows wafted in. “Choice.”

Lyrralt, who had joined them, looked puzzled, Khallayne felt sure Igraine was toying with them. They stole glances at each other to reassure themselves they had heard correctly.

“All beings, be they Ogre or human or elf, master or slave, have choices.”

“You joke with us, Lord,” Jyrbian said, careful to keep his voice respectful. “Of course, we have choices. What has this to do with your prosperity?”

“You do not understand.” Igraine noticed that most of the group had drifted over. “Come, sit down. Let me tell you the story of how this happened. Then you will understand what I mean.” He herded them toward the circle of chairs around the fireplace.

When they were settled, he told his story, speaking in a solemn and poignant voice of the mine, of the groaning and crying of the earth, of the death cry of his daughter, of all that had happened to tear the blindness from his heart. Overcome with emotion, he paused for a long moment. When he continued, his tone had changed into one of bitterness and self-recrimination. “In my selfishness, my greed, I ordered the slaves out. The sides of the tunnel were still shifting, the ceiling still falling. They were too valuable to risk.”

“But that was a rational assumption,” Nylora protested. She was seconded with nods from most of those present. “What else could you have done?”

“I could have tried to save my daughter, as one of my slaves did. In spite of my orders, he rallied the other slaves. With bare hands, they held back the sliding rock while others ran for beams to shore up the roof.

“They braced the beams with their bodies while he dug me free,” Everlyn said softly and shivered. “It was terrible in that little space, with the rocks pressing down on me. The air was choked with dust. I could feel blood on my face.” She shuddered.

“All this simply because Everlyn wanted to mine a piece of bloodstone for herself.” Igraine pointed at his daughter, frowned sternly, but the frown gave way to a bittersweet smile.

Khallayne looked around at the others’ rapt faces. They didn’t understand.

“Bloodstone? What is that?” This from Briah.

Igraine pointed to a hand-sized chunk of rock in a brass stand on the mantel. “A rock. A plain rock, too soft for building, too ugly for jewelry. Who but Everlyn would even want one? Who but my strange daughter, who collects such rocks and stones!”

After glancing at Everlyn for permission, Khallayne reached to pick up the bloodstone. It was the size of a potato, smoky, so dark it seemed to suck in the light and hold it, and was shot through with fat streaks of red that looked like drops of blood.

It was, as Igraine had said, quite ugly, shiny, as if had been polished, but rough to the touch. Khallayne offered to pass it to the others, but only Jyrbian held out his hand.

“I myself am a collector of crystals,” he said, turning the rock in the light.

Everlyn smiled shyly, took the stone, cradling it in her small hands, and again glanced away from the interest shining in his eyes.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of slave disobedience bearing good results,” Briah said sharply.

Lyrralt struggled to comprehend the story, trying to piece together the meaning of it. He realized there was more to it, something else Igraine was waiting for them to grasp. His arm throbbed, the runes tingling, a grim sensation. “There’s more,” he said, almost in a rasp.

Igraine nodded. “I couldn’t understand why a slave would disobey so flagrantly, why he would choose the life of another over his own.”

Lyrralt made the leap before the others. “You didn’t destroy him,” he guessed.

Khallayne and Jyrbian both looked at Igraine with amazed expressions. Igraine smiled back. “How could I?” he said simply.

“But he disobeyed,” Khallayne protested. “The penalty is death.”

“He saved the life of my only child.”

“But the law —”

“Eadamm saved my life!” Everlyn interrupted hotly, a fierce expression on her face.

“Shhh.” Igraine quieted her. “It is not easy to understand.”

“No, I don’t understand,” Briah insisted. “The slave disobeyed, no matter the consequence. If he was not put to death …” For a moment, she was quiet, pondering her next words. “If he was not put to death, then you broke the law. Your broke the law on behalf of a slave.”

“I did not break the law.”

“Then the slave was executed?”

“I sentenced Eadamm to death at my whim.”

“And your whim has not yet transpired?” Jyrbian guessed.

“No. And I doubt that it will. Eadamm not only saved Everlyn, but when I spared him, he proved a natural leader. He organized the other slaves. In one month, they took as much ore from the low mines, as many gems from the high mines, as they previously had in two months.”

“Doubled?” Jyrbian breathed deeply in disbelief. “Your production has doubled?”

Igraine had told the story before. He had seen the same expressions flit across the faces of his neighbors, his relatives, his guests. First anger, disbelief, then awe and finally greed.

“There’s more. When I saw this happen, I tried an experiment. I loosened the restrictions on the slaves. I gave them tiny freedoms, inconsequential things, and again they worked harder. They produced more. This summer, I allowed the huts and the gardens you can see from the windows. In the meantime, my profits have tripled.”

Now avarice gleamed at him from five pairs of eyes – all except Lyrralt’s and Khallayne’s.

Jyrbian thought of his family’s land, much like Igraine’s, though on a smaller scale: lush farmland backed up to cliffs and mountains riddled with mines, many of them unplumbed. To triple the output! He thought of Ogre cities built entirely of the valuable green stone shot through with tans and grays and pewters, which came from the rocky hills like those behind his home.

“We must have refreshments,” Igraine said, changing his tone and standing. “Everlyn, why don’t you take everyone on a tour of the house? I’m sure they’d like to see our excellent examples of elven sculpture.”

Lyrralt glanced up and found Igraine’s gaze fixed intently upon him. Lyrralt suddenly felt the runes on his arm dance feverishly.

Dutifully, Khallayne stood to join the others, but stepped through the tall windows onto the porch instead. The sun was setting, the land beginning to take on the shadows of darkness. Toward the slave huts, the sparkle of lantern light came to life.

It took a moment for her to understand why the lantern glow seemed so out of place, then she realized that on her uncle’s estate the slaves were not given lanterns in their quarters. At nightfall, if they weren’t working, they were expected to rest for the coming day.

As she stood there, breathing the fresh, cool air, a silhouetted figure eased out of a door at the other end of the gallery and into the shadows of the yard, a woman slave with a shawl draped over her head.

Trying to see where the woman went, Khallayne didn’t hear Igraine slip up behind her until he had touched her arm. “Are you not hungry, Lady?”

She started, then relaxed, smiling apologetically. “I was only admiring your estate, Lord. And noticing how odd it seems to see lights in the slave huts.”

“Yes, it is. But they appreciate having a little extra time for themselves in the evening. And the amount of oil they may use is rationed. In the end, I gain more than I lose.”

She looked pensively at the lantern-lit windows again before turning to him. “What you’re doing is very dangerous, isn’t it?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“In Takar, I’ve heard things said,” she continued. “They’re jealous of your success, and perhaps a little afraid of it. There are some who say the number of runaway slaves has increased dramatically since you began your program. We were warned to be careful on the trails.”

“But you experienced no trouble,” he admonished gently, “not from slaves anyway. And believe me, I have not had a runaway since last summer. You know how the court is for starting rumors. Perhaps others cannot control their slaves. If so, surely it is no concern or fault of mine?”

He certainly was persuasive. She had to grant him that. “Yes, of course, you’re right.”

“Lady Khallayne, many have come to hear of my success. They go away changed or confused or even angry. There is very little in between. Yet I had the feeling you were mostly disappointed with my explanations.”

“Lord, I hope I’ve given no insult —”

“None,” he said. “But I have the feeling you didn’t really come here for the same reason as everyone else anyway.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well,” he admitted, laughing. “Lord Jyrbian did tell me you do not own an estate. Of what use would my management techniques be to you?”

He walked off into the shadows and seated himself on a long, low settee. “Come.” He patted the soft cushion on the seat. “Tell me why you have come so far to meet me.”

Everything about him, his voice, his open manner, his beguiling tone, the way he sat patiently, quietly waiting, invited her to confide in him. She strode to the settee and sat down beside him. “Truthfully, Lord —”

“Igraine,” he interrupted. “Just Igraine.”

For a moment, she was taken aback by such familiarity, but there was nothing insincere about Igraine. “Igraine.” She tried the word and found the sound of it, like its owner, forthright and comforting. “I did come to hear your tale, to learn how you’ve become so successful, but I had thought …”

He waited in silence for her to continue. She felt his entire attention was hers.

“I thought the reason for your success would be magical in nature.”

He straightened.

She felt a thrill of triumph to have startled him.

“Magic! You thought I had increased my profits by magic?”

“I … hoped,” she admitted. Tensely she waited for his reaction.

“Jyrbian did not say you were of a Ruling Family.”

“I’m not.” She drew one leg up on the settee so that she could face him. “But I know a lot. And I want so badly to learn more. I think I could be so —”

She stopped when she realized what she’d confessed. She tensed as he looked her over, as his lips moved. The scrutiny of the spell he cast passed over her like fingers on her skin, on her very bones. The sensation lasted only a moment, then was gone.

“Yes,” he mused. “Very powerful. Well, Khallayne … My methods for running this province are not magical. And I am not of a Ruling Family, but as governor I have been allowed some leeway. I will be glad to teach you what I know.”

In the minutes since they had started talking, the sun had set. Khallayne knew he couldn’t see the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks, the dilation of her pupils, but surely he could feel the heat, hear the pounding of her heart. “You will?” Then immediately, “Why?”

He stood, reaching down to pull her up. “As you said, there are those who do not appreciate my ways. I believe there are dark days coming, for me and for all the Ogres. I think an ally such as yourself would be most beneficial.”

“What would I have to do?”

“Help me spread the word. Help me change the world. Be my friend. I can use someone as powerful, as persuasive, as you.”

He sounded almost insane. She had never encountered anyone like him before, and she wondered if perhaps he were using some sort of spell to influence her, because, lunacy and all, she wanted nothing so much as to do as he said.

“I don’t think the world needs changing, but I do want to learn the magic.”

Igraine clasped her shoulders and smiled at her.

“Perhaps I already can help you,” she continued. “With this warning. As governor, you report to Lady Enna, correct? And the profits of the province must be tithed to her?”

Igraine nodded.

“And the other ruling members might be … threatened by your success?”

Again he nodded.

She leaned close and said in an almost-whisper, “Then I think you should know that Jyrbian has come at the behest of Teragrym.”

*

Jyrbian looked up and frowned as Igraine strolled into the dining room with Khallayne on his arm.

He was already in a sour mood. Everlyn had brought him to the room and introduced him to the large crowd of visitors and relatives. She had bustled about, ordering extra plates and more food.

He had invited her to dine with him, had deliberately saved the chair beside him for her, even glowering at Briah when she tried to sit in it. But Everlyn had disappeared through the door to the kitchen and never returned.

Now it appeared that Khallayne had been in private audience with Igraine. His scowl deepened.

“Oh, how lovely,” Khallayne exclaimed, detaching herself from her host so that she could walk to the head of the table and look at the elegant dining table that dominated the room. It appeared to be built of translucent ice.

“It’s very old, from a time when my family traded in elven slaves.” Igraine said.

“Is it made of crystal?”

“Can you imagine an entire city made like this?” One of the females Everlyn had introduced as an aunt beamed proudly at Khallayne.

As the two of them launched into a discussion of elven architecture, Jyrbian pushed away his uneaten supper and joined Igraine.

“Lord Igraine, if I may be so bold? This slave who saved Everlyn …”

“He is an extraordinary human.” Igraine took up the conversation with only the slightest prompting. “It is from him that I have learned everything.”

“I would like to meet this extraordinary slave.”

“I would, too.”

Jyrbian looked around to discover Lyrralt standing behind him. He grimaced, but before he could tell his brother he wasn’t welcome, Igraine answered, “I’d be pleased to have you both tour the grounds and meet Eadamm. Of those who have come to visit and to learn, there are always those who see beyond the obvious. I hope this time it will be you.” Igraine bowed and left them standing there, wondering to which of them he had spoken.

“And me? I always see beyond the obvious, too,” said a lovely voice behind them.

They turned to find Khallayne lounging against the sturdy elven chair at the head of the table. Her heavy, dark hair looked like coal against the crystal, and her black eyes glittered as if lit by candles.

*

The slave named Eadamm was unlike any human in Jyrbian’s experience. He had never seen one who bore himself with such pride and audacity. He had none of the hunched look of a slave waiting for the next command. He stood tall, shoulders back, and his gaze met Jyrbian’s squarely, without flinching.

“It’s almost as if he doesn’t consider himself a slave at all,” Lyrralt murmured.

Jyrbian, who usually was offhand with slaves as long as they performed their tasks with a minimum of efficiency, found the slave’s attitude unsettling. “A slave wearing decoration?” he questioned, pointing out the black-and-red stone wrapped in silver hanging from a silver chain on the slave’s neck.

“It does seem a bit frivolous,” Lyrralt agreed.

Despite his misgivings about the slave, Jyrbian was impressed with the quality and quantity of raw gems being processed from the mines. Igraine’s fields, also, were thriving. What could this philosophy do for his father’s estate?

He glanced speculatively at his brother, who had edged away and was standing near Everlyn, listening as the slave explained their mining procedures. He sounded unbearably pompous. Yet Everlyn was smiling at him as if his words were as fascinating as thoughts from the gods.

*

Later that evening, Jyrbian lay in bed and remembered the slave and the way he held Everlyn’s attention. Jyrbian didn’t seem to be able to coax more than a pleasant but detached smile from her.

He pulled the rope over the bed, which rang a bell in the kitchen. When the night slave entered his room hesitantly, minutes later, he was standing beside the window, naked, the moonlight shining on his magnificent skin.

*

Lyrralt, too, could not get the slave out of his mind. He could almost hear Igraine’s persuasive words. “Think of it, Lyrralt, a choice. A true choice. Decide for yourself what is right or wrong. Good or bad.”

In the privacy of the room he’d been given, he opened the vial of water, rinsed and spat, touched ears and eyes.

Worse even than Eadamm’s face, the whispered words that none of the others had heard kept returning. When Igraine had seen that the sight of Eadamm and the happy, confident slaves had intrigued him, had puzzled him, Igraine had whispered, “Free will, Lyrralt, such as only the humans who live on the plains have. To choose even which gods you will worship!”

He banished the memory and prepared to pray, to meditate.

There was no warning. No buildup of itching and tingling. The searing agony branded his flesh, speared him with instant pain. He writhed on the cold stone floor and cried repeatedly the name of his god until it was over.

When sanity returned, and he could move his arm without torment, he sat up. It was several minutes before he dared look down at his arm. To his surprise, there was only one rune. Even with his novitiate’s eye, he had no trouble reading the augury.

It had only one meaning: Doom.

Chapter 6

MAGIC TO SPILL MEN’S BLOOD

On the morning they were to start for Takar, Khallayne slept late. In her dreams she found herself alone in Igraine’s audience parlor. As she looked up at the constellations on the ceiling, they began to spin, moving faster and faster, until the pinpoints of brilliant light became magical threads, streams of silver, gushing across the sky. Her feet drifted upward.

The embroidery on her tunic, which depicted an inferno, ignited. She could taste the smoke, smell charred skin, singed hair. Then Jyrbian was at her side, and Lyrralt, and Briah, smiling as their faces melted, as their flesh dripped in globs onto the floor. And still the constellations swirled, visible through the flames and smoke.

And she, whirling in the flames, untouched, laughed and laughed and laughed.

*

Although the members were the same, the group that started back to Takar was not the noisy, playful one that had left three weeks before. Subdued, lost in thought, they rode the steep path single file.

Instead of taking the faster route, through Therax Pass, the way they had come, Jyrbian had decided to return by a western trail that wound around the mountain and along a high ridge.

Briah and her sister, Nylora, and Tenaj and her two cousins rode together and spoke in low whispers. Jyrbian, Khallayne, and Lyrralt rode apart, alone with their thoughts.

The roar of rushing water drew them forward and upward. The sound at the beginning of the steep trail was just a distant hissing, but it grew louder and louder as the trail leveled and foliage thinned, becoming scrubby plants and tufts of grass.

Right beside the waterfall, the sound grew deafening. The rushing water threw a rainbow of spray into the air, then fell away into the valley, a silver ribbon snaking its way through the fields. Stands of green-and-gold grain rippled gently in the breeze.

Khallayne, riding in the middle of the group, reined in her horse and sat staring at the magnificent view before her. One corner of the fields, all Igraine’s land, was bisected by the river. Farther to the northwest, out of sight, was the manor, and even farther were the mines.

She had been to the mines, riding with Igraine. There had been no special magic at work there, just the usual activities of slaves, the starting of cook fires, the wielding of common tools, jewels laboriously dredged up from the bowels of the earth. Those were mostly mundane tasks, which was disappointing, but the things Igraine had begun teaching her, spells of higher cunning than anything she’d stolen from humans, unusual wards of defense, were special. And there would be more. Just as soon as she could, she would make arrangements to return.

“What do you think of it?” Jyrbian stopped beside her, interrupting her daydreams.

“It’s breathtaking.”

“I didn’t mean the view,” he said acidly. “I meant Igraine and his ideas.”

“I don’t know. It’s … They’re …” She was stalling. She knew exactly how she felt. Igraine’s ideas were at best dangerous, at worst treason.

Lyrralt stopped beside them. “What if everyone decided to act in this fashion? What would happen, Khallayne? Our world is built on order. To each, his place. To everything, its reason. What will it mean if everyone chooses to behave anyway he or she pleases?”

“For myself, I think I like the idea of choice.” Jyrbian nudged his horse on. He would prefer to be alone with his thoughts of Everlyn; he intended to ask for her when Teragrym offered him a reward for his services.

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” Lyrralt snapped.

“Yes, I do.” Jyrbian reined in. “And I know what I would choose for myself.”

“You mean who, don’t you?” Khallayne asked.

“Women and sex!” Lyrralt snorted with disgust. “You think of nothing else!”

For a moment, Jyrbian stared at his brother with something like astonishment, then he shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “What else is there, Brother?” When Lyrralt didn’t respond, Jyrbian shrugged and twisted his face comically, the old expression of cynicism returning to his eyes.

Khallayne didn’t laugh. For just a moment, just before Lyrralt had broken the spell, the expression on Jyrbian’s face had been something she’d never seen before. For just a moment, he was alien to her, a handsome stranger whose face shone with pure, sweet emotion, totally devoid of hunger and greed.

“Let’s move on. I want to make time to stop at the Caves of the Gods,” Lyrralt said, ending the conversation by turning his back on both of them and riding away.

The Caves of the Gods were one of most visited landmarks in the southern Khalkists, located at the highest point on the Therax Ridge, where three trailheads met.

From that wide, well-worn section of trail, travelers could head down along the north face of the ridge and continue deeper into the Khalkists, or go down along the south face to Takar, or even farther down the mountainside and out across the plains to where the eastern arm of the southern Khalkists wrapped the ancient city of Bloten in a protective curve.

The Caves of the Gods were little more than a squiggle of trails honeycombed in the mountain. But the caves had three entrances near the trailheads, and inside, the paths formed a circular maze, all interconnected, all leading eventually, some way or another, back to one of the three mouths. The mouth by which one exited, upper, middle or lower, foretold the answer of the gods to one’s prayers.

It was from the mouth of truth, the mouth of success, that the attack came.

Lyrralt had walked far back into the cave, away from the soft voices of his companions, until all he could hear was the monotonous drip of water and his own soft footfalls in the dust. Travelers and pilgrims over the centuries had carved niches into the soft stone and left charms, talismans, icons as evidence of their passing.

Finding a place where cool air seemed to flow from the rock wall, Lyrralt had stuffed his torch into a sconce and stood, watching the light flicker on the stone and the gray smoke waft away into darkness.

It was then he heard the voices – the whispering, rumbling voices of many – of humans.

He hurried back the way he had come, shouting a warning. He turned the wrong way twice and had to backtrack. By the time he dashed into the midmorning light of outside, slaves were leaping from the upper mouth of the cave. Shrieking men and women streamed from the ridge.

Khallayne had been rubbing her horse with a bit of old blanket when the animal screamed in anger and pain as a rock struck its withers. It lashed out with its hind legs, sending her flying backward. As she landed on the soft clay embankment across from the caves and slid down, chaos exploded around her.

Howling humans leapt off the clay embankment above her and charged the party from the opposite edge. Lying on her side, gasping for breath, Khallayne first felt an urge to laugh.

There were probably ten of the enemy, men and women as ragged and tattered as the lowliest sewer worker, so scrawny that their legs and arms looked like sticks draped with dirty flesh. The weapons they flourished were simple farm instruments, hoes and rakes and shovels, makeshift pikes and crude clubs.

Across the path, Briah leapt astride her horse as one of the slaves swiped at her, leaving bloody gashes down the horse’s shoulder and Briah’s leg. Khallayne’s urge to laugh was stifled by disbelief and a rush of fear.

As the ragtag army ran toward him, Jyrbian reached back with both hands, drawing the sword he wore strapped across his back. Standing nearby, Tenaj followed suit, leaping to Jyrbian’s side.

The others in the party were trying to control their mounts. The animals were kicking, bucking, wheeling in circles. The pack of humans turned as one toward the two who stood alone, Jyrbian and Tenaj. The ring of steel made Jyrbian’s heart sing as he met his first attacker, an ugly, scarred male with a pointed iron spear that might once have been part of a gate. The sound was followed by a gurgle of death as Jyrbian easily parried the first thrust and slit the slave’s throat.

Lyrralt regained control of his mount, leapt astride it and, drawing his mace, rode toward the clump of slaves, slashing right and left.

Struggling to regain her composure as another human leapt from the embankment above, Khallayne managed to kick out and trip the man. They rolled, a tangle of arms and legs and heavy wooden cudgel. Although smaller, the slave was strong from years of toil in Ogre mines. He managed to end up on top of her, but his first blow was clumsy. The club grazed Khallayne’s temple.

She didn’t allow him another chance. She yanked her dagger free with such force that she split the scabbard, then she plunged it into the man’s ribs. The man’s blood gushed over her hands and onto her belly, soaking her tunic. Bright red. Slippery. The salty scent of copper filled her nostrils. The human’s face, looming above her, looked comically surprised, then life drained from his brown eyes and he slumped.

Shuddering, Khallayne pushed him away and crawled to her feet. The fighting was all around her, the clang of sword against metal, the war cries of the attacking humans, the neighing of an injured horse, the scent of blood and the sour sweat of human slaves. Human fear.

Lyrralt, no longer astride his horse, was conspicuous in the melee, swinging his mace in wild, whistling arcs. He was doing little real damage, but holding back the attackers.

Jyrbian and Tenaj stood back-to-back. Nylora, Briah, and the two cousins also fought with their backs together. All wielded swords stained with blood. The ground was littered with the bodies of humans who had stupidly ventured within range of their practiced blades. The remaining slaves were ranging and scuffling about the two groups, threatening.

“Khallayne, do something!” Lyrralt shouted, gesturing toward the embankment above the caves. At least ten more humans could be seen approaching, thrashing their way through the scrub and trees.

She knew what he was asking, but it would mean exposing herself … The others would realize her power. And would die knowing anyway, if they were outnumbered.

Something boiled inside her. Something bubbled with excitement.

One of the humans stabbed, and Briah jumped to block him. Her wounded leg refused to bear her weight and, as she slipped, a woman slave swung her weapon with all her might.

Briah screamed and fell with the long spikes of a farm rake buried in her body. Trying to aid her sister, Nylora would have fallen also had one of the cousins not stepped in to close the gap and yank her back.

Breath coming in short, painful gasps, Khallayne gripped the bloody handle of her dagger. Fury, the flame of temptation, writhed inside her.

“Khallayne, now!” Lyrralt shouted, pointing toward the embankment with the tip of his mace. At the last moment, he lashed out viciously with it and gutted a slave rushing toward him.

Despite her fear of being exposed, she shivered in anticipation. The squirming inside was a thrumming in her blood, a music pulsing in her veins. Pleasure, almost carnal, slithered across her skin. She spoke the words that leapt into her throat and flung her hands out.

Lyrralt’s attackers burst into flame, so suddenly that the two humans had no time to scream. Lyrralt was almost engulfed. His mace was scorched, but then he managed to jump backward and roll away from the flame licking at his hands and arms.

Khallayne saw Lyrralt only dimly through a wall of rushing wind. Her vision clouded by blood and smoke, she flung out her hands and spoke the words again. The incantation seared her throat.

The slaves who had started to scramble down the embankment were thrown back by a wall of fire.

Vision and hearing still impaired, Khallayne threw out her hands again, this time sending a fireball slamming into the embankment. Shards of gray rock and red clay went flying. Another spell was bubbling in her throat when something barreled into her and knocked her down.

She scrabbled for her dagger, sensing the handle against her palm through a haze of fury. She came up fighting, the words to another spell forming on her lips, bare fists striking out, only to realize the person she was hitting was Jyrbian. What she had heard through the roaring in her ears was his voice shouting her name.

She collapsed into his arms, gasping and spent, but also exhilarated.

Jyrbian supported her in the crook of one arm, his sword at the ready, but the few slaves left alive had fled. “Whatever you did,” he said, his voice husky with admiration, “it worked.”

She said nothing, simply looked up and met Lyrralt’s gaze as he came over to them.

“Are you harmed?” Lyrralt asked.

She managed to shake her head and push herself away from Jyrbian.

Blood was running off the bodies of the dead, pooling on the hard ground. The woods at the edge of the clay bank were charred, little trickles of fire still licking the dry leaves. Above the caves there were three lumps of charred black that vaguely resembled human forms.

The only sound came from Nylora, who had knelt beside Briah’s body and was moaning. She touched her sister’s lifeless body at the forehead and throat and wrist, desperate to find some sign of life.

It was obvious to the others that there was none. A row of neat punctures, encircled with blood, ran diagonally across Briah’s chest.

Nylora looked up and saw Lyrralt. “Heal her,” she pleaded. She paused and touched the hole over Briah’s heart. Her fingers came away red and sticky.

“I can’t,” Khallayne heard him whisper as he went over to Nylora.

“You saved Khallayne,” she accused Lyrralt.

One of the cousins leaned over and caught Nylora’s arm to pull her up, but she resisted. “You saved Khallayne! I saw what she did. I saw her use magic!” she screamed. “If you don’t heal Briah, I’ll tell everyone!”

Lyrralt dropped to his knees in front of Nylora and grasped her bloody hands. “I can’t,” he said with anguish. “The gods have not yet granted me such power.”

She jerked away from his grip, moaning, “This is what comes of Igraine’s free will.”

“These weren’t Igraine’s slaves,” Jyrbian said gently, holding out his hand to help her stand.

“What does it matter whose slaves they were?” She slapped his hand away and pointed at Jyrbian. “This is what comes of it!” She threw her short sword at him, but the weapon thunked onto the ground harmlessly.

Lyrralt looked around. There was blood all around him, on his hands and his clothes. He could taste it in the air. The rune on his arm throbbed. He had to struggle not to give in to the whisper “Doom,” while they tried to console Nylora.

Lyrralt stared at Briah’s body, his fingers clasped over his left shoulder. Khallayne gazed only at the scorched earth across the path.

Jyrbian took charge. Only Tenaj was unaffected, alert and aware of the possibility of further danger.

“We need to round up the horses,” he told her. “The slaves may have run, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back.”

Briah’s horse had been killed, and the others had disappeared into the forest. With a curt nod, Tenaj strode off, calling for Khallayne to help.

Once found, the horses were nervous; precious time was spent calming them, while Jyrbian grew more agitated, sure that the group would be attacked again.

“I’ll put Briah’s body behind me,” Tenaj said.

Jyrbian shook his head. “No. I want the strongest fighters mounted separately, in case we’re attacked again.”

Soon they had checked each mount for injuries and were ready to move. Eyes tearstained, Nylora took up Briah’s sword and the heavy rings from her sister’s fingers and climbed to her feet. “It’s Igraine’s fault. It’s his fault Briah is dead. And when we get home, I’m going to make sure everyone knows what he’s doing! I’ll make sure everyone knows everything!”

Khallayne, her expression stiff, mounted without bothering to glance at the hysterical Ogre.

Chapter 7

IF THIS BE TREASON

A gong pealed, sonorous and stately, and five doors opened simultaneously onto the raised platform of the chamber of the Ruling Council. Five council scribes, stiff and formal with importance, entered onto the platform, carrying their writing trays before them.

The audience, seated in semicircular rows ranging from the foot of the platform to the back of the room, placed their right hands over their left on the floor and bowed low over them. The most important families, or their representatives, were seated in the front, with the ranking members kneeling beside the center aisle.

The room was full, the back rows crowded, as it had been since the Keeper had died the week before. Each morning, as many Ogres as possible crowded into the chamber, hoping to hear an announcement about the History.

The scribes took up places behind the low tables of the council, but remained standing.

After another sounding of the gong, four of the five members of the Ruling Council – Teragrym, Enna, Narran and Rendrad – entered from opposite doors and took their places at the long, low tables, leaving the center seat open.

A moment later, the final member, Anel, entered from the center door and joined them. Her family held the king in traditional safekeeping and, therefore, she was the leader of the council.

As a group, the five members sank to the soft linen cushions that protected their knees from the floor. Their elaborate robes fanned out in circles of bright color about their bodies, silver embroidered with white, palest yellow, bird’s-egg blue, a dark burnt umber the color of plowed earth, and, in the center, the leader, in a plain, unadorned red the color of rubies.

“Who is the first petitioner?” Anel began the council’s official business with the ritual question.

“I am, Lady.”

A soft gasp went up from the audience. The speaker was not an aide, but Lord Narran himself. “I bring a matter of government security before the council, and I ask that the chamber be cleared.”

Again a sound went through the audience, a barely voiced groan of disappointment. The council frequently met behind closed doors, but normally not on an audience day. However, the audience rose to go, filling the room with the sound of rustling cloth.

When they were alone, even the scribes gone, and all the doors closed, Anel turned to Narran. “What, my lord, is so important as to warrant that kind of drama?”

“This morning, I was given information which I feel we must act upon immediately, Lady.”

Anel dipped her head slightly, granting permission for him to continue.

“Is it about the History?” Rendrad asked.

Narran shook his head. “No, it’s more serious than even that. I believe Igraine, governor of Khal-Theraxian, is responsible for the slave uprisings that have troubled us of late.”

Enna half rose from her cushion. Though Igraine had been appointed governor by the whole council, Khal-Theraxian was in her domain. Her own winter home was in the province, not far from Igraine’s estate, and she was supplied with a healthy percentage of the levies. “Narran, you go too far! I know you’ve been jealous of Igraine’s improved production, but —”

Narran, too, rose, his yellowish green complexion growing dark. “I do not —”

“Enough.” Anel cut through both their angry voices with just the one softly spoken word. When they had both subsided, she spoke to Narran. “Have you evidence to back this claim?”

“I have details of what he’s been doing. Once you’ve heard, I believe you will agree that he is committing both treason and heresy.”

Enna clenched a fist on top of the smooth parchment that lined her table. “Heresy, Narran? Surely not!”

“Heresy,” Narran repeated firmly.

Anel sighed. “Then we must hear your details. If you’re right, we will send for Igraine.” She gave Enna a reassuring look. “He will be given an opportunity to explain himself.

*

“Lord Teragrym cannot see you now.”

A young Ogre, wearing a tunic with the dragon logo of Teragrym’s family, tried to usher Jyrbian out of the small, private waiting chamber. The setting was intimate, lush, the gray stone walls covered by rich hangings, a small, cheery fire crackling in the fireplace, its reflection dancing on the marble of the hearth. Beside the hearth was the stool on which Teragrym had sat in the audience chamber. It seemed like months ago, instead of only four weeks.

Jyrbian brushed at his soiled tunic, at the bloodstains on his sleeves, and wished he’d taken the time to change before reporting to Teragrym. But the closer the group had come on their trek back to Takar, the more urgency he’d felt. Too many people knew what was going on, and Teragrym wasn’t going to reward him for information he might pick up in the dining hall.

“Did you tell him how important it is that I see him?” he demanded of the Ogre, shaking free. “Did you tell him I’ve just come from Khal-Theraxian, and that we were attacked by a band of escaped slaves?”

Not to be brushed off so easily, the younger one smiled politely, bowed, and readjusted his grip on Jyrbian’s elbow. “Yes, of course, I did. But the lord is very busy. Perhaps tomorrow …”

Jyrbian gulped the glass of wine he’d snatched from a slave in the hallway on his way to Teragrym’s quarters, not caring that he appeared mannerless. The smooth, sweet liquid soothed his dry throat, his agitation.

“I realize the lord is busy, but I have news that I must pass on! Information about Governor Igraine —”

“Not today.” The Ogre’s pleasant voice disappeared, became as cold as stone. “Lord Teragrym has heard enough of that one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard? The council has issued a warrant for the governor’s arrest. He has been charged with heresy.”

Jyrbian was so surprised that he allowed the aide to push him out the door. Khallayne was waiting in the hallway. Unlike him, she had bathed and changed clothes, her long black hair brushed to a high gloss. She wore a silk tunic and embroidered vestrobe.

She smiled politely, as if she barely knew him, and allowed Teragrym’s aide to usher her through the door.

Fury welled up in him beyond his capacity. He could imagine Everlyn slipping through his fingers. His hopes for estate dashed. He threw the wine glass at the wall across from Teragrym’s door. Shards rained down upon the floor.

Inside the chamber, Khallayne, pausing as she heard the glass burst, smiled.

“What was that?” Teragrym’s aide asked.

“Jyrbian venting his frustration, I would imagine.”

Teragrym didn’t keep her waiting long.

As he entered, she placed her hands on the floor, palms up and open in the posture of supplication, and bowed low. Only when the lord’s shadow had passed over her did she slowly sit up.

Teragrym was seated before her on the stool.

“Lord, I —”

“You have come from Khal-Theraxian,” he interrupted.

She hesitated, stammered. For the whole trip back, she’d rehearsed what she would say to him. She wanted what he could teach her, more than ever. She needed his sponsorship more than ever.

The words had been rehearsed over and over again in her head even before she’d seen the bone-white ribbons on the city gates, the funeral colors for the Keeper.

Now she had to struggle to find her voice. “Y – yes. I’ve b – been to Khal-Theraxian.” She struggled to regain her composure. “Some friends were visiting, and I went along. I’m sorry, Lord. Should I have informed you?”

“Tell me what you saw there.”

“What I saw —? I don’t understand. We saw the estate and the mines. Governor Igraine’s —”

“Do not test my patience!” Teragrym snapped. “I believe you know what I mean. What did you see of Igraine’s behavior? Was there anything you would deem treasonous?” He hesitated, drawing that last word out, almost as if he expected to trap her.

“Treason —” The word choked her, got lost in the quickening of her breath. “My lord, I …” An image of Igraine flashed through her mind, of him in the darkness saying, “Perhaps someday you will be in a position to benefit me.” But if she lied to Teragrym and was discovered … “I —”

“Did you or did you not discern any treasonous activity?”

“My lord, forgive me. You’ve startled me with so strong a word. We saw … I saw Igraine and his holdings. And I met his family. And he showed us his new methods for increasing production among his slaves.”

“And did these methods strike you as treasonous?”

She made her choice. Her allegiance had to go to Igraine. She took a deep breath. “No.” The word was out of her mouth before she realized it, irretrievable.

Teragrym nodded, his expression unreadable.

“Lord, about the test. I have something for your consideration.”

“Test?”

“You said if I could prove myself worthy, you would consider taking me into your household.”

“I could not possibly concern myself with that now.” Teragrym stood. “I’m sure you understand. I have simply too much to attend to, with all this going on about Igraine.”

“Going on?” She looked at him, stunned, disbelieving. Not interested in the test? How could he say he was not interested?

“Yes. Igraine has been charged with treason and heresy. An envoy and guards have been sent to arrest him and bring him before the council. But surely everything will turn out fine, since you’ve been to his estate and seen nothing extraordinary.”

*

“Captain.” The envoy of the Ruling Council stood on the slope behind the tree cover, but where he could see Khalever, the estate of the governor of Khal-Theraxian. A blanket was draped over his uniform to keep out the dewy chill of the morning.

Not many weeks to go and fall would turn to winter. Already some of the higher mountain passes were impassable. Even at this lower altitude, the mornings and the evenings had grown cold.

There were five guards accompanying him, one from each council member, just enough for protection from the dangers of the trail. Even those five had been hotly debated among the council, with Enna arguing that they could simply send a summons to Igraine. In the end, Narran’s report had swayed them. The envoy was glad for the protection.

The captain of the guards strode over to him, carrying two cups of steaming tea. She needed no blanket, for the guards had winter uniforms with heavy cloaks.

He accepted the tea gratefully and wrapped his cold fingers around the metal cup before sipping. “I think it would be better if you remained out of sight and allowed me to go in alone. After all, Igraine is the governor. We should allow him the dignity of obeying without coercion.”

The captain, a female Ogre who was half a hand taller than the envoy, shrugged. “This is your mission.” She said it as if she didn’t envy him a bit.

She took the cup back and walked with the envoy to his horse, then stood watching as he rode away into the woods. The sun was visible on the horizon when she spotted him emerging from the woods and heading toward the long drive that led to Igraine’s home.

She went back to her troops, to check that they were faring well after another hard night on the trail. Like her, they were unaccustomed to nights spent in the wild, in the cold, but she was proud of the way they had adapted.

It was late afternoon when one of the sentries came running to her and announced that he had seen the envoy returning along the same road from the house.

“Was Igraine with him?” she asked.

“He was alone, Captain,” the young one said breathlessly. “But I’m sure it was him. I recognized his horse.”

Sometime later, the horse trotted up the trail with the envoy tied to the saddle, his head slumped backward at an impossible angle. The insignia of the Ruling Council had been ripped from the breast of his uniform.

It took the council guard only four days to make the trip back to Takar. They arrived, exhausted, barely able to sit their horses, and went straight to the council.

A second envoy was dispatched, with a guard of ten with instructions by Narran to take Igraine prisoner. A flurry of arrows took the guard by surprise before they ever left the woods on the border of the estate. One of the first lodged between the eyes of the envoy.

The guard was well trained, fearless, but with no enemy in sight, they had no way to fight. Only six returned to Takar.

Khallayne had spent the days waiting, cautioning herself to be patient. A week after their return, she sent a carefully worded note to Teragrym, hinting that she might be able to break the impasse, but there had been no response.

Though they had grown friendlier after the slave attack in the forest, Lyrralt had again ceased speaking to her. He had learned of her visit to Teragrym from Jyrbian, and accused her of trying to bypass him, deny him his proper reward.

Jyrbian was surly and unapproachable, speaking to no one.

So Khallayne played at board and card games with acquaintances, and wished the whole charade were over so she could return to Khal-Theraxian and pick up her studies.

Anxious to get out of the castle, she enthusiastically joined the majority of the courtiers to attend one of the last slave races of the season. The day dawned bright and sunny and unseasonably warm. Half the city had turned out for the event.

The huge oval stadium was filled with laughing, cavorting Ogres. The sound of so many packed into one place was as deafening as the sight of them, brightly bedecked in all the colors of the rainbow, was blinding.

Normally, Khallayne would have an invitation from someone with good seats, but she hadn’t wanted to have to be charming and brilliant, so she had come alone, choosing to sit in her uncle’s reserved area. Though her mother’s brother had bought her place at court, she avoided contact with the family as much as possible. She hoped her presence would not remind him of the debt.

The horn sounded the first event, and she leaned forward with the crowd to see the runners bolt out of their blocks. But today the runners appeared lackluster and apathetic. They showed little speed and loped along, obviously not interested in competing with each other.

“Obviously, their trainers didn’t adequately explain the inducements,” observed the Ogre sitting next to her, a distant cousin in the city for a visit.

Bored, Khallayne fanned herself. “How hard could it be to make them understand?” she responded. “Run or die. Win and live. It’s probably just because it’s the end of the season. The slaves are always tired toward the last.”

The Ogre grunted and sat forward again as the second race was announced.

Khallayne didn’t strain to watch.

The second contest was as dull as the first. There was no rivalry. As the slaves crossed the finish line almost side by side, their trainers stepped out of the staging area to acknowledge the crowd. The boos changed to a roar of approval as they saw that the trainers carried whips.

Now Khallayne did ease forward, as the humans were led back from the track toward the posts in the center of the stadium. She felt the surge of excitement that rippled through the spectators. The first crack of whip against flesh was like music, a song of pain which an Ogre could not hear without responding.

Khallayne closed her eyes, then opened them again in surprise as a roar went up from the crowd at the far end of the stadium. Whatever was happening nearest the city gate was obviously more exciting than any slave whipping.

It took only a few moments for news to reach her. Igraine was being brought into the city, to stand before the council.

By the time she understood, the crowd was already pushing toward the high end of the stadium overlooking the main street. She made it to the far aisle and went down the wide steps toward the floor of the stadium. In the dark tunnels that led out to the street, she found almost as much of a melee as above. She wasn’t the only one who’d thought to go out on the street for a look.

She pushed her way through the crowd, ignoring the protests as she shoved and jostled and was jostled in turn. She used a little of her magic, giving one a poke here, another a prod of there, discreet but enough to move people out of her way.

She emerged onto the street, into light that blinded her as well as the milling crowd. Igraine’s procession was already past. She hesitated, wandering about on the wide walkway beside the street, loathe to head back inside. In doing so, she learned something she would never have guessed had she not been among a crowd of merchants and commoners.

Not everyone, it seemed, supported the council’s decision to question Igraine. It was a revelation to her, for she had been raised never to question the rulings of the leaders. How naive she’d been to think she was the only one who supported Igraine!

She collected her horse and started back for the castle immediately. In the stables and yard, even in the hallways, there was almost as much of an uproar as there had been at the stadium. It took only a little detective work to discover that Igraine was being housed as a “guest” in Enna’s wing, and just a small bribe allowed her to slip down a small hallway and into the suite of rooms assigned as his quarters.

Igraine was seated before a roaring fire, his hands and booted feet stretched toward the flames. He looked up as she slipped through the door and smiled sadly. “I’d forgotten how drafty the castle car be.”

The room had the chill feeling and damp smell of having been unoccupied for a long time. The furnishings were as lavish as anything to be found in the castle, the huge bed piled with blankets, covered trays of food standing on a side table, but still it evoked visions of a cell.

“You shouldn’t have come, Khallayne.” Igraine stood and accepted her quick bow with an incline of his head.

“I had to come. I had to …”

“You had to what, child?” He came forward caught her cold fingers, and drew her closer to the fire.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, surprised that she really didn’t know why. “I want you to know I told one of the council members that I didn’t see anything I regarded as treasonous.”

“Thank you.” He patted her hand. “It’s not treason to try to increase production in one of the state’s provinces. It’s not treason to try to save your people.”

“Then why did you kill the messengers?”

“I didn’t.” He dropped heavily back into the chair “My slaves did, with the permission of some of my family. I didn’t know until the third one came.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “Then it’ll be all right. All you have to do is tell them, and —”

The sadness on his face deepened. “You have understood nothing, have you? Nothing of all that I told you those days in Khal-Theraxian.”

Of course, she had, but …

“I can’t sacrifice my slaves to save myself! If I do, then what I believe is as nothing!”

“But they’re only slaves. You can always get more.”

Igraine erupted from his chair, his face contorted, and she saw for the first time since she’d met him the strong and terrible Governor of Khal-Theraxian, whose province was the most trouble free in all the mountains.

“The slaves are the innocents in this, despite their killing!” As quickly as it had come, Igraine’s temper waned and his sadness returned. Suddenly he looked very old.

“Khallayne, don’t you see what our world is becoming? Don’t you see that if we don’t make changes now, we’re doomed?”

He held out his hand for her to come closer. “Our civilization was once vital and innovative. Our citizens were warriors and thieves. We took the best from over the whole continent. Now we do almost nothing for ourselves. Our warriors have grown soft and useless, our people decadent. Our cruelty insists on the suffering of others.”

Khallayne dropped to her knees before him, mesmerized by the power of his voice, hypnotized by the sweet reason of his words.

*

“Igraine, Governor of Khal-Theraxian, you have been charged with treason and heresy, with endangering the lives of your neighbors and friends by inciting the slaves to insurrection.”

Khallayne kneeled as before in Igraine’s room, only this time, she was squeezed in between Jyrbian and an Ogre female she didn’t know. And Igraine was pleading his case before the council.

“It is not treasonous for me to increase the production of my holdings tenfold,” he argued. “It is not heretical to treat my slaves with kindness if they work twice as hard.”

“And this is the philosophy of ‘choice’ you espouse?” Narran prompted. “What you call ‘free will’?”

“We have grown hard in our ways,” Igraine responded, loudly and proudly enough that no one doubted his belief in his words. “We are selfish while espousing order and obedience. Enslaved by our needs. In doing so, we have grown cold and hollow. We decay day by day, and the ugliness that fills begins to show outside.”

The audience gasped. Some hissed softly between their teeth, but that didn’t stop him.

“It is time we decided for ourselves who we will be and what will be our destiny. We are the firstborn of the gods, the brightest, the best. The most beautiful. Is it not time we lived up to our potential?”

Khallayne shifted imperceptibly. The heat was stifling, the scent of perfumes and bodies thick. She longed for fresh air, a clear head.

Igraine’s words, which had seemed so reasonable the day before, in the bald light of a council hearing bore a tinge of the lunatic. Even so, as she looked around, she could see that not all of the others thought him mad. A few, a very few, were gazing at him as she had the day before, enthralled by the power of his voice.

Igraine ended his impassioned speech by turning his back on the council and opening his arms as if he would embrace the whole audience. “I’m sure there are many who agree with me, who believe as I do. Join me. Show your council that we mean no harm.”

Khallayne’s breath caught in her throat. Several of Igraine’s neighbors and family were in the audience, and they stood, joining him before the council.

Igraine’s eyes swept the room, urging more to come forward, lingered on her. His scrutiny reminded her of the pain of Lyrralt’s healing.

Her muscles tensed, wavering. Just as she started to rise, Jyrbian placed his hand on her forearm. It appeared an innocent gesture, but his fingers bore the weight of his body.

“I think it’s going to go very badly for him,” Jyrbian whispered, leaning very close, his lips barely moving. “And very badly for any who can’t distance themselves from him.”

Chapter 8

WITH DANGERS COMPASSED ROUND

Khallayne tiptoed into her place a few moments before the judgment was to begin. She craned her neck and peered down the aisle toward the front of the audience hall, where families knelt near the throne platform.

Only the families and allies of the Ruling Council were allowed to kneel in the presence of the king. The rest stood in rows, ranked by order of their importance and heritage. As she did, others in the depths of the audience hall shifted from foot to foot and craned for a glimpse of their sovereign.

That the king was putting in a rare appearance was probably not a good sign for Igraine, she reflected.

The huge chamber looked very different in the light of day, in the midst of controversy, than it had the last time Khallayne had been there. The ceiling was lost in shadow and without the sparkle of candlelight; the walls were once again cold granite that reflected the slightest whisper or scuff of boot.

There was no singing of the History. Khallayne felt a pang of remorse. How odd to begin an official function without the reminder of whence they had come.

Teragrym was still refusing her attempts to see him. Even Lyrralt had relented and talked with her about it. She craned farther out into the aisle, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lyrralt, but she wasn’t sure where he was standing.

Her remorse was not enough to make her come forward with the crystallized Song. All Ogres knew the words by heart from hearing it since birth, but the weaving of the intricate melodies, the layer upon layer of meaning, the subtle tonal changes from word to word, sometimes syllable to syllable, were not so easily repeated. Those were locked in the sphere.

The call to come forth and be heard opened the trial.

A stir went through the crowd as the huge doors at the back of the hall opened and the procession began, first clerks and underlings, then lesser nobles. Finally, after a long pause, came the Ruling Council, its members resplendent in their brightly colored tunics, each followed by a standard bearer. Then, after another wait, the king entered, flanked by standard and staff bearers, followed by the largest and most finely attired retinue.

When all had made their way slowly to the throne platform and taken their places, the Noble at Arms advanced with much ceremony up the stairs and bowed to the king.

Khallayne shifted from foot to foot, wishing they would hurry. The floor was cold and bumpy through the soles of her thin dress slippers.

The noble, a thin but broad-shouldered female whose face was lined with age, rapped the steel-capped butt of her staff on the floor three times. “Lord Igraine, Governor of Khal-Theraxian, appear and face your judgment,” she sang out in a booming voice.

Khallayne took a deep breath and eased back into her place, shrinking from view. Suddenly, she wished she had not come. Attendance was mandatory, but surely no one would have missed her.

After another long wait, Igraine came slowly down the aisle, his head held high and proud. A gasp went through the room as everyone saw that he didn’t walk alone, as those charged with serious crimes normally did. Following him, dressed in their finest, were representatives of the branches of his family, heads of the clans of his neighbors, even some who were from provinces far removed.

Across the aisle and closer to the front of the chamber, she spied Jyrbian pushing through his kinspeople to the aisle. They, like she was, were so shocked at the size of the group behind Igraine that they ignored the abominable behavior.

Khallayne heard the drone of the noble’s voice as she read out the formal changes and counter-charges. There were almost fifty Ogres standing with Igraine in an unprecedented show of support. Did they realize this wasn’t a council meeting, where they might voice their opinion? The risk of yesterday, of being tainted by association with Igraine, was nothing compared with this public display. If he was found guilty of treason and heresy, by standing with him they would share his sentence also!

She searched the crowd again for Lyrralt. He was nowhere in sight, but Jyrbian still hovered at the edge of the aisle, staring in open-mouthed awe at the backs of Igraine’s supporters. As if feeling her gaze, he glanced around at her. Seeing disapproval in the curve of her brows, her lips, he shrugged, raising his palms slightly.

Would this save her from suspicion, this ostentatious display of favor on the part of so many?

The verdict was read by one of the clerks of the council in a voice too low to carry, but his words were picked up in the front and echoed to the back of the chamber, even before the noble could proclaim them.

The judgment.

“Insane …”

“Heresy …”

“Guilty …”

“Guilty …”

“Guilty …”

Voices rose and fell in shock, in glee and dismay.

Khallayne’s head snapped back. She lost her footing momentarily as if the whispers had been a slap at her. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

What would happen now?

*

Fire. Red. Burning. A face loomed before her, twisted and leering, fleshly gnarled with growths, eyes dull and mad. A hand, fingers twisted like stunted twigs, grabbed her shoulder.

Khallayne opened her mouth to scream.

“Khallayne, wake up!”

The dream stopped, shattered into reality. She bit back a cry as she woke to darkness and the scent of Jyrbian. He was leaning over her bed, shaking her awake. With only the barest illumination from the coals in the fireplace, she couldn’t see his face, but tension was evident in his voice, in the way his fingers gripped her shoulder.

“Wake up!”

She pushed his hand away, sat up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“We have to go. Get dressed.” He yanked the blankets, barely sparing a glance for her nudity.

She rose quickly and reached for a robe.

“No. Get dressed for traveling. Sturdy clothes, good boots.” Jyrbian crossed to her wardrobe and rifled through the items hanging there.

She quickly donned her undergarments, choosing to layer fine silk next to her skin despite his instructions and pulling sturdier linen over that.

Jyrbian tossed things from the closet, sturdy riding pants, a long-sleeved blouse and tunic, a cloak.

“What’s happened?” she asked as she donned the clothing.

“Two of Igraine’s followers are dead. Officially, while trying to escape during questioning. Unofficially, under the knife of one of the council’s interrogators.”

“Interrogators?”

“Torturers. They were tortured to death. Executed for their support of Igraine.”

Khallayne froze, her fingers tangled in the lacings of her high riding boots. Tortured. Executed. Suddenly, her fingers found a life of their own, moving swiftly to complete their task. “Where are we going?” she breathed.

“Igraine’s people are helping him escape tonight. You’re going north with them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Igraine’s people —”

“But why do we have to go?” she interrupted. “We didn’t stand up with him.”

“Lyrralt has seen a list of suspected supporters. Your name is on it. And mine.”

She stomped her feet on the floor, as much in frustration and anger as to settle the boots into a comfortable fit. “Where north?”

“Perhaps to Thorad. Or Sancron. Perhaps we’ll have to build our own city.” His voice was excited.

North. She nodded, swallowing her dread. She had lived her whole life to advance her magic. Now … there was no help for it.

“My travel packs are here.” She threw the contents of a heavily carved wooden chest onto the floor and tossed a heavy leather saddlebag toward Jyrbian.

He grabbed up the leather pack. “Do you have winter traveling gear? It’ll be cold in the northern passes.”

“There.” She pointed to another chest, under the window. While Jyrbian was occupied stuffing woolen pants and her heavy winter cape into the bags, she packed her hairbrush, perfumes, a few pieces of jewelry, and the one human spellbook she’d never gotten around to destroying. It was very old, the spells very basic, but the bindings, the handwriting, were so beautiful, she’d never burned it.

Jyrbian, the heavily stuffed saddlebags thrown over his shoulder, caught her hand as she slipped the book into the bag. He tilted her wrist until the bare light from the fireplace illuminated the dark red binding, reflected silver highlights off the embossed runes. “Will you teach me?” he asked softly.

Khallayne was astonished by the awe, the hunger in his voice. She started to deny him for all the old reasons, then realized suddenly that now she could do as she pleased. “Why not?”

Jyrbian joined his laughter with hers and, holding her hand, pulled her into the dark corridor. Together they ran lightly toward the stables.

There were others, dark figures who joined them, as they emerged from the building, who slipped from shadow to shadow without making a sound, following Jyrbian’s lead.

In the stable and at the southern gate, the bloodied bodies of Ogre guards lay on the ground, their throats cut or the feathered tails of arrows protruding from their bodies. Not one had drawn a weapon. They had all died unaware, without sounding an alarm.

As she and the others galloped out of the courtyard, Khallayne glanced back at the fallen bodies. There was no turning back for any of them.

They rode quickly through the sleeping neighborhoods, taking the side streets and alleys that ran behind the grand homes. Their horses’ hooves were muffled with cloth; their identities so obscured by folds of cloak and cape that Khallayne recognized only Tenaj, and her only because of the half-wild stallion that no one else could ride.

Near the trading district, they stopped. Jyrbian and two others dismounted and quickly snipped the twine that held the cloth on the horses’ feet. Following whispered instructions, the group broke off in smaller parties of two and three.

In the nighttime hustle and bustle of the warehouses and taverns, they were barely noticed. Riding between Jyrbian and someone she didn’t know, Khallayne kept her hand on her dagger, waiting with tensed muscles for obstacle or interference.

When the alarm flare of the castle whined overhead, it was no surprise. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the white rush of sparks and fire shoot into the sky over the castle.

Then there was no time left for fear or contemplation. She heard Jyrbian hiss, “Ride!” and she kicked her horse into a run.

Her heart lurched as the animal’s hooves slipped on the cobbled street. For a moment, she thought he would go down, then he caught his balance and sped after Jyrbian’s stallion. They were heading for the southern gate – the same one the group had used only weeks ago on their trip to Khal-Theraxian.

Hadn’t Jyrbian said they would be going north? But behind her she could hear the pounding of hooves as others followed Jyrbian’s lead. She let the horse have its head and hoped that Jyrbian knew what he was doing.

Despite the danger of riding so hard in the darkness, they passed the dark stadium, the city gate, without incident. At least now if she fell, it would mean a mouth full of dirt, not that her head would crack open like an egg on the uneven, cobbled streets.

Where the road narrowed and forked up into the forest, the group of about fifteen stopped, milling about in confusion. She found Lyrralt and Jyrbian arguing with Tenaj and a woman she didn’t know.

“— north,” Tenaj was saying. “To join up with the others. Won’t they expect us to return to Khal-Theraxian?”

“That’s the first place they’ll send troops,” the woman agreed.

“I’m going back to Khal-Theraxian,” Jyrbian said, so quietly and with such resolve that it was obvious his mind couldn’t be swayed. “But I agree you should head north. All I’m saying is that you should fork back through the forest to the high road. The first thing they’ll do is cover all the city gates. And if you cut back around the wall to head north, you’ll have to pass the eastern gate.”

Lyrralt nodded in agreement. “He’s right.”

“But can we get through the forest?” Khallayne asked.

“I know a hunting trail,” Tenaj said.

Without further argument, they turned south, up into the mountains. They rode hard without pause. Khallayne’s horse labored under her, his sides heaving as he climbed the steep trail.

Finally, they reached an intersection in the hunting trail, a mere widening of the distance between thick trees. In unspoken agreement, everyone halted and dismounted.

Khallayne could barely walk. She stumbled to the edge of the trail, sank down and stared up into the gray nothingness of the predawn sky. Someone passed her a waterskin. She gulped from it, water dripping from her chin.

Never in her life could she remember being so tired, so drained. Slowly she became aware that most of her fellow travelers were equally exhausted, collapsed in tired heaps much as she was, where they had dismounted.

Only Jyrbian and Tenaj were active, moving from horse to horse, running practiced hands over the animals, arguing as they went. Tenaj was trying to convince Jyrbian that he needed to continue on with them, over the ridge and north toward Thorad.

Her bones feeling as if the weight of the mountains were pressing down on them, Khallayne rose and went over to where Lyrralt sat, resting against the ruffled bark of a tree as if his neck would no longer support the weight of his head.

For the first time in weeks, he smiled at her without malice, handing over the skin that drooped from his fingers. It held sweet wine, much better than the tepid water she’d drunk minutes before.

“Why does Jyrbian insist on going to Igraine’s estate?” she asked after she’d drunk deeply of the liquid, felt its strength and fire slide down into her throat.

“For a female. Why else?”

*

It was Everlyn herself, a voluminous shawl swathed over her nightdress, who answered Jyrbian’s insistent banging on the door of Khalever. She opened the heavy, carved door barely a crack and stared fearfully out at him, past him to the group of five who sat, still mounted, near the steps.

He smiled at the sight of her. She was so tiny, so delicate, so beautiful. Then he realized, from the way her large eyes were stretched wide and round, that he frightened her by his appearance.

“My lady, forgive me.” He sketched a sweeping bow, which, until that moment, he could not remember ever executing without some touch of sarcasm. “I’ve come on the word of your father, to take you to safety.”

“My father!” Everlyn threw the door open wide. “Oh, please, is he safe?”

Jyrbian took in the group of humans and Ogres who huddled in the hallway behind her, their faces white and fearful. “Yes. He’s being taken to safety in the north, even as we speak.”

The deep silver of her eyes, which had heretofore been as sorrowful, as cold as granite, lit from within. The change was like a glorious sunrise, filling Jyrbian with warmth and light.

Her gladness just as quickly became confusion. “Taken to safety? I don’t understand. He isn’t coming home?”

Jyrbian started to explain, but the jingling of a bridle, the impatient stamp of a horse, reminded him of the urgency of his mission. “Lady …” He took her elbow and guided her back into the house. The hallway was still shadowed by early-morning dimness and cold. “Your father has been judged insane by the Ruling Council.”

“Insane! For what?”

The voice was familiar, insolent. It grated on Jyrbian’s nerves. He turned and saw Eadamm standing in the doorway of the audience chamber. The slave met his gaze squarely. Another handful of slaves, all dressed as though they worked in the house, stood behind him.

As if she sensed his irritation, Everlyn laid her hand on Jyrbian’s arm and led him past Eadamm into the chamber. “Please, Jyrbian, what has happened to my father?”

It was easy to follow her sweet voice, to turn away from the ugly, strutting human and concentrate on her instead. He saw the warning glance she shot the slave. “The council judged him guilty of treason and heresy for his teachings.”

Everlyn’s deep-green complexion seemed waxy in the dim light. “Treason.”

“Yes. But there were many who supported him, and they’ve fled north with him, to safety. I’ve come to take you along.”

Everlyn’s gaze drifted past Jyrbian, in the direction of the group of slaves. “Leave here?” she whispered.

“Everlyn, it’s no longer safe here. This is the first place the king’s soldiers will look for your father.”

The group stared, first at him, then at each other, with slowly dawning comprehension. A female Ogre drifted toward the long windows and peered outside. When she turned back, she nodded grimly to the others. “He’s right. We should go.”

Only Everlyn wasn’t sure. Jyrbian could read indecision in the set of her delicate shoulders, in the glossy dampness pooling at the corners of her eyes.

She crossed to the hearth and took down the bloodstone. Cradling it in her palms, she whispered, “But this is my home.”

Before Jyrbian could respond, Eadamm said quietly, firmly, “The lord is right, Lady. You would not be safe. And think what they could do to your father if they held you hostage. He would do whatever they said, even if it meant walking to his death.”

Aware of the minutes ticking away while they debated, Jyrbian bit back the harsh words he wanted to fling at the human. If the human could persuade Everlyn, he would allow those transgressions to pass unmentioned for the moment.

Still not convinced, she pressed the large rock to her breast. “They have no right …”

“They have every right,” Jyrbian said. “This is your father’s land by their grace.”

“They will attack,” Eadamm said. “And these people will die defending you.” He gestured toward the gathered Ogres and slaves.

Tears spilled down her cheeks, but she nodded in agreement. “I’ll go,” she whispered. Still clutching the bloodstone, she motioned for two of the slaves to follow. “I’ll get my things. Eadamm, will you come? I have instructions for the others. And we must dispatch messengers to alert our neighbors.”

Once her decision was made, Everlyn and her family moved swiftly, efficiently, waking the rest of the household, feeding the children, packing clothing, tools, food, weapons.

By the time all were assembled in front of the manor, his small contingent of four had swelled to fourteen adults and three children, all well mounted. They were as orderly and disciplined as if they’d trained for this day all their lives.

Everlyn guided them around the house, choosing a path through the sea of grain, which she said would take them through the fields and set them much more quickly on the mountain path toward the caves.

As they rounded the back corner of the house, Jyrbian saw movement, frantic activity, in the area of the slave cabins. Women and children with packs of belongings on their backs were disappearing into the tall corn. Along other trails through the waving sea of gold, he saw the flash of morning sun on weapons. He straightened, rising up on his stirrups as he reached to draw his sword.

Everlyn stopped him by catching his reins. “There’s no cause for alarm,” she said. Something in her voice belied that, a little catch, a breathlessness.

“The slaves are escaping,” he exclaimed. “Arming themselves!”

“Yes,” she said, and this time the tone was fearful, as if she were a child, defiant and afraid before a parent. She looked back, sadness marring her beautiful face. “They will guard our escape. And as for running away … They may go where they wish. I have freed them.”

“Freed them!” Dismay, astonishment and indecision warred within him. It was already too late to turn back, round up the fleeing slaves. There were too many of them, too few Ogres, too little time to waste. Then, suddenly, he realized what she had done. All his emotions gave way to admiration. “By the gods,” he told her, reaching out to squeeze her hand, “what a ploy! When the King’s Regiment arrives here and finds the slaves have run, they won’t even think of coming after us. That was brilliant!”

He spurred his horse and rode to the head of the line. Jyrbian’s passage frightened a covey of birds. With raucous cries of protest, they burst from cover and zipped skyward, their brown wings beating in time to his pulse, sending a draft of warm air to caress his face. Glancing back to see that the others were following, he kicked his horse and sped off, imagining that, he, too, had taken wing.

They rode, a ribbon of colorful silks and wool winding through the golden field. Their passage stirred, above the wheat, a cloud of insects as thick as dust, opalescent wings awhir.

Through the fields and into open meadow they rode. Across a swath of river, the water a thin, silver scrim over a bed of white pebbles. Their passage sent up a noisy spray of droplets that sparkled like fire in the morning sun.

Everlyn kept up Jyrbian’s pace, pointing out the path through the fields, the places where it was safe to veer off and cut through the meadows.

Up into the mountains they continued, under cover of thick evergreens and oaks, which blotted out the heat and the light. To Jyrbian, the transition from grassy meadow to the hard, packed earth was an assault to his ears. Surely the entire forest boomed with their presence. Once more he took the lead, pushing as fast as he dared on the steep mountain trail. He slowed as they approached the Caves of the Gods, and sent a scout ahead to make sure the area was clear. Finding that it was, he called a halt.

He was the first to touch his feet to the ground, leaping nimbly from the saddle so that he could help Everlyn dismount. She seemed pale and clung to his supportive arm for a moment as she stretched her legs.

“How are you faring, Lady?” He went quickly to his horse and brought back a full wineskin.

She sipped delicately and passed it back. “It’s a hard ride.”

All around them were groans and gasps, of both pleasure and pain, as others dismounted. Only the children seemed unaffected, running about, laughing and shouting.

Everlyn’s aunt grabbed an older child as they went past. “Care for your mounts first,” she ordered angrily. “Then play.”

The horses were lathered and still breathing hard. As Jyrbian, too, moved to water his stallion, to rub the animal down and feed him a handful of oats, he realized that the group with which he had begun the trip had doubled in size. There were many crowding into the open area before the cave entrances.

The size of the group had grown again by the time he called the next stop, and with each succeeding stop, until Jyrbian was leading a group easily one hundred strong.

Chapter 9

BATTLES LOST AND WON

The added number didn’t slow the group significantly. Two weeks later, at a crossroads high in the mountains to the north of Takar, Jyrbian caught up with the smaller group who’d left Takar with him. Three days later, he led them down into a small dip in the trail, where they joined with the group that had escaped with Igraine.

“I’m not sure where they all came from,” Jyrbian said in amazement.

“They’re from Khal-Theraxian. From estates that bordered mine,” Igraine supplied, seeming not at all surprised at the size of his following. “They’re from many districts. From anywhere that the Ogres wanted to embrace a new path.”

Everlyn, holding the arm of her father as if she would never again let him go, looked around, spying faces she recognized. “There’s Lord Nerrad from Bloten, and Lady Rychal. Her land borders ours on the east. And I think that’s most of the Aliehs Clan …” She pointed toward a large crowd of mostly young Ogres who looked as if they were on a picnic instead of running for their lives.

Their picnic was interrupted as an Ogre, riding at breakneck speed, tore through their blankets, his horse scattering adults and children and food. The rider sawed viciously on his reins, trying to slow his horse; then the animal reared and stopped.

One of the Aliehs started toward the rider, his scowl evidence of his intentions, but the rider’s words stopped him cold.

“King’s troops!” He waved back toward the way he’d come. “Coming this way fast!”

“Damned idiot —!” Jyrbian started toward the Ogre, his next words drowned out by the reaction of the crowd, gasps and shouted questions, as they surged forward. A child began to cry, a high, rising wail that was picked up by other children. Jyrbian reached the Ogre and dragged him off his horse.

Another Ogre, almost Jyrbian’s height, though not so muscular, reached the two of them and thrust out his hand. Jyrbian remembered seeing him among the crowd at Khalever when they had left the house. “What’s the meaning of this?” Jyrbian snarled.

“I’m Butyr, Igraine’s nephew,” the Ogre told him, trying to catch hold of the newly arrived rider. Jyrbian refused to release his grip and turned, shaking the younger Ogre as he led him, practically on tiptoes, away from the thick of the crowd.

“I sent scouts down the west trail to follow behind us,” Butyr said, joining the small circle of Igraine, Everlyn, Lyrralt, Tenaj, and two others Jyrbian didn’t know, which quickly surrounded them. Finally Butyr managed to break Jyrbian’s grasp on the rider. Jyrbian glared at him. Scouts were a good idea, one that he should have instigated.

Tenaj interrupted. “Did you also tell them to ride back into camp and start a panic?” she snapped.

Butyr’s small eyes narrowed dangerously. “Of course I didn’t!”

“You said there are troops?” Igraine broke in smoothly, turning to the scout.

The Ogre nodded. His face was pale. “Coming fast. Along our back trail, but they’re moving as if they already know we’re here.”

Butyr shot Jyrbian a look of disgust, as if the situation was all his fault. “They probably had scouts out, too. How far behind are they?” asked Butyr.

“Thirty minutes. Maybe forty. I – I rode as fast as I could.”

“How many?” demanded Tenaj.

“I couldn’t tell. Fifty, seventy, maybe more. They were coming up the ridge, where the trail is narrow. They’re riding two abreast, so I couldn’t see the end of the line.”

Butyr slapped the Ogre on the shoulder. “Well done, Eilec. You’ve given us time to set up a defense.”

Butyr shouted out the names of several of his cousins, motioning them to come forward.

Jyrbian looked around wildly, trying to see past the milling crowd, to make out the lay of the land. They were in a low place where trails from all four points of the compass descended and crossed.

Butyr squatted and quickly sketched a U-shaped defense in the dirt. “We can send the families on. And disperse everyone who is well versed with sword here and here.” He indicated points along the sides of the trail. “Our bowmen should be positioned here.”

Jyrbian peered at the nearby crowd. Bowmen? From the way Butyr said it, he half expected to see a troop of smartly dressed fighters, instead of such a weary crowd of refugees. But, yes, he did recall seeing some of Igraine’s people with bows slung across their backs. And rare was the Ogre who had not been taught as a child to use a bola for contests. It was considered a skill of the upper class, used to while away summer evenings.

So Butyr’s plan had potential, except at this altitude. The forest wasn’t dense; the thin, pale-barked trees offered little concealment. Jyrbian tried to remember the paths to the north and west. Didn’t one of them climb, then level off, then climb again before it crested? He whispered to Tenaj, and she gazed first north, then west, remembering, then pointed north.

Igraine was nodding as he peered at Butyr’s marks in the dirt. With a quick glance at Lyrralt, Jyrbian stepped forward. “The enemy will be attacking from the high ground,” he said harshly. “We’ll be slaughtered.”

Everlyn’s face paled. Jyrbian could see her fingers tighten on her father’s arm.

Butyr rose slowly and faced Jyrbian, his eyes black with fury. “I suppose you want to ride away as fast as we can,” he sneered.

Jyrbian drew himself up. He towered over the smaller Ogre. Only his brother was as tall among the Ogres who stood listening.

“I only meant that we should withdraw along the north trail, where the ground levels out.” Disdainfully, he erased Butyr’s plan and drew a new one. “Then we can deploy those with bows here, where the king’s troops will be riding uphill. And those with swords can wait behind, for any who are brave enough, or foolhardy enough, to make it through. Remember, the king’s troops are mainly an honor guard, trained for ceremonial duties, carrying flags and the like.”

“And I suppose you were trained to the sword, Lord Jyrbian,” Butyr said.

Before Jyrbian could reply, Igraine stepped in. “It’s a good plan, thanks to both of you,” he said with heavy emphasis on both. “Everlyn, you get the others to help you start the children on ahead. Jyrbian, you go ahead and choose positions. Butyr will organize everyone into groups.”

Jyrbian nodded his agreement and, with a quick bow to Everlyn, strode off.

Lyrralt went with him wordlessly, mounting and following him up the north trail. Jyrbian tossed him the reins and walked to the high point on the trail, looking back down to reconnoiter.

As they stood watching the long line of families and older Ogres go past, Jyrbian asked, “Where’s Khallayne? I could use her, there on that rise.”

Lyrralt looked at him as if he were crazy, but said simply, “She’s gone ahead with the others.”

“What’s wrong with you, Brother?”

Lyrralt looked at him, then back down the hillside, where their comrades were separating into groups, some with swords already drawn. He could see the flashes of sunlight off the sharpened blades. “Does it disturb you not at all that we’re about to fight our king?”

“It’s their necks, not ours,” Jyrbian said sharply. When Lyrralt didn’t respond, he continued, even more harshly, “If you don’t want to fight, then go with the children. Stay out of the way.”

Lyrralt stiffened, meeting Jyrbian’s angry gaze with fury. “I’ll fight, Brother. I just don’t like it.”

Despite his strong words to Lyrralt, as the King’s Guard charged up the hill, Jyrbian felt the shock of staring into faces he’d seen at jousting matches, at suppers, at assemblies.

The bowmen proved a success and would have made a rout with sufficient numbers. As it was, there were enough of them to do damage, to delay the enemy, but not enough to stop the inevitable charge up the hill.

Jyrbian met the guard head-on, on foot, a mad courage coursing through him. As he cut the first Ogre from his horse, as his sword met another high in the air, he felt the song of battle in his blood, in his bones. He forgot fear. The enemy was upon him, and he attacked left and right, refusing to give ground, to even step back as he parried. Lyrralt and Tenaj and Butyr were forced to stay by his side or allow him to be overwhelmed. Buoyed by his courage, attracted by his killing frenzy, others joined them, their fierce, exuberant expressions matching his own.

A blade slipped past his defenses and touched his side, but there was no pain. A warm, slick wetness slid down his body, inside his tunic; he felt only joy as he pressed his arm against the wetness and continued to fight. His sword swung in perfect arcs, a beautiful thing to behold, almost poetry in the air.

In sheer numbers, the royal troops outmatched them, but Jyrbian had chosen his spot well. Riding uphill, the King’s Guard stood no chance. The ground had turned into bloody mud. The bodies of their fallen comrades crunched underfoot. They gave up and ran, leaving behind a battleground littered with the first casualties of Igraine’s War.

Jyrbian raised his arms in jubilation, in thanksgiving. The gods’ bloodlust, their blessings, had poured down upon him, upon his troops.

He rode at the head of the troop, still wearing the clothes in which he’d fought, into which his blood and the blood of his enemies had soaked. In the stained, torn silks, he looked like the embodiment of a dark god himself, proud and arrogant, triumphant.

Riding swiftly, they had easily caught up with those they’d sent ahead. The eyes of men and women and children, admiring, grateful, followed Jyrbian as he led his warriors into the camp. He failed to capture the admiration of only one, the one he most wanted.

Her face puckered with worry, Everlyn ran out among the mothers welcoming sons, husbands welcoming wives, children underfoot everywhere, searching frantically for her father. When she found him, standing near Jyrbian, her face broke into a sunny smile.

“Lady,” Jyrbian said, bowing. “Would that I might make you smile so.”

Flustered, she turned away to greet her father.

Jyrbian determined, at that moment, that he would be whatever he had to be, do whatever was required, to make her pixie face light up for him.

Khallayne’s face did light up, for him and for Lyrralt, who was still trailing him, a silent, bad-tempered wraith. She held out her arms to Jyrbian and hugged him close as if she would never let him go, as if they were long-parted lovers. “I was afraid …” she whispered, her arms tightening around his shoulders. “I thought I might never see you again.”

For a moment, his roguishness rekindled and he pulled her close, swung her easily off her feet even though she was as tall as he. “Did you miss me, then?” he whispered back, turning his head so his breath tickled her neck.

“Terribly,” Khallayne laughed, but when she pulled back and turned to Lyrralt, her expression turned serious. “What is it?” she whispered. “Are you injured?”

He looked so tired. She reached for his hands. They were as cold as ice.

Jyrbian snorted and turned on his heel, leaving the two of them staring at each other, hands clasped as if they had shut out the world. He went in search of another healer for the wound in his side. He didn’t trust his own brother to heal it properly.

Khallayne spared barely a glance at his retreat. The pain she saw in Lyrralt was greater. “Lyrralt?”

His grip on her fingers tightened. “Khallayne, do you know what I’ve seen?” he whispered, his voice taut. “The end … Doom.”

She shook her head.

He mumbled barely intelligible words about the fight, about seeing the bodies of Ogres he knew, about blood and bone fragments and swords flashing in the sunlight. Something about the future and runes. Again the word “doom.” His fingers twisted in hers.

With a soft cry, she wrenched free.

“Khallayne?” Lyrralt reached to touch her, this time his fingers gentle. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s just … I just …”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He turned away, his eyes searching for and finding Igraine. He had to stop the madness soon.

He followed the crowd, which ebbed and flowed around Jyrbian. His brother, now wearing a clean tunic and showing no symptoms of his wound, was arguing to split the group of Igraine’s followers, send the families with children on ahead. “We’ll keep the warriors behind to guard the rear. I know Takar will not give up so easily.”

Lyrralt watched him, suddenly reminded of Jyrbian wearing a soldier’s dress uniform, proclaiming that someday there would again be a need for fighters.

Butyr argued against splitting the group. “We’ve defeated the best the court could send against us. We have nothing to fear at the moment.”

They mounted at Igraine’s urging, moving on without solving the disagreement. For the next week, while passing through the southernmost part of the Khalkist Mountains north of Takar, Jyrbian and Butyr continued to argue. Split up or separate. Head north or west. Attempt to settle in Thorad, or build a new home of their own.

Igraine, who could have settled all arguments, listened and made no judgment.

They began to climb into the main body of the mountains. The trails, which had been wide and well traveled, became narrow, rutted for miles on end, then overgrown with roots. The dense undergrowth disappeared, the oaks became conifers, and the land rocky. The nights grew cold. Game, which had been plentiful and had made their nighttime fires smell of rich stew, became sparse.

There was no more arguing. They turned west, working their way toward more hospitable terrain.

Khallayne rode with Lyrralt or Jyrbian as much as she could. Neither were ideal traveling companions. Jyrbian spent his evenings in debate with Butyr or silently sitting at Igraine’s campfire, as near Everlyn as he could get.

Lyrralt was withdrawn, uncommunicative, spending his evenings in communion with his god. “I feel as if we’re floundering,” he said. “Adrift.”

“Childish prattle,” Jyrbian responded. But Khallayne knew it was more than that. Just as she knew her own power, she sensed Lyrralt’s. “Doom,” she pressed him, “Why do you say that?”

“Because Hiddukel has told it to me,” was all he would say.

Khallayne opened her mouth to ask another question when the horse in front of her reared. Its rider fell backward, an arrow protruding from her chest!

A child screamed. Pandemonium erupted around them. Arrows flew, as thick as bees. Horses stampeded.

Tenaj, who had fallen when the horse ahead of them reared, cried out as the panicked horses almost crushed her.

Jyrbian materialized and, catching a fistful of her tunic, dragged her off the path, away from the skittish horses. An arrow whizzed overhead, and he let her drop to the ground.

“Get down!” he shouted, kicking his horse in the flank. “Everybody, keep low!”

Khallayne yanked her horse in a circle, trying to see who was attacking, and from where. The arrows seemed to be coming from all directions.

The “who” was answered immediately. The man behind her slumped. The Ogre arrow in his forehead sported the brilliant colors of Clan Redienhs.

She ducked lower, clutching her horse’s neck. The animal’s muscles were trembling under its silky coat. She wanted to scramble into the thick undergrowth that lined the trail, but dared not. Dared not even dismount.

Khallayne could hear Jyrbian’s voice, farther away now, shouting orders. She moved toward the sound. To her right she could hear the sing of steel against steel, the shouts of battle, and she knew her people had left the trail, had plunged into the forest to meet their attackers.

Ahead of her on the trail, Jyrbian was in the thickest of the fighting, a dark god of war, terrible and beautiful. With arrows flying through the air around him, he stood in his stirrups. He managed to keep his horse under control with one hand while he signaled with the other, directing archers to cover on the left side of the path, those with swords to dismount and flank the enemy on the right.

Seeing him so much in control, so dauntless, Khallayne lost her fear. She rode into the thick of the fighting. The scent of blood rushed at her, filling her with pure euphoria. The thrill of being able to use magic without restraint wiped out all the sights and sounds.

The power leapt up in her, so voraciously that she didn’t even need to use her hands to direct it. Her mind sent it outward, unfocused.

The enemy guardsman who had been nearest Jyrbian had been lifting his bow. He dropped where he stood, his heart burst in his chest. A trickle of blood escaping the corner of his mouth was the only tangible sign of injury.

She felt his death, the sudden explosion of tiny veins, of life-sustaining arteries, as a sickening swelling in the power. She doubled over as the Ogre’s death struck her a blow like a fist to the chest. But there was no time to stop and think. She turned, sent the magic outward again, and felt the energy billow as two more fell. And two more.

“Khallayne! Khallayne! There!”

She drew in the power enough to clear her vision. Jyrbian was still standing in his stirrups, bloodied sword held at the ready. Lyrralt was at his side. Jyrbian pointed to her right, into the forest. “There!”

He wheeled his horse around and almost rode down one of his own people to get to her side. “There!” He pointed again. “The archers. Can you get to the archers?”

She stared, but could see only splashes of color, here, there, among the thicket of trees and vine growth. Only the arrows continuing to rain from that direction told her for certain that the enemy was there.

With Lyrralt on one side and Jyrbian on the other, she closed her eyes, envisioned the forest, the undergrowth, the Ogres crouched beneath for cover, rising up to fire an arrow, then dropping back down again.

The power was awakening within her, demand ing, thrashing, screaming to be released. She let loose the magic. The forest sprang to life. In the discretion Jyrbian had indicated, every vine, blade of grass, every leaf shifted, stretched, moved, became animated.

A male Ogre on Jyrbian’s right screamed. Farther down the line of fighting, again and again, the cry was echoed.

For a moment, Jyrbian froze. Every muscle in his body turned to ice. “Khallayne!” His voice cracked then picked up strength as he saw a vine stir over head. “Khallayne, control it!”

He didn’t know if she heard or not, but the for est turned away from Igraine’s people, toward the attackers.

He heard the enemy shout, first surprise, the warning, screams of pain, cries of questioning terror.

Khallayne sat rigid in her saddle, reins limp in her hands, eyes glazed. Jyrbian looked about. Tenaj was nearby, remounted. “Guard her,” he ordered, indicating Khallayne.

He didn’t know if it was safe, but he urged his horse forward, off the path, into the forest. Everything was moving, leaves, vines, dead branches reaching and twisting and killing.

The enemy was caught in its deadly embrace Vines as thick as his arm wrapped around archers twining about them. Their bodies were being crushed to pulp.

Farther into the forest lay more horrors, more crushed bodies, bodies impaled on thick branches of living trees. A standard bearer had dropped his staff the body beside it was covered with crawling, wriggling leaves.

A vine as thin and dangerous as razorwire dropped down from a branch and struck out at Jyrbian like a snake. Backing away, he slashed at it with his sword. Green ichor spurted from the severed limb. Something hissed. Jyrbian wheeled his horse and kicked it hard.

*

Bakrell turned from the view of the castle courtyard and the skyline of Takar at midmorning. “Kaede, you can’t do this!”

As his sister took clothing from her wardrobe and ferried it to the bed, Bakrell followed her, back and forth.

Traveling packs were laid, already partially filled. Kaede laid another stack of clothing beside what was already there, then gathered another armload from atop a nearby chest before answering. “Why not?”

“Because … Because it’s crazy. It dangerous, that’s why!”

She snorted at him with amusement. “You’ve grown soft, Bakrell, too accustomed to silks and slaves.” She rubbed the brocade lapel of his embroidered vest.

He watched, silent for a moment, as she continued to pull out all she had packed in order to sort through it again. She had, arrayed on the bed, an incredible collection of luxurious as well as sensible belongings, including a bejeweled bracelet worth as much as everything else combined.

“Why would you need this?” He picked up a silky tunic, so soft and delicate it might have been spun by spiders.

Kaede snatched it back, arched an eyebrow. “You never know what you might need. I’m not giving up civilization completely.”

“You’re really looking forward to this adventure, aren’t you? You’re not going to mind at all, giving up these creature comforts.” He waved his hands to indicate the sumptuous room.

“No, I don’t mind.” She took a bracelet from him and, eyeing him mischievously, slid it onto her wrist, hiding it inside the cuff of the expensive leather riding jacket.

He considered the packs on the bed only a moment longer, then decided. “All right, I’ll go with you.”

“What?”

“You can tarry a little longer while I pack. I don’t see why we have to sneak away in the middle of the night anyway,” he said over his shoulder as he started for the door.

“Perhaps you’d like to leave the castle after a hearty breakfast tomorrow morning, announcing to all within earshot that you’re off to join the followers of the heretic Igraine?” she called after him.

He paused at the door, grinned at her, excitement beginning to shine in his eyes. “Don’t forget to pack food.”

*

Bedraggled, bloody, beaten, the remnants of the guard of Clan Redienhs rode into the rocky gorge. Afternoon sun beat down on them, reflected warmth back from the red, rocky walls on both sides of the wide trail. In unspoken agreement, they slowed their pace once the group was within the gorge, out of the forest.

Riding near the front of the group, Daria glanced back, making sure her brother was also clear of the trees. She shivered, remembering tree limbs crackling with energetic movement, vines writhing across the ground, reaching for her. In the depths of her worst nightmares, she had never dreamt of such horror!

Raell had stayed near her, once the attack began, even though he was a swordsman and she an archer. He considered himself protecting his younger sister. It had almost cost him his life. When the forest had come alive … Despite the warmth of the sun, she pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders. She clutched the silver clasp, etched with the condor symbol of Sargonnas, at her throat. They were both lucky to be alive.

She was so engrossed, she noticed the agitation in the ranks only when Raell galloped up beside her. “What’s going on?” she asked, suddenly noticing the movement ahead.

“Look!” He pointed toward the end of the gorge, at the brightly colored troops coming to meet them, flags with the colors of Clan Signet flying snappily above, one flag in particular, with the logo of the clan leader on it. “Reinforcements!”

Reinforcements. That meant turning back, perhaps another battle. The idea of more fighting didn’t bother her. The thought of riding back into the forest did.

*

The shadow detached itself from high up in the tree and scuttled quickly to the ground, dropping sometimes as much as two feet from branch to branch. The humans on the floor of the hillside gasped each time the girl let go of a handhold, each time she caught. Eadamm grinned as she paused on the last branch, dangling precariously several feet from the ground.

“Stop showing off,” he called with pretend gruffness. “Tell me what you see.”

She dropped the last ten feet and landed with a bone-jarring thud. “Two or three new companies of Ogres, wearing yellow, with a shiny star here.” She sketched a square above her left breast. “What was left of the other group has joined them.”

“Clan Signet,” Eadamm interjected. “What are they doing?”

She smiled. “Camping.”

Eadamm’s lips stretched back in a feral grimace. His teeth were white against his dark skin. “We’ll attack at dusk.”

“I don’t see why we should attack at all,” Jeb, one of Eadamm’s generals, protested. “We’re free. We’re less than three days’ ride from the plains. From home!”

Eadamm resettled a stolen Ogre sword more firmly around his hips. Though some of the others wore stolen Ogre finery, he’d refused to wear even a cloak from his former masters. He wore a blanket, with armholes slashed in it, over his torn and stained slave garments. “And how long do you think you’ll be free if we do nothing to stop the Ogres. Perhaps you’d live out your life a free man. But what of our people? If we don’t stop the Ogres, they’ll just kidnap new slaves and start over.”

Jeb peered at him. “You just want to protect your old master!”

Eadamm started to retort, but instead shrugged. “Again, if we don’t, how will we ever be secure in our homes? Igraine’s followers must persevere. For our safety.”

Jeb looked at the plans Eadamm had been sketching in the hard ground. “I don’t agree.”

“You don’t have to stay with us if you don’t want to,” Eadamm said gently.

Jeb straightened, his hand going to the dagger tucked into his belt before he realized Eadamm meant no offense. For a long moment, he regarded his friend. “I have nowhere to go. But do we have to attack in the dark?”

“It won’t be any darker than it was in the mines. Until we’re ready for light,” he added cryptically.

*

Eadamm was right. Perhaps to the Ogres, who had not toiled in darkness for years, it was night. To him, even in the wee hours before dawn, that darkest time before sunrise, the craggy canyon in which the Ogre troops had chosen to sleep was plainly visible. The crags and sheer faces of the canyon walls were shadowed and spooky, but the tents of the Ogre troops were outlined sharply.

The blades of Ogre swords flashed in the moonlight as the humans swept down on the camp, pouring into it from both ends, cutting off any chance of retreat. Eadamm’s people carried stolen weapons and homemade ones – lovely swords of elven design taken from some rich estate, pikes hand carved from elm wood and capped with hand-hammered metal, axes stolen right out of firewood, hoes and rakes and scythes still smelling of grain fields.

Eadamm led the first charge, riding at the front of his people. The sounds were overpowering; screams of rage and vengeance about to be realized echoed off the canyon walls. It surged in his blood, fueling his battle lust. He met his first opponent, a wild-eyed sentry, and cut him down with one quick slash.

The Ogre response to the attack was sluggish but fierce. Attacked from two sides, they poured out of the tents, leapt from their blankets to meet Eadamm’s troops.

Shrieks and death cries filled the air. Sword rang out against sword, pike against pike. Over the din of weapons striking each other, Eadamm could hear an Ogre commander trying to rally his archers. Eadamm wheeled and charged in the direction of the voice. The Ogre had the presence of mind to send an arrow whizzing past Eadamm’s ear before he was cut down.

The humans torched the Ogre tents, sending up an eerie light, which cast their shadows, several times enlarged, dancing on the canyon walls.

The Ogres, caught in disarray, rallied quickly, forming pockets of resistance against which the humans battered. They grabbed up shields and pikes and fought back-to-back, protecting the archers, who rained arrows down on the humans. The arrows flew up and out of the circles of Ogres, appearing as if by magic.

Again and again, Eadamm’s people rushed the lines, skewered an Ogre here, one there. But again and again, the humans were repelled.

Stragglers, caught too far away to join in the protective circles, fought hand to hand, silhouetted against the flames. Humans picked up bows and quivers of arrows and picked off those Ogres who thought they could climb up the canyon walls to safety.

For sheer ferocity, the humans equaled the larger, better-equipped Ogres. In sheer force, they were no match. For each human killed, Eadamm felt the decimation to his numbers. For each Ogre who fell, another stepped forward to take his place.

He stood in his stirrups and yelled for one of the soldiers on foot to bring him bow and arrow. He lit the feathers from the flames of a burning tent, nocked the arrow quickly, and let it fly. The burning signal sailed in a high arc over the battle. Even before the wildly dancing flames had disappeared from overhead, a bolt of blue sizzled upward into the sky, like lightning in reverse.

Though he was expecting it, the brightness of it blinded Eadamm and panicked his stallion. The big animal reared, pawing in midair. Eadamm felt the momentum of the horse’s action toss him backward. He went sailing through the air and landed with a bone-jarring whump!

As he gasped for breath, his vision deserted him. Stars danced before his eyes, but whether from the lightning or the fall, he didn’t know. Then he could see, figures blurry and indistinct, both atop horses. As he strained to see, the larger figure leapt from his saddle, carrying the smaller one to the ground.

His vision cleared to reveal Jeb and a large Ogre female, locked in a death grip. He tried to stand, to go to Jeb’s aid, but his balance was off. He stumbled, went to his knees. Dimly, he was aware when the larger figure lifted a gleaming silver dagger. She lifted it high in the air, then brought it down again and again. The man who had been his second-in-command since the escape from Khalever slumped.

A woman who had escaped from Bloten rushed to Eadamm’s side. As she helped him to sit, the lightning sizzled again, lighting the night as brightly as the sun lit the day. The woman, hearing the warning whine of the spell building, covered her eyes.

This time, Eadamm was sure it was the magical lightning of their one human wizard that left spots of color dancing behind his eyelids. He could see barely two feet. Despite the disorientation, he scrambled to his feet and remounted the skittish horse.

All about him, the Ogres were in disarray, blinded and frightened by the magical flash of light. The lines of carefully tied horses had broken loose and were careening through the camp.

Eadamm veered like a madman through a large group of Ogres, cutting a bloody swath through the group. Hacking with his stolen sword, he stabbed and slashed his way through and out of the circle on the other side. Inspired by his bravery, a group of humans plowed through behind him, cutting down their enemy left and right.

For several minutes after the magical lightning, the battle raged around him. Surging through the flames and smoke, the humans pressed their advantage. The Ogres scrambled to regain their defense, but to no avail.

The humans surrounded the few last groups of Ogres and hacked and slashed their way to victory. Until, at last, the mere sight of so many humans, bloodied, was enough to make the few remaining Ogres break formation and run.

The humans gave chase, but Eadamm called them back. “Leave some to carry the tale,” he shouted.

Two of Krynn’s moons, near to setting, hung low in the sky. It seemed only minutes ago that the battle had begun, rather than more than an hour.

Jeb was dead, pierced through so many times that it seemed the Ogre had been trying to obliterate him rather than just kill. Eadamm knelt at his friend’s side and covered his broken body with the fine woolen cloak that had been torn half off him. It was muddied, ripped, stained with the blood of Ogres and Jeb himself.

“We won,” Eadamm told his friend. Only then did he notice how quiet the canyon had become.

Chapter 10

DIRECTIONS FROM ABOVE

Anel stared at the female Ogre who stood before the Ruling Council. Although every hair was braided and neatly in place, she still appeared harried and frightened.

“The forest killed them?” Anel asked, her voice disbelieving even though she had already heard similar reports from the three guards who had escaped. She glanced at her fellow council members. Their faces were equally stunned.

The warrior nodded. “We were lucky. Our group leader saw the danger, and we managed to pull back, rested, and regrouped. Then, when we were ready to attack again, that’s when the humans surprised us. We – We were in the back. We barely escaped with our lives. My brother was … Raell …” Her voice choked off. “He was one of the unlucky.”

Anel nodded in sympathy. “We will sing for your loss.” She motioned an aide to step forward and lead the female away. She didn’t need to probe the mind of this one. She’d already probed the first three for truth. Except for minor details, this fourth story corroborated the others.

“We must send another company,” Teragrym began even before the door had closed. “A stronger, more dedicated one.”

“Who do you suggest?” Enna responded acidly. “They have defeated our best. And from where? We need more guards for the estate trails. Two more supply caravans were struck this morning by runaway slaves. And to where? Our scouts have died alongside most of the Redienhs warriors.”

“Then we must begin conscripting from the common classes. Train harder, faster, better,” Teragrym said dryly. “And we must send mages.”

Narran flipped open his fingers, sending a jagged flash of light shooting toward the ceiling. It sizzled and disappeared. “Which of us do you suggest, Teragrym?” he asked angrily. “Perhaps you want to send one of your children?”

“We have to fight magic with magic, not swords. I do not prefer to send my family into danger, but what I must do, I will do. As you will.” He fixed Narran with a withering glance. “But don’t worry. For the moment, I have someone besides you in mind to command a counterstrike.”

“Then you may proceed accordingly, Teragrym,” Anel said. “Enna, you will institute a program for selecting and training more guards.”

*

Calmness. Serenity. Eight days of safety.

Butyr’s young sister had been one of those killed, as well as two sons of the wild Aliehs clan, and five others they couldn’t spare, but they had gone on.

The last days had been a healing time, a calming time, though with none of the comforts to which Khallayne had been raised and barely enough food, and that ill cooked.

Her legs aching and belly rumbling, without a home, she had never been happier. Jelindra, a young female Ogre barely a hundred years old, her pale hair still tied with childish ribbons, rode by her side, hanging on Khallayne’s words as she taught the young one the incantation for disguise.

“We’re close now, Khallayne.” Tenaj rode back from the front of the group to interrupt the lesson. Jelindra grimaced with disappointment but obediently rode away, still counting off the lines of the incantation on her fingers.

Khallayne watched her go with a smile. “I think she’ll be very good someday. She’s very accepting of the power.”

“I’d like to learn,” Tenaj said very quietly, very shyly. “I’ve never been very good, but …”

Khallayne smiled with pleasure so genuine that the expression lit up her face. “Oh, Tenaj, you have no idea. This is unbelievable. My whole life I’ve had to hide my magic. Now everyone knows, and instead of being punished, they’re asking me to use it more! I’d love to teach you, anything you want to learn.”

They both had to gallop to catch up with Lyrralt.

The whole company wanted to go into the city, but they understood the danger involved. Lyrralt had not wanted to go, but had been chosen, along with Tenaj and Khallayne, to check out the city, to spy.

The city of Thorad was as unlike Takar as Lyrralt’s father’s estate was different from the king’s summer home. Like Takar, it was a center for trade, but unlike Takar, it wasn’t walled. Built after the Ruling Council had brought peace, the young city had sprung up in the very center of the Khalkists as the hub of the Ogre empire.

It was laid out in the orderly, wagon wheel style of old, its outermost ring consisting mostly of taverns and inns. All the buildings had high, sloping roofs, the better to shed the heavy snows of winter, and the windows had folding wooden shutters that could be closed to shut out the elements. Today, they were all thrown open to let in the warming rays of the unusually warm fall day.

Lyrralt was glad to the see the streets filled with traders, merchants, and travelers. He slowed his horse, wondering which way would be best. They needed information and supplies, but it had to be done without arousing suspicions.

“What do you think?” Tenaj reined in beside him.

“Well, the easiest way to get information in the castle was to sit in the dining hall. I have little familiarity with such places as these.” He indicated the rough-looking inns and taverns lining the street. “But I suppose they’re the best place to start.”

Tenaj nodded agreement, pointing to one across the street.

There were several horses crowded to the hitching rods outside its door. He shrugged and steered his horse toward it. The one Tenaj had chosen was as good as any other.

Inside, the inn was dark, but warm from a crackling fire in a fireplace as large as any in the castle. There were perhaps twenty other guests in the room, mostly at the bar. The tables and chairs in the cramped dining area were gray stone, and as soon as he and Tenaj sat down, Lyrralt understood why the fire was kept hot. The stone leeched the warmth from his body right though his cloak.

An Ogre wearing a huge medallion with the sigil of Hiddukel brought the three travelers some wine without being asked. He bowed to Lyrralt, saying, “You’re welcome in my inn, Lord.”

Lyrralt relaxed at once, knowing they’d come to the right place. All merchants worshiped Hiddukel, god of ill-gotten gain and greed, but, fearing to insult their customers, who were sponsored by other gods, few did so blatantly. He leaned close so that he could speak without being overheard by the other diners. “With luck, I’ll be able to get the information we need out of this one.”

Tenaj nodded. “If I stood at the bar, I could listen in on the conversations.”

“And I could find another place.” Khallayne sipped her wine and made a face. “Preferably someplace with better food and drink.”

Lyrralt nodded, motioned them closer. “Listen for anything at all that might tell us what the council is up to. Anything. A large supply order or an inn too full could mean a guard unit on the move. And anything at all about Igraine. How do the citizens feel about him here? What have they heard?

“Most of these people are traders. They travel most of the year. We might learn of someplace where we could settle. The others wouldn’t like to hear of it, but I don’t think there’s anyplace in the Khalkists where we’ll be safe anymore.”

“I agree,” said a voice behind Lyrralt.

Lyrralt whipped around, his hand automatically slipping inside his robe for his dagger. How had the two who stood staring down at him sneaked up without being detected?

“Who are you?” Tenaj asked suspiciously, her hand also hidden under the table.

“I’m Bakrell. This is my sister, Kaede. We didn’t mean to startle you.”

“We’ve been waiting for you.” The female Ogre spoke in a sweet voice.

The two, brother and sister, smiled the same smile and took seats on the stone bench on either side of Lyrralt without being invited.

Except for the smile, the two were so different, Khallayne’s immediate assumption was that they must have had different fathers. Kaede possessed skin as dark indigo as Jyrbian’s and Lyrralt’s, eyes so pale a silver that they were almost white. Her brother had medium royal-blue skin, average silver eyes, average build and height. He would have blended into any crowd, from royalty right down to the lowliest shopkeeper. Except for his expression. Despite the smile, he looked at all of them from under his brows with a strange intensity.

She shivered. The temperature felt as though it had dropped ten degrees.

“Waiting for us?”

“Yes. Not you, exactly, but for someone from Takar. For someone traveling with Lord Igraine. We’ve heard … many things.”

“We wanted to know more.” Kaede’s voice was as light, as beguiling, as her brother’s was dark. “We … We want to join you. The talk is of nothing else. Of the new life you – Lord Igraine – will build out of the old. I – We want to be a part of it.”

Khallayne stared at her through slitted eyes. There was something about her, something she thought she ought to recognize. Had she seen her before somewhere? “You said the mountains aren’t safe?”

Bakrell nodded. “We left Takar the week after Lord Igraine escaped. We’ve been forced to take back trails to avoid the troops.”

The two strangers both had their hands on the table in plain sight. Lyrralt relaxed a little, eased his hand out of his robe. “How long have you been here?” He took a sip of his wine.

“Over a week. We knew – well, we hoped someone would come this way. We thought you’d need supplies.”

“What we need,” Tenaj said, “is information. About Takar.”

“The last we heard, the word in Takar is that the Ruling Council is determined that Igraine be caught. We don’t know if it’s true, but the main trails out of the city are heavily watched.”

Tenaj grimaced. “It’s what we expected.”

“So what do we do now. Live on the plains among the humans?” Khallayne asked, half sarcastically.

Kaede’s expression brightened. She turned to her brother. “That would be exciting, wouldn’t it?”

“Among the humans?” he asked. “Surely there is a better alternative?”

Khallayne looked at Kaede. “Have we met? I have the feeling I know you.”

“Perhaps you’ve seen me in the castle. Bakrell and I visited occasionally. I know I’ve seen you. That’s how we knew you were from Takar. I’ve always admired your unusual beauty. I’m so glad we spotted you. We’ve been watching the taverns for days.”

Kaede sounded sincere. Their story sounded honest. Everything seemed right except for their clothing. They wore simple garb that didn’t stand out in the surroundings unless one recognized quality. Khallayne wore the roughest clothes she owned, and the trail was beginning to tell on them. The cloth of Kaede’s and Bakrell’s tunics and cloaks was the finest material. The clasp at the throat of her cloak was brushed gold, the bands on his wrists polished silver. They seemed unlikely refugees.

“We’ve been purchasing trail supplies since we got here,” Bakrell said. “A little every day, in different places. We thought, if anyone came, it might come in handy.”

“I’m sure Igraine will welcome you both.” Lyrralt sketched a little bow of welcome.

*

Several hard days later on the trail, Khallayne’s skeptical opinion of the brother and sister still hadn’t changed. They did everything that was asked of them, Bakrell haughtily, glancing around to see who might be admiring him. Kaede carried water and started fires as gracefully as if she were at court. But instead of the gaze of many, in just one day, it was obvious she was interested only in the gaze of one person – Jyrbian.

With amusement, Khallayne noted that Jyrbian was as oblivious to Kaede’s admiration as Everlyn was to his.

*

Lyrralt sat well away from the others, behind the curve of a ditch. He uncapped the vial of water he carried always. The flickering fire was barely enough to hold back the encroaching darkness.

The fugitives were camped in a large, open area almost devoid of the dense forest that surrounded them. In the warm glow of the setting sun, the view from the ridge was fabulous, a glorious panorama of the Khalkists, awash in rose and orange and gold.

The History said the bald areas were caused when the gods thumped their fists onto the mountains. But sitting on the ground, with the quietness of the earth seeping into his bones, speaking to his heart, Lyrralt could sense an ancient fire that had burned away the trees, leaving only grass. It seemed a fitting place for his meditations.

As he did each evening, Lyrralt raised his eyes to the heavens, to the constellation of Hiddukel, and whispered a prayer, an entreaty for guidance.

Since the mad flight from Takar, he had been without direction, adrift. Hiddukel had told him nothing since. He knew only that Khallayne was involved in his destiny, and there was doom in the teachings of Igraine. There was also a blindness in the future, something he would not be able to see.

Perhaps tonight guidance would come. Glancing around once more to make sure he was unobserved, Lyrralt slipped his tunic to his waist, exposing his shoulders and arms to the cold night air. The runes glowed white and milky against his skin, mirroring the glow of the stars in the velvet sky.

He waited, lips moving in almost desperate entreaty, praying for guidance and the loving touch of his god.

The inner flesh of his arm tingled, so lightly it might have been only the breeze caressing his flesh. Lyrralt held his breath. Again, the tingle. The sensation was so layered, so complex that it could not be separated, could not be differentiated. Then pain, hunger, rhapsody all vibrated along his nerves.

He wanted to watch, to see the writings that would appear on his flesh, but he could not. The pain, the pleasure, drew his head back, made him take great gulps of air. He could only hold out his arm to the sky and wait for the test to be done.

The stars had moved in the sky by the time Lyrralt was once again conscious. The sensation on his skin had become a mere itch. He hoped the sigils would not be too cryptic, now that he had no experienced priest to guide him.

Or, looking at it another way, he had the highest advisor of all, Hiddukel himself. And with such a guide, how could he fail?

Lyrralt looked down and saw a band of runes encircling his arm, just beneath the one rune that had appeared at Khal-Theraxian. He moved closer to the fire and stirred up the embers until he had some light. His breath caught in his throat.

The symbols could be read easily, even by a beginner. Death. Stealth. Igraine – that symbol he knew already on his arm. And the next one, too, the dead queen – Khallayne. But he couldn’t tell what had appeared next to her name. He would have to study it.

For the moment, the ones he could discern were enough to set Lyrralt’s head spinning. Getting Igraine away from the protection of Jyrbian and Everlyn wouldn’t be easy. But it was necessary.

Igraine had become almost holy to most of the group. Every night, a different group huddled around him at his campfire, clung to his words as if they were bits of wisdom from the gods themselves.

Lyrralt would have to watch and wait and plan. He snuffed out his fire and returned to camp.

*

They rode north, higher into the mountains to avoid the main trails. Using the back ways slowed them. Somehow more refugees found them, some from Takar, some from Thorad, even a handful from faraway Bloten, and the added numbers slowed them further.

Rain poured from the sky with such ferocity that Tenaj remarked that the gods must surely be weeping. Water dripped from the leaves, cut grooves into the paths, flowed until the travelers had not a thread of dry clothing left.

Each morning Lyrralt woke wet and miserable. He searched the distant mountainside for new landslides. There was always at least one, an ugly scar marring the green slopes, a clay-colored wound where the earth had simply given up and let go. With each slide, he rode more nervously, wondering if the next one would be the one to come down on his head.

The path forked, narrowed to a ledge, and disappeared around a bare cliff face toward a roaring waterfall. To the northeast, the path went around the same cliff, wide and smooth as it meandered toward Thordyn Pass.

They climbed down and gathered around a map, which Jyrbian hunched over and held as tightly against his body as possible to shield it from the rain. It was old, probably inaccurate, but was all they had. This part of the mountains was all bare cliff faces and rocky outcroppings. No one would need a map of it, except thieves and criminals.

Lyrralt peered over his brother’s shoulder. The path to the east was nearly twice as long and wound through a narrow valley that would make an excellent spot for ambush, if the tree cover was good.

“I think we should take the west path.” Jyrbian folded the map and put it away in his saddlebag.

Lyrralt quickly remounted, his heart beating as loudly as the rain thrummed on the leaves overhead. By the time he was settled, Butyr and Everlyn were arguing for the easier path.

“Jyrbian, it’s still raining. That path will be dangerous.”

“And least likely to hold an ambush, besides being half the distance,” Jyrbian said firmly.

Lyrralt let out his breath, relieved that Jyrbian had the presence of mind to resist Everlyn. He edged his horse toward the narrow path.

The rain had eased to a trickle, coating the trail with a layer of moisture. The rocky path was bare and slick, so narrow that their legs would brush the granite wall. They would be forced to ride single file. And it would be easy for a horse to slip, for the slick hooves to skid, for a rider to tumble down the cliff’s side …

“What do you think?”

Lyrralt turned to find Igraine beside him. The Ogre was watching him with a solemn, penetrating gaze. Looking at him, not the trail, as if he could see deep into his heart.

The hieroglyphs woke on his arm, writhed and itched. “It’s very narrow. Slippery and treacherous. But it is shorter, and —”

“Still you favor it?”

“Yes,” Lyrralt said, looking away, suddenly sure that Igraine knew what he was planning, knew he was thinking how easy it would be, once they were on the narrow ridge, for Igraine’s horse to plunge accidentally over the edge.

“I’m glad you agree, Brother,” Jyrbian said as he pushed past, his horse nudging Lyrralt’s aside.

Lyrralt looked back and saw Everlyn, Khallayne and Tenaj, and behind them, two of the newcomers, Bakrell and Kaede. Butyr was farther back, scowling, talking with large gestures to one of his cousins.

Two of the Ogres who always loudly supported Jyrbian, who had established themselves as sword-masters, pushed past before Lyrralt could close the gap. “After you, Lord,” Lyrralt said when the two were past and motioned courteously for Igraine to precede him.

Chapter 11

GLORY AND DANGER ALIKE

They rode out onto the ledge.

The fear they all felt was like the gray mist, thick enough to see, to taste. Lyrralt forced himself to concentrate on Igraine’s broad back, to watch for an opportunity.

The ledge on which they rode was so narrow that they loosened grit and pebbles from the cliff face with each step of their horses.

No going back.

Lyrralt tore his gaze from Igraine and settled on the immense gulf of open air between him and the ground below.

No going back. The words beat a refrain in his mind.

The roar of the river, the rushing of the waterfall, the pounding of his own heart, made a song to Hiddukel. In tempo to it, he whispered a chant aimed at Igraine and the horse he rode. He urged his horse forward, as close to Igraine’s as he dared.

Igraine’s horse shied, indication that Lyrralt’s chant was working. It whipped its glossy mane back and forth, then stopped, lowering its rump preparatory to rearing. Igraine stiffened, fought against the fear that enveloped him. Somehow, he kept his head, restrained the horse.

Lyrralt chanced releasing his reins and touched his shoulder, drawing on the magic of the runes. He could feel the power flowing through him, out of him, streaming toward the Ogre and beast ahead.

A scream! Lyrralt started, then froze, every muscle in his body seizing up. The magic of the runes died, cut off abruptly.

“Don’t stop! Keep moving!” The words echoed, came from somewhere far away, perhaps originating from ahead, perhaps from behind. Perhaps it was Jyrbian’s voice. Perhaps his own.

More screams broke through, more than one voice. There was a crack, like a whip striking the cliff face, and pebbles rained down on his back. More screams were followed by a horrible sound of a rider and horse falling, somewhere behind him. The screaming died away and ended abruptly with the sickening, bone-cracking thud of bodies slamming into rock.

Lyrralt’s horse, responding to the terror of the other animal, tried to bolt. Its hooves scrabbled for purchase on the path. The rider behind him cried out.

Lyrralt grabbed for the cliff face with one hand, yanked at the reins with the other, tightened his grip on his mount, and prayed for the animal to regain its footing.

The rider behind him cried out again as Lyrralt’s horse stumbled backward.

Lyrralt nails tore as he grabbed for an outcropping of rock, a crevice, anything. He kicked out. His fingers found only slick stone. Then he was free, hanging by his fingertips in the air.

His body slammed back into the wall. As breath whooshed out of his lungs, his grip on the sharp rock broke, and he knew momentum was going to carry him over the cliff.

Something – someone – caught him. Strong hands encircled his wrist and yanked him forward. He danced for firm footing, found it, and looked up into Igraine’s eyes. His face taut, Igraine held his wrist firmly, held his arm stretched at a painful angle across the backside of his horse, as he tried to control the animal, tried to keep his own precarious balance.

“Don’t let go!” Lyrralt gasped.

Igraine gave a single shake of his head and pulled harder, righting himself and steadying the horse with a mighty effort.

Muscles stretched to the breaking point, Lyrralt lowered himself until his feet found the path. He would have fainted but for the pain coursing through his body, but for the steely gray eyes locked with his, holding both of them upright almost by sheer will.

“Slowly …” Igraine said tensely, looking back down the trail. “Slowly. Climb up behind me. Now! Climb up!” Igraine pulled on his wounded arm.

Lyrralt gasped as pain shot through his joints.

Behind him, someone screamed. Something slapped against the cliff above him. Pebbles rained down on his back. It was starting all over again!

More screams, more pebbles. A fist-sized rock struck his shoulder. Something hit Igraine, and he let go.

Lyrralt fell back and flattened himself against the granite cliff. Tentacles, ghastly yellow and banded with brown, fleshy rings, were reaching up from beneath the ledge, slithering along the path, searching, tapping the space between riders. When they didn’t find anything, first one tentacle, then another, reared back and hammered the wall, sending a shower of pebbles and rocks exploding outward.

As the tentacles returned to their searching, Lyrralt realized he could hear a slavering, gurgling hiss. He reached for his arm, closing his fingers over the runes for strength. He closed his eyes and whispered to Hiddukel, asking for a shield, something to disguise his body from the slithering arms.

A scream louder and more terrible than any before broke his concentration. His eyes snapped open. The tentacles found a victim! As Lyrralt watched, the arms plucked a rider and horse from the ledge and dragged them over and down, out of sight.

The sounds that followed were indescribable. Lyrralt’s stomach lurched and would not be denied. Clinging to the cliff, he bent at the knees and vomited over the side.

“We must move. Quickly.” Igraine had turned around on his horse, his hand extended.

He seemed to be very far away. The distance from Lyrralt to the back of the horse seemed insurmountable. Lyrralt shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Can you walk?”

Lyrralt nodded. He stepped, clutched the wall tighter, and inched forward. His feet were numb. One step. Another. Somehow his legs supported him. His arm, though aching, held on to the cliff.

After a moment, Igraine gently urged his horse onward.

Lyrralt dared to look back at the Ogre on the path behind him. They nodded at each other as Lyrralt forced himself to take another step, then another, another.

The rain had started again, drops so huge that he could feel them roll down his neck. They soaked the ledge. Still he forced his legs to carry him on, concentrating on just one step at a time.

It seemed that days passed before the ledge began to widen and he stepped off the shelf. He rushed forward, past Jyrbian, past Igraine, past Khallayne’s outstretched hand, past the riders who had stopped ahead of him. He didn’t stop until there was solid ground for twenty feet all around him, trees blocking the view down the mountainside. There he fell to his knees and retched helplessly.

When he finally looked up, it was Igraine who had dismounted and was coming to help him, Igraine’s hands that held his shoulders, supported his head. Then there were others, supporting his body, someone gently wiping his face with a soft cloth, another Ogre handing him wine to rinse his mouth.

Shamed to his core, he pushed everyone away, stood on his own, and found himself surrounded by concerned faces, Igraine, Everlyn, Khallayne, Tenaj, Everlyn’s Aunt Naej.

“I thought we were going to lose you,” Igraine said with a smile, evidence of how pleased he was that they had not.

“I was just ahead,” Khallayne said. “I saw your horse go over, and I could tell there was a problem, but I didn’t know what happened.”

“He saved Lord Igraine!” the Ogre who had been behind Lyrralt on the trail said.

“What!” The word was spoken by a chorus of voices, Lyrralt’s among them.

The runes on his arm roused, clamped down, burned. “I didn’t —!” Lyrralt protested. He looked at Igraine’s face, saw only a serene smile there, instead of irritation for the mistaken idea. “Igraine saved me!”

The mumbling died down. The crowd turned to Igraine, waiting for his response.

“I’d say we saved each other.” Igraine clasped Lyrralt on the shoulder.

There were words of approval from the crowd. Some reached out to touch Lyrralt, to pat him, to murmur wordless awe and approbation. He had saved and been saved by Igraine. It was almost as if they felt that by touching him, they touched Igraine and took for themselves a blessing, a charm of protection.

Lyrralt, ignoring the seething runes, was amazed by their warmth.

As the Ogres began to drift back to their horses, ready to move on, Lyrralt looked up.

Jyrbian sat on his horse, looking away toward the horizon, his face dispassionate, expressionless. Lyrralt realized that, of all the hands that had reached out to help him, his own brother’s had not been among them.

Jyrbian looked down at him finally and said, “Are you going to stand there all day?” He spurred his horse. The huge animal gave a lurch in Lyrralt’s direction, then wheeled and headed up the trail.

*

“Lyrralt will be one of the ones to go. It’s his horse we need to replace.” Jyrbian’s voice, speaking with the authority of one who knew he would not be disputed, echoed in Lyrralt’s thoughts as he and his entourage of fourteen rode into the human settlement.

Since the deaths on the trail, Jyrbian wasn’t likely to be disputed. His loudest detractor, Butyr, had been the first one dragged from the ledge to gruesome death. Lyrralt, who was exalted for having been saved by the grace of the gods and the intercession of Igraine, hadn’t even tried to argue, though he had not wanted to make the trip into Nerat for supplies and information.

The three weeks of travel since the deaths of those on the cliff trail had been long and tedious. Lyrralt had watched, planned, waited for another chance to do his god’s bidding, but the opportunity eluded him. Now Igraine was always encircled by a group extolling his brave actions.

Lyrralt himself was sought out, admired. Perhaps, he reflected ruefully, that was why Jyrbian had insisted he lead the group into Nerat. Perhaps Jyrbian didn’t want anyone else becoming popular and powerful.

Obviously relishing his leadership of the refugees, Jyrbian was trying to pattern his mannerisms after Igraine.

Lyrralt had watched his brother, day after day, pulling a mask over his natural cynicism, forcing out calm, gentle words where harsh ones would have been more comfortable on his lips, striving to show a face that would prove worthy of Igraine’s approbation … and Everlyn’s love.

Unfortunately, the latter eluded him. Igraine might smile at Jyrbian and nod approvingly, but his daughter seemed oblivious to Jyrbian, impervious to all his smiles and courtly bows.

As the party rode into Nerat, down the middle of the main street, all human eyes, hostile and cold, turned on them. This burg was nothing like Thorad. It was a poor, dusty collection of unmatched buildings, a few made of stone, some rotting wood, and some apparently made of nothing more than mud and sticks.

Lyrralt and his people were accustomed to humans as slaves, dispirited and harmless, their wills broken, all resistance crushed. These humans didn’t appear to be any of those things.

Lyrralt chose a ramshackle building that appeared to be a merchant center and motioned for half his party to accompany him and the other half to remain with the animals.

The inside of the wooden building smelled abominably of human sweat and unclean flesh, of unfinished, weathered wood and mysterious human spices. It was dark, lit by only the light from two dirty windows and lanterns in each corner. The single room was piled with bags and boxes of merchandise, shelves stacked with unmarked earthen containers.

“We don’t want your kind in here,” a harsh, guttural human voice said from behind the counter, which ran the width of the back of the room. Behind it were more shelves, these containing bottles of ale and wine.

Lyrralt, whose eyes were still adjusting after the noon sun’s brightness, could barely make out the lean figure of a male human, fists propped on the bar. The human had long, dark hair curling about his shoulders and shorter hair across his entire face.

Because of the hostility, the outright hate in the human’s voice, Kaede, hand on the hilt of her sword, started forward. Lyrralt stopped her unobtrusively.

Igraine and Everlyn had both spoken with him on the trail, warning him of reacting too severely to the hostility they were sure to encounter in Nerat. They had been extremely forceful in their opinion that the humans should be dealt with fairly and respectfully.

Lyrralt said coldly, “We have coin. We require supplies and information. We can pay handsomely. And we offer information in return.” Igraine had told him to say that, too.

“I said we don’t —” The human who had spoken first began again, his tone even more rude, even louder than before, but another cut him off.

“Turk … Let’s hear what he has to say.” The speaker was taller and leaner than the first human, and even uglier. He had a small circular hat perched on his thin head.

He motioned for the angry human to step back, then turned to the group of Ogres. “We don’t get many Ogre customers. The only time your kind visits Nerat, it’s to steal our children.”

Everlyn stepped forward, her palms extended. “Please, we mean no harm. We’re not like that. We are …” She paused, obviously searching for some way to explain. Finding no single word, she used many, quickly explaining the actions of Eadamm, the philosophy of Igraine, and how they had happened to be on the plains.

The human grunted when she had finished. “Uh. I’d heard something like that. Didn’t believe it, though.”

“We need horses, five or ten, as many as you can sell us,” said Lyrralt. “And supplies. Dried meat, flour, sugar, salt.”

“Wine,” said Tenaj from behind him.

“And we need to know about the land around here. What lies north? And east?” As he was speaking, Lyrralt pulled money from his pocket, displaying a handful of steel and copper coins.

The human’s eyes, which had grown narrow and suspicious at his questions, now glinted. He was no different from an Ogre merchant in that respect. “Get the supplies.” He motioned for the one named Turk to bring the items Lyrralt had listed. “There’s maybe three horses in the village for sale, I guess. No more.”

Turk, who had stomped away to do as he was told, now returned. He slammed a heavy, dusty sack onto the counter, and glared at Lyrralt and Everlyn with such anger in his eyes that Lyrralt would have liked to hack his eyeballs from his head.

He touched the dagger hidden at his waist inside the flowing folds of his cloak. The movement was not lost on the humans.

“Turk was a slave in Thorden,” the taller human explained without any hint of apology in his voice. “He has better reason than most to hate your kind. He lost his fingers during his slavery.”

As Turk slammed another sack onto the first, he laid his arms on the top of it. It was true; he had no fingers on his left hand and only two on his right.

“Lost them?” Turk growled and held up his scarred hands, first in the human’s face, then waving them toward Everlyn and Lyrralt. “My master” – he spat the word, forming his right hand into a fist – “ate them. While I watched.”

Everlyn flushed. Lyrralt shrugged. An Ogre might do as he or she pleased with property. Just the same, he turned away from the sight of the man’s missing fingers.

“Get someone else to serve them.” Turk slammed his fist into the bag of flour once more before stomping away.

“We’ll do it ourselves,” Tenaj said softly, moving toward the sacks.

Lyrralt was surprised to see that her face bore the same compassion as Everlyn’s.

*

Khallayne sat on a row of rocks at the edge of the camp and stared at the flat line of the horizon. Even after days of existence on the plains, she wasn’t accustomed to the eternal flatness.

A few feet away, Jelindra and Nomryh worked at starting fires and extinguishing them. Jelindra had progressed at an amazing pace, but her brother was having more trouble with the fundamentals of magic.

“No, no, Nomryh,” Khallayne admonished. “You’re depending too much on the incantation. Try to feel it. Try to forget the words and feel the power.”

He nodded and bent to a small, cleared space with a pile of dry grass in the center.

Khallayne went back to gazing at the horizon. For all her life, she’d lived in the mountains, where even the largest valley was ringed with mountains. She found the flatness of the land, the infinity of it stretching away, frightening and fascinating.

She felt what the gods must have felt, looking down on Krynn in the beginning. Away from the camp, with only her two charges and the soft murmuring of the spells for company, she felt small and inconsequential.

“Khallayne?” Jyrbian slid down on the rocks several feet away. “I was watching you work with the children.”

“Are you having trouble with your magic?” She patted the rocks closer to her, beckoning him closer.

He nodded, looking so dismayed that she laughed. “It took me two hundred years, Jyrbian. You can’t expect to master it in a few weeks.”

“I know.” He shifted nearer. “It’s just that I’ve come so far …”

She understood exactly. “For two hundred years, I tortured human mages, extorting their knowledge from them. But until the battle in the forest, I didn’t understand.” She turned sideways, drawing her knees up. “Human magic and Ogre magic are vastly different. I didn’t realize that I was hampering my own abilities by relying on the human requirements for incantation and spell components.”

He was following every word, but she saw that he didn’t really comprehend.

“I’m sorry, Jyrbian. I can’t explain any better than I already have. You just have to let go. You must trust your own intuition.”

She held out her fist and popped her fingers open. Puffballs danced in her palm, like those on the tops of the nearby grasses, except that hers glowed at the center. “Try to feel it. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

He held out his fist, concentrated, and opened his fingers. There was nothing there.

She smiled at his crestfallen expression. It was harder for him than most. The mighty warrior Jyrbian was not accustomed to failure.

“It’ll come, Jyrbian. It’ll come the way it did for me. And Jelindra.”

He was no longer paying her any attention. He was looking eastward, where the line of sky and land was broken by a group of riders on horseback.

“Look!” she called to her students, pointing.

“It’s only Lady Everlyn and the others,” Nomryh protested.

Khallayne looked at him sternly. “Yes, I believe so, too. But what should we do?”

“Run and alert the sentries. Sound the alarm.” He spoke in a tired voice, by rote.

“Very good.” Khallayne took pity on them, shooed them away. “Go tell the sentries as you’re supposed to. Then go and play for a while before supper. You’ve done enough for today.”

The two hurried away, their energy already renewed.

Jyrbian, too, stood. “I’d better go and see what they’ve found out.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet, but she demurred.

“I think I’ll stay a while longer.”

The clamor of the camp rose as Lyrralt and his group rode in, leading three new horses loaded with supplies. Everyone came over to see what had been brought back, to hear the news, everyone except for Kaede. She left the camp, a shawl folded over her arm.

Khallayne watched lazily, observing the ebb and flow of the crowd, Kaede’s wandering. Kaede roamed far out onto the plain, then bent down.

Khallayne sat up straight and shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see Kaede’s arms moving up and down, as though digging.

Kaede must be digging for roots. Some of the Ogre cooks had been experimenting with roots and berries and grasses, looking for something to flavor the monotonous meals. So far, dried meat, boiled and mixed with greens and herbs, still tasted like dried meat.

Still, Khallayne sat there, staring out over the plains, waiting for the golden disk of the sun to slowly drop toward the dark meeting point of land and sky.

The humans attacked at dusk.

Chapter 12

A LESSON PUT TO USE

For a moment, Khallayne’s mind refused to be drawn away. The violent sounds seemed unreal, far away.

Humans erupted from the grass, screaming and yelling, like fish leaping from beneath the peaceful waters of a pool. The pounding of horses, the screams from camp, the sudden peal of blade against blade, all were background.

Then reality intruded, and Khallayne leapt to her feet with a gasp. Humans were attacking!

She ran, the pumping of her blood thrumming in her ears, fuel to the coursing of the magic. By the time she reached the encampment, the humans were fiercely engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with the Ogres. They had attacked the east perimeter of the camp.

Power coiled in her belly, ready to be unleashed. The fighting was so close, there seemed no way to set it free without danger to her own.

This was no ragtag band of runaway slaves, wielding homemade weapons and crude spears. These warriors rode into the line of Ogre defense, laying about with axe and mace. They ran, sword in hand. Archers knelt just outside the light of the campfires and let fly arrows feathered with the colors of the prairie.

Khallayne wheeled in time to see a female Ogre run down by a grinning, snarling human on horseback. He crushed her skull with one blow of his heavy mace, then wheeled his mount toward other fighters.

She snatched up the fallen Ogre’s sword and ran toward the human. He swung at her, and she felt air whistle past her face. His horse danced sideways, and he jerked it around.

As he charged again, she darted in under his weapon and grabbed his leg, sent magic whooshing out through her fingertips. She had no idea what she was doing. She felt the power, as she had in Khal-Theraxian, as she had in the forest. And as before, the power served her without direction.

The human screamed, fell from his horse, and lay writhing in the dirt, begging for mercy as he died. Without a backward glance, Khallayne threw down the sword.

Another sword sliced through the air. Materializing as if from thin air, Tenaj met the low, whistling swing and deflected it from Khallayne with her sword. Her next movement ripped open the gut of the man, left him standing with his hand pressed to his bleeding stomach, his expression comically surprised. Before Khallayne could say anything, Tenaj had wheeled toward an opening in the line of defenders, blocking to prevent another attacker from slipping through.

Khallayne pivoted. In the thick of the fighting she saw Jyrbian. He was standing his ground, seemingly invincible. Lyrralt fought near him, meeting the human attackers with the same ferocity as his brother.

All around them, the others were rallying to him. She ran toward them. The humans were being driven back!

As Khallayne struck out at the nearest human, Everlyn ran past, weaponless. Khallayne darted to intercept her, past sword thrusts and under swinging axes, but Everlyn reached Jyrbian first. She threw herself between him and the human he was fighting, a husky, hard-muscled human who held his weapon awkwardly because of missing fingers on his sword hand.

Jyrbian dropped his guard, and the human was so surprised at seeing an Ogre throw out her arms to shield him, that he didn’t take immediate advantage of the situation.

“Please stop!” Everlyn cried.

“Everlyn! Get out of the way!” He reached out to snatch her aside.

She evaded him, still using her body to protect the human. She reached out and shoved the human who was fighting Lyrralt. The woman warrior was so surprised, she almost dropped her weapon.

Lyrralt, however, didn’t. He stepped in, lifting his mace high over his shoulder.

Before he could knock the woman’s head from her shoulders, Igraine stopped him. He stepped in front of Lyrralt, raising a hand in front of Lyrralt’s mace.

With a glance at her father, Everlyn dropped her arms and said simply, “We have to stop the fighting.” Despite the softness of her voice, the words carried to the others.

On both sides, the attacks slowed until, all along the line, humans and Ogres stood warily still, breathing heavily, weapons frozen but held at the ready.

“Please …” Everlyn turned to Turk, the human who had shown her his crippled hand in Nerat. “This is not what we came here for. Please, stop the fighting. We mean you no harm.”

“Ogres always mean harm!” he snarled, thrusting his maimed hand into her face.

Jyrbian growled as Everlyn closed her fingers over the man’s hand, showing him tenderness. Disgusted, Jyrbian reached for Everlyn, but Igraine stepped between them.

“We aren’t like that,” Everlyn told Turk, meeting his shocked gaze unflinchingly. “That’s why we’re here, because we – we choose not to keep slaves, not to harm others. That’s why we’ve been driven from our homes.”

Turk pulled his hand away from her. “You’ll not find a welcome here. Too many have died, or worse, at the hands of your kind.”

“Then we’ll go,” Igraine spoke for the first time, laying a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Put away your arms. Leave us, and tomorrow we’ll be on our way. We want no more killing. We want only a place to make a home in peace.”

Khallayne looked up and down the line and saw that Igraine’s words found support, even among the humans. They had begun to lower their weapons, to stand down from their tense posture. She felt the pressure easing.

Turk looked at Everlyn. “Is this the truth?” he demanded of her. “Will you leave, without further harm to any of my people?”

Before Jyrbian, or any of the dozen or so others who seemed about to answer, could speak, she nodded emphatically. “Yes. I promise.”

Turk gestured abruptly, and the humans began to withdraw.

“I’ll take your word on this,” Turk warned Everlyn, “though I may be crazy to do so. But if you break your word …”

Without completing the sentence, he backed away. As quickly, as silently, as they had come, the humans melted back into the plain, taking their fallen with them, leaving behind a band of dazed Ogres. If not for their few dead and wounded, Khallayne could almost believe the fight had never happened.

“What …?” Even Jyrbian, usually so authoritative, so sure of himself, was at a loss.

“What have you done?” Lyrralt asked finally, in a silence so profound that all could hear his words. “Why did you stop the fight? We should have killed them all!”

“Is that what you’ve learned from my father? Is that who you want to be, after all we’ve been through?” Everlyn asked with quiet strength.

Obviously struggling to understand, Jyrbian said, “They attacked us.”

Kaede appeared at Jyrbian’s elbow, a bloody dagger in her hand. “They’re humans.” If she had said “animals” or “dung,” her voice could not have portrayed more disdain, more contempt. “And they attacked us without provocation.”

Khallayne remembered that Kaede had left the camp. She tried to remember if she had seen Kaede during the fighting.

“They have reason to hate us,” Igraine was saying softly, “after all that we have done to them.”

Jyrbian opened his mouth to disagree with Igraine, to agree with Kaede. Humans were stupid and savage, good for nothing but slavery. And as for humans who would attempt to kill Ogres … his hatred, his lust to kill them boiled over inside. But Everlyn was watching. Sweet, kind, gentle Everlyn, who seemed so fragile that surely his rage could burn her up.

Visibly he controlled his emotions and was rewarded with a smile that warmed his heart. But when he stepped toward her, as usual she turned away.

Kaede put her hand on Jyrbian’s, her breast against his arm and gazed up at him with all the heat, the desire, he wished to see in Everlyn’s eyes.

He turned away. “We cannot go on this way,” he said, facing Igraine.

Khallayne stepped forward. Lyrralt was at her elbow. Bakrell, also, seemed to have appeared from nowhere, clutching a bloody weapon, as his sister had.

Toning his words with respect, Jyrbian said, “Now is the time to speak of the future. We’ve been running. Now you want us to run again, this time from a pack of puny humans. We could have vanquished them, made slaves of them! Built a new place here.”

There was only a minimum of mumbled agreement and much shaking of heads from those around him, but none spoke out. They waited for Igraine to respond.

Everlyn, her face flushed, eyes narrowed, said hotly, “You’ve learned nothing! Slavery is an evil thing! We can never build —”

Igraine hushed her with a glance. “We must find our own place,” he said, softly, then he repeated it in a louder voice for those at the back of the crowd. “And we must build it ourselves. Of our own sweat, not on the misery of others.”

“You mean, no slaves?” Lyrralt stared at Igraine in disbelief. The preaching of kindness and generosity in order to increase production from slaves had seemed bad enough. But this …!

“Lyrralt. It’s wrong to take a person from his home, from his family. It’s wrong to lock a man away, take away his freedom.” Everlyn touched his arm, as compassionately as she’d touched the human.

Jyrbian’s expression changed into one of jealousy and desire.

Lyrralt stared at her as he had stared at Igraine, as if he’d discovered someone, or something, he’d never seen before.

Igraine’s persuasive words filled the silence. “If we don’t change our ways, we’re doomed. Did you – all of you! – not see it in Takar?” He swept his arms wide.

There was murmured assent. “Did you not feel the hopelessness, the uselessness in your lives?” Jyrbian looked around at the crowd, saw the eager faces, the fevered eyes.

Igraine’s voice took on a compelling, urgent quality. “Can you not see what our kind will become if we continue on that misbegotten path? Have you ever felt more alive, living as we have these past few weeks, than in all of your miserable lives before?”

He had them now, their hearts and minds. The surge of joy, of faith from his followers, was almost tangible to behold. “We will leave in the morning.” he said. “We will find a place of our own, where we can be safe and happy.”

The crowd sighed. The Ogres, arms around their loved ones, began to drift away.

Everlyn went with her father, without a glance for Jyrbian, who would have followed her had Lyrralt not caught his arm and pulled him back.

“Is this heresy what he has been preaching all along, about not having slaves?” Lyrralt accused his brother, his glance taking in Khallayne, too.

Jyrbian shrugged, watching Everlyn’s disappearing back. “I’ve been too busy to sit around Igraine’s feet like a doting child.” He turned away.

The others also walked away, leaving only Khallayne and Bakrell to hear Lyrralt’s horrified voice. “This is madness! It was bad enough when he was talking about ‘choosing for yourself.’ Now he wants you to live as humans live, digging in the dirt for food, building miserable clay huts with your own hands! Don’t you even care?”

“Do you? Care, I mean?” Bakrell peered closely into Lyrralt’s eyes as if to gauge the sincerity of his answer.

“Well, I don’t care,” Khallayne said, before Lyrralt could answer.

“You don’t care as long as you can practice your heretical magic!”

She met his angry gaze with an expression of equal determination. How long since she’d thought of her magic as a thing to be hidden away? As a wrongness? Any philosophy, heretical or not, was worth the peace and joy and sense of belonging of the past weeks. She shrugged, looking eerily like Jyrbian a moment earlier. “You’re right. I don’t much care about his philosophy, one way or the other.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Lyrralt alone with a renewed conviction that he must act soon, whether a good opportunity presented itself or not. He had been looking for a safe moment to kill Igraine, one that would allow him to escape before his deed was discovered. Perhaps he would have to die in the act.

The runes hummed approvingly on his skin.

*

Fear. The face was there, and it was her own. But it wasn’t. The pale sea-green complexion, which had always drawn men to her like bees to honey, was mottled, as splotchy and knotted as tree bark. The black eyes were dull and stupid and humorless. But they were hers.

Screaming woke her. The sound so nearly matched the images of her nightmare that for long moments, Khallayne lay, twisted in her blanket, wrapped in screams that seemed to be her own, except …

The screaming went on and on, growing louder then ending abruptly in a silence more terrible than all the noise.

Thinking, at last, that the voice crying out in terror had been Jelindra’s and not her own, Khallayne leapt to her feet, stumbling as her blanket caught around her ankles.

Across the campfire Tenaj and Lyrralt each fought free of their blankets, too. Nearer the tent where Igraine slept, Jyrbian tossed off his blankets with a curse that woke more people. “What in the name of Sargonnas is happening now?”

Before anyone could answer, a new scream ripped through the air. Without hesitation, Jyrbian drew his sword and wheeled in the direction of the disturbance. But his sword would be of no use against the thing that had sprung into the air, conjured out of nothing. Or maybe there was more than one. Khallayne wasn’t sure.

As Jyrbian charged, slashing with his sword, the cloud that rose into the sky might have been one or twenty creatures. The faces of it changed rapidly. The monster was catlike, snakelike, fanged, black-mawed, a rock, mere mist. There were two, then one, then a mass of them, writhing like snakes streaming from their winter cave into the spring sun.

Jyrbian’s sword sank into flesh and mist. An appendage, flickering between long, slithery tentacle and claw-tipped, gnarled horror, reached out and threw Jyrbian backward twenty feet. He landed in a heap and was still.

Khallayne started toward him, and Tenaj grabbed her, hauling her back. “Forget him!”

The creature was smaller now, more solid, more deadly, but still moving slowly, dreamlike, almost loving in its gestures, as it grasped a female Ogre around the neck with its impossibly long fingers. She tried to scream, but all that came out was gurgling, then abruptly no sound at all.

The cloud creature had gained in substance while the living being had become a flimsy husk, lifeless, no more substantial than paper.

There were new cries from about the camp as more Ogres awakened to find their view of the stars blotted out by the gruesome creature. Lords and ladies who had, weeks before, known a dagger only as a jeweled object to decorate a belt, took up their ceremonial swords and their crude pikes and prepared to fight.

Khallayne knew their courage would do them no good. Hadn’t Jyrbian just proved that? She could sense Tenaj collecting her power, could hear the murmured words of a spell forming on the other Ogre’s lips. Tenaj was still only learning things Khallayne had practiced as a child, still tentative about the power inside her. Khallayne realized she had to help.

The cloud creature turned on them. Its features were two, three, a dozen frightening faces, shifting until they were one, multiplying again, then melting into something ugly and monstrous and monolithic.

Khallayne tried to close her eyes, tried to concentrate and bring up her own power. She couldn’t. She couldn’t move a muscle. Even her eyelids refused to budge, to blot out the dreamlike movement, the painfully slow change of features, from one to many. Chameleonlike. Dreamlike.

Tenaj finished her spell, the words to a “banishing” spell hurled at the creature with all the neophyte force she could muster.

The thing wavered in the air, then reared and moved in their direction, all teeth and roaring maw. It leapt at them, like a snake coiling and striking.

In the instant before it struck, Khallayne perceived its true nature. Fifty feet away, maybe seventy, the tenuous, smokelike tail that tethered the cloud creature to the earth was connected to a sleeping form. In the center of pandemonium, in the middle of the attack, Jelindra slept. The creature issued from her. And it was Jelindra’s voice that had wakened Khallayne …

Tenaj fell, struck by one of the writhing tentacles. She tried to regain her footing, but was dazed by the blow. She slipped. Her arms refused to support her weight as she tried to push herself back up.

The horrible, half-melted, half-monster face leered at Khallayne. The stench of filth and corruption filled her nostrils. The nearness of the thing freed her tightened muscles.

She flung up her hands, forming a shield to protect herself and Tenaj.

“Do something!” Lyrralt materialized at her side, mace clutched in his fingers. He helped Tenaj to her feet, his tall, strong body bracing her, then grabbed Khallayne’s shoulder. “Stop the thing!”

Khallayne tried to tear herself from his steely grasp. The tips of each of his fingers pressed bruises into her flesh. The thing lunged at them again and rebounded off her shield. It struck again and was repelled again. It reared up into the night and screamed, a roar of fury and frustration. It turned on the warriors surrounding it, on Ogres who hadn’t the power to shield themselves. It grabbed a young boy and lifted him, screaming and kicking, into the air.

Lyrralt shook Khallayne. “Khallayne! Do something!”

“Jelindra —” she managed to gasp. “Jelindra’s nightmare. Wake her.” She pointed to the sleeping form, barely visible through the crowd.

At last comprehending, Lyrralt went into action. He leapt campfires, dodged confused, shouting Ogres, made it across the camp, and grabbed the sleeping Jelindra.

His touch was rough and abrupt. In response, the creature writhing in the air above his head roared, spewing fire and noxious smoke. The flame licked at Lyrralt’s head and shoulders.

Khallayne surged forward, sure he was about to be immolated. Just as she reached him, the creature disappeared. She blinked, blinked again.

The monster was gone, leaving dark sky and twinkling stars overhead as if nothing had happened. Jelindra was sitting up, clutching her blanket in her fists. Lyrralt, standing above her, mace still clutched in hand, was unharmed.

Then Jelindra screamed, hideously, pitifully.

Khallayne and Lyrralt wheeled in the direction of the child’s stare, both expecting to find another monster.

What they saw instead was Celise, Jelindra’s mother. She was kneeling on the ground, weeping over the lifeless husk that had been Nomryh.

Chapter 13

MURDEROUS INNOCENCE

“Is Jyrbian all right?” Khallayne asked Lyrralt as she wiped at her forehead wearily.

Jelindra and Celise had been calmed at last, thanks to some wine, a little magic, and Igraine’s comforting, soothing words.

Bakrell swaggered up in time to hear her question. “He’s making full complaint of an interesting bump on his head. Everlyn is patting his wrist, and my sister is fuming.”

Holding her injured arm against her side, Tenaj laughed, a bell-like peal as silvery as her eyes.

Bakrell looked at her with an appraising, appreciative expression that reminded Khallayne of the old Jyrbian, the one who had wooed her and every other woman at court with rowdy charm and high spirits. Now he had vanished behind a mask of authority, straining for the affection of a woman who paid him no attention.

She felt a moment’s pang for that Jyrbian, that bygone world, then let it pass. Not for a return to that comfortable life would she give up the magic.

The crowd around Jyrbian parted. He walked with a slight limp, his arm around Everlyn’s shoulders for support. His expression, beatific, was like nothing Khallayne had ever expected to see on his face.

Whatever the extent of his injuries, at that moment he didn’t seem to be suffering much. Just as Bakrell had said, Kaede was holding his elbow for support. Storm clouds in the sky could be no darker than the expression on her face.

“How’s Jelindra?” Everlyn asked, looking around for the child.

Khallayne waited until the threesome was within hearing. “She’s better. Your father’s with them.”

“Do you really think she dreamed that monster?” Jyrbian asked, his voice clipped.

“Yes, but you can’t hold her responsible. She’s only a child, and she’s half mad with grief. And no one can control their dreams!”

“If she caused that thing once … what do we do in the future?” he asked. “Let her accidentally kill us off one by one?” His voice was less harsh, less accusing, but still bitter.

“I don’t know.”

“We could take turns at night watching her,” Everlyn suggested. “Surely, if it happens again, we can wake her up right away and break the spell.”

“Or you can die, sucked dry, like her brother did.”

Everlyn slipped from under Jyrbian’s arm, her face suddenly distant. “I think I’ll check on her.”

“What about me?” Jyrbian called after her, his voice playful. Only Lyrralt knew him well enough to sense the disappointment in his tone.

Everlyn smiled back over her shoulder, her long hair tumbling like silk down her back. “Surely you’ll manage.”

The warmth of her smile made him forget everything. He didn’t notice Kaede’s expression slipping from troubled to bleak. Without glancing at Kaede, Jyrbian limped toward his bedroll.

With a longing glance at Jyrbian’s back, Kaede turned to Bakrell. She motioned for him to stay with the group. He caught her arm and wordlessly held her for a moment.

“Keep them occupied,” she whispered.

Reluctantly, he nodded and went back to Khallayne’s side as Kaede went to her bedroll for a shawl and a small package.

As Kaede slipped out of camp, she saw that Bakrell was still in the center of the group, drawing their attention with his questions and conversation.

Since the human attack near Nerat, the Ogres had been posting sentries at night. Kaede and Bakrell had taken turns, sitting outside the perimeter of the camp and watching the darkness. But someone could have slipped out – or in.

Kaede pulled the dark shawl over her bright hair and crept away from the camp, heading out onto the plain. Solinari was just rising, offering a pale, cold light on the horizon. She walked through the tall grass, damp with dew, until the fires of the camp were mere twinkles in the distance, until the only sounds were the rustling of grass and the chirp of nightbirds.

She searched until she came to a small rise. Beyond it, she dug a hole and planted the small package. There were no rocks on the plain, as there had been in the mountains, so she marked the place by pulling up all the grass around it for the width of her two hands. Then she set a small spell on it, a beacon for anyone who knew how to search.

Brushing grass and dirt off her pants, she rose and started back to camp. Voices, so nearby that she could understand what they were saying, interrupted the quiet, sibilant whisper of the breeze.

Kaede dropped to the ground, flat on her belly, waiting for the voices to start over. In a moment, a female’s soft voice broke the silence.

“I’m here.”

An equally soft, male voice answered.

The female’s voice again. “Oh, Love, it’s you who’ve come.”

This time Kaede recognized it. In spite of the pleasurable tone she’d never heard coloring Everlyn’s speech, she knew it was Everlyn’s voice! And in a lover’s clandestine meeting!

Her heart caught in her throat as the male voice responded. She couldn’t hear it well enough to identify it. Praying that it wouldn’t be Jyrbian, she raised herself cautiously for a better look.

*

Bakrell was sitting on her bedroll when Kaede slipped back into camp, waiting for her with a tense expression on his face.

She glanced about, checking that no one appeared overly interested in their conversation before leaning close. “Bakrell, you won’t believe what I’ve discovered about Everlyn!” she whispered.

He looked at her flushed face, at the exhilaration shining in her eyes. Her lips were pulled back in an intense smile. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Kaede.”

The caution, the disapproval in his voice, dimmed her enthusiasm.

“I was wondering … if you haven’t forgotten why we came here.” He looked first at her, then at his own hands, clasped in his lap.

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.” He edged closer to her. “I was wondering, considering the way you feel about Jyrbian and all, if you’ve —”

“I haven’t forgotten anything!” Kaede glared at him, slapping away the conciliatory hand he extended. “I’ve searched and searched, but I’m convinced that Jyrbian is the one. Why do you think I keep running after him?”

Bakrell lifted an eyebrow at her and smiled.

“All right,” she admitted. “I do want him for other reasons. What’s wrong with that? That only makes it more convincing. I haven’t forgotten why I came here, and I resent —”

“Kaede.” He stopped her by gently placing his fingers over her mouth. “Slow down. You misunderstand. I wasn’t accusing you. I was – I’ve been thinking. This life really isn’t so bad, is it? I mean, it’s pretty exciting, and we can do as we please. And I was just thinking maybe we shouldn’t cause any trouble …”

“I have no intentions of causing trouble,” she said sweetly, and pushed him off her blankets.

*

Two days later, Kaede waited for Jyrbian near the edge of the camp. He greeted her with a smile, which he regretted the moment her face lit up. She was a beguiling woman, and she had left no doubt about her interest in him. In another life, just a few short weeks ago, he would have been interested in her. But now there was Everlyn, and she eclipsed Kaede the way the sun outshone the stars.

“Jyrbian,” she said, her voice as sweet as cream. “I have to talk with you.”

The way she said it, he thought talking wasn’t what she had in mind. He answered with a word, her name. He eased the warning in his tone with a slight smile.

She reached for him, wrapping her arms around his, pinning them to his sides playfully. Her breasts were soft against his chest, her breath sweet. “I want you.”

He stepped back, gentle as he pushed her away. “Kaede, don’t. I won’t say I’m not tempted, but …”

Her expression went from lighthearted and seductive to disappointed and grim. “You think you want her. But she’s not what she seems.”

“Don’t say anything against Everlyn, Kaede,” he warned.

“Then ask her yourself! Ask her why she leaves the camp when she thinks everyone is asleep. Ask her who she meets during the night! Ask her …”

For the first time since she’d met him, Jyrbian’s fearsome temper frightened her. His face twisted with fury. His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her arms.

“You’re hurting me,” she whimpered, pushing closer to him.

“Hurting you!” he roared. “I’ll kill you!”

“Then kill me!” She went still in his grasp. “Ask her, then kill me if I’m lying. I’ll sing my song of death quickly and lie quietly under your sword.” She pressed into him harder.

He allowed it. He crushed her to him so hard that the knots in his belt scraped her skin. He twisted his fingers in her hair and yanked her head back.

“Ask her. Unless you’re afraid to hear the truth. Unless you’re willing to accept her with the scent of a human’s hands still fresh on her body.”

“What are you saying?” Jyrbian rasped.

“The truth. I’ve seen things. Before you decide who you want, you should know the truth. Ask her. I’ll wait.”

Jyrbian looked at her. He stepped back so suddenly that she stumbled. “I’ll be back,” he almost hissed.

The conviction in her voice didn’t waver. “Not to kill me.”

“I may kill you either way,” he vowed.

He found Everlyn in Igraine’s tent, sitting on a camp stool at the makeshift table where Igraine kept his maps. A stub of candle on a piece of bark provided some illumination, warming Everlyn’s face with a soft glow. In a shadowed corner Jyrbian could discern a figure underneath a blanket that must be Jelindra, breathing rhythmically.

“Is she sleeping?” he asked.

Everlyn nodded. “You seem better.” When he appeared not to understand, she pointed at his leg and said, “You’re not limping anymore.”

He shrugged, indicating that his injury was of no consequence.

“What’s wrong?” She stood and moved closer to him, nearer the flap of the tent, away from the sleeping figure. Still speaking softly, she laid her hand on his arm and repeated the question.

“Everlyn …” He almost walked away. For a moment, he thought, I cannot live with knowing. But he had to know. “I have to ask you something. I have to … Is there —? I’ve been told —”

He saw the truth in her eyes, the sadness, the fearful anticipation, even before he could finish the question. He knew the truth of Kaede’s words.

“It’s true! You are sneaking out of the camp to meet someone.”

“Yes.” She said it quietly, softly, without any regret.

If she’d a tinge of remorse … “Who?”

She shook her head and looked away.

Weeks of watching and waiting washed over him like fever. “Why do you meet in secret like thieves?”

Again she shook her head, but he already knew the answer. “So it’s true!” he hissed. “You turn me away, ignore my every smile, refuse the touch of my hand, for a slave.”

“He’s no slave! He’s a … a being with a heart and a soul, the same as you and me.”

Her quick defense, her easy tenderness, fanned his anger. A dagger slid into his belly would have caused no more agony.

“Jyrbian, I’m sorry. I know this is not easy to explain, but … once I knew him … I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help but love him! I couldn’t help but – And now, I don’t know what to do.” The words began to pour out of her. “I don’t know where to turn. We could never live with my people. And his kind hate the Ogres so. They’d never accept me.”

Every word was a thorn driven into his heart. Yet, he wanted her to go on, wanted whatever intimacy she was willing to share, wanted to be the one to whom she revealed her heart.

She glanced up, saw his stricken expression, the warring of emotions on his face. “Jyrbian, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. But he has worn my heart … from the day he saved my life …”

“Eadamm,” he breathed. He remembered the way the slave had spoken to her, that morning in her father’s home, the way she had looked at him. He realized that Everlyn would have stayed at Khal-Theraxian if the slave had not advised her to go. He whispered the name again, tasting hatred and jealousy on his tongue.

“Yes,” she admitted reluctantly. “He’s been following us, protecting us. His people have been harrying the king’s troops in the mountain passes. That’s why they haven’t followed us so far.”

He barely heard the last words. She was offering him crumbs. “Do you think you could ever love me?” He saw the answer in her eyes before the whisper had died on his lips. He understood before she murmured a sound.

She lifted her hands slowly and rested them on her belly. “I bear his child.”

He reached for her. She stepped into his embrace, resting her forehead on his arm as if putting aside a heavy load. “I don’t know what we’ll do, where we’ll go so that our child can be raised without hatred and pain.” He closed his eyes and felt a deathly stillness creep over him, a peacefulness such as he’d never known before.

He moved his hands slowly up her back, feeling the delicate bones, the thin layer of flesh through the silky cloth. His fingers touched her shoulders, slipped tenderly up to her throat.

She made one sound, an ecstasy so exquisite it could barely be discerned, before his fingers closed. She struggled almost not at all.

“Everlyn?” He eased her down gently and smoothed her hair back from her face, straightening the long strands until they fell prettily over her shoulders. “Everlyn?”

So still. So pretty. He placed her hands at her sides, touched her cheek. Her skin was smooth and warm. Her tunic was rumpled around her neck, and as he straightened it, a necklace fell out: a stone wrapped in fine silver wire, hung on a silver chain, shiny and black, shot through with red, and shaped like tear.

He yanked it from her neck, breaking the chain.

A sound, a soft chuckle, disturbed the silence.

He looked up and saw eyes staring at him from the darkness: Jelindra’s eyes, wild and mad.

“Get up,” he told her. “We’re leaving.”

The girl obeyed his orders, showing not the least hint of repulsion, though he walked with his arm firmly around her shoulders, so he could stop her if she made a sound.

He led Jelindra through the least populated areas of the camp. Kaede caught up with them at the line where his horse was tethered. “You said you’d come back for me,” she said accusingly.

He looked at her as though he’d never seen her before, yet he said, “Get our things.”

She stared at him open-mouthed for a moment, then rushed off. By the time he’d readied the horses, she had returned. She carried his bedroll and saddlebags as well as her own.

The sight of her snapped him back to reality. How long since —? His mind fled from the memory of soft skin against his fingers.

He looked around quickly. Still nobody had noticed them. “Stay here. Watch the girl. If she makes a sound, kill her.”

Kaede opened her mouth to question him, but he had already gone back into the camp, slipping silently among the sleeping Ogres.

He found Khallayne easily, quickly. She was buried in her blankets, only the top of her head showing, black hair spilling out onto the ground. He started to shake her awake roughly, then thought better of it and slipped his hand down into the blankets until her soft breath touched his fingers.

The soft skin of her cheek reminded him of another’s skin. He stroked her face gently, remembering soft skin and a sweet scent.

Khallayne woke, striking out at his hand. He clamped his fingers over her mouth, leaning down until his lips were against her ear. “Shhh, Khallayne, it’s me.”

She stopped struggling, and immediately he eased the pressure on her mouth, helped her to sit.

“No need to wake the whole camp,” he said easily.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He picked up her boots and held them out. “It’s the girl. I need you to come with me.”

“Jelindra?” Instantly, she was wide awake. She took the boots and pulled them on. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing. She’s just – wandered away from camp, and she’s frightened. Come with me.”

Khallayne stood quickly and grabbed her jacket.

“That way.”

As Khallayne started to move, Lyrralt stirred and sat up. His bedroll was only a few feet away. “Jyrbian?”

Jyrbian put a finger to his lips and shushed Lyrralt.

“Jyrbian, what’s wrong? Where’s Khallayne going?”

Jyrbian gave him a look such as Lyrralt had not seen since Takar, one eyebrow raised high, self-deprecating charm twisting his mouth. “It’s none of your affair, Brother, if you know what I mean. Go back to sleep.”

Jyrbian picked up Khallayne’s saddlebags and eased away into the darkness. Khallayne was almost to where he’d left Kaede and Jelindra when he caught up with her.

Kaede and Jelindra were mounted. Kaede was holding the reins to the other horses. The girl appeared even more docile, even more remote, than before.

“What’s going on here?” Khallayne wheeled on him.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “Mount up.”

Kaede tossed him his reins, her expression murderous.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, Jyrbian,” said Khallayne.

“We don’t need her,” Kaede jeered.

Jyrbian responded to Khallayne as if Kaede hadn’t even spoken. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But if you don’t, you’ll find her body” – he paused and jerked his thumb in the direction of Jelindra – “left to rot on our trail.”

“Why are you doing this? What’s happened?”

“It’s your choice,” he said conversationally. “Her only use to me is as a hostage, to keep you in line. If you’re not with me … And before you think of casting a spell, are you willing to bet you could take care of both of us before one of us kills her?”

When Khallayne still didn’t move, he turned his horse and started to ride away. Kaede followed him, leading Jelindra’s horse.

“I wouldn’t do that, Jyrbian.” Lyrralt’s voice came out of the darkness.

Jyrbian spun, his hand moving to his sword, and found himself facing off against his brother and Bakrell.

“Why not?” Jyrbian asked softly. He dropped his hand from his sword hilt, with his palm open and ready, dangling at his side.

“They’ve found Everlyn.”

Jyrbian started at the name. Quickly, he regained his composure. Beyond them, in the lights nearest the tent, he could see agitated movement.

“What’s happened to Everlyn?” Khallayne asked.

“She’s dead. From the bruises and marks on her body, strangled.”

“Jyrbian?” Khallayne stepped forward.

He was reminded of Everlyn, stepping between him and the human at Nerat. The memory seemed etched in blood.

“What happened?” Khallayne asked. Hers was a voice of reason, of conciliation.

“Everlyn was seeing a human male, at night, outside the camp.” Kaede also edged forward, her voice brisk, cold.

“Seeing a human?” Lyrralt didn’t understand.

“He was her lover.” Kaede spat the word as if it were filth.

The others responded with shocked silence.

Before they could react, Jyrbian surged forward and grabbed Khallayne. He yanked her by the back of her tunic, up and over his saddle. Before she could recover her senses, he thumped her across the back of her head and she went limp.

Lyrralt started forward, stopping when Jyrbian reached with one hand for his sword. His horse danced, agitated by the extra weight and the tension around him. “Go back, Brother. Go back to your miserable friends. Don’t follow us. Don’t —”

“Jyrbian, don’t do this.” Igraine’s voice, choked with grief, interrupted the scene. “There’s been enough damage. Don’t do anything more.”

“You’re responsible for this!” Jyrbian retorted, eyeing the silent crowd amassing behind Igraine. “You! Preaching of better ways. But there is only so much we can change while still giving honor to the gods. Still honor our traditions. If you continue this way, the vengeance of the gods will rain upon your heads!”

He glanced at Kaede, the only person in the whole camp who sided with him willingly, and jerked his head in the direction of the mountains. He galloped away, Khallayne hanging limply on his horse.

Kaede started to follow, then stopped and turned back for a moment, yanking on the reins of Jelindra’s horse to control the animal. The child sat astride, much more docile than the horse.

“Bakrell?”

Caught by surprise, Bakrell opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

“You’re not going to stay here? There’s no reason anymore. We have what we came for.”

She waited, but Bakrell refused to meet her gaze. “No,” he said at last.

“You’re staying?” Kaede was incredulous, but when he didn’t speak to her again, she yanked her horse around and galloped after Jyrbian, leading Khallayne’s riderless stallion and the horse on which Jelindra rode.

Chapter 14

VENGEANCE OF THE GODS

The sound of the four horses, galloping through the dry grass, pounding the earth, sounded across the plain for a long time.

“We have to go after them!”

Tenaj was in favor of pursuit. Several others standing nearby rumbled agreement.

Lyrralt shook his head. “If you chase them in the darkness, they’ll kill their hostages for sure. Or you. It would be easy to set an ambush.”

Tenaj’s hand dropped from its customary set on the pommel of her sword. “Why did they take Khallayne and Jelindra?”

“I don’t know.”

Igraine, shoulders drooping, turned slowly back toward camp, but Bakrell blocked his way.

“Lord, please.” Bakrell fell to his knees before the older Ogre, hung his head in shame. “I must confess what I’ve done. I must tell you all that I know.”

Those who had been drifting back toward camp stopped. Lyrralt and Tenaj moved in closer. Igraine put a hand on Bakrell’s shoulder and nodded.

Bakrell swallowed. He began with his gaze fastened on the ground at Igraine’s feet. “My sister and I are of the last of the Tallees Clan, the clan of the Keeper of the History of the Ogre.”

Lyrralt gasped.

“My sister and I joined you partly because she thought someone here knew about what happened to the History.”

“I don’t understand,” Igraine said solemnly. “I thought the Keeper died a natural death.”

“That is what the council allowed everyone to believe. But Kaede believes there was a conspiracy. And she believes the Song is still alive. For our family, the Song has its own special … music. She hears it, still.”

Bakrell paused, cocking his head as if he, too, were listening to something far off. “I haven’t her abilities, but I must say, I agree with her. I think, if the Song were truly gone, there would be a … silence.”

“Go on,” Igraine prompted when Bakrell lapsed into silence.

“The Song drew Kaede here, to someone among us. But she wasn’t sure who. Two nights ago, she told me she thought Jyrbian was the culprit.”

“So you came here to find the Song,” Tenaj said coldly. “Is that all?”

“No. We also came …” He mumbled something.

“What?”

Igraine put his hand on Bakrell’s chin, tipping it back so he could see his face. “Don’t be afraid. No one is going to hurt you now. What is the other reason you joined us?”

Bakrell squared his shoulders. “We came on behalf of the Ruling Council.”

A gasp went up from the crowd, and there was a surge forward, but Igraine controlled everybody with a wave of his hand. “Continue.”

“Things are very bad in Takar,” Bakrell said. “The humans. Escaped slaves are everywhere in the mountains. When we left, there had already been three supply trains attacked and destroyed.

“There were many who didn’t approve of how the Ruling Council handled Igraine. They were incensed that an Ogre was punished for consolidating his profits. And they have become even angrier that the council seems powerless to stop the human attacks.”

“The council sent out troops to find you. You met the first, and the second, and destroyed them. What you don’t know is that they have continued to send reinforcements. As far as I know, from the last communication from our contact, every one of them has been attacked and harried or destroyed. By humans. They thought that you were using humans for soldiers, because there were so many attacks by the escaped slaves, so many coordinated, planned attacks.”

“And that’s why they sent you?” Igraine asked.

Bakrell nodded. “They wanted information. Kaede volunteered to come.”

“But we haven’t been in communication with any groups of slaves,” Tenaj protested. “Surely you discovered that weeks ago.”

Bakrell started to tell them what Kaede had discovered about Everlyn, and the slaves who’d been guarding their flanks, since after the attacks in the mountains, but he couldn’t. Igraine looked old, immensely tired. His eyes were swollen with grief. Bakrell couldn’t add to his misery.

“Yes, we did. We realized that immediately. We stayed on, hoping to discover the truth of the lost History. And —” He hesitated. “There’s one other thing. Kaede’s – that is, we’ve – been relaying messages for a courier, messages to the council, with maps and information on your whereabouts.”

There was no response this time, no emotion at all from the broken and grieving refugees. They were stunned.

“We don’t know if the messages got through,” he said hurriedly. “We don’t even know if they were picked up as they were intended to be. We’d just leave them behind, marked in the prearranged way.”

Bakrell clutched Igraine’s hand. “Please, Lord, the reason I’ve told you all this is because I have made a decision. I want to stay. The longer we dwelt among you, the more convinced I became that yours is the right way to live. I know I’ve committed transgressions against you, but I want to stay.”

Wearily, Igraine patted his hands. “I can’t make that determination, Bakrell. Everyone will have to decide. But for myself, I welcome you. We have all committed crimes and atrocities. We have all suffered.”

As if suddenly reminded that Igraine’s only child lay cold and dead within the tent, the assembly broke up without any other words, forming into smaller groups. They silently drifted back to the tent at the center of the camp. There they built a pyre for Everlyn’s body and sang their songs of sorrow for Igraine.

Bakrell moved among them. Although none spoke to him, none turned away as he helped with the sad tasks.

Lyrralt took his blankets and slipped away, alone, to the edge of the camp, past the lines of horses and the watchful eyes of the sentries.

Tonight. He knew it had to be tonight. Igraine would be left alone with his grief. And Lyrralt would be able to slip into his tent.

The runes throbbed on his shoulder, itched down his arm. He sat alone in the darkness and wished for a moment’s numbness, that he might be free of the urging of the runes. He searched for the constellation of Hiddukel in the night sky, but clouds had covered Solinari and blotted out the stars.

In the blackest hours of the morning, he slipped back into camp and into Igraine’s tent. The interior was dark; only a single candle was guttering in its own wax, almost dead.

Igraine sat on a mat of thick carpet, his legs crossed, his hands lying on his knees. He didn’t look up as Lyrralt entered, but said, “So you’ve come at last to kill me.”

Lyrralt was so surprised, his hand halted in the act of drawing his dagger from inside his robe. “Kill you, Lord?”

Igraine slowly raised his head.

Lyrralt gaped when he saw that Igraine’s silver eyes had gone gray.

“Isn’t that why you’ve come? Isn’t this what you’ve planned for, watched for, for weeks?”

Lyrralt shrugged and drew the dagger. So, Igraine knew. Soon he would be dead, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. And if he raised the alarm, it would be over before anyone could come. “Yes. That’s why I’ve come.”

“You won’t stop what is happening, you know. What I’ve begun is larger than me now. It’s larger than any single Ogre.”

Despite the tiredness, the defeat in Igraine’s voice, Lyrralt felt the pull of persuasion. The runes squirmed, reminding him of his duty. A calmness came over him. “I don’t care about what you’ve begun. Only you.”

Igraine nodded. He hadn’t made any move to defend himself. Lyrralt shifted the dagger to his left hand and wiped his sweaty palm on his tunic. The runes seemed to wriggle, wormlike, faster and faster. He struggled to maintain the objective in his mind.

“You know you don’t want to do it, though, don’t you?” Igraine asked. “You haven’t for some time now. If you had wanted to, you would have done it long ago.”

Lyrralt paused in the act of raising the dagger. It didn’t matter what Igraine thought. He would soon be dead. “There was never an opportunity. You’re always surrounded by admirers, by acolytes.”

“There have been plenty of opportunities. You’ve ignored every one of them until tonight.”

Until tonight. Lyrralt lifted the dagger over Igraine, meaning to plunge it downward into his skull. On his arm, the runes felt as if they had caught fire, as if they had grown roots, which were biting deep into his flesh, reaching into the marrow of his bones.

Lyrralt groaned in pain, reared back, and brought the dagger down with all his might! It thudded dully, vibrating as it lodged in the wooden post above Igraine’s head.

Pain ripped through his shoulder. He screamed and fell, writhing, spine contorted, onto the mat at Igraine’s feet.

Igraine touched his back, his hip, his aching shoulder, and the pain eased. He heard the sound of running feet, the flaps to the tent being shoved open, but he couldn’t move.

“Lord?” Tenaj’s voice sounded from the entrance. “We heard a scream.”

“It’s all right.” Igraine smiled down at Lyrralt. “It was just a muscle spasm.”

Lyrralt sat up slowly and saw several faces peering worriedly through the open flap.

Igraine waved them away. All but Tenaj and Bakrell disappeared.

Those two entered. Bakrell stared at the dagger embedded in the post. He considered the weapon, Igraine, then Lyrralt, then wordlessly he pulled it free and offered it to Igraine.

Igraine took it and passed it back to Lyrralt.

Before Bakrell could comment, Tenaj said, “I want to go after Khallayne and Jelindra.”

“And I have told her it is I who should go.” Bakrell squatted on the mat beside Lyrralt, facing Igraine. “My sister is partly to blame.”

“And it is my friends they’ve taken.”

“They are just as much my friends, Tenaj, though I have not shown them the honor friends deserve,” Bakrell said.

“Why you instead of me?”

“Because we’ll need you to lead the warriors in Jyrbian’s place,” Lyrralt told her softly when his wits had returned. “If the council knows where we are, we will need you more than ever. Bakrell should be the one to go.” It was only after he’d spoken that he realized what he’d said. He looked to Igraine for permission or censure, but Igraine did as he’d always done when, before, Jyrbian had made some decision of which he approved. He merely smiled.

Bakrell was nodding agreement, too.

“I wouldn’t be too pleased,” Lyrralt said, rubbing his shoulder as the runes started to dance again. “You’re probably riding to certain death, whether you catch Jyrbian or not.”

“No. I’ll be careful. Maybe we can figure out some way to get a message to the humans who’re guarding us. And if I don’t catch them before they get to Takar, I can lose myself in the city, where I’ll be perfectly safe.”

*

Khallayne woke, groggy. Her neck and the back of her head ached. Her belly hurt, and someone was shaking her so hard, she thought she was going to be sick.

She opened her eyes, and the ground rushed past her eyes with sickening speed. Suddenly, she remembered.

Jyrbian had grabbed her and thrown her across his horse. Then darkness had descended, and she remembered nothing. Until now.

She struggled to hold her head up, to steady it against the horse’s bouncing. She pounded on his leg with her fist and was rewarded with laughter from above.

The horse slowed and broke into a trot, which almost tore her head from her shoulders, then slowed some more and stopped. Jyrbian dragged her up and over the horse until she was on her back, cradled in his strong arms.

“So you’re awake?” he asked.

“Where are we going?” Khallayne tried to ask, but her mouth felt as though it were filled with puffballs.

Jyrbian motioned for Kaede. He took the reins of Khallayne’s stallion.

“We’re riding, my love, into the night.” He pushed one of her legs over the saddle of her horse, then lifted her up onto the horse’s back. “And remember, if you get any ideas about not keeping up with us, or of getting lost, Jelindra will be staying with us, even if you do not.”

He grinned cruelly at her, then kicked his horse into a run. They stopped sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and Kaede tied her wrists and ankles together as she fell asleep, too exhausted, too sick with pain and heartache to resist.

The sun was up, shining in her eyes, when she regained consciousness. She rolled over and buried her face in the crook of her elbow, trying to shut out the sunlight. Darkness descended, and she realized she overheard Kaede talking to Jyrbian.

“Why, Jyrbian?” Kaede was demanding. “Why do we need them? They’re just slowing us down.”

“It’s my decision, that’s why,” Jyrbian’s voice answered.

Khallayne was very alert.

“You asked me to come with you! You want me to help you watch the girl. I think you owe me an explanation!”

“I didn’t ask you to come,” Jyrbian responded, still sounding bored. “And you’re free to leave anytime you choose.”

Kaede’s voice softened, lost its stridency. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know I want to be with you. But, I see why they have to come along with us. I don’t want —” Her voice died away.

“Well, I do want them with us.”

“Buy why?”

“Very well, I’ll tell you. If it will satisfy you and stop you from complaining.”

Khallayne heard crunching sounds, footsteps on dry grass.

When Jyrbian spoke next, his voice was right above her. “The girl I care nothing for, except to make this one behave. But this one …” The toe of his boot grazed her hip. “This one is going to teach me everything she knows about magic.”

He slipped his foot under her and shoved hard, turning her over. “Do you hear me, Khallayne? You’re going to make me the most powerful Ogre in all of Takar.”

He smiled and walked out of her range of vision.

Khallayne sat up slowly, shielding her eyes from the sun. “And what if I refuse?”

He was standing beside Jelindra, who was still asleep, wrapped in a blanket. He touched the girl’s head gently with the toe of his boot and looked back at Khallayne. “I don’t think you will.”

*

Lyrralt sat on a broken wall and stared around him. After several days of hard riding, they were camped in the ruins of a human city in a small range of low hills. They must be nearing the edge of the plains, he supposed, since the flatness was beginning to be broken by rolling land and small hills.

Bakrell was several days gone. He had ridden back the way they had come with a jaunty wave, leaving Lyrralt with the melancholy feeling that he would never see him again.

What was left of the city around him was sad. The crude, half-standing stone walls gave the impression that they had never stood straight and strong as intended. Perhaps they had been broken and leaning, even when new.

Lyrralt walked through the fallen rock, the piles of dust and rubble and wondered who had lived in the place, and why. There was something about it that reminded him of Bloten. Humans attempting to build an Ogre city? It made no sense. Humans were savages who eked their lives out of the plains. They barely had civilization. Or had they built their own cities and roads, before the Ogres had discovered their usefulness as animals of burden, of hard work?

He was standing on the highest place in the ruin, a small portion of a wall that ran along a ridge, when the rain began.

At first, the downpour was so heavy that it seemed like stars falling from the sky! Burning stars! Stars trailing fiery tails.

The first one hit, not far out on the plains, as he’d thought it would, but nearby, just feet from the sheer drop of the ledge. It was a rain of fire! Pebbles and dirt and rainbow flame exploded upward!

He looked up into the sky and saw more, thousands more fiery spots of light, trailing downward. He shouted a wordless warning to those several feet below him, poking through the ruins. As he pointed, more balls of light hit, sending up gouts of flame.

One of the older cousins of Igraine’s clan was standing nearby. A spout of fire curled up and slapped him down. He said, “It’s cold,” in an unsurprised voice. Then his flesh began to melt, like wax dripping from a candle, and the sound that came from him was an ululation of pain and despair.

As the Ogre fell, a dark, fused mass of flesh and bone, the real horror began. Great balls of the light, feet apart, inches apart, came down! Coldfire it was, sent from the heavens by the gods. Wherever it touched, it burned without flame, burned cold, but with a heat more intense than anything Lyrralt had ever experienced.

Lyrralt leapt down from the wall, landed on the side of his foot, and rolled on the hard ground. He came to his feet running. Where was Igraine? He had to find Igraine.

Another Ogre was hit by the coldfire, and another: Haleyn, who made such beautiful music with his flute, and Issil, who supervised the carrying of live coals from camp to camp, always making sure the Ogres had continued warmth.

One of the children of Igraine’s clan, the noisy one, fell. His sister screamed and grabbed him as the fiery ball crashed onto his back, and she, too, was consumed. And Celise, Jelindra’s mother, also died shrieking.

He saw Tenaj run, dodging the fiery explosions, dragging two of the children away before they could touch the melted body of their father and become part of his boiling flesh.

He stopped, looked about wildly, and ran again. As he ran, Ogres died all around him. But none of the deadly fire came near enough to touch him. He looked up at the sky. This was no attack of humans or Ogres! No attack even of any kind of magic he recognized.

Reaching inside his tunic, Lyrralt grabbed the medallion that hung around his neck and yanked it so hard that the chain cut into his skin and broke. He clasped it between his palms and shouted – sang! – screamed! – a prayer to the heavens. “Mighty Hiddukel, Great Goddess Takhisis, why have you spared me? So that I might observe death all around me? Have mercy on your children! Show forgiveness and spare us —!”

The silver disc that bore the etched symbol of his god heated up so that he flung it away without thinking. The disc sailed up as he gasped, realizing what he had done.

He grabbed at it. But it exploded. Many-hued brightness erupted, searing his eyes and etching a line like a jagged glyph down his face from eyebrow to chin. He felt the runes on his arms writhe and burn even hotter than the metal.

He screamed and fell back, away from the unbearable pain, trying to escape the agony of his burning flesh. He tore the sleeve from his robe, scraped at his arms, his face.

The pain ended as suddenly as it had begun. The last thing he saw, before darkness overcame him, was the skin of his left arm, unmarked and dark indigo, as unblemished as the day he’d first appeared before his first clerical master.

A peacefulness came over him, covered him like a blanket, like nothing he’d ever known. This is what it is to die, he thought. This quiet, this dark …

Tenaj and Igraine found him. The fiery rain of stars had ended. The fire of the gods had left no wounded, only melted lumps of flesh, no longer recognizable as Ogres.

Lyrralt was sitting, his back against a broken wall of stone, legs crossed comfortably, his hands clasping his unmarked forearms.

His face, his beautiful, finely chiseled face, bore a craggy scar that began at his hairline, dipped to his heavy eyebrows, zagged across his high cheekbone, back across his cheek, and disappeared underneath his chin. It looked like a thunderbolt, molded of silver as bright as the color of his eyes. Except that his eyes were no longer bright silver. They were a shining, opalescent white with no sign of any pupils at all.

“Lyrralt?” Tenaj kneeled beside him, afraid almost to breathe his name, for fear that he would start to scream. Or that she would.

“Lyrralt, are you …” What she meant to ask seemed a stupid thing to inquire, with his face disfigured and his eyes so strange.

For a moment, Lyrralt continued to stare, then he stirred, slowly straightening. He reached out, obviously for her hand, but not in the right place.

Igraine took his hand tightly. Tenaj reached across and placed her palm on their joined hands.

Lyrralt fumbled for the linked hands and felt first her fingers, then Igraine’s beneath them. He said softly, “I can’t see you.” And he smiled.

Chapter 15

BLESSED WITH VICTORY AND WAR

The cool, crisp mountain air felt like home after the alien heat of the plains. Tree branches hung low overhead. The damp, welcoming scent of decay permeated the mulch underfoot.

Jyrbian rode in silence, as he had for days, drawing the scent of rot, the humidity, into his lungs. His despair rode with him.

Khallayne was sullen and withdrawn. Kaede was, for the moment, wise enough to remain silent, for Jyrbian’s thoughts were not kind.

The bloodstone seemed warm in his pocket, as if he could feel it against his hip through the layers of cloth. He could still envision it, lying against the smoothness of her throat, the polished black surface of rock, the red veins pulsing through it, pulsing, though blood no longer pulsed in her veins.

Did her human lover know that she was dead? His mouth curled. His fingers clenched into fists; the leather of his reins cut into his palm. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to pound his fists on something until his hands were numb, until his fingertips could not remember the sweet sensation of smooth flesh beneath them.

His horse nickered softly and danced sideways, almost unseating him. He pulled at the reins and tightened his grip on the animal.

“Jyrbian.”

He glanced back at Kaede irritably, still tugging as his horse pranced. He saw that her horse, too, was misbehaving, throwing its head up and down.

Immediately alert, Jyrbian signaled for silence. Dismounting, he soothed his mount with gentle hands, then checked his sword, easing it a hand’s length in and out of the scabbard twice, just to make sure it was ready to do his bidding. Holding firmly to the reins, keeping the horse’s head down, he eased along the trail. With a stealth that spoke of experience, Kaede slid to the ground and followed, leading Jelindra.

Khallayne slid to the ground, too. They knew, as long as Kaede held Jelindra in her thrall, that she would follow them.

The woods had become silent. Gone was the chitter of birds and the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth. The cool, leaf-shaped shadows had become menacing.

Beside the trail, Kaede discovered what was making the horses so restive. Dumped carelessly between the roots of a huge, old tree were what was left of two Ogre guards, a male and a female, wearing uniforms that had probably once been the immaculate white-and-red of the Dalle Clan. The cloth was so stained with blood and dirt, coated with dead leaves and twigs, that it was difficult to know for sure. It seemed as if they had been hacked and battered to death, the bodies dragged off the trail and left for the animals.

“No attempt to hide the bodies,” Jyrbian whispered, sliding close to Kaede so that his lips barely made a sound. “Whoever did this didn’t care who discovered the evidence.”

“Humans!” The word was a hiss, a warning, a curse. Kaede turned away, one hand on her sword hilt, one on her stomach as if she were sick.

Jyrbian knew, however, that she actually clutched the dagger she wore tucked in her belt, hidden beneath the folds of her tunic. He backed carefully away from the bodies and back onto the hard ground of the trail, careful to make as little noise as possible among the leaves and dead twigs.

They were west of Thorad by at least two day’s ride. If he remembered correctly, the trail forked ahead, heading east down into a valley and west up into the mountains, bypassing the city. Intuition told him the humans would be to the east, on the more passable trail. Food would be easier to find, and so would prey.

He grinned at Kaede. “Shall we see what lies ahead?”

He glanced back. Khallayne was on foot, leading her stallion, staring at the two guards’ bodies with dread fascination. Jelindra was still mounted, staring off into space.

“Can you make her watch the horses?” Jyrbian gestured toward the trees on the opposite side of the trail.

They were very near where the trail came out on a low ridge overlooking the valley.

Kaede spoke for a moment with Jelindra, words Khallayne couldn’t hear, and then left her holding the horses. “She’ll be all right,” Kaede assured Jyrbian.

Crouched low, hidden by scrubby plants and rough, sharp-edged boulders, Jyrbian and Kaede edged through the sparse woods, out to the ridge overlooking the valley. Khallayne followed.

Just clear of the shadows of the forest, where the trail ran along a rocky ridge that circled the valley below, Jyrbian paused, lay down on his belly, and crept to the edge of the crest, keeping his head low.

A troop of Ogres was camped in the curve of a gurgling stream. The camp was orderly. Bedrolls of four to five warriors were laid out neatly around campfires that ringed the field tent. The Ogres were busy cooking. They stood out in the green field, wearing the red-and-white silks of Clan Dalle.

Jyrbian made a sound of disgust. They might as well be painted with targets.

Kaede sidled up beside him, shushed him, and pointed toward the slope to their left.

There, among the thin forest that marched down the hillside, was flitting movement!

Silent shadows weaved in and out among the trees, working their way down to hiding places among the shrubs at the water’s edge.

Whoever commanded the company, whoever had chosen such a vulnerable place to camp, deserved to die, to be gutted and left for carrion birds! Unless the approaching humans made noise, they would be upon the guards on two sides of the camp before an alarm was raised.

Kaede tensed, ready to rise and warn her compatriots of the approaching danger. Her sword was already half drawn when Jyrbian grabbed her.

She yanked free of his grasp. “They’ll be slaughtered!”

“Wait! Think!” He held her arm. “If you shout now, the humans will melt back into the forest. And we’ll be alone up here with them.”

“So what do we do?”

Jyrbian grinned, a crooked, thin-lipped expression that made his eyes look as hard as granite. “We go down.”

Before she could question him, stop him, he melted back into the shadows.

A moment later, he came crashing past, mounted.

Kaede stared up at him as if he were crazy, then leapt to her feet and followed. Khallayne hesitated a moment.

As Jyrbian reached the edge of the ridge, he drew his sword and held it high over his head. The blade threw out glinting red highlights from the evening sun as he forced his horse to leap down the slope.

The ground was a mixture of dark soil and creek-side sand, cut through with gullies of rainwater. The slope was steep, and his horse went down at an angle, sliding, running, falling.

As he reached the level ground, Jyrbian tugged viciously at the reins and sent his horse careening along the edge of the stream, toward the tree line. As he flew past, he noted dark-skinned faces with silver eyes open wide with surprise.

“Humans on your flank!” he shouted. He tore into the woods, into the nearest concentration of humans, and flailed about with his sword. He hit one on the side of the head with the flat of his blade and felt another taste its sharp edge.

The humans had to stand and fight, exposing their positions to the Ogre company.

Jyrbian wheeled his horse among the trees, slashed at a human with a wooden pike, then wheeled back to meet another with a sword. His steel blade sang against inferior metal. He felt as near to ecstasy as could be.

He realized the overwhelming numbers, saw his own death if the sluggish company of Ogres did not respond, then raised his voice in the first, terrible notes of a battle song, a death song.

His foot landed squarely on the chest of a human woman and echoed with a thud and crack. The human emitted a gurgle and fell back. His sword made a welcome whir in the air as he wheeled to meet the next attacker.

Then Kaede was coming to his aid, leading Jelindra into the battle, their horses sending up a spray of sand and pebbles. Her cry of attack made the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge. At last, the Ogres responded to Kaede’s battle cry, ran for their weapons, and rushed across the stream to join in the attack.

Jyrbian allowed the first of them to sweep by him, then met the next handful of charging warriors, blocking their path. “That way,” he commanded, pointing with his bloody sword. “Into the woods. Flank them.”

If there was any hesitation on their part to follow the orders of a complete stranger, he didn’t see it. Swords waving, they raced up the hill as he had directed, meeting further waves of humans in the woods.

Quickly, he dispatched others, five here, ten there, any he could commandeer, until the enemy was engaged in a melee all along the stream and through the woods. The Ogre troops might have been slow to respond, but they were making up for it with ferocity.

Three humans fell for every Ogre overcome. Leaping free of his horse, Jyrbian rejoined the fighting for the pure joy of making the odds even heavier. Every human whose throat he slashed, whose belly he stabbed, bore Eadamm’s face. He fought and fought harder, mind lost to battle lust.

Finally, he wheeled, sword held before him, and wheeled again, disappointed to find no remaining opponents. Nearby a young female with a short sword was battling a human male with two daggers. Jyrbian stepped into the fray and plunged his sword into the man’s chest. As the man slid free of the blade, leaving it coated with his blood, Jyrbian lunged cruelly and cut his throat as well, from ear to ear.

The blood was like an intoxicant. He raised his sword to strike at the body even as it lay, already dead, then Kaede stepped in front of him.

She laid a hand on his trembling arm. “He’s dead, Jyrbian. They’re all dead. Or running.”

For a moment, he stared at her blankly, then the words penetrated. He looked around. The woods, the shores of the stream, were littered with bodies. The water ran red. It seemed the sky darkened with blood. A heavy, rhythmic wind poured through the clouds, a pounding echoed off the mountainside.

“Let the rest go,” Kaede insisted, holding his arm.

Slowly he became aware that his fingers were knotted with pain from gripping his sword, that the heavy, bellowslike sound was not coming from the sky, but from his own lungs. The pounding was the beating of his heart, blood pulsing in his veins.

“Let them go,” she repeated in a softer tone, easing the weight of her hand on his arm. “There are troops in the woods who will hunt them.”

“Indeed?” said a grating voice behind them. “And I should like to know who thinks himself high enough to order my troops around during battle.”

When Jyrbian turned, he automatically adopted a fighting stance.

Several of the Ogres who had surrounded Jyrbian in the heat of the fighting also followed Kaede’s example and stepped away from the building confrontation.

The Ogre who faced Jyrbian was obviously the captain of the company. He was tall, though not as tall as Lyrralt, and so slender that he was almost gangly. He wore a fancy version of the red-and-white Dalle uniform, the front so ornamented with citations and ribbons that the cloth barely kept its shape. He had “dandy” written all over him, a soft, pampered member of the high nobility who had probably never set foot away from the court before this life-or-death excursion.

“Ahh.” With an exaggerated courtesy, Jyrbian straightened, bringing his booted heels together with a tap. Though he affected a bow, he never took his eyes from the slender Ogre. “And I should like to know who so stupidly risked the lives of these fine warriors by bivouacking in a place that invites ambush.” His voice was like steel and ice.

Anger flared in the captain’s eyes. He turned purple with rage. His hand flew to the jeweled hilt of his sword, slid the clean, unbloodied blade from its scabbard.

Jyrbian attacked before the Ogre had a chance to act, but the other parried well. Their blades met high overhead, then lower, at waist level, and locked as the hilts slammed into each other.

With muscles hardened by months of riding and grueling work, Jyrbian was bound to win any test of strength.

Indeed, the captain fell back. One step, two, three, and the growing crowd around them, strangely watchful and silent, flowed with the contest.

Again Jyrbian attacked high, was met, and sent his opponent stumbling backward. He sliced low.

The captain scuttled sideways.

Jyrbian could see the trace of fear in the other man. The other parried, defended, skipped about in desperation to elude the blade that seemed to shimmer in spite of the blood drying on its edge, despite the diminishing light.

Jyrbian reached deftly past his defenses and pricked his opponent’s neck, sliced his arm, light cuts that seemed more taunting than harmful. He caught the captain’s sword and flipped it neatly out of his hand. With a quick sweep of his foot, he tripped the Ogre.

While the captain lay on the ground, cringing, Jyrbian stepped on his sword and broke the brightly polished blade. Standing over the fallen man, his own sword dangling carelessly so that the tip hovered over the Ogre’s chest, Jyrbian said quietly, “I am Jyrbian, of Clan Taika.”

He paused, just long enough for the Ogre’s eyes to grow large, for him to tremble. Then Jyrbian coldly turned his back and strode away.

The warriors in his path respectfully parted to let him through. Then he heard the whoosh of something fly through the air. He wheeled and crouched low.

The Ogre captain was half sitting, his arm extended, fingers spread. Jyrbian had seen Khallayne in the same posture when she was spellcasting. But this Ogre would cast no more spells.

He was staring stupidly, not at his own hand, but at the dagger protruding from his chest – Kaede’s dagger, buried to the hilt.

Kaede stood to Jyrbian’s left, her hand still extended. Looking at Jyrbian, her lips curved in a smile. He remembered then that Khallayne had been teaching her magic.

“Apparently,” he said, “you’ve progressed quite nicely in your lessons.”

“Now they’re your troops,” she replied.

He looked about at the sweaty, bloody Ogres. He nodded. “And now we’re going to win some battles, instead of sitting and waiting for the humans to come and slaughter us.”

A shout of victory, of celebration, went up around him.

*

Khallayne had been left behind when Kaede had gone crashing down the slope, dragging Jelindra along with her. Her horse had almost thrown her.

Kaede was about to join the fighting when Khallayne caught up with her and tore Jelindra’s reins from Kaede’s saddle. Kaede had barely paused before turning her attention to the battle.

Khallayne took Jelindra into the valley, away from the worst of the fighting. Jelindra was dazed, caught up in some spell. She tried to get away. Khallayne rode her down, caught her by the back of her tunic, and held on as the girl kicked and screamed. Khallayne slid to the ground, still gripping Jelindra’s tunic.

“Jelindra! Jelindra, stop it! Let me talk to you!”

Jelindra kicked her, tried to run.

Khallayne tackled the girl, brought her down hard. When Jelindra rolled over and tried to fight back, she slapped her. “Stop fighting me!” Khallayne shouted.

Jelindra collapsed into sobs. “Please, let me go! Please, Khallayne, let me go. She keeps the thoughts away. Please let me go.”

“What are you talking about?”

The fighting had grown fierce near the stream. Khallayne held Jelindra’s face against her shoulder and watched the Ogre company sending the humans fleeing back into the forest. Their chance to escape would soon vanish if they didn’t leave now.

“She lets me forget,” Jelindra cried, pushing away from Khallayne. Her childish voice rose to a piercing scream. “She lets me forget Nomryh! She lets me forget that I killed him!”

Khallayne sat stupefied as the girl jumped up and ran back toward the group of Ogres who were congregating at the stream, toward Kaede.

She witnessed the end of the fight between Jyrbian and the Ogre captain. She saw Kaede send the dagger flying. Then she saw Jyrbian look around for her and send a handful of guards trotting across the field toward her. She sat on the cold ground and waited for them.

*

Jyrbian claimed the tent of the dead leader. No one disputed his right.

Kaede stood for a moment at the door, surveying the small room created by canvas walls. It housed a cot, which appeared fairly comfortable, a chest, and a small folding table. The table bore neatly folded squares of thick paper, obviously maps, which the Ogre captain had not seen fit to consult.

Jyrbian unbuckled his sword and laid it on the table, then sat on the edge of the cot and loosened the laces of his boots.

“You made the mistake of turning your back on him,” she said finally, part statement, part question.

He eased one boot off and stretched his foot out in front of him before planting it on the carpet. “You were there.”

She smiled at his confidence in her, at the appreciation in his gaze, and remembered with pleasure flinging her dagger and feeling the power of her magic send it to its target.

“Where’re Khallayne and the girl?” Jyrbian asked.

“The girl came back to me,” Kaede said smugly. “I’ll assign guards to keep them under watch, but she won’t stray.”

“No. I want them in here.” He removed the other boot.

Kaede’s expression went from joyous to disappointed, but she turned to follow his orders.

“But not now.” He reached out and caught her before she could take a step, caught the front of her tunic and used his grip to pull her close. With one arm around her, he tugged on the material again, and one of the carved bone buttons popped off.

He tugged again, harder, and thread snapped as two more buttons flew. As she reached for the front of the tunic to unbutton it rather than ruin it, he yanked more buttons off. “Never mind. You’ll need a new uniform for our return to Takar anyway.”

*

They rode into Takar at the head of the company, flags held high, symbolizing their victory.

The warriors’ uniforms had been altered as much as possible, stripes and decorations torn off. They all wore, as did Jyrbian, the crescent symbol of Sargonnas, God of Destruction and Vengeance, fashioned from the bones of their enemy. They were no longer of the Dalle Clan. They were Jyrbian’s.

The pageantry of the warriors drew a crowd of onlookers as they rode through the streets, stirring cheers.

Kaede was breathtaking in her red-and-white silks, her long, silver hair pulled back and braided warrior style.

Khallayne and Jelindra rode behind them, flanked by guards. Jelindra was swallowed up in her warrior tunic. Khallayne wore hers carelessly, showing her disdain.

Jyrbian proudly wore the same clothes he was wearing when he had left Takar, now bloodstained and well used. He’d cut his long hair to just above shoulder length and gathered it at the nape of his neck. His sword lay across his back.

The crowd responded to him, to the power they felt in him. They cheered and ran alongside the troops to keep him in sight.

Riding beside him, Kaede felt like laughing, and did so as the cobbled streets grew crowded and boisterous.

Chapter 16

SONG OF THE ISLAND HOME

Jyrbian faced the Ruling Council as dirty and bloody as the last time he’d stood before one of them. But this time, they were the ones who needed something, and he was the one in a position to bestow favors.

Kaede stood to his right. Jelindra was behind her, and Khallayne stood farthest away, back against the door.

The five members of the Ruling Council seemed smaller somehow, aged by the weeks that had gone by. Jyrbian stood, tall and proud, and did not perform the requisite bow. “I’ve come to offer my services as leader of all the troops of Takar.”

They glanced at each other, but before Anel, the leader, could respond, Jyrbian continued. “My proposal is this. I will consolidate the guards of the clans, and I will turn them into one army. I will reclaim the mountains from the humans. My army will make all the roads safe, as well as the passes and estates. My army will put the slaves back to work, where they belong.”

He took a step closer to the platform on which the five council members knelt and lowered his voice. “And when I have done that, my army will track down the heretic Igraine and his treasonous followers and bring them all back to stand trial for their crimes.”

He heard Khallayne’s soft gasp, but paid it no attention.

Without glancing at the others, Anel smiled and nodded to Jyrbian. “This plan you propose is indeed ambitious, Lord. We shall take it under serious advisement, of course. I’m sure you realize we’d like to discuss it first and hear the report of our agent.” Anel glanced at Kaede. “We —”

“Of course, I understand, Lady,” he interrupted smoothly. “But you must also understand, of course, that I will do these things with or without your approval.”

The gasps this time were from the council, and Teragrym and Enna both half rose, ready to challenge him.

Jyrbian waved them back down. “With you or without you. It is your choice.”

He left the audience chamber as abruptly as he had come, Kaede, Jelindra and Khallayne trailing in his wake. He spoke to the first Ogre he encountered in the hall.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

The Ogre, a male about Jyrbian’s age, but much smaller and paler, had obviously heard of their arrival. “I’m Ginde, Lord Jyrbian, general aide to the council,” he said nervously.

“Well, now, you’re my aide,” Jyrbian said brusquely.

The Ogre gulped, looking first at the door to the chamber, then at Kaede, then back at Jyrbian. “Yes, Sire.”

“I’ll be wanting new quarters. The larger ones on the southern side of the building will do nicely.”

Jyrbian started off down the hall, the aide dancing alongside him, trying to catch his attention.

“But, Lord, those are occupied by —”

“I don’t care. Have them unoccupied. Now. And I’ll want my troops quartered in the section the king’s troops used to occupy,” Jyrbian said, banging open the door to the dining hall.

The room was half filled, busy for midafternoon, and the conversations died away as everyone looked at Jyrbian.

“I’ll be wanting all new things,” he said over his shoulder. “I left nothing behind of any importance. You can put Khallayne in my old apartment. And give Jelindra Lyrralt’s old room for the time being.”

Kaede nodded, leaving him at the door of the dining hall, motioning for the two of them to follow her. Jelindra obeyed with alacrity, Khallayne sullenly.

There were guards everywhere, at corners and doors where there had never been guards in the castle for as long as Khallayne could remember. And very few slaves, most of whom were wall-eyed and cowed.

They passed a small woman slave carrying a tray, and she recoiled against the wall as if she expected to be struck as Kaede brushed by her.

Had the slaves always been so afraid of them? Had they always walked with bowed heads and cringed at the slightest sound of a raised voice? Khallayne glanced back at the woman, but kept walking.

“In here.” Kaede held open the door to Lyrralt’s old apartment and waited for Jelindra. As soon as the girl was inside, Kaede pulled the door closed and locked it, tucking the key inside her jacket.

Khallayne heard Jelindra scream.

“Kaede —!” She wheeled toward Jelindra’s door, then toward the rooms that would be hers – Jyrbian’s old apartment. The door was already closing behind Kaede. Khallayne surged forward, realizing that, now that Jelindra was safely locked away, Kaede had released the spell that had bound the child’s memory.

Khallayne banged the door open, slamming it into the wall.

Kaede looked up from a chest set against the far wall, her eyes narrowed, dangerous, as she waited for Khallayne to speak.

“Looking for something?”

Kaede stood and allowed the lid of the chest to bang shut. “Evidence.”

“Of what?” Khallayne pulled her jacket close against the chill in the room. It smelled damp and musty, of being closed up for weeks. Without moving a muscle, she lit the half-burned logs in the fireplace.

Kaede didn’t blink. “Of the Song of History.”

“The what?” Khallayne covered her quick intake of breath by turning toward the crackling fire and holding out her hands. Every ounce of her willpower was required to not look at the window, at the sill, to see if Jyrbian’s collection of crystals still stood there.

“The Song of the History of the Ogre.”

“I don’t understand,” Khallayne lied, pretending to examine the figurines on the mantel. Surreptitiously, she glanced at Kaede in the mirror that hung above the fireplace.

Kaede had the door to the wardrobe open and was fingering Jyrbian’s clothes. “Bakrell and I are the last of the Clan of the Keeper.”

“I thought the Keeper was the last.”

“My mother was not born in a sanctified marriage, but we are blood nonetheless!” Kaede said the last fiercely, as if daring Khallayne to deny it.

When Khallayne said nothing, Kaede continued, “I’ve never felt the Song was dead. Never. There would be a silence in me if it were gone.”

“So … where is it?”

Kaede looked frustrated. She went to the center of the room and turned slowly, eyes closed tightly, as if sampling the air. She sighed. “I don’t know. But I feel it strongest when I’m with Jyrbian.”

Khallayne nodded. “Why haven’t you just asked him?”

Kaede grinned. “Obviously you don’t know Jyrbian as well as I thought you did. If he knew I really wanted it, he’d never give it to me.”

The room was beginning to warm. Khallayne slipped off the heavy riding jacket and tossed it across a chair. “If you know what kind of Ogre he is, I don’t see why you follow him.”

Kaede laughed mirthlessly. “Obviously, you really don’t know him.” She was still laughing as she left the room without bothering to lock Khallayne in.

Khallayne ran on light feet to the door and opened it just a crack. She could hear Kaede’s laughter dwindling as she strode down the hall.

She retrieved her jacket and forced herself to wait several more minutes before venturing out into the hall.

A guard was stationed at the intersection of the corridor at the other end of the hall, and she straightened as Khallayne emerged. Khallayne concentrated, striking with a mental blow, right above her eyes, as hard as she could.

The guard dropped with a clatter of sword.

Khallayne held her breath. She waited for someone to come to the guard’s aid, but the hallways remained silent. She pressed her face against the heavy carving on the door, but there was no sound coming from Jelindra’s rooms. “Jelindra?” She called softly.

No answer.

She was afraid of what the girl might have done when all the memories, of her nightmare and the death of her brother, were unmasked and given back to her.

Khallayne breathed deeply, forced herself to control her fear. She concentrated as she hadn’t concentrated since the battle in the forest, drawing power from inside.

She had intended to blow the door off its hinges, to blast it into tiny pieces, but at the last moment, she changed the spell. Made it something delicate and precise. She slipped it into the keyhole in the door, into the tiny passages in which the key fit. Click. Click. Click.

The door swung open with just the tiniest pressure.

“Jelindra?” Her voice was soft, as delicate as the spell.

The room was in darkness, even colder than hers, but she was loathe to light it with magic. She bumped into the bed and felt across the uneven surface until she touched Jelindra’s hair, spilling out over a pillow. “Jelindra?”

A tiny sob escaped the bundle of blankets.

“Jelindra. It’s me. I’ve come to take you out of here.”

The girl sat up and folded herself into Khallayne’s arms, erupting in a torrent of tears. “She gave it all back, Khallayne. She gave it all back. After she promised! She made me remember it all.”

Khallayne held her for a moment, then pulled back the covers. “You knew you couldn’t forget forever, didn’t you?”

Jelindra tried to pull away.

“She takes away the good memories, too. And you don’t want to lose those, do you?

Jelindra began to cry again, but she shook her head. “No, I don’t. It’s just that – it’s just that it hurts so much. And I’m afraid.”

“I know. I am, too. But it’ll get better. I promise.” Khallayne held out her hand. “Come on. We’re leaving.” Jelindra took it and allowed herself to be pulled up and out of the room.

Khallayne led her through passages remembered from another lifetime. The walls were familiar, the rooms they passed likewise, but they seemed to belong to a past unconnected with her own. The guards they passed, one after another, were also from another life altogether. Khallayne disabled the first two, then after that, used a “sleep” spell to save energy.

They reached the stables without arousing any suspicions. Jelindra was breathing hard, but moving with quick steps. With another blow, Khallayne incapacitated the stable guard. She waved away the slave working in the stalls, and he shrank fearfully into the shadows.

Khallayne led their horses from the stalls, grabbed blankets and saddles, talking as she did so. “Jelindra, listen to me, okay? And try to remember all this. If we’re separated —”

Jelindra started, tears welling up in her eyes, and Khallayne wasted precious minutes calming her. “Just listen. I’ll be right behind you, okay? But in case something happens, ride for the western gate. Okay? Get away from the city, but stay on the main trail. I’ll come that way as soon as I can. Okay?”

Jelindra nodded and vaulted onto the back of her horse. “The west gate. I’ll wait for you.”

They started out of the courtyard, riding slowly in the watery winter sunlight. Khallayne would have preferred the darkness of night to cover their movements. She magically muffled the sound of their horse’s hooves slightly, hoping nobody would hear them.

The gates of the courtyard loomed overhead, casting a shadow over the cobblestones. She breathed a sigh of relief. They were going to make it.

Suddenly, a cry of alarm went up from the castle. She glanced back and saw Jyrbian, standing at the top of the steps, pointing at her.

“Stop them!” he shouted. “Don’t let them get away!”

Khallayne slapped the rump of Jelindra’s horse. “Go!” she screamed. “Run!”

The horse leapt forward and streaked through the gate, Jelindra bent low over its back. Khallayne wheeled to face Jyrbian.

Guards poured from the castle and from the exercise yard behind the courtyard, running for the stables. If they reached their horses, they would catch Jelindra for sure!

Power hummed along her nerves. She cast it out, slamming the doors to the stables, fusing the hinges. The guards beat against the doors, then turned and headed toward her.

She spoke a word, a simple word, and a wall of fire sprang up to meet them. The guards fell back.

An arrow whizzed past her, far off to the side. She heard Jyrbian scream, “Don’t hurt her! I want her alive!”

She could see him, through a haze of heat, gesturing at the guards. His lips were moving in spell casting, and she felt the power of the fire waver. She breathed the wall of flame higher.

She wheeled her horse again, turning toward the city. The animal, frightened by the fire, scrabbled for purchase on the cobblestones, almost fell, then righted himself. The gate flashed past as he leapt forward. She was clear! She was free!

Something smote her, something like a giant hand. It jarred her teeth, jolted her muscles, then lifted her up off her horse and dropped her with skull-crushing force. She cried out, braced for the impact.

At the last moment, something equally powerful cushioned the fall so that only her back was bruised, her breath knocked out of her.

Dazed, she sat up. Clattering feet were right behind her, but it wasn’t too late to buy more time for Jelindra. She came to her feet, ready to fight.

The two guards in front drew bows, nocked arrows, and dropped to their knees.

“Gently,” Jyrbian called, striding down the hill toward her. “Gently.” He was smiling, waving the guards away as he moved forward.

“Khallayne.” When he reached her, he motioned the guards away and walked right up to her. He clasped her shoulders in his big hands. “Thank you.”

She jerked away from his grasp. “For what?”

“I understand.” His smile grew even wider. “When you ran, I tried to stop you, but the words wouldn’t come. But then the spell did, from inside, just like you said it would.”

He tilted his head back, face to the sky, and laughed. “Now there’s nothing I can’t do!”

*

Shadows moved. Stars as bright as gems burned holes in the black sky and twinkled so brightly that Bakrell thought he could hear them singing a song of fire and darkness that tinkled like chimes. The night seemed full of rustling movement.

He rode easily, humming to himself for company. Two warriors had ridden with him, but as they had neared the mountains, he had sent them back. Tenaj would be angry. If he ever saw her again, he was sure she would have a few choice phrases, but he also felt he would be safer alone.

The mountains loomed, a blot in the sky, casting a long, dark shadow out on the plains. In the next hour, he would be in the foothills.

He kicked his horse to a canter. He watched for any sign of human or Ogre encampment, listened for warnings in the hooting and calling of the nightbirds, of the rustling of animals in the grass.

He chose the most direct route he knew, a trail almost straight up into the Khalkists, riding into rain as soon as he left the rolling foothills behind. The drizzle made pleasantly pattering sounds on the leaves, dripped down the back of his neck, and plastered his clothes to his skin.

It was miserable in the higher elevations. The mountains smoked, a phenomenon Bakrell had heard about but never seen. It seemed the bluish smoke from dozens of campfires spiraled up through the lush foliage and blended into the blue-gray sky. It was quite beautiful, and he hoped to never see it again, if it meant being this cold and wet.

After days of travel, he still had seen no Ogre parties, which both relieved and puzzled him. Had the council given up their pursuit? He was sitting at the edge of the forest, staring at the city of Thorad, when he came up with an idea.

Maybe he could find an inn near the edge of the town. He was so cold and miserable that he was willing to risk it for one night of comfort, of sleeping on a surface that didn’t squish.

With no walls like those that protected most of the older cities, Thorad had been an easy target for human attacks. At the wide road that was the main entrance on the east side, barricades marked where attacks had been met. Bags filled with earth, huge timbers, even barroom tables filled the gaps. Buildings bore charred facades.

As Bakrell rode in, a few Ogres eyed him with suspicion, unease, and downright hostility. He had never seen such Ogres as these! They looked as bad off as Igraine’s people. In fact, refugees were exactly what they appeared to be, families with belongings piled in two-wheel carts, farmers with packs slung on their backs, all as wet and miserable as he.

He chose the inn where he and Kaede had stayed before. The public room was empty save for two Ogres huddled near the fire in the dining area. The innkeeper, whom Bakrell remembered, was behind the bar, polishing the shiny surface of the old wood.

It was then that Bakrell realized what made the city seem truly strange and empty. There were no slaves! He hesitated, thinking back, and could not remember seeing one human face in the streets.

“Come on in, stranger,” said the innkeeper.

The two at the fire looked up at him warily, but quickly went back to their mugs when he nodded at them.

The innkeeper placed a mug of steaming tea before him as Bakrell climbed onto a stool. “Berry and bark,” he offered as explanation when Bakrell sniffed it. “All we’ve got.”

Bakrell wrapped his fingers around the mug and took a sip. The brew was weak and bitter, but the warmth of it felt like the finest whiskey. “I’d drink plain water and be as happy as if it were wine, as long as it’s hot.”

“Been traveling?” There was suspicion in his tone, under the nonchalance.

Bakrell nodded. “It’s been miserable, with all the rain. I need a room for the night.”

“You can have your pick if you’ve got the price.”

“I have money.” Bakrell dug into his cloak and pulled out a soggy purse. Coins clinked as he counted them out on the bar.

Instead of the gleam Bakrell had expected, the innkeeper’s face showed disappointment. “Better than nothing,” he said. “Rather have food, or candles. Or wine.”

“I have —” In his mind, Bakrell went over the items he was carrying on his horse. He had no candles, and he wasn’t willing to give up his two skins of wine. “I have dried meat,” he offered finally. “And salt.”

The innkeeper’s face brightened. “Salt? You can have a room for a whole turning of the moons!”

“It’s in a pack on my horse, outside.”

“Outside! You can’t be leaving something valuable like that outside. It’ll be gone before you can blink.” The innkeeper rushed to the door behind the bar and shouted for someone to go and get Bakrell’s horse. “And bring the bags in here!”

Bakrell sat back, his fingers closed on the warm mug.

The innkeeper narrowed his eyes. “Where is it you said you’re from? Have I seen you around here before?”

“I stayed here in the fall. My sister and I. We were waiting for … someone.”

The Ogre’s eyes narrowed as he considered Bakrell. “I remember a young one with a sister sharp as a whip. He was pretty useless-looking, though, decked out in fine clothes. Not like you.”

Bakrell smiled sadly. “No, I guess I don’t look much like that.”

“Them two, they were heading out onto the plains, looking for Igraine.” The innkeeper spat on the floor as soon as he said the name. “And may they find him, too. Heretic bastard!”

Bakrell nodded, then sipped thoughtfully at his drink.

“He’s the cause of all this, him and his ideas about slavery.” He waved his arms about, indicating the empty room. “Me with no slaves to work the place. Not that it matters. Got no customers anyway. Half the population doesn’t even have homes anymore.”

“I saw all the people outside. They looked like they’re on the move.”

As the innkeeper continued to speak, he became more agitated. “City’s not safe. No walls. The humans ride in and do whatever they want and ride back out again before the guard even rouses itself.”

“Where will they all go?” Bakrell was beginning to be sorry he’d ventured into Thorad, information or not.

“Humans’ll slaughter most of them on the trails. Damn fools don’t know what it’s like out there. Think they’ll be better off running away. Others’ll starve when they get to Takar and Bloten and find they’re not wanted there either.”

“But surely they’d be welcome in Takar. The Ruling Council —”

“Ruling Council! Pahhh!” He spat again, with as much animosity as when he’d spoken of Igraine. “They’re sitting behind those walls, safe and warm. Don’t care if their own starve. Why would they want any more?”

Bakrell sighed heavily, pushing his cup toward the Ogre for a refill. “How did things get so bad, so fast?” he whispered. He felt, suddenly, a desperation to find Khallayne and Jelindra and get away from the mountains as quickly as possible.

*

Lyrralt stood on the shore, digging his bare feet into the sand. The breeze off the water was bitterly cold. The sand was cold between his toes, and grainy.

Reaching the Courrain Ocean, the great body of water to the north of the continent, had been a joyful moment. They had been camping nearby for almost a week, and many of the Ogres still ventured down to the beach despite the cold. They had spread out in small family encampments all along the seaside, among the sandy, grassy hills.

Children played near the water’s edge, laughing and shouting, mixing their voices with the cries of the seabirds and noise of the surf. He heard all, saw nothing.

“You shouldn’t be walking around without your shoes,” Tenaj called cheerily, crunching her way across the sand toward him. Igraine was with her, just back from a trip into Schall, a human city two days to the west. Lyrralt recognized him from his scent.

“How was your trip?”

The smile on Igraine’s face vanished.

Tenaj tucked her arm through Lyrralt’s, but waited for Igraine to speak. Igraine grimaced. “Disappointing. I’m afraid the reputations of our brethren have preceded us. We were most unwelcome. I’ve brought plenty of supplies, but I think we need to move on soon.”

“Before the humans decide to attack?” Lyrralt guessed.

“Yes.”

“Is there no place where we can be safe?” Tenaj asked, her voice suddenly depressed. “I’m tired of running. I’m tired of always looking over my shoulder.”

“Perhaps there is a place.” Lyrralt turned her toward the ocean. “In Schall, were there sailing vessels?” he asked Igraine.

“Yes. I saw sails near the waterfront.”

“Large enough to carry us? All of us?”

“I don’t know.”

Tenaj was trembling. “Where?” she whispered. “Where would we go?”

Lyrralt pointed out over the water.

“How do you know this, Lyrralt?” Igraine’s voice was caught by the wind and tossed back to him so that it seemed to come from very far away.

“There’s an island somewhere to the north. It’s … It’s calling me.”

Igraine turned into the ocean breeze, feeling the salt spray on his face. He tried to quiet his thoughts, putting away the worries of caring for so many Ogres, feeding them, sheltering them, keeping them alive. Yet he heard no song, no call from across the ocean waves. As always, when he allowed the mask of day-to-day worries to fall away, he felt only grief, the overwhelming sorrow and loneliness that had permeated his soul since Everlyn’s death, a heartache almost too strong to bear.

*

Darkness, dank and dripping. Scuttling of claws on stone, somewhere in the shadows. Light from a smoky, oily torch, showing flashes of moldy walls, of grayed, chewed lengths of bone.

There were doors, recessed, so thick and heavy that they might never open. One door was open, and Khallayne backed away from it, instinctively knowing that she didn’t want to know what lay out of range of her torchlight.

She was in the dungeons beneath the castle. The guard who had come for her volunteered no information, and he responding to her questions with only, “I’m following Lord Jyrbian’s orders.”

Lord Jyrbian. Lord Jyrbian had, so far, been as good as his word. He had organized the troops. He and Kaede had drilled them until they were ready to drop, then Kaede had drilled them more. made them fight each other with pikes, with swords, with fat maces, like the humans used, on foot and on horseback. And they loved him for it. The first supply train guarded by his troops had come through unscathed, and now everybody loved him.

Khallayne and the guard passed a deep doorway, and in the flash of torchlight she saw an unidentifiable mass, disintegrating cloth that might have been a pile of rags, or might have been a body. A lump of clothes, flesh all but gone, with wispy blond hair sticking up like straw.

She gasped softly, drew back. Had this always been here, this suffocating, dark place, below the rooms where she danced, ate, made love?

“In here, Lady,” he said, stopping before a door, deep-set in granite. “Lord Jyrbian is waiting.”

She froze, suddenly sure that if she went through the door, she would never leave the cell alive. She would spend the rest of her life eating unidentifiable food passed through a slit, living in the darkness until her skin was leeched of all color, her mind of all sanity.

The door swung inward, and yellow light spilled into the corridor. The warm air that came rushing out hinted at a scent musky yet somehow familiar. After the chilly dampness, the light and warmth pouring through the door should have been welcome.

It wasn’t. Her intuition told her so.

Jyrbian was just inside the door. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear the words.

The power. The power in the room. She sensed the seething of the magic, the darkness despite its brightness. An aura greenish and ugly, stronger than any she’d ever seen, enveloped Jyrbian.

The guard pushed her hard in the small of her back. Inside the room, the din of the spell was even worse. Her own power crawled in her veins, wanting to respond, to protect, but she fought it down. She’d never felt anything like it, not even the magic that flowed about the Ruling Council. Such malevolence! Such evil!

Then she saw what – who – Jyrbian had brought her to see. Hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of anguish, she took a step forward.

Bakrell was tied to a slab of stone in the middle of the floor, its surface angled. He was naked, muscles bulging. His mouth stretched wide, teeth bared in a silent mask of anguish.

“I’m sure you remember Bakrell,” Jyrbian said smoothly. As he spoke, the aura of power around him ebbed and diminished.

Bakrell made a pitiful sound, an animal whimper. Except for the trickle of blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth, he might have been sleeping. Or dead.

Khallayne maintained her composure. She dug her toes into the soles of her boots, feeling the coldness of the floor. Fought to keep her face impassive because she sensed her safety and Bakrell’s life depended on it. She fought and lost. There was no way she could conceal her horror, her disgust, her nausea.

“I know him,” she choked out, horrified when her voice stirred him, made him open his eyes.

Jyrbian straightened, made some small gesture she noted only at the periphery of her vision, and the putrescence that was his power poured back into the room.

Bakrell’s body contorted, straining at his bonds with such ferocity that it seemed he burst. And just as suddenly, slumped pathetically.

“Jyrbian, please …” Although every inch of her skin crawled with revulsion, Khallayne held out a hand to him. “Why are you doing this?”

Jyrbian took her hand, drew her close enough that he could put a hand on her shoulder. “Because it pleases me.” He turned toward his captive and asked, “Doesn’t it please you, too?”

Bakrell’s eyes were dull, the shine of life gone from them, and she knew he was dying. She’d seen too many, fallen in battle, their lives draining away, not to recognize the signs. Gaze locked with Bakrell’s, she whispered, “Jyrbian, please don’t do this. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“My dear, you have nothing left that I want. He, however, has information that might lessen his suffering, should he choose to share it.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder, then eased off into a caress.

She couldn’t stop the shiver of repulsion that ran down her spine. “What?”

“The location of Igraine’s camp.”

The greenish light, the malevolent power, leapt again. Bakrell’s body arched up off the stone. Jyrbian grabbed Khallayne as she tried to do something, grabbing her around the waist with strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

“Bakrell, if you know, tell him!” she cried.

Bakrell didn’t respond. His body pushed up off the stone, held for long moments, then dropped. His eyes rolled up in his head.

“If you know, tell him! He’ll kill you!”

Bakrell simply shook his head. No.

Irritated, Jyrbian flicked his fingers.

Bakrell’s body spasmed. His muscles bunched as if they would rip through his skin. He screamed. And screamed. The sound reverberated around the small room, echoing, stabbing her ears, her heart, like daggers driven into her skull. So loud, so tortured a sound, that it persisted in her mind even after Bakrell went silent.

Jyrbian released her. He went to Bakrell, touched him as gently as a lover. “Don’t you want the pain to be over? Don’t you want this to end? All you have to do is tell me. Just tell me where I can find Igraine. I know you know where they were going. How else were you going to take Khallayne and Jelindra back?”

Unable to speak, Bakrell rolled his head back and forth. Back and forth. No.

His dull eyes stared out through swollen lids at Khallayne. For a moment, just a moment, there was recognition in his face. Horror. Understanding. “Forgive me,” he rasped, his voice a blood-filled whisper. With effort, he rolled his head back until Jyrbian was in his vision. “You won’t hurt her?” he rasped, and when Jyrbian agreed, whispered, “Near Schall. On the shore.”

His eyes slid shut. His head rolled heavily to the side. His chest heaved, then settled, and didn’t rise again.

For a moment, the silence in the room was overwhelming. With a triumphant malevolence, Jyrbian turned to the guard in the doorway. “Take a company immediately. Start tonight. Bring Igraine back to me, dead or alive. But the humans who guard him I want alive.”

The Ogre saluted smartly, disappearing into the dark corridor.

When his footfalls had died away, Jyrbian turned to Khallayne. “Allow me to escort you back to your apartment.”

Chapter 17

DRAWING NEAR THE DUST

Sunlight pierced deep into the clear blue waters of the Courrain Ocean. As she often did in the mornings, the Xocli paused, her large, flat tail moving lazily in the current, and turned one of her three heads to watch the return of her fellow sea creatures, riding the warming beams of light down from the surface.

A stately leaffish drifted by; the rippling fins for which it was named gamboled like ornaments, waving a warm good morning.

The nightly, vertical migration had begun at dusk. Tiny fish, too small for the Xocli to actually see, rose, seeking food. Slowly, the small fish that fed on the tiny ones followed, and the larger creatures followed them in turn. Nighttime in the depths of the Courrain Ocean was a totally different world than the day.

She watched the nightly dance and the morning return, though the Xocli didn’t rise with nightfall, not unless there was a voice, calling to her – as one called to her this morning, faintly and dimly.

The caller was not nearby, perhaps not even on the water, but she could feel the call of its sadness; the sorrow touched her core. Motioning to her children, she set out across the ocean floor, allowing the current to pull her along, take her where it would. There was no hurry. The melancholy of the caller would tell her when to rise.

One of her heads snapped up a larval shrimp floating on a sea leaf that sparkled like sequins. The tiny morsel made her hungry for more. She opened her three mouths and gulped in water, enjoying the rush of it through the gills on her necks.

Spectral light played across the gossamer, transparent mantle that shielded the organs in the Xocli’s necks and torso. Streaming along behind her, the little ones, the children, frolicked in and out of the beams of sunlight, diving below the reef and popping back out above or behind it.

The children ranged wide, then circled back to her as she turned. Not only was she avoiding the colder area north of the reef, where a vent in the ocean floor sent inky fluid smoking toward the surface, but the melancholy from the surface was stronger, singing in her bones, a siren song that could not be ignored.

The young were miniature copies of her: three heads sitting atop long necks, golden scales and fins rippling with all the colors of the ocean. The transparency of their young skin, their developing mantles, made them difficult to see against the reef, save for the brightness of their eyes.

She felt, rather than heard, the cry of one of the children. Turning back rapidly, she counted. One, two, three, against the reef. Another out on the floor, examining a miniature “chimney,” the beginnings of a vent, from which pale particles drifted upward. Another, still farther away, swam lazily. That left one unaccounted for, the one who was bugling in pain and fear.

The cry was coming from the north, from the vent. Ordering the others to stay away, she darted toward the sound. She twined her three long, thick necks and swam with her three heads nose-to-nose. Gone was the lazy, panoramic view of the underwater as she homed in on the pleas.

Visibility narrowed as she approached the vent. The smoky black fluid that spewed from the vent clouded the water until almost no sunlight penetrated. She swam by feel, following the vibration of her child. Its pitiful cries were weakening, moment by moment.

She bugled her distress, and a mere whimper was the only response from the lost one. She circled in the cloudy darkness. Just when she thought she would never find the little one, she saw it, its back closer to the reef than she had thought, trapped in the waving tentacles of a giant tube worm.

The tube worms were not maneuvering creatures. They lived out their lives attached to the reef or a boulder, unable to chase after their prey. They shot stinging tentacles into the current to capture their food, then dragged the stunned, hapless creature back in a deadly embrace.

The little one was mewling weakly. Held immobile in the grasp of the huge tentacles, it was drowning. The Xocli swept in toward it, screeching a cry of warning, of distress and challenge.

The tube worm, stupid and sluggish when feeding, was quick when it sensed prey. The stinging tentacles darted out and latched onto the tender flesh at the base of her necks.

Pain like the bite of hundreds of tiny teeth shot through her nervous system. She squealed and kicked backward with her large pectoral fin. Her weight and the power tore her loose, leaving her flesh on the barbed tentacles. She darted in again. And again the tube worm pricked her, pumping its venom into her veins.

She tore loose again, tearing several of the tubes from the base this time. She felt the whisper of the mindless creature’s anger conveyed through the water. She surged in once more, spreading her three necks as far as they would go, as wide, attacking from three different directions.

Ignoring her pain, she attacked. Again and again. Tireless. Desperate. She besieged the tube worm from above, below, charged in, a direct frontal assault. She tore off pieces of the ugly, writing tentacles, snapped whole clumps from the base.

The tube worm met her assault on all sides, spraying out a thick, noxious white poison in addition to the stinging tentacles. The Xocli backed away, blinded, bleeding, defeated. Her little one moved no more in the grasp of the tube worm. Its ululations stilled forever.

She reared back and sounded her distress, her grief. Her anguish was so great, it almost overwhelmed the calls from the surface. With one last glance back at the remains of her child, she swam upward, signaling for the other children to attend her.

She shot upward, heeding the siren call from above, feeding on the misery of the caller, drawing it into herself.

Added to her own sorrow, the emotion was overpowering. She gave vent to her pain. Anguish became fury, building inside her to a fever pitch, until the Xocli that broke the surface of the ocean, rising up into the air, was crazed with rage.

The tiny ships pitched on the ocean’s surface below her. And she drank in the fear and pain of the tiny beings that clung to the decks. She sucked in the anesthetizing, exhilarating emotions.

*

Water, blue-gray and endless, stretched as far as the eye could see, merging with the sky. Rippling in the cold sunshine, it looked like melted glass.

They were north of the continent of Ansalon, far west of the Khalkists. Nearby were islands, called the Dragon Isles, the human captain assured them, some of them large enough to support a colony of Ogres.

“How much farther?” Tenaj called to Lyrralt, who sat in the shade of the upper deck, his back braced against the bulkhead. She strode across the rolling deck, stepping over those lolling in the sun with the ease of many days aboard ship, and squatted down next to him. “How much longer?”

He smiled, turning his sightless eyes toward her. “Not much longer. Can’t you hear it?”

She cocked her head. “Yes.” She drew the word out in a sibilant hiss. And she did hear something, as they all were beginning to, a siren call, drawing them across the water. “But it’s still so faint. I can’t tell if it’s near or far.”

“It’s near,” said someone behind her. “Very near.”

“It better be,” another voice growled.

Tenaj stalked back to the bow. That was the problem with being packed on the ship so close with so many others. There was no privacy. The smaller ship, which sailed behind them, was probably even worse.

Igraine came up beside her, laid a hand on her shoulder. “Feeling crowded?” he asked quietly.

As always, Tenaj was surprised at how well he read her mind and ashamed to have harbored such unworthy thoughts. “I know I should be grateful,” she admitted contritely. “We were lucky to find a captain willing to take us all at once.” Lucky to find a human whose greed appreciated the coin they could pay.

“We’re lucky to be here, all healthy.” Igraine said it ruefully, for he had been one of the few who had taken seasick the first few days out. Then very quietly, very sadly, he whispered, “I wish Everlyn could have seen the new home.”

Tenaj looked at him in surprise. It was the first time she’d heard him mention Everlyn since the killing.

Igraine wasn’t the same leader who had left Takar. His daughter’s death had drained all the life from him, leaving a male who seemed diminished, his silver hair and eyes now a drab gray. But his voice still carried the authority to move mountains.

She squeezed his hand sympathetically, turned her face to the wind, and stared out at the sea. Just as Igraine started to speak, she drew a sharp breath and leaned forward, over the railing.

“Do you see the island?”

“No.” She shook her head, pushed away his hand. “No.” What she saw was a pattern in the water, a whirling pattern that wasn’t natural. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted to the captain, trying to make her voice heard above the billowing of the sails. “Something’s ahead!”

The captain pantomimed that he couldn’t make out her words. Shielding his eyes, he peered ahead, then abruptly grabbed the wheel of the ship and strained to change direction, shouting orders to his men.

The ship pitched as it turned, groaning in the water.

Tenaj grabbed Igraine and hustled him toward the bulkhead, toward the stairs and belowdecks. “Everyone get below!” she shouted.

Everyone had already risen in alarm, and when the ship had turned about, sending up a plume of water, they’d scattered.

Igraine gasped. Screams broke out across the deck, and Tenaj turned just in time to see something raise its head, a golden snout breaking through the surface, water sheeting off its rippling skin. It was beautiful and horrible, she thought, a creature cast in transparent, pearlescent gold, with the scales of a fish and eyes as red as rubies.

Another head broke the surface beside it, then another, three of them, huge, mantled necks bulging, glistening. They reared back, sending air whistling past her ears, her hair whipping into her eyes.

The captain was yelling something unintelligible. Ogres were shouting, running. Igraine was the one pushing her now. She bumped into Lyrralt, standing with his back braced against the bulkhead.

“Brace! Brace!” the captain was shouting.

The creatures were surging forward, churning white froth in their wake, their huge blunt heads lowered for battering. She had only a moment to think, to act, before the creatures bashed into the side of the ship. Surely its timbers couldn’t withstand the tremendous blow!

Tenaj threw up her hands, making a shield with every ounce of magical power at her disposal. The monsters’ heads struck the invisible shield with such force that she felt the tremor. One of the heads crashed past and rammed the ship.

The ship rocked with the impact, pitching wildly back and forth. Wood groaned and splintered, threatening to give way. The blow threw Tenaj to the deck. Her head struck the planks. She rolled onto her back, dazed, and saw the sea monsters preparing to ram again.

She pushed to her knees, muttering under her breath the words to another spell, hoping to strengthen it.

An instant later, Igraine was there beside her, and Lyrralt, helping her to stand. Then others, crowding in close, added the strength of their own magic to hers.

The creatures attacked again, coming up hard against the invisible shield. Bugling in fury and frustration, the creature reared back, rising up another fifty feet into the sky, and attacked again. It struck a blow that tossed them all to the decks as if they weighed nothing. The shield shook with the force of the blow, but held.

From behind them, a cheer went up. Anticipating the creatures’ next attack, Tenaj shouted, “Concentrate!” There was another shout as Lyrralt grabbed her. “They’re going!”

A human sailor went running past, and Igraine grabbed him. “What are they?” he demanded.

“Not they. It! A Xocli. It’s trying to feed its young! We’re the food.”

“It’s heading for the other ship,” Tenaj said dully. She ran toward the railing, waving her arms and shouting as she went, hoping to distract the creature.

It sailed past, half submerged. As she reached the end of the deck, she cast a spell with all her might. Something like a thunderbolt sizzled through the air and fell short. She threw fireballs, one, then two, more. They flew through the air, but fell short.

By her side, Igraine also cast a spell, and something hit the water very near the monsters, sending a geyser high into the air.

The Xocli swam on toward the smaller ship.

“There’s no one on that ship with the power to stop it,” Tenaj said, her voice defeated. The ones who were more advanced in magic and spellcasting had sailed together, hoping to spend their time on board learning from each other.

She watched numbly as the creature repeated its performance with the smaller ship, ramming it repeatedly. She saw bodies fall into the water, heard thrashing and screaming, then stillness. On her ship, there was moaning and songs of sorrow.

The smaller ship tipped over on its side, like a toy in a pond. Bodies slid off the deck, scrabbling to hold on. Something beneath the water tore at the Ogres as they hit the water. Still the creature butted its golden heads against the ship. Again and again.

Tenaj tore loose from Igraine and ran back up to the captain. “Go back!” she screamed. She scrambled up the ladder to the upper deck. “Go back! We’ve got to help them!”

“We can’t.” The human met her gaze squarely. “It would sink us, too.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said his second mate gruffly, pointing. “It’s going.”

Tenaj turned. The sea monster was sailing away, gracefully, beautifully, gradually disappearing beneath the water as it moved.

The second ship was still afloat, but listing badly to the right. Starboard, she corrected herself.

As they watched, signal flags slid up the mast. “Taking on water,” the captain translated. “Able to sail, though. Signal them back. We’ll fall in beside. Help out as best we can.”

Tenaj insisted they circle close and check the water for survivors, but she knew it was useless, even as the captain acquiesced.

How many lost?

She went back down the ladder to her place at the bow. The people behind her on deck were subdued now, crying softly, speculating in whispers as to who among their friends and family was lost.

Igraine joined her, then Lyrralt. The sun set. Still she stayed, watching the black water ahead, lit by Solinari so that it sparkled like diamonds. The wind grew colder. The stars came out.

She was still standing there when the lookout shouted. “Land!”

She looked this way and that, then realized it was right in front of her. The blackness she’d taken for starless sky was an island.

A large island.

Igraine and Lyrralt joined her once more, pushing through the Ogres who had crowded up from below deck.

For a moment, Igraine stared at the black finger of land on the horizon. Then he spoke quietly. “We will be called the Irda, Children of the Stars, Watchers of the Darkness. As we have found our way to this place, we will make our own way into the future.” For the first time since Everlyn’s death, he felt hope and peace and a wonderful calmness in his heart.

*

Khallayne sat for days, silent and uncommunicative. She ate when food was put before her, slept when a slave led her to bed. She shivered when the room was cold, sweated when she sat too near the fire.

She hurt. Her teeth, her skin, her fingers. Her muscles, her eyes. Everything ached, and for days, a sound, even the tiniest one, made her cringe. But she knew all that would pass. Her aches would recede, and her ears would return to normal. She wasn’t so sure about her sanity.

It was all hazy, like an early morning high in the mountains when the clouds haven’t lifted and the air hangs heavily moisture laden and nothing has sharp edges.

“Why are you keeping her alive?” Kaede’s voice, tinged with jealousy, broke through the haze.

“Because it amuses me,” Jyrbian’s voice answered, his despicable voice as smooth as silk.

She watched it all as she would have watched a play, waiting for her heart to wake up and tell her she was alive. The thing that made her look, listen, made her at last return to the world of angry whispers, was a scream, the scream of a dying man.

“So,” a voice said from near the window. “You are going to wake up.” The voice didn’t sound very pleased with the prospect.

Slowly, Khallayne sat up. She spotted Kaede standing at the window, a crystal from Jyrbian’s collection held in her palm.

Bakrell’s death came back to her. “Bakrell …” she choked out.

Kaede put the crystal back onto its bronze stand and turned toward her. “Ummm. I always thought you liked my brother a little more than you let on. No doubt he’s one of Igraine’s most loyal followers by now. He never did anything halfheartedly.”

She didn’t know! Khallayne understood immediately. Jyrbian hadn’t told her. She opened her mouth to tell her, to let the anger and pain come pouring out. But she didn’t. That revelation might be something she could put to good use, later.

With effort, Khallayne pushed her legs over the edge of the bed and pulled herself up. Wobbly and weak, she made her way toward her scant wardrobe. “What does Jyrbian want with me?”

Kaede shrugged, but Jyrbian answered her from the door. He was dressed beautifully in a red uniform, brimming with good health. “There might still be a few spells I don’t know.”

She leaned her head against the door of the wardrobe. “You’ll have to kill me,” Khallayne said quietly. Then with growing vehemence, she added, “I’ll die before I’ll ever teach you another thing!”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

And it didn’t. What miserly, little spells could Khallayne teach him when he already knew how to torture someone to death without leaving a single mark on the body? When she glanced at Kaede, standing in the light pouring through the window, her fingers moving lazily over the crystals from Jyrbian’s collection, she suddenly knew there was one spell to teach. And she knew, even before Kaede gasped, that he would kill her, if necessary, trying to wrest the secret from her.

At that moment, Kaede snatched up the crystal, her mouth open wide in disbelief, holding it up to the light. The clear, round ball was filled with a curling ribbon of smoke. Sunlight streamed through the crystal, creating a dancing rainbow of light.

“The History!” Kaede gasped, holding it close to her ear. “The History. Jyrbian, how did you get it?”

Jyrbian was as perplexed as Khallayne was horrified.

“What are you talking about?” He held out his hand, but she refused to give him the crystal. He wrested it from her hand, repeating his question.

“It’s the History. The Song of the Keeper! It’s in there. How did you get it?”

“Are you sure?” He held the sphere up to his ear, then up to the light. “That’s ridiculous! How could that be?”

“I. can hear it! Give it to me. It’s mine! Someone stole it from the Keeper. She wasn’t sick. She was murdered!”

He held it higher, out of her reach, pushed away her grasping hands. Before Kaede could stop him, he’d strode to Khallayne, thrust it into her hand.

Round and smooth and cool. Khallayne’s fingers closed around the sphere. She recognized the tingle of life. She carried it, cradled, to the fire and held it up.

“You did this,” Jyrbian said with absolute certainty. “Lyrralt said something the day the Keeper took sick, something cryptic, about singing for his fortune, the same day he was so angry with you. But he alone never had the knowledge to do this, so you must have helped him. How?”

Yes, the Song was still in there. She could feel it, the way Kaede could hear it. “No. I didn’t do it.” She lied. Khallayne handed the crystal back to him. “I don’t feel anything but a piece of glass.”

Jyrbian regarded her for a moment. “Try to remember,” he said sweetly. “Perhaps it’ll come back to you. Before I have to jog your memory, the way I had to jog … someone else’s.” He thrust the crystal back into her hands.

Kaede cried out in protest. “It’s mine! You can’t —”

One glance from Jyrbian silenced her, and she followed him from the room with murderous eyes.

Khallayne carried the sphere to the bed. Propped up on pillows, buried in warm quilts, she placed the crystal in her lap and stared at it, trying to remember the night it all happened, trying to remember the spell and how it had felt and the way it had all worked together.

Then, when she thought she remembered the ribbony darkness and the flow of the Song from the Old One’s lips, she reached out with her power. In her mind, she tapped the crystal ball.

And the sphere opened. The Song flowed out, around and about her hands, through her fingers, a music beyond description, so bittersweet that tears clouded her vision, a song about a world that would soon vanish forever. A beautiful, glittering world like an apple with a worm of decay in it.

She was lost in the Song, unable to follow the music, when she heard cheers, the uproar of something in the courtyard below. She leapt to her feet and ran to the window.

In the courtyard below, she could see a crowd of troops, all milling about, shouting, crying out greetings and congratulations. She thought she saw Jyrbian, resplendent in dress uniform, marching through the crowd of men and horses. Then she saw the reason for all the noise.

The crowd of troops surrounded a group of prisoners, chained together around a wagon on which a lone prisoner stood, chained and tied: Eadamm, the human leader for whom Jyrbian had been searching like a madman.

*

Jyrbian forgot everything – the History, Kaede’s angry entreaties, and the tantalizing spell Khallayne would surrender to him, sooner or later.

Hundreds of humans, old and young, had descended into Jyrbian’s dungeons and not returned. They had died, screaming and begging for mercy, or so far gone into insanity that they could not even cry out. As he had destroyed each of them, it had been Eadamm’s likeness he saw on their savage human faces, Eadamm he wished he were killing.

Now he would have that pleasure.

Jyrbian strode through the throng of Ogres and humans who had crowded into the courtyard, pushing them out of his way. He climbed up onto the wagon and faced the human he hated above all else. “What a pity you can die only once,” he told the man, disappointed when the slave maintained his composure.

He searched the crowd for the captain of the troop that had brought the human in, motioning the man forward. “Where did you find him? Was he guarding Igraine’s people, as I thought?”

“No, Lord. As far as I know, the others have not been found. He was captured near Persopholus. We think he was directing the siege of the city.”

“And the battle?”

“We won, Sire.” The captain pulled himself up proudly. “The humans were slaughtered.”

Jyrbian grinned with pleasure and leaned down to clap the Ogre on the shoulder. “And did you find anything valuable on him?” He jerked his head in the direction of Eadamm.

“Yes, Sire, just as you said. My warriors brought it to me.” The captain reached into his tunic and drew out a pile of silver chain attached to a charm, wrapped in silver wire.

From his tunic Jyrbian pulled out another charm just like it. The bloodstone he’d taken from Everlyn’s neck. He held them both up wordlessly for the slave to see.

Eadamm lunged at him, his lips pulled back, teeth exposed like a feral animal. The chains wrapped around his body held as Eadamm strained against them uselessly.

A beatific smile on his face, Jyrbian climbed down from the wagon. He found Kaede in his bedroom. She was barely dressed, her hair long and loose, her perfume heavy and heady, seductive.

“You’ve heard?”

She nodded, proffering a glass of wine. “His death must be spectacular. It must be an example to others.”

A slow, candied smile creased his lips. His mind was already beginning to ferment with ideas, with images. His smile grew wider, eyes wandering over her body. He took a step toward her, saw her answering smile and the heat in her eyes …

*

Khallayne barely heard the noise of the crowd as she mounted her horse and followed the others out through the courtyard and into the city. The sun was bright on the cobblestones and glinted on the gray stone walls.

She rode behind Jyrbian, fear in her throat. “Only a parade,” he had said, smiling a smile as guileless as a child. “In honor of the capture of the humans. You really shouldn’t miss it.” She had played along, eager to get out of the castle, hopeful of a chance to escape.

Now they traveled slowly, regally, down the curving switchbacks that led into the city streets, and along the wide avenues toward the coliseum. All along the route, Ogres lined the streets, waiting for the entertainment, drinking, buying food from vendors who worked the crowd. Khallayne felt a terrible foreboding about the event for which the whole city had turned out.

The streets outside the coliseum were lined with platforms, viewing stands draped with satin in the colors of all the powerful clans. Jyrbian’s was nearest the center, in the shade of the looming coliseum. Only the Ruling Council’s was better positioned.

Kaede was already on the stand, resplendent in an emerald gown with matching jewels at ears and throat. But when she saw that Khallayne sat at Jyrbian’s right, she frowned and turned away. Jyrbian dismounted and led Khallayne up the stairs.

The Ruling Council arrived. Anel looked across the banister and bowed to Jyrbian. There was a buffet table, laden with delicacies, at the back of the viewing stand, and someone thrust a bronze goblet filled with deep red wine into Khallayne’s hand.

Music began, the high, trilling sound of a flute. Other instruments joined in, adding their melodies. Drums. Cymbals. Bells. Another flute. Twining their light, playful sounds.

The light seemed to dim, as if the sun had gone behind a dark cloud. Khallayne shivered, blinked her eyes to clear them, and found the light as bright as before. She clutched her goblet tighter to keep her fingers from trembling and peered down the street, as everyone around was doing. All except Jyrbian, who stood straight, stared straight ahead.

First to appear were the children. Ogre children, dressed in white with ribbons of every color, strewing flowers in the street as they danced, laughed, played, and shouted.

Behind them were the flute players, more musicians, more children. Young women and men tossed flowers to friends in the crowd. Troops, smartly dressed in their best, swords shining in the light, followed, then more children, older ones, all so filled with a gaiety that it struck Khallayne as false.

Then came the captured slaves, naked, barefoot, oiled as if they were on display for the auction block. They were bound together with chains that shone as bright as the soldiers’ swords.

The crowd cheered and clapped the same as they had for the dancing children.

Through it all, Jyrbian displayed a ghastly smile. “You don’t want to miss this,” he said, taking her arm gently.

More troops marched out of the coliseum. These were on foot, though from their uniforms it was obvious they were officers, higher in rank than those who had come before. They walked in perfect rows, in perfect step, shoulders thrust back proudly.

As they drew near, Jyrbian’s fingers tightened on her arm.

Three figures walked in the center of the rows of officers – one stumbling, almost carried by the two who walked at his side.

That one was Eadamm. His wrists were bound in front, and his legs streaked with bright red. He had been hamstrung, the heavy tendons cut just above the knee.

Khallayne cried out. The goblet of wine fell from her fingers, flashing in the sunlight. Jyrbian held her against him, forcing her to stand where she was. When the goblet hit the street below, it made not a sound.

Khallayne looked down and saw that, while Jyrbian held her in a tight grip with one hand, with the other he held Kaede’s fingers, lightly, gently stroking them. “Eadamm will be paraded every day for six days,” Jyrbian was saying. “One day for each of the six months since the rebellion. Then he will be publicly executed.”

He looked down at her and smiled before turning back to the spectacle, his eyes following Eadamm’s every step.

And Khallayne saw that his face, which had once rivaled hers for beauty, now had become twisted and ugly, like his soul.

*

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Each day, Jyrbian sent a new dress to Khallayne’s apartment, each more elegant than the last.

Each day, he sent two burly guards, well versed in magic, to escort her. They broke through her wards. They carried her when she resisted.

Each day, Jyrbian sat astride his horse in the courtyard and watched as they brought her out and lifted her into the saddle of her horse beside him.

“Why do you slap and kick when you could destroy them with a simple magical thought?” he asked, amused.

“Kill them because they blindly follow your orders?” she asked. “That would make me just like you.”

Each day, he laughed as he led her down the mountain into the festive streets.

Each day, he stood beside her and held her arm and forced her to watch Eadamm’s humiliation, Eadamm’s torture.

On the seventh day, it was late afternoon before a slave came with the tunic and embroidered vest she had worn all those many nights ago, at the party where she’d looked at Jyrbian with lust and anticipation.

The castle had been rumbling with parties and celebrations all day. The execution was soon, she knew. And she knew Jyrbian would force her to watch, but she could feel nothing but relief that it would soon be over. At least Eadamm would be beyond Jyrbian’s reach, beyond pain.

The late afternoon sun shone brightly in the courtyard, making the cobblestones so warm that she could feel them through her boots.

Jyrbian was waiting for her as always, as was Kaede. She mounted without being prompted, but held back on the reins until Jyrbian turned back to her. “Why do I have to go to this?” she asked quietly.

He smiled and chided her, “Khallayne, you were here for the beginning. You can’t miss the end.”

The end was even more bizarre than what had gone before.

The coliseum was packed and surrounded by hundreds of Ogres who couldn’t get in. They wouldn’t have made it through the crowd without Jyrbian’s guards opening a path. The mood was ugly; there were mutterings and complaints because there wasn’t space for everybody.

Jyrbian and his entourage rode under the heavy stone arch into the coliseum. The sounds of the crowd muted. The whole coliseum became strangely quiet. They dismounted and were escorted to Jyrbian’s box, a private chamber that opened onto a huge balcony overlooking the stadium field. It was only then that she understood.

All around them, in other special boxes, were courtiers, packed into seats, hanging over the balconies, calling to each other and laughing.

To her horror, the majority of the seats were filled with slaves. They were interspersed with guards who brandished swords and pikes and bows.

The entertainment began. Dancers and jugglers and acrobats. Smartly trained horses and smartly trained soldiers went through their paces. Troops marched and saluted with perfect precision. Magicians magicked, pulling flowers out of thin air and juggling fireballs.

The Ogres clapped and cheered and drank. The slaves sat silently.

Then great torches were lit, and the real entertainment, what all the Ogres had come to see, began.

Eadamm was brought into the center of the coliseum.

Every slave in the place sat forward.

Shackles were attached to his arms with great ceremony. Horses backed into their traces.

Khallayne turned away. Jyrbian didn’t notice. His eyes were glued to the tableau, fists tapping his thighs. Kaede stood near him, brushing his arm, but he was unaware of her.

Khallayne saw Anel, in the center box, raise a red square of cloth, saw it fall, felt the sudden hush, heard sounds so horrible, she knew she would never be able to wipe them from her mind again. Whips cracked. Something creaked and snapped. Something tore.

She clapped her hands to her ears to shut out the raucous, frenzied cheering. Tears streamed down her face.

There was another burst of cheers, higher and louder than the first, then another, and she thought, “It’s over. It’s over.”

Eadamm had been drawn and quartered.

Then came a sound like nothing she’d ever heard in her life, like nothing she would ever hear again. It was dim at first, but building, surging, a hum that became a song that became a fire that became an explosion, rage and fear and horror too long suppressed, pain too long endured.

The slaves were rising up. The sound was their fury, all of them, as if someone had passed a signal. They were turning on their masters, on their guards.

Chapter 18

ENDING AND BEGINNING

Kaede screamed. Jyrbian shouted orders.

Though she knew, from his gestures, that he was marshalling his guards to rush them to safety, Khallayne didn’t care. Now was her chance to escape!

She moved quickly, catching up her long skirts and pushing through the confused, frightened crowd toward the door. Guards were trying to block any attack. Their backs were to her.

She looked around. The drop to the ground was over three times her height. But then she would be on the field.

In the box next to Jyrbian’s, on the opposite side of the Ruling Council, there were fewer guards, more courtiers. Pandemonium. The box itself was lower to the ground. If she jumped, then the ground was only perhaps ten feet away.

She climbed onto a chair, kicking food and porcelain out of her way. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she could manage it. Then she heard Jyrbian shout her name, and she pushed.

She reached out as she fell. Her fingers caught on the rough stone, scraping, tearing nails and palms. Her body slammed into the wall. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she let go.

She fell the rest of the way and hit the ground hard. Stars danced before her eyes, and she felt sharp jabs of pain lancing on her left side. She rolled onto her back, gasping for breath. Above her, staring down, she could make out Jyrbian face. And Kaede’s.

She rolled to her hands and knees. She pushed up to her feet and stood. With a glance to make sure she wasn’t being pursued, she slipped out from between the boxes and looked for an exit.

Most of the slaves had jumped from the stands onto the field and fled toward the city gate. Many were still in the stands, and what they were doing to their owners, to the guards, made her whimper. She hugged the wall, aiming for an exit. A few yards away was the tunnel used to transport slaves and animals onto the field.

She edged around the corner into the darkened tunnel and came face-to-face with a slave, a human whose head barely came up to her shoulders. He had carrot-orange hair and mean, little eyes twisted with hate, and blood spattered across the front of his ragged shirt.

He grinned at her, a Jyrbian grin, all teeth and loathing. He was carrying a stick, perhaps a piece of a lance or pike, jagged on both ends where it had been broken. In the darkness, it looked as if it had blood on it.

Before she could react, a woman’s voice interrupted the rise of the club.

“Stop!” A small slave woman ran toward them out of the darkness. “Not this one,” she told the man, stepping between Khallayne and her attacker.

He shoved her away and raised his club. “All Ogres die!” he snarled.

The slave grabbed a stick of wood and swung it, hitting the male squarely in the back of the head with a sickening thump.

“This way,” the human said without a glance for the crumpled man, jerking her head toward the dark tunnel.

Before she could turn, Khallayne caught her arm. “Laie?” There was no one else it could be. The kitchen slave who had helped her the night she and Lyrralt had taken the History, now thinner, harsher around the eyes, but with the same straw-colored hair and bluer-than-blue eyes.

The slave looked at her, a strange expression in her eyes. Khallayne felt guilty. The female obviously knew her. Why else had she saved her? “Laie, thank you.”

The slave looked around her, checking to see that no one observed them. “Hurry.” She turned and ran back down the dark tunnel.

Without any hesitation, Khallayne followed. With her longer stride, she caught up easily and followed Laie almost to the end of the tunnel, then through two turns and three different corridors.

Twice they were almost seen by other slaves, but each time they were able to slip back into the shadows, behind a door, until the danger was past. And once, Khallayne had time to work her spell of “distraction,” so the running slaves passed them by.

At last, they came out into the street, into a city gone mad. The last of the sun had faded, and night should have settled over the city, but the city was in flames. The sky was filled with an orange glow that threw shadows so long they stretched across the street. Buildings on either side of the coliseum had flames spouting from their windows. The street was littered with debris and bodies. Screams and wild laughter echoed off the walls of the houses.

How could it all have happened so fast? Khallayne stared into the sky. Would there be anything left standing when the sun came up?

“We have to go!” Laie caught her sleeve. She led the way up the street, dodging other slaves carrying weapons, walking around lumps in the road that were crumpled and broken and gleaming red.

One of the broken bodies that littered the walks seemed to writhe into something alive as they passed it. Khallayne saw it first, felt it. She caught Laie and yanked her away.

“What is it?”

Khallayne knelt and stared at the writhing thing. She could feel the malevolence of it, the power that still clung to it. “I don’t know. A spell gone awry, maybe. Just don’t touch it. And watch for others. Let’s get out of here.”

Laie nodded, but this time let Khallayne led.

Khallayne saw two other things that seemed wrong to her. A thing, similar to the one they’d passed, clung to a brick wall. And a body that was so badly damaged, it had to be dead, still moved and crawled, reaching out for them.

They found an alley filled with barrels and boxes and crouched in the shadows while figures ran past not five feet away.

“I have to go to the castle. There’s something there I must retrieve.” She was free, out of Jyrbian’s grasp. Her common sense screamed at her to run, but she’d left the crystal – the History of the Ogre, laid out from the beginning of time – in the castle. She had forgotten it once. She didn’t want to make the mistake of leaving it behind again.

Laie looked at her as though she were crazy. “Back into the castle? I can’t go there.”

“I know. I understand. But I have to.”

Laie nodded, turned away.

“Why?” Khallayne blurted out. “Why did you save me?”

The blue eyes stared at her. “I owed you a life. I’ve paid it back.”

Khallayne nodded. “Thank you.” She was almost to the end of the alley when she impulsively turned. “Laie, if you can make it out of the mountains, head northeast. There are human towns there, humans who aren’t afraid of the Ogres, who fight and live good lives.”

Then she turned around and walked away rapidly, not looking back.

The castle was strangely empty, strangely dark, though there were candles everywhere, on the floor and window ledges and tables, as if the Ogres who were still there were attempting to expel the darkness.

They, not the humans, were the scurriers now, carrying their own belongings, packs stuffed with food, as they prepared to flee.

No one gave her a second glance as she strode rapidly through the halls. They were all too intent on saving themselves.

The apartment in which she’d dwelt for the past weeks was brightly lit, the door standing open in welcome. She knew who would be waiting for her inside.

Jyrbian was by the fireplace. He wore a fresh uniform. His hair was combed, not a strand out of place. He leaned, one arm draped across the mantel, as casually as if she had stopped by for an evening visit.

Khallayne didn’t see Kaede, standing by the window ledge where the sphere was concealed, until she was already through the doorway.

Kaede smiled cruelly when she saw Khallayne’s glance. “I didn’t expect we would ever see you again,” she said dryly.

“Oh, I knew she’d be back,” Jyrbian said easily.

Khallayne looked at him, surprised. Then she saw what he held in his hand, casually rolling it in his palm: the crystal sphere.

His movements might be indifferent, his voice bland, but his face was taut, the skin stretched over the muscles. His eyes were a tarnished metal gray, heavy lidded, and completely mad.

“You still haven’t told me how you did it.”

Khallayne’s eyes followed the crystal.

“Please, Jyrbian,” she said softly.

Jyrbian threw back his head and laughed, low-pitched and filled with madness.

She took a step toward him, sensed Kaede take one toward her. “Please, Jyrbian, let me have the sphere. You have no use for it here. Takar is gone forever. But it doesn’t have to be forgotten. All that we were doesn’t have to be forgotten.”

“You want it to take back to Igraine?” He held it out teasingly.

“To our people, not to Igraine.”

He grinned, his teeth gleaming. “You do know where they are? You knew all along.”

She shook her head. “No, but I’ll find them. Somehow.”

“Tell me.” He held out the sphere. “A trade. The History for the location. For my curiosity.”

Her intuition said run. Now, quickly. No more conversation. Just feet moving, one in front of the other. Quickly.

“No. You’ll just kill me, the way you killed Bakrell.”

Kaede made a muffled noise at the mention of her brother’s name. She stepped forward.

Laughter was bubbling out of Jyrbian once again. The laughter erupted, demented, maniacal. Jyrbian held the globe out to her, cupped between his palms and, as she stepped forward, smashed it, crushed it in his bare hands.

With shards of crystal and blood dripping from his hands, he regarded her.

“How could you?” Kaede screamed. “That was mine! Mine! You’ve destroyed it, as you’ve destroyed Bakrell!”

Jyrbian sidestepped her, continued his stalking of Khallayne, but Kaede jumped in front of him again. “Tell me why you killed my brother!” she screamed in his face.

“He murdered him for no reason,” Khallayne said. “He died in the dungeons of this castle.” Khallayne backed away quickly as Jyrbian swept Kaede aside effortlessly.

With a scream, Kaede rushed him. He backhanded her casually, sending her sprawling on the floor. Her head hit a chair.

Magic seethed in the pit of Khallayne’s stomach, reminding her of flames. Fire. Now. It had to be now. She closed her eyes, a dangerous thing to do, but it helped focus the power.

She felt Jyrbian tense, ready to leap, and she cast the power outward with all her strength. Coldfire. She had no idea where the spell came from. It was intuition by now.

The bluish orange flames leapt toward Jyrbian, enfolded him. He screamed in rage and twisted within the field of flame, shouted out words of an incantation, a prayer for protection from his god. Flames weakened, sputtered; still she concentrated, putting all her knowledge, her fear, her pain, into maintaining the spell. He stumbled, staggered, clutching his brow.

Then, incredibly, Kaede was standing, adding her force to the fire.

Jyrbian turned on Kaede, reaching out through the wall of flame. He grabbed her shoulder, pulled her close, into the fire with him.

Khallayne cried out. Kaede convulsed, her body arching in pain. Jyrbian’s fingers dug into her throat.

Khallayne fell to her knees, sweat and tears mixing on her face. She balled her fists into her stomach and doubled over with the effort of maintaining her attack. Kneeling on the floor, she could feel the broken shards digging into her knees and cutting into her palms. She gathered the pieces up into her hands. A residue of magic still clung to them, an echo of power and song.

Jyrbian dropped Kaede, abandoning her bruised body, and turned his attention to Khallayne.

Khallayne rose to meet him, the pieces of crystal in her fingers, met him with fury for what was lost – the city, the Ogre civilization, the Song of History.

Unable to defeat the flames that surrounded him, he reached through them. A lamp exploded. Something large fell behind her. The window, the beautiful, etched glass window, exploded inward, sending glass arcing toward the ceiling.

Behind him, Kaede climbed slowly to her feet, almost unable to walk. Khallayne couldn’t understand her, but her lips were moving as she stumbled toward Jyrbian.

He turned his attack on her. Something leapt toward Kaede. She took the blow full-force in the chest, but kept moving, walking toward him, leaning forward as though into a blizzard-strength wind.

Too late, he realized what she was doing. He tried to back away, but Kaede reached out for him. She stepped into the fire of Khallayne’s spell, bringing with her whatever spell it was she’d been casting, and turning the power of his own attack back on him.

“Go!” she whispered to Khallayne. “Go!”

Khallayne ran as things in the room erupted into flame, as the rocks and crystals on the window ledge began to explode.

In the doorway, she paused to look back, seeing only Jyrbian’s face, the face she’d once thought the most beautiful in all of Takar, twisted with hate.

She wheeled and ran down the corridors, down the stairs, and out into night, into the cool air. But she could still hear Jyrbian’s voice, twisted, demented, inside her head, screaming.

Run! Run! There is no place on all of Krynn where the Ogres will not find you, where the gods will not find you!

*

Her horse had been left at the coliseum, so she took Jyrbian’s big stallion. He stood in his stall, still saddled.

Khallayne galloped down into Takar, back into the flames, automatically heading for the west gate. To get back to the plains, she’d have to take a different route than before, toward Bloten. The passes northward would already be snowed in.

The streets were almost empty. Most of the houses and buildings showed damage, but the worst of the fires still burned brightly to the east, nearer the coliseum.

No one bothered her. No guards challenged her as she galloped through the gates and out onto the wide road leading out of Takar.

She almost didn’t hear her name being called out over the pounding of the horse’s hooves. She looked back and saw a small figure in rough clothing running down the shoulder of the road, waving her arms, cloak streaming out behind.

Jelindra! She pulled hard on the reins, bringing the horse to a stop. She was sure Jelindra would be gone by now! She slid to the ground. Jelindra almost knocked her off her feet as she threw her arms around her.

“Oh, Khallayne, I though you’d never come!”

Khallayne hugged her just as tightly. “I thought I wouldn’t either. I can’t believe you’re still here.”

Jelindra appeared healthy, though her face was dirty and her hair full of twigs. “I told you I’d wait,” she said. “I hid in the woods, and I watched the road every day. Then I saw the fires, and I thought you weren’t going to come!” She threw her arms around Khallayne again.

Khallayne hugged her back. “Well, I’m here now. Let’s go home.”

Nodding, Jelindra stepped back, wiping away tears and streaking dirt across her cheeks. “How will we find them?”

Khallayne shrugged. “I don’t know. But we’ll manage somehow.”

*

The two stood on the deck of the huge ship and leaned against the rail.

Beneath Khallayne’s feet, the ancient timbers of the deck creaked. Above her head, the canvas sails snapped and billowed in the wind. And all sounds were underlined with the soothing motion of the ship slicing through the ocean, smooth, relaxing, as lulling as going back to the womb.

Khallayne leaned far out, feeling the sting of salt spray on her cheeks and forehead, the splintery oak beneath her fingers as she gripped the rail. Would the island be there? Would their people be safe? In Schall they’d lost the last trace of them, but a sailor had told an incredible story of a group of people called the Irda, beautiful people who’d gone away to live on an island – an island that had called to them.

Khallayne, too, heard the song on the wind. It was a sound more beautiful than any Ogre voice, high and pure like crystal chimes, more beautiful than the voice in the sphere.

The bright, silvery light of Solinari sparkled on the featureless water, as far as they could see. But there was no island yet. No finger of land to mar the perfect beauty of the moonlight on the black-silk water.

Bare feet gripping the wooden deck, Jelindra ran to the other side of the boat and hung over the rail, but that way, too, was water, dappled with moonlight. Jelindra ran back to Khallayne.

Water and moonlight seemed unbroken to the horizon. Jelindra slumped against the rail where moments before she’d eagerly leaned across. “What do we do now?” she asked. “If there isn’t an island …”

“It has to be there!” Khallayne thumped the railing with her fists. Her heart wouldn’t contemplate otherwise. “I can hear it.”

Jelindra cocked her head. “Yes,” she agreed. “I can hear it. Let’s go!”

Before Khallayne could stop her, she’d slipped down the rope ladder to the little boat they’d prepared earlier in the evening and started to untie the rope mooring it to the ship.

Khallayne climbed down into the boat. “Are you sure? You know, if you’re wrong, we’ll die!”

“We’re not wrong,” said Jelindra firmly.

The little boat slowed and pivoted as the ocean took it, slipping away from the ship with the current. They had committed themselves. Noisily, Jelindra dipped an oar into the water. The boat responded, and she stroked again.

The boat shot forward. Khallayne dug into the water again and again, matching her strokes to Jelindra’s, aiming the craft toward where she thought, hoped, believed, the island should be.

She rowed until her arms ached, until her shoulders burned with fire, until the pain almost drowned out the song of the land, until she couldn’t move the wooden oar anymore and it hung over the edge of the boat.

Then, suddenly, as if a fog had lifted, the island was before them. A dark silhouette loomed up to block out the gorgeous sky.

Laughing, crying, Jelindra reached back to hug Khallayne, then began to row faster.

The pain forgotten, Khallayne pulled with her oar, sliding it so deeply into the water that she was dipping her fingers, until she felt the boat scrape bottom.

Then she slid into the cold water and pulled the boat by a rope. It seemed to take forever. Jelindra joined her, adding her insubstantial weight to the rope.

The boat scraped sand, and they left it, running the rest of the way, until warm, dry sand was beneath their feet.

Khallayne dropped to her knees, dug her fingers into the gritty sand. She pressed it to her face and felt the grains stick to the furrows that tears had left on her cheeks.

“Home, Jelindra! We’re home!” She threw handfuls of sand into the air, then covered her eyes when the ocean breeze blew it back in her face.

“Khallayne …”

The fear in Jelindra’s voice ended Khallayne’s celebration. She saw that someone was coming toward them.

Blinking against the sand that coated her lashes, she stood and took a tentative step toward the figure, partially hidden in shadows at the edge of the trees. “Who’s there? I’m Khallayne. I’ve come to find Igraine …”

Lyrralt! It had to be Lyrralt. She knew the way he moved, the way he stepped, his scent on the salt breeze.

The figure moved forward cautiously, too small, too slight, to be an Ogre. “Khallayne?” The light caught the soft hair, the canted eyes of an elf.

Khallayne froze.

Jelindra’s cry shattered the stillness of the night.

Khallayne stepped in front of the girl, reaching back to protect her, to comfort her, and the figure said her name again, no longer in question, but in joyous greeting.

It dawned on her. An elf had said her name! A male, tall and slender, with the features of an elf – only with Lyrralt’s voice.

Before their eyes, he transformed. It was a shape-shifting, like the appearance of the island, magical, miraculous. The lithe elf became Lyrralt, tall and strong and broad of shoulder, sapphire skin gleaming in the light of Solinari, silver hair as bright as the moon. And sightless now, forever.

“Forgive me,” Lyrralt said, holding out his arms to them. “Forgive me, but I had to be sure.”

Khallayne ran to him, threw her arms around him. A moment later, Jelindra threw herself bodily against them, joining their circle.

He shivered, held them closer.

“How did you do it?” she asked. “For a minute, I thought you were an elf!”

Laughing, he released them. “The gods have touched us, Khallayne, blessed us with a gift beyond believing, beyond – beyond —”

“Stop.” She touched her fingers to his mouth to stop his excited, confusing words, felt the warmth of his breath under her fingers, and something else. The scar. She turned him in the moonlight and saw the jagged mark running the length of his face. “Start slowly. Tell us everything.”

In response, he ran his fingers across her face, as if reassuring himself about the Ogres who stood beside him. He brushed sand from Jelindra’s hair. In a serene tone, he explained, “Last month, at the High Sanction of Solinari, the gods touched us. In the night, they touched us with peace, with calm. And when we woke, we could change.”

“Change?”

“Shapechange, as you saw me a moment before. I can assume the shape of another being. We all can. Do you realize what that means?” His voice rose excitedly. “It means that we never have to be afraid again. We never have to run again. We will always have the perfect disguise. Even if the island is discovered, no one will ever know who we are!”

“The island! Why couldn’t we see the island?” Jelindra demanded.

He paused, smiling shyly. “It’s my spell, a spell of hiding, but we all work to maintain it.”

Khallayne could hardly dare to believe it. There was simply too much information, too fast. Gifts from the gods. Everyone’s magical ability, powerful enough to hide an island? And Lyrralt, blind, scarred and using magic?

“Khallayne?” He caught her hand.

“It’s so much to take in,” she whispered. “So much.”

The sadness in her voice, in her face, registered. “What is it? Tell me,” Lyrralt asked.

She caught his hands in hers. “There’s so much, I hardly know where to begin …”

“Jyrbian?”

“Dead, I think,” she whispered, hoping it was true. She hoped there was no way he could have survived Kaede’s fire, for she never wanted to think of Jyrbian alive as she had last seen him. “Bakrell, too. And Kaede.”

“And Takar burned,” Jelindra piped in.

Khallayne nodded. “We looked back, just before we left the west road. It was like a smoking cinder. The whole city …”

“The others will want to hear.”

Epilogue

THE BOOK OF THE IRDA

The Keeper of the History of the Irda stood on the hillside, surrounded by her people, assisted by friends and love ones, though she was as young and strong as the saplings that grew nearby. She had seen the world of her childhood pass on, had seen the sacred History of her people destroyed, but still she smiled, because of the Gift that she would give to all her people.

She held up the book, the Gift of the gods, and in a voice as pure and clear, as bright and beautiful as sunshine, spoke the beginning of the words written within, the words that wove the History of the World, of the Ogres, firstborn of the gods.

This I have salvaged out of the destruction. The music is gone forever, as is the beauty of the Ogres, but the words are preserved for all to read.

We are the Irda, firstborn of the gods.

The High God looked down upon the chaos and bid the god Reorx to forge the universe with his mighty hammer. From the forge of the gods, our world was wrought and the gods played here, as children gambol in a field.

In the sculpting of the world, sparks flew from the anvil and settled in the skies, danced in the heavens. The sparks were spirits with voices like starshine. They shone as the gods themselves, for they were pieces of the gods themselves.

The gods saw the spirits and wanted them for themselves, and they battled over them, striking mighty blows upon the world. The High God looked down upon the destruction and was angry with his children. In the heat of his anger, he decreed that each of the triumvirate of the gods, Evil, Neutral and Good, could gift the spirits with one legacy, and afterward, must allow the spirits to go free.

The gods of Light gave the spirits bodies, that they might master their world. The Dark gods offered weakness and want, that the spirits might learn greed and corruption. The gods of Gray, the Shadow gods, gave the spirits free will, that they might shape their own lives.

And so, the races were born.

From the gods of Evil came the Ogres, firstborn of the world. Gifted with immortality and untold beauty, the Ogres chose the lofty mountains as their home.

From the gods of Goodness and Light came the elves, graceful and regal and good, who sought the enchanted forests and hid themselves away to live in harmony with the land.

Those of the Middle, the Gray gods, brought forth the humans. They were short lived and brutish, but they had the capacity to both destroy and love. To them were left the grassy plains.

The Ogres set themselves above to rule the other children of the world, but the elves were too placid, too good to make suitable slaves. The Ogres turned to the humans to build their castles and their cities and their roads. On the bones of humans, the Ogres built a civilization.

Like stars in the sky, the watchers of the darkness were the mighty Ogres, building a nation of order and discipline. But their hungers consumed them, their greed and desire made them weak and ugly, and their appetites devoured them.

The humans rebelled against their cruelty and vengeance, and the Ogres fell from the grace of the gods.

Igraine, governor of a mighty province, learned from the humans the most precious gift of all. He learned of choice, of choosing between right and wrong. He learned from the humans the gift the gods had given, the ability to destroy and to love and the potential to choose between.

He gathered about him the Irda, the Children of the Stars, his friends and family, those who believed his vision, and they fled the mountains. Through hardships they traveled, finding a new home, Anaiatha, among the Dragon Isles.

The Ogres are no more. They will disappear back into the chaos from which the world was made.

But the Irda will continue, in goodness and strength, firstborn of the gods, chosen of the gods.

And this History, the Irdanaith, the Book of the Stars, will continue. I write it for all the Irda to see and study, that we may never make the mistakes of our ancestors, that the History will never be lost.

The Dragons

Part I (continued)

CHAPTER 4

ABYSSAL FLAMES

(ca. 5000 PC)

The crude rabble of Crematia’s quarry huddled in a small alcove in the floor of the Abyss. These creatures, however, were not like the furry rodents that had sustained her upon her emergence from the egg. Now the mighty red dragon held sway throughout the realm of her queen, taking any of the inhabitants she desired for the pleasure of her feasting.

Tail lashing in leisurely arrogance, Crematia eyed the wretched creatures with cruel detachment. This was a family of them, wide-eyed creatures who walked upright and wore the skins of animals over their own hairless hide. Now a male strutted and growled, brandishing his pathetic club while the female huddled against the wall, three or four nit-like children clinging to her skirts, her hands, and her hair.

“Please, O mighty one!” wailed the mother. “Show us mercy!”

Crematia’s crimson maw curled into a sneer.

“Mercy is weakness,” she declared, then made a slow intake of breath. “And weakness is death.”

Finally the red dragon’s jaws opened, and the expulsion of fire blossomed into an oily, searing bundle of flames around the helpless victims. The roaring of the blaze drowned the pathetic wails of the dying creatures, a fact that invariably held true, except when Crematia incinerated a very large number of victims at once. In these cases, she had been amused to discover that the dying could raise a wail loud enough to carry above the infernal din.

But such opportunities for mass execution were very rare indeed. Crematia had become the scourge of the Dark Queen’s hellish realm, but so effective was her killing that there were only occasional targets left upon which she could vent her wrath. She had learned her lessons well, remembering the queen’s commands as if they had been seared into her mind with the fiery force of dragonbreath.

“Find your strongest enemy and kill him,” Takhisis had ordered. “Then find your new strongest enemy – for there will be one – and kill him.”

To that end, Crematia had slain all the other red dragons that had emerged from the nest of her birth. With cunning and cruelty, she had tracked them down, males and females alike, and killed by fang or talon or fire. Occasionally she prolonged the suffering of a victim for her own entertainment, but never did she do so out of mercy.

The other chromatic dragons, the blacks, whites, blues and greens, had been taken elsewhere by the queen, or else Crematia would certainly have killed them as well. Now she was left with pathetic beings like these warm-blooded creatures clad in furs. They died at her whim, but were scarcely deserving of the term “enemy.”

“Crematia … my Scarlet Daughter.”

“Yes, my queen.” The red dragon bowed low when she heard the voice of her mistress. The obedience was ingrained – she had seen too many nestmates perish because they had been slow to respond to the Dark Queen’s abiding need for fealty and worshipful fawning.

The great five-headed image of Takhisis reared from the chasm in the base of the Abyss. Naturally it was the crimson head that fixed its twin eyes upon Crematia, that spread the mighty jaws to speak in a low and rumbling voice.

“It is time for your journey to commence.”

The words were exciting, bringing twin wisps of sooty flame snorting from the crimson nostrils. For eons, Crematia had known that her mistress had some destiny, some great task, for her, and it was thrilling to hope the time had finally come for her commencement.

“My journey of vengeance, Honored Matriarch?” Crematia’s heart flared into a blaze of anticipation. For too long had she been sharpening her cruelty and her skills against such pathetic targets as these primitives.

“Indeed. Know that others of your nest will journey through the planes behind you, but you are the one I have chosen to lead my children in their return to Krynn. You shall pave the way, and the others I will send when you are ready.”

“I am prepared to go now, mistress,” the red dragon pledged with a low, wide-winged bow.

“You must be courageous, my daughter, but not foolhardy. You shall know killing, and wreak terrible destruction in my name. Seek the wyrms of Paladine; learn their habits and their lairs. But do not risk yourself. Leave the dangers to your sisters and brothers, my lesser wyrms.”

“I obey, my queen.”

“Then it is time for you to depart.”

Fire surged as the queen’s crimson jaws gaped, billowing a cloud of infernal flame that swelled and crackled in the air. For several heartbeats, the flames raged, and when they faded, a smudge of oily smoke lingered like a tangible sphere floating in the air.

The smoke gathered into a swirling vortex, a tiny funnel that twisted with a gusty roar on the red stone of the ground. With a tightly focused spiral, the whirlwind spun like a grinding drill against the rock until it dissipated with an audible pop of sound.

In the space where it had been, a bright red ruby gleamed. Multiple facets flared and sparkled, reflecting the myriad fires rising from the horizons of the queen’s realm.

“Eat this Talonstone and my blessing shall infuse you.”

Crematia’s head darted forward, and the huge ruby disappeared, rippling its way down the snaky length of her scaly throat.

“With this gem of potent enchantment shall you carry magic to Krynn. You will bear a power greater than that of any good dragon, for sorcery has been lost to them for many ages. You, the first of my children, shall be a creature mightier than any in that world, and with that power you shall commence to claim all of Krynn for me!”

“Aye, mistress!” pledged Crematia, her belly seething and flaming at the prospects of destruction and killing.

“Follow the passage. Make way to a world of lesser mortals and let them know your wrath and your will!” commanded the Dark Queen, her crimson head rearing like a mountain above. Five pairs of jaws spread wide, acid and lightning, gas and frost and flame all erupting skyward in a quintuple fanfare.

“Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death!” Crematia repeated reverently.

Her crimson wings spread wide, and the red dragon took to the air. Before her, the gate flamed into existence, a great circle of fire poised in space, burning with raging fury. Through that gap she saw a smoldering but sun-brightened sky and a landscape scarred by deep gorges and heaving, fiery mountains. Tucking her wings, narrowing into a streamlined dive, the red dragon swept through the gate, departing forever the Abyss that was her mistress’s realm.

She emerged from a shower of flames and immediately pulled upward, straining for height. The gate had passed her into the bottom of a deep shaft of rock, but the space was so broad that she was able to swing through lazy spirals, gradually climbing up and out. Riding the upsurge of scalding gases past sheer walls of flame-scorched stone, the crimson serpent rose steadily higher.

Finally Crematia emerged from the top of a great smoldering mountain, the greatest summit in a vast and tangled range of such peaks. She knew intuitively that this was Darklady Mountain, a massif that had risen from the tortured land in honor of her queen’s awful might. Slopes of dark debris, streaked with rusty red and trailing spumes of tar, marked the conical summit in slashes of color, like a crown encircling a lofty brow.

Smoke and ash filled the sky, whipped by the wind, trailing like horsetails from many of the loftiest summits. Wings spread wide, Crematia soared, looking into a volcano that seethed and pulsed with the rage of internal fire, then flying above another with a caldera that lay still and snowbound below. Rivers of lava scored some of the valleys, while others were shrouded in great, apparently eternal blankets of ice, frost, and snow.

The sun was a fire in the heavens, but the warmth of that great orb was muted by the clouds of smoke roiling through the skies. Everywhere mountains spumed and exploded, and great billowing expulsions of ash and toxic vapors layered the sky. The stench of the air was thick and acrid, and comfortingly familiar to the Abyss-bred serpent. She soared with a sense of serene exhilaration over soot-stained glaciers and peered with aloof condescension into deep, eternally shaded gorges.

After flying for a long time, the red dragon swept between the steep shoulders of two massive mountains and found herself over a region of foothills. The ground was rough and rocky, but lacked the height and the flaming intensity of the volcanic reach she had just traversed.

It was in a valley between a pair of rolling crests that she saw the first signs of life, walking figures that shuffled outward from a deep, well-protected cave mouth. Immediately she cloaked herself with a spell of invisibility, soaring low for a closer look, knowing she was safe from observation. Several upright figures tromped along the ground, each hulking body borne by a pair of gnarled legs. Some of the brutes clutched large limbs of wood – apparently weapons, the red dragon deduced as she watched the creatures suddenly close in on a mountain sheep, bashing the animal between them until it was slain.

Intrigued, Crematia continued her explorations, discovering many of these creatures inhabiting the foothills around the High Khalkists. She observed that they dwelled in clans and took shelter in high, shallow caves. They had scored a series of crude tracks, linking many of the tribes over these torturous mountain pathways. Her observations suggested that the clans were led by the biggest of the brutes, who seemed to be rough, crude folk, readily prone to violence.

In one place, she discovered a deep valley sheltered between the sheer walls below two lofty summits. Along the floor of the gorge were no fewer than a half dozen great caves, and a large number of the two-legged brutes seemed to dwell there.

Still invisible, the red dragon flew back and forth, finally discovering one gathering that intrigued her. Several of the largest of the bull warriors gathered here, and from these bristled headdresses of bright feathers, while ornaments of gold dangled over their broad chests. Whispering a word of magic, she canceled her spell of invisibility, appearing suddenly when she was just overhead. The dragon settled to the ground before the adorned beings, the downward blasts of her wings driving dust and debris into their faces.

Crematia saw the gnarled legs, hulking bodies, and strapping arms of these humanoids. She studied the sloping brows, the wide, tusked mouths, and the massive hands clutching knobbed clubs or boulders. The creatures cowered back from her but did not run away, except for one female who, clutching a squalling infant, darted from the pack.

The red dragon lowered her head, jaws gaping, and spat a blast of searing flame around the lumbering, terrified creature. The victim’s scream rose to a piercing ring as the female, now a living torch, tumbled and thrashed across the ground. In a heartbeat, her life and that of her babe were snuffed away, leaving as a remnant two intermingled, blackened shapes. Satisfied that the smoldering corpses were ample demonstration of her might, Crematia regally swung back to regard the abject creatures cowering before her.

“How are you called?” she asked the largest of the band, who scarcely dared to raise a fearful eye from the ground when he heard her question.

“We are ogres, O mighty one! And we are your miserable servants.”

“Do you expect my mercy?” demanded the red dragon.

“No, O mighty one. Mercy is weakness!”

“And weakness is death,” she concluded with a grim nod. “Your answers please me. You will make me welcome and show me honor. And you, my hulking one, you shall be my general and my slave. What is your name?”

“I am the battle chieftain known as Ironfist, and my enemies quail at the sound of my approach!”

“That is good. Now, Ironfist, send messengers. You must prepare your fellow tribes for the arrival of my kin. Your clans will gather to my call. Know that I shall lead you to a mastery of the world!”

CHAPTER 5

LORDS OF PEAK AND BLADE

(ca. 5000 PC)

The stag lunged through the thicket, crushing brittle branches with the force of its headlong flight. Nostrils flaring, hooves drumming the ground, the mighty deer lowered branching antlers and bulled ahead, breaking into the clear with a snorting toss of its proud head. Now the animal galloped across a marshy meadow, each leaping step kicking up great clods of moist dirt. Stretching, reaching in long strides, the stag accelerated with a frantic burst of speed. Darting and veering, the great creature lunged over the muddy terrain, its hoofprints a scar of darkness across the wet landscape.

And following that advancing scar was a fast-moving shadow in the form of a serpentine body, with a long tail and broad, tapering wings.

Darlantan saw immediately that the clearing would be the animal’s undoing. The silver dragon tucked his wings and dropped precipitously to land on the stag’s heaving back. Metal-hard talons flexed, argent tips gripping the flesh of shaggy haunches, while Darlantan’s forefeet drove their claws into the stag’s powerful shoulders. The mighty deer stumbled, collapsing from the dragon’s weight, but by then Dar’s jaws had closed around the muscular neck, biting down hard, breaking the hapless animal’s spine.

Tumbling to the ground, the stag rolled through the mud and shuddered to a halt. Darlantan pitched forward, but the graceful dragon spread his wings and glided very low. Blades of marsh grass brushed his belly for a moment, but then he swept upward, finally rising high enough above the ground that he could once more flap his wings and safely gain elevation.

Circling back to the bleeding body of the antlered deer, he bugled his success into the clear, crisp air of the High Kharolis. The blue sky, an azure so deep that it never failed to move Darlantan, fully enclosed the vast valley, vaulting overhead like a magical dome of turquoise resting upon the ring of mighty peaks. How he loved to soar through that sky, to experience the utter, liberating freedom of flight.

Now Kenta and Aysa, silver and bronze shapes against the snowfields, glided into view, and Darlantan knew the others would be following soon. His chest puffed outward in unconscious pride, and again he bellowed word of his triumph with a cry that echoed back and forth between the lofty summits. He saw another speck of brown metal and recognized Burll. Darlantan chuckled, knowing his bronze kin-dragon would never be late for an offering of food.

Proudly the silver male settled beside the corpse of his kill. His chest thrust outward as he watched his nestmates gliding closer. Darlantan’s tail curled around the motionless body as he lifted his head as high as the elk’s antlers had been when the animal was alive. The mighty denizen of the forest weighed more than the winged hunter that had brought it down, and the silver dragon knew this was the largest single kill in the history of his nestmates’ lives.

Kenta, the first to land, dipped her head in a nod of approval, flexing her wings and straightening her tail in a display that Darlantan found strangely intoxicating. She had done the same thing before, this silver female, and he had come to relish the fleeting, uncanny sensation. Uncertain of why he did so, Darlantan felt compelled to offer her the tenderest morsel, ripping the tongue from the elk’s mouth and extending it to her in a silver claw.

“Do you remember when we used to eat bats?” asked Kenta, gulping the tongue in a smooth slurp, rippling the scales all the way down her sinuous neck.

Darlantan chuckled as he tore away a hindquarter of the massive elk. “It would take as many bats as Patersmith has stories to equal the meat in this single haunch.”

He tore into the meat, relishing the taste of the fresh blood, the warm fullness of each bite as he gulped it down. More of the band came into view now – Oro and Mydass, the golden females, with brass Smelt gliding swiftly behind them – so the silver took a generous portion of the kill and withdrew, allowing his nestmates a chance to share the proof of his hunting skill.

“You killed this?” Smelt asked. Darlantan nodded serenely, and the brass dragon continued. “I like deer – especially the big ones. They have so much meat. Do you want the heart, or can I have it?”

The silver dragon’s attention remained upon Kenta, so Smelt pulled the bloody muscle from the stag’s chest and swallowed it in a rippling gulp. “Too bad Aurican can’t see this,” he said, wiping a forked tongue across his crimson jaws.

“Where is our golden kin-dragon?” Darlantan asked, amused by the serpentine metallic shapes clustered around the rapidly diminishing corpse. It pleased him to feed his nestmates, but he wanted Aurican to behold his trophy before it was merely a clean-picked skeleton.

“Oh, I saw him flying toward the sunset, maybe a dozen sunrises ago,” Smelt explained while gulping a mouthful of venison. “He was in the foothills, and I flew along with him for a while. But it seemed as if he didn’t want to talk.” With another convulsive gulp, he swallowed, then swiveled his long neck toward the west. “He should have heard your summons, but maybe he’s too far away. Or perhaps he made a kill of his own.”

“Yes … perhaps,” declared Darlantan, disappointed. Still, he brightened at the sight of the stag’s bristling antlers as Smelt lifted the skull and used his serpentine tongue to slurp out the tender brain. It was as though the ghost of the great deer danced before them. At least that rack would provide some proof of his accomplishment. He could take the trophy into the cavern to show Patersmith, who still took pride in the accomplishments of his growing charges.

Restlessness soon took the place of reflection. Darlantan stood stiff-legged, flexing his wings. He would remember this place and return for the antlers, but for now he was ready to fly. Without a farewell, he departed, leaving his nestmates to break the joints and suck the marrow from the remnants of the kill.

A short time later, as he flew beside a high mountain ridge, he heard a squawk of outrage from the other side of the rocks, followed by a dragonlike bellow of anger. Tipping his wing, Darlantan veered up and over the crest, coming to rest on the jagged but solid summit of the ridge.

Below he saw Blayze crouched on a shoulder of rock, jaws gaping as he faced a fluttering, feather-winged creature that the copper dragon had trapped against the mountainside. The birdlike beast shrieked again, hooked beak widespread. Blayze’s jaws spread wider, and Dar saw his nestmate’s belly swell, ready to hurl forward the deadly acid of his breath weapon.

Before that lethal spume emerged, Darlantan pounced, sweeping downward, reaching with his claws as he swept past the ledge. He snatched the griffon – he recognized the feathered flier by its tawny feline hindquarters – in his claws and pulled it away, allowing his momentum to carry both the fliers down the mountainside, away from Blayze. The copper’s blast of acid seared the rocky wall, trickling downward, hissing and burning against Darlantan’s tail as the silver dragon swept the struggling creature to safety. Landing on his haunches on a lower shoulder of the slope, Darlantan held the squirming griffon off the rocks to avoid crushing the creature with his own weight.

“That wyrm took my prey!” hissed the griffon, twisting with surprising strength. A sharp beak jabbed Darlantan’s neck, and with a yelp, the silver dragon threw the hawk-faced flyer to the side, struggling to hold his balance on the steep mountainside.

“That was my fight, Darlantan!” snarled Blayze, still crouched over the mountain sheep. “I don’t need your help!”

“I’m not trying to help you,” Darlantan replied. “I just wanted to talk to the griffon.”

That feather-winged flier, meanwhile, had spiraled away and come to rest on a knob of rock. Now it straightened powerful wings, smoothing ruffled feathers with long strokes of its hooked beak. Darlantan crouched above, studying the creature curiously. Blayze, after glaring at his silver nestmate, decided to eat instead of pursue the quarrel.

“Don’t think you can kill me just because you saved me from that snake!” spat the griffon, rearing back on its feline hindquarters and flailing the air with powerful, taloned foreclaws.

“Why would I save you to kill you?” Dar asked, puzzled by the statement.

“Who knows? Why would your kin-dragon take my sheep when he could easily kill one of his own?” huffed the creature, casting a nervous glance up the mountainside. Darlantan saw that Blayze was crouched there, and when the copper raised his head, he saw jaws dripping with fresh blood.

“I saw the ewe first,” huffed the half-hawk, half-lion creature, fixing bright yellow eyes upon the silver dragon. The griffon blinked appraisingly, and Darlantan sensed it was more curious than angry.

“Blayze never was much for waiting his turn,” the silver serpent explained. “Was that courage or foolishness that was leading you to fight him?”

The griffon blinked in surprise, then settled back on all fours. Apparently he had decided Darlantan wasn’t an immediate threat, for he began grooming his chest and shoulders with one foreleg’s talons as he spoke.

“Actually, I didn’t think I could escape. And I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t swept me away. Why did you do that?”

“I’ve never met a griffon. My name is Darlantan. Do you have a name?”

“Ravenclaw, at your service. And I will remember you, silver Darlantan. But now, since my kill was taken, I must fly to the hunt.”

With that, the griffon took wing, eagle feathers streaming in the mountain air, the sleek form gliding toward the lower valleys, where presumably he could hunt without interference from bullying dragons.

Darlantan also flew, but his course took him upward, not down, until he soared over the ramparts of the lofty range. He left behind the High Kharolis, the vast mountain range that domed over the grotto and its surrounding cavern. Dar’s flight took him away from that timeless home, into lower regions of forest that the dragon had flown above, but rarely inspected.

As he flew he reflected on an old lesson – “Mercy is strength,” Patersmith had said, “for it breeds friendship.” Indeed, he felt a kinship with the griffon, a warm pleasure that the creature was still alive. He was glad he had been merciful; Blayze would have killed the creature.

Through many sunrises, he soared above vast woodlands, awed by the extent of forest. In places, ponds, streams, or lakes sparkled blue amid swaths of greenery. Occasionally a knob of rocky bluff jutted upward, and when he grew tired, the silver dragon invariably came to rest upon one of these. He relished the pastoral swath of green, vaster by far than the Valley of Paladine. The lush forests seemed to blanket an entire portion of the world with their deceptively soft-looking foliage.

Game was plentiful here, and each night he was able to kill a deer or pig for his sustenance. For sunrises that stretched into seasons and even longer he remained in the forest. If it hadn’t been for the continuing absence of Aurican, Darlantan’s exploration would have been a marvelous adventure. Yet the fact that his golden brother had been gone so long he found increasingly disturbing – either because something bad had happened, or because the gold had perhaps discovered something extremely fascinating. Aurican was quite capable of becoming so distracted by a wondrous discovery that he would quite forget to inform his nestmates.

Dar’s emotions wrestled constantly between concern and envy. He wasn’t at all certain if he hoped Aurican had been distracted by some discovery, for there were times when it would have satisfied him to find his brother in some kind of real distress – nothing so serious that Darlantan couldn’t have immediately come to his aid, however. The silver dragon flew on in growing agitation, his concerns slowly gaining prominence over suspicion and jealousy.

Finally his persistence was rewarded by a glimpse of shimmering golden scales, a serpentine shape coiled in a small, tree-shaded clearing. Braying a greeting, Darlantan tucked his wings and angled between lofty pines to land precisely in front of his brother. The draft of his wings drove a great cloud of dust and pine needles into Auri’s face, an effect that Darlantan found not displeasing.

“Greetings, Cousin,” declared Aurican, blinking his eyelids, then sneezing a cloud of dust back at Darlantan. The gold dragon’s head reached high above the ground, while his sinuous body curled between several trees.

The silver chuckled, wrapping his tail around a tree trunk and squatting on the loam beside the sinuous golden form. “The ground here is soft, but surely there’s more than that to bring you so far.”

“Shhh.” Auri’s inner eyelids lowered lazily, his snout subtly gesturing toward the woods.

Darlantan mimicked his brother’s air of indolence, allowing his gaze to shift far to the side in their childhood game of misdirection. He sniffed with casual curiosity, startled by a strange and intriguing smell wafting through the air. The odor was curiously sweet and complex, suggesting a variety of sources.

But nothing unusual was visible.

For a long time, the two serpents remained still. Finally Darlantan saw movement. Several figures skulked through the forest, advancing cautiously amid the shelter of the trees, drawing closer to the meadow, clearly interested in observing the dragons. The beings were quite pathetic-looking. They walked on two legs like Patersmith, but were skinny, if perhaps a little taller than the tutor. Though hair dangled from the scalps of these creatures, their faces were completely barren of whiskers. They wore skins of supple leather around their loins; their legs and arms were bare, with additional leather strapped to their feet. Darlantan could smell the skin of elk and deer.

Finally the strangers emerged into the open, and Aurican tipped his head regally toward the newcomers, then turned to regard his nestmate, an expression of gentle rebuke in the downward curl of his snout.

“You startled them rather badly, you know,” Auri explained. “I’ve spent many seasons trying to tame them. Actually, I’m rather impressed they returned so readily.”

Darlantan studied the approaching figures, realizing that, despite the uniform slenderness of their physiques, they were well muscled, wiry sinew rippling visibly beneath their pale skin. They carried curved wooden weapons in their hands, and several were girded with slender blades worn at the waist. Their eyes were bright and curious, reflecting a certain natural intelligence.

Then the silver dragon noticed the ornaments. Dar blinked in astonishment and envy as he saw a chain of golden links, the metal smooth and polished to the same sheen as Auri’s scales. The gold dragon inclined his head low, and one of the two-footed beings placed the beautiful chain over his head. Rising again, Aurican looked about proudly, letting the glimmering metal jangle down to his broad chest.

Then the gold dragon turned over his forepaw, and Darlantan saw that Auri clutched one of the gemstones he was so fond of caressing. This stone seemed to be a large, smooth-surfaced opal, and it remained floating in the air after the golden talons withdrew. Slowly, reverently, one of the two-legged creatures advanced, reaching out to stroke the opal, then finally drawing the stone to his skinny chest. With a bow at the onlooking dragons, the little being stepped backward to show the gift to his companions.

“They are called elves,” Auri explained as more and more of the pale figures emerged from the woods. “Remember? Patersmith told us about them. They are possessed of certain skills that even a dragon might find useful – and, Dar, I think they have a knowledge of magic!”

Awed and once more a little jealous, Darlantan raised his own sinuous neck, his head rising just a bit higher than Aurican’s. He looked at the gathering of Aurican’s pets – his elves – and he found himself admiring their courage. He saw that they whispered and muttered among themselves, pointing at the two dragons, clearly conversing in some sort of crude language.

“They even speak,” Auri explained, as if reading his nestmate’s mind. “In fact, they have a wealth of lore. I have met a chieftain who tells tales of my mother, Aurora!”

“That seems an unusual discovery,” Dar agreed, “for beings so small, with neither scales nor hair, to have lore of the ancients. It is strange that Patersmith did not tell us more about them.”

“Perhaps he did not know, for he believes magic to be vanished from Krynn, and yet these elves can work magic on metal.”

Darlantan watched and listened attentively as Aurican said something to one of the elves in a strange tongue. The elf then opened a satchel at his side and held up a powder of bright flakes in his hand. Darlantan stared, intrigued, as the elf let the stuff trickle back into the leather sack, a shower of miniature sparkles, each as bright as Aurican’s scales.

“They bring the gold from the rivers like this, but then they work a spell of magic, weaving the dust into these links that adorn me.”

“That is a wonder,” Darlantan agreed. “But are you certain it is magic?”

“Look.” Auri nodded toward the woods, where another elf was emerging into view. This was a tall, proud male, whose hair was dark, in contrast to the strawlike yellow of his fellows. He strode boldly up to Darlantan and raised a shimmering object in his hands, a thing so beautiful that the mighty dragon all but gasped in astonishment.

It was a necklace of links, a gently chiming chain as perfectly brilliant as Aurican’s, save that it was made out of pure, gleaming silver.

Darlantan lowered his head in imitation of Auri’s gesture of acceptance, allowing the elf to place the chain over his head. He felt the weight against his scales as he rose and allowed the chain to jangle down the length of his long neck. Now he, too, felt the adornment of the elves, and his earlier envy was replaced by a twinge of shame.

“Can you tell them I am grateful?” he asked Aurican, looking with renewed interest into the elf’s deep, emerald-colored eyes.

“I will tell them for now, but soon you will know their language as well.” The gold made a declaration in that lilting, musical tongue – it wasn’t primitive at all, Dar realized – and the elves bowed toward Darlantan. The dark-haired male who had bestowed the silver necklace made a soft, pleasant-sounding reply.

“Now they invite us to journey into the forest with them,” Aurican explained. “They were just about to take me there when you arrived, but they have extended the invitation to us both.”

Darlantan eyed the woodlands skeptically. “The trunks are close together, Cousin,” he said. “How do you intend to pass? Magic?”

Aurican smiled slyly, rearing back on his haunches and placing his foreclaws onto the golden chain. “You are closer to the truth than you might think. Of course, spell magic was lost with our mothers, but we have within us the means.”

Abruptly Darlantan wasn’t looking at Aurican, but at a tall, handsome elf who stood in the place where the gold dragon had been. The elf threw back his head and laughed, and only then did Dar recognize his nestmate.

“That is magic!” he gasped. It was strange, even incomprehensible, to try to understand that this little creature was actually the mighty Aurican!

“You must join us,” the gold dragon in the body of the elf said, bowing low and sweeping a hand before Darlantan.

“But …”

Unwilling to appear ignorant before Aurican and his pets, Darlantan reared back in the posture his golden nestmate had assumed, but nothing happened.

“Perhaps it is a gift only of gold dragons,” Dar suggested, trying to conceal his disappointment.

“No, I suspect that it will work for you – albeit not for our nestmates of the brown metals. You must form a picture of your new shape,” Aurican encouraged. “Choose what you will. I became an elf, in honor of our hosts. But any form is available. Just be sure it’s something that will fit between the trees,” he added with a grin.

And then Darlantan knew. His claws closed around the chain, and he felt the world expanding. In a heartbeat, he stood among the elves, securely balanced on his clawless feet. His stature was broader than the elves, though he was their equal in height.

“Very appropriate,” Aurican declared with a pleased nod.

Darlantan touched the whiskers that cascaded from his chin, strangely delighted by the arcane transformation and pleased that he could make his shape a tribute to Patersmith. A moment later the sturdy figure of the tutor, his gnarled hand still touching the silver chain, followed the file of elves into the forest shadows.

Children of the Plains

(ca. 4017 PC)

Chapter 1

The sun was low in the morning sky, yet already the heat was stifling. Denizens of the night had retreated to their dens, burrows, and nests, away from the glaring sun and the promise of even worse heat. Small herds of elk, having grazed when the grass was still shiny with dew, clustered together under widely separated trees, monopolizing the only shade around. Not even a heat-crazed panther could shift them from the meager cover. As the sun climbed higher, only two kinds of creatures were moving in the heat: flies and humans. Neither could afford to remain idle while there was food to find.

Five humans, lean and brown, lightly clad in buckskins, silently crossed the empty savanna in single file. Widely spaced to cover the maximum amount of ground, they swept the grass on either side with their eyes, the butts of their spears, and sticks. Anything that moved was fair game.

Leading the group was Oto, father of the three children. He’d seen thirty-eight seasons on the plain, and his face was seamed with cracks, like a lake bed baked hard by the dry season. Oto’s light brown hair had thinned to the point where his scalp showed through and was now burned as brown as the rest of him. Streaks of white stained his beard. Though old for a plainsman, Oto’s eyes were still sharp and his hunting sense legendary.

Ten paces behind Oto walked Amero, his eldest son. At thirteen, Amero’s chin was beardless, and his voice still had a child’s squeak. Not yet a man, custom denied Amero a man’s weapon. The boy used a boy’s tool, a long springy pole suitable for probing rabbit burrows and gigging fat frogs. Amero was sweating under his buckskins. He would have loved to strip down to his loincloth, but the path was dotted with thorny scrub and knife-grass, either of which could shred flesh to the bone in an hour’s forage. Sighing, Amero hung his hands on the pole across his shoulders and concentrated on keeping his father in view.

Eleven steps back, his mother, Kinar, hefted her baby off her aching hip. Menni was almost two, a strapping boy-child. He nodded against his mother’s shoulder, his legs dangling and his hands draped around her neck. Kinar longed to put him down, but she knew Menni could never keep up with Oto’s swift pace.

Last in line was Nianki, the oldest child and the last surviving daughter. Kinar had borne Oto seven children, but they were a lucky family. She knew other women who’d birthed more babies yet had none left to show for it. That Nianki and Amero had survived to such advanced age was a tribute to Oto’s skills as a hunter and her own wisdom in foraging.

Nianki was a strong girl who could run half a day without stopping, climb any tree, and snatch a black viper from its sunning rock faster than it could strike, but she was no help to her mother. There was no point in handing her the baby. Inside ten paces Menni would start to cry, and Nianki’s usual solution was to slap him.

Kinar had tried to pass on to her daughter the knowledge she’d acquired in thirty-one summers – when to pick berries so they didn’t cause a gut-ache, the way to tell poisonous mushrooms from the delectable kind, how to soothe cuts with the sap of soft-tongue plant, and how to harvest honey from a wild beehive without getting stung. Nianki preferred to run after her father and be a hunter. Oto would not allow a female to carry a spear, so Nianki had made her own weapon, a throwing club with a sharp flint head.

Nianki didn’t notice her mother’s glances back at her. The girl’s eyes were on their surroundings, constantly scanning for danger or prey.

The earth was still dry from winter. Hard red clay showed through the tufts of grass. The last rain had been three days ago, a brief shower accompanied by much lightning. It softened only the surface of the soil, which dried quickly. Here and there Nianki saw random footprints of animals who’d crossed the trail while the clay was wet – a rabbit, an elk, the flat, wide prints of a young bear. A flurry of circular dents in the soil told of the passing of a party of centaurs. Oto got along with centaurs, but he always gave them wide berth. He said you never knew what a centaur might do or say – they were wild creatures, not human at all.

Beside the elk prints she spotted another set of tracks. They were smaller, and of unusual shape. Nianki dropped to one knee to study the unfamiliar spoor.

The prints were long and narrow, with a short pad and strangely long toes. She traced the dried impression with her finger, then sniffed it. A faint odor, pungent like rotten meat. These were the footprints of a predator.

Soundlessly, Oto appeared out of the hush on her right. “Why are you stopped?” he said, resting the butt of his spear on his right foot. It was a lifelong habit that had left a callus on his foot that fit the shaft like a socket.

She pointed to the tracks. “I don’t know this animal, Oto.”

“What can you tell about it?”

Her brows met over her nose as Nianki frowned. “It smells of dead meat. I think, a hunter.”

“Not a scavenger?”

“It followed a live elk.” She indicated the other tracks with a sweep of her hand. “A lone bull. I think this beast culled him from the herd.”

Oto knelt and studied the tracks with a practiced eye. “Yes. The bull was running, but not hard. A single animal was dogging him, driving him —” He lifted his sun-darkened face to the southern horizon. In the distance was the highest relief on the plain in all directions, a pile of upthrust boulders. A hundred wolves could hide in the rocky crevices.

“Ambush,” Oto said.

“A pack?”

Her father nodded.

“Have you seen animals hunt like this before?”

“No. Only men.”

Kinar and Amero had noticed something amiss and doubled back to find Oto and Nianki. The baby stirred and began to fuss. Kinar rocked him gently and made soothing noises in her throat.

“What is it?” Amero asked.

“Animals Oto doesn’t know. A hunting pack.”

Amero scanned the bush nervously. “Are they still around?”

Oto stood. “The elk have bedded for the day. They would not do so if there were a hunting pack near.”

Nianki stood. “We should go back,” she declared.

Oto folded his arms. “We’ve left last night’s camp. Game has fled, and Kinar has picked the land clean. Going back means going hungry.”

“I don’t like this,” Nianki said.

“Nor do I,” added Kinar worriedly.

Mother and daughter seldom agreed, and their sudden cooperation was unnerving. Amero shifted uneasily. “Perhaps we ought to go back?” he ventured.

“You’re not the hunter,” Oto replied sternly. His dark eyes rebuked all of them. “We go ahead. To go back is to go hungry.”

“To go ahead may mean danger!” Nianki insisted, stamping her foot. Kinar hugged the baby closer and backed away from her. Father and daughter had fought before, and over less than this.

Surprisingly, Oto chose to talk rather than use his fists. “No hunting pack would attack a whole family. We are too many and too wise. These beasts, whatever they are, are hunters like us. They like easy prey. They cull slow-witted bulls or weak calves. They don’t stalk the strong.”

Amero stared. He’d never heard Oto speak so many words at one time. As he looked from his father to his defiant sister, it suddenly occurred to him that Nianki was as tall as their father. Next to her, Oto seemed a gnarled old tree bending to the wind of a fresh storm. Amero wondered if his father’s thoughts were the same as his: This time, if he dared strike Nianki, she might strike back, and her blows could cause more hurt to him than his to her.

Menni burped loudly and began to cry. This broke the awkward silence. Oto handed his spear to Nianki and took his son from Kinar’s arms. He held Menni at arm’s length in scarred, callused hands.

“Last child,” he said in an odd, hollow voice. “I give you my protection.”

He balanced the boy on his hip and used his free hand to lift a dark, shriveled object that hung around his neck on a thong. It was the dried paw of a panther, black as a moonless sky. Many seasons ago the panther had crept into their camp and killed Oto’s firstborn son, Ibani, while the boy slept. Oto had slain the panther after an epic chase of forty days. Since that day, the spirit of the panther had been bound to Oto and done his bidding, warding off evil.

Oto tied a knot in the thong to shorten it and hung the talisman around Menni’s neck. Kinar’s face glowed with happiness. She took Menni back and held him close, no longer fretted by his size or weight.

Nianki paced past them, resuming the trek to the next night’s camp. Amero started after her but stopped when Oto gruffly ordered them to halt.

“Spear.”

Nianki hefted the weapon and tossed it sideways to her father. He caught it easily with one hand.

“I’ll make the path,” Nianki announced. “Come.”

Amero watched in silence as she strode away. Oto waited until Nianki was ten paces ahead, as custom prescribed, then resumed the march. Kinar and the baby followed him, leaving Amero to bring up the rear.

Amero looked back at the mysterious footprints. Little was left of them. The clay had cracked under Oto’s heel. A fresh breeze stirred the taller grasses, carrying with it the sighs of spirits. Amero blinked. Was the panther ghost passing nearby, seeking its new charge?

He turned and hurried after his family, the end of his long stick trailing in the dust behind him.

*

Precious little game could be found on the high savanna that day. Even rabbits were scarce, as though another hunting party had passed down the trail ahead of them. Kinar found some wild onions and a handful of sticky tuber-roots. The onions were bitter and the tubers too sweet, so their midday meal was both skimpy and unpleasant. Oto finished quickly and resumed the lead position. Nianki fell back again.

When they drew near Mossback Creek, Oto, in the lead, suddenly made the quick, downward, chopping gesture that meant “take cover.” All of them dropped to the ground silently. Not even the baby made so much as a whimper.

Nianki left her mother and brothers in the cover afforded by the scrubby bushes and crawled up the slight rise to where Oto lay motionless. As she crested the hill on her belly she could finally see what had caused the alert. The savanna was no longer empty. Two people crouched on the bank of Moss-back Creek.

They appeared to be excited about something, pointing to the creek. The errant breeze brought only snatches of their voices to Nianki’s ears, but she could understand none of their words.

“What is it?”

Nianki flinched as Amero’s whisper sounded from below her left shoulder. Instantly she froze as the two strangers rose to their feet and looked in their direction.

Amero gasped at the strangers’ appearance, and Nianki’s left hand moved over to pinch his arm, signaling silence. The strangers appeared not to see them and went back to their study of the creek. After much talking and gesturing, the pair shook their heads, crossed the creek, and headed away from the hidden plainsmen.

Oto waited until the two were far distant, then got to his feet. Nianki and Amero followed suit.

“Who were they?” Amero asked excitedly as they rejoined Kinar and the baby. “Did you see their faces? They were black! Dark as the night sky!” He touched his own skin, burned brown by the fierce sun, and repeated, “Dark as the night sky!”

“Why did you leave your mother and the baby?” Oto demanded.

Amero’s enthusiasm faded in the face of his father’s obvious anger. He hung his head, saying nothing, knowing there was no reason he could give that would satisfy Oto.

Nianki shook her head at her brother’s foolishness. He had been wrong to leave Kinar. His whispered question had nearly betrayed their presence to the strangers. Amero was always asking questions, wanting to know things. He could not be content to do a thing because he was told it was right, or because it had been done a certain way for as long as anyone remembered. He always wanted to know why. It was not a trait that endeared him to their father.

Oto was still glaring at his eldest son. Nianki spoke, distracting her father. “Have you seen men like that before?”

With a final shake of his head, Oto turned toward the creek.

“No,” was his curt response.

“Then why did we hide?” Nianki demanded of his back. “They might’ve known where we could find game. We could’ve asked about those strange prints we saw earlier.”

Oto said nothing, but just kept on walking. Nianki shook her head in disgust.

“Oto is wise.”

Nianki turned to look at her mother.

Kinar added, “He’s kept us alive by being cautious.”

“There were only two of them.”

Kinar clucked her tongue in that annoying way of hers, hefted Menni higher on her hip, and followed after her mate.

Amero had gone to the top of the slight rise and was staring in the direction the two strangers had taken. As she drew near, Nianki cuffed him on the head.

“Stupid,” she said, though without malice.

He ignored the blow and continued to gaze into the distance. “Who knew there were people like that?” he said. “Their skin was black as the night sky. It was so strange.”

Amero’s hair, like Nianki’s, was light brown, straight as a spear, and reached to the middle of his back. They wore their hair tied back with a leather thong. The strangers’ hair had been close to their heads, and so tightly curled it didn’t move when the wind blew.

“I wonder —”

“Enough,” Nianki ordered. When Amero began a sentence with those two words, there was no telling where it could lead, nor how long it would take the boy to get there. She gave him a rough shove. “Stop mooning and start walking. I’m thirsty.”

Unfortunately, when they joined their parents and Menni, they found the creek had been fouled. Both banks were churned up with many footprints – the same narrow prints they’d encountered that morning.

The torn carcass of a red deer lay in the water, its flesh-less face pointed skyward. Clouds of flies rose from the bloated hide when Oto’s shadow fell across it. By the smell, it had been dead for some days. Amero recoiled from the rank odor and plucked a green grass stem to hold over his nose. At her request, he pulled one for his mother too.

“I guess this is what the strangers were so excited about. No wonder they didn’t drink,” Nianki said. “Never saw animals dirty a stream like this. Why would they do it?”

Oto frowned. “Marking territory. This means, ‘all others, keep out.’”

“Fair warning. We should listen.”

In answer, Oto crossed the water twenty paces upstream from the deer carcass. Reluctantly, the rest of the family followed. The normally cold creek water was tepid from the long day’s heat, but it still tasted good.

The east bank proved as empty of game as the west bank. Even birds had abandoned the plain. The poor hunting, prolonged silence, and empty vistas wore on their nerves. Without realizing it, they closed ranks, the gaps between them shrinking.

The sun was halfway to its rest when the smoky blue peaks of the mountains first appeared on the horizon. They resembled thunderclouds piled up in the eastern sky and were much farther away than they looked.

Amero took his turn making the path. Being slower than Nianki and having less stamina than his father, Amero’s pace was almost leisurely. He picked his way through the grass, swinging his stick in a wide arc to expose gopher holes and dislodge vipers. His stomach grumbled loudly. To assuage his empty belly, Amero chewed a grass stem. It didn’t help much.

Ye-ye-ye.

He stopped dead, his stick falling to the ground. It had been quiet so long that the distant call sounded like thunder. Amero knew all the songs, screams, and chatter of the plain. He’d never heard this noise before.

A hand fell on his shoulder. He jumped, alarmed. Oto could move like mist when he chose.

“Hear?” he whispered close to Amero’s ear. The boy nodded. “Stay,” hissed Oto and made a gesture behind his back. Nianki glided off to the right, into the sun-gilt grass.

Kinar and the baby stood close behind Amero. Menni knew enough to be quiet. He buried his face in his mother’s neck and clutched the panther talisman with dirty fingers.

Ye-ye-ye.

There was a scattering of dwarf elms about a hundred paces in front of Amero. The strange yelping came from there.

Oto angled off to the left, crouching, with his spear held high. He hadn’t gone a dozen steps before the sour smell of meat-eating predators reach his nostrils. Near, maybe fifty paces, and moving – moving to his right. The old hunter glanced in Nianki’s direction. She was just visible, walking upright through the dry weeds.

Nianki smelled nothing. The wind was on her right cheek, blowing toward Amero and Oto. She slipped the thong off her wrist so she could hurl her ax if necessary.

Something flickered through the grass ahead, a gray shape against the faded green of the dry foliage. She raised the ax and waited.

Ye-ye-ye.

Close – very close! Impatient, she charged forward, axe held high. She reached an area of trampled grass from which a trail led off to the left. Tufts of long gray hair stuck to the sharp grass. Nianki plucked a few and sniffed. Not wolf, not cat. What then?

Oto heard movement as well. He planted his left foot and hurled his spear at a target he sensed rather than saw. The keen flint head hit and buried itself solidly in something. He could see the spear shaft bob in tiny circles – his prey was still breathing.

He rushed forward, drawing his obsidian knife. As he parted the greenery, he saw a shaggy brown coat and a pair of stout yellow tusks. Wild boar? He’d speared a pig?

When he killed the great panther, Oto’s limbs had felt labored and slow, as if he were swimming in mud. Kills were like that sometimes. The spirit of a beast sometimes put a spell on the hunter to ward off a death-thrust, to spoil his aim. When Oto recognized the creature he’d killed was only a boar, the same sort of spell of slowness descended on him. Then he saw tooth marks on the snout and throat of the pig.

It had been dragged in front of him as a decoy. He’d wasted his cast on bait.

Fiery pain ripped into his leg. Oto’s lethargy vanished at the sight of his own blood coursing down his calf. Over his shoulder he could just make out a large gray beast, vaguely wolf-like in form, clamping onto his right leg. Oto roared in outrage and reached for his spear. Before his hand could close on the smooth wooden shaft another gray mass hurtled through the air and seized his wrist. Oto was jerked off his feet, falling facedown in the grass. Sharp fangs closed on his other arm, and he was dragged away, roots and rocks tearing at his face.

Oto’s cry spurred Nianki to a run. She tore through the grass toward her father. The hot odor of fresh blood filled the air. So too did the call ye-ye-ye, vented from a dozen or more beastly throats. Four-footed forms passed on either side of her. Nianki turned and brought her axe down on the hindquarters of a galloping animal. It shrieked and fell in the grass. She overran it and had to leap to avoid its snapping jaws.

“Yeee! Yeee!” it howled. Opening its long muzzle the wounded beast showed heavy, pointed teeth and a black tongue.

Bite this! she thought, whirling to hurl her ax at the creature’s head. There was a crunch of splintering bone, and the thing ceased howling.

There was no time to examine her kill. Nianki ran toward her father’s last shout. She found a dead boar with Oto’s spear in it. The grass was trampled flat all around and blood stained the leaves. There were signs something heavy had been dragged away.

A new scream – Kinar! The pack had doubled back!

Nianki jerked the spear from the pig’s carcass and ran toward her mother. She burst onto a horrible scene – Kinar and Amero back to back, Menni clutched tightly in his mother’s arms. Amero’s flimsy stick whipped in a desperate arc, holding off five shaggy gray monsters. They resembled wolves, having four legs, long canine snouts, pricked ears, and bushy tails, but there was something alien about their bodies. Their shoulders were massive and muscular, the forelegs too long, and all four paws gripped the earth like hands.

“Nianki! Help!” Amero cried. One of the animals had gotten hold of his stick. Two more took it in their teeth, and it was torn from his grasp.

Nianki speared the nearest beast through the throat. It screamed like a man, rolling and flailing in the dust. Another of the strange animals tried to seize the spear shaft in its jaws, but a blow from Nianki’s ax discouraged him.

“We’ve got to get away!” she gasped.

“Where?” her mother shrieked.

The only possible shelter in sight was the elm grove. “The trees! And pray to all the spirits these beasts can’t climb!”

Amero pushed his mother ahead, guarding her back. Nianki cut a path through the circling pack, jabbing at them with the bloody spear head. For several terrifying moments the creatures refused to yield. Then, without warning, they vanished into the untrampled grass. Panting heavily, Nianki urged her family on.

“Hurry! They’re not leaving – just regrouping!”

“Give me the baby,” Amero said to Kinar, pulling Menni away. The little boy cried furiously. “I can run faster with him than you can.”

Tears streaming down her face, Kinar agreed. The elm grove was sixty paces away. She forgot her sore feet and empty belly and ran for all she was worth. Despite his claim, she soon outstripped Amero. He called to Kinar, warning her not to get too far ahead. She paused, turned back to answer him, and was hit at the knees and neck by a pair of the gray predators. In an instant she was gone, dragged into the weeds.

“Mama! Mama!” Amero began the cry and Menni took it up. Raggedly, the older boy jogged to the spot where his mother had been. Another beast appeared in front of him. Amero recoiled, turning away to shield Menni. Instead of sharp fangs, he felt the shaft of his father’s spear scrape along his ribs as Nianki impaled the leaping beast.

“Mama!” he gasped, eyes wide with horror.

“I know,” said Nianki grimly. “Get Menni to the trees. Hurry!”

The first elm he reached was nothing more than a sapling, incapable of holding the toddler’s weight, much less his own. A larger specimen stood a few yards away The beasts were yelping behind him, and fear of them gave Amero strength. With Menni in his arms, he leaped up the trunk to the lowest branch. It cracked under the strain. He pushed Menni against the trunk and said, “Hold on there! Hold on hard!”

“Mama! Mama!” the child wailed, but he held on.

The broken branch giving way beneath him, Amero slid to the ground. Rough bark tore at his hands and knees. Menni clung to the trunk above him. Unless the pack could climb or leap, he was safe for now.

Amero spun around and saw Nianki fighting three of the creatures. They had surrounded her and now took turns darting in, trying to get their teeth in her. She crushed one’s skull with her axe, but she lost her grip on the weapon in the process. A fourth beast appeared and leaped at her exposed back. Down she went, and Oto’s spear flew away.

“Nianki!”

Amero took one step in her direction, but was promptly cut off by two of the animals. Their black lips curled, blood-flecked saliva drooled from their gaping mouths. Defenseless, Amero backed away. The closest empty tree was a good twenty paces behind him. If he turned his back, the beasts would be on him before he could make it that far.

“Ha!” he shouted, stamping his foot. “Go! Go!”

The nearer animal halted its advance and made its ye-ye call. Amero had the insane idea the creature was laughing at him! He picked up a stone and hefted it significantly. The pair of predators spread apart. They were making it harder for him to hit them, Amero realized in astonishment. What sort of beasts were these, who showed such careful cunning?

“Ha!” he shouted again, and feigned throwing the stone. The nearer beast sprang aside. Once he was farther away, Amero threw the rock with all his might at the other. It struck the monster on the nose, and Amero took off running.

He tried not to hear the swish of long gray limbs in the grass behind him. He ran faster than he’d ever run in his life, his toes barely touching the ground. His goal was a stout gnarled tree, with a trunk as thick as his waist. A low branch beckoned as a handhold. Only five steps to go. Hot breath on his heels, the fetid smell of the creatures’ breath. Four steps. Something touched his buckskin-clad leg, and he put on a burst of speed he didn’t know he possessed. Three paces to go. Claws raked down his right leg, ripping his chaps, and grasped at his bare heel. Amero kicked free and coiled his legs to leap. One step. He launched himself at the branch and snagged it with both hands. Paws with sharp, grasping digits grabbed at his dangling legs. Amero swung his feet up and wrapped his legs around the tree. With a supreme heave, he rolled over on a stout branch less than two paces off the ground.

Panting, two of the pack circled beneath him, waiting to see if he would lose his grip and fall. When he didn’t, they trotted away, lolling tongues pink with clay dust. Amero heard Menni whimpering from his perch but the intervening trees blocked his view of the child. Once Amero managed to catch his breath, he climbed higher in the elm and searched for his mother, Oto, or Nianki. The air was still, and he could see nothing but grass.

*

After being knocked to the ground, Nianki had managed to gather her legs under her. Pain raced through her left forearm as the jaws of one of the creatures snapped shut there. Agony gave way to anger in an instant. Instead of trying to pry the animal’s mouth open, she resolved to cause it as much damage as possible. In short order she had gouged its eyes and kicked it repeatedly in the ribs. It slackened its bite, and only then did Nianki go for its jaws. She pried its long yellow fangs apart until its jaw snapped. Yelling at the top of her lungs, she grasped the monster by its hind feet and swung it in a wide circle, releasing the limp body, which tumbled into the tall grass.

Blood seeped steadily from deep wounds in her arm. Nianki held the injured limb tight to her chest and ran into the bush. She knew she had no hope of outrunning the pack, but she had killed several, and others had gone off in pursuit of Amero and the baby. If there were just one or two left, she might be able to turn the tables on them.

Her vision blurred. The hammering pain in her arm was spreading. Staggering with effort, Nianki skidded down a slight draw. In the rainy season there was a swift stream at the bottom of this hill. At this time of year it would be a dry wash, but where water passed, there would be rocks, and rocks were the tools Nianki needed.

She slammed into the thin trunk of a weeping willow and clung to it, gasping. She could hear animals crashing through the underbrush on both sides of the ravine. Were there two of them? More?

She slid off the tree trunk and pressed onward. A soft sand bank gave way to a bed of pebbles. Several boulders, washed smooth by the brook, rose from the dry stream bed. Nianki found two fist-sized stones, and with one in each hand, climbed atop the biggest boulder. She had hardly reached its summit before the beasts came yelping through the bush, their strange cry echoing in the still, hot air. There were three.

“Come!” Nianki yelled, forcing deep drafts of air into her aching chest. “I have stones enough for all of you!”

The monster on her left leaped. She brought both hands together and cracked the creature’s skull between the rocks. Its blood and saliva sprayed her face. As it fell heavily at her feet, its claws and teeth tore the tough buckskin of her shirt. The beast rolled off the boulder and fell lifeless to the stream bed.

A second animal approached more stealthily and succeeded in biting her on the back of her right thigh. Nianki screamed in pain and pounded her attacker’s jaws. Each strike cost it teeth, and the monster let go before she crushed its skull as she had the others. Nianki lost her footing – the boulder was slick with blood – and fell on her back. For a moment, all she saw was bright blue sky. The click of claws on rock followed, and the third animal seized her by the throat.

The beaded collar of her shirt saved her from death. The beast’s fangs could not penetrate completely the closely studded bear-tooth beadwork. Nianki pulled a knee up and tried to lever the creature off, but it gripped her shoulders tightly with its fingerlike claws.

She could feel her pulse thundering in her head and knew she was bleeding from the throat. Her left hand opened, releasing a rock. She had no strength left to hold it. With all the life that remained in her body, Nianki brought the stone in her right hand down on her attacker’s forehead. The savage creature’s response was to tighten the grip on her neck. Fangs penetrated her flesh more deeply. She hit the beast again, and was about to try one last time when she felt the animal stiffen and shudder.

Nianki pried the jaws apart and let the furry gray body fall to the side. She tried to rise, but her strength was spent. The world went dark before her eyes, and she collapsed across the smooth granite in a spreading pool of her own blood.

Chapter 2

For many hours Amero remained in the top of the elm tree, his back braced against the knobby trunk. He’d heard shouts far away, but it had long since grown quiet all around him – quiet as death. Menni had cried weakly for while, and then he too fell silent.

Amero called now and then to his father, his mother, and his sister, but no one answered. He was afraid to call Menni. The little boy might try to get down from the tree and come to him, and he had no doubt the killer pack was still out there in the grass, watching, lurking.

Finally, he had to give up shouting. His throat was too parched to continue. From his uncomfortable perch he took stock of the situation. He feared the worst. There was no escaping the fact that neither Oto nor Kinar would abandon their children if they were alive. They might have found some place to hold off the beasts, but this was the only grove of trees in the vicinity – hilltops or caves were in short supply on the savanna. The realization of their deaths made his eyes sting and his throat tighten. Amero scrubbed his smarting eyes. Not yet, not yet! His first task was to live. There would be time for grief later.

He had no food, no water, no weapons. His hands, knees, and feet were raw from falling and climbing. His right leg burned where the creature had raked it with its claws. His buckskin breeches hung in tatters. He pulled them off and draped them on the branch. It was cooler in his loincloth anyway. His life seemed to depend on how long he could remain in this tree. Without food and water, it wouldn’t be long.

The sun dipped below the horizon, and the first stars appeared in a flawless purple sky. Amero gazed at the emerging lights. His mother had told him about the stars – how they were the eyes of great spirits on the shore of heaven and how there were patterns in their arrangement. Her people had named these patterns. There was the Winged Serpent, symbol of the great spirit Pala, which stretched from one side of the sky to the other. Facing him across the vault of heaven was the stormbird, Matat. Kinar always called Matat “she,” and Pala “he,” though she never explained why.

Amero yawned. He had to keep alert. To occupy his mind, he tried to recall the names of the other constellations, but none came to him. Failing that, he dredged up more of his mother’s stories. His favorites by far were the tales of far-off places and things seen by Kinar’s father, Jovic. Jovic had witnessed and done amazing things, things the boy Amero always wished he might do some day.

His eyelids closed, his head slowly coming to rest on the branch.

“Long before I was born,” Kinar always began, “my father Jovic traveled to the mountains far to the west. There he saw heaps of stone shaped into blocks with even sides. The blocks were so big Jovic realized whoever shaped them must have been giants, at least three times the height of normal men.”

Amero smiled sleepily at the memory. The giants grew with every telling of the story.

“Jovic saw strange markings on one block, pictures carved and colored,” continued Kinar. “The pictures were of faces like his own, but unlike too. The stone faces were painted blue, and the hair on the faces’ heads was white as snow.”

Amero’s eyes snapped open. His injured right leg had slid off the branch, jerking his body sideways. He drew it up quickly and shuddered. A leaping beast could have dragged him to the ground by that dangling limb.

Were the animals even still there? He strained his eyes in the darkness, gazing deep into the shadows for signs of the pack. The songs of night birds were a good sign the beasts had departed. Perhaps he could descend, backtrack to the stream, and fill his belly with cool, fresh water.

The sound of a dry twig snapping rang out. The birds ceased their rhythmic call.

“Oto?” he said in a loud whisper. “Is that you? Kinar? Nianki?”

“Oto?” replied a voice in the night. Amero gripped the tree harder. It was not a voice he knew.

“Who’s there?” he said more loudly.

“Who’s there?”

He’d once heard an echo-spirit in a canyon, but he’d never heard of one living on the plain. “Nianki, don’t jest with me,” he said uncertainly.

“Don’t jest with me.”

For a fleeting instant, Amero spotted a pair of glowing white eyes a dozen paces away. They were low to the ground and wide-set, just like the eyes of the killer pack animals.

“Who’s there?” he demanded.

“Who’s there?” mocked the voice.

“I’ll not come down!”

“Come down. Come down.” From the shadows all around the tree, the two words were repeated, over and over. More eyes gleamed. Amero counted ten pairs in all.

He sighed and sagged on the branch. Wasn’t there easier prey for them to catch? Then his eyes snapped wide open.

They had talked to him? What sort of unnatural beasts were these?

Shaking with fear, he climbed to the highest part of the tree that would hold him and wedged himself into a narrow crotch. He picked open the lacings along the sleeve of his buckskin shirt and braided the ends together to double the strength of the binding. He dropped the useless shirt onto a lower branch. Looping the braided lacing around his waist, Amero tied himself to the tree. The hide laces would not support him if he fell, but they would steady him enough to sleep.

One pair at a time, the eyes below vanished. When they were all gone, the only sound was their peculiar yelping cry – slower now, sounding more and more like cruel human laughter.

The night seemed endless. It passed in fits and starts, as every cricket in the grass, every bat flickering through the treetops brought Amero to instant wakefulness. When at last he did sag into deep slumber, a horrible apparition invaded his rest.

Out of the darkness crept one of the beasts, glowing dimly. The creature slunk to the foot of the elm tree and slithered up the trunk without using its paws at all. The combination of snake-like movement and blood-smeared muzzle sent shudders of fear through Amero. He tried to untie the thongs holding him in place, but his arms would not rise. His lips parted to cry for help, but no sound came forth. Closer and closer the faintly luminous creature came, its dark eyes fixed on Amero’s face. When its cold, damp nose touched the sole of his dangling foot, he found his voice. He woke screaming.

The sun was well up. He blinked against its bright rays and raised a hand to shield his eyes. Memory of the terrifying immobility that afflicted him in his dream caused him to raise and lower both arms, just to assure himself he could. As the evil image faded from his mind, a lingering impression remained; someone, some thing not human was nearby. It was watching him with curious detachment, the way Amero studied anthills or wasp’s nests when he was a little boy.

Wind stirred the sparse elm leaves. There were clouds aloft this morning, small puffs of white on a field of hazy blue sky. Amero fervently wished for rain. He’d had no water since yesterday, and the heat and his exertions had left him wrung out and very, very thirsty. He pulled a slender branch close and licked the underside of the leaves. The faintest patina of dew remained, and tasting it only made him feel thirstier.

Amero loosened his lacings and stretched his stiff limbs. He spotted a line of black gardener ants trooping along a lower branch. He swept a dozen or so off into his palm and ate them quickly. They were tart, a little crunchy. He’d eaten ants before when nothing else was available.

Clearing his parched throat, he called to Menni. His brother’s tree was only twenty paces away, but he’d heard nothing from the baby for a long time, and he was worried. It was one thing for a thirteen-year-old like Amero to spend the night in a tree, but a toddler less than two? An ache grew in Amero’s chest as imagined the worst. He had to check on his brother. He must find out whether the boy was all right.

He plotted his way before leaving the safety of his tree: If he took a roundabout route to Menni’s tree, he could move from the safety of one climbable tree to the next. The first tree that could support his weight looked to be eight paces distant; the next one after that, six.

Cautiously, Amero descended. The grove was quiet. Only the hum of locusts broke the silence. He darted from tree to tree, keeping low, with every sense alert for the sound of the returning pack.

By the third climb he had Menni’s tree in sight. Amero wanted to call to his brother, but he was terrified the child wouldn’t answer. Leaving his last perch, he picked up a fallen limb – a feeble weapon – and advanced slowly on Menni’s hiding place.

Something in the tree stirred with every breath of wind. Amero squinted against the glare and tried to make out what it was. It was too small to be Menni.

Within a few steps he realized his brother was no longer there. The object blowing with the breeze was a scrap of cured rabbit pelt. Menni had worn a bonnet lined with rabbit fur.

Mutely, Amero plucked the pathetic scrap from the tree. The slim trunk had lost much bark, the marks fresh and still bright with oozing sap. It was easy to imagine what had happened. The pack had butted and battered the small tree until Menni lost his hold.

Dark bloodstains on the ground lent painful support to this vision. Amero let the tears run down his cheeks for a moment, grieving for his lost brother. He knelt in the dirt and closed his hand around Oto’s panther talisman. It had done Menni little good. Perhaps the spirit of the panther owed protection only to its conqueror.

A rustle in the bush brought Amero’s mourning to an abrupt end. His heart contracted to a small hard knot when he glimpsed gray forms flitting through the grass. They’d been waiting for him! He threw down the worthless talisman and bolted.

The pack had already maneuvered between him and the center of the grove. He had the impression of six or seven animals in front of him, maybe four or five behind. There were trees all around, but none were much more than saplings. Still, given a choice, Amero preferred to take his chances in the trees rather than on the ground.

He angled for a likely looking elm. The beasts saw his change of direction and closed in rapidly. Up he went, clawing at the rough bark. He heard the snap of empty jaws as he swung his legs up and over a low branch. Having failed to catch him, the beasts immediately fell to slamming their broad, ugly heads against the truck. The blows were powerful. As Amero clung to the tree for his life, he realized little Menni could never have held out against such an onslaught.

There were eleven of the gray beasts below him, circling and yelping. In a strikingly uniform movement, they all dropped on their bellies and lay still, gazing up at him.

Now what? Having failed to catch him on the ground, were they planning to wait until hunger and thirst loosened his grip?

He crept up, a finger at a time, putting the maximum distance between him and the pack. In his mind he named the animals yevi, “laughing dogs.” All predators were smart, but the yevi exhibited intelligence beyond that of wolves, panthers, or bears. Were they spirits of some kind? They bled and died like other beasts. Were they people – people of a beastly sort? He’d seen centaurs, and he’d heard the story of Grandfather Jovic’s meeting the bull-headed men of the east, so it seemed possible the pack were a strange race of people.

The treetop bowed under his weight, and he lost his grip for an instant. Frantically, he hugged the slender trunk as it bobbed from side to side. The tough green elm hadn’t cracked yet, but he doubted he could spend the night up here. Other, stouter, trees were too far away.

The springy treetop reminded him of one of his father’s old tricks. Oto was widely skilled in trailcraft, and once he had shown Amero and Nianki how to make a snare from a live, bent-over sapling. Game as large as wild pigs could be snared, and the force of the unbending tree was often enough to fling the catch in a complete arc and dash it to death against the ground. If only Amero could use the power of the elm to toss him to another, bigger tree. He tried deliberately bending the treetop down, gauging the force required to hold it in place. However, he had to abandon the notion. There was not enough strength in the tree to throw him to safety, but more than enough to throw him to the waiting yevi pack.

He retied his rawhide lacings around the trunk and settled down to wait out his foes. As the sun mounted higher in the sky, he noted with grim satisfaction the yevi were panting in the heat. He resolved to die in the treetop if need be, but he would not fall. He could not allow the pack to claim his entire family. Better that his dry flesh should feed the crows.

*

At sunset, half the yevi pack rose and departed silently into the bush. Their sudden movement, after so many hours of stillness, roused Amero from his lethargy. His heart leaped at the sight of the departing beasts, but when he recognized only half the pack was leaving, he knew they were simply going for food and water. The remaining yevi stayed behind to keep their eyes on their treebound prey.

He was finished. If they could go for sustenance and he couldn’t, Amero was doomed. He couldn’t outlast them. As night arrived, Amero sank into despair. He was so weak from hunger and thirst. Even signs of approaching storm clouds didn’t bolster his failing spirits. The yevi would never give up. Their single-minded devotion to his destruction went far beyond the normal needs of predators. A herd of elk, passing by in mid-afternoon, garnered no special attention from the pack. Why did they so earnestly seek his life?

Clouds boiled in from the east. Blue-white flashes of lightning illuminated the thunderheads from within, sometimes breaking into the open and crashing to earth. The sound of thunder rolled across the wide savanna, and the elm grove tossed in the wind. The first raindrops to fall were fat, heavy, and startlingly cold. Amero licked his lips gratefully each time he caught one.

The yevi remained in their vigilant positions, never flinching at the thunder or lightning, never seeking shelter. They reminded Amero of the stone fetishes he’d seen in the Kharland, carved by men of the southern plains to appease the spirits of the hunt. Wind and rain came in gusts, enough to appease the worst of Amero’s thirst, but still the yevi waited.

A close flash of lightning lit up the entire sky. By the dazzling light Amero glimpsed an extraordinary sight – a vast dark shape high in the sky, silhouetted against the purple clouds. It was long and sinuous, with a pair of immense, narrow wings flapping slowly. It was certainly the biggest bird Amero had ever seen, but before another blast of lightning could bring him a clearer glimpse, the thing nosed up into the clouds and was gone.

“Stormbird,” he marveled aloud. Oto had spoken of these. Like the star-pattern in the sky for which they were named, stormbirds were enormous, rare creatures.

“They fly in the edge of every storm, carrying lightning in their claws and thunder in every stroke of their wings,” Oto had said. “They never touch earth and can swallow an entire flock of geese as one meal.”

Amero could hardly believe he was seeing a stormbird with his own eyes.

Just then, fiery fingers of lightning struck the ground less than a hundred paces away. The tree trembled, and bits of scorched wood and dirt pelted him. He ducked his head to avoid the debris and saw the yevi were on their feet, milling around and whining. Amero cinched the lacings tighter and wished for another, closer strike. Perhaps that would send them away for good.

Thunder boomed in the grove, and still the yevi didn’t leave. They did break their circle around Amero’s perch, collecting in a tight knot on one side of the tree. Amero devoutly wished they would skulk into the bush, driven away by the crackling lightning and booming thunder. Instead, they remained, huddled together and evidently quaking with fear. Common predators would have abandoned Amero to his fate. Why did the yevi remain?

The storm blew itself out at last, rolling westward across the plain toward the great forest. Before long Amero saw stars through rents in the clouds, and the incessant flashes of lightning galloped away. The night was left dark once again.

Refreshed by the rain, Amero resolved to escape the yevi on the morrow. He slept a second night in the treetop. One way or another, it would be his last night there.

*

Dawn arrived, fresh and bright. The short, sharp rain had brought green shoots out of the ground overnight, and the air was filled with buzzing insects. The abundant bugs attracted swarms of birds, so the morning was astir with noisy, colorful life. Amero stretched his aching arms and legs and wondered if his neck was developing a permanent bend.

Ten members of the yevi pack were still on watch beneath Amero’s tree. Drying mud matted their fur, and they looked generally bedraggled, but their menace was unchanged. Amero felt the cold clutch of helplessness again as he tried and failed to come up with a plan to escape.

Four more yevi appeared from the bush, looking quite clean and rested. Without a sound the pack spread out in a circle around Amero’s perch. Strangely, the beasts aligned themselves facing outward, not inward, as though they were defending the tree instead of besieging it.

“Get out of here!” Amero shouted in exasperation. “Go! Go now!”

There was no answer from the yevi. Could he have imagined hearing their voices the other day?

A flock of birds whirled in and filled the branches of Amero’s elm. There must have been a hundred tiny black-and-tan birds, all chirping at once, making a tremendous din. They were highly agitated – some hopping back and forth from one limb to another, fluffing their wings, some even daring to land on Amero’s head or shoulders. The shrill peeping reached a crescendo, then in a body the noisy flock took to the air. They circled the grove once and flew away.

Curiously, the yevi were backing up, slowly contracting their circle. A few on the west side broke ranks and trotted around to the east side, filling the gaps between the beasts already there. Whatever was coming, whatever had startled the birds and worried the yevi pack, was coming from the east. From the mountains.

Straining to see in that direction, Amero was surprised to feel a sudden chill run down his back. He was even more astonished to look up and see a man come striding toward the grove. He was too far away for Amero to make out his face clearly, but the boy could tell by the stranger’s shock of red-gold hair that he wasn’t Oto. Amero had never seen anyone with hair that color before.

“Stop!” he shouted. His voice was a weak croak after his prolonged ordeal. “Beware! The pack – the yevi!”

The animals were rooted to the spot. On came the stranger through the widely spaced trees. He carried no spear nor club Amero could see. The boy was horrified. The yevi would tear the man to pieces.

“Go back! Danger!” Amero cried.

At last the man seemed to hear him. He halted twenty paces away and looked up at him. Though the sun was bright and the glare terrific, the stranger didn’t shade his eyes.

Two yevi crept forward a few steps, lips curled, snarling ferociously. The stiff gray fur on their humped backs rose, flaring like lion’s manes.

Surely the man could see them! Amero thought. Why did he approach so casually?

The stranger resumed his easy pace toward Amero. Two yevi detached from the circle and charged, their claws tearing up clots of muddied soil. Amero closed his eyes and turned away. He’d seen enough of what the yevi could do.

The air quivered, as if from thunder, but there was no sound. The hair on Amero’s arms stood up. Instead of the man’s screams, he heard a concerted yelping from the pack. He opened his eyes cautiously and saw the two attacking yevi had been thrown back. Their bodies lay unmoving, limbs jutting out at twisted angles.

What had happened?

Three more beasts broke ranks and attacked. The fiery-haired man extended his left hand, the fingers spread. When the yevi were within leaping distance, he waved his hand, as if shooing a fly. The air before him blurred – once more Amero felt the hair on his arms stand on end – and the three attackers seemed to be grabbed by invisible hands in mid-flight. They were hurled backward with great speed, landing in a heap near the foot of Amero’s tree. From the way they bounced, they must have broken every bone in their bodies.

The pack exploded. The gray killers flung themselves at the stranger, who repeated his gesture with both hands. Not only the air but the earth trembled, and the yevi scattered like leaves in last night’s storm.

Once the grove was clear of the pack, the man stood in the shadow of Amero’s elm and looked up. He was tall and well-made, though not unusually big or brawny. His skin was lighter than Amero’s, lightly tanned by the sun, and it was smooth and free of scars and marks. He was barefoot and wore a simple loincloth of buckskin, inlaid with strips of some shiny green hide – tortoise shell, or snakeskin of some kind. It was the stranger’s hair that intrigued Amero most. Not only was the color unique, it was short and shaped to his head like that of the black men Amero had seen just days ago. While theirs had been tightly curled, this man’s hair was as straight as Amero’s.

“You can come down now,” said the stranger in a low, musical voice. “They will not bother you again.”

“Who are you?” asked Amero, trying to maintain a firm grip on the tree.

The stranger did not respond, but merely stared up at him with a mildly interested expression. In spite of his innate wariness, Amero found his fingers slipping. He was so weak, so tired from his long captivity in the tree that it was hard to hold on another moment.

Helplessly, Amero asked, “You’ll not... hurt me?”

The stranger sighed. “What I did to those creatures I could do to you whether you are in the tree or out. Remain there, if you wish.”

His words sounded logical, and Amero was simply too exhausted to resist further. He loosened the laces that held him to the tree. Soon his feet were on firm ground, but his legs wouldn’t support him. His knees folded, and he found himself sitting down hard on the ground.

“My family, out there,” he murmured. “Have you seen anyone else?”

“No.” The stranger’s eyes – a light blue color, like the sky – betrayed no hint of emotion. “I saw only you.”

Amero pulled himself upright. “Are you a spirit? Do you command the wind – is that how you defeated the yevi?”

“‘Yevi?’ Ah, you have named them already.”

Amero was about to repeat his question when a single animal reappeared from the tall grass. The boy pressed his weakened body against the tree, unable to haul himself up. However, flight was unnecessary.

The stranger frowned at the yevi. “Begone,” he said simply.

You thwart our hunt. Amero heard the words distinctly, though the beast’s jaws never moved. Why do you protect our prey? What is he to you?

“This is my land,” the man replied, smiling. “I do as I will. You don’t belong here. Tell your master to send no more hunting packs into my domain. I won’t tolerate poaching.”

You dare challenge Sthenn?

The stranger shrugged. “I know your master well. He can seek me any time he chooses, but he won’t. He’s a coward. He prefers to use vermin like you, you ‘yevi’ —” he nodded at Amero in acknowledgment for the name – “to accomplish what he wants.”

The gray beast let loose a guttural yelp. And what will you do, mighty one? Take up humans as your favored pets?

“They’re too frail and stupid to make good pets, but I won’t have you randomly butchering creatures on my land, either. Go and tell your master what I’ve said.”

He turned his back on the yevi and started to walk away. Amero pulled himself to his feet, intending to follow the man, but the yevi sprang for the boy’s throat. It never made it. There was a brilliant flash, the smell of singed flesh, and the yevi was blasted to scorched bits.

Amero rubbed his eyes, and his vision quickly returned. “You destroyed it!” he said, agog.

“I should have known a creature like that could not be trusted. Well, when none of the pack returns, my message will be just as clear.”

He walked carelessly away, Amero limping at his heels. “You never told me your name,” the boy said. There was no response, so Amero added, “I have no family, no one. Can I go with you? I can... I can serve you.”

The boy limped faster, hissing in pain each time his injured leg touched the ground. Desperate, he began listing his accomplishments. “I can fish, gather berries and roots, make snares, skin rabbits, knap flint, and... and if this Sthenn comes looking for you, I can guard your back.”

At the mention of the name, the stranger whirled and seized the boy with both hands. An image flickered through Amero’s mind, an impression of vast size and enormous power. A light seemed to glow from within the man’s oddly colored eyes, and Amero feared he was about to be roasted like the last yevi.

“Where did you hear that name?” the man demanded.

“The beast spoke it,” Amero replied in a strangled voice. The man’s grip was painful.

His blue eyes narrowed. “You understood what the beasts said?”

“Yes. They spoke to me yesterday, trying to lure me out of my tree —”

“Tell me what else it said!”

The boy hastily recounted the exchange he’d just heard between the yevi and the stranger. When he was done, the man released him. Fear and exhaustion robbed Amero completely of strength. He sank to the grass.

“Now that’s... interesting,” was all the stranger said.

“What will you do with me, spirit-man?” he said weakly.

His rescuer seemed lost in thought, but finally said, “Duranix.”

“What?” asked Amero.

“My name is Duranix, and no, I won’t kill you. In fact, you may follow me.” It didn’t sound like a request. Duranix strode away, due east toward the distant mountains. A little stunned, Amero hobbled after him.

“Where are you going, Duranix?”

“Home.”

“What’s home?”

Duranix glanced back. “A place to live. Where one sleeps at night. Where is your home, Amero?”

“I have no home.” Amero swallowed a lump in his throat and looked down at his scraped, dirty feet. He would not cry. He was a man, and men did not cry. Oto never did. “We make a new camp every night. If you stay in one place too long, you go hungry. All the food gets eaten or runs away.”

“I see what you mean. I too travel a lot, but I always return to my home.”

In spite of his grief, Amero felt a stirring of curiosity. Lifting his tear-stained face, he said, “Where’s home?”

“Where the mountains meet the plain and a river breaks on a high cliff, that is home.”

“Oh, a waterfall. How large is it? What is it called?”

Duranix smiled. “Just ‘home.’ What would you call it, Amero?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to see it – but I could make up a name for it, if you want.”

“No doubt you would. Humans name things the way bees work a field of cornflowers. Here’s one, here’s another, here’s ten more.”

Heart singing with hope, Amero pushed himself to his feet. He took a step, then the sky seemed to spin around his head. The ground rushed up to meet him and he knew no more.

Duranix looked down at the unconscious boy for a moment, then effortlessly plucked him off the ground with one hand and tucked him under his arm.

“How can you understand the beasts?” Duranix said to the unconscious boy. “Why did I hear your thoughts of pain?” He answered himself. “Time will tell. Sleep now, boy. When you wake, we shall be home.”

Chapter 3

Nianki awoke in stifling darkness. Memory of the previous day’s terror returned. After slaying the last of the beasts stalking her, she’d crawled to the foot of the boulder and burrowed into the loose sand of the dry creek bed. Handful by handful she’d hollowed out a hiding place, and while the red moon still blazed like an ember in the sky, she crawled into her makeshift cave and slept like a dead person. The overhanging bulk of the boulder had warmed her during the night, but it must be daylight now – the sun-baked stone made the hole unbearable. Breaking through the thin wall of gravel and sand she’d erected to hide the opening, Nianki crawled into fresh air.

The gully was empty. The bodies of the beasts she’d slain were gone. Nianki tried to stand, but her wounds flamed with pain. Bracing herself against the boulder, she forced herself erect. This last movement drew her mouth open in a silent howl, but she did not allow herself to give voice to her torment. Even if the killer pack was no longer around, there were plenty of other scavengers who would find the injured Nianki a tasty morsel.

She found a length of dried vine to use as a crutch. It was as thick as her wrist and curled along its entire length, but it was stout. With its help she limped down the creek bed. A fallen tree blocked the way a few paces on. Nianki dragged herself over the obstruction and moved on, leaning heavily on her stick.

She knew her family was dead. If Oto were alive, he would have found her by now, and if he wasn’t, none of the others could be. Kinar, Amero, and Menni were not strong enough or swift enough to escape the deadly gray marauders.

So be it.

With each agonizing step, Nianki swore a private oath to Chisa, the great spirit of nature, that none of those creatures would be spared from her wrath – not male, female, or pup.

She would slay them all without mercy, until there were no more left to kill. It was an ugly, black vow, but it filled her with purpose and kept her moving forward.

Flies followed her, drawn by the smell of her wounds. Her tongue ached for water. The gully slanted down at a shallow angle, so she kept to the dry ravine in hopes of finding water.

Near midday the smell of water teased her nostrils. Nianki quickened her step, dragging her mangled leg through the loose gravel. Ahead, the gully was closed by a hedge of ferns and dense creeping vines. Now, she could hear the water as well. She tore through the greenery with stiff, bloody fingers and found a spring bubbling out of a split boulder. It collected in a moss-rimmed pool a hand’s reach below. Nianki wept at the sight of it.

She lowered herself on her belly beside the pool. Cupping her hands, she raised them brimming to her parched lips. Her first swallow tasted like blood, but she bolted it down nonetheless. Two more handfuls followed, the fourth she threw on her face. The clear pool grew murky. Exhausted, she let her face rest against the soft moss.

Kinar had tried to teach her which leaves and roots were soothing to wounds. Nianki had always been too impatient to heed her mother’s words. Only clumsy hunters allowed themselves to get wounded, she had thought. In fifteen years she’d suffered nothing worse than a few cuts and scratches. Now she worked her memory hard, trying to pry out the information Kinar had labored to impart.

Sumac soothes, larchit heals. The phrase surfaced in her fevered mind. Sumac was a woody shrub with pointed, shiny leaves, four leaves per stem. Larchit, also called soft-tongue, grew in dry places. Its leaves were like dark green, fleshy fingers. When cut, the leaves exuded a clear sap.

Nianki opened her eyes. Kinar’s words, Kinar’s voice, resounded in her head as clear as sunlight.

Silver algae from a fast-flowing stream is good for burns, she’d said. The meat of acorns, dried and ground to dust, will stop bleeding.

“Mother —”

Be still, Nianki, and listen. This is slippery gum, and this is koti weed.

Nianki pushed herself up on her hands, half-expecting to see Kinar standing over her, but she was alone by the pool.

Gingerly, she peeled off her dirty, blood-soaked buckskins and slowly bathed her wounds. Those on her leg and neck were the most severe. She dipped a scrap of hide in the water and squeezed out the excess, using the soft nap of the buckskin to scrub away the dried blood and encrusted dirt. It was agonizing. Nianki banished the urge to weep by concentrating on her task.

She shivered. It was natural enough, sitting there half-naked, washing in cold spring water, but the strange heat in her face told her this was more than a normal chill. She’d seen bull elks survive a panther’s mauling, only to succumb a few days later to wound fever. Oto’s own father died after being gored by a wild pig, though his wounds had not seemed severe.

Nianki knew there were herbs for fever, but she found it increasingly hard to remember what they were. Sumac and larchit were fixed in her mind like trail signs. Lose them, and she would be lost indeed.

When her cuts and bites were clean, she dressed in her damp skins. Though it was another hot day, Nianki trembled as she threaded the lacing of her kilt and tunic. She put a smooth pebble from the pool in her mouth. Sucking on it would slake her thirst. Leaning heavily on her vine staff, she climbed out of the gully and surveyed her surroundings.

Their scattered, frantic flight from the pack had taken Nianki’s family far off their usual track. She could see the eastern mountains clearly enough, but the peaks presented an unfamiliar pattern. To the north and south lay trackless plain, as far as the eye could behold and well beyond. Back to the west lay several days’ worth of grassland, and after that, the great forest.

Huge clouds filled the sky north and west, the flat undersides growing darker and darker as more clouds piled up. Having no desire to limp through the rain, she decided to head south, away from the coming storm.

More than dislike of rain turned her feet south. Kinar came from there. Her people followed herds of wild oxen as they grazed northward in winter and south in summer. They lived in bands of twelve or more, often unrelated by blood. If anyone would be disposed to tolerate a lone hunter like Nianki, it would be the ox herders.

*

With her back to it, Nianki felt the storm coming before she heard the first thunderclap. The air was oppressive, and the dry heat of a typical late spring day was replaced by sullen humidity. Limping along with her arms full of sumac and larchit leaves, she took shelter under an aged cedar. After wedging herself into a crevice in the split trunk, she began to treat her wounds. Sumac had to be pulped before it was applied, so as the storm overtook her she methodically chewed sumac leaves, pressing the resulting spicy-smelling paste to her tom flesh. Chewing also kept her teeth from chattering. Fever burned deep within her breast. It was a cold fire, like Soli, the white moon.

When her neck was covered in sumac paste, Nianki broke a larchit stem and smeared the clear sap on her leg wound. It stung, but not as badly as washing it had.

In the distance, she saw the rain begin as a wall of mist sweeping across the savanna. Lightning crackled in the clouds, sometimes breaking out and striking the parched earth. Deer and birds fled before the storm. The sight of so much game made Nianki’s empty stomach growl. She chewed more sumac, which was oily and pungent; it dampened her desire for food.

The sighing wind rose to a drone as the storm came closer. Whirlwinds of dust danced by, chased by an army of errant leaves. Nianki flinched as a bolt of blue-white lightning stabbed the ground a few hundred paces away. Dry grass flashed into fire, only to be doused by the ensuing downpour.

The rain finally reached her, and she huddled deeper into the cleft of the tree. Rain raked over her, the cold droplets feeling like a lash of thorns. Nianki threw her good arm across her face to shield it from the driving spray. As she peered over her own elbow at the storm, she heard the drumming of massed hooves above the gusting wind. A herd of elk was stampeding. Her hunting instincts aroused, Nianki pushed herself up for a better view.

Elk were accustomed to thunderstorms – thunder alone wasn’t enough to send them trampling over the plain. Something else must have frightened them.

She saw no smoke. No grass fire could survive in the downpour anyway. Nianki braced herself against the tree and stared through the rain at the oncoming herd.

There! Topping a slight rise, a huge, winged shape came swooping after the terrified elk. Nianki gaped in wonder. Tapered, leathery wings rose in a high arc, the tips almost touching, and swept down again to brush the storm-tossed grass. The monster had a thick, streamlined body and a serpentine neck and tail. Its scaly hide had a shiny reddish-gold cast.

All she could think of was her father’s tales about “stormbirds,” huge flying creatures who lived in the sky and brought violent tempests in their wake. Nianki never imagined a monster like this could actually exist, much less fly with such speed and precision.

So rapt was her attention on the stormbird that she forgot the elk herd was bearing down on her. All of a sudden, a wall of brown bodies, antlers, and churning hooves came over the low hill just two hundred paces away – aiming straight at Nianki. There was no way she could outrun them, so she ducked behind the old cedar and fervently hoped the herd would split around this slight obstacle.

The stormbird opened is massive jaws, revealing fangs as long as Nianki’s forearm. Its snake-like eyes rolled back in its head.

A bolt of lightning erupted from its throat.

Stones and dirt flew, and the blast flung Nianki to the ground. She rolled over, expecting at any moment to be trampled by elk or seared by lightning. The ground heaved and shuddered for some moments, gradually settling down. Nianki raised her head.

The herd had split around the cedar tree and was rushing madly for the horizon. Charred carcasses littered the plain, and a smoking rent in the earth thirty paces long lay within spitting distance of Nianki’s tree.

Shaken, she hauled herself to her feet as the stormbird swept overhead. The air from its beating wings washed cold over her.

The monstrous snake-head darted down and snatched up one burned elk after another. It gulped the carcasses down amid a loud snapping of bones. Flapping its wings hard, the stormbird circled and gained height. Rain streamed down Nianki’s face as she watched it climb.

The monster glided in a wide half-circle, and for the first time noticed Nianki. Eyes the size of sunflowers peered down at her. She thought it would strike her with its lightning, but the monster held its turn and flapped away after the quickly disappearing herd. It looked back once, dropping its long neck in order to peer under its own wing.

Soaked to the skin and shivering, Nianki stood there long after the monster had vanished. The past few days had been a revelation. She who thought she knew so much about nature, about the world of the plains, had suffered two rude shocks. First, the pack of misshapen predators that had killed her family – now this! Had the world turned inside out? Were there spirits and monsters behind every tree, beyond every hill?

The smell of burned meat penetrated her reverie. She wandered among the charred remains of eight large animals, a head here, a haunch there. Hungry as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to take any of the stormbird’s leavings. She’d heard of people who burned their meat with fire, but the idea disgusted her. Meat should be eaten fresh or dried, not burned. Only scavengers ate charred food.

Yet, Nianki’s stomach writhed with hunger, sending shooting pains through her gut. Weak and injured as she was, she couldn’t hunt her own game. She needed food to regain her strength – and there was food all around her, though blackened and smelling of fire. Swallowing hard, she slid to her knees beside a still smoking haunch.

Life’s a struggle, Oto always said. If you knock down an anthill every morning, the ants will build it back by evening. The ants had no choice, if they wanted to live, and neither did Nianki. She wrenched off the elk’s leg, hoping the flesh closer to bone might be less burned.

No luck. The lightning had blackened the poor beast right through to the marrow. Nianki sighed and chewed in silence as the rain continued to drench her and the dark, empty savanna.

*

She wandered south. Her fever got worse, and she lost track of the passage of time as she slept more by day and walked by night. Perhaps four days after seeing the stormbird – she couldn’t remember exactly how long it had been – Nianki found the cold remains of a hunter’s camp. They ate well, these hunters. She found the bones of a slaughtered pig, a pile of wild grape stems, and a broken birch-bark box that once held salmon jerky. She licked the grease from the bark box and gnawed the cast-off pig bones. It was her first food since the burned elk.

Barks and thin howls announced the arrival of a pack of wild dogs. Nianki feared the dogs more than she would a bear or big cat. Bigger predators were wary of humans and their cunning ways, but dogs were stupid and fearless.

She rooted in the debris left behind by the other hunters, thinking to find the boar’s leg bone or some other suitable club. She had better luck than she dared hope.

Tossed in the grass with the offal was a stone-headed spear. The shaft was broken midway, but the careless owner had thrown it away, flint head and all. Nianki held up the shortened spear and examined it by the failing light. The milky gray flint was finely knapped and quite sharp.

Just holding a spear, even a broken one, filled Nianki with new strength. When the dog pack’s scouts yelped close by, she howled back at them, daring them to attack. There followed only the sound of crickets, singing in the twilight. When she next heard the dogs they were farther away. For the first time in many days, Nianki smiled.

Moving on, she found a swampy water hole. With her new spear she gigged a few fat frogs, then dug some tender cane shoots out of the malodorous black mud. She crouched on a stone by the water hole, washing the shoots and gnawing on them.

The food and her weapon gave her new confidence. She walked all night, and just before dawn she smelled smoke. A thin smudge rose from a pine copse ahead.

Hunters in these parts often slept with a slow fire going, feeding it with resinous green pine. The resulting smoke kept mosquitoes away and usually warned off prowling scavengers.

Still limping on her mangled leg, Nianki crept up on the strangers’ camp. She saw two man-sized lumps on the ground, a smoldering heap of pine boughs between them. A hide bag hung from a tree branch, out of reach of badgers and rats. On the other side of the camp a tripod of sticks stood with a bark box balanced carefully on top. Soundlessly, Nianki entered the camp and sat down on the upwind side of the fire.

One of the men, a tall fellow with bare brown shoulders, rolled over on his back. He began to snore loudly. His companion stirred.

“Shh!” the sleepy man hissed, throwing a convenient pine cone at his snoring friend. It landed nowhere near him.

The snorer rasped on. The one who’d thrown the pine cone gave a disgusted sigh and rolled to his feet. He had a cape wrapped around himself – soft elk hide studded with a crow-feather collar – and he hitched this up around his shoulders. He shuffled toward his friend, unaware of Nianki.

“Pakito, turn over!” he said fiercely. The snoring man remained heedless. His snores were so loud Nianki thought he’d scare away all the game within a day’s walk.

“Pakito! You worthless pile of ox dung!” The caped man aimed a kick at the snorer’s hip. No gentle nudge, it rolled the clueless offender over on his face.

“Ow!” he yelped, sitting up and blowing brown pine needles out of his mouth. “Pa’alu! Did you kick me?”

“I did! You were snoring again.”

“Is that any way to treat your brother?”

“You’re lucky I didn’t use an axe.”

Nianki let out a brief, sharp laugh. Both men started and stared, noticing her for the first time.

“If I were a panther,” she said, “you’d both be feeding my kits by now.”

“Who are you?” demanded Pa’alu, the caped one. Nianki ignored the question. Pakito, taller by a head than his brother and broader in the chest, tucked his feet under him and faced Nianki. He had a round face and dark brown eyes.

“You look like you’ve been fighting a panther,” he observed pleasantly. “Since you’re here, you must have won.”

Pa’alu was staring at the short spear in her hand. “Your weapon – may I see it?” he asked. She held it out for his inspection, but did not relinquish it. Pa’alu’s eyes widened and he said, “Pakito! You said you lost your spear when the boar’s mate ran off with it. How did this – this scarred one get it?”

“My name’s Nianki. I found this a night’s walk from here.”

Pa’alu rounded on his brother. “You threw away your spear!”

“It was broken,” the big man said sullenly.

“It has a good head of gray mountain flint! The shaft could have been replaced!”

Pakito gave an exaggerated shrug, saying nothing. Nianki decided the strapping fellow was actually the younger of the two, no more than seventeen or eighteen seasons old. Pa’alu seemed a few years older.

“It was a bad luck spear anyway,” Pakito finally said. “It never hit anything.”

With a shake of her head at such thinking, Nianki reversed her grip and hurled the shortened weapon at Pakito’s feet. It struck at his toes. He yelped and fell over backward. Pa’alu snatched up his own spear and held it high, ready to impale Nianki. She sat quietly, hugging her knees.

Pakito got up, visibly shaken, but exclaimed triumphantly, “You see! He missed me, as close as he was!”

Pa’alu snorted, but his eyes never left Nianki.

She slowly stood, saying, “I’m a she, giant. And you have a cut between the first two toes of your right foot.”

Pakito lifted his foot, grabbed it in both hands and spread his toes apart. A crimson bead oozed from the tiny cut.

“I’m bleeding!” Pakito sat down heavily and blew on his toes. His brown eyes looked accusingly at Nianki.

Pa’alu grinned. “You have a plainsman’s eye,” he said approvingly. “Where’d you learn to throw a spear like that?”

“From my father. He is – was – a great hunter.”

Pa’alu yanked the spear from the ground and handed it back to Nianki. “Keep it. It doesn’t seem to bring bad luck to you.” He eyed her many injuries. “Or perhaps bad luck is finished with you already.”

Nianki sat down cross-legged, laying the short spear across her lap. Pa’alu offered her a hollow gourd with a long thong tied around its neck. She shook it, heard sloshing, and sniffed the open neck. Water.

She drank deeply, gulping rapidly to prevent any spillage. When she was done she handed the empty gourd back to Pa’alu.

“A handy thing,” she said.

“I made it,” he replied. “Haven’t you seen a water-gourd before?”

“I’m not from these parts.”

Little by little Nianki relaxed. Pakito was good-natured and devoted to his brother. Pa’alu was a bit harder to fathom. He had the quick reflexes and keen eyes of a hunter, but he also seemed clever in the way her brother Amero had been – always making things and thinking of new ways to do things. Cleverness like that made her uncomfortable.

They shared their breakfast with her – raisins, salmon jerky, and soft white mush Pakito called “cheese.” It smelled spoiled to Nianki, and she declined to eat it.

“What happened to you?” Pa’alu asked. “Who attacked you?”

“Animals. A hunting pack. Never seen their like before.”

“Wolves?” mumbled Pakito through a mouthful of raisins.

“No.” With painful economy, she described the beasts who had destroyed her family. “I alone survived,” she said. She bit off a piece of jerky and chewed in silence.

“What will you do now?” said Pa’alu.

She shrugged. “I’ll live the best I can.”

“You can come with us,” Pakito said, looking to his brother for confirmation.

Pa’alu’s expression was unreadable. “You are welcome,” was all he said.

Nianki stood up. “I will go where the wind takes me.” She lifted her head, watching the clouds stream to the southern horizon. “Alone.”

Pakito was crestfallen, but Pa’alu nodded solemnly. He placed a few pieces of salmon in a bark box, tossed in some raisins, and handed it to Nianki, saying, “May the spirits of the sky and plain favor you.”

“They haven’t yet,” she replied.

*

The brothers departed westward, laden with their food and implements. Nianki couldn’t understand why two hunters would burden themselves in such a way. Why carry so much food when it was all around, waiting to be picked or caught? Still, she couldn’t fault the brothers’ generosity. On the strength of their food and water she felt reborn.

That evening she reached a broad river and found it teeming with birds – ducks, geese, cranes, herons. Raiding a few nests, she added four eggs to her provisions. Afterward, she bathed her wounds by swimming out to midstream and floating on her back for a while, letting the current carry her downstream. Curious minnows followed her, nibbling at her fingers and toes. It was an odd, teasing sensation that she half enjoyed, half ignored until it called up memories of the stormbird gobbling down whole elk. Everything in the world fed on something else. The mouse ate the grub, the fox ate the mouse, the vulture ate the fox – humans ate nearly everything and were eaten by still larger predators. Even the mighty elk were just morsels for the stormbird.

And who ate him? What did the stormbird, he who breathed lightning and flew on the crest of a tempest – what did he fear?

Her eyes closed. She lay, bobbing gently, until an errant wave sent water into her nose and she jerked upright, coughing and spitting. The minnows vanished into the depths.

The broad red orb of the sun was setting, so she swam to the south shore. The other side of the river was a cacophony of birds quacking and trumpeting as they came to roost for the night.

Nianki climbed a sandy hill overlooking the river and bedded down for the night, her back against a sturdy vallenwood tree. It was just a sapling by vallenwood standards, yet still bigger around than she could reach. She laid Pakito’s broken spear against her chest and slept deeply. Only once did a noise in the night alarm her – a panther prowling nearby let out a scream. The high, almost-human sound brought Nianki rolling to her feet, spear ready. When next it screamed, the panther was farther away, so Nianki resumed her place under the tree and slept undisturbed.

Chapter 4

For Amero, the trip to Duranix’s home passed in a dream, one he would recall often in later years. He was flying through the air. There was wind in his face, pulling at his hair. Stars raced by through gaps in the clouds. Amero had dreamed of flying before, but never so vividly. Once he struggled to awaken so that he could see where he truly was, but sleep, like a blanket of fog, enclosed him again.

His first impression after the odd dream was of noise – a low rumble, loud, yet not painful to the ear. The cool air was heavy with the smell of water. Amero opened his eyes.

High above him was an arching expanse of rock streaked with red and black minerals. A pulsing, bluish light filled the air. Amero sat up. He was in a shallow, scooped-out hollow in the floor. The depression was full of fir boughs and freshly torn-up grass; some clumps still had dirt clinging to them.

Around him was an enormous cave, a hundred paces along each of its three walls. The curved ceiling must have been sixty paces high. Light entered the cavern from three points. The first was a hole in the ceiling below the apex and facing outward, not straight up. The second was a large circular opening in the outside wall on the extreme left; it was well off the floor, and anyone entering there would have to do considerable climbing just to get down to the cave floor. The last was a small opening on the far right, at floor level, just the right size for a grown man to use. A wall of plunging water screened the view. A waterfall. That accounted for the persistent rumble.

Amero climbed out of the bough-filled pit. His right leg where the yevi had clawed him was still painful, but much less so than before. He forgot his injury as he examined his new surroundings.

The cave walls were unnaturally smooth, without stalactites or stalagmites. The floor in the wide part of the cave – the waterfall side – sloped gradually upward. In the rear, a level platform at least eighty paces wide filled the comer. The only other noteworthy feature was the smell. The cave smelled vaguely sour, like overripe fruit.

Not seeing anyone, Amero limped to the lower, smaller opening and looked out. A column of foaming water thundered down the mountainside, concealing both entrances to the cave. To his astonishment, he found the cave was hundreds of paces above the ground, set in the side of a vertical cliff face. His head swam, and he lurched back from the precipice.

How did I get up here? he wondered. Where was Duranix? There had to be a trail, a passage ascending from the river basin below.

Recovering his nerve, Amero mounted the slope to the rock platform. The face of the platform was curiously notched with long, parallel scratches that served as handy footholds. After scrambling up, he found the upper floor was also hollowed out in the center. And there he found Duranix, lying in this upper-level bowl.

His strange benefactor was curled up in a strange position, his knees bent backward in a way Amero had never seen a human’s legs bend before. Even odder, the floor was littered with peculiar objects, like large tree leaves, only these were stiff and shiny. Amero picked one up. A little bigger than the palm of his hand, it was oval-shaped, heavy, hard, and the red-gold color of autumn leaves. What could it be?

“Rubbish.”

Amero flinched and dropped the object. It rang loudly when it hit the floor. Duranix had rolled over and was watching him, his head propped up on one hand.

“Wh-what?”

“I answered your question,” Duranix said, eyes narrowing. “Those things – they’re rubbish.”

“My question?” Amero’s confusion cleared when he realized the man had overheard his thoughts. Well, he decided, nothing such a powerful spirit-being did should surprise him. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said awkwardly.

“Then don’t think so loudly. I’m bound to hear.” Duranix sat up with a quick, fluid movement Amero found hard to follow.

The strangeness of his host, the unfamiliarity of his surroundings, began to overwhelm him. Backing to the edge of the platform, Amero asked, “How did you get me into this place? We must be a whole day’s climb from the bottom.”

“Three hundred sixty-two paces, as you would measure it,” said Duranix as he rose and stretched. Amero saw there were several of those shiny leaves where Duranix had lain.

Duranix straightened his loincloth and walked down the notched platform ledge. Amero hobbled along at the taller man’s heels, trying to keep up.

“How long have I been here?” Amero asked.

“Since last night.”

Amero stopped dead in his tracks. “But how? We are many days’ journey from the plains. It’s imposs —” The boy cut himself off, once more remembering the ease with which his host had dispatched the yevi.

Duranix offered no explanation. Holding onto the rim of the lower opening, he leaned out toward the waterfall. Spray dampened his short hair. He leaned further and opened his mouth. Water beaded on his face and filled his mouth.

When he’d drunk his fill, Duranix swung back into the cave. His fair skin glistened. He smiled with some secret amusement and said, “Thirsty? There’s no sweeter water in the world than my waterfall.”

Amero was thirsty. He licked his cracked lips and gazed longingly past his host at the tumbling torrent.

“I can’t reach out that far,” he said, shaking his head.

“I’ll help you.” Duranix grabbed Amero by the scruff of his neck and thrust him through the opening. The boy let out a shriek of terror as he saw the distant ground between his feet.

“No! No! Don’t drop me! Please don’t —”

Duranix shoved him into the stream. The water pummeled Amero, and he locked his hands on Duranix’s arm, certain he would be dropped over the edge. However, Duranix never lost hold of him, and after a few heart-stopping moments, he was hauled back inside the cave.

Gasping and sputtering, Amero collapsed on the floor. “Why were you screaming?” Duranix asked. “I would not drop you.”

“The water – too hard – too hard,” the boy choked.

Duranix sighed. “What fragile creatures humans are.” He left Amero coughing and spitting. A moment later he was back with a scrap of dry deer hide and one of those shiny oval leaves. He rolled the hide into a cone and crimped the seam shut by folding the leaf around and pinching it with his fingers. He held this odd object in the edge of the flow of water until the hide hollow was filled. He offered it to Amero.

The boy pushed wet hair out of his face and took the proffered gift. The hide held a double handful of water, and he drank it quickly. The water was cold and pure, with a mineral tang missing from lowland streams.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes closed as he savored the wonderful taste.

His thirst appeased, Amero turned the unusual object around and around in his slender fingers. “You made this?” he marveled.

“It would be foolish to die of thirst within sight of a waterfall.”

Wet through and through, Amero began to shiver, his teeth chattering in the cool air. He returned to his bed of boughs and crawled among them, trying to get warm. The water-catcher he kept firmly in his hand.

Duranix busied himself in the far corner, below the high, larger opening. He returned shortly with an armload of furs and hides.

“Use these as you see fit,” he said, dumping the load beside Amero.

“Where are you going?” The boy’s voice cracked as he asked the question, and Duranix turned slowly toward him, red eyebrows pressed together in a frown. Amero muttered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... I’m sorry.”

Duranix studied him silently for a moment, and Amero hid his embarrassed face by turning to the heap of furs.

“What did you call the animals who attacked you?” the man finally asked.

Amero pulled a thick white ox hide over himself, up to his chin. “Yevi?”

“Well, boy, I must find out how far the yevi have penetrated into my domain.”

“Your domain? Are you... are you the father of the whole plains, Duranix?”

He smiled briefly. “Father? Quaintly put. I am the master of the lands from these mountains west to the forest’s edge.”

“Are there other masters? In the forest?”

Duranix’s handsome face darkened. “There is. He is called Sthenn.”

“Your... brother?”

Duranix folded his arms, looking angry. Then he relaxed and said, “I must remember you have a limited range of expression. Sthenn and I are of the same race, if that’s what you mean.”

“You look like a man, but you do things I’ve never seen any other man do.”

“I sometimes go abroad in human form.”

“Why look like a man if you’re not one?”

Duranix was silent and Amero realized he was asking a great many questions. It was a habit that got him in trouble so often with Oto. The boy bit his lip. It was hard not to voice the questions that filled his head.

However, Duranix did not look annoyed, as Oto so often had. He simply looked thoughtful and replied, “It makes traveling easier for me to appear as a man. Besides, humans amuse me. Most of them are no better than the beasts they hunt and kill.”. He gave Amero a penetrating look. “You’re different though. I see signs in you of higher faculties – intelligence, curiosity, and perhaps something more. You heard the yevi speak. When you think clearly, I can hear your thoughts as loudly as I hear the falls outside.”

Amero felt oddly embarrassed. “I’m just Amero, the son of Oto and Kinar.”

“True, but you are different from your parents and siblings, aren’t you?” Amero hung his head, admitting as much. Duranix added, “You have special abilities. It’s why I brought you here. I want to know more about you.”

Duranix fixed the cape around his shoulders and stood in the lower opening. “I’ll return after sunset.”

Before Amero could protest being left alone in the cave all day, Duranix leaped into space. He plunged through the waterfall and disappeared. Still wrapped in the white ox hide, Amero crawled to the ledge and looked down. There was no sign of his host. The waterfall was more than an arm’s length from the cliff wall, and he could see nothing through the thundering stream but the blue of the sky. While he was gazing down the cliff wall to the boiling pool below, a large shadow passed swiftly over the cave mouth. Amero looked up, but whatever it was had vanished.

He sighed. Though he was pleased at having been rescued from the yevi, Amero thought of his current situation and found himself reminded uncomfortably of a field mouse he’d once captured. He had kept the mouse in a hollow length of cane. He would spend entire evenings playing with the mouse, seeing how it reacted to various things he put in its little home, learning what it would and would not eat. One day he found the mouse was gone – it had gnawed through the bottom of the cane over several nights and run away. Amero, only five at the time, had cried over the loss. Nianki had told him it was only an animal’s nature to want freedom. He was beginning to understand how the mouse must have felt.

Thoughts of his future couldn’t compete very long with the return of his curiosity. He decided to explore the cavern and see what clues he could glean about his mysterious host. If he found food along the way, so much the better.

He began at the lower opening and worked around the cave wall to his left. The floor here was rougher. Hard stone had been gouged out in some way, leaving long troughs in the floor. Each groove was as wide as his hand, and they occurred in close groups of three at a time.

He found more of the oval leaves along the wall, though most were green with mold. Amero tried to bend one, as he’d seen Duranix do. Arms quivering with effort, he managed to put a slight bend in one. How firm they were! He put one on the floor and stomped it, gaining nothing but an aching foot. With a loose stone, he hit the leaf with all his strength. A clear ringing sound echoed through the cave. The blow left a small dent in the leaf and broke off the tip of the stone cleanly.

These things could be useful, he mused. They were already well shaped for digging. He could scrape away a lot of soil with one.

Amero walked slowly along the uneven floor toward the rear of the cave. Aside from loose stones and the odd golden-red leaves, he found little else of interest until he came to Duranix’s sleeping place.

In the corner he discovered a heap of bones, many charred and splintered. This explained the sour smell in the cave. Duranix apparently enjoyed a variety of game, as there were bones of elk, deer, and oxen. Then Amero found something that froze the blood in his veins: a fleshless human skull.

Oto always said the spirits of the dead clung to their bones. That’s why the dead had to be buried. If you left their bones lying around, their ghost would wander the land, doing evil.

Yet there was something pathetic about that dry white lump of bone. Curiosity overcame fear and Amero picked up the skull gingerly. It was big. The jaw had come off, and there wasn’t a shred of meat left on it anywhere. On the back were deep, converging gouges. The bone had splintered there.

Amero put down the skull and wished peace to the spirit of the man who had once inhabited it. He decided not to dig further in the bone pile. He didn’t want to know if other humans had died here, perhaps – he shuddered to think it – eaten by Duranix. He determined to leave the cave as soon as possible. He would find a way to live, maybe even a whole new family. Anything was better than being eaten by – whatever kind of creature Duranix was.

With renewed vigor he searched the platform and all around it, looking for a passage out of the cave. There was none. All he found in the rest of the chamber were a large heap of hides and skins and piles of the hard red-gold “leaves.”

He almost wept with frustration. This high above the ground, how could he get out? He couldn’t fly like a bird, bat, or bug. How did Duranix enter and leave without harm?

Amero recalled his captor’s exit (how quickly Duranix had gone from host to captor in his mind). The strange man put on his long cape and flung himself through the wall of water, vanishing. The cape – why did he need the cape? To keep the water off, or was there a different reason?

Odd images from his flying dream flitted through his mind: rushing over the ground, the wind whipping his hair, the stars racing by. He imagined Duranix spreading his arms like a bird, the cape billowing out behind him like wings. Could a man really fly like that? Amero thought it unlikely. Was there power in the cape, spirit-power? He had no answer for that.

Yet not everything that flew had wings. In the spring, elms and maples cast their seeds on the wind. These fluttered and spun long distances, but they always came to earth somewhere, unbroken. Was that it? Was that the secret of Duranix’s cape?

He scrounged through the hides, looking for a likely scrap. All the pieces were too large. He tried to tear off a portion of pigskin, but it was too tough. He needed a flint knife or some other sharp stone.

The cavern was hollowed out of a sandstone cliff. All the loose pieces of sandstone on the floor, though good for polishing the bark off a spear shaft, were incapable of holding a sharp edge.

The strange leaves, Duranix’s so-called rubbish, were certainly hard and fairly thin. Amero tried sawing at a hide with the edge of one, but the leaf was too dull. Taking up a palm-sized chunk of sandstone, Amero scraped one side of the leaf, trying to hone it thinner and sharper.

It worked very well. After a few minutes’ work, he cut his thumb on the resulting edge. Bleeding but triumphant, Amero quickly sliced out a piece of hide, which would make a cape for him comparable in size to Duranix’s.

Even after his success in cutting the hide, Amero couldn’t bring himself to tie on the cape and leap off the cliff. Perhaps he should test his idea first.

He slashed out a smaller piece of buckskin, more square, and cut a few strips of hide as thongs. An elk skull, antlers still attached, would serve to give weight to his experiment. He tied the skull to the hide with four thongs, one to each comer of the buckskin. Amero carried this odd-looking assembly to the opening. Taking a deep breath, he rolled it over the edge.

The elk skull dropped, snapping the four thongs taut. The square of buckskin filled with air and billowed up. Swinging gently back and forth, the strange contraption drifted down the side of the cliff very slowly indeed.

Amero’s heart raced. It worked!

Then the floating skull humped into the cliff wall, swung away, and got caught in the downdraft of the falls. As soon as the plunging water hit the hide, it collapsed and went tumbling into the permanent bank of mist at the foot of the falls.

Amero sat back, shaken. Yes, it could be done, but only if he kept away from the waterfall. That’s why Duranix had leaped through the water. He was able to do it because he was preternaturally strong. If Amero tried it and failed, he wouldn’t have long to mourn his lack of success.

The cave was growing brighter. Sunlight had crept up the cliff all morning and now was shining through the waterfall into the recesses of the cave. The pulsating, blue-tinged light threw everything in the chamber into strong relief, including the human skull Amero had found. The white bone shell glowed in the midday light, and the sight of it galvanized Amero to action.

With his tool he cut wide strips of hide and tied his ankles and wrists to the ox skin he’d chosen. He gathered the hide to his chest and waddled to the lower opening. At the last moment he stuck the sharpened gold leaf into the waist of his loincloth. His heart thudded painfully in his chest. He cast one look back at the skull. Empty eye sockets gave him the encouragement he needed.

Amero sprang from the rim with all the force his legs could give. He hit the waterfall, and for a fleeting moment felt the power of the roaring column of water. Then he was tumbling through open air, head over heels. He opened his eyes and saw the sun and clifftop careen past. He let go of the hide and it fluttered and flopped like a living thing. Down he plummeted. He rolled over on his back to get away from the flailing ox skin. It caught the air and filled. Amero was jerked upward, snatched painfully by his wrists and ankles. His fall slowed greatly, but he was still going down fast enough to make the wind whistle in his ears. Worse, he was tumbling backward and couldn’t see where he was going – he saw only the ox hide above him.

It was difficult shifting the hide straps around his wrists, but he managed to flop over on his stomach. He wished he hadn’t. Below was the lake of the falls, rushing toward him at sickening speed. Amero opened his mouth and screamed.

He was still screaming when he hit the water. It felt almost as hard as hitting the ground. The air was driven from his chest and water rushed into his mouth and nose. Kicking furiously, he tried to rise to the surface, only to find his progress blocked by the sinking ox hide.

Nianki had been a better swimmer than he, a fact he regretted as he struggled to free himself. A painful poke in the ribs reminded him of his new tool. He drew it and cut the four straps. Kicking away from the confining hide, Amero broke the surface a few paces away.

He dragged himself ashore on a sandy spit. As he lay on his back gasping for air, Amero could see the dark circular openings in the cliff face behind the waterfall. They were so high up, yet here he was, alive on the ground!

Amero sat up and winced. His ribs ached. He had cuts on his hands and chest from the sharp tool, but none of that mattered. He was free again! It was time to put as much distance as possible between himself and Duranix. When sunset came and the strange spirit-man returned, would he come looking for Amero? Or, like a wise fisherman, would he not waste time on one that got away?

Amero hefted the golden tool. What this thing needed was a handle of some kind, some way to carry it so he wouldn’t get cut all the time. Maybe a split shaft, like Nianki’s hunting club had?

Amero went to the water’s edge and waded along the shore. The outflow from the falls would obscure his footprints in the sandy bottom and make it harder for Duranix to track him. With luck, he could be far away before sunset.

Luck was not with him, however. The terrain around the lake was rugged. There were no trails, and in making his own way, Amero had to tread on rocks and gravel washed down the ravine by winter rains. The sharp shards bit into his feet, drawing blood. He’d gone barefoot all his life, and his feet were tough, but he’d never had to contend with conditions like this.

When the sun started to dip below the surrounding mountain peaks, Amero was still within sight of the waterfall. Desperation made him careless. He abandoned the shaded slope of the valley and jogged down to the floor of the ravine.

It was more level there, so the going was easier, but he was in plain sight of anyone on the high ground around him.

The trees in the area were mostly pines and oaks, very tall and widely spaced. A flock of starlings flew over, and the dark shadow they cast frightened Amero into the bushes. When he saw the birds wheel about and return, he emerged from hiding.

“You! Stop!”

He spun around and saw four men rushing toward him. They looked like plainsmen, except they wore more clothing. They were all of an age, four or five seasons older than Amero, and alike enough to be brothers. They ringed him with leveled spears. One, whose dark hair was plaited into a single thick braid, shouted, “Stand still, or we’ll kill you!”

“Please!” Amero said. “I have nothing! I’ve done nothing!”

“You came from the lake of the falls, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but —” Amero began, and found four spears pressed into his chest and back.

“I thought so!” said the man with the braid. “You’re the monster who lives in the cave behind the falls.”

“No, I’m not! I escaped from the cave today.”

Another of the men, with a large black mole on his cheek, shook his spear and scoffed, “Oh, yes? And how did you do that?”

“I used an ox hide —” Amero stopped his explanation abruptly. He had floated down beneath an ox hide. It was the truth, but it didn’t sound like the truth. Indeed, it sounded ridiculous.

“We’ve seen you fly in and out of the cave, monster, and we know you can take on human shape. You’ve killed off all the elk and deer in this range. Our children go hungry!” The man with the braid raised his voice, his face reddening with rage. “And what did you do with our father, Genta? Last autumn he went hunting for you and never came back!”

The skull in Duranix’s cave had belonged to a big man, he suddenly remembered. All four of the hunters – all four brothers – were head and shoulders taller than Amero.

“I’m not the monster,” he insisted. “I was taken captive by Duranix – that’s his name – but I escaped. I dived into the lake and swam ashore. My name is Amero, son of Oto and Kinar.”

“Don’t lie to us, dragon!”

Dragon? The word meant nothing to Amero. “No,” he insisted, “my name is Amero.”

Two of the hunters prodded him from behind. Amero staggered forward, stung by the sharp spear points. The angry hunters might kill him at any time. He pointed to his cut and abraded feet and held out his scraped hands.

“Look at me!” he declared. “I bleed, as you do. Does your monster bleed? Is dragon’s blood red?”

Mole-face grasped his hand, running a callused thumb over Amero’s lacerated palm. “Feels like a girl’s hand,” he muttered.

Amero snatched his hand back indignantly. “I’m not the monster you seek, but he is returning at dusk from his day’s hunt. We should get away from here, quickly, before he finds us.”

The brothers had a loud debate over what to do. The eldest, the one with the braid, was called Annom. He wanted to kill Amero just in case he was the dragon. Mole-face, called Hatu by the others, had a sounder idea. They would tie up Amero and hide, watching the cave to see if Duranix returned. If he did, then Amero’s story would have more weight. Perhaps he would swoop down and they could capture him. If he didn’t return, they would know Amero was actually Duranix and could cut his throat then.

The brothers agreed on Hatu’s plan. They lashed Amero’s hands behind his back with a length of vine and shoved him into the brush. Hatu cut a leafy bough and used it to erase their tracks in the sand. The two younger brothers, Ramay and Nebo, crouched on either side of Amero, their spears digging into the boy’s ribs. Annom scanned the sky a while, then joined the others under cover.

The sun sank behind the western ridge, painting the highest peaks crimson and pink. Twilight came and shadows lengthened. The sky remained clear.

When Soli, the white moon, appeared in a notch between the northern peaks, Annom cleared his throat.

“The dragon has lied to us.”

They hauled Amero out and threw him to his knees. Annom drew back his spear.

“Wait!” Amero cried shrilly. “I’m not your monster!”

“Enough lies! Before I kill you, tell me what happened to our father!”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to this valley before in my life! I am Amero, son of Oto and Kinar, brother of Nianki and Menni —”

Hatu snorted loudly in disbelief. Annom flexed strong fingers around the shaft of his spear and prepared to cast.

I’m going to die! was Amero’s horrified thought.

Though flushed with terror-driven heat, Amero suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. The cooling twilight air vibrated, as from distant thunder. The boy turned his head, suddenly realizing what was coming.

Annom apparently felt nothing out of the ordinary, but merely stared coldly at him. “Die, monster,” he said.

Amero shook his head. “Too late,” he whispered.

An invisible hand swept down the ravine, throwing everyone to the ground. Amero found it hard to rise with his hands bound, but the four brothers were up in an instant. They formed a circle, all facing outward.

Duranix came strolling out of the encroaching shadows, his cape draped over one arm. The three younger brothers uttered cries of amazement. Without a word, Annom hurled his spear. Duranix deflected it with a mere wave of his hand.

“You! How did you get down here?” Duranix demanded of Amero. Hatu lined up to charge him while the others covered Amero with their spears.

“I jumped,” the boy replied wearily. His fear of Duranix had not abated, but he knew he’d lost his chance of escape.

Hold your breath. Duranix’s thought reverberated in Amero’s head. Wisely, the boy asked no questions but did as he was told.

Hatu, yelling loudly, charged with spear leveled. Duranix awaited his attack with complete calm. When the big plainsman was just six steps away, Duranix opened his mouth and blew in the direction of his attacker.

Hatu staggered and stopped. The heavy spear fell from his hands. He backed a few steps, rubbing his eyes. Duranix inhaled deeply and blew again. Hatu’s face went white with fear. He broke and ran. So did Nebo and Ramay. Only Annom remained, kneeling in the dirt, tears of futility flowing down his cheeks.

Duranix hauled Amero to his feet and pulled his bonds apart as though they were nothing. Then he grabbed Annom by his thick braid and pulled him to his feet.

“I’m trying to understand human behavior,” Duranix said, “so I won’t kill you – this time. But this boy is under my protection, do you hear? If any harm comes to him, I’ll kill every human in the six valleys of the lake. Nod your head if you understand me.” After an angry, frightened moment of stiffness, Annom nodded once. Duranix flung the big man aside.

Annom stumbled away in the direction his brothers had fled.

“You’re a great deal of trouble, Amero,” Duranix said, planting his hands on his hips. “Why did you leave the cave?”

“I had no food,” he replied warily, “and I didn’t know what you planned to do to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found bones in the cave.” Amero took a deep breath. “Some of them were human.”

“Oh.” Duranix picked up Annom’s spear and examined the workmanship. “I did eat that man.”

Amero’s heart skipped a beat. “He was the father of those four hunters. His name was Genta.”

“Really? Strange. Even meals have names to you humans.”

Trembling, Amero flung a hand out at Duranix. “Are you... are you a dragon?”

“So you learned a new word! And what is a dragon?”

“Some kind of monster that eats people!” Amero folded his hands into his armpits, hunching his body as though in pain. “Is that what you have planned for me?”

Duranix pressed his hand to his chest. “I give you my word, Amero, I will not eat you,” he vowed solemnly. After a second’s hesitation, he added, “At least, not without considerable provocation.” He laughed, but Amero found no humor in his words.

Serious once more, Duranix said, “Let me tell you a story, a story about a monster and a human hunter.

“I was born far to the east on another mountain, but I’ve lived in this mountain range for over three hundred years, as you count them. For a long time I dwelled peacefully in this valley, sleeping in the open, confident no beast would dare disturb me. One day last fall – a magnificent day, too, the morning after the first frost – I woke to find a flint spear in my throat. It was a small wound, but no one had ever hurt me before – no one but another dragon, that is. Surprised, I lashed out and caught the one who was daring and stupid enough to attack me while I slumbered. It was this fur-wearing human. He was big for his race, with copper-colored hair and a beard to match. I was about to bite his head off when I was seized with curiosity. Why had he attacked me? I’d done nothing to him. I held him in one foreclaw and squeezed until he stopped struggling and cursing at me.

“‘What do you think you’re up to, little one?’ I asked.

“‘Ridding the valley of a monster,’ he replied boldly.

“‘Monster? Me?’ I’d never been addressed as such. I asked him what made me a monster. His answer was badly phrased, but in essence he claimed I was an unnatural creature, who did not belong in the world of men and beasts.

“‘Men are beasts,’ I pointed out, with inescapable logic. ‘You think because you walk upright and make tools of stone you’re better than other animals?’

“‘Men were created by the Great Spirits to be like them and represent them in this world,’ he avowed stubbornly. Monsters, he told me, were an affront to the Great Spirits’ purpose.

“I earnestly wanted to know more about this belief of his, because if it were widespread, then my peaceful life would soon be over. Packs of smelly, hairy men would be hunting me and my kind wherever we chose to dwell. As I bore no particular ill-will toward humans, I wanted to understand the irrational hatred he seemed to have for me.”

“Did he explain?” the boy asked, caught up in the tale.

Duranix jabbed the spear into the stony ground, burying half the length of the shaft. “No, he did not,” he said peevishly. “He went back to cursing me. I kept him captive for some days while I enlarged the natural cave behind the waterfall as a safe haven for myself. After it was ready I brought him there and released him from his bonds. The first night, he tried to assault me with a stone. I broke his skull.” Duranix sighed. “I didn’t really mean to. Humans are so frail.”

“And then you – ate him?”

He shrugged. “Later, yes. I was hungry, and it seemed a shame to waste him. If it’s any consolation to you, he didn’t taste very good. Humans are too stringy. Elk are much to be preferred.”

Soli was well up in the star-flecked sky. Its clean, cold light made the sand and gravel look like snow.

“What did you do to the hunters?” Amero asked after a moment of silence. “Why did they run away?”

“I can exhale a gas that engenders extreme trepidation in those who inhale it.” Amero regarded him blankly. Duranix added, “My breath causes fear.”

The boy nodded slowly. He looked away, staring silently at the landscape and pondering what he’d heard. Duranix remained quiet as well.

At last, the dragon said, “I want you to stay, Amero, but I won’t compel you. You can walk away now if you wish, and I won’t stop you.”

“If I stay, what will happen?” Amero asked warily.

“How should I know? Am I one of your Great Spirits? The future is a day no one has seen yet.” Duranix scratched the ground with his foot. “As I said, I think we can learn from each other. More humans arrive on the plains and in the mountains every season. If I’m to live among them, I think we’d better understand each other, don’t you?”

After only a moment’s reflection, Amero nodded. “I will stay,” he said simply.

He started walking down the draw toward the lake. Duranix called for him to wait.

“One more thing. I’ve used this human form to avoid frightening you. I modeled it after the man I caught – you said his name was Genta? I want you to see how I really look, Amero. Let that be the first step on our path together.” Duranix walked a ways up the ravine and stopped. He spread his arms wide and threw his head back. In the blink of an eye he swelled several times in size and lost his human coloring. Dropping down on all fours, his arms became thick, muscular forelegs with three massive claws and a single rear toe. His torso spread until it was wider than any man’s. He had huge, powerful rear legs, bent in a graceful curve like the haunches of a panther. A tail, a good five paces long and ending with a barbed tip, curled up behind his back and scraped the valley walls.

Amero felt a sensation almost like heat. Unmasked, Duranix shed a sort of radiance the boy could feel. It was like the sun on a cold day – a warmth that felt both good and strong. Or was it a cool breeze on a hot day – except the breeze left no sensation of movement? For a moment, Amero was dazed, dazzled. He stepped forward, hand outstretched, numbed by the dragon’s presence.

The most arresting feature of Duranix the dragon was his head. More angular than a snake’s, the reptilian skull was huge and wide. Barbels hung down from its chin, and yellow membranes flickered sideways back and forth across eyes whose pupils were vertical slits.

Breath from the dragon’s nostrils – each as wide as a stout tree trunk – raised swirls of dust at Amero’s feet. Across his brow were two upswept horns, matched by a larger set curving back from the broad crown of his head. From nose to tail Duranix was at least fifteen paces long, and he was covered in oval, overlapping, shiny red-gold scales.

When the transformation was complete, Amero staggered, as though released from a powerful hold. He pulled his makeshift tool from his waist and stared at it. His tool, and the strange things in the cave he’d called leaves, were actually the dragon’s scales. Duranix must shed a few every day, the way a man left hairs where he lay.

“You’re the stormbird!” he exclaimed in awe. “I saw you flying through the clouds the night before you saved me from the yevi!”

Duranix cocked his huge head. “Stormbird, eh?” he said. “I like that. Much more elegant than ‘dragon.’”

Duranix’s chest heaved. He thrust his serpentine neck forward until his massive head was less than an arm’s length from Amero’s wide eyes. The effect was so terrifying Amero’s knees failed and he sat down hard.

The dragon opened his mouth, revealing wickedly curved fangs. It took Amero a heart-pounding moment to realize that Duranix was actually grinning at him.

“What do you think of me now?” the creature asked. The voice was still recognizably his, but the sheer power of it, even at a whisper, rattled Amero’s teeth.

The boy opened his mouth but no sound came out, so he swallowed and began again. “I hope we shall always be friends.”

Duranix snorted. Dirt and pebbles flew. He hoisted his head high and said, “Come! I want hear how you escaped from the cave on your own. You have much ingenuity for a human!”

“Could I eat first?” Amero asked faintly.

“Of course! I spotted a herd of mountain goats in the third valley on my way here. Do you like goat?” Amero nodded. He was hungry enough at this moment to eat dragon.

Duranix seized him in his left foreclaw. The grip was irresistible, yet surprisingly gentle. Long narrow wings unfolded from his back. They stretched upward, and without waiting for further comment, Duranix launched into the air with a single massive leap. Amero nearly fainted from the shock of his powerful ascent. The ground dropped away with a rush.

As the dragon flapped his wings to gain altitude, Amero took in deep breaths to calm his pounding heart. The dizziness faded. The stars wheeled overhead and wind whipped at his long hair. Amero knew a sudden urge to shout with joy. He wanted to savor every moment of his first conscious flight.

It was a memory he would long cherish.

Chapter 5

Days passed, then weeks.

With some idea of finding her mother’s people, Nianki put the morning sun on her left, the setting sun on her right, and followed ancient trails across plain and woodland. She was going where she had never been, which Oto had taught her was never wise, and she was alone. Walking by night under a vault of stars, she felt at times like the last woman alive. She passed dark campsites under the white moon’s gleam, finding nothing in them but broken weapons and scraps of clothing stained with blood. Hidden eyes seemed to follow her progress, but no one attacked her. Pakito’s short spear saw to that.

Twenty times she saw Soli rise and set, and on the twenty-first morning she came to a wide river she couldn’t easily ford. It flowed west to east, unlike the rivers in her home range. More proof the world was upside down! Nianki tracked along the river bank a full day without finding a place to cross, then gave up and swam to the other side.

The river turned south, so Nianki followed it until she came to the sea. She’d heard about the sea from Kinar, who’d seen it often as a child. Kinar described it as an endless lake, stretching from horizon to horizon, so vast one could not see the opposite shore. She also shared the stories of her coastal ancestors, stories of fearsome monsters that dwelled in the depths, and of massive, deadly tempests lasting for days, scourging the sea and land.

One hot day in late summer, Nianki arrived at a high headland and beheld the sea. Though it was fully as big as she’d been told, she saw no sign on its calm green-blue waters of sea monsters or storms.

There were, however, many people. She began to encounter increasing numbers of strangers – almost thirty by the time she reached the sea. This was more human company than Nianki had ever seen at one time in her life. The climate was mild, and the local folk seemed placid and accepting. Small hands of centaurs moved among them without rancor, a state of affairs new to Nianki. On the high savanna, plainsfolk and centaurs were competitors, and both were wary of strangers. Unnerved by the crowds, Nianki kept to herself, making contact only when she needed to barter for food.

The coast was rich in forage and game, even with the large number of people about. Much of the provender was strange to her. Fish she knew, but some of the other things the locals ate – like shellfish, crabs, and seaweed – disgusted her. For some days she subsisted on rabbit and wild strawberries, supplemented by fish she obtained in return for mending a local man’s nets.

Gradually her wounds healed, her body grew strong, and she was able to hunt. As the seaside sun baked her skin even darker, the scars stood out as bold streaks and splotches. Nianki wore her marks with pride. She’d won them by surviving, surpassing even her father’s toughness.

Her harsh appearance proved to be an asset in dealing with others. People saw the scars on her face, neck, and arm and knew they were in the presence of a hunter and fighter, not merely some man’s abandoned mate. For herself, the scars also served as tangible memorials of her lost family. Each healed bite, each ragged tear, kept the memory of her father, mother, and brothers alive.

Despite the easy climate and plentiful food here on the coastal plain, every day Nianki saw families large and small leaving, trudging north. At first she gave it no thought, but when she realized they moved even during the punishing heat of midday when sensible folk took their ease, she began to wonder at the reason.

She was sleeping one night within sight of the beach when the sound of footfalls woke her. Snatching up her spear, Nianki rose swiftly to one knee, ready to strike. Instead of marauding four-footed beasts, she found herself faced by a family of four – an old, white-bearded man, a stocky woman of some thirty seasons, and two children – a boy and girl of six and eight. They carried food and water on a pair of willow-withe travois, the woman dragging one, the children the other.

“Peace to you,” said the old man, holding up both hands to show they were empty. “We didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Where are you going?” Nianki asked.

“The mountains,” said the woman, eyeing the scarred girl warily. “As we must every summer.”

Nianki lowered her spear. “Now? There are beasts abroad in the night.”

“We should have left days ago, but the boy was sick with a flux.” As she spoke, the woman kept sidling away. Nianki moved in front of her, blocking her path.

“I’m a stranger to these parts,” said Nianki. “If there’s danger, I want to know.”

The woman’s eyes darted back and forth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“When I arrived, people were thick as tadpoles here. Now everyone’s leaving. What are you frightened of?”

“The Good People,” chimed the girl child.

“Shh!” hissed the old man. “Don’t speak their name!”

“Who are ‘the good people’?” Nianki demanded.

The woman tried to barge past. Nianki grabbed her arm. The old man moved to break Nianki’s hold, but he found her spear point pressed into his throat. The young boy dropped his side of the travois and started to cry.

“Be still!” Nianki barked. Her fierce shout startled the boy enough that he subsided to a sniffle. The woman remained rooted where she stood, eyes downcast.

“You,” Nianki said to the old man. “Talk.”

His jaw worked. “Every summer, the Good People come here from the east. They are powerful in spirit, but difficult to deal with. Some use their wisdom to help and heal us. Others treat us like game and hunt us for sport, so every summer we leave the shore and travel to the mountains.”

“What do they look like?”

“They are comely people, graceful and lightly made, yet strong. Their color is not like ours – their skin is very fair, and their hair like a dandelion’s. They wear strange bright clothing and command beasts to do their bidding.”

It sounded like a fable, but they were obviously terrified of something. Nianki moved her spear from the old man’s neck.

“Be off,” she said.

“You’d best leave, too,” the woman warned. “The Good People are not to be trusted. They could take your head for a trophy, as they did my poor mate’s three summers past.”

“I’m fairly warned. Go.”

The children picked up their poles and tugged the travois. Their mother bent her back and pushed on ahead, breaking the trail for them. The old man lingered.

“Fifteen summers past I’d have fought you for this,” he said, fingering the mark on his throat Nianki’s spear made.

“Fifteen summers past I fought only for my mother’s milk.”

He scowled as he hurried after his family. The old man limped badly, hips rocking from side to side as he walked. He must have taken a bad fall once, and the bones had never set properly.

Nianki moved her camp in case the old hunter decided to double back and visit her while she slept. She laid a circle of twigs on the ground around her, overlapping them. If anyone tried to creep up on her, she’d hear them when they trod on the brittle wood.

The remainder of the night passed peacefully. Dawn broke hot and hazy, and Nianki was awakened by itching all over her body. From the welts on her ribs and legs, she knew she’d been found by a host of sand fleas.

She searched wide and far for a stream to bathe in, but fresh water was sadly lacking in the pine barrens above the beach. Scratching furiously, she resolved to wash in the sea. She had never before dared immerse herself in the sea, but it was the only body of water around large enough to cover her, and she couldn’t bear the terrible burning itch – the fleas had even invaded her hair.

Down to the beach she went, shedding her clothes. The cold surf felt wonderful on her tormented skin, and she plunged in head first.

Surfacing, she spat water, surprised by the salty tang. The bites stung a bit, but the itching rapidly subsided. She held her head under for as long as she could stand to drown the miserable insects. When she popped up again, she heard voices coming from the beach.

Far down the shore was a sizable party, twelve or thirteen people with animals. The beasts were easier to make out than the people – tall, four-legged creatures, built like elk but less bulky and without antlers. The animals were walking in the midst of the people, tame and docile.

A screech overhead alerted her to the presence of a falcon. It circled the beach in advance of the party, its shrill cry audible above the churning waves. The bird of prey swooped down on the people and animals, coming to land – she was astonished to note – on the arm of one of the men.

Nianki was eight paces from the beach, treading water. Swimming in the surf was tiring, and the cold water sapped the strength in her legs. Early twinges of cramp warned her to seek land. She swam slowly toward shore, keeping her head down and aiming for her pile of clothes. Her short spear was underneath them.

The mixed band of men and animals was approaching rapidly. They were too close now for Nianki to emerge from the water and not be seen. On closer inspection, she counted twelve men and four of the long-legged beasts. Two of the men were actually riding astride the backs of two of the animals, and the creatures didn’t seem to mind. Words spoken by the old man last night floated into her head: They wear strange clothing and command beasts to do their bidding. Were these the Good People everyone feared?

The strangers’ clothing was indeed odd. Instead of faded brown buckskin or tawny hides, they wore smooth, flowing garments, green as leaves. Some wore hoods on their heads of the same green material. Six of the men on foot carried very long spears, and on their heads something shiny caught the light and flashed.

The lead figure pointed and said something unintelligible in a loud voice. Nianki followed his rigid finger to her discarded clothing. The spear carriers ran forward as the foremost figure dug through her pile of clothes, locating her spear in the process.

By this time she was lying on her stomach in very shallow water. Waves were breaking over her head, and a nagging cramp clutched at her right calf. Why didn’t they move on? It was just a pile of clothes and a short spear – or were they looking for the owner?

She pushed herself backward into deeper water. Cramp or no cramp, she could swim past the interlopers and leave the water behind them, out of sight. Nianki paddled along slowly, parallel to the shore.

“Ay-ha!” One of the mounted men had spotted her. Those on foot came back on the double. A spearman cast his weapon. It fell harmlessly short. The other mounted man spoke sharply to the spear carriers, who fell into line and remained in place as Nianki swam away.

They weren’t pursuing her, but the two riders were. Nianki cursed their ingenuity. They had the use of their animals’ longer legs and greater strength. Even swimming as hard as she could, she couldn’t outdistance strong animals.

She tried trickery. Diving, she swam a few paces in the same direction, then doubled back. When she came up for air, she saw the two riders had split up to cover both directions. They hadn’t left their mother’s arms yesterday, these two.

The cramp in her leg was getting worse. Nianki struggled to keep her head up. A few paces in, it was shallow enough for her to stand on her good leg, but the waves kept pounding her. One especially large roller lifted her off her feet and sent her tumbling onto the beach. In a flash, she was up and heading for the trees as fast as her hopping gait could take her. The strangers shouted to each other in their unknown tongue.

Leg burning with every stride, Nianki gritted her teeth and kept going. Halfway to the dunes her right leg seized completely, and she fell. Immediately she was surrounded by slender hoofed legs.

Coiling her good leg beneath her, Nianki sprang up so suddenly that one of the animals shied away, almost tossing its rider to the sand. Before Nianki could exploit this, a heavy net was thrown over her, and she went down again, tangled in its folds.

Somebody hit her with a wooden spear shaft. More blows followed until a clear, authoritative voice rang out and the beating stopped. Several pairs of hands dragged Nianki upright and pulled the net away from her head. Quaking with rage, Nianki found herself staring at a ring of spear points.

“Be still, and no one will hurt you,” said a calm voice.

The speaker was sitting atop one of the animals. By his age and demeanor, she decided he was the father of the other louts.

“Let me go!” she demanded angrily. “Why do you attack me?”

The speaker said something to his companions in their incomprehensible tongue. They laughed. Nianki worked her hands through the folds of the net and with a few furious shakes, managed to loosen it enough that it fell to the sand around her. Alarmed, the spear carriers shoved their weapons close to her face and chest.

The speaker raised his hand and bade them stop. In the midst of her peril, Nianki was struck by the fact the man’s hands were covered in supple hide, cleverly made to encase each finger separately. His eyes were remarkably large and an arresting shade, bright blue like the sky. He mopped his brow with his sleeve and threw back the hood from his head. Nianki gaped. His ears were bizarrely malformed – tall and pointed. There was no doubt in her mind now. These must be the ones the family had called the Good People. Trouble was, she didn’t think they were people at all.

“Do you understand me?” he asked. She nodded curtly. “My name is Balif, of House Protector, first warrior of Silvanos, lord of all the elves.”

“Words, words, words,” Nianki muttered.

“None of which mean anything to you, I know. Do you have a name?” She maintained a sullen silence. He asked again just as genially.

“Nianki,” she said, biting her name into three hard syllables. “You are the Good People.”

Her words amused Balif, and he said something in his own language to his comrades. They laughed again and she realized he must have translated the phrase for them. To Nianki he said, “Is that what humans call elves?”

“I don’t know ‘elves,’ but you’re the only Good People I’ve met.” She began to feel chilled, sitting naked on the sand. “Well, what will you do? Ravish me, or just take my head as trophy?”

Balif actually looked startled. His sky-colored eyes widened in shock. “Nothing of the sort. Give the human her clothes.”

Sandy buckskins were thrown at her feet. Nianki stood up under the strangers’ gaze, and donned her clothes. One or two comments were made, and she was just as glad not to know what had been said.

Hardly had she cinched the bone buckle around her waist when her arms were seized and a wide collar clamped around her neck. It was cold, hard, and smooth, and try as she might, she couldn’t loosen it. Her captors tied a strong cord to a ring on the front of the collar.

“What is this?” she yelled, pulling at the collar. “What are you doing?”

“I am here on a mission for my lord,” said Balif, turning his beast away. “You will not be harmed if you come peacefully.”

He spoke in his own language, and the elves on foot formed themselves two by two and walked in step back up the beach. The other riding elf was given the end of Nianki’s tether, which he tied to his wrist. He and Balif bumped their heels against their animals’ flanks and rode on.

Nianki dug in her own heels. Her determination, though powerful, was no match for the strength of the long-legged beasts. She was jerked abruptly forward and had to flail about wildly to regain her balance.

She was forced to jog to keep up. The cramp had eased, but her right leg was still sore. Cursing loud and long, she struggled to maintain the pace. If she slowed or fell, she knew she’d be dragged.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded breathlessly.

“To our camp, a few leagues from here,” Balif replied.

“What’s ‘league’?”

“Five thousand, one hundred paces,” he said, which was no help at all. Nianki had never had cause to count much above a hundred, so the number meant no more to her than the strange word.

“Why are you doing this?” she said, after abandoning the puzzle of distance. “I’ve done no wrong to you.”

“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.”

His easy superiority enraged her. “Yes, I would!”

He pulled back on the lines tied to his animal’s mouth. It stopped immediately. The walking elves halted as well. Nianki decided this Balif must be a stern father. Men and animals alike obeyed him rigidly.

“This territory has been claimed by my lord Silvanos. It will be added to his realm. You wandering barbarians will be expelled from the land east of the Kharolis River, in order that elves can be settled here. Those humans resisting us will be killed. Those captured, like yourself, will be taken to a camp north of here and held until it is determined whether or not you carry lethal diseases. If you’re fit, you’ll be marched to the central plain and released, on condition you never return to our land.”

She understood the words, but the ideas behind them made no sense to her. Land was what you lived on. It wasn’t a thing you could grasp in your hand, like a stone or a spear. How could anyone claim it? The one thing she did clearly comprehend was that they intended to hold her against her will.

The why of it eluded her. Among her people it sometimes happened that men took women as mates against their wills, or a dishonest hunter might covet and take another’s weapon, but this capture baffled her. She had nothing of value the elves could covet, and Balif’s reaction when she’d asked if he intended to ravish her dispelled any notion of lust on his part. For all she knew, Good People weren’t even made like men and women under their clothes.

Still, she had no intention of being led around on a string. Surrounded by the elves with their animals and spears, there wasn’t much she could do at the moment, but she wagered that even the Good People had to sleep sometime.

As she jogged along between the animals, she passed the time by studying her captors. The old man’s words were true and false. The elves – she decided not to think of them as “Good People” any longer – weren’t ugly, though their slenderness and light coloring made them unlike any plainsmen she’d ever seen. They were abundantly clever, with their smooth clothes, bright adornments, and tame animals, but Nianki saw no sign of special spirit-power in them. The spear carriers sweated in the heat as they tramped along behind the riders. They obviously feared her strength and fleetness if they resorted to a collar and cord to restrain her. No, they were strong in cleverness, but not in spirit-power, and that meant she could fight them.

The morning was gone when they reached a shallow valley lined with heavy scrub. On the other side, a dense forest loomed. The ancient trees grew so large and close that it looked like nothing larger than a fox could enter. The elves seemed pleased to see the forest, and Nianki deduced they lived within it.

An animal-borne elf arrived and spoke excitedly to Balif. With broad sweeps of his arm, Balif ordered his sons to follow the new rider as he galloped into the valley. Nianki called to him as he was about to follow them.

“Balif! Where do you go?”

“More of your kind have been flushed from the ravine. We’re going to round them up,” he said. His animal pranced and snorted, anxious to go. “I leave you with Tamanithas. We shall return shortly.”

“Think your son is up to it?” she retorted.

His high brow arched still higher. “Son?”

“These fellows are your sons, yes? That’s why they follow you and do your bidding.”

Balif steered his animal in a half-circle. “These are my retainers. They are not of my blood.” He galloped after the departed spear carriers.

Alone with the other rider, Tamanithas, Nianki promptly sat down. The elf eyed her with a haughty expression. He uttered a short, no doubt uncomplimentary, phrase.

“Don’t jabber at me,” she said crossly. His response was to wrap her cord around his hand a few more turns. “What kind of hunter are you, anyway, who follows not his father but a stranger? Do you even know who your father is?”

He snapped a single word at her, probably the elf equivalent of “shut up.” Nianki noted his irritation and was pleased. She leaned forward slightly and let the cord fall slack on the ground. With a surreptitious shove of her foot, she pushed the cord toward the animal’s left rear foot. She didn’t think the creature’s hoof was sharp enough to cut the cord, but if Tamanithas was a little careless, she’d have the better of him yet.

“Good People? I laugh! You elves are no better than the hunting pack that gave me these!” She waved a hand over her scars. “Look how many of you it took to catch a lone woman swimming in the sea!”

The elf glowered, repeating his command. Nianki spat in the dust.

“You think you can possess the land itself? Why, if you got down off that beast and faced me, I’d wring your neck like a rabbit’s.” She illustrated her remarks by placing her fists one atop the other and making twisting gestures.

Tamanithas shouted and pulled a weapon from a wooden sheath hanging from his waist. The weapon was like a knife, but it was as long as his arm and made of the same hard shiny stuff as her collar and the hard shells the marching elves wore on their heads. There was no mistaking the purpose of the thing’s wicked point, which he waved in front of her face with harsh imprecations.

The elf turned his animal a quarter-turn to the left in order to present his weapon. That was the move Nianki had been hoping for. The animal stepped over the slack cord. She took the line in both hands and jerked hard.

Tamanithas’s mount felt the cord binding its hind leg and tried to shuffle out of it. Nianki dug in her heels and pulled harder. The elf shouted at her. By now the beast’s legs were hopelessly tangled, and with a loud squeal, it toppled over. Tamanithas was thrown face first to the ground.

Nianki tried to leap on the elf’s unguarded back, but the cord pulled her up short and she couldn’t reach him. The animal thrashed its legs and tried to stand. Braving the broad hooves, Nianki wrapped several lengths of cord around its legs. She looked at the fallen elf. He wasn’t moving.

With some stretching, she was able to retrieve his weapon. It was sharper than flint and cut the cord to her neck easily. Nianki rolled Tamanithas over. He’d hit the ground hard. His nose was bloody and he’d probably spit out a few teeth, but he breathed. She thought briefly of dispatching him with his own weapon, but since the elves hadn’t harmed her when they could easily have killed her, she spared him.

The animal continued to struggle and bellow. Nianki feared the noise would draw the others back, so she clipped the cord tangling its legs, and the beast reared up, rolling its eyes and looking highly indignant. Nianki spread her arms and shouted, “Hai! Hai!” The creature pivoted on its hind legs and bolted through the trees.

She ran in the opposite direction, east. The elves would expect her to run west or north, toward open country.

Down she went into the scrub-filled valley. Saplings and underbrush were so thick she couldn’t work up any speed. The elves’ animals couldn’t follow into these dense thickets, but pursuers on foot certainly could. She zigzagged through the trees. When fallen logs or hanging vines were available, she traveled across them, leaving a much less obvious trail.

Nianki ran until the land began to rise again. The other side of the valley was the homeland of the elves. She certainly didn’t want to go there. Yet her pursuers were likely not far behind, so she needed a place to hide. She found a fallen ash tree that had been hollowed by ants. Both ends were open, and she tested the width to make certain her shoulders would fit inside. They would.

As she was investigating the hollow tree, she spotted a large hornets’ nest high up in another tree. That would make an excellent diversion.

She took off her buckskin shirt and climbed near the nest. Hornets as long as her thumb buzzed warily around her. With a length of branch she draped her shirt very, very carefully around the globe of bark and mud. Shinnying down, she went back to her hollow log. If the elves tracked her, they might see her shirt and think she was hidden among the leafy branches. If they used spears or rocks to bring her down, they’d get a face full of hornets for their trouble.

Nianki slipped into the log and lay still. She took slow and deep breaths to quiet her racing heart. Though inside the log’ was hot and dank, it was far better than being led around by a tether.

She fingered the collar, still firmly in place around her neck. The entire circumference was smooth, save for an oval hole in front. How did this thing work? She tugged and twisted it, but only succeeded in choking herself.

Voices. Heavy footfalls crashing through the underbrush. The elves were coming!

Nianki heard several voices shouting back and forth, and the tramp of many feet came nearer. She thought for a moment she recognized the voice of Tamanithas, speaking loud, unintelligible words to his comrades. No doubt he was cursing the perfidy of his barbarian charge. A cry from nearby brought all other conversation to a stop. They’d found something.

She heard several pairs of feet pass by her hiding place. Nianki held her breath. Something cold touched the sole of her left foot. Had they found her? She bit her hand to prevent herself from making a sound. No cries of discovery followed, and she wondered what was pressing lightly against her foot. No sooner had she thought about it, than the sensation began creeping up her leg.

The open end of the log pointed to the sky. A man of normal height on foot could not see into the log, but an elf on horseback could. Nianki saw Balif ride by, his aquiline profile dark against the bright sky. He didn’t see her.

Whatever was crawling on her had reached the small of her back. Nianki resisted an urge to bolt from her hiding place. If she was still, it would leave her alone. If she didn’t bother it, it wouldn’t bother her. That was true, yes?

Dry and cool to the touch, the thing passed over her right shoulder. The sensation was maddening, made all the worse because she could not squirm, scratch, or reach back to find out what it was. When it brushed Nianki’s right ear, she clenched her eyes shut so tightly tears oozed from the corners. Her breath came in ragged little puffs, lips pressed together, nostrils flaring.

Something passed by her cheek. She opened one eye, her right, and saw a blur of green and black. Her stomach knotted. Green and black were the colors of the ground viper, the most poisonous snake in the forest. If its head was by her cheek, and she could still feel it slithering across her heel, the viper must be at least two paces long.

The snake’s thick triangular head dipped below her jaw, seeking the bottom of the log. Nianki’s hands were clenched into fists under her chin, her arms pinned in place by the tight confines of her sanctuary. She held her breath again as more of the snake crossed under her face. She had one chance of escaping both the viper and the elves. It required absolute accuracy, even by the poor light inside the log. As the snake turned its head left to make room for the rest of its bulky body, Nianki struck. She opened her mouth wide and bit down hard. She had to get close enough behind the serpent’s head so that it couldn’t bite her in return. If it did, she would die inside this moldering old log.

Scales gritted between her teeth. The snake’s pliant bones resisted, then broke under the pressure. Hissing furiously, the snake’s body coiled and flailed. Nianki pushed her right hand out and grabbed the angry serpent. A flickering sensation against her left eye was the viper’s tongue, lashing in vain. Nianki ground her jaws together, into the meat of the snake. Its struggles diminished. She pulled with her hand against the grip of her own teeth and the viper’s head came off. She held on until she was sure it was dead, then she spat it out.

All through her silent battle, the hubbub outside had grown louder. Triumphant cries gave way to screams and obvious maledictions. Nianki heard running and the unmistakable sounds of falling. They must have found her shirt – and the hornets’ nest.

Weary, she lowered her head to the lichen-coated wood. She remained in the log until well after the round patch of blue sky at the open end had changed first to purple, then to black.

At last Nianki crawled out. Listening carefully for prowling elves, she stretched her cramped body. All she heard was the normal nightly chorus of frogs and crickets. She saw the pale splotch of her shirt lying on the ground. Shivering from the cool night air, she retrieved it and quickly put it on.

Nianki pulled from the hollow tree the long carcass of the snake she’d killed. Properly dried, viper meat was good to eat. She slung the dead snake over her shoulder and, with the stars as her guide, began the trek away from the elves’ country.

As she walked, the words of the old man at the seashore came back to her. Powerful in spirit, but difficult to deal with. In her opinion, the elves were a difficulty, but not insurmountable. They seemed less dangerous than the vile beasts that had taken her family, and yet...

She grasped the cold smooth body of the dead snake. There were things in the wilderness a good hunter couldn’t ignore, things that wouldn’t leave you alone even if you were quiet and still.

Plainsmen were leaving the south to escape the elves. Nianki would go, too. Her mother’s people would be gone anyway. There was no help for her to be had, no hands to rely on but her own.

So be it.

Chapter 6

Squeezing through the large upper opening in the cave wall, Duranix dropped four smoldering goat carcasses on the floor. In his true shape, he filled the great cave to an alarming degree. Amero ducked and dodged the dragon’s feet and tail, yet still managed to catch a stunning blow from one of Duranix’s wingtips. Seeing his discomfort, Duranix resumed human form.

Amero picked himself up from the cave floor, grumbling, “It’s like being a mouse in a bear’s den.”

“I see I’ll have to remain small for you.”

“Is it hard for you to stay in your man-shape?”

“It’s confining, but there are some advantages. Being human muffles my senses somewhat, which makes it easier to be around you.”

Amero touched a steaming haunch. He snatched his fingers back and blew on them. “What do you mean?”

Duranix wrenched off a charred goat leg. The sizzling meat didn’t burn him at all. “Humans smell bad. Odors stick to that soft skin of yours. While I’m in human form, the smell doesn’t bother me as much.”

Amero could smell nothing but burned goat flesh. He asked the dragon why the animals were so seared.

“I take them down with bolts of lightning,” Duranix explained. “That way I don’t have to chase them so long. Also, seared meat is more digestible than raw.”

Though his skepticism was evident, when the goat cooled Amero tried cooked meat for the first time. At first it tasted dirty, as if it had been dropped on the ground, but under the charred crust the meat was tender and tasted less burned. To his surprise, Amero found himself enjoying the dragon’s fare.

Human-sized or not, Duranix had the appetite of his larger form. He ate three of the goats and most of the fourth, leaving Amero to snatch what he could in between. When Duranix was done, only a few bones remained. His stomach ought to have been bulging alarmingly, but he looked no different than before. Amero gathered up the leftover bones and put them on the pile at the rear of the cave.

When he returned, he found Duranix at the lower opening, gazing out. His usual breezy manner was suddenly subdued. “What troubles you?” Amero asked.

“The yevi have entered the plain in strength,” said the dragon. “Though they try to hide from me, I counted more than a hundred between the western forest and the fork of the Plains River. I can only assume even more are roaming the regions I didn’t inspect.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means hard times for you humans. The yevi will sweep your small hunting bands from the plain before winter sets in.” Duranix turned to regard his young friend. “The destruction of your family will be repeated many times.”

Amero knew what that meant. His sleep was still troubled by nightmares of his family’s destruction. In his dreams, he had to watch helplessly, unable to move, as Oto, Kinar, Nianki, and Menni were torn apart by ravening yevi.

He said urgently, “Can’t you stop them?”

Duranix clasped his hands behind his back. “I am only one. They are many.”

“Why is this happening?” Amero demanded, pacing up and down behind Duranix. “Where do the yevi come from?”

“They come from the depths of the great marsh that lies on the far side of the western forest. There Sthenn plots to displace free creatures, like you humans, with his own minions. He’s a green dragon, my elder by a thousand years, and a clever, vicious character. He’s tried to kill me before. When I was but a hatchling, he brought down an avalanche on our nest, killing my two clutchmates and grievously wounding my mother.”

For the first time Amero felt a common bond with his fantastic protector. Both of them had lost their families, and both, ultimately, to the same villain.

“Why did Sthenn try to kill you?” Amero asked. “Why does he try to wipe out the plainsfolk?”

Duranix turned away from the dark door. For a moment, Amero saw his eyes gleam in the dim light.

“You’ve lived long enough to know the world is made up of competing forces. Red ants fight the black ants. Wolves bring down a deer and are chased away from their kill by panthers. Men, ogres, and centaurs rove the plains and mountains, trying to stay ahead of hunger, disease, and one another. Do you understand?”

Amero nodded mutely.

“Even dragons must compete, boy. Sthenn wants this land. I’m not sure why. There isn’t much here. It isn’t rich by dragon standards. Maybe he wants it only because I have it. Who knows? But I will not let him have it, not one tree, not one peak. I would fight your Great Spirits themselves to keep what is mine.”

Amero was silent, not fully understanding what had been said. Duranix pulled some of the dry boughs from the boy’s bed and piled them in the center of the cave. He pointed one hand at the pile and a tiny flare of lightning crackled forth, igniting the tinder. Soon the boughs were blazing brightly.

Amero had seen fire in the wild before, but he knew it as a faceless enemy, burning trees, consuming food, terrifying game. When Duranix started the fire the boy kept well back.

“Why are you skulking back there?” the dragon asked. “Come closer. Fire is something to respect, not fear. It’s either good or bad, depending how you use it.”

Amero approached the flames warily. The heat felt pleasant on his face. Duranix’s cave was chilly by night, and the fire dispelled both the somber shadows and the clinging cold.

“How do we stop the yevi?” he asked, staring at the flames.

“‘We?’” said Duranix. He smiled, showing lots of teeth. “‘We’ shall try to stop the spread of the yevi packs, somehow. I don’t think Sthenn will come out to fight me, dragon to dragon. If we defeat the yevi, that will be enough for the time being.”

Again, Amero didn’t quite grasp every word, but he knew enough to believe Duranix could be a powerful ally to his people. But the plainsmen were scattered. How to let his people know? And what to do once Amero found them? Most, faced with Duranix in his natural shape, would react like Genta and his sons – they would want to kill the “monster.” There had to be a way to let the hunters and plainsmen know that Duranix was actually their friend.

“No, boy, I’m not,” the dragon said, once more hearing Amero’s thoughts. “I don’t love your kind. You’re smelly, quarrelsome, and violent.”

Amero opened his mouth to protest, but Duranix waved away the unspoken words.

“But, tiresome as you are, I prefer humans to Sthenn’s mindless beasts. You at least can choose to be good or evil, and that makes you greater in spirit than all the yevi Sthenn commands.” He tossed a dry branch on the fire. It blazed up, the flames casting weird shadows on the arching walls. “It puts you in advance of us dragons, too, in some ways.”

Amero regarded him quizzically, disbelieving. Did he have a power the dragon didn’t possess? If he did, what about other men and women? Would their collective strength be great enough to resist Sthenn?

This time Duranix did not respond to his unspoken question. Still in human form, the dragon had ascended to his broad stone bed and fallen deeply asleep. Eating did that, he’d explained earlier.

Amero watched the glowing embers of the dying fire for a long time. The fire fascinated him. He pushed a dry fir bough into the ashes and watched it catch light. As each needle flamed, it spread its fire to its neighbor, until they were all ablaze. Once burned, the fir bough fell rapidly to ash, crumbled, and disappeared. What if the yevi were like the fire, and the plainsfolk their kindling? If the plains people didn’t band together, would they be consumed until nothing remained but smoke in the air and dust on the ground?

*

“There must be an easier way,” Amero said. He was standing inside the cave mouth, hundreds of paces above the foaming falls. He’d just asked Duranix how he was supposed to get down, and the dragon’s first response was, “Jump.”

“I’ll carry you,” Duranix said patiently.

“Well, yes, but —” He dug his toe into one of the shallow grooves in the cave floor. “Could you cut handholds in the rock for me?”

Fearlessly Duranix leaned out, bracing himself casually with one hand. “Do you really want to climb up and down a sheer cliff face?”

He didn’t, but Amero hated being so dependent on the dragon. “I’ll think of something else,” he muttered.

Duranix wrapped an arm around Amero’s chest and leaped through the waterfall. The brief shock of cold water was followed by a prolonged sensation of falling. Amero felt Duranix’s arm transform from human to dragon. The great creature spread his wings, and with a snap, their downward plunge ceased.

Amero opened his eyes. They were gliding across the lake of the falls, a long triangle of water whose sharp end curled west and narrowed to become the Six Canyons River, a tributary of the mighty Plains River. Above them the sky was dotted with dull white clouds. The enormous shadow of the dragon raced over the placid surface of the lake, growing larger and faster as Duranix lost altitude. Beating his wings rapidly, the dragon slowed and lowered his hind legs. He landed lightly on a sandy hillock on the north side of the river.

With some effort, Duranix writhed and shrank into human form. He was red-faced and panting by the time he resumed his borrowed shape.

When Amero looked at him quizzically, the dragon said, “Going from large to small is work. From small to large is... liberating.”

Since searching by air failed to turn up many of the roving yevi, Duranix had resolved to return to the plain on foot. At ground level he could pick up individual tracks, scents, and spoor of the yevi. He could see far when aloft, but the dragon could also be seen from far away. Tracking the hunting packs on the ground was a slower method but promised better results. He set off at a rapid pace that soon had Amero floundering to keep up.

“Wait – wait,” the boy gasped, staggering through the waist-high grass. “Don’t go so fast!”

“There’s a lot of ground to cover. The faster I go, the sooner it will be done.”

“I can’t keep up! Remember, I’m only a human!” Duranix slackened his pace reluctantly, making no secret of his disdain for Amero’s weakness.

The land below the mountains was terraced by flattened hills that widened and lowered as the pair headed west. Clumps of highland pines and cedars thinned until solitary ones stood out like lonely sentinels on the horizon. Striding along with no attempt at stealth, Duranix scattered herds of wild oxen ahead of them and flushed coveys of pigeons from the tall grass.

The boy and the human-shaped dragon made rapid progress. By midday the mountains were only a smudge at their backs. Duranix agreed to a respite when he reached a wide, flat boulder in the midst of the plain. Amero went scouting for water while the dragon perched comfortably atop the sun-baked stone, soaking up the heat like a basking lizard.

A small stream, choked with grass, ran down a gully a few dozen paces from Duranix’s sunning spot. Amero parted the grass and dipped out a few handfuls of water. It was poor stuff compared to the waterfall, tasting tepid and weedy. He lifted his head and looked downstream. A fallen twig, boldly white against the green grass, lay half in the water not far away. Wood that white had to be birch, he thought, rising to his knees, but birch didn’t grow on the high plains —

On closer inspection, the “twig” proved to be the arm bone of a human child a girl, judging by the scraps of clothing left on the skeleton. Rain had washed away the smell of decay, but the ferocious bite marks on the girl’s bones were ample evidence of what had caused her death.

Amero recoiled in horror and opened his mouth to summon Duranix. Before he could form the words in his throat, Duranix was beside him.

“I heard your shock,” said the dragon. He knelt by the pathetic remains. “Yevi?”

“Probably. A panther would eat the marrow from the long bones as well as the flesh, and a bear would carry a kill back to its den.”

Duranix snapped an arm bone in two and sniffed the marrow inside. Amero grimaced.

“Dead no more than four days,” said Duranix. “What the yevi left, the scavengers finished.”

“She must have had a family,” Amero said sadly. “I wonder what happened to them?”

Duranix stood up. “No trees nearby to hide in, and no caves. I’d say they were killed.” He swept the horizon with his powerful senses, trying to locate any living humans or yevi in the vicinity.

His search was interrupted when Amero dropped to his knees and began to dig. With his bare hands he tore up tough lumps of prairie grass. Worms and grubs fled into the earth as quickly as he exposed them. He clawed angrily at the root-infested soil.

“What are you doing?”

“The girl must be buried, else her spirit cannot rest,” Amero replied, without slackening.

“Is that true?”

“I believe it.”

Duranix went down on one knee. With two sweeps of his hand, he doubled the depth of the hole Amero had started. When the hole was elbow deep, Amero gently placed the dry bones in it. Some of them were missing, but when all the bones present were placed in the hole, Amero said, “Rest now. May your ancestors greet you with joy.”

Duranix cocked his head curiously at the boy’s words but said nothing as Amero pushed the dirt back and pressed clumps of sod in place.

“There are no large beasts within range of my senses,” Duranix said. “The girl’s tracks show she was running from south to north when the yevi caught her. A child that young wouldn’t be on her own, so we should go south to look for others in her party.”

Amero sadly agreed, and they resumed their march.

The land grew flatter, and Duranix began to outpace Amero once more. The boy trudged along, beset by late autumn heat, buzzing flies, and the thoughts churning in his mind.

The child had been perhaps six or seven – older than his brother Menni, but far too young to meet the fate that had found her. He mourned her, though he’d never known her.

See how the one lags behind. His mind wanders.

Amero heard the voice in his head, a thin whisper, like the crackling of a dry reed. He looked left and right, ahead and behind. The only thing he saw was Duranix, striding along far in front of him.

Quiet! It hears you!

Never! Two-legged beasts have no ears to hear us.

Amero thumped his forehead with the heel of this hand. Who was whispering?

Let him draw a few more paces back, and he will be ours!

What of the other?

He is too coarse to hear us, and we will be swift. Spread out, brothers.

Sweat popped out on Amero’s face, sweat brought on not by the trek but by sudden enlightenment. He was hearing the voices of yevi! They were near, close enough to see him and Duranix. Where were they? Why didn’t the dragon hear them, too?

He feared to slow down too much or to call to Duranix, in case it precipitated their attack. What could he do?

He had a weapon.

The sharpened dragon scale was still shoved into the waist of his loincloth. It rode on his right hip, hard and inflexible. Head down, still shuffling his tired feet, Amero drew the scale. He hadn’t yet made a handle for it, but the curved edge was keen enough to cut through the toughest hides in Duranix’s cave. He let the tool dangle loosely from his hand.

Duranix! Duranix, if you can hear me, help! Yevi are stalking me! he thought as forcefully as he could. The tall figure of his human-disguised friend drew ahead, widening the gap between them.

Grass stems wavered against the prevailing breeze. Something was creeping up on him from both sides. Beads of sweat chilling on his skin, Amero kept his eyes locked on the path ahead, not daring to look right or left. In his mind’s eye he imagined three of the gray killers crawling on their hollow bellies through the grass – one behind, one on each side. He gripped the dragon scale tighter. Now, over the hiss of wind in the grass and his own footsteps, he could hear the movements of the yevi clearly. Amero whirled, the sharp scale held horizontally at arm’s length.

The yevi launched itself just as he turned, two hundred pounds of murderous stealth against eighty-five pounds of boy. It spied the bright dragon scale but failed to recognize it as a threat. The whetted edge sheered right into the animal’s brow, slicing through fur, flesh, and into bone.

The full weight of the animal drove Amero to the ground. He yelled and kicked the creature, trying to shove it off. The smell of dusty fur and filth suffocated him. At any moment, he expected the savage jaws to close on his neck or face. When the yevi drew off him, he threw his hands up to ward off the expected attack.

It never came. Slowly Amero lowered his hands. Astonished, he saw the yevi’s sightless, staring eyes and flaccid tongue less than an arm’s length from his face. The beast was dead.

He yelled, rolled aside, and leaped to his feet. Duranix was there, holding the dead yevi by the scruff of its neck. Two other yevi, also dead, lay in the grass.

“You killed it,” the dragon said, wrenching the weapon from the animal’s skull. “What’s this? One of my old scales? That’s good!” He threw back his head and laughed.

Amero was in no mood to join him. “What took you so long?” he quavered. “I called you and you didn’t come.”

Duranix tossed the dead yevi to the ground. He dusted his hands with distaste. “I didn’t believe you,” he said, shrugging. “I detected nothing in the area. Until this one attacked, I thought we were alone.” He frowned, his smooth brow furrowing with concern. “You heard them, and I didn’t. This human shell of mine is limiting, but not that limiting. Sthenn must have taught them how to veil their thoughts from me. Lucky for us, human senses are different from a dragon’s.”

Amero picked up the scale and wiped off blood and brains on the grass. His palms were cut again from handling it. “I wish I had a handle for this. It’s a good tool, but too sharp to carry in my hand. What I need is a shaft, like an axe handle —”

“Why not a spear shaft?”

Amero shook his head. “I never passed my coming-of-age,” he said, regretfully. “I’m not allowed to have a spear. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Nonsense,” Duranix said. “If you can carry and use it, what’s not right?” He fingered the honed scale in Amero’s hand. It didn’t cut his human-looking skin. “What’s this coming-of-age anyway? What is required?”

“I must spend four days completely alone on the plain. I have to make my own weapon and kill four-footed game with it, then I bear the trophy-head back to my father and mother.”

“You can hear predators talk and killed one with a sloughed bronze scale. There is your trophy.” Duranix gestured at the slain yevi.

Amero averted his face so the dragon wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. He cried at the sudden realization he would never be able to present a manhood trophy to his parents, ever. His family was gone, and he was nothing but a wanderer, doomed to pass his life alone.

Feeling Duranix’s gaze upon him, Amero brushed aside his childish tears. “Yevi travel in packs,” he said. “There must be more nearby. Do we hunt the rest, or search for plainsmen to warn?”

Even as a man, Duranix’s pallid eyes were penetrating. “What do you say, Amero?”

He considered. “We’ll do more good warning hunters. The pack could scatter if we – if you – attacked them directly.”

Duranix agreed, and before leaving, he left a macabre message for the yevi pack. He piled the three dead animals in a heap and, with his lightning, set them on fire. Sthenn’s creatures would no doubt flee before him, creating a haven of safety in which Amero could warn what plainsmen they met. They set off again, south by west, with a column of dirty black smoke rising from the savanna behind them.

*

In time the landscape became familiar. Amero recognized several landmarks, like White Elk watering hole and the pine-topped hills called Crows’ Haven. The great fork of the Plains River lay to the northeast. Amero and his family had crossed that river three times a year in their circuit of the plain – south in summer, west in autumn, north in winter.

Though it was only days before the onset of deep autumn, they had not encountered a single human since leaving the lake of the falls. Large game was scarce, too. Aside from the occasional solitary antelope or rogue ox, they saw nothing bigger than a rabbit all day.

Towering white clouds sailed slowly across the sky, periodically hiding the blazing sun. Duranix shortened his stride and gradually came to a stop. He turned his head slowly, as though listening to some distant call.

“That way,” he said, pointing toward the distant river. “Many men and animals are that way.”

Amero felt nothing. “How far?” he asked.

“A half day’s walk – or a few moments by air.”

“Do you dare show yourself by day? You’ll start a stampede if you swoop down on them in your natural shape.”

Duranix tapped a golden nail against his chin. “You’re right. If only I could observe and not be seen myself.”

Amero looked up at the sky. “Could you hide in the clouds?”

He nodded slowly. “I can, though my presence in clouds often precipitates a thunderstorm.” Amero regarded him blankly. “I cause it to rain,” Duranix said more plainly.

Without further discussion, Duranix unfolded to his winged reptilian form. On the open savanna he didn’t seem so overwhelming, but he was a massive, formidable creature nevertheless. Bending his serpentine neck in a half circle, he brought his broad head eye to eye with Amero.

“Do you want to fly with me or walk to the river?” he asked, his voice like fading thunder.

There could be two dozen yevi in the tall grass around them, just waiting for the dragon to depart. Amero truly had only one choice. He took his courage in his hands and declared, “I’ll go with you.”

Duranix reached out with one foreclaw to pick him up, but Amero backed away, asking, “Couldn’t I go some other way?”

“Such as?” rumbled the dragon.

He pointed. “Could I ride on your back?”

Duranix glanced at the expanse of burnished scales and flying muscles standing out prominently on his back. He closed his foreclaw around Amero.

“No,” he replied. “At the first gust of wind or abrupt turn, you’d fall off, and I’d have to find a new pet.”

Amero would have protested further, but the dragon gathered his mighty rear legs beneath himself and sprang into the air. He climbed rapidly in a tight spiral, aiming for the heavy cloud formations overhead. Amero felt as if his stomach had been left behind on the ground.

They plunged into a cool white pillar. Clouds that looked so solid from the ground, Amero soon discovered, were actually as insubstantial as morning mist. He worked his arms loose from Duranix’s grip and tried to see over the dragon’s thick claws. Every now and then a scrap of brown earth appeared through holes in the cloud. Amero wondered how high they were.

“High enough,” Duranix boomed. “Be quiet. I must concentrate.”

His wings beat in quick, steady rhythm. After a short time, blue sparks began to flicker from every downstroke of the dragon’s wingtips. The smell of the lightning filled the air, and Amero’s hair prickled and stood up on its own. It proved to be more alarming than harmful, and the boy soon got used to it.

A large gap appeared ahead of them. Duranix lowered his left wing and slipped through the opening. Amero caught a glimpse of green water, probably the southern tributary of the great river. Duranix kept below the clouds for a while, then abruptly rose into the bright white mist. Amero’s head snapped back, and his stomach did a somersault.

“Did you see them?” said the dragon, his powerful voice tinged with excitement. “Yevi, hundreds of them, just below us.”

Amero struggled against his host’s impervious grip. “I can’t see a thing!” he complained.

“They’re massing for an attack. I couldn’t tell if they were after elk or humans, but I’m guessing they’ve driven most of the humans in this area into the fork of the river.”

Amero felt his heart pound. Penned on two sides against the swift river, the humans would have to fight or die.

Duranix swung around in a complete circle, losing height as he did. “Hold on, boy, we’re going to see and be seen!”

The dragon burst from the underside of the cloud, accompanied by a bolt of lightning. The flash dazzled Amero. When his vision returned, he saw an amazing scene below: Scores of humans were milling around in the riverbend. Mixed in with them were a few centaurs, their heads decorated with colorful headdresses made of feathers. Large numbers of elk, wild oxen, deer, and wild pigs were trapped as well. The more aggressive animals, the boar and bull elk, charged back and forth, conscious they were in a trap. Plainsfolk bunched together in small family groups, warding off half-crazed animals with spears and sharpened sticks. The centaurs, armed with stone-headed clubs, had slain a mighty bull elk and were sheltering behind the bleeding carcass. The yevi formed a great pack just out of spear-casting range.

The sun cracked through the clouds, sending bright shafts of light through the billowing banks of mist. Duranix’s shadow swept across the scene. Animals and humans alike looked up in wonder, which quickly gave way to terror.

Duranix hovered, flapping laboriously to remain in one spot. Lightning played about his wings, head, and tail. The prickling sensation on Amero’s skin grew almost unbearable.

“Now what?” the boy asked:

“Time to land!”

The dragon folded his wings and plummeted to the ground. He aimed for the empty ground between the trapped plainsmen and the yevi. Oxen, elk, centaurs, and humans scattered, some throwing themselves in the river to escape. The current was very strong, and the panic-stricken were swept away.

Duranix alighted hard, shaking the earth beneath him. Lightning played about him, striking the ground with explosive force. The milling throng at his back raised a dense cloud of dust, but above this, Duranix could see the yevi advancing.

Duranix threw back his homed head and let loose an ear-shattering bellow. Amero was astonished by the sheer volume of his mighty companion’s cry. He clapped his hands over his ears until the roar died away.

“I am Duranix the Bronze, master of mountain and plains! Who dares challenge me?”

“What are you doing?” Amero stammered. He was facing rank upon rank of snarling yevi. It seemed impossible they couldn’t bury even a great dragon under a mass of lean, gray bodies.

Walking a bit awkwardly on his hind legs, the dragon advanced a few steps.

“Begone!” he roared. “This is your only warning!”

The gray horde shifted forward in a single, rippling motion. Duranix extended his neck and opened his mouth wide. A searing column of blue-white fire erupted from his throat. It played back and forth on the front ranks of the yevi, who exploded when the dragon-fire touched them. Duranix closed his jaws and drew in a breath. The unhurt yevi surged over the smoldering bodies of their own dead. They were just forty paces away.

The dragon brought his barbed tail around and used it to scratch behind his left horn. The yevi had closed to thirty paces.

“Duranix?” Amero said nervously, tapping the dragon’s claw for attention.

“What?” was the mild response.

“Do something!”

“What did you have in mind?”

Several hundred raging beasts were now only twenty paces away. Amero shouted, “Anything! Do anything!”

With his free foreclaw Duranix gestured at the onrushing pack. The air shook, and dust whirled into the air in front of the dragon. An invisible swath was torn through the yevi ranks, scattering those on either side and pulverizing those in the center. The yevi checked their attack, milling about in confusion. Duranix gestured again, and another hole was torn in the pack. Animals at the edges and rear began to run away. The trickle of desertions became a torrent until only the front ranks remained.

“This range is mine, from the lake of the falls to the southern sea!” Duranix bellowed. “Tell Sthenn I will not allow his creatures to poach on my land!”

“You cannot hold!” muttered the remaining yevi. “You cannot hold! You tire! We will have the plain as our own. That is the promise of our master!”

Duranix let loose a blast of lightning, milder than before, but which nonetheless tore the ground asunder and ignited grass and scrub among the yevi. Singed, the beasts fled yelping.

A mild, warm rain began to fall. Duranix set Amero on the ground. When he was sure the yevi had all fled, he and

Amero walked back to where the trapped plainsfolk were crouching behind hastily erected barricades of stones, logs, and twists of thorny vines. At their approach, a hail of spears landed around Amero.

“Stop!” he shouted. “I’m human, like you!”

“Showering you with gratitude,” Duranix said dryly. He stood behind Amero, looking a bit unsteady on his feet.

“You’re scaring them,” the boy said. “Can’t you change to human form?”

“I’m tired,” he said. The dragon dropped on his belly and rested his chin on his crossed forelegs. His tail curled around his body. He sighed and closed his eyes. “You explain things to the silly creatures. I’ll remain here.”

Amero picked his way through a welter of rocks and logs. Deer sprinted to and fro, and wild pigs dashed about, grunting.

“The yevi are gone!” Amero called. “It’s safe! You can come out!”

Slowly, a thickset man emerged from a heap of logs and stones, spear couched on his shoulder. He climbed atop a fallen log and pointed at Amero with his weapon.

“Who are you, who commands the stormbird?” he asked hoarsely.

“‘Commands?’” said Amero. He glanced back at the slumbering dragon. Forgive me, mighty one, but if it calms them, let them think so!

Amero approached the lone hunter. His beard was strongly flecked with gray, and his broad shoulders were scarred with the marks of a long and strenuous life. Amero held up his hands, palms out, the plainsman’s gesture of peace.

“I am Amero, son of Oto and Kinar,” he said.

“Valka,” the man replied, tapping his chest with his spearhead. “What do you want with us?”

Amero was taken aback. He’d expected, at the very least, grudging thanks. Stifling his annoyance, he said, “I want nothing. My friend and I saw your trouble from the air and came to help you.”

Valka’s black brows rose. “The stormbird is your friend?”

“Yes. His name is Duranix.”

Gradually more hunters appeared, along with their mates and children. Amero had never seen so many people together at one time. They were plainly curious about the boy they’d seen fall from the clouds in the grasp of a mythical stormbird. They pressed in, trying to get a glimpse of him and the fantastic creature lying so quietly on the same ground where he’d routed the yevi host.

Valka said, “Who are you, boy? Where did you come from?”

“As I said, I am Amero, son of a hunter like you. Some weeks past my family was killed by the yevi – the same creatures who were stalking you. I was saved by Duranix, and since then we’ve been trying to warn others about them.”

“We’ve been running from the near-wolves for a full change of the moon,” Valka said. “They killed my son, Duru.” Fathers and mothers in the crowd took up the refrain, listing the names of family members claimed by the remorseless yevi.

“Duranix has scattered them,” Amero said. “A few may lurk about for a while, but I don’t think they’ll mass again, for fear he will destroy them.”

“How can he destroy them?” said a yellow-haired woman, her faced streaked with tears. “Are they not evil spirits sent to plague us?”

Amero shook his head. “They’re flesh, hide, and bone, like any other animal,” he said firmly. “Come, look at the slain.” He started toward the battle site. “Come,” he said again to the reluctant hunters. “Don’t be afraid.”

Though Amero walked within arm’s length of the dozing dragon, the other humans gave him a wide berth. Rain had put out the fires Duranix had started, but steam hung in the air over the blasted soil. Three centaurs had already gone out to inspect the bodies of the burned and smashed predators. The centaurs watched the plainsmen approach with tense expressions.

“Peace to you,” Amero said. Up close, centaurs stank. He tried not to wrinkle his nose in disgust, remembering what Duranix had said about the smell of humans. Valka and some of the bolder hunters poked and prodded among the dead yevi.

“Huh,” a centaur grunted. “Like wolf, but bigger.”

“They have hands,” said one of the humans, startled. “What unnatural beasts!”

The tallest centaur approached Amero. He held out a swarthy, black-nailed hand to the boy. “You save miteera. Now, friends.”

“Miteera” must be either the centaur’s name, or the name of his band, Amero decided. The boy did not hesitate but clasped the creature’s rough, callused hand. Not long ago he would have been terrified to be so close to a centaur, but after living with a dragon, he found that centaurs weren’t so frightening after all. They certainly showed a lot more gratitude than the plainsmen.

“Friends,” he said, gripping the centaur’s hand as hard as he could.

The creature released him and gestured at the yevi with his club. “These people?”

“They’re smart as people,” Amero said. “They were sent to drive us off the plains.”

“Sent by who?” asked the blonde woman sharply.

“Another dragon – a stormbird – the enemy of Duranix. He lives far to the west, in the forest.”

They mulled this over, and Valka said, “What’s to prevent this enemy from sending more beasts to attack us?”

“Duranix will fight them,” Amero said proudly.

“He’s a mighty beast, but he can’t be all places at once.”

“My children are dead!” cried the blonde woman. “Three of them carried off! How can my man and I live, knowing any other children we have can be killed by these creatures?”

“My family was destroyed by them, too,” Amero replied, “but Duranix saved me.” He wanted to ask her how safe any of them were, with panthers, vipers, drought, starvation, disease... their lives were an endless struggle for survival. He wanted to ask all of them, but he didn’t. There was no answer to her question, or to his.

The centaur leader said it best: “Help now, and live. Help later, and live. Alala!” With this exclamation, he and his brethren raised their clubs in salute and galloped away.

Amero trudged through the slackening rain to where the dragon slept. Before he reached the slumbering giant, a hand caught his arm.

Valka asked, “Where do you go now, boy?”

“I go home with Duranix.”

“What is ‘home?’”

“The place where Duranix lives.” He pointed eastward. “There, at the edge of the mountains, at the lake of the falls.”

“And he protects you from the yevi?”

Amero nodded. Valka looked back at the other people. Some had taken up their meager possessions and were already moving on. Others, among them the angry blonde woman, remained a few paces away, waiting expectantly.

“Would he protect us?” asked Valka.

Amero hesitated. “I think he would,” he said. “Let me ask him.”

Valka hung back as Amero approached the sleeping dragon. Though his heart hammered at his own temerity, Amero decided to put on a bold front. The folk watching were all older and more experienced than he. If he betrayed any fear of the dragon, he’d forfeit the influence he had as Duranix’s friend.

“Hey,” he said loudly, “Duranix, wake up!”

The dragon’s leathery nostrils flared. A gust of hot breath almost swept Amero off his feet. The dragon opened one eye, the eyelids splitting vertically to reveal a huge gold-flecked pupil. The eye focused on Amero, narrowing.

“What do you want?” said the dragon testily. The edge in his voice caused the small crowd of humans to shrink back.

“I have an idea,” Amero said brightly. “These people would like to place themselves under our protection.”

“Our protection?”

Amero lowered his voice. “Your protection.”

“What am I going to do with a herd of humans? One makes an interesting pet, but twenty are an infestation.”

“They won’t live in the cave with us,” Amero said, his voice rising. He spread his hands apart, sketching out his new vision in the air. “They can live on the shore of the lake below the cave. They can go about their own lives there. You need not do anything for them, unless the yevi come back.”

Duranix lifted his head so suddenly the group of waiting humans stumbled backward in fearful surprise, half tripping and falling to the ground. He eyed them coolly.

“I’m not feeding them,” he announced.

“Of course not! They’ll feed themselves.”

“And when I’m sleeping, I want it quiet. None of their shouting and squawking.”

“Yes, Duranix.”

He heaved himself to his feet with a yawn. “Very well,” the dragon said, “but they’re your responsibility, Amero. I expect you to keep them in line. It’s one thing to save wildlife from slaughter. It’s another thing entirely to invite a herd into your home.” He yawned again prodigiously. “Fighting makes me hungry. I don’t suppose any elk are left on this side of the river?”

Before Amero could reply, Valka called, “We will find them!” He gestured to the other hunters in the group. They took up their spears and fanned out in the direction of the riverbank. There was a rumble of hooves and shouts from the plainsmen, and in short order they returned dragging the carcasses of three large elk. They presented these to the dragon from a respectful distance.

“Well,” said Duranix, blinking. His eyelids made loud clicks when they came together. “Perhaps we will get along after all.”

He stretched his mouth wide. Amero shouted a warning, and the hunters and their families scattered before the lightning erupted to roast the elk to the famished dragon’s taste.

Chapter 7

Nianki ran across the moonlit plain, knees rising high, arms pumping in time with her legs. The spring night was warm, and the white moon played hide-and-seek with high clouds made pink by Lutar, the low-hanging red moon. Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes. A few paces ahead, a yearling buck darted, its bold white tail flicking with fright. She’d flushed the deer by accident as she crossed the high plain by night. It sprang up so close in front of her that she couldn’t ignore the opportunity.

Had she owned a full-length spear, she could have brought the yearling down by now, but Pakito’s cast-off weapon was good only for short throws. After eluding the elves, she had doubled back to the beach and found the truncated spear unclaimed on the sand.

Snorting, the deer twisted sharply to the right. Nianki yelled at the animal. Her blood was up, and she meant to have this young buck. She stretched her long legs and gained a step on her prey. The deer was too young to know it could outrun her. It knew pursuit only by panthers or wolves, which it could evade but not outrun. It kept changing direction, dodging from side to side, in an attempt to escape, but she wasn’t fooled. She closed to within a pace of the buck. Each step made her legs burn, each breath now felt like a flint knife in her ribs. The yearling was panting, too, its long tongue lolling from the side of its mouth.

Nianki raised the spear to her shoulder. The next time the buck bore right —

He did, making a lightning turn right across her line of sight. Nianki hurled the short spear. It grazed down the deer’s ribs, drawing blood. The head buried itself in the ground, and the shaft tangled the yearling’s feet. It tumbled to the ground in a welter of flailing legs and wide, rolling eyes.

With a ferocious cry of triumph, she leaped upon the fallen animal. It struggled to rise, but she caught it around the neck with both arms. Bleating with terror, the young buck tried to roll her off, but she held on, tightening her grip on the animal’s throat. Nianki got a knee in the deer’s side and wrenched backward with all her might. Bones in its neck snapped, and the deer ceased struggling.

She fell back on the matted grass and gasped for air. The collar the elves had put on her chafed. Worse, though her wounds had healed cleanly, the scars still ached when she exerted herself.

Recovered, Nianki found her spear and used the flint head to butcher her kill. She gutted the carcass, wiped it out with dry grass, and then slung the yearling across her shoulders. It was essential to keep moving. The smell of blood would draw scavengers from far and wide, and she didn’t want to have to fight them off.

She made for an outcropping of boulders near the horizon. Bowed under the weight of the carcass, Nianki kept her head down until she was quite close to the boulders. When she finally looked up, she was startled to see two human figures in the shadow of the rocks. She tossed aside the deer and presented her spearpoint.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

“Peace to you, spirit of the night! We mean no harm!”

“Show yourselves!”

Two plainsmen, young enough to be beardless, emerged from the darkness and stood open-handed before Nianki. They were naked but for scrap-hide kilts. Their faces were gaunt with hunger, and their ribs stood out like reeds, even in the dimness of the soft moonlight.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am Kenase,” answered the taller boy, “son of Ebon and Filar, and this is Neko.”

“Your brother?”

“No, I am the son of Sensi and Myera,” said Neko.

“How come you to be here?”

The boys exchanged looks. “We escaped from the Good People.”

Nianki tapped her spear against the hard collar. “I escaped from them as well. When did you break free?”

“We left their camp near sundown,” said Neko haltingly.

“That way.” He pointed east. “The Good People are powerful, hut I didn’t think they could capture a spirit!”

Nianki frowned. “What are you talking about? Who’s a spirit?”

“You!”

She laughed. “The moons have addled your heads! I’m no more a spirit than you.”

Kenase pointed at the deer. “We saw you. You ran down a deer and slew it with your own hands! Who but a spirit of the night could do that?”

“A hungry woman, that’s who,” Nianki replied. She hoisted the carcass back on her shoulders. “How long has it been since you two ate?”

Neko licked his lips. “Three days, Great Sp – Uh, what shall we call you?”

“Nianki, daughter of Oto and Kinar.”

“Oto the panther killer?” said Kenase.

Nianki nodded.

“I know tales of his prowess as a hunter. You’re his daughter? That explains much!”

Nianki climbed atop the lower boulder and set to work skinning the buck. She nipped off morsels for the two young men. Kenase, she reckoned, was about her age, maybe a season older. Neko was a year or two behind her. They ate greedily, and Nianki had to admonish them to chew long and swallow little. Fresh meat was hard on a starved stomach.

Kenase explained he had been visiting Neko’s family to meet Neko’s younger sister, Nefra. Their parents were considering Nefra taking Kenase as her mate. While with Neko’s family, they were captured by a band of the Good People, eight on foot and four riding those strong, four-legged animals, which he called “horses.”

“The Good People breed them to serve as beasts of burden,” Kenase explained.

“Go on,” said Nianki, chewing slowly.

“There were six of us,” Neko said, “and they drove us to a hilltop near the boundary of the eastern forest. The Good People have made a sort of hedge of tree trunks at the top of the hill, so close together no one could pass between them. There were many, many plainsfolk there, inside the hedge.”

“How many?”

Kenase counted on his fingers, then on Neko’s as well. “More than our hands can count.”

“So how did you get away?”

“Some of the women made a noise and drew the eyes of the Good People to them. The men boosted me and Neko over the tree trunks, and we ran away. We meant to find my family, return, and free the rest.” Kenase’s shoulders slumped dejectedly. “In the time we’ve been running from the Good People, we’ve seen no plainsmen at all, until we saw you.”

Nianki sighed. She thought herself favored by the spirits to have gotten away from the elves. The last thing she wanted to do was steal into a camp full of them, but her heart ached to hear this. She couldn’t bear the thought of so many plainsmen being held captive.

“How many elves – Good People – were at this camp?” she asked finally.

More counting on fingers. “We saw twelve in all,” said Kenase.

“If they have the chance, will your kinsmen fight for their freedom?”

“Yes, I am sure of it!”

“Good.” Nianki stood on the boulder and wiped her hands on her buckskin shirt. “I’ll help you.”

Neko and Kenase jumped up, ready to return, but Nianki ignored them and dragged the rest of her kill to the highest point in the outcropping. As the boys watched, she climbed down a few steps and stretched out on the rock.

“Aren’t we going right away?” asked Neko.

“Not now. It would be light by the time we reached the camp. Better to go tomorrow afternoon and arrive after the sun has set.”

“But they hunger and thirst!” Kenase protested.

“They’re plainsmen,” Nianki replied. “Hunger and thirst are familiar companions. They’ll endure another day. If you want my help, you’ll have to do as I say, and I say we can best help them after dark.”

She put an arm across her forehead, covering her eyes. Oto used to do that when he was through talking, and it had the same effect on Neko and Kenase it always had on Nianki, Amero, and Kinar. They fell silent.

Nianki was glad they’d seen her run down the yearling buck. It was an unusual kill, and it awed them enough to accept her counsel.

“Great Spirit of the Night,” they had called her. The longer Nianki lived, the less she believed in spirits. The elves were supposed to have mystical powers, and she’d seen little of it. Kenase and Neko took her for a spirit, yet she was flesh and blood. Were all the stories she’d heard of ghosts and spirits just lies or. dreams? The hard world Nianki was coming to know seemed to have little room for spirits.

*

She awoke to find bright sunlight streaming on her face, and she heard low voices conversing close by. Nianki sat up abruptly. The two boys were sitting on the ground with their backs against the boulder, eating and talking. A pile of wild celery lay between them. From the stems and strings heaped alongside, it looked like Kenase and Neko had already eaten about half of what they’d gathered.

Nianki checked her deer. It had not been touched, she noted with satisfaction. One of the oldest tenets of the hunters’ code was a kill belonged to whomever brought it down. The boys’ respect of her kill was a positive sign.

She scrambled down the rock. Kenase stood up.

“Good morning,” he said. “Sleep well?”

“Well enough.”

Neko also rose, though more slowly than his companion. A stalk of celery stuck out of his mouth.

“Hungry?” he mumbled, offering her the unchewed end.

“I need water,” Nianki replied. “Is there any?”

Kenase offered to lead her to a nearby spring, but she declined. He gave her directions, and she went to the water hole alone.

After she drank her fill, Nianki splashed the tepid water on her face. She thought about Pa’alu and his hollow gourd for carrying water. Maybe it wasn’t such a strange idea. Never knowing where the next water hole might be, carrying your own supply on a long trek made a lot of sense. Next time she came across a suitable gourd vine, she would save one.

While trudging up the hill, Nianki decided to test the young men’s mettle. Instead of walking straight back to the boulder, she circled around the low side of the hill and came up on the far side, with the rock between her and the boys. She crept up on the warm stone and lay flat, pushing herself along with just her fingers and toes.

“... until she gets back,” Neko was saying.

“What do you think of Karada?” asked Kenase.

“Strange,” said Neko, “and dangerous.”

“Karada” in the plainsmen’s tongue meant “Scarred One.” Nianki had no doubt whom they were talking about.

“Do you think she can get my family out?” Neko continued.

“She’s strong and fleet, and no matter what she says, I think the spirits are strong in her. You saw how she brought down the deer with her hands?”

“Uh-huh.” Neko picked celery string out of his teeth. “She moves like a panther. If anyone can free my family, she’s the one.”

Kenase looked down the hill toward the spring. “She’s taking a long time.”

“Women are like that.”

Nianki quietly withdrew. She considered jumping down on them from her hiding place, but that seemed childish. Besides, it was useful to know what other people thought, especially if they didn’t realize you knew.

She ran back around to the spring and ascended the hill in plain view. Again Kenase stood when Nianki approached, and again Neko remained where he was, slouching against the boulder.

“We’ve enough food for the day, so there’s no need to tire ourselves hunting,” Nianki said. “I say we stay here and rest a while, so we’ll be strong tonight.” The boys readily agreed.

They slumped in the shade of the boulder. Kenase offered Nianki the wild celery they’d gathered. She munched a few stalks, all the while evaluating her new comrades. Kenase was earnest and talkative. He was plainly impressed with Nianki and kept trying to do things for her, to her secret amusement. Neko was different. He was quiet and observant – in fact, he watched Nianki as intently as she watched him. His interest wasn’t as openly friendly as Kenase’s, and he seemed more detached.

She told them without elaboration about the loss of her family, and how she’d received the scars she bore. More detailed was her recounting of her meeting with Balif and his band of elves near the coast. Both youths were puzzled by Balif’s declaration that the elves would take all the land from the Khar River east to their forest home.

“Take it? Take it where?” Kenase asked.

“The elves mean to live here and drive all the plainsfolk out,” Nianki explained.

“They can’t do that,” Neko replied. “Where will we go? West of the river is the land of the ox-herders. The hunting is bad there. There’s no room for us!”

“All the more reason to free your family, and any other humans we find. The people of the plain must work together, like the elves do, to resist this invasion.”

Nianki curled up on her side, pillowing her head with one arm. “Rest now,” she said. “When night falls, we go.”

*

When twilight faded to the black of night, Nianki and the boys made ready. No moons were up yet. It would well past midnight before Lutar rose. By then, Nianki hoped they would be on their way to freedom.

Neko led the way. He set an easy, loping pace that Nianki had no trouble matching. Pausing only to take his bearings from the stars, Neko bore due east for a long time. To the north, foothills stood out against the glittering sky. Ahead, the fringes of the vast eastern forest loomed.

Halfway to midnight, Neko stopped and fell to one knee. Nianki came up on his left, while Kenase knelt on his right.

“Between those two hills,” Neko whispered. A faint glow lit up the hollow between the indicated hills.

“What’s that light?” Nianki wondered aloud.

“Fire,” said Kenase. “The Good People command flame.”

She didn’t like that. Fire was not something a sensible hunter fooled with. It did not care whose hide it burned, and its illumination would make their task that much harder.

“Follow me. No sound.” Nianki moved forward at a slow, crouching walk.

The trail wound between two round-topped hills into a steep ravine. Atop the ridge to the right was a row of tree trunks, just like the boys had described. They were so close together not even a rabbit could have passed between them. Somewhere inside this line of tree trunks a bonfire blazed. By its glow Nianki saw an elf on horseback, riding slowly around the outside of the camp.

With gestures, she conveyed she wanted to circle the camp and view it from all sides. Kenase took her hand and led her off to his left, away from the horse and rider. She was a bit surprised at his touch.

The terrain along the foot of the ridge was all briars and knifegrass. Nianki took the lead, pushing aside the thorny growth with her spear. Every few paces they stopped to study the camp. So far they’d spotted no easy way in.

“There’s a gap on the other side,” Neko whispered, “but it’s closely guarded.”

They climbed the steep slope toward the dark end of the camp. Nianki used her spear as a handhold – she drove it into the ground, used it to haul herself up, yanked it out, repeated the process. She held out a hand to Kenase, who in turn pulled Neko along. The ridge had steep sides, but it wasn’t that high, and before long all three were lying on their bellies, staring at the blank wall of logs.

“A rider circles the camp,” Kenase said. “Elves on the inside keep people away from the trunks.”

“And you escaped from here?” Nianki said. “How did you manage? Did they pursue you?”

“It was dark. I guess they couldn’t see us.”

She looked to Neko for confirmation, but he was too busy gazing at the wall. She nudged him, and they continued their circuit.

The firelight grew stronger, and it quickly became apparent the elves had a large fire going in front of the opening to the camp. Four of them, armed with spears, stood between the fire and the gap in the logs. Nianki tried to see beyond them into the camp, but the glare of the fire was too bright.

“What now?” Kenase hissed.

“Back,” she muttered. “Back to the dark. We’ll get in the way you got out – climb over the trees.”

“But the rider —”

“We’ll wait till he passes. Come on!”

The enclosure was roughly oval shaped, with the bonfire at the center of one of the long sides. Nianki got as far from the firelight as she could. She crept out of the bushes and listened. The clop-clop of the approaching horse’s hooves caused her to flatten herself into a chink in the trunks. The horse walked by, its bored rider’s head bobbing with every step his mount made. When he was well past, she waved for Kenase and Neko to join her.

“This is not good!” Neko said with surprising fervor.

“Have you got a better idea?” Nianki replied. He looked at his toes. “All right, lift me up!”

They boys braced themselves against the logs and Nianki climbed their backs. The tree trunks were about twice her height, so with one foot on each boy’s shoulder, she was able to see over them.

The dark end of the camp was dotted with sleeping people lying in family groups of five and six. She guessed there were thirty or forty people. At the other end of the enclosure the elves made their camp. They had hides stretched over frames of tree branches to keep the rain and sun off. She counted eight to ten sleeping elves. A pair of horses was tethered to the wall.

Nianki swung first one leg then the other over the tops of the tree trunks. The ground was a good three paces distant, but she slid off her perch and landed lightly on her fingers and toes. She crept up to the nearest sleeper – a woman – and clamped a hand over her mouth. The woman opened wide dark eyes and gave a cry muffled by Nianki’s hand.

“Quiet!” Nianki said. “I’m here to help you!”

The woman nodded her head, showing her understanding, and Nianki removed her hand. She sat up, and Nianki saw she wore a hard collar, identical to the one that encircled Nianki’s throat. A cord ran through the collar’s ring to the collar of the next sleeper, and the next, eventually ending at a large stake pounded in the ground in the center of the camp.

In her travels since leaving the coast, Nianki had availed herself of a piece of sharp obsidian as a cutting tool. It was brittle stone, but easy to knap to a keen edge. She flicked the obsidian blade over the cord, cutting it cleanly.

“Wake the rest, carefully,” she whispered. “Pull the cord through and you’ll be loose. I’ll help the others.” The woman nodded vigorously, turning to wake her companion.

Nianki crept to the next group of sleepers. Before she could awaken anyone else, a cry went up from the elves at the fire. At first Nianki thought they were just carrying on among themselves, but then she saw the sleeping elves were rising and taking up their weapons.

Without bothering to wake the boy she’d approached, she cut the cord on his collar. Two elves mounted their horses and the rest ran to the opening in the wall. To her consternation, Nianki saw they had Kenase and Neko.

“Listen, human!” shouted one of the elves on horseback. “You can’t get out. We have your friends! Stand up and let yourself be seen!”

Sleeping plainsfolk stirred all around her. Some got to their feet, rubbing their eyes. Nianki joined in, mixing with them while gradually working her way toward the way out.

“Can you see her?” called a man’s voice in the plainsmen’s language.

“Not yet,” replied the mounted elf. “Cha! They all look alike to me!”

“This one has a scarred face and long brown hair.”

Who was speaking? Most of the captives were on their feet now, making it hard for Nianki to see ahead. She bumped into a burly hunter with fierce black brows and curly beard. She pressed the obsidian knife into his hand.

“Free as many as you can,” she said. “If we all move as one, they can’t stop us.”

“Aye,” he said, black eyes shining. “Stampede. Good plan!”

She worked her way to the front of the crowd and found herself looking up at a familiar face. The mounted elf was Tamanithas, the elf she’d knocked down and left unconscious.

His eyes widened in shocked recognition as his gaze fell upon her. “You!” he spat in passable human-speech.

“I thought you would’ve gone home by now,” she said calmly. “Learned to talk like a real person, have you?”

“I knew your barbarous tongue when last we met,” he sneered. “I just hate to soil my mouth by speaking it!” He ordered the elves on foot to take her.

A concerted shout went up from the humans at Nianki’s back. As fast as they could, they whipped the confining cord from the rings around their necks. The man with the curly black beard rushed to Nianki’s side and returned the obsidian knife to her.

The sight of their prisoners freeing themselves paralyzed the elves for a moment. They were only twelve against forty. The elves closed ranks and presented a hedge of spears to the angry mob. Tamanithas paraded his horse up and down behind the line of guards.

“Get back to your places!” he shouted. “Get back and you will not be harmed!”

“It’s you who should flee,” Nianki shouted back. “This is not your land! Return to your forest, and we won’t kill you!”

Tamanithas drew his long-bladed weapon and started to ride over his own spear carriers, but he was restrained by two comrades on horseback. They argued loudly in their own language while the unruly mob of plainsfolk drew closer and closer, forcing the elves into the narrow end of the oval camp. Hands found stones in the dirt, and lengths of wood cut by the elves to feed their fires made handy clubs.

A shower of stones fell on the mounted elves. The pair restraining Tamanithas went down, and one of the horses bolted from the scene. One stout rock struck Tamanithas in the shoulder. He shrugged it off and urged his animal forward. The spear carriers parted ranks to avoid being trampled. He rode straight at Nianki, who awaited his charge calmly.

She was unarmed, save for her knife. Her spear she’d left with Kenase. Tamanithas rode with his weapon held high. Just before the horse would have collided with Nianki, she leaped to the side, throwing her right arm and right leg around the horse’s neck. The beast reared and bucked. She held on tightly and drove the heel of her foot into Tamanithas’s chest. His hands flew up, and he slid off the horse.

A swarm of furious men and women descended on the fallen elf. He was kicked and pummeled and dragged to his feet. By the time Nianki managed to get off the spinning, bucking horse, the rest of the elves had withdrawn to the opening, leaving Tamanithas in the hands of the humans.

Sudden quiet fell over the scene. Nianki strode through the crowd and saw the elves had reorganized at the bonfire. On one side, the humans held Tamanithas, bruised and bloody. On the other side, the elves had Neko, kneeling, with a spear to his back. Standing with the elves, unguarded, was Kenase.

“So, you’re with them,” Nianki said, the truth dawning on her.

“I serve the Good People,” Kenase replied. “Let Lord Tamanithas go, and we’ll serve them together, you and I.”

She spat in the dirt. “I serve no one.”

“They’ll kill Neko.”

She stepped out further, planting her hands on her hips. “Listen to me! Tell your people what I say, Tamanithas.” He sullenly agreed. “We will release Tamanithas if you give up Neko and leave this country. If you harm Neko, we’ll kill the elf, hunt you all down, and kill you, every one.” She glanced back at Tamanithas. “Tell them.”

He translated her threat. The elves drew closer together. There was some conferring among those on horseback. At last, one gave a command, and Neko was prodded to his feet. He limped across the open ground to stand by Nianki.

“Let him go,” she said to the people holding Tamanithas. There was some growling from the crowd, but they relinquished their hostage. With as much dignity as his battered appearance could support, Tamanithas rejoined his people.

“Depart now,” Nianki said. “You’ll be followed until you leave the plain. If you try to come back, everyone in your band will be slain.”

Tamanithas’s horse was sent to the waiting elves. The former hostage mounted and rode out in front of the wary spear carriers.

“This is not over,” he vowed. “This land will belong to my lord Silvanos.”

“Land belongs to the spirits, not to those who live on it,” said Nianki, “but we’ll not be driven from our hunting grounds. The plainsmen will know of your deeds, and how we turned you back. If you return, we’ll be waiting for you.”

The humans raised a cheer. Stung by her declaration, the elves formed ranks and started marching away. Then only the mounted elves were left with Kenase standing between them. He looked at Nianki fearfully and reached up to clasp the mane of Tamanithas’s horse.

“Take me with you, great one!” Kenase said. “I can still serve you!”

“Begone, wretch. You would lick the hand of whoever feeds you.” Tamanithas pulled his animal free. With a single cry, he kicked his horse to a gallop. The other riders were close behind him.

Kenase was quickly ringed by vengeful hunters.

“You led my family to the Good People!” Curly Beard cried, punching Kenase on the jaw with his fist. Others echoed his accusation. Kenase was hauled to his feet only to be beaten down again. Nianki watched silently until Neko appeared at her side. He handed her the short-shafted spear.

“Thank you,” she said. The ring of betrayed hunters parted for her. Her face was as hard as her voice when she spoke to Kenase. “I fed you. I gave you meat. You lied to me.”

“I did it for all of us!” he exclaimed. “The Good People are wise and great! They can bring many wonders to us, wonders of comfort and ease!”

“Like this?” Nianki said, yanking at the cold collar at her throat. “Wonders like starvation and slavery?”

“The collars come off!” Kenase edged away from Nianki, toward the interior of the camp. “There is a tool that makes them come off.”

The plainsfolk allowed him to ransack the bedding left behind by the elves. He found a large bright ring made of the same hard, smooth substance as the collars. “Bronze,” Kenase called it. It was “metal,” he said.

A curious worked rod of metal hung on the ring. Kenase pushed one end of the rod in the hole in Nianki’s collar and twisted. The collar popped open and fell to the ground. With a roar, the crowd surged over Kenase and the rod was torn from his grasp. The camp resounded with cheers as collar after collar was removed.

Curly Beard, who said his name was Targun, asked Nianki what should be done with Kenase, who was cowering as he awaited his fate.

“Why ask me?” she replied, still rubbing her neck. Her skin was peeling from days of chafing.

“He betrayed us,” Targun said, “but you saved us. Decide his fate. It will be done as you say.”

Heavy silence fell over the camp, broken only by the crackle of the dying bonfire. Nianki cast a cold eye over the boy. He was crying now. His weakness disgusted her.

“Turn him out,” she said at last. “Let him fend for himself. Tell the story far and wide so that no plainsman lends him food or comfort. If he lacks for anything, let him seek his masters in the forest.”

Targun and the others man-handled Kenase to the path taken by the elves. Head bowed, the whimpering boy shuffled away, terrified of exile but relieved to be alive.

Someone pushed Nianki aside and jerked the spear from her hand. He ran forward a few steps and cast the short spear at the retreating Kenase. It struck him in the small of the back. He uttered a cry and fell facedown in the dirt.

The spear-thrower faced Nianki. It was Neko.

“Why?” Nianki demanded.

“Kenase led the Good People to my family,” said the boy. “They killed my brother because he wouldn’t submit to capture.”

Nianki removed the spear and rolled the dead boy over. She closed his eyes and wiped the spear head on the grass.

“It is done,” Targun said solemnly. “Let no more blood be shed.”

The plainsmen drifted away, eager to put distance between themselves and the elf camp. Most of the families were gone by the time the red moon appeared over the horizon. A few remained, Targun’s among them.

Nianki poked among the elves’ abandoned gear. She found a bronze dagger in a wooden chest and slipped it in her waistband. While she was rummaging, she noticed the remaining men, women, and children were watching her.

“I’ll not take everything,” she assured them. “Get what you want.”

“No,” said Targun. “We’re waiting for you.” She stared at him blankly. “We want to follow you.”

“I don’t seek a mate,” she said flatly.

“That’s not what I mean.” Targun gestured, and a short, smiling woman of ample proportions led four children to stand at his side. He obviously had no need of a mate. He said, “You bested the Good People and saved us all. There is a power in your presence, like the nearness of a panther. The spirits are in you, and we want to follow you.”

“Let the spirits who protect you protect us as well,” added Targun’s mate.

Bewildered, Nianki was about to tell them they were all crazy, when she spotted Neko sitting on a stump near the fire. He looked numb, vacant. Though she’d never killed a man, she had seen that dazed reaction in others.

“What about you, Neko?” she called.

Slowly he looked up at her. “I’ve no blood kin left. I follow you.”

Many pairs of eyes stared hopefully at her. As she looked around at the expectant faces and considered what was being asked of her, Nianki was reminded how they had defeated the better-armed, supposedly more powerful elves. A band of hunters who were not blood kin – such a band had not existed on the plains before. Perhaps there was something to be said for the safety and strength of numbers. If elves could do it, so could humans.

Nianki scrubbed a hand through her hair and sighed gustily. “I’m unmated, yet I’ve acquired a family,” she muttered, then added more loudly, “All right, you can follow me.”

“Where should we go?” asked Pirith, Targun’s mate.

Nianki frowned at her, though it was a frown of thought rather than of displeasure. Pirith posed a very good question. Where should they go? East lay the domain of the elves, and the land to the south was also infested with the invaders. The western plain was where the killer pack had wiped out her family.

“North,” Nianki said firmly. “Good hunting up north, this time of year.”

They stripped the camp of everything useful, then waited for Nianki to lead them away.

Targun asked, “What is your name?”

Before Nianki could answer, Neko spoke.

“Karada,” he said. She looked at him and smiled.

“That’s right,” she said. “Call me Karada.”

Chapter 8

Years passed. Ten times the trees blossomed, and ten times winter sheathed the cliffs surrounding the lake of the falls in white mantles of snow. Twenty-two plainsmen followed Amero to the lake – six women, four men, and twelve children. In ten years they became six hundred, partly from natural increase, partly from the arrival of new settlers. Word spread across the plains of the marvelous village on the lake where people came to live instead of spending their lives roaming the endless savanna. Some people came to see the settlement and went away puzzled. Others saw and remained to swell the growing population, and like tinder heaped on a glowing coal, the more the population swelled, the brighter the flames of progress.

The people who lived there called it Yala-tene, or “Mountain Nest,” though most outsiders called the settlement Arku-peli, which meant “Place of the Dragon.”

Unburdened by fears of attack, the people of Yala-tene devoted their energy to peaceful pursuits of hearth and field. The hide tents of the first settlers gave way over the years to real houses, stoutly built of local stone. There was little good timber in the vicinity – most of the wood available was soft pine and cedar – but stone was abundant. The villagers built their houses in the style of their old tents: round with high, domed roofs covered by slabs of slate or cedar shakes. The peak of the dome was left open to allow smoke from the hearth to escape. Each house was like a miniature fortress, with thick stone walls and no opening other than a single door. As families grew larger and more prosperous, some houses acquired second floors, and these were often pierced with long slit windows.

People who stayed in Yala-tene brought with them their own skills and ways of living. From the northern plains came gardeners, who taught the plainsmen how to cultivate crops instead of having to gather them in the wild. On the west shore of the lake, ground was cleared of thorny scrub and turned over to planting onions, cabbages, carrots, and even grapes. To make passage across the lake easier, the untamed river was bridged late one winter by a plan ingeniously conceived by Amero. Because of the lack of strong timber, a flexible plank bridge was held up by thick strands of vine rope that were anchored on each end by a squat stone tower. The bridge was completed in time for the spring planting of the settlement’s fifth year.

In the seventh year of Yala-tene, herders arrived from the far south, driving flocks of goats and oxen before them. They came to barter for fodder as they passed through the desolate mountains, but some of the herders, too, remained behind when the flocks moved on. Enough herders chose to stay to provide fresh meat to the settlement the year round. Rock-walled pens were built on the north side of the sandy hill on which Yala-tene stood.

Twice a week the villagers slaughtered an ox or a pair of elk for the dragon. Knowing Duranix liked his food cooked, they learned to offer the meat on a blazing pyre of logs. The smell and sight of roasted meat attracted the attention of many people, and in time the fashion of eating cooked food became a firm habit.

After many weeks, bones and ashes began to pile up. To contain the growing mound of debris, villagers laid the beginnings of a rectangular wall of rock around the fire pit. Eager to show their appreciation of Duranix, everyone in Yala-tene gathered an armload of stones for the project. Before long, a large flat-topped cairn of smooth lake stones rose in the center of the village.

It became a sought-after honor to present the dragon with the twice-weekly offering, one the families in Yala-tene vied for. To keep the peace and determine fairly which family could serve the select haunches of beef and venison, Amero had to institute a rotating schedule, fixed by the positions of the white moon.

It was an arrangement that suited Duranix perfectly. At first the dragon had maintained his stated lack of interest in the humans that accompanied Amero back to the lake. Gradually, over many months, he found himself intrigued by their activities. It was as though the very shortness of their lives imbued them with a sense of urgency. Duranix still came and went according to his desires, but he acceded to Amero’s wish that he not absent himself for extended periods, since the fledgling settlement had come to rely on him completely for protection.

Duranix seldom went among the people himself because, even in his human form, most of the villagers feared him and wouldn’t speak or act freely in his presence. Amero, who still lived in the great cave, became the dragon’s go-between, and through him, Duranix kept up with the villagers’ affairs. He knew them all by name, their rivalries, their passions, their triumphs and travails.

In the second year after the founding of the village, Amero devised a hoist by which he could he raised and lowered from the cave to the lake. At first this was a simple rope of vines tied to a man-sized basket made of woven willow wands, and it required Duranix to haul the basket up or lower it down. By year three, Amero had added a counterweight and a windlass to the hoist so that he could raise or lower the basket without the dragon’s help.

Though still a young man, Amero was generally recognized as the chief of Yala-tene, by virtue of his special relationship with the dragon. At twenty-three, he was a lean young man of middling height. He was pale for a plainsman, a consequence of spending so much time in caves and tents. After getting his long hair tangled in the windlass one day, Amero had gone to Konza the tanner and had his hair cut short. Elder plainsmen were shocked – they thought the length of a man’s hair reflected strongly on his virility – but boys in the village took heed of the change and began cropping their hair in imitation of Amero. In time, only the most elderly men still wore traditional plainsman’s braids or horsetails.

One evening in early summer of the eleventh year of Yala-tene, as shadows lengthened and the first fires began to gleam in the village below, the timber frame attached to the lower mouth of the cave creaked, and the thick vine rope piled up in a heap on the cave floor. The basket arrived bearing Amero, who leaped out and tied off the hoist.

Amero hailed Duranix as he entered the cave. The dragon, in his natural form, was lying atop his platform at the rear of the cave. He held a stone in one foreclaw and rubbed and scratched it with the other claw. The stone’s surface glittered in the dimly lit cavern. Duranix’s tail was wrapped around an oblong slab of granite, and he repeatedly lifted and lowered the slab. Amero knew what that repetitive motion meant – the dragon was bored.

“What do you have there?” Amero said, climbing the steps to the platform.

“I found it on my last flight east,” said Duranix, squinting with one enormous eye at the stone in his fist. “It’s extremely hard. I’ve been trying to work it into a more pleasing shape.”

He paused his scratching and held the glittering stone on the points of two claws for Amero to see. It resembled a ball of ice the size of a child’s head and was almost completely clear. Amero could see through the stone to Duranix’s eye. The globular stone distorted the image, making the dragon’s eye seem even larger than usual.

“It’s beautiful,” said Amero. “What kind of stone is it?”

“Diamond.” He tossed the bright rock aside. “How go the storage caves?”

“Slow. The diggers hit a vein of black stone that’s stopped them.”

The villagers had decided to emulate Duranix and carve a series of tunnels in the cliff face – not to live in, but to store their supplies of dried and smoked meat, vegetables, and other foodstuffs. Early work went rapidly, and three galleries had been sunk into the mountain, but after forty days, the diggers met tougher rock. All three passages were blocked by the same impenetrable black stone, and their deer-antler picks and stone hammers could make little progress against the impervious wall.

“Do you need my help?” Duranix said.

“Not yet,” Amero replied. “There’s no better way to wake a lazy mind than to put it to work. Mieda will figure out some way around the problem.”

Mieda was their chief digger, a man of many unusual talents. He’d walked into Yala-tene a year ago, starving and unable to speak. With patience and many good meals, he’d recovered, though he remained a taciturn, enigmatic figure. He had many skills, but his black skin and tightly curled hair marked him as being from a far different place.

Amero had been thrilled to meet Mieda, remembering the glimpse he’d caught of the two black men the day his family was attacked by the yevi. However, any questions Amero and his fellow villagers had about his origins were doomed to remain unanswered. Mieda would not talk about where he was from or about his past, but he did work hard and well, winning the trust and respect of the plainsmen.

“Speaking of problems, how’s yours?” Duranix asked.

“Oh! My fire!”

Amero ran down the steps to the great hearth in the center of the cave. He used the leg bone of an ox to rake the ashes away from the morning fire. Buried under the ashes were several bronze dragon scales. Amero was trying to find a way to work Duranix’s bronze into forms the villagers could use. Gingerly, with much waving of singed fingers, Amero snatched the blackened metal from the ashes.

Duranix slipped off the platform in one sinuous movement and came to the hearth. He found the notion of formulating tools from his hide peculiarly human. His wide reptilian head hovered over Amero’s shoulder.

“Well?”

Though warped and blackened by heat, the scales had not melted. “Failed again!” Amero cried. “I was sure it would work this time!”

“What did you do differently?”

Amero threw the hot shards of bronze back in the firepit and dusted his sooty hands. “I wrapped the scales in wet river clay. I thought it might hold in the heat and melt the bronze.”

“You laid an ordinary fire?”

Amero ran a hand through his cropped hair. “Yes. I’ve already tried using different kinds of wood in the fire. That had no effect. Are you sure your scales can be melted?”

“So I was told, long ago. It’s not something I’ve given much thought to, you understand,” said Duranix, rapidly losing interest. He flowed under the larger cave opening and reared up, resting his foreclaws on the rim of the hole and stretching his wings slightly. “I’m leaving the valley tonight. I may not be back till dawn.”

Amero yawned, stretching his arms wide. “I was in the diggings all day, breathing dust and smoke from torches. I think I’ll just wash up and go to sleep.”

Long ago, at Amero’s request, the dragon made a rent in the outer wall of the cave. A steady trickle of water from the falls flowed down this crack and filled a deep basin Duranix clawed out of the rock.

Amero stripped off his buckskin shirt and dipped his hands in the cool water.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“South by east.”

Amero stopped, water dripping from his cupped hands. “You’ve scouted that direction twice in the last five days. What’s out there?”

“I don’t know. Something. I’ve seen large clouds of dust hanging in the air at twilight. I’ve seen swaths cut through the grass by some large, moving formation. The tracks I’ve found are of four-footed creatures.”

Amero dipped his hands in the water again and splashed a double handful on his face. “Yevi?” They’d periodically had to hunt down and destroy small yevi packs, but there’d been no massing of Sthenn’s minions in almost ten years.

Duranix shook his head. Several loose scales fell from his neck, ringing when they hit the stone floor.

“It’s the wrong direction for yevi unless they moved east in large numbers without my detecting them,” the dragon said. “Whatever it is, they don’t want to be seen. They move by night and hide by day. Game animals flee before them but follow after them, if that makes any sense.”

The dragon thrust his head through the cave opening and sniffed the evening air. “Nothing seems amiss, yet something is,” Duranix rumbled. “I’ll find out what. Nothing on the plain can hide from me for long.”

With his back feet gripping the rim, Duranix squeezed his bulky shoulders through the hole and unfurled his wings. A single push of his massive rear legs launched him skyward.

“Be careful!” Amero shouted. It was a silly thing to say to a creature as powerful as a dragon, but Amero meant it. He’d grown extremely fond of Duranix, slowly coming to understand the dragon’s odd sense of humor – and developing a sense of humor himself in the process. He enjoyed their companionship greatly. It still amazed him that he had such a fantastic creature for a friend.

He pulled a fur blanket around his shoulders and sat down on the warm hearthstones. Scratching a piece of scorched bronze with his fingernails, he pondered his problem. He needed more heat if he was ever to melt the bronze. What made one fire hotter than another? Women in the village would sometimes hurry a pot to boiling by blowing the flames with a reed fan. Would such a technique work on metal? Maybe he could get one of the town basket weavers to make him a big fan for the experiment.

Amero lay down on the hearth. Sleep claimed him, but his rest was not peaceful. For the first time in many years he dreamed of the day the yevi had killed his family. In his dream he kept looking back over his shoulder to see Nianki running behind him. Faster! Go faster! She mouthed the words, but no sound came out. Amero raced for the nearest tree. By the time he reached it and looked back again, Nianki had vanished under a seething mass of fanged, gray-furred bodies. He woke calling her name.

*

Duranix cruised slowly at a great height, buoyed by warm updrafts rising through the cold, high air. Far below, the valleys were deeply shadowed clefts where any number of enemies could hide. The valleys opened onto the plain, which by night resembled a featureless sea of gray grassland. The dragon gazed down, trying to detect movement. Individual creatures would be invisible from this height. Even the heat of their blood wasn’t discernible. It would take a hundred creatures moving in unison to register in Duranix’s vision.

He floated for some time, bearing south and east from home. Far to the south was the homeland of the elves, a region he could safely ignore. They were no danger to him. The elves were too civilized, too powerful to succumb to the influence of Sthenn. The host moving across the eastern plain by night, slowly closing on the mountains, could be an elf band, but he discounted the idea. He’d found signs in the Khar River region that the elves had been fighting a formidable foe there. Daylight investigation revealed half a dozen elven strongholds burned to the ground since the red moon last waned.

Duranix had landed at one such site. The log stockade had still been smoldering when he arrived, but the only bodies he’d found were of slain elves. There had been no clues left behind to identify the marauders. Whoever had attacked the outposts carried away their own dead and scoured the battlefield for lost weapons.

The dragon hadn’t shared this with Amero or the villagers. The settled life of the plainsmen was still precarious. One wrong word and many frightened humans would flee for the imagined safety of dispersal on the open grasslands. Amero had worked long and hard to win the trust of his people. He cared deeply that the village succeed. Duranix was too fond of his friend to allow his great project to fail, so he’d decided to hold his tongue until he had more certain knowledge of the possible danger.

A red glimmer broke the monotonous gray expanse below. It was only a momentary flare, but it caught the dragon’s attention. Wings beating hard, he held his place and watched for a repeat of the telltale light. It did not appear again.

He spiraled down as quietly as possible, slowing his speed by letting his feet dangle. The savanna gained more detail. A strip of silver water running east-west, probably the river the elves called the Thon-Tanjan, appeared on Duranix’s left. The ground was dotted with a few very large, widely spaced trees, burltops and vallenwoods. Scores of men or beasts could hide under a single one of them. He’d have to get closer still to investigate. At least the hilly terrain afforded him a concealed place to land.

The dragon alighted in a narrow draw and shrank to human guise. By the time he climbed the highest of the near hills, the denizens of the night had recovered from his intrusion. Crickets chirped in the grass, and clouds of mosquitoes filled the air.

He ran down the hill toward the spot where he’d seen the crimson gleam. When the pungent smell of burning pine reached him, Duranix flattened himself against the ribbed trunk of a giant burltop. He’d hardly taken up this position when a pair of animals trotted past. Mounted on the animals were riders carrying long spears.

Duranix froze. Grand as he was, as a dragon he was still cousin to the lizard and the snake, and when he wished he could remain perfectly motionless. The riders passed within arm’s length of him. Their shape and smell was unmistakable – two humans riding two horses. Duranix knew elves tamed and rode horses, but he’d never heard of humans doing it until now.

He considered snatching one of the men and forcing him to answer questions, but paused when he heard them conversing in the tongue of the plainsmen.

“... so I said, ‘The best flint is the black kind from Khar land,’ but you know Nebef, he thinks he knows everything, so he says, ‘The yellow flint of the east mountains makes the best points...’”

Interesting, Duranix thought. Whoever they were, they were wide-ranging if they knew both Khar and this eastern plain.

After they’d passed, Duranix stepped out from behind the tree and watched the riders continue down the draw. He was so distracted by his discoveries that he didn’t hear a second pair of riders steal up behind him.

Suddenly, a rough hide net was thrown over his head. Two horsemen, shouting in triumph, tried to sweep by on either side and scoop him into their net. They hadn’t reckoned on snaring a dragon in disguise. Though he looked no bigger than a sturdy man, Duranix weighed as much as full-grown bronze dragon. When the net snapped taut, he merely planted his feet, and the riders were yanked off their horses.

Duranix pulled the net apart as easily as a man can tear a cobweb and stood over the two dazed riders. One was a rangy fellow with yellow hair, a flowing mustache, and a smoothly shaven chin. His companion was a short, dark female, clad in a strange outfit consisting of a buckskin tunic with short lengths of twig sewn on. The twigs had been peeled of their bark and matched to length. The female’s arms and chest were covered in tight horizontal rows of white wooden pegs.

He picked up the woman by the collar and held her off the ground. She shook off the effects of her fall and stared at Duranix.

“Uran! Uran, get up!” she yelled. The yellow-haired man only groaned. The woman yanked a sharply pointed flint dagger from her waist and slashed at Duranix with it.

He caught her wrist with his free hand and squeezed. She screamed and let the knife fall to the ground. Duranix dropped her.

“You broke my arm!” she gasped, collapsing to the ground. “I haven’t broken it yet, but I can,” said Duranix

“Who are you?”

“I’ll ask the questions, though I can’t improve on yours. Who are you?”

The woman glared at him fiercely and wouldn’t respond. He picked up the stone knife and snapped it in two with one hand. His great strength caused her anger to dissolve into shock. To further intimidate her, Duranix allowed his eyes to flash with contained lightning.

“Forgive me, Great Spirit! Forgive us! We thought you were an elf!” the woman said.

“What is your name?” asked the dragon.

“Samtu.”

“And him?”

“Uran. We are of Karada’s band.”

Duranix folded his arms. “And who is Karada?”

“The greatest hunter, the bravest warrior, the keenest tracker, the cleverest —”

“Yes, yes,” said the dragon, interrupting a no doubt lengthy list of superlatives. “Where is this Karada? I would like to meet him.”

All at once something gripped Duranix’s ankles. There was a sharp tug and he lost his balance and fell backward. This is why four feet are better than two, he thought in disgust.

Samtu yelled, and her companion, Uran, leaped on the fallen Duranix. It was a brave deed, but entirely futile. With only the slightest effort, the disguised dragon hurled Uran aside. The plainsman flew some distance and landed heavily in the grass.

Duranix rose, irritated at being tripped by such a puny creature. He grasped Samtu by the hair and dragged her to her feet.

“I should pluck the head from your shoulders like a ripe cherry,” he said coldly, “but first tell me where I can find this Karada.”

“Spare me, Great Spirit!” she begged. “I’ll take you to the camp! It isn’t easy to find in the dark! Please let me live!”

Duranix released her, embarrassed he’d caused such terror. Humans, with their spears and stone knives, were far too weak to present a serious danger to him. He might as well torment a rabbit.

“Look to your companion,” he said gruffly, gesturing at the fallen man. “He landed hard.”

Samtu went to Uran, who hadn’t moved since landing. She found him wide-eyed and staring, dead of a broken neck. She reported this to Duranix.

“My apologies,” he said.

He was surprised when Samtu shook her head and declared, “It was a fair fight, though not an even one.” She closed the dead man’s eyes and removed the flint knife from his belt. Favoring her injured arm, she managed to heave Uran’s body onto his horse. Samtu tied the reins to her mount’s bridle.

“Come, Great Spirit. I will take you to Karada.”

He expected to find the human chieftain camped beneath a spreading vallenwood, but the truth was more subtle. The plainsmen had cleared a large area of the shoulder-high grass in the midst of the open plain. Nets, supported by poles, were spread across the clearing. The cut grass had been layered on top of the net, which kept the camp from being spotted from above and gave shade to the artificial clearing beneath.

Leading her own and Uran’s horse, Samtu allowed Duranix to precede her into the clearing, which was lit by a few small, smoky fires. That’s what he’d glimpsed from the air, one of these veiled campfires.

Tough-looking warriors leaped to attention when they spied the stranger. Samtu tied the horses and warned her comrades off. As he passed them, Duranix slowly increased the height of his human form, so that he soon overtopped the tallest plainsman by a full span. He hoped his imposing size would forestall any more rash attacks.

Samtu announced, “Tell Karada a mighty spirit wishes to speak with her.”

A runner was dispatched, and all awaited the arrival of the chieftain – the warriors with much muttering and fingering of spears, Duranix with utter calm. They did not have long to wait.

The chieftain entered the clearing alone and on foot. She was a woman, a bit older than twenty-five, rawboned and red-brown from the sun. Aside from her piercing eyes, Karada’s most striking feature were the jagged scars that crisscrossed her throat, left arm, and right leg. She was clad in a knee-length, divided kilt of pigskin, tanned a soft gray. Her torso was covered with a ribbed breastplate of carved twigs, similar to the one Samtu wore, except the twigs were studded with carved teeth taken from various predators. Karada carried an unusual short-handled spear. The shaft was only half the usual length.

“Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was clear and firm, the tone of a woman used to being obeyed.

“My name is Duranix.”

“Samtu says you killed one of my men.”

“An accident. My regrets. I should have been more careful.”

“Uran was a stout fighter,” she said. “How did he die?”

Samtu related how they’d spied Duranix in the dark, apparently skulking on the trail of two of their other riders. She described their failure with the net and Duranix’s amazing strength.

“Are you a spirit?” Karada asked, nonplussed.

“I am a living, flesh-and-blood creature, I assure you, but this shape you see is not my real one. I am a dragon – what you call a stormbird.”

This revelation set off a loud hubbub in the clearing. Plainsmen left their campfires and filled the clearing around Duranix while he spoke, eyeing the body of their fallen comrade. When he announced the truth about himself, there were many loud denunciations.

“Shut up,” Karada said without raising her voice. The crowd fell-silent at once. “That’s a tall tale, stranger. I’m known to be a blunt woman, but I won’t call you a liar. What I want to know is, why are you here?”

“I dwell some distance from here, in the mountains. There are humans there living under my protection, and when I detected your band hiding by day and advancing by night, naturally I wanted to find out whether you were dangerous to my people.”

Karada rested the short spear on her shoulder. “You live with humans?”

“A modest settlement,” Duranix said.

Someone in the crowd said, “Arku-peli!”

The dragon surveyed the faces of Karada’s plainsmen. They were very different from Amero’s villagers, and different from the small family groups who still wandered the western savanna. There was pride in their faces, a sense of their own independence and toughness. Despite Duranix’s words, his appearance, and the corpse of their comrade, they were not intimidated. The dragon found this interesting and disturbing at the same time.

“I see you’ve heard of our village,” Duranix said. “Those who live there call it Yala-tene.”

“It’s said a stormbird lives at Arku-peli, in the cliffs above the lake,” Karada replied. “Are you him?”

“None other.”

She smiled thinly, sitting down on a fallen log. “I saw a stormbird once, many years ago, high in the sky. It was riding the crest of a storm, and I watched it slay half a herd of elk with its fiery breath.”

Her words triggered a memory. Duranix hadn’t hunted elk in years, not since the villagers began supplying him with choice sides of meat. An image surfaced in his mind: a bedraggled and bloody human waif, standing in pouring rain, watching him devour his food on the hoof...

“Are you listening?” Karada was saying.

Duranix pulled himself back to the present. “What?”

“I said, let me see you as you really are.”

He considered the request briefly, then said no.

“Why not?” she asked. “You allow the people of Arku-peli to look upon you, don’t you?”

“They’re used to me. I wouldn’t want to scare your men.”

Duranix’s remarks brought on a shower of boasts and threats from the plainsmen. Karada let them rant.

The dragon ignored their posturing. “What are you doing here, Karada? Are you headed for Yala-tene?” he asked.

“What if we were?”

“You’re welcome, so long as you come in peace.”

She jabbed the butt of her spear into the dirt. “Peace is not our concern just now! Silvanos, lord of the elves, is trying to push us back across the Tanjan. We’re fighting back, as we did in the south. My scouts tell me he’s moving a large war band up the Thon-Thalas on rafts. I intend to meet them. We’ll crush them where they step ashore.”

This declaration stirred fierce cheers from the warriors.

Karada continued, “When we’ve defeated the elves and sent them back to their forest, maybe then we’ll pay a friendly visit to Arku-peli. Does that answer your question, dragon-man?”

“Well enough, Scarred One.” The mutual witticism made them both smile. He touched his right hand to his forehead in salute, allowing a small snap of lightning to pass between his fingertips and head. The plainsmen pressing in on the scene grunted in surprise and drew back.

“I’ll tell the people of Yala-tene you’re only interested in fighting elves. Good luck to you, Karada, and be cautious. Elves are not to be trifled with. They’re a force of nature, like a cloudburst. Their fury can be endured but not turned aside.”

“Keep your advice, dragon. Silvanos is learning we humans are a force as well. We ask only the right to go where we will, to live as we will. If Silvanos would grant us that, there would be no fighting.”

Tired of the belligerent band, Duranix said farewell and departed on foot. Karada’s nomads parted ranks for him, and he strolled away into the night.

*

When the dragon was gone, Karada called, “Pakito, Pa’alu, I want you.”

The two brothers, long members of Karada’s band, pushed their way through the throng and stood before their chief.

Pakito had grown into a huge man, heavily muscled from balding head to bare toes. Pa’alu cut an impressive figure as well, less massive than his brother, but with a formidable width of shoulders and powerful limbs.

“What’s your will, Karada?” asked Pa’alu.

“Follow him,” she said, indicating the departed Duranix. “Find out where he goes, and see if he is what he claims.”

“And if he’s not?” rumbled Pakito.

“If he’s a fool or a liar, let him be. If he’s a scout for Silvanos, bring back his head.”

“Aye, Karada. That we’ll do.” Pakito cracked the joints of his enormous hands for emphasis.

The plainsmen dispersed to their beds. Pa’alu lingered in the clearing until he was alone with Karada.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I still think your plan is wrong,” he said, kneeling beside her. “We can’t face an elf war band on equal terms. Most of our men still use flint-head spears and stone axes. We have horses now, and a few elven blades, but it’s not enough.”

She regarded him coldly. “Is it because you are afraid, Pa’alu?”

“I’ve hunted and fought at your side for nine seasons. What’s at stake is not my life or yours, but the whole band. You know I speak from the heart.”

“When the gray killers destroyed my family, I survived because I fought back,” she said. “I’ve hunted down and slain more of them than I can count. When the ‘Good People’ tried to drive all humans from the southland, I brought the families and single hunters together to fight back. Now we’re five hundred strong. We have horses and can cover ten leagues a day, hunt and fight on the move...” Karada paused, tracing a line in the dirt with her toe. “I know the elves are powerful, Pa’alu. They have metal. Their shamans have spirit-power none of our wise men can match. It’s said they can change the weather, command the winds, talk to beasts of the air, land, and water...” She slammed the butt of her spear on the ground. “So, do we throw down our spears and run away, hoping the great Silvanos doesn’t decide to take the land north of the river away from us?”

She stood up, hair falling loosely into her face. “We will fight, Pa’alu. We will hit them as they try to leave their rafts, and the river will run red with elf blood. Then Silvanos will know we are not rabbits, but plainsmen!”

She stalked away. He followed, catching her arm.

“You’ve been alone too long,” he said in a low voice. “You see only with the eyes of a hunter. Put down your spear, Nianki. Take me as your mate.”

She pried his hand loose. “You take a chance,” she whispered. “I’ve killed men who laid hands on me. Do you remember Neko?”

Pa’alu stepped back. “I meant no disrespect. I love you, Nianki.”

Her expression did not change. “I’ve no time for such things. Pakito is waiting. Go.”

When Pa’alu remained, she gave him a level look and departed. He watched until darkness engulfed her, cursing himself for saying too much and for loving a woman he could not reach. He might as well love the stars in the sky – like Nianki, they could lead you through the darkest night, but they were impossible to touch and gave no warmth. So it was with his chief. Many men had tried to win her or take her, but she’d bested them all. Through it all Pa’alu remained at her side, glad to be a friend and comrade, if nothing else.

Pakito’s bull voice echoed across the clearing, calling him. With a deep sigh Pa’alu shouldered his knapsack and went to join his brother.

Out from under the protective canopy of grass, the sight of the stars mocked his heart. Pa’alu had never thought much about spirits and powers, but faced with an impossible goal, he decided it couldn’t hurt to reach out to them in case there were forces greater than humankind who could intervene on his behalf.

Pa’alu looked up at the sparkling firmament and made a solemn vow. Some day, Nianki would be his. Whatever the cost, he would have her.

Chapter 9

It didn’t take long for Duranix to discover he was being followed. This did not mean Pa’alu and Pakito were clumsy stalkers, merely that the dragon’s senses were far more perceptive than any normal prey. He heard their footfalls behind him within a league of leaving Karada’s camp. Once he knew they were there, it was easy to spot them. The warm blood in their veins gave their silhouettes a dull luminosity against the cooler background of trees and grass. After ascertaining his trackers numbered only two, he moved on.

Duranix could have reverted to dragon shape and taken to the air, leaving the humans far behind, but that wouldn’t have been nearly so interesting. Instead, he began to walk faster and faster until he was covering ground in huge bounds. His pursuers faded in the distance. Once his lead was comfortable, Duranix searched for a convenient spot to turn the tables on the plainsmen.

He found what he wanted in a field of boulders. Hundreds of upright stones littered the grassland, most of them slabs of black granite. Their regularity, and the fact that no other outcroppings of similar stone occurred in the vicinity, puzzled the disguised dragon. The stones appeared to have been arranged purposefully, but who could have done such a thing? They were well outside elf territory, and the backward local humans lacked the means to move so many heavy boulders.

Duranix stopped at the edge of the field of standing stones. His run across the savanna hadn’t winded him. A quick glance behind failed to reveal Pakito or Pa’alu in sight.

The dragon entered the outer circle of stones. He trailed his fingers over the rough surface of one angular boulder. His senses tingled strongly. Surprised, he pressed first his palm, then his cheek against the cold granite. The stone fairly hummed with contained force. There were hundreds more stones around him. He touched those nearest him and found them charged as well. Much power had been expended here in the distant past – power greater than a hundred dragons. The stones radiated it invisibly, like heat stored up from a hot summer day.

The deeper he went into the formation, the more disturbed Duranix became. He’d been looking for a spot to stage a playful ambush. Instead, he’d stumbled across a place of vast, captive spiritual energy. It was neither benign nor malign in flavor, but the sheer amount of power pent up in these stones made Duranix’s mock-human skin crawl.

He’d wasted enough time with these savages. He resolved to get out of this strange forest of stones, resume dragon form, and fly back to his lake. On his way out, he heard movement among the standing stones – a jingle of metallic links, the flex of heavy leather.

A tiny blue spark appeared in the air before him and rapidly grew into a spinning globe of light three spans wide. It was harmless, Duranix knew, merely a source of illumination, but it meant someone mortal was drawing on the power of this place.

Folding his arms, Duranix said loudly, “You’ve made yourself known. Who are you, and what do you want?”

Two-legged figures emerged from behind the stones – more than a dozen in all. Duranix readied himself to fight or flee. Some of the hidden watchers gathered under the blue light, and he saw they were elves, not humans. They surrounded Duranix with a ring of bronze-tipped javelins.

Eleven were dressed in warrior garb. The twelfth was visibly older than the rest, wore a long blue robe embroidered with arcane hieroglyphs, and had a feathery mustache and beard. Duranix was intrigued by this last detail. Elves did not possess facial hair. They regarded beards as a bestial human trait. Sparse though it was, this bearded stranger could not be a full-blooded elf and, surprisingly, he chose to flaunt the fact.

He leaned on a tall, stout staff, studded with raw, unpolished gems. “I am Vedvedsica, high sage to my lord Balif, first warrior of the host of our great master, Silvanos.” Vedvedsica raised his staff, pointed it at Duranix, and declared in ringing tones, “You are not what you appear to be!”

“Who is?” said the dragon pleasantly. “What brings you so far from your native forest? Aren’t you afraid of the plainsmen?”

“I am well protected,” the robed elf replied, with a nod to his escort.

Piercing the night with his dragon’s eyes, Duranix perceived each of the armed elves was weighed down with a pair of hide bags draped across their shoulders. The bags were obviously heavy and clinked when the elves moved. Vedvedsica himself had a small drawstring bag around his neck.

“You’ve been prospecting,” Duranix surmised, “chipping fragments from the standing stones.”

One of the warriors shifted nervously, saying, “He knows our business, Master. Shall we silence him?” The other elves tensed, ready to strike with their javelins.

“No!” the priest said sternly. “This is no wandering barbarian! Keep still, or he may slay us all!”

Duranix had to smile. “You’re wise for one so small.”

A shrill whistle split the air. Half the elves turned about, scanning the ill-lit stones for the source of the noise. A similar whistle rose from the darkness on the other side of the stone field. The senior warrior snapped commands, and four elves ran off into the shadows to investigate.

Duranix stood very still. He detected motion above and behind him. His peripheral vision discerned someone jumping from the top of one standing stone to another. The elves hadn’t noticed.

“What will you do with them?” Duranix asked as the drama unfolded around them.

“Do with what?” Vedvedsica asked, frowning. There was something unnatural about his eyes. With those whiskers under his nose, he had the face of a panther.

“Those stones.” A second shadowy figure leaped across the high rocks on Duranix’s right. Still the elves saw nothing. “The ones you and your retainers carry.”

The priest fingered the little bag hanging down on his chest. “These will make powerful amulets,” he said. “The high lords of Silvanost will reward me richly for them.”

Just then a fist-sized rock hit the warrior nearest Duranix in the face. He went down hard, blood spurting from his nose.

The rest of the elves exploded into uncoordinated action – running, yelling, trying to minister to their fallen comrade. One angry elf ported his javelin and tried to shove Duranix back against one of the boulders.

The dragon felt he had been more than patient, but his forbearance was wearing thin. He grasped the offending javelin with one hand and snapped it in two places with a twist of his wrist The astonished elf leaped back, clawing for his bronze short sword. Duranix blew lightly in the warrior’s face. The elf dropped his sword and ran screaming into the outer darkness.

Duranix turned his attention to the priest’s light orb. With a sweep of his hand he shattered the fiery blue ball into ten thousand sparks, which winked and went out. Night engulfed the scene.

Someone large and heavy landed in front of Duranix. He grabbed the intruder by the front of his buckskin shirt.

“It’s me – Pakito!” his captive said.

“So it is.” Duranix hoisted Pakito off his feet and flung him at the group of elves guarding Vedvedsica. They all went down in a flailing, cursing heap. Pakito recovered first and laid about him with his massive fists.

“Pa’alu! Brother, I’m here!” he shouted. Duranix couldn’t tell if he was calling for help or asking Pa’alu to join the fun.

The priest, seeing his guards scattered, turned to run. He was preternaturally fleet, but Duranix was on him in two long bounds. The disguised dragon snagged the elf priest by the back of his robe. Suddenly, there was a choking aroma of flowers, as if Duranix had been buried under a mountain of roses and lilacs, and he found himself holding an empty robe.

The smell was overwhelming. Coughing, Duranix threw down the robe and tried to find the fleeing priest. His eyes swept the horizon but saw nothing.

Pakito had subdued five of the elves by sitting on them. When one struggled to escape, Pakito whacked him with the butt of a javelin. One brave elf charged out of the dark with his weapon leveled. Duranix stepped in front of him. The bronze spearhead struck the dragon square in the chest, and the elf thrust hard. His javelin bent double, leaving Duranix unharmed. Uttering a terrified oath, the warrior dropped his weapon and fled.

Quiet descended. Pa’alu joined them, casually wiping blood from an elven sword.

Pakito looked up from his awkward position atop the unconscious elves. “Well, dragon-man,” he said genially, “I’m glad we didn’t try to take you back at camp!” He told his brother how the elf’s spear had hurt Duranix no more than a soggy reed.

Pa’alu listened intently then shoved his sword through his belt and surveyed the area. “Lucky thing we happened along.”

“Luck? You two have been trailing me since I left Karada’s camp.”

“Not us!” Pakito insisted, but his open expression easily betrayed the truth of the matter.

The dragon shook his head. “No matter. What concerns me most is the elf priest who escaped.”

“We first thought you came here to meet them,” Pa’alu said. “It wasn’t until we heard you talking that we realized you were as surprised as we were to find them here.”

“What is this place, anyway?” asked Pakito.

“I’m not certain,” said Duranix. “It feels like... a graveyard.”

Pakito jumped to his feet. The elves he’d been sitting on groaned but remained quiescent. “Who’s buried here?” the big man asked, eyes wide.

“No one.”

Pa’alu ran a hand lightly over a nearby stone. “What do you mean?”

“This formation is not natural,” Duranix told them. “These stones have stood for untold years, yet they still resonate with great power.”

“I’ve heard stories,” Pa’alu said, lowering his voice, “tales of the days before men and elves. It’s said the spirits fought a great war over who would rule the world.”

“True enough,” Duranix said.

“Maybe these are some of the losers.”

The dragon was struck by the plainsman’s surprising acumen. He knew from his hatchling days of the All-Saints War, when the spirits aligned themselves with Good or Evil, or tried to remain neutral. After some defeats, the forces of

Good and Neutrality allied themselves and defeated – hut did not destroy – the forces of Evil. What greater punishment could there be for defeated spiritual beings than to be confined to the material world, imprisoned for eons in a matrix of unfeeling stone?

Pakito broke the silence. “What about them?” he asked, gesturing toward the limp pile of bodies.

“Take their metal and leave’em,” Pa’alu said, squatting by his brother’s unconscious victims. “It’s a long walk back to the forest. Maybe a wolf or panther will get them on the way.”

“Karada should know they were here,” Pakito insisted. “There aren’t supposed to be any elves this far north. What if there are more?”

“What indeed?” Duranix shook off the oppressive aura of the stones. “Your chief should be warned. This was a small party, but if a sizable band of elves is about, your people could be trapped between it and the force ascending the Thon-Thalas.”

“Who’ll warn Karada?” Pakito wondered, looking confused. “We were ordered to follow you.”

“I return to Yala-tene. One of you can come along; the other can go back and warn Karada.”

The brothers saw the sense in this. Pakito, knowing his brother’s feelings for their chief, offered to go with Duranix. Pa’alu declined.

“I haven’t been to the mountains since I was a boy,” he said. “I’ll go with the dragon-man.”

“But —”

“Go on, Pakito. You’re the only one who can carry all this metal back anyway.” He filled his brother’s arms with elven javelins, swords, greaves, and helmets. “Start now. You’ll reach camp before noon.”

Pa’alu hung a few extra waterskins – taken from the elves – around his hulking brother’s neck and, with a hearty slap on his back, sent him on his way. While the brothers were parting, Duranix went to where Vedvedsica’s robe lay. A dense odor of flowers still clung to the empty garment.

Pa’alu approached. “Find something?”

“I’d hoped to find the bag of stone chips he carried,” said Duranix. “It appears he took them with him.”

“How are such things done?”

“It’s a talent, and a rare one among flimsy creatures like yourselves. I think the priest has somehow learned to tap the latent power of the stones. It’s a dangerous ability for savages.”

Duranix stood, tossing the robe aside. When he did, a single small stone fell from the folds. Pa’alu picked it up. It was a smooth, heavy nugget, no bigger than a walnut, and of a richer yellow color than bronze.

“Heavy,” said the plainsman, handing the stone to Duranix. “What is it?”

“Gold.” What felt like cold stone to the plainsman almost burned Duranix’s hand. The nugget was saturated with power.

To Pa’alu’s bewilderment, Duranix put the yellow nugget in his mouth. Without further explanation, he struck out due west for Yala-tene, leaving Pa’alu hurrying on his heels to keep up.

*

Smoke poured from the mouth of the tunnel. Amero and his chief digger, Mieda, stood back from the opening with strips of wet birch-bark over their noses and mouths. Deep inside, they could see a red flicker of flame. More diggers emerged, coughing and soot-stained. When they reached open air, they doused themselves with handy buckets of cold lake water.

“How goes it, Farun?” Amero asked anxiously.

The digger, his face blackened by soot, coughed and said, “It’s still burning, but no one can stay in there long.”

“That’s all right,” Amero replied. “As long as we can run in and feed the fire, there’s nothing else to do right now.”

Fire had been Mieda’s idea. The storage tunnels had progressed well as long as there was sandstone to burrow through, but when the diggers found a strain of hard black stone, the project stopped dead. They tried various tools on the black stone, including shovels fashioned from the dragon’s cast-off scales, but nothing made an impression. Then one morning Amero found Mieda by the shore of the lake. He’d built a small twig fire and was watching it intently.

“Catch a fish?” Amero asked.

Mieda tapped the black object in the fire with a stick.

“What’s that?”

“Black stone, like in tunnel.” Mieda’s command of the plainsman’s language wasn’t complete. Many villagers still thought he was slow-witted because he didn’t talk much. Amero knew better.

“You’re cooking a stone?”

“Yes.” Mieda remained cross-legged on the sand, staring at the fire.

Amero dropped down on the other side of the flames. He said nothing for a long time, then impatience stirred his tongue.

“What are you doing, Mieda?”

“Learning to break rock.” He leaned forward and spat on the black stone shard. Satisfied with the hiss that it produced, Mieda dipped his hands in the lake and dumped the water squarely on the stone. Smoke and steam rose. The little fire sputtered and died.

“What did that accomplish?” Amero asked.

Mieda raised his stick – a limp pine branch, plucked green from the tree – and struck the black rock smartly. To Amero’s amazement, the rock cracked and fell apart.

“How did you do that?” he exclaimed.

Mieda smiled. “Seen it before. Cooled fast, hot stone breaks.” He met Amero’s eyes. “Understand?”

“Yes! We can do this in the tunnel!”

So they did. It wasn’t as easy as cooking a rock on the beach. The tunnels filled with smoke when the first dry pine boughs were set alight. The diggers ran out for fresh air, but someone had to go back at intervals to feed the flames. Every bucket, gourd, and bowl in Yala-tene was filled with water, ready to throw on the heated rock face. Normal work in the village came to standstill as everyone waited to see if Mieda’s technique worked as well in the large scale as it did in the small.

The fire had been burning all morning. Farun reported the heat inside the tunnel was unbearable. Amero looked to his chief digger.

“What do you say, Mieda?”

“Water.”

Amero held up his hands. “Take the water now! Two at a time, go!”

He and Mieda were the first to enter. Still holding soaked bark to their faces and waddling under the weight of full buckets, they entered the smoky passage. The heat was overwhelming. Sweat coursed down Amero’s face as they neared the fire. In addition to the pine boughs, the diggers had stacked oak wood against the wall. The hardwood had burned down to a glowing drift of coals.

Mieda dropped his mask and picked up his bucket in both hands. He flung the water high, so it would run down the rock face. Amero did the same, then both men retreated, coughing hard. As soon as they were out, the next pair ran in, and the next, until forty pails had been dumped on the fire.

Amero, Mieda, and the diggers stood around the mouth of the tunnel, wrapped in steam and smoke. A gentle breeze helped clear the mist away.

“Now, we’ll see.” Amero started for the opening. Farun held out a long-handled stone mallet. Amero smiled and rested the heavy tool on his shoulder.

The others trooped in behind Amero. The carved stone floor sloped downward, so the farther they went the more standing water they encountered. By the time they reached the black stone wall, water, ashes, and rock dust had combined to make a soupy black mud. Some of the men slipped and fell. A few others snickered. Amero let the mallet hit the floor, and the resulting clunk silenced the crowd at his back.

“Give it a whack,” said Farun.

“It ought to be your honor,” Amero said, offering the handle to Mieda.

The dark-skinned man pressed the mallet back into Amero’s hands. “Honor’s yours,” he said. He gestured to Farun and the others. “My life, their lives, are owed to you. You hit.”

Amero swung the hammer high and brought it down smartly on the obstinate wall. The hammer head was granite, and many granite tools had been broken on the black stone before, but this time the obstruction shattered. Grit flew, and hand-sized flakes fell to the muddy floor. The diggers roared with satisfaction.

Outside, the waiting villagers heard the cry of success and echoed it. Men ran out of the tunnel calling for baskets to haul away the debris. More mallets were brought, and soon the cliff side rang with the blows of stone on stone.

Amero and Mieda stood outside and watched a continuous line of diggers emerge bearing baskets full of broken rock. These were emptied on a large pile of leavings that rose by the side of the lake. As more black stone was thrown on top of the sandstone debris, tiny avalanches cascaded down the pile into the lake.

“We’ll have to find a better place to dump that,” Amero mused. “We don’t want the lake tainted with rock dust.”

A young woman emerged from the tunnel with a basket on her back. Amero quickly lost interest in the rock pile when he recognized Halshi, eldest child of Valka, one of the first plainsmen to settle by the lake with his family. Halshi had jet-black hair, smooth, tanned skin, and a ready smile. Amero had hinted to Valka he was interested in becoming Halshi’s mate, but with one thing and another, this task and that, nothing was ever settled between them. Still, Amero always found himself watching her whenever she was around.

Halshi added her burden to the pile. She’d started for another load when Amero called to her.

“How goes it?” he asked. “Are they breaking through?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, hitching her basket on her hip. “The rock’s flying apart now. You did a good job, Mieda.”

The chief digger acknowledged the compliment with a nod. Amero found himself wishing he’d earned Halshi’s praise.

A scattering of red glints in the rock pile caught his eye. Amero squinted to see them better. It wasn’t a trick of the light. As he drew nearer, he saw the debris was flecked with hundreds of small red beads.

“What’s this?”

He knelt and picked a larger nodule out of the pile. Roughly globular, the bead was shiny and hard, like Duranix’s scales, though a different color.

“That stuff?” said Halshi, looking down at him. “I don’t know, but the pit’s full of it.” She returned to the tunnel.

Amero found himself intrigued by the strange red beads. He dug through the coarse slag with his hands and found most of the black stone was dotted with them. Even odder were the larger slabs of rock that had red beads oozing out of them.

A shadow fell across Amero. Mieda had come to see. “Ever seen this stuff before?” Amero held up a handful of red beads.

Mieda examined the pellets closely, holding them up to the light, even putting one between his teeth and biting on it. At last, he replied, “It’s copper.”

“What’s copper?”

“It’s strong. It’s —” Mieda groped for a word the plainsman would recognize. “The dragon, his hide is like this.” He made two fists and banged them together. “Strong. Hard. This is copper.”

“Metal? It comes from rocks?” asked Amero, amazed.

“I’ve lived long, been many places, seen it before. I never saw it made. It makes tools and pretty things, if you have enough of it.”

Amero was lost in thought. “There were no beads in the black stone before the fire,” he muttered to himself. “Somehow the fire sweated the copper out of the rock.”

His mind was racing. For years he’d sought to make use of Duranix’s cast-off scales, but aside from bending or sharpening them, he’d found no way of changing their shape. All his experiments with fire had failed to melt a single bronze scale. If a substance with scale-like hardness could be extracted from the earth around them, couldn’t it be worked into more useful forms, into any form they wanted?

He set a gang of children to work sifting through the tunnel slag. All the red pellets were to be collected and saved.

By sunset the tunnel had been extended five paces deeper into the mountain. They’d planned to go twenty paces in each tunnel. That would guarantee cool, safe storage for a long time. The villagers were tired but happy with their success.

Amero was too excited to sleep. He had a basket full of copper beads and a head full of ideas. Other tunnels could be extended through the black stone blockage using Mieda’s heating method. If each one yielded similar amounts of copper, Amero would have enough raw material to begin experimenting with it. He wished Duranix were here to advise him. The dragon found the human predilection for toolmaking amusing, and he was a fount of useful ideas.

Thinking of the dragon raised a new question: Where was Duranix? His flight to and from the east should have taken only one day. The sun was now setting on the dragon’s second day away.

Amero realized Duranix might have been diverted by any number of things. Who could know what would interest a dragon? Still, he found himself staring at the eastern range, a frown on his face, as the setting sun turned the sky at his back crimson. He kept hoping for a glimpse of the dragon flying home, but the darkening sky remained empty

Chapter 10

A strange and ominous calm hung over the banks of the Thon-Thalas. Cold river water, collected in the mountains to the west, chilled the warm summer air, creating patches of mist slowly flowing along with the current. Half of Karada’s band, almost two hundred-fifty men and women of fighting age, crouched in the bushes a pace or two from the water’s edge. Further up the hill, the rest of the plainsmen waited on horseback, their position screened by a hedge of freshly cut saplings.

Now and then a horse snorted or tried to eat the tender leaves of the camouflage just in front of them. Karada glowered at these indiscretions, and the riders quieted their mounts quickly.

Pakito came up the hill, moving with remarkable stealth for a man his size. He’d been appointed to lead the warriors on foot, partly because of his great strength, but also because they had no horse that could carry him.

He ascended by way of a path carefully screened with vines and replaced undergrowth. When he reached the hedge Pakito waved to his chief.

“Any sign?” she whispered.

“They were at the deer ford last night,” Pakito replied huskily. “Our scouts counted thirty-two rafts, sixteen with warriors, ten for horses, and the rest laden with supplies.”

Karada nodded, satisfied. The elves never traveled without what seemed to plainsmen like copious, unnecessary supplies – food, tents, tools, and assorted mysterious gear whose purpose was known only to elves. Their equipment allowed them to do many things the plainsmen couldn’t, but carrying it also slowed them down. Karada intended to exploit this weakness to the fullest.

“Go back to the river,” she told Pakito. “Make ready. They’ll be here about dawn.”

He grinned widely. “I wouldn’t want to be an elf this morning!”

“I wouldn’t be an elf ever,” she muttered, dismissing him. Pakito hurried back down the path to his waiting men.

Gradually the violet pre-dawn gave way to the rose of daybreak. Karada took off her heavy headband and wiped her forehead. The band was made of bear teeth, bored through and strung together on a backing of black ox hide. Her people had contributed all the bear’s teeth gathered in a year’s hunting to make the headband for Karada. She clenched it tightly in her hand as if to take the power and ferocity of the bears into her own spirit.

A distinctive three-note whistle rose from the riverbank. The signal! The elves were in sight!

Karada replaced her headband and drew the sword she’d taken from the elf Tamanithas so many years ago. All along the line the mounted warriors stirred restlessly. She glared them into silence again.

Through the leafy hedge she spied the first raft. It was a square platform of logs lashed together, about two paces by four. A crowd of twenty elf warriors stood in the center of the raft while bare-chested rafters walked back and forth along both sides, pushing the craft along by means of long wooden poles. Mist on the river parted in front of them. The raft moved slowly down the center of the stream, making deliberate progress against the current.

Karada and her scouts had reconnoitered the Thon-Thalas for eight leagues in both directions and had picked this spot as the place the elf expedition would likely disembark. The riverbank was wide and firm here. Farther south the banks were too steep, and farther west the current was too swift for poling. This was the spot and no other.

A shout, and the rafters reversed their poling pattern. Karada flexed her fingers around her reins. With much scrambling, the pole-carriers collected on the left side and in unison drove their poles hard into the water. The awkward craft nosed for shore.

No sooner had the hewn ends of the logs touched the bank than the elf warriors sprang ashore with weapons drawn. They formed a line, their chief shouting a series of commands. They moved inland a few paces, poking the underbrush with their spears and swords. Karada held her breath.

Her warriors were not far from where the sharp bronze points probed. She knew her fighters would keep cool. They were as much afraid of her and Pakito as they were the elves, but she worried the elves would discover the trap before it was ready to spring.

The elf chief called a halt, assembling his troop at the water’s edge. The rafters pushed their craft away and made room for the next one. It too was loaded with armed warriors. These filed off and awaited the next raft.

Karada shaded her eyes from the morning sun and looked downriver. The expedition was piling up, the rafts bumping each other. The current was just strong enough to require constant effort to keep the rafts in place. As she expected, the warriors were concentrated in the first rafts. After them came the horses; the supplies would be landed last. By then the river would be a solid, chaotic mass of rafts, balky animals, and struggling rafters. That would be the time to attack.

And so it happened. Elf warriors filled the dry ravine leading from the river’s edge to the open plain above. It was the obvious, easy place for them to muster once they’d left their rafts. They stood alertly for a time, watching the trees with disconcerting intensity, but as the morning grew hot and nothing happened they began to grow careless. Some even took off their helmets and sat down on the mossy ground.

The last of the three hundred and sixty warriors came ashore, and the first raft of horses nosed forward. Pens had been erected on the rafts to keep the animals in order. Karada was glad to see the horses arrive. Their smell covered the odor of her band’s horses.

An elf on the front of the first raft of horses threw a line to waiting comrades on shore. Four elves took hold and hauled the raft in. Empty troop rafts bumping against them made the process awkward and tedious.

Karada gave a signal. It was relayed down the line, and a gray object, a little bigger than a man’s head, was tossed out of the trees to land at the feet of the four elves pulling in the horse barge. In an instant wasps spilled out of the gray object and attacked the rafters. Yells and much slapping ensued, and some of the unfortunates threw themselves in the river. Warriors nearest the shore stood and laughed at their comrades’ ill luck.

They stopped laughing as three more wasps’ nests landed among them. A lordly chieftain, recognizable by his elaborate helmet and fur-trimmed mantle, drew his sword and pointed at the trees where Pakito’s men were hiding. One nest might be a misfortune; four constituted an attack.

The elves formed ranks even as the wasps swarmed over them. Karada had to admire their discipline under such conditions. She doubted even fear of her would keep her own band steady under such an onslaught.

More nests were lobbed at the horse rafts. Crazed by the stings, the horses burst their flimsy pens and floundered into the river. Rafters were thrown down when the animals swamped the log platforms. Soon the river was filled with elves and horses. Over all hung a cloud of angry black wasps.

The front ranks of the elf force stormed up the bank to Pakito’s position. The giant plainsman stood up and roared defiance at the enemy. He had painted his face with white clay, soot, and berry juice. When Pakito was joined by two hundred and fifty comrades, the charging elves wavered and stopped, but only for a moment. The rear ranks flung javelins at the wildly painted enemy, and Pakito’s men replied with their last batch of wasps’ nests.

Karada wanted to cheer when she saw Pakito holding his men in place. Plainsmen all too often wanted to rush their foes, yelling and waving their spears. A headlong rush would strike terror into the hearts of most foes, but the elves were too well trained to succumb to panic. This time Pakito, holding his people firm, forced the elves to climb the slope. All the while the plainsmen pelted their enemy with rocks and heavy splits of wood.

The line of elves extended past the plainsmen’s position, so those on the extreme right broke formation and ran to hit Pakito’s men on the flank. When they did, they exposed their backs to Karada’s hidden horsemen. She raised her sword high. The eye of every horseman was on her. Wordlessly she whipped her blade down and urged her mount forward.

From the river it appeared as though a wall of mounted human warriors had burst through the trees, and a wail of confusion went up from the elves.

Karada charged ahead, running one elf down and impaling another with her sword. The shocked troops tried to turn to counter her attack. As they did Pakito let loose his bull-like battle cry, and the humans fighting on foot surged down the hill.

The trap was sprung, and the fight quickly became fierce. Karada laid about her on every side, trading blows with any elf in reach. A javelin flew at her face. She batted it aside, but an elf came up close on her right and upended her by grasping her foot and heaving her off her horse. She landed heavily in the trampled ferns and rolled quickly away to avoid being stepped on by her own animal. Rising, she was immediately attacked by a sword-armed elf. They traded cuts. He was trained in this art, and Karada was not. She received a ringing blow on the side of the head. Her bear’s tooth headband saved her life, but she went down hard, losing her weapon.

Karada scrambled to her feet, snatched up an elven spear, and fought her way to her comrades. She climbed atop a stump and saw that most of the elves had been pushed back to the river. Some had been driven into the water, and others clambered onto empty rafts. Bundles of javelins were being passed hand over hand from the supply rafts to where the battle raged. Karada decided to put a stop to that.

She rallied sixteen mounted plainsmen and ordered one to give up her mount to the chief. The woman climbed down. It was Samtu, who’d brought the dragon-man to camp not long ago.

“Take care of Appleseed,” Samtu said, handing the reins to Karada.

“No promises,” the chief replied. “Warriors, with me!”

They swung away from the main fight and galloped down the riverbank. The elven rafts had bunched together, filling the river from side to side. Without a word of explanation or warning, Karada rode to the water’s edge and urged her horse to leap. The horse sprang and landed solidly on one of the rafts. The craft bobbed hard, causing Appleseed to scramble for footing, but the animal kept his feet and Karada kept her balance too.

She speared a rafter who tried to fend her off with his pole. Two other elves tore into the bundle of javelins they’d been trying to pass, seeking to free some to use against Karada. She slid off Appleseed and killed them both before they could get weapons in their hands.

By now many elves were standing in water up to their knees. The rearmost ranks were climbing across rafts to reach the south shore. The plainsmen higher up on the bank, with no one left to fight, began throwing stones or javelins at the fleeing enemy. The last rafts in the convoy, the ones laden with the expedition’s supplies, began to retreat. Rafters poled frantically downstream, eager to escape the ferocious onslaught.

“Go!” Karada shouted after them. “Go! Come no more to our land!”

Her triumph was cut short by a blast of noise – the sound of ram’s horns. Startled, she remounted Appleseed and rode to the shore. The rumble of massed hooves filled the air.

A cry rose from the throats of the elves on the riverbank. “Balif! Balif!”

She couldn’t believe it. Balif, the elf lord who’d captured her on the beach so many years ago? She led the remaining mounted plainsmen up the draw, reining up when she reached the edge of the plain. What she saw brought a lump to her throat.

Elves, hundreds and hundreds of them, all on horseback. Sunshine glinted off their bronze lances. Two standards waved in the breeze over this magnificent host – the first was the hated emblem of Silvanos; the second, a device Karada didn’t recognize. It was a narrow pennant of bright blue, slashed with slanting red and black bars.

The band behind her milled about uncertainly. There were no more than one hundred and fifty plainsmen on horseback to receive the charge of five hundred or more elves. Samtu, now astride another horse, worked her way to Karada’s side.

“We can’t stand against that!” she cried.

Karada looked back at Pakito’s force on foot, still fighting the few elves left at the river. “If we don’t, Pakito and all those with him will die!”

She ordered her horsemen to group together in a tight circle. At a deliberate trot, they rode away from Pakito, crossing toward the approaching elf host. As Karada hoped, she drew the elven army’s attention away from the vulnerable plainsmen on foot.

“Ready?” she called to her band. “If we die, we die free!”

The plainsmen managed a cheer, but it sounded hollow. Karada took her place in the front rank of horsemen and put aside her sword in favor of her old short-handled spear, which she always carried slung on her back. She was just about to order the charge when a surprising movement among the elf riders stopped her.

The block of five hundred riders turned to the right in one simultaneous movement. It was then Karada and her followers saw that behind the mass of elf warriors was another army of equal size. This army turned their horses left on command, revealing a third contingent.

The plainsmen sat and gaped. None of them had ever seen so many elves at once, much less so many armed, mounted elves. The rear of Karada’s band fell apart, warriors galloping away as fast as they could. Karada pushed her way through the ranks, yelling and striking her own men with the shaft of her spear.

“Cowards!” she raged. “Craven dogs! Where are you going?”

“We are lost!” they cried, scattering out of her reach.

She saw Sessan, one of her best horsemen, urging his comrades to follow him, retreating to safety. Karada screamed curses at him, damning him for his treachery.

“We’ll fight another day!” Sessan whirled, declaring, “Die if you want, Karada, but don’t expect us to die for nothing!”

She reversed her grip on her spear and made ready to hurl it at Sessan. Samtu rode up beside her and tried to stay her hand. Blind with fury, Karada slashed at her comrade. Whitefaced, Samtu dropped her sword and rode away.

In scant minutes Karada was alone, facing fifteen hundred elf warriors. Her anger burned itself out, leaving her surprisingly calm in the face of imminent death. She wrapped her reins tightly around her fist and thumped her bare heels against Appleseed’s ribs, and the horse cantered through the bloody grass toward the foe. When the gap had closed to thirty paces – javelin range – Karada stopped to savor her last breath of life.

Facing her was a splendidly outfitted band of elite outriders in sky-blue mantles. Twenty strong, they wore tall bronze helmets and carried round shields, burnished until they shone like gold. The shields bore the emblem of the sun, the symbol of Silvanos’s throne.

In the midst of these magnificent warriors she spotted one elf flanked by standard bearers and another, older elf in civilian clothes. The younger elf was clad in a gilded breastplate and plumed helmet, greaves, and a brilliant blue cape. She recognized him. It was Balif, her old enemy.

*

From under the visor of his helmet Balif saw a lone human on horseback, confronting his entire host. Her gray chaps were streaked with blood, and a barbarous headdress of yellow teeth held down a mane of sun-bleached hair. When Balif finally realized who this human was, he couldn’t help himself. He smiled.

The line of elves stood still behind him, awaiting the order to attack. Instead of launching his whole force at Karada, Balif rode out followed only by four standard bearers.

Karada raised her spear.

“Hold!” Balif shouted. “Do not throw your life away with that spear!”

“My life is mine,” she shouted back. “I’ll do with it as I please!”

Balif reined up an arm’s length away. “Greetings, Nianki.”

“You remember me.”

“How could I forget?” He looked past her as the last of her mounted warriors disappeared over the hills. “You seem to have run out of army.”

“They were unworthy.”

“I don’t think so. Your band has wrought great havoc in the south, burning outposts. They simply know when not to fight.” Balif pulled off his helmet and cradled it in front of him. Wind caught his long blond hair. “I give you leave to withdraw, Nianki.”

She shook her head. “Never.”

“Your life will be spared if you go.”

“A few elf lives too, I reckon, but I won’t live by your charity.”

“I have only to raise my hand and you’ll be trampled into the weeds.”

“So what’s stopping you?” she replied harshly. “Are you afraid to fight me in single combat?”

Balif laughed. “You’re a strange foe, Nianki!” he said. “Your bravery here today confounds the claim that humans are merely grunting savages who deserve nothing better than to be driven from the plain. You’re resourceful, gallant, and have a certain rough grace.”

“If you truly believed what you say, you would not persist in driving us from the land,” she told him.

He shrugged. “I think there is room for all. Unfortunately, mine is but one voice. There are many in my lord’s council who prefer to exterminate humans rather than live with them.” With a little shake of his head, he recalled himself to the current situation. In a loud voice he declared, “Withdraw, Nianki.”

“I offered you single combat,” she said grimly. “Do you refuse?”

“So you did. Yes, I’ll fight you, if you wish.”

One of his retainers cried out, “No, my lord, you cannot!”

“This barbarian is no honorable opponent!” said another.

“I’ll stake my life on this human’s honor,” he said curtly. “Stand back, and do not interfere.”

The unhappy standard bearers turned their animals back and rode slowly to the waiting elf host. Balif drew his sword and slung his bright golden shield over his shoulder.

“Since you have no shield, it would be unfair of me to use mine,” he explained.

“Use whatever you like,” Karada replied. She shifted her spear from an overhand, throwing position to an underhand thrusting grip. “Hah!” she cried, urging Appleseed forward.

Balif likewise launched his mount into motion. They met with a loud clang of metal and stone. A shout went up from the elf army.

The fine flint head of Karada’s spear showed a deep chip where Balif’s bronze blade struck it. Another blow and the flint would shatter.

Karada shifted her grip to present more of the hardwood shaft and lunged again. His sword hilt slammed into her jaw. Dazed, she raked her spear upward, opening a jagged cut on his forehead, below the rim of his helmet. Balif caught her spear arm with his free hand, pinning it back, and brought his sword down hard on Karada’s shoulder. Her wooden armor saved her from a serious wound, but it fell apart as the sharp edge of the elven blade cut the thongs holding it together. Karada twisted her horse around to shield her exposed side, then she hit Balif in the chest with the butt of her spear. He grunted, falling backward off his horse.

Unbidden, the elf army surged forward, eager to save their stricken commander. Balif jumped to his feet and waved them off. Karada took her horse back a few paces to gather room to charge. Shouting, she bore down on Balif. He stood awaiting her attack impassively, sword at his side. At the last moment, he raised his empty hands, fingers spread, and intoned two words in his own language. Appleseed stopped and rooted his hoofs to the ground. The stop was so sudden Karada had no time to prepare, and she went flying forward over the horse’s neck. She landed hard at Balif’s feet. By the time her head had cleared, she found herself staring at the point of Balif’s sword.

In spite of the blood trickling down his face from his forehead wound, his expression was calm and his sword was steady.

“Yield,” he said.

“I will not!”

“By my ancestors, you’re stubborn!” He sheathed his sword and extended his hand. “Come on, get up.”

She sullenly refused his help and stood on her own. The standard bearers, flanked by the elite riders from the center of the elf host, quickly surrounded Karada and their commander. One of the elves handed his commander a cloth, which Balif tied around his head to stanch the bleeding.

The older elf, who had a high, domed forehead and thin, unelven whiskers, sat silently on his horse, fingering a long wooden staff studded with colored stones.

“What will you do with the human, my lord?” he asked.

“A good question,” Balif said. One of his retainers found his helmet and offered it to him. Balif tucked the conical bronze helmet under one arm and said, “I could take her back to my lord Silvanos, as a captive.”

“I’d rather die,” Karada spat.

“I thought you would.” Balif sighed and gestured to his soldiers. The ring of javelins surrounding her lowered.

The older elf, his posture deferential, said something to Balif in their own tongue. Balif shook his head, saying, “No, Vedvedsica. I have a better idea.” Then he spoke to Nianki. “I think a better message would be sent to your people if I spared your life and sent you on your way.”

“Not a wise choice,” warned Vedvedsica quickly, all deference gone.

“No one asked you.” The sharp retort shut the elder elf’s mouth and brought satisfied grins to the faces of Balif’s retainers.

“You’re letting me go?” demanded Nianki.

“Just so.”

Karada tore off her bear’s tooth headband and hurled it to the ground. “No! Damn you, a warrior doesn’t let a dangerous enemy go free! Do you think I’m so harmless, I’m not worth killing?”

“On the contrary,” he replied, swinging back onto his horse. “You’ve caused much trouble to my lord Silvanos. Neither my lord nor I wishes to pursue a war against the plainsmen in our territory. By sparing you I send a clear message to your comrades that Silvanos’s rule is just and temperate. You’ll be deprived of your arms and your horse, and you’ll have to leave this province before the next conjunction of the red and white moons. After that time, if you attack subjects or property of my lord Silvanos, you’ll be declared an outlaw. You’ll be hunted down and killed without mercy. Is that clear?”

She did not reply. When the silence lengthened, the elves around her slowly recovered their javelins and broke ranks. Balif, Vedvedsica, and his retainers rode past her, down to the river to relieve the battered elf force there.

*

Line after line of elf warriors rode by Karada, inspecting her with cool indifference. She felt her face burn with impotent fury.

Appleseed was led away, and her spear was taken as a trophy by Balif’s squire. Seething, Karada turned her back on the elf host and walked away, toward the distant mountains.

She followed the trampled grass trail of the plainsmen who’d abandoned her. Before long she came upon a group of her people on foot, led by the towering Pakito.

“Karada! You live! The day isn’t totally lost!” said the giant.

“I live, if I can bear the shame of this day.” Balif hadn’t even left her a sword to fall on. “I’m pleased you made it and led these good men to safety,” she said, clasping Pakito’s burly arm. The remaining plainsmen who’d fought on foot gathered round her. She told them how she’d fought Balif and lost, and how he’d outlawed them all from the province.

“What’ll we do?” asked Targun, one of her oldest followers. “Where do we go?”

“Away,” she said. “We’ve lost, and all we can do is gather our strength and fight another day.”

“You mean we’re not giving up?”

She looked over all that remained of her once-proud band of followers. Tired, sore, bleeding from a handful of superficial cuts, Karada managed to smile in her old, fierce way.

“The land where our ancestors roamed will be the land where our children live,” she declared. “So long as we live, we can rise and fight again. Is that not so?”

“Aye!” Pakito shouted.

“Aye!” echoed the others.

“For now, we’ll go over the mountains,” she said, pointing northwest. “There are no elves there.”

Chapter 11

In winter the mountains slumbered under a thick layer of snow. The passes were filled with deep drifts, ice formed on every surface, and the cold air cut through the heaviest furs like a fine bronze blade. Summer was more agreeable, though often strange. Warm, humid air from the lowlands got trapped in the high passes, filling them with dense white fog that could linger for days.

This was the situation when Duranix and Pa’alu arrived at Vulture’s Beak, the highest pass in the mountains. On the eastern side of the peak the sun shone, and a dry wind flowed down the slopes to the plain. As soon as they crossed over to the western side, the world was wrapped in chill, damp mist.

“I should’ve flown,” Duranix muttered, rubbing his arms.

“Why didn’t you?” Pa’alu asked. He pulled a fur cloak from his pack and threw it around his shoulders.

Duranix did not reply. Of course, he could have changed to dragon form and carried Pa’alu along, as he did Amero, but he wanted time to get to know this barbarian better. There was an aura of menace about Pa’alu that Duranix couldn’t quite fathom. He needed to take the measure of Pa’alu before introducing him to the peaceful, sheltered world of Yala-tene.

Their rate of progress slowed as the fog closed in, leaving them to work their way along a narrow ledge. The drop-off might have been two steps away or two hundred; the fog made it impossible to tell. Even the dragon’s powerful senses were of little use. Between the muffling effect of his human guise, the cold, and the fog, he could discern little about their surroundings.

As they crept along, they played a game of questions to pass the time. The plainsman began.

“Why do you protect humans?”

Duranix slid his right foot forward, feeling loose gravel give way when he put his weight on it.

“Oh, to be on all fours,” he grumbled.

“Well, what’s your answer?” prodded the hunter.

“I protect what is mine,” Duranix said, moving forward a few inches. “I have rivals, other dragons, who would steal my territory away from me. The worst of these is a green dragon named Sthenn. He thought to extend his influence at my expense by sending a horde of predators to attack the humans living on my range.”

“The yevi.”

“I see the name has penetrated beyond the mountains. Yes, using the yevi to exterminate free-roaming humans, Sthenn hoped to bring my lands under his control.”

Duranix’s progress stirred up a flock of raucous crows. They burst from a rock ledge above the disguised dragon’s head, cawing loudly. Both Pa’alu and Duranix flattened themselves against the cliff as the birds flew off into the mist.

“Damn noisy birds. Another question, dragon-man —”

“No, it’s my turn,” Duranix said. “How long have you been in love with your chief.”

Pa’alu flinched as if speared. “Who told you that?”

“No one. The signs are obvious. I’ve studied humans, you know. When you’re near her, your face glows with hot blood, and your heart beats faster.”

Pa’alu said nothing. He let the interval between Duranix and himself widen. Duranix looked back and raised an eyebrow.

“I take it from your silence that your feelings are not returned?” the dragon said, waiting for Pa’alu to catch up.

“I won’t discuss this. Ask a different question.”

Genuinely curious, Duranix would not be dissuaded. “Have you confessed your feelings to her?” Pa’alu said nothing and the dragon misread his silence. “You haven’t. Well, then, perhaps she does love you. How can you know if you don’t —”

“I have told her, for all the good it did me!” the plainsman said.

“She rejected you.”

“Karada is a hunter and a fighter, the leader of our people. She has little time for aught else.”

Pa’alu looked away into the featureless fog. Duranix let him think for a while, then resumed his inquiry.

“Does she love someone else?”

“No. Other men have pursued her. When I joined the hand nine seasons past, she had a close friend, a fellow called Neko. He was like her shadow, never far from her side. She treated him like – a brother, I guess. Karada is a keen tracker and a bold leader, but she doesn’t look deeply into people’s hearts. She never knew Neko loved her and wanted her as a mate. One day, the two of them went out to hunt together. This was before we learned to ride horses. They should’ve returned after two days, yet four went by before Karada came back, alone. She refused to say what had happened, or where Neko was. Pakito, me, and a few others searched the bush and found Neko’s body. His throat had been cut.”

“Now that’s rejection,” said Duranix.

Pa’alu glared. “Don’t speak ill of her! We brought his body back to camp. He was one of us, and deserved a hunter’s burial. The entire band sat in judgment of Karada. She told us what had happened. On the first night out, Neko tried to force himself on her after his spoken overtures were refused. She rejected him and went her separate way, but he wouldn’t be denied. He tracked her down and attacked her.” A look of savage satisfaction darkened Pa’alu’s face. “So she killed him.”

“And you believed her?”

“All of us believed her.”

The ledge widened into a broad path slanting down toward the west. Duranix and the plainsman paused there, sharing swallows from Pa’alu’s water gourd.

“My turn to answer,” said the dragon, leaning back against a boulder. “Ask a question.”

Pa’alu shook his head. “No, I weary of talking.” He excused himself and walked off into the fog.

The golden nugget Duranix had taken from the field of standing stones suddenly awakened and throbbed against his jawbone. Curious about sudden activity in the stone after so many quiet days, he took it out and examined it. It looked just the same as when he put it there. There were no visible changes, yet even as he looked at it, the nugget seemed to pulsate between his fingers.

“Pa’alu!” he called. When there was no answer after a few seconds, he called again.

“What is it?” said the plainsman, emerging from the fog. “I was only gone a moment —”

The dragon displayed the nugget. “It’s come alive. I can feel it vibrating.”

Pa’alu turned a half-circle, surveying the trail in both directions. “Would it do that on its own?”

Duranix stood up. “Unlikely. It must be reacting to some other source of power.”

“Are there rings of spirit-stones in these mountains?” Duranix shook his head. He had been through this pass many times before.

They picked up their gear and hurried on. The path widened until the towering peaks were shrouded in fog. Heavy mist closed in behind them, cutting them loose from all visible landmarks. Duranix walked ahead, the nugget lying on his open palm.

“Wait,” he said in a low voice. Something about his tone made Pa’alu draw his elven sword.

Noiselessly, Duranix began to swell. His flesh darkened to reddish bronze and his limbs elongated dramatically. Pa’alu stepped back in wonder to make room for a formidable length of tail snaking back to where he was standing. He’d spent four days with Duranix and had accepted his claim that he was a dragon in disguise. However, merely hearing the words had not prepared Pa’alu for the actual sight.

Fifteen paces long, Duranix was four paces tall at the shoulder and seven from the ground to the top of his long, bronze-scaled neck. Fog swirled about his enormous, horned head.

“By all the spirits!” Pa’alu gasped.

Duranix bent his neck around and glared at the astonished plainsman. His vast nostrils flared. “Shh!” he said, and Pa’alu thought it sounded like all the snakes in creation hissing at once.

Arcs of blue light flickered through the mist. Duranix opened his wings and flapped them a few times. The resulting wind parted the fog just enough to reveal a lone figure standing on a patch of level ground not far ahead. Wrapped head to toe in a long garment the color of the fog, the stranger was almost invisible. Duranix advanced slowly, his great four-toed claws driving deep into the rocky soil.

“Priest!” the dragon demanded in a thunderous tone. “Why are you here?”

The stranger came toward them slowly. He raised his hands to shoulder height, parting the pale gray cape he wore. Pa’alu finally recognized him. It was Vedvedsica, the elf priest they’d bested at the field of standing stones.

“You have something of mine,” said the elf. He seemed unaffected by Duranix’s overpowering presence. “I want it back.”

“I don’t think I’ll give it to you,” the dragon replied. “Children and savages shouldn’t play with fire.”

Vedvedsica brought his hands together. A beam of blue light lanced out from them, striking Duranix in the chest. The dragon grunted and slid backward a step. Shaking his horned head, he opened his mouth and exhaled at the elf. Vedvedsica crossed his arms and stood unflinching in the stream of fear-inducing gas.

“I’m not so weak as to succumb to this child’s-play,” he said, smiling benignly.

Pa’alu worked his way around the dragon’s left and crouched behind a low boulder. Closer now, he saw the priest wore a breastplate of shiny white metal, studded with rough gems and chips of striated black granite – just like the boulders where he and the dragon first encountered him.

Duranix snapped his jaws shut, staring with increased respect at Vedvedsica. His huge, panther-like pupils raked the elf priest up and down.

“We seem to be at an impasse,” he said finally. “Your spells cannot hurt me, and my powers will not affect you so long as you wear that breastplate.” Duranix displayed his fearsome teeth. “I could just bite your head off. It’s crude, I know, but it would solve the problem of your being here.”

At that moment Pa’alu stood out from his hiding place and hurled a pair of rocks at Vedvedsica, one from each hand. They never reached their target but fell to the ground a few steps away.

“Keep out of the way, human, or you might get hurt,” said Vedvedsica blandly. “Your barbarian chieftain and her band have already been destroyed by my lord Balif. If you value your life, you’ll keep clear of me.”

“Liar!” Pa’alu started forward, only to find his way blocked by the dragon’s tail.

“Stand away,” ordered Duranix.

The dragon gathered his four legs beneath himself, coiling his back to spring. The elf stood his ground, coolly watching his mighty adversary preparing to attack. When Duranix sprang, however, Vedvedsica whipped his cape around his body and vanished. The dragon landed with a crash on all fours where the cleric had been standing. Looking momentarily astonished, Duranix whirled around.

Pa’alu caught a twinkle of azure from the comer of one eye. Vedvedsica had reappeared behind Duranix. Swiftly the elf threw open his cape and brought his hands together for another blast of that spirit-light he commanded. Silently, Pa’alu lunged. The captured elven sword caught the priest’s left wrist, and Vedvedsica screamed. There was a brilliant flash of light and a thunderclap that hurled Pa’alu to the ground.

Deafness and blindness followed, then Pa’alu felt himself being hauled to his feet. By the time he recovered his senses, he saw Duranix had resumed human guise and was helping him to stand.

“Wh-what?” the plainsman stammered. His head was throbbing, and the ground seemed to spin beneath his feet.

“My thanks,” said the dragon. He steadied Pa’alu until he could stand on his own then added, “I underestimated Vedvedsica. He’s very powerful. His first blow was just a test. The second might actually have injured me.” Duranix closed his human hand around the gold nugget. “Strong as he is, though, he has limitations. You stopped him, Pa’alu. I thank you.”

“What do you mean?”

Duranix pointed to the spot where the elf had disappeared. Lying on the ground was a slender white hand, severed raggedly at the wrist. It was pale as wax, as if it had no blood in it. There was no blood on the ground either.

Duranix picked up the hand. The stump was seared dry, cauterized by the very power Vedvedsica had tried to use against them.

Pa’alu found his sword, knocked from his grip by the powerful blast. The blade was bent and partly melted at a point two thirds of the way from the hilt. Awed, he touched the ruined blade, then snatched his hand back when he discovered how hot the bronze still was.

“That shaman is evil!” he declared, rejoining Duranix.

“No, not evil. He probably serves his lord quite loyally. But he is ambitious, hungry for power, and careless of how he gets it.” Duranix replaced the nugget in his mouth. “This encounter will give him something to think about.”

“Do you think he spoke the truth about Karada?”

The disguised dragon shrugged. “Your chief is a tough woman, but I doubt she can stand against the might of Silvanos.”

Pa’alu slipped the ruined sword into his belt, as it would no longer fit the wooden scabbard. “Then I must go back and find her!”

“Go if you must, but consider!” Duranix called after him. “We’re closer to Yala-tene than to Karada’s last camp. It would be better to go on to the village. Once there, you can get tools and supplies for a return journey, while I fly back and search for your comrades.”

Pa’alu hesitated. The dragon added, “If the battle is over, there’s nothing you can do.”

“I should have gone back with Pakito!”

“Then you might be dead or captured now, too. Come, let’s go. You cannot change what has been, but you can shape what will be.”

Pa’alu turned around, and they marched down the ravine another league, finally breaking through the omnipresent fog. Below the white mist the sun shone brightly on the valleys and lower peaks spread out before them. Duranix pointed to a distant green summit.

“Yala-tene lies below that mountain,” he said. “We should be there by tomorrow afternoon.”

“It will be good to see people again.” No sooner had he said it, Pa’alu apologized.

“No need,” the dragon said. “Humans are herd animals, after all. They’re happiest in a flock of their fellow beasts. But you, Pa’alu, are due a reward. You dealt bravely with Vedvedsica and did me a good turn. I want to repay you.”

“I can’t imagine how.”

“Well, think on it. I am in your debt.”

They continued their descent to the lower valley. The long-hidden sun was warm on Pa’alu’s face. He accepted it without complaint, along with the gratitude of his strange and powerful companion.

*

“All right – fan!”

Six children from the village were kneeling around a stone-lined pit. Each child held a reed fan. At Amero’s command, they began waving the fans vigorously over the fire. Orange flames leaped up, and the dry cedar firewood filled the air with aromatic smoke.

Amero had spent half a day building this pit, digging a shallow hole in the sand near the base of the cliff and lining it with small stones. In the center of the pit he’d piled up a ring of smaller stones and plastered the resulting bowl with clay. He’d filled this inner bowl with beads of raw copper collected from the tunnel debris. He had then carefully laid a fire in the outer pit and marshaled his helpers to fan the flames.

Duranix had been gone four days and four nights. The dragon had been away from Yala-tene for longer periods in the past, but Amero usually knew why and where Duranix had gone. The twice weekly offering of meat had been placed on the cairn the previous day and was still there, gathering only flies. The family of Konza the tanner had the honor of providing the dragon’s meat, and its apparent rejection didn’t sit well. A family of five could live for two weeks on one offering. So, where was the dragon? Amero had tried to explain Duranix was away on an important reconnaissance, scouting for possible dangers to Yala-tene. The village elders had accepted this in stony silence and departed to their daily work. The rotting meat continued to lie in the open.

It was a hot, sunny morning. As Amero toiled over his copper experiment, lines of villagers led by Farun and Mieda headed for the tunnels. Mieda’s stone-cracking technique was such a success that he and Farun planned to duplicate it in the two other tunnels, finishing the excavation in short order.

Mieda rose at dawn and supervised the laying of firewood at the blocked ends of both passages. About the same time Amero was lighting the fire in his pit, Mieda was putting the torch to the tunnel fires.

“Keep fanning,” Amero said, as some of the children tired. He’d brought a bucket of melons along to reward his helpers, and when anyone faltered, he handed them a sweet wedge of fruit. Some minutes – and some melons – passed, and the beads of copper began to shimmer with heat. Amero poked them with a long stick, which quickly succumbed to the heat and flickered into flame. He’d forgotten how hot the fanned fire would be to his tools as well as the copper.

The children slid back from the pit as the heat grew. Amero sent around a gourd dipper of cold water. Most opted to pour the water over their heads rather than drink it. Knowing a good idea when he saw one, Amero soaked not only himself but another stick. The damp stick survived the heat long enough to prod the beads. To his delight, Amero found the metal bits had grown soft as tallow.

“Keep it up!” he said. “Something’s happening!”

Just then a loud rumble reverberated through the valley. Amero felt it strongly through the soles of his feet. He looked down the shoreline and saw a tall cloud of dust and smoke rising from the mouths of the two tunnels under construction. At first he thought nothing of it, remembering how much smoke had come from the tunnel he’d helped dig. Then he heard screaming.

“Douse that fire!” he said. They stared at him in disbelief. One boy froze, and the flames caught his reed fan. He dropped it, blazing, into the pit.

“Go on, douse it!”

Two boys picked up buckets and poured water over the fire. It died with a loud hiss and much smoke and steam. By then Amero was already running toward the tunnels.

People were crowding around the tunnel mouths, shouting, crying, climbing over each other to see. Amero had to shove his way through the mob to reach the center tunnel. The air was full of acrid, resinous smoke and grit. Lying on the ground were eight diggers, covered in dust and bleeding from gashes on their heads and backs.

Amero spotted Farun through the dirt and soot. He dropped to his knees and clasped Farun’s hand.

“What happened?” he demanded. “What went wrong?”

Coughing, Farun replied, “The roof fell. We had the black stone hot enough, and Mieda sent for water. I was in the first pair to dump water on the rock face —” Another fit of coughing seized him and blood flecked his chin.

Amero ordered everyone back and called for travois to take the injured away. Eight men were removed from the center tunnel. The north tunnel had also collapsed. No one had managed to get out.

Amero looked around wildly at the sooty, coughing men and cried, “Who was in there? Does anyone know?”

Konza the tanner regarded him with a dull, shocked expression. “Mieda, Talek the mason, Halshi —”

“Halshi was in there?” Amero exclaimed.

Konza nodded slowly. “So was my eldest son, Merenta,” he said. Tears trickled down his face, cutting tracks in the dust on his cheeks.

Amero tried to think of something comforting to say, but his tongue felt wooden and useless. He could only stare at the blocked tunnel. Halshi was in there, and Mieda, and so very many others.

Suddenly, a tall stranger appeared among the dazed crowd. Dressed in buckskin trews and a sleeveless hunting shirt, his long chestnut hair gathered in a thick knot at the back of his neck, the stranger ran by the grieving Konza and the paralyzed Amero to the pile of fallen stone blocking the tunnel mouth. With his bare hands he took hold of a large chunk of sandstone and rolled it aside. Several smaller rocks he tossed out of the way.

His industry freed Amero from the paralysis gripping him. He fell to his knees beside the stranger and started digging, too. The two men joined forces to dislodge a large, flat boulder. With much grunting and a few skinned knuckles, they got the slab out of the way. Others overcame their shock and horror and joined in the digging.

“Thank you,” Amero panted. He suddenly realized he had no idea who he was speaking to. “I don’t know your face. Who are you?”

“My name’s Pa’alu,” the man said.

“You’re a plainsman. Where did you come from?”

“I’m one of Karada’s band. The dragon, Duranix, guided me here.”

Amero seized the muscular newcomer by the shoulders. “Duranix! Where is he? We need him – he could tear down the whole mountain and free those buried!”

Firmly but gently, Pa’alu broke Amero’s grip. “Duranix isn’t here. He brought me to the valley and showed me the trail here, then he flew away.”

“But why?”

Pa’alu hesitated. Under the circumstances, how could he explain? Duranix owed him a debt, so he’d asked the dragon to flyback to the Thon-Thalas to look for Karada and the rest of his people.

He said simply, “He went to search for survivors of a great battle. Karada and my people fought the elves and lost.”

Amero looked away briefly, searching in vain for a glimpse of his friend, as Pa’alu turned and rejoined the rescue dig. Bare-handed progress was slow, but tools were brought and the furious work organized. The sun bore down on the scene as the men and women of Yala-tene toiled to free their trapped friends. Many of the rescuers worked until the pitiless heat wore them out. The exhausted were carried to the shade.

Besides being hot, the work was bedeviled by constant secondary landslides. Rocks ranging from fist-sized pebbles to veritable boulders rained down on the tunnel mouth. The entire face of the sandstone cliff was shattered, and the cracks ran all the way back to the collapsed center tunnel. Mieda’s technique had worked too well.

The sun had sunk behind the western peaks by the time they reached the buried diggers. One by one they were brought out – Mieda, Talek, Merenta, Halshi, and the rest. None were alive.

They were carried to the nearest open ground, below the cairn that had held the food offerings of the dragon. It had been a long time since Amero had lost someone he cared about, and gazing at the still faces of Mieda and Halshi left him feeling empty inside. Hollow. He didn’t understand why he felt so betrayed. There was no one to blame. Mieda hadn’t known the rock was fissured over the tunnels when he built the fires. He had died leading his diggers, an honorable death. No, the betrayal lay elsewhere.

A foul smell assaulted his nostrils.

“Get that rotten carcass out of here!” Amero shouted. A maggot-ridden ox haunch was dragged off the cairn. As family members gathered to claim the bodies of their loved ones, Amero’s aching emptiness grew larger. An idea formed to fill the void in his heart. He called for firewood – lots of it.

Farun, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, limped up to Amero. “What do you intend?” he asked.

“Our lost friends were working to make the village a better place,” Amero said. “They died together. We should honor them together.” His head swam. He wiped cold sweat from his brow. “The mountain treacherously crushed them. We will free their spirits and send them to the sky, where the mountain cannot touch them.”

He ordered cords of pine and cedar laid atop the cairn. The eight victims were then laid on the stacked wood, and Amero called for a torch.

No one moved to comply. The villagers, like all plainsmen, believed burial was the proper way to treat the dead. They were paralyzed between loyalty to their young leader and anguish at his flaunting of one of their ancient traditions.

It was Pa’alu, the stranger, who brought Amero a blazing torch. He took it with a grateful nod and held it high above his head.

“Don’t be afraid!” Amero declared. “We have all lost friends we’ve loved. I give them the honor, the dignity of fire! Let their spirits remain ever more watching over us!”

He thrust the torch into the lowest course of logs. The dry pine caught fire rapidly. In minutes, the cairn was a lake of flame.

The people of Yala-tene stood silently around the pyre, watching the thick smoke rise to the stars above. Amero tossed the torch into the flames and stood back beside Pa’alu.

“Thank you,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” the hunter replied. “I hope someone does as much for me someday.”

Duranix, where are you? was Amero’s miserable thought. The words had barely formed in his head when the sky was shattered by the dragon’s terrible roar. Already overwrought by events, the crowd shifted and wavered. Some fell to their knees as the black shadow of the winged dragon passed overhead.

In a rare display of his true shape, Duranix alighted on the shore of the lake, some paces from the blazing cairn. He furled his leathery wings and approached the pyre, scales gleaming in the firelight. People scattered before him, many more dropping to their knees as the dragon’s flashing eyes swept over them. By the time he reached the cairn, only Amero and Pa’alu were standing.

“What is this?” asked Duranix, raising a claw to the fire.

Tersely, Amero told of the disaster, the rescue attempt, and his inspiration to honor the dead with a funeral pyre.

Duranix extended his long neck and put his head in the flames. A wave of horrified gasps flowed from the villagers and several of the women shrieked. Seeming not to notice their reactions, the dragon looked around in the fire for a moment, then withdrew his head. “Mieda,” he said with unusual emotion. “He’ll never see the northern seas again.”

“Where were you?” Amero demanded. Words caught in his throat like stones. “We needed you! You could’ve dug those people out of the mountain faster than the whole village, but you weren’t here!”

Duranix sat back on his haunches. His booming voice carried over the crackle of the fire. “I was scouting for enemies. I found a band of warrior nomads, led by the woman Karada. She’s fighting the elves for control of the eastern plain. Two days ago she lost a battle, and her people are scattered. This man,” he said, pointing to Pa’alu, “came with me to see Yala-tene. He’s one of Karada’s band.”

“Are we in any danger?” asked Amero, wiping tears from his face.

“Not from the elves. They’ve come no farther than the headwaters of the Thon-Thalas.”

“Any news of Karada?” asked Pa’alu anxiously.

The dragon shook his massive head. “I could find no one brave enough to converse with me,” he said, sounding vexed. “The nomads are hiding in fear of elf retribution.”

Duranix backed away from the cairn. The flames had subsided a bit, and the balmy wind off the lake was blowing smoke and hot ashes. He moved off a few paces and unfurled his wings. Without another word, he leaped into the air and flew back to his lair behind the waterfall.

Amero took a deep breath and faced the crowd. “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “Duranix might have been able to save our people if he’d been here. He was away, working on our behalf, and he’s only one creature. He can’t be everywhere at once.” He searched the faces of the stunned, anguished people. “If any of you are unhappy with me, with what I have done, speak now. I will listen.”

For a moment no one said anything. Then Valka, father of Halshi, tottered to the front of the crowd. He was elderly, lame from old hunting injuries. Despite his gnarled limbs and twisted hip, he stood as straight as he could before Amero.

“I’ve lived twice as long as my father,” he said in a wavering, tired voice. “I’ve seen more of my children survive in the last ten years than in all the years before. I have a warm house, a bed, and much family around me. These things I owe to the great dragon and to his son.” When he used the word “son,” Pa’alu turned to stare at Amero.

Old Valka went on. “Halshi was my only daughter, a good girl, hard-working and cheerful. I’ll miss her, but I would rather she died in a cave at Yala-tene than out in the wild, poisoned by snakebite or torn to pieces by the yevi. Here, a hundred families knew her and can mourn for her. That’s as good a rest as any plainsman can hope for.”

Valka doffed his buckskin cap and bowed his head. “Be content, Amero. You’ve made my life more than I ever expected.”

By threes and fives and tens, the people of Yala-tene bared their heads and expressed sentiments like Valka’s. In the end, Amero found their gratitude as hard to bear as their grief. Weeping, he walked off alone into the darkness beyond the dying pyre.

Amero remained in the village until the fire was out. By then it was very late, and the crowd had dispersed, save for a few, like Valka and Pa’alu, who slept on the ground by the cairn. As Amero walked slowly through the quiet village on his way back to the cave, he passed by the remains of his copper experiment. He took a moment to kick apart the clay bowl. Instead of a cascade of separate copper pellets, the bowl contained a single mass of metal, all melted together. At least the day had one success, though he had no heart to celebrate it.

Chapter 12

By the time Karada reached the western slopes of the mountains, her band of followers had grown from forty-odd warriors on foot and horse to over a hundred. All along the route plainsmen left the line of march to collect their mates and children, most of whom lived in solitary camps in the eastern foothills. In the wake of their defeat, they feared the Silvanesti would sweep the countryside clear of humans, so they packed up their families and followed Karada west.

It was raining as the long, straggling procession of nomads wound its way along the twisting mountain passes. Most of them, Karada included, had walked all the way from the Thon-Thalas. What horses they had were given to a few trusted scouts, who rode ahead looking for potential trouble and locating the best trails.

The habit of leadership was strong in Karada. Though this ragtag collection of families was a far cry from the hundreds of warriors she had so recently led, they still saw her as their chief, and it was a role she could not easily relinquish.

She was constantly on the move, going from the head of the line to the back, encouraging the wounded and whipping the laggards into line. It became clear four days into the march that the elves were not pursuing, but still Karada wouldn’t allow her people to dawdle. She drove them over the mountains through the low, easy southern passes, and not until they reached the great open plain did she allow any rest.

The skies cleared, and while the younger hunters scoured the savanna for food, Karada held a council with the surviving leaders of the band. There weren’t many – Targun, Pakito, Hatu the One-eyed, and Samtu.

No one was surprised Samtu remained in Karada’s band despite being threatened by her own chief. Samtu owed everything to Karada. Her family had died when she was only five. Karada had found the girl wandering like a fox cub, naked and filthy, and raised her in a stern but caring way.

Karada’s seconds ranged themselves around a modest fire, sitting on whatever rocks or logs were convenient. Karada took a chunk of trail bread from her knapsack – the last bit of food she had – broke off a piece and handed the rest to Pakito. The trail bread went around the circle until it was gone, then Karada started a gourd of fresh water in its wake.

“Here we are, back again on the plains of my birth,” Karada said. “I wish it were for better reasons.”

“I can’t think of a better reason than being alive,” Targun said. Though Karada had never stopped to consider it before, he was the oldest man present and was showing his age. His once black hair was shot through with gray, his squat, powerful frame now seemed wasted and hollow.

“At least there’s good fishing here,” he added. “Nothing bigger than a minnow ever got up the blasted Thon-Thalas!”

They laughed a little. The water gourd came back to Karada. It was still heavy and sloshing. Her comrades had left much of the water for her.

“It’s late in the season,” she said. “We don’t have the time or the horses to hunt down enough game to feed the band.” She spat on the flattened grass. “Balif thinks he’s shown himself to be a generous conqueror by letting us go. The fact is, if we don’t do something, few of us will survive the winter.”

“What can we do?” Samtu wondered.

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

Silence reigned. Finally, Pakito said, “We could find Pa’alu.”

“How will that help?”

The big man reddened. “He’s smart. He could think of something,” he said lamely.

“He’s smart all right – smart enough to run off and not come back,” jeered Hatu.

Pakito jumped up. “Watch your words, One-eye!”

“Have I said something untrue?” Hatu was no weakling himself, the last survivor of a family of four strapping brothers. His manner was always outwardly mild, but he was a tough, sometimes ruthless character. Even Karada respected him as a fighter.

“My brother never ran away,” Pakito said. “The chief ordered us to follow the dragon-man.”

“So where did he follow him to? The red moon?”

Pakito took a step toward him. Karada stopped the giant with a word.

“Sit,” she said. Pakito flexed his battle-scarred hands into fists, but he obeyed his chief and sat down.

“Fighting each other is worse than stupid,” she told them. “I won’t have it, do you hear?”

“I wonder about Pa’alu,” Targun said. Pakito glared, but the old man went on. “Pa’alu and the dragon-man, I mean. Did they go to the Place of the Dragon?”

“So what if they did?” asked Samtu.

“What of the settlement there? Might they help us?”

Karada slowly sat up straight. “I pondered that when Pakito told me how the dragon-man helped defeat some elves at the place of standing stones.” She made a fist. “I put away the idea because I thought we could beat the elves without help.”

“Things have changed,” said Targun.

“A dragon would make a powerful ally,” Pakito remarked.

“How can you bargain with such a monster?” said Hatu. “Long ago my brothers and I fought a dragon in those very mountains. He killed my father! For all I know, it’s the same beast.”

“It may not be. Should we pass up a useful ally for such a slender reason?” Karada said. Hatu did not reply. “You know the mountains, Hatu. Can you find Arku-peli?”

Long ago, a wounded elk had gored Hatu, costing him his right eye. He wore a patch on his headband that hid the empty socket. When he was very troubled, he would mb the patch absently. He was rubbing it now with his thumbnail.

“I’ll do as my chief commands,” he said at last. “To me there seems little difference between serving an elf or serving a dragon, but if Karada says ‘dragon,’ then I obey.”

“Thank you, Hatu.” Everyone shifted uncomfortably. It was not a phrase Karada used often. Her saying it was a grim measure of their plight.

They estimated they were four days from the Place of the Dragon. None of them, not even Hatu, knew exactly where the settlement lay. Common repute said the village was on a lake at the foot of a high waterfall. Hatu remembered such a lake from his youth. Once back in the mountains, he felt sure he could find his way there again.

The nomads rested a full day on the savanna. Their meager food dwindled, and they resumed the march under a cloudless blue sky, the last hot days of the season. The scouts returned and reported no signs of pursuit by Balif and no other sources of trouble in sight.

*

Unknown riders began appearing in the valleys south and east of the lake. Foragers from Yala-tene were alarmed when they encountered the first humans they’d ever seen on horseback. They’d heard tales of plainsmen who had adopted this elf habit, but it was strange to see men and women astride long-legged beasts. And what strange humans they were – tough, sinewy people, cured by wind and sun until they resembled the leather gear they wore. They moved in groups of eight or ten at a time and were armed with spears or long-handled clubs. They were polite enough when bartering for food and water, but there were scores of them roaming the high passes, and their very numbers made the villagers nervous.

The first riders arrived at the lake five days after the tunnel disaster. They were first seen on the cliffs overlooking the village and were mistaken for elf warriors. A panic ensued until Pa’alu identified the horsemen as members of Karada’s band, his comrades.

Amero heard the commotion and descended from the cave to see what the matter was. He found a congregation of village elders in the square before the dragon’s cairn. Pa’alu was with them.

“What’s the alarm?” asked Amero wearily. He was hollow-eyed and pale, having slept little the past few nights.

“Riders have been seen atop the cliffs,” Pa’alu said. “Some of my people have arrived.”

Amero glanced back at the cave where Duranix was sleeping off his recent meal of ox meat. In his current state, the dragon would be hard to rouse, but if there was trouble...

Pa’alu read Amero’s thoughts on his face. “Why all the worry?” the plainsman asked. “Wanderers come to the village all the time, don’t they? Why are you all so scared?”

“Plainsmen on horses,” said Konza, “like warrior elves.”

“They mean no harm,” Pa’alu vowed. He looked away to the cliff wistfully. “My brother Pakito may be with them.” And Karada.

Now it was Amero’s turn to read Pa’alu’s thoughts. “Your people are welcome,” he said, as much for the elders’ benefit as Pa’alu’s. “Go and meet them, Pa’alu, so there’s no mistake about our good will. If you find your chief, bring her here and we will do her all honor.”

A smile flickered across Pa’alu’s face. He saluted Amero with his javelin, saying, “I go gladly. Please tell the villagers not to challenge Karada’s band. They’re seasoned fighters who’ve lately lost a battle. They’ll likely be in a foul mood.” He departed at a jog. Once he was out of earshot, the elders peppered Amero with their fears about the newcomers. Amero let them rant for a while then waved for silence.

“Why do you worry so much?” he asked. “They are plainsmen like us. If we treat them kindly, we’re more likely to make them strong friends than enemies.” He let that sink in for a moment, then added, “And you forget who we are. We’re not exactly sheep.”

“Maybe not, but we do have a powerful shepherd,” Valka said wryly. The dragon was an asset not easily trumped. Amero decided not to tell the worried elders that Duranix probably would be out of action for several days at least.

“Go back to work,” he advised them. “Act as if this were any day, and receive the strangers with kindness.”

Despite his words, Amero himself was anything but calm. As he returned to the cave to study his copper melting experiments and await events, he felt a shiver of fear. Pa’alu had described Karada’s band as being five hundred strong. Yala-tene had had trouble in the past with lone outcasts or small bands of thieves, kidnappers, and killers. In most cases they hadn’t needed Duranix’s assistance, but they’d never faced so large a force of strangers before. Amero was no warrior, and neither were the people of Yala-tene. Could Duranix defend them against so many?

His fears were magnified as he ascended to the cave in his basket. As he rose, Amero could see more and more of the plateau behind the cliff. It was dotted with moving figures, all approaching Cedarsplit Gap, a steep ravine that led from the heights down to the valley of the lake. By late afternoon, for good or ill, Karada’s band would be here.

Then his anxiety doubled when he saw Duranix was not in the main chamber. Amero ran up the steps to the dragon’s sleeping platform and saw him there – in human form. Duranix’s slow, regular breathing filled the cavern. Still asleep? Had he changed to human form in his sleep?

The thought must have been a strong one, because it disturbed the sleeping dragon. Duranix turned over in one of those sinuous motions impossible for a true man to make and opened his eyes. Without saying a word, he held a hand up in front of his face.

“Bizarre,” he said, and sat up abruptly. “How long have you been gone?”

Amero was still at the edge of the platform. “Not long. It’s not yet midday.”

The dragon held out his human hands. “I must have transformed in my sleep. That’s very strange.”

Duranix stood up, spread his feet apart and held his arms out. Usually this signaled the beginning of his change back to dragon form. This time nothing happened. The dragon looked disturbed.

“What is this?” he said wonderingly.

Amero had no idea and said so.

Duranix whirled, pointing both hands at the pile of old bones at the rear of the platform. Lightning arced from his spread fingers. Bones shattered into dull white shards that flew in high arcs, falling to the sandstone floor. He followed this demonstration by hurling a web of incandescent lightning against the wall. The crash and flash were stunning. When Amero lifted his head, Duranix was standing, staring at the smoking holes in the wall.

“I’m not totally powerless,” said the dragon slowly, and Amero detected relief in his voice. It crackled to anger when he added, “But this is intolerable! Why can’t I revert to my natural shape?”

“Are you ill?” asked Amero.

“I feel buried in this feeble body,” Duranix snapped.

“Could it be your enemy?”

“Sthenn? No. I would sense him long before he could get near enough to place such a spell on me.”

Amero racked his brain for a helpful thought. “Maybe it was something you ate?”

Duranix blinked, then burst into bitter laughter. “Don’t be stupid, boy. This isn’t a bellyache!”

Amero recoiled. Though he had lived with a dragon for ten years, he knew next to nothing about the creature’s inner thoughts or workings. His sudden anger, coupled with the imminent arrival of Karada’s band, brought home to him the tenuousness of his life, and of Yala-tene itself.

“Calm down. I’m not going to eat you,” said Duranix, interrupting Amero’s anxious reverie. “Your thoughts are muddled. Who is coming?”

“Pa’alu’s people – Karada’s band – at least, some of them. Riders have been spotted on the plateau and in the outlying valleys. They seem to be converging on Yala-tene.”

“I see.” Duranix sat down on the edge of the platform and let his bare feet dangle. “You’re worried the warriors will attack your people?” Amero admitted as much, and Duranix nodded. “You’re wise to think so. Karada is hard and harsh, and her band takes her as their model. Does Pa’alu know they’re coming?”

“He’s gone to meet them.”

Duranix thumped his heel against the cool stone. “That’s good. He’s in love with Karada. That may give him some influence over her.”

“Good influence, I hope,” Amero muttered.

The dragon hopped down to the floor. “Fear not, Amero. Though I may be confined to this shape, I’m still the dragon of the lake. No one need know otherwise. If the problem is some allergy or influence, it will pass.”

A trio of ram’s horns blared from below. Amero raced to the door and looked down. Dust rose from the direction of Cedarsplit Gap, and a small column of riders could be seen entering the valley between the cattle pens and the bridge.

“How does this thing work?” Duranix was examining Amero’s hoist. “If I can’t spread my wings, I’ll have to descend like you, won’t I?”

Amero frowned. He explained the hoist system, with its counterweight and pulleys made of the heartwood of the burltop tree. The basket attached to the hoist was roomy enough for two. However, he said, the counterweight was too light for Duranix, who still weighed as much he did in dragon form.

“So am I stuck here, a prisoner in my own cave?”

Amero recalled the dragon’s advice from years ago when he, Amero, had asked the same question. With pleasure, he repeated that advice now. “You could jump.”

“I’m in no mood for your insolence!”

His fury was genuine, and Amero backed away. “It was a jest!”

“A poor one. There must be a cause for this malady —”

The horns sounded again. Amero climbed in the wicker basket and prepared to drop the counterweight. “You’ll have to work it out yourself. I must go,” he said. Grunting, he yanked on the strap and the hide sack of stones rolled off the timber shelf and started down. On the ground, a second sack started to rise, as the basket sank slowly.

The hoist gathered speed and Duranix disappeared above. It was all very well to tease the dragon about being marooned in the cave, but without him the village was practically defenseless. Under no circumstances could Karada’s band be allowed to know this – nor could the people of Yala-tene.

As Amero crossed the sandy lanes between the villagers’ houses, doors thumped shut around him. The paths through the village were empty of people. Homes with two stories had their upper windows open, as curious and anxious families peered out at the approaching horsemen. Tools and work were left in place as everyone fled inside and bolted their doors. By the time Amero reached the outer edge of the settlement, he was alone, completely exposed and vulnerable.

A ragged line of horsemen, no more than a dozen in all, trotted over the sandhill. Rather than walk out to meet them, Amero halted and struck what he hoped was a confident pose. The lead riders spotted him and came toward him at the same lazy trot. When they got closer, they spread out in a line six horses wide. At little more than spitting distance, the rider in the center of the line held up his hand, halting his comrades.

“Greetings,” said the dusty, fair-haired nomad.

“Peace to you all,” replied Amero, clearing his throat to avoid any quaver in his voice. “I am Amero, headman of Yala-tene.”

The horsemen’s leader looked surprised. “Are you the Arkuden we’ve heard of?” In the plains tongue Arkuden meant “dragon’s son.”

“Some have called me that. I am simply Amero, founder of this village and friend to Duranix, the bronze dragon of the lake.”

The horseman smiled widely, showing bad teeth. “My name’s Sessan. This is Tarkwa, and this, Nacris.” These were the man and woman flanking him, respectively. Like the rest of the riders, they were grimy, sunbrowned, and hard-eyed. Amero greeted them.

“You’re part of Karada’s band?” he said.

Sessan betrayed surprise. “We were, not so long ago. How’d you know?”

“One of your comrades has been with us for a while, Pa’alu by name. We saw you coming, and he identified you as being of her band.”

“Pa’alu, here? Where is he?” Nacris said.

“He left on foot this morning to meet you,” Amero replied, scratching his head. “I’m sure he went up Cedarsplit Gap. I can’t think why you didn’t see him.”

“It’s a dusty day,” Sessan said. “We may not have seen him if he was walking. Truth to tell, we don’t pay much attention to you stray root-pickers on foot.”

A few of the other riders laughed. Amero smiled through the insult and said, “How many of you are there?”

“What you see here, plus whoever else makes it this far.”

“Is your chief with you?”

Tarkwa exclaimed loudly, “Karada? She’s dead!”

Sessan and Nacris stared at him with as much surprise as Amero. Abashed, Tarkwa said, “She must be dead, I mean – she stayed behind to fight the elves alone. No one’s seen her since, have they?”

An awkward silence ensued. Amero broke it by saying, “On behalf of my people and the great dragon Duranix, I welcome you. Please, follow me.”

Nacris steered her horse in front of Amero and extended a dirty, callused hand to him. “Climb on,” she said cheerfully.

Amero had never ridden a horse in his life, and he sensed this was a test of his mettle. How hard could riding a horse be for a fellow who’d flown through the air in a dragon’s claw? He clasped Nacris’s hand, and she hauled him up. He slid onto the horse behind her. It was hard to say who smelled worse, Nacris or the horse.

Sessan raised his hand and shouted, “Let’s go!”

The nomads stirred their horses to gallop. They yipped and yelled as they raced down the hill toward the silent houses. Amero clung to Nacris’s waist and bounced up and down with the motion of the horse. It was punishing, but he was proud he remained on the creature’s back. He called instructions to Nacris, and she guided her horse toward the lakeshore.

At his direction, she stopped on the open ground between the cairn and Amero’s hoist. Here the ground was all rock ledges, lightly dusted with sand washed down by the falls. The waterfall was close by. Amero had long since gotten used to its thunder, but the nomads were as excited as children by the roaring column of water. They walked their horses into shallow water and let the fine spray cover their faces. Amero slid off the horse, went back to dry land, sat down on a slate ledge, and waited.

When he tired of playing in the water, Sessan slogged ashore, wringing out his long hair as he came. Dripping, he dropped beside Amero and began peeling off his sodden sandals and leggings.

“Nice spot,” he said, squeezing the excess water from his suede footgear. “I can see why you chose to live here.”

“I didn’t choose it,” Amero replied. “The dragon did.”

“Oh, the dragon. When can we see him?”

“Any time he decides to show himself. He doesn’t come among us too often.”

“I thought he took on the shape of a human? He came to Karada’s camp looking like a big man.”

“He takes human form sometimes,” Amero said carefully, “but he does not do our bidding.”

The other riders whooped and splashed in the cold lake. Amero watched them, smiling. At least they would smell better after their wet roughhousing.

“We’d like to stay for a while,” Sessan said suddenly.

“I understand. You can live here if you want, so long as you agree to obey the village elders.”

“Oh, we won’t be staying that long.” Sessan slung his damp sandals around his neck. “We’re wanderers. We can’t dig a hole and live in it, like some rabbit.”

“No, you’re more like wolves, aren’t you?”

Sessan wasn’t offended. He laughed at Amero’s comparison. Jumping to his feet, he swept his arm in a wide half-circle. “Yeah, us wolves’ll camp here, by the lake.”

“You’ll find it damp,” Amero said. “The mist from the falls will soak your tents before nightfall.”

He waved away the young headman’s warning. “We’re used to it. Any night on the savanna it rains is damp for us. Thanks, boy!” He clapped Amero on the back and went to unpack his horse.

Hide tents sprouted on the rocky ledge, and a picket line for the horses stretched between some boulders rolled over from the cliff base. Before departing, Amero told the nomads they could barter with the villagers for whatever they needed – food, fodder for their animals, and so on. He warned them against stealing, then bade them a good evening.

By the slanting amber light of an early autumn afternoon, he saw more dust, more riders filing down the gap. Wearily, he set out to greet them. Amero wondered how many visitors the valley could take before the villagers and the nomads found it too close for comfort.

Chapter 13

When he left Yala-tene, Pa’alu’s step was light. The news Karada might be close by put power and speed in his stride.

When he reached Cedarsplit Gap, he started the climb. Within a few score paces the ravine divided into northern and southern branches. Having spotted his old comrades atop the plateau south of the village, he assumed the southern course would take him to them.

As Pa’alu walked along the red rock ravine, his head filled with thoughts of Karada and the hope that he would find her well. Pakito also figured in his hopes. Surely nothing could ever harm his foolish giant of a brother. The feel of the sun on his face finally broke through Pa’alu’s busy thoughts.

When he’d left the village the sun had been at his back, very low in the eastern sky. Now it was in front of him and over halfway toward its zenith. How long had he been walking? When had the ravine doubled back? Most annoying of all, why had he met none of his fellow plainsman?

Pa’alu shook his head. Perhaps he should go back the way he had come —

Even as the thought formed in his head, he came around a curve in the ravine and found that the narrowing gorge opened into a bowl-shaped canyon perhaps twenty paces wide. Pa’alu squinted. The rock walls here were not the dark red of the ravine but were made up entirely of a light-colored stone. The creamy rock reflected the sun’s light dazzlingly.

The plainsman moved farther into the bowl-shaped canyon. Its floor was strewn with loose rocks that varied from fist-sized chunks to boulders twice as wide as he was tall. The canyon’s rim was completely bare of foliage. Two other passages led out of the deep bowl – one due east, directly ahead of him, the other to his left, on the north side.

By now it was obvious to Pa’alu he’d taken the wrong way. Grumbling at his foolishness and angry at the wasted time, he turned to retrace his steps back to Cedarsplit so he could take the northern fork in the ravine.

The opening that had been directly behind him was gone.

Pa’alu stopped, surprised. Deciding that he must have moved away from the opening while looking at his surroundings, he searched along the curving wall of the canyon to locate the passage.

He found nothing but solid rock.

Perplexed, Pa’alu continued on around the edge of the canyon intent on finding the northern path out. It, too, seemingly had disappeared. He went to the center of the canyon, climbed atop a medium-sized boulder, and scanned for the openings.

His annoyance became shock. There were no openings at all in the canyon’s walls. They had disappeared, and he was trapped in a steep-sided, rock-filled hole in the ground.

“This is madness!” he exclaimed to the high walls. His voice ricocheted around and came back to him, mockingly. “Madness... adness... ness.”

Pa’alu picked up a stone and threw it at the canyon wall. It had no more effect than his spoken protest, but the action made him feel a little bit better.

“That won’t get you out.”

He whirled to face the unexpected voice. A few paces away, seated atop a low table of fractured shale, was a strange, gaunt figure dressed in green. Pa’alu brought up his javelin, ready to attack or defend.

“Peace to you, friend,” said the stranger in a mild, calm voice. “I mean you no harm.”

He was sitting with one leg tucked under him, the other drawn up to his chest. His leg seemed strangely long, his bent knee reaching up as high as his head. The weird man’s arms were also outlandishly proportioned – the forearms too short, the fingers incredibly long. His clothes added to his freakish appearance; he wore a tight-fitting leather garment in various shades of green.

Pa’alu slid off his own rocky perch and watched the stranger warily. “Who are you?”

“A friend. A friend, Pa’alu.”

“You know my name.”

“I’ve heard it said.” The stranger unfolded his legs. His dangling feet touched the ground – some three paces below the rock ledge on which he sat.

“Who are you?” Pa’alu repeated, staring at those weirdly long legs. “How did you get to this place?”

“My name is... well, call me Greengall. I’ve been watching this path for a long time, waiting for the right fellow to come along. I think you’re that fellow.”

“Did you trap me in here?” asked Pa’alu, gripping his javelin tightly in both hands.

“Yes.”

Pa’alu raised the weapon to his shoulder to cast. Greengall’s hairless brows knitted together in a fearsome frown at the javelin aimed unwaveringly at his chest.

“Don’t be stupid! If I can divert you to this place and close walls of stone, do you think I can be hurt by such a trivial weapon as that?”

Pa’alu lowered his weapon sullenly. “What do you want of me?”

“You came from the place called Arku-peli, did you not?”

“I did.”

Greengall smiled, and Pa’alu flinched. The smile had drawn the corners of the stranger’s mouth up until they were even with the outside corners of his jade-green eyes. The plainsman swallowed hard.

Seeming not to notice Pa’alu’s discomfort, Greengall said, “A pleasant habitation! Such a picturesque location, too. How many people live there, would you say?”

The back of Pa’alu’s neck prickled, as it did when he heard the night cry of a wolf. “I don’t know,” he replied slowly. “I’ve only been there a few days.”

“They say a dragon lives there, too.”

“That’s true.”

“His name is...?”

“Duranix,” replied Pa’alu.

Greengall clapped his hands together. “Duranix, that’s it.” His expression abruptly went from extravagantly merry to deadly serious. “Have you seen him?”

“I’ve seen him.”

“It must have been very frightening for you.”

“No, most of the time I spent with him, he was in human form.”

Greengall’s head tilted to one side. He sighed loudly. “He’s so good at that. Me, I look like an overgrown grasshopper.”

The comparison was apt, and it prompted Pa’alu to ask, “Are you a dragon, too?”

Greengall snapped to his feet, causing Pa’alu to back quickly, hand flexing around the shaft of his javelin.

“What did you say?” Greengall snarled. Unfolded, his legs were enormously long and tightly muscled. His green leather breeches fit him like a second skin. At full height he towered over Pa’alu, who was tall for a plainsman.

“What did you say?” Greengall repeated.

Pa’alu did not reply but hurled his javelin at Greengall’s narrow chest. It was a good cast, well aimed and propelled by all of the nomad’s considerable strength. Even so, Greengall’s long-fingered hand lashed out and grabbed the elegant elven spear in mid-flight. The green-clad stranger laughed, deep in the back of his throat.

“A poor decision,” he said lightly. Saliva dripped from the comer of his too-wide mouth. “Here I am, trying to be polite, and you throw a sharp stick at me! Poor, poor choice. After I’m done with you, you won’t be throwing anything, little friend.”

He advanced, covering the ground between them in two vast strides. Pa’alu snatched a bronze dagger from his belt and prepared to sell his life dearly. Before he could strike, however, Greengall caught him by the wrists. He stretched his hands apart, pulling Pa’alu’s arms out straight. With no effort, Greengall hauled the stout warrior’s arms over his head and lifted until he stood on tip-toe. Pa’alu’s knife hand went numb, and the dagger fell to the ground.

“Humans are so loosely made,” Greengall said matter-of-factly, pushing his caricature of a face close to Pa’alu’s. “I wonder how long you can live without your arms?”

His lips parted enough to reveal his teeth. They were awful, serrated, and like nothing in any human mouth. Greengall lifted one long, narrow foot and rested it on Pa’alu’s feet, pinning him in place. Then he pulled on Pa’alu’s arms. With agonizing slowness, the creature increased the tension. The plainsman resisted as long as he could, then groaned in pain. His shoulders began to ache, then burned as though they were on fire. The remorseless Greengall pulled harder. Something in his shoulders gave. Pa’alu’s eyes filmed over with red agony.

The haze of pain was penetrated by an intense blue flash. The tension on his arms slackened, then ceased. The weight of the stranger’s foot on his feet disappeared. Pa’alu dropped heavily to the ground. His eyes were still clenched shut in pain, but he heard a loud, tortured hiss. Then an acrid odor filled the air, searing his throat. His arms flopping uselessly, Pa’alu rolled away, gasping for air.

When he opened his eyes, Pa’alu saw Greengall was backed up against the canyon wall. The chest of his taut leather shirt was scorched, and a sickly yellow fluid dripped from a wound there. Pa’alu followed the monster’s line of sight. He gasped when he realized who his rescuer was.

It was Vedvedsica, the elf priest. His severed hand had somehow grown back, for he was pointing two hands at the bizarre green-clad monster who cringed against the shadowed rock wall.

Greengall’s inhumanly wide mouth howled obscenities at the elf, who stood on a boulder ten paces away. A cloud of greenish gas blasted from Greengall’s mouth and swirled around Vedvedsica like a gale of vile smoke. The tiniest wisps of the gas strayed over to Pa’alu, causing him to cough and gag, yet Vedvedsica stood unmoved by the full blast of it.

“You should not have come out,” Vedvedsica told Greengall loudly. “Your powers are weakened when you leave your swamp. If Duranix or his kin catches you here, your life will be forfeit.”

“So why do you do their dirty work, elf?” Greengall snarled. “Have you come to worship little Duranix as the stupid humans do?”

“Duranix and I have business to settle that doesn’t concern you,” replied the priest. He pressed his hands together and blue light began to emanate from them.

Realizing another attack was imminent, Greengall screamed horribly and launched himself upward. He vanished in a blur of motion, leaving behind a whirlwind that sucked all the greenish vapors out of the bowl-shaped canyon and into the sky.

Pa’alu got up slowly, still unable to use his arms, which hung limply at his sides. To Vedvedsica he croaked, “I thank you, but why did you rescue me?”

“Troublesome as Duranix is,” said the priest, casting a distasteful glance skyward, “things would be infinitely worse if that creature usurped his place.”

“But I —” He swallowed with shame to say it. “I cut off your hand!”

Vedvedsica shrugged. “An annoyance and a setback, but I have no time to waste on matters of petty revenge. How badly are you hurt?”

Pa’alu tried to move his arms. His hands tingled, his shoulders burned, and he couldn’t make the limbs work. Vedvedsica stepped down from his boulder. His hand dipped into a hidden pocket in his robe and came out with a large green leaf, rolled into a tube. He took Pa’alu’s hand. The plainsman turned white with agony at the forced movement, but he couldn’t pull away. Vedvedsica shook out of the leafy tube a small round berry, the size and color of a black cherry.

“Swallow it,” ordered Vedvedsica. With much effort, the plainsman got the berry to his lips. Within seconds a warm sensation spread through his injured limbs. The terrible pain ebbed, then vanished altogether. He fell to his knees before the priest.

“I am yours to command,” he said humbly. “That monster would have killed me for sure if you hadn’t come. How can I repay this debt to you?”

The elf tucked his hands into his sleeves and assumed a thoughtful expression. “If you truly mean to repay me, there is something you can do for me,” he said.

“You have only to name it, great one.”

Vedvedsica lowered his eyes. “What if I asked you to kill someone?”

The answer hung in Pa’alu’s throat for a moment. “Then they would die,” he said haltingly.

“Don’t be such a fool,” the elf said. “Don’t give away your conscience so readily. The world is full of beings who are stronger, smarter, or more ruthless than you – your will is the only thing these powerful ones cannot take away from you, as long as you don’t let them!” Pa’alu looked confused, so Vedvedsica continued, “What I want is simple, plainsman. No one need die for my wishes, least of all you. I want the yellow stone Duranix took from me. You know the one, don’t you?”

“Y-yes,” Pa’alu said tentatively.

“Get the stone from him and bring it here, to this place.” Vedvedsica pressed his thumb into the ledge on which Greengall had been sitting. His finger made a deep hole, as if the hard stone was merely wet clay.

“Leave the yellow nugget in this hole. I will find it.”

He turned to go. Pa’alu, feeling fully recovered from his one-sided fight with Greengall, followed after the priest, saying forlornly, “How can I get out of here? The passages in and out are gone!”

“That was simply one of the monster’s illusions,” Vedvedsica said, waving a dismissive hand. “Look again.”

Sure enough. The three paths were right where Pa’alu had expected them to be. He blinked a few times, but the clefts in the canyon wall remained.

Vedvedsica was already picking his way over the sloping ground to the east. Pa’alu called after him. “What is this yellow stone? Why is it so important?”

The strange elf paused, stroking the sparse hair on his pointed chin. “It’s part of a larger answer,” he said. The plainsman obviously didn’t understand, so Vedvedsica offered this explanation. “When hunting, if you find large footprints, you know you’re on the trail of big game, don’t you?”

Pa’alu nodded.

“Well, consider the yellow stone the ‘footprint’ of something much larger, so large your human mind can’t conceive it. It has touched a great font of power – perhaps the source of all power in the world.” His eyes grew distant, looking at some vista only he could see. “When I have it,” he mused aloud, “I’ll know for sure.”

His golden, almost feline eyes focused on Pa’alu once more, impaling him with a glance. “Get the stone, human. Get it soon, and your debt,” he said the word almost with amusement, “will be paid.”

*

Karada’s straggling band found the first signs of habitation when they reached the river of the falls. Ail along both banks were stumps of trees, cut down with stone axes. Wandering plainsmen never cut down whole trees; they used only dead or windfall limbs.

Karada squatted by the stump of an oak. She scooped up a handful of wood chips and sniffed them.

“Sap’s still fresh,” she remarked. She dumped the chips, dusting her hand on the leg of her chaps. “Can’t have been cut more than three or four days ago.”

“There are drag marks, here,” Pakito said. The dark loam was deeply indented where the felled tree had been dragged to the river and rolled in.

“I don’t understand. The stream flows away from the mountains. How could they float logs against the current?” asked Samtu.

“They must haul them from the riverbank,” Karada replied. “It would be easier than dragging them all the way back to the mountains.”

Eighty-eight survivors of Karada’s once mighty band stood quietly behind their chief, waiting for her word to move on. Their numbers had diminished in the last days of their journey. Each night a few slipped away, no longer believing Karada was leading them to safety. Autumn was in the air – mornings broke crisp and cool – and the plainsmen’s instincts were to head north, following the game herds as they migrated before winter set in. Karada’s trek east into the inhospitable mountains seemed like folly.

Karada paid no attention to the lessening muster. Their strength as a people lay in their unity. Leaving the band was a step backward for the deserters, a return to the hard, desperate days of lonesome hunting and gathering. If there were those in the band too weak to trust her, then she didn’t want them around anyway.

“Hatu,” she said, rising to her feet, “how far to the lake?”

He surveyed the gray peaks with his good eye. “Half a day,” he said. “Certainly by nightfall.” He pointed to a trio of nearby mountains. “The river passes through them on the north side of the low ridge. The lake of the falls is on the other side.”

“Good. Let’s get moving.”

Hatu had not been to the lake in ten years, and his memory played him false. By the time the sun had begun to dip below the western horizon, Karada’s band was barely in the shadow of the first major peak in the mountain range. They paused on the riverbank and ate cold rations from their vanishing supplies, not bothering to build campfires or forage for fresh food. This was usually the time of day the nomads made camp for the night, but Karada insisted they push onward.

She formed a mounted patrol of six, including herself, and rode ahead into the darkening valley. The rest were left under the leadership of Targun and Samtu, to follow at the best possible speed.

The sound of their horses’ hooves rattled loudly off the walls of the narrow valley. Signs of human life continued: tracks in the mud on the riverbank, signs that outcroppings of rock had been hammered away to make wider trails. By the side of one trail Karada and her scouts found a pile of stinking garbage – fruit and vegetable peelings, offal, and the like. It was becoming more and more obvious they were approaching a sizable settlement.

The valley walls closed in, and the river made a sharp bend to the right. The low thrumming sound they’d been hearing became a steady booming noise, heralding the great waterfall. The night was very dark, with only occasional glimpses of the stars through scudding clouds. Karada ordered her companions to halt at the river’s bend and stay out of sight. She rode forward slowly alone.

Even by filtered starlight the waterfall was a stunning vista. The river poured down the mountainside, fed by a thousand clear springs and the snows of a long winter. It gathered force and hurled itself over the cliff, losing a third of its volume to mist. What remained churned up a bright, clear lake, which narrowed once more into the river they’d been following.

The lake was bound by a narrow shoreline on the right, thickly covered with low plants and slender trees growing in unnaturally straight rows. The wider, left bank was even more surprising. A cluster of tall, beehive-shaped houses filled the land between the lake and the cliff wall. Smoke rose from every rooftop, orange firelight glinting from many of the second story windows. The wind changed, bringing to Karada the odors of pine smoke and cattle dung.

Hatu edged forward on horseback to Karada’s side. He looked over the scene and whistled softly.

“This is it! Sure has changed,” he said in an awed voice.

“Ride back to the main band, and tell Targun to bring everyone on. We sleep in Arku-peli tonight.”

Pakito and the other scouts rode up. After admiring the sights for a moment, Pakito said, “We’re on the wrong side of the river. It’s too deep to ford. How do we get across?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a ford upstream.” Karada wrapped the reins around her hand. “Let’s find out.”

They didn’t have to travel far before they found the bridge. The plainsmen crowded around the end of the bridge, marveling at its construction.

“Is it a plant? Did it grow here?” Pakito wondered. “It’s made of wood and vine —”

“Human hands made it,” Karada said. “See the blade marks on the planks?”

Karada and the scouts waited until the column of people appeared, headed by Targun, Samtu, and Hatu – the latter on horseback.

Karada and Pakito rode across the bridge. It swayed under their weight but held up fine. The rest of the band followed, many of the younger members clinging to the supporting vines and moving nervously from handhold to handhold until they were on solid ground again.

“What do you suppose they’re like, these people?” Pakito murmured as they rode slowly toward the first line of houses.

“They’re very clever,” offered Targun.

“That they may be, but living under piles of stone is for lizards, not plainsmen,” Karada stated flatly. “And where are their scouts, their watchmen? We could be a war party of elves for all they know.”

“We’ve been seen.” Hatu pointed to the looming houses. “There are people moving inside those stone piles. They know we’re here.”

He was right. Karada watched the upper-story windows and saw heads and bodies silhouetted again the inside glow of firelight. Suspicious, she slowed her horse, and the rest of the band did likewise. Just as they were about to enter the shadowed lane between the lines of houses, the wail of a ram’s horn filled the night.

The tired, edgy plainsfolk on foot recoiled from the sudden alarm. Hatu and the mounted warriors drew swords or leveled spears, but Karada called for calm and ordered everyone to stand still.

A glow appeared between the houses. As they watched, it came nearer, bobbing gently. It soon resolved itself into a solitary figure on foot, carrying a blazing torch. It was a young man, whose hair was cut short in a strange kind of fashion. Hatu fingered his own long braid of hair and gave the shorn villager a disparaging sneer. He made a rude comment to Pakito about a bald goat he’d once seen. The big man laughed.

The light was poor enough the young man did not seem to notice their disdain. He stopped a safe distance away.

“You’re the largest group so far,” he said in a genial voice. “Welcome!”

“You don’t even know who we are,” Karada said coldly.

“More of Karada’s band, yes? Your people have been arriving steadily for the past few days.”

The plainsmen exchanged looks of surprise. Pakito asked, “How many of Karada’s band have come here?”

The torchbearer considered the question silently, tilting his head in thought for a few seconds, then replied, “Over two hundred, so far. How many are you?”

“Eighty-eight.”

“Quite a crowd! Well, follow me. I’ll take you to your comrades.”

The pale-faced, short-haired man started back the way he’d come.

Hatu muttered, “Our so-called comrades – those who abandoned us on the battlefield. How will they take to seeing us now?”

“That’s my problem,” Karada said quietly. “Whatever happens, don’t let the old folks or children come to harm.”

The mounted plainsmen followed the torch bearer in single file, Karada leading. They passed silently through the quiet village. A small wolf sprang out of the shadows and barked at them. Karada raised her spear to strike, then noticed the wolf was tied to a stake with a rope around its neck. Their guide came back and quieted the beast with a few soothing words and a pat on the head.

“You command beasts here?” asked Samtu.

“A few. They guard our homes and fight off their wild brethren.”

“Why should they do that?” Pakito asked from over Karada’s shoulder.

“We’ve tamed them. Settled life agrees with them, as it does the rest of us.”

The torch bearer went on, Karada’s people following him. Each one passed under the scrutiny of the tame wolf, who watched them with unblinking yellow eyes.

The copse of houses came to an end. A patch of sandy, open ground followed, in the midst of which was a tall, square pile of stones, quite unlike the domed houses. The top layers of stone were soot-stained.

“What’s this?” asked Samtu.

“Our place of offering. Here we give oxen and elk to our protector, the dragon.”

“Duranix,” the chief said.

Their young guide halted. “You know of him?”

“He came to our camp in human guise,” Karada explained.

“My brother followed him here. Do you know if one named Pa’alu is here?” asked Pakito.

“He was, but he isn’t now.” The torch bearer scratched his head and explained. “Pa’alu was here, but he left yesterday to meet small parties of your band arriving then. He was hoping to find Karada. He hasn’t returned yet. Actually, we’re quite worried about him.”

“This is Ka —” Samtu began, but a glare from her chief stilled her tongue.

“We all have friends and comrades we hope to see again,” Karada said.

In contrast to the quiet, orderly village, the camp of the nomads was a riot of haphazard tents, lean-tos, and windbreaks of sand and loose stone. The young guide left Karada for a moment and ducked into a rambling tent made from spotted cowhide. He returned with Sessan and Nacris in tow then slipped away quietly.

Both nomads staggered as they walked, and their clothes were awry. They’d worked in the ox pens all day in exchange for two jugs of wine, most of which they’d already drunk.

Sessan looked up at his chief. “By my blood!” he swore in surprise. “You’re alive!”

Karada had noted the departure of their young guide, now she spat at Sessan, “I am. Why are you?”

He pressed the wineskin on Nacris and drew himself up as straight as he could. “I’m alive because I left!”

“You admit it, do you? You ran away from the battle!”

He swept his hand in a wide arc. “We had no chance,” he said solemnly.

Nacris upended the skin, gulping down more wine. She wiped her mouth and said, “How did you survive, eh?”

“I fought until captured. Balif stripped me of arms and turned me loose.”

“How can you live with the shame?” asked Sessan harshly. “I’m surprised you didn’t throw yourself from the cliff top!”

“Yes, I chose to live with our defeat. Any fool can kill herself, but I will rebuild the band and strike the elves again! I’ll make Balif curse the day he sought to shame me into quiet exile!” Karada stormed. “You want to speak of shame? Look at you, cowards and traitors, standing there! And addled with drink like a pair of loons! Is this the end of our band, our dream of a free land for our people?”

“The elf lord spared you,” Sessan replied heatedly, “but the rest of us would have been trampled into the grass had we stayed.”

Karada mastered her anger. “You disobeyed my command.”

“You’ve no right to judge us, no right to lead us. You would’ve let us all die in a lost cause!” Nacris retorted. She cast about wildly. “Ask him. These are sensible people here. Where’d he go – the Arkuden?”

“Who?”

“The village headman, the fellow who led you here.”

Karada said, “He left. And why should I ask a short-haired villager anything?”

More nomads came out of their shelters to watch the confrontation. Tarkwa, the other leader of the breakaway band, joined Sessan and Nacris.

“If we are to be one band, strong and united, there must be one chief,” Karada said. “The chiefs word must be obeyed. Anything else is chaos.”

Tarkwa, who was sober, said, “I cannot follow you, Karada. You speak of freedom for all plainsmen – that is my desire, too. But we can’t be free and be your children, trembling at your every order. What difference is there between serving elf lords or serving you?”

“I am one of you.”

“Not good enough!” Sessan sputtered.

“You care nothing for our lives,” Nacris cried. “You’d sacrifice us all for your own glory!” Many of the nomads behind her shouted approval of Nacris’s hard words.

Karada flinched, but she swung down from her horse and walked up to Sessan. She stood nose to nose with him, shoving Nacris away when the woman tried to wedge herself between her man and Karada.

“Will you fight me?” she whispered fiercely.

His reddened eyes betrayed fear, but he said, “Yes. Any time. Tomorrow!”

Her laugh was sharp and ugly. “Make it the day after tomorrow. I need rest and you need to sleep off your foolishness.”

Sessan stepped back and slammed his foot on the sand. “Daybreak, then. Here.”

Karada turned on her heel and remounted. “Look to your horse, Sessan. We’ll fight mounted, with spears, as plainsmen should.”

There was a murmuring behind her as she rode on to claim the high ground by the cliff wall for her tired band of loyalists. Samtu and Targun went to find food for the children. Hatu and Pakito were delegated to organize the raising of tents and tarps. Pakito tried to say something to her about Sessan, but he was banished with an angry gesture.

Karada flung her skimpy baggage to the ground and pulled the blanket off her horse. Without a further glance or a word to anyone, she strode down to the lake.

A wall of mist swirled up from the falls, enveloping her in a silver cloud. She stood up to her ankles in the chill water and removed all her gear and clothing. Kneeling, she threw handfuls of water on her face and neck. The dust of many leagues washed away.

She wished her many worries could be as easily lost.

Chapter 14

It had been a restless couple of days. Amero had had to go out after dark each night and lead in party after party of stragglers from Karada’s band. The last was a particularly large and pathetic group, made up of old folks, children, and a few warriors who seemed worn out and ill-fed. Their appearance reminded Amero of the hard life that still existed outside the comfortable confines of Yala-tene.

As if these interruptions to his sleep weren’t bad enough, his days were disrupted as well. Duranix had been ceaselessly pacing and prowling the cave ever since he found himself unable to change back to dragon form. As time passed, he became more and more irritable. For long periods he would sit, motionless, staring at the cave walls. Then, in a sudden burst of action, he would circle the room over and over, muttering and gesticulating. Tiny bolts of lightning arced from his hands, and after a few hours of this, the air in the cave seemed alive with crackling energy. Everything Amero touched gave him a shock.

He tried to concentrate on his copper experiment. Men in the village had constructed an anvil to his specifications, hewn from a single block of rose granite. Amero placed the ingot he’d cast the day the tunnels collapsed on the anvil and pounded it with a sandstone maul. The spaces between the half-melted beads closed up, and the ingot gradually became a flat, thin plate.

As Amero worked in the early hours before dawn, on the second day after the arrival of Karada’s band, the mussel shell chimes at the top of the hoist rattled. Amero didn’t hear it at first and kept hammering. Duranix left the path he was wearing in the sandstone floor and went to the lower door.

“Pa’alu’s returned,” he announced. Amero kept pounding, so Duranix shouted the news. Amero looked up distractedly. Sighing, he set aside the maul and went to the opening. All he could see was the ever-present waterfall disappearing into the dark depths below.

“It’s him,” Duranix insisted, then added testily, “I may be crammed into this tiny body, but I haven’t gone blind yet!”

Amero started the counterweight down. Rope hissed over the wooden pulleys. The basket appeared. He saw Pa’alu, gazing up at him. The broad-shouldered plainsman filled the small basket completely, and his ascent was slow.

The top of the basket frame bumped the pulley and stopped. Amero tied off the hoist and Pa’alu vaulted over the side, landing lightly on his feet.

“Greetings, Amero, and to you, great Duranix.” The dragon grunted something unintelligible and resumed his angry pacing.

“What ails him?” asked Pa’alu.

Amero considered speaking the truth, then said, “Who can say? Pay him no heed.” He put aside his newly made copper sheet and sat down on the anvil. “I’m glad to see you, Pa’alu. Where have you been? Many of your comrades have arrived during your absence, including a big man who says he’s your brother.”

“Pakito’s here! That is good news!” He clapped Amero on the shoulder. The well-intentioned blow was enough to knock Amero off his perch.

“Any word of Karada?” Pa’alu asked anxiously, lending the young man a hand.

“No word as yet.”

By this time Duranix had circled the cave and come back. “What kept you?” asked the dragon. “We worried you were lost in the mountains.” Amero was curious to hear Duranix express concern about a mere human.

“That’s what I came to tell you. I was waylaid in the mountains.” Pa’alu related his encounter with the monstrous Greengall – up to a point. He carefully avoided any mention of Vedvedsica. The dragon would not knowingly give up the nugget if he knew it would go to the elf priest.

“Describe this Greengall!” Duranix said grimly. “Leave nothing out!”

Pa’alu described the weird fellow: long legs, short arms, spidery fingers, hideously oversized head and mouth. When he began to describe Greengall’s clothing, Duranix folded his arms and lowered his head.

The dragon muttered, “I should have expected this. He’s been quiet too long.”

“Do you know this creature?” asked Amero.

“Sthenn.” The name was an evil hiss. Duranix locked eyes with Pa’alu. “You met the green dragon Sthenn and lived to tell about it. How did you manage that? You’re a stout fellow for a human, but you’re no match for a dragon of any hue. Why did Sthenn let you go?”

It was Pa’alu’s turn to fold his arms and look grave. “He spared me to be a messenger,” he said. “He sent me back to tell you he wants the nugget, the gold nugget you took from the elf priest.”

The dragon was speechless for a moment. Amero, who knew little of the unusual nugget Duranix had brought back from his travels, asked, “Why does he want a mere stone? What value is it to him?”

“It’s a cache of pure spirit-power,” interjected Duranix curtly. “Sthenn must have some idea of tapping it, though I don’t understand why. We dragons have our own sources of power. What is Sthenn planning? Does he think to offer such power to his followers?”

“What is he talking about?” Pa’alu asked Amero.

“Be still,” the dragon said. He put a thumb and forefinger into his mouth and took out the nugget. He placed it on Amero’s granite anvil. All three looked at it with new curiosity.

“There is a hierarchy in the universe,” Duranix explained. “Some of your people already know of the higher beings and worship them as gods. Below them in power are dragons, who exist midway between the pure spirits and the lower animals.” Amero didn’t have to be told who the “lower animals” were. Pa’alu still looked mystified.

The dragon continued, “With proper concentration and training, elves and even humans could release the power contained in this stone.”

“Could the yevi?” Amero said under his breath.

Pa’alu reached out to grasp the dull golden nugget. His hand froze just above it.

“Go ahead, pick it up,” said the dragon. “You’ll feel nothing from it.”

Pa’alu found the stone warm to the touch – no doubt from being in Duranix’s mouth all this time. The nugget was weighty for its size, but as the dragon had said, Pa’alu could feel nothing emanating from it.

“It’s just a stone,” he said, disappointed.

“Keep thinking that,” the dragon replied. “When humans start coveting spirit-power, the world is in for more grief than it can bear.”

Pa’alu carefully replaced the nugget on the granite block. He expected Duranix to reclaim it instantly, but the disguised dragon had wandered away, a hand to his head.

“Duranix?” Amero said.

The dragon’s steps faltered. He clutched his head in both hands and stumbled through the hearth. Ashes and charred wood went skittering across the floor. Amero hurried to him, leaving Pa’alu by the anvil.

“Duranix? Duranix, what is it?” Amero called, alarmed.

The dragon-man threw his arms wide suddenly and let loose a roar of – what? Agony? Fear? Amero couldn’t tell.

As he stood there, shaking, his screams reverberating off the hard walls of the cave, Duranix’s arms began to bleed blue-green blood. The skin along the back of his arms split open. Under the tearing human skin were the red-bronze scales of Duranix’s true flesh.

The dreadful sound of skin splitting was not quite drowned out by Duranix’s continuous roaring. He doubled over and, before their eyes, his human body burst apart. His true self stretched outward and upward. The roar increased to full dragon volume. Amero fell to the floor, covering his ears with his hands while Pa’alu, trembling in amazement, ducked behind the weighty anvil. Amero thought the ceiling would surely crack apart under the terrible noise.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the transformation was complete.

“It’s good to be full size again!” Duranix shouted, extending his wings. The dragon shivered with obvious pleasure. “How do you creatures live in such small bodies?”

“We manage,” Amero grunted, as he hauled himself out from under an outstretched wing. Coming up on the dragon’s left side, he reached out and gave the great creature an affectionate thump with his clenched fist.

“Are you all right? What happened?” Amero asked as Pa’alu came crawling out from his hiding place.

“It’s hard to describe. Pressure built inside me – I thought I was going to burst!” Duranix sniffed at the shreds of his human shell lying on the floor. “It appears that I did.”

“You don’t usually shed your skin when you transform,” Amero mused.

Dragon eye met human eye in a flash of shared thought, and they turned to Pa’alu. “The stone!” they cried in unison.

Pa’alu picked up the nugget and fingered it wonderingly. “This yellow rock kept you from shapeshifting?”

The dragon clomped forward, furling his wings. “That must be it!” he said. “The stone somehow kept me in the shape I was in.”

“Then we must get rid of it,” Amero said firmly.

“I’ll do it,” said Pa’alu quickly, closing his fingers around the stone.

“I must keep it out of Sthenn’s hands,” Duranix said. “Give it to me.”

Pa’alu walked slowly under the dragon’s arching neck. He held out the nugget to Duranix.

“Are you sure you want to handle it again? Who knows what ultimate effect it may have on you? Let me destroy it. I have no sensitivity to its power. To me, it’s just a lump of rock.”

Duranix had extended two claws to take the nugget off the plainsman’s palm. He suddenly thought better of it and withdrew.

“Very well, Pa’alu,” he agreed. “You have good instincts. They saved me some trouble with Vedvedsica not long ago. Take the stone. Put it some place neither elves nor dragons can easily find – a deep lake, a bottomless cave. Take it away, and tell no one where you leave it.”

Pa’alu tucked the nugget into the pouch on his belt. “Fear not,” he said confidently “You won’t see it again.”

The cave had grown steadily lighter. A gray dawn, filtered by clouds and the waterfall, had arrived. Weary from his labors, Amero went to the water basin and tried to awaken his numb face. Duranix, his serpentine grace restored, sprang to the upper cave exit and put his head out.

“I must stretch my wings,” he stated grandly. “I’ll look around for Sthenn while I’m at it.” A rumbling sound, like a distant avalanche, filled the cave. The dragon’s keen eyes fastened on movement farther down in the valley. The eyes narrowed, and he hissed a single word. “Prey!”

With a flip of his barbed tail, the dragon vaulted through the wall of water and disappeared. Pa’alu hauled the hoist into the cavern and threw a leg over the side of the basket.

“I’d best get rid of the stone now,” he said.

The sound of many loud voices penetrated the cave – a massed shouting. Pa’alu couldn’t see through the waterfall. Amero came to the opening. “That’s coming from the nomads’ camp,” he said with a pang of foreboding.

Another shout went up. It had a feral, bloodthirsty sound, like the cry of yevi. Amero climbed in the basket with Pa’alu.

“Something’s happening,” he said, rubbing his brow tiredly. “Something bad.”

“Hold on,” Pa’alu advised. He loosened the descending counterweight, and the basket lurched free. Bowed by fatigue, his eyes shadowed by dark circles, Amero gripped the sides of the basket.

Pa’alu put two fingers into his belt pouch and touched the yellow stone. So near his moment of triumph, it wouldn’t do to let the nugget fall out and be lost.

*

Karada slept soundly her first two nights in Yala-tene. She spread her elkhide blanket at the foot of the high cliffs and rested better than she had in many days. On the second morning, Pakito had to shake her hard to wake from her deep slumber.

“Chief,” he whispered, “Sessan waits.”

She sat up, yawning. “Let’im. If he gets thirsty, he’ll drink more wine. The more time he has to drink, the better.” In a show of bravado, Sessan and Nacris had spent the time since the challenge drinking and gaming with their cronies. Karada had kept clear of them, eating sparingly and re-knapping her flint knife.

The whole camp was awake when Karada strolled down to the lake to wash her face and neck. The nomads were astonishingly quiet, not at all the boisterous tribe Karada had created and led for ten years. She noted with satisfaction the sight of Sessan kneeling on the shore, pressing a cold, wet piece of buckskin to his aching head. Nacris hovered over him, massaging his shoulders. If her expression was any indication, her head hurt at least as much as his.

Karada spared them only a glance as she headed for the water. When the challenge had been made, she had given the stupid man a day’s grace to recover from the effects of his drinking. If he chose to spend that time getting himself even drunker, then so be it.

She washed her neck and face, savoring the feel of the chill lake water, then donned her chiefs headband. Sessan and Nacris, pointedly ignoring her, left the lakeshore to finish their own preparations for the coming contest.

Samtu brought her horse, and Karada slung a dusty blanket over the animal’s back. Vaulting easily astride, she took the reins from Samtu and kicked the horse into a trot. She rode down the hill to an open piece of ground along the water, which was closed in on three sides by nomad tents and a growing crowd of onlookers.

Sessan appeared at the other end of the strip. His horse, a fine roan stallion, pranced and snorted at being hemmed in. Nacris was dancing around beside him, trying to give her man last-minute fighting advice. Sessan kept nodding, but his eyes were closed.

“Karada.”

She looked down as Pakito handed her a flint-headed spear. “Here,” he said. “Tarkwa and I compared weapons, and this one matches Sessan’s length.”

“Thank you, Pakito.”

“Chief, I don’t like to tell you how to do things, but...” His voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“Beat him, but don’t beat him too hard. You’ll win more by being fair than by being harsh.”

“I didn’t start this,” Karada answered. “Sessan and those who follow him need to learn who the real leader is and always will he.”

She thumped her heels against the horse’s flanks and trotted away. The big man shook his head and returned to the sidelines with Targun and Samtu.

Tarkwa stood between the combatants with his hands upraised. The rolling murmur of the crowd faded. He declaimed, “We are here to see the contest of Karada and Sessan. You all know the reasons for this fight. Do you accept it and pledge to follow the victor?”

“Yes!” the assembled nomads cried.

A flurry of wind scoured the shoreline, driving dust in the eyes of the spectators. All eyes rose skyward in time to see the dark shape of the dragon climb into the low hanging roof of white clouds. Their first glimpse of Duranix in dragon form set the nomads to chattering again, until Tarkwa shouted for their attention.

He picked up a stone from the beach. “When this stone strikes the water, the fight begins!” he said. He went to the edge of the crowd, faced the lake, and lobbed the stone into the air.

Karada wasn’t watching it. She looped a thong around her wrist and used it to tie the spear shaft securely to her hand.

Splash! The sound of the rock entering the lake was immediately followed by a clatter of hooves. Sessan had launched into a headlong gallop. Still unmoving, Karada busied herself with her weapon, her seat, her reins.

The open strip was only twenty paces long by eight wide. Sessan bore down on the motionless Karada, his spear leveled. He uttered a sharp cry. Some of his friends in the crowd cheered, but most of the nomads held their breath.

Karada turned her horse slightly to her right and rested the spear shaft against her shoulder. Only then did she look up at the horse and rider thundering toward her.

“Now, Karada!” Sessan yelled. He aimed his spear at the center of her chest. When the flint head passed the ears of Karada’s horse, she bent herself backward at the waist, twisting slightly away. Sessan’s eyes widened in surprise. His spear passed harmlessly over her shoulder. When he was past, she sprang up and swung her weapon sideways in a wide arc. The hardwood shaft, as thick as Karada’s wrist, struck Sessan at the base of the neck. Part of the crowd howled with delight at her tactic.

Sessan reeled but kept his seat and his grip on his spear. Karada swung her horse around in a tight left turn and cantered after him. He parried her first thrust and tried to maneuver away to get some fighting room. She crowded him, and when he blocked the sharp flint head, she used the butt end of her spear as a club, landing a hard blow to his ribs.

The crowd melted away as the two riders pressed against them. Sessan, bleeding from the nose, saw an opening and drove through, galloping through the water toward the center of the strip. Karada checked the thong on her wrist and rode sedately after her foe.

This was the scene when Amero and Pa’alu arrived. The first thing Pa’alu saw was his brother, towering over everyone else in the crowd. He shouted a greeting, and the big man plowed through the press to reach his elder brother. With much hugging and back-slapping Pa’alu and Pakito were reunited.

Pa’alu’s joy vanished when he saw what was happening by the lake. He thrust Pakito away and said, “Karada? Alive? Here? What is she doing?”

“It’s a duel,” said Pakito. “She’s fighting Sessan to see who’ll be chief of the band.”

“What?” The idea that anyone would challenge Karada was insanity to Pa’alu. Did Sessan truly understand what he was up against?

Amero slipped in beside him and asked, “Is that woman Karada?” Pa’alu nodded vigorously, and Amero said, “That’s the woman I led in two night’s past.”

Sessan wrenched his horse around and galloped back, again trying to impale Karada by a full charge. This time she lowered her head and urged her mount to a gallop, too. She kept her spear low, on her right side, away from Sessan’s rush.

“What’s she trying to do?” Amero asked, spellbound.

Pa’alu knew. He’d seen her maneuver before. Grimly he said, “Sessan’s a dead man.”

The gap between the riders closed fast. Karada steered left, crossing in front of Sessan. The nomads gasped with surprise.

Still she kept her spear low. Sessan let his point droop until it was aimed directly at the crouching woman.

The two horses flashed by each other. Karada raised her arm, deflecting Sessan’s spear head. At the same time, the flint tip of her weapon caught him just under the ribs. It went in until the head emerged from his back. The thong binding the weapon to her wrist should have betrayed Karada, perhaps breaking her wrist or snatching her off her speeding mount, but the leather was no longer tied to her. She opened her hand and the loose ends of the thong flew free.

Karada sat up and slowed her horse. By the time she turned around, the roan was trotting riderless toward Sessan’s tent.

A woman screamed. Nacris ran out of the crowd. She picked up a pair of stones and threw them at Karada. The chief batted one away, but the other hit her horse on the side of the head. The animal reared, and to avoid being thrown to the ground, Karada slid off his rump. A bronze elven dagger gleamed in Nacris’s hand. Karada had only a flint hunting knife.

Pa’alu had a bronze dagger of his own. He forced his way through the excited crowd until he was a few paces from where Karada and Nacris now circled each other.

“Karada!” he shouted, holding up the elven blade. She couldn’t pick out his voice amid all the others screaming her name, so he cried, “Nianki! Take this!”

Her old name reached her. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at him. That was enough for Nacris, who lunged at her. Karada grabbed Nacris’s arm and spun around, using the force of her spin to propel Nacris away.

“Nianki! Take the dagger!” Pa’alu flipped the weapon at her. It landed point first in the sand. Karada snatched it up just in time to parry another furious rush. Nacris used her blade like a short sword, slashing underhand and lunging at Karada’s belly. At one point the bronze blade scored a bloody line down the length of Karada’s right forearm. Nacris paid for her success when Karada backhanded her across the face. The furious challenger spun away, falling to her knees in the sand. With astonishing speed, Karada was on her back. She grasped Nacris by the hair and jerked her head back, baring her throat to the keen bronze blade

The yelling, milling crowd instantly fell silent. The change was so abrupt even Karada noticed. She paused, crouching over her opponent, knife pressed to Nacris’s throat just enough to crease her skin but not enough to draw blood.

“Stop!” yelled a man’s voice. “Stay your hand!”

Nacris struggled a little, but Karada pricked her to remind her how close to death she was. Karada looked this way and that, trying to see who dared give her orders.

The nomads parted ranks and a young man emerged. His short hair and tidy clothes marked him as a villager, not one of her nomads.

“Don’t kill her!” he said, horror evident on his pale face.

“Why not? She meant to kill me!” Karada snarled, panting.

“She’s mad with rage because you killed her mate,” the man insisted.

Karada looked down at Nacris. She could feel her foe trembling and see tears running off her face to the sand. Karada removed the knife, stood up, and planted a foot in middle of Nacris’s back. The latter collapsed facedown in the dirt. Karada kicked Nacris’s dagger away. It skittered to the man’s feet. He picked it up and offered it butt first to Karada.

Pa’alu ran forward and took his own knife back. Karada was sweating heavily, and blood dripped down her fingers from the cut on her arm.

Pa’alu offered her his water gourd. She took it, saying, “You made it.”

He smiled. “So did you.”

She took a long swig from the gourd. When she finally lowered it, she wiped her chin with the back of her hand and looked at the villager. “Why did you try to stop me?” she asked him.

Amero said, “You won the fight. There was no reason to kill her.”

“Maybe not, but I heard a lot of people shouting her name. There can’t be two chiefs in this band. Either I am chief, or there is no band.”

“You won. You are the chief,” said Pa’alu firmly.

Amero opened his mouth to speak but he was jostled aside as Pakito, Targun, Hatu, and Samtu worked their way to

Karada’s side. Pa’alu took his brother’s hand and raised it high. He cried, “Hail, Karada! Hail, Karada’s band!”

The nomads took up the chant with enthusiasm, repeating it so loudly the valley thundered with their cry.

Sessan’s body was cleared away, and Nacris was carried off to a shelter on the edge of the camp. Karada strode up to Sessan’s large tent and sat down on the chiefs stool. Targun set to washing and binding her wound as warriors lined up to attest their renewed loyalty to her.

Standing in a half circle behind Karada were her stalwarts, Pa’alu, Pakito, Samtu, and the rest. Amero worked his way to Pa’alu’s side. The young villager’s face reflected a jumble of emotions, impossible to read.

“Pa’alu, I must speak to you.” Amero said.

“Aye, Arkuden. What is it?”

“What was it you called Karada during the fight?”

The plainsman kept his eye on the line of warriors saluting and passing his chief. “Her true name,” he said. “Everyone was screaming ‘Karada, Karada,’ and she couldn’t hear me among the hundreds.”

“Karada is not her true name?”

Something in Amero’s tone caught Pa’alu’s attention, and he looked down at the smaller man. Shaking his head, he replied, “Ten years ago, when I first met her, she was just a wandering hunter like Pakito and me. Only later, when she was gathering the band together did she take the name Karada.”

Amero tried to calm the excitement rising in his breast. He’d heard what the plainsman had yelled, but he kept telling himself he’d heard wrong. It simply couldn’t be.

“What is it? What is her birth name?”

“Nianki.”

Amero blinked. He tried to speak, but his words came out as a croaking whisper. He cleared his throat. The noise of jostling, celebrating nomads around him seemed to grow louder in his ears. He swayed slightly. “Did you say ‘Nianki?’”

Pa’alu nodded. His eyes were on his chief and he didn’t notice the young headman’s evident distress.

Amero left the loyal circle and stepped into the chiefs line of sight. He stared at her, this stranger called Karada.

Could it be? He stared hard, trying to see past the sunburn and the scars, calling up in his mind the face of his lost sister.

His strange expression caused the chiefs smile to drop away. She returned his glance sharply and demanded, “Now what, village-man? First, you had me spare a foe who would’ve killed me. Do you want me to forego the oaths of my loyal people now?”

“What is your name?” Amero asked. His voice trembled.

“What? Can’t you hear? The sky knows my name today!” To Targun, almost done wrapping her injured arm, she said in a phony whisper, “These rockpile villagers seem a little slow-witted.”

“Is your —” Once more Amero had to clear his throat before he could resume. “Is your name Nianki?”

Conversation around the chiefs tent died. Karada shrugged. “That was the name given me by my mother and father.”

“Were their names Oto and Kinar?”

“So they were. Who told you that?”

Amero took a step toward her. “Did you have a brother named Amero?”

Her amused expression vanished, and she frowned at him. “I did,” she said. Her hazel eyes were as hard as gemstones. “He was killed many years ago, along with my parents and another brother. How do you know his name?”

Amero’s mouth opened and closed. As Karada watched him with growing wonder, he looked straight at her and announced, “Because I am Amero, Nianki. I am your brother.”

Chapter 15

The plainsmen had a saying: “Swift water grows the biggest fish.” It was their way of saying change brought danger and hope in equal measure.

In the days that followed, Karada and Amero became brother and sister again. The cooling nights were passed at the chiefs tent, where the story of Nianki and Amero’s survival were told for all to hear. The knowledge that Karada had a family was something of a revelation to the warrior band. Many of them considered their chief almost a spirit, a demigoddess of the hunt. As they listened to brother and sister speak, the change in their chief was startling. The stern, vengeful Karada became talkative. She even laughed. Few of her people had ever seen Karada smile widely, much less laugh out loud.

Pa’alu was enchanted by Karada’s transformation. He had long cherished every line of her face – wide cheekbones, high forehead, small, straight nose, pointed chin – and every scar on it. Yet the face he knew had always been hard as fieldstone and cold as mountain snow. This new feature – a tooth-baring grin that crinkled her eyes – was totally astonishing, and he silently loved her all the more.

Yet even as he watched the reunion of sister and brother, his delight slowly gave way to something unsettling and ugly. Why did she bestow the favor of her smile and good humor on a man she hadn’t seen in more than ten years? Brother or not, Amero hadn’t fought at her side, hunted and scouted the trackless savanna with her. Was an accident of birth enough to justify this injustice? When she clapped an arm around Amero’s shoulder, Pa’alu felt as if a knife had been shoved into his ribcage.

Two days after the fight between Karada and Sessan, Pa’alu slipped away from the chiefs tent and lost himself in the crowd. It was easy to do. The people of Yala-tene were also turning out to see Karada, the famous nomad chief. Word she was blood kin to their own headman only heightened the villagers’ curiosity and relief. Surely no harm would come to them and their village now, not if the chief of the wild nomads was the long-lost sister of their founder.

Pa’alu drifted through the excited surge of villagers, buffeted this way and that as they flowed around him. He found himself behind the high cairn of the dragon altar, deposited there like a leaf in the eddies of a swiftly moving stream. He came to rest slumped against the sloping side of the cairn. Some time passed before his surroundings breached his melancholy thoughts.

The smell of soot and burned meat roused him. He looked up at the stone pile where the villagers placed their offerings for the dragon. Thinking of Duranix brought to mind Green-gall and Vedvedsica. It had been many days since he thought of the task given him by the elf priest. Digging a hand in his belt pouch now, he found the yellow stone.

This golden nugget held power, enough to affect the mighty Duranix, enough that Vedvedsica should crave the stone for himself. Why should Pa’alu give up such power? Why couldn’t he utilize it for himself?

You owe a debt to the priest, he reminded himself. The elf had saved his life. Besides, Pa’alu was no wise man, stewing herbs or plotting the courses of the stars. In his hand, it was just a piece of stone. It wasn’t the way to Karada’s heart.

Pa’alu put the nugget back in his pouch and stood up, thinking. He might not know how to use the power in the stone, but he knew how to get what he wanted in other ways. The price of the yellow stone had gone up. Once it had been worth Pa’alu’s life – cheap for so miserable a soul. If the elf priest still wanted the stone, Vedvedsica had better be willing to bargain, because the price was now Pa’alu’s happiness.

*

Amero declared a feast in his sister’s honor. Oxen would be slaughtered, fruit would be brought from the orchards across the lake, and the red wine of Yala-tene would flow. Not to be outdone, Karada organized a hunting party to provide the feast with rabbit, gamecock, and golden trout from the highest mountain streams. The day of the feast was set for Moonmeet, the night when the moons Soli and Lutar would meet at the peak of the vault of heaven – by tradition, the last day of summer. Moonmeet would happen three days hence.

His initial shock having passed, Amero was filled with excitement at finding Nianki alive. She and her trusted companions were taken on a tour of Yala-tene, the villagers proudly showing off the storage tunnels, the gardens and orchards. All went well until Nianki asked if she could visit Duranix’s cave.

“Certainly,” said Amero after a moment’s hesitation, “but only you and I may go.”

“Why’s that?”

“The cave is the dragon’s home, and though I’ve lived there for ten years, I must consult with him about the visits of strangers.” Seeing Nianki’s men look disappointed and a bit offended, he added, “You will all meet him in due course. Besides, the hoist can carry only two people at a time.”

Hatu fingered his eyepatch. “Don’t go, Karada,” he said warily. “This is the valley where my father died, and that dragon is the one who killed him. You can never trust a monster.”

She laughed caustically. “What, after ten years the dragon is going to go berserk and bite our heads off? Too much food and wine has made your head soft!”

He bristled, drawing himself up and squaring his shoulders. “I speak what I feel to be the truth, Karada,” he said stiffly.

“You need exercise,” she said, laughing. “Join Kiopi’s fishing band. Use your vivid imagination to catch us some trout.”

Amero shifted his feet, embarrassed by his sister’s taunting. He didn’t like her high-handed, insulting manner with other people. He tried to think of something soothing to say to Hatu, but the one-eyed nomad departed in mute anger. Nianki didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t seem to care.

At the hoist Nianki grabbed the frame and levered herself into the cramped basket. Her brother tugged on the ready lines and the counterweight started down. With a jerk, the basket began to rise.

“Karada!” Targun called up to her. “Don’t forget! The time of mourning is past. Sessan will be buried at sunset!”

She leaned both elbows on the basket rim and looked down at him. “So?”

“You should be there!”

She waved the notion away. “I’ve no time for traitors,” she replied.

As they rose out of voice range of the ground, Amero said, “It will cause bad feeling if you slight Sessan’s funeral, Nianki.”

“He was a fool and a coward,” replied Karada shortly.

“He fought bravely. You killed him. You should go.”

She lost the smile that had been on her face since their reunion. “Amero, I killed Sessan because he tried to steal my people from me. He paid for that with his life. I won’t dignify his burial with my presence.”

There was no budging her, so he let the matter drop. As they climbed out of the basket underneath the waterfall, Amero pointed out the system of pulleys he and Duranix had mounted in the sheer cliff face. The pulleys allowed the basket to rise, descend, and even traverse sideways a distance of a few paces to clear the waterfall.

Nianki looked where he pointed and nodded when he spoke, but the mechanism didn’t interest her. As the basket slipped behind the thundering falls, she put out her hand and let the edges of the torrent briefly tear at her fingers. She smiled again. Here at least was a force she could admire.

Amero tied off the basket, and they entered the cave. The thick stone walls muted the roar of the water enough to allow for normal conversation. Nianki, gazing upward, boldly walked into the center of the cavern. Hands clasped at his back, Amero followed her.

“The dragon made this?”

“He clawed this room out of solid sandstone,” was Amero’s proud reply.

“Amazing. I wish we’d had him with us at the Thon-Thalas.”

She wandered here and there, admiring the water pool and hearth and examining his various tools and experiments with polite curiosity. Amero watched her explore for a while, then said, “Nianki, we have to talk.”

She turned his copper sheet over in her hands. “About what?”

“We’ve found each other after all these years. You have a life on the plains, while I —”

She dropped the copper carelessly. It clanged on the floor. “Why don’t you join us? It’s a great life – riding, hunting, seeing the wide plain unroll beneath your horse. There’re the elves, of course. I’ve not given up the fight to free the south and east from Silvanos’s hands.”

“Nianki, my life is here.” Amero sat on the edge of the stone hearth. “This is my place. These are my people.”

Her smile faded. “I thought you’d say that.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Thanks, brother. We may stay a while to gather supplies and our strength before we move on.”

Amero looked away to where the stream flowing down the wall pattered into the pool. They’d found each other after almost eleven years, and already they were speaking of separating again.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

She considered a moment. “North. The hunting’s better there, come winter. We’ll cover the northern plain, maybe even follow the coastline to the far northeast. I hear tales of other humans there, living in treetops. They also say the black-skinned folk cross the sea in great dugout canoes and trade along the shore. Maybe some of them will join us.”

“I think you should stay here, Nianki,” Amero said urgently, “We’ll combine our people into a single band. We’ve a lot to teach each other. Why, I’m close to learning how to make my own copper tools! Once I’ve mastered that, I’ll make bronze. The mountains are full of minerals, and the valleys are good for crops and flocks. Your people can teach us your way with horses.”

She dipped a hand in the cold pool. The hard face of Karada had replaced the smiling visage of Nianki.

“And who will lead this united band?” she scoffed. “You? Me? Both of us? Think again, brother. Your villagers won’t stand for orders from a wanderer like me, and my plainsmen won’t listen to a soft-handed foot-walker like you.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she said more softly, “Even

I wouldn’t follow your orders, Amero, and I don’t think you would follow mine.”

He nodded sadly. “Will you come to visit now and then?”

She grinned. “Every Moonmeet, if I’m able, I’ll come – so long as you hold a feast each time!”

He rose and embraced the sister he once thought he would never see again. As she felt his fingers tighten against on her back, scarred Karada was briefly big sister Nianki once more. “Cheer up,” she said. “Knowing you’re alive makes a difference.”

“And to me,” he said.

A shower of water announced the return of Duranix. Amero and Nianki stepped quickly apart, embarrassed by their mutual affection, and to escape the torrent of water flung off by the huge dragon. Duranix shook his head. His barbels jangled metallically against his chin and muzzle. Nianki was taken aback. She had never seen Duranix in his true form, and her hunter’s instincts were aroused by the looming creature. She tensed to fight or flee.

“Ha,” said Duranix, grinning. “I leave for a while and Amero brings a mate to my cave. What next? Pups?”

Nianki threw back her head and laughed. She laughed all the harder at seeing her brother’s face turn brilliant crimson.

Furious and more than a little embarrassed, Amero exclaimed, “This is my sister! The one I thought long dead!”

“Ah,” Duranix said. “Karada is your sister. How can that be?” Duranix studied them. His pupils narrowed to slits. “I don’t see the resemblance.” Amero’s face showed anger again and the dragon added, “Humans look so much alike to me, you might all be siblings. I’m sure you know your own sister.”

Nianki gave a snort of smothered laughter.

Duranix clomped heavily to his platform, each ponderous step intended to shake the water off his back. He climbed smoothly onto the dished-out ledge and idly picked up an ox leg bone lying nearby. All the flesh had been eaten off already, but the dragon gnawed the ends of the bone. His wickedly curved teeth scraped against the bone.

“Does he always eat like that?” Nianki muttered.

Amero rolled his eyes and climbed the steps at the front of the platform. He cleared his throat. Duranix bit through the bone with a single snap of his jaws. Nianki flinched. Amero, used to his companion’s habits, said eagerly, “Did you find anything?”

The dragon’s casual manner vanished. He tossed the bone aside. “Sthenn was here. I could smell his trail from five thousand paces high.”

“Who’s Sthenn?” asked Nianki.

“Is he still around?” Amero asked gravely.

“No – or if he is, I can’t find him.”

Amero’s anxiety was evident and Nianki demanded again, “Who’s Sthenn?”

Her brother explained about the green dragon, the yevi, and his ongoing rivalry with Duranix. She listened with a grim expression.

“This green dragon created the yevi?” she said. Amero nodded. She made a fist, pressing it to her lips. “Elves in the east, dragons in the west... Is there anyone who doesn’t want to drive us off the land?”

Duranix exhaled sharply, and the resulting whirlwind blew Nianki’s hair across her face. She regarded the bronze dragon warily and said, “I have to wonder – maybe I’m fighting the wrong foe. The elves, arrogant as they are, are beings not unlike us. Some of them have notions of honor. This green dragon sends packs of unnatural beasts to do his dirty work for him. Maybe he’s the one Karada’s band should be fighting.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Duranix. “Sthenn is more than two thousand years old, by human reckoning. He’s clever, cruel, vindictive, and unpredictable. He never forgives a transgression, no matter how slight. As long as you are nomadic savages, wandering the plains, he will take little notice if you kill his pets. But if you show up at his lair with an army, he’ll use every trick and tool at his disposal to destroy every last one of you in the most unpleasant fashion he can think of, and in his long life, he’s thought of many.”

Amero felt suddenly cold. Unconsciously, he stepped closer to Duranix.

“You talk like you’re afraid of him,” Nianki said to the dragon.

Duranix raised his head. “I am afraid of him. He killed my mother and my clutchmates – my siblings, as you would say – for no other reason than it pleased him to do so.”

“How did you escape?”

Duranix’s claws flexed, scratching loudly on the stone platform. “I didn’t,” he said. “Sthenn spared me on purpose. He deliberately killed my family then let me live.”

“Why?” asked Amero. Duranix seldom spoke of his own past, so this was rare information to him.

“I spent a few centuries wondering that myself. I believe Sthenn let me live so that he could terrorize me. Over the course of his long life, Sthenn has grown jaded. One thing he still savors is fear. He loves being the object of dread and goes to elaborate lengths to instill it in others. It’s easy enough to frighten lesser creatures, but there’s little for dragons to fear except another dragon. Making me afraid of him is a powerful pleasure.”

“Why don’t you seek him out and kill him?” said Nianki.

“Eighty-six years ago I tried to bring him to battle. He set fire to an entire forest and escaped under cover of the smoke. For all the years since, he has taunted me. His avalanches made my first home uninhabitable. He drives off herds of game in hope that I’ll go hungry. He attacks humans and elves to make them fear all dragons and hunt me.”

Nianki pounded a fist into the palm of her hand. “If I were you, I’d find this green monster and settle him once and for all!”

Duranix glanced at Amero. “Are you sure you two are related?”

Amero ignored the gibe and told Nianki it was time they departed. He had work in the village below. Nianki bid the dragon good-bye, but as her brother tugged at her elbow she continued to urge Duranix to deeds of bloody vengeance against his mortal enemy, Sthenn.

“Yes, yes,” the dragon answered her dismissively. “Amero, have the elders set up an ox or two for me, won’t you? I’m famished.”

While they descended in the hoist, Nianki shook her head saying, “With an ally like Duranix, I could defeat the elves in a single season!”

“He won’t fight elves for you,” Amero replied. “The struggles of we lesser creatures are not his concern.”

“He helps you.”

“I’m his friend. Also, our village is a thorn in Sthenn’s claw. The more humans settle here, the harder it will be for Sthenn to harm Duranix.”

Nianki considered this as the basket emerged from behind the waterfall. Below, Samtu and her retainers were waiting.

“Nianki, I understand why the villagers listen to me,” Amero said. “The dragon protects them, and I speak to Duranix. Living here has made their lives easier. But why do these people follow you? Why do they obey you?”

“I give them a name,” she said, her voice almost inaudible against the roar of the falls. “They are Karada’s band. It’s something to belong to, to believe in, to be proud of. There are so many enemies in the world, brother – faceless ones like hunger, cold, storms, sickness, wild beasts. We fight them every day, knowing we can’t really win. I gave my people a new enemy: the elves – an enemy we have a chance of defeating. So my people have something to belong to, an enemy they can defeat, a leader to fight for. For that they will follow me to the end of my days.”

The basket came to rest with a thump. Karada climbed out and was immediately surrounded by her comrades, all eager to hear about the lair of the dragon. She strolled grandly back to the camp with them hanging on her every word.

Amero stood in the wicker basket and watched his sister – no, she was not Nianki any more, but every bit Karada, leader of her band. Though life had taken them down different trails, Amero realized he and his sister were not so far apart after all.

*

In a cleft in the mountains a quarter-league from Yala-tene, the plainsmen buried Sessan. As the sun sank lower in the western sky, Nacris made the burial party wait while she selected a spot for her mate’s final rest. The soil was too hard and stony for them to dig a proper grave. They would have to pile rocks atop Sessan’s body. Nacris chose a wide ledge near the crest of a hill. As the diggers covered her mate, she stared out at the expanse of hills and valleys laid out before her.

It wasn’t right, she thought dully. They didn’t belong in this place. The sky seemed closer and smaller than it did on the vast grasslands she was accustomed to. At least here, near the top of this mountain, Sessan’s spirit might not feel quite as imprisoned as it must in the narrow confines of the valley.

As soon as their task was done, the nomads sent by Karada to bury the dead man promptly departed. The few plainsmen who cared enough to grieve remained a short while, then one by one, left the melancholy scene. Soon only two remained, Nacris and Hatu.

After a period of silence, Hatu said softly, “A terrible loss.”

Nacris glared at him, the red light of the setting sun giving her face a ruddy cast. “What? Why are you here?” she demanded coldly.

“To pay homage to a brave warrior,” the one-eyed plainsman replied.

Nacris reached out to touch the heaped-up stones. “You’re one of Karada’s,” she spat.

“When it comes to fighting elves, I’ll follow Karada, but this village, this dragon... it’s a dangerous sham.”

Nacris raised her reddened eyes.

“Did you hear? The village headman is Karada’s brother.”

“No!” Nacris exclaimed.

Hatu nodded. “It’s true. She was grinning like a panther when she found out. Sessan wasn’t even cold yet, and Karada was laughing.”

“Someday I’ll kill her,” Nacris whispered.

“Not an easy task,” said Hatu. “For one person, that is.”

Nacris stood up. The last of the sun’s light vanished behind the high peaks and a chill wind whistled across the ridge. She drew her sheepskin vest close around her. “Are you turning against her?”

Hatu walked slowly around the pile of stones. Nacris began moving too, keeping her distance from the one-eyed warrior. He paused at the head of the grave, and she stopped at the foot.

When he spoke, Hatu avoided her question. “Did you notice the pile of stones in the village?” he asked. “That’s where the people of Arku-peli sacrifice oxen or elk to the dragon, twice a week. In return for his meals, the dragon supposedly protects Arku-peli from attack.”

“So?”

“Did anyone try to stop you and Sessan from leading half a hundred riders into the valley?”

Nacris rubbed her cheek, trying to remember. “No, no one. The headman – Arkuden? – he met us unarmed.”

“Some protection the dragon gives, eh?”

Hatu started walking again, circling the grave. Nacris continued to keep her distance. When he reached the foot of the grave, he halted.

“I tell you what I think,” he said finally. “I think these people have sold themselves into slavery. They feed this dragon out of fear, not because he protects them. And what happens when the oxen run out, and no elk can be found? How long will it be before the villagers are setting their own beloved children on that altar?”

Nacris laughed. “What a mind you have! No plainsman would —”

“No plainsman would sacrifice his child to a dragon? Do you really believe that? Our own comrades abandoned a good warrior, Sessan, out of fear of Karada. You saw how few of them came to honor his death. Do you think these strange, settled —” he sneered as he said the word – “folk of Arku-peli would be any better?”

The scorn faded from Nacris’s face. “What do you propose?”

“Nothing for now. I will speak to others, quietly. You should too. Start with Tarkwa. He’s a clear-thinker. Then, when the time comes, the band will leave that accursed valley, but it won’t be led by Karada.”

He picked up a stray stone and placed it on Sessan’s grave. “And if the Arkuden tries to defend his sister, he will be destroyed, too.”

*

Pa’alu placed the golden nugget in the hole Vedvedsica had made in the rock. Since there was no way to know when the priest would appear to claim his prize, the plainsman settled down to wait.

Night fell. The canyon was draped in deep shadows, and still Pa’alu kept his vigil. He stayed awake the entire night, sometimes singing out loud to keep his mind alert, other times striding around the perimeter of the canyon and stamping his feet on the rough ground until they were bruised and sore. His only companion was the sound of his own voice. Any night creatures that lived in the canyon gave the noisy human a wide, wary berth.

At last, the milky wall on the west side of his prison took on a tinge of pink as the rising sun finally made an appearance. The indigo sky lightened to azure. Still, there was no sign of Vedvedsica.

Near midday, his stomach empty and his patience exhausted, Pa’alu picked up the stone and prepared to leave. A shadow passed over the sun. Strange, since the sky was cloudless. Pa’alu looked up, shading his eyes. The sun’s glare seared his vision, and for several heartbeats he could see nothing. The air grew heavy, dense. It was hard to force it into his lungs. When his eyesight resolved again, he saw the priest standing by the rock, probing the hole with his slender fingers.

“Where is the stone?” asked Vedvedsica. “Give it to me.”

“I have it,” Pa’alu said, his voice sounding oddly distant and flat.

The priest held out his hand. His arm elongated in a weird fashion, extending all the way from where he stood to where Pa’alu was, a good three paces away.

The plainsman recoiled in shock. “The price has gone up,” he said.

Vedvedsica came closer. His outstretched hand remained near Pa’alu and the rest of his body caught up to it. He looked concerned.

“The stone is more powerful than I thought,” the priest said. “It is affecting you. It wants to remain with you, but you must give it to me. Only I can control it. If you keep it, it will control you.”

“I’ll give it to you, but you must do something for me,” stated Pa’alu, anxious now that the elf priest was so near.

“Wasn’t saving your life enough?”

Pa’alu had a strange urge to laugh. He opened his mouth and tiny crystals, like snowflakes, flew out. When they struck the rocky ground, they shattered, and the sound of a hundred tiny chuckles escaped. Shocked, he looked at Vedvedsica. The elf seemed to see nothing amiss. He regarded the plainsman with obvious vexation.

“What does my life matter?” Pa’alu continued warily. No crystals flew out of his mouth this time. “What does anything matter without Karada?”

“The woman? She loves you not.”

The elf’s words were like blows. Pa’alu lifted his chin and said, “No, but with your power you can change that.”

“You would compel her affection?”

“Yes!” The word echoed off the sun-washed canyon walls.

Vedvedsica sighed. “Elves and humans are so alike! While I search for knowledge and wisdom, others crave only petty wealth or love. I spend half my time making love philters for the nobles of Silvanos’s court.” He shook his long, narrow head contemptuously. “What a waste!”

“Will you do it?” Pa’alu said.

The priest stroked his sparse beard. He had hair sprouting between his fingers, and his nails were long and narrow, like a panther’s claws. “It would serve you right if I walked away and let the stone eat your soul, but I need that nugget far too much. Yes, I will cause this barbarian woman to love you.”

Pa’alu felt in his pouch for the stone. He could see it, yet for some reason, he couldn’t grasp it. He plainly saw his fingers pass through the yellow stone as if it were smoke. What strange things were happening!

“Concentrate,” said Vedvedsica sternly. “Use all your senses, not just your eyes!”

Sweat dripped from the plainsman’s nose as he carefully closed his fingers around the phantom nugget. At last, he felt the rough edges of the rock. Sighing deeply, he handed the stone to Vedvedsica.

“There’ll be none of that, now,” the elf said, apparently speaking to the stone. “In you go.” He placed the rock in a small agate box with a sliding lid then tucked the box in his robe.

“How will you do it?” Pa’alu asked. Already his hearing was back to normal, and the distortion in his vision was rapidly clearing.

“Do what? Oh, your true love.” Scorn dripped from his voice. “I don’t have my flasks and alembics, so I can’t brew a philter. I’ll have to give you an amulet. They’re not as precise, but you’ll have to make do.”

From another recess in his robe, the priest took out a handful of small bronze disks. They were blank on both sides, merely smooth metal. He chose one about the size of a daisy blossom and returned the rest to his robe. As Pa’alu looked on, Vedvedsica pressed the disk between the palms of his hands, holding them high over his head. His lips moved in a silent conjuration.

This went on for some time. Pa’alu grew tired and retreated to the shady side of the canyon. He mopped his brow and watched the priest stand in the full glare of the sun with not a bead of sweat on his translucent skin.

The sun was halfway to its western bed when Vedvedsica at last lowered his hands. He stared at Pa’alu, a smile on his thin face. The plainsman got stiffly to his feet and approached. When the elf opened his hands, Pa’alu leaned over to see. The disk was unchanged.

He was about to say something when the elf took out a shard of rosy rock crystal. Vedvedsica placed the shard on top of the disk and stood back. He clapped his hands five times and shouted a single-syllable in Elvish. The crystal shard vanished in a pinpoint flash of light.

Folding his arms, Vedvedsica said, “It’s done.”

Tentatively, Pa’alu picked up the disk. He expected it to be hot or at least warm to the touch. In fact, it was as cold as mountain spring water. It was also no longer blank. The whole surface, front and back, was covered with incredibly fine lines, swirling in an intricate pattern. He rubbed a finger over the images. The metal was smooth, so the lines weren’t engraved on the surface, but neither did they smear under his rubbing.

“Listen well, human,” said the priest. “This amulet works only once. You must touch it to the skin of the one whose love you desire. It must touch yours at the same time. A common method is to place it in your palm when you clasp hands with the object of your affection. Once touched to both persons, the spell discharges and cannot be repeated or repaired. Do you understand?”

“I do. Thank you, great one!”

Vedvedsica smiled unpleasantly. “Passion is easy to compel,” he said. “It may not be so easy to live with.”

But Pa’alu wasn’t listening. Exhaustion and hunger had made him lightheaded. He gripped the amulet tightly and spun around, dancing with joy. At last, at last! he exulted. At last Karada would be his!

A shadow crossed the sun’s face again. When the plainsman looked up, Vedvedsica had vanished.

Chapter 16

Preparations for the Moonmeet feast had been vigorous and were now nearly complete. Children had collected armloads of kindling, gleaning every fallen twig and branch from the valley of the waterfall. Loggers had supplied larger trees from the supply they’d floated upriver. The area between the dragon’s cairn and the nomads’ camp had been cleared, and a large bonfire laid. The fire was lit, allowed to burn down to a shimmering bed of coals, and whole oxen were set up to roast.

The nomads were astonished that the villagers chose to ruin good meat with fire. Karada, though she also found the idea shocking, allowed herself to be persuaded by her brother that cooked meat could be tasty. However, she approved Pakito’s quiet suggestion that the feast also include some animal flesh not seared by the villagers’ fires.

Apples and pears from the orchard were wrapped in clay and baked in the ashes, and smaller game – rabbits, fowl, and two wild boar – were spitted and cooked at the edges of the great fire.

Village women pounded a ring of stakes into the sand and rigged a large hide vat. Clay jugs were brought from the houses and storage tunnel and emptied into the vat. Before long it was brimming with scarlet wine, and the smell of the new vintage saturated the air.

Not to be outdone, the nomads brought out an array of drums, wooden flutes, and rams’ horns. Positioning themselves with their backs to the lake (so the setting sun wasn’t in their eyes), the nomads began to play. There was no structure to their music. They generally followed whoever displayed the most energy at the moment. If a pair of drummers were moved to pound a fierce rhythm, then the other drummers and pipers followed them. If a horn player stood up to sound a melancholy air, the drummers fell silent and let the lone player soar.

The valley reverberated with the sounds of the feast. Children – from both the nomads’ camp and the village – ran between the houses, shrieking with delight, chasing each other, engaging in mock fights, or capturing fireflies. Long trenchers made of white pine planks or pinned birch bark carried steaming ribs and cutlets to the hungry crowd.

Higher up the hill, just below the cliff face, an open tent had been raised. There, Amero and Nianki sat side by side, eating from a common tray. On Nianki’s left were Targun, Samtu, Pakito, and Hatu. An empty place was left for Pa’alu. No one had seen him for almost three days, but Nianki wasn’t concerned, and Amero was getting used to his strange absences.

On Amero’s right were the village elders: Konza the tanner, Valka, Farun the stonecutter, Hulami the vintner, and Menefer the master potter. Everyone was eating and talking. A steady stream of boys circled from the vat and firepit back to the tent bearing fresh supplies of food and drink.

“Great stuff, this,” Nianki exclaimed at one point, swirling her cup around. “Where did you learn to make this?”

“Some of our people knew how to make wine when they arrived,” Amero said. He didn’t care for it himself. It distressed his stomach. “Northerners, from Plains’ End. They brought vines with them in pots of dirt.”

“Sometimes we took drink like this from elves we captured. Theirs is lighter in color, almost clear. They call it ‘nectar,’” said Pakito. A huge pile of gnawed beef bones lay in front of him. “Drink enough of it and it sneaks up and hits you on top of your head!” He banged a broad fist against his own forehead to illustrate the sensation. Samtu and Targun laughed.

“Where is that brother of yours?” Hatu asked from the end of the row. “He should be here.”

“I don’t know,” the big man said, the edges of his words growing soft with wine. “He won’ stan’ still at all.”

“A true nomad,” said Targun, his face red as a berry.

“I’m old enough to remember growing up on the plain, moving every day, trying to live off roots and lizards and the odd deer now an’ then,” Valka said. “That life was hard. Why do you still do it?”

“Are you talking to me?” said Targun.

“You’re the eldest here, yes. Why keep roaming?”

“It’s what I know,” Targun declared fervently. “I feel nervy if I stay in one place too long, like a snared rabbit.”

“We’re free,” added Samtu, dark hair falling across her round face. She was leaning on Pakito’s enormous shoulder with evident contentment. “We go where we will, when we will.”

“Except to elf land,” Hatu muttered. Alone among the nomads at this table, he had made a point of refusing to sample the cooked meat.

Nianki glared. Amero cut off any awkwardness by saying, “Tell me of this warlord, Balif. What sort of fellow is he?”

Everyone fell quiet, looking expectantly at Nianki. They were all curious. She was gnawing a pheasant’s leg. Lowering the morsel she said loudly, “What are you all gawking at?”

“You know Balif well,” said Pakito impishly. “Tell your brother about him.”

“I tried to kill him a few times and failed. That doesn’t make us comrades,” Nianki said matter-of-factly.

“But what’s he like?” her brother insisted.

Nianki sighed and tossed the now clean pheasant leg over her shoulder. “He’s a clever, arrogant fellow, like most elves. A bit skinny, but made of sinew and whit-leather, and his eyes are strange.” Some of them regarded her quizzically. “Very pale blue,” she explained.

“Sounds like quite a man,” said Hulami the vintner. She’d outlived three mates herself and had an eye for capable men. “I’d like to meet him.”

“He’s not a man, he’s an elf,” Nianki retorted, annoyed. “And if I meet him again, I hope he’s on his knees, suing for peace!”

Shouts of greeting rose from the crowd. Torches were lit from the dying bonfire, and by their warm glow Amero and the others could see Pa’alu approaching up the hill. Amero rose and gave his hand to the plainsman.

“Peace be with you, Pa’alu! Welcome to the feast at last. Is everything well?”

Pa’alu nodded curtly and replied, “Very well, Arkuden. Very well.”

He half-turned and offered his hand to Nianki. As she was busy downing a cup of wine, his gesture went unnoticed. Pa’alu lowered his hand.

A boy offered the plainsman a trencher of roast. Pa’alu accepted it gratefully and took his place between Pakito and Hatu. His younger brother regaled Pa’alu with stories of the doings of the past couple of days – the bird hunts, fishing expeditions, building the bonfire, and the various reactions to the taste of roasted oxen, which Pakito declared to be far superior to raw. Pa’alu listened idly while eating.

On his left, Hatu said pointedly, “Sessan was buried yesterday.”

Everyone ignored the remark – everyone but Pa’alu. He said simply, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Thank you,” Hatu said, his single eye gleaming.

The nomad drummers struck up a brisk rhythm. Samtu jumped up and tugged at Pakito’s unresisting arms.

“Dance with me, dance with me,” she teased.

“I dance like a bull elk,” Pakito told her, shaking his head.

“I don’t care. Come.”

He rose unsteadily, but Samtu ducked under one of his arms and braced him up. They weaved slightly as they went down the hill toward the torchlit festivities – Pakito because the wine was affecting his head, and Samtu because Pakito’s weight was affecting her balance.

Nianki leaned back in her stool, one hand patting her leg in time to the beat. Pa’alu put aside his trencher and stood, asking her to dance.

“A chief doesn’t dance,” she answered lightly. “It isn’t dignified.”

“No one will judge you, “Pa’alu said. He smiled and held out his hand. “Please.”

Amero watched this little scene unfold with great interest. Despite the many intervening years, he still had much residual affection for his sister. He worried about her. She was too hard, too much apart from the world, and he found himself wishing she’d take Pa’alu’s hand and dance.

Something glinted in the plainsman’s cupped hand, catching Amero’s eye. He looked again. A gleam like that meant metal. On second glance, he saw that Pa’alu’s hands were empty. Had he imagined it?

The tall plainsman’s hands stayed empty as Nianki rudely ignored him. He finally returned to his platter with a chastened expression and devoted himself to his food.

Hulami set her eye on Targun and dragged him away to the growing crowd of dancers. The plainsmen were dancing in large circles, men on the outside, shoulder to shoulder, and women on the inside, facing out. Most of the action consisted of stomping and kicking to the rhythm of the drummers, twists and turns punctuated by high-spirited yelps.

Into the uneven circle of torchlight came a stranger. It was Duranix, once more in human shape, but his build and coloring were different than before. Now, strangely, the dragon resembled a slightly taller, brawnier version of Amero. He paused by the end of the tent, gazing at the merrymaking.

Though the nomads didn’t recognize this newcomer as the dragon, those nearest him found themselves moving back, giving this unknown fellow room. Nianki also didn’t recognize him, but the young man they called “Dragon’s Son” did. Amero beckoned to Duranix to join them, calling his name heartily.

A stool was brought and placed between brother and sister. The serving boys brought trenchers of beef and a lengthy jack of wine. Duranix dismissed the drink but accepted the meat.

“I had an ox this afternoon,” Duranix said, “but now I’m hungry again.” Everyone except Hatu laughed. He was glaring at Duranix, Amero, and Nianki, and did so for a long time, until he realized they were paying no attention to him. The one-eyed plainsman knocked over his cup and stalked away into the darkness.

“He’s Genta’s son,” Amero explained privately to Duranix. “He’s never forgiven you for what happened.”

Duranix shrugged. “I’ve never forgiven the slayer of my mother and clutchmates.”

“He’s a whining child,” Nianki stated a little too loudly. “Ignore him!”

Duranix gestured to the ring of dancers. “What is this? Some kind of ritual?”

“This dance? They’re just feeling their blood,” said Nianki. She drained the last drops from her cup and, to everyone’s amazement, clamped a hand on her brother’s forearm.

“I’ll show you, dragon-man,” she declared merrily. “Come, brother!”

Amero allowed himself to be dragged away by his tipsy sister. He looked over his shoulder at Duranix and Pa’alu, his face showing – was it amusement or puzzlement? Duranix couldn’t tell.

The disguised dragon glanced at Pa’alu to see how he was taking Nianki’s playfulness. When Duranix asked if he was jealous of Amero or annoyed with Nianki, he denied it with remarkable calm.

“Karada makes her own choices,” Pa’alu said in a low voice. “As her loyal comrade, I accept them.” So saying, he put aside the remains of his dinner and departed in the direction of the wine vat.

As the wine level went down, the feast grew louder and the music more fevered, more ragged. A few fistfights broke out on the fringes of the crowd, but none of them lasted more than a few blows before one of the combatants went down. Once a blade flashed, but Amero was on the spot in an instant. He stopped the fight brewing between a nomad and a villager, shaming them into settling their dispute peaceably, but the incident left him uneasy. Where had Duranix gotten to?

Craning his neck, the young man saw that the dragon was standing in the center of the women’s circle. The women – both nomads and villagers – dancing in the circle had turned to face him rather than the men still moving in the outer circle. The women were whirling around the bemused dragon. Karada, very much the tallest woman there, had her arms linked with two of her nomad sisters, and her joyous face was flushed, her long, tawny hair flying.

A muscular, bearded nomad, his ropy arms sheened with sweat, called a loud cadence and resumed the beat on his goatskin drum. The others gradually joined in, slowly building the volume and tempo.

Amero spotted Nianki standing alone near the heaping embers from the ox roast. She too was sweating heavily from her wild dancing, and she was gulping down drink from a full-sized leather bucket. Amero hoped there was only water in the pail. His sister had already had too much wine.

“What a feast, eh?” he said, touching her lightly on the back. Her buckskins were sodden, her hair plastered to her head. She lowered the bucket. Thankfully, it was water.

Pa’alu appeared with three cups and a tall clay amphora brimming with wine. “You look thirsty,” he said, pouring Nianki a cup. She took it, drained it, and held it out for more. Pa’alu smiled at her.

“Hold still,” he said, reaching out toward her cup hand as though to brace it. “I don’t want to spill.”

Laughing uproariously, Pakito and Samtu came up behind Pa’alu. The cheerful giant slapped his brother on the back, a blow to rattle any man’s teeth. Pa’alu lost the amphora, which crashed to the ground and shattered, spraying them with sticky wine and clay shards. He also failed to catch hold of Nianki’s hand as she cursed the spilled wine and strode away to the lake to wash her hands and legs. Pa’alu turned on his merry brother and grasped the front of his sheepskin vest.

“Drunken idiot!” he hissed. Pakito, who could’ve flattened his brother with the back of one hand, blinked a few times and leaned back away from Pa’alu’s incomprehensible display of temper.

“Shut up,’Alu,” Samtu said genially. “There’s more wine!”

Pa’alu broke away and ran down the beach to the water’s edge. Amero too had noticed and was puzzled by the plainsman’s harsh reaction to such a minor accident. He went after Pa’alu.

The crowd was sparse by the lake. A chill rose from the water, and this discouraged most revelers from tarrying by the shore. Formidable piles of dirty trenchers lay heaped up along the shoreline. There would be much work to do in the morning, cleaning up after such a celebration.

Nianki was squatting on the sand, splashing cold water on her arms, legs, and face. Pa’alu slowed to a walk when he spotted her. Amero lingered at the edge of the crowd, anxious not to appear too intrusive.

“Karada.”

She didn’t look up. “What do you want, Pa’alu?”

“I have something to give you,” Pa’alu said softly.

“More wine? Good.”

“No, not wine.” He stood over her, one fist clenched.

She finally looked up, her sodden hair covering half her face. “Speak plainly, man. I can’t stand it when you drift around behind my back with that doe-eyed look.”

He held out his closed fist. “It’s here.”

“What is it?”

“Stand up and I’ll show you.”

Distant lightning shimmered behind her when she stood. Nianki wiped her hand on her legs, then planted her fists on her hips expectantly.

“Well, what’ve you got?”

“Something very rare....”

Over his shoulder she spied Amero watching them. Nianki let out a yell. “Hey, brother, come here! Pa’alu has something to show us!”

He jerked his hand away. “It’s not for anyone but you!” he said through clenched teeth. Pa’alu was about to flee when Duranix also appeared, walking along the shore toward him, blocking his way.

Lightning played about the western sky, and muffled peals of thunder echoed overhead, mixing with the pulsing rumble of the drums.

“What do you have?” asked the dragon. His voice was casual but plainly suspicious. “It’s the stone, isn’t it? You kept it, didn’t you?”

“No.” Pa’alu was hemmed in on three sides. The only escape was the lake.

“Show me what you have,” Duranix ordered.

“It’s not for you!”

“I can see it glowing through your foolish flesh. I smelled it on you earlier at the tent, but I thought it was just an aura, a remnant of the stone, but it’s not. You never got rid of the thing, did you? Do it now – throw it in the lake. It will poison you, as it almost poisoned me.”

“What he’s talking about?” asked a groggy Nianki.

“A nugget, charged with dangerous spirit-power,” Amero explained, his eyes watching Pa’alu with new seriousness.

“You’re wrong,” Pa’alu said, backing away from the dragon. “It’s not the yellow stone, I swear!”

Duranix closed within arm’s reach. Pa’alu drew his knife to fend him off. Nianki also advanced a step toward the pale, shivering plainsman, but Amero caught her by the arms, holding her.

A blade of elven bronze was no threat to a dragon, but Duranix didn’t want to harm the plainsman. He raised a finger near the tip of Pa’alu’s knife. A tiny arc of lightning flashed from his finger to the blade. There a was a loud snap, and Pa’alu flew backward into Nianki and Amero. All three went down in a heap on the sand.

“Get off me, you fool,” Nianki snarled, pushing the stunned Pa’alu away. Amero squirmed out from under the bigger man and saw something shiny and golden glittering on the sand.

Nianki saw it too and reached for it. Her hand brushed Amero’s, and their fingers touched the warm metal disk at the same moment.

Nianki drew in her breath sharply and flinched as if struck. She snatched her hand back and stared at it with distaste.

“Did it shock you?” asked Amero, stooping to pick up the mysterious object, but she continued to stare, saying nothing.

Amero examined it. It was a flat round piece of bronze. The light was poor, so he held it close to his face to see it, turning it over and over, examining it. Nianki was staring strangely at him, not at the disk.

“What is it?” asked Duranix, looking over Amero’s shoulder.

“A disk of metal. Bronze, I think.” The disk was blank on both sides, with no engraving or marks whatsoever. He handed it the dragon, who scrutinized it with diminishing curiosity. “He was telling the truth after all. It’s not the nugget.” Amero looked regretfully at Pa’alu, who was staring fiercely at Nianki.

Duranix flipped the disk over and over in his hands. “Strange. I could’ve sworn he was carrying the stone. I thought I sensed an aura of power hanging over him like the stink of an unwashed human.”

All of a sudden Nianki shuddered so violently she tottered into Amero. He put an arm around her to brace her up. “Too much to drink?” he asked gently.

“Uh... that must be it.”

“Let me help you back to your tent.”

Amero helped her stand. When he let go, Nianki shivered so hard she almost fell down. Amero grabbed her arm to steady her.

“What’s wrong?” Duranix asked.

The dragon folded the bronze disk in half with his powerful fingers and tossed it toward Pa’alu. The plainsman dropped to his knees, fingers scrabbling through the sand to find the disk. With a shout he stood bolt upright, staring at his empty hands.

“Where is it?” he cried hopelessly. His eyes darted between Nianki and Amero with a terror that none of them understood.

Then, with an agonized cry, Pa’alu picked up his knife, reversed the blade and raised it high to plunge into his own chest. He never made it. His hand was caught in Duranix’s unbreakable grip.

“Let me go!” Pa’alu screamed. “My life is over!”

Without a word, Duranix wrung the elf blade from the plainsman a second time and tossed it in the lake. He released Pa’alu, who stumbled backward and fell to the sand.

At that moment a fork of rose-colored lightning, bright as the moon, lanced down from the clouds and struck the mountaintop above the waterfall. A shattering thunderclap sounded, silencing the drums and pipes of the feast.

“By all my ancestors!” Pa’alu said hoarsely. “Forgive me, Karada. I never meant —” He scrambled to his feet and started to run toward the village. Once he spun around and cried, “Forgive me! I never meant it!” Then he ran on, crashing against the revelers in his path.

Amero exchanged a puzzled look with Duranix. “Strange,” said the dragon, watching Pa’alu as he disappeared into the crowd. None of what happened had registered with Nianki, who seemed dazed.

A sheet of warm rain fell suddenly, lashing the crowd of celebrants. With much yelling and coarse laughter, the feast broke up as people sprinted for house and tent. Amero hurried through the hubbub with Nianki on his arm. Torches died in the downpour, and the stony flat above the beach became dark and confusing, with much running, falling, cursing, laughing. Steam and smoke curled up from the ashes of the bonfire, and village women struggled to get the uneaten portions of the feast into the storage tunnel.

Amero reached Nianki’s tent with some difficulty. The cowhide shelter flapped and lashed in the wind, threatening to blow away. Amero left Nianki on her bed roll and grappled with the whipping flaps. He tied them off, one by one, until the open shelter became a dark, dry, enclosed room.

Rained drummed on the roof. Amero snugged down the center flap. In the dark he could hear Nianki moving.

“I’m almost done. Feeling any better?” he asked. There was no response but her even breathing. Was she asleep? “Hulami’s wine is good, but it creeps up on you like a viper.”

With the tent secured, he wiped the rain and sweat from his face. “Sleep well, Nianki.”

“Amero.”

He paused at the door flap. “Hmm?”

“I love you.”

Though he’d always known she cared about him in her own rough way, he’d never heard his sister speak such tender words before. She sounded tired, a little lost.

“I love you, too,” Amero said before he ducked out into the storm. “Sleep well.”

*

Soon after the storm broke, the shore was empty, the feast over. A single towering figure remained outdoors, close to the water’s edge. Rain pelted Duranix in his true reptilian shape, running in thick streams down his massive face and off the scales on his back. He didn’t bother to unfurl his wings and use them to protect his eyes. A dragon’s vision was more acute by night than by day. He could see just fine, rain or no rain.

High above Yala-tene, at the very edge of the cliff overlooking the nomad camp, stood a solitary onlooker. To Duranix, his warm blood painted him against the night in a rose silhouette. He and the dragon stared through the night and the storm at each other.

“Vedvedsica.” Duranix’s rumbling whisper was swallowed by the wind.

Looking down, the elf cleric smiled to himself. The nugget, wrapped in fine gold wire, hung from a slender chain around his neck. He turned away, laughing.

Chapter 17

After their night of indulgence, the villagers had to rise with the new day and go about their work. Cattle had to be fed and watered, the gardens weeded, and ripe vegetables harvested. Summer was over, and cool-weather crops like cabbage and onions had to be planted. In addition to all these chores, there were pots to throw, timber to harvest, and hides to tan. Red-eyed and yawning, the villagers rose from their beds and silently went to work.

Not so the nomads. It was their custom to sleep in the remains of their revelries until thirst and hunger forced them to face the day. When they feasted a good hunt or a victory in battle, they got up only when their heads stopped throbbing, then mounted their horses and moved on. In the days after the Moonmeet feast, Karada’s band continued to carouse after dark. The only one who might have stopped them, Karada herself, was strangely absent from the scene.

Amero, like the rest of the villagers, had been busy. Three days went by before he found time to visit his sister. By then, the nomad camp resembled the scene of some terrible disaster. The thunderstorm on the night of the feast had collapsed most of their carelessly pitched tents, and the plainsmen had been too inebriated to do much about it. The most hard-drinking nomads slept where they fell, spending their nights exposed to the elements.

The only good-humored nomad Amero met was the amiable giant Pakito. He spotted the big man sitting outside his lopsided shelter, pouring rainwater out of his boots and smiling. A less violent, but no less dampening, rainstorm had rolled over the valley the night before.

“You’re in good spirits, considering,” Amero said, hailing him.

“Considering what?” asked Pakito.

“Considering your boots won’t be dry for days.”

Pakito sighed happily. “What do wet feet matter on a glorious morning like this?”

Amero was about to inquire what made it so glorious, but he was interrupted by Samtu. The dark-haired plainswoman poked her head out of the tent, squinted her eyes against the feeble morning light, and croaked, “Oh, help! Is there water? By all my ancestors, I think I’m dying.”

Still grinning, Pakito handed her a waterskin, and she ducked back into his tent. Amero had to laugh. “Now I understand. You’ve taken a mate!”

“Been taken, more like. I’ve always been a stumbling ox when it came to women, but Samtu wouldn’t let me go.” He flung a boot high in the air and yelled for the simple joy of it. The boot came down on a nearby sleeping nomad, who bounced up, cursing. From inside the tent, Samtu groaned and told Pakito to shut up.

“Sounds like love to me,” Amero said, and with a wave, moved toward Nianki’s tent.

With much groaning, coughing, and cursing, the nomads roused themselves from their latest stupor. A general cry for water went up, and this time there wasn’t enough to go round. Several blinking, stumbling plainsfolk made their way down to the lake, where they fell on their bellies and lapped up the cold water.

Reaching his sister’s tent, Amero called out to her. Nomads lying nearby cursed at him. He ignored them, saying, “Nianki, are you here?”

“Yes,” was her low reply.

He lifted the flap and squatted down to look inside. Nianki was sitting up, her back to the opening. She wore only a thigh-length doeskin shirt. Her long hair was tangled and matted.

“Nianki?”

“Amero.” She did not turn to greet him.

“Are you well?”

She hung her head. “I had a strange dream,” she murmured. “I thought it was a dream, but I’m awake and it’s still going on.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Her tanned face seemed quite pale, and he could see dark circles under her eyes, even in the dimness of the shelter.

He knelt in the opening, his back holding the flap up and letting daylight in. “Your people were at it again last night,” he said. “Are you well? I haven’t seen you since the feast.”

“Come inside, Amero. Let the flap down.”

He crawled in. It was close and steamy inside the small tent, and very dark. A few narrow beams of light penetrated through small holes in the hide.

“Something happened to me,” Nianki said. She still sat with her back to him.

“What? Are you ill?”

“Not... not in the usual way.” She drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Amero, do you believe we are brother and sister?”

A strange and surprising question. “Of course,” he said.

“Is it possible our memories are wrong, that we’re not related at all?” Her voice sounded taut, almost desperate.

He settled down on the ground and stared at her hunched shoulders, barely visible in the sultry shadows. Her questions confused him, but her tone told him this was important to her. “Our memories match,” he said. “Our experiences are the same up to the day the yevi attacked us, all those years ago.”

“But suppose we’re not really siblings – suppose you were a baby found abandoned on the savanna. What if that were true, and Oto and Kinar just the people who raised you and not the parents of your body?”

Confusion became shock. “What are you telling me? Am I not your brother?”

She turned suddenly and seized his hands in her own. Her eyes were dark and troubled as she whispered, “What if it were true?”

He looked down at her rough hands, gripping his with fervor. “I’d be very surprised,” he said lamely. “All I remember from my childhood is Oto, Kinar, Menni, and you. If I were a taken-up babe, I wouldn’t know it unless I was told.” He slowly raised his eyes to hers. She was weeping, soundlessly. He’d never seen Nianki cry before, not even as a child.

“You’re only two years older than me,” he went on. “How could you remember when I was born, much less found?”

Nianki dropped her hands and turned away again. “You weren’t found, Amero,” she muttered. “You are my brother.”

His head was spinning. He felt like the victim of a prank, only the prankster was weeping at him instead of laughing.

“What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Why are you acting so strangely?”

She scrubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands, taking in deep draughts of air as though to clear her head. “It’s nothing,” she said, sounding stern again. “Too much wine and too many bad dreams.”

Amero got up on one knee. “I’d say the same things were afflicting your band,” he said. “All but Pakito.” He explained how the strapping warrior and Samtu had come together.

“Good,” she said, quite clearly. “A man needs a good mate.”

Shouts erupted outside, hoarse male and female voices. Amero stood and flung back the tent flap. Nomads were running past Nianki’s tent toward a small crowd gathering at the edge of the village. The loud, angry voices came from there.

Sighing, he said, “There’s been nothing but trouble between your people and mine, since the feast. If this keeps up...” He left the thought unfinished and hurried away to the disturbance. Nianki followed, still clad in the long, doeskin tunic, shading her eyes against the hazy daylight.

Amero worked his way through a hostile crowd of nomads. They were massed around the house of Hulami the vintner. At first Amero thought they were blaming Hulami’s wine for their pounding heads and raging thirst, but when he got closer, he discovered they were besieging her with requests for more wine.

Hulami was backed up against her own door. Her two apprentices stood on either side of her, stout stirring paddles held up like clubs. Amero recognized the man yelling at her as Tarkwa, one of Nianki’s leading warriors.

“Whatta ya mean, you won’t give us wine?” Tarkwa bellowed. “You gave away a vat full three days ago and now it’s gone!”

“That was a feast!” Hulami replied hotly. “I expect the villagers to send me food and goods for the wine I make. I can’t afford to give it away every day! If you smelly fools want more of my wine, you’ll have to barter for it like everyone else!”

Amero winced at the vintner’s harsh words. Karada’s band shouted insults right back. “Bloodsucking viper” was the kindest one he heard.

Tarkwa stepped forward from the crowd. The apprentices presented their paddles, pressing the grape-stained ends against Tarkwa’s chest.

Someone shouted, “Kill’em Tarkwa! We’ll take what we want over their dead bodies!”

Amero ran to the front of the mob, yelling and waving for attention. The shouts of the crowd drowned him out and no one paid him much heed until Nianki appeared and stood close beside him.

“What’s the problem?” she said loudly.

“This sour wench thinks she can fill us with wine one day and keep it back from us the next! We’re going to teach her different!” Tarkwa snarled. The mob at his back howled approval of his words.

Nianki turned and shoved the two young apprentices aside. Hulami looked to Amero for help, but before he could say anything, Nianki whispered something in her ear. Whitefaced, Hulami stood away from her door.

Tarkwa gave a rousing cry. The mob echoed his cheer and surged forward. Nianki put her hands on the doorjambs, bracing herself and blocking their way.

“What’re you doing, Karada?” Tarkwa said.

“I’ll get out of the way,” she said calmly, “and you can drink up everything you find – drain the chamber pots, if you want – but if you take away this woman’s livelihood today, there won’t be any more wine in Arku-peli. Ever.”

She dropped her arms. Her angry followers hesitated.

“It’s some kind of trick,” said a woman in the front ranks. “Karada’s playing with us.”

“No trick,” Nianki replied. “If you pick all the apples off a tree one day, you know there won’t be any apples tomorrow. If you guzzle all the wine in the village, it’ll be gone, and you’ll be just as thirsty and heavy-headed tomorrow.” She moved out of the doorway, folded her arms, and leaned against the wall. “So go ahead.”

Some of the nomads took halting steps toward the door. Nianki eyed them. “It’s not just the wine you’re giving up you know,” she told them in the same matter-of-fact tone. “You start robbing the villagers, and there won’t be so much as an ox tongue for you tomorrow.”

“But we’re thirsty!” someone cried.

“There’s a whole lake over there, or didn’t you notice?” she snapped.

Slowly, grumbling all the while, the mob of nomads receded from Hulami’s door.

“What’s the matter?” Nianki called. “Lose your taste for wine?”

The crowd broke up sullenly as the parched nomads headed for the free water of the lake. Tarkwa lingered a few steps behind. Out of the press appeared Hatu, looking surprisingly well compared to the others. He spoke to Tarkwa, and they fell to talking.

Hulami went into her house and returned with a clay jug of wine. “Karada, this is for you,” she said, beaming. “You saved my life!”

Amero joined them. “You handled that well,” he said.

Nianki set the brimful jug of wine at her feet and smiled faintly. “Fierce as they are, they’re like children. They want what they want, and they want it now. You can either beat them into obedience – which I’m too tired to do this morning – or you can try to point out what they’ll lose if they do as they want.” She shrugged. “It usually works.”

Tarkwa and Hatu watched them from twenty paces away. After a short exchange, they left, following the others to the lake.

Nianki picked up the wine jug and gave it back to Hulami. The vintner was puzzled.

“Don’t you want it?” she said.

“I’d better not. I can’t pay the price of it either.”

She walked away, slowly and rather stiffly. Amero and Hulami watched her go.

“She’s different today,” said Hulami. “She seems – I don’t know – more like a woman and less like a war chief this morning.”

The vintner’s words trailed off as she watched Nianki walk away. “What do you think it is?” Amero prompted, worried about the sister he’d so recently regained. “She’s been acting strangely this morning, even crying, and she seems so distracted. Do you think she’s ill?”

Hulami gave him an quick sideways glance. “Ill? Not exactly,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Karada was in love.”

That was a notion Amero had never considered. “You really think it possible?” he asked her.

“Certainly. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that look on a woman’s face when I see it.”

Amero thought of Pa’alu and of Nianki’s strange behavior at the feast. Perhaps a few nights’ reflection, aided by Hulami’s vintage and his news about Pakito and Samtu, had caused Nianki to consider Pa’alu anew. Amero wondered where Pa’alu was. The plainsman should be told about Nianki’s change of heart.

*

Pa’alu woke, certain he was dead.

He’d run off from the feast just as the thunderstorm broke, fleeing headlong into the rain-swept night. His only thought was to find the elf priest and demand the spell be broken. Though he waited in the bowl-shaped canyon for two days, Vedvedsica never appeared. Despairing, his mind still reeling from what had happened, Pa’alu returned to the fringes of the nomads’ camp and was taken up by several of his reveling comrades. He accepted their repeated offers of wine.

When the wine and food had at last run out, Pa’alu had left his compatriots. A part of his benumbed, wine-sodden brain still seethed with thoughts of finding the elf priest, so he thought to search elsewhere. Late one night, he crossed the rope bridge and staggered up the logger’s path, tripping constantly on the deep ruts left by dragged logs. Exhausted at last, he collapsed on an outflow of tiny pebbles.

When Pa’alu woke, this third morning after the feast, his face and arms were numb from lying on the stones all the night before. Thinking for one crazed moment he was dead and in his grave, he swallowed hard and tried to move his lifeless limbs. When his feet twitched and tingled painfully – though his arms remained numb – he decided he might not be dead after all.

He rolled over, and the brightness of the ivory-clouded sky burned his face like a flaming brand. After an effort that brought beads of sweat to his brow, Pa’alu managed to get one limp arm over his tortured eyes. Too much wine. Far too much.

The amulet.

The thought brought him upright with such violence, his stiff muscles shrieked in protest. He sat, wavering from side to side, as his foggy mind tried to recall the events of the past – how many? – days, especially those of the feast night. Where was the amulet Vedvedsica had given him? He patted through his muddy clothing and found nothing.

Some of the fog wrapping his brain lifted. He’d already used the amulet, hadn’t he? At the feast, he’d held it out to Karada. The dragon tried to take it from him. Pa’alu drew his knife. There was a flash of lightning from the dragon. Then Pa’alu was lying on the sand, and he no longer held the amulet.

Nianki had picked it up. Nianki and Amero.

Nianki and Amero.

“Oh, my ancestors,” Pa’alu groaned, covering his face with his hands.

“Don’t the blame the dead for the faults of the living.”

Pa’alu flinched at the sudden intrusion and tried to push himself to his feet. When his bleary eyes adjusted, he saw Nacris sitting cross-legged on the ground a few steps away. Her horse was tethered to a handy pine sapling. He’d been so involved in his memories of that horrible night that he’d not heard her arrive.

“Why are you here?” he groaned, too lost in his own misery to really care.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Nacris replied. She looked well-scrubbed, her hair pulled back tightly and tied. Her buckskins had been buffed with pumice to whiten them.

“So you found me.”

Ignoring his unwelcoming tone, she handed him a full waterskin. It dangled from her hand for only an instant before the painfully parched Pa’alu grabbed it. Upending it, he drank deeply, the excess water trickling over his neck and chest.

Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “Thanks.”

Nacris said nothing hut continued to watch him intently. He suddenly felt uncomfortable under her flinty gaze, and unconsciously he began to comb his hair and beard with his fingers, trying to look more presentable.

“Why are you here?” Nacris said at last.

“I drank too much and lost my way.”

“No, I mean, why are you in the band?”

He paused in his grooming. “To follow Karada,” he said.

“Is that the only reason?”

“What other reason do I need?”

“And when Karada falls in battle or dies of sickness? Will you remain with the band then?”

Feeling was returning to Pa’alu’s limbs. The sensation was agonizing – like the bites of a thousand horseflies at once – but Pa’alu hardened himself and addressed Nacris’s question. “I would stay by my brother,” he said. “I would stand with Pakito.”

She nodded slightly. “A sensible answer. Did you know Pakito has gained a mate since the feast?” Pa’alu’s expression showed his ignorance, so she added, “Samtu.”

“He’s fortunate.” His tone gave the lie to the simple pleasantry. Knowledge of his brother’s happiness, when he himself was so miserable, was like bitter ashes in his mouth.

“You’re one of the finest hunters and scouts in the band, Pa’alu,” Nacris said. “If Karada and the band part ways, who will you follow?”

He was beginning to understand the cast of her words, and he shook his head. “You can’t be trying to take the band away from Karada again. Did Sessan’s death teach you nothing?”

“It taught me no one of us is strong enough to defeat Karada. To succeed, the best of us must join together.”

Pa’alu stood up, dropping the waterskin on the pebbles in front of Nacris. “You’re a fool,” he told her flatly. “Karada is the band. There is no band without her.”

He started to walk past her, and Nacris said, “And if Karada betrays the band? What then?”

“You’re talking nonsense. Because you brought me water, I won’t mention this to Karada —”

Nacris stood quickly, took Pa’alu by the shoulder, and whirled him around. “Karada is betraying the band right now! She sided with the mudtoes this morning!” Pa’alu recognized the derisive term for the villagers that was gaining popularity among the nomads.

“What are you talking about?” he said. Nacris related the events that had taken place outside the house of Hulami the vintner. “Karada sent her own people away thirsty then accepted a jug of wine for herself! She’s so taken with her own power, she forgets the welfare of her people!”

“Liar! How many times in the past has she gone without food so that others could eat? Gone without sleep so that others could rest? Karada cares nothing for her personal comfort. She lives like a mountain goat, guiding her flock through treacherous places, surviving on only the sparest food and water.”

Nacris folded her arms. “That was before we came to this strange valley. Now there’s meat and drink in abundance and a man for her to love.”

The last words pierced Pa’alu’s aching head. His fist knotted around the front of Nacris’s whitened buckskin shirt. He lifted her till she was swaying on her toes.

“What did you say?” he hissed.

Unresisting, she said, “Arkuden, the headman. Her brother.”

His grip slackened, and Nacris stepped back. Eyes wide in horror, Pa’alu hissed, “Why do you say that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Her long-lost brother turns up alive, offers food and comfort in abundance. Why shouldn’t she side with him against the rest of us?”

Pa’alu relaxed, realizing Nacris knew nothing about the amulet or its effect. The rage and frustration he felt over the failure of his stratagem resurfaced.

“Pa’alu, are you listening?” He looked at her and she added gravely, “Join me or not, as your spirit commands, but I have to know: Will you tell Karada what has passed between us?”

Misery welled up in his breast. Tell Karada? How could he even look upon her again?

“No,” he said. “I won’t tell her.”

Nacris regarded him warily. “Swear by your ancestors.”

His head throbbed unmercifully, and a tendon in his neck felt like it was going to jump through his skin. Compared to his current pain and anguish, the wrath of his ancestors’ spirits was as remote as the great gray sea. Without hesitation, he said, “I swear. By the spirits of my ancestors.”

He departed, leaving Nacris standing by her horse. Once he was well out of sight, two men emerged from the rocks farther down the draw and approached Nacris.

“Well?” said Hatu.

“He won’t join us, at least not yet,” Nacris reported.

“I told you he wouldn’t,” Tarkwa said.

Hatu fingered the handle of his flint knife. “But will he betray us?”

“I don’t think so,” Nacris said. “Drunk or sober, his word is still granite.”

“They say he tried to gut himself in front of Karada, Arkuden, and the dragon,” Tarkwa said with a smirk.

“If his mind is weakening, so be it,” Hatu said. “That could be a boon for us. Alive and silent, he’s still dangerous. Alive and mad, he may be the best weapon against Karada we can get.”

*

Duranix had left the valley only moments after seeing Vedvedsica atop the cliff at Yala-tene. Searching for the elf priest, the dragon flew south as far as the vast woodland claimed by Silvanos, yet he found no sign of Vedvedsica. The priest was probably already back in the elf city, trying to work his will with the help of the yellow stone.

The dragon flapped hard to gain height, climbing so high that even his impervious bronze hide shuddered with the extreme cold. Peering southward, he could see – very faintly – the pale, golden glow on the horizon that heralded the city of Silvanost.

Remarkable. To think there could be a gathering of the creatures so large that the combined light of their fires stained the night sky. A part of him would enjoy making the long flight to see such an amazing sight. Instead, he made a wide, sweeping turn, speeding his strokes.

Now that he’d determined Vedvedsica was beyond his reach, he wanted to get back to Yala-tene as fast as he could. It was apparent Pa’alu had made some kind of bargain with the elf priest. The bronze disk had contained so much power it glowed in the dragon’s vision, even when clenched inside the man’s hand. By the time Duranix had gotten hold of the metal, it had given up its power somewhere, for some purpose. He needed to discover exactly what had happened.

The landscape slowly unfurled below the flying dragon. The dense forest home of the elves gave way to grassy plains, which in turn began to swell and roll as he drew near the mountains that held the Lake of the Falls. Those mountains loomed larger and larger before him, clouds thickening on their slopes. Soon he was gliding in their silent heights, alone save for the tallest peaks poking up through the clouds.

It was irksome that Vedvedsica had succeeded in getting the stone, but it was much to be preferred over Sthenn or the humans having it. The elf had some limited knowledge and experience of higher powers, but he could be in for an unpleasant surprise should he try to use the stone. It was a whole order of magnitude greater in strength than any fetish or object of power he would have encountered before. It could consume him in the end.

Vedvedsica reminded Duranix of the thirsty centaur in a story Amero had told him. The centaur had stood under a thundercloud, eyes closed, mouth open, expecting a refreshing shower. Instead, he received a white-hot bolt of lightning. As the humans said, “Thought rain, got pain.” The elf priest hoped to bend the stone to his own ends; instead, he might end up being the one bent – or broken.

Duranix smelled the waterfall from twenty leagues away and descended through the clouds. He circled the mountain once, morning sunlight flashing from his scales, then dived for the cave. His hind claws caught the rim of the opening, and he hung there for an instant, shaking the water from his long face. He smelled a human in his cave. It didn’t smell like Amero.

He leaped to the floor, and his landing made the mountain shake. The cavern was dark, but his eyes noted a glimmer of body heat, far off to his left, near the small lower door.

“Come out, little mouse, come out,” Duranix rumbled, in a very undragonlike, sing-song manner.

Nianki stood away from the hoist basket, hands clasped in front of her. “Ah, no mouse after all,” said Duranix. “A wolf, more like.”

“Save your humor, dragon,” she said. “I have something important to ask you.”

He lowered his belly to the floor and folded his tree-trunk size legs under him. “Speak, Nianki,” he said.

“Karada,” she said sharply. “Nianki is an old, empty name. It only sounds right coming from my brother’s lips.”

“Speak then, Karada.”

She stepped forward, and he saw her cheeks were damp with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. His barbels twitched with surprise.

Drawing a deep breath, she said, “You’re a creature of great power, I know. I’ve seen some of it these past days. Just how great is it?”

“It’s the measure of myself, no more, no less.” Karada gave him a disgusted look, and he snapped, “I’m not being coy or poetic, woman. I don’t know how to quantify my own strength. How powerful is the sun? How forceful is the wind?” He lowered his chin to rest on the stone floor, bringing his eyes more or less to the level of her own. “Why do you ask?”

“I need your help,” she said, her voice tinged with real pain. “I... I’m going mad.”

“For most humans, a short journey.”

Karada was in no mood for levity. She whipped a flint knife from her belt waved it under the dragon’s vast eye. “I’ll not be made a fool of!” she cried, her voice ragged with emotion. “Listen to me or I’ll start that journey right now!”

It was absurd, threatening a bronze dragon with a span of sharp flint. Duranix was unmoved, and the click of his blinking eyelids was loud in the quiet cave. However, her obvious sincerity moved him to say, in a kinder tone, “Please continue, Karada, but calmly.”

She returned her knife to her belt and ran a hand through her gilded brown hair. “I have... I have a... sickness of the mind,” she faltered. “I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

“What are the symptoms?”

She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Her voice was barely audible. “I think about a man, all the time. I hear his name when I draw breath. I see his face whenever I shut my eyes. If I let his image linger, my face grows hot and my legs and arms feel weak.”

“That’s not so mysterious. Humans are so afflicted all the time. You’re in love. Haven’t you ever been in love before?”

Nianki turned quickly on her heel. “No, never! There’ve been men in the band I admired – Pakito is strong and loyal, Hatu a fine tracker, even Sessan was good fighter when he wasn’t listening to the venom Nacris poured in his ear....” Her voice trailed off. “But, it’s nothing like that. I feel sick... here.” She pressed a hand to her belly. “And I have thoughts. Strange thoughts.”

“I’m sure you do,” Duranix said quickly. The last thing the dragon wanted to hear were this warrior woman’s inner thoughts. “In my years observing humans, I’ve learned love is an extremely potent feeling. It makes people happy and miserable, often at the same time.” He cocked a flaring metallic eyebrow at her and added, “You seem no different than the rest, except you’re not used to it.”

His bantering tone was lost on Nianki. Arms hanging limply at her sides, she stared dully at the floor and said, with no emotion at all, “I’m in love with Amero.”

The smoldering question in Duranix’s mind suddenly flared to brilliant life. The disk Pa’alu had been concealing the night of the feast must have caused this. He’d tried to get Karada to take his hand while he held the disk. He must have intended the spell (most certainly cast by Vedvedsica) for her and himself. This outcome had surely been an accident.

Or was this exactly what Vedvedsica had intended?

“Did you hear me?” she demanded.

Duranix pulled his attention back to her angry, worried face. “Yes, I did,” he assured her. “Humans don’t mate with their siblings, do they?”

“No!” Her eyes widened in self-loathing, and she clutched her head in both hands. “The very thought is a horror! How can I, born of the same spirit and flesh as Amero, possibly be so unnatural?”

Duranix gave no reply, but instead reared up on his haunches. Shuddering, he shrank himself into human form.

Eyes downcast, wrapped in her own misery, Nianki didn’t notice his transformation. She started when his human hand touched her shoulder. When she looked up at him, she flinched even more violently.

Duranix wore a completely new form. He was a tall, muscular plainsman with glossy, waist-length black hair and deeply tanned skin. “Be calm!” he told her. “I took on this form to make a point.”

“What point?”

“Outward appearance is an illusion. Every being is unique because his or her spirit is unique. I could, if I chose, take on the appearance of Amero, but would that make me Amero? Of course not.”

With her mind in such turmoil, Nianki could not understand the reasoning behind his demonstration. “Are you telling it me it’s all right for me to feel this way?” she said, astonished.

“No.” He sighed at the obtuseness of humans. “I believe you’re the victim of a plot, Karada.” He told her about Pa’alu and the amulet. As he watched her face redden alarmingly and her body begin to shake with anger, he chose to keep the name of Vedvedsica to himself. She was capable of any foolishness just now, even embarking on a quest for vengeance that would most likely end with her death.

When Nianki finally spoke, her voice was a hoarse, furious whisper. “Do you mean that I’m suffering this unnatural love because of Pa’alu?” Duranix nodded. She clenched her fists and said, her voice rising with each word, “Oh, the filth-eating dog! The crawling, cold-blooded, wretched —!”

Duranix held up a hand. “I don’t believe Pa’alu meant you ill. I think he traded the nugget for some kind of spirit-token, which was meant to loose its power on you and make you love him, but there was a mix-up, and the spell discharged instead on you and Amero.”

Nianki breathed hard, forcing herself to master her anger. Her deep red color faded to normal tan. She could not escape the bounds of her compulsion, so her next question was, “Does Amero feel for me the way I feel for him?”

“He does not seem so affected. We’ll have to find Pa’alu and question him on the way the token was supposed to work.”

From towering rage, Nianki fell into despair. She wept uncontrollably at the mere thought that Amero might be suffering as she was. It was unbearable, the idea the one she loved could be in pain.

Duranix watched her cry silently, but with some sympathy. He could think of nothing to say to her.

“The old question returns,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her nose with her sleeve. “Can you help me?”

Duranix faced her, his black, more-than-human eyes sweeping her up and down. “I cannot,” he said at last. “If the power was forced into you, it would leave a spirit wound on you I could see, and I might be able to draw it out into a likely receptacle – a crystal or metal object, but I sense nothing out of place. That’s the black subtlety of it. Every human has the capacity to love. Yours has simply been directed along an unnatural course. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Can’t you use your power to change who I love, at least?” she asked wildly.

“I’m not a practitioner of such arts. If I tried blindly, I might harm you, or worse, even kill you.”

Nianki laughed bitterly. “Death couldn’t be worse than this.” Her countenance convulsed in deep anguish for a few seconds, then suddenly cleared. She strode to the lower door, bypassing the hoist basket, which was lying on its side. Standing in the opening, her long shirt rippling in the breeze from the waterfall, she cried, “I can do something a dragon can’t! I can cure a lovesick heart!”

She jumped.

Duranix’s tall human form crossed the distance to the opening in two bounds. Without pausing, he hurled himself after her. A heartbeat later he hit the wall of plunging water. As he fell, he flung his arms outward and expanded to his true shape.

The force of the torrent was driving him toward the lake below. Through the icy blast of falling water he spotted the warmth of Nianki’s tumbling body, already halfway to the foot of the falls. Duranix folded his wings tightly to his back and plummeted after her.

Head down, neck outstretched, nose pointed at his own imminent death, the dragon overtook Nianki and grasped her in one foreclaw. She was limp and did not resist. He flung out his wings to slow their descent, but the force of the waterfall was so great, it snapped his left wing bone where it was joined to his body.

Pain.

He hadn’t felt pain in a long time. Genta’s spear thrusts, even Vedvedsica’s spirit-blast, had been playful buffets compared to this. The last time the dragon had felt anything this excruciating was the day the avalanche had covered the nest. A whole mountain had fallen on him, and he’d lain there, entombed with his mother and siblings, gasping in the darkness as his bones were crushed, his body smashed.

He had to slow their fall. He threw his shoulders back, forcing his wings open. Bone scraped on bone in the broken wing, and the dragon roared in agony. The updraft around the churning falls lifted and slowed him just enough for him to put his three unencumbered claws down before he hit the ground. The shock of his landing was enough to bring blood to his mouth. Yet, through the red haze of pain, Duranix remembered what he held in his left foreclaw. He leaned to his right, put his claw down gently and opened it. Nianki rolled senseless to the ground. Duranix toppled over, trembled, and lay still.

The sound of Amero’s voice penetrated the roar of the water and the fog in the dragon’s head.

“Duranix! Duranix!”

“Don’t shout,” the dragon rasped, “you’re standing by my ear.”

He opened one eye. Amero and a score of nomads were clustered around. Several of the nomads knelt by Nianki’s limp body, working over her. Amero, his face white with concern, said angrily, “What were you trying to do, kill yourself?”

“Humans are so much trouble,” muttered Duranix. “Besides being stupid, they’re clumsy. That one missed your basket contraption in the dark and fell from the cave.”

Amero hurried to the circle where Nianki was being tended. He knelt beside her, pressing his hand to her throat. Her pulse beat strongly.

“She passed out,” said Targun, who was kneeling on the other side of her. “Let her rest a minute, and she’ll come back.”

Amero was about to rise when Nianki’s eyes snapped open. She half-rose and threw her arms around his neck.

“Amero! Amero! Don’t let me go!” she gasped.

Embarrassed and relieved at the same time, her brother pulled her trembling hands apart and lowered her back to the hide blanket Targun had brought for her.

“You’re all right,” he said soothingly. She turned her face away and wept. Misunderstanding the cause of her distress, Amero added, “It’s all right, truly. Duranix saved you. He’s had a hard landing, but you can’t kill a dragon so easily.”

As if to prove the truth of those words, Duranix had gotten to his feet. He clumped over to them, his broken wing dragging on the ground. His wide, serpentine head hovered over them, eyelids clicking open and shut.

Amero held his sister’s cold, wet hand. “You and I have something more in common now,” he said cheerfully. She said nothing, her face still turned away. “We’re the only two people to have leaped from the dragon’s cave and lived. I guess clumsiness runs in our blood, eh?” The gathered nomads chuckled. “What do you think, Duranix?”

The dragon glanced from Nianki to Amero and back to Nianki again. “I think humans make terrible pets,” he said.

Chapter 18

Autumn arrived. The days grew short and dark, but the darkness was not confined to the sky. Once the dragon was known to be injured, the atmosphere in the valley changed.

Nomad and villager had been getting along tolerably well, with occasional disagreements between individuals offset by frequent incidents of cooperation. Several of the younger nomads had actually begun teaching their village counterparts to ride horses. At first the elder villagers scoffed at those taking the lessons, but the young of Yala-tene knew riding could be an extremely useful sill. The lessons were marked by much raucous roughhousing, but the gibing was good-natured, and no one got hurt.

Now trouble between nomad and villager was on the rise – name-calling and theft became more frequent and escalated into shouting matches and fistfights. Riding lessons came to a halt. The once-friendly sessions had become untenable after several violent melees.

Amero and the village elders moved from one crisis to another, separating angry nomads and villagers, smoothing over confrontations, trying to resolve a growing host of simmering disputes.

“I don’t understand it,” Amero complained one evening. He was in the home of Konza the tanner. He and his host had gulped a hasty meal by the circular fireplace while waiting for the next outbreak of trouble.

“I thought things would work out better than this,” he continued, poking the fire with an aromatic cedar stick. “Our people and Nianki’s – we’re all plainsmen. We’ve learned so much from each other and can learn a lot more. So why is there so much trouble?”

“You believe too much in the goodness of people,” Konza said. The firelight etched the lines of weariness on his face with deep shadows. “These wanderers are lazy, good-for-nothing savages. What they want, they steal. What they don’t understand, they destroy.”

Amero looked up from prodding the flames. “I thought Nianki could keep them in line.”

Konza sighed, pouring hot water over a pot full of mashed dewberries. He let this steep a few moments, then poured off the resulting tea for Amero and himself.

“You’ll forgive me for saying so,” Konza said solemnly, “but your sister is mad.”

Amero stared at the flames. No anger showed on his face, for Konza was saying only what Amero had secretly feared for some time. Hearing the words from the sober, hard-working tanner made them seem all the more true.

Following her fall from the cave, Nianki had sunk into a strange, withdrawn state. She wandered through the valley, laughing or weeping for no obvious reason. Her hands, feet, and face grew dirty, her hair was tangled with bits of straw and leaves from sleeping in the open. She remained fierce, however, and thoroughly thrashed a pair of young bucks from the village who cornered her in the orchard one day and taunted her about her wild appearance. Amero had a terrible time keeping the boys’ families from retaliating.

The only time Nianki ever seemed to regain clarity was in the presence of Duranix. The dragon, his broken wing rendering him temporarily unable to fly to his high cavern home, remained on the shore of the lake. The village healer, a young sage named Raho, designed a massive leather harness for the dragon to wear which supported his folded, broken wing as it healed. Village delegates brought Duranix offerings of meat, but none of them, nor any of the nomads, would remain near the crippled creature for very long.

Only Nianki and Amero would spend much time with Duranix, and they rarely appeared together. Her brother’s presence seemed to provoke wild extremes of emotion. When Amero complained of this to Duranix, the dragon flicked his forked tongue several times and said cryptically, “The hardest stone in this valley is your skull, human.”

Now, facing Konza across a flaming hearth and hearing the tanner’s comment about Nianki’s state of mind, Amero tried to reason out the cause of all the trouble between the nomads and their settled brethren.

“We’ve had a lot of bad luck lately,” he mused. “The tunnels collapsed, Duranix got hurt, my sister’s ill, the nomads are restless, and I haven’t had any time to work on my copper experiments.”

Konza shrugged. “The answer to our bad luck is simple. It started with the arrival of the nomads, and it will end when we rid ourselves of them.”

Amero flinched at his blunt words, which stung like a lash. “They’re valiant and useful people,” he said. “They can add to our strength.”

Konza snorted. “They’re violent and dangerous,” he insisted. With a sidelong look at the younger man, he added, “I’m not the only villager who thinks so.”

Shouts and a loud crash outside forestalled Amero’s reply and underscored the tanner’s claim. Wearily, Amero rose from the hearth and went to the door. Konza got up to follow, but Amero waved him back.

“Take your ease,” he said. “I’ll see what’s up.”

Two houses over he found a boy lying in the dirt, his head bleeding. The travois he’d been dragging was wrecked, and broken pots lay scattered about. A thick, sweet smell filled the cool night air. Honey.

Amero helped the boy sit up. His name was Udi, second son of Tepa, the beekeeper. Tepa had a cache of beehives in the apple orchard, and he traded his honey in the village at considerable advantage. Udi groaned a bit when he felt the bump on his head, but groaned much louder when he saw the damage done to his father’s supply of honey.

“Who did this?” demanded Amero.

“I never saw them,” said the teenager, a hand to his head. “I heard footsteps behind me, but. I thought it was just a neighbor. There was a yell, and when I turned to see who it was, something hit me on the back of the head.”

“Can you tell what’s missing?”

The boy counted jars. Eight were intact, four broken, and only one was missing.

“Someone attacked you to take just one jar of honey?” asked Amero, incredulous.

“It’s the riders,” Udi muttered. “They steal for the rough jest of it.”

“You don’t know that,” Amero replied, with more conviction than he felt. He helped reload the travois and sent Udi on his way. A cursory examination showed three pairs of footprints in the dust around the site of the robbery. Two pairs headed toward the lake. The third went north, toward the cattle pens.

He tracked the solo marauder straight to the walled corral. Sure enough, a single figure sat atop the stone wall, looking over the herd of brown and white spotted oxen.

“You there! Stay where you are!”

The fellow didn’t even turn around. Amero climbed onto the wall and was surprised to see that the lone figure was Pa’alu.

Pa’alu had been acting oddly ever since the night of the feast. He disappeared for days at a time and had not been seen now for over a week. Amero wondered at the epidemic of strange behavior.

“I thought perhaps you were gone from the valley,” he said, sitting beside the warrior.

“I’ve been away,” Pa’alu replied. “I’ve been hunting in the nearby valleys by myself, on foot. Haven’t done that in eight seasons.”

“There was a robbery back there.” Amero pointed to the row of dome-shaped houses.

“Robbery? What was stolen?”

“A jar of honey.”

“Ha, a robber with a sweet tooth.”

“He came this way. See anybody run by?”

“I wasn’t looking.”

The cattle stirred sleepily, crowding around piles of fodder that had been left for them. Amero watched the long-horned animals silently for several minutes, searching for the words he wanted.

“Pa’alu?” he said at last.

“Hmm?”

“What happened, the night of the feast? Why did you try to stab yourself? We’ve never talked about it.”

The other man turned his head, and for the first time Amero saw how hollow-eyed he’d become. “Too much wine,” Pa’alu said calmly. “I should thank the dragon for stopping me.”

Amero flashed a smile. “Duranix says living with humans means stopping a hundred stupid things a day.”

Both men laughed briefly. Amero threw his legs back over the wall and slid down to the ground outside the pen.

“I must keep looking for the thieves,” he said. “Good night, Pa’alu.”

“Peace be with you, Arkuden.”

Amero departed and was soon swallowed by the darkness around the village houses. Pa’alu waited to a slow count of thirty, then took a squat jar from under his cloak and broke the beeswax seal. Making clucking sounds in his throat to attract the hungry cattle, he poured a stream of golden honey on the dirt. Before long the oxen were lapping at it with their fleshy red tongues. Pa’alu wiped the rim of the empty jar with his fingers, then stuck them in his mouth.

*

Back in the camp, Nacris and Tarkwa were panting from their run. They ducked into a large tent, with triumphant grins. Hatu, inside the tent, was waiting with a small lamp burning.

“Well?” demanded Hatu.

“He wouldn’t strike a blow, but he took a jar,” Nacris reported.

“Good. Pa’alu will soon be one of us. Next time, we must make sure he strikes the first blow but not the last.”

Hatu bent forward and blew out the lamp.

*

Nianki was not sleeping in the orchard.

Though she lay in the soft grass at the base of an apple tree, she could not rest. She stared up through the tree’s twisted branches at the patches of night sky visible through its remaining leaves.

It was a tree that saved me.

Amero’s voice drifted through her mind. He’d climbed a tree to escape the yevi all those years ago.

Thoughts of Amero kept Nianki from sleeping. Each time she closed her eyes, her brother’s face seemed to rise up before her like a spectre that wouldn’t be banished.

“Go away,” she muttered. “Leave me be. Go away.”

Her brother’s face smiled at her.

“Leave me in peace!” she screamed and sprang to her feet, drawing her flint knife as though she could fight off the strange, unnatural feelings assailing her.

With a shock, she found herself facing a stranger. A tall, thin figure with a high forehead stood only a few steps away from her blade. He recoiled so sharply that the long robes he wore whipped around his ankles.

“Stop!” he commanded.

Nianki kept her knife between them and demanded to know who he was.

He recovered himself quickly and adopted a calm, superior air. “Savages have short memories,” he said. “Don’t you know me, Karada?”

She still didn’t relax her posture, but it was obvious that her mind was working to place him. With a small smile, he lifted his hands and pushed back the hood he wore. The moon’s light limned his features with silver, including a wispy beard and tall, sharply pointed ears.

Surprised, Nianki backed away a step. “Elf!” she spat. “You were with Balif the day we fought on the plain. He called you...” Her troubled mind wouldn’t obey her. The name escaped her utterly.

“Vedvedsica,” he said coolly. “My name is Vedvedsica.”

Nianki wasn’t listening. Her head darted violently left and right. “Where are your troops?” she demanded. “Does Balif think to attack us as we sleep?”

“There are no troops,” he said. “There is no one but me.”

After a few more moments peering into the dark, she had to accept his words. “What do you want?”

“You.”

Her expression was so outraged the priest gave a dry laugh. “Calm yourself, savage,” he said. “I merely wish to take you on a journey.”

She backed away. “I’ll go nowhere with you.”

Vedvedsica shrugged. “You would cast aside an opportunity to know your enemy better? You aren’t much of a leader, are you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I offer you the chance to learn more about the Silvanesti. It will cost you nothing, not even time.”

She obviously didn’t understand, and he sighed. Slowly, as though speaking to a particularly dim-witted child, Vedved-sica said, “I will not harm you. I merely wish to show you the city of your enemy.” Stroking his wispy beard he added, “A true leader would not miss such an opportunity. Unless she were afraid to see the truth.”

His taunt penetrated her clouded thoughts. It was true her mind was a whirl of conflicting impressions and impulses, and she often found herself in places with no memory of how she got there. For all of that, she understood the elf’s slight to her courage, and it angered her.

Stiffening her spine, Nianki shoved her knife back into its sheath, pushed her tangled hair from her face, and said, “Show me, then.”

“Take my hand.”

She nearly balked again, but his expression – so condescending! – caused her to clench her jaw and obey. She wrapped her hand around his wrist. The cool dryness of his skin made her flinch, but a sudden blast of icy wind in her face was much more shocking. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep the dust out. It felt as though she were falling.

“Home.”

At his spoken word, Nianki opened her eyes and gasped. She was suspended in midair, hundreds of paces above the ground. The elf was by her side, and she still held his wrist. She was immensely grateful for the touch now. It seemed the only thing between her and a horrible death.

“Amazing, is it not?” Vedvedsica said calmly, looking around.

Nianki squinted in bright sunshine, though only seconds before it had been night in the orchard. Once her eyes had adjusted, she gathered her courage and turned her gaze slightly downward. It was enough to set her heart to pounding, and she closed her eyes.

“You won’t fall, savage.” His sarcastic comment forced her to open her eyes again.

“Where —?” It came out as a croak, so Nianki swallowed and tried again. “Where are we?”

“Silvanost. The city of my master, Balif, and his master, the great Silvanos. You may be the first human ever to see it. Don’t squander the opportunity.”

Taking a deep breath, Nianki vowed to do as he said. She looked down. She was standing on stone so white it nearly blinded her to look at it. The marble was cool beneath her bare feet and just ahead of her it curved downward. Behind her the white stone stretched for a good distance, probably twenty paces at least.

“What is this?” With her free hand she gestured at the glossy marble platform.

“The Tower of the Stars.”

“Tower?” Nianki carefully edged her feet forward, toward the downward curving edge of the marble. Peering beyond the edge, she gasped.

She and the elf were standing atop a structure that must surely reach halfway to the sky. Its white marble sides stretched for a dizzying length to the ground far, far below.

Nianki slowly and carefully straightened herself again, fighting against the urge to clutch the elf’s arm with her free hand. When she was upright once more, she turned her gaze outward to take in her surroundings.

Now that she’d grown accustomed to the great height, her first impression was one of light. It glinted and sparkled and flashed from a thousand surfaces. All around this tower were other, smaller structures. They appeared to be made from white or milky stone and the sun’s light scintillated off them as though from a thousand polished blades. Quite a few of the structures looked complete – Nianki stopped counting after thirty – but nearly twice that number seemed to be still under construction.

It was astonishing. Amero’s village of Yala-tene represented the largest gathering of people Nianki had ever seen, yet this place, this Silvanost, was easily ten or more times the size of the humans’ village.

Looking past the ring of spires, Nianki saw the city was built on an island. Beyond the surrounding water lay a forest. It stretched away, green and dense, as far as the eye could see.

Strange – too strange. Not only had it been dark before and now was bright day, but the season had changed as well. It had been cold in the valley of the falls. She remembered the chill night air in the orchard. Had not the apple trees’ leaves turned brown already and fallen around her? Here the trees were clothed in their mid-summer foliage, not the bright colors of autumn.

Vedvedsica seemed to sense her growing confusion. With his free hand he squeezed her arm, saying sharply, “You tax my concentration! Be calm! There is great disorder in your thoughts.”

“You have no idea,” she muttered. His words acted as a tonic though, and her surroundings sharpened into focus.

Nianki saw the streets below fill with movement. The figures were made impossibly small by distance.

“Shall we move among them?”

She had no chance to reply to his question before they were dropping like stones. Though her fingers tightened convulsively on his wrist, Nianki stifled an urge to cry out. Vedvedsica, she was sure, would not let them be hurt.

Their plunge suddenly halted a few steps above the ground. Her heart pounded in her throat, and she threw the elf a furious glare. He paid her no heed whatsoever.

Three male elves nearly walked into Nianki. She stepped back out of their way, but they gave no sign they’d seen her.

As a pair of females approached, Vedvedsica planted himself directly in their path. Nianki was astonished to see the females pass through him as though he was made of smoke.

“How —?” she began, then gave a violent shake of her head. Why question what was so obviously the work of great spirit-power?

They were graceful-looking people, she had to give them that. No taller than she, and many of them shorter, they somehow gave an impression of height. Their movements were easy and fluid. Their skin was paler than hers, their hair was mostly light-colored, ranging from sandy blond through pure snowy white. They wore flowing robes in a rainbow of bright colors.

Though she saw their lips moving, she could not hear what the elves were saying. In fact, she realized, she could hear nothing at all from her surroundings. The elves walking or riding on horseback made no noise, and there was no sound of birds or insects.

“Why don’t I hear them?” she asked.

Vedvedsica looked a bit strained. “It isn’t necessary,” he told her, and that was all he would say on the subject.

Nianki went back to watching the Silvanesti. There were so many! The streets teemed with life, young and old, male and female. She caught sight of two children – a boy and girl – jogging toward her. The girl, taller of the two, was obviously teasing the boy, and even Nianki could see the family resemblance between them. When the girl turned her back, the boy reached out and yanked a long golden plait of her hair. He then turned, laughing, to flee as she gave chase.

“At least children are children everywhere,” she said.

“Really? That girl will likely outlive your great-great-grandchildren.”

Looking at him as though he were the one whose wits were addled, she snorted. “I’m not that far gone in my head, shaman.”

Vedvedsica’s eyes glittered with a strange inner light as he turned to look her full in the face.

“Do you suppose all the races have the same pitifully short lifespan as humans?” he said in that same calm, certain tone. “We elves live for hundreds of years. My Lord Balif has seen ninety-eight springs come and go, and he will still be a strong, valiant warrior when your grandchildren are nothing more than dust.”

Nianki opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“How can you hope to best an enemy,” Vedvedsica continued, “who will still be vigorous when you are twisted with age, who will still be hale and hardy when your grandchildren are bowed down with the weight of years? Don’t you see how foolish your resistance is?”

Movement above her head caused Nianki to look up quickly. The white stone structures on each side of the street loomed above her, their tops seeming to draw closer and closer together, blocking out the sky, blocking out the light.

She felt a painful tightness in her chest. As yet another elf moved through her, unseeing, unknowing, leaving not even a whisper of air in his wake, she swayed on her feet.

“What have you done to me, shaman?” she gasped. “Can’t breathe —”

Faster than thought, Nianki found herself back atop the Tower of the Stars. The strange breathlessness faded, and she inhaled and exhaled deeply, relief coursing through her.

“You’re hexing me,” she accused.

He regarded her thoughtfully. “In truth, I am not. You’re unaccustomed to the presence of so many beings, so many structures. For one raised under the open sky, it would be a shock.”

Nianki was rubbing her temple with her free hand. It pounded as though a drummer was beating on her head. “Can it be true?” she muttered to herself. “Ninety-eight years? Ninety-eight?”

“It is but a brief moment, after all.”

The plainswoman looked up quickly. The priest was no longer there. In his place stood the warlord Balif. The wind blew through the elf’s shoulder-length blond hair, and his sky-colored eyes regarded her with a strange intensity.

She took a step backward in surprise but found herself brought up short. Just as her fingers were releasing his wrist, he deftly caught hold of her arm, maintaining the contact between them. Nianki looked down, staring dumbly at the long, pale fingers encircling her sunbrowned arm.

“Do not fight me, Nianki,” he said. “There are greater rewards to be had as my friend than as my enemy. To fight the Throne of the Stars means only death for you and your followers.”

“Stop!” she cried. Nianki moved as far away from him as his hold on her arm allowed, though that brought her perilously close to the edge of the marble platform. “This is a trick! You aren’t Balif, and I will not give up what is mine!”

So saying, she yanked her hand violently out of his grip.

As soon as their hands parted, Nianki felt herself fall backward off the tower. The last thing she saw as she plummeted into the void was Vedvedsica’s surprised face staring down as her as he stroked his wispy beard.

Nianki woke with a violent start, her angry shout still echoing in her ears. Casting about wildly, she saw the faint outlines of the Yala-tene orchard, but atop this was overlaid the phantom elf city – bright towers, impossibly high, reared out of the silver waters of the lake. Crowds of transparent elves passed to and fro among the white marble columns.

She shook her head, but still the ghostly images lingered. Nianki struck her forehead hard with her fist. The ghostly scene blurred and thinned slightly, the dark outlines of the orchard growing stronger.

So, pain countered the spell? Very well. She was no stranger to pain. Nianki drew her knife.

*

Duranix squirmed fitfully, trying to find a comfortable position. His left wing ached, so he had to lie on his right side exclusively. Trouble was, his weight tended to cramp his good wing if he lay on it too long. Pain and annoyance combined to ignite an angry blue aura around his head. When his blood was up, the air around him tended to crackle with lightning.

He gave up trying to sleep and went down to the lake for a drink of water. He trod as lightly as he could so as not to disturb the sleeping humans around him. When humans were disturbed there was always noise – babies crying, dogs barking, men cursing when they stubbed their toes on the way to the latrine, women complaining about the babies crying, the dogs barking, and the men cursing. Duranix preferred his nights quiet.

He waded out a few paces and dipped his long neck down for a sip of cold water. It didn’t taste as sweet as it once had, before the humans started living here. Water from the falls was as pristine as ever, but the lake had lost its purity long ago.

The dragon turned and slogged back to shore. He spied a lone, lanky figure coming down the pebbly beach toward him. For once his eyes deceived him. He thought it was Amero, but when the stranger began humming tunelessly in a high, hoarse voice, he realized it was Nianki.

“Greetings, mighty one,” she said.

“Thunder and lightning, woman!” Duranix said. “What have you done to yourself?”

Nianki had cut her hair – rather violently, from the looks of things. Long tendrils still hung to her shoulders, but the rest was sheered off so closely that less than a fingerwidth of hair remained. In a couple of spots, her pallid scalp actually showed through and cuts on her head showed dried beads of blood.

“I was in the orchard,” she said simply. “My hair got tangled in a tree limb, so I cut it off.”

“You look like you’ve been in a fight, one you didn’t win.”

“Oh, no,” she said, smiling. “I won.”

Duranix sensed that the haze in her mind seemed thinner now. Had she succeeded in chasing the shadows away?

“How’s your wing?” she asked.

He worked his left shoulder in a circle, hissing from the resulting pain. “Still hurts, but I’ll fly again.”

She ran a hand over the stubbly crown of her head. “Did I thank you for saving me?” Before he could answer, she frowned and added, “I can’t remember. So much has happened that I can’t remember.”

The dragon’s voice cut through this thought. “Do you recall your brother, Amero?”

“Do you know the sun and the wind?” she said sarcastically.

They both heard footfalls among the loose rocks higher up the shore. Two men paused on a rocky outcropping and one called out, “Karada! We must speak to you!”

She squinted into the darkness. “Who’s there?”

“Tarkwa,” Duranix said, “and the one-eyed man – what’s his name?”

“Hatu.” Raising her voice again, she asked, “What do you want?”

“Karada, we need to speak to you!” came the call again.

She started up the hill and Duranix followed, but the men waved the dragon off. “We only want to speak to our chief!”

“Rude animals,” said the dragon. He settled down on his haunches. “Watch yourself, Karada.”

She looked back at him. “Why?”

“I sense those men are not your friends.”

She laughed in her old way and seemed almost her normal self. “No, they aren’t my friends,” she agreed, “they’re my followers. Besides, Hatu doesn’t hate me; it’s you he loathes. He thinks you killed his father.”

“I did. Ate him, too.” He waited for shocked exclamations.

There were none forthcoming. Instead, she asked, “Really? How was he?”

“Treacherous, like most humans.”

Amero didn’t like jokes about eating people, but Nianki laughed heartily and strode up the hill to meet her men. When she drew near, both Hatu and Tarkwa recoiled at the sight of her ragged hair.

“Who attacked you?” exclaimed Tarkwa.

“Forty angry centaurs, but I bested them,” she replied. “What do you want?”

“We want to leave, Karada.”

“So go.”

“He means the whole band,” said Hatu.

“I’m not ready to leave,” she answered.

The two men exchanged looks. Tarkwa said, “Karada, we can’t stay here forever, living on scraps from the villagers and idling our days away. We’re getting to be like those fat oxen they keep in pens, dull and lifeless. We need action! What about the elves? What about your plan to drive them off the southern plain?”

Memories of her bizarre dream echoed in Nianki’s mind. She shook her head hard, dismissing them, and said flatly, “We’re not ready yet. We need to build up our numbers, rest, get strong.”

“And how long will that take?” asked Hatu.

Nianki folded her arms. “As long it takes.”

“Some of the band are restless,” Hatu retorted. “Nacris has been talking to the warriors —”

“That poisonous wench had better keep her mouth shut! I spared her because of what happened to Sessan, but if she crosses me again, I’ll have her head!”

Nianki’s voice had risen to a shout. From twenty paces away, Duranix heard her and lowered his head to ground. He could hear better that way, as the rocky soil transmitted noise to the sensitive barbels on his chin.

“It isn’t just Nacris,” Tarkwa said. “Others are grumbling too. Even Pa’alu.”

“Where is Pa’alu?” she demanded.

“I can’t say for certain, Karada,” replied Hatu. “He seldom stays in camp but roams the valleys by night and the high peaks by day.”

“Hiding from me, is he? Next time you lay eyes on that pig, you tell him I want to see him. No, better still, bring him to me! Drag him, if he won’t come on his own! I have much to pay him back for!”

Both Hatu and Tarkwa were edging away from her. The sight of their chief, red-eyed, hair ravaged, screaming at them, was fearsome even to the seasoned warriors. She might have gone on denouncing Pa’alu had not Amero appeared, drawn by the sound of her loud voice.

“Nianki? What’s the matter?” He stared at her, aghast. “What’s happened to you?”

Her rage evaporated like mist in the hot morning sun. In the space of a few breaths, Nianki’s face mirrored a whole gamut of emotions – delight, relief, anguish, shame. The display wasn’t lost on Hatu. He made careful note of it.

“Amero,” she said, “forgive me, I didn’t mean to shout.”

“Is there trouble?” He stepped forward, hand out, but his sister evaded his touch.

“No trouble, Arkuden,” said Tarkwa quickly. “We were talking about the day our band leaves Arku-peli.”

“Oh? When is that?”

“Soon,” said the two men in unison.

Nianki’s jaw worked. “I haven’t decided yet. There are still things to be done here.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you want,” Amero told her, putting a hand to her back. She swayed and shut her eyes briefly.

“Spread the word,” she said to her followers. “Karada’s band will move when Karada says so – not before.”

Hatu said nothing, but Tarkwa nodded, saying, “Yes, Karada.”

They left.

“Did you fall off the mountain?” asked Amero, perfectly seriously.

She touched her head self-consciously. “It was tangled in a tree limb. I couldn’t free it, so I cut it off.”

“What with, a hatchet?”

“No, a flint knife.”

He looked her in the eye. She avoided meeting his gaze momentarily, then let herself be fixed by his concern.

“I am well,” she said firmly. “For the first time in many days, I am well.”

“Are you sure? Forgive me, but you look like you just finished battling a panther with your bare hands!”

“A panther would be easy compared to what I’ve been wrestling with.”

“Was it a fever of the brain?” he asked.

“No. The affliction lay... in other regions.”

Hearing Duranix snort nearby, Amero moved toward the dragon. Nianki followed closely.

A warm breeze struck their faces. Amero halted, peering into the darkness. He held a finger to his lips and pointed. Duranix had fallen asleep at last. The breeze was his breath.

Amero took his sister’s hand, and they tiptoed away. Nothing was said as Amero led Nianki past the falls to the waiting hoist. Remembering her last visit to the cave, Nianki dug in her heels and balked.

To be heard over the roar of tumbling water, he had to put his lips close to her ear. “It’s all right,” he said reassuringly. “You won’t fall out this time.”

He righted the basket and helped her in. With a stout heave on the rope, Amero started the counterweight on its downward journey. The basket stretched under their combined weight then, with a groan, lifted off the ground.

The cave was dark when they arrived. Amero knew his way and crossed to the hearth. He poked in the embers of the afternoon fire and found some coals still glowing. Tossing a handful of grass on the embers, he quickly had a smoky red fire blazing. He laid on a few larger pieces of kindling. When the firelight bloomed, vast shadows were thrown upon the high walls.

“Come, warm yourself,” he said, beckoning her to the fire. “Are you hungry?”

Nianki sat down stiffly on a pile of furs. Amero stirred the small fire, laying on a few larger splits of oak to keep the autumn chill out of the cave.

“Hatu is right,” Nianki said suddenly. Her voice echoed off the distant ceiling. “The band should leave, and soon.”

“Really? Why?”

“It’s not good for us to stay.”

Amero held his hands up to the crackling fire. “Winter will be here soon. I thought you came here to shelter your people from the cold.”

“We’ll go to the north country, where it’s warmer. There’ll be game there. We’ll do all right.”

“Do as you think best, but I, for one, wish you’d stay.”

She regarded him longingly. “Do you mean it?”

“Of course,” he replied, surprised by the fervor of her response. “You’re my sister. I’ve only just found you, and I don’t want to lose you again.”

Nianki withdrew to the shadowed end of the hearth. For a time there was no sound in the cave but the snap of burning wood. She finally broke the silence by saying, “Are you happy with your life, Amero?”

“Yes. I think so. It’s hard sometimes.” He wove his fingers together and hooked his hands around one knee. “The villagers expect me to know what to do all the time, to have an answer whenever they ask a question. There’s a hundred questions today, and a hundred the next day, and a hundred the day after that. People think Duranix tells me what’s what, but he really doesn’t help me much. He likes to hear gossip, but he isn’t interested in the real work of the village. I keep trying new ideas – I want to make our lives better, easier. Lately I’ve been working on a way to get copper metal out of cliff rocks —”

“What about the rest of your life?” Nianki said, interrupting.

He shrugged. “Only the spirits know what will happen then.”

“That’s not what I mean. What about the part of your life you share with another?”

“Duranix is my friend —”

She rolled her eyes. “A mate, idiot! Have you ever had a mate?”

“No. I haven’t had time. There was a girl in the village, Halshi...” Amero’s hazel eyes clouded with the painful memory of the cave-in. “But she died, not long before you came.”

“Did you love her?”

Amero considered, then decided if he had to think about it so hard, the answer must be no. “I liked her. There wasn’t time for more,” he said. Shifting uncomfortably, he changed the subject. “What about you? Any man caught your eye?”

She shook her head violently.

“What about Pa’alu? He seems a fine fellow.”

Nianki’s eyes glittered in the half-light. “Pa’alu is the biggest fool on the plains. Soon, he’ll pay for his foolishness.”

The quiet savagery of her tone sent a chill through Amero. He put another split on the fire.

“I should find a mate,” he said, nodding. “I don’t suppose I can spend the rest of my life in a cave with a dragon.”

“A village girl, I suppose.”

“I don’t know. What about one of your fierce nomad women? Is there one you’d like to recommend?”

Her voice fell to a whisper. “Do you like fierce women?”

“I like you, and you’re pretty ferocious.” Nianki looked away. “When I wonder about a mate, I find myself thinking about women like our mother. She was a good companion to Oto and a good mother to us, don’t you think?”

Silence. Nianki was staring into the flames and Amero put her lack of response down to weariness. He was certainly tired.

He yawned. “I’m done! You’re welcome to stay here tonight. Sleep well, Nianki.”

The fire shrank to a bed of glowing coals. Amero crawled into the hollowed-out bowl in the rock floor that was his bed. He was asleep in moments.

He dreamed he felt his mother’s hand caress his face, like she did when he was a child. Though part of him knew it had to be a dream, it was a profoundly comforting one. He slept on in blissful peace.

Chapter 19

After a stormy month, the valley grew quiet again. Fighting between nomads and villagers declined. Nianki seemed recovered and ceased her aimless wandering, muttering, and weeping. The rumor spread she cured herself by cutting her hair so severely, and later it became a common sight in Yala-tene to see men and women with closely shorn hair after bouts of sickness or bad temper.

The last big harvest from the summer gardens was due, and Amero asked Nianki to organize the nomads to help gather in the vegetables. She convinced nearly all of the three hundred nomads to work the harvest, realizing the hard work would be a good outlet for her people. The only ones who did not work were the very old, the very young, the ill, and one other: Pa’alu. He had disappeared again.

Duranix continued to wear the harness on his broken wing. Fine weather made him yearn to fly, and frustration at his inability to do so led to dangerous displays of lightning in the valley. Finally, Amero suggested the dragon leave the village for a while.

“Take a journey,” Amero said. “Explore.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” asked the dragon, waving his one good wing. “I cannot fly, and being human hurts too much.” Whatever human form he might take, he would still have a broken arm until his wing healed, and the more he shapeshifted, the longer the healing would take.

“Go as you are,” Amero told him. “You have four good feet. Use them.”

Duranix lifted one foreclaw and studied it. He frowned, considering his friend’s words. “Walking is so undignified,” he muttered.

“So is whining.”

The voice belonged to Nianki. Amero and the dragon turned to watch as she approached.

Her face was scrubbed clean, and she wore a new buckskin shirt and divided kilt, bare of any beadwork. Her hair had grown back just enough to cover her nearly bald spots, and she did not wear her chieftain’s headband. Aside from being thinner than before and having hair shorter than her brother’s, she looked well. She carried a large basket in one hand.

“I’m going to pick apples,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’ll be there soon,” Amero replied.

“I won’t be,” Duranix announced. He eyed Amero. “I’m going for a walk.”

Nianki nodded, bid the dragon good-bye, and departed to join the column of plainsfolk heading for the rope bridge. Her brother watched her thoughtfully.

“She’s come through it, whatever it was,” he said. “I don’t mind telling you, I was afraid for a while. I thought she’d lost her wits forever.”

“She’s a strong woman, but I don’t think she’s over her trouble, just coping with it more effectively.”

“Oh? What do you know about her trouble?”

The dragon bent his long neck, bringing his horned, bronze-scaled face down to Amero’s level. “She’s human and your sister. That’s trouble enough.”

They walked side by side through the maze of tents and lean-tos that was the nomad camp. Eventually the shelters became too dense for Duranix, and he detoured to the shoreline of the lake. He waded out until his claws were submerged. The buoyancy of the water made it easier for him to move.

“Where will you go?” Amero asked, following along the shore.

“West, I think. I’ve spent a lot of time in the east and south this year. I should have a wider look around. Sthenn’s been quiet since the Greengall incident, but it wouldn’t hurt to reconnoiter the western plains.”

They reached the foot of the bridge. To the right, the cattle and horses got wind of the dragon and began to mill about in anxiety. Duranix stretched low and slipped under the bridge. Once under, he climbed the west bank and stood erect, sunlight glistening on his wet scales.

“Have a good walk, and come back soon,” Amero said.

“I don’t know how far I’ll go, but I should return in two or three days.”

Duranix trundled away. Amero had never seen the dragon walk more than a few steps at a time. His rear legs had a wobble in them that Amero had never noticed before.

As he fondly watched the dragon depart, Amero suddenly realized he’d forgotten his reed hat. If he was going to work all day outside, he’d need the hat to keep the low autumn sun out of his eyes.

He walked briskly back to the foot of the waterfall. Soon he was descending in the hoist with the brown reed hat on his head. The scene beneath him was as still as a forest glade. The nomad camp was empty. A slight haze from burned-out campfires hung over the patched, irregular tents. Beyond the camp, a few solitary craftsmen stirred in the alleys of Yala-tene, but the village too was unnaturally calm. As he surveyed the scene, only one thing stood out – a lone figure leaning against the dragon’s offering cairn. Whoever it was, he took care to lurk on the shaded side, so it was impossible for Amero to see who it was.

The basket bumped into solid ground and stopped. Amero stepped out and tied off the counterweight. He detoured away from the lake, curious to see who was lingering by the cairn.

The tall, well-made person had his back to Amero. He was dressed in the skimpy clothes of a nomad and had waist-length chestnut-colored hair, drawn back in thick hank and held with a carved bone clip.

Amero’s footsteps echoed dully off the stone sides of the cairn. The man turned suddenly, revealing his face.

“Pa’alu!”

“Greetings, Arkuden.”

There was something in his manner – his voice, his posture – that reeked of menace. Backing up a step, Amero reminded himself of all the good services Pa’alu had rendered to the village and to Karada’s band.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked lightly.

“Here and there. Hunting. Watching.”

Amero had the distinct feeling he’d found a viper sunning on a rock, and his questions were as welcome as poking the serpent with a stick.

“We’ve missed you,” he said, choosing his wording carefully.

“Who? You? Karada?”

“All of us, I’d say.”

Pa’alu picked at the moss growing in the chinks between the stones. “Where is the dragon?” he asked.

Amero’s eyes darted around, searching for a convenient way out of this conversation. “Gone for a day, looking around. He does that.”

“And Karada?”

“She’s at the harvest.”

Amero heard movement behind him, but before he could react, he was thrown facedown to the ground. A knee pressed hard into the small of his back, and his wrists were secured by a long strip of rawhide. His captors rolled him over on his back. Glare blinded him until Pa’alu stepped over him, blocking out the sun.

“What’s this? Let me go, Pa’alu!”

“I thought you were clever,” Pa’alu replied coldly. “This place, this village of yours is full of clever things. But you’re stupid and blind.” He knelt and cupped his hands together. “I put her in your hands, and you never even realized it.”

“What are you talking about?” Amero demanded.

At a nod from Pa’alu, his companions hauled Amero to his feet. They were Hatu and Nacris. He was stunned to see these three working together. There were footholds on the backside of the rock pile, and using them, Hatu swiftly climbed atop the cairn. Pa’alu and Nacris boosted Amero up, and Hatu dragged him onto the stone platform. The depression in the center of the cairn, where Duranix’s oxen or elk usually lay, was filled with dry kindling and windfall wood. The sight filled Amero with horror. They wouldn’t —

Pa’alu climbed onto the cairn and stood over the helpless Amero. “It’s my turn to make an offering,” he said. “Too bad the dragon isn’t here to appreciate it.”

“You waited for Duranix to leave!”

“Yearling bucks can do little when the bull is with the herd.” He strained against the rawhide restraints and tried to get to his feet. Pa’alu calmly kicked him in the ribs. Gasping, Amero lay still.

To the others Pa’alu said, “It’s done. Tell the rest.”

Hatu climbed down and ran toward the bridge, the only way to the gardens across the lake. Nacris ran away too, but doubled back among the houses until she was within a few paces of the cairn. She hid in the shadows and kept her eye on the erect figure of Pa’alu, standing atop the dragon’s altar.

Slowly, his agony faded, and Amero was able to breathe again. He avoided moving too much, lest he provoke more punishment from his captor.

“Pa’alu, may I speak?” he said.

“Say what you will.”

“Let me go, Pa’alu. I don’t know what ill you think I’ve done you, but you’re wrong. I’ve done nothing knowingly to injure you. You must believe me!”

The plainsman’s face was as hard and empty as the high peaks around them. “I don’t do this on a whim, Arkuden. I’ve had many days and nights to think about it. I’ve been kicked about by chiefs and great ones with no more thought than if I were a pine cone – Karada, Duranix, Greengall, the elf priest, you. You’ve all made me do things I never wanted to do, but that’s over now.”

He’s mad, Amero thought in horror. Nianki’s insanity had passed from her to him.

Striving for a calm, reasoned tone, Amero said, “What did I do, Pa’alu? How did I hurt you?”

“You were given a great gift, and you scorned it. It’s true I didn’t mean for you to have it, but have it you did, and you turned your back on it.”

“Please,” said Amero. “I don’t understand. Tell me what this gift is.”

“Karada’s love.”

Amero heard the words, but couldn’t fathom them. Of course he had his sister’s love – why wouldn’t he? He didn’t want to challenge a madman in his delusions, but he didn’t understand at all. He was afraid there wasn’t anything to understand, that Pa’alu was simply crazed, and no amount of reasoning could bring light to the dark pit of his mind.

“I love my sister,” he said. “I know you care for her too, and she won’t have you.”

“Karada’s an idiot,” Pa’alu replied. “She thought love made a person weak. Then the amulet showed her how love felt, and you didn’t even notice!”

“Amulet?”

Before Amero could explore the puzzle of the unfamiliar word, the noise of an approaching crowd came to their ears. Pa’alu pulled a resinous pine branch out of the pile of wood and set to work lighting it with a flint. Horror washed over Amero.

“Pa’alu!” he said desperately. “What do you mean? What’s an amulet?”

Once the pine branch was flaming, Pa’alu sat down on the edge of the platform, letting his legs dangle over the side. He looked down at Amero.

“Not so clever, are you? An amulet’s a piece of metal, round, flat, with spirit markings on it. The elf priest made it for me when I gave him the yellow stone.”

Amero grimaced. Vedvedsica had gained the spirit stone after all.

“What was the amulet for?” he asked.

“To make Karada love. She was supposed to love me, but you picked up the amulet that night instead of me, and she was stricken with love for you.”

All at once the strange events since the feast came into focus. Nianki’s behavior, her odd, disturbing questions, all of it made sense now – terrible, frightening sense. The amulet caused her to love the one man in the world she shouldn’t desire. No wonder she nearly went mad!

Pa’alu stood up, the flaming torch in his hand. The sound of the crowd had grown much louder, though from his position lying atop the cairn, Amero couldn’t see them. Pa’alu faced the village houses, the direction people would come from the orchard. By listening and watching his captor’s face, Amero could tell when the villagers and nomads were close at hand.

There were shouts, and Pa’alu held the torch high above his head. Amero expected him to plunge the brand into the kindling with his next breath, but the crowd noise subsided, and he lowered the torch safely to one side.

“Pa’alu! Come down from there!” It was Nianki’s voice. “Throw the torch on the ground and free Amero!”

“I’m not taking your commands any more, Karada. This may be the day I die, but if I do, I’ll take Arkuden to the spirit world with me.”

There were shouts of “No!” and “Let him go!” and Amero hoped his people or Nianki’s would storm the cairn and save him, but he quickly realized that the torch was so near the dry kindling that no one dared move.

Duranix! Duranix, if you can hear me, I need your help! he thought frantically. How far away could the dragon hear him? A league? Two leagues? Ten? How far had the dragon walked in half a morning?

“Why are you doing this?” Nianki called out. “Amero’s done you no harm.”

“I’m doing this because you betrayed me – betrayed us! You promised us greatness, Karada. You said that under your leadership we would rule the plains! Yet we live in this tiny valley, relying on the favors of strangers, laboring for them in exchange for a little meat and a place to pitch our tents. Is this the greatness you promised, Karada?”

Her response was to throw herself at the cairn. She ran and leaped, landing halfway up the sloping stone sides. Without ready footholds, she had to climb, and that slowed her down. Pa’alu calmly shoved the torch into the pile of wood. Smoke curled from the broken branches, followed by a puff of red flame.

Nianki hauled herself up as far as the upper edge of the altar before she misplaced her foot and slid back to the ground. Pa’alu came to the edge and looked down at her.

“Amero!” she cried. Villagers surged around her, trying to reach the cairn before the fire claimed their chief.

While everyone was yelling and struggling, Nacris saw her moment and acted. She stepped away from the shadow of the house in which she’d been hiding. The crowd was between her and the cairn, and no one was looking at her. She picked up a loose stone.

“Free Arkuden! Death to the nomads!” she cried, and threw the stone.

The distance was short and her aim was good. The rock hit Pa’alu hard on the jaw. He reeled with the blow and toppled off the cairn. Flames erupted from the pile. More villagers surged forward, some of them echoing Nacris’s cry, “Death to the nomads!”

Nianki got to her feet in time to avoid being trampled. She shouted for order, but the crowd was too loud, too far gone in pent-up anger to hear her.

Makeshift weapons appeared: pruning forks, wooden hoes, rakes, stone hammers, and axes. Blows were exchanged. The press of the crowd drove Nianki straight into the stone side of the cairn. She was unarmed save for her flint knife, which she could not reach because of the weight of the throng at her back.

She struggled and cursed, her blood boiling as she watched her outnumbered people being clubbed senseless by outraged farmers, potters, and herdsmen. Nianki yearned to plunge into the fray and teach the villagers a lesson, but her first duty was to Amero, still bound atop the cairn.

Suddenly, the mob pinning her helplessly in place dissolved as the unarmed scurried to get away from the armed. She started climbing again, and this time desperation put new strength in her hands. By the time she made it to the stone platform, Amero was squirming frantically, trying to put some distance between himself and the flames. With only bark sandals on his feet, he kicked at blazing tree limbs.

“Amero!” She grabbed him by his shirt when he wormed his way close enough. Dragging him away from the fire, Nianki next climbed over him and sat astride his back, sawing at his bonds with her knife.

Rocks and thrown clubs whizzed by Nianki. She dodged them with uncanny flicks of her head and shoulders, never once looking up from her task. When the thong was finally cut, she slid aside. Amero dragged her down so she would be less likely to be hit by random missiles.

“What happened?” she said in his ear.

“Pa’alu’s gone mad! He meant to kill me, and Hatu and Nacris helped him!”

She stared, disbelieving. “Hatu?”

He nodded furiously. A hammer hit the rim of the platform and exploded in a shower of rock fragments.

“We’ve got to stop this!” Amero said.

“Any idea how?”

“I’ll try to calm my people! You’ll have to see to yours!”

Below, those nomads not knocked out in the first minutes of the riot fell back to the animal pens. There, they began bridling their horses and mounting amidst a hail of stones and other makeshift missiles. Once on horseback, the nomads closed ranks and charged, relying on their speed and weight to knock the villagers out of the way. They quickly cleared the pathways between the houses and trampled the best-armed group of villagers, a band made up of the sons and daughters of the village elders. Yelling war cries, the mounted nomads galloped to their camp. While the villagers retreated to their houses, the nomads pulled down their tents and lashed their gear to their horses.

Nianki came upon Pa’alu, painfully crawling away from the cairn. He’d broken a leg and several ribs in his fall. She easily overtook him and pinned him to the ground by planting her foot in his back.

“Now you must kill me,” he gasped, his face in the dirt.

“Kill you? I should roast you alive on the pyre you made for my brother! Were Nacris and Hatu involved in this?” she said.

“No.”

“Liar!” She put more weight on her leg and his broken ribs scraped together. He writhed in agony. “They put you up to this!” she hissed.

“No! I did this myself! So kill me!”

Nianki removed her foot and grasped Pa’alu by the hair, turning him over on his back. She said, “You’re going to live just long enough to tell the entire band this was a plot by Nacris to overthrow me!”

Pa’alu looked past the angry eyes of the woman he loved and into the face of death. A figure had appeared atop the cairn behind Nianki. She didn’t see him, had no chance to block or dodge the spear he threw; however, the weapon wasn’t aimed at her. It took Pa’alu low in the gut.

Nianki rolled to the side and jumped up, knife ready. She caught only a glimpse of the spear thrower as he leaped down from the other side of the platform. By the time she ran around the end of the cairn, Pa’alu’s attacker had escaped into the maze of village houses.

She cursed heartily and returned to Pa’alu. His eyes were still open, but his breath was shallow.

“Karada,” he whispered.

She bent low over him to catch his dying words. “Who else?” she hissed. “Who else is with Nacris and Hatu?”

“All of them.” He tried to laugh, but it came out as a rasping, rattling wheeze. “Finish me.”

Knowing he’d betrayed her, yet feeling some pity at last, Nianki found it in her heart to fulfill this last request.

She pulled the spear out of his belly. It was a boar spear, with a broad flint head and an oak peg lashed to the shaft to keep the spear from going in too far to be recovered. She positioned the tip over his heart.

“Peace... to you... Nianki,” he rasped.

“There is no peace,” she replied. “Not while I live.” She leaned hard on the shaft. Pa’alu, so near death already, felt nothing, and his last breath escaped soundlessly.

She slumped against the stone side of the cairn, the bloody spear across her lap. Out of the swirl of dust and smoke appeared a towering figure, coming toward her.

Pakito.

Nianki straightened her back and wrapped her hands more tightly around the spear shaft. The last thing she wanted was a fight with Pakito, her most loyal friend and a formidable foe, but Pakito’s brother was dead, and by her hand – how would the mighty warrior take that?

Pakito dropped to his knees beside his brother. He closed Pa’alu’s eyes and, scooping up a handful of loose dirt, gave him a nomad’s benediction – he poured the handful of dirt on Pa’alu’s forehead.

“Pakito.”

“Yes, Karada?”

“I killed him.”

“I saw. Thank you.”

She sat up. “You’re grateful I slew your brother?”

“He was suffering. He’d been suffering in his mind for a long time. This was his cure, Karada.”

She rose and laid the boar spear on her shoulder. “I see the band is breaking camp.”

Pakito looked up at her. Tears streaked his broad, bearded cheeks. “I have your horse. Samtu, Targun, and a few others are guarding our mounts back at the corral.”

“I knew you couldn’t be with that viper Nacris.”

His anguished gaze never wavered. “I follow you, Karada.”

Nianki peered through the dust at the chaos of the collapsing nomad camp. “There’s more blood to be shed before this is done,” she said grimly. “Our blood I fear. I should have cleaned up all the traitors when Sessan was slain. You see the price for my generosity.”

Amero appeared. He had minor burns on his arms and legs, and a few cuts and bruises, but he was all right. He was alone – not a single villager dared leave the safety of their stone houses to stand with him.

He saw Pa’alu’s body and silently wished peace to the departed hunter. Then he turned to his sister and Pakito.

“The villagers will not come out,” he said. “Eight are dead, and many more are hurt. How could this happen?”

“Envy,” said Nianki. “Envy, jealousy, and spite. Nacris spread her lies in the band and turned more of them against me.” She nodded at Pa’alu’s corpse. “I see now she enlisted this mad fool to hurt me through you.”

Pakito’s broad shoulders shook with grief. Amero put a hand on his back and offered a few words of comfort.

The rumble of approaching horses grew louder. A column of mounted nomads appeared through the dust. Leading the column were three riders: Tarkwa on the left, Hatu on the right, and Nacris in the center. Three-quarters of the nomads had chosen to follow their new leaders. At the sight of her nemesis, Nianki drew back the boar spear, ready to cast.

“Stay your hand, Karada!” Tarkwa cried.

Nianki neither relaxed nor lowered her weapon. Pakito and Amero stood by on either side, ready to defend her.

“Get down off that horse, Nacris,” Nianki said. “I’d hate to scratch a blameless animal when I kill you!”

“You’re not going to kill anybody,” Hatu replied. “We’re done with you, Karada. Your cruel, mad ways have hurt the band long enough.”

“I made this band!” she said. “You were nothing but lone scavengers, running scared on foot from elf hunting parties. I made you into a band of free men and women. We took horses from the elves and made the plains ours. Is this how you repay me?”

“No one is more important than the band,” said Nacris. “You never understood that, Karada, and now you’re out. We don’t need you. We’re taking what we want from this valley and going far away from you, the elves, and your dragon-master. Stay here if you like, live in unnatural love with your brother, and serve that beast!”

Nianki flung the boar spear, but Tarkwa and Hatu put up their own weapons and blocked it. Nianki snatched the flint knife from her belt, but before she could advance toward her foe, she found herself held back by Pakito and Amero.

“Let go of me!” she cried.

“No,” said Amero. “I’m not ready to watch you die.”

“Very wise,” said Hatu, lowering his spear. “Continue your wisdom and give us what we want from your stores.”

“My people will starve over the winter without stored food,” he said.

“You’re in no position to resist,” Nacris retorted. “If you get in our way, we’ll burn your gardens, drive off your oxen, and flatten this village to the ground!”

Amero’s heartbeat pounded in his ears. Duranix was away and crippled. Though the villagers outnumbered the renegade nomads, Nacris’s followers were seasoned fighters, and with their horses to give them mobility and force, how could Yala-tene withstand them?

He felt Nianki’s taut muscles relax in his grip. Amero let go of her arm. Pakito did likewise.

“Here’s my offer,” Nianki said. “Leave, now. If I ever see any of you again, I’ll hamstring the lot of you – all but you, Nacris. I promise I’ll gut you like the yevi-spawn you are.

“You’ll take nothing from Yala-tene. Ride out now, each with your horse, spear, and tent. You’re nomads. I taught you how to survive on the plains and in the forests. Leave, and live. Take, and die. That’s your choice.”

Coming from anyone else in this situation – on foot, armed with a single knife, surrounded by enemies – such a declaration would have earned mocking laughter. However, the words, deadly calm and utterly serious, came from Karada. No one laughed.

Tarkwa, ever practical, broke ranks first. He rode past Amero without a word, heading out of the village. Slowly, others followed, guiding their horses in a wide, wary circle around Nianki. Nacris glared, but she didn’t bother trying to stop them. She knew she did not command the respect – or the fear – that Karada did. When Hatu joined the stream of riders, Nacris could he silent no longer.

She said, “You too? I thought you had more spine than this!”

“I’ve walked away from many previous lives,” Hatu said, urging his mount onward. “If I live, I can make another. Dead, I’m just carrion.”

Nacris was alone. The odds had shifted so completely against her, Nianki felt bold enough to reclaim her thrown spear. Scowling fiercely, Nacris twisted her mount’s head around and trotted after Hatu. She cast one glance backward as she rode. Nianki reversed her grip on the spear and jammed it forcefully into the sand, in the hoofprints of Nacris’s horse.

Slapping the reins against her horse’s neck, Nacris sped her departure.

*

It was nightfall before the villagers felt it was safe to leave their houses. The wounded were brought out for treatment, and the dead, who included Amero’s old friend and counselor Valka, were laid upon the cairn for cremation. Pakito gently added Pa’alu to the line atop the platform. Some of the villagers grumbled at a nomad being honored along with their dead, but Amero silenced them and applied the first torch to the pyre.

Standing side by side, watching the flames leap skyward, Amero said to Nianki, “Pa’alu told me about the amulet.”

She said nothing, only stared at the flames.

“I’m sorry,” he added.

“Why?” she replied. “Nothing has happened, and nothing will.”

“I’m sorry you had to suffer the way you did.”

She shrugged. “It’s nothing. Another scar. I have many.”

He wanted to comfort her, put his arm around her shoulder or take her hand in his, but he didn’t. Nianki had climbed a mountain to escape her feelings, and the last thing she’d want would be for him to climb up beside her and be within reach again.

Amero clasped his hands behind his back and moved away from his sister.

*

The glow of the funeral fire could be seen in the next valley, where the rebel nomads gathered to chew hard jerky and swig water from gourd jugs. At Hatu’s order, they were allowed only one small campfire to keep off the worst of the chill night air. It was a quiet and subdued band of plainsmen that camped around this small fire.

Nacris lay on her back at a distance from the campfire. Though she appeared to be staring at the starry sky, her mind was not on the jeweled heavens. Nacris was furious. She was so angry she couldn’t stop her hands from trembling.

Nacris’s eyes flickered over to where Hatu walked among their comrades. He seemed completely unconcerned by their shameful defeat. She couldn’t hear his words, but whatever he was saying caused low ripples of laughter among the nomads gathered in this small valley.

Tears of fury welled up in Nacris’s eyes, and she dashed them away with one hand. She turned her face away from Hatu.

A line of red fire across the night sky made her blink, and she rubbed her eyes.

Another streak of light traced a path across the stars. And a third. And a fourth.

Several of her nearby neighbors noticed the display. A wave of exclamations worked its way across the band, until all eyes were turned upward.

The plainsmen were a superstitious lot and they fell silent as they watched. Even Hatu’s talk was stilled. The lights continued their frantic display for several long minutes, then began to decrease in number.

The plainsmen began to mutter fearfully. Many voiced the thought that the dragon had somehow caused this, that he was angered by their rebellion against his son and would wreak his vengeance on them.

Nacris wasn’t fearful. In fact, the sight of the racing lights brought an upwelling of joy to her leaden heart. She leaped to her feet, her eyes shining as brightly as the stars above.

“Don’t be stupid!” she said. “The dragon doesn’t control the stars! Such signs in the sky are omens. Don’t you see? The stars fell directly over our camp! It was a sign meant for us!”

The plainsmen looked unconvinced. Hatu stepped close to the fire, so its light illuminated him for all to see.

“Nacris is right,” he told them. “The mudtoes are feeling good right now. They think they’re rid of us, but they’re not. We needed this first fight to separate our people from Karada’s and to get rid of that fool Pa’alu.” Raising his voice, he added, “Now we know who’s with us, and who’s not!”

There were nods and grins around the campfire now, and Hatu’s words were passed along to those camped farther from the center.

Nacris hurried to him. “You mean to go back!” she exclaimed. “You always meant to!”

“Yes, we’re going back!” His face was hard, lines of anger etched in its surface. “I want my horse groaning under the weight of all the beef he can carry! I want my waterskins so full of wine they leak red on the trail behind us! I want that dragon’s head, but if he’s not around for killing, I’ll have the head of the Arkuden!”

“What about Karada?” asked Tarkwa.

“What about her?” Hatu demanded. “She’s no spirit-warrior, despite what some of you think. She bleeds the same as any of us. Are we going to slink away from her like a pack of whipped dogs, or will we be warriors and take what our might can get for us?”

The rebel nomads roared their approval. Even Tarkwa seemed fired with the fervor of revenge. “When do we strike?” he asked.

“Now! Tonight!” insisted Nacris.

Hatu shook his head. “Tomorrow. Let them sleep and think they’re rid of us. When the sun rises over Vulture Gap, we’ll hit Arku-peli like an avalanche!”

Chapter 20

Amero didn’t sleep that night. So many things crowded his mind – the riot, Pa’alu’s death, the final revelation of the cause of Nianki’s distress – he found no peace in the quiet solitude of the great cave. After a fruitless session of open-eyed brooding, he chose to pass the night in lonesome toil, trying to figure out how to melt bronze.

Copper melted at a certain intensity in the fire. He reasoned that since bronze was harder than copper, it would require more fire to soften it. He built a hardwood fire on the hearth and, lacking a gang of children to fan for him, made his own “gang” of fans by boring holes in a long, straight plank and inserting eight reed fans in them. He hung the plank by thongs from a tripod of poles. By pushing it back and forth, he created a significant wind.

He set a clay pot on the fire and filled it with strips of bright copper from his last experiment. In short order the strips collapsed into reddish metallic beads, which in turn coalesced into a fist-sized ball of molten copper. Amero scratched out a long, thin trench in the damp sand at the other end of the hearth, then, lifting the hot pot with a convenient pole, poured the molten copper into the trench. The wet sand hissed, and gouts of steam arose.

The cavern slowly brightened to the pale hue of predawn. Weary, Amero went to the pool and dipped his sooty hands into the chill water drawn off the falls. Now to try his fire on a few of Duranix’s bronze scales.

A clinking sound from overhead caught his ear. The apex of the cave was lost in shadow, but a sprinkle of dirt floated down, easily visible by firelight. Darker, larger bits came down with the dust. Amero went to where the debris fell and pressed a damp finger to it. It was moss – green moss, such as grew on the banks of the river above the cave.

He was still trying to fathom this puzzle when the sound of horns, muffled by cave walls and the rumble of the falls, penetrated to him. An alarm! Amero rushed to the opening.

The sky outside was barely light, but he could see some disturbance at the upper end of the valley near the cattle pens. A panther after a young calf, perhaps? Dust rose, and he saw people moving.

There was another noise behind him. Amero turned. Something was sweeping the floor halfway between the hearth and Duranix’s sleeping platform. He frowned, trying to understand what he was seeing. It was a pair of rawhide ropes, braided and knotted. His eyes lifted, following the ropes upward. Descending the ropes in rapid hand-over-hand fashion were two men, nomads, with spears strapped to their backs.

Amero was so astonished by this sudden intrusion he froze for the two or three heartbeats of time that it took for the men to finish their descent and drop to the floor.

“What do you want?” he asked.

They whipped the flint-headed spears off their shoulders.

“Your life!” said one of the men.

His first impulse was to jump into the hoist and flee, but that would simply make his attackers’ job easier. They would certainly cut the rope, leaving him to plummet conveniently to his death. He was unarmed, and there were no weapons in the cave. He never imagined, he’d need them here.

Amero ran to his hastily-made tripod of poles, thinking he could pull one of them free to use as a quarterstaff. By the time he got there, the two nomads were already upon him, thrusting with their spears. Amero grasped the suspended plank in the center and shoved it first at one man, then the other. The second nomad was a little slow, and the stout plank caught him on the chin, sending him reeling. Amero had no time to celebrate, as the first nomad’s flint spear point tore through the reed fans and buried itself in the plank by Amero’s hand. With a yell, the nomad pushed the tripod over, and Amero had to scramble not to be trapped under the contraption.

Now he was empty handed, facing a wary foe. The nomad – a dark-eyed fellow about his own age – held his spear in both hands and made short, vicious lunges toward Amero’s belly. The floor, as usual, was littered here and there with Duranix’s shed scales, and Amero fervently wished he at least had a sharpened scale to fight with.

He backed up a few steps, keeping just ahead of the nomad’s jabs. Outside, the sounds of conflict grew louder.

“Nacris!” Amero exclaimed, understanding dawning. “She led you back here to raid the village!”

“I am Hatu’s man,” the nomad spat. “We’ve come to take what we can!”

“Then take what you want and be gone! Why kill me?”

“Hatu commands it. He wishes to injure the dragon as the dragon once injured him.”

Amero backed up to the wall. The nomad grinned and set himself to run the village headman through. Amero carefully braced himself to dodge. This would require fine timing on his part. The nomad raised his spear to shoulder height and, with a yell, attacked.

Amero twisted aside and grabbed the shaft in both hands. He wasn’t strong enough to wrestle the weapon away from the nomad, but that wasn’t his plan. He pulled the warrior in the direction he was already moving, straight at the cave wall. Unable to stop in time, the nomad slammed into the hard sandstone. His spearhead snapped off, and the man slid to the floor, stunned.

Amero turned toward the second warrior. If he was still unconscious, Amero could tie him up before —

Lip swollen and bleeding, the second nomad got up on one knee. He spied Amero, and met his shocked look with a glare of pure hatred.

“I’ll have your head, Arkuden!” He spat the name like a curse.

Lying on the hearth a few steps away was the copper bar Amero had made during the night. It was only a trifle longer than his arm and not edged like a sword, but it was better than nothing. Amero sidled around, drawing the angry nomad away from the hearth.

“I’ve no quarrel with you,” he said with as much calm as he could muster. “None at all. We welcomed you, shared our food with you —”

“Shut up! You’re as bad as the elves! You would make us into cattle! Men aren’t meant to grub the earth or squat under a pile of stones. A plainsman must be free, must roam!”

He held his spear loosely in his right hand, and without any warning, he swung it in a wide, flat arc. Amero felt something catch and rip on his chest. His goatskin vest hung in tatters, and red blood welled up from a long cut across his breastbone.

Though he was shocked by the suddenness of the injury, Amero retained enough presence of mind to use it to his advantage. Feigning greater harm than he’d actually suffered, he groaned and staggered to the hearth. With a dramatic gasp, he draped himself across the cold end of the fireplace and dug his fingers into the sand, closing them around the copper bar, now cool and hard.

The nomad approached and put down his spear in favor of a wide stone axe hanging from his belt. He raised the axe high.

Amero tore the copper bar out of the sand and presented the tip to his oncoming opponent. He meant only to use the bar to ward the fellow off. However, the shallow end of the trench had formed a narrow tip on the end of the bar, flat but sharp. The ax-wielding nomad ran right onto it, and it penetrated his chest, to their mutual astonishment.

The axe fell to the floor. Clutching the copper bar, the nomad tried to wrench it from his body. Amero released his end of the bar as though it had scorched him. As the color drained from the nomad’s face, so too did horror whiten Amero’s features. The nomad’s knees buckled, and he fell facedown, driving the bar through his chest and out his back.

Amero’s mouth hung open as stared at the fallen man and the widening pool of blood around him. Though he’d seen men die many times before, he’d never killed anyone in his life.

He continued to stare at the dead man. He tried to bring a hand up to wipe sweat from his brow, but the hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t control its motion. Amero slumped on the edge of the fireplace and clasped his hands together tightly to stop their violent trembling. A hitter taste filled the back of his throat. He swallowed hard.

His paralysis was ended by the other nomad. The man grunted and began to stir against the wall. Amero jumped upright as though pulled by a string. He cursed himself as a fool – sitting here trembling like a child when the lives of his people were at stake.

Amero kept his eyes away from the dead man and concentrated on the living warrior, who could still pose a threat to him. Taking up a length of cord from his fallen apparatus, he went over and bound the semiconscious man’s hands behind his back. He then dragged him to the hoist and looked out.

Smoke was rising from the village – more smoke than from ordinary campfires. Though close to the deafening waterfall, Amero’s experienced ear caught other sounds: screams, shouts, the sound of animals and people in distress. He shoved the inert nomad into the basket and climbed in beside him. Once the counterweight was free, he sank quickly to the brewing battle.

At the foot of the hoist, a terrified group of children and mothers had gathered. They greeted Amero’s descent with frantic cries, which faded when they saw his grim face and bleeding chest wound.

“Arkuden, save us!” some cried.

He said nothing, but pushed the nomad out of the basket and proceeded to shake him awake.

“You!” Amero said. “You want to live, yes? Tell me, are all your comrades attacking through Cedarsplit Gap?”

“I’ll tell you nothing,” answered the bloody-faced man blearily.

There was no time for lengthy interrogation. Amero gave the nomad over to the older boys and girls and bade them guard him.

“Where’s the dragon?” asked one of the women, clutching two babes in her arms. “He’s supposed to protect us!”

“He’s not here,” Amero said bluntly. “We’ll have to defend ourselves.”

He had the spear left behind by the nomad he’d killed. Shouldering it, Amero hurried down the hill to join the fray.

*

Nianki slept like a child that night. Despite the sundering of the band and the strange death Pa’alu had chosen for himself, she felt oddly at peace when the time came for rest. It reminded her of the aftermath of a storm. Once the lightning, thunder, and rain disperse, the land lies supine, washed clean by the torrent.

The only thing that still disturbed her was that Amero had learned her secret. Just when she had won a measure of control over her passions, his knowledge threatened to upset her fragile equilibrium. She couldn’t look at him without having to fight down the horrible urge to blush, stammer, and run away

She abandoned her stuffy tent and took her bedroll to the ledge overlooking the lake. She spread the ram’s skin, wool side up, and lay down in such a way that she could see the lake between her feet. The dark glimmer of the water, coupled with the steady drone of the falls, soon lulled her to sleep.

Her rest was peaceful until near dawn. She dreamed a shadow fell across her face. Opening her eyes, she saw someone bending over her. His face was in darkness. She wanted to turn away, but she was paralyzed. She couldn’t even close her eyes. She could only lie there helplessly as he came closer and closer, wafting an icy cold breeze before himself. Just before the man’s lips touched hers, she saw a metal pendant glittering at his throat. Who was he? Why was he so cold? A single name formed in her mind: Pa’alu.

She woke, flailing her arms in horror.

There was no one there. Nianki hunched over, breathing hard. She uttered a curse and wiped the sweat from her cheek and brow.

The rocky ledge beneath her vibrated. Her imaginary battle with the unknown man had rolled her off the ram’s skin. Now her feet and hips rested on bare rock. A rhythmic vibration ran from the rock and into her body. Curious, Nianki pressed her ear to the ledge and listened.

Vibrations that strong and regular could only be hoof-beats!

She was up in a flash, striding toward the remains of the nomad camp. It was easy to find Pakito’s tent. His feet stuck out the end, and intertwined with them were Samtu’s smaller, paler feet. Nianki kicked Pakito’s soles. He rumbled threateningly and flung back the flap of his tent.

“What? Who’s there?”

“On your feet, Pakito! There’s trouble!”

“Karada?” He slid Samtu aside. She whimpered a little and tried to cling to his broad chest. “What trouble, Karada?”

“Nacris has come back!”

That sank in, and the big warrior was on his feet in short order.

Nianki went from tent to tent waking her greatly diminished band. In moments, eighty-six sleepy nomads assembled by the dragon’s cairn. All were armed, but few were more than half-dressed.

“We haven’t got much time!” Nianki declared. “The first sixty, follow me. Targun, take the others and pound on every door in Arku-peli. It’s time the mudtoes fought for their own valley.”

Karada and sixty warriors stumbled through the dark village toward the cattle pens. It was plain that if the rebel nomads were coming back, they’d have to use one of the passes at the northern end of the valley, of which Cedar-split Gap was the closest. At the top of the sandy hill that stood between the pens and the village, Karada halted her comrades.

“What is it?” asked Pakito, too loudly.

“Shh! Listen!”

The gap, lined with stone on all sides, focused the sound of massed horses into the valley. They all strained to hear, poised on the crest of the hill. The rumble was unmistakable.

“What’ll we do?” whispered Pakito.

“They think they’ll surprise us, catch us asleep,” Nianki said. “Instead, we’ll catch them.”

She spread her meager force out along the hill, just below the crest and out of sight from the other side. The warriors went down on one knee and leaned their spears forward, bracing the butt against their feet. If the renegades came galloping over the hill, they’d run smack into a hedge of waiting spear points.

Behind them, Targun, Samtu, and the rest rattled every door in the village. Some of the villagers came out to see what the commotion was, but most bolted their doors and tried to get a glimpse of the situation from their upper windows. They were the first to catch sight of the oncoming attack.

The cry went up. “Riders! Riders!”

“Brace yourselves!” Nianki told her warriors.

Waving torches, the first wave of horsemen swept down on the unguarded cattle pens, their agile ponies jumping over the low stone wall. They threw ropes over the gate and tore it down, then screaming nomads got behind the herd and started driving them out of the pen.

“They’re stealing our oxen!” wailed a villager.

Pakito eyed his chief. Karada shook her head. The warriors held their positions.

To her consternation, a sizable body of riders simply rode around the hill, along the pebbled shoreline. There was nothing between them and the village. Nianki was about to order her line to fall back when a second wave of mounted renegades, some eighty strong, came cantering over the hill. It wasn’t quite the headlong charge she wanted, but several of the riders did run into the thorny line of spears. The renegades recoiled, and showered the nomads on foot with stones and thrown spears.

“Hold your place,” Nianki said. “If something comes your way, knock it down before it reaches you.”

Following her own order, she batted down a pair of light javelins hurled at her. The predawn darkness made it difficult to see every missile, and two of her warriors went down, scalps laid open by large stones.

“All right, on your feet!” she said. Nianki herself went to one of her fallen comrades and helped the injured woman stand. “Back to the houses – but slowly! Slowly!”

Under jeers and missiles, the slender line withdrew to the outermost ring of houses. Nianki gave the nomad she’d rescued to some householders, who took her inside. A few of the older villagers, who remembered fighting like this from their younger days, joined Nianki’s defenders. They were armed with whatever came to hand – wooden rakes, shovels, staffs. Not one in ten had a stone-headed weapon. With no other options to hand, Nianki put them quickly into the line.

The renegades who’d ridden down the shore of the lake turned in to the village and began throwing torches at the housetops. One by one, the roofs caught fire, the families running outside to escape the flames. Hatu’s riders let them go, racing inside to plunder the burning house before the roof fell in on everything. The terrified villagers ran to the foot of the falls, under the very mouth of the dragon’s cave, and prayed for the aid of their great protector.

Into this scene of terror came Amero. He directed those fleeing to take shelter by the falls and moved on against the screaming tide. A few horsemen were harassing the fleeing villagers, tripping them with their spear shafts or knocking them around with their horses. Furious, Amero stormed at the nearest bully. The laughing nomad was chivvying an old man and teenage girl, pushing them this way and that, not letting them get clear to run. Amero rushed the nomad from his blind side and thrust his spear into the man’s armpit. The horseman’s head snapped around, totally astonished. He fell from his horse. Freed of its rider, the animal galloped away from the battle.

Villagers surrounded Amero and praised him for his prowess and courage. Impatiently he said, “All I did was stab a man when he wasn’t looking! Go!”

A pair of riders bore down on Amero. He flattened himself against the side of the cairn just in time to dodge simultaneously thrown javelins. One came close enough to cut the waist of his trews.

For the second time in as many days, Amero found himself going up the side of the cairn. At least the horsemen couldn’t reach him up there. Rocks and axes flew thick and fast as he scaled the sloping stone side. A few thumped him with glancing blows. Wincing, he kept his grip and made it to the top.

The dark sky was lightening to blue. Keeping low to avoid missiles, Amero crept to the other edge of the cairn and saw the battle raging among the houses.

Nianki’s line had become a circle, bounded on all sides by stoutly defended houses. In the gaps between, her warriors and the armed villagers who remained fought tenaciously. The narrow lanes between the houses reduced the mobility of the renegades’ horses, and many dismounted to fight on foot.

From his perch, Amero spotted Nianki. Her closely-cropped hair made her easy to pick out as she stood in the center of the besieged circle. She directed the defense with cool words or fierce cries, as needed. Amero was deeply struck by this image of his sister. He’d seen her duel with Sessan, but he’d never before witnessed her commanding in battle.

A head bobbed up over the edge of the cairn, a long-haired nomad. With surprisingly little remorse, Amero put his foot in the man’s face and sent him tumbling to the ground. Two others tried to scale the platform and reach him, but he fended them off with his spear. Amero felt a growing confidence in his fighting abilities. Another quick glance over at his sister and he thought proudly that warrior blood did run in the family.

A heavy pall of smoke wafted between the cairn and Nianki’s position. Renegades on the outer edges of the battle were setting more and more roofs afire. When the flames reached the houses making up Nianki’s defenses, her line would fragment, and the defenders would be cut up and defeated piecemeal.

Scooting back to the center of the platform, Amero knelt and bowed his head. Concentrating as hard as he could, he formed a single thought.

Duranix! Help us, or we are lost!

The blazing roof on the house nearest the cairn – Konza’s home – collapsed. Inside, the wooden posts and flooring burned ferociously, tongues of flame spurting from the second-story windows. The heat was so powerful it drove Amero to the opposite end of the cairn. He fervently hoped no one was left inside the tanner’s house.

Pakito, fighting with the long-handled axe so dreaded by his foes, cleared a swath in front of him. Through the smoke he saw Amero crouching atop the dragon’s cairn.

“Karada!” he bellowed. “Isn’t that Arkuden?”

Nianki spared a glance in the direction he indicated. She saw Amero, wreathed in smoke and flames. Her heart seemed to stop; her instinct was to fly to his defense. Instead, she said, “We can’t reach him – there’s too many on us!”

“I can reach him,” Pakito said, planting his fists on his hips.

A fierce smile briefly lit her dirty face. “Do that, and you can name your own reward!”

The towering warrior jabbed a thick finger at his chief. “Remember those words, Karada!”

Gripping his axe, he strode past the line of smaller warriors – though all warriors were smaller than Pakito – into the lane between the rings of houses. At once he was set upon by a mounted renegade wearing a wood-and-leather breastplate: Tarkwa.

Tarkwa tried to ride Pakito down, but the big man was not about to be trampled under. He threw his left arm around the horse’s neck and brought his axe up in a wide swing. Tarkwa tried to parry with his spear, but the heavy axehead shattered the shaft and Tarkwa’s forearm as well. Howling in agony, Tarkwa tried to wrench his horse’s head loose from Pakito’s grip. The three of them – man, horse, and rider – skidded in a tight circle, slamming into the wall of a burning house.

Pakito found himself between the horse and the wall, for anyone else a bad spot. The giant warrior, however, drew his legs under himself, used the house for leverage, and threw the horse to the ground. Tarkwa rolled over and over in the sand, coming to a stop in the open doorway of a blazing house. Groggily, he sat up, just as the whole wooden interior of the house come crashing down on top of him.

Pakito moved on, swatting aside his former comrades as they tried to intercept him. After a few deadly swipes, they gave him wide berth, and he arrived at the cairn.

Coughing from the heavy smoke, Pakito called to Amero.

The young headman’s sooty, blood-streaked face appeared.

“Pakito!”

“I’ve come to take you to Karada.”

Such a declaration should have sounded ludicrous – battle and fire raged on all sides – but coming from Pakito, it was simply a statement of fact.

Amero half-slid, half-fell to the ground beside the giant. Pakito hauled him to his feet and propelled him forward.

Two of the six houses that formed Nianki’s defense line were on fire. The villagers inside had to climb out the rear windows to drop down among their neighbors and Nianki’s followers. By the time Pakito and Amero rejoined them, there were almost a hundred people in the shrinking circle.

Stumbling forward, Amero felt strong arms stop him. He looked up into Nianki’s smoke-streaked face.

“Bad day,” he said, taking her gently by the hand.

“Going to get worse,” she replied. “There’s a lot of people to kill.”

Even as she said so, a lull struck. The renegades backed out of spear-thrust range. Nianki’s defenders accepted the respite, some of them falling to their knees out of sheer exhaustion.

Hatu and Nacris rode forward into view.

“Karada! Arkuden! Can you hear me?” Hatu yelled.

“I hear only the screech of a vulture!” Nianki yelled back.

“What do you want?” Amero shouted.

“Lay down your weapons, and we’ll spare you.”

Nianki laughed derisively.

Hatu pointed over his shoulder at the falls. “There are a lot of helpless people over there,” he said. “It would be a shame to slaughter them all just to persuade you not to be stubborn.”

“Would he do that?” asked Amero, horrified.

“What do you think?” Nianki replied.

Amero started toward the mounted pair. “Then we must give up.”

Nianki gripped his arm in her hard hand. “If we stop fighting he’ll kill us all. He’ll not spare your villagers.”

“I can’t let my people die to prolong my own life!” he said, pulling free. He started for Hatu once more. Pakito blocked his way until a shake of Nianki’s head convinced the big nomad to stand aside. She turned away, unable to watch.

Amero walked slowly up to Hatu. “You tried to kill me once before,” he said. “Ten, eleven seasons ago. You and your brothers caught me here in this valley. You thought I was the dragon in disguise.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

“It’s no good,” Nacris said anxiously. “It’s no good unless Karada comes out, too!”

“She won’t,” Amero said.

“Stubborn wench. Well, at least you’ll be out of the way.”

Hatu laid the flat side of his spearhead on Amero’s shoulder. The point was just a finger’s breadth from his throat. Amero closed his eyes.

Cries of alarm rose from the renegades on the shore. Nacris turned her horse around and met a pair of riders galloping up the hill.

“What is it?” she said.

“Something coming up the lake, coming this way!” gasped one of the men.

“It’s big!” his companion added. “Very big!”

Big? Amero thought. Hah! At last!

He knocked Hatu’s spear point off his shoulder and dropped to the ground. Hatu cursed and raked down Amero’s back with his weapon. Amero felt the sting, but he kept scrambling. He scuttled under some other horses before rising to his feet and sprinting for Nianki.

The renegades milled about in confusion. Some charged Nianki and her warriors, while others formed a rough line on the shore and waited for whatever was coming down the lake. Hatu and Nacris rode to the water’s edge to see for themselves.

The normally chill water of the lake was boiling. Waves propelled by some submerged object were surging down the lake toward the falls. As the astonished nomads looked on, trout, bream, and pike churned the water ahead of the object, some so frantic they flung themselves out of the water to escape. But to escape what?

The fast-moving mound of water drew abreast of the nomads on shore and slowed. Some of the renegades backed their horses away until drawn back in line by sharp words from Nacris. Twenty paces from shore the water split apart as a long greenish-gold neck rose from the depths.

“Duranix! It’s Duranix!” Amero’s cry was taken up by all the villagers until it became a roaring chant.

Fully half the renegades quit the fight there and then. The ones facing Nianki’s line simply melted away. Laden with looted food and other goods, they mounted their horses and galloped for safety. Nianki and Amero led their singed, tired defenders away from the burning houses, drawing up in circle on open ground beyond the cairn.

Duranix opened his mouth wide and let loose a full-throated roar that loosened stones from the cliff tops. Taking in the scene with one sweep of his head, he swam past Hatu’s position and climbed ashore between the renegades and the unprotected mass of children and old people cowering beneath his cave. Water rolled off the burnished scales of his back in silver sheets. He still wore the leather brace on his injured wing.

“Amero, are you alive?” he roared over the heads of the closely packed renegades. Pakito and another man hoisted the headmen onto their shoulders. Amero waved his arms.

“I am!” he shouted, grinning madly.

“Good. Stay where you are.”

Duranix reared up on his hind legs and lumbered forward. Spears and javelins bounced off his scaly hide. Bronze-headed elven weapons pricked him, but he ignored them and darted his long neck into the mounted mass, knocking men and horses down with every sweep of his horned head.

The renegades disintegrated like snow on a hot rock. Duranix moved among them, hurling them this way and that with swipes of his claws. The ground was soon thick with the fallen, a few dead, most of the rest senseless. In the center of this tumult sat Hatu, calmly waiting. Beside him, a nervous Nacris fidgeted with her mount’s reins and obviously wished she were someplace else.

Duranix dropped down to all fours and extended his head toward Hatu. The nomad’s horse shied, but the one-eyed warrior controlled his animal skillfully.

“Why don’t you ride away?” Duranix asked.

“I don’t care to be struck down from behind,” said Hatu.

“That’s human thinking for you – as if it matters from what direction a blow falls!”

“An honorable man fights facing his enemy.”

The dragon grinned, and Hatu’s horse shied again as the nomad squeezed its sides convulsively with his legs. “Ah, you expect me to fight like a man?” Duranix hissed.

“I expect you’ll fight like the evil beast you are!”

In a motion faster than a snake striking, Duranix seized Nacris in his mouth. She screamed and struggled, but he raised her high in the air and with a single sideways shake of his head, tossed her into the center of the lake. She screamed all the way until she hit the water.

Hatu swallowed hard. “Nacris is a good swimmer,” he said, but his voice was unsteady.

“How unfortunate,” Duranix replied.

Few were the men who could look up into an angry dragon’s face and not give way to panic, yet Hatu stood his ground. For all his treachery, the one-eyed plainsman’s courage inspired in Amero grudging respect.

“Come on,” said Hatu, drawing an elven sword from his belt. “Let us fight.”

“Absurd,” Duranix replied. “If fighting a bull, should I lower my head and bang horns with him?” He advanced a step.

In his free hand Hatu held a ram’s horn. He raised it to his lips.

Amero had a sudden, shocking insight. Two nomads had entered the cave to kill him at the beginning of the fight. There could be others —

“Duranix!” he shouted. “Beware! There are men on the cliffs above you!”

Hatu blew a single bleating note on the horn. Duranix reached out a claw to snatch Hatu off his horse, but the plainsman evaded his grasp. Just then, a boulder the size of a full-grown ox slammed into the sand steps away from the dragon. Villagers and nomads alike shouted in surprise.

High up, Hatu’s men labored to lever another boulder off the cliff. Amero shaded his eyes, but the morning sun was behind the men, and he couldn’t make out how many there were. Another huge slab of sandstone smashed to the ground. It shattered into many pieces, pelting Duranix. He ducked his head under the barrage. While he was distracted, Hatu galloped away with the last of his followers.

Instead of following them, Duranix did a bold thing. He slithered with serpentine grace to the foot of the cliff, dodging a third boulder. Fixing his foreclaws in the relatively soft sandstone of the cliff face, he began to climb.

Heedless of the danger from falling rocks, Amero ran to where Duranix was picking his way up.

“Come back!” he shouted. “You can’t dodge them if you’re clinging to the cliff!”

“How many boulders can they have?” replied the dragon coolly. A fourth missile, this time a smaller, harder slab of slate, whistled down. It struck Duranix a glancing blow to the right shoulder. Scales curled up under the impact, and bluish-green blood oozed from the wound.

Furious at the rebels and afraid for his friend, Amero grabbed Duranix’s barbed tail just as it left the ground. The dragon paused and looked down at him.

“Let go, Amero. This is no place for pets.”

“I’m not a pet!” was the young man’s angry reply as he clung to the muscular tail.

“It’s no place for a friend, either.”

“I can watch out for falling rocks! Shut up and climb!”

Without another word or backward glance, Duranix started up the cliff. He didn’t have to hunt for handholds or toeholds; his powerful claws gouged their own as he went. Faster and faster he ascended, until he was racing upward like a lizard on a canyon wall. Yet he was careful to keep his long tail as motionless as possible, to avoid injuring the foolish human clinging to it.

Amero held on for dear life. In spite of his brave words to the dragon, he wasn’t able to keep watch for falling rock – his eyes were tightly shut. He did feel the powerful surge of the dragon’s muscles as Duranix scrambled sideways to avoid being hit. At last Duranix’s vertical tail lifted to horizontal, and Amero knew they’d made it to the top.

By the time he’d let go of the dragon’s tail, Amero saw that Duranix had slain three of Hatu’s men. The dragon sprang forward a full ten paces and caught one man as he was running away. With a sideways flick of his claw, Duranix hurled the luckless nomad over the cliff.

“Stop!” Amero cried. “Don’t kill any more, please!”

“They’re vermin. They’ll make trouble if you let them go.”

“They’re men! They can learn from their mistakes!”

Duranix gave a disgusted snort, but he stopped. The remaining four renegades took the opportunity to race for their horses. They galloped away.

“You’re too forgiving,” said the dragon, resting on his haunches. He growled a bit as he bent his neck to examine his bruised shoulder.

The battle was over. Amero found himself shaking uncontrollably. He slumped heavily to the ground and toppled over on his side. The wounds on his chest and back were shallow, but very painful. As his eyes closed, he felt the dragon’s cool metallic claws close gently around him.

“Lie still,” rumbled Duranix. “I will take you home.”

Chapter 21

A day passed, then another, then five, and the renegades did not return. Nianki posted lookouts on the clifftops and across the lake to watch for trouble, but it seemed that Nacris, Hatu, and their followers had been defeated.

Though his wounds were not deep, Amero contracted a fever, and for many days his survival was in question. To provide the best care for him, a large open shelter was raised near the burned houses, and the people of Yala-tene took turns nursing him. While Amero was ill, his authority fell quite naturally to Nianki. No one disputed her orders now. The villagers, who’d seen her fight for them, obeyed her without question.

For Amero, the days passed like a single bad night’s sleep. At intervals he would open his eyes – it was daylight and someone was feeding him broth; it was night and someone else was smearing larchit on his wounds. After these brief moments of wakefulness, he would lapse back into a deep slumber.

Once, he heard people around him talking, and he recognized Nianki’s voice.

“Where did you try today?”

“South, in the lower valleys,” answered a different voice. “There was no sign.”

“If I know him, he’ll go back to familiar territory, the land of his ancestors.”

“And where would that be?”

“North,” Nianki replied. “The north plain, close to the mountains.”

“Then that’s where I’ll look.”

The voices ceased. After what seemed like only a moment, he heard some scraping noises, and the sound of water being poured. Cool dampness caressed his lips, chin, and forehead. He opened his eyes.

“Nianki.” His voice was a croak.

She dipped a scrap of chamois in the clay basin and squeezed out the excess. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Dry. Water?”

She lifted a hollowed gourd to his lips, using her other hand to support his head. The small sip of water he managed to swallow tasted wonderful.

“Who was just here?” he asked once he was resting again. “No one.”

“I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

She smiled. “You were dreaming again. You’ve been doing that a lot. You talk when you’re asleep, did you know that?”

“No.”

She gently wiped his neck and shoulders and rinsed the chamois again. He looked past her. His bleary gaze picked out movement – villagers moving to and fro, rebuilding their burned houses.

“How many people did we lose?” he asked.

“Twenty-three of the village, eighteen of my people.”

So many. He closed his burning eyes. “How is Duranix?”

“Arrogant as ever. He and Pakito and that old man Konza took off after the oxen Hatu’s riders chased away. Your dragon still can’t fly, but his senses are keener than a falcon’s, so I guess he’ll be helpful tracking the wayward beasts.”

He smelled the sourness of larchit paste. Nianki had peeled off the dressing of damp jenja leaves to apply a fresh layer of soothing paste to his chest wound. His eyelids felt weighed down by exhaustion. Fighting against the darkness that pulled at him, Amero yawned and said, “And how do you feel, Nianki?”

“I wasn’t injured.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She continued her ministrations, loading a twig with a gob of larchit paste. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him calmly. “Ever. Stop asking questions and get well.”

“Yes, Karada.” He sighed and allowed sleep to claim him once more.

*

Amero’s fever waxed and waned. On one of his good days, he was visited by Pakito. The giant warrior lifted Amero as though he were a small child and carried him outside.

The villagers and Nianki’s loyal nomads had formed a long human chain from the cliffs to the dragon’s cairn. Stones came down the line, passing from one pair of hands to the next until they reached the ceremonial rock pile. With a final heave, some of the sturdier nomads added the new stones to the pile. They must have been laboring for quite a while, Amero realized, for the cairn had almost doubled in length and width.

Reclining rather stiffly in Pakito’s mighty arms, Amero asked what was going on. Nianki, who had joined them, explained how the villagers needed some place to put the rubble from their ruined houses. At first they hauled the burned and broken rocks to the lake, then someone – no one could recall exactly who – suggested adding the rubble to the dragon’s altar. The idea took hold, and everyone joined in to complete the task.

“The dragon saved us, at peril to his own life,” explained Pakito. “We’re doing this to honor him, and you.”

“Where is Duranix?” asked Amero. It felt as though he hadn’t seen his friend in weeks.

“Sleeping off dinner,” Nianki said.

They watched the work in silence for a while. The cairn grew ever larger.

“The way they feel now,” Nianki said. “They’d pull down the mountain and throw it all on the pile, if it pleased the dragon.”

*

A chill mist filled the valley one night, and the next morning every stone and tree limb in the valley was coated with frost. The highest crags of the mountains turned white, and when the wind blew down from the heights, it brought the bite of winter with it.

The day Amero walked without a staff was the same day Duranix discarded his wing brace. Man and dragon faced each other on the sandy spit below the falls.

“Are you sure you don’t want your stick?” teased Duranix.

Amero raised his thin arms over his head and flapped them up and down. “Are you sure you don’t want your brace?”

The dragon spread his long, leathery wings and mirrored his friend’s movement, raising a cloud of grit. “No more braces for me,” he declared. “Today I fly!”

He launched himself into the air, wings flapping slowly. He drifted hack to the sand. Launching himself again, and working harder this time, he gained height. His long neck stood straight out from the strain, but he climbed upward in a wide spiral, testing his newly healed wing. It was exactly ninety days since he’d broken it.

Nianki appeared, draped in a mantle of white wolf fur. She watched Duranix disappear into the low clouds that roofed the valley. He roared with delight, and the eerie sound reverberated down the lake, causing people on both shores to look up from their work.

“Someone’s happy,” said Nianki dryly.

“Yes, me!” Amero turned in a little circle, showing her he wasn’t supported by anything. “See? I’m walking on my own.”

“It’s about time,” she replied tartly. “I was about to take Targun’s advice and shorten your walking stick a little bit each day. He figured you’d give it up when you discovered you were bent double.”

“Ha, thanks!”

Nianki turned away, and he followed her. They strolled down the water’s edge together.

“How goes the planting?” he asked. It was past time for the winter crops to go in, but so much work had been needed to repair houses and pens in the village, the second planting was late.

“It goes. The ground seems too cold and hard for anything to grow.”

“That’s all right. If anyone can grow vegetables through ice, it’s Jenla.”

Nianki nodded. “Smart woman. She should’ve been a nomad.”

They reached the southern end of the village. Piles of loose stones filled the circular holes where houses had once stood. These houses on the periphery had been demolished and their undamaged materials salvaged to repair the other homes. Most of the people who lived in them had perished in the fight.

“I’ve been thinking —” Amero began.

“Oh, not again.”

He gave her a mock glare, then continued. “We’ve relied too much on Duranix to protect us. He is, as he will tell you himself, only one dragon. Yala-tene needs to be a safe haven, a stronghold that can survive even if Duranix is away for ten days or more. What we need is not a series of strong, individual houses, but a way to defend all the houses at once.”

The chill wind had strengthened. It whistled around her ears, as Nianki raised the white fur hood of her cloak. “How would you do that?” she asked, not really interested.

“As we do the cattle: put all the little houses into one big house!”

That caught her attention. She stopped and regarded him skeptically. “You want to build a house large enough to hold every family in Arku-peli? That’s mad! Even if you could, all those people living together wouldn’t last. They’d kill each other!”

Amero went to the stump of a wall, carefully lowering himself onto it. Many weeks of illness had left him with little stamina.

“I’m not talking about building a whole house to cover all the others, though that would be quite a feat.” He looked up at the overcast sky, a far-off expression on his face.

She sighed impatiently. “Get to the point, will you?”

“Sorry,” he said, looking at her again. He gestured with his hands, making a circle around himself and continued. “A wall, Nianki. We can build a wall around the village. That would keep any marauders out.”

She folded her arms. “You want to build a wall around the entire village?” He nodded. “Sounds like a waste of sweat and stone to me. All you really need is a hundred stout fighters to defend the place.”

“Every man and woman in Yala-tene could be trained to fight,” he countered. “Spears would be provided to every family, to be kept at home for use when there’s trouble.”

“All very well, but pairing off your mudtoes and having them whack each other a few times doesn’t make them warriors.”

“That’s where you come in.”

Nianki scoffing expression froze. “Me?”

“I want you to train them – teach them to fight like your best warriors. With you to train and lead them, Yala-tene will never have anything to fear.”

She leaned against the wall of the fallen house, feeling the cold stones press against her knees.

“Well?” he said.

A tiny flake of white floated down and came to rest on the back of Nianki’s hand. For an instant, the perfect miniature net of feathery ice crystals stood out clearly against her deeply tanned skin. Then, warmed by her body, the flake vanished.

“Snow,” she said. Nianki lifted her hooded face to the sky. More snowflakes were coming down now, but only a few.

“Nianki, will you stay and teach the people of Yala-tene how to defend themselves?” asked Amero insistently.

“No.”

He was taken aback. “No?”

“I’ve stayed too long as it is. It’s time for Karada’s band to depart.”

So saying, she stepped over the broken length of wall and strode quickly away. Amero opened his mouth to call to her, but she was out of sight before he thought what to say.

There was a rush of wind, and Duranix alighted on a patch of nearby open ground. He shook his head from side to side, sending a tinkling cascade of ice crystals to the ground. He flapped his wings before furling them, shedding more ice and snow in the process.

“I hate winter,” he declared, “but I love it that I can fly again.”

Amero said nothing. He was still looking off toward where Nianki had vanished.

Duranix used his foreclaws to preen slush and water from his horns and face. “Why so morose, Amero?” he said. “You’re walking, aren’t you? Or have your legs failed you? Is that why you’re sitting out here in the cold by yourself?”

Amero stood – a bit wobbly, but upright – and said, “Nianki won’t stay. I asked her to train the villagers to fight, but she won’t do it. In fact, I think she may be leaving today!”

Duranix leaned down to his far smaller friend. The brazen nail of one clawed digit tapped the crown of Amero’s head.

“Is there anything in there but bone?” he asked. Angrily, Amero brushed the claw away. Duranix added, “You astonish me, human. You asked her to do the one thing she can’t do and still respect herself. Don’t you realize that?”

“Well, no. I thought she was over the effect of the amulet.”

Duranix rolled his huge eyes. He forced himself to adopt a patient tone. “I don’t know if she’ll ever be ‘over it.’ Someone else will have to come along and win her heart.” He drew himself upright. “Not an easy prize.”

Together they walked to the enlarged altar. The villagers, with the help of Nianki’s band, had nearly tripled its size. Where once it had been a rectangular pile, it was now square, and over twenty paces to a side. When the rocks had kept tumbling down the sides, someone had thought to use the gray mud from the lake bed to hold the rocks in place. Soon the all the outer layer of rocks were stuck together with mud, which coupled with the yellowish sandstone, lent the altar a distinctly speckled appearance.

Konza and his eldest son, Tiphan, hailed Amero and the dragon as they neared the altar. They were an odd-looking pair. Tiphan had fashioned coats for his father and himself from cast-off bronze dragon scales. He had punched holes in the upper edge of the scales and, using hide strips, attached them in overlapping layers to two long cloaks. Though their demeanors were grave, both men clanked as they walked, and Duranix found the effect comical.

“They look like a pair of beetles,” Duranix observed in a low voice. Amero had to stifle a laugh; the description was apt.

“You’re walking again, Arkuden? That’s excellent,” Konza said. Tiphan, only sixteen, stood to one side looking grave. It was an expression difficult to maintain since Duranix kept exhaling gently on him, just to make his coat of scales clatter in the resulting breeze.

“Thank you, Konza,” Amero said, studiously ignoring the dragon’s actions. “I want to get back to work as soon as possible. I have many plans to discuss with you and the other elders —”

“There are no other elders,” Tiphan said.

“What?”

“What my son means is, while you were ill, the surviving fathers and mothers of the village met and chose me to be their representative to you and our great protector.” Konza smiled widely. “We all felt the old way of council meetings and arguments was too slow and awkward to deal with the dangers of this new life of ours. From now on, you can tell me what you want done, and I will tell the villagers.”

Amero was astonished. “Tell you? But I don’t want to —”

Duranix unfolded one wing just enough so that it came between Amero and Konza. “Arkuden shouldn’t be out in this weather,” Duranix announced grandly. “He’s still recovering. He’ll return shortly.”

Amero couldn’t reply with a mass of wing pressed against his face, but before he could free himself, Duranix whisked him into one claw and spread his wings to their fullest extent.

Without further warning, the dragon launched himself into the air, leaving Konza and Tiphan staring upward in awe and not a little confusion.

When they were aloft and heading for the cavern, Amero demanded, “What was that? And since when do you call me Arkuden?’”

Duranix ducked through the waterfall and landed on the cave floor. He used his wings skillfully to shield Amero, so not a drop got on him. The dragon threw several logs on the hearth and fanned the faint coals with his breath. Watching Duranix’s cheeks bulge as he blew stirred an idea in Amero’s agile mind – but he shook his head to clear his thoughts and returned to the issue at hand.

“What do they mean, I’ll tell them what to do? I wouldn’t feel right telling people twice my age what to do.”

“You’re so conservative,” chided Duranix, basking in the warmth of the blazing fire. “When this settlement began, you were just thirteen years old. None of the elders wanted to listen to you then, but they did, mostly because they feared me. Now you’re twenty-four. Many of the fathers and mothers who originally followed you here from the plains are gone. The younger ones have only known Yala-tene and you, and now they want you to lead them.” Duranix brought his tail around closer to the fire to warm it. “I think you should.”

“How can I? What if I make mistakes? People’s lives are at stake!”

“When Hatu came back to destroy the village, you fought back, even killed people. Why?”

“To save those I care about,” he replied.

“So!”

The fire crackled loudly. The hot yellow flames highlighted Amero’s drawn face, making the lines of worry etched in his countenance seem even deeper. The silence between them stretched on. Amero kicked at some pebbles.

“I guess I can try it Konza’s way. I’ll work hard, and find others to guide and counsel me,” he said finally.

“Your dedication is almost dragonlike,” Duranix replied.

Amero sat down on the hard stone floor and stretched out his tired legs. Despite the burden being placed on his shoulders, and the imminent departure of his sister, he couldn’t stop smiling. He knew the dragon had just paid him the ultimate compliment.

*

It took two days for Nianki’s band to pack their gear. Every inhabitant of Yala-tene insisted on providing the nomads with enough provisions to get them to the northern plains, where there would still be abundant game to hunt. In addition to their remaining fifty-three horses, Nianki’s band was given six tamed wolves, ten oxen, and nineteen goats. The oxen were harnessed to five large travois laden with dried fruit, vegetables, and clay jugs of Hulami’s best wine.

More surprising was the fact that ten villagers chose to go with Nianki. They were all young men and women whose families had perished in the battle. Starting anew in the valley of the falls was too painful for them, and they had asked to be taken into Karada’s band.

“You are welcome,” she told them, “though we have no horses for you.”

Young Valka, grandson of Amero’s old friend of the same name, said, “It’s as well. We don’t know how to ride your animals.” He grinned and added, “Yet!”

It was on a clear, cold day that Nianki formed her people at the foot of Amero’s bridge. The snow of two days past was only a light dusting, a harbinger of heavier falls to come. The trees and houses were covered with silver frost, and a blanket of mist rose from the lake.

Duranix joined the crowd of villagers who gathered to see the nomads off. He was in human shape, the first time he’d taken the form since breaking his wing. Konza and Tiphan were there in their coats of scales, though beneath them they wore furs to keep out the chill.

“Do you have enough food to get you past the Plains River?” asked Amero, looking over the heavily loaded travois.

“If we had any more, the oxen couldn’t drag it,” Nianki said. “Be at ease, brother. You’ve done right by us. More than right.”

Pakito was to lead the nomads who traveled on foot. With much genial shouting, the amiable giant stirred his small band into motion. There were many farewells as the villagers who had joined Karada’s band marched away, their tidy clothes and short hair marking them as different from their long-haired nomad cousins.

Samtu rode up in answer to Nianki’s call. Her belly was beginning to swell with Pakito’s child. She had been the object of much teasing, as nomads and villagers alike warned her that if the baby took after its father, she had a lot more swelling yet to do.

“Take the riders out,” Nianki told her. “Once across the river, split into two columns. I want one to ride on each side of the walkers, to shield them.”

Samtu nodded. “What track shall we follow, Karada?” she asked.

“Follow the river. It will lead us where we want to go.”

Samtu whistled through her teeth, and the riders mounted their horses. Only Targun remained behind with Nianki.

“Well, dragon, you’ll have more peace in your valley from now on,” she said, leaning down from horseback to offer her hand to Duranix.

He clasped her hand. “I doubt it, Karada. Many people know about the valley of the lake now, including all the nomads who fled the fight Nacris lost. And there’s Vedvedsica. He was here the night of the Moonmeet feast, prowling around for some reason.”

Duranix had finally told Nianki that Vedvedsica was the one who’d fashioned the amulet for Pa’alu. Now, at his mention of the cleric’s name, she frowned, recalling flashes of her bizarre dream about the city of elves. Then Targun, sitting on a horse by his chief, spoke, and she banished the images with a shake of her head.

“Do you think Silvanos will move against you?” Targun asked.

“I don’t think so. There’s little for him to gain here,” Duranix said. “The elves will keep an eye on us though, I’m certain.”

“I wish we knew happened to Nacris and that one-eyed wolf, Hatu,” Amero said. “They worry me more than the elves.”

Duranix arched one eyebrow and touched a finger to his forehead. From behind his back, he produced a small bundle, wrapped in a scrap of leather, and gave it to Nianki. She queried him with a look.

“A gift,” he said. “To be opened once you’re away from Yala-tene.”

With that, his human face actually reddened slightly. He bade them good-bye and walked away. The rest of the villagers drifted away as well, until only Targun, Nianki, and Amero were left by the foot of the bridge.

“Go ahead, Targun,” she said. “Watch after Samtu, will you? She looked like she might lose her breakfast at any moment.”

“Aye, Karada.” The elder plainsman gave Amero a silent, smiling nod and rode away.

Finally, it was just the two of them: Nianki on horseback, her white wolfs fur robe rippling in the breeze, and Amero, his leggings and sleeves stained with the soot of his hearth.

“Will you ever return?” he asked quietly.

“The world is a big place,” she told him. “When I’ve ridden all the way round it, I may get back here.”

“Might take a long time.”

“I think it will.” Nianki leaned down with her hand out, as she had done to Duranix. “You’re a good brother, Amero. Oto and Kinar would be pleased.”

He took her cold, callused hand. The mention of their parents brought a lump to his throat. He swallowed hard, and said hoarsely, “There is always a place at my fire for you, Nianki.”

She abruptly pulled free and slapped her horse’s neck with the reins. She cantered across the bridge,. which swayed from side to side as they went. Nianki soon caught up to Targun and took her place beside him. Amero leaned against the last tall piling of the bridge and watched the nomads until they disappeared around the bend of the river.

Though he watched until she was lost from sight, Nianki never looked back.

*

Duranix, still in human form, found Amero hunched over the hearth that evening. He seemed to be shaking gently, rocking back and forth.

The disguised dragon put an awkward hand on Amero’s shoulder. “It will be all right.”

His friend raised his head. He hadn’t been shaking with grief as Duranix had thought, he’d been busy blowing on a bed of glowing coals.

Accustomed as he was to Amero’s strange ways, Duranix still had to ask, “Why are you doing that?”

“It makes them hotter,” he announced triumphantly. “I think I’ve found a way to melt bronze at last!”

Amero, Duranix decided, would be fine.

*

The nomads camped ten leagues from Yala-tene that night, not quite on the open plain but sheltered from the icy night wind by a pair of low hills. Tents were pitched, and the old rhythm of the wandering life slowly resumed. They could feel it inside, like the pulse of a second heart.

The stars were out, so numerous and so bright Nianki could see all the way back to the snow-clad mountains, or ahead to the flat, endless savanna. The Winged Serpent, the sign of Pala, was in his place in the heavens, as was Matat, the stormbird.

Dragon, Nianki corrected herself. Matat was a dragon. Like Duranix.

Alone by a campfire, she opened the leather-wrapped gift Duranix had given her. When she saw what was in it, she smiled briefly and tossed the whole bundle onto the burning wood.

Flames slowly ate into the square of oiled leather, curling around the traitor Hatu’s black eyepatch. Duranix’s parting gift to her was a little peace of mind about the safety of her brother and his people.

In a flicker of silent orange flame, the gift turned to ash.

Brother of the Dragon

(ca. 3995 PC)

Chapter 1

Flames roared into the chill blue sky. Jetting from every fissure in the stone wall, they combined in the open air into a great eruption of fire. Loose rocks and a few unfortunate men were hurled skyward, and a loud boom, deeper than thunder, reverberated off the walls of the valley. The fireball blossomed like a monstrous flower and quickly burned out. In its wake came a column of gray smoke, then nothing.

Amero opened his eyes. For a moment he was dazed, seeing blue sky above him instead of the foundry roof. His ears rang. Lifting his head, he saw he lay on the ground six paces from the foundry door. Inside the shattered building, all was smoke and flickering flames. His workmen staggered to and fro, stamping on smoldering embers.

“Arkuden! Your arm!”

Dully Amero looked down and saw his left sleeve was on fire. The little flame was creeping up his arm. Daran, the apprentice who’d warned him, slapped at the burning material, extinguishing the fire.

“Are you well, Arkuden? Say something!” The boy’s eyes were ringed with heavy smudges of black soot.

The pain in his arm brought Amero to his senses. “I’m all right,” he said hoarsely.

“What happened? I was carrying wood for the firebox, but before I could unload it – whuff! And I was out here!”

“Sounds like the journey I made. Go see if anyone else is hurt.” The apprentice got up and headed to the workshop door. Amero pulled himself to his feet and called, “Count heads, Daran! I want to know if anyone’s missing!”

“Aye, Arkuden!”

Dusting soot from his hide trews, Amero followed the boy inside.

The foundry was a shambles. Through the swirling smoke, Amero saw his new fire-feeder was wrecked. The wood-and-leather fan, powered by the legs of six sturdy apprentices, had been too successful. Too much air had been forced into the firebox, causing it to burst.

He found a man sprawled on the floor, out cold. It was Huru, his shopmaster. Hauling the unconscious man to his feet, Amero draped Huru’s arm over his own shoulders. He was heading to the door when the timbers in the roof gave way, sending a shower of burning splinters to the floor.

“Everyone out!” Amero shouted. “Get outside now!”

The stony beach below the foundry quickly filled with coughing, bleeding, smoke-blackened men. The early morning air was cold, and they shivered in the short kilts that were the usual attire inside the sweltering workshop. A few sat on the damp, sandy ground and nursed burns or bruises.

Amero called for water. The first dipper he gave to Huru, and the cold liquid brought the shopmaster’s dark eyes fluttering open.

“Arkuden... who threw the thunderbolt?” he grunted.

“I guess I did,” Amero said ruefully. “The furnace blew back in our faces.”

A head count showed everyone had made it out. One of the copper pourers, Unar by name, had the most severe injury. Hit in the eye by a flying stone chip, half his face was bloodied. Amero sent him to a healer with an apprentice to lead him by the hand. The rest of the workers were in reasonably good shape, though shaken by the blast.

Passersby stopped and stared at the sooty crew and the shattered remains of the foundry. The people of Yala-tene were accustomed to their chiefs odd ways, but this was a novel sight.

Once he was sure his men were all right, Amero went inside again. The foundry roof was completely wrecked. Sunlight pierced the drifting dust and smoke in a hundred narrow beams. Shards of gray roofing slate littered the floor. Charred wood, still smoking, lay everywhere.

Amero went to the crucible – a great stone pot cut from a single block of granite. Rough ingots of copper and tin were visible inside. Though the heat had fused them in numerous spots, they were not melted together. After all the fire and fury, his dream of making bronze was still unfulfilled.

“It’s a wonder we weren’t all killed.” Amero turned to see

Huru standing in the doorway. The shopmaster added, “What do we do now?”

Amero kicked a still-glowing ember with his bark sandals. “Start again,” he said. “Bronze won’t make itself. We’ll have to fix the workshop first, then build another fire-feeder.” He grimaced. “A smaller one, this time.”

Back outside, they found the workmen being tended by a dozen young men and women dressed in white doeskin robes. The well-scrubbed youths moved among the sooty men, administering cool water and dabbing their cuts and burns with pads of soft, boiled moss.

Amero frowned. He knew he ought to be grateful for the help, but he wasn’t. This help came with an unpleasant price.

“Greetings, Arkuden! Praise the dragon you are well,” said Mara, one of the white-robed youths.

“Why are you here?” he said. “I didn’t ask for help.”

“I sent them.”

Standing on the gravel path was Tiphan, son of Konza, leader of the Sensarku, the Servers of the Dragon. Not yet thirty, Tiphan was tall and sharp-faced, with shoulder-length blond hair and a beardless chin. The young people were his followers. Amero clenched his hands into fists then forced himself to relax.

“Greetings, young Tiphan,” he said, brushing stone chips from his short brown beard. “What brings you to my humble workshop?”

“I was on my way to the Offertory when I saw a column of fire in the sky,” Tiphan said. Though young, he had a deep, resonant voice. “My first thought was that the Great Protector was paying us a visit.”

“Duranix isn’t here,” Amero said bluntly.

Tiphan looked over the chaotic scene and dusted his hands lightly together. “I see that now. The fire was your doing, Arkuden?”

“An accident,” Amero said. “We have a lot of repairs to do, so if you would take your people away...”

“As you wish, Arkuden.” Tiphan clapped his hands, and the Sensarku ceased their ministrations and fell into line behind their leader. Huru cajoled his men to their feet, and the foundry workers filed back to the ruined workshop.

“Your efforts to make bronze have not yielded much success,” Tiphan said. “How long have you been trying, Arkuden? Ten years?”

“Twelve.”

“Perhaps men weren’t meant to make bronze. It is, after all, the hide of our Protector.”

“The elves have been making bronze for generations,” Amero observed.

“Elves are not men,” Tiphan countered.

Amero bit back a sarcastic reply, saying mildly, “You’ll excuse me, Tiphan. I have much to do, and I don’t want to keep you from your own work.”

“The fields, Tosen...?” said Mara, standing close behind Tiphan. Tosen was a term of respect meaning “First Servant.”

The young Sensarku leader nodded. “My father and I are going to view the planting of new seedlings in the orchard. The dragon has given us word that winter is over.”

Amero folded his scratched and bruised arms. “Planting, now? It’s too early. The seedlings will perish in the cold.”

“It is the Protector’s word.”

“Duranix is not a weather seer.”

“What the Protector says must be so,” said Mara. Tiphan nodded approvingly.

Amero looked at the proud, serene faces behind Tiphan. How firmly they believed their leader’s words! He envied the haughty Sensarku chief. It must be pleasant to have such unshakable confidence, to inspire such unquestioning loyalty.

Four burly men in hide shirts and fur leggings arrived, bearing Tiphan’s father, Konza, in a litter. Behind them came four more bearers with an empty chair for his son.

“Greetings, Amero!” said Konza with a wave. In his early life, he’d been a tanner, and his arms were stained red-brown up to the elbows from years of working hides. Now he was nearly sixty, and his gray hair hung in limp strands around his deeply lined face.

“Long life and health to you, Konza,” Amero replied. He meant every word. Konza, though a bit foolish, was a good-hearted friend. He was also a valuable check on his son’s ambitions.

For twelve years, Tiphan and his father had taken sole responsibility for feeding the dragon. In the old days, any hunter in the valley could offer up part of his catch to Duranix in gratitude for his protection. Konza had started the practice of choosing only the finest beasts for the dragon’s meal. It was only fitting the dragon should get the best, Konza said. It demonstrated how much he was revered by the people he guarded.

Tiphan refined the procedure further. Believing the dragon shouldn’t have to snatch his meals off a pile of dirty stones, the young man began scrubbing the dragon’s cairn himself. Other young men of the village sought to share the honor of serving the dragon, so he gradually gave over the onerous cleaning duties to them. Younger boys and girls learned to wash the sacrificial animals, and later, the enclosure around the cairn itself.

Father and son received no direct encouragement from Duranix for their efforts. The dragon seldom spoke to anyone but Amero, but where once he’d merely swooped down and carried off a raw carcass, he now perched atop the high wall surrounding the cairn and ate the cooked offering in full view of the reverent youths below. Everyone took this to mean the dragon was pleased by their labors, and over time the Sensarku grew in size and prestige.

The four bearers lowered their poles, bringing the empty chair to ground level. As Tiphan climbed in, Konza said to Amero, “We’re off to the orchards.”

“So your son said. Have a look at the bridge as you cross it, will you? The winter’s been hard. I hope the supports aren’t stretched or rotted.” The vine-and-plank bridge across the river that fed into the lake was one of Amero’s early projects. Anyone crossing the river had to use the bridge or pole over on a raft. The current was too swift to swim safely.

“Yes, the bridge,” Tiphan said, signaling his bearers to go. “One of your useful creations.”

Before Amero could retort, the bearers took the two men away, followed by smiling acolytes. More than a little angry, Amero left Huru to supervise the cleanup and stalked away.

He crossed the spray-drenched beach below the waterfall that dominated the valley and gave its name to the Lake of the Falls. The sheer cliff face had just one visible opening on the north side of the falls. A complicated tower of timber and vines rose from the ground to the hole. Amero went to the base of the log tower and pulled hard on a vine rope. The apparatus squeaked, and a large rattan basket sank slowly toward him. This hoist was another of his early inventions.

He climbed in and started the counterweight down. As he rose, the whole village of Yala-tene was visible, spread out beneath him.

The settlement had grown against the base of the cliffs like a cluster of toadstools on an oak stump. In the twenty-two years since its founding, it had changed from a random collection of tents and lean-tos to a permanent town of eleven hundred souls. Narrow dirt streets snaked between the field-stone houses (some of which had as many as four floors), and smoke curled up from over six hundred chimneys.

Twenty-two years, Amero mused. A lifetime by nomad standards – time enough to grow up, mate, and raise children.

Instead of children, Amero had raised a village under the watchful eye of his friend, the bronze dragon Duranix. The dragon dwelt in a cave hollowed out of the cliff face behind the waterfall, and though he had little to do with the daily lives of the villagers, Duranix remained Amero’s mentor.

Though Duranix stood ready to defend the people of Yala-tene from dangers natural and unnatural, he often left the valley for days or weeks at a time, keeping a watchful eye on the land he claimed as his domain. His absence at the time of a nomad attack twelve years earlier had convinced Amero that a more reliable defense for the village was needed. From this was born his notion of a protective wall.

Curving out from the mountain north and south of the village was the great stone wall. The wall didn’t look imposing from this height, but at ground level it was a different story. Four-fifths of the wall around Yala-tene had been completed, and the last gap, a fifty-pace stretch facing the lake, would be finished after the next harvest.

Work on the stout barrier was done mainly in the winter, when fields were fallow and the herds were kept shut in their pens. Women, men, and children labored on it, and the work was hard. The loose stones littering the valley floor, tumbled round by the river, were not stable enough for the wall, so heavy blocks had to be cut from the cliff behind Yala-tene. These were dragged on log sledges by gangs of villagers and piled up. Early sections had collapsed before attaining their full height. The budding masons learned to make the wall wider at the bottom than the top, then the structure stood solid and firm.

Two other structures stood out. One was the Offertory, where Konza and Tiphan served meat to the dragon. This was a square, roofless building, surrounded by a wall six paces high. Konza handpicked the whitest stone in the valley for it, and the Sensarku acolytes kept the place spotless inside and out. The courtyard inside was covered with washed white sand from the lake, regularly raked and cleaned by Tiphan’s young adherents. In the center of the Offertory was the altar itself. Once a rude pile of stones, it was now made of dressed blocks laid in sloping courses.

The other major building in Yala-tene was Amero’s workshop, lately the scene of the furnace explosion.

The basket bumped to a stop. Amero tied off the counterweight and climbed out.

He was immediately struck by the smell in the cave. For years he’d lived here with Duranix and had become accustomed to the pervasive odor of the dragon. These days he spent most of his time in the village, and the sharp aroma – lizardlike and oddly metallic – was very noticeable.

“As though humans don’t stink,” boomed a voice from the rear of the cave.

“You’re hearing my thoughts again,” Amero called back.

Duranix’s broad brazen head rose from the stone platform on which he slept. “You think so loudly that I can’t help it.”

“Don’t listen, then.”

His sharp tone caught the dragon’s attention. Duranix’s huge green eyes, slit by vertical pupils as long as daggers, followed Amero as he went to the cold firepit and sat down with his back to the dragon.

Duranix crawled off his bed with peculiar serpentine grace. With no more sound than the scrape of a few bronze scales on the rock floor, the huge creature drew up beside Amero.

“What vexes you? Speak,” Duranix ordered, “or take your gloomy spirit to some other cave.”

“I demolished the foundry this morning,” Amero said, smiting his knee with one fist. “The fire-feeder I made forced too much air into the furnace, and it burst.”

“I thought you smelled sootier than usual.”

“I failed again. The foundry is a wreck.”

Duranix shrugged, a gesture picked up from Amero. “Build another. Your devices have failed before.”

“Yes, so Tiphan has reminded me!”

“Ah.” Duranix coiled his tail around Amero, surrounding him with a wall of living bronze. “This is the true cause of your mood.”

“Tiphan wants to be chief of Yala-tene.” Now that the words were out at last, Amero was surprised by how angry they made him feel.

“Time was, you didn’t want to be chief. Now you fear Tiphan will take your place?”

“I only want to do what’s best for the village. Tiphan wants what’s best for Tiphan. And you help him!”

“I?”

“Yes! You eat your meat for all to see, encouraging them to think you honor the Sensarku with your presence. Why don’t you eat in the cave like you used to?”

“They amuse me. All that washing and cleaning! Tiphan’s the funniest of all. His mind’s so narrow I can hardly hear his thoughts, but he’s so obvious in other ways that he makes me laugh.”

Amero stood up and stepped over the dragon’s tail. “Did you tell him that winter was over?”

Duranix blinked. The movement of his eyelids sounded like swords being drawn from scabbards. “The boy asked me if I thought it would snow again this season. I said I didn’t look forward to any more snow.”

Amero shook his head, seeing how Tiphan had misread the dragon’s casual comment. “If he tells the planters to start now, we may lose the year’s fruit crop!”

“I could pluck his dull-witted head from his shoulders,” Duranix suggested. “That would put an end to your troubles.”

“Oh, be serious! It’s not worth Tiphan’s life.”

“Isn’t it? You said the harvest might be ruined.”

If the harvest is ruined, Tiphan will he too.

Amero’s thought carried plainly to the dragon, and Duranix narrowed his eyes. “You’d let folk in the village go hungry to best Tiphan?” he asked, the barbels on his chin twitching in curiosity.

Amero flushed at having his selfishness discerned. “I’ll not let anyone go hungry. Once the foundry is repaired, we’ll have bronze to trade with the wanderers who come through the valley. We can barter metal for food.”

“And if your metal-making fails? You’re gambling with the empty bellies of a lot of people.”

Amero lowered his head. “Maybe the weather will stay mild and the seedlings thrive.”

“And maybe I’ll start eating roots and berries,” said Duranix dryly.

*

A score of men and women, still clad in winter furs, hunched over their work. With hoes they grubbed small holes in the sandy soil, and into each hole went a tiny fruit tree. By the shore of the lake they planted apple trees, because these needed the most water. At the foot of the mountain the villagers placed walnut trees. Sturdy walnuts could stand the rockier soil and occasional slides of dirt and stones from the higher slopes. In between the apples and walnuts were planted the most valuable trees of all, burl-tops. A single burltop tree could provide a family with bushels of brown fruit, to be dried, eaten fresh, or pressed to extract the sweet oil inside. Windfall limbs made excellent handles for tools, and sloughed-off bark could be made into shingles, sandals, baskets, or buckets.

Everyone thought it was too early for planting. Snow still lay on the slopes above Yala-tene. A four-day thaw had broken winter’s ponderous grip on the valley floor, but the boggy land held meltwater too well. Yet, as Tiphan had ordered, the planters had come to break ground on the west side of the lake for a new orchard. Seeds held back from last year’s harvest had been planted in small pots and carefully tended all winter. Exactly when to transplant the green shoots into the ground was a critical decision.

A gentle chiming filled the air, a sound like the fall of icicles from the plateau above the town. One by one the diggers raised their heads, the distraction offering them an excuse to ease their aching backs. Morning sun glinted off burnished bronze, flashing in their eyes. The Servers of the Dragon were coming.

Two litters appeared, coming down the path from Amero’s bridge. Eight sturdy bearers moved slowly, their feet gripped by the same gritty mud that hampered the planting. The men in the chairs were covered from neck to ankles in heavy robes made from hundreds of small bronze scales, sewn to an underlying doeskin shirt. The scales tinkled as the chairs swayed from side to side.

The planters leaned on their tools, waiting for their visitors. When the bearers arrived, they halted and lowered the litters to the ground. With a distasteful glance at the mud around him, the younger bronze-clad man remained seated, but the elder left his chair to join the workers in the mire.

Jenla, eldest of the planters, raised her hand in greeting. “Welcome, Konza. Welcome, Tiphan, son of Konza.”

“Greetings to you all,” Konza replied cheerfully. With every step his bark sandals sank into the sodden turf. The hem of his heavy metallic gown dipped into the mud.

“Father,” said Tiphan. “You’re in the dirt.”

“These good people spend their days in the mud,” his father replied. “Why shouldn’t I dirty my feet to speak to them?”

“We are Sensarku,” Tiphan said, his tone indicating the number of times he’d had to remind his father of this. “To be worthy of the great dragon’s favor, we must be pleasing to his eye. You won’t be if you muddy his scales.”

“I’ll wash before I return to the Offertory. Don’t be so proud, boy! We’re all Servers of the Dragon.” He gestured to the diggers, waiting patiently in the cold mud. “Aren’t we?”

Tiphan sighed. “Yes, father.”

Turning back to Jenla and the rest, Konza smiled. “I bring good tidings. We have the dragon’s word no more snow is expected this season. You can plant your seedlings knowing the weather will only get warmer.”

Jenla’s square face brightened. “That’s good, Konza. When I dug my first hole, I tell you I was thinking ill of our Protector. The soil is too wet, but so long as there’s no snow, the land will dry, and the trees will grow.”

“You should always believe the words of our Protector,” Tiphan said coldly.

“They believe,” Konza said, grasping the old woman’s hand fondly. “Jenla remembers how hard life was before Amero and the dragon taught us how to live.”

“We must return and prepare the evening’s offerings,” Tiphan said loudly.

Konza smiled indulgently, his deep-set brown eyes gleaming with gentle tolerance. “My son was very young when we came to the valley,” he explained. “He doesn’t remember wandering the plains each day, searching for food and shelter.”

The old man clasped hands with the diggers he could reach, wishing them all fair sun and dry skies. By the time he resumed his seat in the litter, not only were his feet and hem muddy, so were his hands and sleeves.

Eight pairs of brawny arms hoisted father and son off the ground. Hampered by the soggy earth, the bearers slowly worked their way around until they were facing Yala-tene.

The planters resumed work. Jenla stood idle a bit longer, scanning the sky. Most of it was a clear blue, but heavy gray clouds crowded around the southern peaks, as if ready to slide down into the valley.

Jenla frowned.

*

Tiphan’s bearers were younger and stronger than his father’s, and they soon outdistanced their fellows. Even if they’d been close enough to converse, Tiphan would’ve remained silent. All the way back the younger man fumed.

His father was hopeless. He had no sense of dignity, no feel for the importance of their positions as Sensarku. That he would descend to the ground and soil his robe was bad enough. That he would clasp hands and consort with ordinary diggers was worse. He would have to remind his father yet again of the proper way to comport himself. As Servers of the Dragon, they were not common people any longer, and they had to be worthy of their place.

When Tiphan’s litter reached the outskirts of the settlement, cattle herders tending their beasts greeted him. The older ones hailed him the traditional way, by raising both hands high – a plainsman’s greeting meaning, “I’m a friend. I’m unarmed.” The rest, villagers of Tiphan’s generation and younger, bowed their heads as he passed. No one knew where this custom came from. Some said it was the way elves showed respect to their lords. Whatever the origin of the gesture, Tiphan liked it.

The stock pens were full of long-horned oxen, lean from subsisting on dry hay all winter. When the outer valleys thawed, the herds could be turned loose to graze on the fresh green grass growing there. Their flesh would sweeten and be all the more pleasing to the Great Protector.

Behind the ox pens were long, narrow horse corrals. Some of the mares had foaled early and were trailed by leggy offspring. Tiphan frowned. He did not approve of horses. They reminded him of the savage nomads who had chosen not to live under the wings of the dragon. The nomads roved the plains outside the valley, many on horseback. Filthy, lawless barbarians, they stole cattle, kidnapped women and children, and did not respect the Sensarku.

Tiphan forgot his dislike of horses and the people who rode them when the village wall came into view. Where finished, it was eight paces high and three paces thick, and even the haughty Sensarku chief thought it a grand project, worthy of the dragon’s people.

Under the wall were clustered an ever-changing forest of tents and ragged lean-tos. Wanderers of every stripe came to the valley to trade. Born in the open, some folk could not adapt to the close streets and roofed dwellings of the village. They pitched their tents and remained for one day or a hundred, trading game, labor, or objects for food and handicrafts.

Something in the muddle of scruffy tents caught Tiphan’s eye. He leaned forward, saying, “Leave me at the wall.” The lead bearer grunted acknowledgment and steered his comrades to the open defile.

To prevent enemies from simply storming the necessary openings in the wall, Amero’s builders created a low, extra wall in front of each opening. Those entering Yala-tene by these baffles had to zigzag around the short wall before they could enter. In times of trouble, heavy timbers or boulders could be set in the baffles to block them completely.

The bearers lowered Tiphan’s chair to the ground. He rose with a musical clatter of bronze scales and stepped down. Moments later, his father’s litter arrived.

“Why have you stopped, son?” Konza called.

“I want to check the progress of the wall. You go ahead. Preparation of the offering must commence by midday. Will you see to it?”

The old man blinked. “Gladly.” He sat back, plainly puzzled. “But I thought you were in a hurry to get back.”

“I was.” To Konza’s bearers, Tiphan said, “Take my father to the Offertory.”

With a concerted shout, they set off, giving Konza no chance to countermand his son’s command.

Tiphan sent his own bearers away as well. He strolled along the outside of the wall, admiring the evenness of the stonework, the precision of the seams between the blocks. Amero’s masons had learned a great deal about laying stone in twelve years. This newest section of wall was their finest effort yet.

Turning away from the wall, Tiphan walked down to the wanderers’ camp. Eyes watched him from scores of open tents, yet for all the roughness of the encampment, he had nothing to fear. The inhabitants might call their town Yala-tene, meaning “Mountain Nest,” but to outsiders such as these, it was known as Arku-peli, or “Place of the Dragon.” No one dared interfere with Tiphan. His dragonscale robe made it plain he had access to the powerful Duranix.

Tiphan spied a tall, conical tent near the center of the camp. Bark walls meant the owner was too poor to have a tent made of deerskin. A flap of woven ivy hung over the entrance, reinforcing the image of poverty, yet on the leafy doorflap hung a bronze disk two handspans wide, embossed with an image of the sun. Bronze was rare and valuable, quite out of place on such a lowly shelter. It was this artifact that had caught Tiphan’s eye.

The Sensarku swept back the flap with one hand. The interior was dark and smelled of sour mold and raw meat. He saw crossed feet, clad in bark sandals. They retreated from the shaft of light Tiphan let in.

“May I enter?”

“As you choose, but close the flap.” The speaker – his name was Bek – had an edge in his voice, the sharpness of danger and guile.

Tiphan stepped in and let the mat of vines fall shut behind him. Darkness closed around him. Tiny points of sunlight pierced the interior through chinks in the bark shell. By these Tiphan could see Bek sitting on the far side of the tent. A few rough stones piled in the center of the floor served as a firepit. The rest of the tent was crowded with rattan baskets and bags of moldering leather.

“What do you have for me this time?”

“What you asked for,” Bek said.

Tiphan’s eyes widened. “Show me.”

“It wasn’t easy to come by and won’t be cheap.”

“Show me!”

The shadowy figure stood. Bek was little taller standing than sitting. As he slipped past, Tiphan caught only glimpses of his strange host: tattoos scrolling down his neck, a blue stone fixed in a pierced earlobe, a reddish pigtail hanging down his back. And what was hanging from the back of his belt? A panther’s tail?

Bek knelt by a tall basket and pushed off the lid. The rattan container was crowded with cylinders of stiff white parchment. The tattooed man drew out one scroll, checked the glyphs on the butt of the wooden rod, and handed it to Tiphan.

“Kinsheesus Talikanathor is its name, more or less. In the argot of Silvanesti priests it means ‘The Way to Bind the Sun.’”

Tiphan parted the scroll. It was filled from side to side and top to bottom with Elvish script. Glosses on the black text were scribed in red. He was still learning the language, and the poor light did not make deciphering the ornate, feathery writing any easier.

Tiphan let go of one side, allowing the scroll to roll itself shut. “What do you want for it?”

For the first time the little man looked his customer in the face. Both his eyes glowed in the dark, and in different colors. His right eye was cool, greenish blue, like the belly of a carrion fly. The left eye was yellow, like the stars in the constellation of Matat, the dragon.

“Give me your robe,” Bek said.

Tiphan laughed. “This robe is worth more than your life!”

“This book is worth more than both our lives.” Bek removed the scroll from the Sensarku’s hand and carefully returned it to the basket with the others. “You can’t walk into a scribe’s shop in Silvanost and ask for these tomes, you know. They’re forbidden! I took many chances getting it.” He drew a stubby finger across his throat. Tiphan ignored the ugly gesture. Bek continued, “This book has commentaries by Vedvedsica himself. Did you see the passages in red ink? His hand, his wisdom.”

Tiphan knew the fame of the elf priest Vedvedsica. For many years he’d been the first sage of Silvanos’s realm. Then, a few years ago, rumors had reached Yala-tene of his downfall. It was said the wily Vedvedsica had been exiled to an island far away in the southern sea.

“I’ll give you four pounds of bronze,” Tiphan told him. “Or six pounds of copper. I also have some gemstones.”

Bek shook his head. His eyelids closed for the space of two heartbeats, and when they opened again, his irises had switched colors – now the right one was yellow, and the left blue.

“I want the robe off your back, nothing less,” Bek said, grinning. His teeth were uncommonly long and pointed.

“There’s ten pounds of bronze in this robe!”

“With this book you can command the elements!” The little man held the lid poised over the basket. “Last chance. What say you?”

Tiphan’s hands positively ached to hold the manuscript again. Jaw clenched, he unclasped the buckle of his belt and let it fall to the dirt. Dropping his arms, he shrugged the heavy robe off. It piled around his feet like musical, golden snow.

The little man handed Tiphan the scroll. “Wise choice, my friend. Knowledge is much more valuable than bronze,” he said. To Tiphan’s amazement, the panther tail attached to the back of the man’s belt moved, lashing once from side to side.

“You seem to crave bronze well enough,” Tiphan said, slipping the parchment roll inside his white doeskin shirt.

“A fella’s got to eat. While you’re here, can I interest you in another book? It’s also from Silvanost, very rare, suppressed by five priesthoods.” In answer to Tiphan’s questioning look, Bek elaborated. “Girthas Laka Morokiti, ‘Dialogue of the Courtesans.’ It tells of the amorous doings of highborn Silvanesti ladies.”

Tiphan sneered. “Keep it. I seek wisdom, not lechery.” He picked up his belt, raised the door flap, and added, “But if you find more like this, contact me in the usual way.”

“Good fortune to you, excellent Tiphan!” Bek called cheerfully. “Always a delight to serve you.”

The Sensarku walked away. He glanced back once and regretted it. The bookseller stood partially concealed in the door of his tent. Where sunlight fell on him, the illusion of humanity failed utterly. One leg, one arm, and his shoulder were covered by charcoal fur. A single yellow fang protruded from his whiskered upper lip. The supposed panther’s tail curled around Bek’s ankle, twitching with feline amusement.

Chapter 2

At long last the screaming stopped. The blazing tents collapsed in a shower of sparks, and the night grew dark again. Laughing and talking loudly, the raiders drifted back to the despoiled camp. Having chased down and killed the last of their terrified victims, they fell to looting the camp.

There was little to be had. The only livestock were four goats and six oxen. No more than twelve plainsmen had been in camp when the raiders struck. All were now slain. All but one.

The girl pressed herself into the grass close beside a speared ox, using the fat beast for cover. Her tangled, waist-length black hair screened the pale oval of her face from view. She held her clenched fists to her mouth to keep from making a sound. Tears streamed down her cheeks. When the screams of her kinsman stopped, she heard one of the raiders tell another to start butchering the animals.

A rider approached at a canter. She prayed to her ancestors to let the darkness shield her, to let the rider go to another beast. The carcass shifted slightly as he prodded it with his spear.

“A big one here!” he shouted. “Gunsa, bring a hatchet!”

With that, the girl sprang to her feet and bolted. The ox was between her and the rider, and he was slow to react. She ran for her life, bare feet pounding in the dry grass.

“Ai, Zan! Another dove!” the raider cried. Two-score throats, all yelping with delight, answered him. The rumble of many hooves filled the night behind her.

As long as she had room to run, she kept to a straight line. Soon enough the horses would outpace her, and she would use her greater agility to dodge them. That was her plan, anyway. There was no cover in the tall grass, just open ground in all directions. Tonight the endless plain seemed more endless than usual.

She caught sight of raiders to her left and right, cantering along, just keeping pace with her. They were at least twenty paces away. A single glance over her shoulder revealed ten riders trotting behind her in very leisurely fashion. Puzzled, she slowed a bit. The raiders reined in. Her puzzlement grew. Why didn’t they try to take her?

All of a sudden there was a loud neigh, and a large horse reared up in front of her. It was so close its forelegs struck her in the ribs, sending her sprawling. Where had he come from? She could have sworn the way ahead was clear.

She rolled to her knees, wincing from the horse’s kick. The animal towered over her, and she felt a cold flint spear tip, already wet with blood, pressed against her throat. Bracing herself for death, she closed her eyes.

The point moved away. A stern voice commanded, “Stand up.”

She opened her eyes and got a good look at the rider for the first time. He was dressed in a cloak the same dark gray color as his horse. No wonder he’d been hard to see. The rider’s head was covered by a grotesque hood, made from the skull of some horned beast and embellished with leather flaps and paint. To a more ignorant victim, he could have been taken for a spirit.

The girl rose, clutching her bruised ribs. The rest of the raiders arrived, forming a ring around her and the hooded man.

“Kill her, and let’s be off,” said one of the new arrivals, barely giving her dirty face a glance. There was silence as the hooded man continued to regard her.

“What’re you waiting for, Zan? Let’s —” the fellow began again.

With no word of warning, her hooded captor swung his spear in a wide arc, catching the protesting raider on the jaw. His hands flew up, and the man toppled backward off his mount. No one else said a word or moved to help.

The hooded man called Zan dismounted. He took a length of rawhide rope from his belt and said to the girl, “Put out your hands.” When she did not comply, he barked, “This can go around your hands or your neck!”

Reluctantly she presented her wrists. He cinched the hide strap around them tightly.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Beramun, daughter of —” She couldn’t finish and couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in her dark eyes. Her parents were dead. All her kin were dead.

“You’re mine now, Beramun,” the man said, heedless of her suffering. He remounted, keeping the end of the hide rope in his left hand. “Try to run away, and I’ll have you hamstrung.”

He snapped more orders to his men, sending half back to the camp to butcher the fallen animals. He led Beramun and the remainder of his hand across the dark plain to a dry ravine. There, a few bored-looking raiders guarded a collection of terrified captives kneeling in the dirt, hands tied like Beramun’s. At Zan’s command, the prisoners stood. Beramun’s rope was secured to the others.

After a satisfied survey of the prisoners, Zan said, “Back to Almurk. We’ve meat for us and captives for the Master.”

The prisoners were driven forward in a stumbling, weeping mass. More riders joined the loose column. Beramun, who was good with numbers, counted three times twenty warriors on horseback. In addition to their twenty-seven captives, the raiders had taken eight live oxen, sixteen goats, and a pile of lesser booty. This was heaped on captured travois, drawn by stolen oxen.

Beramun could hardly believe what had befallen her so suddenly – her family killed and she taken captive. Yet, she was young and strong, and so she kept going even as three of her fellow captives fainted. Those who collapsed met quick fates. Speared, their corpses were cut loose and left by the wayside. Shocked, the remaining prisoners began to carry or drag any who fell.

The eastern sky brightened behind them. Beramun glanced back at the coming dawn. They were marching due west. West of the plains lay a mountain range called the Limbs of the Sky, and south of that was the Edge of the World.

Daylight did little to allay Beramun’s fears. Frightening as the raiders were by night, by day they were worse. All were hard, rangy men, hungry-looking as wolves. They wore their long hair loose and decorated themselves with paint, bones, and sparkling stones. They rode bareback with only a thong bridle and reins to control the animals. Perched on their shoulders was their principle weapon: a flint-headed spear. The shafts were so long that a mounted man could impale his target even if it was flat on the ground.

The band never stopped moving. Plainsmen all, the captives were accustomed to long days afoot, but it was still a hardship to move at such a pace with no food and only a little water doled out grudgingly when the leader, Zan, ordered it.

To distract herself from her misery, Beramun studied Zan. He’d shed his fearsome hood when the sun warmed the air. He was young, only a few seasons older than she, making him about twenty. His hair was light brown, parted in the center and drawn back into a thick hank. Remarkably fair-skinned, he had a surprisingly childlike face with a boy’s downy cheeks. There was no mistaking the hard set of his hazel eyes though. For all his boyish looks, Zan was no innocent.

After marching all day, they came at last to a swiftly flowing river, running south to north. Beramun wasn’t familiar with the land this far west, but some of her fellow prisoners told her the river was called the Wildroot. Its racing current meant the captives couldn’t cross on foot, and it was too swift for the horsemen to ford. Beramun expected the raiders would turn north or south to find a likely crossing, but Zan ordered the band to halt.

The captives sank gratefully to the dusty turf. Beramun’s well-callused feet were burning, and her ribs still ached from the kick Zan’s gray stallion had given her. She was also monstrously thirsty. Not until after the raiders and their horses had drunk did two men bring hide buckets of water to the captives.

Hands still tied, Beramun and a woman named Roki held one bucket steady so the older prisoners could drink. Then she and Roki shared what was left. Roki was short and sturdy, with big hands and a pleasant, strong face.

“Wonder what they’ll do with us?” she said in a husky whisper.

Beramun shrugged. She’d heard tales of clans who stole young women to be mates, hut Zan’s raiders had taken men and women, young and old alike.

“Some of the riders called us ‘slaves,’” she offered, “whatever that means.”

“It means we work for them, do whatever they say.”

“For how long?”

“Till we die.”

Beramun stared. “They can’t do that!” she exclaimed. “We’re plainsmen too!”

“Doesn’t matter to the likes of them.”

Zan and several of his lieutenants rode by. He stopped short when he spotted Beramun among the others.

“You there,” he said. “Stand up.”

Dazed by thirst and fatigue, Beramun didn’t realize he was speaking to her until a fellow captive prodded her sharply. She got to her feet.

The raider on Zan’s right, a balding man wearing an elaborate collar of bear and panther teeth, looked her over. One eyebrow climbed his high forehead.

“You’re right, Zannian. You have an eye, don’t you?” he said.

“It’s just a girl, Hoten,” said the man on Zan’s left, a dirty fellow with deep-set eyes. “Close your eyes, they all look alike.”

“You’re a pig, Kukul.” Zannian said. “You know nothing about beauty.”

Beramun was only distantly aware they were talking about her. She’d lived her whole life among kinsmen too close in blood to be considered possible mates. She had little idea what strangers would make of her looks.

“Will you keep her for yourself?” asked bald Hoten, smiling.

Kukul snorted. “Only if his mother approves!”

Zan turned on him. “Hold your tongue, you scab! I am chief of this band, and I answer only to the Master!”

Kukul held his hands up, palms out. “Peace, Zannian, peace! I jest!”

The raider chief twisted his horse’s head around. “You’d be wiser to obey more and joke less!”

He trotted away. Hoten called, “Zan, the girl – do you want her culled out?”

Zan gave a quick shake of his head. “All captives belong to the Master. If he allows it, I’ll take her, but not until then.”

Kukul rode after him, leaving Hoten with Beramun. Looking down, the older man said, “You’ve caught the eye of our chief, girl. Mind what you do, and you might come out of this far better than you imagine.”

Beramun, who had been staring at the ground in embarrassment, raised her eyes to meet the raider’s. Though she didn’t understand just what the raider chief had in mind for her, she thought it had to be better than slavery or death.

*

The sun went down, and still they squatted on the east bank of the river. The bored laxity of their guards encouraged some prisoners to think of escape. The younger men on the other leash worked their way into the midst of Beramun’s group. A red-haired fellow Beramun’s age pushed in shoulder to shoulder with her and Roki.

“Name’s Opet,” he whispered. “The raiders caught my family southeast of here, in Khar land. They’re heading for their own camp, so we better escape if we want to live. Are you with me?”

Roki and Beramun exchanged looks. “Yes,” they said in unison.

“Good.” He slipped a hand under his buckskin shirt and drew out a small, sharp chip of obsidian. “When they settle for the night, we’ll cut our bonds and go.”

“Is that your only plan?” Roki said, shaking her head. “You won’t get six steps before they spit you like a partridge!”

“We’re not gonna run,” said Opet, eyes shining. “We’ll jump in the river. They won’t be able to use their horses to catch us. Can you swim?”

“Yes!” said Beramun, feeling a surge of hope. Roki’s wide shoulders slumped.

“I can’t swim,” she muttered. “I’m probably not the only one here who can’t.”

Beramun clasped the downcast woman’s hand. “I’ll help you!”

Roki shook her head. “Have you seen that current? Your ancestors will bless you if you manage to make it across by yourself!”

Opet frowned. “We have to try. The raiders are waiting for something – maybe another band to join them. If we don’t act soon, we’ll likely be surrounded by even more of them.”

Roki’s eyes flickered between their captors and the racing river. At last she nodded. “I’ll try. If it’s the will of the Great Spirits, I’ll make it across.”

Word of the plan passed among the prisoners. Opet’s sharp black stone was likewise passed from hand to hand. On his advice, the rawhide ropes were cut just to the point of breaking. At the right moment, all the captives had to do was snap the last bit of thong and race to the river. As Roki had feared, some of the prisoners could not swim, but all vowed to chance death by drowning rather than face whatever fate the raiders intended for them.

Raiders moved among them at sundown, bringing water and evil-smelling jerky for a meager meal. The captives submitted meekly to the jeers and kicks of the raiders, biding their time till the planned escape.

Time seemed to crawl. Many of the weary captives fell asleep, as did quite a few of the raiders. Lutar, the red moon, rose from its resting place and cast a sanguinary light over the plain. All was still. Even the spring crickets were silent.

Opet crept up to Beramun and tugged at her elbow. “Time to go!” he hissed. His hands were free, and with a sharp tug, he broke the weakened thong around Beramun’s wrists.

Quietly, the prisoners stirred their sleeping comrades. No more than twenty paces separated them from the rushing water. Beramun gathered her feet under her, poised to flee.

Opet slapped her on the back, and she took off like a rabbit, sprinting down the stony riverbank. The time for stealth was over. Her footfalls and those of her fleeing comrades were loud in the quiet night.

The noise roused the raiders. Some tried to mount their horses while still weighed down by sleep and fell heavily to the ground. Zannian, barefoot and bareheaded, shouted orders as he wrestled with his nervous gray stallion.

Beramun reached the water first, with Opet close behind. She dived in, surfaced, and waved for Roki to follow. “Come on!” she cried.

Roki hesitated only a moment before fear of her captors overcame her terror of water, and she charged into the river. She floundered close enough for Beramun to grab the back of her shirt. Swimming out from the shallows, the two women were hit by the rush of the current. Roki panicked, pounding the water with her feet. Beramun had no breath to spare for soothing words. Tightening her grip on Roki’s clothing, Beramun crawled against the powerful rush of the river.

The older woman calmed when she realized she wasn’t drowning. Also heartening was the sight of mounted raiders trying but failing to urge their horses into the river. The animals would not advance beyond the firm footing in the shallows, so all the raiders could do was hurl spears at the fleeing captives. The long weapons made poor projectiles and fell short of the swimming prisoners.

All at once the night sky blossomed with an eerie green light. Beramun slung wet hair from her eyes and saw that a pine copse on the far shore had burst into flames. She continued her desperate swim, certain her eyes were deceiving her. How could flames be green?

Without warning, Beramun slowed her strokes, and Roki promptly sank beneath the surface.

Rising again, the older woman sputtered, “What are you doing?”

“Look there!” Beramun cried, treading hard to keep her head above water. She stared with wide-eyed terror at the western shore.

Hovering in the air above the burning trees was a huge, winged creature, many times the size of the largest horse or ox. Its long, skin-covered wings moved up and down in broad strokes, fanning the green flames consuming the pine copse. Four muscular limbs dangled beneath the creature, and a long, serpentine tail balanced an equally sinuous neck.

“What is it?” Beramun cried in horror. “What is it?”

Roki clung to her, eyes fastened on the fantastic creature. “Stormbird!” she replied.

The monster alighted on the riverbank. Shouts went up from the assembled raiders, and Beramun wondered if Zan’s men would fight the gigantic creature or flee.

Opet and some of the stronger swimmers were nearly to the other side. They too had seen the stormbird and were trying to give it wide berth. The creature reared up on its hind legs and waded into the water. It struck as swiftly as a viper. Raising its head again, it held a man trapped in its jaws.

The sight was too much for Beramun, and she panicked. Seeing this inconceivable monster killing a fellow plainsman struck terror into her heart. When she froze, the current rolled her and Roki over until they were both choking for air. Once, when she surfaced, Beramun saw the stormbird transfer the screaming man from its jaws to one taloned claw, then its head darted down and seized another man.

A sandbar in midstream rushed up, and Roki managed to plant her feet, stopping their headlong rush. They clung to the sandbar and watched in terrified disbelief as the monster crushed a man in each claw, then dropped the bodies in order to capture two more screaming victims.

Upstream, Opet and a few others gained the shore out of reach of the stormbird, but they weren’t safe from its wrath. The creature opened toothy jaws wide and, with a roar greater than a hundred panthers combined, expelled a stream of green vapor from its throat. The cloud swallowed the escaping plainsmen. Some dropped where they stood. Others stumbled forward a few steps then collapsed, writhing in agony. Ten men soon lay dead.

Only Roki and Beramun remained in the river. Over the noise of rushing water they heard Zannian yell, “Come back, you women! You can’t get away!”

“We must return,” Roki said, her chattering teeth not hiding the bitterness of her words. “Better those two-legged beasts than the stormbird!”

Beramun, nearly fainting from exhaustion, didn’t move. “I don’t think I can make it to either side.”

Roki hugged her friend closely for both warmth and comfort as the stormbird dropped onto all fours and prowled down the bank toward them. When it was opposite their position on the sandbar, it halted. Roki’s arms tightened convulsively on Beramun.

“It’s coming!” the older woman gasped. “Spirits, save us! It’s coming!”

The creature did indeed rise up on its hind legs and spread its wings, but it did not take to the sky. Instead, it brought its foreclaws together, talon to talon, and slowly furled its wings tight to its back.

Before Roki’s fear-filled eyes, the river calmed. The current slowed to a gentle flow. When the stormbird pulled its claws apart, a channel opened in the water, growing deeper and wider as it approached the sand spit. Water receded from the sandbar, leaving a walkable passage in the raging river.

“What’s happening?” asked Beramun groggily, trying to lift her head.

Roki swallowed hard. “The monster is parting the river!”

Soon there was a dry channel as wide as four horses abreast. Zannian led his men into this trough without fear or haste. By the time he reached the sandbar, Roki had pulled Beramun to her feet. The two women stood waiting for him.

The raider chief gestured, and Hoten appeared with new bonds. This time the raiders not only bound their wrists, but hobbled the women’s ankles as well. Unable to take more than short, shuffling steps, Roki and Beramun made their way down the sandbar to stand miserably beside Zannian’s horse. Roki was still supporting the younger woman, and Beramun’s violent shivering shook them both.

Zannian’s eyes narrowed. Reaching behind, he pulled out his bedroll – a coarse, horsehair blanket – and dropped it across Beramun’s shoulders. Thumping his bare heels against his mount’s sides, he rode on.

Beramun stared after him in surprise. “Why did he do that?” she asked as they pulled the rough blanket around themselves.

Roki gave her a disbelieving look that slowly changed to sympathy. “You don’t know, do you?” she said gently. “You’re a good-looking girl, Beramun. Beware of him, especially when he’s kind to you.”

The surviving captives came shuffling toward them, hobbled and chastened. Beramun and Roki fell in at the back of the line.

When they reached the west bank, the prisoners were ordered to stop and forced to kneel in the cold mud. The stormbird, near enough they could smell the lingering stench of its poisonous breath, broke the spell on the river with a twitch of its scaly shoulders. Water crashed back into the trough and resumed its course.

A common tremble ran through the captives, now under the black eyes of the stormbird. Zan and his men didn’t seem afraid of it. In fact, the young chief rode up to the beast and saluted with his spear.

“Hail, Master!” he exclaimed. “Your arrival was well timed.”

“Lucky for you,” intoned the monster in a rasping but surprisingly humanlike voice.

“We would’ve caught them again,” Zan said. “Not as easily as you, great Master, but we would have. We thank you.”

While Zan reformed his men, the stormbird gazed down on the cowering captives.

“Why do you rodents try so hard to escape?” it asked, tail tip switching back and forth. When no one dared answer, the monster seized a captive plainsman. The man was bound to the next prisoner, and he to the next, and so on, so the entire line of terrified captives was dragged aloft.

The man in the taloned claw screamed piteously. His tormentor looked at him with the glee of a child holding a captured beetle.

“Why do you risk death to escape?” rasped the monster, shaking the man. The fellow’s head snapped back and forth. “Why, little beast?”

“To b-be f-free!” the man blubbered.

The stormbird tossed its head toward the empty plain. “You’re not free out there. You must hunt and scrounge and fight every day to keep the breath in your flimsy little bodies. How does that make you free, eh?”

“Because we go where we will!”

The words were torn from Beramun’s lips by a surge of anger. That anger changed to fear as the monster dropped the terrified man and thrust its reptilian face to within an arm’s length of her own.

“And where do you go?” the creature asked, showing entirely too many ridged yellow fangs.

The hot, stinking breath on her face made her sick. “Wherever —” It came out so faintly, she had to clear her throat and begin again. “Wherever the Great Spirits guide us.”

“Spirits? Ha! Who are these spirits?”

Why had she spoken? Beramun wondered miserably, terror welling up inside her. Yet the stormbird expected an answer, so she stuttered, “They are th-the makers of all things – the s-sun, the moons, the plants, and the beasts of plain and forest.”

“And I?” said the hideous creature, its face coming even closer to hers. “Was I made by your Great Spirits?”

“Yes,” she said faintly, her legs wavering like grass in a strong wind.

The black, slit-pupiled eyes widened. The monster threw back its head and roared. It took Beramun a heart-wrenching moment to realize the beast was laughing. Curiously, this display of mirth made the raiders draw together, anxiety evident on all their faces.

“Pretentious vermin!” the stormbird bellowed. “No one made the dragons! We were born from Chaos, forged of fire and fury! The world is ours, and you worthless insects are merely pests to be tolerated or exterminated as we see fit.”

The monster stretched up to its full height. “I am your master now. I am Sthenn, the Wakeful One, the Shadow Who Does Not Sleep, called Greengall, Deathbringer, and the Terror of Night. You live by my whim alone, and my whim is that you serve me. Is that clear, vermin?”

Zannian rode up, his skull-topped hood propped under one arm. “Patience, Master,” he said, an edge in his voice. “They all struggle at first. They wouldn’t be plainsmen if they didn’t try to escape, but they’ll give no more trouble, I promise you.”

Sthenn gazed down at the mounted man for a long moment, and his angry posture relaxed.

“More and more,” he said, “I understand Duranix’s interest in humans. Such amusing, infuriating creatures. It will be delightful to discover whose are best – mine or his.”

Beramun understood none of this, but seeing the stormbird’s anger fade helped her own fear subside, and her heart slowly resumed a normal beat. When Sthenn had reared up, she thought her life was over. Fortunately, the great beast was easily distracted, as Zannian’s intervention proved.

She looked again at the youthful chief as he got his band moving again. Thief and killer he was, but he was brave, facing the dragon’s rage like that. In some savage way, he might even be honorable.

Drawing the borrowed blanket close around her shoulders, Beramun hobbled along with the rest of the captives. She did not notice Roki frowning at her, nor did she remember the older woman’s warning about being wary of kindness from her human captor.

Chapter 3

The sun shone several days, then the clouds that had been lurking on the mountaintops like a pack of gray wolves swept down into the Valley of the Falls. A damp mist clung to every surface in Yala-tene, and when the feeble sun set, the dew turned to ice.

Repairs on the foundry came to stop. Stone blocks grew too slick to handle safely, and visibility fell to just a few paces. Amero and his workmen tried to carry on, but the cold made their fingers stiff and clumsy, so Amero called a halt, dismissing the men with a sigh. He soon stood alone in his ruined workshop.

Lately life was so full of delays. None of his recent projects had come to fruition. The town wall, though well advanced, should have been finished a year ago, and his bronze experiments could not resume until the foundry was repaired.

When he was younger, it seemed he had all the time in the world to solve the questions that surrounded him. Now there was little time for anything but daily work.

Shaking off his gloom, Amero resolved to visit Unar, the man whose eye had been injured when the furnace blew apart. He left the shattered building and stepped out into the frosty night.

Finding a house in the warren of streets wasn’t easy, even on a bright, sunny day. To identify themselves, most householders painted their family’s totem symbol on their doors. Amero came at last to the door with the hook-billed turtle and knocked on the worn cedar panel.

The door opened. Highlighted by fire was a face he knew well. It was Unar’s widowed sister, Lyopi. She held a flaming brand.

“Amero,” she said. She was one of the few people in the village who called him by his given name.

“I’ve come to see Unar.”

“He’s sleeping, but you’re welcome.” Lyopi stood aside, and Amero entered the warm interior of the house.

The ground floor was a single large room, as in most houses in Yala-tene. A dull red fire crackled on the hearth. As Lyopi dropped the burning stick onto the fire, Amero saw Unar was propped on a heap of furs, a soft willow poultice on his injured eye.

“How is he?” Amero whispered.

“The eye is lost,” Lyopi replied. “Old Memmet the healer removed the stone chip, but could do nothing for his eye.”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry. Better it should be my eye.”

“Don’t say foolish things.”

She pulled free of his grasp and moved to the dark periphery of the room. Without a word, Amero followed.

Lyopi seated herself on a stool by the wall. Not seeing another chair, he sat on the floor at her feet.

For almost a year, Amero and Lyopi had been together, as intimate as mates but still undeclared to the rest of the village. Some gossips believed he was taking advantage of a lonely widow, but in fact, it was Lyopi’s choice that they remain apart. By custom, to be Amero’s mate, she would have to live in his house and give back her first mate’s property to his kinsmen. Because Lyopi did not want to relinquish her home, she and Amero remained friends and occasional lovers – a situation that suited her fine and Amero found tolerable.

She pulled the thick, loose braid of her chestnut hair over her shoulder and leaned back against the stone wall. Her brown eyes, usually so warm and full of life, were dull as they regarded her injured brother.

The silence stretched for several long seconds, until Amero asked, “Why so sad, Lyopi? Unar’s strong. He’ll live.”

Her gaze shifted. “Yes, but what will he do? A one-eyed man is a poor hunter.”

“There are other things a man can do besides hunt.”

She uttered a short, bitter laugh. “We’re still plainsmen, Amero. Hunters. Living inside a pile of rocks hasn’t changed that.”

“Unar will always have a place in my workshop, if he wants it.”

She made a quick gesture, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Even in summer?” she asked, knowing he usually employed helpers in his shop only during the idle months of winter.

“Even in summer. Unar’s not the only one who doesn’t hunt, you know.”

Lyopi offered a fond smile, which soon faded. Leaning her head against the cool stones behind her, she closed her eyes.

Thinking she looked very tired, Amero rose to leave. She reached out and caught his hand. “No. Stay.”

Suddenly embarrassed, he replied, “I didn’t come here for that.”

Sometimes she seemed to read his mind almost as well as Duranix. “I know,” she told him, putting a hand to his bearded cheek. “Stay anyway.”

So he did.

*

Across the fog-shrouded village, another light burned far into the night. Tiphan lived with his father in a modest one-story house close to the Offertory. Like everything else in his life, Tiphan’s home was as tidy as he could make it. Sensarku acolytes cleaned it for him daily, just as they cleaned the Offertory grounds.

Tiphan sat at the one table in the house, peering closely at the document before him. For five nights he’d yearned to study the arcane manuscript he’d bought from Bek the bookseller, but every night his father had stayed awake, talking, prowling around the house, and generally making himself a nuisance. Finally tiring of the delay, Tiphan had sprinkled yellow tane pollen on Konza’s dinner. Soon the old man was snoring away on his pallet.

Once Konza was asleep, Tiphan removed the prized manuscript from his secret cache. By the light of a fat lamp, he puzzled over his newest acquisition.

Behold the Way to Bind the Sun, it began. To command the stars, the beasts, and the flowering things, know this: As embers carry the fading heat of the fire, so do certain stones, gems, and wood of trees carry the dying light of heaven. When the gods awakened in the Age of Twilight Sleep, they rose by their natures into three realms – Good, Neutral, and Evil.

Tiphan’s fingers grew stiff from tracing the line of ornate script. He flexed his hands, closed his eyes briefly, then resumed reading.

Each did claim the spirits then living, and they fought a great war over who should rule the spirits of life. At first Evil was strong, and dealt Good many a blow. The Neutral lords saw this, and said, “Let us aid Good, that Evil will not next try to destroy us.” So the alliance was forged, and Evil subdued. Yet, as are all gods, Evil is immortal, and perished not. The minions of Evil turned to living stone by the servants of Good and Neutrality, inhabit the world to this day.

Tiphan paused. He was beginning to see where the treatise was heading.

These stones are Power, and the sage who finds them may use their Power to effect all manner of change – the sun to go dark, the summer to yield snow, the dead to rise and walk among the living. All this and more is possible.

Next to this last sentence was another’s handwriting in scarlet ink: Circle of standing stones, ten leagues east of the mountains, between the headwaters of Thon-Thalas and Thon-Tanjan.

If Bek had spoken truly, this was the hand of the great elf priest Vedvedsica. To the Silvanesti, “the mountains” were the very range where Yala-tene was located. The two rivers named were known to all plainsmen. A great battle had once been fought there by a Silvanesti host, led by the warlord Balif against the nomad warriors of Karada, sister of their own Arkuden.

Tiphan’s hands trembled. To think there might actually be such a circle of powerful stones so close by! With such stones, could he have power like the great Vedvedsica?

Konza snorted and mumbled in his sleep. Tiphan cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The old man soon settled down, his breathing deep and even.

Tiphan tiptoed to the hollow in the wall where he hid his cherished manuscripts. He had two other tomes, spellbooks really, describing in cursory terms how certain spells were to be cast. Also in the hole were fragments of various

Silvanesti works – treatises on astronomy, herbalism, even animal husbandry and metallurgy, subjects that some people like that fool Amero found fascinating.

Tiphan drew out the particular piece of parchment he sought. Called a “map,” it was a large triangular fragment, the corner of a larger sheet of the finest sheepskin. In four colors of ink, the map showed the plains west to Khar, the forest at the Edge of the World, part of the Silvanesti’s forested homeland, and the southern range of the mountains. Two fine lines of blue ink snaked south and east to the distant sea, showing the Thon-Tanjan in the north, the Thon-Thalas in the south.

Tiphan smothered a laugh. The unspeakable Bek’s manuscript was a real treasure. All that remained was to collect the stones of power. He could leave tomorrow, before the rising of the sun. Konza could oversee the cleansing of the Offertory and preparation of the dragon’s meals, but Tiphan would need help on his journey, someone to carry his provisions and to hunt along the way.

Who should he take? Who could he trust? Sorting through the ranks of the Sensarku in his mind, the answer came quickly: Mara and Penzar.

Tiphan returned the map to his cache. With the stone in place, no one could tell what was there. He donned his warmest garment, a black panther cape and hood covered with white dove feathers. On a stand a few steps away, his father’s brazen robe gleamed. The stand that should have held Tiphan’s bronze robe was empty.

Tiphan stifled another laugh. What had seemed so high a price a few days ago he now deemed cheap. Konza had asked about Tiphan’s missing robe, but so far he had fended off the queries. Once he returned laden with stones of power, no one would question his judgment on anything ever again.

He lifted the door latch and stepped out into the night. Yala-tene glittered in the soft, pearly light of Soli, the white moon. Tiphan skidded down the frosty lane until he reached the house of the Sensarku women. Next door was the house of the male acolytes.

Unlike the other villagers, the Sensarku lived in communal homes, treating each other as kinsmen. Townsfolk thought this odd, but it was considered a great honor to be chosen to join the Sensarku. Some of the proudest families in Yala-tene willingly gave their sons and daughters over to Tiphan’s keeping.

Walking straight into the women’s house, Tiphan took a lit lamp from its niche by the door. Raising it high, he called, “Mara? Where is Mara?”

Midway down the row of sleepers, a girl sat up, rubbing her eyes. “I am here, Tosen.”

“Come. I wish to speak to you.”

Holding a rabbit-fur blanket around her shoulders, Mara padded on bare feet past her dozing sisters. At seventeen, she was not the eldest of the female acolytes, but her devotion to the great dragon and to Tiphan was unquestioned.

She pushed a tangle of curly auburn hair away from her freckled face. “What is it, Tosen?”

“We have a task to perform, Mara. A very special task,” he whispered, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “You must prepare for a journey.”

“Journey? Where?”

“Over the mountains, to the east.”

She blinked, her brain still befogged by sleep. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow before dawn.”

That woke her up. “Tosen, I bring the dragon’s meal to the Offertory tomorrow! My father selected a fine yearling ox —”

“Lower your voice, girl! This is more important! Do as I say. Dress warmly and pack food and water for the two of us for twelve days.”

“Two of us, Tosen? Are we going on this journey alone?”

“No, Penzar is coming, too. He’ll bring his own supplies.” Mara let out the breath she was holding. Eighteen-year-old Penzar was a fine hunter and tracker. He could certainly supply game for them, wherever they were going.

“It will be done, Tosen,” she said, bowing.

“Say nothing about what we do, even to your sisters,” he murmured. “And bring a weapon.”

“Weapon?”

“We’re going to the wilderness, beyond the eye of our Protector. Do you have a weapon?”

“A bird stick. A quartz knife.”

“Bring both.”

Tiphan returned the lamp to the wall niche. “Good night, Mara. I’ll see you at the entrance to the Offertory when the morning moon sets.”

“Yes, Tosen. Good night.”

When Tiphan emerged from the women’s house, a raw wind was scouring the street. He faced away from the wind and hurried to the men’s house. The scene with Mara was repeated as he roused Penzar, telling him they were going on a special journey.

The boy scrubbed a hand through his sandy hair, causing it to stand out from his head in short spikes. Blearily, he said, “Leaving? Has the Arkuden cast you out?”

“No, fool. I have an urgent task to perform on the far plains. You and Mara will serve me on the journey.”

“Mara?”

“Yes. She’s strong, keen-eyed, and a good reader of weather signs. You’ll be our hunter and tracker. Bring your hunting spear and supplies for yourself for twelve days.”

Penzar nodded. “Aye, Tosen.”

As Tiphan left he was startled to see sleet falling. He headed home, the tiny particles of ice stinging his face. Sleet began to pile up in silver drifts against the houses. His breath plumed out, hanging in the air like smoke as he skidded across the frozen streets.

Duranix had told him there would be no more snow. He thought of the seedlings the villagers had planted. Ice was not snow, but it certainly meant woe to the tiny fruit trees. Had the Protector been wrong, or had he, Tiphan, misunderstood?

Alone in the empty street, Tiphan shook his head. The Protector was never wrong, and it seemed unlikely that he, the Protector’s chief servant, would be wrong either. Trust the dragon and believe in your own wisdom, he told himself. Believe, and all will be well.

*

Little noises teased Amero’s ears. He didn’t want to notice them. He was too comfortable. Snuggled deep under a pile of furs, his nose buried against the back of Lyopi’s neck, he was content. The noise was probably Unar, bumping around the dark interior of the house.

The noise grew louder. Someone was hammering on the door. Amero bolted upright. He heard loud, unintelligible talk in the street outside.

Lyopi pushed herself up on one elbow. Tendrils of hair had worked free of her braid and stood out around her face. “What is it?” she said crossly.

“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”

He made for the door. “Amero,” Lyopi called, “you might want some clothes.”

He looked down at himself and grinned. “It is cold out.”

The room resounded with more blows on the door. Amero pulled on his leather breeches and buckskin shirt. When he opened the door, he caught his foreman in mid-knock.

“What is it, Huru?” asked Amero, squinting against the morning light. People were running in the street.

“Sorry to wake you, Arkuden, but there’s trouble.”

Lyopi appeared behind Amero, wrapped in a black bearskin. “What trouble?” she asked.

“Ice fell all night. The fields are covered with half a span of sleet. The orchard planters are furious. They say the dragon lied to them, told them winter was done.”

Amero sighed, scrubbing his fingers through his short hair. “I knew this would happen. Where are the planters?”

“At the Offertory, demanding an explanation. Old Konza can’t handle them.”

“Konza?” Lyopi’s dark brows rose in surprise. “Where’s Tiphan?”

The dark-skinned man shrugged. “No one knows.”

Amero closed the door and put on his sandals and cloak. Lyopi began to dress as well.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“No, Unar needs you. It’ll be all right. I won’t let anyone hurt Konza.”

She frowned. “I’m not worried about Konza.”

Amero kissed her and hastened away with Huru. His first steps in the street sent him sliding into the wall of the house across the way.

“Watch your step, Arkuden!” Huru warned. “The ice is very bad.”

The rest of the town seemed empty, with none of the usual morning hustle. Amero soon saw why. Most of the townsfolk were crowded into the streets around the Offertory.

Konza, backed by Sensarku acolytes, was blocking the entrance to the sacrificial altar. Amero saw Jenla at the head of the outraged planters, shaking her fist under Konza’s nose.

“... what he told us, and we believed him!” she said. “We spent two days on our hands and knees, putting in all the seedlings we had! If they die, what will we harvest?”

“The loss threatens us all,” Konza said. His lined face was white with cold and anxiety. “No one meant to mislead you —”

“Great heaps of good that does us now!” howled another planter. “Without fruit, without nuts, I’ll have nothing to barter for meat or hides for my family.”

“The elder trees still live,” Konza said weakly.

“They’re played out!” Jenla cried. “For the past four years they’ve yielded less and less. Last summer we got just threescore and one bushels of apples from the whole orchard, and only four-score and eight of burl nuts!”

Amero pushed his way through the crowd of curious onlookers until he was standing between Jenla and Konza. His presence caused an immediate change in the mood. Konza and the planters visibly relaxed.

“Arkuden,” said Konza. “I’m glad to see you.”

“As am I,” Jenla added. “You can right the injustice done to us!”

“What injustice?” asked Amero.

She repeated her earlier charges. When she finished, Amero said, “Who told you winter was over?”

“It was Tiphan!” said a man behind her. The other planters took up the cry and repeated it until Amero held up his hands for quiet.

Jenla said crossly, “He spoke the words of the Great Protector, Arkuden.”

Amero smiled. “Then we should ask the dragon.”

A murmur went through the crowd. No one was quite sure what Amero had in mind, but it was more interesting than huddling by their hearths on a frigid morning.

Amero tried to move past Konza but found his progress blocked by the close ranks of the acolytes.

“Stand aside,” he said.

“Only Sensarku may enter,” replied a stern-faced youth.

“Boy, I was living in the cave with the dragon before you were born,” Amero retorted. “Stand aside. I am the Arkuden, the dragon’s son. If he tolerates me in his home, he won’t mind me in his dining hall.”

To Amero’s astonishment, the acolytes stood their ground. Konza ordered them to move, and they reluctantly parted, allowing Amero into the Offertory.

Inside, he gazed up at the high walls and scrubbed stonework. It was a very different place from the day he and his sister Nianki had fought rebel nomads for control of Yala-tene. The cairn where the rebels nearly burned Amero alive was then a rude pile of sooty stones. Now it had the air of a sacred place, somehow more important than merely the spot Duranix took his meals.

Konza and the female acolytes trailed behind him as he walked around the high altar. The crowd gathered around the entrance and peered in. The male Sensarku barred their way.

White sand crunched underfoot. Sleet covered the sand, making the courtyard around the altar gleam like white metal. On the far side of the altar, Amero found steps inset into the stonework. He started up. The girls on Konza’s heels protested.

“He is not clean!” said one. “He defiles the Protector’s place!”

Konza whirled, his gray fox cape lifting from the force of the spin. He scowled at the assembled girls.

“Hold your tongues!” he snapped. “Amero is the true son of the dragon! He may go where he wishes.”

The acolytes, chastened, said no more, but they watched with intense resentment as Amero mounted the steps.

The platform was quite high. Only the village walls were taller. Amero had often seen the top of the Offertory from his lift, but he’d not been on the great cairn since Tiphan had forbidden it to non-Sensarku. It was a simple structure, a solid stone platform ten paces wide by fifteen long. In the center was a firepit to roast Duranix’s meals. Short pillars at the corners of the pit served to hold the ox or elk carcass above the flames.

Konza joined him. The wind was blowing less, but it was still bitterly cold atop the high altar.

Amero turned and faced the waterfall, several hundred steps away. Duranix! Duranix, will you come? he thought. There was no answer but the whistle of the east wind.

Amero frowned as he concentrated on sending his thoughts again to the distant dragon.

Duranix, there’s a problem in the village. Please come.

There was still no answer from the dragon, but Amero felt a tingling in his ears. Assuming it was from the cold, he cupped his hands over them. The tingling grew stronger, and then a faint sound, little louder than the wind, seemed to scratch inside his head.

It’s too cold to go out. What do you want?

Amero was so startled he staggered and nearly fell when his feet slid on the icy altar. Konza grabbed his arm to steady him.

“What is it?” the old man asked, seeing his astonished expression.

“Nothing. It’s icy up here, that’s all,” Amero managed to say, though his mind was whirling.

This was astonishing! From the beginning of their acquaintance, he’d known Duranix could read his thoughts. Yet only now after so many years did the dragon demonstrate that Amero could also hear Duranix’s replies.

Don’t be such a child. Duranix’s voice echoed inside Amero’s skull. You’ve always had the ability to hear my thoughts. Remember how, many years ago, you heard the thoughts of the yevi?

Stunned by the revelation, Amero recalled himself to the business at hand. Please come down, for your sake and mine!

Spears of sunlight poked through the low-lying clouds, raking the frosted landscape with light. Amero waited for an answer. After several seconds, he turned away.

“He’s not coming,” he said, annoyed.

Konza clutched his arm. “No, Arkuden! See. The Protector comes!”

Amero looked up in time to see Duranix bursting through the wall of plunging water, wings spread wide.

A concerted “Oh!” rose from the people below. In the years since he’d saved them from the nomad attack, Duranix had not appeared very often in broad daylight. The Sensarku offered their sacrifices at dusk or dawn when most villagers were at work or asleep.

Duranix put his massive bronze head down and dived straight at the Offertory. Wings folded, he plummeted directly toward Amero and Konza. He grew larger and larger, showing no sign of slowing or turning. Konza let out a yelp and crouched as low as his stiff back would allow, sure they were about to be smashed flat.

At the last moment, the dragon flung open his wings and swooped up, his claws missing the crown of Amero’s head by less than a span. Unimpressed by his friend’s display, Amero remained standing. The icy wind of Duranix’s passing tore at his cloak and blasted his face.

They’re already afraid of you, Amero told him. You don’t have to show off.

Duranix beat his wings hard and dropped his clawed feet. He came to rest on the platform, which creaked under the weight of his nearly fifteen-pace length. Curling his wings tight around his chest, the dragon spoke. “Thunder and lightning! It’s too cold to be outside!”

“That’s the problem,” Amero said. “The planters planted their seedlings, and now they’re afraid the ice will kill them.”

“Well, it’s winter,” Duranix said.

Konza made a surprised sound.

“When you spoke last with Tiphan,” Amero said, “did you tell him there would be no more snow?”

The dragon flicked his tongue impatiently. “You know I didn’t. Let them take it up with Tiphan. He’s at fault here.”

Amero turned to Konza. “Where is Tiphan?”

The old man, neck craned back, couldn’t take his eyes off Duranix. Something akin to worship lit up his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “He left before dawn this morning. Something about an important journey.”

“He left Yala-tene?”

Konza nodded. Amero was incredulous. Tiphan was openly scornful of the wandering life. The old ways of the plainsman held no appeal for him.

Duranix exhaled on his foreclaws. Out came an arc of brilliant blue-white fire, like lightning. Konza’s adulation turned to fear, and he crouched in terror, his hands coming up to cover his head. There were screams from the people below.

Duranix paid no attention to them. “That’s better,” he said, clapping his smoking claws together. “It’s too cold out here. You should get inside, Amero.”

I will, as soon as you speak to the people.

Duranix finally noticed the villagers milling around the Offertory entrance. As his angular reptilian head turned in their direction, many people pushed their neighbors, intent on escape. The rest seemed rooted in place, staring back at him in shock.

I see I shall get no rest until I do, Duranix replied. From the center of the platform, he sprang to the top of the Offertory’s surrounding wall. Gripping the top of the wall with his rear claws, Duranix flapped his wings and stretched out his long neck for balance. The villagers’ fear turned to near panic.

Once he’d settled himself, Duranix gazed down implacably.

“People of Yala-tene!” he boomed. The villagers froze in place. “Some of you think I told Tiphan, Konza’s son, that no more cold weather could be expected. This is not true. He asked me if I thought it would snow again this season, and I said I didn’t want any more snow. That is all.”

A figure clad in baggy woolens cautiously approached the perching dragon. “Tiphan mistook you?” Jenla asked loudly.

Duranix looked the old woman straight in the eye. “Yes.”

“Then our quarrel is with Tiphan!” she declared.

Amero hurried down from the platform and emerged from the Offertory. “Tiphan is gone,” he announced. “He left Yala-tene this morning.”

The villagers digested this with puzzled, unhappy mutters. A young Sensarku, as much in the dark as anyone, asked, “Will he come back?”

“I don’t know, but we must act quickly to save the orchard,” Amero said. “Everyone must lend a hand. Gather all the hay you can find and take it to the orchard. We’ll spread it over the seedlings to keep them warm.”

Konza, also down from the altar, added, “We can build fires between the rows to warm the soil.”

Amero slapped the old man’s thin shoulder. “Good thinking! Let’s get to it. Duranix, will you start a fire for us across the lake?”

The bronze dragon agreed.

“But if we use our hay,” said a fellow in a herder’s apron, “what will the oxen eat?”

“Moss and lichens,” said another. “It keeps the elk alive all winter. Why not oxen?”

Buoyed with hope, the villagers dispersed. Amero watched them with relief. What looked like sure violence had been diffused by a unifying task.

Children.

“What?” Amero looked up at Duranix.

They’re such children. One minute furious, the next minute happy.

“They’re good people. They’re your people.”

“So they are.” The dragon spread his wings in preparation for flight. He shivered, and the tips of his wings curled as a massive sneeze erupted from his nostrils, followed by wisps of steam. “But in the future, can you arrange to have these little dramas during warmer weather?”

Chapter 4

The Edge of the World, according to the plainsmen, was not a range of sky-piercing mountains or a trackless, endless sea. For them, the Edge of the World was a forest, one so dense, dark, and thickly grown that it forever blocked the way westward.

There were stories of lone hunters or small bands of plainsmen who had tried to penetrate the mysterious woodland. So far as anyone knew, none had ever returned. The east was better understood and less feared, even with the menace of the Silvanesti there. Humans had explored all lands to the north, east, and south, but the forest at the Edge of the World remained an impenetrable barrier.

The raiders drove their prisoners into this fearsome territory without hesitation. Beramun and her fellow captives quickly realized Zannian’s men had secret trails marked out in the underbrush. Many times the plainsmen were guided through a barely visible opening in a thick hedge or made to climb over a heap of fallen logs, and there on the other side would be a hidden path.

Sthenn left them before sunrise. For such a powerful creature, he showed increasing anxiety as the sky lightened, his voice growing more and more shrill, his orders becoming wild and contradictory. Beramun imagined the dragon spent most of his time in the deep forest and thus found the full light of day hard to bear. When the first pink rays of dawn appeared in the east, Sthenn halted the band of humans trailing in his wake.

“Zannian!” he snarled. “Zannian, where are you?”

“Here, Master. I’m here.” The raider chief, on foot, stood close to the dragon’s haunch.

“Ah. Quiet, aren’t you? Rodents are so stealthy.”

“What is your will, Master?”

“I return to my den. Hurry your cattle to Almurk. You shall wait upon me tonight.”

Some of the raiders let out mutters of surprise, and Zannian said, “Tonight, Master? It’s at least twelve leagues to Almurk. I counted us there by tomorrow morning.”

Sthenn flexed his leathery wings and hissed, “Do not dispute me! Do as I command! Use the whip on the captives and your men if you must, but be in Almurk before the sun next rises!”

Zannian could only bow and say, “I do your will, Master.”

“See that you do.”

Before the eyes of the amazed captives, the dragon’s body grew thin and pale. His extremities changed to green mist, which the day’s early breeze dissipated. His wings followed, then his massive torso. The last thing to vanish were the dragon’s malign black eyes, slowly blinking until they faded from sight.

Roki, shoulder to shoulder with Beramun, shuddered. “We are lost,” the older woman said hopelessly. “If we remain in that creature’s power, our lives will be measured in days.”

Beramun forced herself to be cheerful, for her friend’s sake. “Don’t speak of it,” she said, clasping Roki’s chill hand. “Whatever his power, the stormbird must be mortal and have some weakness. So long as we live, there is hope.”

Her gallant sentiments were cut short by Zannian’s shouts. He ordered the prisoners’ hobbles cut so they could move faster.

“You’re in Sthenn’s realm now,” he warned, gesturing to the gloomy trees around them. “Try to run away, and you won’t last ten steps off the path. Our Master has filled the forest with beasts of his own making. Their only purpose is to kill the unwary, so keep to the track and do as you’re told!”

Tired but fearful, the captives moved down the narrow trail in a column of twos. It wasn’t long before they had proof of the forest’s deadly purpose. One of the raiders fell asleep while riding, and his horse strayed off the path. It ambled to a short bush growing beneath a leafless tree. Slim yellow fruit hung from the bush, and a temptingly sweet aroma wafted to the hungry prisoners as they passed by. Before Zannian or the other riders had noticed their sleeping comrade, the horse nosed into the bush and nibbled a yellow fruit.

A snap louder than any whipcrack split the air. Hairy brown tentacles burst from the ground, enveloping the horse. The raider was thrown to the ground. Two tentacles seized the startled man around the waist and neck, drawing him under the seemingly solid soil and putting an abrupt end to his hoarse screams.

“Hoten! Kukul!” Zannian yelled. “Save the horse!”

Warily, the two riders jabbed their long spears into the ground around the bush. Beramun heard a high, keening shriek of pain. Blackish fluid oozed out of the dirt where Kukul’s spear penetrated. The tentacles loosened their grip on the horse, and Hoten snagged its bridle, leading the animal to safety. Grinning, Kukul gave the ground one last jab. Foul-smelling liquid spurted out, drenching his spear and arm. Kukul jerked his weapon free and rode back to the waiting band.

“It’s gonna be sore for a while,” he boasted. Extending the reeking spear, Kukul deliberately wiped the vile ooze across the backs of two prisoners. “Faw! The takti smells a lot better above the ground than below.”

Takti was a south plains word meaning “fisherman.” Beramun understood the wry reference. The creature buried itself under loose soil and extended a lure that had the appearance of a fruit-bearing bush. When unsuspecting prey tried to eat the fruit, tentacles seized them and dragged them into the takti’s maw. The comparison to a fisherman’s baited hook was grimly appropriate.

The prisoners needed little goading to get them moving again. They stumbled deeper into the forest. Slowly their surroundings changed. The oak, yew, and alder of the upland woods gradually gave way to cypress, juniper, and elm. The dry brown soil became black and soft, and an air of decay permeated the forest. Wispy gray widows’ hair moss hung in long clumps from the branches of trees.

Midday came, and still the column lurched onward. The raiders’ horses began to pant from exhaustion and thirst. Still Zannian would not let anyone stop, lest they incur the wrath of Sthenn. Instead, he ordered his men to dismount and lead their horses.

Red-eyed vipers as thick as Beramun’s thigh occupied low branches above the trail. Spiderwebs two paces wide filled the gaps between some trees. Other dark things scurried away as they passed, a thousand rustlings and stirrings in the thick mat of rotting leaves covering the forest floor.

Beramun noticed they’d been going downhill for quite some time. Worn, white tree roots snaked across the trail like bleached bones. That and the smell of decay reinforced the impression they were passing through a burial ground. The widow’s hair was so thick on the trees that very little sunlight reached the ground.

She lost track of time in the perpetual gloom. The trail seemed endless, sometimes winding left, sometimes right, but always down and down. The ground grew damper until it squished between her toes with every step. The air was warmer, wetter, and heavier.

Something touched her arm. Beramun flinched, thoughts of vipers and carnivorous monsters flashing through her numbed brain. Looking up, she saw Zannian riding alongside her. He’d tapped her with the butt of his spear.

“Water?” he said, holding a hide-wrapped gourd. He shook it to show her it was full. The sound was nearly more than she could bear. Her parched mouth yearned for water, but Beramun saw her fellow prisoners eyeing the gourd as well, licking their cracked lips.

Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “Not unless there’s some for all.”

Zannian’s face hardened. “Be thirsty then!” He trotted back to the head of the line.

“Next time take what he offers,” said the man behind her. “He wants you. You can use that.”

“I want no favors from him,” Beramun replied in a low voice.

The man shrugged and muttered something that ended with “stupid girl.” Roki, at least, gave her a heartening smile.

The last leagues passed in blur. The trail changed from a path worn into the hard soil to a raised hillock of dry ground surrounded by a stinking morass of rotting vegetation. Night fell, and still they blundered on. Prisoners began to collapse from exhaustion and thirst, some dropping in mid-stride. The raiders were in no better straits. More than one toppled from his mount. Those who fell off the trail into the brush never emerged again. A brief grunt, a thrash of limbs, and it was over. No one had the strength to help them.

Some inner power kept Beramun going. Her arms and legs felt carved from wood. To keep herself moving she blotted out all thoughts – her murdered family, Zannian, his terrible dragon master. The world narrowed to the patch of ground in front of her. Nothing else existed but her next footfall.

Finally the awful trek ended. At the head of the struggling column, Zannian reined up. His men followed suit, some of them actually weeping with joy. The prisoners, insensible to commands or curses, kept tramping forward until the foremost fetched up against the halted horses, tripped, and fell. Those behind fell over them, and so on, until the whole wretched column lay gasping on the ground.

“This is Almurk,” Zannian rasped. He cleared his parched throat. “This will be your home until you die.”

In spite of the fatigue that dragged at her limbs, Beramun couldn’t resist lifting her head for a look. They were in a clearing about sixty paces wide. A broad dirt path divided the clearing in two. On each side were clusters of rude huts made from lashed saplings and sheathed in leaves, mud, and bark. Smoke hung in the still, dank air, blending the fetid odor of the swamp with the smell of burnt wood and unwashed humanity.

Though the clearing was free of trees, a heavy canopy of vines growing across the branches that ringed the settlement blotted out the sky. The canopy held in the smoke and smells and probably kept Almurk as dark as twilight all day long.

Hoten, Kukul, and the rest of the raiders dismounted and began shouting at the prisoners. When the wretched folk did not comply fast enough, they were whipped and kicked until they got moving. Many of the prisoners could do no better than crawl on hands and knees, heads hanging, sides heaving.

The continued mistreatment of her fellow captives made anger flare in Beramun’s heart. She staggered to her feet, staring coldly at the men trying to drive her into a penlike enclosure. They knew she had found favor in their chiefs eyes, so they hesitated to strike her. Captives clustered around her, using Beramun as a shield against their tormentors. The pitiful group clung to each other as the girl’s dark eyes remained fixed in silent fury on the raiders.

Kukul rode over, scowling at the clump of unmoving captives. “Why are you standing there?” he snarled. “Get moving!”

“Water,” Beramun croaked. “We need water and food.”

“You get what we give you when we give it to you!”

“No! Now!” Her shout was tinged with a courage brought on by exhaustion, fear, and outrage. “If you mean to kill us, then do it. We won’t be starved and parched to death!”

Infuriated by her defiance, Kukul snatched a long obsidian knife from his belt. Beramun’s flash of courage faltered at the sight of the naked black blade, but when she glanced backward for a way to flee, she saw instead her fellow captives. Their gray, suffering faces had been transformed by her desperate defiance.

Their need transformed her too, giving her new strength. Pulling Zannian’s blanket from her shoulders, Beramun twisted it quickly around her left arm. Kukul slashed at her, and she used the blanket to ward off the blow. She felt the stone blade snag on the coarse cloth. Backing up, she dropped awkwardly to a fighting crouch. The humid air was heavy and thick, and she had no strength left after the long forced march. Her best hope was that Kukul was spent, too.

Kukul uttered an obscenity and cut at her backhanded. Beramun fended this off with her padded wrist, then used her free hand to punch the raider’s face. Blood flowed from his nose. He howled and jabbed at her exposed belly. Beramun twisted away, lost her footing, and fell hard.

Grinning triumphantly, Kukul advanced until he was standing over her. He pinned her blanket-wrapped arm to the ground with one foot, then raised his knife.

Beramun, gasping for breath, squeezed her eyes shut.

Death did not arrive. Instead, she heard a gurgling noise and the astonished cries of her fellow captives. Opening her eyes, she saw a slender, flint-tipped spear protruding from Kukul’s throat. Dark red blood covered his chest. The obsidian knife fell from his fingers, his knees folded, and down he went, falling backward across Beramun’s ankles.

She kicked free of the dead man. Zannian appeared. He picked up Kukul’s knife. In his right hand he held a strange device: a carved stick as long as his forearm, fitted with a leather strap on one end and a small leather cup on the other. A short spear like the one that had killed Kukul fit loosely in the leather cup. She saw immediately how it worked – by whipping it overhand, the stick hurled the small spear with great force.

“Did he hurt you?” the chief asked.

Beramun didn’t answer. Her gaze locked on Kukul’s lifeless eyes.

Zannian said sharply, “Stand up.”

She snapped back to awareness and did as he ordered. He unwound the blanket from her arm. The center of the bedroll was slashed in several places.

“You’re bleeding.”

Beramun stared at her arm as though it belonged to someone else. There was indeed a long cut from her wrist to her elbow. Blood dripped slowly from the tip of her little finger, soaking quickly into the black earth.

“So I am,” she said.

The night, the camp, and Zannian’s face swirled before her eyes as the last of her strength deserted her.

*

Beramun awoke upside down, her head and arms dangling. A greenish yellow light offered just enough illumination for her to see. It took her a moment to realize she was being carried over someone’s shoulder. The legs and feet beneath her might have belonged to any of the raiders. She noticed a carved wooden rod hanging from her carrier’s waist and recognized the odd weapon. Zannian had killed Kukul with it.

The raider chief was carrying her down a dark tunnel. Stones had been set in the soft soil to make a firm, dry path. The light was coming from clumps of villainous-looking toadstools growing in cracks in the paving. The gills radiated the sickly glow, and the stems and caps were a dull, dark red, like raw meat.

The path slanted downward. Turning her head, she saw the tunnel stretched behind them. No entrance was visible – just an unmeasurable darkness. Dampness clung to her skin, but she resisted the urge to shiver. Her injured arm was wrapped in a hide bandage, but she wore the same short, ragged shift she’d gone to sleep in two days before.

Zannian stopped, and Beramun closed her eyes, maintaining her limp, unconscious pose. The raider chief bent his knees until her feet touched the ground, then he caught her under the arms and lowered her to the ground with care. Hearing his footsteps move away, she dared crack an eyelid to see what was happening.

They were in a large, circular room, ten paces across. The floor dropped away in stages, resulting in a series of stone steps leading down to an open hole. Even more toadstools grew here, resulting in a relatively brighter view. Zannian stood on the lowest step, facing the hole and stretching his arms wide.

“Great Master,” he intoned loudly, “I am here as you commanded.”

Beramun heard scratching noises near her face. Opening her eye a bit wider, she spotted three huge cockroaches, each as big as the palm of her hand. Their bellies and spiny feet made soft scraping sounds as they clambered over the loose debris on the floor. Disgusted, Beramun clenched her eyes shut. She had to set her teeth firmly to keep from crying out when the giant insects crawled over her chest to investigate the dried blood on her injured arm.

Bad as the cockroaches were, a new, louder noise chilled the blood in her veins. She opened one eye and looked toward the pit, from which the noise came. It was a hard tapping, like wood or bone against stone, followed by the distinct hiss of skin rubbing on skin. That and a rising acidic stench announced the coming of Sthenn.

“Master! I await your orders!” Zannian cried.

A large claw rose out of the black pit and gripped the edge of the lowest step. It was the dewclaw on the dragon’s wing joint, as big as Beramun’s slim hand, though yellowed and eroded like a tusk of weathered ivory. The reek of the dragon’s poisonous breath grew stronger. Emitting rapid clicks, the roaches fled to crevices in the wall. Beramun wished she could follow them.

Her breath caught as she watched the dragon slowly emerge from its lair. A second dewclaw appeared, followed closely by the forward-curving horns atop Sthenn’s head. His horns were stained and notched from untold years. The dragon’s broad brow rose above the edge of the pit. His head was heavy and square, the color of ancient jade. Along his muzzle and the underside of his throat, his scales were ragged, corroded-looking. The barbels on his chin were thick and the palest green of all, as if their color had leached away with the centuries.

“I am here as you bid, Master,” the young chief said.

“That is good,” rasped the dragon. “I don’t have to tear your head off.”

Zannian stepped back from the rim of the pit as more of the monster emerged. Sthenn’s body was slender and serpentine. Gray-green scum mottled the edges of his scales, and he exuded a powerful reek of age, mold, and uncleanness.

He perched on the stone ledge that lined the opening of his lair. In the confined space, his presence was overwhelming. Beramun felt cold moisture trickling down her face and neck, the sweat of pure fear.

“What’s this?” asked the dragon, swiveling his head toward her. As he did so, Beramun closed her eye.

“A slave,” Zannian replied. “We took her on the raid.”

Beramun heard the dragon come closer. She could almost feel his baleful eyes boring into her. She begged all her departed ancestors to spare her from too much pain, to make her death mercifully quick.

Something cold and sharp raked through her hair, and this time Beramun begged her ancestors for the strength not to shriek aloud.

After an interminable time, the dragon said, “All rodents look alike to me. Why bring it here?”

“I would keep her for myself, Master, if you allow it.”

The hovering presence above her withdrew. Beramun’s heart eased its frantic thumping.

“Why this one? Many females have come to Almurk in recent days. What’s special about this one?”

Zannian did not answer immediately, so the dragon repeated the question, his powerful voice rising into a higher register, lending it a curiously feminine tone.

“She’s beautiful, Master.”

“What do rodents know of beauty?” Sthenn sneered. “That frail, thin hide of yours isn’t capable of beauty.”

“True, Master. May I keep her anyway?”

Beramun was certain she’d given no sign she was awake, yet something had alerted the dragon, for he said, “Let’s ask the little squirrel. She’s listening to your plea.”

The dragon’s claws closed around her waist, and she was lifted from the stones. The time for pretense was gone, so she vented her pent-up terror in a loud, ringing scream. Zannian took a step toward her. The green dragon’s slit eyes flickered to the raider chief.

“You wish to help her?” Sthenn asked, chuckling malevolently.

“Master, I —”

Sthenn swung his claw in a wide arc until Beramun’s feet were dangling over the open pit. Her frantic squirming inside his claw only seemed to amuse the monster more.

His black mirth made Beramun furious. “Go ahead and kill me!” she shouted. “I won’t be forced to mate with any man!”

The dragon’s hard laughter echoed off the walls. “Hear that, little Zan? True love indeed!”

“Please, Master,” Zannian pleaded, his face crimson. “Don’t hurt her.”

“And if I told you to choose between serving me and having this black-haired wench, what would you say?”

Beramun saw the raider’s throat work as he swallowed hard. “I will always serve you, Master.”

“Excellent answer!”

Sthenn tossed Beramun onto the upper steps. She landed hard and rolled, coming to a stop against the niter-encrusted wall. Her tumble scattered the loose debris, sending some of it rolling into the yawning pit. She realized many of the “stones” she’d been lying on were actually human bones.

“Take her, boy, and use her as you see fit!” Sthenn cackled. “When you tire of her, bring her to me – though beautiful rodents likely taste much the same as ugly ones.”

The dragon lowered himself backward into his hole. His feculent laughter echoed upward long after his monstrous form was lost from view.

Zannian knelt by Beramun and helped her sit up.

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped.

He withdrew, but said, “Mend your attitude. Those who break the laws of Almurk end up here, as meat for the Master.”

“How can you serve such a monster? How can you feed your fellow humans to him?”

“Sthenn is the source of our future greatness. With him as our master, we will forge a great tribe and conquer the plains!”

Beramun ignored his helping hand and stood, bracing herself against the sticky wall until her knees ceased shaking.

He watched her through narrowed eyes. “You can live as the chiefs mate or die as his slave. The choice is yours. Until you decide, you’ll work like the others in the tannery.”

He indicated she should precede him up the tunnel. She limped past, bruised from her hard landing, and they walked in silence. The long tunnel eventually ended on a blank wall. Looking up, Beramun saw an opening. A ladder made from peeled saplings was positioned in the hole. Weary, her entire body aching, she began the climb up.

When they emerged, she saw it was still night. Zannian pointed wordlessly to the pen where the other captives slept. Head held high, Beramun limped into the low-walled prison.

Chapter 5

Tiphan and his young helpers left the valley through Cedarsplit Gap, climbing into the low-hanging clouds as they went. Everything they wore or carried soon acquired a thin coat of ice. Once they crested the pass, they encountered a frigid wind that cut through their furs. By the time the sun rose above the eastern range, all three travelers were numb to the bone.

Tiphan consented to a pause in the lee of a promontory for refreshment. Strengthening drafts of Hulami’s best wine got their blood coursing again.

“The wind shouldn’t be so bad on the downslope,” Mara remarked.

“I hope so,” said Penzar, lips blue with cold. “Tosen, now that we’re out of Yala-tene, can you tell us where we’re going?”

In reply Tiphan opened his hip pouch and took out the scrap of Silvanesti map. He spread it on a convenient rock and pointed approximately halfway between the eastern rivers.

“Here,” he said.

Penzar touched the ragged edge of the tom map reverently. “This is elven?”

“Yes. It represents a place, like you might draw a picture of a person you know.” Tiphan drew his knife and deftly scratched a few lines on the rock face behind them with the bronze blade. Mara and Penzar squinted at the image. It was a simple face – round head, eyes, nose, the suggestion of a mouth.

“This might be anyone,” Tiphan said. “So I add —” He scored a curling line from the back of the image’s head. “Now who is it?”

Penzar said, “Mara!” and the girl echoed, “Me!”

“If I drew a three-sided lake with a waterfall at the broad end, you’d know what place it was, wouldn’t you?”

The boy grinned. “Of course, Tosen.”

Mara was studying the crude likeness on the rock. She glowed with her pleasure at having been chosen as the subject of her leader’s lesson, but she quickly resumed her serious countenance.

Standing out from the sheltering boulder, she said, “The wind dies. Shall we go?”

As they crossed the high divide between east and west the wind subsided. It was still freezing and extremely dry – too dry for snow or ice – but the sun was bright, and they made good time. Penzar moved ahead, scouting for hidden danger and game, but he found neither. The mountains were desolate this late in winter, and save for few birds of prey wheeling in the faultless sky, they saw no animals at all.

By afternoon it was Mara’s turn to scout ahead, which she did with her bird stick in hand. If she scared up a covey of quail or a grouse, she could bring down a bird in flight with her carved throwing wand. Unfortunately, she found the rocky crevices as lifeless as Penzar had.

At this height, the sky was clear, blue, and free of clouds. Shading her eyes, Mara looked to the eastern horizon. Slender, thready clouds reached out from the edge of dawn, like long white fingers. It was snowing, possibly raining, somewhere far to the east, but she reckoned the moisture wouldn’t reach them for several days.

The clatter of loose rocks ahead woke her from her reverie. She drew her arm back, ready to throw her stick at whatever was moving up ahead. Listening, she heard something else: the rhythmic fall of hooves.

Mara turned and sprinted back up the trail. Topping an outcropping of rock, she spied Tiphan and Penzar in the distance and ran even harder. When she was close enough, she gasped her warning.

“Tosen! Horses!”

Horses meant nomads or elves. In either case, the trio was in no position to meet hostile strangers. They hastily quit the trail, taking shelter between two boulders. Penzar stood with spear ready as the others peered around the rocks to see what was coming.

Four swarthy heads appeared, bobbing as they came. They had leathery faces and shoulder-length black hair, lank and woven through with vines and leaves. They weren’t elves or humans, and as they drew nearer, it became plain they were not riding on horses. They were horses below the waist.

“Centaurs,” Tiphan whispered.

The four leaders were followed by a crowd of others, all weighed down with baggage – furs, hides, bedrolls, tools, and woven willow panniers. Mara counted twenty-two centaurs in sight, with more coming over the ridge. This was no hunting party. This was an entire tribe on the move.

The lead man-horse reached the spot where Tiphan, Mara, and Penzar had left the trail. In their haste to hide, they hadn’t obscured their tracks, and the centaur saw the signs of their passage. He held up a hand, shouted something in a guttural tongue, and the whole tribe halted. Gray-haired elders cantered forward to confer with the scout. With much gesturing of arms and stamping of hooves, the scout made his point. Bending his forelegs, he knelt and sniffed the stony ground. Slowly he raised his head until he was staring directly at the humans’ hiding place.

“Tosen?” Penzar whispered, gripping his spear.

“Be still. I’ll deal with them.”

Tiphan stepped from the crevice. The centaurs spotted him and began an excited babble. Four of them galloped up, flanking the Sensarku leader.

“Mara! Penzar! Come out,” he said evenly. “Penzar, leave your spear.”

“But Tosen —”

“Do as I say!”

Mara emerged from the cleft in the rock and stood confidently by her leader. Penzar came out more slowly, eyeing the fierce-looking centaurs with obvious suspicion.

One centaur, whose hair was liberally streaked with gray and whose dark horse’s body was likewise dappled with silver, approached Tiphan. He scrutinized the Sensarku and uttered a short sentence in his own tongue.

Back in the rocks, Tiphan had thought he recognized this centaur. Now it was time to test his memory.

“Miteera?” he ventured. “Miteera?”

The centaurs pranced and muttered, obviously startled to hear the word from human lips.

“Miteera,” said the gray-dappled centaur. “Your face I not know.”

“I am Tiphan, Konza’s son. Peace to you, Miteera, and to your people.”

“Know you me... how?”

“I know many things,” Tiphan said, smiling. “I am chief of the Sensarku, the Servants of the Dragon.”

“Ah!” Miteera turned to his people and gave them a rapid explanation in their own tongue. To Tiphan, he said, “From Arku-peli?” Tiphan admitted they were. “Your chief Arkuden?”

The smile faded from Tiphan’s face. He forced it to return. “Yes, the head of our village is the Arkuden,” he said. “What brings you and your people to the high mountains, Miteera?”

The old centaur’s face darkened, his gray eyes narrowing. “Pushed out eight suns ago. By B’leef.”

It took Tiphan a moment to realize Miteera was saying “Balif.” To be certain he asked, “The Silvanesti drove you out? The elves?”

Miteera nodded and spat on the ground. “Old Ones with fire and metal drive Miteera people out. Many die. We go to sunset. Leave B’leef.”

With a few more questions, Tiphan pieced together the rest of the story. For some time, the Silvanesti had been systematically driving the centaurs from of the woodland between the two branches of the Thon-Tanjan. Eight days ago, Miteera’s tribe had fought a pitched battle against Balif’s army and lost. Many centaur warriors were killed. All that remained of Miteera’s tribe was now fleeing west to escape the conquering elves.

“Long’go, Arkuden save Miteera from yevi. Arkuden friend. We find Arku-peli this way?” asked the old centaur.

“Yes, the high trail will take you to the Lake of the Falls,” Tiphan replied.

“Where you go? To sunbirth?”

Tiphan admitted they were heading east. The centaur shook his head and twitched his long, gray-streaked tail. “Bad. Bad to go,” he said. “You meet Old Ones. Meet death.” He mimed a sword thrust into Tiphan’s gut.

“We go on the Arkuden’s business,” Tiphan said. Mara arched an eyebrow at her leader’s easy lie. “Would you lend us one of your warriors, to go with us and help us avoid the elves?”

Miteera looked doubtful, but he put the question to his band. Several centaurs seemed willing, and the chief chose a youthful one with a russet-colored horse’s body and like-colored hair, who stepped forward from the crowd.

“Elu,” said Miteera, “most brave and strong. He go with you.”

“Why does he want to go?” Penzar blurted, suspicious still.

Miteera pointed a gnarled finger at Mara. “Elu like two-leg girl. He go for her.”

Mara blushed, and Penzar sputtered, “Tosen, you can’t —”

“We humbly accept your help, Miteera,” Tiphan said, silencing his acolyte with a glare. “Welcome, Elu.”

“Him not talk,” Miteera said. “You point, he know.”

Elu shouldered his bundle of belongings and took his place at Tiphan’s side. The rest of the centaur band trotted past the humans. Miteera remained until the last of his people was gone then bade the humans good-bye. To Elu, Miteera addressed an elaborate farewell, which involved much stamping of hooves and clasping of arms. At last, the chief cantered away. Elu raised his club in salute.

Keeping his voice level, Penzar asked, “Tosen, why did you ask for this savage to accompany us?”

“Isn’t it obvious? A centaur is the next best thing to a pack animal.”

“But he has designs on Mara!”

“Then he’ll work hard to please her.” Tiphan took the heavy packs from the acolytes and draped them over the unresisting Elu’s withers and back. The centaur’s bright green eyes widened slightly, but he accepted the new burdens without complaint.

“Tosen, will we encounter elves, do you think?” asked Mara.

“I doubt it. We’re not going so far east as the Tanjan woods. Once we get to flatter land, we will have to keep sharp watch for Silvanesti, I’m sure, but I don’t expect to meet them in strength.”

Long clouds from the east overtook the sun. A cold wind rose with the shadows and teased wisps from Mara’s thick braid. She pointedly ignored the admiring look the centaur gave her.

“Come,” said Tiphan. “We ought to reach the tree line before dark.”

Penzar retrieved his spear, saying, “I’ll scout again.”

“Let Mara,” said Tiphan smugly. “She can be the carrot for our centaur friend.”

Mara was not amused, but she took the lead, and they resumed their march. Fifty paces behind her came Tiphan and Penzar. Elu, silent and strong, walked patiently at the rear, laden with the baggage.

*

Amero knelt by the water’s edge and dipped his hands in the cold lake. Mud and dried blood loosened from his sore fingers, clouding the clear water.

Across the lake, smoke rose from scores of small fires between the rows of seedlings. It had taken two days of back-breaking labor to clear the ice from the orchard, swathe the tender seedlings in mounds of straw, and get the warming fires going. It was too early to tell whether their efforts to save the orchard would be successful.

Like everyone else, Amero tore at the frozen soil with his bare hands, pulling sharp shards of ice away from the delicate plants. As he looked at his cut and bleeding hands, he dreamed of metal tools for every villager – bronze that would cut through ice and frozen turf, turning hard land into garden. More than ever he knew the future of humankind lay in the mastery of metal.

“You’ll get chilblains if you stay out here with wet hands.”

He turned, recognizing the voice. Lyopi draped a fur cape over his shoulders and held out a steaming mug of tea. Rising, Amero took the clay cup from her hands. Its warmth against his sore palms was just the solace he needed.

“Thanks,” he said. “I sometimes wonder how I lived so long without you to take care of me.”

She laughed. “So do I.”

They strolled back to the unfinished section of the town wall. Even before they reached it, Amero could hear chimes and sistra ringing inside the Offertory. The Sensarku made their instruments from Duranix’s cast-off scales. Amero considered it a waste of good metal, but the Sensarku were devoted to their ceremonies and repeated them every day.

“I wonder what happened to that fool Tiphan,” said Lyopi with characteristic bluntness. “I didn’t think he was the type to run away because of a single blunder. He was too proud for that.”

Amero sipped his tea. “He hasn’t run away. He’s on some quest.”

“How do you know?”

“Anari, who sleeps near Mara, told me Tiphan came in the night and woke Mara to tell her they were going on a journey. He also took Penzar, who’s a good tracker. They left before any of us knew about the danger to the orchards. He’s gone to the east to find something.”

Lyopi crossed her arms, burying her hands beneath her arms to keep them warm. “Find what, do you think?”

“Common sense, I hope.”

Flames flickered up above the walls of the town and Offertory. Lyopi drew in breath loudly. “They’re ‘purifying’ the cairn because it was touched by your unclean self,” she said. When Amero didn’t reply she added, “Aren’t you offended?”

“Why should I be? I don’t care what beliefs the Sensarku follow as long as they do their work and mind the village elders.”

“Very wise,” she said, with mild irony. She knew when Amero said “village elders” he really meant “the Arkuden.”

A new, more distant sound drowned out the chanting from the Offertory: the sound of rams’ horns blown by sentinels high on the cliff above Yala-tene. It was a danger signal, warning of an impending attack.

Amero and Lyopi raced to her house. Whenever an alarm was raised, all able-bodied adults in the village gathered at the north end of Yala-tene armed with sword, axe, or spear. Amero found Lyopi’s injured brother Unar trying to rise from his sickbed in answer to the call.

“Down, down,” Amero said, pushing the wounded man back on his pallet. “No one expects you to fight.”

“But, Arkuden —”

“Lie still, Unar, or I’ll have your sister sit on you.”

“Ugh, threaten me with anything but that!”

Lyopi glared at them. “Shut your mouths, or I’ll raise lumps on both your heads!” She brandished a stone-headed axe. “I’m not so stout that you should fear me sitting on you, brother!”

“True, you weigh less than the dragon,” Amero quipped. He found a hunting spear and tested its heft.

“She’s more like a sturdy calf,” Unar said.

“Quiet you, or I’ll have your other eye out!”

Unar subsided at last. Lyopi tied a heavy leather cap around her head and went to the door.

“Are you ready, Arkuden?”

He shouldered the spear. “I am. Lead on.”

Barely two score villagers had gathered by the unfinished wall. The rest were out hunting or working in the orchards on the other side of the lake. The horns continued to blow, but now they were sounding from the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. The strangers were moving fast, right down the path to Yala-tene.

The armed villagers chattered nervously among themselves. What sort of danger was bearing down on them? Elves? Nomads?

“Form a circle!” Amero shouted.

The villagers with spears presented a hedgehog of flintheads to the unseen foe. One by one the horns died away. Eventually, the sound of massed hoofbeats reached the villagers.

“Horses!” someone cried.

“Nomads! The nomads have come back!”

Villagers on the extreme ends of the formation began to back away.

Amero shouted, “Stand where you are! Stand fast!”

The frightened folk rejoined the circle, crowding closer together.

The noise grew louder. Dust rose from the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. The villagers’ nervousness spread to the cattle and horses penned on each side of them. The animals milled about, neighing and lowing.

A column of dark-clad riders burst from the pass. They thundered out a hundred paces, halted, and surveyed the scene. Amero squinted through the whirling dust. They looked like small, dark-skinned men on ponies, not rangy nomads or fair-skinned elves.

The riders launched into motion again and came straight at the defenders. At sixty paces the dust parted enough for Amero to see who they were.

“Raise your weapons!” he cried. “Spears up! It’s Miteera!”

Confused but relieved, the villagers shouldered their arms. The centaur herd slowed when they saw the spears rise. Amero stepped out of the formation and held up his hands.

“Greeting, noble Miteera!” he shouted. “Welcome to Yala-tene!”

The gray-haired chief of the horse-men trotted forward.

“Hail, Arkuden! My eyes weep to see you!”

Arms wide, man and centaur embraced. Time had not dulled Miteera’s fierce smell, but Amero was so relieved that he felt like he was holding an armful of flowers.

The remainder of the centaur tribe ambled down the ravine into the open valley once they saw there was no danger.

“What brings you to our valley, noble chief?” Amero asked. “It’s been ten years since I saw you last.”

“Ah, Arkuden, such evil speaking I must do! My people are driven out!”

“Driven out? By who?”

“The Old Ones.”

The centaurs were rough, primitive folk, but they were valiant fighters. To dislodge the entire herd would have required —

“A great host,” Amero muttered. “Balif?”

Miteera nodded, frowning. “Aye, Arkuden. We could not stand before fire and metal.”

Amero studied the warriors at Miteera’s back. Many bore recent wounds, and all looked tired and trailworn.

“Fear not, Miteera,” he said. “You are welcome here. Will you stay and take greens with us?”

“One night only, Arkuden.”

“Why the hurry?”

“Is word of kokusuna.” This was the centaurs’ word for “spirits.” It also meant, in a vague way, “omens.”

Amero led the centaurs to the water troughs used by the village’s horse herd. The visitors weren’t insulted. Centaurs considered horses kin and in general held them in higher regard than humans. As the centaurs refreshed themselves, one of them spoke to his chief. Miteera clapped a gnarled hand to his brown forehead.

“Ah, Arkuden! Your people seen on mountain!”

“Eh?”

Miteera explained how his band had encountered three humans in the high mountains. Through the old chiefs oblique descriptions, Amero understood the three to be Tiphan and his two acolytes.

“Were they well?” he asked.

“Hale, not wise.” The centaur shook his head at the incomprehensible foolishness of humans. “They go sunbirth. B’leef there.”

Amero was puzzled. Tiphan was headed east, toward the elves? “Did he say exactly where he was going or why?”

“Nah. They hunt. Not say what.”

Amero’s face betrayed his concern, and Miteera clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Fear not! Elu I give – strong, good fighter. He guard good.”

Amero called for fodder to be brought to the hungry centaurs. The centaurs ate the sweet grass ravenously, plunging their faces into piles of fodder and coming up with great wads of hay sticking out their mouths and clenched in both hands. They chewed noisily, slurping water to wash everything down.

While they fed, Amero plied Miteera with questions about the elves. According to the centaur, Balif’s army had appeared in late summer, following the course of the Thon-Tanjan. They pushed into the centaurs’ homeland slowly, stopping every few leagues to erect stockades, which they filled with warriors. The two races first clashed about the time the leaves changed color. Elf cavalry wiped out one centaur warband, driving the rest of the herd into the eastern bend of the Tanjan, trapping them against the swift-flowing river. The destruction of the centaur tribe seemed certain. And then —

“B’leef turn away,” Miteera said. “Fight old enemy. Karada.”

Amero stepped back, thunderstruck. It could not be! The old centaur was mistaken – not Karada!

Karada, born Nianki, was Amero’s only blood kin. He had not seen her in twelve years. She was known throughout the plains as Karada, meaning “Scarred One,” from the scars of a vicious animal attack she bore on her face and neck. Fifteen years ago she and her band of nomads had been the scourge of the Silvanesti, raiding their outposts and threatening their new settlements. Twelve years ago, after being defeated by Balif, Karada’s shattered warrior band had come to Yala-tene, where rebels in her ranks tried to overthrow her and loot the village. Together, Amero, Duranix, Karada, and her loyalists had defeated the rebels, led by Hatu the One-eyed and Karada’s blood foe, Nacris.

With the village secure, Karada and her people had departed. Though Amero had hoped she would return, neither she nor her people had ever come back to the Valley of the Falls.

Stories had reached him of his sister’s ongoing fight against the Silvanesti. Karada had become the nemesis of the elf general Balif. For years she thwarted the elves’ plans of conquest in the north and east. Four years ago, wanderers passing through Yala-tene brought a tale of Karada’s death. Pursued by elite Silvanesti warriors, she and her band were said to have been trapped on a flat-topped escarpment in the far north, overlooking the inland sea. Five times the finest warriors of Silvanost tried to storm the plateau, and five times they were hurled back by Karada’s ferocious fighters. Finally an elf priest came forth and called down fire from the sky. The wooded plateau blazed from end to end, and when the flames went out days later, the elves found the burned bodies of Karada and all her band. That was the tale the wanderers told, and Amero had believed it – until now.

“She’s alive?” Amero asked eagerly, “Karada lives?”

Miteera shrugged. “I not see. Old Ones cry, ‘Karada! Karada!’ and ride away. Not kill us.” The old centaur’s eyes gleamed. “Karada is kokusun. No kill, ever.”

Amero didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t only the centaurs who thought his sister was a spirit. Many people, villagers and nomads alike, believed her to be the living spirit of the plains. Amero knew that if anyone could escape the might of Silvanos, it was Karada.

Amero saw the centaurs bedded down for the night then returned to the cave. He told Duranix what he’d learned from Miteera, both the story of Karada and that the centaurs had seen Tiphan and his two acolytes in the eastern mountains.

“Shall I go after Tiphan?” Duranix asked, slanting a look at his human friend.

“He chose this path. Let him follow it.”

“It would be convenient if the elves rid you of your problem.”

Amero was genuinely shocked. “I don’t desire his death!”

Duranix’s brazen lids clashed as he blinked. “I don’t see why not. He wouldn’t weep if you fell off the mountain.”

“I try to be better than that,” Amero said, kicking at the hearthstones.

The dragon stared as Amero gazed into the fire. Finally Duranix asked, “What about Karada? I can search for her, if you want.”

Amero shook his head. “How do you search for a kokusun? Can you spot a spirit from on high and take it in your claws?”

“If you ask me,” said the dragon, “I will try.”

Chapter 6

Days followed days in a blur of hard labor, filth, and fear. Beramun worked in a tannery, stirring huge clay vats of molten beeswax. The wax was kept boiling as sheets of cowhide were dipped in it. Slaves had to lift the hot dripping hides out of the wax and carry them on poles to the molding shed where the leather was pounded over carved wooden forms and allowed to dry. The result was a shell of tough, hardened leather that other slaves trimmed into breastplates.

Roki worked in the molding shed. Beramun was able to see her several times a day when she brought in steaming sheets of leather. Roki explained that the raiders wore the hardened leather shells over their shirts to protect themselves from knives and spears.

“There are so many,” Beramun said, eyes traveling down row upon row of hide-covered molds filling the shed.

Roki flopped a hot, limp hide over her workbench. Molten wax splattered on both women, as it did a hundred times a day, leaving them with tiny, livid burns on their arms and legs.

“There must be more raiders than we’ve seen so far,” Roki said grimly.

Beramun learned other prisoners worked in a knappery, pounding out flint spearheads all day, and still another group cut and trimmed score upon score of green saplings for spear shafts. Zannian’s plan was all too obvious: He was going to raid on an even greater scale.

From sunrise to sundown the slaves labored. When it was too dark to see, their captors sounded a drum and herded them back to their walled enclosure. They were fed the same coarse food the raiders ate – a stew of nuts, wild greens, mushrooms, and the tough, unsavory meat of a common forest bird. It was not generosity that filled the slaves’ bowls. Roki said they were fed well so they could work all the harder.

After consuming their large bowls of flavorless but filling stew, the slaves went to sleep. Like the others, Beramun slept where she sat and did not stir until the drums rumbled at dawn, calling them back to work.

She wondered at her deep and dreamless rest. All her life she’d been a light sleeper. Living on the open savanna had taught her to remain alert to any possible danger. Since Almurk reeked of peril, how did she sleep so soundly?

One evening she feigned illness and gave away her food to those around her. Moments after finishing their meals, the captives fell fast asleep. Though tired and sore, Beramun felt alert. When vigorous shaking failed to rouse Roki, Beramun knew her suspicions were confirmed: The raiders were putting something in the food to make the prisoners sleep.

The next day she passed this information to Roki. The older woman was surprisingly unmoved.

“At least they allow us to rest,” she said with a shrug.

“But don’t you see? If we don’t take the food, we can stay awake and escape from here!”

Roki peeled a dry breastplate off the form and tossed it on the pile with the others she’d made that morning.

“We’ll never get out of here,” she said flatly. “If the raiders don’t catch us, the stormbird will. Or would you rather be eaten by some spirit-cursed monster in the forest?”

“I’d rather escape this muck hole and live free,” the girl insisted. A guard, sauntering through the molding hut, brusquely ordered Beramun back to work. She shouldered the poles and hissed at Roki, “I’ll not eat any more of their food.”

“Then you’ll starve.”

The day did not improve after that. One of the slaves was stung to death by bees while removing a section of honeycomb for the waxworks. The forest bees were the size of Beramun’s thumb, and the poor girl was overcome so quickly there was no chance to help her. The girl was an uncomplaining worker, no more than fourteen. That was all Beramun knew about her. She didn’t even know the girl’s name.

As the guards routed the bees with smoky pine knots and carried the girl’s body away, Beramun could only think she had been someone’s child. She must have had a family who cared about her, yet she had died alone and unknown in this horrible place.

Beramun refused to accept the same fate. She resolved to escape that very night.

After work, the usual stew was served. Beramun waited until the guards were gone then gave her portion away, ignoring her growling stomach. She considered telling her fellow slaves about the sleeping potion then changed her mind. Many of them had lapsed into sullen indifference, like Roki, or else openly collaborated with the raiders in hopes of currying small favors. Not wanting to risk exposure of her plan, she decided to keep it to herself.

She feigned sleep a long time before making her move. The slaves’ pen resounded with snores and wheezes as the exhausted captives dozed under the influence of the potion. Beramun didn’t bother trying to open the heavy gate but simply climbed the low wall. She had one leg over the top when something grabbed the ankle still inside the pen. A scream formed in her throat, but she stifled it. Looking down, she saw Roki had hold of her foot.

“Come back!” the woman said hoarsely. “You’ll be killed!”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” Beramun replied.

“I didn’t eat the stew. I knew you would try this!”

“Join me or not, but let me go!”

Roki hesitated a few seconds, but to Beramun it seemed like an age before the older woman’s callused hand released her ankle. By the feeble starlight penetrating the canopy of vines overhead, Beramun saw Roki’s cheeks were wet with tears.

A lump formed in Beramun’s throat. The woman had been her friend, the only one she’d made among the captives, but she couldn’t remain here.

She swallowed hard and said, “Farewell, Roki. Smooth trail and —” She stopped, unable to complete the plainsmen’s usual farewell. There would be no smooth trail or open skies for Roki here.

Beramun lifted her leg over the wall and prepared to drop three steps to the ground. Suddenly Roki exclaimed in a loud whisper, “Wait! I’m coming!”

“Hurry!” Beramun replied and dropped to the ground. The moldering turf muffled the sound.

Her friend clambered over the rough wall and fell heavily against Beramun. Her landing was frighteningly loud, and they froze for a moment to make sure they hadn’t been heard. There was no sound but the trill of the night creatures in the forest.

The two women stole across the empty camp, hand in hand, with Beramun leading the way. She went directly to the lean-to where the newly made spears were stacked and took one for herself and Roki. Somewhere in Almurk a dog barked. Huddled against a pile of spears as high as their shoulders, the women listened fearfully. The dog made no other sound.

“Where shall we go?” Roki whispered close to Beramun’s ear. “The trail we came in on?”

“Too obvious. We’ll have to strike out through the forest.”

Roki recoiled in horror, clutching Beramun’s arm. “That’s crazy! We’ll be eaten alive!”

“Go back then. The slave pen is right there.”

Roki said no more but transferred her tight grip from Beramun’s arm to the shaft of her spear. With hand gestures, Beramun indicated she intended to go straight across the camp, skirting the opening to Sthenn’s lair. Roki looked very much like she wanted to protest, but clamping her lips tightly together, she nodded.

They slipped by the yawning hole in the ground, glancing nervously into its dark depths. North of the pit were the hovels where the raiders lived. Outwardly, they were little better than the pen enclosing the slaves – simple structures of scrounged stone, wood, bark, and mud plaster. There was a strong smell of woodsmoke there, and the tang of roasted meat. Something else, too – a sour, musky odor Beramun had never smelled before. It wasn’t the dragon or any human, no matter how filthy. It reminded her of predatory beasts, like panthers or wolves, but it was different, too. Stronger somehow, like a whole pack of flesh-eaters collected in one noisome spot.

The strange smell came from smaller, ruder log structures scattered among the huts. These small dens were too low for a human to stand in. Beramun and Roki gave them wide berth.

A shaft of light fell on the path before them. The women paused, tracing the yellow glow back to its source. Standing in the midst of the raiders’ huts was a larger, better-made dwelling with a moss-thatch roof and smooth wattle-and-daub walls. It even had windows, which were covered with wicker shutters. Voices could be heard, speaking from within.

Smitten with curiosity, Beramun crept up to the bigger house, ignoring Roki’s frantic tugs on her shirt. She leaned the spear against the wall and stood up on tip-toe, trying to see through the loosely woven shutters.

The light came from a mussel shell just inside the window. It was filled with burning fat. Beyond it, another lamp burned, and between them sat Zannian. He was drinking from a clay cup and listening to a heated harangue from a gray-haired woman sitting with her back to the window.

“... can’t be ready for another ten days,” the woman was saying. “The breastplates are made, but they’ve not been dyed the proper color yet.”

“You and your color,” Zannian said, irritated. “Why must your band have green hoods and chests?”

“To honor the Master. The Jade Men will fight to the death for him when I command.”

“When you command, Mother?”

Beramun could hardly contain her surprise. Of course Zannian had parents, but to find his mother working alongside him for the vicious green dragon was astounding. She crept forward, gripping the window sill to steady herself. Roki crouched at her feet, trembling.

“I command them, and the Master commands me, as you well know,” the old woman said.

He looked past her for a moment and his expression changed, just slightly, and only for the barest instant.

Zannian said, “All right, make your green dye. You can have ten extra slaves to help. Now go.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I have other tasks.”

She knocked aside his empty cup. “Yes. Drinking. Very important!”

“Good night, Mother.”

His farewell, spoken with finality, silenced her at last. The old woman rose laboriously, leaning heavily on an oak crutch. Beramun saw her left leg was wrapped in leather trews. Her right leg, also wrapped, ended at the knee.

She hobbled to the door. Pausing there, she turned, and for the first time Beramun glimpsed her face. She had dark gray eyes, a sharp chin, and slender, bony hands. Though deeply lined, her face was not that of an old woman, but it did speak of a very hard life. Something about her face chilled Beramun. This, she decided, was a woman capable of anything.

“I hear there’s a girl in camp, a girl you fancy,” the woman said, and Beramun listened intently.

“Yes, so?” said Zannian.

“You’ve no time for girls, you know. Not until the Master’s plans are carried out.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about that?”

“Once we fake Yala-tene, you’ll have your pick of girls, Zan. Keep your mind on the Master’s will till then.”

He looked straight at the window where Beramun was peeping. “I will have what I will have. Neither you nor the Master need worry about it.”

Beramun shrank back from the window. Roki clutched her leg, inquiring with large, frightened eyes. Beramun wanted to run, but a flood of light appeared from the open door of the hut as Zannian’s mother hobbled away.

The women crouched low beneath the window. When the door flap closed again, Beramun moved. Before she could recover her spear, Zannian threw the shutter open, lamp in hand. Beramun was caught in a patch of soft yellow light. She froze, transfixed by the sudden illumination. Roki slunk away in the shadows, unseen.

“I thought I saw someone,” Zannian said, his youthful face flushed. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, not without irony. “I thought I’d walk around and see the rest of the camp.”

“Not a wise idea. The camp isn’t safe at night. Come inside.”

Zannian waited until she started toward the door, then he closed the shutter. Beramun knew if she ran, he’d overtake her before she could reach the trees. With a discreet wave to Roki, she continued to the door. Zannian was there, holding the hide flap open for her. She ducked under his arm and entered.

It was very warm inside, a condition aggravated by the heat of the flaming lamps. A sweet aroma she couldn’t identify hung in the air. Zannian sat down on the floor and bade her do likewise. He watched her closely as she sat, his guileless face betraying an obvious appreciation for her looks, dirty though she was.

“How long were you out there?”

She wouldn’t answer.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m pleased to see you,” he said, finally breaking his gaze and taking up a gourd. He poured a golden liquid from the gourd into a small clay cup. He held it out to her, and she realized this was the source of the sweet smell.

“Try it. We make it from the honey we collect from the hives.”

Beramun took the cup but waited until she saw Zannian pour himself another measure and drink it. She held the cup to her lips and sipped. The stuff tasted as sweet as it smelled but burned as it slid down her throat. Beramun coughed and coughed.

Zannian grinned. “Don’t let the sweet smell fool you. Mead’s strong.”

Eyes filling with tears, she set the cup down. He refilled both cups.

“You can’t escape, Beramun,” he said suddenly.

Her eyes met his. “I wasn’t —”

“Yes, you were. You figured out we put tane pollen in the slaves’ evening meal. Last night you didn’t eat yours to test your notion, and tonight you tried to escape.”

Her incredulity was so obvious that he smiled.

Beramun was suddenly struck by a strange thought. Tidied up, Zannian would be handsome. His smile, like a conjurer pleased with a trick, gave his face a whole new aspect. At the river, he’d given her his blanket. He’d saved her from Kukul and risked the dragon’s wrath by defending her. Was he a good man in spite of himself?

“Nothing happens in Almurk I don’t know about,” Zannian said. “I was raised from the earliest age to rule this land, and I shall.”

The odd moment was shattered. Beramun shook her head, angry for entertaining such ridiculous thoughts, even for a moment. This was the man who’d led the murderers of her father, mother, and kinsmen!

He mistook her gesture for disbelief of his grand claim. “I will,” he insisted, “and you can be mine, Beramun – mate to the chief of all the plains.”

“Why do you keep after me?” she snapped. “Aren’t there girls here whose families you did not destroy?”

“My master and my mother taught me to take only the best,” said Zannian, unmoved by her rebuke. He tossed back his mead. His cheeks reddened. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Eyes like the night sky filled with starlight, hair darker than a raven’s wing... and I will have you!”

He spoke like a bard, which astonished Beramun, but she was even more stunned when, with frightening speed, he caught her by both wrists. She tried to twist free, then made fists and attempted to hit him, fighting as Zannian dragged her to him. She hit him in the ribs, a glancing blow. Snarling, he slapped her across the face with his open palm. The blow made her ears ring, and she spun to the floor. In a heartbeat he was over her, pinning her facedown on the cold clay.

“Don’t fight so hard,” he rasped in her ear. “This can be a pleasant night.”

The thought of an entire night at his mercy put new strength in her limbs. Beramun drove her elbow backward into his stomach, and he rolled aside, gasping. She got to her knees before he seized her by the shoulders and pulled her backward. Then Zannian let out a grunt and went limp. Momentum carried Beramun onto her back, and she landed atop the young chief.

She scrambled to her feet and whirled, panting with exertion, rage, and fear. Instead of Zannian, however, Beramun faced Roki. The older woman stood a step away, holding her spear reversed. She’d subdued the amorous chief with the butt-end of her weapon. Zannian was unconscious.

“Why didn’t you stab him with the point?” Beramun demanded.

Roki shook her head. “I’ve never killed a man.”

“Nor have I, but if ever there was a time —” She tried to wrench the spear from the woman’s grasp, but Roki resisted.

“We must go!” the older woman whispered urgently. “The night wears on, and we must be far away before they discover we left.”

Beramun poured sticky mead over the lifeless Zannian. If anyone came looking for him before daybreak, they’d think him drunk and not raise an alarm. She relieved him of his bronze Silvanesti dagger, a hawk feather cloak, the only full waterskin in sight, and a round of mushroom bread.

Roki stood guard by the door, urging speed. Beramun took a last look around, and they dashed outside and plunged into the forest on the north side of the camp. The forest swallowed them, and in moments Almurk was lost from view.

*

The rising sun was the only witness to their flight. The heavy weave of vines, trees, and hanging moss kept out all but a little light. What could be seen sparkled through minute gaps in the canopy, like daytime stars.

The initial excitement of their escape passed quickly as Roki and Beramun found their pace slowed to an elder’s walk. They crept along, probing ahead with their spears, searching for carnivorous monsters and footing firm enough to support their weight. The necessity for the latter had been borne in on them the hard way. While it was still dark, Beramun stepped in a morass. She lost Zannian’s hawk feather cloak to the dragging embrace of the mire, and only Roki’s timely intervention saved her life. Thereafter they went single file through the dense undergrowth, poking and prodding the black soil carefully.

Just after daybreak, they paused to rest under an elm so large the two of them could not circle its trunk with their arms. Covered in sweat and mud, they sat under the vast tree and quickly consumed the bread and water they’d stolen from Zannian.

They had just begun to scrape the mud from their legs with elm twigs when they heard the howling. The twig fell from Roki’s hand.

“What’s that? Wolves?”

Beramun leapt to her feet. “No. Yevi! They’re hunting us!”

They ran, pointing their noses at the brightest patch of sky, east. Beramun kept glancing back toward the sound of the hunting pack.

Haste made them careless. Dodging around in thick underbrush, Beramun became separated from Roki. Before she could worry about that, the ground went treacherous again. Her foot sank into muck up to her ankle, and she went sprawling. Zannian’s bronze dagger flew from her hand.

She had no time to search for it. Something low and gray flitted through the dense foliage off to her left. Leaves and twigs snapped continuously behind her. Her pursuers were very close!

A woman’s scream rent the air. Roki! Beramun ran toward the sound, snatching at trees and saplings to keep her feet from sinking into the soft soil. A dozen paces along she came to a shallow, soggy ravine. To her horror, she saw Roki, pinned on her back by a large yevi. The beast was vaguely wolflike, with shaggy gray fur, pointed ears, and a long, fanged muzzle. There the resemblance ended. Twice as large as any wolf, the creature’s limbs were unnaturally long and bent forward at the knee, unlike the back-crook of a canine leg. Instead of padded paws, the monster had distinct fingers with which it gripped the fallen woman’s arms.

Roki and the beast struggled. She could no longer scream with the creature at her throat. The monster seemed to be trying to throttle her into submission.

Beramun took up Roki’s dropped spear and thrust it hard into the animal’s flank. It immediately released its prey and let out a weird, yelping cry: Ye-ye-ye!

The bestial cry was answered from the surrounding trees. Terrified, Beramun leaned on the spear shaft and drove it home. The gray beast collapsed in a welter of purplish blood. Beramun wrenched out the spear and knelt by Roki.

The older woman’s eyes were open but unseeing. Beramun shook her and called her name. Roki’s throat was horribly twisted, though the skin was unbroken. Pressing her ear to the older woman’s chest, Beramun heard no heartbeat. The beast had crushed Roki’s windpipe.

Tears welled in Beramun’s eyes. She stood and plunged the spear again and again into the carcass of the dead creature, screaming out her anguish.

Ye-ye-ye!

The weird cries sounded again, louder, closer. They penetrated Beramun’s fury, and she froze, panting, spear raised for yet another thrust. Staring down at Roki’s body, she vowed not to let these evil beasts take her alive.

Scrambling out of the gully and still weeping copiously, Beramun straggled on, slashing at a tangle of creepers with her spear. She heard the rush of moving water ahead.

The hated yelping cry came again – so much closer now that Beramun put on a burst of speed. She dived through a wall of green vines and suddenly found herself in midair. With a breathless cry, she plunged into water.

Holding her spear and kicking with her feet, she rose to the surface and looked back. A pair of the hideous gray creatures stood at the gap she’d made in the wall of vines at the river’s edge. Though they continued their howling and slavering, tearing at the vines with savagery, they couldn’t or wouldn’t jump in after her. With a surge of bitter triumph, Beramun let her spear go and began to swim in earnest.

Alternately swimming and floating on her back to rest, Beramun outdistanced her pursuers. The current was steady but not swift, and she had no trouble staying afloat. After almost a league, the water grew shallower, and she found herself bumping over algae-slick rocks. The stream widened into a calm lake, whose shore was dotted with cypress and yew trees, heavy with hanging moss. A small green island rose up in the center of the lake. Beramun swam to it.

The island, little more than a hump of tangled tree roots encrusted with mud, had no beach to speak of, but she dragged herself out of the water and hid among the cypress knees. There were no signs of pursuit. Gradually, her heart ceased to hammer, and her breathing slowed. Wrung out with fear and grief, Beramun eventually slept.

When she woke it was dark and cold. Wind stirred the placid surface of the lake, drawing the warmth from her limbs and leaving her shivering. Her shift was in tatters and afforded her little more than protection for modesty. She tore off handfuls of moss and stuffed them inside her shirt for warmth. It didn’t help much. Hunger gnawed at her belly.

A broad shadow passed over the island. Beramun cowered, glancing anxiously upward. She saw nothing but cypress trees and hanging moss. Working her way out of her hiding place, she stood in the small clearing at the heart of the island and surveyed the sky.

Lutar was well up in the sky. A large cloud, driven by the south wind, hung close to the crimson moon. It must have caused the shadow, she decided.

Shivering harder now, she wondered if she dared build a fire. There was certainly enough tinder on the island, and cypress wood for a firebow. While she hesitated, weighing comfort against safety, Beramun didn’t see the massive claw behind her slowly closing. When she finally felt the pressure around her waist, it was too late.

She screamed once and tore at the hard, scaly claw, but her efforts were futile. Hoisted into the air, she found herself face to face with the green dragon once more.

“Little rodent,” Sthenn said, voice dripping menace, “I was beginning to think you’d never wake up.”

Strength drained from her limbs like sand from a sieve. She could fight no more. She would follow Roki to the land of their ancestors where her parents waited.

The dragon shook her. “Wake up,” he said crossly. “Wake up, or I’ll put you to sleep forever!”

“What’s stopping you?” she murmured.

“This has been great fun,” Sthenn replied, showing his decayed, ragged fangs. “Hunting humans is quite stimulating. I must remember to do it more often.”

“Some day,” Beramun said, “the rodents will strike back.”

The dragon closed his claw just slightly, and Beramun felt her ribs creak. Breath gushed from her body, and her vision faded.

“Where were you going?” the dragon hissed. “If you had escaped the forest, where would you have gone?”

Though her body spasmed with the effort of drawing breath, she found her lack of sight a blessing.

“Home,” she said, her voice little more than a sigh.

“No,” said Sthenn, flicking his black tongue against her face. She jerked her head back violently at its touch. “Yala-tene, rodent. Yala-tene is where you want to go.”

“Yala-tene?” She’d heard that name before.

“A collection of humans in the mountains far to the northwest. You want to go to Yala-tene,” Sthenn said in a bizarrely soothing, sing-song tone.

“Can’t.” Beramun’s voice was nearly soundless. Her head felt swollen and pounded with pent-up blood. She was only moments from blacking out. “Can’t escape.”

“Yes, you can.”

Sthenn opened his claw. The sudden release of pressure let Beramun breathe again, but she immediately swooned, her head falling back over his talons. The green dragon parted her shift with a single nail, exposing her left shoulder. Holding the same nail to his mouth, he breathed on it until it began to glow a dull cyan. He then pressed the glowing nail tip hard against Beramun’s flesh. She moaned but did not wake. When Sthenn took his claw away, an iridescent green triangle, slightly larger than a human thumbprint, appeared above her heart.

The dragon’s mouth stretched wide as he admired his handiwork. A wheezing giggle emanated from his chest, sounding like the working of an ancient, rotted bellows. Spreading his scar-etched wings, Sthenn took off and flapped lazily across the water. Alighting on the high shoreline on the northeast side of the lake, he laid the unconscious Beramun on the ground. He reared up on his hind legs to stare down at her, tiny and supine at his feet.

His voice again taking on the strange sing-song quality, Sthenn said, “Remember, little rodent – Yala-tene. Go to Yala-tene. Go to Yala-tene.”

As in a dream, Beramun frowned and rolled onto her side. “Yala-tene,” she sighed.

Sthenn took off, circled once, then flew back to Almurk. He had no fear the girl would be harmed, even in her dazed and helpless condition. There was no creature in the forest at the Edge of the World who would dare harm one who bore the green dragon’s mark.

Chapter 7

Though Amero had hoped to question Miteera for more clues about Nianki, the old centaur proved true to his word. He departed with his entire herd before sunrise, long before the Arkuden awoke at Lyopi’s house.

Amero sent children running through Yala-tene with orders to summon the village elders. Before the morning frost had melted off the cliffs, he told the elders about the elves’ attack on the centaurs and exhorted them to finish the village wall as soon as possible. There was some grumbling over his proposal to let the very old and very young tend to fields and stock while the rest labored on the wall, but most of the villagers saw the necessity. None wanted their best defense left unfinished if there was the slightest possibility the Silvanesti might attack.

Amero left the elders debating around the council fire. Only Konza followed him. The elderly Sensarku caught up with Amero before the latter reached the basket of the hoist to Duranix’s cave.

“Arkuden, a word,” said the old man, and Amero paused. “Did the centaurs by chance see any sign of my son?”

Amero looked abashed. “The news of Balif made me forget. Yes. Miteera met Tiphan and the two acolytes in the mountains. The old chief lent them one of his warriors to guard them. Why did Tiphan go, Konza?”

The elder Sensarku looked annoyed. “He doesn’t tell me where his mind is. He thinks I’m too old and foolish.”

Amero placed a hand on Konza’s shoulder. “I’ll ask Duranix to keep an eye out for your son. There can’t be more than one band of three humans and a centaur roaming the mountains together.”

The old man thanked him profusely then departed. Amero climbed into the hoist and set the counterweights in motion. It had been three days since he’d last been to the dragon’s cave. Amero found the cavern cold and dark. With no frail human to complain, Duranix hadn’t bothered to light a fire.

“Duranix!” Amero called. “Duranix, are you awake?”

There was no answer. He got out a flint and some tinder and knelt by the firepit. Hot sparks soon had the fire blazing. As he prepared to call again, the firelight showed him that the dragon was quite close by – just on the other side of the hearth, in fact. The unexpected nearness of the vast creature startled Amero. He let out a yell and fell backward.

“Thunder and lightning!” he said, borrowing one of Duranix’s favorite phrases. “Why are you lurking in the dark?”

The dragon’s burnished scales glowed red in the firelight. “I am listening,” he rumbled.

“To what?”

“I’m not certain. There is a sound in the air that is not a sound, a smell of something that has no smell.”

Amero was instantly concerned. Duranix was not given to fancies or vague feelings. “Is it dangerous?” he asked.

“Anything unknown can be dangerous.”

Amero explained about the Silvanesti threat and the mission he hoped the dragon would perform. “Could it be Balif and the elves you sense?” he asked.

Duranix shook his horned head decisively. “Not elves.” Amero looked at him inquiringly, and the dragon added, “It’s from the other direction, from the west.”

Duranix went to the lower cave opening and sniffed the night air. His dorsal spikes stood up. “There’s a storm coming.” He looked at his human friend and said, “I shall go east as you wish.”

“What more should we do? Are we in danger from the west?”

“There is time yet,” the dragon said. With a spring of his hind legs, Duranix hopped up to the largest of the cave openings. “Watch the setting sun. The storm will come from there.” He shook himself, as if dispelling the unsettling sensations. “I shall return soon.”

“Keep well,” Amero called. “Beware of Balif and his host.”

“Ah, I fear no blades, even in their thousands.” Duranix’s forked tongue flicked out. “I will be like the hawk – watching, keeping out of reach, and striking only if it suits me.”

He entered the plummeting wall of water quietly, almost wafting through. It was completely unlike his usual exuberant exit, and it troubled Amero as much as Duranix’s cryptic farewell.

*

For seven days Tiphan and his little band tramped eastward, following the mysterious marks on the scrap of Silvanesti parchment. Elu maintained an impassive silence, but the acolytes lent ready ears to Tiphan’s vision of the future. He dreamed of many new villages, each with its own Offertory, spreading across the plains. At the center of this growing realm would be Yala-tene, and the heart of Yala-tene would be the grand new Offertory Tiphan planned to build one day.

“Does the Arkuden agree with your plans?” Mara asked.

“He will see the wisdom of our ideas,” Tiphan replied. “Just as the great Protector brought peace and comfort to one village, so shall we bring it to every part of the land.”

Mara’s head swam with the magnificence of the Tosen’s vision. She tried to imagine many Yala-tenes dotting the plain, each with a whitewashed sanctuary and loyal Sensarku, sending their smoky offerings aloft to please the great dragon. The vastness of the concept left her dizzy – or perhaps the dizziness was the result of their pace. They’d been walking since sunup, and it was well past midday.

She wobbled from side to side in the tall grass. Tiphan, walking ahead of her, continued to talk, spinning his dreams of the future. Before she fell, a strong, rough arm went round her waist, bracing her up. She shook off her dizziness and looked up. With a surprised cry, she pulled free of Elu’s gentle grasp.

“Elu,” Tiphan said sharply. “You must not touch her. Understand? Mara is Sensarku and not to be handled, yes?”

The centaur regarded him with good-natured indifference.

Tiphan came back, took Mara’s hand, and drew her away. She felt a surge of happiness at his touch, but he simply led her a few steps away from the centaur before letting go.

“Keep clear of him,” was all he said, and resumed the trek.

“Yes, Tosen.” She was rather glad he turned away quickly. He missed seeing the color rush to her cheeks.

Penzar came running over the low hill southeast of their path. Elu gripped his club and raised his head, alert for trouble. Penzar arrived, out of breath, and pointed back in the direction he’d come.

“Silvanesti!” he panted.

Alarmed, Tiphan demanded, “How many? How near?”

“There are signs a large band of elves passed here not two days past. Some on foot, some on horseback. They were moving south to north.”

“We must keep clear of them,” Tiphan said. By gestures, he indicated the centaur was to take the lead. Without complaint, Elu cantered away, his club resting on his sun-baked shoulder, his bright green eyes already scanning ahead.

Penzar regarded him thoughtfully. “Brave fellow,” he said. “He’s tangled with Silvanesti before.”

“He’s a savage,” Tiphan corrected. “He doesn’t know any better.”

Despite the increased danger, Tiphan insisted they go on. Long after the sun set, they hurried toward their unknown destination. Late in the evening, under a splendid ceiling of stars, Tiphan finally called a halt.

The three villagers dropped where they stood, worn out by the journey. Mara was starting to resent the way Tiphan was driving them, then she saw him take off his sandals and unwrap his leggings. The blond doeskin strips were stained with blood. Their leader had spared himself least of all.

Elu returned with a brace of rabbits. Mara built a twig fire, and they ate in silence. Tiphan and Penzar fell asleep when they were done, without even spreading their bedrolls. Mara wanted to sleep, but she knew someone had to stand watch.

Elu, his four legs folded beneath him, watched the fire subside to a handful of glowing coals. He ate his fodder, and when he saw Mara nodding sleepily, he fetched a blanket from his panniers. He held it out to her, careful not to touch her.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the soft goathair wrap. She suddenly felt a bit ashamed. Elu really wasn’t so frightening. In his own rough way, he was actually quite gallant. He also seemed wide awake, so she asked, “Will you stand watch?”

Without a word, the centaur walked off into the darkness. For the brief moment before sleep claimed her, Mara saw him silhouetted against the stars, facing east.

It was still night when Mara woke. She couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and she looked around wildly, terrified at having fallen asleep in the open. Her companions were still dozing. A glance showed Elu still on watch in the star-dappled distance. The plain was strangely quiet and devoid of life. She heard none of the usual crickets or night birds.

Rolling over, Mara saw a blue light playing in the sky, not far away. She thought she heard a faint sizzling sound as forked streams of azure fire arced upwards. A hot wind played on her astonished face. Blue lightning from a cloudless sky?

“Wonderful.”

Mara flinched. Tiphan had awakened and was watching the spectacle. “This must be what I came to find,” he said in an awed but oddly serene voice. “I didn’t know exactly where to go, but I believed the way would be revealed. And so it has. Rouse Penzar, and follow me.”

So saying, he rose and walked away, leaving all his gear behind. He strode past Elu without even a glance.

Confused but excited, Mara shook Penzar awake, and they gathered up their baggage. Soon all three were trudging after their leader, now lost in the darkness.

Penzar was shaking his head. “This is not good. This is not good.”

“What are you muttering?” Mara asked.

“It’s not wise for the Tosen to go wandering off. We should stay together.”

Elu suddenly held out an arm, stopping them. He hefted his club and sidled off to the left, into the untrampled grass.

“What is it?” Mara whispered.

Penzar gripped his spear tightly. “I don’t know.”

Elu reappeared, silent as a ghost, and beckoned. Reluctantly they left Tiphan’s trail and followed the centaur. Twenty paces from their original path another track appeared. A single line of horses had passed this way on a converging course.

Elves. They looked anxiously ahead where Tiphan had disappeared. Elu beckoned, and reluctantly they followed the Silvanesti’s track, arms ready. Just then the blue aurora ended without warning, leaving the moonless night profoundly dark. Elu continued to lead the way, placing his heavy hooves with great care so as not to make too much noise.

The grass thinned, replaced by patches of open, sandy soil dotted with loose stones. While Mara looked for Tiphan, Penzar squatted in the dirt and counted the prints of more than a dozen different horses.

Elu stopped abruptly. Mara came up behind him, and she shuddered violently. The air had suddenly gone intensely cold. It was as though they’d crossed some potent, invisible barrier. Mara opened her mouth to exclaim, but Elu put a finger to his lips, signaling silence.

Penzar reached the threshold of cold air and uttered a low grunt of surprise. Mara gripped his arm and pointed ahead.

Against the background of stars they could see many lofty, upright shapes in silhouette. They had reached a field of standing stones.

“Tosen!”

Mara had spotted Tiphan twenty-five paces away. She hurried to him, followed closely by Elu and Penzar.

“We thought you’d been taken by elves!” Penzar exclaimed.

Tiphan was running a hand over one of the granite sentinels. “Elves? I’ve seen no elves.” He frowned and complained, “Odd. I get no sensation of power at all.”

Mara jumped a bit when he seized her wrist, saying, “Here, you try.”

Dutifully, she pressed her fingertips against the cool stone. She shrugged. “It feels like an ordinary rock,” she reported. Penzar tried, with no better results. Elu stood back, refusing to touch the monolith.

“I’m sure this is the place,” Tiphan insisted. “It matches the description in the manuscript, and I’m certain this is where the blue lightning came from.”

“Why is it so cold?” Mara asked, breath pluming from her mouth and nose.

“It’s like the boulders have sucked all the warmth out of the air,” Penzar said.

Muttering, Tiphan wandered into the field. There was no pattern to it. The stones seemed randomly dispersed. Nonetheless, they obviously were not a natural formation.

Tiphan caressed several of the monoliths in turn, feeling nothing. Their initial fear overcome, Penzar and Mara did likewise. Only Elu refused to enter the forest of standing stones. He backed up and stood on the edge of the field, his face a mask of concern.

“Come here!” Tiphan shouted. “Bring tools!”

Mara and Penzar converged on their leader. Penzar had a mallet with a heavy diorite head and a deer-antler pick. At Tiphan’s direction, he struck the corner of one monolith with the mallet. It rang with a surprisingly clear tone, but nothing resulted.

“Again,” said Tiphan. “Harder.”

Penzar swung with both hands, and this time a sharp triangular shard flew off. Mara retrieved the chip and Tiphan put it in a small pigskin bag he wore around his neck. After similarly collecting six good-sized slivers, Tiphan moved on.

Behind the stone they’d chipped was an especially tall block. Tiphan directed his helpers to sample it as well. As Penzar raised the mallet to strike, however, something gleamed on the ground at his feet. He lowered the stone hammer and bent down to examine the bright object.

“Tosen, look!” he said excitedly. “Bronze!”

Tiphan and Mara crowded close. It was a broad metal chisel, plainly of Silvanesti make. The cutting edge was dusted with granite.

“Why would they leave a fine tool like this behind?” Mara wondered.

“They probably mislaid it in the dark,” Tiphan replied.

“Maybe there’s more lying around!” Penzar shuffled his feet in the grass. Bronze was rare and valuable. If the elves had been careless once, they might have been careless twice.

Mara got out her flint. The ground was littered with tufts of dry grass, so she piled up a goodly heap and lit it. A small smoky flame licked up, throwing their shadows high on the tall stones.

“Any more bronze?” asked Penzar, studying the ground by the new light.

Suddenly, Mara gasped, and Tiphan uttered a cry of alarm. Penzar looked up to see what startled them.

“By my ancestors!”

Protruding from the monolith before him were several slender pairs of hands, a knee, and some toes. Higher up, a number of faces appeared, half-embedded in solid rock. Their mouths gaped open as though screaming, but they were filled with cold granite.

Mara stumbled back, covering her face with her hands. Recovering from his initial revulsion, Tiphan stepped closer, peering at the lifeless faces.

“Elves,” he reported. “Probably the same ones who rode here ahead of us.”

“But why are they like this?” Mara asked, her face white.

Tiphan frowned. “They must have committed some offense against the spirits dwelling within.”

“Let’s leave, Tosen,” Penzar pleaded.

“Not yet. I want samples of that rock, too. Mara, make a torch and check the rest of the field. See if more Silvanesti were captured by the spirit-stones.”

Mara hesitated only briefly. She’d been a Sensarku since she was eight years old. The long habit of obedience to her Tosen’s will kept her from fleeing in terror. She used the turned shaft of an elven javelin to make a torch. To the javelin’s bronze head she tied a bundle of dry grass, then held the grass to her dying fire. It blazed up, and she found more lost equipment: sandals, waterskins, knives. Tiphan directed Penzar to use the elven chisel to cut out a stone sample near the embedded bodies. She saw his hands were shaking, but he obeyed the Tosen.

All the nearby boulders held captive bodies. The largest stone held no less than five elves. The ground was covered with lost tools and trinkets – buckles, helmets, knives, scabbards, finger rings, even a sword or two. Looking over the debris, cold sweat broke out on Mara’s chilly brow. Belt buckles and finger rings? Had the Silvanesti taken these off before the stones swallowed them? It seemed unlikely, so why hadn’t these trinkets been consumed as well?

Trinkets. Weapons. Bronze. Copper. Gold. All their metal was at her feet, not in the stones.

She whirled, dropping the torch. “Penzar, stop! Don’t use the chisel!”

Even as she spoke, the ringing of metal on stone reached her ears. Instantly, the deep chill of the field was displaced by a wave of hot wind emanating from the struck monolith. A flash followed, so bright she was blinded even with her eyes clenched shut. Dropping to her knees, she crawled toward where she’d last seen Tiphan and Penzar.

Shrill screams assaulted her ears as she crept forward. The flare in her eyes was fading, and as she regained some of her eyesight she beheld an awful vision: Penzar, arms buried up to the elbows in the gray granite boulder. The stone had softened, resembling gray dough as it flowed thickly toward Penzar’s torso. Mara yelled and grabbed Penzar around the waist.

“Help me, Tosen! Help me!” she screamed over Penzar’s horrible cries.

Tiphan stood several steps away, staring open-mouthed. The massive boulder continued to pull the boy in, and Penzar’s shirt ripped apart as he was dragged from her grip. His frantic pleas for help changed as he saw the gray ooze inching closer to Mara.

“Get away!” he gasped.

Powerful arms hurled Mara aside. She fell back, tears of terror streaming down her face, and saw Elu step past her and grab hold of Penzar’s legs. The centaur’s hard muscles strained, but the boy was already lost. Thick tentacles of liquid stone entwined around his neck, pulling his head in, filling his ears, nose, and mouth. His cries ended in a ghastly thick gurgle. With a final sound like rushing wind, the stone block enclosed him completely.

Wavering tendrils reached out, blindly seeking more prey. Elu darted quickly out of reach. Mara continued to shout Penzar’s name.

“It’s too late!” Tiphan shouted. “He’s gone!”

As the words were said, Penzar’s hands and the left side of his face appeared on the monolith, as though he was bobbing to the surface of a pool of granite. His eye sockets and open mouth were gray with solidified stone.

“It was the metal,” Mara sobbed. “It’s all around us! Penzar and the elves were swallowed by the stones because they touched them with metal!” She turned her face into Tiphan’s shoulder, weeping helplessly.

“The stone mallet did not arouse them,” Tiphan said slowly, recognizing the truth of her words. “So the lightning we saw must have occurred when the boulders came alive and engulfed the elves.” He nodded his head slowly, wonderingly. “Such amazing power!”

Mara raised her tear-stained face and regarded him with outrage. He neither comforted her nor lamented the loss of Penzar, who’d been a loyal acolyte for years. Worse, Tiphan stared at the dreadful stones with a look of near ecstasy.

Pushing herself away, Mara took Elu’s proffered hand, and the centaur led her slowly away.

Tiphan grabbed the diorite hammer and began to peck at the hulking monolith, just an arm’s length from where Penzar’s lifeless hand protruded, fingers curled in supplication.

“Come back!” he called over his shoulder absently. “I want samples from all these stones.”

Mara neither answered nor returned, and Tiphan soon forgot her as he concentrated on reaping his harvest.

Chapter 8

Zannian clapped his hands to announce his arrival. From within the great tent, a voice said, “Enter.” He parted the flaps and passed into the wide, circular room.

The ground was covered with rotting peat, and gray moss hung from the tent roof. A pair of yevi, wearing heavy leather collars studded with obsidian spikes, stood up when the young warrior entered. They growled deep in their throats until a languid voice commanded them to be still.

Reclining on a heap of moldy leaves and peat was a bizarre figure, humanlike, yet weirdly inhuman. The creature’s head, arms, back, and legs were vivid green. Its belly was white like a frog’s. Each hand was tipped with five overly long, yellow-nailed fingers, each foot with a like number of slender, prehensile toes. Its human-shaped head had two forward-facing eyes, a long nose, and a sharp, jutting chin. A shaggy green mane covered the creature’s scalp and reached to its shoulders. Its eyes shone like polished emeralds.

“Master,” said Zannian, bowing low. “There’s been a sign in the sky.”

“Yes, I felt it. A flash of considerable power. Did you locate it?”

“Yes, Master. It came from the east, six days’ ride from here. It must be the dragon in Arku-peli.”

“Of course.” The green creature probed through the loose mass of rotting leaves on which he lay and found a glossy black roach. He held it between two fingers, watching for a few seconds as it kicked vainly, then popped it in his mouth. Yellow fangs flashed briefly as he chewed.

“Shall we set out for Arku-peli at once?” the young warrior asked.

“There’s no hurry. I have injected a drop of poison, and it will take some time to work its way to our enemies’ heart. Until then we may bide our time. You know my messenger, don’t you? The black-haired rodent you craved?”

“I know, Master.”

Zannian suppressed his impatience, trying to see the wisdom of the dragon’s way. Sthenn – or Greengall, as he preferred to he known when in this form – delighted in formulating schemes of elaborate cunning. Yet Zannian had no doubt his master would do just as he intended – destroy the bronze dragon Duranix and make Zannian chief of all the plains.

“My mother has the Jade Men drawn up,” he replied. “Will you come see them?”

“If I must. How is your mother?”

Coming from the green monster before him, this question struck Zannian as oddly funny. He laughed briefly, then stifled his mirth when his master’s face curled into a frown. A long green leg uncoiled, striking Zannian in the chest. He flew across the tent, hit the oxhide wall, and slid to the ground.

“Do not open your foolish mouth at me!” Greengall snapped. “I hate it when rodents bray.” He rolled to his feet. In this form he was imposingly tall, but very thin. His reedy physique was as deceptive as the rest of his appearance. All the power and strength of a green dragon resided in him, no matter how awkward his outward shape.

Zannian slowly got to his feet. His chest ached from the blow, but no bones were broken. Greengall’s buffet had been a measured one.

“My mother awaits your attention with the Jade Men, Master,” he said hoarsely. He lowered his eyes as the shambling green scarecrow stalked past him.

Attended by his yevi escort, Greengall strolled from his tent. Outside, the squalid camp stirred. They were a long way from Almurk and the Edge of the World. A day after the two women slaves had escaped, the green dragon announced it was time to begin the advance on their enemies. The entire band, one thousand strong, had mounted their horses and ridden out of their dank hideaway, following an unmarked trail set out for them by their monstrous master. They did not go alone. In the midst of the mass of horsemen trudged a mob of slaves and stolen animals, both groups whipped forward with equal brutality.

On the open plain, the raiders swept all before them, capturing small bands of plainsmen and their herds. Those they did not capture or kill fled, and before long the great plain was barren of animals and men.

Zannian led his men to the ford of the Great Plains River, and there they stopped. Like most of the dragon’s machinations, the halt was unexplained. For three days they remained in camp, sending out only small raiding parties. Now, on their fourth night, Sthenn ventured forth as Greengall to inspect his savage host.

Oxen stirred fearfully when they caught Greengall’s reptilian smell. Raiders stopped whatever they were doing and bowed as he passed. Slaves scrambled out of the way, anxious to avoid his notice. The trees around the camp were already hung with the bodies of captives and raiders alike who’d displeased the master. The presence of so many corpses lent a pervasive air of death to the camp. Only Greengall and his yevi didn’t seem to find it oppressive.

The disguised dragon paid little heed to the raiders or slaves, giving the corrals and tents only a cursory glance. Zannian led the way through a gap in the tents. They entered a gully running from the nearby hills to the river and ascended the slope toward a ravine. Three blazing torches, each surmounted by a polished white human skull, marked the entrance to the ravine. Greengall smiled when he saw the death’s heads and fondled them in passing.

The ravine itself was well lit by two-score blazing torches arranged in a box of fire, twenty paces to each side. Inside the square was a block of warriors standing shoulder to shoulder. Each was outfitted with a dark green leather breastplate and hood, a brace of spears, and a green-painted wooden shield. They stood absolutely still, even when Greengall came into view.

Sitting in a crude litter at the head of this silent company was Zannian’s mother, Nacris. Two of the hooded warriors stood on each side of her as bearers.

“Greetings, Master,” she said, her voice as rough as her appearance. Greengall barely gave her a nod.

“Is everything ready?” Zannian asked.

“Ready for anything,” she replied. Her flint-colored eyes glanced quickly over the rows of silent warriors.

Greengall stood by Nacris, elongated hands clasped behind his back. Zannian stood on his master’s other side, a half step back.

“Begin,” said Greengall.

“Jade Men! Salute!”

Nacris’s voice carried crisply across the gully. The block of warriors shifted in unison, moving their feet a space apart, spears held before their masked faces.

“Hail, Sthenn!” they cried in unison. “Hail, Deathbringer!”

“Charming,” said the altered dragon. “I like their color.”

Nacris allowed herself a brief, triumphant glance at her son, then snapped, “Spears up!”

A hundred weapons rose as one. At her command, the first rank, ten warriors, raised their shields and approached, marching through the line of torches. They halted. Not only were their weapons painted green, all their exposed skin was too.

“They walk beautifully,” Greengall said acidly. “Now, let’s see them fight.”

“Fight who?” Nacris asked.

“Why not Zannian?”

“Master, you can’t mean that!” Nacris protested. “He’ll be killed!”

The monstrous face regarded her with total calm. Nacris bowed her head and looked at her son. The young man’s face was like stone, revealing nothing of his inner thoughts. Without a word of resistance, he pulled the bone-and-leather hood down over his head. Drawing a bronze elven sword, he stood ready to receive the spears of the Jade Men.

“Fight to the death,” Greengall said calmly. “Give the order.”

Nacris opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her lined face twisted with indecision.

Greengall smiled. “Give the order, or I’ll tear your other leg off.”

“Jade Men, attack!” she cried.

The spearmen spread out and tried to box Zannian in. He didn’t wait for the ring to close but charged the nearest warriors. He beat aside one’s shield and ran him through. The green-painted warrior fell, clutching his side. Zannian dueled briskly with two other attackers as his first victim struggled to regain his feet. There were no war cries or oaths as the men fought. Their silent dedication was total.

Zannian broke two more shields with his metal blade before the first spear points began flashing past his chest and face. He sidestepped the fast thrusts, giving ground until he was backing up the slope of the hill behind him. Two Jade Men combined to harry Zannian at the same time. He beat one, lopping off the flint head of his spear, but the other delivered a resounding crack to Zannian’s thigh with the shaft of his weapon. Down went the raider chief. The green-painted warriors crowded in for the kill, and only then did the Jade Men make noise: a thready whistling, as they sucked air excitedly through their sharply filed teeth. Nine spears rose high, ready for the final thrust.

Greengall said, “Enough.”

“Hold!” Nacris shouted.

The Jade Men obeyed, but their eyes remained intensely focused on their foe. Even the wounded man, supported by a comrade, was still staring at Zannian.

The raider chief got up, a sheen of sweat on his bare arms. “They fight well,” he said.

“Good,” said Greengall, nodding. “For what use do you intend them?”

The crippled woman bowed her head. “Any task you choose, Master. They will run until they drop, fight until killed, and slay without mercy anyone you order slain. They live to serve only you.”

It was the simple truth. The Jade Men had begun as one hundred babies, stolen from their murdered parents and raised in Almurk to become Sthenn’s invincible, unquestioning band of killers. The oldest of them was now sixteen. Nacris had trained them to worship the green dragon as father and master. She herself was the closest thing to a mother any of them would eyer know.

“They seem like useful little rodents,” Greengall said mildly. He asked Zannian, “What do you think of them?”

“Their fighting skills are great,” the raider chief replied honestly, “but there’s no good in being fearless. A warrior should fear failure.”

Greengall laughed loudly, the upper half of his head tilting backward from the hinge of his oversized jaw. “There’s one other thing all your warriors should fear,” he chortled. “They should tremble before me, for I am Death.”

*

The sky was painted from zenith to horizon with many thousands of stars, all silently lighting the land beneath. They were Beramun’s guideposts. She had walked a long way from the Edge of the World, passing the many days in solitude.

The high plain was usually teeming with life – herds of oxen and elk, bands of plainsfolk following the herds on their yearly route from south to north and back again. This spring, she had encountered few animals and even fewer people. She caught glimpses on the far horizon, but all fled from her before she could reach hailing distance. Rabbits and other small game also gave her wide berth.

Reduced to eating roots and grubs, she stumbled onward, guided by some inner voice that kept her face pointed toward the rising sun. She lost track of the days and of her location, until late one night she came to a broad river, flowing from south to north. She knew this river, if not the exact spot where she stood. This was the Great Plains River that divided the world she knew into East and West.

The slow-flowing water was no obstacle to her, and she descended the riverbank to the water’s edge. There she stumbled upon a small ox herd, sheltering by a copse of laurel trees. The beasts stirred from their sleep and began to low loudly. She murmured soothing words at them, but the animals seemed unusually alarmed by her presence. Powerful bulls rolled their eyes and pawed the ground at her approach. The oxen nearest her jostled their comrades hard to avoid her.

“Stupid beasts,” she muttered. She would have loved to spear one and feast on beef, but she had no weapon. Reaching the water’s edge, Beramun paused to tie back her long hair with a strip of hide, and she saw a flash of fair doeskin in the deep shadows beneath a nearby tree.

“Who are you?” the stranger said sharply. It was a woman’s voice.

“Just a wanderer, passing by.”

“What are you doing to my beasts?” demanded the woman. “You’re one of those raiders, aren’t you?”

“No! I’m just a plainsman. I escaped the raiders myself not long ago.” Beramun advanced a few steps, only to have the sharp end of a herding stick presented to her chin. Beramun slowly held her arms out from her sides. “I mean no harm,” she insisted.

“Let me see your face!”

Beramun backed away from the shadows until starlight fell full upon her. This placed her closer to the oxen, and they grew restless again, bawling and milling about.

“Where are you bound?” the herder asked.

“The village of Yala-tene. Do you know it?”

“Everyone knows it.” The woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You don’t look like a villager.”

“I’m not. I go to warn them about the raiders. They’re coming to attack the village.”

The oxen grew more and more distressed. Hemmed in by the closely growing laurels behind them, they splashed into the river, working their way through the shallows, away from the young woman on the riverbank. The herder backed away with her animals. “How do you know what the raiders do?”

“I told you, I was their prisoner.”

“Maybe you’re their scout!”

“No!” Beramun shouted, stamping her foot in frustration. At this the frightened oxen gave way completely. They were only fourteen strong, but they stampeded right at the lone herder. The woman let out a yell and dropped her stick, fleeing ahead of the churning beasts. Horrified, Beramun rushed to help. The oxen put on a frenzied burst of speed at her approach, as if the green dragon himself were after them. The herder yelling and the animals bawling, they disappeared around a bend in the river.

Cursing the stupidity of oxen, Beramun went back to the tree where she’d first met the herder. She found the woman’s hide cape and provisions bag. The bag held an apple, a few dried mushrooms, and a hunk of smoked fish. Beramun devoured the food greedily.

After she’d eaten, she drank deeply of the cool river water, then washed the mud and filth from her face. When she tugged her torn shift out of the way to douse her neck, she saw a dark blot on her chest. She peered at the strange mark. It was smooth, almost shiny when the river water ran off it. It wasn’t sore, and it felt no different than the rest of her skin. She had no recollection of how she got the strange mark. A bruise perhaps, or a bite from some virulent forest insect? Since it wasn’t painful, she paid it no more mind.

Beramun rolled the hide cape and tied it in a bundle on her back with a leather thong, then slipped into the water. The river was wide and the current modest, so she made good progress. Halfway across, she heard a thin, distant shriek from the shore behind her. Treading water, she looked back. The western horizon was alive with an orange glow, like an enormous grass fire. Huge shadows moved against the flickering backdrop of flame. A sudden flash of memory came over her. Her family’s tents burning in the night, the screams of her kinfolk, and the excited shouts of the raiders mingling in a horrible din.

Fear raked her like a knife in her stomach. Turning away, Beramun swam hard, slapping the water in her haste to get across. She dragged herself out and collapsed in the gray mud, breathing hard. She raised her head and saw the firelight on the horizon was gone. Only starlight remained.

Chapter 9

Tiphan spent a full day collecting samples of the spirit stones. When darkness came, he returned to camp laden with the stone chips, uncharacteristically beaming.

Mara had remained in camp with Elu. Since Penzar had vanished into his stone tomb, she could not bear to go near the monoliths. She bore Tiphan’s indifference in silence for two days, but as he sat, sorting the rock chips by size and color and placing them in hide bags, she decided she’d finally had enough.

“Tosen,” she said. “We must leave here.”

“We will leave when I’m done,” he said firmly.

“No! Tonight! This place is cursed!”

“Nonsense, girl. The stones attack only when they’re struck by metal. I’ve chipped off scores of samples with the stone hammer we brought from Yala-tene, and I’ve suffered no ill effects at all.”

“Then what about the elves? Won’t they be returning to find out what happened to their fellows?”

“How should I know? Shall I abandon this great find to a threat that may never appear?”

“Yes!”

He put down an angular gray nugget. “You disappoint me, Mara. Where is your faith? We’re in this wondrous place on the dragon’s business, trying to bring power and glory to our village, and you want to abandon it all?”

She didn’t want to weep again, but the tears started anyway. “I was thinking of Penzar,” she whispered brokenly.

“Penzar was a good lad. I’m sorry he was lost,” Tiphan said with some feeling. His blue eyes narrowed. “He was also loyal and obedient. Will you dishonor his memory?”

As Mara stared back at the man who’d dominated her days and a goodly portion of her nightly dreams over the years, a strong new emotion flared in her breast. Disgust. In spite of his words, she saw no remorse in Tiphan. How could she ever have thought she was in love with him? He cared nothing for her, nothing for Penzar. They were simply tools, beasts of burden like the selfless centaur he called a savage.

She shivered suddenly. “I’m going home tomorrow,” she stated flatly. “Without you, if I must.”

“I won’t permit it!” Tiphan retorted. “It isn’t safe for you to travel the plains by yourself.”

“Elu will go with me.”

Tiphan jumped to his feet. “You will not leave!”

Up to this point, the centaur had been standing behind Mara, arms folded. As the argument progressed, however, Elu’s attention was drawn away. Mara and Tiphan went back and forth, angry and adamant for several minutes before realizing the centaur had gone.

“Now where did that savage run off to?” Tiphan snapped.

Mara pulled a burning brand from the fire and held it high. She got a glimpse of Elu’s russet-colored hindquarters moving away from them in the high grass.

“There,” she said, dropping the brand back into the fire and starting after him.

Tiphan caught her arm and spun her around rather abruptly. Mara slapped him hard across the face. It was hard to say which of them was more shocked by her action, but it was Tiphan who recovered first.

“Get hold of yourself, girl!” he said, shaking her hard. “I know Penzar died horribly. I was there! But there are greater matters at stake here. If Yala-tene is to grow and survive, we must gain the secret of the spirit power! Can’t you understand that?”

He was shouting at her now. Dazed, she turned her face away and said nothing.

“You’re a fool,” Tiphan said, letting her go. “I made your life too easy. You know nothing of sacrifice.”

The injustice of his words sent her anger soaring again. “I’ve served you loyally for more than half my life!” she exclaimed. “Penzar died in your service, and you care nothing for us! All you care about are your own selfish ends!”

Mara ran after the centaur. It was deeply dark on the savanna, with no moons yet risen and the stars veiled by layers of clouds. Tiphan muttered an oath, checked to make certain he was wearing his bronze knife, and set out after his wayward acolyte.

Mara followed the clear trail Elu had made, her heart still pounding from the argument. When the trampled grass suddenly ended with no sign of the centaur, she halted, puzzled and frightened.

“Elu?” she whispered. Something rustled in the grass. She gripped her throwing stick. “El – oh!” A rough hand grabbed her leg, pulling her down in the high grass. The hand came up to cover her mouth, and she realized it belonged to the centaur.

“Quiet. Elves.”

Mara’s green eyes widened in astonishment at hearing him speak. He removed his hand from her mouth and pointed. She turned.

A long way off, half a league or more, sat a figure on horseback. His dark cloak and hood rendered him almost invisible against the night horizon. If Elu hadn’t pointed him out, Mara knew she would never have noticed him.

“There are more,” whispered the centaur. “Four hands.” Twenty. Centaurs counted by fives, as in five-fingered hands.

A swishing in the grass announced Tiphan’s arrival. “What are you doing down there?” he asked, too loudly. Mara waved furiously for him to be quiet.

“Get down!” she hissed. “Elves!”

Tiphan dropped to his hands and knees and crawled toward them. Mara told him what Elu had observed, omitting that the centaur had spoken their language.

“Are they looking for their comrades?” Mara wondered.

“Maybe, or they may simply send out patrols to keep track of intruders,” Tiphan murmured. He glanced back at their own camp. Their fire, which had always seemed so tiny, now looked like a bonfire, lighting up the sky. “We must get back to camp and safeguard my stones.”

No one objected to putting more distance between themselves and the elves. They crept back down the same path Elu had first made. Elu stomped out the campfire and covered the embers with dirt. The night was still quiet. There were no signs they’d been detected by the Silvanesti.

“I suppose we must go,” Tiphan murmured. “If the Silvanesti catch us...”

Draping their sparse gear around their necks, they stole away. Tiphan insisted on carrying the many bags of stone chips himself, though he could hardly stand upright under their combined weight. Elu tried to take some from him, but the Sensarku leader brushed his hands away with a sharp word.

The centaur took the lead. He kept his torso low. Mara followed in a crouch, and Tiphan brought up the rear, bowed down as much by his weighty load as from caution. The path led down a slight hill to a dry creekbed lined on each side with pines. As the tops of the black pines hove into view, a screech owl gave forth its weird laughing call. The clouds parted, and the white beams of Soli split the darkness.

Without warning, a rush of armed, shouting figures erupted from the trees. Moonlight glittered on bronze spear points. Mara screamed and threw off her burdens to flee. Tiphan would not abandon his precious rocks. He slung the heavy bags into the brush and dived after them.

Elu straightened, a hefty stone in each hand. He hurled them at the oncoming elf warriors, knocking down two at the front of the closely packed ranks. Eight Silvanesti on foot attacked the lone centaur, jabbing at him with their light javelins. Elu fought them off with his club, wielding the stout stick with considerable skill. He connected solidly on one elf’s shield, sending him sprawling into three others. When the Silvanesti found they couldn’t simply overwhelm Elu in a rush, they drew back and cast javelins at him. He dodged or batted aside all but the last two. One took him low in the side, near where his human torso met his equine body. He bellowed, dropped his club, and snapped the shaft with his bare hands. The second spear slashed across his neck, opening a wound that bled copiously. Rearing, Elu shoved the stump of the javelin through his side and plucked it out from behind. The elves rushed again, and he lashed out with his hooves, laying out one after another.

The valiant centaur retreated up the hill, bleeding from his grievous hurts. He threw back his head and shouted the centaurs’ distress cry – a strange ululating call designed to summon any of their kind within hearing distance. The Silvanesti knew the sound well, and they hesitated, unsure whether more centaurs would appear.

None did, but Mara rose up from her hiding place and threw her bird stick. She was behind the elves, and her weapon caught one below his brazen helmet. In the dark, his comrades did not see the slender stick or who threw it. All they saw was one of their number throw up his hands and fall facedown in the dirt. This disconcerted them more, and they fell back to the line of dark pines.

Mara ran to the staggering Elu, bolstering him up by slipping her shoulder under his blood-drenched arm.

“Come on,” she said. “Stand up! We must get away!”

“Club... spear...” Elu said.

Mara recovered his weapon and armed herself with an elven javelin.

They stumbled up the hill, crashing noisily through the high grass. When they reached the crest of the hill, instead of open land ahead, they saw a troop of Silvanesti cavalry, waiting patiently.

Mara’s knees failed at the sight, and she slid to the ground.

“Stand, Mara,” Elu said, leaning on his club. “Better to die on your feet, even if you do have only two of them.”

He held out a hand to her. She could see his teeth gleaming in a smile. She let him pull her up.

Soli broke through the clouds, bathing the savanna in chill white light. The elves swung their spears down in one motion and advanced.

Elu squeezed the girl’s hand, which had gone cold in his grasp. “Afraid?” he asked.

She licked her dry lips. “Yes.”

“Don’t be. If we die well, our enemies will speak of us, and our spirits will live in their memories!”

Clatter from behind heralded the return of the Silvanesti foot soldiers. Mara wrapped both hands around her captured javelin.

“Elu,” she whispered, never taking her eyes off the oncoming riders, “why did you stay silent so long? You speak our tongue better than Chief Miteera.”

“You can learn more by listening than by talking,” he explained. He winced, and his left foreleg buckled slightly. Gasping, he drew himself up again and grinned. “Not so dumb for a savage, yes?”

“Good-bye, Elu.”

At forty paces, the mounted elves charged.

*

Tiphan groveled in the sod, hugging the sacks of stones to his chest. He heard the clash of arms, followed by shouts and the terrible cry of the centaur. He shuddered. If Elu was dead, then the girl was too. It was time to save himself and get his treasure back to Yala-tene.

He worked open the drawstring on one bag and groped inside. These fragments were taken from a particular standing stone, situated in the center of the field. Unlike the other boulders, which were granite or sandstone, this monolith had been streaked with gold. Tiphan knew from his Silvanesti manuscripts that gold had a special affinity for spirit power. That was why the elves used it for priestly instruments and amulets.

He removed from the bag a large piece of stone flecked with the yellow metal and pressed it between his palms. His knowledge of conjuring was rudimentary, but he was desperate.

He heard movement in the grass nearby. The elves were coming! He closed his eyes and sent his plea to the spirit stone.

Save me! Save me! By the power of this stone, save me from my enemies!

Nothing happened. Tiphan repeated the silent, heart-felt plea again and again. Yells from the surrounding grass sent spasms of fear through his gut. He clenched the stone until it cut into his skin. Blood seeped out between his fingers, staining the grass where he lay curled into a tight ball.

A rumble, as of distant thunder, signaled the approach of mounted Silvanesti. In spite of his terror, words suddenly broke through his clenched teeth, resounding in the darkness: “Take me to Yala-tene! Save me! Take me to Yala-tene!”

A strange sensation spread over his hands. Though hot with sweat and sticky with blood, his extremities suddenly felt cold as ice. At the same time, Tiphan felt a glow on his closed eyelids. He cracked his eyes open and saw the shard in his hands exuding the same blue-white light he’d seen in the spirit lightning.

What was happening? Had his plea been heard?

Holding the stone in one hand, Tiphan scooped the other bags into his arms. Just in time, as the cold light grew larger and larger, finally engulfing him. His terror evaporated in triumphant joy. The charging elves faded into the now dazzling blaze. Tiphan exulted. Success! The power was in his hands at last! He’d done it!

As the open plain faded before his vision, Tiphan heard the sound of laughter.

*

The days following Duranix’s departure were mild and sunny. The ice in the fields melted, and the planters waited anxiously to see whether the orchard would survive. Layers of hay and smudge fires helped, but the final proof would be evident soon. Either green shoots would rise from the soggy fields, bringing with them the hope of a new crop, or they would not. Dead seedlings, like dead bodies, remained buried in the unforgiving ground.

Amero busied himself laboring on the wall. News that the Silvanesti were on the move again put new urgency into the work. He kept Duranix’s vague fears of a western threat to himself. He saw no reason to frighten his people with a menace too shadowy to name.

The best stone for the wall was quarried from the cliff face between the village and the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. It was dense gray-white granite, speckled with black. The method of building, which had evolved over many seasons’ work, was simple but effective. The blocks were dragged on huge travois from the quarry to the base of the wall. Long ramps of packed earth rose along the inside and outside of the wall. Timber supports kept the ramps stable while building proceeded. The ramps were paved with smooth cobblestones taken from the abundant supply washed into the lake by the waterfall.

Looking back now over the length of finished wall, Amero marveled at how many of the heavy stones had been moved over the years. It was punishing work. Many times Amero passed his nights at Lyopi’s house, where she patiently wrapped his battered hands with strips of soft doeskin soaked in mint and other soothing herbs. There he slept like a dead man, yet awoke every morning eager to continue the arduous task. There was something very satisfying about raising the great wall around Yala-tene.

After eight days of community labor, the northern gap was finally closed. The new stretch of wall was as yet only head-high, but a continuous ring of stone enclosed the village at last. To commemorate the accomplishment, a celebration was declared for the next evening.

On the morning of the feast, fìrepits were dug and cords of hardwood laid for a hot, ashy fire. The air filled with sweet smoke as oxen began to roast. Food stores in the long tunnels hollowed out of the mountain were relieved of dried fruit and vegetables, stored there since the autumn harvest. That evening, when all was ready, the builders saluted their success. Though wine flowed freely, it was not a riotous gathering. Most of the people were too tired to celebrate too strenuously.

Songs were sung and tales told. The stories were of the old life on the plains, of endless wandering and life at the mercy of nature, great hunts, pursuits by fierce animals, deadly storms, floods, and marvels encountered on the open savanna. As the words were spoken, Amero watched the faces of his people. The young listened to the old tales closely, enthralled by the everyday hardiness of their ancestors. The elder villagers, many of whom had lived the nomadic life, reacted to the tales in different ways. A few smiled, but many sat with eyes downcast or with a far-off look that spoke of memories at work. Several wiped away tears.

As he listened, Amero’s own memories stirred. His thoughts were not of the wandering life, but of Duranix and Yala-tene. He’d lived more than half his life in this valley with these people. What a long way we’ve come, he thought.

Talk died as the work of many days caught up with the villagers. Snores became plentiful. Some of the crowd tottered away to sleep in their own beds. Others just put their heads in any convenient lap and dozed.

Amero, fuzzy with wine and fatigue, watched the flames in the firepit burn down to a glowing pool of embers. Lyopi was curled up beside him. Looking down at her fondly, one hand idly smoothing her chestnut hair, he gradually noticed something strange was happening. The flames in the firepit were slowly dying, yet light bathed the banquet scene – a bluish-white shine like Soli’s glow, but more intense and pervasive. The strange light, Amero realized, was coming from inside the town.

He stood gently so as not to wake Lyopi. Others in the crowd were still awake, and they had noticed the strange light, too.

“Arkuden,” said Udi, the beekeeper’s son, “what can it be?”

“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully.

“It’s coming from the Offertory,” Hulami said.

Indeed it was. Amero set off for the enclosure, followed by a dozen townsfolk. From four houses away, he could see the source of the light was indeed the Offertory. The eerie glow filled the street, washing the color from everything it touched.

When they reached the entrance to the Offertory, they found the Sensarku assembled in the courtyard, kneeling before the high cairn. Atop the stone platform stood an elongated, pear-shaped ball of light, so dazzling it hurt the eyes.

“What is this?” Amero blurted. The reverent acolytes nearest the entrance held fingers to their lips and shushed Amero. Irritated, he strode into the courtyard. The acolytes tried to stop him, but he kicked them off roughly and called, “Konza! Konza, what is going on?”

The old man, crouching by the altar, stood up. “Quietly, please, Arkuden!” he said, voice taut with emotion. “Do not insult the Omen!”

Konza sidled through the ranks of his followers and took Amero aside. “It appeared after sunset,” he whispered. “The boys were washing the cairn when this... spirit-omen arrived.” He looked up at the bright mass with wonder on his face. “It must be a sign from the dragon!”

Amero was doubtful. Duranix had many abilities, but Amero had never known the dragon to do anything like this.

He went to the footholds cut into the front of the cairn. More Sensarku protested, but Konza quieted them with a look. More curious than afraid, he climbed toward the orb. Up close, it gave off no heat and made no sound, but the light was truly blinding, and Amero had to shield his eyes. It seemed to be spinning rapidly, like a child’s top.

Listening intently, Amero became aware of a faint, massed whispering, as though scores of voices were murmuring at once. The voices seemed to echo, as though coming from a hollow place, like the deep interior of a cave. Amero strained to make sense of the words, but could not.

Questions burned in him as brightly as the strange light. He wanted very much to touch the brilliant object, to know what it was made of. He drew his bronze Silvanesti dagger. It was a span long, with an oilwood handle. He extended the point at the orb. The whispery, distant voices increased in volume as his blade approached. They grew so loud that Amero winced in pain, but he still couldn’t understand them or pick out a single voice from all the chaos. It seemed clear the voices didn’t like the dagger.

“Do you hear that?” he shouted over the din.

Konza was just a few steps away. He said, “Hear what, Arkuden?”

Setting his jaw, Amero shoved the dagger forward. Voices and light merged into a clap of thunder. All Amero had time to do was fling an arm over his eyes before his feet left the platform. He landed hard on his back, the impact driving the wind from his body.

Breath and sight slowly returned. Amero was on the ground, propped up by a pair of acolytes. They were patting his face and rubbing his hands. Their faces wore definite “I told you so” expressions. He brushed the youths aside and rose, grunting from the pain in his back.

Three steps away, Tiphan lay in the midst of a chattering circle of young Sensarku. He looked more than strange. Every bit of color had been bled out of him. He appeared to be clad in snow-white buckskins. His long blond hair and eyebrows had also turned white. His eyes were open and the look on his face positively beatific.

“Tiphan, son, can you hear me?” Konza was saying, hugging the young man desperately. “Say something! Can you speak?”

Amero pushed through the flock of gawking acolytes until he stood over the dazed Tiphan. He broke Konza’s hold on his son, seized the young man by the front of his shirt, and dragged him to his feet. Beneath him lay a number of small leather bags, likewise bleached of color.

“Where have you been, Tiphan?” Amero demanded, shaking him like a child. “Where are Mara and Penzar?”

Tiphan’s limp neck stiffened. He raised his head and looked Amero in the eye.

“Arkuden?” he said hoarsely. His eyes, still brilliant blue, took in his surroundings, and he smiled. “Home.”

Pulling free of Amero, Tiphan climbed atop the altar where all the Sensarku and townsfolk below could see him.

“People of Yala-tene!” the colorless man cried, flinging his arms wide. “I have come home!”

Chapter 10

Riding warm updrafts and weaving through sparse clouds, Duranix flew far out over the plain. He glided for leagues, steering by small movements of his tail. The sight of his shadow racing across the land below stirred up herds of elk and deer and the occasional wild ox, but for many days he had encountered no other creatures. The lack of wandering plainsmen made the otherwise teeming savanna seem oddly empty.

Duranix could see as well in darkness as in daylight, and the fall of night was a good time to leave his lofty vantage point and inspect the terrain in a stealthier manner. Many creatures, on two legs and four, went abroad in the night and hid by day. To spot them, the dragon landed and prowled the savanna like a panther.

He’d flown almost two hundred leagues, he estimated, since leaving Yala-tene. Such efforts emptied the belly and dried the throat. As soon as his hind legs touched the ground, Duranix’s thoughts turned inexorably to his hunger and thirst. The latter he slaked in a shallow tributary creek of the Tanjan. Meat would require a bit more exertion.

He strode through a copse of trees in the gathering dark, sniffing the wind for game. Catching the pungent scent of pig, he lowered his belly to the grass and crawled forward, nose to the trail. The only sound he made was that of his scaly hide sliding over the new green grass. He slithered right and left, following the meandering boar’s track. The smell grew stronger as he went, indicating the pig was near.

Suddenly, he glimpsed the animal’s brushy, black tail as it dug in the sod, looking for sweet roots. It never saw Duranix sweep up from behind, mouth agape. A snap, and the dragon’s daggerlike teeth made short work of the full-grown boar.

Still, it would take more than a single boar to satisfy his raging hunger. He sat up on his haunches and flared his nostrils wide, trying the air.

Lutar peeped over the horizon, enormous against the distant low hills, Its red light made the grass and trees black and gave his bronze scales a bloody cast as he searched for game.

He halted, catching wind of something quite different from elk or deer. The air carried a residual tang, almost as if lightning had struck nearby, though the sky had been clear for several days.

The only other force Duranix knew that could so singe the air was spirit power – a great deal of it. Sensing no other dragons nearby, he decided the source must be the elf priests Amero had warned him about.

The dragon noticed a path trampled through the weeds. Dropping his nose to the ground, he detected the scent of elves and horses. Since the path bore in the same direction as the scent, he followed it. Different, more familiar, aromas assailed him – human, centaur, the cold stink of metal. A piquant odor overspread all the rest: blood.

Duranix arrived at a wide area of flattened grass. Four dead horses, stripped of their tack, lay on one side of the clearing. The broken shafts of several elven javelins lay on the ground, their bronze heads having been salvaged. Scattered blankets, clay cups, and water gourds completed the scene. The aura of exhausted spirit power led off into the tall weeds a few paces away.

Before investigating further, Duranix decided to eat the dead horses. The humans had a saying: “Hungry enough to eat a horse,” meaning they were so ravenous they didn’t care what they ate. Duranix saw little difference between elk or horse.

He opened his mouth to sear the horses with a blast of fire, but halted abruptly when he saw an arm at the bottom of the heap of horseflesh. Living with Amero had given him a certain respect for thinking creatures. He couldn’t scorch the whole pile without removing the human first.

With a hungry sigh, Duranix tossed aside the top three carcasses. To his surprise, he discovered the arm belonged to a centaur. It was plain the man-horse had died hard. His body bore many wounds.

Duranix pulled the centaur’s body out of the way and roasted the horses. Once he’d eaten his fill, he incinerated the centaur. It was a small favor to a race he grudgingly admired, giving the fallen warrior a thorough cremation rather than leaving his body to the scavengers.

Picking his teeth with an equine leg bone, Duranix turned his attention to finding the locus of the spirit power he’d sensed earlier. He soon tracked it to a small clearing where the green growth of spring had been banished somehow, leaving the grass flattened and dead white, like the horse bone he held. The sensation of departed energy was amazingly strong here.

Duranix shook his head, wondering what had happened. The glint of metal caught his eye, and he retrieved from the grass a fine bronze knife. From the markings on the hilt, he recognized the weapon. It had belonged to Tiphan.

The presence of the single centaur at the battle now made sense. Amero had mentioned that Miteera sent one of his people along with Tiphan’s little expedition. The centaur had given his life in a bloody fight. What had become of Tiphan and his two acolytes?

As the dragon poked about for more clues, something stung his left rear claw. He lifted the limb, expecting to find another bronze blade in the grass. All he saw was a small, flat, stone chip, about the size of a man’s ear. The stone was dark gray granite streaked with gold and was neither hard enough nor sharp enough to penetrate his hide, yet he had he felt it intensely when he trod on it.

He picked up the stone – and immediately flung it away, shaking his claw as though burned. The mental shock he had received was intense. The tiny granite chip screamed with spirit power.

Things became clear in an instant. Tiphan was behind this. The young Sensarku, always hungering for power, hadn’t left Yala-tene on some pious quest. He’d gone in search of stones containing spirit power and had obviously found what he sought – with devastating results.

The obvious next step would be for Tiphan to return home. The fading trace of expended spirit power hinted that the human had found a quicker way home than walking or riding horseback. He’d used the power, or the power had used him.

Here was a danger far greater than the Silvanesti or hostile nomads. Foolish, ambitious Tiphan now had spirit power in his hands! The ignorant human had no idea of the damage he could cause or the danger he and his people faced from his rampant stupidity.

He could he in Yala-tene right now.

Duranix launched himself skyward, the Silvanesti threat forgotten. While he had been dawdling here on the eastern plain, snacking on boar and horse, a hideous danger was aimed at his valley, his home. If he flew as fast as he could, he could reach Yala-tene just after dawn.

If there was anything left of Yala-tene by then.

*

“Bad. This is very bad.”

Jenla knelt in the muddy orchard. She probed through the hay with a stick, gently lifting it to see if any green sprouts were visible. So far, she’d crawled down half a row without finding a single shoot.

“Are none alive?” asked Tepa anxiously. Without fruit trees, there’d be no blossoms. Without blossoms, his bees couldn’t make honey.

“Not yet.” She slid her damp knees forward and probed again. A slender shoot, more yellow than green, poked up through the soggy soil. “Ha!” Jenla crowed. “Apple tree!”

“That’s one.” Tepa ran a hand through his thinning gray hair, repeating sadly, “One.”

“Tiphan will answer for this.” Jenla marked the sickly seedling with a stone. “Heed my words – and watch where you step!” she said loudly, pushing Tepa away from the single live tree she’d found.

The old beekeeper wasn’t listening. He was gazing at something far away, brow furrowed wTith effort. When she noticed his distraction, she followed his rapt gaze, shading her eyes.

“What do you see?” she asked. Though he was old, Tepa’s excellent vision was well known. His keen eyes could still track bees in flight.

He concentrated for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he finally replied. “There’s something lying on the bank below the bridge. It’s not moving.”

“Probably a dead mountain goat, washed down from a higher valley. Maybe we can salvage the hide.”

The orchard was empty of other villagers, as work this morning was concentrated in the vegetable gardens, out of their sight. In companionable silence, the two elders walked along the shore toward the object Tepa had seen.

When they’d covered about half the distance to the unknown object, Jenla asked, “Can you tell what it is yet?”

He didn’t answer, and Jenla wasn’t surprised. Tepa was a cautious man. He didn’t volunteer opinions unless he had facts to back them up.

They drew nearer, and Jenla suddenly saw movement from the object. “It’s alive,” she said.

Simultaneously, Tepa cried, “It’s a girl!” He ran the rest of the way to the prone figure. Jenla shouted hoarsely at him to wait for her.

Tepa reached the fallen figure. Skinny arms and legs stuck out from beneath a mound of piebald oxhide.

“Can you hear me, girl?” he asked. She didn’t answer. He used the tip of his staff to lift the filthy hide. A cloud of flies rose up, and Tepa flipped the hide away, exposing the fallen stranger.

She was thin to the point of gauntness, wearing a tattered shift crusted with dried mud. Her bare legs and arms were black with muck, and her waist-length black hair was matted and stiff. Tepa could see her bony ribs moving through a gash in her shift. Her eyes were closed.

Tepa dropped to one knee and gathered her in his arms. When he lifted her, her head lolled back.

“Poor little one,” the beekeeper soothed. “You’ve traveled far, haven’t you?”

Jenla arrived, panting. “Careful, old man!” she said sharply, though not without affection. “She could be a spirit, even a dragon in disguise.”

Tepa dipped his hand in the stream and let the cool water dribble across the girl’s forehead. He chided Jenla, clucking his tongue.

“This is no monster,” he said, “just a lost girl, who’s gone too long since her last meal.”

The girl’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes as black as her hair. Seeing Tepa, she began to struggle. He let her go and stood back with Jenla. The girl rubbed her eyes and got to her feet, regarding the couple warily.

Tepa asked gently, “What’s your name?”

“Beramun.” She dusted sand and dried mud from her doeskin shirt and kilt, keeping wary eyes on Jenla and Tepa.

When nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, Jenla asked, “Who are your people?” The custom among plainsmen was to introduce themselves by the names of their parents.

“I have no people. I’m Beramun. That’s all.” She pointed past them to the town across the lake. “Is that the place called Yala-tene?”

“It is,” Tepa said.

Beramun sighed, her eyes closing briefly. “At last! I’ve wandered through half these mountains, looking for this place.”

She swayed a bit on her feet. Tepa stepped forward to help her, but she shrank from his proffered arm.

“When did you last eat?” he asked, stepping back.

“I don’t know.” She looked in the leather bag looped around her shoulder. From the way the limp bag hung, Tepa knew it was empty.

Beramun added, “Some days ago, it seems.”

“Well, come with us, girl,” Jenla said firmly. “We’ll feed you.”

Beramun resisted. “I must speak to your headman first!” Fear darkened her wan face. “I bring news of great danger!”

She was so insistent Jenla relented, and the three of them set off for Yala-tene at once. On the way, Tepa found a few dried apple slices in the pocket of his wraparound tunic. He offered the fruit to Beramun. She took them without hesitation but otherwise remained silent, obviously not intending to divulge her news to anyone but the headman of Yala-tene.

*

After a long, slow walk, they reached the village wall. Beramun had never seen such a structure. She marveled at the large stone blocks and how tightly they fit together. Inside, the town bustled with activity. Potters carried their wares to the kilns on long, ladderlike racks. Basket makers, coopers, and cobblers haggled over barter rates with the folk who gathered the raw materials – woodcutters, tanners, and the fishermen who cut rushes in their spare time.

Beramun was overwhelmed by the tumult. She had never seen so many people in one place, and everyone seemed to be going in all directions. They spoke her language but much more quickly than she was accustomed to. Here and there she saw black-skinned men and women she knew came from across the sea.

Her head swam as she tried to make sense of the cacophony. The old man, Tepa, tried to talk to her, but Jenla shushed him. Beramun gave the woman a grateful look. The teeming streets passed by in a blur, and an ache quickly bloomed behind her eyes.

At last they came to a low, rather tumbledown structure made of round rocks and slabs of bark. Fire glinted from within. In front of this building many people had gathered. Some were speaking with great heat at the top of their lungs.

Her guides led her through the crowd to where two men, one standing, the other seated, were loudly declaiming. The standing one was tall, and rather good-looking, but his hair was white, which seemed odd for one with such a youthful face. His eyebrows and eyelashes were also white, giving his whole face a very strange cast. The seated fellow was some years older. He had very short light brown hair and a closely trimmed beard, not at all like the luxuriant beards she was used to seeing on men his age out on the plains.

“... further evidence of Silvanesti plots against us,” the younger, white-haired man was saying. “My companions were cruelly slain – even the centaur Miteera sent to help us!”

The seated man looked even angrier, his face red above his whiskers. “And I say you had no right to go off on your own like that!” he countered. “Your folly cost the lives of two young people you were entrusted to guard. What did you say to their parents, Tiphan?”

White Hair replied loftily, “I said they died for the good of Yala-tene.”

His opponent scowled, drumming his fingers on his knee until he spotted Beramun in the crowd. The drumming stopped. He stood up.

“Jenla. Tepa. Who is this?” he asked.

The two villagers moved forward with the girl between them. Jenla explained how they’d found her, finishing with, “She says her name is Beramun, and claims to bring dire news for you, Arkuden.”

The name caused Beramun to stiffen. “Arkuden?” she repeated. “You’re a dragon’s son?”

He smiled, his hazel eyes filled with restored good humor. “I’m Amero, son of Oto and Kinar. ‘Arkuden’ is a name the folk hereabout call me. What news have you, Beramun?”

He had a kind face and pleasant voice, and Beramun relaxed a little. “Before Soli last waned, I was taken prisoner by raiders on the south plain. These men have horses and range all over, robbing and killing as they please. Their leader is called Zannian.” She noticed Tiphan glaring at her, obviously irritated by her interruption.

“Go on,” Amero said kindly, giving Tiphan a stern look.

“This Zannian is planning to make war on all the peoples of the plain,” she finished. “I spent some days in the raiders’ camp, making leather shirts for their warriors. I saw many, many spears being piled up.”

“We have nothing to fear from raider trash,” said a stout fellow with a reddish beard, standing nearby. “We have our wall, and we have the mighty protector, Duranix.” His words inspired many approving murmurs.

“What is Duranix?” asked Beramun.

“A dragon,” Tiphan said, looking down his thin nose at her. “Powerful in spirit, wise in counsel, mighty —”

Beramun recoiled. “Dragon! You also serve a monster?” She was horrified. Had she come so far, endured so much, only to find herself prisoner of yet another evil beast?

The crowd jeered and called her names for insulting the one they kept calling “the Protector.” Amero quieted them. Then, his soothing tone gone and his voice edged with urgency, he asked, “What did you mean by ‘you also serve a monster?’”

“Zannian and his band have a dragon master, too!”

All talk ceased. Tiphan stared hard at Beramun, his eyes narrowing. “What dragon is this?” he demanded.

“His name is Sthenn. He’s a green dragon who lives in the forest at the Edge of the World.”

For five or six heartbeats there was no sound, then every man and woman present began exclaiming loudly and at once. They surged around Beramun like a storm-tossed sea, waving their hands wildly, pointing to the mountains, pointing to the sky.

“Sthenn!”

“—  evil dragon who created the yevi —”

“— as powerful as Duranix?”

“Duranix? Where is Duranix?”

“He must help —!”

On and on, until Beramun pressed her hands over her ears to muffle the cacophony. She closed her eyes as well, trying to shield her aching head from the tumult. Someone touched her on the shoulder. Opening her eyes, she saw it was the headman, Amero.

“Come with me,” he said close to her ear. “We’ll go some place quiet to talk.”

Trust was difficult. The news that these people were the followers of yet another dragon had shaken her badly. However, the kindness in his face and the appeal of a quiet place swayed her, and she let herself be led away from the agitated crowd.

Amero brought her through the throng to the cliff face close by. A basket made of wooden poles lashed together stood there. He climbed in and held out his hand to her.

She hesitated, and he said, “You’re safe here, Beramun. No one will harm you, least of all me. Come.”

More than the words themselves, his gentle manner reassured her. He explained that the hoist would lift them safely up. After a moment of nervous hesitation, she climbed in with him.

During the ascent, she held tightly to the sides of the basket. When the contraption finally bumped to a stop high off the ground, she tried not to look, but her eyes were drawn to the drop.

By the ancestors! The people below looked small as beetles! The thought made Beramun smile. Not so threatening from a height, the crowd did resemble a swarm of beetles roiling in the sunlight after their rotten log home had been turned over.

Amero tied off the basket and helped her climb out. The interior of the cavern was huge and dimly lit.

“You live here?” she exclaimed. Her voice echoed off the high ceiling, the words coming back to her over and over. She laughed with childish delight at the effect.

“Duranix made it,” Amero explained. “He and I both live here.”

Mention of the dragon’s name killed Beramun’s playful mood. “Dragons are monsters,” she said flatly. “How can a man live with one?”

“Duranix is no monster. He’s the greatest friend a man could have. All that I’ve become, all that Yala-tene is, is due to my friendship with Duranix.”

Even through her mistrust, Beramun could hear the sincerity in his words. He went to the pit hearth and stirred the embers until they flamed. An elk haunch was on the spit there. He sliced off several generous pieces and offered them to her on the point of his knife. She hesitated only an instant before taking the knife and gnawing the meat with evident hunger.

Amero filled a leather cup from a pool of water by the cave wall. The basin was kept full by a rent in the outer cave wall that allowed water from the falls to trickle in.

He handed the cup to Beramun, then moved away, puttering in the recesses of the cave, allowing her to eat in peace.

After blunting her hunger pangs, Beramun rinsed her face and arms. When she returned to sit by the fire, Amero came back to question her about Sthenn, Zannian, and the raiders.

She told him all she knew, from the moment she’d been captured to her final escape down the river.

“Two hundred raiders or more you say, with a dragon behind them?” Amero muttered. He was standing at the entrance to the cave, frowning thoughtfully. The setting sun painted the sky scarlet beyond him.

“You believe me, don’t you?”

He nodded, and she sighed gustily, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Arkuden, if you’ll give me a quiet corner in this beehive of a village, I’d like to rest a bit. It’s been a long journey from the Edge of the World.”

“It’s better if you stay up here,” Amero said absently. “Duranix is away, and there are things going on in the village I’d rather you not get involved in.”

Beramun demanded, “Are you keeping me prisoner?”

He regarded her with a distracted expression. “You can come and go as you please. It really would be best if you stayed here, at least until Duranix returns. He’ll want to hear your story. Sthenn is his ancient enemy. They’ve fought each other before.”

Beramun chewed her lip, thinking. She hated confinement, but after many days on the run, always terrified Zannian or Sthenn would appear over the next hill or beyond the next grove of trees, she was weary beyond belief. The cave was blessedly calm and free of the hurly-burly of the teeming streets below. The constant rumble of the waterfall was actually rather soothing, and the food was better than anything she could scrounge on the plain.

*

Amero’s deep musings were interrupted by loud snoring. Turning, he saw Beramun leaning against the hearth, fast asleep. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. Her brief wash had removed the worst of the mud from her face, revealing her to be a pretty girl, thinned by too much hardship. Young, too. Her self-assured manner had fooled him at first, but looking at her now, he knew she couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen.

Something about her arrival bothered him. He couldn’t decide exactly what, so he cut himself a helping of roast elk and sat nearby, eating quietly. Duranix’s warning about an unknown peril loomed larger than ever. They had their choice of dangers: elves on the move in the east, Sthenn and his human host reported in the southwest, and perhaps worst of all, the strange incident involving Tiphan. The facts were indisputable. Tiphan had been transformed by some unknown power, and his naked ambition to take over Yala-tene was now as shockingly plain as his newly whitened hair.

Amero suddenly felt small in the great cave, small and insignificant. He wondered where Duranix was just then. Swallowing the last bite of elk, he sat down on the hearth across from Beramun and watched her sleep.

Chapter 11

The closer he got to Yala-tene, the more Duranix grew disturbed. Something was terribly wrong, and it wasn’t all due to that fool Tiphan’s dabbling with forces he couldn’t control. The sense of menace he’d detected before leaving the village was still building like invisible thunderheads, foretelling a storm of terrible magnitude. Though still too vague to identify, the signals were stronger than before – stronger and closer.

Duranix landed on the cliffs above the village, where years before he’d fought the rebel nomads of Hatu the One-eyed and Nacris. He inspected the sleeping town. Though the starry night seemed peaceful, the chill he felt throughout his massive body confirmed the worst: The malign presence had come to Yala-tene. It would have to be found and expunged as quickly as possible.

He flew into his cavern, shaking off the waterfall’s momentary deluge as he always did. The dying embers of a fire and the smell of roast elk told him someone had eaten recently. His heat-sensitive vision picked out a single warm body, sleeping by the hearth. Amero was home.

Duranix stalked across the cave and exhaled a small bolt of lightning into the firepit. Flames blazed up. Familiar surroundings and the nearness of his human friend raised Duranix’s spirits.

He pushed his head close to the sleeping mound and boomed, “Wake up, boy! I’ve much to tell you!”

The sleeper jerked upright. With a start Duranix realized it wasn’t Amero, but a female with long black hair. Her mouth opened, and she screamed, scrambling around the hearth away from him. She kept on screaming, face contorted by utter panic.

“Cease that noise!” he roared.

Like a judicious slap in the face, his command worked.

The girl’s jaws worked in silent horror, then she shouted, “You’re the dragon!”

“How brilliant you are! Who are you?”

She pulled herself together and replied in a calmer tone, “Beramun. I’m Beramun. You... you’re Duranix, aren’t you?”

“I am, and this is my home. Why are you here?”

“Amero brought me —”

“Did he?” His eyes narrowed. “Where is the hospitable Amero?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking around rapidly. “He was here when I went to sleep.”

Duranix circled the hearth. Beramun scampered away, maintaining her distance. “Are you the female he’s been tending in the village?” the dragon asked.

Her face colored. “No! I only arrived in the valley yesterday.”

“Then why did Amero bring you here? It’s not his custom to lodge strangers in our home.”

Beramun stood up, tugging at her twisted clothing. “I came to Yala-tene to warn him, to warn everyone,” she said, untying the braided hide belt at her waist and smoothing her kilt.

“Warn them of what?”

“Zannian’s raiders.” Beramun had to loosen the wraparound shirt in order to unbind her arms. When she did, the shirt fell away from her shoulders, exposing the green mark high on her chest.

Duranix’s pupils expanded. Without warning, he sprang through the fire. She had no time to dodge, but did let loose another bloodcurdling scream as his bronze talons enveloped her.

“You are his!” Duranix bellowed.

“Let me go!” she shrieked. “Let me go, monster! Let me go!”

He reared up on his hind legs, and for a heart-stopping moment she thought he meant to dash her against the cave wall. Instead, he carried her to the largest opening, the one directly behind the falls.

“You belong to him,” Duranix said coldly, his great voice carrying easily over the rumble of the water. “Did he send you to destroy me?”

“Destroy you?” Beramun’s voice was shrill with terror. “Belong to who? I don’t know what you mean!”

He thrust her out of the cave. Hundreds of paces above the ground, she now clung to Duranix as fiercely as she had fought his grip a moment before.

“Why did you come here?” he bellowed.

She screamed the words as fast as she was able. “To warn the people of Yala-tene about Zannian and his raiders —”

“Lies!” Duranix leaned farther out and pushed Beramun into the edge of the plunging stream of water. At its heart the waterfall had sufficient force to break bones and tear hair out by the roots. Even here, the torrent forced Beramun’s head down and pounded her back. She choked until he hauled her in.

“Why did you come here?” Duranix demanded. “What is your purpose?”

“I told you —”

He extended his foreclaw toward the water again.

Tears streaming down her drenched face, she cried, “No! No! It’s the truth! I swear by my ancestors! It’s the truth!”

A shout came from behind. Turning his broad head, Duranix saw Amero vault out of the basket and rush toward them.

“Stop it, Duranix! Don’t hurt her!”

“Are you mad, boy? She is one of Sthenn’s creatures!”

“No! She came here to warn us about Sthenn!”

Duranix examined the limp, bedraggled girl in his grasp. His brazen lip curled in disgust, and he tossed her to Amero. The latter managed to catch her, staggering backward under the unexpected burden.

“What’s gotten into you, Duranix?” Amero said, lowering Beramun to the floor. “I’ve never seen you mistreat a human so!”

The dragon’s ribs worked hard as he inhaled and exhaled, calming himself. Finally he said, “She wears Sthenn’s mark! She is his creature, no less than the yevi that killed your parents.”

“His mark?”

“See for yourself. High on the left side of her chest.”

Amero gently parted Beramun’s sodden hair and peeled back the wet doeskin. The green triangle stood out plainly. He touched it lightly with a forefinger. The mark was smooth, the edges flush with the girl’s skin.

Beramun came out of her daze and pushed weakly at his hands. “What’re you doing? Don’t touch me!”

“What is this mark?”

She held her shirt tight to her neck. “I don’t know. A bruise!”

“Have you always had it?”

“No. I noticed it after my escape from Almurk.”

Amero quickly recounted to Duranix her story of capture by Sthenn’s raiders and her escape.

The dragon listened, motionless and silent, but when the tale was done he said, “This is the shadow I sensed coming, Amero. This is the danger that threatens us all. She was marked by Sthenn. She is his creature. Better she dies now, before she can do his evil here.”

Beramun gasped and stood on shaky legs to run. She looked about wildly, realizing she was hopelessly trapped in the cave. Duranix made no move toward her, but Amero stepped between the dragon and the girl.

“There’s no proof she’s here on Sthenn’s behalf. Maybe the mark is just a bruise.” Even to his own ears, it sounded weak, and Duranix was not likely to be wrong about such a thing.

“I smell Sthenn all over her,” the dragon told him, crouching low and coiling his powerful legs beneath him. “I sensed his presence a hundred leagues away. Now I know why – he sent this girl here.”

“But why? She has warned us about his plots!”

“You don’t understand the poisonous subtlety of Sthenn’s mind. If he sent her here, there is a black reason behind it.” Amero folded his arms across his chest. “I won’t let you harm her.”

Silence ensued, heavy and tense. Amero knew he was no match for the dragon, but he honestly could not imagine that Duranix would hurt him. Though he was still a strange and oft-times unfathomable creature, Duranix had been Amero’s friend too long for the dragon to disregard him.

Finally, Duranix relaxed his attack stance. “Very well,” he said calmly. “Shield her if you must. There’s no understanding the irrational feelings humans have for each other.” Amero breathed more easily, but the dragon’s next words troubled him anew. “I warn you though, by all that’s passed between us – this female is doing Sthenn’s work, and we will all come to grief if you let her live.”

Amero looked over his shoulder at Beramun. “Go to the hoist,” he said quietly. “Wait there for me.”

She obeyed immediately. The dragon’s eyes followed her every step.

“There are other dangers here,” Amero said, hoping to divert Duranix. “Tiphan returned yesterday by means of some kind of spirit power. He claims to have mastery over it.”

“I feared as much.” Now it was the dragon’s turn to tell Amero about his findings. He described what he had discovered on the plains – the remains of a bloody fight, the residue of power, the spirit stones, and the dead centaur.

Amero shook his head sadly at the loss of Miteera’s gallant warrior. “Tiphan’s changed – or been changed by these stones,” he said solemnly. “Even his appearance is altered.”

“He seeks to imitate the elf priests. He would become like Vedvedsica.”

“He must be stopped!” Amero declared. “That power is as wrong for humans as it is for elves. Just look at the evil done by Pa’alu all those years ago with a simple amulet!”

Pa’alu had been a nomad warrior who’d been in love with his chieftain, Amero’s sister, Nianki. When she failed to return his affection, he had made a deal with the Silvanesti priest Vedvedsica for an amulet to compel Nianki’s love. A terrible accident had occurred. The amulet had indeed caused Nianki to fall in love, but that love was directed along unnatural lines, toward her brother. Much sorrow had ensued, leaving Pa’alu dead, Yala-tene wrecked by the rebellious nomads, and Nianki driven into self-exile with her band of loyal followers.

“I’ll search for this Zannian,” Duranix declared. “You’ll have to deal with Tiphan for now.”

“Konza may still have some influence over his son. I’ll speak to him in the morning.”

Amero intended to say more, to smooth over their confrontation over Beramun, but it was not to be. Having spoken his mind, Duranix stalked to the rear of the cave. It was obvious he was still angry, and Amero’s heart was heavy as he returned to the hoist.

Beramun stood in the basket regarding him nervously. Somehow, his many burdens seemed to lighten when he looked at her, and he smiled.

“Is all well?” she asked.

“Well enough,” he said, climbing in and pulling the slip knot. The basket sank toward the ground.

She wrung water from her long hair. “It was brave of you to defend me,” she said quietly.

“I was in no danger. Duranix would not hurt me.”

“He’s a beast. A very great beast, but not human. Can you be sure of him?”

“Very sure.” Amero looked into her black eyes. More sure than I am of you. He kept that thought to himself.

The basket bumped into the pile of sawdust Amero used to cushion the landing. He climbed out first, then helped her jump down. His hands were still around her waist when she skidded in the sawdust. He held on to keep her from falling.

After a few seconds, she said, “You can let go now.”

Amero released her. He was thankful the dark night hid the blood burning in his face.

“Thank you, Arkuden.” She clasped his hand lightly. It was a simple gesture of gratitude, nothing more, but the fleeting contact set his heart racing.

*

By lamplight the stones looked very ordinary: mottled gray chips of varying sizes. A few had streaks of gold in them, but only a few. Konza sat at the table in his simple house, the pile of stones before him. Across from him sat his son, his appearance so strangely altered by his recent journey. Konza had begun to believe the alterations ran even deeper than mere appearance.

“You see, father, these stones are the key to power,” Tiphan said, running his hands over the dusty pile. “According to my elven manuscripts, they contain a portion of the power of a mighty spirit confined to the stone in ages past.”

“These bits of rock?”

“Yes. Here is a treasure greater than all the bronze in Silvanost!”

Tiphan was sorting the stones by size and weight. Even the bits that flaked off them were pushed carefully into a tiny heap. Konza watched this peculiar process with a plainly skeptical expression.

“How did Penzar and Mara die?”

“What?”

Tiphan’s blue eyes, seemingly all the brighter for the white lashes now framing them, lifted from his work to stare at his father. “Elves killed them. I told you that. We were set upon by more than a hundred Silvanesti warriors. Penzar was slain, then Mara, and the centaur. It all happened so quickly, I couldn’t help them. The only reason I survived was because of the stones.”

“I see.” The older man drummed the tabletop with his fingers for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No, I don’t. How? How were you able to command the power of the stones?”

Tiphan smote the table with his fist, causing his father, the stones, and the small lamp to jump. “Questions, questions! What troubles you, old man? Aren’t you happy to have me back alive – and in possession of such enormous power?”

“Yes, Tiphan, I am.”

His tone was so sincere, Tiphan felt guilty. He sat back with a deep sigh. “Very well, father. I’ll show you how I was able to master the stones.”

Rising, he went and removed the loose stone that hid his secret cache. He poked his arm into the hole and felt around for his scrolls. He found the longest parchment roll, drew it out, and unrolled it a span.

“Here,” he said, showing the Silvanesti book to his father. “This is The Way to Bind the Sun, a book compiled by elf priests. It describes the stones of power and how a practiced artisan can use them.”

Konza didn’t even glance at the scroll. “You know I can’t read,” he said.

“You could learn! I’ve studied every scrap of Elvish script that’s come into this valley and talked to wanderers and traders who know the Silvanesti. This book tells of an ancient war among the spirits and how the victors and the defeated chose to remain on this mortal world, locked in stone for all time. Whole, these spirits are too willful for man or elf to control, but a small fragment can be called upon to release its power!”

Konza was plainly impressed with his son’s erudition, but his expression was troubled as he asked, “What will you do with this power?”

Tiphan gestured broadly. “Help Yala-tene, of course – in a hundred ways! The power is directed by my will, so whatever I wish can be done. Think of the deeds I could do! Instead of sweating long days to break stone and haul it to build the town wall, I might be able to command the stone blocks to rise and fly themselves into place! I could call forth rain in a drought, or sunshine during a deluge. If the harvest was poor, I could command the gardens to flower and grow heavy —”

“Ah!” Konza struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. “The orchard! I forgot!” As Tiphan rolled up the Silvanesti scroll, the old man explained how the late icefall had ruined the spring planting.

“The villagers were very angry with you,” he said. “Amero spoke to the Protector, and he told the planters you had misinterpreted his words when you claimed he said winter was over. If you’d been here, I think they would’ve torn you to pieces!”

Tiphan smiled thinly. “But I wasn’t here. Isn’t that proof the power seeks me as surely as I desire it? Why else would I have had such an overwhelming urge to leave Yala-tene on that particular day?”

Konza was taken aback. Tiphan had always thought well of himself, but since his return he was acting as though he, and not the great dragon, was the protector of Yala-tene. He didn’t even grieve over the deaths of his acolytes. When he spoke of the Arkuden, his tone now was openly arrogant.

“Son, you must make amends,” the old man insisted. “Somehow you must help the planters.”

Tiphan had returned the scroll to its niche. Turning slowly, he said, “You’re right, Father. That’s a fine notion.” He scooped up a single stone from the table. “I’ll do just that!”

He draped a sheepskin robe around his shoulders and raced out the door. Konza had to scramble to catch up.

The night was bright, the air crisp and cold. Their exhalations formed clouds around their heads.

“If you want to see the orchard, shouldn’t we wait for daylight?” Konza panted, pushing himself to keep up with Tiphan’s brisk stride.

“There’s no time to lose. The next sunrise will shine down on a new orchard, and a new village!”

They crossed Amero’s bridge, their sandals thumping loudly on the planks. It was quiet in the upper valley, still too cold at night for frogs and crickets to serenade. By the time they arrived at the upper end of the orchard it was just after midnight. Lutar was chinning itself on the horizon, and a vague pinkish light colored the scene before them.

Tiphan stopped so suddenly Konza bumped into him.

“Now what?” asked the old man, shivering despite his robe.

“Watch, and say nothing,” was his son’s portentous warning.

In truth Tiphan wasn’t at all sure he could invoke the power of the stone he held tightly in his hand. His escape from the elves might have been an accident, sparked by desperation. Still, Konza was watching. Better to test his technique before his own father than a crowd of skeptical villagers.

Tiphan pressed his palms together, the stone wedged between them. Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he concentrated.

Power of the stone, hear me! he intoned silently. Bring forth the bounty of the soil! Raise up these wasted seeds into thriving, abundant trees! He repeated the wordless command over and over.

Nothing happened. The night remained very still and cold. Tiphan felt a trickle of sweat run down his temple.

“Never mind, son. Let’s go home.”

His father’s gentle, pitying tone infuriated Tiphan. “Don’t interrupt!” he snapped. Speaking made him remember an important fact: He’d rescued himself from the elves by speaking the words aloud!

“Power of the stone!” Tiphan intoned in a loud voice. “Hear my plea! Hear my command! Bring forth the bounty of the soil! Raise up the withered seedlings from waste and death! Come forth in life and plenty! Release your power! Come forth! Come forth!”

The air around them shimmered. They felt a whisper of heat on their faces. The stone in Tiphan’s hands grew warmer. Very quickly, it became painfully hot.

Raising both hands high and never ceasing to shout his invocation, Tiphan hurled the stone at the straw-covered field. As it flew through the air it left behind a visible trail of golden sparks.

When the fragment hit the ground, there was a noiseless burst of white light. Konza turned away, hands over his ears, believing a thunderclap would follow. None did, but a lengthy wash of warm air enveloped them.

“Tiphan!” Konza gasped. “What’s the matter?”

His son had fallen to his knees and was shaking violently. Konza took him by the shoulders, thinking to aid him. However, the old man recoiled sharply when he saw his son’s face.

Tiphan was laughing. Paroxysms of mirth shook him from head to toe.

“Now do you see, old man?” Tiphan sputtered. Savage laughter continued to wrack him until tears ran down his cheeks. “Now do you see?”

Konza looked at the ice-ravaged orchard. Something was indeed happening. Releasing his hysterical son, who collapsed onto his hands and knees, Konza walked into the frosty field. Where once the ground had been covered with damp hay, there was a now a fine green fleece growing from the foot of the far cliff down to the water’s edge.

Konza knelt, brushing tentative fingers over apple and walnut trees, burltops, and more. Tiphan hadn’t simply repaired the seedlings killed by ice. He’d covered the entire expanse of ground in finger-length sprouts of all type and description.

A hand fell on Konza’s back, and he flinched.

“Isn’t it wondrous?” breathed Tiphan.

“It’s terrifying!” said Konza honestly.

Here was power to rival the great spirits. As his eyes roved over the dense mat of seedlings, Konza knew that such power wasn’t meant for ordinary men. He looked at his son nervously. Tiphan’s thoughts were obviously running along different lines.

“The land will yield everything to us,” the younger man said, spreading his arms wide and inhaling deeply. “The world will be our garden! Nothing can resist my power!”

Chapter 12

Duranix had searched from the mountains to the Plains River, detecting no trace of Sthenn or his minions. This troubled him. There had been a far greater odor of the enemy back in Yala-tene, Duranix reflected, emanating from that black-haired girl.

Thinking of Beramun made the dragon angry. He was certain she was up to no good, though how she fit into Sthenn’s machinations wasn’t clear.

He turned south, crossing the landmark river. There were always plainsmen on its shores, watering their animals or traveling by raft or canoes. Nomads were keen-eyed and alert to any danger. He resolved to question any he could find about Zannian’s band. For that, he would need to take on human shape, since the wanderers would flee at the sight of his natural form.

He landed in a grove of cherry trees. Hidden by clouds of pink blossoms, he shrank to a stocky, broad-shouldered, brown-haired man who vaguely resembled Amero. The disguise would not only allow him to approach any nomads he might meet, but would also serve to muffle his presence to Sthenn, if the green dragon was in the vicinity.

Duranix emerged from the cherry trees and began to run. Human form or no, he ran faster than any other creature on the plain, surpassing even the astonishing speed for which the panther was famed. By noon, he was gazing down from a hilltop on the distant silver band of the river’s southern fork, and he’d encountered neither raiders nor plainsmen. He found the lack of customary nomads extremely disturbing. This time of year the savanna should have been dotted with many small bands moving south behind migrating herds of elk and oxen.

Duranix stretched his senses wide, drinking in the faintest whiffs of auras and aromas. There was a sizable herd of oxen within range. He made note of that. A fat ox or two would be a fine antidote to the enormous hunger he’d built up after many leagues of running.

Before racing off after his dinner, he caught another scent that put an end to his thoughts of food. Humans, two or three at most, with horses. At last, he had found the nomads he sought.

A shrill whistling filled his sensitive ears. He quickly spotted the source of the sound. A bawling ox calf galloped through the widely spaced trees. Behind it was a trio of humans on horseback, whistling and shouting. They had long spears and were obviously trying to bring down the runaway beast.

Duranix loped down the hill, angling to intercept the galloping calf. His sudden appearance on the beast’s left spooked the calf, and it veered away. Between the dust and flower petals from nearby trees, the riders didn’t see the calf change direction. They thundered straight ahead, whooping, until the one on the far left spotted Duranix. He reined up and shouted something to his comrades, who likewise slowed to get a look at the stranger.

In the space of a few heartbeats, Duranix realized these fellows weren’t simple herders chasing a stray calf. They carried no ropes but were armed with flint-tipped spears and wore weird leather hoods decorated with animal bones, teeth, and vivid stripes, swirls, and splotches of paint. That much of the girl Beramun’s story was true. There were raiders on the plains.

Followers of Sthenn weren’t likely to respond to polite queries, so Duranix took a more direct approach. He charged the center rider. The man’s horse shied violently, rearing on its hind legs. The rider, taken by surprise, fell and hit the ground hard. He rolled twice and lay still.

The other two riders drove in, spears leveled. Duranix sprang at the nearest one, whose hood bore a wide stripe of bright red paint. The dragon grabbed Red Stripe’s spear shaft in both hands and yanked. The man flew off his horse and landed in the dirt.

With no time to dodge the third human’s attack, Duranix hurled the captured spear at him. Backed by a dragon’s muscles, the long spear drove all the way through the last rider. His hands flew up, and he toppled backward off his animal.

The first two men were senseless, so Duranix went over to the one he’d speared and hauled him to his feet. He tore the fearsome hood from the rider’s head, revealing him to be a young man with shaggy black hair and only the thinnest sprouts of beard on his chin.

“Speak,” Duranix said roughly. “Who are you? Where do you come from?”

The raider coughed blood. His eyes roved wildly, taking in the unmoving lumps that had been his comrades. “Takanu,” he gasped, “from Almurk.”

The disguised dragon recognized the latter name from Amero’s recital of Beramun’s escape. “Is your chief named Zannian?” he demanded.

The raider nodded feebly. Duranix dragged him to where his horse waited, cropping the spring grass a few paces away. Faint surprise registered in the dragon’s mind as he noted that all three horses had remained nearby. Unlike most of their kind, they didn’t seem alarmed by his dragon aura.

He held the reins of Takanu’s horse with one hand and, with the other, threw the raider onto the animal’s back.

“I’m going to spare you, Takanu, to go back to your chief and deliver this message – stay away from Yala-tene or face certain, swift death. Do you understand?”

The raider didn’t reach for the dangling rawhide reins. He sat slumped in his saddle, one hand clutching his wounded side, shaking his head.

Duranix repeated the message more loudly, adding, “Now go!”

“I can’t,” the raider groaned.

“Why not? Your wound isn’t fatal.”

“I can’t return defeated, spared by an enemy,” the raider insisted. “I’ll be punished. Better to die now.”

What kind of savages was he dealing with? “Then tell them you fought me and I ran away,” the dragon said with some asperity. “Tell them whatever you like, so long as you deliver my warning.”

Takanu slipped a hand into his shirt. When he brought it out again, there was an obsidian dagger in his fist. Quicker than thought, he stabbed himself in the stomach and slid sideways off his horse.

Deeply vexed, lightning snapping around his head, Duranix rolled the raider over. Takanu was dead. His hard landing had driven the dagger deep. Another messenger would have to be found.

The disguised dragon stripped the two unconscious men of their clothes and weapons. He retrieved their horses and lashed the raiders facedown across their mounts’ backs.

To make certain Sthenn knew exactly who was sending the message, Duranix reverted to dragon form and searched his body for a loose scale. He found one on the back of one knee. Tearing a long strip of buckskin from a raider’s shirt, the dragon tied the scale in place over the man’s face. He sent the horses on their way with slaps on their rumps.

Satisfied he’d made his point, Duranix turned his attention back to his voracious appetite.

*

Jenla could not believe her eyes. The day before, she and Tepa had found nothing in the orchard but muddy hay. This morning, the field was alive with thousands of tiny green seedlings, so densely packed she could barely see ground between them. Falling to her knees in the dirt, she touched the tender shoots with her fingers, hardly believing they were real.

“Believe what you see.”

Jenla’s head snapped around toward the unexpected voice. There stood Tiphan, looking strangely colorless in the golden light of morning.

“It’s amazing,” she said, breathless. “How could such a thing happen?”

“I did it.”

Her wordless shock seemed to please him. “I have acquired the spirit power previously known only to the elves.” With a beneficent smile Tiphan added, “Since our great protector misled us about the weather, it seemed only right that I repair his mistake.”

Though she knew his version of events wasn’t accurate, Jenla didn’t argue. Tiphan frightened her. What with his arrival in the Offertory in a flash of light and his strange new appearance. “Well,” he said, “aren’t you going to thank me?”

“Thank you, Tosen.” Frowning at the seedlings, she muttered, “These will have to be thinned, or they’ll choke each other out.”

“You’re welcome, Jenla. Peace to you.”

He wandered away, still smiling. Jenla dismissed the unfathomable Sensarku from her mind, her thoughts returning to the task before her.

She plucked out a handful of apple seedlings to make room for the others to grow. Tossing them over her shoulder, she loosened the soil with a sharp wooden stick. Tearing out more seedlings and throwing them behind her, she created a neat row where none had existed. After she’d worked down a few steps, she glanced back to survey her handiwork. What she saw stopped her cold.

The discarded seedlings, torn from the soil, were growing! They had already put down roots and were even now righting themselves. The thick mass of plants turned their leaves to the sun.

Unnerved, she dropped her stick and shouted, “Tepa! Udi! Tana! Come here!”

From other parts of the fields her friends came running. When close enough to behold the restored orchard, they halted abruptly, and their jaws dropped. At her impatient urging, they approached again, their eyes fastened on the writhing carpet of seedlings.

Jenla related Tiphan’s claim to have “repaired” the damage done by the too-early planting.

“He can do that?” asked Udi, awestruck.

“The proof is here,” Jenla said. “The seedlings are alive – unnaturally so! Torn out, they keep growing!” She gestured at the pile. “We have to find a way to thin them.”

Tepa pondered the problem. “Burn the unwanted ones,” he said. “That should take care of them.”

All around they could hear a faint but steady scratching sound. Astonished, they realized it was the sound of the orchard growing.

“Get help!” Tepa told his son. “Hurry! If we wait too long we’ll need axes to thin the saplings!”

Udi ran to the next vale to recruit the villagers working in the vegetable gardens. Tepa scrounged twigs and dry grass and started a small fire. They began thinning the seedlings and tossing the unwanted ones on the fire. Soon enough, the fire had grown to considerable size.

*

Across the lake, Amero noted the rising spiral of smoke and wondered what was burning. He was overseeing repairs of the foundry while waiting for Tiphan. He’d sent runners throughout the town, seeking the Sensarku chief. Tiphan finally arrived with a full entourage of acolytes, all starry-eyed and awestruck by their leader.

Outwardly calm, Amero inwardly seethed. He didn’t want the young, impressionable Sensarku present when he upbraided their leader. Sitting on a stone bench outside the ruined foundry, he pointedly did not rise when Tiphan reached him. Instead, he continued whittling a cedar stick with practiced nonchalance. Tiphan halted, and his acolytes spread out on each side.

“Welcome, Tiphan,” Amero said. “I hope you’re recovered from your journey?”

“Quite recovered, Arkuden.”

“Send your people back to the Offertory, please. This doesn’t concern them.”

The Sensarku leader spread his arms wide. “I have no secrets from my children.”

Disgusted by his turn of phrase, Amero almost cut through the aromatic stick with a single stroke. Recovering, he said, “Let me speak plainly. I’m concerned about you, Tiphan. You left here as one person and returned as another.”

“Is that wrong, Arkuden?”

Amero met his eyes. “No, but you brought something with you I cannot tolerate in Yala-tene.”

“What would that be?”

“Spirit power.”

Tiphan smiled broadly. “It’s no secret I have acquired the power known to the priests of the Silvanesti,” he said. “I have said so publicly.” The joy on the faces of his acolytes reflected his own. “What an elf can do, now I can do. What arts they master, I can master, too.”

“No one can control the spirits. To try is folly. You’re like a man who juggles flaming brands – as long as you catch the cool end, you’re fine, but sooner or later you’re bound to burn your fingers.”

Tiphan’s smile vanished. “I never thought to hear such craven words from you, Arkuden. You, who have lived with a dragon and wrested metal from the very rocks beneath our feet? Why should you fear this power? It exists, stored in stone, for the wise to use, just as your metal lies hidden in ordinary rock. You dig it out to help us, to make life in Yala-tene better. My goal is the same.”

The scrape of feet behind him made Amero glance over his shoulder. His workmen were crowding the windows and door of the foundry, listening to Tiphan speak. From their faces, it appeared the Sensarku was winning his point.

“There’s a grave difference between copper and spirit power,” Amero countered, standing at last. “Metal, once smelted, is just metal. It neither harms nor helps, but does the will of the hand that wields it. This power you crave is not like that. Using it is like setting a wild beast loose from a trap. It may run away, or it may turn and bite you. There’s no controlling it. If you try to use it, it will destroy you, Tiphan, and may very well destroy Yala-tene, too.”

Tiphan shook his head sadly. “You’ve grown old, Arkuden, old and cautious. I’ve called upon the power twice already, and both times reaped the benefits.” He pointed across the lake. “My power has insured a bountiful harvest for seasons to come by saving the frozen seedlings. It also saved me from the elves, who attacked me on the plain.”

Amero folded his arms to stop them trembling with anger. “Attacked you?” he said coldly, “Mara, Penzar, and Elu were attacked, too. How is it this great power of yours couldn’t save them?”

“Have all your schemes borne fruit? Did they come without cost?” Tiphan retorted. “How many died when the storage tunnels were being dug? What about the people injured in your experiments? What was the final tally of dead after the nomads were welcomed into the valley?”

The smug look on the face of the Sensarku leader was suddenly too much for Amero. Furious, he started at Tiphan, but was stopped by the young believers who rushed between him and their leader. Fists clenched at his sides, he glared at the eight or so acolytes blocking his path.

“Stand clear, Tiphan, if you want to insult me!”

“You see our wise Arkuden,” Tiphan said loudly, addressing the rapt workmen in the foundry’s windows. “Outmatched in words, he has no other remedy but fighting.”

“You must give up the stones you collected!” Amero shouted.

“I will not.”

“Duranix will return soon and compel you to do so!”

All eyes turned to Tiphan. He pursed his lips and lowered his head, looking thoughtful. “I will always obey the will of our great protector,” he said solemnly, “but I have the right to make my case to him in person.”

Amero sneered. “That will be a song worth hearing!”

A new group of acolytes arrived. They hailed their leader and brought out a gift they’d made for him: an ankle-length mantle of the best white fox fur. They draped it over his shoulders and cheered. Satisfied he’d made his point, Tiphan led his large group of followers away.

Fuming, Amero turned his back on them. The sight of his workmen, standing idle as they witnessed Tiphan’s little spectacle, made him even angrier.

“Well?” he snapped. “Furnaces don’t mend themselves!”

Sheepishly, the men returned to work. He was about to join them when Lyopi and Beramun arrived.

“I heard you shouting as soon as I stepped out of my house,” Lyopi said. “I knew Tiphan couldn’t be far away.”

Amero took a deep breath, trying to rid himself of his ire. “He has a talent for baiting me.”

“And you have a talent for letting him.”

Lyopi’s comment sounded accusing to his ears, but before Amero could reply, Beramun spoke up.

“You should thrash him,” she said. “Disrespect to a headman shouldn’t be tolerated.”

Lyopi raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know our Arkuden. He talks his foes into submission far more often than he beats them.”

Again Amero felt stung by her tone. Why couldn’t she be more supportive, like Beramun?

Turning to the girl, he said, “Are you lodged comfortably?” He had asked Lyopi to keep Beramun out of the dragon’s sight.

“Yes, Arkuden. Lyopi has shared her home with me.”

“I always do my best for the lost and strayed,” Lyopi said wryly.

Amero ignored her bait. “Duranix has gone out to investigate your story. He’ll search the western plain for signs of Zannian’s band. If they’re out there, Duranix will find them.”

“You’ll dine with us tonight, Amero?” asked Lyopi, taking Beramun by the arm and drawing her away. She noted with a frown how closely Amero’s eyes followed the girl.

His answer was slow in coming, but finally he shifted his gaze from Beramun to Lyopi. “Yes, I will,” he said at last.

“Then bring a brace of rabbits, or a deer haunch,” Lyopi snapped. “I’m not your mother, to wait on you hand and foot.”

The women departed, leaving a surprised Amero wondering what had put steady Lyopi in such a bad temper.

*

Sunset arrived red as blood. Scouts came in tired from their daylong rides, their throats dry as the dust that coated them from head to toe. Stolen wine flowed freely. Zannian let the thirsty scouts drink their fill, and the camp grew loud with intoxicated boasts of warrior prowess.

Some had returned with loot and new captives – a few head of oxen or goats, or families swiftly rounded up as they tried to sneak across the plain. All captured humans were herded past an old oak stump by the river. Sitting on this stump was Hoten, son of Nito. He was in charge of tallying the new acquisitions, scratching marks on strips of bark to record the chattel – beast or human – taken by the raiders. Behind him sat Nacris, keenly watching from her litter.

After the latest pair of oxen were driven away, Nacris announced, “That makes six score and seven oxen taken. Not bad.”

“Five-score and nine of those came from the single herd we took six days ago,” Hoten replied. “Since then, only eighteen oxen have been brought in. Word has spread. The wanderers are keeping out of our reach.”

“What of it?” she said, shrugging. “We’ve enough meat now to last all winter, and when we take Arku-peli, we’ll have even more.”

“A wise hunter doesn’t pluck a bird he hasn’t caught yet.”

She scowled, shifting in her litter. “You’re a gloomy bird yourself, Hoten. Don’t you believe in the might of our master and the skill of my son?”

Hoten put down the quartz shard he used to mark the bark strip and rubbed a hand over his sweaty pate. “There’s no doubt of either,” he said evenly. “Our master is powerful, and Zannian is a great warrior.”

Rowdy laughter in the center of the camp abruptly died. Hoten stood to see what had quelled the men’s high spirits.

“What is it?” Nacris pushed herself up with her hands.

He frowned. “Looks like some of our men have come back bested.” He hurried away, leaving Nacris cursing and calling for her absent bearers.

Hoten pushed his way through the drunken raiders. Two horses had ambled into camp with riders tied facedown across their backs. Both men had been stripped of clothing and weapons. One was dead with a cracked skull, but the other was only groggy from his long ride upside down.

Hoten sent a runner to find Zannian and ordered the live man released. The rawhide bindings were swiftly sliced. He fell heavily to the ground. Some of his comrades laughed.

“Shut up,” Hoten snapped. “Oswan, what happened to Siwah? Where’s Takanu?”

The man couldn’t say. The dead one, Siwah, was brought over to Hoten for inspection. He had a strange sort of hat on his head. In the fading light it glinted like metal.

Hoten jerked the object off Siwah’s head. It was metal, a thin, curled sheet.

Cursing loudly, Nacris and her bearers bullied their way through the throng. When she spotted the object in Hoten’s hand, she uttered an oath of surprise.

“Give that to me!” she demanded.

Hoten handed the strange metallic token to her just as Zannian arrived.

“What’s going on?” the chief asked.

“Someone beat three of our scouts,” Hoten said. “That thing came back on Siwah.”

Nacris had been turning the burnished metal object in her hands, trying its hardness with her thumbnail, even sniffing it.

She snapped, “Where did this come from, Oswan?”

He shrugged. “It was just there – on Siwah – when I woke up.”

“Summon the Master.”

“What is it?” Zannian asked his mother, reaching for the object.

She yanked it out of his reach and cried, “Summon the Master! Now!”

The raiders knew Nacris did not invoke the green dragon lightly. They whispered among themselves uneasily, as Zannian ordered Hoten to fetch Greengall.

“Takanu’s dead,” Nacris declared, putting the metal leaf on her lap. “These two were sent back as a warning.”

“How do you know?”

“This, boy!” She waved the metal at Zannian. “Wait till the Master sees this!”

Soon, Hoten returned with Greengall. The crowd of warriors melted away, making a path for the towering creature. A few bowed their heads. Most just sought to avoid the gangling monster’s eye.

“Why do you summon me?” Greengall said irritably.

“Look at this, Master!” Nacris held up the metal leaf in both hands.

Greengall’s vertical pupils contracted to black slits, making his eyes appear even larger than usual. He took the leaf from her.

“What is this?”

“A scale, Master.”

“I know it’s a scale!” he bellowed, swatting her across the face with it.

The sharp edge cut deeply into Nacris’s cheek. She bore her hurt in silence as the hardened warriors drew back in a body, fearful of Greengall’s rage. Nacris dabbed at the blood running down her face and looked up to her harsh master again. She laughed. The low, cheerless sound drew all eyes.

To Zannian’s surprise, Greengall, who hated the sound of human merriment, chose to ignore the transgression instead of punishing it. Clearly the mysterious fragment was important.

“Who brought this here?” Greengall asked, looking around. No one spoke.

Zannian alone had not retreated. Handing his bleeding mother a scrap of doeskin to press to her wound, he said calmly, “Oswan, step forward and tell the Master your tale.”

Trembling as much from new terror as from his recent ordeal, Oswan fell to his knees before Greengall. In halting words he told how he and his comrades had spotted the runaway calf and given chase, how a strange, powerful man had appeared and unhorsed them. That was all he remembered.

“A man, you say?”

Swallowing audibly, Oswan replied, “Yes, Master.”

“Does this look like the skin of a man?” He flung the scale to the ground. It rang musically against a rock. “He is near! My old friend, the plaything of my youth, has come to seek me out!”

Zannian was puzzled. “Who, Master?”

Nacris said exultantly, “The bronze dragon, Duranix!”

She resumed her perverse cackling. The raiders muttered and shifted uncomfortably. Greengall, catching Nacris’s mood, started giggling, his green mane lifting as his chortles rose in volume.

“It was only a matter of time before dear little Duranix paid us a visit,” he said. To the raiders, he shouted, “Why do you fear? I slew this lizard’s mother eight hundred years ago, and Amylyrix was thrice the dragon Duranix will ever be! It was inevitable he would take the field against us. I will deal with him. You have only to slaughter his foolish herd of humans, and your task will be done.”

“Having an enemy dragon on the plain will make our task harder,” said Zannian.

Greengall thrust his hideous face close to the young chiefs. “Is that a complaint, rodent?”

With remarkable aplomb, Zannian stood up under the monster’s baleful gaze and replied, “No, Master. An observation.”

“Good.” Greengall grinned, showing tight rows of sharp, conical teeth.

He picked up the scale and tucked it under his unnaturally long, green arm. “Continue as before,” he ordered. “Sweep the savanna clean of all nomads and game animals. That will prevent the villagers from getting news or fresh meat from outside their valley. Once that’s done, we’ll make our advance on Arku-peli.”

The raiders cheered, but it sounded forced. Greengall departed, his grotesquely long legs bowing out as he walked away.

Several paces distant, he stopped. Turning back, he added, “Oh, yes. Hang that one.”

Oswan blanched and held out his hands. “Spare me, Master!” Oswan wailed. “I did no wrong!”

“You let the enemy get the better of you,” Greengall replied. His face contorted in a wide, wicked grin. “Hang a while, and consider your failure.”

Hoten signaled, and Oswan was seized by comrades and dragged off, screaming his loyalty and innocence. Greengall, ordinarily very fond of hangings, ambled back to his tent, idly licking the bronze scale. Zannian hesitated a moment between his bleeding mother and his freakish master, then followed Greengall.

“Master!” he called, as the latter was about to enter his tent.

Greengall turned, taking the scale from his lips.

“Why not spare Oswan? If the men were ambushed by a dragon, they had no chance to win anyway.”

“I know.”

Zannian blinked. “Why kill him? We’ll need every man for the battle ahead.”

Greengall lifted the flap of this tent. “Hanging him will encourage the others.”

Greengall ducked inside and reclined on his couch of rotting leaves. Zannian hovered near the flap, wishing his master would light a lamp. He heard a scrabbling in the peat and leaves, followed by a muffled crunching. Greengall must have found a rat or roach.

The dragon swallowed and said, “Don’t hover there like some cautious bat. Come in!”

Zannian stepped forward and let the flap fall.

“It’s time your scouts were given their special spears. Make sure the potion is applied to the bronze tips.”

“Yes, Master.”

“Take no more prisoners until Duranix is found. Any man your riders meet might be the dragon in disguise, so kill any humans you find until I tell you to stop.” Greengall belched loudly. A horrible stench filled the tent. “One other thing, Zannian.”

“Yes, Master?”

Greengall stretched and scratched himself, his talons scraping loudly against his leathery skin. “The human female you once desired is not far away.”

Heat flared in the young warrior’s breast. “Beramun? Where is she?”

“Arku-peli.”

Zannian’s heart raced. Greengall might be lying – he certainly had a black sense of humor – but what if he wasn’t?

“She couldn’t have escaped if I hadn’t allowed it,” Greengall continued smugly. “She is where I wished her to go. Through her, Arku-peli will fall. She’s my egg in little Duranix’s nest.”

“When the valley is ours, I will have her?” Zannian asked, with undisguised yearning.

“That is up to you, little Zan. If the fight does not consume you both, she may yet be yours. When the village is in ruins and the Lake of the Falls is saturated with the blood of Duranix and his nest of rodents, you may claim whatever you want from the remains.”

Greengall dismissed Zannian, and the young man withdrew, his head spinning. He was filled with new zeal, new purpose. If it meant finding Beramun again, he would tear down the mountains with his bare hands. He’d been stricken from the time he first saw her, and her escape had made his desire for her grow unbearably. Now that he knew she was in Arku-peli, he couldn’t wait to lead his men into battle.

Thoughts of fighting and the black-haired girl put a swagger in Zannian’s step. He walked back to the firelit camp humming happily, not even noticing the body of Oswan swinging from a tree.

Chapter 13

The sounds of the night abruptly ceased. Frogs, crickets, owls, and other denizens of the dark fell silent. The sudden silence stirred Duranix from his nap. He opened one eye.

He spotted a line of horsemen riding in single file along the southern horizon. From the gear they wore, he deduced they must be from the same band as the other three he’d fought. Evidently his message to Sthenn had been ignored.

Duranix crawled from his resting place. Rocks tumbled away as he straightened his stiff legs. Noise carried far on the savanna, and the column of riders halted, hearing the clatter.

The dragon sprang into the open, expanding to his true shape as he hurtled into the air. Landing at full stretch, he spread his wings, threw back his head, and sent a bolt of white-hot lightning blasting from his throat.

The raiders reacted strangely to the terrifying display. Instead of galloping away, they broke formation and charged. Nonplussed, the dragon watched as the small party surrounded him, spears leveled.

Duranix swiped at the nearest rider. Rearing up on his hind legs, he exhaled his fear-inducing breath at the rest of the men. To his immense surprise, the men and horses did not bolt. Both men and beasts wore masks over noses and mouths, and the leather masks were smeared with some kind of oily paste. Duranix knew Sthenn dabbled with herbs and potions. Apparently he had prepared his forces for this type of attack.

A sharp pain flared in Duranix’s right leg. He’d been so astonished by the failure of his fear-breath that he’d failed to notice the last rider in line. The fellow had worked in behind and pricked the dragon’s right rear leg with a bronze-tipped spear. With a roar, Duranix whirled on his attacker.

The dragon’s claw shot out and plucked the raider from his horse. The man was a brave fellow and didn’t scream, even when the dragon bit his head off.

Duranix hurled the body at the raiders, then spat the man’s head at them for good measure. Still they did not flee, but merely circled out of reach.

The dragon tried to pull the spear from his hip, but the flimsy shaft snapped, leaving the bronze head embedded. Bellowing, he lunged at the nearest rider. The human’s pony pranced sideways, narrowly avoiding Duranix’s talons. The raider had the temerity to jab at the dragon with his spear.

Once more Duranix was taken aback. These insane humans were trying to fight him! Humans always fled when he attacked. These raiders, mounted on fleet horses, could have galloped away at any time, but instead they maneuvered around him, making menacing thrusts with their puny spears.

Puny but painful! Duranix’s hip wound burned. The pain was so abnormal he had a terrible moment of insight. He leaped backward several paces and groped in the wound to find the spearhead. He shuddered in agony, but persisted and found the jagged triangle of bronze. With the tips of two talons, he teased it out and gave the point a quick sniff.

Poison. The smell was pungent and fetid – Sthenn’s personal blend.

Six of the raiders marshaled themselves and charged. Duranix feigned a greater hurt than he felt and awaited their attack, head hung low. At the last moment, he launched himself over the charging horsemen, vaulting above their heads and alighting behind them.

Their comrades shouted warnings too late. With two wide sweeps of his claws, Duranix cut the men to pieces. Foreclaws dripping gore, his eyes flashing with fury, he faced the remaining three raiders.

“Flee!” cried one. “We’re outdone!”

“Stand fast!” bellowed another. “Remember Oswan! If I’m to die, let it be fighting a great beast, not kicking at the end of a rope!”

So saying, he gave a full-throated battle cry and charged. A heartbeat later, the other two kicked their mounts into action as well.

With pain singing through his leg, Duranix had no patience left. His mouth gaped, and a lightning bolt issued forth. Three riders, their horses, and a goodly patch of savanna were reduced to cinders in the twitch of an eye.

As the smoke rose into the starry sky, Duranix sank to the ground, panting. Numbness gripped the muscles around his wound, and when he tried to stand, the useless limb would not support his weight. Hobbling to the dead raiders he hadn’t incinerated, he stripped off their chaps and tore the leather into strips. With these he made a tourniquet to restrict the spread of the poison from his leg.

It scarcely helped. The weakness was spreading rapidly up his haunch, toward his wing. When he tried to fly, he was so badly off balance he tumbled headfirst to the ground.

After four such spills, he gave up, exhausted. The numbness now encompassed his right leg and wing, and was creeping across his lower back.

The dragon raged at his own stupid complacency. He’d known these humans were allied with Sthenn, and yet he’d let them get close enough to stick him with their primitive weapons. He pondered gnawing off his poisoned leg, to keep the toxin from reaching his heart. The limb would grow back eventually, but until it did he would be a helpless cripple, easy prey for Sthenn or his bold human minions.

Duranix limped eastward, moving awkwardly on three legs. Keeping to creeks and gullies, he avoided showing himself, in case other raiders were tracking him.

As the white moon set and the deep stillness of late night settled over the plain, he was reduced to crawling. His right rear leg and right wing were completely useless, and his left leg had begun to tremble under his weight, Duranix had to pull himself forward with his foreclaws, occasionally assisted by thrusts of his weakening left leg. He kept this up for some time, putting more and more distance between himself and the raiders.

The rustle of wings overhead was followed by a ground tremor, as something heavy alighted nearby. By this time, Duranix was so dazed with pain and fatigue he hardly noticed.

“Dear, dear,” said a simpering voice. “What a sight!”

Duranix pushed himself up with his forelegs and lifted his heavy head. “Sthenn!” he rasped. “Where are you, you wretched lizard?”

“Behind you, dear friend, as always.”

Duranix looked back. Sthenn’s silhouette blotted out the stars. With great effort, the bronze dragon hauled himself around to face his adversary.

Sthenn watched his struggle with amusement. “It’s been a long time, little Duranix.”

“Not long enough. Come to finish me off?”

Sthenn blinked his dark-veined eyes. “Finish you? Certainly not. That would be too easy. You’ve a long way to go yet. All the way back to Arku-peli.”

Duranix stretched his jaws wide and loosed a bolt of lightning large enough to split a mountaintop. Sthenn leaped into the air, his desiccated wings flapping just enough to keep him aloft, and the bolt flashed harmlessly beneath him. Duranix quickly corrected his aim and another blast blazed forth. Sthenn rolled to one side, dodging easily.

“A merry game!” he declared. “I wonder which of us will tire of it first?”

The second bolt left Duranix prostrate. Sthenn landed nearby and approached with wings folded. Drawing himself up to his full height, he looked down on his helpless foe with enormous delight.

“Be still, little one,” the green said soothingly as Duranix tried to rise. “I won’t harm you further... yet.”

“What do you want?”

“Can’t you guess? Your land, your humans, your lair, your life. I’ve spent centuries planning your destruction. There’s no hurry. My beautiful plot is still playing out.”

Duranix clenched his eyes shut, summoning all his strength, then he began to crawl away. Sthenn watched avidly, enjoying every agonized movement

“Shall I tell you my plan?” he asked. “I am quite ingenious, you know. The first step was to create the yevi. I thought I could rid the plains of wandering humans with them, but you interfered more directly than I expected.” Sthenn’s amused expression darkened. “When you recruited the two-legged rodents to serve you, I had to do the same. How do you stand the smell of them?”

“You get used to it,” grunted Duranix as he dragged himself forward.

“You never were as sensitive as I. Still, my humans have been useful to me. They’re more vicious than the yevi and a good deal more clever. The boy Zannian has a great talent for bloodshed. While waiting for your favorite pet to age, I groomed my own to be a conqueror.”

Duranix’s head snapped around in surprise, and Sthenn nodded, pleased by the effect of his pronouncement.

“Destroying your favorite human is part of my plan.”

The green dragon stepped with exaggerated daintiness around his struggling foe. He extended a single gnarled talon and tapped lightly on Duranix’s open wound. The bronze dragon flinched but made no sound.

“Painful? Bad as it is, it won’t kill you. I didn’t compound a lethal dose. You will become more and more helpless, but you won’t die.”

Helpless. Duranix refused to let his enemy see how that word terrified him. Instead he spat, “Coward! Kill me if you dare! If you don’t, I swear on the deaths of my mother and clutchmates, I will kill you!”

Sthenn grinned widely. “Ah, your mother. Amylyrix was a worthy opponent.” He slowly shook his head in a mockery of sadness. “How tragic she was unable to protect her offspring in the end. Come to think of it, she didn’t protect herself very well either. And that makes me the better dragon, yes?”

So saying, the green dragon sank his claws into Duranix’s injured leg. The bronze roared loud enough to rattle the stars. Rearing up, he tried to grapple with his tormentor.

Sthenn easily caught Duranix’s foreclaws in his own. “You’re weak,” he taunted, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “There’s no pleasure in besting a weakling.”

Duranix saw an opening, drew back and smashed his horned skull into Sthenn’s face. The ancient bones in the green dragon’s face were thick and hard, but his aged flesh was not. Duranix’s horns punched through Sthenn’s brittle scales into the gray flesh beneath.

Sthenn shrieked in hurt and outrage. Duranix lunged again and clamped his jaws around the old dragon’s throat.

Sthenn let go of Duranix’s foreclaws and backpedaled furiously, all the while working to pry the bronze dragon’s jaws apart. Too sick to maintain his grip, Duranix felt his bite weaken. Sthenn slipped free.

The green dragon hurled himself backward a full twenty paces. “You dare to hurt me?” he said shrilly. “You’ll suffer tenfold for this!”

Duranix felt a surge of exhilaration. Despite his terrible weakness, he could still hurt his enemy. He rasped, “Come! Let’s fight the way our ancestors did, by tooth and claw! Leave the humans to settle their own disputes. I’m a third your age, and I have only three limbs to fight with! What do you say? Let’s have it over and done with now.”

Sthenn kept his distance. “Fool,” the green dragon sneered. “My poison will rot your innards before the flowers fall from the trees. Not till then will we meet again. It will be a pretty reunion, for I shall pick you apart like a cockroach!”

Sthenn launched himself into the sky, opened his wings, and flapped to gain height.

“Soon, little Duranix!” he called from above, his high-pitched voice echoing through the dawn. “Think of me as you suffer in the days to come!”

*

It was early afternoon, and Duranix had been gone four days – far too long for an ordinary look around. At first, Amero hadn’t worried. The dragon came and went as he pleased, but with enemies reputed in the area, his prolonged absence seemed more ominous.

From the hillside below the cliffs, Amero could see across the rooftops of Yala-tene to the still incomplete town wall. The final gap had been closed, but the stonework was still only head high. He’d have to scrape up what idle hands he could to resume work there.

Someone came up behind him, and he felt a cool hand on his shoulder. Expecting Lyopi, he was startled to find it was Beramun. He stared at her. He’d suspected she would be pretty once the filth of her arduous journey was cleaned away. What he hadn’t realized was that she would be beautiful.

Well-scrubbed and dressed in Lyopi’s clothes, Beramun had put on a little weight since her arrival, and her skin had acquired a healthier hue. Unbraided, her hair fell in a dense black wave just past her waist, with shorter tendrils curling around her oval face. Her eyes were large, dark as ebony, and fringed with thick black lashes. She was the loveliest woman Amero had ever seen.

“Arkuden, do I disturb you?”

The true answer brought a rueful smile to his face, but he said, “No, not at all. How are you? Do you have all you need?”

“Yes, thanks to you.” She did not look satisfied, however, but worried. “Where are the raiders?” She stepped beside him. A tall girl, she stood nearly eye to eye with him. “They could have been here by now if they wanted. What are they doing? I hate standing idle, waiting for lightning to strike!”

He smiled. “I know how you feel. Duranix has been gone a long time, and no wanderers have entered the valley from the western approaches for seven days. It’s like the savanna swallowed dragon and nomads alike.”

“Can’t we do something?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Something! The raiders are coming, and I feel as though I’m doing nothing!” She bit her lip and added in a low voice, “Your woman doesn’t like me.”

“My woman?”

“Lyopi. She’s your mate, isn’t she?”

“No!” More calmly, he explained, “We’re not mates. We’re... friends. She lost her man on a winter hunt a few seasons past. She and I keep company. If we became mates, she would have to leave her home —”

“And you live with a dragon.” Beramun laughed. It was a light, cheerful sound that warmed Amero.

“What about you?” he asked. “Have you a family? A mate?”

“What family I had perished at the hands of Zannian’s raiders.” Her beautiful face darkened. “One day I’ll see him dead for it.”

“Revenge is a bitter fruit, Beramun. When your enemies die, it doesn’t make the pain go away.”

Beramun didn’t answer. The sun slid behind a band of clouds. She shivered with the sudden chill and gazed up at the sky. Amero thought he saw a tear trembling in the comer of one eye.

“Since you have no family,” he said, “you should live with us in Yala-tene.”

“I’m a girl of the plains, Arkuden. Your village seems strange to me – so enclosed, so crowded and busy.” She gestured at the mountains. “Even out there, the cliffs feel like they’re closing in on me.”

“You get used to it. We all came from the plains, Beramun. Please stay. I offer you my protection, and —” He stopped, temporarily unable to speak. As her lovely face turned toward him, dark brows lifted questioningly, the rest of the words came out of their own volition. “And you could become my mate.”

Obviously unprepared for such a declaration, she managed a smile. “You’re kind, but I don’t know you, and I wouldn’t take a man for safety’s sake alone.”

Ashamed of his boyish blundering, he assumed his most serious chieftain’s demeanor. “Forgive me. I must go. Tonight I’m leading a search for Duranix, and I must prepare.” He walked quickly down the hillside as soon as he finished speaking.

Beramun watched his rapid departure in bemusement, then turned her eyes from the village to the valley beyond. A moment later, Lyopi hailed her.

“The Arkuden just left,” Beramun said as the older woman came up behind her. “He said he was going out tonight to look for the dragon.” Lyopi nodded, and Beramun added, “I want to tell you, because you’ve been good to me. The Arkuden just asked me to be his mate.”

Lyopi blinked in surprise at the girl’s blunt words. Guardedly, she asked, “What did you say?”

Beramun shrugged. “I’m not ready to be anyone’s mate. The Arkuden’s a nice man, but he’s too old and too strange for me.”

To Lyopi the words sounded flippant and disrespectful, and her temper flared. “Go back to the house, Beramun,” she snapped.

“Why?”

“There’s chores to be done, girl. If you think I’m going to house you and feed you for nothing, you can think again. Even Unar has to share the work, and he’s my kinsman.”

“You’re not my mother!” the younger woman protested hotly.

“Then go. elsewhere, but don’t insult a good man with your foolish talk!”

Beramun stepped back, stung by her words, then her outraged expression changed. “So that’s how the wind blows,” she said, nodding sagely. “I’ll go. Thank you for your hospitality, Lyopi.”

“Thank the Arkuden. You were his guest, not mine.”

They parted, both feeling ill-used. As she stalked away, Beramun decided she’d had enough of Yala-tene. What she wanted most was to roam the wide plains and sleep beneath the open sky. She’d warned these people of Zannian’s raiders. Now she was done with them.

Chapter 14

A crimson sunset brought stillness to the Valley of the Falls. It also brought a well-deserved rest to those working in the gardens and orchards. Tired villagers swung their tools onto their shoulders, put the dying light of day at their backs, and headed home.

Atop the wall, Amero watched them stream in. Their voices were happy and their pace casual as they talked of the day’s work and the evening meal to come. Threats from unknown human raiders didn’t seem real on a mild, rose-tinted evening like this.

Villagers waved and called greetings to the Arkuden. After welcoming everyone, Amero picked up his spear, water gourd, and provisions bag, and descended to ground level. Four young men waited for him there. The one Amero knew best was Udi, Tepa’s son.

“We did as you bid, Arkuden,” Udi said. “We have food and water for four days, and every man has spear and knife.”

“Good. Remember this is not a war party. If we meet any raiders, we’ll hide rather than fight. Understood?”

“Aye, Arkuden.”

The other young men nodded their agreement.

They set out, girded by the long shadows of dusk. There was no need for stealth in the valley, so one boy produced a reed pipe and blew a tuneful air as they crossed Amero’s bridge and ascended the broad gravel path into the western pass.

Night was well in place by the time they reached the mouth of the pass. Here a fork of the Plains River meandered away to the northwest, and the rugged peaks smoothed into a series of low, steep hills, fringed with small stands of trees.

Amero sent the best tracker in the group, Paharo, Huru’s son, ahead to look for traces of Duranix. When the dragon flew, he left no tracks on the ground, so Paharo searched for any accidental signs – broken treetops, swirls of dust laid down by the sweep of Duranix’s wings – but found none. He returned and told Amero the trail would not be easy to follow, especially by moonlight.

“We’ll go a while longer,” Amero said, “then camp when Soli is highest. Agreed?”

The young men readily assented, and the search party headed southwest.

The night was filled with the usual sounds: the click and whir of insects, the soft flutter of bats, an occasional owl hoot or far-off panther wail. Periodically, Amero sent out a silent mental call to the dragon. He received no answer.

The full moon climbed among the stars and cast a bright light on the countryside. When Soli peaked in the vault of heaven, Amero called for rest. Paharo chose a convenient hilltop for their campsite. Amero had forbidden a fire, so they ate cold rations. The Arkuden and Udi took the first watch, and the other three bedded down.

Amero left the crown of the hill and settled against a locust tree. Sipping water from a gourd bottle, he sat and studied the stars.

The two great constellations – Matat, the dragon, and Pala, the winged serpent – faced each other on the eternal plain of the sky. The stars reminded him of when his mother used to explain their patterns to him and his sister Nianki and their little brother Menni. She had called Matat a “stormbird,” not realizing her true name. Matat was a dragon, like Duranix.

His thoughts thudded back to earth. Duranix. Where had he gone? What if he was gone forever? Amero tried to imagine life without his mighty friend. It was like contemplating the loss of a hand or an eye. He depended on the dragon so much.

Duranix had been the only constant in his world since the day his parents were killed by the yevi. If the dragon hadn’t rescued him and brought him to the Lake of the Falls, it was unlikely he would have survived.

Amero closed his eyes once more and sent out a silent call. Duranix, where are you? Come back, old friend. I need you!

There was no reply, and with a sigh, his thoughts turned to the other face haunting him: Beramun. He felt like a fool for having spoken to her so bluntly. His lack of tact was the result of his years as unchallenged leader of Yala-tene. Twenty years ago he wouldn’t have dared say such an audacious thing. Amero’s patience, like his youth, had fallen away with the years.

Beramun’s life was far removed from his chosen path. For her, wandering was still the only way. She was young, too, with a young person’s sense of invulnerability. It was impossible to contemplate death or old age when your limbs were strong and your body full of vitality.

Perhaps that’s why he was so drawn to her – for her beauty, yes, but also for her vigor, that joyful freedom of the open plain, where each day began fresh and new. His days were regular and much the same. He had many burdensome responsibilities and saw the same people day after day, season after season.

One of those people was Lyopi, the living opposite of Beramun. Amero found it easy to see the differences between them but difficult to explain why both attracted him. Lyopi was strong, warm, comforting, and sensual. She made him feel calm. Beramun excited him.

He furrowed his brow. How he wished Duranix were here. Even sarcastic advice was better than no advice at all.

The whisper of footsteps in the grass caused Amero to sit up. Udi appeared, ducking under the newly leafed trees.

“Arkuden,” he said tensely, “I heard something.”

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know what it was, but it came from a patch of thorn bush on the back of the hill.”

“Wake the others then join me there – quietly!”

Amero crept to the far side of the knoll. A dense thicket of briars filled the dark ravine between this hill and the next. He crouched low and listened.

Sure enough, he heard light, regular breathing. He was so focused on trying to pinpoint the source of the sound that Udi’s sudden appearance at his side caused him to flinch.

“Do you hear it?” Udi’s voice was almost soundless.

Amero nodded.

“Animal?”

Amero shrugged. It could be a bear. They were fond of the berries found inside such thickets.

At Amero’s gesture, they moved apart and headed silently down the hill. When they reached the edge of the thorny growth, a new sound froze them in their tracks. A cough, followed by the light clearing of a throat. The two men exchanged looks. Not a bear. A human. Perhaps a raider scout?

Amero raised his spear high and signaled for Udi to do the same. They would flush out whoever was inside. The Arkuden nodded, and both weapons thudded into the dense tangle of thorns and leaves. Nothing happened.

Amero indicated they should try again. This time something definitely shifted within the brush, away from Udi and toward Amero. With both hands the Arkuden jammed his spear into the tangle. He was rewarded by a low cry of distress.

“Stop!” said a voice muffled by the dense brush. “Don’t strike again!”

“Come out at once. This thicket is surrounded!”

The pile of greenery heaved, and a person came crawling out, belly to the ground. When the stranger stood up, moonlight caught her face. Amero yelped with surprise.

“Beramun!”

“Arkuden?”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I go where I choose,” she replied tartly. The rest of Amero’s party arrived in time to hear this exchange. The boys snickered, and she added, “I left the village this afternoon.”

“Why?”

“Your woman, Lyopi, expected me to work for her. I refused, and she put me out.” Beramun’s dark eyes narrowed. “You made it hard for me to stay with her when you asked me to be your mate.”

The boys were openly amused to hear their old Arkuden had tried to woo this beautiful young wanderer. Amero ignored their grinning faces, though he felt his own burning with embarrassment.

“Why did you come this way?” he asked, annoyed. “Isn’t this the land threatened by Sthenn and the raiders?”

“It’s the land I know. Where else could I go?”

Amero was too tired to continue this pointless exchange. “Back to camp, hoys,” he said. To Beramun he added, “You’re welcome to join us, if you wish.”

She shrugged. “If you’ve got some of those dried apple slices with you, I’ll stay for breakfast.”

“I have a bag full,” said Udi, shaking it.

They climbed the hill to their little camp. Paharo regarded Beramun curiously. “How did you get in and out of those thorns without being scratched?” he asked.

Beramun glanced at her bare arms. “It’s a trick my mother taught me,” she said. “Thorn bushes have a nap, like fur. You have to find the nap of the thorns, and go in and out with it. Briar thickets make good places to hide and sleep. Nothing bigger than a rabbit can get in.”

“You’re bigger than a rabbit,” said Amero.

“I guess I am.” She laughed, and Amero’s anger melted away. He found himself noticing how the moonlight glinted off her ebony hair, how it limned her face with silver.

Paharo and another boy took over watch duties so Amero and Udi could sleep. Beramun chose a spot away from the men and stretched out on the ground. Though she had neither blanket nor cloak, she quickly fell asleep.

Amero was collecting his gear when Beramun woke, the morning sun raking her face.

“Arkuden? What —?” she began, squinting up at him. “Good morning. Get ready, we’re moving out.”

She shook the sleep from her brain and stood, brushing twigs and grass from her clothes. Udi and Paharo passed around dried fruit and elk jerky. Beramun recovered her meager kit and fell into line with the rest.

“Are you coming with us then?” asked Paharo, chewing a brown wedge of apple.

“Until you find the dragon,” she said. “If the Arkuden doesn’t mind.”

“You’re welcome,” he told her. “But you must be one of the parly. Don’t go stalking off on your own without telling us.”

Beramun agreed.

It was a warm, sunny morning, but there were signs change was coming. Fat white clouds crowded the sun, and by midmorning, low, gray clouds had come pushing down from the north. The men donned their grass capes and hoods. Beramun had no such storm gear among Lyopi’s hand-me-downs. Paharo offered her his cape, hut she declined it, saying she’d been rained on before.

The land flattened gradually, the hills shrinking. Trees became fewer. An ocean of waving grass displaced the patches of knotweed and flintgrass that dotted the foothills like sparse locks of unruly hair.

As they beheld the open savanna, Amero suffered pangs of memory. He’d not been to the great plain in many years, and his childhood came back to him in a painful rush. His first dozen years had been spent out here, wandering behind Oto, Kinar, and his fierce elder sister, Nianki. Too young to hunt, he’d often cared for baby brother Menni while Kinar prowled for roots and grubs. The fingers of his left hand curled with the memory of that tiny hand in his.

“Arkuden.”

The ghosts of years past vanished. “Eh?”

“Paharo has found a trail, Arkuden.”

“Found it? Where?”

Udi pointed at the sea of grass, waving in the cool southern wind. “It looks like the Protector alighted here. He continued on foot that way,” he said, gesturing to the south. “The trail disappears a short way on. High grass can conceal even a dragon’s footprints.”

Amero nodded. “We’ll have to spread out. Divide into pairs. No one is to lose sight of the others at any time, understand?”

The four young men promptly paired off, leaving Amero with Beramun. Grinning at their Arkuden and the young woman, the boys waded off into the waist-high grass, sweeping the ground ahead of them with their spears.

“I’m sorry,” Amero said to Beramun.

“For what?”.

“The boys think they’re being funny.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. She set out, parting the grass with her hands like a swimmer.

“Wait,” Amero called. “Don’t get too far ahead.”

“Why not? It’s my country, after all.”

“It was mine, too,” he muttered, plunging into the grass.

They made slow progress through the thick spring growth, and the only things they found in the grass were snakes and hopping rats. When the sun neared its zenith, Paharo sang out from his place on Amero’s left.

“Arkuden! A track!”

Everyone converged on the spot where Paharo crouched in the grass. A large, bare human footprint was plainly visible once he’d pushed back the tall weeds.

“He’s taken human shape,” said Udi.

“Walking like a man, we can track him,” Paharo added.

Amero looked in the direction the print pointed. “Still going due south. I wonder why?”

“The river lies that way,” Beramun offered. “The raiders must cross it somewhere.”

They re-formed and moved out, Paharo leading, along the dragon’s trail. They moved deliberately, careful to find the next footprint before proceeding.

Cool wind rushed over the savanna, heralding a storm. The clouds darkened, lowering until it seemed they would touch the grass itself. Amero halted the party for rest and food. Not long after they stopped, a spear of lightning flashed to the ground some leagues away.

“We’re going to get wet,” sighed Udi.

They finished eating quickly and got moving again. Beramun took the lead this time, slipping through the tall weeds like a deer, scarcely disturbing the stalks as she passed. Compared to her, the village boys moved like clumsy oxen, tramping loudly and leaving a plain trail behind.

Just as the first fat drops of rain splattered on Amero’s head, Beramun came scrambling back on all fours. “Down! Down!” she hissed. “Get down!”

They dropped on their bellies. Udi was nearest Amero, so he grabbed Udi’s wrist and whispered, “Ask her what’s amiss.”

Udi relayed the message. Back came a one-word answer: “Riders.”

The clouds cracked open. Lying on the ground, Amero could see raindrops running down the grass stems, making little craters in the dirt when they landed. Over the pelting rain he heard a whistle, followed by a shout. He couldn’t make out what was said, but the speaker was male and only a few paces away.

With hand signals, Amero indicated that his companions should spread out so a single rider couldn’t stumble over all of them at once. The boys crawled off into the grass. Beramun stayed where she was. The clop-clop of horses’ hooves was plain now. Amero gripped his spear tightly.

“Ho, Tezar!” the rider called. “Any signs?”

Any reply from the distant Tezar was lost in the drumming rain. Amero was horrified to see Beramun suddenly get up on one knee. He gestured frantically at her to get down.

A horse came through the tall grass on Amero’s right. Drawing in his hands and feet, Amero made himself as small and still as possible.

There was another, brighter flash of lightning, followed at once by a booming roll of thunder. While it was still echoing, Beramun ran up to the first rider, cupped her hands under his right heel, and heaved. He hit the ground and, dazed, pushed himself up on his hands and knees.

Amero rushed forward and struck the raider on the head with the shaft of his spear. The man dropped facedown in the grass. Glaring fiercely at Beramun, Amero waved for her to get out of sight.

She answered his glare with a shrug, then vanished into the grass. Amero crept away, too. Moments later, a pair of horsemen reached the scene and found their comrade out cold, his horse cropping grass a short distance away.

Amero held his breath, but the newcomers burst into raucous laughter. “Drunk again, Wenaman?” said one.

“Better get him up before Hoten sees him,” growled the other raider.

The men heaved their limp friend onto his horse. Lightning flared, showing that their leather chestplates and hoods were embellished with garish paint, bones, horns, and animal teeth.

They rode on, and Amero lifted his head slightly to follow their progress. They headed northeast in the direction of Yala-tene.

Blinking hard against the rain, Amero turned to look for the rest of the raider patrol. He expected to see perhaps a score or so of riders. What he did see froze the blood in his veins.

Hundreds and hundreds of men on horseback, heads bowed against the rain, filled the plain in a ragged line half a league long. On their heels came a sizable herd of oxen, and behind the cattle was a bedraggled, slow-moving mob of people on foot. On each side of these obvious captives were more mounted men. Some prisoners were laden with towering packs or harnessed to long travois heaped with bundled goods.

In all, Amero estimated there were more than a thousand people crossing the plain. This was no scouting party, but the host Beramun had warned them about. She had greatly underestimated their numbers.

A dark suspicion rose in Amero’s mind. Was her mistake genuine or part of some complex stratagem to catch Yala-tene off guard? Was Duranix right about her?

Amero made himself small in the grass and tried to think what to do next. He had to get his people out of the raiders’ way, then they had to find Duranix and get themselves back to Yala-tene. All without being caught.

The sky lowered further, and though it was early afternoon, the day grew as dark as evening. Rain pounded down like a waterfall. Muddy water cut shallow gullies in the sod. Amero had to crawl on his belly through this muck to get away from the wide-ranging outriders. He thanked his ancestors’ spirits for sending the rain to shield him and his companions.

He barely managed to get out of the way before the main body of raiders rode by. He was close enough to hear voices calling out commands, complaints, and harsh jibes. He smelled the ox herd. An odd thumping noise he didn’t recognize at first turned out to be the sound of blows delivered to the backs of the raiders’ prisoners. Riders guarding the captives dealt these blows repeatedly, almost rhythmically, to keep the tired, reluctant mob moving.

*

Many paces away, behind and to Amero’s right, Beramun was hiding in the grass. She had upended the first rider because she thought they could steal his weapons, but he’d been seen by his comrades.

Peering through the grass and pouring rain, she watched the sodden herd of prisoners stumbling by. She recognized the faces of many of her fellow slaves from Almurk. She thought of Roki and the screams of her murdered family, the memories bringing anger and filling her with determination. Armed only with a short flint knife, she crawled toward the marching mass of prisoners.

As she slithered through the mud, Beramun came upon Paharo lying quietly in the weeds. She halted alongside him.

“We must do something!” she hissed in his ear.

“Against so many?” he replied. “What can we do?”

“They mean to attack your village! Here’s a chance to strike a blow before they get there!”

Rain streamed down Paharo’s dark face. Her words obviously struck a chord. He drew a knife from his waist and nodded. “We can free the prisoners. Some may be strong enough to help us. The rest can distract the riders long enough for us to get away.”

Beramun gave a sharp nod of agreement. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the two crawled toward the plodding mass of captives.

A mounted man passed them, eyes averted to keep out the driving rain. Paharo dashed forward in a low crouch. Beramun followed. Prisoners on the edge of the crowd saw them but wisely kept silent. Another burst of speed, and the pair reached the slaves. They slipped into the slogging crowd, masked from view by the mass of captives.

“Here, take this,” Beramun said, giving one of them her knife. “Cut your bonds.”

“Free as many as you can, then wait for our signal,” Paharo added. “When it comes, everybody run for it!”

The knife was passed quickly from hand to hand. The flint blade worked its way deeper into the crowd, but those already free milled around nervously. Most wanted to run immediately. Others ached to attack the nearest raiders. They made garrotes from their rawhide bonds and surreptitiously picked up stones from the ground.

“Any sign of the green dragon?” Beramun asked, glancing around.

Stark fear showed on every face, and a pale woman said, “Greengall’s probably in the rear.”

Paharo was confused by the name, and the terrified prisoners explained. None of them had seen the dragon in either of his forms since yesterday.

Relieved by this news, Beramun pushed through the line of freed slaves and walked deliberately into the open. She kept going, even when a guard rode up and shouted a challenge.

“You! Get back in line!” the raider barked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She whirled and batted his spear aside. Repeating her earlier trick, she cupped her hands under his heel and upended the astonished raider. He splashed to the soggy turf. Before he could get up or call for help, freed prisoners fell on him, pounding him into silence.

Paharo appeared. Beramun thrust the bridle of the fallen raider’s horse into his hands. “Go back to Yala-tene,” she told him. “Warn your people.”

“I don’t ride very well.”

“Learn fast!”

He climbed on the animal’s back. “The Arkuden is here somewhere. I should find him!”

“I’ll find him. You tell everyone Zannian is coming! They’ll be more likely to believe you than me.” Beramun ended further discussion by slapping the horse’s rump. The animal bolted, and Paharo had to give all his attention to staying on its back.

The prisoners burst into action. Almost half were free, and they scattered to the four winds. Some put their heads down and ran for their lives, others remained to fight.

Raiders on guard duty tried to summon help, but their rams’ horns were soaked and produced only mild bleating noises. They had little time to use the horns anyway before going down in a hail of stones. A few raiders charged the seething horde, spearing several prisoners. They too were dragged from their horses and beaten unconscious or killed. Smarter raiders wasted no time with either rams’ horns or resistance. They galloped away at once to get help.

“Flee! All of you!” Beramun cried. “Go in every direction! Spread the word! Warn everyone about Zannian and his monstrous master!”

As the lightning flared and thunder crashed, two hundred slaves took to their heels. Beramun watched them go with immense satisfaction, rain streaming across her broadly smiling face.

She watched too long. The gray line of horsemen suddenly stopped receding and began to grow larger. Zannian was coming.

Beramun armed herself with a stray spear. The only cover in sight was a stand of birch trees, their white bark visible through the downpour, perhaps a quarter-league west. Spear in hand, she raced for the trees.

She’d gone fifty steps when someone popped out of the weeds in front of her. She lifted her spear to strike, then saw it was Amero.

Dodging nimbly around him, she yelled, “Run! Zannian’s coming!”

Together, they sprinted for the trees. The growing rumble they heard now wasn’t thunder. It was horses – many, many horses on the move.

“We’re going to die,” Beramun gasped.

Amero looked back quickly. “Yes, we are. Keep running.”

The raider band spread out in a wide line to sweep up as many runaway prisoners as possible. It seemed to Amero that fully half the raiders were chasing him and Beramun, which hardly seemed fair. Was there no one else for them to run down?

They reached the small copse of birch saplings and fell down behind them. Their pursuers saw them disappear into the stand of trees and galloped after them.

Beramun took her eyes off the oncoming raiders long enough to see the Arkuden butt his spear in the ground and brace it with both hands. She imitated his position.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Beramun glanced at the Arkuden, her face stiff with fear. “What?”

“I’m stupid,” Amero muttered. “I’m too old for this! I should be home working in the foundry, bouncing my children on my knee.”

“You have children?”

He sighed and shook his head, eyes fixed on the oncoming horsemen. They were only ten paces away now.

The raiders whooped and jostled each other. Many crowded in to reach Amero and Beramun, thinking they could ride through the slender birches. The springy young trees bowed, but did not break, tripping the horses. A dozen riders went tumbling in the mud.

The riders behind them saw the danger and pulled up. Amero lunged through the press, spearing a raider in the chest and pushing him off his horse.

Another rider impaled himself on Beramun’s weapon. The force of his fall tore the shaft from her hands. Disarmed, she ducked behind Amero.

Amero recovered his spear and thrust at another rider. This fellow parried with his own weapon and jabbed at Amero. The flint point raked down Amero’s chest, slicing his leather vest but sparing his skin. He stumbled back out of reach.

“Time to go!” he shouted to Beramun.

Without a second glance, she ran. Amero tried to catch up, but she was half his age and toughened by life on the savanna. As he fell behind, he glanced back and saw more raiders coming. The ones tangled in the birch stand were also getting back on their horses.

Amero...

At first he barely heard it over his own ragged breathing, but it came again, this time very clearly.

Amero.

Duranix!

Amero exulted, even as he sent his thoughts to his friend. Duranix, where are you? I need you!

I am near, but I’m hurt, Amero.

Tell me where you are!

The dragon’s instructions filled Amero’s head. While running, he searched for the landmarks Duranix was using to guide him. Ahead on his left, at the edge of a storm-washed ravine, he saw a solitary gray boulder protruding from the grass.

“Beramun!” he yelled. “This way!”

Despite the fifteen raiders at her heels, she swerved immediately toward the Arkuden.

You’re near, Duranix said in Amero’s head. I can smell you even in the rain. Look for the stump of an ash tree with red toadstools growing on it.

Amero swiped rain from his eyes and searched. He saw the stump on the crest of a small rise, ten paces distant.

Beramun overtook him. “Where are you going?” she panted.

He wasted no breath on a reply, just grabbed her arm and dragged her onward.

The raiders hurled short, flint-tipped spears at them – missiles the length of a man’s forearm. Though small, they arrived with great force, burying themselves in the mushy turf. All missed, but the sight of them gave extra strength to the fleeing couple’s tired legs.

When the ash stump was close enough to touch, Amero planted his feet and spun. Not expecting his sudden stop, Beramun blundered past, crashing into the old tree.

The ground between Amero and the raiders erupted. A massive horned head, gleaming dull bronze, rose from a hole artfully dug in the sod. Cursing, the pursuing raiders hauled back on their reins. It was too late.

Duranix’s jaws gaped, and a bolt of fire erupted from his throat. It wasn’t his usual blue-white lightning, but a glaring orange-yellow flare. It sufficed for the purpose. In two blinks of an eye, the raiders were consumed.

“Duranix!” Amero cried, running to greet his mentor. The great reptilian head turned toward him, and Amero halted in shock. Duranix’s eyes were dull and yellowed. He was holding himself up with both front legs, while his back legs sprawled uselessly in the hole beneath him.

“Don’t just stand there like a fool,” the dragon snapped. “Get in!”

Amero waved to Beramun. “Come on!”

She balked, and Duranix snarled, “Leave that creature outside. Better yet, kill her where she stands!”

“If I come in, she comes in, too!”

There was no fire in the ailing dragon’s eye. His mighty head hung low as he gasped, “Hurry then. I can’t hold this up much longer.”

Beramun still hesitated, so Amero yanked her arm roughly and snapped, “Do you prefer to be found by Zannian?”

She let him pull her into the pit.

Duranix’s head sank, allowing the sod on his back to fall into place, covering the opening.

Chapter 15

As had been his habit for many years, Konza walked home carrying supper in a wicker basket. Unlike his son, he did not rely on the acolytes to collect his necessities. Old as he was, he preferred to go out among his fellow villagers and collect his own victuals.

Nearing home, he saw smoke rising into the leaden sky over the Offertory. Though Duranix had been gone six days, Tiphan insisted the offerings be made as usual. Konza deplored the waste. All that good meat burned to cinders, sustenance for no one.

At home he found the door flap down with three sturdy poles pegged in place, barring the entrance. The ground floor window flaps were pulled down tight as well. Puzzled, Konza set down the heavy basket.

“Tiphan!” he called. “Tiphan, why is the door barred?”

There was no response. It was late, and he was hungry. When his son did not answer a third time, Konza got down on his knees and pushed the flap inward. There was just room between the ground and the lowest guard pole for him to pass. Konza wormed his way inside and stood up triumphantly.

His victory vanished when the unnatural chill inside hit him. His breath formed mist in the air. Then he noticed the light.

The single-room house was divided by partitions made of wooden poles and rattan mats. The partitions formed a wall between the two beds. Behind the wall, on Tiphan’s side, a strange, greenish light shone, brighter than any lamp or torch.

“Son?”

Still no answer. Vexation gave way to concern.

Ever practical, Konza unpegged the poles on the door flap and brought in his basket, setting it on the table by the hearth. He picked up a thick, ironwood walking stick and walked slowly around the partition. The air grew even colder. Goose bumps rose on his arms.

There was Tiphan, seated cross-legged on a mound of furs, surrounded by his Silvanesti scrolls. Eyes closed, hands cupped together at his chest, he did not appear to be breathing. Floating in the air above his hands was a sizable chip of spirit stone. The bright greenish light emanated from the levitating stone.

Konza was dumbstruck for a moment. Gathering his scattered wits, he breathed, “By all our ancestors! What are you doing?”

The floating stone wobbled, as though reacting to his voice. Konza held out his walking stick, meaning to knock the hovering stone away. Before the wood touched the stone, Tiphan’s eyes sprang open.

Konza cried out. His son’s eyes were no longer blue. They were ice-white from corner to corner.

“Beware, old man.” The voice came from Tiphan’s lips, but it was not his son’s. Deeper, more powerful, it resonated strangely inside the stone house, sounding like several voices speaking in unison.

Konza lowered the walking stick with a shaking hand.

“Who are you? What have you done to my son?”

“We are many, old man. Fear not. Your son is with us.”

“Are you the spirits held captive in the stone?”

“That is as good as any explanation.”

“Give me back my son!” Konza demanded.

“We hold him not. He is here because he sought us. Through him we shall find release from our prison.”

“Liars! Deceivers! You tricked him! Restore him to me!”

He – they? – laughed, a low chuckle, arid with the dust of bygone ages.

Konza gripped the sturdy walking stick in both hands and shouted, “Tiphan! Son, if you can hear me, hold fast! I shall release you!”

He brought the knurled ironwood down hard on the hovering spirit stone. The instant the wood came in contact with the shard, a silent blast of light filled the small house.

*

Hundreds of eyes watched Tiphan. Nothing was clearly visible, just the suggestion of forms and shapes beyond the boundaries of his sight. They spoke in whispers or shouted in unison, a chorus of a thousand separate voices, which he understood despite their numbers. They were calling him by name.

Join us, they said. Be our gateway to the world we once knew, the world of light and color. Do this, and we will share with you power undreamed!

The words sent a thrill of exultation through Tiphan, and he eagerly consented, yet even as the spirit host enfolded him, a fragment from his newest scroll flashed through his mind.

The Way to Bind the Sun contained a gloss by a sage named Kerthinalhest, who had lived many hundreds of years ago. According to Kerthinalhest, not all the spirits who fought in the great war had gone into captivity voluntarily. Some had been imprisoned by still greater spirits, forced into silent oblivion after ferocious resistance. Kerthinalhest believed minions of Evil were present in the stones in equal numbers with spirits of Good and Neutrality. Great care must be taken, he wrote, to choose stones containing only beneficent spirits.

The spirits sensed his doubts. We are Good spirits, they told him, unjustly imprisoned in this shell of unfeeling rock. Free us! Lend us your mind and body. Great will he your reward! We, the Many, shall favor you above all mortals.

Tiphan’s mouth opened. He was ready to agree when he heard his name being called. This voice was very different from the others. It sounded frightened, then angry. The Many tried to drown out the new voice, but no matter how much they whispered, screamed, and teased at his senses, the voice succeeded in reaching him.

“Give me back my son!”

It was his father’s voice, and he sounded terrified.

Tiphan turned toward a slim column of light. He held out his hand —

A thunderous explosion struck him, and all the voices cried out as one.

*

Tiphan opened his eyes. His sight returned slowly, and he found he was lying with his back against a cold stone wall. Every muscle in his body ached, as though he’d been flung against the wall.

The house was dark, but he could make out familiar shapes. He took a deep breath and sat up, cradling his throbbing head in his hands.

Give me back my son!

His father’s furious words echoed in his head. “Father?” Tiphan called. “Father, where are you?”

The only answer was the incessant ringing in his ears. Groaning, Tiphan stood and looked for flint with which to strike a light. In his groping, he found the small table holding the clay bowl of tinder and the lamp had been knocked over.

Powerful tremors shook Tiphan. The house was so bitterly cold! The spilled lamp oil had congealed in the chill, and his hands and feet were numb. He headed toward the door to open the flap and let in light and heat. As he crossed the room, he trod on what felt like gravel. He hissed in pain as the sharp bits cut his bare feet.

Once the door flap was opened, the last of the day’s light flooded in. He turned back and beheld chaos.

Everything had been thrown to the floor – tables, stools, loose clothing, furs. There was no sign of his father, but just inside the door a large basket lay on its side, dry beans and burlnut flour spilling across the floor.

His father had come home, but where was he?

From the overturned basket, Tiphan’s gaze fell upon a sight that made his heart race. Beside his bed was a strange mound of whitish gravel, the same stuff that had cut his bare feet. The mound was shaped like a man – two separate, long piles for the legs, two more like arms, a higher, rounded area for the head, and a thick section for the torso.

Tiphan knelt and ran his fingers through the stuff. It was like soft limestone, the color of old bones. Instinctively, he knew he was touching the remains of his father. Konza had come home and found him entranced. Taking fright, he’d interfered, and this was the result. The thwarted spirits had taken Konza’s life.

Tiphan felt oddly detached as he looked at the crumbling remains. A part of him regretted Konza’s death, but his head still rang with the voices of the Many. He could hear them still, calling him...

The crinkle of parchment distracted him. His precious Silvanesti scroll lay curled up on the floor under his foot. He lifted his foot quickly and picked up the scroll. Chalky white dust cascaded to the floor when he unrolled it slightly. The scroll was undamaged.

Fortunate, Tiphan mused, turning his back on Konza’s remains. He had much to learn before he dared converse with the Many again. Righting the table, he spread the Silvanesti scroll and began to read.

*

Pairs of torches blazed atop the wall on each side of the west baffle. A lone watchman stood by the southern set of torches, shielded from the night wind by a long fur cloak.

Anuca, son of Montu the cooper, gnawed absently on a strip of smoked venison and wished something would happen to enliven his dull duty. His friend Min, son of Nubis the stockman, had seen stars racing across the sky the night he stood guard. On this dreary night, there were no stars. So far, all Anuca had done was keep his torches lit in this wretched wind.

The hoofbeats of a fast-moving horse caught his ear. Shoving what was left of his snack in his mouth, Anuca took a torch in one hand and his spear in the other. He pondered how to summon help. He had no third hand to hold the ox horn he was supposed to blow. Dithering a moment, he put down the spear to take up the horn.

“Hold!” he shouted, waving his torch. “Who are you?”

The horse skidded to a stop, and the rider slid off the animal’s neck and fell inelegantly to the ground. In a heartbeat he was up again.

“It’s Paharo!”

He snatched the dangling bridle and led the horse in. Anuca jogged down the ramp to meet him. Another sentinel, summoned from her post by the sound of hoofbeats, joined them.

“What’s wrong?” the sentinel, Lyopi, demanded.

“Paharo’s back!” Anuca called. “Say, Paharo, where’d you get the horse?”

“From the raiders! They’re coming this way! Rouse the elders and tell them to gather in front of the foundry!” When Anuca and Lyopi regarded him blankly, the trail-worn Paharo barked, “The Arkuden’s life and the safety of the whole village hang in the balance! Gather the elders at the foundry! Go!”

Before long the entire adult population of Yala-tene was crowding into the open ground in front of the foundry. The village elders arrived, sleepy and dazed. Only Konza was missing. In his place came his son, for once not surrounded by a pack of adoring acolytes.

Paharo related in detail what he’d seen. Many hundreds of mounted warriors on their way to Yala-tene, but no sign as yet of a green dragon.

“What of the Arkuden?” Lyopi demanded. “Where is he?”

Paharo looked at the ground. “The last I saw, he and the nomad girl Beramun were running for their lives.”

A murmur went through the crowd. Tepa said, “Did you find any trace of the Protector?”

“We were following a ground trail, but we came upon the raiders and had to flee. Whether the Protector lives, I can’t say.”

Sounds of soft weeping slowly filled the air. Paharo, his message delivered, slumped against the side of the foundry, his knees quaking with fatigue.

Nubis spoke for many present when he said, “We must send messengers to meet this Zannian, to see if he can be persuaded to spare our village.”

“No!” said Paharo, snapping upright again. “You can’t expect mercy from men like these! I saw a vast crowd of folk, bound hand and foot, driven along by the raiders. Beramun told us Zannian makes slaves of all he captures – those the green dragon doesn’t kill for sport!”

Nubis spread his hands. “How can we resist such a war-band? We’re not fighters.”

“We have the wall,” said Jenla. “I will fight any enemy who tries to scale it.” She planted her hands on her hips. “I maybe old, but I won’t give way to cutthroats! Who will fight with me?”

Many brave voices responded.

“And what will you do if the green dragon appears?” Nubis demanded. “Will you fight him, too?”

“Yes!” shouted Paharo. “If the choice is slavery or death, I’ll fight to the death!”

The meeting quickly degenerated into an argument, with everyone loudly voicing their opinions on whether or not to fight.

Tiphan stood to one side, listening calmly. He strolled to the low wall around the foundry and stood on it. Concealed in his left fist was a fragment of spirit stone. He held his right hand high, fingers spread. Pale blue fire blazed from his fingertips. He whirled his hand around his head, creating a fiery corona in the air. The disputing villagers quickly fell silent, awed by his display of power.

When every eye was on him, Tiphan spoke. “We must destroy our enemies,” he intoned.

Into the surprised silence Tepa said dryly, “A fine plan, Tosen. But how will it be done?”

“By me, with the spirit power I command.”

That sparked a fresh round of wrangling. Could the arrogant young Sensarku really defeat Zannian’s band and a green dragon by himself? Shouldn’t they consult the Arkuden?

Jenla’s voice carried clearly above the tumult. “Forgive our doubts, Tosen, but you haven’t answered the question. How will you destroy the enemy?” she asked.

Tiphan turned to the nearby cliff. Drawing back his right hand, he hurled a ball of bright blue fire at the towering rock face. It struck and burst with a sound like thunder. Dirt and rock dust showered the stunned crowd.

“The Tosen will save us!” Nubis shouted.

“Alone?” Jenla retorted.

“We must send a party of spearmen to escort him,” said Montu. “Twenty – no, forty! – of our strongest young men. They can march out at daybreak.”

“Forty men can do little against Zannian’s hundreds,” Paharo advised.

“They won’t have to!” the cooper replied, fired by the Sensarku’s display of power. “He needs protection only while he summons the blue fire. Isn’t that true, Tosen?”

Tiphan cleared his throat. “That is so.”

The respect dawning on all their faces elated him. He spread his arms wide. “No spearmen are needed,” he declared. “I shall go forth with the Sensarku. My followers will be my shield.”

Consternation erupted. Most of the acolytes had never been out of the Valley of the Falls. Even as hunters and trackers they were backward, having spent most of their time serving in the Offertory.

Tiphan ended the argument by saying, “Very well. Choose six villagers to serve as guides. Paharo, will you lead them?” The tired scout nodded. “Good. We shall muster outside the west baffle at dawn.”

Tiphan stepped down from the wall. Jenla blocked his departure.

“Tosen, where is your father?” she asked.

“My father? He is gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Having seen the great good it did me, my father has undertaken a journey to the east to learn more about the spirit power.”

A small crowd had collected around Tiphan and Jenla. “Who went with him?” she asked.

“No one.”

Jenla blanched. “You let an old man go into the wilderness alone? Are you mad?”

“He insisted on it. He wanted to strengthen his heart by privation and gain the benefit of ancient wisdom as I did.” Tiphan pushed past her into the dispersing crowd, adding quickly, “Peace to you, Jenla. Good night.”

“He’s lying,” Jenla said after Tiphan departed. “Konza was no fool. He wouldn’t go on such a journey by himself.”

She turned to Paharo with a thoughtful frown and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Guard yourself well, son of Huru,” she said. “If what I fear is true, you face as much danger from your friends as your foes.”

*

The downpour had slackened to a steady drizzle. After the prisoners’ escape, Zannian recalled his men to a central point on the open plain. There, Nacris and Greengall waited for news, while the Jade Men formed a square around their tent.

Greengall sat on the muddy ground. He enjoyed the dampness, though he complained that the high plain was not properly fetid like the black soil of Almurk.

From time to time riders appeared, bringing reports of the round-up. When important information came in, Zannian ducked under the tent to inform his mother and master.

“Six more slaves have been retaken,” Zannian told them. He checked the tally scratched on a slab of slate. “That makes fifty-four we’ve gotten back so far.”

“I hope the wretches catch their death!” Nacris said, shivering in spite of her cape and furs. Absently she scratched the black scab on her cheek where Greengall had cut her with Duranix’s scale.

“Is there any word of the nomads who aided the escape?” asked Greengall.

“Very little, Master. Stories vary. It seems four or five plainsmen slipped past our outriders and reached the prisoners. All the dead so far are known to us.”

“And Duranix? Any sign of him?”

“None, Master. He seems to have vanished.”

Greengall wove his unnaturally long fingers together and cracked his knuckles. Nacris winced at the unwholesome sound.

“He’s not far away,” Greengall said. “I can smell him. His wound is festering delightfully, and he is in great pain. Remember, Zannian, there’s a special reward for the man who finds the bronze dragon.”

Zannian bowed his head. “I’ll remind the men.”

He walked back out into the rain, mounted, and rode away to confer with his warriors. Nacris eyed Greengall, squatting in the mud like a monstrous frog.

“Why do you toy with your enemy?” she asked. “Duranix is a dangerous foe. Why didn’t you kill him when you had him cornered?”

Greengall picked up a glob of wet dirt in his hand and slowly closed his fingers into a fist. Shiny black mud oozed between his fingers.

“Any dragon, even a meddlesome bronze, is worth more than all you miserable rodents put together,” he explained. He flung the mud to the ground, splattering Nacris’s foot. “Contesting with Duranix has been the greatest pleasure I’ve ever had. If all I wanted was to kill him, I could have done that when he was a hatchling.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He grinned widely. “I knew his mother, Amylyrix. We fought long and hard for this same territory, one thousand two hundred years ago. Neither of us could gain the upper hand until I found her nest in the Easthorn Mountains, far from here, and brought an avalanche down on her. Her clutch was buried under half a mountain, and she herself was mortally wounded. I sat atop the pile of stones and waited for her to die. It took eleven days.”

Nacris understood. She dreamed of the day she would stand over Karada’s dying body.

“I thought I had disposed of her whole brood,” Greengall continued, “but as I sat there listening to Amylyrix expire, I heard a hatchling mewling under the rocks. Curious, I dug him out. It was Duranix. His mother had shielded him from the weight of the landslide with her own body.”

“A mother’s finest deed,” said Nacris sincerely.

The grotesque creature gave her an inscrutable look. “Yes, very noble. I picked up little Duranix by his tail and told him, ‘I’ve killed your family, but I’m going to let you live. Do you know why?’ All the little scalesucker could do was puke and whimper. I rapped his skull with a stone to make sure he was listening. ‘I’m going to let you live,’ I said, ‘so I can kill you later.’”

Time passed with only the sound of dripping rain to mark it.

“Do you understand?” Greengall asked, coming out of his reverie to give Nacris a probing look.

“The bronze dragon owes his life to you, however reluctantly.” From beneath her tangled, graying hair, Nacris’s eyes glimmered like rain-flecked flint. “How he must hate you.”

“I hope so! What a waste if he doesn’t!”

Nacris settled back in her litter and closed her eyes. What a monster she was consorting with – conniving, endlessly cruel, and with a vicious sense of humor. Having Sthenn for an ally was like sleeping with a deadly viper. The question was not if it would bite you, but when.

No matter. The green dragon was simply the means to an end. To destroy a powerful, clever enemy, one needed powerful, ruthless allies.

Twelve years ago she’d lost everything. Karada had killed her mate, Sessan, then helped Duranix defeat the disaffected nomads led by Nacris, Hatu, and Tarkwa. Tarkwa perished in the fight. Hatu was hunted down and murdered by the bronze dragon. Nacris alone had survived, hurled into the lake by Duranix, her leg shattered by the fall. A clan of ox herders had rescued her from the river below Yala-tene, but her leg had been too far gone to be saved.

The herders went south to Khar land, and Nacris went with them, slowly recovering. She vowed by all her ancestors that she would one day have her revenge on Karada, the village of Yala-tene, its protector dragon, and its headman.

One bitter winter day her adopted clan was massacred by the Almurk raiders. Nacris recognized one of her attackers as Hoten, son of Nito. Bald Hoten had been part of the rebel faction she’d led against Karada. He spared his old chief and took her deep into the forest at the Edge of the World to meet Sthenn. There, her dreams of vengeance began to take a more definite form.

“I have need for one like you,” Sthenn had told her.

Grateful to be alive, Nacris promised her loyalty, saying, “I no longer ride, but I know how to lead warriors in battle.”

“Any hothead can do that. I have a different task in mind, one more nourishing to the black heart I see within you.”

He had departed as the green dragon but returned in the form she came to know as Greengall. He brought with him a dirty, disheveled boy of twelve. He had introduced the child as Zannian, then added, “Boy, meet your mother.”

It was hard to say who had been more astonished, the child or the woman. The boy spoke first.

“Mother? How come I haven’t seen you before?”

“She’s been away fighting,” said Greengall. Venomous irony dripped from his words. “Now she’s come back to raise you properly. Isn’t that right?”

Nacris stared at the ragged hoy with his rat’s nest of light brown hair. Through the caked-on dirt, she could see intelligence shining from his hazel eyes – intelligence and mistrust in equal measure – as he gazed back at her.

She glanced at Greengall. He was smiling, his horrible, too-wide grin revealing sharply pointed teeth. She voiced none of the questions that tumbled through her brain. Instead, she simply nodded. At that moment the bargain was made.

“Yes, I’ve come back,” she said to Zannian, opening her arms. “Come here, son.”

The boy let the strange woman hug him, though he didn’t return her rough embrace. After a few moments, Nacris pushed him away, brushing the matted hair from his face.

“I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing,” she said. Looking past Zannian to Greengall, she added, “You must tell me everything.”

Nacris became a mother. Later, she added to her vicious brood the orphan boys who became the Jade Men. Like Zannian, they were raised to know no right but force, no truth but fear, and no pleasure but obedience. She told herself she cared for none of them. They were tools for a task, nothing more. Why then did she feel a pang of fear when the Jade Men demonstrated their fighting skills against Zannian and yet felt nothing when a Jade Man was gravely wounded?

The rain continued to fall. Nacris imagined the cold drops washing away all her feelings and all her fears, until only pure hatred was left.

Chapter 16

At daybreak, Paharo and his five fellow scouts gathered under a cloud-shrouded sky. Dampened by intermittent drizzle, they waited for the Sensarku. When Tiphan and his acolytes arrived, the sight of them left Paharo and his scouts blinking in amazement.

They were twenty young men and women, none older than eighteen, clad in white doeskins. Their hair was plaited with spring flowers, and on their shoulders each bore a spear, its shaft daubed with white paint. Another five pairs of acolytes, also dressed in buffed doeskins and with flowers in their hair, drew five travois. The travois were heavily laden with supplies – by the look of it, enough to feed them all for twenty days.

Tiphan, walking proudly in the midst of his followers, was draped in doeskins of dazzling whiteness. His pale face was likewise coated with white paint, as were his hands and arms. Bronze dragon scales covered his chest. With his already white hair and eyebrows, he looked like a spirit in human guise. Only his eyes contained any color. They shone brilliant turquoise in the midst of his eerie pallor.

Paharo shook off his astonishment and got his scouts moving. They trotted away, spears on their shoulders, while Paharo wended his way through the immobile acolytes to speak to Tiphan.

“Tosen,” he said, glancing up at the midmorning sun, “are your people going like this? Soft clothing and bark sandals won’t last a day on the plain. Thorns and sharp stones will tear them to bits.”

The ghostly white face regarded him coolly. “All will be well, child. Believe in the power I command, as my children do.”

Paharo refrained from pointing out the Sensarku leader was only four years older than he was. Instead he said, “Very well, Tosen. We’ll scout ahead. When we reach the mouth of the valley, we’ll wait for you.”

“Thank you,” said Tiphan. At his command, his acolytes readied themselves to march.

Paharo jogged after his comrades, shaking his head. They had wasted good daylight waiting for Tiphan and his people, and when the Sensarku finally arrived, they were burdened with so much clothing and heavy supplies they couldn’t possibly make fast time. If the raiders attacked, the Sensarku would be easy prey unless Tiphan’s power actually could save them. For the sake of all Yala-tene, Paharo desperately hoped the Tosen could do the things he boasted.

*

The pit was stifling. Rain had filtered through the sod, reducing the floor of the hole to cold mud. Amero and Beramun huddled together in front of Duranix, listening to the drumming of horses’ hooves as the raiders crossed the plain searching for them.

While Beramun shivered in silent misery, Amero pressed an ear to the dragon’s cavernous chest. Duranix’s heart labored slowly, like the muffled thunder of a dying storm.

What happened? Amero asked silently. Did you fight Sthenn?

Not Sthenn, although I saw him. One of his humans pricked me with a poisoned spear. Sthenn excels in making noxious potions. This is one of his worst.

What can we do?

Duranix exhaled hard. There was a moist rattle in his lungs. I removed the spearhead, hut the poison is in mg blood. Sthenn said it wouldn’t kill me, hut I don’t trust him. If I don’t find treatment soon, I fear the worst.

I won’t let you die! Amero laid a hand on his friend’s massive foreleg. Duranix’s scaly skin felt uncharacteristically moist and warm.

The dragon did not answer. Duranix’s eyes were closed, and his heartbeat was still abnormally slow, his breathing labored.

With nothing to do but wait, Amero and Beramun at last succumbed to exhaustion. Lying in the dirt in front of Duranix, they slept.

When Amero woke, the air was dank and hot. Drenched in sweat, he yearned for a cool breeze and a drink of water. He climbed the side of the pit until his head bumped the layer of sod covering the hole. He found a crack and managed to work his fingers through. Peering through the resulting opening, he saw the starry sky. Night had fallen.

He slid back down to the bottom again and felt around blindly until he located Beramun.

Though he tried to be gentle, she awoke with a start and cried out.

“Shh!” he hissed. “It’s me, Amero!”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to wake you quietly. It’s dark out, and I thought we could use some fresh air.”

“Oh, yes!”

She pushed past him and scrambled up the slope, bumping her head into the tangle of roots and dirt atop the pit. After a moment of fruitless struggle, she grumbled, “How do we get out of here?”

“Stay still. I’m coming up.”

He joined her at the top and found the seam again. Together, they heaved aside a triangular piece of sod. Cool air flooded over them. Both gasped in relief and shivered at the sharp temperature change.

Beramun put a foot on Amero’s thigh to push herself out, but he grabbed her ankle.

“Careful!” he whispered. She nodded curtly, climbed out, and Amero scrambled after her.

The storm had moved on, but tattered remnants of clouds periodically hid the stars. In the distance, the plain to the east was dotted with many small red flames – the campfires of Zannian’s band.

They found a brook flowing below a nearby hill. Joyously, they drank their fill, then washed the grime from their feet, hands, and faces. Amero wondered if the other boys had escaped. Beramun told him she’d sent Paharo off on a raider’s horse to warn the village, but he had no idea what had become of Udi and the rest.

Somewhere in the dark a wolf howled. Amero stood up, alert to the danger.

Beramun kept washing. “He’s leagues away,” said the girl, pouring a double handful of fresh water over her feet. “Don’t be so nervous.”

Running a hand through his damp hair, he said, “It’s been a long time since I was hunted.”

“I’ve been running since the night the raiders killed my family.”

“My family was killed by Sthenn’s followers, too, many years ago.”

“By raiders?”

“No. Yevi.” Amero sat down on the bank of the brook and told the story of his fight with the gray marauders.

“The dragon saved you,” Beramun mused, looking back toward the pit where Duranix lay. “I wonder why?”

“Sthenn’s creatures were in his territory. When he came to investigate, he found me. He destroyed the yevi pack only because he didn’t want Sthenn poaching on his territory. It was no more than that. Later, I think he saw me as an interesting animal to keep around.”

“Like we keep dogs?”

Amero smiled. “Something like that. Eventually, we became friends.”

A heavy scraping sound interrupted their storytelling. This time they both stood up, alarmed. Amero saw the dark bulk of the dragon crawling toward them. The sight of the mighty Duranix, dragging himself along on his belly with his two front limbs, stunned him profoundly.

The two humans stood by helplessly as the bronze dragon drew near. He dipped his snout into the stream and gulped loudly. While Duranix was busy drinking, Amero inspected the dragon’s wound.

“It’s festering,” he reported. “I should lance it.”

Duranix snaked his head around. “Will that help?”

“It will release the pressure.”

The dragon blinked once, eyelids clicking. He laid his chin down on the grass and closed his eyes. “Proceed.”

Amero drew his bronze dagger. Beramun exclaimed, “You’re going to cut him?”

“The poison needs to be bled out. It won’t cure him, but it may make him more comfortable.” Amero gently probed the edges of the wound with his fingers. “I ought to have a fire going, to cauterize the wound, but...” He shrugged. A fire was impossible with the raiders so close by.

Beramun took several steps back. “You’re crazy! Hurt him, and he’ll tear your head off!”

Amero ignored her. He put the point of the dagger against the sealed wound and pushed. Duranix didn’t even wince. Muscles straining, Amero worked the dagger in deeper, pressing until black blood coursed from the cut, soaking his hands. Swallowing the nausea in his throat, Amero held his place and cut deeper.

Suddenly, Duranix’s injured leg flexed backward in a powerful kick that tore a deep gouge in the turf. Amero flung himself out of the way, and the hard talons missed his belly by only a finger’s width.

Duranix raised his head. “I felt that!” he rumbled.

“Sorry,” said Amero, flat on his back on the ground.

“Don’t be! That leg has been numb for days!” Reptilian brow furrowing, Duranix tried to lift his injured limb. Quivering with effort, it rose slowly, then fell back.

“That’s good!” Amero pushed himself up on his elbows. “Try again.”

The dragon bent back and took hold of his poisoned leg with his foreclaw and worked it back and forth. He hissed in pain as more poisoned blood surged from the wound. The grass and stream were stained by the spreading, foul pool. Holding her nose, Beramun retreated to higher ground.

“That’s better,” Duranix said. “It burns like fire, but at least I can feel it!”

“Can you walk?”

Duranix tried to stand and failed. “No. It’s still too weak.”

Amero threw handfuls of water over the dragon’s leg, washing the black blood away. As he labored, he called up to Beramun, “Do you know what larchit looks like?”

“Yes.”

“I need as much as you can find to make a poultice.” Amero rinsed his dagger in the stream and wiped it on the grass. “Here. Cut me some, please.” She took the weapon in one hand and, still holding her nose with the other, departed.

“I wonder if she’ll come back,” Duranix murmured, head down on the ground once more.

Amero finished washing the dragon’s leg. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“Sthenn has marked her for his own, Amero. Sooner or later, she’ll betray you to him.”

Amero sat down by the dragon’s head. “Can’t you spare her some trust? I’ve been with her for days, and she’s done nothing wrong. Oh, she miscounted the raiders, but...” He waved a hand dismissively. “She could’ve betrayed us to them a dozen times, but she didn’t. She’s been nothing but what she seems – a girl, alone in the world, pursued by evil forces.”

In spite of his fevered exhaustion, the dragon cocked a metallic brow at his friend and teased, “Irresistible, isn’t she?”

“Oh, shut up.”

They listened to the crickets awhile, then Duranix’s nostrils flared. “I’m starving. Have you anything to eat?”

Amero looked in his shoulder pouch. “A little trail bread, some elk jerky —”

“Give me the meat.”

The jerky was in two folded strips, each as long as Amero’s forearm. Enough to feed a man for three or four days, for the dragon it was less than a bite. It disappeared quickly into Duranix’s maw.

“We’ll have to move soon,” Amero said. “We don’t stand a chance against Zannian’s band by daylight.”

“You should go ahead on your own. I’m too slow. It will be easy for them to track me.”

“I won’t leave you behind.”

“Don’t be stupid. I won’t be able to defend you from the whole band.”

“Who asked you to? Have you ever considered that I might be able to defend you?”

“Silly human! Think of the female, then. Do you want to see her killed?”

Amero’s argument died, the anger on his face fading into worry. He could take responsibility for himself and for the dragon, but not for Beramun.

Duranix closed his eyes tiredly. “You see? You must go without me.”

Before Amero could reply, Beramun returned with an armload of larchit leaves. They found smooth stones on the creek bank and set to pounding the fleshy green leaves to paste. Amero smeared several handfuls of the paste on Duranix’s wound. “You know this won’t cure me,” said the dragon.

“I know,” Amero said.

“Then why do it?”

“It will soothe your hurt. Isn’t that enough?”

Duranix lowered his head to the ground. “Stupid man,” he said, but there was no rancor in his words.

Beramun said little until Amero had finished ministering to his giant friend, then she asked, “What next?”

“We must get to Yala-tene,” he replied, rinsing the sticky larchit sap from his hands. “If we can get Duranix to the village, our healers can treat him.”

She chewed her lower lip and scuffed a heel in the dirt. “It’s a long way to the mountains. Do you think we can evade Zannian’s riders over that distance? I don’t.”

“You may be right. You should go.” Amero cleaned the dagger again and returned it to its sheath. “If you strike out due west, you might avoid the raiders altogether.”

She folded her arms. “You’re telling me to leave?”

“Yes. I want you safe.”

Beramun jumped up, eyes flashing. “Who said you could decide my fate? Those vipers out there wiped out my family. I will see them served the same!”

“Don’t shout,” murmured Duranix, eyes still closed. “They’ll hear you.”

She flushed, then snatched up Amero’s spear. “I’m hungry,” she declared more quietly. “I’ll bring back game.”

She stalked off, leaving Amero staring after her. Before he could speak his confusion, a low, bass rumble rose from Duranix’s throat.

Amero circled around to glare at the dragon face to face. “Are you laughing at me?”

“You’re making progress, boy. If we survive, she may give herself to you yet.” Hot puffs of air from Duranix’s chuckling stirred Amero’s hair.

“That’s not funny.” A smile crept across Amero’s face even as he said it. “Boy” indeed! Though he was thirty-eight, in

Duranix’s company Amero frequently felt like the thirteen-year-old he’d been when they met.

Soon, his laughter was mingling with his friend’s.

*

Beramun returned from her hunt empty-handed. The countryside was barren, she reported, everything chased away by Zannian’s mounted patrols. By then the eastern sky was blushing toward dawn. It was clear they would be dangerously exposed come daybreak.

Amero and Beramun cast about for some spot where they could make a stand. Hiding in the pit again was out. The sod was beginning to sag under the weight of the previous day’s rain. The sunken rim of the hole was a dead giveaway. The bottom of the hole was knee-deep with mud as well.

While the two humans traded increasingly desperate suggestions, Duranix struggled to his feet. He had feeling in his hind legs again, but they were still too weak to support him. Stretching his wings wide, he could tell by the pain in his shoulders he couldn’t take to the air, either.

He lifted his head as high as he could and surveyed the distant raiders’ camp. The sun, veiled by a lingering cloud, was rising behind the camp, and he could see the humans stirring. It was only a matter of time before their mounted scouts found his little group.

Duranix shifted slightly on his forelegs. Mud squelched between his claws. Looking at the viscous soil, a marvelous, far-fetched idea blazed through the fevered haze in his mind. Digging his claws into the mud, he bowed his neck until his jaw rested on the wet turf. From deep within himself, he summoned the fire inside.

Duranix’s brazen skin grew hotter and hotter. The mud on his limbs and belly dried to a gray powder and flaked off. Steam rose around him. He continued to pour his depleted strength into the damp soil, heating it until the previous day’s heavy rains were given up in the form of mist.

Amero was still searching for a likely place to hold off the raiders when he noticed the shallow creekbed was rapidly filling with fog. Already, all he could see of Duranix was the arch of his spine and the top of his bowed neck. Fascinated, Amero watched the mist fill the ravine, creeping up the hillside and flowing down the other side. A light breeze helped move the mist across the open plain. He was soon surrounded by one of the thickest fogs he’d ever seen.

“Amero? Amero, are you there?”

“Beramun! Over here!”

She appeared out of the murk like a black-haired wraith. “Duranix is weaving a mist to hide us from the raiders!”

They worked their way back to the creek and used it to guide themselves to the dragon. Golden morning light filtered through the fog, tinting it the exact color of Duranix’s scales, and they missed the dragon completely. They backtracked. In the end they found him only because Beramun walked directly into his chest.

“My ancestors!” she exclaimed. “He’s become fog himself!”

“Not quite,” Duranix replied. “But close enough for our purpose.”

“How long will the mist last?” asked Amero.

“It will remain only as long as the wind and sun allow. Once gone, I cannot renew it. My strength is used up.”

Amero grabbed Beramun’s hand. “Then we’d better get moving.”

*

Before breaking camp, the Jade Men left behind a macabre honor for their master: a mound of severed heads, taken from the slain prisoners. It stood higher than a man, and the green-garbed warriors forced the recaptured slaves to march past it. Nacris had not ordered the deed, but she approved it. The surviving captives trudged silently by the gruesome pile, their earlier pride in the escape completely gone. A few paces beyond the grisly warning, the mist swallowed them.

“Move on,” Nacris commanded. Four Jade Men hoisted her litter onto their shoulders and followed their comrades into the fog.

A dark shape passed overhead. Fog swirled, and Sthenn, in full winged form, landed beside the column of Jade Men. Nacris ordered her bearers to stop.

“Greetings, Master,” she called. “Queer weather, isn’t it? At sunrise the day was as clear as a mountain stream.”

“So it was.” Sthenn stretched his ancient limbs and preened. “This is no ordinary fog. It stinks of metal.”

Nacris regarded him blankly.

“Duranix, fool!” he barked.

“The bronze dragon lives? I thought he was poisoned.”

“He is. By this subterfuge he seeks to hide from my scouts.”

“I warned you not to judge him lightly.”

The green dragon cocked his misshapen head and snarled, “Have a care, old rodent! Task me with your warnings, and you may lose another limb.”

Nacris paled, the scar on her cheek standing out vividly. Her fear seemed to satisfy him.

“The air is drying,” he said, his angry tone gone. “The fog won’t last much longer. When it clears, I will find poor little Duranix.”

He was right. For the first time in hours, Nacris saw faint shadows appear.

“Have the Jade Men spread out,” the dragon told her. “If they find Duranix before Zannian’s men do, I’ll grant you a boon, my little cripple.”

With a few running strides, he took to the air. Amber mist spun behind him, quickly obscuring him from view.

“You heard the Master,” she said to the Jade Men. “Find that dragon!”

All but her bearers departed, and Nacris sat back in her litter. They were two days away from the Valley of the Falls. In two days, her revenge would truly begin.

She knew the favor she would ask of Sthenn. The Jade Men’s tribute to their master had given her the idea. Once Arku-peli had fallen, she would ask him to send swift scouts to every corner of the plains to find her former chief. When Karada was found, Nacris would send her gifts from the new mistress of Arku-peli – the heads of her brother and the bronze dragon, salted and cured like elk jerky.

Chapter 17

The Sensarku marched along in good spirits, chattering and enjoying the dry morning after the thunderstorm. They camped the first night by a branch of the Plains River, laid fires, and generally behaved as though they were on a casual hunting trip rather than a war party.

The second day dawned much like the first, with no sign of raiders, a green dragon, or their own lost people, but the acolytes’ ease was shattered by midmorning. Paharo and his scouts had kept their distance from the noisy Sensarku, save for periodic reports to Tiphan. Before noon on the second day, the acolytes were alarmed to see all the scouts suddenly returning as fast as they could run.

Calming his followers, Tiphan ordered his spearmen forward. Fingers fumbling a bit, he tied a special belt around his waist. In it were fourteen separate pockets, each containing a fragment of spirit stone.

“What news?” called Tiphan as Paharo returned.

Though the morning was mild, beads of sweat glistened on the scout’s forehead. “Something strange, Tosen. The day broke clear, but an unusual patch of fog has appeared to the southwest, and it’s moving our way.”

“Fog? Is that all?” Tiphan frowned, adding, “Wait. You say it’s moving?”

“It’s like no mist I’ve ever seen.”

“How fast is it moving?”

“It’ll reach us by noon at the latest, I’d say.”

Tiphan nodded. “Then we shall continue our advance.”

The scouts muttered, their disagreement with this strategy plain.

Paharo, trying to keep his tone respectful, said, “Tosen, I don’t advise it. Anything could be in that fog – anything!”

“Then the further from Yala-tene we meet it, the better for our people,” was his lofty reply. To his acolytes, Tiphan said, “Make ready! We will proceed.”

“Tosen, please! This isn’t wise.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Paharo.” Tiphan noted the apprehension on the faces of the other scouts. “Have your men stay in sight until we reach the mist,” he said. “No sense getting separated.”

Gradually the southern horizon took on the color of pale bronze as the sun played over the gently rolling fog-bank. Without being ordered to do so, the Sensarku slowed then halted in a body to gaze at the strange phenomenon. The oncoming mist slowly swallowed isolated trees and waving grass.

“Why have you stopped?” Tiphan’s voice rang out.

Nervously, the acolytes shouldered their weapons and started forward. All talk ceased.

Tiphan debated using one of his spirit stones to dispel the fogbank, but decided to save his power for more serious threats. When they finally entered the murk, he congratulated himself on his wisdom. The mist flowed around the Sensarku, but nothing untoward happened.

Paharo was not so confident. Conditions were entirely wrong for such a mist, and it behaved most unnaturally. The fog held together in the wind instead of tearing into wisps, as was usual. Despite his concerns, Paharo and the scouts continued forward.

Moments later the scout on his far right suddenly stiffened. The fellow held up his hand, and his comrades halted. He knelt in the high grass. The others followed suit, obeying his silent warning.

Paharo heard what had alarmed the boy – a swishing sound of movement in the grass ahead and to their right. It could be a deer or pig, or it could be a raider approaching. He strained his eyes to penetrate the mist, but it was so thick the Sensarku thirty paces behind him were completely hidden.

Paharo got a whiff of a sour aroma he knew well – larchit paste – as two figures loomed out of the mist. He could make out only enough to know they were humans on foot. He brought his spear up, ready to cast.

One of the intruders stumbled and cursed. Though the words were muffled, Paharo recognized the voice. He grinned in relief.

“Arkuden!” he called out. “It’s Paharo. We are here.”

The two newcomers closed the last few steps rapidly, revealing themselves to be Amero and Beramun. With many grins and back slaps, Amero was reunited with the young hunter.

“Did Udi and the rest make it back to the village?” the Arkuden asked quickly. Paharo explained he hadn’t seen the other boys since Beramun had sent him off to warn the village.

Just then, the loud footfalls and careless jangling of the young Sensarku rattling their gear pierced the fog.

In response to Amero’s questioning look, Paharo explained, “We’re guiding the Tosen and his acolytes to turn back the enemy.”

“What?” the Arkuden exclaimed. “They’ll be slaughtered!”

Another sound forestalled any reply: a heavy dragging noise, as though a large, laden travois was approaching.

“Duranix is coming,” the Arkuden explained. The scouts were thankful to hear the dragon was alive.

“He’s grievously hurt,” Beramun warned. “Look yonder.”

Duranix was pulling himself along with his powerful front legs. When he saw Amero talking with the young hunters, the dragon lowered his head to the ground and sighed gustily.

“I can’t go another league,” he said.

“How far are we from the valley?” asked Amero.

“At a hunter’s pace, a day and a night,” Paharo replied. “With the Sensarku in tow, two full days.”

Amero’s face reddened. “The arrogant fool. Where is Tiphan?”

“He is here.” Tiphan strode through the murk, leading his followers. “I rejoice to find you alive, Arkuden.”

“I’m sure you do.”

Tiphan spied Duranix lying motionless in the grass. He bowed to the dragon. “And our Protector! How fares he?” he asked solicitously.

“Weak,” said Amero. “The raiders wounded him with a poisoned spear.”

The acolytes huddled behind Tiphan, pointing at the unmoving dragon and murmuring unhappily. Amero resisted an urge to push among them and box their ears. It was Tiphan who deserved his anger, not these foolish youngsters.

“Shall I heal him?” Tiphan said simply.

All conversation stopped. “What?” Amero asked.

“Shall I call upon my spirit power to heal the Great Protector?”

Amero, Beramun, and the scouts exchanged surprised looks.

“Can you?” the girl asked.

“All things are possible to the wise,” Tiphan said smugly. Gripping his staff, he walked to Duranix’s side.

“Great Protector,” he declaimed loudly. “May I, the first of your servants, attend you?”

The dragon opened one eye. “Did you bring me an ox haunch?”

“No, Protector. I’ve come to heal you.”

“I’ve no patience for jests, little man.” The eyelid clicked shut.

“I have the power, Protector. May I use it to aid you?”

A sigh echoed in the silence. “Do what you will. I can go no further.”

The Sensarku leader bowed. He waved the acolytes forward and had them stand in a ring around the prostrate dragon. Taking one of the largest fragments of stone from his belt pouch, he wedged it into a slot cut in the head of his staff.

“Behold! Power from the time before men and dragons!” Tiphan raised his staff, then lowered it until the stone chip hovered a finger’s width above Duranix’s forehead.

The dragon’s eyes snapped open. He exclaimed hoarsely, “Thunder and lightning! That’s —!”

“Is it all right?” Amero interrupted, stepping forward.

“Stand back!” Tiphan commanded. “The power is not for ordinary men!”

Duranix said nothing more, so Amero kept silent, though his gaze moved uneasily from the Sensarku to the prostrate dragon.

Tiphan began his invocation as proscribed in the Silvanesti books, repeating again and again a simple, clear command to the power in the stone. At first, he did this silently, in his head, but as his blood warmed with the force of his concentration, the words spilled loudly out of his lips.

“Heal the wound!” he cried. “Cleanse this tainted flesh! By all the power captive in you, I command you, spirit of the stone, to heal this wound!”

Softly at first, then rising in volume as their master’s voice likewise rose, the acolytes took up the chant.

“Heal! Heal! Heal! Heal!”

The stone glowed. Tiphan was trembling from head to toe, and sweat dampened his colorless hair. He lifted the blazing stone away from Duranix’s head, holding it as high as his arms and the length of the staff would permit.

“Let it be done!” he screamed, and brought the staff down like a club.

For the briefest instant Amero imagined he saw a plume of sparks trailing from the dazzling stone. Then it struck Duranix’s head between his horns, and a tremendous flash of white light erupted. Amero reeled away and fell, taking Beramun down with him. As he hit the ground, he heard the full-throated roar of the bronze dragon.

*

Zannian cantered forward to confer with his lead riders. The vast fogbank was at last beginning to dissipate, after they’d spent half a day plodding through the impenetrable murk. Riders on the west side had found signs of humans on foot, moving northeast, along with a broad bloodstained trail flattened in the grass – the trail of the wounded dragon.

He ordered a hundred men to gallop northwest to intercept the wounded creature and his helpers. Poisoned spears were given to every fifth man.

Then came the explosion. It began as a distant flash in the fog, like far-off lightning, but instead of fading, it grew larger and brighter until it engulfed Zannian and everyone around him. He felt a sharp bite of cold on the exposed flesh of his face and arms. When his eyes recovered from the blinding glare, he saw the fog had been swept away. Not a trace of the mist remained.

Sthenn, who had been flying overhead all morning, emerged from the blast out of control and plummeting to earth. He landed hard a score of paces from Zannian, his breast and chin striking the ground. The warrior chief rode over to the floundering green dragon.

“Master! Thank you for clearing away the fog!”

“Worthless rodent! I didn’t do it!” Sthenn said shrilly, and Zannian was shocked to see portions of the dragon’s hide were blistered and smoking. He held his wings awkwardly away from his body, as though it was painful to move them.

“A great power has been loosed,” Sthenn said. “Power not seen in these parts in my lifetime!”

“By the bronze dragon?”

Before the green dragon answered, he tried to fold his wings. Several enormous blisters on his wing membranes ruptured. Sthenn’s howls of anguish were so loud Zannian’s horse shied. Mad with pain, Sthenn rolled and thrashed in all directions, swatting riders from their horses. His hind feet tore huge clods from the ground as he shrieked in agony.

Zannian, fighting to control his mount, dodged frantically, but a buffet from the dragon’s wing felled him and his horse. He hit the ground, rolled away from the gray stallion, and kept crawling until he was well clear of the great beast’s tantrum.

At last the aged green dragon mastered his temper and roared an answer to Zannian’s question. “That was no dragon spell! One of those detestable elf priests must be nearby. Only they have the means of tapping the ancient spirit power!”

Gingerly, Sthenn stood on all fours, breathing heavily. “Get your men together,” he told Zannian.

The raider chief formed his band into three large blocks of horsemen, with the center under his personal command. It took some time for all the warriors to gather, and before he was done mustering them, Nacris had arrived with the slaves and the Jade Men.

“Where have you been, woman?” hissed the dragon. “Get your warriors in order. There’s going to be a fight.”

“But my men —” Zannian began.

“Keep them here!” Sthenn thundered. “I want the Jade Men to strike the first blow!”

Flushed with lust for battle, Nacris barked orders. She deployed the Jade Men in a single line ahead of her son’s block of horsemen, spears and shields ready.

“All is ready, Master,” Nacris reported. “Where is the foe?”

“They are near. Start your men forward at a walk, and beware of trickery.”

*

Amero’s eyesight and hearing slowly returned. He got to his feet. All around, scouts and Sensarku alike were rising groggily from the turf. Duranix, however, was not in sight. All that remained was a large flattened spot in the grass where he’d lain.

Amero ran forward, horrified. Had Tiphan destroyed Duranix?

“Look!” shouted Beramun.

Following her pointing finger, Amero saw a dark spot against the bright blue sky. It grew rapidly in size as it plunged toward them.

“Duranix!”

The bronze dragon was falling toward them at a tremendous speed. When he was close enough for those on the ground to see the individual scales of his hide, he threw open his wings. Extending his long neck skyward, Duranix let loose a roar that shook the ground.

Amero jumped up and down, waving his arms. Duranix was alive and flying!

The dragon banked steeply, and Amero saw his mighty shoulder muscles coiling and uncoiling with every sweep of his wings.

The dragon landed in the grass as lightly as a swallow. Amero ran to him. Not only was Duranix healed, but he seemed larger than before. The underside of his belly was higher off the ground, and his length had increased a good five paces.

“My friend, you’re enormous!” Amero exclaimed.

Duranix turned his head this way and that, taking in the expanse of his new physique. “I do seem to have grown. It must be a side effect of the healing power. Won’t Sthenn be surprised!”

The acolytes had gotten Tiphan to his feet and were dusting the gray dirt of the savanna from his white doeskin robe. His staff was found and brought to him. It was shorter now by half – the end where the stone had been wedged was gone, vaporized.

“The Protector?” he asked, still dazed.

“I am here.”

Tiphan’s eyes widened to take in the dragon’s new dimensions. “Glorious!” he cried. “Great Protector, you are restored!”

“So I am.” Duranix paused, seemingly at a loss for words, then added, “I thank you.”

Tiphan did not bow but smiled widely and held out his hands. “I do but serve you, Great Protector!”

The acolytes, though disheveled and still trying to locate their weapons and gear, raised a ragged cheer.

A rhythmic rumbling, rising steadily in volume, cut into the celebration. Two of Paharo’s scouts ran off while the Sensarku regrouped. Just as they’d gotten themselves into some semblance of order, back came the hunters at a hard run.

“The raiders are coming!” they cried. “Hundreds and hundreds of them!”

“I think you were healed just in time,” Amero said, shifting closer to Duranix.

“Listen, all of you!” the dragon announced. “I am healed of my wound, but I haven’t eaten in many days, so I’m not at my full strength. It would be best if we withdrew.”

Amero, Beramun, and Paharo’s scouts grabbed their gear and started to retreat. The Sensarku stood their ground, awaiting their Tosen’s orders. The sound of the oncoming horde grew louder by the moment.

“My heart is full of gladness to have rendered good aid to our Protector,” Tiphan said, smiling beatifically, “but we came here to defeat the enemy, and that is what I shall do.”

“You can’t stand against them!” Amero declared.

“I have the power.” Tiphan’s brilliant blue eyes regarded him coolly

Exasperated, Amero looked to the dragon. “What do you say?”

“We’re too exposed here,” he said. “If we stay and fight, I can kill most of them, but you will all likely die, too. If Sthenn’s with them, none of us may get out alive. We need a defensible place.” He looked to the low hills east of their position. “That tallest hill – we’ll make a stand there. That should keep them from overrunning us.”

Beramun and the scouts set off running, leaving Amero and Duranix behind – Amero arguing with Tiphan and Duranix awaiting his friend.

“Tell your people to join us,” Amero ordered Tiphan.

“The Sensarku will stay. We shall save everyone.”

“Tiphan! The green dragon may be with them! You’re gambling not only your life but the lives of your followers!”

Proud disdain showed on Tiphan’s face. “I fear no green dragon. If my power can heal our benign Protector, it can smite a malign attacker.”

The sound of the approaching horsemen was like thunder and not very distant thunder at that.

Amero turned helplessly to Duranix. “He’s mad!”

“Tiphan, as your Protector, I order you and your followers to come with us,” said the dragon.

The acolytes appeared ready to obey. Before they had taken two steps, however, Tiphan halted them with a word.

Shouting could be heard over the noise of the pounding hoofbeats, and he said, “Fear not, mighty Duranix! I will protect my people!”

Amero tried to appeal to the acolytes directly, but none of the Sensarku would budge.

Duranix had had enough. Even as Amero continued to plead with the young folk, the dragon lowered his head and snagged the back of Amero’s tunic in his teeth. He lifted his protesting friend off the ground and stalked away. He easily overtook Beramun and the scouts and set Amero on his feet among them.

“Tiphan?” asked Paharo, glancing back the way they’d come.

Amero shook his head, face red with anger.

“Is it possible he can defeat them?” Beramun asked. “He does have great power at his command.”

“He’s an ignorant savage, playing in flames,” Duranix said bluntly. “The only question is, will he burn up your enemies or himself?”

*

Zannian and his chiefs, riding in the forefront of the raiders, halted abruptly. He flung up a hand, signaling the rest of the band to stop as well.

“Did you hear that?” he exclaimed.

Hoten, at his right, nodded gravely. “The voice of the bronze dragon.”

“His death scream! The Master’s poison has done its work!” Zannian exulted, wrapping the reins tightly around his left fist. “Now there’s nothing between us and Arku-peli but a few scouts! Send word to my mother. Loose the Jade Men! Spare no one!”

He kicked his mount into a gallop. The raiders raised a spontaneous shout of triumph and followed. When they topped the next rise, an unexpected sight met their eyes. “What’s this?” Zannian wondered aloud.

On the opposite slope, a small party was drawn up in a circle. There couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty of them, all on foot, dressed in white, and lightly armed.

“They look like children,” snorted Hoten.

Sthenn’s warning about trickery rose in Zannian’s mind. This couldn’t be as easy as it appeared.

“Hoten,” he said. “Take a hundred riders and follow the Jade Men.”

“Aye, Zan. We’ll have no trouble.”

The chief shook his head. “This smells bad to me. The Jade Men are fierce, but too young to know battle. Be ready to support them in case of treachery.”

“Aye, Zan.” Hoten picked up a hundred raiders from the band behind him. They loaded their throwing sticks, and at Hoten’s command, started down the slope.

The Jade Men, formed in a single line, gradually brought their flanks in, forming a silent circle fifty paces from the white-clad villagers. With their painted skin and dyed leather armor, they hardly seemed human. Nacris followed in their wake, her litter carried on the shoulders of four muscular bearers.

To their credit, the villagers did not waver at the sight of death marching toward them. They held their small circle. In the center, a white-haired figure stood, holding aloft a short wooden staff.

The Jade Men closed to within thirty paces. Nacris saw a flickering halo around the villagers’ leader. In the next heartbeat, a stream of fire, like horizontal lightning, lashed out from the circle of villagers. The ground exploded under the Jade Men’s feet. Stones, dirt, and burning clumps of grass flew everywhere. Five green-painted warriors were thrown down.

The Jade Men closed the gap in their line and continued their silent advance undeterred. A second blast burst upon them. This time, Nacris was hurled to the hillside and two of her bearers were struck dead where they stood. She rolled over in the grass and tried to drag herself to safety.

From his place atop the facing hill, Zannian watched with disbelieving anger. His fury grew as a ragged cheer rose from the circle of villagers.

“What is this force they command?” he shouted at no one in particular. “Why wasn’t I told they could do this? Where is the Master?”

Sthenn was reported to be some distance in the rear. Zannian sent riders to fetch the dragon.

“Tell him they throw fire at my men!” the raider chief yelled as the messengers sped away. “We need him to overcome them!”

Zannian turned to his mounted warriors. “The rest of you, form on me!” he ordered, and the balance of the center block of raiders, two hundred strong, closed ranks. “No throwing sticks. Spears! Use your spears!”

Two hundred flint-tipped lances swung down. Bellowing hoarsely, Zannian led them down the hill. Reaching Hoten’s band, Zannian united both groups and started toward the ring of cheering villagers.

When they were sixty paces from the white-clad enemy, a third bolt of lightning lashed out, flying over the heads of the Jade Men and hitting the ground scant steps from Zannian’s gray stallion. The raider chief felt the heat of it on his face, and dirt and stones flew wildly, but he kept going.

At twenty paces, a fourth bolt was unleashed, but it was far smaller than the others and flew harmlessly wide of the raiders, tearing a smoking hole in the hillside. That was the last. The Jade Men reached the slender line of villagers and fell on them like wolves.

As the enemy’s blood flowed, the Jade Men gave voice for the first time, chanting, “Greengall! Greengall!” Most of the villagers were speared where they stood. A few tried to run, but none got more than a few steps before being cut down.

Zannian found Nacris sitting propped on the wreckage of her litter, trying to see the battle. He extended a hand to her. She swung awkwardly onto the horse behind him.

“How goes the fight?” she said.

“Your Jade Men are wading through the enemy’s blood.”

“They closed for the kill despite the lightning?”

“Not one turned away.”

Her hard face split in a savage smile.

Zannian approached the surviving villagers. He was astonished to see them fall back to protect their leader. The lightly armed youths surrounded their leader in a wall of living flesh, batting aside spear tips with their bare hands. Two even threw themselves on spearpoints to keep them from piercing the man in the center of their circle.

Zannian put a ram’s horn to his lips and blew the call that ordered his men to stop fighting. The mounted raiders halted, but the Jade Men continued to press in, spearing the helpless villagers.

“Order them to stop,” Zannian told Nacris. “I want to know about this power they possess.”

She had to give the command twice, but the Jade Men finally drew back in a tight square in front of Zannian’s horse.

Seven young men and women, their white doeskins torn and drenched with blood, clung together around their leader.

“Yield or die,” Zannian said, halting his horse only a step away from the panting, bleeding group.

The villagers’ leader maintained his straight-backed, arrogant posture. He was a strange-looking man – tall, pale, with hair the color of midwinter snow.

“I am Tiphan, first servant of the great dragon of Yala-tene.”

“Are you? And where is the great dragon of Yala-tene? Why does he leave his followers to perish like dogs?”

“I sent him away,” Tiphan said proudly. “I am the defender of my people.”

“You’ve done a job of it, too.” Zannian’s eyes raked over the dead youths. “Was it you throwing that blue fire?”

“It was.”

“Tell me how you do it, and I may spare your life.”

“I possess the ancient power.” Tiphan’s proud stance was wavering, exhaustion evident on his face. He trembled, but said, “Send your warband away, and I will instruct you in the ways of the Sensarku.”

Zannian laughed. The man’s gall was amazing.

A large shadow swept over raider and villager alike. Zannian’s amusement became grimmer. He said, “You’re the one who’s about to learn something.”

With a strong backwash of air, Sthenn landed. Tiphan’s young followers wailed when the saw the green dragon. The white-haired man spoke sharply to them, and they dragged themselves off their bellies and wrapped their bleeding arms around him, seeming both to support and draw strength from him.

“What have we here?” Sthenn said. “Is this the source of the power I felt? I can’t believe it!”

Tiphan drew himself as straight as he could. “I am Tiphan, first servant of the great dragon of Yala-tene.”

“Friends of my old friend Duranix, eh?” Sthenn, blistered hide oozing pus, hopped several steps and landed heavily in front of the Sensarku. “How charming. Did he teach you those tricks?” The hideous green head snaked closer. “Did he?”

Tiphan tried to maintain his defiant stance, but he shrank from his hideous questioner. His reply was nearly inaudible. “No. I learned them myself.”

Sthenn’s jaws parted slightly. He blew a stream of cyan-colored gas on the villagers clinging to Tiphan’s legs. Coughing and retching horribly, the acolytes slid limply to the ground, poisoned by his breath. Sthenn’s bony claw darted in and took hold of Tiphan’s waist. He hoisted the man into the air.

“Nothing is funnier than a rodent who thinks he’s important,” the green dragon said. He raked a single claw down Tiphan’s chest, slashing open his doeskin robe and drawing blood. “Tell me, wise rodent, what’s become of my dear, dear friend Duranix?”

“He... lives,” Tiphan gasped, eyes streaming tears from the gas.

“Of course he does!” Sthenn squeezed his hapless victim until blood spurted from Tiphan’s nose. “But where is he now?”

“Yala... tene.”

“Impossible!” Sthenn shook him hard, snapping his head forward and back. “Don’t lie to me, rodent! His hindquarters must be rotting by now!”

The light of pride flared one last time in Tiphan’s blue eyes. “I cured him,” said the Sensarku leader.

Sthenn could see he spoke the truth, and the dragon howled with pure vexation. He spread his jaws wide, intending to bite Tiphan’s head from his body, then changed his mind. Instead, he began to squeeze, gradually tightening his grip around the man’s waist, savoring each snapping bone.

Tiphan’s head lolled back, his tongue protruding, and the green dragon relaxed his grip slightly, planning to draw out his death for as long as possible. Tiphan’s head slowly came up, and he opened his mouth. With his last breath, he called upon the remaining stones in his belt.

A ball of white fire engulfed him, sending horses and men reeling back in terror. When it vanished seconds later, Tiphan was gone, and so was Sthenn’s foreclaw.

The green dragon screamed. The stump of his right foreleg was blackened and smoking. Torrents of anger, pain, and outrage poured from his throat. He fell to the ground and thrashed wildly, hammering his head into the turf. His tail whipped about, smashing anyone and anything it struck. Panic-stricken, the raiders fled their master’s agony, riding away pell-mell to escape.

Zannian and Nacris fled too, pausing on a nearby hilltop to watch Sthenn’s torment.

Hoten joined them. Like his chief, the elder raider looked down on the green dragon’s display with an unsympathetic eye.

“So the Master lost a hand?” he asked.

“Yes,” Zannian answered. “It’ll grow back, in time.”

Hoten watched the scattering raider host and sighed. “It’ll take time to get the men back together.”

“Don’t even bother until the Master finishes his fit,” Nacris put in.

“How long will that take?”

Nacris leaned forward tiredly, resting her head on Zannian’s back. “Until he’s done.”

*

Several leagues away, Duranix halted in his tracks. He was walking rather than flying to avoid giving away their position to the raiders. When Amero noticed the dragon wasn’t at their heels, he doubled back.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Tiphan is dead.”

Amero pulled up short. “How do you know? Can you hear his thoughts, too?”

“He was too weak-minded for that.” Duranix waved a claw in the air as if shooing a pesky insect. “I heard something though, like many voices whispering of his death.”

Amero tried to feel sorry for Tiphan, but he could generate little sympathy for his foolish, headstrong rival. However, his heart was heavy, thinking of the beguiled young people who had died with their Tosen. He hurried on. With the Sensarku gone, there was nothing standing between them and the raiders.

Duranix followed more slowly, looking back in the direction of the Sensarku’s last stand. Whatever his motives, Tiphan had healed Duranix and given his life to save the dragon and the others. No human had ever done such a thing for a dragon before.

Chapter 18

The sweetest sight Amero could imagine appeared: the walls of Yala-tene. He stood at the foot of the bridge that bore his name, a lump growing in his throat. They had come through.

His people had passed an uncertain night in a hasty defensive camp. Strangely, no raiders had attacked them. The peaceful night made Paharo and the others wonder if the Sensarku had succeeded and defeated the raiders after all. Duranix quickly quashed their hopes. It was possible Tiphan had delayed the raiders, he said, but he would know if Sthenn had been killed.

The orchard was in full bloom, and drifts of white and pink blossoms greeted Duranix and the weary humans as they crossed the bridge into the valley proper. The billowing petals lent an unreal air to their crossing, for these were from Tiphan’s enchanted trees, already twice as big as was natural for this time of year. If their growing continued, the villagers could be harvesting fruit well before the summer was over.

Jenla and the planters were working in the orchard and saw the lofty striding figure of Duranix before they spied Amero and the others. They came running, shouting cries of welcome. Though happy to be home, Amero had dismal news for them.

“The raiders may yet be coming,” he told the gathering of gardeners. “We must make ready to resist their attack. This Zannian leads a host of fifty score warriors and has the help of a vicious green dragon.”

“What of Tiphan and the Sensarku?” someone asked.

Grim silence revealed their fate more clearly than any words. Jenla shook her head, saying, “Pride was his undoing. Others may weep for him, but I can’t.”

Though Amero agreed with her, he knew of at least one person who would grieve. “I must tell Konza about this,” he said.

It was Jenla’s turn to reveal bad news. “Tiphan told us his father had gone east, seeking more of the spirit stones, but no one saw him leave,” she explained. “Trackers combed the upper passes, but they found no sign Konza had been through. I think Tiphan silenced his father, so the old man wouldn’t try to stop the ill-fated expedition.”

“Murder?” said Beramun, wide-eyed.

Jenla said no more, and the word hung in the air.

“We’ll puzzle that out later,” Amero told them. “We must get our defenses ready.”

“At least we have our Protector back,” said Tepa, taking in the dragon’s larger size. Duranix said nothing, his gaze still fixed on the western peaks.

The gardeners followed Amero’s little band back to town. Horns blew in a loud, flat chorus. Children lined the tops of the walls, and the elders trooped out to greet them.

Amero was pleased to see Udi, Tepa’s son, among the villagers. He had arrived in Yala-tene after Tiphan’s group had departed.

Duranix boosted Amero atop the lower wall. From there he addressed his people.

“Friends,” he said, “I’m glad to be back with Duranix and the brave scouts who came to find us. I grieve the loss of all the Sensarku.” He could not bring himself to mention Tiphan’s name. “Sad though I am, there’s no time for mourning. The threat from the raiders is grave. There are fifty score of them, led by a green dragon.”

Shocked silence greeted this announcement.

Nubis the stockman was the first to find his tongue. “When will they get here?”

“I don’t know, but we must make ready immediately. From this moment on, Yala-tene must become a war camp. Every villager over the age of fifteen will carry a spear at all times. Children will gather food and fodder for the animals. Every baffle must be sealed. By this time tomorrow, I want Yala-tene closed up tight and ready to fight!”

No one cheered, but no one objected either. Amero named his foundry master Huru as his second-in-command. Hulami the vintner was to take charge of the supplies of food and water. Montu and other craftsmen were to make weapons.

When he’d finished, Amero turned to Duranix and asked, “Do you have anything to say?”

The dragon’s head now rode well above the top of the wall, He surveyed the villagers clustered around him for a moment, then said, “Remember this – the raiders are not coming to steal your cattle, burn your homes, or carry off your women, though they will do all those things if they get the chance. They come at the will of Sthenn, who wants nothing less than the total destruction of Yala-tene.”

Few villagers dared ask questions of the bronze dragon. Jenla did.

“Why do they want to destroy us?” she said. “We’ve never done them any harm.”

“You exist. That is cause enough,” Duranix told her. This plainly did not satisfy her, so he elaborated. “Sthenn is a creature of corruption and chaos. He despises order in any form and hates any authority but his own whims. This village is an affront to his ideas and a threat to his desire to rule the plains as he does his native forest. You cannot bargain with him. You cannot buy him off. Your only hope is to fight. If you can defeat his horde, I will deal with him.”

Jenla nodded. “Let what the Protector says be done,” she said.

“Arkuden, about the baffles —” Paharo began.

“I know.” Amero looked up at Duranix. “Can you bring boulders from the cliff and use them to block the entrances?”

Hungry and depleted from his long crawl across the plain, Duranix nonetheless agreed. There was no choice. No one else in Yala-tene could move enough stone in so short a time.

The villagers scattered to their tasks. Hulami marshaled the very old and the very young to gather food and water for people and beasts alike. Paharo remained behind after the villagers dispersed.

“Arkuden?” he said. “A word, please? I have an idea.”

Amero took the young hunter aside, and they conversed in low tones. Amero listened attentively, nodding in agreement with what Paharo was saying.

“Do it,” the Arkuden said at last. “Take whoever you need, but no more than thirty all told. I can’t weaken our defenses by more than that.”

Paharo went through the village, tapping young men and women to join him. He picked fleet, able hunters every one, none over the age of twenty. Bringing this band back to Amero, he announced his final selection: Beramun. She was still by the Arkuden’s side.

“Not her, Paharo,” Amero said quickly.

“Why not?” she protested.

“You don’t even know what you’ve been chosen for!”

“I don’t care what the task is, so long as I get to fight Zannian!”

He stepped closer and said privately, “I prefer you to stay here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What could you have for me to do that’s more important?”

He had no argument greater than hers. Voice tight with concern, Amero told her, “Be careful, girl.”

“You too, old man,” she joked, and took her place with Paharo’s group.

After a brief explanation of his plan, Paharo led them toward the river at a jog.

*

Zannian gazed up at the hulking gray mountains. He’d never seen real mountains before, but his expression did not show awe or fascination. Instead his youthful face was etched with deep frustration. Too many things were impeding his progress. Someone would pay, and pay in blood.

Hoten rode up to his chief. “The trail goes straight in,” he reported. “It can’t be more than two days old.”

Zannian scratched a newly sprouted patch of beard on his chin. “Straight in? The dragon too?”

“Aye. The tracks run right down the center of the pass as far as we rode.”

Zannian turned his horse to face the open country behind them. His men were strung out all the way to the horizon, still regrouping after their headlong flight away from the injured Sthenn.

“We’ll hold here a while,” he said. “Some of those dogs won’t get here before sundown.”

Hoten cleared his throat and spat. “Speaking of stragglers, where’s the Master?”

Zannian eyed his lieutenant. “Those who speak that name lightly come to bad ends.”

“I mean no disrespect,” said Hoten, his tone anything but respectful. “I only wondered where our mighty leader is now that we’re at the enemy’s throat.”

“He’ll return when it suits him.”

No one had seen Sthenn since he’d lost his claw to the villager’s spirit stones. Weeping acid tears of pain, the dragon had flown away, leaving the raider band in total disorder. Most of the men who’d ridden away from the green dragon’s torment slowly returned. Others never came back. Without Sthenn’s fearsome presence to stiffen their spines, they deserted for good. For a time it seemed the entire band might fall apart.

It was Nacris who had acted swiftly to keep the raiders together. On her orders, the Jade Men captured ten deserters and put them to death. Lacking trees from which to hang them, Nacris had the men beheaded and their heads displayed on spears.

Along with fear, she wielded another potent weapon – the power of greed. She reminded the men of the booty waiting in Yala-tene. She loudly scoffed at the notion Sthenn would not return. The desertions ceased, but it would be several days before the entire band was together again.

The young raider chief yearned for battle. Slaughtering those fools in their fancy robes wasn’t fighting, merely killing. Daydreaming of past battles, he suddenly found his thoughts filled by the black-haired girl. Sthenn had promised she was in the valley ahead.

Zannian licked his dry lips and wrapped the reins tightly around his left hand.

Hoten noted his chiefs characteristic gesture. Zannian always did it before riding into battle.

“Take a scouting party into the pass, Hoten,” Zannian said. “Leave your horses and go on foot, quietly. That narrow pass is perfect for ambushes. I want you to make sure the way is clear for the rest of us.”

“We get to be the bait?” A warning glance from his chief made Hoten shrug and add, “As you say, Zan.” He rode away to cull a suitable patrol from the men on hand.

Hoten found Nacris hobbling about on a crude crutch near the mouth of the pass, close to the stony banks of the Plains River.

“Careful you don’t fall in,” Hoten said, dismounting.

She laughed. “No water can harm me.”

“How can you know that?”

“My death’s been foreseen. The Master himself divined it. Neither water, nor fire, nor stone, nor metal shall kill me.”

He left his horse cropping the sparse grass. “Do you really believe that?” he asked, putting a hand to her weatherworn cheek.

She neither acknowledged his gesture nor pulled away, but said, “Why not? A dragon’s eyes see further than mine.”

He took his hand away. “I see another way to interpret that augury – Sthenn himself will kill you one day.”

Nacris laughed again, a short, harsh bark. “I’ve thought of that, too.”

“How can you be so indifferent?”

She hobbled a few steps away and looked into the pass, still misty in the morning light. “My life ended here twelve years ago,” she said flatly. “The man I loved died, the woman who killed him lived, and I was crippled. Since then, I’ve been waiting to take my revenge. When I have it, then I can rest what remains of my body.”

Hoten knocked her crutch aside and caught Nacris in his arms. Bitter and hard as she was, he cared for her.

“If I threw you in the river and held your head under, what would you do?” Hoten whispered.

“Drown.”

Her lack of fear infuriated him. “That’s all?”

“I’m not strong enough to fight you.” She looked him squarely in the eyes. “If you want a struggle, wait till we capture Arku-peli. There are many women there who can gratify you.”

Disgusted, he released her, picked up her crutch, and thrust it at her.

“Now I know why the Master gave you command of the Jade Men,” he said. “You’ve become as soulless as they are.”

In a cold fury, he left and rounded up the first twenty men he found idling by the water. He had each arm himself with a throwing stick and bundles of missiles. They left everything else behind – horses, food and water, heavy spears, and shields. Bait they might be, but Hoten saw no reason to weigh his men down. If the villagers were waiting for them, speed would be more valuable than armament.

They tromped past Zannian. The chief was listening with ill-disguised annoyance as his mother lectured him on tactics. Hoten acknowledged his leader with a nod. Mother and son both ignored him.

The outer pass was wide, with the river flowing down the middle. Heavy sandbars and tumbled gravel filled the floor of the ravine, tufted here and there with knifegrass and brittle scrub. The pass was twelve paces wide at this point, but the frowning cliffs and lofty slate peaks beyond made it feel much narrower. The men kept bunching up as the burden of the surrounding heights bore down on them. Time and again Hoten had to give the same warning.

“Stand apart, louts! You want some mud-toe villager to drop a stone and get six of you at once?”

The tracks, human and dragon, led unequivocally forward. Hoten followed them for three leagues, then the prints abruptly vanished. The tracks didn’t lead off in other directions. They simply disappeared. The gravel ahead was free of marks.

“Did the dragon pick them up and fly away?” wondered one of the raiders.

“Maybe,” Hoten said, but he wasn’t convinced. He squatted to study the ground more closely.

“It’s spirit power again,” said another man uneasily. The men muttered among themselves, clearly not finding such a thing hard to believe.

“There are no spirits at work here,” Hoten said harshly. “Not unless spirits use pine boughs to sweep tracks away.” He held up several loose pine needles, still sticky with sap. “This happened not long ago.”

Behind Hoten a voice called out, “Someone’s coming – many, and on horseback!” The raider was kneeling on a patch of rock, his hand pressed flat against it. Hoten did likewise and also felt the heavy vibrations. The strength and rhythm of the pounding could mean only one thing.

“It’s our own people,” Hoten announced. “It’s too soon. I’ll have to head them off.”

He ordered his men to hold where they were, then ran down the stony slope.

He soon spotted the outriders of the main band. Standing atop a convenient outcropping, he waved his hands over his head. The horsemen stopped. Zannian emerged from the ranks and rode to meet his lieutenant.

“What news, Hoten?”

“You came too soon, Zan. My men are only a hundred paces farther on. The bronze dragon himself could be hiding in the cliffs above us, and we wouldn’t know it until it was too late.”

“You give the mud-toes too much credit,” Zannian scoffed. “The ones who escaped us on the plain are probably home by now, and the rest are wetting their breechcloths just thinking about our coming. We should attack before they have a chance to regroup.”

“I think that’s unwise, Zan.”

The chief shrugged. “Then argue with my mother. It’s her idea.”

Hoten looked for Nacris, but she wasn’t to be seen. “We’re going,” Zannian announced. “Find a horse.”

One of the lead riders shouted a warning. Hoten pushed through the standing horses to the water’s edge, and Zannian followed him on horseback. They soon saw what had made their man cry out: a body, floating facedown in the river. From his clothing, it was clear he was a raider.

At Zannian’s command, two men waded into the stream, snagged the drifting corpse, and hauled it back to shore. Hoten turned the man over. His forehead bore a terrible wound.

“It’s Besh – one of my scouts,” Hoten said, frowning.

“Looks like he fell. Clumsy idiot.” Zannian turned his horse around and called to his men, “Forward!”

“Zan, wait.”

The chief rode away. Fuming, Hoten stared at the body. What was Zannian thinking? He was always bold, but never so rash. What was wrong with him?

A horse was brought, and Hoten mounted. He took a spear from the hide scabbard draped over the horse’s neck. Still filled with misgivings, he joined the stream of riders filing into the shadowed depths of the gorge.

The column strung out as the raiders thinned into a narrow line just two riders wide. Hoten made his way forward until he was riding alongside his chief. He remained watchful until they came to the spot where he had left his scouting party. His men were nowhere in sight.

“What trickery is this?” Hoten growled. He dismounted and searched the stony riverbank. Not a trace of his nineteen men remained.

A figure suddenly appeared out of the scrub a hundred paces upriver. Several raiders yelled to alert their leader.

Zannian shaded his eyes to see who it was. There was no mistaking the mane of jet hair, the slim shape, and insolent stance.

“Beramun!” Zannian drew his bronze sword and brandished it above his head. “My elven blade to the man who takes that girl alive!” he cried.

The raiders cheered, urging their horses forward. The girl awaited their rush, hands on her hips.

Hoten grabbed the bridle of Zannian’s mount, shouting, “It’s a trap! Can’t you see that?”

“Let go!” the chief shouted, shoving Hoten away with his foot. “I swore to have that black-haired girl, and have her I will!”

With a hundred raiders well ahead of him, Zannian charged down the canyon at the unmoving figure. Hoten’s frantic warnings were lost in the din.

When the horsemen were sixty paces away, Beramun turned and sprinted up the ravine. The men followed, whooping and brandishing their spears, each believing he’d be the one to win the fine elven blade.

As the foremost riders passed a twisted cedar tree, Beramun scampered up a sloping heap of rocks by the south wall of the gorge. From behind this mound a dozen armed villagers appeared, spears ready. The raiders slowed, saw how few of the enemy stood before them, then charged onward, laughing.

Hardly had the triumphant shouts left their throats than a hail of heavy stones, some as large as a man’s head, rained down on them. Horses and raiders toppled.

Zannian, held up by the flailing mass of fallen men and animals in front of him, turned his horse this way and that, dodging missiles. He caught sight of Beramun again, standing with her comrades. The sight of his men being routed by a bunch of dirt-scrabbling farmers filled Zannian with fury. He drove his heels hard into his mount’s flanks. Riding over his own fallen men, he closed within thirty paces of Beramun.

“Give yourself up, and I will spare your life!” he shouted.

She did not move. “I won’t ever be your slave again!”

Zannian notched a dart into his throwing stick, but before he could fling it, a block of red sandstone grazed his horse’s neck. The startled animal bucked, forcing Zannian to drop his weapon and hold on with both hands to avoid being unseated. While the gray stallion danced and twisted, more stones flew down. One struck Zannian squarely in the chest, and he fell into the mob of fallen raiders.

Hoten saw his chief go down. He took command, calling for darts. This forced the villagers to quit their place atop the rocky mound. They fled up the gorge on foot. The raiders couldn’t pursue because of the continuing barrage of stones and spears.

Hoten ordered half his men to dismount and scale the cliffs. They ascended steadily, protected from projectiles by the overhanging peak. Moments after they reached the top, the bombardment ceased.

After sending the unconscious Zannian to the rear, Hoten led fifty mounted warriors after Beramun and her comrades. They quickly caught up to the fugitives. Spurred by their chiefs promised reward, the raiders concentrated on Beramun. Her companions dueled with the raiders until their backs were quite literally against the canyon wall.

“Slay all but the black-haired girl!” Hoten roared.

The raiders closed in. Their reluctance to harm Beramun bore against them. With no such compunction staying their hands, the villagers drove back the first wave of raiders. Hoten called for darts, but his men feared hitting Beramun and losing the bounty, so their attack came to naught.

Many of the villagers had lost their spears in the previous attack and were reduced to throwing stones at the enemy. The youth on Beramun’s right went down, felled by a spear in his chest. Two raiders jumped off their horses and tried to grab her. She hit one on the head with the shaft of her spear. The pole snapped, but the man went down. The second raider caught her by the wrist and delivered a vicious backhand blow.

Beramun slammed into the canyon wall and slid to the ground, dazed. The raider who’d felled her reached down to claim his prize. His triumph was short lived. A deafening roar filled the tight confines of the gorge. Rocked by the terrible sound, Hoten and his men looked up to see Duranix hovering over the gorge, his wings flapping hard to keep his enlarged body aloft.

The bronze dragon roared again. As one, the raiders dropped their weapons and leaped on their horses to flee. Duranix lowered his head and blasted them with a bolt of lightning. The ground shattered beneath them, dust and rocks flying in all directions. Most perished, and the few survivors raced down the canyon on foot. The dragon landed in front of them. Jaws gaping, he incinerated them, one after another, until not a man or horse stood upright.

Beramun pushed herself onto her hands and knees. A weight on her arm turned out to be the raider’s hand still gripping her wrist. It had been burned off above the elbow. Paharo helped her pry the dead fingers loose.

The smell of singed flesh filled the air, and the view downstream was obscured by drifting smoke and dust. The surviving villagers approached the dragon.

Beramun called, “Well timed! Another ten heartbeats, and we’d have been done for!”

Duranix whirled, his burnished scales flecked with soot and blood. The swiftness of his movement and the ferocity of his expression caused them all to shrink back in alarm.

“I don’t want your thanks!” he snapped. “Do you think I enjoy slaughtering Sthenn’s worthless slaves? Do you?”

“We’re grateful you saved us,” Paharo said humbly.

“Amero asked me to. Thank him. Now get back to the bridge. He’s waiting for you there.”

The villagers started back to Yala-tene. Duranix remained, staring at the empty vista before him. Seeing him linger, Beramun turned back and said, “What are you waiting for?”

Duranix looked down at her. “Sthenn is near. I feel him. Don’t you?”

She touched the front of her tunic, fingers resting atop the green mark on her chest. “I’m not his creature,” she insisted. “I’m a free woman.”

“Go, before I forget Amero’s wishes and kill you right here!”

Infuriated, she yelled, “Stupid beast! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

Duranix lowered his huge head until it was only a handspan from her face. “Perhaps you don’t know the evil Sthenn has planned for you,” he said. “But anything is possible – sedition, betrayal, murder. I won’t let you harm Amero.”

Beramun’s back was against the cliff wall. She could only stare into those huge green eyes, her throat too dry to speak.

Suddenly the dragon whipped his neck around, head thrusting skyward. Mouth gaping, Duranix roared.

Beramun dropped to the ground, clapping her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to block the powerful sound. The rocks beneath her resonated with the endless roar.

Through a red haze of agony, Beramun saw a winged shape fly overhead. She knew that shape and why the bronze dragon roared. Sthenn had returned.

Duranix continued to bellow a challenge to his ancient nemesis. Stones cascaded down both sides of the canyon, plunging into the river and piling up along the canyon walls. The terrible sound grew so unbearable that Beramun screamed. She couldn’t hear her puny cry over the omnipotent voice of the dragon, but she screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.

The thunderous roar finally ceased as Duranix spread his wings. With two running steps, he vaulted into the air. The tips of his wings scraped the walls on each side of the canyon, but he cleared them and soared aloft.

Breathless, Beramun forced herself to her feet, her back braced against the canyon wall. She was surprised to see another figure rising from the debris some paces away. One of the raiders had survived: the bald one, Hoten.

Looking fully as battered as she, Hoten regarded Beramun blankly for a moment. In unison they turned their faces skyward, where Duranix was climbing to meet his enemy in a final duel. Soon the paths of both dragons took them out of sight.

Without a word or sign of acknowledgment, Hoten and Beramun stumbled away: he, back to his chief, and she, to the Lake of the Falls.

Chapter 19

By the time Beramun returned to the valley, Yala-tene’s defenses were in place. Boulders and logs had been piled across the mouth of the canyon, making it difficult for the mounted enemy to ride directly to the bridge. Villagers armed with spears and stones were in position atop the stone towers that anchored each end of the bridge. Barricades of timber and thorn bushes blocked the north end of the bridge. When Beramun arrived, tired and battered, Amero and the village elders were in the midst of an argument.

“We must prepare the bridge to fall,” Amero was insisting. “If the raiders get the better of us, we’ll have to destroy it. The river’s too deep to be forded, so they’ll have to take the time to build rafts.”

“Destroying the bridge means abandoning the orchard and gardens to the enemy!” Jenla protested. “The greatest part of our food supply lies in those fields. How can we give them up?”

“We have food stored in the town caves,” said Huru.

“How long will that last?” demanded Tepa. The usually mild beekeeper was red-faced and sweating. “Without food, we can’t stay inside our wall for long!”

Then Amero spotted Beramun. A look of vast relief crossed his face. He called out to her, cutting off the elders’ angry debate. Jenla and the rest fell silent as the Arkuden ran to meet the nomad girl.

Beramun slumped tiredly against a felled log.

“Here, take this,” Amero said, handing her a dipper of cool water. “I was beginning to think you were lost. What happened?”

“Duranix,” she said between gulps of water, “saved us.”

“So Paharo said. What was the roaring we heard?”

She winced at the memory. Her skull still ached from the awful noise. “Duranix saw the green dragon in the sky, bellowed a challenge, then flew after him.”

“Flew after...?” Amero cast a quick glance at the village elders and lowered his voice. “He’s gone?”

Beramun drained the gourd dry and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I saw the look in his eyes. He won’t return until Sthenn is dead.”

“Say nothing about that!” he whispered to her. “Our people may lose heart if they hear their protector is gone.”

Jenla called for Amero to rejoin the elders, and he did. The argument began anew over whether the bridge should be destroyed. Standing in the midst of his contentious people, Amero looked more tired and strained than Beramun had ever seen him.

The screech of a falcon caused her to look up. The feathered hunter wheeled in lazy circles across the flawless blue vault of the midday sky. Somewhere up there in the boundless ocean of air, the two dragons were winging toward their final destiny.

*

After Duranix cleared the canyon rim, he climbed as rapidly as he could, never losing sight of his foe. Sthenn continued to glide in a vast, lazy circle, five thousand paces above the mountain peaks. Filled with barely contained fury, Duranix retained enough presence of mind to know this wasn’t right. For all his age and cunning, Sthenn was fundamentally craven. It was completely unlike him to wait patiently for Duranix to catch up. The evil beast must be up to something.

As he reached the halfway point in his climb, Duranix saw Sthenn drop his right wing and glide off to the west, away from the Valley of the Falls. So that was his game! He wanted Duranix to follow him away from the valley, leaving Yala-tene alone against Zannian’s host. It was a brutal, unsubtle stratagem, and it showed how well Sthenn understood him.

As he continued the pursuit, Duranix told himself the loss of a few hundred humans was worth the destruction of the vile green dragon. It came down to a cold calculation: It was better for Sthenn to be dead than for Amero to be alive. There would always be more humans. They bred like rats, died often and easily, and kept the world constantly stirred up. Amero was a good fellow for a human – amusing, engaging, and thoughtful, and he conceived a constant stream of schemes and ideas. It was possible he’d find a way to cope with the raiders on his own.

Sound, logical reasoning. So why did it feel so wrong? Why did Duranix have a thoroughly irrational desire to wheel about and descend upon the advancing raider horde?

He couldn’t break off the chase. He couldn’t allow Sthenn to escape. If fortune favored him, he might finish his enemy and return in time to save Yala-tene as well, but if the chase took too long, if Amero died before he could return, then Duranix vowed that Zannian’s band would not long survive the death of their master.

As Duranix’s mind wandered, so did his navigation. Unconsciously, he fell into a slow northward bank, which would eventually bring him full circle, back to the Valley of the Falls. While he wrestled with his conscience, he failed to see the green dragon also changing course, doubling back toward him.

Duranix’s instincts saved him. At the last moment, he sensed danger and turned sharply away, and Sthenn’s outstretched claws found only empty air. Laughing, the green dragon pulled out of his dive.

“Little friend, do I have your attention?” he sang in the ancient dragon tongue.

Duranix’s answer was a bolt of white-hot energy. Sthenn maneuvered out of its path and returned the favor with a stream of poison gas. The green dragon’s breath could kill any warm-blooded creature. To Duranix it was merely a noxious irritant.

“Come, come!” Sthenn said, hovering. “I expect better from you than this!”

“Taunt away,” Duranix replied, laboring hard to maintain his position with wings shorter than Sthenn’s. “Use up all the witticisms you have, Sthenn. The time is coming when your dead, stinking carcass will be the only joke you have left!”

“Excellent! So it’s death you want, little friend?”

“Death for you, wyrm!”

Sthenn drew his dangling limbs up close to his body. Duranix saw one foreclaw missing. A blackened stump was all that remained. A smile curved his brazen lips. The arrogant Tiphan must have hurt the green dragon after all.

“Come,” Sthenn said with unusual gravity. “I give you this one chance. The world is wide. Follow if you can, and we shall see who finds death first.”

Sthenn rolled away, heading due north. Duranix briefly considered throwing another blast at his back but chose instead to conserve his strength. The bronze dragon flapped hard after his speeding quarry. Nothing else mattered now. He would not give Sthenn up, even if it meant chasing him to the end of the world.

*

Night fell. A profound silence enveloped the Valley of the Falls.

To deny the raiders help in locating them, Amero decreed no fires should be lit in the camp around the bridge. The villagers ate cold food, raw or dried, as their parents had done when wandering the vast plains.

“You know,” Paharo said, chewing a thin strip of dried elk meat, “I really hate raw flesh. I don’t see how you old folks stand it.”

“You children are spoiled,” said Jenla, sitting on a stone between Tepa and Paharo’s father, Huru. “I never even tasted cooked food till I was thirty.”

“Why didn’t you cook before you lived in Yala-tene?” asked a young woman behind Paharo.

“No one thought of it,” Amero said. “On the plain, once you made a kill, you had to butcher it on the spot and carry away what you could before wolves or panthers came to take it away from you. There was no time to do more, so taking up flint, building a fire, and cooking your meat never came up.”

“On a hunt we always roast our catch,” said Paharo.

“Spoiled,” repeated Jenla.

An owl hooted close by. Conversation ceased. Everyone listened intently until the owl hooted again, farther away.

Amero stood, taking up his spear and shield. “I think I’ll have a look at the bridge.”

Nubis shrugged. “It’s still there, Arkuden.”

The villagers chuckled. Amero smiled and walked away. One of the sentinels atop the south tower looked down and waved. He waved back.

For almost twenty years the bridge had connected the halves of the valley. It had been one of Amero’s first successes. With no timber in the valley long enough to span the river, and with no way to join short planks together that would bear much weight, building a bridge seemed impossible. The solution appeared one day when Amero heard an old man complaining to his mate that his belt no longer fit, and he needed a longer one. She responded tartly that there was no sense wasting good cowhide on his growing paunch. Amero watched as the thrifty woman braided short lengths of rawhide around narrow wooden pegs, expanding her man’s belt.

He adapted the same idea to make the bridge. A series of planks formed the walking surface. Vines were woven around the ends of the planks to join them one to another. At each end of the bridge, the vines were tied to stakes on shore, anchoring the long, flexible structure. The bridge sagged under heavy loads, however, and it was Duranix who suggested towers or posts be erected with supporting lengths of rope running from them to the bridge. The first wooden towers were eventually replaced by stone pillars.

The bridge had served without fault for many years, and had borne countless villagers and wanderers to and from Yala-tene. When his sister, Nianki, left the valley with the remnants of her nomad band years ago, they’d ridden their horses across with no difficulty. Amero knew the raiders could do the same. They must not be allowed the chance.

He paused halfway across the span. The river was deep here, its dark water coursing swiftly beneath his feet. The water would make an effective barrier to Zannian’s horde.

He looked both ways to make certain he was not observed. The night hid him well. Drawing his bronze dagger, he sawed at one of the main support ropes that stretched from the stone tower on the north bank down through a series of wooden brackets and up again to the south tower. The braided vine was as thick as his ankle, and it took a good deal of effort to cut.

Casting furtive glances over his shoulders, he kept up until the vine was cut over halfway through. Crossing to the other side, he repeated his work on the other rope. If the bridge were heavily strained – as by a mass of mounted raiders – it should collapse. If needed, a few strokes with a stone ax would part the ropes quickly.

He strolled to the north end of the bridge and called to the guards posted on the north tower. Neither one replied. Amero snorted. The fools had fallen asleep at their posts.

“Ho!” he shouted. “Wake up! Lookouts are meant to look!”

Something darted across the open ground beyond the barrier of timber and thorn bushes at the end of the bridge. Low and gray, its silhouette was definitely not human.

Amero froze. Pairs of red eyes gleamed in the darkness. An old fear, long buried but never forgotten, gripped his heart. He retreated slowly, not daring to turn his back on the yevi.

A quick flick of his eyes upward showed the sentinels hadn’t budged. He knew now they weren’t shirking. The lookouts were dead.

Amero backed another few steps, and a single yevi leaped over the barricade at the north end of the bridge. It landed lightly in front of him. He presented his spear and drew a deep breath.

“Wake up!” he bellowed as loudly as he could. “The raiders are here! The raiders are here!”

Both ends of the bridge erupted. Raiders and yevi who’d been lying in wait threw themselves at the barricade. Yevi sprang over the obstacle while hooded raiders attacked it with axes and poles. On the villagers’ side, Huru quickly mustered the townsfolk into a wall of shields five ranks deep. As previously rehearsed, the townspeople marched in close order to the end of the bridge and halted.

Amero meanwhile lunged with his spear but missed the yevi stalking him. The hump-shouldered creature snapped its heavy jaws time and again, trying to catch Amero’s spear shaft.

A second beast leaped over the hedge of thorns. Not wanting to battle two at once, Amero pushed his attack, slamming his shield into the first animal. It rolled backward into the second yevi, and they went down in a tangle. He quickly drove his spear into one, twisted it sharply, withdrew, and stabbed the second. He felt the flint tip pierce fur and flesh, scraping bone beneath. Giving a yell of triumph, he yanked his spear free. One yevi lay still, the other whined as it crept away, dragging its useless hindquarters.

Amero sprinted for the friendly end of the bridge. Just as he reached the wall of shields, a column of raiders four abreast came galloping up the gorge. Amero could see more than thirty men had infiltrated their defenses. They were dressed in dark leather capes and hoods, their faces smeared with dark green paint. Ten or more yevi moved among them, laughing their peculiar, distinctive cry.

The riders approached the bridge, led by a mounted figure in a macabre hood studded with animal horns and teeth.

Surrounded by torch-bearers, the fellow raised his hood and shouted, “People of Arku-peli, listen to me! I am Zannian, chief of Almurk! Put down your weapons! If you resist, we’ll kill you all!”

The villagers huddled behind their shields. Encouraged by their silence, the hooded man said, “Lay down your spears, and I will spare your lives! This is your only chance for mercy!”

Amero shouted back, “This is our valley, and we’ll defend it!”

“Die then!” The chief yanked his hood back down.

Riders dropped deer-antler grapples into the tangle of thorns laid around the end of the bridge. Then a mob of slaves was driven forward. Whips snapping, the raiders forced the captives to haul on the rawhide ropes attached to the grapples. The thorn barrier quickly came apart.

“Stand ready!” Amero shouted. “Those in the back, brace those in the front!”

Villagers in the rear of the formation pressed their shields into the backs of their comrades. Some laid their spears over the shoulders of their neighbors, creating a bristling hedge of points. Their steadfastness didn’t discourage the raiders. In fact, Zannian’s men seemed outraged at this show of resistance. Screaming threats of bloody death and destruction, they thundered across the bridge, slamming into the wall of shields.

The bridge was too short to allow a full charge, but the impact was still enough to dent the line deeply. It was an awkward fight, with the raiders jabbing at the villagers’ exposed heads and the villagers stabbing at the riders’ legs. Zannian ordered more men across the bridge to press home the attack.

Leading from the front rank, Amero shoved his spear forward and felt it strike home. A raider reeled off his horse, a deep wound in his thigh. He fell among the churning horses’ legs and was impaled by another villager before he could escape.

Horses reared, lashing out with their hooves, and several villagers were knocked down. Gaps opened in the line of shields, and the raiders pushed forward to exploit them.

Beramun found herself trapped on all sides by friends and foes. Hemmed in so tightly she could hardly breathe, she threw down her wooden buckler and climbed on the back of the man in front of her. A dart whisked by her face. Raiders who couldn’t reach the front line were using their throwing sticks to bombard the tightly packed villagers.

Beramun clambered over the heads of battling townsfolk until she reached the entwined supports of the bridge. She hauled herself up the thick cable under a constant barrage of darts. One scored a line across her calf, another tore through her hair, just missing her skull. She kept climbing.

Atop the south tower, she found both sentinels slain, their bodies studded with darts. She pried stones loose from the ledge and dropped them into the mob below. The crowd was so dense, it was impossible to miss, and she brained several raiders.

Realizing there would be no quick victory, Zannian ordered his men back. The raiders retreated, to the jeers of the elated villagers. A few townsfolk broke ranks to chase the raiders and were set upon by the yevi, hiding in the shadows on the bridge. They were dragged, screaming, into the darkness. Amero called the rest back, anxious to prevent unnecessary casualties.

As the raiders withdrew up the canyon out of sight, the villagers set up a cheer, thinking they’d vanquished their enemy. Their joy was short lived. In moments, the raiders came galloping back. They’d retreated only to gain room for a charge. Thundering down the slope three abreast, each raider was bent low, their long spears leveled.

From her high perch on one of the bridge’s support cables, Beramun shouted, “Form up, quick! They’re coming back!”

Amero yelled, “You, on the far right and left, move in behind and support the front!”

The bridge was thirty-two paces long. When the raiders were halfway across, Beramun cast her spear at one of the lead riders. She missed, but a horse in the second rank tripped on the shaft and went down, hurling its rider into the river. Another horse stumbled on the first fallen beast, then another.

The momentum of the raiders was so great that they surged past the fallen men and horses and hit the wall of shields. The villagers directly in their path were ridden under. The second line collapsed, but the third held. Villagers in the broken lines cast aside their shields and hauled raiders off their horses. A close, bloody fight ensued at the south end of the bridge.

“Push on!” Zannian bellowed from the north bank. “Kill them! Ride them down! Go! Go!”

Raiders emulated Beramun and began climbing up the bridge’s rigging. Six of them closed on the lone girl. Her spear gone, all Beramun had was a flint knife and whatever stones she could pry loose from the tower top. Standing fearlessly exposed to enemy darts, she knocked two raiders off the rigging in quick succession.

More and more horsemen piled onto the bridge. The villagers’ line was slowly bending backward under the sheer weight bearing against it. Amero’s people dug in their heels. Men and horses toppled into the river, and the swift current bore them away.

A creaking groan sounded, and the bridge canted to one side. There followed a louder crack, and one of the cables weakened by Amero broke. The thick cord whipped through the air, knocking several riders into the river, and the west side of the bridge collapsed, pitching everyone in the water.

A roar went up from the embattled villagers. Raiders and their horses were swept away by the frigid current, though a few clung to the planking still attached to the bridge. The attackers who’d gained a toehold on the south shore were soon battered and subdued.

Beramun had noticed the weakened condition of the upper rope on her side of the bridge. She hacked at it with her knife. At last, the cable parted. Men still clinging to the crazily canted bridge were swept away. The water roiled with people and horses, some swimming, some drowning, others already floating lifelessly. A handful of villagers ran along the water’s edge, bombarding the frantically swimming raiders with rocks and spears. Any raider who made it to the hostile shore was swiftly dispatched, their bodies thrown back in the river.

On the north bank, rams’ horns sounded the retreat. Dejected raiders rode down the canyon out of sight of the cheering villagers. The yevi slunk away as well. The green-daubed men melted into the shadows at the foot of the western cliffs. Though Amero could no longer see them, he was sure they were still there, lurking in the dark.

Zannian alone remained, gazing over the battlefield. He removed his fearsome hood and threw it down in disgust. By the light of the blazing barricades and in full view of the people of Yala-tene, he removed his leather breastplate and drew his bronze sword. Slowly, deliberately, Zannian scored a cut along his left breast. Dark blood seeped from the wound. He extended his bright blade to the gawking villagers, so they could see the blood on it.

The formerly cheering townsfolk fell silent. Nubis asked the question for everyone: “Is he mad? Why does he injure himself?”

“He’s sending you a message,” Beramun said grimly. “This defeat is a small hurt, like the cut he gave himself. He’s not giving up, not after one fight.”

His message delivered, Zannian laid the bare blade on his shoulder and rode away.

Chapter 20

Zannian withdrew his men from the pass, leaving a score of Jade Men and yevi to make sure the villagers didn’t reoccupy the heights. When the sun rose, the majority of the band was drawn up on the western plain: nine hundred twenty-two warriors on horseback, another forty without mounts, and just under two hundred slaves and prisoners.

Nacris, Hoten, and the lesser captains sat crossed-legged on the ground in a semicircle, listening to their chief. He stood before them next to a framework of willow upon which was stretched a soft, tanned sheepskin. Drawn on the skin was a crude map of the valley, as deduced by reports from their scouts and information forced from their prisoners.

“Here is our goal,” Zannian said, pointing to the center of the map. “Arku-peli itself lies here, between the eastern shore of the lake and these cliffs. There are only five entrances to the valley, and three of them lie on the eastern side – Bearclaw Gap, Cedarsplit Gap, Northwind Pass. On our side there are two – the pass we know, which the villagers call the Plains Gap, and this unnamed canyon, impassable to us.”

“Why impassable, Zan?” Hoten asked.

“It’s only a few paces wide, and the river fills it completely.”

Zannian picked up a clay dish of red ocher, the same pigment his men used to paint their faces. He dipped a well-chewed willow twig in the thick paint and snaked a red line through the Plains Gap to the river.

“Half the band will ride to the spot where the bridge once stood and hold the mud-toes there.” He drew a line down, parallel to the riverbank. “The rest will ride south and take the gardens where the villagers grow much of their food.”

“We destroy the gardens?” asked one of the captains.

“No,” Zannian replied. “We live on their food, weakening them and strengthening ourselves.”

The men nodded, murmuring approvingly. Nacris ended the optimistic mood by asking, “What about the bronze dragon?”

The circle fell quiet. Zannian folded his arms. “The Master has seen to him.”

“How?”

The chief bristled. Failure in battle and the sight of Beramun still out of his reach put him in no mood for sharp questions, even from his mother.

“The Master has lured the bronze dragon away. He won’t be a factor in our fight.”

“Then neither will the Master.”

Zannian glared at her. “We don’t need him to defeat these mud-grubbers! They’re clever, they’ll resist for a while, but they can’t stop us!”

Some of his more zealous underlings got up and shouted, fiercely echoing their chiefs sentiments. One by one the other captains stood, vowing death and destruction to the villagers. Only Nacris and Hoten remained seated – she by necessity and he by choice.

When the shouting subsided, Hoten asked carefully, “What is our next step?”

“Capture the gardens,” Zannian told him. “If you take any prisoners, I want them alive. We’ll put the slaves to work tending the crops. I’ll lead the rest of the band to the river to keep the villagers in place.”

“What about the Jade Men?” Nacris wanted to know.

“Keep them close but out of sight. They’re our secret dagger, and when the time comes, they’ll be the first across the river.”

Zannian collected the four hundred best horsemen in his band and led them into the pass. On their heels came Hoten with the balance of the raiders, including the men who’d lost their mounts. Next came the slaves and prisoners, dragging heavy burdens of weapons and supplies.

Nacris and the remaining Jade Men were the last to go. Standing silent and immobile in the hot morning sun, the Jade Men’s green face paint and green clothing made them look like an orchard of weird, man-shaped trees.

Nacris looked them over proudly. “Sons of Greengall,” she said loudly, “our master has gone away to do battle against the beast whose range we have invaded. With the bronze dragon gone, there is nothing between us and victory but a few hundred hut-dwellers who think they can defeat us with tricks and traps and piles of stone. But we know better!”

One of the Jade Men raised his spear in salute, then plunged its head into the ground.

“No retreat!” he vowed. “We will not leave this valley without victory!”

“No retreat!” echoed his comrades. “Greengall! Greengall!”

Nacris let them chant a while, then held up a hand for silence. They quieted.

“We will make the river run red with our enemies’ blood!” she said. Leaning forward in her litter, she added, “But there is one villager you must not kill. I speak of Amero, called Arkuden, the headman of Arku-peli. The Master has given this man to me to use as I will. When the battle joins, I will point him out to you. Mark him well.” Her flinty eyes raked over the ranks of green men. “In my hands it will take him many, many days to die, and from him I will have the answer to my final vengeance. No one, not even my son, will deny me my due! Do you understand?”

“Yes, Green Mother,” they replied as one.

At her nod, they picked up their weapons and marched into the steep pass, the last of the invaders to quit the plain.

*

Despite their initial success, it was clear to the villagers they hadn’t won the war. All day, while they worked feverishly to strengthen their defenses, they knew they were being watched. Zannian’s band remained out of sight, yet from the crags above the swift river to the shadowed crevices beyond the ruins of the fallen bridge, a thousand hidden eyes saw everything being done on the open floor of the valley. Work stopped periodically as nervous villagers stood and stared at the far shore, trying to catch sight of the invisible menace. Calmer heads, like Huru or tough old Jenla, had to scold or cajole them back to work.

On Amero’s instructions, the east bank of the river was covered with obstacles to hinder the raiders. Stakes were pounded deep into the sandy loam and long vines were strung between them, creating tangle-traps. Though his people were exhausted from the night’s battle, Amero kept them working. Busy, they had less time to be afraid.

He walked among them tirelessly, offering encouragement, settling disagreements, helping out whenever any difficulties arose. He hammered stakes, braided vines, and even helped comb the shoreline for bodies and weapons washed up during the night. While working on this last task, he came across Beramun piling up raider spears and leather breastplates in heaps. A score of dead raiders lay nearby, stripped of arms. Some villagers were preparing a pyre for them.

“Greetings,” Amero said to the girl. “Are you well?”

“Well enough,” she replied. She threw two boiled cuirasses on the growing pile.

“I saw you on the bridge tower last night. You fought like a panther.” Beramun did not reply, but stood staring down at the debris of battle, arms folded. “I mean that as a compliment,” Amero explained awkwardly.

She shook her head, dismissing his words, then kicked the heap of stiff leather armor. “I helped make these,” she said. Tears welled up in her jet eyes. “There was another prisoner, a woman named Roki, my friend —” A sob interrupted her words. “She and I escaped together, but she...”

Her misery made his heart ache, but Amero didn’t dare take her in his arms. He settled for taking her hand. The moment was fleeting. She noticed the others were watching them and freed her hand, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks.

Hulami the vintner arrived with a caravan of travois loaded with food and drink.

“Arkuden!” Hulami called.

Without another word, Beramun slipped away. Amero drew a deep breath and let it sigh out.

“How goes the work in the village?” he asked the vintner.

Hulami handed her chief a skin of wine. “Well, thanks to the dragon, the north and south entrances are sealed, but the western baffle still has a gap. I asked Montu to organize a gang to finish the job, but the other elders in the village are protesting. They say if the last opening is blocked, everyone outside will be trapped if the raiders cross the river.”

“Blast them! We’ll see about that!” Amero shoved the wineskin back into Hulami’s hands. He named Huru to command in his absence, then stalked back to Yala-tene.

The western entrance was just as Hulami described, partially open. The filled section looked fine. Duranix had torn up boulders the size of small huts and wedged them into the gap between the baffle wall and the main wall. A hundred men pushing at once could never dislodge such mighty stones.

On the other side of the baffle, two villagers stood casual guard, leaning on their spears. One of them was Lyopi.

“Why isn’t this gap closed?” Amero demanded as soon as he was within earshot.

Taken aback by his bluntness, Lyopi replied, “The elders chose not to. How wall you and the others get back inside if there’s no opening?”

“If we fail out there and the wall stands open, the raiders will ride right through,” he snapped. “I won’t have the town’s safety endangered by stupid half-measures!” He cupped hands to his lips, calling, “Montu! Montu, where are you?”

“Calm down,” Lyopi said. “I thought the raiders had been turned back. Why so angry, Amero?”

“Many good people died last night to keep our village safe! Their deaths mean nothing if the village falls from carelessness!” Red-faced, he shouted for Montu again.

Since reason had no effect on his bad temper, Lyopi shouted back, “You’ll find the elders at the Offertory, Arkuden! Go and rant at them, not me!”

Without another word, he did just that.

The town was nearly empty, with so many people at the river camp or manning the walls. The Offertory felt especially abandoned. Before they’d left, the Sensarku had put everything neatly away. Their communal houses were closed and shuttered. The walls of the Offertory were as clean and white as ever, but windblown sand had drifted through the opening in the sanctuary wall, marring the spotless inner courtyard.

When Amero approached the cairn, a flock of crows rose squawking from the top, scattering ash and burned bones. Amero circled the cairn and found Montu and the remaining elders sitting on the sand. Slabs of roast were piled between them. Open pots of wine and cider lent their acid bite to the air. The elders were dining heartily on elk meant for the dragon.

“Greetings, victorious Arkuden!” cooper Montu hailed him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Amero demanded. They regarded him blankly. “Why didn’t you finish closing the western baffle?”

Adjat the potter said, “Arkuden, if we close that last opening, no one can get in.”

“That’s the purpose of the wall, idiot!” Amero shouted.

Stunned by his unusual harshness, Adjat said, “But you’re outside, with so many of our friends and kinsmen —”

“And fourteen of our friends and kinsmen died last night to keep the enemy at bay! I won’t have you endangering the town out of misguided feelings for me or anyone else. Close the baffle at once! This very morning. Do you hear?”

“The Protector’s gone, and there aren’t any young men left to do the heavy work,” Montu protested.

“Then do it yourself!” he shouted. “Turn out every soul left in Yala-tene – the old, the young, the sick, the lame – and let them carry stones. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Arkuden,” said the cooper meekly. “Yes. We’ll begin right away.”

They put aside their meat and filed out of the Offertory. Following them, Amero added, “If you need ready stone, pull down these walls.”

The elders halted in a body, aghast. “Pull down the Protector’s place?” said Adjat.

“The Sensarku won’t protest,” Amero said coldly. “Leave the cairn if you must, but take all the stone you need from the Offertory walls.”

“Very well, Arkuden.”

Sentinel horns blared. Amero cast about wildly, seeking the source of the alarm. The horns were too close to be the lookouts on the cliffs. They must be on the town wall.

He raced through the streets to the western entrance, irrationally fearing that the raiders had somehow jumped the river and were advancing on the wide-open town. As he ran up the ramp, he spied Lyopi among the crowd and worked his way to her.

“What is it?” he demanded, out of breath.

“Look there.” She pointed. Dust was rising from the orchard and gardens across the lake.

Everyone stared, crestfallen, but Amero said, “This was bound to happen. They failed to overwhelm us last night, so now they’ll try to get around us. They’ll try to land at different points along the lake and river. We don’t have enough people to defend the whole shoreline.”

“Will Duranix come back in time to stop them?” Lyopi asked.

Everyone atop the wall looked to Amero, waiting for his answer. He realized he couldn’t lie to them. “Duranix flew away to fight the green dragon,” the Arkuden said. “That means we’re on our own, but so are the raiders.”

There was complete silence for several heartbeats, then an elderly woman spoke up. “Can we win, Arkuden?”

“We’ll win.” He managed a smile. “Those savages fight only for lust and loot. We fight for our homes, our lives, and the lives of all who come after us. They are many, and ruthless. We are few, but determined. We’ll win because we must.”

No one cheered, but several heads nodded in agreement.

The crowd slowly dispersed. Lyopi turned to go back to her guard post, but Amero caught her by the arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what? Shouting at me? I’m not a child. I’m not going to cry because you raised your voice to me.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry for more than that. I’ve been acting like a fool half my age.”

He saw a teasing light glowing in those familiar brown eyes. “Half what age, Amero? You never stopped being a boy.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said ruefully. “I feel like a lost child right now. Duranix is gone, Beramun cares nothing for me, and I need all the friends I have left.”

He leaned forward to kiss her. Lyopi turned her face slightly and he kissed her cheek.

“Go,” she said, giving him a none-too-gentle shove. “If we’re both still alive at midsummer, we’ll be friends again.”

She was right, of course, he thought ruefully. His boy’s heart was still there, inside the breast of the desperate headman.

As he was leaving, Amero spied Montu leading a long line of villagers toward the last gap in the wall. Each carried a sizable rock in his or her arms. When he saw that, he finally believed his own proud words. They would win. They had to.

*

Hoten stood at the water’s edge below the orchard. While his horse drank from the lake, he took in the distant view of Yala-tene. This was the broadest part of the lake, but he could easily make out features of the village in the distance. There was the wall, and a white peak that looked like some sort of altar above the yellow sandstone defenses, and beyond it was the tumbledown heap of stones and timber that served as the village foundry. Between the southern edge of the wall and the great waterfall was an open stretch of rocky beach a quarter-league long. Some obscure wooden structures were clustered at the foot of the falls.

Looking up, Hoten eyed the high cliffs behind the town. That was the place to be! From there, one could rain fire and death on any part of the village. If the raiders could gain those heights, Yala-tene would be forced to surrender. Unfortunately, because of the intervening mountains, lake, and waterfall, the only route to the eastern cliffs involved leaving the valley and journeying far to the south, through a lower pass, then north again through the eastern foothills. Such a trip would take many days, through territory infested by centaurs, elves, and the warlike human nomads of the east – not a practical strategy.

Hoten started back to the old bridge site to confer with his chief. On his way through the orchard he found eight of his warriors standing idly around the base of a young apple tree. He demanded to know why they were lazing about.

“Hoten, look at this!” one man exclaimed. He snapped off a slender green stem from one of the apple tree’s low-hanging branches. He thrust the sprig into the dirt, directly in front of Hoten’s horse, then stood back, arms folded.

“What are you playing at, Kej?”

“Wait! Just wait!”

A minute passed. The men kept looking from the twig to Hoten and back, and grinning broadly.

“Somebody tell me what’s going on – now!” Hoten demanded.

“Look here!” Kej pulled the twig out of the ground. It wasn’t a twig any longer; a thin tangle of roots hung from the broken end.

“Eh?” Hoten dismounted and took the twig from Kej. “That’s impossible!”

The men pulled up other twigs they’d planted before he arrived. Each had a tuft of fine new roots. Hoten reluctantly accepted the evidence of his eyes.

“This is some rich soil!” Kej said, laughing.

“Shut up. There’s something strange at work here.” Taking the rooted stem with him, Hoten mounted his horse. “You men get to work,” he ordered. “Zannian will be here soon, and I don’t want him to see you idling around watching plants grow!”

He rode away. At the bridge site, the standoff was still going on. Raiders rode to the water’s edge, yelling and shaking their spears. Across the river, a block of villagers, drawn up on the facing slope, stood stolidly behind their cowhide shields.

Zannian slumped on his horse, chewing a strip of venison.

“Zan, the gardens are ours,” Hoten reported, “but there’s something you need to see.”

He held out the twig and explained what he’d observed. Zannian listened but didn’t believe it any more than Hoten had at first.

The chief held out a hand. Hoten put the tiny apple tree sapling in it. Not bothering even to look at the twig, Zannian threw a leg over his horse’s neck and dropped lightly to the ground. He shoved the tender shoot into the grainy sand by the water’s edge.

“I’ll make you a wager, Hoten. If this sprig grows noticeably by tomorrow, I’ll give you the pick of any horse in the band.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Zannian’s grin was feral. “You get the honor of leading the first attack across the river.”

An honor indeed. Zannian knew the initial attack would be the bloodiest fight in the valley.

“Well, what do you say?”

“I don’t need a new horse, hut there is a wager I’ll make with you.” His chief nodded for him to continue. “If that sprig is larger by tomorrow, I want your mother for my mate.”

Zannian couldn’t have been more surprised if Hoten had asked to mate with the green dragon.

After staring at him for several startled moments, the chief burst out laughing and said, “I’ll take that bet, but I won’t call you father if you win!”

“And I won’t call you son,” Hoten replied.

There was no disputing the outcome of the bet. By the next morning, the tiny sprig was a sapling a pace tall and as thick as Hoten’s thumb. Zannian was fascinated. He waved aside Hoten’s sincere thanks for Nacris’s hand, then called for more shoots to be cut from the orchard and transplanted to the bridge site.

“Why plant more?” asked Hoten. “We have the whole crop abandoned by the mud-toes.”

“I don’t want them for food. I have another use for them.” Zannian explained, and Hoten’s eyes widened in surprise.

Chapter 21

The green dragon flew northwest. Land flowed rapidly beneath him and his implacable bronze pursuer. The northern plain, the steep mountain range of Dar, the delta of the great Plains River, and at last, the great sea passed beneath them. As the first stars appeared in the darkening sky, the dragons left dry land behind and continued their flight over the open ocean.

Once over the water, Sthenn descended until he was skimming above the tossing waves. Duranix dropped to within five leagues, determined to keep his canny foe in sight.

Sthenn bore left during the night, heading due west. Duranix easily followed his enemy’s progress in the dark, as the wash from Sthenn’s wings left ridges of white foam on the surface of the calm sea. At dawn, Sthenn overtook a pod of whales, black-skinned animals each three paces long. Snaking his head down into the waves, the giant dragon snatched out two whales in quick succession, gulping them down whole. The rest of the panicked pod sounded, but Sthenn tracked them through the murky green water and was directly over them when they surfaced again. He grabbed a third whale in his jaws and tossed it over his shoulder.

Duranix saw the whale tumbling through the air, and he caught it in his claws. It infuriated him to accept food from his enemy, but he was practical about it in the end. His belly was achingly empty. He devoured the small whale in two tremendous snaps of his jaws.

The green sea turned blue when the morning sun broke through the haze on the horizon. A low coastline appeared ahead, and Sthenn turned toward it.

Duranix readied himself to pounce. He hoped to catch Sthenn when the green dragon landed to drink or rest, but his old tormentor flashed over the narrow beach without slowing. Duranix saw a blur of green foliage, the cone of a smoldering volcano, and they were over the trackless sea once more.

More islands appeared on each side, but Sthenn paid them no heed. Gradually he gained height again, leveling off a thousand paces above the water. His wings worked unflaggingly. He did not seem tired at all.

Frustrated, Duranix tried to close on his adversary. To his delight, the gap between them shrank from four leagues to barely one. At that range, he loosed a bolt of lightning. With uncanny prescience, Sthenn slipped out of the way, and the bolt sizzled harmlessly past. The green dragon promptly rose into a tall bank of clouds, vanishing in the white mist.

Duranix slowed. Clouds were a perfect place for an ambush. He peered through the billowing mass, trying to catch a glimpse of his quarry. He saw nothing.

After circling a bit, he made up his mind and plunged into the cloudbank. Immediately blue static collected on his wingtips, horns, and tail. He welcomed the growing crackle of power. Bolts arced from cloud to cloud and from cloud to sea, growing larger with each sweep of his wings. He steered a serpentine path through the mist, sowing lightning and rain in his wake.

On his third swing through the white cloud, Duranix detected movement above and let a mighty bolt of fire erupt from his throat. It struck with a thunderous explosion, and Sthenn came hurtling into view, his decrepit hide trailing smoke.

Got him! Duranix exulted. He dropped free of the cloud and followed the falling green dragon.

Two hundred paces above the wind-tossed waves, Sthenn righted himself. There was a black singe mark down the center of his back. Duranix folded his wings and plummeted at his ancient enemy, claws extended. Yawing from side to side, Sthenn seemed stunned, barely able to stay in the air. He sank to within forty paces of the water. Thunder rolled overhead, and heavy rain lashed at both dragons. Duranix flexed his claws wide, eager to do as much damage as possible.

His talons met only air. At the last moment, Sthenn adroitly maneuvered out of the way. Duranix plunged by and, unable to stop, hit the sea, sending up a huge column of water.

Sthenn climbed leisurely into the clouds, laughing. “Enjoy your bath, little friend!” he called.

Furious, Duranix fought his way back to the stormy surface, spewing torrents of saltwater from his mouth and nostrils. A wave struck him in the face, and he submerged again.

Sthenn swung around in a tight curve and came winging back. Just as the bronze dragon’s head broke the surface a second time, the green dragon’s heavy tail struck him smartly on the back of the skull, plunging him once again facedown into the ocean.

The green dragon flapped for altitude and turned for another pass. “Come, come!” he chided. “We can’t be done yet. Get up, little friend!”

Kicking his legs, Duranix propelled half his body length out of the water. He intended to throw himself on his enemy and drag him down, even if it meant they both sank beneath the waves. However, Sthenn saw the danger and drew back, fanning his wings hard to reverse course. For once his elderly reflexes were just a bit slow, and he couldn’t evade Duranix’s outstretched claws.

As the dragons met, a tremendous bolt of lightning flashed from the clouds to their metallic hides. Duranix was thrown backward into the sea, momentarily dazzled by the terrific flare and concussion. Waves broke over him, and he choked on seawater.

When he finally raised his long neck above the waves, Sthenn was nowhere in sight. Duranix ducked underwater. Even with momentary flickers of lightning brightening the depths, he could see no sign of his quarry.

Without the metallic dragons aloft to stir up the atmosphere, the storm quickly blew itself out. Shafts of sunlight fell on the heaving sea. Sthenn was still nowhere to be seen.

Where had the evil beast gone? Duranix refused to believe the green dragon had succumbed to the lightning strike. The only evidence he would accept for Sthenn’s demise was the monster’s lifeless carcass.

As he bobbed in the calming waves, he felt an odd tickling sensation on his tail. Before he could react, he was jerked under the surface. Saltwater went into his eyes, blinding him. He lashed out with talons and twisted his tail free of the unseen grasp, surfacing in time to see Sthenn burst from the ocean not far away.

“The game isn’t over yet!” the green called mockingly. “The whole world lies ahead of us, dear Duranix. Rise and follow!”

His desiccated laughter carried far over the open sea. “Right now, my little Zan is butchering your humans and laying waste to your valley. Will you allow such deeds to go unavenged?”

In answer, the bronze dragon flung himself into the air. Sthenn put his tail to the morning sun and flew away.

Water streaming from his wings and back, Duranix followed.

*

Ten days had passed since the battle of the bridge. Wary of the raiders’ mobility, each evening Amero sent scouts to the far corners of the valley to keep an eye on what the enemy was doing. Beramun went on one such patrol to the northern end of the valley, returning two days later.

Jenla, Huru, and the rest hailed her. “Welcome back,” Amero said, rising to his feet. “How is the north?”

“Still as a winter glade,” she reported. “I found no sign the raiders are trying to get around that way.”

He handed her a bowl filled from the bubbling stew pot bedded in the embers at the edge of the fire.

As she wolfed down the first hot food she’d had in days, Beramun asked, “What’s happening here? What’s Zannian been up to?”

“He’s been quiet since his men took our gardens, but he’s up to something,” Amero said. He gestured to where the fallen bridge had stood. “They’ve raised a hedge on the river-bank, so we can’t see what they’re doing.”

“They’re using the trees Tiphan cured with his spirit power,” Jenla explained. “They grow so fast that in a few days the hedge will be a forest!”

Beramun drained the last morsels of stew and Amero refilled her bowl. “It’s only a question of where and when they’ll attack,” the Arkuden said. “The hedge may be a trick, to make us watch them at one place while the real attack falls somewhere else.”

“Send someone over to have a look,” Beramun suggested.

The others fell silent and Amero said, “Paharo tried, last night. The raiders caught him... and killed him before our eyes.”

Shocked, Beramun swallowed hard. She had liked the brave young hunter. She couldn’t believe Paharo was gone.

As they stared into the flames, loss evident on every face, she walked around the fire to kneel beside Huru. The foundry master was weeping soundlessly, tears streaming down his dark, lined cheeks.

She rested her hand on his. “Your son was a good man.”

Huru closed his eyes, grateful for her words. She looked across the leaping flames to Amero. “You still need to know what’s going on over there. I’m a strong swimmer. I’ll go.”

Amero shook his head. “You just got back. Rest. Someone else can do it. I may go myself.”

“Don’t be stupid! You’re needed here.”

Amero’s voice grew loud. “I won’t let you throw your life away!”

“You let Paharo.”

Wood crackled in the fire, sounding unusually loud in the stillness following her words.

Beramun tied her hair back with a thong and asked for a hank of rope. Tepa went off into the darkness and returned with a coil of braided vines, recovered from the ruined bridge. Beramun tied it firmly under her arms. Carrying the rest of the rope over her shoulder, she strode away from the camp. Amero, Huru, and several others trailed behind.

The sound of the river’s rushing water covered the noise of their footfalls on the gravelly shore, but with the raiders only thirty or forty paces away on the opposite bank, the little group did no talking.

Beramun knelt and, by gestures, indicated what she intended to do. Amero clasped her hands in his, pleading with his eyes. She pulled free.

The villagers held one end of the rope as Beramun slipped into the water. The current pulled the line taut as the people on shore played it out. She swam a third of the way across, then dove.

Amero, hands clenched tightly into fists, watched Beramun surface in shallow water by the west bank. She waved once, then skulked down the beach, the rope still securely tied around her waist.

Suddenly, two horsemen rode into sight behind Beramun. Amero and the others dropped on their bellies.

Beramun was brought up short when they stopped paying out the rope. Looking back, she saw the riders. She crept back into shallow water and submerged. The mounted men passed without noticing her.

When they were gone, she crawled on her belly through the grass to higher ground. From this vantage point she could see behind the dense wall of fruit tree saplings. She stayed only a moment, then returned to the river.

Before she could slip away, however, a pair of shaggy gray yevi appeared, their eyes reflecting Lutar’s red light. One sprang into the water and seized the floating rope in his jaws. The other flung itself on Beramun. It hit her squarely between the shoulders, and she disappeared with a loud splash.

“Pull!” Amero hissed.

The villagers hauled frantically on the rope, hand over hand. There was a tremendous drag on the line, and even with eight pulling, they could scarcely get the rope in. Halfway across the river, the calm water erupted. In the poor light it was impossible to tell who was in trouble, Beramun or the yevi.

Since the noise was sure to rouse the raiders, Amero abandoned all pretense of stealth and shouted for help. More villagers came running down the hill and took hold of the rope. With the extra help, they dragged it in.

Knife drawn, Amero waded out to assist Beramun. A limp and lifeless body surfaced a few paces away. Those on shore desperately demanded to know whether it was Beramun.

Amero’s questing hand found sodden gray fur. The floating corpse was a drowned yevi.

He turned and thrashed toward shore, shouting, “It’s not her! Pull! Pull!”

The villagers obeyed with a will. The second yevi, thoroughly entangled in the vine rope and likewise drowned, glided to the bank at their feet. Of Beramun, there was no sign.

Several dozen mounted raiders, fully armed, galloped down the opposite shore and hurled short spears. The missiles hissed into the shallows and thumped into the sand. Dropping the line, Amero and villagers had to retreat.

Back at camp, everyone was dumbfounded to find Beramun drying herself by the fire. They rushed forward, clapping her on the back and laughing with relief.

“What happened?” Amero asked. “How did you escape?”

She wrung more water from her long black hair. “Simple,” she said. “I figured yevi were like wolves – they can swim, but only on the surface. So I dove, untied myself, and snared them in the rope. As long as your people kept the rope taut, the beasts couldn’t untangle themselves.” She shrugged. “Once free, I swam upstream to get away and came ashore.”

The villagers laughed and cheered. Giddy with relief, Amero took her in his arms and embraced her like a comrade.

“You’re graying my hairs, you know,” he said.

“Oh? And who grayed them before me?” Her gentle gibe inspired more laughter from the delighted villagers.

Jenla brought Beramun a mug of hot broth. As she sipped it, she reported what she’d seen on the other side of the river.

“They’re building rafts,” Beramun said. “Big ones. I saw slave gangs lashing whole trees together behind the hedge.”

“I knew it!” Amero smote his palm with his fist.

“Can we stop them?” asked Huru.

“I don’t know,” Amero replied. “We must meet them at the water’s edge, wherever they land. If they get their horses ashore, we’re in big trouble.”

He increased the number of sentinels patrolling the eastern shore and ordered bonfires lighted at half-league intervals all the way down to the lake.

Beramun’s news sent a chill through Yala-tene. The quiet interlude had lulled many into thinking the raiders might give up and go away. The rafts made it clear the fight was far from over.

*

To renew his people’s confidence, Amero designed new defenses for the eastern shore of the lake. A fence of sharpened stakes was erected, and broken mussel shells were poured on the banks to cut horses’ hooves. Villagers stripped the valley and eastern passes of every thorn bush and movable boulder. These were piled up behind the stakes to further impede the enemy.

From the old bridge tower to the open lake, the shoreline was two leagues long. Amero knew they didn’t have enough stones and stakes to fill the whole distance, so he left gaps in places suitable for the villagers to defend – hills, gullies, and other natural strong points – mainly near the old bridge. Using shovels made from Duranix’s cast-off bronze scales, they deepened the gullies and piled the dirt on the hills to make them steeper.

Montu the cooper came down from the village once the last gap in the wall had been closed. Because Montu was a skilled woodworker, Amero asked him to estimate how long it would take Zannian to produce enough rafts to ferry his warband across the river.

“At twenty men or ten horses per raft, it would take fifty rafts to carry a thousand warriors,” Montu said. “Working night and day, they might make ten rafts a day.”

It had been six days since Beramun’s daring swim across the river. Six days – perhaps sixty rafts.

Everyone expected the raiders to come that night or by dawn the next day. All were surprised when the raiders began dragging their rafts to the river in the middle of the afternoon, the same day Montu made his estimate.

Horns bleated and bronze scales chimed in the villagers’ camp. Lookouts high atop the eastern cliffs raised the alarm for those inside the wall. People ran to their assigned places, took up whatever weapons they had, and waited.

The village militia formed into two bands, one to defend the crossing by the old bridge and another to hold the bank halfway up the river to the lake. Amero gave command of the bridge group to Huru. He led the latter himself, two hundred eighty strong, to a point directly west of the village.

The raiders launched their rafts from the former bridge landing. Warriors on foot pelted the opposite shore with a thick rain of darts, driving Huru’s defenders back. The first rafts carried no horses, only armed men and frightened slaves with long poles for pushing the rafts. The defenders could do nothing but watch as ten timber platforms packed with garishly painted raiders left the western shore.

Amero led his group away from the imminent fight. It pained him to do so, but he knew Zannian had enough men, and probably enough rafts, to make other crossings. His band took up a position hidden in a deep ditch a league from Hum’s men, and there they waited. Lookouts on higher ground stood ready to signal Amero when the raiders made their move.

In unison, the raiders raised their spears and chanted, “Zannian! Zannian!”

Huru’s people awaited them in silence. Raiders armed with throwing sticks lofted darts over the heads of their comrades. The darts, each two spans long and tipped with flint, thudded into the sand in front of Huru’s position. The missiles climbed up the hill as the rafts drew closer.

“Stand ready,” Huru said quietly. Each villager laid his spear in the gap between his own shield and his neighbor’s.

The nearest raft was only a few steps from shore. On the first raft stood Hoten. The balding raider wore his elaborate collar of bear and panther teeth. Despite winning his bet with Zannian, he’d volunteered to lead the attack. He was past the prime of a plainsman’s life and knew this would likely be his last fight, one way or another.

His raft scraped sand. Drawing a bronze elven blade from the scabbard at his side, Hoten raised it high.

“Forward!” he bellowed.

“Let’s go!” shouted foundry master Huru, and the wall of shields, bristling with spears and studded with thrown darts, moved down the hill.

Darts hummed over Hoten’s head toward the villagers. Now and then one found its mark, and a defender went down. The man or woman behind the stricken fighter stepped forward to fill the gap. Hoten admired their tenacity. The villagers had shown more courage and ingenuity than any foe the raiders had battled on their long march across the plains.

He swung his metal blade down, splintering a villager’s wooden shield. A black flint spearhead whisked by his ear. Wrenching his sword free, Hoten lopped off the spearhead, then thrust his blade at the man facing him. Silvanesti bronze met flesh. Bleeding copiously, the man couldn’t even fall, so tightly were his neighbors pressed against him.

Huru’s band had the better of the hundred or so raiders struggling ashore. His rear ranks were actually suffering more from darts than the front ranks were from close combat.

The villagers pressed on until their feet were in the river. Raiders swarmed around them, stabbing at the villagers’ faces or legs. More rafts were coming ashore above and below the defenders, and Huru saw they might be surrounded if they remained too deeply engaged. He called for his people to withdraw slowly up the hill and to reform their line from five ranks deep to four, thus lengthening their line.

As he turned to face the enemy again, a bronze blade pierced his shield and drove into his chest. His knees sagged. Huru looked into the face of his killer, then collapsed in a heap, the life leaving his eyes.

Hoten put his foot on the dead man’s shield and yanked his blade out.

Their leader gone, the villagers began to lose heart. The wall of overlapping shields was broken, and raiders pushed in between the confused ranks. Dart throwers had to halt their firing as their own warriors were now mixed too closely with the enemy.

Upriver, Amero saw that Huru’s band was slowly breaking apart. He wanted to race to the rescue, but he knew this was what Zannian expected. He and his people stayed put, their anguished eyes fastened on the nearby battle.

It took several blasts of the lookouts’ horns to penetrate their concentration and warn Amero of a new threat. Through the orchard came several very large rafts, pushed over the tilled earth by a swarm of slaves. Once shoved onto the lake, men and horses filed onto these oversized rafts. They rode easily in the calm water.

Amero felt his heart sink. He’d been outflanked. There was nothing to stop the raiders from landing on the east shore. He’d gambled Zannian wouldn’t strike so far south, and he’d lost the gamble.

“Stand up!” he cried. Those around him looked puzzled, their attention still fixed on the fight at the bridge crossing. “Stand up! Sling your shields and couch your spears! We’ve got to stop them!”

Amero led them up the hill to the stone flats above the lake. He let the fleetest young people sprint ahead, with orders to torch the hoist to Duranix’s cave and the other wooden structures outside the wall. By the time his band had re-formed on the shore, smoke was already rising from the hoist. At least the raiders wouldn’t be able to use the dragon’s cave to get above Yala-tene.

*

From midlake, Zannian saw the villagers break and run. He rejoiced at first, thinking they were quitting the fight. When he saw them take up a new position to oppose his landing, his delight faded. He was certain his two hundred mounted warriors would trample the foolish villagers into the mud, but he’d hoped for a rout, not a hard, bitter fight.

“No mercy,” he reminded his men. “We must hit them fast and hard and not let them escape to that pile of mud and stone they call a village.”

The wind shifted, blowing smoke from the burning huts over the lake. It obscured the beach as well, but Zannian kept the rafts going straight ahead. When they finally pad-died clear of the smoke, he saw the villagers had adopted a new formation. Unlike the solid wall of shields they’d used earlier, they were now disposed in a hollow circle, two ranks deep. A smaller band of fighters, shieldless, stood in the center of the circle.

Zannian frowned. What were the mud-toes up to now?

As planned, the trailing rafts had pushed off to each side, so that all would land at the same time. Zannian expected a fight at the water’s edge, but the villagers were drawn up on the highest point of the rocky ledge overlooking the lake. This was a grave mistake. His men would be able to disembark, mount, and then attack.

The rafts bumped ashore. Without waiting to lead his horse onto dry land, Zannian swung onto the animal’s back and raised his sword.

“For Almurk, and victory!” he cried, and dug in his heels. The gray stallion sprang into the shallow water and splashed ashore.

Amero watched the raiders. “Are you ready?” he asked his people. They answered with silent nods, eyes on the approaching enemy. “Then let’em have the stones.”

The villagers in the center of the armed circle, all strong young men, picked up stones and hurled them at the gathering raiders. The rocks had been chiseled with sharp edges and the muscular youths delivered them with great force. Several raiders went down with bleeding heads.

As calmly as he could, Amero said, “Shields overhead.”

As he expected, the infuriated Zannian called forth a shower of darts in retaliation. With their shields over their heads, the villagers absorbed the heavy hail of darts with no ill effects.

The last raiders ashore mounted their horses. “Everyone ready?” asked Amero. Again, the silent nods. He gave the signal, waving his arms.

The front and rear of the circle opened, and villagers came running down from the cliffs, rolling flaming logs ahead of them. Thirty paces from the enemy, the log rollers let go. The nine large timbers, taken from the burning buildings outside the wall, smashed into the riders coming up the hill, scattering them.

*

Zannian had to do some fancy riding to keep his horse from being bowled over by a blazing tree trunk. Once the fiery logs had passed, he rode among his confused men, hitting them with the flat of his sword, kicking them, swearing at them. By the time he settled them again, Amero’s band had withdrawn higher up the slope.

“They want to play tricks, do they?” Zannian fumed. “I’ll teach them some tricks!”

He divided his men into two groups. One, he sent down low along the lakeshore toward the village. The other, which he led, walked their horses slowly up the hill to where Amero’s people waited.

“Darts,” Zannian commanded. The raiders loaded their throwing sticks. “Give them three rounds of darts, then we charge!”

Arms whipped forward, lofting a storm of lethal missiles at the villagers. They held their shields up as before, but they had been weakened by the earlier barrage, and this time many of the flint-headed darts got through. Villagers toppled. The injured and the dead were pulled out of line, and the ring tightened. A second and third volley of darts swept over the circle of spears, then the deadly bombardment ceased.

The raiders launched themselves in a final furious attack. Zannian drove straight for the center of the circle. His horse was speared, and fell. He threw himself off and fought on foot.

The horsemen rode over the resolute villagers, breaking their line in three places. A group of young villagers who had been held in reserve now pushed forward to drive the invaders out of the circle.

Zannian laid about with his long Silvanesti blade. Bronze cut through wooden shields, spearshafts, and flesh with equal ease. In moments the young warlord had hacked his way to the center of the villagers’ formation.

Amero, using a small buckler faced with dragon scales, squared off against the raider chief. Zannian was half a head taller, much younger, and more skilled at hand-to-hand combat. Amero quickly found himself in trouble. His sword was knocked from his grasp, and only the bronze buckler kept him from being hacked to bits.

Time seemed to stand still. Raiders and villagers locked in close, bloody combat fought and died in cruel balance, neither side gaining the upper hand. Riderless horses cantered back and forth, crazed by the cacophony of battle and their own wounds. Injured fighters cried out for water, for mercy, for their chief, for their Arkuden.

Into this maelstrom galloped the second batch of raiders, sent down low along the beach. They tackled the stubborn villagers from behind and broke them. Men and women threw down their shields and spears and ran for their lives. Most never made it. Faced at last with a type of fighting they knew well, the raiders rode them down before they reached the wall.

Zannian presented the point of his sword to Amero’s throat. “Yield!” he cried. “Yield, and I will spare you!”

“Do your worst!” Amero spat, and batted the sword away with his scale-covered shield.

Furious, Zannian made a savage overhand slash. Amero stepped into the swing, allowing the blade to pass behind, and rammed his bronze buckler into his foe’s belly. The raider chief doubled over. With all his strength, Amero brought the shield up, connecting solidly with Zannian’s jaw. The young chiefs arms flew wide, his legs flew up, and down he went on his back. Amero, elated by the success of his desperate gambit, didn’t hesitate. He turned and ran.

The walls of Yala-tene were lined with people shouting and waving. They flung stones, pots, and firewood at the approaching raiders. Others dropped knotted ropes to the ground, so their fleeing friends could climb to safety. Wild with apparent victory, the raiders rode right up to the foot of the wall and grappled with those trying to escape. They were soon overwhelmed by a lethal barrage of debris thrown down on them, and the survivors quickly fled out of range.

Amero was the last to reach the wall. Those above, thinking no one else was left alive below, had withdrawn their ropes and ladders. Amero warded off raiders’ darts with his bronze buckler as he screamed for a rope.

At last a line dropped down the wall. Amero flung his shield aside and grabbed the dangling end. He was hauled up briskly, but when he was still a pace from the top, a dart buried itself in the back of his right thigh.

With a strangled groan, Amero let go the rope and slid down the face of the rock wall, landing in a heap at the bottom. Raucous cheers went up from the raiders, and four men rode forward to claim their prize. They were promptly felled by a torrent of stones from the wall.

A brief scuffle broke out atop the wall. Lyopi tied a rope securely around her waist and, with shouts and blows, bullied her faint-hearted comrades into helping her. She was lowered to the unmoving Arkuden.

The raiders responded with a hail of darts. The stone heads shattered against the wall, showering Lyopi with sharp fragments. In spite of the bombardment, she reached the ground unscathed. Hurriedly she loosed the rope, and snaked it around both of them.

“Up!” she screamed. “Bring us up!”

The sound of her voice caused Amero’s eyes to open. He squinted, trying to focus on his rescuer.

“Beramun?” he muttered.

“No, you ox-brained fool! It’s Lyopi! Shut up and hang on!”

She wrapped her arms tightly around him as they were dragged up through a continuous pelting of missiles. Lyopi turned Amero to the wall, using her own body to protect him from further hits.

Once they reached the top, she untied them both, shouting, “Now get back, all of you! Anybody else who falls outside stays there!”

Amazed by her daring deed, the villagers obeyed with alacrity, stampeding down the ramps into the streets below. Lyopi and those who could still fight crouched on the walls, watching the raiders. After much frustrated galloping back and forth, the attackers retreated to the beach, out of range of anything that could be thrown at them.

Lyopi turned her attention to Amero. Rolling him onto his stomach, she ordered three men to hold him down. The dart was deeply embedded in his thigh, a span above the back of his knee. She took a firm grip on the dart’s blood-slick shaft and pulled. Amero groaned and twisted in agony, but the men kept him down.

The dart came free. Amero gave a cry and passed out. Lyopi threw the missile away and rocked back on her heels, pushing at her sweat-soaked hair with a bloody hand.

“See if Raho the healer is inside the wall,” she said, her voice shaking. “Tell him the Arkuden is gravely injured and needs his help.”

“There are many wounded —” began one of the men.

Lyopi’s tenuous calm snapped. “I don’t care!” she yelled, brown eyes blazing. “Find him!”

Raho had escaped to Yala-tene with the remnants of Huru’s band. Overwhelmed at the river crossing, they had retreated to the western baffle, where they’d been hauled inside with ropes just as Amero’s band had been.

Beramun was alive, as were Tepa the beekeeper, his son, Udi, and Montu the cooper. The cautious cattleman, Nubis, lay dead on the riverbank, and Jenla, whose stern presence and valiant heart had steadied the villagers time and again, could not be found inside the walls of Yala-tene. Knowing the sort of mercy she could expect from the raiders, her friends mourned the old planter as dead.

*

The sun was setting as Zannian’s men found their leader just waking from unconsciousness. They boosted him onto his horse. His hair was slick with sweat and the blood of his foes. One hazel eye was ringed with a prodigious black bruise. Despite his ignominious overthrow, he received fierce adulation as he rode back to his men.

He was now master of the valley. Two hundred villagers lay dead or wounded on the field. All that remained of Zannian’s enemies were the unknown number now trapped inside the stone walls of Yala-tene.

Chapter 22

Three times the raiders tried to storm the walls of Yala-tene. Each attempt ended in bloody failure.

First, they tried to scale the walls with their bare hands. Next, they tried throwing deer-antler grappling hooks over the walls in a vain attempt to pull down the thick masonry. Their third attempt was the most dangerous: swarming over the relatively low western baffle, a few daring raiders managed to get on top of the wall before being knocked down by villagers. Nacris offered to send the Jade Men against the walls, but Zannian decided they’d wasted enough lives for the time being and refused to allow it.

The raiders withdrew to the south end of the old bridge. There, they built a large camp and set up a towline across the river to ferry rafts of men, horses, and supplies back and forth more easily. As high summer arrived, a lull fell over the valley, though it was a tense, menacing calm.

Through it all, Amero remained in Lyopi’s house, recovering from his wound. Elders came daily to consult with him. As he had long suspected, the raiders, accustomed to making lightning-fast strikes against inferior foes, had no idea what to do when faced with thick walls and staunch defenders. The fight for Yala-tene had cost them many men and horses, and events seemed to be at an impasse. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t leave to seek easier prey.

Some elders came to believe they could strike a deal with Zannian, arguing that since he couldn’t take Yala-tene by force, perhaps he could be bought off. Lyopi backed the suggestion, so Amero agreed to try. Weak and unable to go himself, the Arkuden asked for volunteers. Healer Raho’s brother Tehu offered to go. Bearing a leafy willow wand (an old trail sign used by the plainsmen to indicate a parlay), Tehu walked out to speak to Zannian.

His head was thrown over the walls the next day.

A week after Tehu’s death, Amero was conducting a council flat on his back in Lyopi’s house. Though his leg was healing, he still couldn’t stand.

“I’ve been pondering our enemies, and I think I see their weakness,” he said. “They do no useful work at all. If they can’t carry something off, they destroy it. Our gardens won’t be enough to feed them for long. They’ll have to forage outside the valley. Zannian’s authority has to be the only thing holding them together. If they get too bored and hungry, the band may fall apart.”

Lyopi took a soft scrap of hide from Amero’s forehead, rinsed it in cool water, and replaced it.

“We can’t afford to wait and hope they go away,” she put in. “Even if the band breaks up, some of them may remain in the mountains, robbing and killing. We’ll never get rid of them.”

“The Protector can clear these savages out,” said Montu stoutly. “We only need to hold out until he returns.”

“And how long will that be?” Lyopi asked. “Ten days? Ten times ten days? Suppose the next dragon to appear in the valley is not our Protector, but the green monster who leads the raiders?”

Her words ignited a spirited discussion. Duranix had been gone for so long some despaired of his ever returning. Half the elders supported Montu’s wait-and-see notion. The rest were swayed by Lyopi’s argument for action.

Amero let them wrangle. Not only did they need to vent their frustrations, but their various arguments helped him see all sides of the issue. Finally, he held up his hand for silence.

“I agree it’s dangerous to wait,” he said. “Though I believe with all my heart Duranix will defeat Sthenn, we can’t know when that will be. And if he destroys the green dragon but perishes in the fight, we’ll be left on our own.”

“Then what can we do, Arkuden?” asked Adjat the potter.

Amero rubbed his tired eyes. “I had a dream a few nights ago after drinking one of Raho’s herb brews. I dreamed of my sister Nianki. Most people believe she died fighting the Silvanesti. I believed it myself until Miteera told us how his people were saved when the elves were diverted by reports of Karada’s warriors to the east. Whether my sister lives or not, her band may still exist somewhere in the east. I propose we send scouts to find Nianki’s people and ask them to help us.”

No one spoke, but several elders exchanged unhappy looks. “Arkuden,” Adjat finally said, “what if your sister is dead, and her nomads are no better than Zannian’s raiders?”

“Then we’ll have to think of something else.”

“Do we have time for all that?” Lyopi wondered.

“I think it’s a good idea!” Tepa said suddenly, and everyone stared. The old beekeeper had fallen into a deep melancholy since the loss of his friend Jenla. Speaking now, his usually gentle face flushed with fury. “I remember the Arkuden’s sister well. With a hundred followers – with fifty! – Karada could settle this Zannian and his pack in no time.” He stood up. “Arkuden, I’ll go. I’ll find your sister and bring her and her people back here!”

Udi put a hand on Tepa’s arm. “No, father. The Arkuden needs you here. I’ll go.”

“So will I.”

They all turned to see Beramun standing outside Lyopi’s door. The girl wore a hooded calfskin cape to keep the drizzle off. A long spear leaned against her shoulder.

“May I come in?” She addressed her question not to Amero or the elders, but to Lyopi. The older woman waved Beramun in.

“You know the danger,” said Amero. “Hunting humans on foot is what the raiders do best, and they have yevi to help them.”

“Is it any safer here?” Beramun replied grimly. “When the food runs out and we’re all too weak to wield a spear, what will become of us then?”

“You’re not one of us,” Lyopi said. “What’s to stop a nomad like you from gaining the open plain and never coming back?”

“Lyopi!” Amero exclaimed.

“If I wanted to run, I could have left any night,” Beramun said. “As for this scouting trip, you’ll need more than just Udi and me, but I know six or seven others who’re ready to go as soon as you give the word.”

One by one, they all turned to Amero. He looked away, lost in thought for a moment, then held out his hands.

“Help me up.” Lyopi and Montu boosted him to his feet. His wounded thigh burned unmercifully, but he gritted his teeth and kept himself upright.

“Udi, pick eight in all. Choose good runners over good trackers this time.”

“Aye, Arkuden.”

“Let Beramun be one of the eight.”

The young woman, who’d matured considerably since the night her family had been killed, smiled at Amero.

“Don’t look so grim,” she said cheerfully. “We’ll find your sister, and we’ll be back.”

Udi and Beramun left to collect the rest of their expedition. Beramun waved jauntily as she disappeared into the evening rain.

“I’m sending her to her death,” Amero murmured.

Lyopi rolled her eyes. “Nothing short of a mountain falling on her can kill that girl,” she replied tartly.

Amero swayed, his face growing even whiter, and she slipped her shoulder under his to prop him up. “You should worry about yourself and the rest of Yala-tene. Beramun can take care of herself.”

He shifted his weight off his bad leg. Lyopi’s arm around his waist steadied him. In the face of her calm good sense, Amero felt very weak and foolish. Like the ache in his leg, his futile love for Beramun seemed to fade only when Lyopi was near.

*

Clouds closed in, filling the valley with heavy, wet fog. Everything became damp. Leather softened and stretched, wood swelled, and a coughing sickness spread among the idle raiders. To boost morale, Nacris had a score of stolen oxen slaughtered and the meat distributed to the men. The hides she ordered sewed into a large tent for her son, who held nightly revels there with his captains amid heaps of fresh fruit, vegetables, and beef from the stolen stocks of Yala-tene. No matter how many war stories were told or how much wine was drunk, conversation always returned to the same subject: how to take Yala-tene.

“Fire’s the way,” one of Zannian’s young roughnecks stated. “Tie tufts of dry grass to our darts, light them, and fling them over the wall!”

“If you can find any dry grass in this valley, I’ll eat it,” said another raider as water dripped from every seam in the tent. “Besides, our darts can’t make it over the walls.”

“Fear’s what will do it!” said an older warrior. “I say we line up all the prisoners we’ve taken and chop their heads off, one by one, until the mud-toes give up.”

“Idiot,” Hoten growled. “Why would they give up when they see how harshly we treat our captives?”

“To save the lives of their kinsmen!”

“Idiot.”

Slumped on a pile of furs, Zannian toyed with the bones left on the trencher in front of him. His black eye was now greenish-yellow, the healing remnants of the bruise caused by Amero’s blow. His head still ached periodically, and large draughts of wine didn’t help. The stalemate in the valley gnawed at him. They had beaten the mud-toes in pitched combat more than once, yet the villagers wouldn’t give up. How could he deal with such stubborn, impudent enemies?

His war captains were bereft of inspiration. He listened to them argue – silent, disappointed, dispirited.

“Sometimes I think you’re the best man here,” he muttered to Nacris, seated on his right.

“I am the best man here,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”

“What do you think we should do?” asked Hoten, resting his rough hand on hers.

“Nothing.”

“Well, my men are surely good at that,” Zannian said sourly.

“A certain kind of nothing,” she said loftily. “I’ve given our plight some thought. Have you ever hunted mink?”

He shook his head. “They taste like rats.”

She leaned over and rapped her knuckles on the side of his skull. Zannian snarled a warning. None of the assembled raiders so much as snickered, but Nacris wasn’t intimidated.

“You hunt mink for the fur,” she said. “You can’t spear them, or you’ll ruin the pelt. The way to take mink is to trap them in their burrow.”

Hoten was intrigued. “Go on,” he said.

“There are always two holes to their burrows, sometimes more if the mink has kits. You stop up all the holes but one, and there you wait.”

“And gig the nasty creatures when they come out,” said Zannian, bored.

She smote the arm of her litter with her fist. “No! I told you that would spoil the pelt. You make a sliding noose of elk hide, and when the first mink pokes its head out, you snag him! They have wicked teeth, so you keep your distance and keep the noose tight, until the mink stops fighting.” Nacris lifted a clay cup of Hulami’s purloined wine to her lips. “Then you wring their necks.”

“What has this to do with Arku-peli?” Zannian asked.

“We must encircle the town completely and cut them off from everything outside their walls. What keeps us out will also keep them in.”

“We don’t have enough men for that,” said a raider scornfully.

“Listen, blockheads,” Nacris said more loudly. “We don’t have to ring the town with a living hedge of riders. We stay out of reach of the villagers inside, and with mounted patrols we cut off any hunting parties or scouts they send out. Before summer’s end, they’ll be like the mink in the noose, tired and choked. And then we wring their necks.”

After more half-drunken debate, Nacris’s stratagem was grudgingly approved. Zannian ordered detachments of raiders sent to block the three passes on the east side of the valley. Nothing would be allowed in or out. Once the eastern passes were closed, the ring around Arku-peli would be as tight as an elkhide noose.

“With men in the eastern passes, why not also seize the heights overlooking the town?” asked Hoten. “From there we could do as we like to the people below, walls or no walls.”

“I was in Arku-peli twelve years ago, before the wall was built,” Nacris said. “The mud-toes have tunnels deep in the mountain. They’ll fight hard to deny us the heights, like a mink biting the hunter unwise enough to shove his hand in the den. If we did take the cliff tops, the villagers could take shelter in the caves. We’d spend a lot of blood for little advantage.”

Hoten gave way, and Nacris’s plan was begun. A double column of riders rode around the north end of the village that night, past the thick walls. By daylight they would be in position, and the invisible noose would begin to tighten.

*

Seven young villagers and Beramun stood at the foot of the ramp leading up to the north wall. Their faces were blackened with ash and mud. None carried spears or shields. Each was provided a flint knife, a shoulder-bag of provisions, and a water gourd.

“Remember – you’re not to fight if you can help it,” Amero told them in hushed tones. He was leaning heavily on a staff. His wound still oozed blood when he tried to walk, but he insisted on bidding farewell to the scouts. “If you encounter raiders, steal away as quietly as you can. Do you have your maps?”

Eight young heads nodded assent.

Amero took out a square scrap of goatskin, identical to what each scout carried. “Your maps are copied from the one Tiphan had of the eastern mountains and plains. His was drawn by the Silvanesti, and it worked well enough for him to find the place of spirit stones.” He pointed out the symbols for mountains, rivers, and plains, then finished by saying, “If you get lost, align the rising or setting sun with its picture on the skin, and the drawing will show you where you are.”

Earlier, the scouts had drawn colored pebbles from a bowl to determine what route each would take. None of them knew the route drawn by his fellows, so none could betray the others if caught.

First to go, Tepa’s son vowed, “I will bring back such a horde Zannian will faint with fear!” Udi clasped hands with Amero, then ran up the ramp in quick, light steps. Using a single rope, he went over the top of the wall and vanished into the mist-soaked night.

The other scouts followed after bidding Amero good-bye. Among them were Adjat’s son Bassk and Jenla’s great-niece Anua. The last to leave was Beramun.

Amero held out his hand in a hunter’s farewell. The girl regarded him for a moment, then leaned forward to give him a quick kiss. It was a chaste peck on his bearded cheek, but it was nearly his undoing.

“Peace to you, Amero,” she said. “We will meet again.”

“Fare you well,” he replied hoarsely.

She vanished over the wall. Amero hauled up the rope when it went slack. He was glad there was no one else near just then. A man his age did not like for others to see him weep.

*

Beramun had drawn the highest and least-used path out of the valley, Northwind Pass. Nearly everyone entering or leaving the Valley of the Falls from the east used Cedarsplit Gap, the pass nearest the village, and also the widest and easiest to traverse. North of it was Bearclaw Gap, densely wooded and mostly frequented by foresters in search of timber. Northwind Pass was due north of Yala-tene. Narrow and rocky, it was also extremely steep. These factors Beramun considered assets. No horseman could ride into Northwind Pass.

The valley was filled with low clouds, mist, and light rain. It was hard to make out landmarks, so she made her way to the cliffs, fixed them on her right, and worked her way north. This would take her across the mouth of both Cedarsplit and Bearclaw Gap, but that couldn’t be helped. She didn’t want to lose her way before she even left the valley.

She had to hide when mounted raiders passed nearby, and the distinctive yelps of yevi sent her scrambling into a juniper bush. Four of the shaggy gray beasts trotted back and forth. Their senses were keen enough to pierce the night and rain. The smell of juniper covered her scent, but she couldn’t remain in the bush all night. Lying on her belly, she put her knife in her teeth and started crawling. When she’d gone some distance, she got up on her knees and listened. All she heard was the constant patter of the rain.

She crossed a deep path worn into the turf, scored over the years by heavy trees dragged down the gap to the village. Rainwater that collected in the ruts soaked her feet. She skirted the logging trail and crouched behind a bank of earth. After listening and hearing nothing, she sprinted for the nearest trees. Pausing, back pressed against a pine tree, she listened once more. All was still.

Northwind Pass lay ahead. Beramun slipped through the brush, confident she had evaded her enemies. The north end of the valley was still wild, as few villagers had any reason to go there. She felt more at ease in the sparse woods and underbrush than she had in the open valley. Here was country she understood.

The mouth of the pass was only sixteen paces wide, and it narrowed farther in. She recognized the two spires of white sandstone that her map said marked the entrance. When she saw those white columns glowing faintly in the dark, she wanted to cheer.

The pinewoods ended well short of the pass. Instinct made Beramun pause before leaving the cover of the trees. There was no sound, either human or animal. The rain had slowed, and its soft dripping was all she heard. Yet something was making the hair on the back of her neck bristle.

Her eyes picked out dark shapes standing between her and the pass. She’d taken them for stones at first, so rigidly unmoving were they, but when a pair of them walked away, she realized they were actually men in dark clothing guarding the pass.

She circled right, keeping behind the bracken. She was both puzzled and worried. Her way was blocked by a band of twenty men, standing in the open, not talking and moving very little. Their faces and hands did not shine in the dark and so must be darkened like hers.

Finding a small stone, Beramun tossed it to distract them. When it landed, the formation of silent watchmen broke apart. In pairs, the men darted into the darkness, seeking the source of the sound. Though she couldn’t see the glint of weapons in their hands, she heard the metallic whisper of bronze blades being drawn.

Beramun ducked her head, astonished. They moved so swiftly and quietly!

Suddenly, she remembered the strange, green-garbed youths commanded by Zannian’s crippled mother. Jade Men, they were called. How could she evade such well-disciplined troops?

With great care she lifted her head again. Four men were still visible in the narrow opening of the pass. Worse, the others were lurking in the shadows, seeking the source of the sound they’d heard.

Beramun tossed another pebble, this time aiming behind them. Like bats on the wing, the dark sentinels split into two pairs and advanced on the spot where the stone had landed. Their backs were to Beramun now.

Halfway to the unguarded pass, her left foot skidded on a wet stone. Though the sound was barely audible in the falling rain, the sentinels turned instantly, facing her. She froze in horror, and the four dark men advanced.

Beramun drew her knife, then remembered Amero’s orders to flee rather than fight. She sprinted away. Without a word, her pursuers broke ranks and ran after her. One caught her by the arm well before she reached the sandstone spires.

Beramun whirled, slashing at his chest. Her flint blade cut a long gash in the man’s green leather breastplate, but the hide was thick, and he wasn’t injured. Quite strong, the Jade Man forced her wrist down and relieved her of her knife with ridiculous ease.

Before she could recover, her other arm and both legs were seized. Since there was no longer a need for stealth, Beramun gave voice to her outrage. Her curses rang in the night.

“Let me go!” she said, fighting hard.

“Kill it,” whispered the one holding her right foot.

“Yes,” said another. “The Master expects it.”

“It may know answers to questions,” murmured the third, her left arm transfixed in his rock hard grip. “We should return it to the Mother to be examined.”

More of the green-clad fanatics returned from the shadows, curious to see what their comrades had snared.

The clouds and fog were parting, and by the faint starlight Beramun saw the Jade Men were young, her own age or even younger. There was a blind fierceness in their eyes totally at odds with their deft and silent manner. She had no doubt they could gut her like a rabbit and never feel the slightest remorse.

Unable to overcome their implacable grips, Beramun went limp. Her garments were well soaked from the rain, and slick. She felt one leg slip just slightly. Bursting into motion, she jerked the leg free and kicked the nearest Jade Man in the face. The other three were knocked off balance. She yanked herself free and fell to the ground.

A bronze blade flashed by her nose. It raked lightly down her ribs, snagging the lacings of her buckskin shirt and pulling them loose. The garment fell off one shoulder.

She rolled over on her belly and tried to crawl away. Instantly, many hands seized her again. One of the Jade Men grasped her by the hair and dragged her to her feet. A sharp point buried itself in the soft flesh under her chin. Her heart contracted to a small, tight knot.

The next thing she knew, she was free. The shock of this sudden change was so great she staggered slightly, then whirled, expecting a stab in the back. It never came. The Jade Men had formed a square around her and made no move to recapture her. They watched her closely with cool, expressionless, painted faces.

“You bear the Master’s mark,” said one.

“Mark?”

The one who had spoken bared his left breast. Starlight illuminated the shiny triangle on his skin. As Beramun stared, one after another they revealed identical green triangles.

“You bear the Master’s mark,” the Jade Man said again. He was little more than a boy, judging by his smooth, hairless chest.

“What does it mean?” she demanded.

“You belong to the Master. You do his will, as we do.”

Beramun flushed and opened her mouth to deny it hotly – opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap.

“You’re right,” she said, sidling away from the eerie band. They didn’t try to stop her. “I am doing the will of the Master. You will tell no one about seeing me – not Zannian or anyone else.”

“The Master’s will is our will.”

As one, the Jade Men intoned, “Greengall. Greengall...”

Beramun turned and ran. The path was steep and treacherous, lined with loose gravel and thorny brush. She fell several times but continued to run until the valley vanished behind her.

The night was more than half gone. She needed to be well into the mountains before daybreak.

She paused only once, at a promontory a league from the mouth of the pass. Her hands and legs were smeared with the green paint worn by Sthenn’s boy troop. It smelled awful, like rancid oil, so she halted by a puddle of rainwater and scrubbed herself hard. Even after the paint was gone, she felt unclean where the Jade Men had touched her.

You hear the Master’s mark. You belong to the Master. You do his will, as we do.

Denying it in her head but fearing it in her heart, Beramun took to her heels again.

*

When day broke, the villagers received a shock. Their lookouts on the eastern cliffs saw bands of raiders gathered near the north wall. The lookouts sounded the alarm and sent word to Amero that the enemy was up to something.

Much worse was to come. As the sun rose over the eastern cliffs, the raiders set up two stakes in view of the village lookouts. To these stakes they tied two of the scouts who’d been sent to find Karada’s nomads. The runners, captured during the night, weren’t dead – not yet, not quite.

The news sent a chill of horror through the village. “Two lost already,” Lyopi mourned. “And now Zannian knows we’ve sent for help.”

“Two lost means six got through,” Amero said grimly. “They knew the dangers. They also know they carry all our hopes with them.”

Rain and mist clung to the mountains for two days. It was driven away at last by a rising wind that tore the clouds to shreds. Strange portents followed the wind – booming thunder from a clear sky, cold whirlwinds scampering through the side canyons, flashes of green and blue light in the eastern sky at dusk.

Through all these disturbances, Amero kept a solitary vigil atop the Offertory. He watched as one runner after another was captured and staked out below the walls of Yala-tene. Two, then three, then five distant figures hung limply on posts in plain view.

Amero suffered for each one, having known them all their lives, but as much as he grieved for them and their families, he kept the summit of his anguish locked away, waiting for the unbearable moment when Beramun would join them.

Chapter 23

Two raiders, well muscled and hard of mien, threw their prisoner at Zannian’s feet. The young villager, caught in Bearclaw Gap east of Yala-tene, had been cruelly treated. He was the sixth scout the raiders had found.

“Well?” said Zannian. “What did he tell you?”

“Same story as before – the Arkuden sent him and seven others to find Karada.”

Zannian burst out laughing. “So it’s true! They seek a ghost!”

Nearby, Nacris was working on a tally of the animals they’d captured in the valley. She heard the hated name and put down the willow twig she was using to scratch the count in the dirt.

“Karada again?” she asked sharply.

“It’s nothing,” Zannian said, waving a dismissive hand. “The Arkuden pins his hopes on a dead woman.”

“There’s more, Zan.” The bearded interrogator prodded the unconscious scout with the same stick he’d used to beat him. “If Karada herself wasn’t found, he was to bring back any of her warrior band he could find.”

“Well, a few old wanderers are no threat to us,” he said. “Take this fool out and stake him like the others. When we get all eight, the mud-toes will certainly give up.”

The bearded fellow made no move to leave, but exchanged a significant look with the other raider.

Zannian saw it and snapped, “What else?”

“He said one of the scouts is that black-haired girl, the one you offered the bounty for.”

Zannian leaped to his feet and took hold of the bearded raider’s tunic. “Are you sure?”

“He told us the names of all of them. Her name is Beramun, right?”

Zannian shoved the man away. “Get my horse,” he snapped. “Round up forty men and have them ready to ride!”

“Aye, Zan!” The two raiders picked up the unconscious youth by the heels and dragged him out. Zannian and Nacris were left alone.

“Any objections, Mother?” Zannian’s expression dared her to criticize.

She scratched a few random lines in the dirt. “Should I object?”

“Aren’t you going to say something about me wasting my time chasing that crow-haired wench?”

“No, Zanni. You’ve been sulking in this tent too long. Polish your sword, get on your horse, and go do something.”

Though he knew the childish nickname was meant to tease him, he merely grinned unpleasantly and said, “That I’ll do!”

“One thing,” she said, all jesting gone. “If there are survivors of Karada’s band out there, they’re not to be discounted. Any one of her warriors could whip ten of your yevi-spawned hirelings.”

“Pah!” he spat. “Karada died long ago. The Master told me so himself.”

“You’d be wiser not to believe everything the Master says.”

Zannian paused at the tent flap, unsure. His mother’s advice had lately proven valuable. He was inclined to listen to what she said.

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

“The Arkuden is seeking allies. So can we.” Nacris traced invisible lines on her palm with the willow twig. “I’ve been thinking about just such a move for a while now. There are some warriors I know who would not find Arku-peli’s wall much of an obstacle.”

“Who?”

“Ogres.”

Zannian uttered a single loud oath. “You’re mad! Bring ogres into our fight?”

“Why not?” was her cool response.

“Why not?” Zannian clapped a hand to his head. “Have you forgotten the ancient war between men and ogres? They nearly wiped out our ancestors! And you want to invite them here, to fight alongside us? By all the spirits! What’s to stop them from killing us?”

“We’re not weak, and ogres respect strength.”

“We’ve lost a quarter of the hand so far. How strong will we be when the last battle is fought?”

“There’s the Master too,” Nacris said.

Mention of Sthenn calmed Zannian. “True enough,” he replied, “but he’s far away, battling the bronze dragon. We have no idea when he’ll return.” He pinned her with a stern look. “It’s too risky. I forbid you to have any contact with the ogres. We will conquer by our own hands or perish in the attempt.”

Nacris was silent for a time, then said, “As you wish, Zanni. You’re chief of this band.” She smiled. “Now go! You have wild game to catch, don’t you?”

“Aye! I’ll be back soon!” He dashed off, brimming with newfound enthusiasm.

As soon as he’d gone, Nacris’s fingers closed on the willow twig, snapping it in two. The Arkuden’s desperate plan to find Karada did not worry Nacris. In fact, she wished his plan every success. She hoped Karada was alive and could be found. Let Karada ride headlong to her own destruction!

Nacris raised herself with her crutch and hobbled outside. She made her way slowly to the river’s edge. A gang of slaves was washing clothes, preparing food, and repairing broken weapons. She scanned those guarding the busy captives, looking for one face in particular.

“Where is Harak, Siru’s son?” she called out. The slaves kept their heads down and continued their labors.

“Horse corral,” replied an emaciated woman.

The raiders had set up a temporary corral to hold their spare horses and the goats and oxen taken from the village. Nacris had no problem finding Harak. The young raider was exercising a sable mare injured in one of the earlier attacks on Arku-peli.

She watched Harak closely as he rode. He was not hard to look at. His long hair, pulled back in a horsetail, was the same color as the sleek mare he rode. The early morning sunlight cast his chiseled features into sharp relief.

Work before pleasure, she mused, and called, “Harak! Come here!”

He pulled the reins sharply, bringing the mare around in a tight turn. The horse approached Nacris at a trot. Five steps away, Harak swung a leg over the animal’s neck and slid to the ground.

“Greetings, Mother,” he said pleasantly.

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your mother.”

“As mother to our chief, aren’t you mother to us all?”

“Mind your tongue, hoy, or the chief will have it out.” Nacris limped on her crutch to the shady side of the pen and sat on a convenient slab of rock. “Come here. I have something to tell you.”

Harak folded his lean body gracefully, and propped an elbow on the stone, close to Nacris. His expression was calculatedly winsome, and because he was so handsome and so obvious, she found herself smiling at him.

“How long have you been in my son’s bad graces?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

His pleasant expression didn’t alter. “You know very well. Since the captives broke free during our march across the plain.”

“The escape wasn’t your fault.”

He shrugged. “Tell your son that.”

“Zannian distrusts you.” Harak feigned surprise. She chuckled, saying, “Yes he does, and you know it. He’s afraid you’re smarter than he is, and he resents your prowess on horseback.”

“I am as my ancestors made me,” said Harak with blatantly false modesty.

“So you are,” Nacris retorted dryly. “Well, I have need of you. I want you to be my man, Harak.”

His dark brown eyes widened. “You flatter me. I thought you were Hoten’s mate.”

Nacris backhanded him. An old warrior herself, she had plenty of strength in her arms. The blow sent the insolent young man sprawling.

“Don’t banter with me, boy! I’ve known men who were worth ten of you, as warriors and as lovers. Don’t mistake me for a fool.”

Harak picked himself up. Brushing away dirt, he knelt again, this time out of her reach. His tanned cheek bore the red imprint of her hand.

“All right, Nacris. I’m listening. What do you want of me?”

“I want you to go on a journey. A secret journey, kept even from Zannian. Are you interested?”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Power. Wealth. What else? You know I am favored by the Master. I have free access to his lair in Almurk. He’s collected many treasures in a thousand years of life. Do this task for me, and you’ll also be doing it for him. He will reward you.”

“What sort of treasure?”

“Bronze, copper, gold, rare ointments and poisons, and weapons of spirit power. Any of these can be yours for the asking.”

“Your word as a plainsman?”

Nacris put out her hand. “My word as a plainsman.”

Harak gripped her forearm briefly, sealing the bargain. “Where am I going?”

“Do you know the mountains that border Khar land on the northwest?” He nodded. “I want you to go there and seek out a certain chieftain named Ungrah-de.”

His handsome face drew down in a frown. “That’s no plainsman’s name.”

“No indeed. Ungrah-de is an ogre.”

She waited for him to exclaim or laugh. He did neither. By his silent wariness, Nacris knew she’d chosen the right emissary.

“You’re not afraid of ogres?” she asked.

“I serve a green dragon. Why should I fear ogres? What do I say to this Ungrah-de?”

“I’ll instruct you on the message. You will leave today. Take a horse and plenty of provisions. You must be back by Moonmeet. Do you understand?”

Harak rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “That’s not much time.”

“You’re the best rider in the band. That’s why I chose you.”

He laughed. “You chose me because I hate your son and will keep your secrets from him.”

It was nothing more than the truth, and Nacris let the matter drop. She patted the rock beside her. “Sit here,” she invited. “I’ll teach you the message I want you to deliver.”

*

The air was still and cold. Since sunrise, Duranix had been flying at extreme heights, trying to spot Sthenn. During the night, the green dragon had eluded him after they crossed the coast of a large continent, hundreds of leagues northwest of their homeland. Sthenn had vanished among the dark hills and heavy forest of the unknown land below.

Day arrived, bright and cloudless. Duranix could see for many leagues in all directions. The continent so far was featureless, except for a low mountain range he’d followed since arriving. It ran north-south, dividing the sandy coastal wastes from greener territory inland.

The bronze dragon glided in a great circle, head sweeping from side to side as he searched for his enemy. Sthenn was down there somewhere. Duranix could sense him. Hiding was just another ploy to aggravate him. The treacherous beast wanted Duranix to waste time and strength while Zannian’s raiders savaged the Valley of the Falls.

He descended in a slow, wide spiral. The country below was vast. Past the mountain range were few distinctive landmarks – no rivers, no settlements. Dropping lower still, Duranix felt strong and ready, and was anxious to put an end to this ridiculous chase.

A break in the trees caught his eye. On the crest of a high ridge he spotted an area of blighted trees, their normal verdant foliage gone brown as though a huge shower of mud had fallen on them. Duranix studied the dying trees. The stain was not mud. Leaves had shriveled and died on the branches. It might have been due to some arboreal plague but could just as easily have been caused by the poisonous breath of a green dragon.

On guard, Duranix landed on the blighted ridge. The top was barren of trees and covered with fractured limestone boulders, some of enormous size. The sea had once washed this pinnacle as part of an ancient shoreline.

Constantly checking above and behind, Duranix advanced down the slope on foot.

A few paces along, he stopped dead in his tracks. Ahead was an open pit, partially covered by vines. The creepers had been disturbed recently, though they were still green and growing.

It was a ridiculously obvious trap. Girding himself for whatever he might find, the bronze dragon leaped feet-first into the hole. He plunged through the thin veil of vines and was swallowed by darkness.

After dropping more than twice his height, Duranix hit a stone ledge. His powerful hind legs took up the impact, and the ground trembled with the force of his landing. He expected an immediate ambush. When no attack came, he took a better look at his shadowy surroundings.

He was in an enormous cave, hollowed out of the limestone ridge by centuries of rainwater filtering down through the rocks. The air was heavy with moisture, cold and clammy. The cave was cluttered with stalactites and stalagmites in fantastic shapes, and blacker than Sthenn’s rotten heart.

Just the sort of place a green dragon might hide, Duranix thought. He pierced the chilly gloom with his powerful senses, seeking Sthenn in the depths of the cave. He saw and heard nothing of his foe, but he had an overwhelming sensation of the green’s proximity.

Lowering himself to his belly, Duranix slid forward, eeling around the limestone protrusions. The floor of the cave was coated with hardened lime. It looked like a frozen cascade of milk shot through with orange and yellow mineral swirls. Small creatures, pale and eyeless, scurried away from the slithering dragon.

Duranix followed the passage down until it arrived at a three-way split. He had no distinct feeling as to which way Sthenn had gone.

“A pretty choice, isn’t it?”

Duranix kept still. The green dragon’s words echoed through the cavern, a directionless whisper. The old wyrm was a master at throwing his voice.

“Which tunnel will you choose, little friend?”

Duranix let his barbels trail over the glassy concretions on the floor. He searched for minute cracks in the mineral that might reveal where the heavy green dragon had trod. He found none.

“I am fog, little Duranix. I am the veil of mist arising from every forest glade. I walk on thin air and dwell wherever death and decay hold sway.”

Braggart, Duranix thought at him. Do you think you can frighten me with words?

“Choose a path. Come find me. I will wait for you.”

Ah! Vibrations in the stone floor gave Sthenn away. The vile creature always had talked too much.

Hugging the floor, Duranix hurtled down the center passage. It was a narrow tunnel, and he fit only by furling his wings tightly and pulling in his broad shoulders. Sthenn’s words faded as he charged through the darkness. Something shone in the murk ahead, and the reek of the green dragon’s breath drew him on. Putting on an extra burst of speed, Duranix broke through a flimsy screen of stalagmites into a much larger chamber.

There was Sthenn, curled up amid gleaming bone-white columns of stone.

“Now!” Duranix roared. “Meet my justice!”

Rearing up, he threw himself at the quiescent Sthenn. Just as he was about to get his ancient enemy in his talons, Sthenn slithered sideways, out of reach. Duranix crashed into a hedge of sturdy stalagmites that had been hidden by the dragon’s body. The tapering columns rang from the collision but did not break.

Sthenn gushed foul poison into the cave, drenching Duranix. The greenish gas stung the bronze dragon’s eyes. Outraged, he returned a blast of blue fire.

The bolt smashed into the cave wall, and the mountain above them heaved. Long limestone stalactites fell from the ceiling like spears, followed by man-sized shards of rock and limestone chips. The tunnel entrance collapsed, and debris filled the chamber opening.

“I have you!” Duranix declared. “This is one hole you won’t escape!”

“Nor you, it seems. Shall we rend each other to bits while the mountain comes down around us?”

“Why not? You call yourself Deathbringer. How ready are you to face death yourself?” A great bronze claw closed around an intact stalagmite and snapped it off at its base.

Wielding the stalagmite like a club, Duranix advanced on his foe. Sthenn backed away until his spine was pressed against the cave wall.

“It isn’t just we who will die!” the green dragon sneered. “Think of all the rodents in Arku-peli who will perish without you to protect them! The lake will run red with their blood. And your man, your darling pet – do you know what will happen to him? I’ve given him to Nacris. She has many, many tortures planned for him. And when he finally dies, Zannian will take his skull as a drinking cup.”

Duranix hurled the stalagmite at Sthenn. It shattered above his head, throwing sharp, milky fragments over him.

“Cease your filthy raving, old wyrm! This time you’ve miscalculated! Did you think I would panic at being buried here with you? I fear nothing you can do to me! Do you think I won’t give up my life to take yours? Your death would be the greatest gift I could give to humankind!”

Roaring deep within his chest, Duranix tore through the hedge of stone. Sthenn let out a high, keening screech and flung his decrepit bulk against the wall. Desperate to escape, he continued to hurl himself against the unyielding wall until Duranix’s foreclaws raked down his neck and left foreleg. Rancid black blood welled from the gashes.

Maddened by pain, the green dragon threw himself headfirst against the brittle limestone. With a loud crack, the wall finally gave way, and he plunged through.

The honeycomb of tunnels crumbled under the force of their battering. Rock and dirt poured over Duranix, swiftly burying his feet in a flood of heavy debris. Shafts of sunlight appeared through rents in the cavern roof. By this fractured light he saw Sthenn struggling through an avalanche of his own. Leaner and longer than the muscular bronze, Sthenn put his nose in a crack no wider than an ox’s shoulders and snaked through.

Duranix roared with frustration. The last thing he saw before a torrent of earth closed around him was the tip of the green dragon’s tail disappearing skyward.

In moments, Duranix was completely encased in stone and loose soil. The ridge ceased to tremble as the upper regions of the cave filled. When all was quiet, the dragon opened his eyes.

Black dirt pressed against his face, and the pressure on his body was enormous. Coiling his muscles, he thrust his right foreleg upward, opening his claws as he moved. Closing his talons on the broken soil, Duranix used his grip to drag himself forward. He worked his left foreclaw out, seized a boulder locked in the dirt, and used it to haul himself toward the surface. He repeated this agonizing maneuver until at last his questing claw broke through. With a final tremendous heave, he threw aside half the hilltop and rose, gasping, into the open air.

As he filled his lungs and shook lime chips from his eyes and nostrils, a dry, mocking laugh descended from on high.

“Well done, little Duranix! I knew a mountain couldn’t keep you down. Too bad the ground here is so soft! I dropped far less on your mother, and she died slowly, so slowly, but that was good hard stone.”

Duranix threw back his head and bellowed with rage. The green dragon, circling a few hundred paces overhead, hastily changed direction and flew away. The bronze dragon vaulted into the sky. Though his muscles twinged with pain from the bruising avalanche, he climbed aloft in a frenzy.

Filling his mighty lungs, Duranix bellowed, “Sthenn! I’ll never give you up! The sun may grow cold and the seas dry to dust, but I will catch you and kill you!”

Birds rose in huge flocks from the forest, whirling around him in a cloud of feathers. He slashed through them, gaining speed. The pursuit was on again.

*

The plain shimmered under the merciless glare of the sun. Having left the cool uplands, Beramun shed her heavy clothing. Her single gourd of Yala-tene water was already gone. Despite this, she was happy. For the first time in many, many days she was roaming the savanna again, unencumbered by raiders, villagers, yevi, or dragons.

To conserve her provisions, she foraged as she walked, eating berries and green shoots. High summer on the plain was a time of abundance. She could last a long time on the bounty at her fingertips.

The country teemed with game of every description. Amero had said the Silvanesti had driven the centaurs out of this region, and most of the humans, too. With no hunters to chase them, the animals were flourishing. The lack of humans also meant Beramun would have to go far to find help.

At midday she rested in the slender shade of a pine tree, dozing in the stifling heat. Now and then she started awake at any sound of movement, but it was always rabbits or deer, not raiders or elves.

As she drowsed, she dreamed of fighting. The shouting in her nightmares woke her, and she realized the noises hadn’t all been dreams.

Far-off calls and whistles traveled easily in the hot, still air, making Beramun’s heart hammer. To the west, six leather-clad horsemen were approaching at a walk, poking and prodding the tall grass with their spears.

Raiders.

With night a long way off, she’d have to run for it. She moved in a crouch, keeping the slender pine between her and the hunters. The plain ahead was as flat and featureless as a lake, offering no place to hide. Fortunately the raiders hadn’t seen her. They came on at a casual pace, laughing and talking, and she soon left them behind.

The afternoon wore on, and clouds piled up on the southern horizon, offering the tantalizing promise of rain. The storm was a long way off though and probably wouldn’t arrive until sunset.

Running in the heat had given her a raging thirst, but Beramun found no water until late in the day. The first creek she came across was almost dried up, but the muddy rivulet looked as fine to her as the clearest mountain brook. Stretching out on a warm boulder, Beramun lapped the brown water greedily.

Sighing in relief, she looked up from the water, and her eye fell upon a pair of human feet sticking out of the grass a few paces away. Beramun froze. The feet were bare and blistered, hardly those of a mounted raider. She approached carefully on all fours.

The feet belonged to a man lying facedown in the weeds. She rolled him over.

“Udi!”

It was her fellow scout, the beekeeper’s son. He had dart wounds in his right arm and thigh, and though he was weak from thirst and exhaustion, he was alive. She wet his lips with a trickle of muddy water from her gourd.

Udi’s eyes opened and immediately widened in silent fear.

“It’s all right,” she told him. “It’s Beramun. What happened?”

“Raiders,” he murmured hoarsely. “Chasing me for days... for sport.”

She looked back in the direction of the men she’d seen earlier. They must be the ones tracking Udi. She knew now why they hadn’t noticed her. The injured man was leaving a clear trail, and they were having a good time following it. They weren’t bothering to look for other tracks.

“I’ll help you,” she said.

“No.” He shook his head weakly. “Leave me.”

“I won’t!”

“I can’t go any farther. You go, Beramun. I’ll draw them away.”

“Don’t be stupid! I’ll not leave you!”

“You must. For Yala-tene. You and I are the last scouts left!”

Beramun sat back on her haunches, stunned. “How do you know?” she asked.

“I saw Anua taken. Later, I heard these raiders talking. They said they’d captured six villagers and knew there were two left.”

Beramun was horrified. The fate of the entire village hung on Udi and herself. There was little time to absorb the shock. The voices of Udi’s tormentors drifted across the sultry landscape. They were drawing closer, laughing as they called to each other.

Udi was right. She had no time to waste. “I’ll go on,” she said, “but you must try to evade them, Udi! Promise me that!”

“I’ll try.”

She helped him stand. “I’ll lead them downstream,” he gasped, pointing southeast. “You go that way.”

Northeast. She nodded and released him. He swayed for a moment but didn’t fall.

“Farewell, Udi.”

“Peace to you, Beramun. Tell my father —” He stopped abruptly, then shook his head. Turning away, he hobbled painfully downstream.

Tears stung Beramun’s eyes. Silently cursing Zannian, his raiders, and his filthy master, she dashed off into the high grass.

Before sunset that day, Beramun heard the distant sound of rams’ horns. The raiders were celebrating the end of a successful hunt.

Chapter 24

The hot breath of summer settled over the valley. From atop the Offertory, Amero could see most of the open ground between Yala-tene and the river. What had once been his favorite view in the valley was now a scene of heartache, pain, and frustration.

The bodies of the scouts had finally been removed, but only after Udi had been added to the horrible display. Seven scouts. Seven, not eight. Amero and all of Yala-tene prayed to all their ancestors the last valiant messenger had made it through.

Zannian had replaced the slain scouts with three huge piles of food, each as high as a man on horseback. Fruit and vegetables, part of the bounty looted from the villagers’ gardens, were left to rot. The sour-sweet smell of decay carried on the summer breeze to the hungry people of Yala-tene. No one could escape it. The odor brought with it more melancholy, which spread like a plague.

The storage caves were nearly empty. The last bales of pressed fruit had been eaten, and the villagers were down to dried vegetables and slabs of salted or smoked meat. Adding to Amero’s grief, there had been thefts from the storage caves. Armed watchmen had to be posted to safeguard the food supply for all.

An unnatural quiet settled over Yala-tene. Normally garrulous folk became sullen and withdrawn. Amero, who usually got along well with the village children, realized they were avoiding him in the streets. He puzzled over the reason at Lyopi’s house.

“How can a man often so wise be so foolish?” Lyopi said, interrupting his musing. She was haggard and hollow-eyed, and only Amero’s insistence had halted her practice of giving most of her food ration to her elderly neighbors. She set aside the clothes she was mending and rubbed her eyes tiredly.

“What do you mean?” he insisted.

“The children think it’s your fault they’re hungry.”

Amero was genuinely surprised. “Why do they think that?”

“Because you’re the Arkuden. Everything that happens, good and bad, is because of you.”

“Is that what you think, too?”

She picked up her mending again. “You didn’t bring Zannian down on us. He came here at the bidding of the green dragon.” She gave him a sidelong look and added, “But I don’t understand all the decisions you’ve made. Why did you let the Protector leave?”

“I don’t control Duranix.” Amero’s voice was sharp. “I never have.”

She nodded and bent herself to her task.

He felt the burden of their troubles resting on his shoulders, heavy and solid as a mountain. All he wanted was peace, to have his old life back and work in the foundry, continuing his experiments with bronze. Instead, he spent his days on the abandoned Offertory, impotently watching the movements of the raiders.

During the day they rode back and forth in plain view, doing nothing but doing it loudly. There was nowhere in Yala-tene to escape the noise of their movements or the stench of the rotting food outside the walls or the memory of those who had died. By night, the raider camp was lit with bonfires, and the valley rang with coarse singing and drunken laughter.

A complete turn of the moons had passed since Zannian had come to Yala-tene, and there’d been no fighting for half that time. The raiders seemed in good spirits however – able to hunt, eat, drink, and do as they liked.

Amero watched the raiders ride and carouse. In another cycle of the white moon, it would be Moonmeet, when Lutar and Soli joined in the heavens. Moonmeet signaled the height of summer. It was normally a time of celebration, when the villagers reveled from sunset to sunrise, thereby losing a whole day’s work the next day.

Amero dropped the staff he was leaning on. The villagers usually lost a whole day’s work after the Moonmeet festivities, because no one could work well after a night of drinking, dancing, and feasting. And no one could possibly fight.

He clutched his hair with both hands. How many opportunities they had missed! He limped down the Offertory steps, calling loudly for the village elders. In the street before Lyopi’s house he gathered everyone and explained his idea.

“The raiders have grown comfortable in their camp,” he said excitedly. “They drink and feast every night —”

“On our food,” Montu grumbled.

“Yes, and we just sit here and let them. I’m tired of that! Tonight will be their last revel! When the bonfires blaze and the wine flows tonight, I propose to lead an attack on the raiders’ camp while they’re too drunk to resist!”

The elders did not cheer or even express a taste for vengeance. Amero couldn’t fathom their lackluster response. Tepa spoke up, offering the explanation.

“We’re tired of fighting, Arkuden,” he said. Since Udi’s death, Tepa had begun to show the burden of the years he had once worn so lightly. “So many have been hurt and died, and for what? Will this night attack drive the raiders from the valley?” Amero admitted he didn’t think they would succeed so grandly. Tepa sighed. “Then why do it?”

“During the attack, our stockmen can round up as many oxen and goats as they can handle. We need food, and there’s food rotting a hundred paces outside the wall!”

The elders brightened at this. Victuals were indeed worth fighting for. They began talking at once, some about fresh meat, others about night-fighting tactics. Amero was pleased. It was the most spirit any of them had displayed in many days.

While the elders talked, Lyopi tugged at his elbow. “Are you going on this raid?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Her disapproval was fierce. “Let younger ones do the fighting!”

“I’m not that old,” he said stiffly.

“No, but you’re important to the people of Yala-tene. Think what a blow it would be if you were killed.” She turned away, then abruptly turned back again, shoving her face close to his. “And what will I do if you get killed?”

He had to grin. “I’ll try not to be. But I can’t stay here, safe and protected, and send my people out to fight.”

“Then I’m going, too. Someone has to guard your back, you old fool.” In view of his own reasons, he couldn’t refuse her.

Amero reviewed the available men and women for the daring nighttime raid and chose thirty-three. He was saddened at being reminded how many familiar faces, young and old, were already gone.

A few horses quartered inside the walls would be used as camouflage for the attack. Dressed in leather breastplates and hoods, four villagers would pose as raiders and lead those on foot to the enemy camp. Amero stressed that fighting was less important than sowing the maximum amount of confusion and bringing back food.

At sunset, many more villagers than normal lined the walls, watching the raiders’ camp. Amero was worried their presence might warn Zannian some scheme was afoot, but the raiders paid them no heed. Bonfires blazed up in the raiders’ camp. Shouts and wild laughter soon followed. The valley floor around Yala-tene emptied of riders as Zannian’s men returned to camp for their nightly excesses.

Multiple ropes were let down the wall, and a hurriedly built timber ramp was lowered to allow the skittish horses to reach the ground. A poor rider, Amero chose to lead the contingent on foot. Every bit of metal or stone carried by the villagers was swathed in soft hide scraps to prevent rattling. They blackened their faces and hands. One final preparation made little sense to many: Amero had his people tie bundles of sage or mint around their ankles.

Lyopi asked, “Is this a charm for luck?”

“We make our own luck,” he replied. “The herbs will keep the yevi from scenting us.”

He took hold of a rope and lowered himself to the ground.

*

Six days after she left Udi by the creek, Beramun came to the banks of a mighty river. She was far from the land she knew and had no idea of the river’s name, but it was a broad band of slow-moving green water, half a league wide in places. It flowed from north to south, like the Thon-Tanjan, whose upper branches she had already skirted.

The opposite shore of the nameless river was lined with willow trees. Beyond them was a vast sea of grass, stretching to the horizon. All that moved on it were a few animals. Taking in the broad vista, she felt like the only human being in the world.

Shaking off her loneliness, she slipped into the water. It was a long way, even for as strong a swimmer as she, so she floated out on the trunk of a dead tree, toppled earlier in a storm. Hooking the trunk under her arms, Beramun paddled into the wide river, hoping there were no dangerous beasts lurking beneath its placid surface.

The crossing was long but tranquil enough. She slogged ashore on the east bank and immediately spotted a cut through the wall of willow trees. Closer inspection revealed hoofprints, a good sign. Amero had said Karada’s band rode horses.

Beramun walked through the gap in the trees and spotted a trail winding away into the high grass. Before she’d gone ten steps, a rough net of woven vines dropped over her. Amid deep-voiced yells, she was swept off her feet and dragged pell-mell through the grass.

Beramun shouted and kicked at the sturdy net as she bumped painfully over rocks and roots. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, her trip ended. One edge of the net was pulled hard, rolling her out into the grass.

She sat up, furious. Her protests died in her throat when she saw her captors.

They were centaurs – four dark, heavily muscled horsemen. One flanked her on each side, and two others stood in front of her. They were armed with long-handled clubs, blackened by years of bloodstains.

The largest centaur asked a question in his own tongue.

“My name is Beramun,” she said, guessing at his inquiry. She tried to stand, but the centaurs behind her tripped her. She rolled over and yelled, “I’ve done you no harm! Why do you attack me?”

Big Centaur yelled right back, saliva flying from his lips. Beramun thought of her bronze dagger. Usually she wore it in a sheath at her waist, but for swimming, she’d tucked it in back of the collar of her shirt. It was still there, and the centaurs hadn’t found it.

The chief centaur uttered a long imperative phrase that ended in what sounded like “seelwanest.” He pointed south with a thick finger. Beramun had a glimmer of understanding. She faced the chief and mimicked his gesture.

“Silvanesti?” she said.

He bobbed his shaggy head. “Seelwanest.”

They were taking her to the elves!

“No Silvanesti,” Beramun said, shaking her head vigorously. She raised her left hand and pointed northeast. “I’m here to find Karada. Karada!”

The centaurs instantly lost their bored manner. Big Centaur stepped forward and grabbed Beramun by her hair.

“Karada?” he roared, followed by undeniably ugly denunciation. He shook her like a panther worrying a fresh kill. Beramun, blind with pain, clawed and struck the centaur’s brawny arms. With a final exclamation of hatred, he threw her to the ground.

The leader spoke, and two of his companions took hold of Beramun’s arms, pulling her to her knees. The third stretched her head back. Wide-eyed, she saw the big centaur raise his club high —

There was a meaty thunk, and a long, slender wooden shaft, tipped with gray feathers, appeared in the centaur’s ribs. Blood welled out around the shaft.

The chief centaur’s front knees buckled, and a second shaft sprouted from his chest. When a third appeared in his throat, he toppled to the side with a feeble grunt.

The remaining centaurs released Beramun and galloped away. One of them received a wooden shaft in his back. He stumbled, calling out to his friends. They kept going and did not look back. Weaving from side to side, the wounded centaur tried to catch up with his fellows.

Beramun’s shocked gaze left her erstwhile captors and turned to her savior.

It was a woman, striding through the waist-high grass. Lean, clad in tan, close-fitting buckskins, the stranger had sun-gilded brown hair pulled back in a thick braid that reached to her waist. Her face and arms were brown as leather from years in the sun. She wore a spirit mark – three short horizontal lines of white paint on her forehead. What

Beramun first took to be other painted lines on her throat and jaw turned out to be massive scars, which did not tan as darkly as the rest of her skin. Though not really a handsome woman, she was tall and had an arresting presence.

Halting a pace away from Beramun, the woman raised an amazing device. It was a long, bent piece of wood. The two ends were joined by a taut length of sinew. She fitted one of the slender wooden shafts – it looked like a miniature spear, with a flint head on one end and feathers on the other – against the sinew and drew it back with her fingers while holding the wooden part at arm’s length. The stave flexed deeply. Releasing her grip, the woman sent the tiny, feathered spear winging toward the wounded centaur. It struck him in the hindquarters. He went down, disappearing in the tall grass.

At last the woman took notice of Beramun. “All right, girl?” she asked. Her accent was odd, but her words understandable.

Beramun, still stunned by her last-second reprieve, stuttered, “I am. Yes. Thank you!”

“Good.”

She made for the spot where the second centaur had fallen, Beramun following. Along the way, she slipped the dart thrower over her head for carrying and drew a wickedly long bronze knife.

The centaur was lying on his side, breathing raggedly. When he saw the two women approaching, he struggled to rise. He failed and lay bleeding in the grass.

The woman said a sentence in the harsh centaur tongue. Rage, impotent but genuine, bloomed on the wounded creature’s face.

“What did you say?” Beramun asked.

“I told him to prepare to meet his ancestors.”

“You mean to kill him?” At the woman’s curt nod, Beramun added, “You must not!”

The woman pondered a moment, then reversed her grip on the knife. “You’re right. You should do it.” She offered the handle to Beramun.

“No! I mean you should spare him. I’m not hurt, and he’s suffered enough.”

Studying her with penetrating, hazel eyes, the woman flipped the knife back again into her right hand. “He’s got one arrow in his lung and another in his haunch,” she said. “If we leave him here, he’ll die slowly – unless wolves or panthers get him first.”

Beramun looked at the wounded centaur. One hoof, held off the ground, trembled. The centaur’s face was twisted in agony, his breathing shallow and short. Though he and his companions had tried to kill her, she felt no pleasure at his condition.

He gasped a few words. Beramun looked questioningly at the woman, who translated. “He says he hurts and I should finish him. He laid hands on you, girl. What do you say?”

“Do what you must,” Beramun said. She turned away.

After a moment, the woman, wiping her blade with a tuft of plucked grass, caught up to Beramun.

“I don’t know why they attacked me,” Beramun said.

“The big one, Ponaz, was a vicious renegade.” The woman sheathed her knife and took her dart-throwing device in hand again. “He and his sons capture humans to sell to the Silvanesti. The elves pay in flint and hides.” She gave Beramun a thoughtful look. “They pay more for a live human than a dead one. I wonder why Ponaz was willing to lower your value?”

Beramun fingered her bruised head. “I think it’s because I mentioned Karada.”

The stranger laughed. “That would do it. Karada and Ponaz have had a blood feud going for quite a while. He must’ve thought you were one of her band.”

The woman’s long gait forced Beramun to jog to keep up. “Where are you going?” she asked.

Again, that disconcertingly direct gaze was leveled at her. “Why do you want to know?” the woman asked.

“I’m a wanderer, new to these parts. I was sent to find Karada.”

“Were you? Who sent you?”

“Her brother, the Arkuden of Yala-tene.”

The woman halted. She didn’t draw her knife or load her dart thrower, but Beramun had the distinct feeling she was in peril.

“Centaurs aren’t the only ones who take payment from the elves,” the woman said slowly. “The Silvanesti have a price on Karada’s head – one hundred jewels or one hundred pounds of fine bronze. Such wealth could easily turn a girl’s head.”

“I’m telling the truth,” Beramun replied, trying to stay calm.

Plainly evaluating her, the woman asked, “What is the Arkuden’s true name?”

“True name? Amero. It’s Amero.”

A nod. “And the dragon who guards Arku-peli – what’s he called?”

“Duranix.”

“Right again. What was Karada’s birth name?”

Beramun felt panic rise in her chest. She had no idea.

“Well?” demanded the woman.

“I don’t know. Amero never told me.”

The woman resumed walking. Beramun ran to catch up. “Do you know where I can find Karada?”

“Karada’s dead. She died in battle years ago.”

Beramun was desperate. “Well then, does her band yet survive?” There was no answer, and Beramun’s voice rose. “Please! I must find them! I’m the last of eight scouts sent to find Karada. All the rest were killed. Yala-tene is under attack and will fall soon if someone doesn’t help! Amero and all his people will perish!”

“The Silvanesti have attacked Arku-peli?”

“No. Human raiders, under a chief named Zannian. They fight for a green dragon called Sthenn, and they mean to destroy Yala-tene completely!”

“Where’s Duranix? Why doesn’t he save his people?”

Keeping pace with this elk-muscled woman made Beramun pant. “He left the valley... chasing Sthenn, and won’t return... till the green dragon’s... dead.”

In a stand of poplar trees the woman had tethered a horse. It was a beautiful animal, wheat-colored, with a long white mane and tail. A finely woven blanket lay across its back. Untying the reins, the woman mounted easily.

“You seem honest enough,” she said, wrapping the reins around one hand and extending the other to Beramun. “I’ll take you to Karada’s band, but if you have treachery in mind, you’ll die much less cleanly than that centaur.”

Swallowing hard, Beramun took the woman’s hand. She was very strong, and effortlessly hauled the girl onto the horse behind her.

“Their camp is a half day’s journey from here. Have you ridden before?”

“A little.” She put her arms around the nomad woman’s waist. “My name’s Beramun. What shall I call you?”

The woman pulled her horse’s head around and thumped its ribs with her heels. “Call me Nianki,” she said.

*

The camp was a collection of tents and sod huts, cunningly hidden. Various traps and obstacles Beramun reckoned were meant to fend off attacks by the Silvanesti guarded the perimeter. There were pits covered with twigs and grass (for trapping enemies on horseback), dense hedges of thorn-bush and holly, fences of sharpened stakes arranged with the points raking outward, ditches full of water, and deadfall traps loaded with boulders and masses of earth. Nianki rode in carefully, avoiding each trap. The path was so intricate Beramun knew she could never have gotten in without a guide.

The camp proper was hidden behind a pair of hills, invisible to a casual observer. One moment Beramun and Nianki were riding along a narrow path between the hills, and in the blink of an eye, ten score dwellings appeared, arranged in three concentric circles around a central fire-pit. It was a busy scene, with half-naked children dashing about, dogs barking, artisans making baskets, blankets, and the little spears for Nianki’s throwing stick (“arrows,” she called them). Deeper in the camp were horse pens crowded with fine-looking animals. Beramun estimated there were five or six hundred people living here.

Few were as fair-haired as Nianki. Most had brown or black hair, like Beramun’s. There were also quite a few black men and women from across the northern sea, like Huru and Paharo back in Yala-tene. She wondered if any of these nomads came from her homeland on the southern plain.

People waved to Nianki as she cantered past, but no one displayed much curiosity about Beramun.

Nianki rode up to a large tent near the main firepit. Throwing a leg over her horse’s neck, she dropped to the ground. Beramun, less practiced, managed a barely controlled fall.

“Stay by me,” Nianki said tersely. Beramun followed like her shadow.

The tent was all one spacious room, with a high, pointed roof supported by a tripod of lashed poles. A simple stone hearth filled the center of the room, and the rest of the tent was dotted with baskets and pottery jugs, grass mats and fur blankets. When Nianki entered, someone at the back of the tent stood. Beramun’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she saw a girl about her own age – Nianki’s daughter, perhaps.

“Welcome home,” said the girl. She hurried over, bearing a tall, painted pot and cup. She poured pale yellow liquid into the cup and offered it respectfully to Nianki. From where she stood, Beramun smelled wine, though she’d never seen any that wasn’t red.

“Mara, this is Beramun. Make her comfortable until I return.” Nianki drained the cup and tossed it back to the girl. To Beramun, she said, “Wait here until I come back for you. If I find you outside, I’ll take you for a spy and deal with you accordingly.” She left.

Taking the initiative, Beramun introduced herself.

“I’m Mara,” the girl replied. She had curly red hair and a round, freckled face. “Would you like some nectar?”

“Water would be better.”

Mara scurried away to fetch it. Returning with a cup of water, she held it out to Beramun, eyes downcast. Her deference made Beramun uncomfortable.

Mara asked, “Have you known her long?”

“Nianki? We just met today.” She described her encounter with the centaurs.

“Ponaz dead? There’ll be rejoicing in camp when that news spreads!”

Beramun sat on a pile of furs. There was something about Mara, her manner or way of speaking, that seemed odd and out of place here. Nervous and thin, she resembled Nianki not at all. If not a daughter, was she a captive? Her bearing was unhappily similar to the raiders’ slaves.

“Are you a prisoner?” Beramun said abruptly.

Mara looked startled. “No! I’m very happy to be under my lady’s protection.”

My lady? Beramun had never heard such a term before. “Where are you from? You’re not one of these nomads.”

Mara edged away. “I am one now.”

“Have you been with them long? I need to know what kind of people these are. I’m on a mission, you see, from Yala-tene —”

Mara’s green eyes widened. She dropped the water urn. The thick clay broke, spilling water on the grass floor mats. “Yala-tene!”

“You know it?”

“I was born there!”

Though hesitant at first, Mara told her story at Beramun’s urging.

Her father was an ox herder in Yala-tene, and she’d been an acolyte of the Sensarku. She’d gone on a journey over the mountains with another acolyte, a centaur, and the Sensarku leader, Tiphan, Konza’s son.

“Tiphan?” Beramun said. “I met him.”

“The wretch!” Mara’s unassuming manner vanished as anger brought a flush to her pale cheeks. “The cowardly dog! He abandoned Elu and me to the Silvanesti!”

“Don’t worry. He didn’t prosper after he left you.” Beramun told her of Tiphan’s death and the fate of rest of the Sensarku. If she thought the news would comfort Mara, she was wrong.

Mara wept. She poured out her grief to Beramun – grief for her friends and fellow acolytes slain, and despite herself, sorrow for Tiphan, too. Though arrogant and selfish, he had been her leader for many years and losing him was losing a large part of her past.

Beramun patted her back consolingly. “Whatever else he may have done, he died bravely, trying to destroy the green dragon,” she said.

Mara lifted her tear-streaked face. “Green dragon?”

Now it was Beramun’s turn to talk. She spared Mara nothing, beginning with the night she’d been captured by the raiders, through her escape from Almurk, to her final mission to find help for Amero’s people.

“If only these nomads would ride to the valley and settle Zannian for good!”

Mara brushed her tears away and composed herself. “They will go,” she said. “She is his sister, after all.”

“What? Who’s sister?”

“The Arkuden’s. Karada, born Nianki, daughter of Oto and Kinar, is the Arkuden’s sister.”

Beramun jumped to her feet. Nianki was Karada? She dashed to the tent flap and threw it open. There was Nianki – Karada – sitting on a stone, just outside.

Karada looked at her. “Where are you going?”

“To find you!” Beramun replied.

“Didn’t I tell you not to leave the tent?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know you were Karada.”

The famed nomad warrior stood and ducked under the flap. Beramun backed inside, more intimidated than ever.

“She’s telling the truth, isn’t she?” Karada said.

“I believe her,” Mara replied, and bent to pick up the pieces of the broken water jug.

“So do I.” Karada crossed the tent to the hearth.

Unable to bear the suspense, Beramun demanded, “Well? Are you going to help us? Will you ride to Yala-tene?”

Karada gazed at the smoldering embers in the firepit. “No,” she said.

Beramun was stunned. “How can you say that? Amero is your brother!”

Like a viper striking, Karada turned and thrust a finger into Beramun’s face. “I know who he is,” she said coldly. “His troubles are his own, just as mine are my own. I never asked Amero for help against the Silvanesti. Why should he want me to save him from this Zannian?”

Beramun stood her ground, though she was shaking inside. “Because everything he’s ever done will be lost if Zannian wins – the village, the valley, all the people of Yala-tene. How can you let that happen?”

“He must rely on his own strength and not try to borrow mine.” Karada sat down on the warm hearthstones. Once she’d finished clearing away the broken jug, Mara came and sat at Karada’s feet.

“Mara didn’t tell you her whole story,” she said. Karada brushed her hand over the girl’s thick auburn hair. “After her leader abandoned her, Mara was captured by the Silvanesti.

They took her to Thalasbec, a town on the northern border of their forest. She was given to an elf warrior named Tamanithas, to work in his household as a slave. The Silvanesti were not cruel to her – at least, not in the way your Zannian is to his captives, but they broke her will until she was utterly compliant. She would be there still if I hadn’t raided Thalasbec in early summer.”

“You freed her?”

Karada shrugged. “Tamanithas is an old enemy. My warriors sacked the town, and I myself put the torch to his great house. As the flames took hold, Mara ran out, knife in hand, and attacked me.”

Beramun was surprised by this, and Karada explained. “So deeply had the elves taken hold of her. mind, she thought of herself only as their property and not as a free person. I might have slain her out of hand, but as I had torches in both fists, all I could do was knock her down. After setting the fire, I brought her back here. So far, all she’s done is transfer her slavish allegiance from Tamanithas to me. One day I’ll find a way to awaken her pride again.”

Beramun was touched by the tale, which in some ways paralleled her own, but she didn’t see what it had to do with saving Yala-tene. She said so.

“Raiders are nothing,” Karada told her. “There will always be violent, ambitious men willing to take from others by force. I have built my band up from nothing to take on the Silvanesti and end their tyranny.

“Five years ago I almost died fighting them. I led fourteen survivors – fourteen! – out of a fiery trap into the deepest wilderness I could find. Now we are seven hundred strong, enough to make life hard for any elves who try to take the northern plain from us. I intend to free humans like Mara who’ve been enslaved, their hearts and minds stolen by the elves’ subtle power. That’s why I can’t ride to Yala-tene, Beramun. A greater task awaits me here.”

Beramun sagged to the floor, crushed. She’d come so far, fought so hard, left Udi to die, had nearly been killed herself by centaurs, and it had all been for nothing.

“Stay as long as you like,” Karada said, rising to go. “The freedom of the camp is yours.”

Beramun shook her head wearily. “I must go back. People are counting on me. I want them to know I did my task.”

“I understand. You’re a strong girl. You’d do well in my band. If you live, come back and join us.”

“I don’t expect to live,” Beramun said flatly.

Chapter 25

Hoten emerged from the river. Nacris had an obsession about cleanliness and required him to bathe every few days. She herself bathed in a private pool dug behind Zannian’s great tent.

Hoten put on his leggings, kilt, and shirt. It was a hot evening, and he’d be dry soon enough. He saw more rafts, laden with wood for tonight’s fires, coming over from the west bank. The slaves were already erecting several large piles in the center of the camp. By the look of things, it was going to be another lively night.

The revels were Nacris’s idea. The bored raiders needed something to keep their morale up as they waited for the villagers to starve and weaken. Zannian had gone on a long ride, hunting the black-haired girl. In his absence, Nacris had begun the nightly feasts. The well-being of the band wasn’t her only motive. As she explained it, the defenders of Arku-peli would be greatly disheartened if they saw the abundance being enjoyed outside their walls.

There was a stir in camp as a column of riders arrived. Hoten hurried up the hill to see what was what. He soon heard Zannian’s name on everyone’s lips. Their chief had returned and was in a foul mood.

Six days he’d tracked back and forth across the eastern plain, and never once had he picked up Beramun’s trail. Hot, tired, and angry, he’d returned to camp and found preparations for a feast underway. Flattered at first, thinking Nacris had anticipated his return, his mood quickly turned black when he discovered the celebrations had been going on for days.

Hoten entered the tent in time to hear Zan dressing down his mother.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. “I gave no permission for festivities! You don’t lead this band. I do!”

“It was for the good of all,” she replied, unmoved by his temper. “The men need diversion.” She went on to describe her vision of the revels as a taunt to the besieged villagers.

Turning to Hoten, Zannian demanded, “Do you support this?”

“I didn’t at first, but the men’s spirits have definitely improved since we started.”

Zannian grudgingly gave permission for the carousing to continue. He washed his face and hands in the river and returned, only to be confronted with Nacris’s questions about his hunting expedition.

“So, you didn’t find the girl?” she said.

“No,” he answered sullenly. “There’s probably nothing to find but bones by now anyway. If heat and thirst didn’t finish her, a panther likely did.”

“I hope not. She was a brave girl. In another time, she would have made a fine member of the band.”

Zannian made a dismissive gesture. “Women can’t fight as well as men.”

“If I had two legs, I’d show you the folly of that statement,” retorted his mother.

The feast got underway. The great fires were laid, and whole oxen were carried in on willow frames to roast in the flames. Hulami’s captured wine had long since been drunk up, but the raiders had been making their own brew using the spoils of the orchard and gardens. Pulped apples and pears made a potent cider.

At sunset the meat was ready. Gorged on beef and cider, the raiders were in an expansive mood. They sang old trail songs until their repertoire gave out. In the silence, Nacris asked Zannian to lead them in a new song. He waved the request aside, but so many raiders roared for him, he relented.

Red-faced with drink, he said, “How about ‘The Endless Plain?’”

This was a slow, sad song, but the men cheered. Their chiefs singing voice was appreciated by all. Zannian began. He had a boy’s voice still, high and clear, and after a verse, the rest of the raiders joined in.

*

Not far away, Amero held up his hand to halt the village raiding party. Those on foot dropped to one knee, and the four impersonating raiders reined in their mounts.

“What is it, Arkuden?” someone hissed.

“Listen!”

“Come walk with me, lonely one

In summer sun or winter rain,

From mountains high to rivers low,

Across the open, endless plain.”

“I know that song,” Amero said.

Lyopi whispered, “I’ve never heard it before, but it sounds like they all know it.”

Amero was shaking his head slowly. “Not the words, the tune – but it can’t be! It comes from a song my mother sang to me. And she made it up! How could —?”

“What’s wrong?” hissed the people farther behind. “Why are we waiting?”

Amero forced himself to shake off the strange feeling. Perhaps some passing nomad had heard his mother singing the song long ago.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The animal pen was between the great tent and the river. Lyopi and the other three mounted villagers split off, riding casually through the darkened edge of the raiders’ camp. Amero led those on foot around the right side of the camp, where a long-ago rock fall created a stony barrier to their progress. Carefully, the villagers climbed over the mound of loose rocks. On the other side, bathed in firelight, was the corral full of sleek, well-fed beasts.

Amero sent four of his people to the corral fence. It was hastily built of split tree trunks and stacked stones, with a few vines to tie it all together. The villagers weakened a wide stretch of wall, leaving only a few trimmed branches in place, then they crept back to the rockpile.

“Bring the oil,” he whispered. Pots of burlnut oil were passed forward. Amero took one amphora on his shoulder and slipped down the mound behind the large tent. He poured the brown aromatic oil on the hide wall. It oozed down, soaking into the sandy soil. More jugs were passed to him, and he spread oil all along the side of the tent.

A raider kicked through a flap and stepped unsteadily out. Amero froze in place. The drunken raider answered nature’s call and was about to go back in when he noticed the smell of burlnuts.

“Who’s cookin’?” he muttered. He slipped on the oily sand and fell against the tent. When his comrades came over to pick him up, the more sober ones smelled the oil too. While searching for the source, one of them spotted Amero and raised a cry.

“Now!” Amero yelled, jumping to his feet. “Do it now!”

The villagers had brought hot embers in clay bowls. At Amero’s command, they hurled these at the oil-soaked tent. The embers hit the hide wall in a shower of red sparks. An eyeblink later, the tent erupted in flames.

Raiders groped for their weapons and stumbled to their horses. In the midst of this drunken panic, Amero’s disguised riders galloped through the camp, waving spears and shouting contradictory orders. Lyopi yelled that the bronze dragon was back, breathing fire. Thinking the entire band was about to be incinerated, a sizable number of raiders bolted into the river to escape. Another group of raiders decided the fire was the work of their own slaves and descended upon the poor, sleeping captives. Beaten awake, they were forced to form a human chain from the blazing tent to the lake. Anything that could hold water was carried to the river, filled, then delivered to the flames.

Their mission of confusion done, Lyopi and her companions rode to the corral. Horses, oxen, and goats were jostling each other, lowing nervously.

The four mounted villagers entered the corral, shouting and waving their hands, driving the fearful animals against the fence. It gave way, and the beasts stampeded through the narrow path between the blazing tent and the stony hill. Amero and the villagers on foot ran after the fleeing stock, driving them toward the distant walls of Yala-tene.

The first few oxen had just climbed onto the ramp into the village when the raiders struck. Raggedly they swept forward. A few tried to turn the herd, but the terrified oxen blundered on, trampling anyone in their way Some of the villagers were trapped between the stampeding animals and Zannian’s outraged warriors. Many perished, but the herd kept going.

Amero’s thigh wound opened while he was running. He hobbled on until his leg failed completely, then went down hard. Fortunately the oxen were in front of him, so he was spared being trampled.

“Amero! Watch out!”

He looked up at the warning and saw an armed raider on a huge gray horse thundering toward him. The raider’s spear was aimed directly at Amero’s chest.

*

How many days had it been? Fifteen? Sixteen? How many leagues? Duranix no longer knew.

After escaping the collapsed cavern, he’d tracked Sthenn across this vast, unknown continent, over plains and forest, lakes and desert. Though all he found were teasing traces of the evil creature – burned meadows, poisoned forests, slaughtered beasts – it was enough to keep him on the hunt. After six days of constant flight, Duranix came once more to the ocean.

It wasn’t until he climbed high to search the distant horizon that he saw the pattern in Sthenn’s destruction. All the burned and wasted land formed a marker when seen from above. Broader at its base and narrowing to a point, the blackened, poisoned areas formed a spearhead pointing due west. The spear’s tip was a blasted promontory overlooking the sea.

The meaning was unmistakable. Sthenn had gone west, and dared Duranix to follow.

How wide was the world? Duranix, who considered himself an intelligent and wide-ranging dragon, had no idea. Was there an end to the world, a place beyond which Sthenn could not flee? He wanted to think so. Otherwise the chase might go on and on, until both dragons were used up, worn out, and lost.

What choice did he have?

None at all.

Sparing a last thought for Amero and the humans of Yala-tene, Duranix flew on, his nose to the setting sun.

*

The raider’s spear plunged at Amero’s heart.

His injured leg useless beneath him, Amero closed his eyes and waited for the end.

Amid the shouting, the roaring flames, and the bellowing of the frightened oxen, he heard two horses collide and fall. Something hit the ground at his feet. Opening his eyes, he saw the raider who’d been about to spear him was down, as was his gray horse. A second, hooded rider had apparently rammed into him.

The hooded rider lost control of his horse. It bucked and reared, outraged or terrified by the inferno around it. Losing his grip on the horse’s mane, the fellow went flying off.

Thinking he was one of the villagers masquerading as a raider, Amero crawled to the downed rider. He was sitting up, shaking his head. He got to his feet and helped Amero stand. Arms around each other’s waists, they hobbled away as quickly as they could.

“You were lying there like a rabbit!” said the fellow, rough voice muffled by his hood. “Didn’t you see he was going to spit you?”

Teeth gritted against the pain in his leg, Amero growled, “I couldn’t move! It’s my leg —”

“It’s not your leg that’s weak. It’s your head! But your scheme worked!”

It had indeed. Villagers were herding the frightened animals up the waiting ramp.

The rumble of hooves behind them grew louder. Amero wanted to look back, but his unidentified comrade put on more speed.

“Run!” the fellow said. “Just run!”

Amero gave it all he had. The wound in his thigh continued to bleed, but he kept up his awkward, hopping run.

The fire had jumped to other tents and provided plenty of light. Darts were starting to fly, and the missiles thudded into the ground at their heels. Villagers ahead of Amero were hit, but he and his rescuer gained the bottom of the cattle ramp without further injury.

Blood coursed down Amero’s leg. Face chalk-white, he collapsed heavily against the hooded rider. The stranger threw down his weapons and grabbed Amero’s hands. He dragged the half-conscious man up the ramp even as darts and spears thudded around them. Halfway up the ramp, men from the village arrived and relieved the hooded man of his burden. Villagers on the walls hurled stones and spears, keeping the raiders at bay until Amero was safe.

A few daring raiders reached the ramp and urged their horses up. As soon as Amero was atop the wall, men with axes cut the ropes holding the ramp in place. The wide platform crashed to the ground. The villagers shouted and blew horns to signal the success of their raid.

In the midst of the chaos and celebration of their return, Hulami knelt by Amero. He gasped, “How many did we bring back?”

She repeated his question to the stockmen below and relayed their answer: “Twenty-nine oxen and forty-one goats!”

“Good,” he said. “Where’s the fellow who helped me? The one in the mask?”

Hulami looked around. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t see him.”

“I owe him my life.”

Amero’s wound was tightly wrapped, and he was carried by litter to Lyopi’s house. The elders gathered outside, but Lyopi’s brother, Unar, stood before the door with his arms crossed. He would not let them disturb the weakened Arkuden.

“Is it serious? Will he live?” asked Hulami.

“He’ll live,” said Lyopi, arriving on the scene at last. “I won’t let him die!”

She pushed past her brother and went inside. The elders, buoyed by the night’s success and Lyopi’s confidence, headed for their homes.

*

“Filthy mud-toes! I’ll pile their heads up higher than their damned wall! The scheming rodents! Make me look like a fool, will they?”

Zannian’s fury went on all night. Once the fire was out, he summoned his chiefs and berated them as drunken, worthless fools. At his back, Nacris and Hoten listened impassively.

“From now on, I want a standing patrol of twenty men constantly circling the town,” he raged. “Not a mouse gets in or out of there, do you understand? I want corpses sorted and counted! All the dead villagers in our hands are to be put up on stakes in view of the walls! Hoten!”

“Here, Zan.”

“Since the mud-toes want to be tricky, we’ll be tricky, too. Get the slaves to cut branches from the spirit trees and plant them around the camp. In two days we’ll have a wall of our own, and they won’t be able to wander in uninvited!”

“Aye, Zan. It’ll be done at first light.”

“Do it now!” the young chief screamed. “No one sleeps for the rest of this sorry night!” He drew his sword and whipped it in circles around his head. “Mother! Bring me the Jade Men! I have work for them, too!”

The raiders dispersed to their tasks.

Zannian kicked through the ashes of his ruined tent, thinking black thoughts of what he would do to the villagers when they succumbed. His ugly reverie was interrupted by Nacris.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“Are you ready now?” she said calmly.

“Ready for what?”

“The course I suggested. The ogres.”

Eyes blazing, Zannian made a fist and raised it to strike her. Nacris never blinked. She stood, braced with her single crutch, and regarded him calmly.

“If you weren’t my mother...” he snarled.

“What difference does it make how we win? What matters is that we conquer. Will you let me bring in Ungrah-de and his warriors? We’ll win with their help.”

Zannian lowered his fist. “Your other plans haven’t brought victory,” he said bitterly.

Nacris laid a hand on his shoulder. He was shaking with rage and frustration. “Be calm, Zanni,” she said. “The wise warrior is the one with the clearest head and the calmest heart.”

He stepped forward suddenly and engulfed her in his arms. Her crutch fell among the ashes. Putting his head down to her shoulder, he held her tightly and sobbed.

“Never fear, my son,” she said gently. “We will win.”

“I want the Jade Men,” he mumbled. “I want them to enter Arku-peli any way they can and bring back the Arkuden’s head!”

Nacris brought one callused hand up to stroke his hair. “All right. You’re a good boy, Zanni. You can have the Jade Men, but listen to me, will you? Do as I tell you, and everything will be as we want. I will take care of everything.”

His hands knotted into fists, gripping the back of her leather jerkin. “Yes, Mother.”

*

The nomads fed Beramun well and gave her a place to sleep with other girls. She slept poorly though, tormented by visions of Zannian’s triumph in Yala-tene. She finally gave up and lay awake, thinking of those good people degraded or killed by the green dragon. She couldn’t lie comfortably, her belly full, while the village was in peril. She must go back right away. She would try one last time to convince Karada to take her band to Yala-tene. If the answer was still no, then Beramun would go alone.

Beramun left the girls’ communal tent. It was well dark, and the red and white moons were up. Moonmeet was not far off. The camp was quiet, though she did see sentinels on the surrounding hills, ever vigilant against the Silvanesti.

Shouldering her gear, she set out across the open center of the camp toward Karada’s tent. When she reached the far side of the firepit, a figure flitted out of the darkness directly in her path. Fair skin and dark freckles stood out in the moonlight.

“Mara?”

The girl held a finger to her lips. “Please,” she whispered. “You must help me!”

“What is it? Do you want to return to Yala-tene?”

“No, it’s Karada. Something strange is happening to her. Come!”

Without waiting for an answer, Mara took her hand and dragged her into the chiefs tent. A low, smoky fire was still burning on the hearth, Karada, clad only in a light doeskin shift, was sitting with her back to the entry flap, facing the fire.

“Karada?” Beramun said, moving cautiously toward the woman.

The only reply was a vague muttering. Circling around, Beramun saw the chieftain was awake. At least, her eyes were open. Hair unbraided and disheveled, eyes wide and rimmed in red, Karada stared into the flames and spoke in a low, unintelligible voice.

Beramun knelt beside her. “Karada, are you well?”

“It’s hard. It’s very hard,” the woman said. Her eyes remained focused on the fire.

“What’s hard?”

“Living with a curse.”

Mara came up on the other side. To her, Beramun said, “Have you ever seen her act this way before?”

“No, never.” Mara was on the verge of tears.

Suddenly, Karada leaped to her feet, hands waving above her head. “He’s down! He’s bleeding! Get up! Get up!”

“What are you talking about? Who’s down?”

Karada stared wildly at Beramun, looking straight through her. “Amero!” she cried. “He has a spear in his thigh. He’s bleeding... and the enemy is coming. Amero!”

She whirled, as if she were actually seeing the events taking place. “Yes! That’s it. Right into him! Yes!” Beramun tried to restrain her, but the woman brushed her aside like a gnat. “Now pick him up. That’s it! I’ve got him!” she cried. “Run! Run! Run!”

After screaming the last three words, Karada slumped to the ground, her eyes closed. The two girls couldn’t rouse her, so they straightened her limbs and made her comfortable. They kept silent vigil by her until she stirred after several long moments.

“Here,” said Mara, holding out a cup.

Karada drank. She spied Beramun and lowered the cup. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“Mara asked me to come. You were in a trance, dreaming with your eyes wide open.”

“It wasn’t a dream. I was far away. I saw a battle. My spirit was there!”

“You mentioned Amero. You saw him?”

“Yes.” Karada drew her knees up and locked her hands around them. “He was wounded, but I dragged him to safety.”

Mara and Beramun exchanged looks. “You saved him, Karada?” asked Beramun carefully.

“You doubt me? Was my brother wounded, here?” Karada touched the back of her right thigh.

“Yes, in the battle beneath the wall, before I left,” Beramun said, impressed.

The nomad chief struck her palm with her fist. “Fool! He went out to fight with an open wound like that?”

“What does this mean?” Mara asked, shaking her head in confusion.

Karada explained, “I was sitting by the fire, tired, and I slept. When next I opened my eyes, I saw Yala-tene and its wall, though I haven’t been there in twelve years, before the wall was begun. It was night. The villagers attacked the raiders’ camp and drove livestock back over the wall. But I wasn’t just watching it, I was there!”

“You never left this tent.”

“Maybe not in body, but my spirit was there!” Karada turned to Beramun. “You didn’t tell me Nacris was with the raiders.”

“The one-legged woman? You know her?”

“Oh, yes. I know her well enough to kill her when next I see her!”

The import of this sank in, and Beramun exclaimed, “You’re going to Yala-tene!”

“Yes, and all my people.”

Beramun threw her arms around the scarred woman. “May all your ancestors bless you!” she shouted joyously.

Karada pushed the jubilant girl away. “They haven’t yet,” she said gruffly. “An old curse still burns in my blood, but I’ll go to save my brother and to kill a hated enemy. The good and the bad of it balance out, don’t you think?”

“It’s all good to me! I want Zannian cold and dead, too!”

“If he gets in my way, he will be.” Karada combed her wild hair with her fingers. “Beramun, right now I need you to tell me everything that’s happened in the west. I’ve not been over the mountains in twelve years.”

They talked far into the night, and Mara fell asleep with her head on Karada’s knee. Before dawn, Beramun gave out as well.

When she woke, the camp was in turmoil. Tents were going down in great puffs of dust. Travois were being loaded, and the whole of Karada’s band was making ready to depart.

Beramun watched in amazement as the nomads readied for the journey. Except for Zannian’s raiders, she’d never seen so large a band on the move.

Half the nomads carried bows and wore caps of hammered bronze. Their hair was long, men and women alike, and they rode tall horses. Like Karada, they had spirit marks painted on their cheeks or foreheads.

The other half of the band dressed less splendidly, in simple buckskins and woven grass hats. These included the elders of the band and mothers with small babies. They rode short, sturdier ponies, most of them dragging a travois behind.

Karada appeared, sitting tall and proud on her wheat-colored horse. The warm morning sun flashed off her polished bronze helmet and eased the harshness of the scars on her face and neck. With her white wolf fur mantle and tawny rawhide trews, she looked like the Spirit of the Plains in flesh.

Gazing at her, Beramun felt a lump grow in her throat. For the first time she understood why people followed this woman into peril and fought for her till death. If they could reach Yala-tene in time, Zannian and his ragtag raiders were done for.

Karada was leading a second animal by the reins. She tossed these to Beramun, saying, “Time you learned to ride.”

Beramun climbed awkwardly onto the sorrel horse. Once seated, it seemed she could see a league from her lofty perch. She held tight to the reins and the animal’s white mane.

“Pakito!” Karada shouted. A giant of a man with long brown hair appeared on foot out of the dust. Beramun stared. The fellow was more than two paces tall!

The chieftain asked him, “Are you ready?”

“No, but that won’t stop you!” the big man replied.

She laughed. “Lead the band out, Pakito.”

“Aye, Karada.”

The nomads formed into a rough column, four horses wide. The bow-armed nomads made up the outside columns, shielding those inside. Beramun was amazed to see the enormous Pakito mounted on an equally giant, gray-dappled steed. Towering over everyone, he shouted commands in a bull-like voice, and the nomads began to move.

Karada and Beramun sat to one side, watching the band pass. Mara rode by, perched on a long travois with some dusty, laughing children. Beramun waved, but Mara turned her face away. She had grown jealous of the favor Karada showed to Beramun.

The tail of the long column of people and horses at last came into view, and Karada asked, “Ready, Beramun?”

The girl gripped her mount’s reins tightly. “I am.”

“Good. We’ve a long way to go.”

Sister of the Sword

(ca. 3995 PC)

Chapter 1

The setting sun painted the walled town of Yala-tene in soft colors – golden yellow, warm orange, dusky red. One hue followed another until they were all swallowed by the indigo of twilight. When the day’s last glow subsided, stars appeared in the darkening expanse of sky and the early summer evening took on a crisp chill.

Twenty-two pairs of eyes fixed on the scene were blind to the beauty of sky and sunset. The eyes belonged to twenty-two young men lying on their bellies on a low hill that rose from the bank of the Plains River. The sand on which they lay cooled quickly as night fell, but the youths remained completely motionless. They regarded Yala-tene intently, no hint of emotion on their faces.

They looked identical. Their hair was short and slicked down with a mixture of beeswax, nut oil, and plant dye, and their skin was stained dark green.

They were the Jade Men, raised from early childhood to worship the green dragon Sthenn and carry out his wishes without question, without fail. When their master was away, they gave obedience to Nacris, adopted mother of them all.

For three turnings of the moons, a band of seven hundred raiders, led by Nacris’s son Zannian, had occupied the Valley of the Falls. They had plundered and murdered their way across the plains without opposition. Yet, in spite of Zannian’s leadership, their own determination to plunder and ravage, and their terror of their mighty patron, Sthenn, they had still failed to take the village. Direct assault had not worked, and they’d been unable to terrorize the villagers into surrendering. The raiders’ last resort was to choke the stubborn valley folk into submission, to cut them off from outside aid until their resolve was broken by starvation and despair.

The village, called Yala-tene (“mountain nest”) by its inhabitants, was known to the Jade Men and the raiders as Arku-peli, or “place of the dragon.” It had three sources of strength: the guardianship of the bronze dragon Duranix, the stone wall that encircled the town, and the leadership of the town’s headman, Amero. Sthenn had lured Duranix away on an aerial chase, and no one had seen either beast since before the siege began. The wall had withstood every stratagem Zannian and Nacris devised to overcome it. That left the headman.

Amero, son of Oto, was Zannian’s target. If he could be captured, the village would certainly lose heart. Zannian would achieve his lifelong dream of being chief of all the plains; Nacris would have her revenge upon Amero, brother of Karada, the woman she held responsible for crippling her and killing her first mate; and Sthenn would have destroyed the “pet” humans of his old enemy, Duranix.

That was the Jade Men’s mission tonight: capture Amero.

Nacris had prepared them with a ceremony both simple and mysterious. For two days, the Jade Men had fasted. Though the rest of the raider camp still feasted on the captured bounty of Arku-peli and its lush valley, the Jade Men ate nothing and drank only water. After two days, Nacris broke their fast with a special stew filled with centipedes, cockroaches, and black crickets. Eating these night creatures, she said, would make them likewise silent, stealthy, and unseen.

At a predetermined time, the last Jade Man in line rose up on his knees. He was the leader, differentiated from the rest by a daub of yellow paint on his forehead. He pressed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to his lips and blew. The sound he made was a high squeak, like the call of a bat on the wing. The other Jade Men stood. Each was armed with an obsidian knife, sharp as a viper’s fang, and a mace whose heavy diorite head could burst a skull with a single blow.

Their leader waved them forward. In a single line, they crept over the hill toward the distant town. In the gathering darkness, against the lush grass of the valley floor, their green coloring rendered them invisible.

They passed through the remnants of previous battles – cracked spears warped from exposure, broken flint blades, the decaying carcasses of horses. The smell of death meant nothing to the Jade Men. Having grown up in the green dragon’s forest lair, the rank odor of decay was part of their daily fare.

A few paces beyond the wreckage of battle the killing ground began. Where once the tent camp of wanderers who traded with Yala-tene stood, now there was a barren wasteland. The traders had pulled up stakes and fled the valley in advance of the raiders’ arrival. The villagers had set fire to the grass and underbrush that remained, clearing the land to prevent sneak attacks.

The attack of the Jade Men, however, went forward. They slowed their advance to make their movements less detectable and placed their bare feet carefully, so no stray noises would give them away.

The walls bulked higher as the Jade Men drew near. They could see sentinels, long spears poised on their shoulders, walking atop the wall between trios of blazing torches. This was the baffled entrance into the town, where walls were the lowest. The normal openings through the wall had been filled with boulders and rubble. Consequently this vulnerable place was the most brightly lit and best defended.

The leader slanted off to the right, away from the light, and his troop followed. The twenty-two Jade Men headed for a spot where the wall made one of its three outward jogs. Village masons had to zigzag the wall here to find bedrock on which to anchor the structure. The notches gave natural cover to the Jade Men. Guards on other parts of the wall could not see into the corners.

A dozen paces away, the leader slowed. The high stone curtain darkened the ground here, making it hard to see ahead. In spite of their careful approach, one of their number fell into a prepared pit. The hole was filled with sharpened stakes, and the luckless Jade Man was impaled through his left thigh.

Though he made no outcry, his slide into the trap dislodged gravel and dirt. The resulting cascade seemed loud as a shout to the silent group. They froze, awaiting the blaze of torchlight, the cry of alarm, and the rain of death that would follow when the villagers spotted them.

Nothing happened. The leader crept along on his belly until he reached the pit. He made his way down into the steep-sided hole. At the bottom, his comrade lay grievously wounded, biting his own hand to keep from screaming. Feeling around in the dark, the leader discovered the sharpened stake was thrust all the way through his man’s thigh.

It was a crippling injury. There was no chance he could run or climb with such a wound. Nor could he be left behind. There was too much chance he might make a noise.

Nacris had chosen purposely the Jade Men for this mission. The twenty-two green-painted fighters represented the twenty-two years since the founding of the village of Yala-tene – and the twenty-two years since Nacris’s ignominious defeat at the hands of her archenemy, Karada. It was a deliberate number, imbued with secret power, yet the leader knew he must now compromise that very power. He plucked the knife from the doomed youth’s waist, then reached out to rest his hand on the fellow’s cheek. He felt rather than heard the wounded man sigh and give a nod of acceptance.

With one stroke, the leader cut his comrade’s throat from ear to ear.

Burning with deadly resolve, the leader climbed up out of the pit. Though Nacris had ordered them to bring Amero back alive if possible, he vowed now that it would not happen. By the sacrifice in the pit, the fate of the village headman had been decided: a life would be exchanged for a life.

On hands and knees, the leader led the rest of the band to the base of the wall. Other pit traps dotted the ground around them. Some were hidden by branches of willow and sprinkled with dirt and ash, but no more Jade Men fell amiss. The group was soon gathered at the inside corner of the wall.

They’d practiced this maneuver many times by scaling the tall stone tower at the ruined river bridge. The two brawniest Jade Men faced each other, each butting one shoulder against the wall. Arms fully extended, they gripped each other’s shoulders and settled their feet wide apart. Two of their comrades climbed atop them and repeated their stance, then two more. When the fourth pair began climbing up, the men on the bottom grunted and shifted under the weight. Two more Jade Men joined them, bracing them.

A single man worked his way to the top and leaned both hands against the inward-leaning masonry. Once in place, he was only a single man’s height from the top of the wall. The twelfth youth hauled himself up, and his fingers easily reached the rim of the parapet.

The leader, still on the ground, took one last look around. All was still. Putting his slain comrade’s knife in his teeth, he started up. It was not an easy ascent. The living ladder was slick with sweat and trembled under the terrible strain. He ignored everyone beneath him, concentrating on his goal, the top of the hated wall.

At last he slid onto the flat, open ledge. Off to his right three torches burned, their shafts lashed together in a tripod. He saw no sign of a watchman. Leaning over the edge, he signaled for the others to join him.

In short order, eight Jade Men lay atop the wall with him. The twelve who made up the ladder quietly unstacked themselves and huddled in the dark corner of the wall.

Nine Jade Men were now in Arku-peli. Nacris had chosen these nine (as well as the one who’d been lost to the pit trap) because they were the strongest in spirit. They would do whatever it took to fulfill her orders, down to sacrificing all their comrades.

The leader reviewed the information he’d memorized on the village layout. Tortured from villagers captured in battle, it might not be reliable, but it was all they had. Decisively, he led his men in single file along the wall away from the standing torches. At the inside of the next zigzag, they found, as they expected, a ramp leading to the ground inside.

Halfway down the ramp, they came upon an armed villager relieving himself. The sentinel never had a chance. The Jade Men rolled his corpse into the shadows at the base of the ramp and moved on.

Yala-tene was an alien world to these youths, raised in a forest and on the open plain. The streets were dark, stone-cobbled, and damp. The stone houses seemed to close in on them from all sides. An odor of burnt meat was thick as fog. Though many of Zannian’s raiders ate cooked food, Nacris had raised her Jade Men to loathe such softness. They ate flesh in the way of their plainsmen ancestors: raw.

The concentration of peculiar sights and aromas was almost overwhelming, and their pace slowed as they grew confused and unsettled by the maze of streets. They collected behind their leader in the shelter of a blind alley below the town wall, unsure of their next move.

The leader’s senses slowly adjusted, and he studied his surroundings with more care. The highest structures stood out against the light of the stars. One of these structures, their mother had told them, was the White Tower, where the bronze dragon was fed. The headman, it was said, lived in a dwelling four houses east and two north of the White Tower. The door of his house was marked with the sign of the turtle, painted in white.

By hand signals, the leader ordered his men to follow him. They moved down the dark street in absolute silence. Nothing disturbed their single-minded concentration, not distant voices on adjoining streets nor the barking of the villagers’ tame dogs. Anything or anyone interfering with their purpose would die swiftly.

The narrow road, closed in on both sides by tall, windowless houses, ended on a much wider avenue. Lit by three large, open fires, the White Tower loomed over them. The area seemed filled with villagers, talking loudly and rattling their weapons.

The leader dropped to the ground and slowly wormed his way around the corner into the wider road. His followers waited. At times villagers walked within ten steps of him, oblivious to his prone form. Using his chin, fingers, and toes, he squirmed across the dangerous open space into the shadows on the other side. He signaled for the rest to follow, one at a time.

They proceeded without incident until the last man. A door in the house behind them opened suddenly, flooding the lane with light. A stoutish woman hefting a basket of food scraps saw the final Jade Man lying motionless in the street.

“Iby!” she called over her shoulder, shifting the basket to her hip. “Some drunkard’s passed out in the street!”

A male voice inside the house answered indistinctly. Before the woman could say more, the Jade Men’s leader was on her, green hand clamped over her mouth. He pushed her inside, and the rest of his band flowed in behind him.

The man called Iby rose from his hearth, a stone axe in his hand. He raised his weapon, but the Jade Men swept over him. Down he went, and the obsidian knives were put to work. Neither he nor his mate uttered another sound before they died.

Shivering with excitement, the Jade Men crowded around the dead couple’s hearth, poking their meager supper with their knives. They were quickly and silently called to order by the leader. He led them out of the house by the rear door, and they moved swiftly down the black, narrow street.

The leader felt a surge of triumph when they found the house of the turtle. Not only did it have the animal totem on the door as they’d been told, but a pair of armed villagers stood guard by the door. This was certainly the headman’s dwelling.

Four Jade Men worked their way around to the west side of the house. They would seize the closest guard while their leader and the other four took down the one nearest them. The signal to strike would be the leader’s bat-call.

The guards, one female and one male, were not as heedless as the others they’d encountered. The woman scanned the darkness alertly.

“Something moved over there,” she said.

The Jade Men froze in place.

“A dog?” the man suggested, lifting his spear.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

“You’re too nervous, Lyopi.”

The woman’s protest was interrupted by the squeaking bat-call. Before the first notes had died, several Jade Men launched themselves at the male guard. The woman shouted a warning, and the man turned, swinging his spear. He managed an awkward parry of the trio of obsidian knives thrust at his chest, and his arcing spear-shaft connected with the head of one of his attackers.

The woman put her back to his. As the rest of the Jade Men, leader to the fore, spilled out of the shadows, she gasped, “More of them coming!”

A diorite mace hit the male guard on the knee. He gave a grunt of pain and toppled. Before he hit the ground, another club connected with his temple, knocking him unconscious. At the same time, a leaping Jade Man struck the woman in the back. The spear flew from her hand, and she went down hard, landing facedown in the lane.

Every moment counted now. There was no time to spare for killing the two unconscious guards, and the leader guided his troop swiftly through the door of the dwelling.

A fire on the hearth had burned down to embers. The interior of the single round room was dim. Nostrils flaring, the leader smelled his prey before he saw him.

The headman lay on his side, his back to the door. The commotion outside had not wakened him. Half his face was swathed in bandages – a wound earned in battle with Zannian’s men.

Slaying him as he slept held no satisfaction, so the leader kicked the headman until he stirred. The fellow’s single visible eye widened in shock as he rolled over and saw the apparitions surrounding him.

Before the headman could so much as raise a hand, the leader struck, dropping to his knees and using his whole body to increase the force of his blow. He drove the dagger into his victim so far the brittle stone snapped in two. The other Jade Men moved in, ringing their prey and stabbing him again and again. None would leave with an unbloodied knife.

Shouts outside ended the murdering frenzy. Time to depart. The leader gestured at the open doorway.

He was the last to leave. With a final satisfied glance at the dead man, the leader of the Jade Men went out the door. He left his broken blade lodged in his victim’s ribs.

Outside, the streets were alive with villagers shouting and brandishing torches and spears. The two guards were gone, either fled or carried off.

There was no need for stealth now, so the Jade Men ran, heading for the ramp they’d used to enter Arku-peli. Near the White Tower they were confronted by a band of villagers. Stones and spears flew at them. One of the latter caught the trailing Jade Man in the back, and he went down, severely injured. He swiftly drew his knife and fell upon it rather than surrender to the outraged townsfolk.

The alleys confused the fleeing youths, fragmenting the band of eight. The leader knew the way out yet did not call to the others. Like his men, he had taken an oath to say nothing until the mission was completed. None of them violated that oath – not even those who, confused and disoriented, blundered into armed search parties and were killed.

The leader was the only survivor to reach the foot of the ramp. After racing up the ramp, he uttered his bat-call from the summit of the wall. The rest of his group hastily quit the shadows to re-form their living ladder.

As he waited for them to be ready, the leader looked back over the village. Twin rivers of fire were converging on his position, two columns of torch-bearing villagers howling for vengeance. When several villagers reached the base of the ramp below him, the leader could wait no longer. He slid feet first down the sloping wall to reach his comrades.

Rough stone tore at his legs. When he hit the uppermost Jade Man, the human ladder shuddered but held.

The leader climbed quickly down his comrades’ bodies. As he passed a pair, they would disconnect themselves and follow him down.

From the wall, villagers hurled stones, pots, and torches at the intruders. One pot filled with oil shattered on the wall, and a blazing stick that followed set it alight. The uppermost Jade Men were doused in flames, and the remainder of the ladder simply fell apart, burning.

“Get them! Kill them all! Let none escape!” shouted a villager. Rocks and trash were replaced by lethal spears.

Two Jade Men died in the fire. Three were swiftly impaled. Two more fell into hidden pit traps. It seemed none of them would escape. But when the leader finally threw himself to the ground, he found two of his comrades remained with him. All three lay on the lee side of the hill, panting and listening to the shouts of their furious enemy. Suddenly, one plaintive cry rose above the rest.

“They killed him! They killed the Arkuden!”

The wail was taken up by the rest of the villagers. Lying in the dirt, the searing pain of his scorched arms and back forcing tears from his eyes, the leader of the Jade Men smiled so broadly his parched lips cracked and bled.

Arkuden, meaning “dragon’s son,” was the villagers’ name for their headman. Amero was dead.

Mother and the Master would be very pleased.

Chapter 2

Harak was a long way from home.

Not that he had a home, in the sense the people of Yala-tene did. Harak was a nomad and had always been a nomad, even before joining Zannian’s army. When he thought of home – which he rarely did – he thought of the wide, grassy plains where he’d been born. He was a long way from there now.

Sitting on a cold stone slab high in the mountains of Khar land, surrounded by hostile and suspicious ogres, was not a place Harak wanted to be. He’d undertaken this insane errand at the behest of Zannian’s mother, Nacris. Crazy woman, crazy mission.

Go to the mountains, she’d told him. Find the ogre tribe led by Ungrah-de. Promise them rich plunder if they will help us capture Arku-peli.

It sounded simple the way she put it, but Harak had no real idea just how dangerous his task would turn out to be. Unlike the relatively gentle mountains surrounding the Valley of the Falls, the ogre homeland was higher and colder than any place he’d ever been. By day, wind roared through the passes like a torrential river, blinding him and his horse with driven grit. The air was so frigid and dry it sucked all the warmth from his limbs and caused his exposed skin to crack like old leather. By night the wind died, but sunset brought on cold more pervasive than any he had ever felt before. Furs hardly sufficed to keep the deadly chill away.

Harak’s first night in the high pass was almost his last. He was well toward freezing to death when his horse, unhappy with the raw conditions, kicked him awake. Staggering to his knees, Harak managed to get a fire going before his eyes closed forever. The horse got a double ration of hay the next morning, as well a new name: Stone Toe.

Harak’s travails didn’t end with the cold or the desiccating wind. He had to convince the ogres he met not to kill and rob him on sight. Some would not be persuaded, and time and again he was forced to flee. Those ogres not bent on murdering him presented another problem: how to locate Ungrah-de.

Harak quickly discovered that “Ungrah” was a common name among ogres, and “Ungrah-de” merely meant “Big Ungrah.” Many of the creatures answered to that epithet. A great many.

In the end, he found the one he sought by means of a stratagem. He presented a minor chieftain with a bronze Silvanesti dagger and hinted he had a very special gift for the great chief known as Ungrah-de.

“Give gift to me,” said the lesser chief, who was named Garnt. “I’ll give it to Big Ungrah when next I see him.”

Harak had no doubt his life would end immediately once the ogre extracted whatever goods he had. On the other hand, resisting Garnt’s request was likely to be less than healthy, too.

Clapping his hands to his head, Harak howled, “Fierce One, have pity! I bear in my pack a blade cursed by the priests of the woodland elves. My master, the great chief Zannian, cannot wield this weapon himself, for the curse will strike down anyone who holds the blade, sending maggots to consume his flesh even down to the small bones! My chief seeks to rid both his people of this cursed blade and your mountains of the vile tyrant Ungrah-de. When the monster takes the weapon in his unworthy hand, the elf curse will infest him at once, and we shall be blessed by his death!”

Garnt digested this. Harak was gambling on his host hating Ungrah-de, who by reputation was the largest and fiercest ogre in the highlands.

Garnt asked to see the “cursed” Silvanesti weapon. Harak displayed a sword Nacris had sent along as part of the payment for the ogres’ aid. It was a fairly unremarkable bronze weapon with a ring of smoky garnets in its pommel. Harak made a great show of handling the Silvanesti blade with scraps of leather to keep from touching the bare metal.

Garnt studied the sword for a long time. Harak could almost hear the turnings of his slow brain.

“Such a gift must be delivered right away,” the ogre said at last. “One of my warriors will take you to Ungrah-de.”

Harak bowed low, deliberately letting the bronze blade slip from his grasp and fall at Garnt’s feet. The massive ogre shuffled backward to avoid the touch of the “cursed” weapon.

“You go now!” Garnt snapped, face paling. He sent an ogre named Ont to accompany Harak as guide and interpreter.

A day later Ont was leading Harak through a lofty crevice between two of the highest peaks in the range. The air was so thin that Stone Toe’s breath came in labored, deep-chested gasps. Harak took pity on the horse and dismounted, leading him by the reins.

Even Ont found the height difficult. He rested frequently, leaning a heavy arm against the unyielding mountain and breathing hard. During one of these breaks, Harak asked why the great chief lived so high.

Ont’s knowledge of the plains tongue was limited, but he explained the mighty Ungrah-de, being much bigger than his fellow ogres, could breathe effectively at high altitude. It was clear Ont considered himself a mere youth in comparison to the great chieftain.

Harak he dismissed as a “bird,” the uncomplimentary epithet ogres used to describe any small and insignificant creature.

Harak assumed the ogre was exaggerating. Ont was two full spans taller than Harak’s own considerable height and much more heavily muscled than any human. However, when they reached Ungrah-de’s camp, situated on a plateau below the highest peak in the entire range, he realized his guide was only relating the truth. Ungrah-de proved to a towering creature, and the males of his tribe all topped Ont by at least a handspan.

With Ont interpreting, Harak greeted the celebrated Ungrah-de and offered him the gifts Nacris had sent. In addition to the Silvanesti sword, there were various other pretty items stolen by the raiders on their sweep across the plains.

Painted pots and leather goods did not interest the ogre chief. Ungrah-de kicked through the pile of gifts at his feet until he came upon a rare item – a bronze scale. Cunning Nacris had included it intentionally. It was the same scale Duranix had sent to Zannian as a warning to turn back from Yala-tene.

Ungrah-de picked up the scale in one hand, sniffed it, and said a single word to Ont.

The smaller ogre, translating, turned to Harak and asked, “Dragon?”

“Yes,” Harak said, “a scale from a bronze dragon.” Kneeling before this gargantuan ogre, he felt exactly as Ont had characterized him, like a bird, a sparrow in a ring of vultures.

Ungrah asked a question, and Ont relayed. “You take from dragon?”

A little embellishment never hurt a story. “No. My chief, the mighty Zannian, struck this off the dragon Duranix.”

“Where is dragon now?” the chief asked, through Ont.

Harak looked up at the hulking ogre. “Flown away, to the setting sun. The powerful Zannian chased him away.”

Ont translated this. Ungrah responded with a sharp-sounding query.

“He says, if your chief so strong, why need Ungrah-de?”

“Tell the dread chief my people are worn down from long days of fighting. The villagers have chosen to hide behind walls of stone and refuse to come out and fight, face to face, like men – ah, like ogres.”

Ont conveyed this reply. More of Ungrah-de’s warriors gathered around them. The chief thrust his jutting jaw forward, clacking his lower tusks against his upper fangs. He asked what was in the alliance for him.

“Plunder,” Harak said loudly, spreading his hands wide. “All the horses and oxen you can carry off. Cloth, furs, and anything else in the village.”

“Humans?” Ungrah asked slyly.

Though it made his stomach churn, Harak nodded. “Yes. As many as you can take.”

When Ont translated this, the ogres began talking all at once, bellowing, pointing, and gnashing their prominent teeth. Harak tried to interrupt but it was like whistling against thunder. Ungrah-de noticed the human trying to speak and roared for quiet.

Ogres are taciturn and slow to speak, but once they get going, they’re equally hard to silence. When his bellow failed, Ungrah snatched a club from his belt and laid about with this huge persuader, knocking some of his warriors out cold. Others retreated out of reach, nursing bloody noses or spitting out cracked teeth.

Ungrah shoved the end of the club in Harak’s face and roared a question. Ont, after shouldering his way out of the mob, translated.

“He says what else do you have for him?” Ont added in a low voice, “Give cursed blade now. I pick you up and run when Ungrah die!”

Harak nodded, feigning agreement, but he also noticed Ungrah watching them both warily. The chieftain, he was certain, had understood Ont’s words.

Harak opened his fur coat and drew out the wrapped bundle. As he pulled the leather away from the sword, ogres around him grunted. Lacking metal themselves, they greatly prized the few pieces they acquired by raiding or trading.

Obvious appreciation showed in Ungrah-de’s dark eyes, and one taloned paw moved as if to touch the blade. He hesitated.

“It’s all right. Ont thinks it’s cursed.” Harak pulled away the rest of the wrapping and held the sword in his naked hands. “But it’s not.”

Ont’s shaggy brows arched upward, and his wide mouth fell open in surprise. In the next instant, Ungrah took hold of the long sword (in his huge hands it resembled a dagger) and ran the keen point through Ont’s throat. Dark blood welled out of the wound. His knees folded and, gurgling, he toppled. Ungrah withdrew the blade smoothly. The treacherous ogre writhed on the icy turf until a pair of Ungrah’s troop finished him with their clubs.

Harak was still staring at the dying Ont when he felt the warm, sticky tip of the elven sword pressed against his jawbone. Without moving his head, he shifted his eyes to the wielder.

“Great, dread chief,” Harak said carefully, “surely you won’t kill me after I have gifted you with such a blade?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Ungrah said, and Harak quickly realized his command of the plains language was far better than Ont’s had been. “Was this not a plot by little Garnt to murder me?”

“Yes and no, great chief. My story was true. I am here to persuade you to return with me to the Valley of the Falls to fight alongside my chief, Zannian.”

The sword moved forward a hair, breaking Harak’s skin. “What was this foolishness about the Silvanesti blade?”

Despite the debilitating cold, sweat formed on Harak’s brow and slowly trickled down behind his ear to sting the tiny cut the ogre had given him. With the blade still pricking his jaw, he explained how he had duped Ont’s chief into helping him find Ungrah-de.

“It’s good you slew Ont,” Harak finished. “If he had gone back and told Garnt you were not struck down by the curse, there might have been war between your bands.”

Ungrah took the sword away from Harak’s face. “As I am a wolf, they are rabbits,” he scoffed. “Garnt’s tribe is no threat. Someday I will eat them.”

Harak wondered queasily if that was a boast, or merely the simple truth.

The chieftain bellowed commands, and the ogres erupted into action. Harak thought they were breaking camp, preparing to march to Zannian’s aid, and he grew puzzled when they began piling up a great heap of broken tree trunks and dry brush in the center of the camp.

“Great chief, what’s happening?” he asked.

“We go to your fight, but first we punish ourselves.”

Harak’s questions were lost in a forest of giant, fur-clad bodies, dashing about the high, arid plateau in busy preparation. Though brutally strong, for their size the ogres were surprisingly agile and plainly inured to their harsh environs. He counted close to a hundred, of both sexes. They would be a powerful reinforcement for Zannian. Too powerful, perhaps. He wondered what would happen if the ogres decided to turn on their human allies.

Embers were brought from the recesses of the ogres’ cave to the enormous pile of wood and brush in the center of the camp. Driven by the incessant daytime wind, the woodpile rapidly caught fire. Harak wondered if the creatures planned to immolate members of their own band.

Pairs of female ogres appeared, carrying ox hides tied to poles. The skins had been sewn back together in the shape of their former owners, and they sloshed significantly.

Harak’s brown eyes widened. The ogres used whole ox hides as wineskins!

Wine proved to be too grand a description of the beverage that soon poured forth. The dark, brown brew smelled something like old ox hide and something like sour grain. They didn’t use drinking vessels but crowded around the skins, which were each held by a pair of females. The drinkers received a spray of brown brew in their gaping mouths. Harak learned an ogre’s prowess for drink was judged as much by the amount he could swallow in a single gulp as by how well he stood up to the wildly intoxicating effects.

A muscular hand thumped his back. Regaining his balance, he turned to find Ungrah-de glaring down at him.

“Man will have tsoong,” he rumbled, gesturing at the wineskins.

It was obviously a test, not of manners but of strength. Offering his most charming smile, Harak doffed his fur cap and said, “After you, great chief.”

Ungrah snorted; vapor streamed from his flat, leathery nostrils in the frigid air. He preceded Harak to one of the waiting ox hides, swatting warriors aside like so many pinecones.

The ogre females held the skin as high as they could to reach the chiefs gaping mouth. At a wave of his meaty hand, they pressed the sides of the hide together, directing a stream of tsoong into Ungrah’s mouth. The chieftain’s cheeks and throat ballooned as a river of brew flowed and flowed into his mouth. Harak’s own mouth hung open in shock. He was so amazed that he forgot to be disgusted.

The females drained half the hide into their chief, stopping only because they needed to adjust their grip in order to dispense more. Ungrah stepped back and wiped his tusks with the back of one hand. His warriors roared his name.

Whirling, the ogre chief took Harak roughly by the front of his fur cape. His pupils had shrunk to the size of jet beads.

“You next,” he said. His breath was indescribably foul.

Harak swallowed hard. “Thank you,” he said. He winked at the burly tsoong carriers, saying, “Ladies, be kind to a stranger and a human. Don’t drown me!”

Ungrah repeated his remarks in his own tongue, and the females giggled, a sound only somewhat lower than an ox’s grunting.

Harak offered a prayer to his ancestors, though he thought it highly unlikely any of that wayward crew could help him now. Opening his mouth, he shut his eyes and waited. A stream of brew hit him. The force of it drove him back a step. Gulping rapidly, he managed to keep up with the flow. Then it doubled.

Tsoong washed over his face and down his chin. He tried tilting his head back, but that just allowed the liquid to run up his nose. Choking, he swallowed what he could, then finally turned aside, face purpling.

The flavor was... well, awful didn’t even begin to describe it. Intensely bitter, tsoong had an aftertaste so sweet it made his jaw lock tight. And the smell! He was sure they must ferment it in the ox hides to get such a strong smell of putrid meat.

His stomach roiled. Tsoong threatened to climb back up his throat, but he held it down with a trick he’d learned in Zannian’s band – he rolled his tongue backward, blocking his throat. The intoxicating effects of the brew hit him and lightened his head. A fiery aura enveloped him, the first warmth he’d felt since coming to the high mountains. His nausea faded.

A powerful hand spun him around. The camp whirled about his head. The blurry visage of Ungrah-de swam before Harak’s eyes.

“You did not lose the tsoong!” the chieftain exclaimed with dawning respect. All around them grown ogre warriors were on their knees, retching. “You are a warrior indeed, little bird! Have you ogre blood in you?”

Shame on my ancestors if that’s true, Harak thought groggily, but was sober enough not to say it out loud.

“A spicy... drink, great chief, but I’ve had stronger,” Harak said. Anything stronger would have loosened his teeth.

Ungrah picked him up by the back of his cloak and shook him playfully. “I like you, man. What are you called again?”

“Harak, Nebu’s son.”

“The night is long and cold, Harak Nebu’s Son! You will tell me of your battles, of the enemies you have slain! Come, let us punish ourselves again, to make our spirits angry and our future battles sweet!”

It was a long night. Harak was obliged to drink more of the foul brew but was able to fool the drunken ogres into thinking he was keeping up with their excesses. Ungrah passed out near midnight, the last of the ogres to succumb. Hoarfrost was forming on the snoring ogres, so Harak crawled close to the dying bonfire before blessedly losing consciousness. When morning came at last, he well understood why they called their revels “punishment.” The aftereffects of tsoong proved to be even worse than the ordeal of swallowing it in the first place.

*

Beramun lay on her belly in the high grass. All around her, scouts from Karada’s band of nomads were likewise hidden. It was early afternoon and hot. No shade softened the glare of the sun on the open savanna. Sweat pooled in the small of her back, but she ignored it, as she ignored the fly buzzing around her face and the maddening itch on her ankle.

The rest of the band was half a league back, hidden in a dry wash. Since leaving their camp on the eastern plain, Karada’s people had covered better than fifteen leagues a day – an amazing distance considering a third of them were not horsed.

Continuing that pace would have brought them to Yala-tene in six and a half days, but just after dawn Karada halted everyone. Her scouts had come galloping back reporting fresh signs of strangers on horseback ahead.

“Could be Zannian’s men,” Beramun said, her heart racing.

Beside her, Karada was reflective. “Or Silvanesti. Were the tracks shod?” Elves put copper shoes on their horses’ hoofs. Humans rode unshod animals.

The scouts reported the horses were unshod, and Karada ordered the band to take cover in the dusty ravine. She placed her old comrade Pakito in charge of defending the children, old folks, and baggage, then picked two dozen riders to follow her forward to investigate the strangers. Beramun was included in the scouting party since she knew Zannian’s men on sight.

Before they rode away, a girl of eighteen summers dashed out from the line of baggage-bearing travois. Long auburn braid bouncing on her back, she ran to Karada and clutched the nomad chieftain’s leg.

“Take me!” the girl demanded. “I’m too old to remain with the children!”

Karada shook her leg, breaking the girl’s hold. “Get back, Mara,” she said sternly. “You’re not a warrior.”

“Neither is she!” The girl pointed to Beramun.

“She’s a hunter, and she knows the enemy. Go back to Pakito.” When Mara showed no sign of moving, Karada pushed her away with her foot. “Do as I say! Go!”

The column of riders trotted away. Beramun looked back. Mara glared at her, tears staining her face, then whirled and walked back to the waiting band.

Beramun wanted to feel sorry for the girl. Her life, like Beramun’s, had been difficult. Captured and enslaved by Silvanesti, Mara had been freed by Karada. Beramun had suffered likewise at the hands of Zannian’s raiders. They had killed her family and forced her to labor in their camp, but she had escaped and made her way to Yala-tene. Though she could sympathize with what Mara had suffered, Beramun found it impossible to like her. The girl’s jealousy was all too plain.

Half a league west, they found the trail of the unshod horses. Karada examined the signs. Whoever they were, they rode in a double line, keeping precise intervals between each horse. Beramun felt the raiders were too wild to keep such order and wondered who this could be.

Karada, cinching her sword belt tightly around her waist, ordered Beramun and ten scouts to dismount and search westward on foot for fresh signs. She and the remaining mounted scouts strung their bows and followed at a distance.

Time passed. The sun climbed to its zenith then began its journey down to the west. Beramun walked slowly, constantly scanning the horizon for movement. Her thoughts wandered back to Yala-tene.

How many days had it been since she’d left – twelve, fourteen? Did the walls still stand? Did Karada’s kindly brother Amero still lead the village? Or had he and the rest already fallen to the raiders, never knowing she had reached her goal?

Unconscious of the gesture, Beramun rested her hand against a spot high on her chest. Beneath her fingers was the green mark placed there by Sthenn – a smooth, iridescent triangle, a bit larger than a human thumbprint. The mark had nearly been her undoing when she first arrived in Yala-tene. She had no memory of receiving it, but Duranix said it stamped her as Sthenn’s property and had urged her immediate death. Amero had defended her against his powerful friend. Had her long absence changed Amero’s mind? Perhaps the people of Yala-tene now believed her to be doing the evil dragon’s work.

Beramun kept the mark hidden from Karada and her people. She couldn’t bear the thought that the same hatred and loathing she’d seen in the bronze dragon’s eyes might bloom in Karada’s clear hazel gaze.

The nomad on her immediate right, a dark-skinned fellow named Bahco, suddenly dropped to one knee. All along the line the scouts followed suit. With the pronounced heat-shimmer in the air, Beramun and the others would be invisible behind tall grass so long as they remained still.

She glanced at Bahco. His ebony skin was sweat-sheened, like her own. By following the line of his gaze, she saw dark figures moving against the bright horizon. The objects grew larger as she watched. They were closing. She and the other scouts dropped to their stomachs. Bahco crawled back to warn Karada.

Raising her head slightly, Beramun could make out six figures on horseback and, between them, four people walking on foot. Each pair of walkers had a long pole on their shoulders. A butchered animal carcass swayed from each pole.

Beramun sighed and relaxed a little. They were probably not Zannian’s men. Such a hunting party would likely not be scouting for a force of raiders.

They were approaching from the northwest, heading southeast, which would bring them obliquely across Beramun’s hiding place from right to left. As they drew nearer, sunlight flashed off the metal they wore, and Beramun fretted anew. Hunters avoided wearing metal, as the glare and clatter of it scared away game. Who were these people?

Someone came sliding through grass behind her. A dry, callused hand touched her forearm. She turned and saw the nomad chieftain crouched behind her.

Karada held a finger to her lips. Her bow was in her other hand. Beramun looked a question at her, but Karada’s face was like a mask of seasoned wood. The marks on her face and neck, which had given her the name “Scarred One,” stood out whitely against her tan.

Faintly, the strangers’ voices could be heard. One of them laughed. The odor of freshly killed game was strong now. Beramun didn’t dare lift her head higher for a better view. Instead, she slowly parted the grass stems in front of her, trying to peer through the summer growth.

Her caution was for naught. Karada suddenly rose to her knees and in one swift motion, nocked an arrow and loosed it. Beramun heard the flint-tipped shaft strike flesh; the sound was unmistakable.

Shouts erupted, and the riders urged their horses to a gallop even as Beramun wondered why Karada had given them away by attacking. All around her, the nomads rose from hiding places and picked off the mounted strangers. It was over in a few heartbeats, all six riders slain.

“Stand up, Beramun, and see who we’ve found.”

The nomad chieftain bent over the one she’d shot, turning his lifeless face to the sun and pulling off his helmet. A shock of pale hair was revealed – and sharply pointed ears.

“Elves,” Beramun breathed. “How did you know, Karada?”

The four bearers on foot had thrown down the deer carcasses they carried and stood in a huddle. They were elves too, dark-haired and more sunburned than their mounted comrades. When they heard the name of their captor, they fell to their knees in the trampled grass.

“Spare us, terrible Karada!” one cried. “We are not soldiers. We bear no arms!”

“You’re elves,” she replied coldly. “Why should I spare any of you?”

“We’re poor folk from the south woods,” said another, “hired to work for the great lord. Spare our lives, great chieftain! We will leave your land and never return!”

“What lord?” Karada asked. “Who leads you?”

“Lord Balif.”

Bahco, leaning on his bow, was startled. “Out here? Why would the commander of Silvanos’s host stray so far from home?”

“A hunting expedition, sir. Lord Balif delights in the hunt.”

“Don’t I know it.” Karada prodded the nearest elf with her bow. “How many soldiers are with him?”

He shook his head, exchanging a frightened look with the others. “I don’t know the number, lady.”

“More than what you see here?”

He looked around at the watching nomads, then said, “Yes. Twice this many, could be.”

Karada’s eyes shone. “So Balif goes hunting with fewer than a hundred retainers?” She punched a fist in the air. “I’ll have him! I’ll hang his head from my tent post!”

“But what about Amero and Yala-tene?” Beramun cried.

“What about them?” Karada said coolly.

Beramun was stunned by her indifference. “We have to help them. Now!”

Karada tossed her bow to Bahco and folded her tanned arms. “Amero can hold out a half day longer. I’ve waited too many years to get Balif at sword point!”

Beramun tried to argue, but the rising color in the nomad chiefs face told her it was useless. Love for her brother had given way to a dream of vengeance, a dream Karada would not deny herself.

From the bearers, they learned Balif’s camp was two leagues southeast. Karada sent riders to tell Pakito to bring the rest of the band forward. Her plan was to wait for nightfall, then surround the elves’ camp and take them while they slept. Beramun’s worry that it might be a trap was dismissed outright, reasoning the Silvanesti had no way of knowing the nomads had come so far west.

“As far as they know,” Karada said, smiling a bit, “we’re still in the foothills of Strar, where you found us. Everyone has been chased out of this region, right down to Miteera and his centaurs.” Her smile widened into a fierce grin. “Balif thinks he’s safe!”

The nomads rounded up the slain Silvanesti’s horses and prepared to join up with Pakito. Beramun was relieved when Karada ordered the captives bound rather than killed, and the woodland elves were led away by rawhide halters looped around their necks.

“I ought to burn them, as their masters tried to burn us on Mount Ibal,” Karada muttered. Her hazel eyes narrowed. “But I won’t. I’ve learned many things from the Silvanesti, but they are not my teachers in war.”

Beramun was relieved, then startled as Karada’s demeanor lightened abruptly. “I’ll have him at last! Balif will fall to me!” the nomad chief exclaimed. “It’s you, Beramun. You’re my good luck. Your coming has been a portent.”

Beramun shook her head sadly. “I did not come, I was sent.”

Unmoved, Karada turned her attention to the elves’ game. “Someone pick up that meat! Balif’s hunters went to the trouble to kill those deer. The least we can do is eat them!”

*

They found Balif’s camp just where the bearers said they would, by a small tributary of the Thon-Tanjan. A palisade of sharpened stakes surrounded the tents, and a few mounted warriors stood guard, but the eighty-odd elves in camp were sleeping as Karada closed in around them.

Beramun had never seen bows used at night before. The effect was terrifying. With no more sound than the snap of the bowstring, lethal arrows came flying out of the darkness. Highlighted by the campfires behind them, the mounted guards had no chance. They quickly went down, and Karada sent ten nomads forward to break a hole in the hedge of stakes. Only a small gap in the palisade was opened before the nomads were seen. The rattle of bronze gongs roused the Silvanesti from their slumber.

“Form on me!” Karada called, placing herself at the head of a close column of riders.

“Do we give quarter?” asked Pakito, a giant on a mammoth horse.

The chiefs wheat-colored horse reared as her hands tightened on the reins. “Spare all who lay down their arms!” Karada shouted. “Now, at them!”

Three abreast, the mounted nomads charged through the gap made in the line of stakes. At first there was little resistance. Hastily donning what armor was at hand, the Silvanesti hung back around a central cluster of tents. Several javelins flew at the nomads, emptying a few saddles, but Karada was too canny to ride straight into the center of an aroused enemy camp. She sent half her warriors off to the left, circling just inside the palisade, while she led the rest to the right. A second wave of nomads, headed by Pakito, brought in torches and set fire to the outer ring of tents.

Fire blazed up, revealing the confusing scene. Beramun, armed with an unfamiliar sword, tried to keep pace with Karada. She did not strike a single blow, for the elves had done her no harm, but Silvanesti on foot around her did not realize this. A half-clad elf threw a spear at her. It seemed to leave his hand slowly, then gain frightening speed as it plunged at her face. She brought up her sword to deflect it, but a heedless, howling nomad rode in front of her and took the Silvanesti javelin in the ribs.

Shaking off her battle lethargy, Beramun rode through a gap in the churning crowd toward Karada. The Silvanesti adopted an interesting way of fighting their mounted foes. Instead of trying to make a line, they grouped into small knots of four to six warriors each, presenting a circle of sharp points all around them. They might have held off Karada’s band with this tactic but for the nomads’ bows. Whenever a knot of Silvanesti proved too tough to break, bows were called for and the defending elves picked off.

Between the two biggest campfires, a large contingent of elves had collected, led by a tall, fair-haired Silvanesti clad in a white shift stained with blood. Shouting in unison, the elves charged their mounted enemies and drove them back.

Karada shouldered through the melee. “Balif! It’s Karada! Yield or perish!” she cried.

The fighting continued, however, so the nomad chief called on the archers beside her, ordering them to spare the tall elf leader.

A quick thrum of arrows cut down several Silvanesti standing beside Balif. When he saw his companions felled, the pale-haired elf snapped an order. Within moments, the remaining Silvanesti grounded their arms. A few on the far side of the camp did not hear the command or would not obey it. They fought on until they were overcome, and more died.

By midnight, the fighting was over. Half the elves and a score of Karada’s warriors had been slain. The surviving elves were plainly shocked by the swift battle, and they sat disconsolately on the ground, lords and commoners alike.

Balif, slightly wounded, surrendered his sword to Pakito, who presented the elf lord to Karada.

Looking down on Balif from horseback, she relished the ironic change of fortune that had brought him into her hands.

“So, your life is mine now,” she said. “What do you say to that?”

Balif mopped sweat and blood from his high forehead. “I say I am wiser than even I knew,” he answered in a subdued voice.

She frowned, plainly at a loss. “What do you mean?”

“Years ago I spared you after the battle of the riverbend. Had I killed you, the leader of your band of nomads now might have no reason to spare my life.”

Some of the nomads laughed at this surprising reasoning, but Beramun was still puzzled. “If you’d killed Karada back then, this whole battle might not have happened,” she pointed out.

The elf lord turned to her, and she was struck by the strangeness of his eyes. They were like a cloudless sky, or watered rock crystal....

“Do I know you?” Balif said, pale brows rising. Even in defeat his manner was winning. She gave her name. “Well, Beramun, consider this: felling a single tree does not bring down an entire forest.”

The nomads laughed again, but Beramun was as mixed-up as ever, both by his subtle words and by his demeanor.

“You still talk too much,” Karada said harshly. “Stand where you are and keep silent!”

The captured elves were bound hand and foot and their camp thoroughly looted. Stores of fine bronze weapons, helmets, and breastplates were distributed to nomads who had distinguished themselves in the fight. Karada offered a long, yellow dagger to Beramun, but the girl declined.

“I’d rather learn the bow,” she said.

“Then you shall.” Karada tossed the dagger to Mara. “Put that in my baggage.” Mara slipped into the crowd, the bronze dagger clutched in her fist.

When Balif was separated from the rest and led away, it became obvious not all the nomads were in favor of sparing him. A man named Kepra, whose face bore the old marks of severe burns, argued forcefully for the elf’s death.

“Have you forgotten this?” he hissed, gesturing at his own face. “My mate and children burned to death at Mount Ibal in the fire his soldiers started!”

“Those Silvanesti were commanded by Tamanithas, not Balif,” Pakito said.

The elf general Tamanithas had long pursued Karada with fanatical fury. His soldiers had set fire to the dry grass on the slopes of Mount Ibal, killing over half her band eight years ago. Tamanithas did not long enjoy his victory. He perished in personal combat with Karada, two years to the day after the fiery destruction he’d inflicted.

“Balif is no better!” Kepra insisted, his voice rising. “Cut off his head, I say! You’ve spoken of doing just that many times!”

During the debate, Balif had sat quietly at the center of the emotional nomads. He now asked if he could speak, and Karada gave him leave.

“In the plan of life it matters little whether you kill me or not. The Throne of the Stars will continue, and Speaker Silvanos will find a new servant to carry out his will.”

The humans around him muttered and swore.

“That said, I must admit I do not want to die.”

His declaration was followed by loud suggestions the elf lord be mutilated or blinded. Beramun noticed that for all his seeming calm, Balif’s pallid face grew even whiter as he listened.

Karada let her people rant a while, then said, “A hunter does not injure an animal on purpose. She kills it or lets it go. There is no third way.”

“I could be ransomed,” Balif said. The word meant nothing to the nomads, so he explained. “Send word to Silvanost of my capture, and demand payment in exchange for my freedom. I’m certain the Speaker will barter for me, if the price is not too high.”

Nomads greeted the notion with enthusiasm. Once more there was much noisy wrangling, this time over what to ask for. It wasn’t lost on Balif that Kepra and a good number of other nomads remained silent, staring at him with unconcealed hatred.

Karada called again for silence. “As I am chief of this band, so your life belongs to me,” she said to the elf lord. “Eight years ago I was in your place, and you spared my life —”

“No!” many nomads shouted, interrupting her. “Kill him!”

“Ransom! Ransom!” chanted others.

The tumult died down, and Karada’s gaze bored into Balif s. “You won’t know the day you’re meant to die. That will be my choosing. Until then, we shall see if your great lord Silvanos values you as much as you say he does.”

Balif nodded solemnly.

“Take any four of the well-born captives,” Karada told Pakito. “Give them clothes to cover their backsides, a skin of water each, and a strip of jerky. Tell them to return to Silvanost with this message: Lord Balif will live only if I receive five hundred bronze swords, five hundred fleet horses – mares and stallions in equal number – and five hundred pounds of purest bronze.”

Gasps arose at the huge price named. None of them had ever seen so much metal, and the band had never had five hundred horses at one time before.

“Will they be able to pay it?” asked Bahco, awed.

“They will pay or receive Balif’s head in a pot of salt,” said Karada flatly. Her bloodthirsty remarks did not seem to worry Balif as much as the silent anger of Kepra and those who sided with him. In fact, the elf lord smiled at Karada. She turned brusquely away.

“It’ll take time to gather such wealth,” Pakito said. “We’re riding west. How will we ever get the ransom, if the great elf chief agrees?”

Karada pondered for a moment. Her eye fell on Kepra, scarred inside and out by fire.

“We will give them one year’s time,” she said. “Let the Silvanesti meet us then on the south slope of Mount Ibal. There the ransom will be given over... if Balif still lives.”

The last four words were added in a mutter, but the elf lord agreed with surprisingly little rancor. Four noble elves were cut loose to deliver the message. At first they were reluctant to present such shameful words to the Speaker of the Stars, but Balif convinced them. They were given their meager supplies and sent off. The hoof-beats of their mounts faded quickly into the night.

The nomads dispersed to make preparations for night camp. Soon Karada and Beramun were alone with the captive elf lord.

Balif sat down on the ground. “Congratulations, Karada,” he said.

“For what?”

“You are treating with the mightiest ruler in the world,” he said, almost bemused. He looked past the nomad chieftain standing over him, focusing his gaze on the starry sky. “By doing so, you and your people cease to be a band of scavengers and vagabonds. Now you are a nation, like mine.”

“Like yours?” she said, spitting the words. “Spirits preserve us from such a fate.”

Chapter 3

At first, the flashes in the clouds below puzzled him. They couldn’t be lightning. When a bronze dragon was aloft, any lightning in the air would naturally collect around him, not far beneath in some broken clouds. If not lightning, then the flicker of fire in the air had to be something else, something unnatural. This possibility filled his tired limbs with new energy.

Duranix had been airborne eleven straight days, keeping on the trail of his mortal foe, Sthenn. More than a thousand leagues had passed beneath his hurtling shadow: ocean, islands, continents, and more ocean. His days had been a grim routine of flying, eating on the wing, and straining his senses for clues.

Some five or six days into the chase, Sthenn had switched to a spear-straight course due west, no longer dodging and doubling back to confuse his younger adversary. Just as Duranix was adjusting to his foe’s headlong flight, the aged serpent tricked him again. Losing the trail completely, Duranix wove north and south for several days, seeking remnants of the green dragon’s passage.

There were a few signs – a small blasted area in a dense forest, the half-eaten carcass of a whale floating in the ocean, an errant smell of decay on the high winds – yet never an actual sighting.

Sthenn’s new elusiveness was disturbing. Until now the green dragon had been careful not to lose Duranix. By keeping him on the chase, by leading him farther and farther from the Valley of the Falls, Sthenn was clearing the way for Zannian to destroy Yala-tene.

Duranix accepted those risks – the possibility of his own death and that of Amero – in order to sink his claws and teeth into his ancient enemy.

Now, thousands of leagues from Amero, Duranix sensed Sthenn’s purpose had changed. Perhaps the ancient creature was growing tired. Maybe he thought enough time had elapsed for his human minions to ravage Duranix’s territory. Whatever the reason, the green dragon was no longer leading Duranix astray, offering tantalizing glimpses of himself and leaving obvious markers to his passage. He seemed genuinely to be trying to evade his pursuer.

Scarlet and yellow flashes rippled through the lower clouds again. A distant boom arrived a little later. Duranix knew the air was too dry and cold to birth a thunderstorm. Perhaps he’d found Sthenn at last.

Shortening the spread of his wings, he dropped swiftly through the clouds. White lines of surf were visible to the north, evidence of a beach. Sunlight slanted through the tattered clouds, illuminating the tossing waves. The sea was shallow here, shallow and green as emerald.

Duranix emerged from the lowest level of clouds and found himself buffeted by searing flashes and loud claps of thunder. Heat flashed over his metallic hide.

Slitting his eyes to shield them, he saw the sea below was thick with boats, like the canoes made by humans but larger and more elaborate. Some were very long, with many slender oars protruding from the sides. They resembled giant centipedes. Other craft, shorter and blockier, pushed through the frothing waves propelled by a paddle wheel on each side. The centipede ships were roofed in timber and painted with stripes of red and black. The paddle-wheelers were sheathed in bronze plates. Duranix couldn’t see what sort of creatures were operating the craft, but they were fighting each other, centipedes versus paddlers.

The strange thunder and lightning came again, and he immediately saw the source of the fury: machines, mounted on platforms atop the paddle vessels, were hurling pots of fire at their foes. When a pot hit a black-and-red centipede boat, it burst apart with a loud report and the craft, burning, sank.

There was no sign of Sthenn here, so Duranix pointed his nose west again. His wings had not flapped three times before the ocean exploded behind him. He thought it was more of the sea battle until he heard a reptilian shriek of fury. Craning his long neck around, he spotted Sthenn protruding from the waves. Water streamed from his neck and tree-trunk sized nostrils.

Got you! Duranix exulted. The craven Sthenn had tried to hide by lying submerged in the shallow, green waters, but had misjudged Duranix’s position and emerged too soon. Now he was caught!

Duranix came diving back, chin barbels whipping in the wind. He thrust out his foreclaws and let his mouth gape wide. Too often on the chase Sthenn had managed to dodge Duranix’s energy bolts. He’d always been airborne, able to maneuver. Now he was chest-deep in wind-tossed waves, standing on the sea bottom. Duranix let fly.

The sizzling blue bolt caught the green dragon squarely in his ancient, withered throat. He erupted in a howl of pain. Heat from the blast caused the water around Sthenn to steam. Slowly, like a great tree falling, he toppled backward into the waves.

Duranix flashed over the spot so low his wingtips flicked saltwater onto his back. He sped past a line of black-and-red boats, which back-oared frantically to avoid him. The paddle-wheelers hoisted pennants and closed in to finish their opponents off.

Duranix turned and strove hard to gain height. Strange, there was no sign of Sthenn. He couldn’t possibly have succumbed to a single strike... but then, the green dragon had been traveling hard, and he was not as young or strong as Duranix.

The sea battle continued to rage beneath him, but Duranix ignored it. He had no time for anything but the destruction of his enemy.

The water was a perfect cover for the green dragon. Cursing his inadequate vision, Duranix tried to probe the surging depths with his other senses, but the scene was too confused.

Just as Duranix banked left, Sthenn reared up in the midst of the paddle craft. The green dragon had a deep wound in his chest that bled black ichor into the sea. Bilious jets of toxic fumes billowed from his mouth. The poison couldn’t kill Duranix, but it did mix with the clouds to form a murky vapor. What effect it had on the creatures in the boats Duranix didn’t know

Sthenn reached down with both foreclaws, grasped the nearest boat, a flag-decked paddle-wheeler, and hoisted it into the air. The paddles on each side of the tubby hull continued to turn, water sluicing from them. Wheezing with pain, Sthenn hurled the vessel at Duranix.

The bronze flapped vigorously for altitude. The boat tumbled end over end as it came. Duranix dodged, and the craft plummeted back to the sea. When it landed a huge spout of green water was thrown up, and the battered boat rapidly sank.

A curious thing happened next. The boats ceased battling each other and attacked the dragons! Not just the paddle-wheelers but the centipede vessels as well – scores of craft turned their attention to the giant beasts in their midst. The centipede boats were equipped with sharp metallic prows, which they tried to ram into Sthenn. He swatted the craft aside while spewing poisonous breath over them.

The paddle-wheelers tossed firepots at Duranix. He twisted and turned, keeping his vulnerable wings away from the exploding pots. He had no quarrel with these unknown beings, but they were hampering his more important contest. Without the strength to loose another bolt of lightning, he directed his repelling force against the firepots arcing toward him. The pots rebounded, falling among the very ships that had launched them. Two of the craft were shattered by the ensuing blasts, rolling over and plunging beneath the waves. The remaining paddlers scuttled away.

By this time Sthenn had waded free of the sea battle. Striding laboriously on his hind legs, the green dragon rose higher and higher out of the water.

“Sthenn!” Duranix bellowed. “Stay and fight!”

The old beast continued his plodding progress toward land, still more than a league away. “Not today, little friend,” he wheezed. “Not... today!”

Duranix tore after his fleeing foe. So intent was he on the chase that he didn’t notice a second fleet of paddle craft just below his right wing. At a range of a hundred paces, eight vessels flung their firepots. On converging courses, the pots collided directly beneath the bronze dragon.

The shock of the blast flipped him upside down. Sulfurous fumes filled his chest. He plunged to the water and struck hard, headfirst.

The impact stunned him. He was conscious for a few moments, feeling something encircle his neck, sensed he was moving through the water, being towed. Then he blacked out.

Time passed. The sun climbed higher, its heat thinning the early morning clouds. Blue reclaimed the wide sky. Sea birds, leery at first of the enormous creature beached on their turf, slowly came out of hiding and began to wheel and dive for food again.

Duranix awoke slowly, slitting his eyes against the blinding brightness of sky. He lay on his back in the surf, wings extended but buried in wet sand. His tail drifted side to side with the motion of the tide. Cold seawater gurgled in his ears.

He raised his head, and the web of fiber lines wound around his neck snapped and fell away. Having stunned him, the paddle crafts had wrapped him in a stout net, towed him ashore, and hastened away. Why they didn’t try to harm him further he couldn’t guess.

The ocean was dotted with wreckage – broken timbers, oars, the shattered remains of boats. Underneath the pervasive smell of sulfur and niter was the tang of burned flesh. Whether his, Sthenn’s, or that of the warring creatures on the boats, he couldn’t tell.

Rolling onto all fours, Duranix shook off the netting and damp sand. A look up and down the beach showed him Sthenn was gone, so he set about putting himself to rights so he could resume the chase.

Each wing had to be preened of sand. If the sand was allowed to work its way under his scales, it would cause painful sores. The preening was a cautious operation, requiring concentration. His claws and horns were hard and sharp, and his wing membranes were delicate.

When he was finished, Duranix spread his wings a bit to dry them. He strode up the shoreline to the highest dune. From this vantage, he saw a green line of trees inland. More importantly, he saw Sthenn’s narrow, three-toed claw prints. The old dragon had come ashore here, and his prints led directly toward the distant forest. He must have been hurt if he wasn’t flying – or could this be another of his endless tricks to put Duranix off guard?

It scarcely mattered. Duranix had no choice but to follow his tormentor’s mincing tracks. The trees were still a long way off when he found the ancient stone marker.

It stood in the midst of the dunes, a sandstone column carved flat on four sides. It was old and weathered, and its base was askew, causing the tall column to lean. Strange figures were carved in deep relief on all four faces.

Duranix started to walk around the column but paused. The carvings caught his attention.

The reliefs showed a crowd of two-legged beings (vaguely like humans or elves) swarming ant-like up the side of a mountain. They toppled large round objects – boulders perhaps – off a cliff while others of their kind fought a pair of large, four-legged creatures with long, serpentine necks.

Duranix stared hard at the worn images. Were those wings folded on the creatures’ backs? Was he looking at some kind of memorial to a battle fought against dragons?

The shrieks of gulls spiraling overhead broke his contemplation. With Sthenn still roaming free, this was no time to puzzle over artifacts. The green dragon’s trail led without deviation to the forest; he must be seeking the kind of cover he knew best.

Duranix flexed his wings experimentally. They were dry and free of sand. He leaped into the air.

From this height, he could see the woods were wide and dense, separating the beach from a series of cliffs beyond. The escarpment was composed of a light blue stone, making it hard to distinguish from the hazy sky.

When he reached the trees, Duranix spread his powerful senses wide in search of Sthenn. Immediately, he picked up the scent of a dragon – but, surprisingly, it wasn’t Sthenn.

The old wyrm exuded a putrescence Duranix knew as well as he knew the smell of Amero (poor soft-skinned humans could never get truly clean). This new scent was certainly draconic, but metallic and clean. There was something else, a difference he couldn’t quite fathom. The closer he came to the escarpment, the more pronounced the distracting scent became.

Extending his rear claws, Duranix landed on a ledge of blue stone. It was a pretty species of slate, only slightly darker than a summer sky. He put his back to the plateau and studied the forest below. He had an excellent view of the land, and in that position he remained, unmoving as the stones around him, while the sun passed its zenith and began its descent.

Many animals and birds passed beneath his gaze, but not Sthenn. Puzzling. The green dragon’s presence should have disturbed the local animals greatly, yet he saw little sign of it. Predatory birds circled in the warm air. Tree-climbing rodents cavorted among the leafy branches. Clouds of insects swarmed over the narrow stream flowing through the heart of the woods. The largest beast Duranix saw was a kind of long-legged pig, with a ruff of stiff, white fur around its neck and a pair of vicious-looking tusks. About half the size of a wild ox, the ruffed pigs left the shade of the trees in twos and threes to dip their long snouts in the stream. If Sthenn was around, he was being extremely discreet. The pigs looked completely untroubled.

They also looked quite tasty. Duranix’s stomach rumbled. His last meal had been a school of leaping sailfish two days ago, and he found his attention fixed by the prowling pigs.

Then came that feeling again, the sensation another dragon was near. A broad shadow flashed overhead. Acting purely on instinct, he sprang straight up at the shadow. He had only a glimpse of bright scales and slender wings before he slammed into the belly of another dragon.

The stranger bleated in surprise. Duranix knew immediately it was not Sthenn. He tried to disentangle himself but was firmly held by the other. Together they dropped from the sky and crashed into the forest. The spicy, resinous smell of fractured cedar filled the air.

Powerful clawed feet kicked at Duranix’s chest. Nothing like the vicious attacks he’d weathered from Sthenn, they still hurt. Tired, frustrated, and ravenously hungry, Duranix lost his temper. He seized the other dragon’s hind legs, reared, and flung him into the trees.

There was a glint of bright metal. The dragon hit the cedars and flattened them. Rolling over several times, the stranger came quickly to his feet.

Duranix blinked, his eyelids clicking down and up several times. The stranger was not a he but a she – a bronze dragon, smaller than himself.

She shook off the effects of the crash and faced him, back arched like an enormous wildcat, horns, spines, and barbels rigid with fright and fury. Extending her neck, she opened her jaws and hissed.

He was surprised, having expected her to loose a bolt of lightning. Assuming a passive stance, he relaxed his coiled muscles. “Greetings.” he said. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Greetings!” She growled angrily, deep in her throat. She was half Duranix’s weight and two-thirds his length. Thin, too, but well muscled. Her scales were bright and well buffed.

When he failed to get any further response, Duranix asked, slowly and deliberately, “What is your name?”

The female bronze finally lowered her back and raised her head. “Blusidar. Blusidar is my name.”

“I’m sorry I attacked you, Blusidar. I mistook you for an enemy. There is a green dragon in your territory, a creature of great evil. I’ve pursued him around the world to this spot. When you flew past me, I thought you were him.”

She stepped over broken tree stumps, carefully keeping her distance from the imposing stranger. “I see no dragon but you, and I did not see you till you struck.”

She was young, Duranix realized. Very young. Still, she was the first bronze dragon he’d encountered since the death of his mother and clutchmates many centuries ago. In his travels around familiar lands, he’d met other dragons: the loquacious brass Gilar, who dwelt in the far eastern desert, and the copper twins Suphenthrex and Salamantix, who lived on twin mountains northeast of the Valley of the Falls. Other dragons he had known had dwelt on the borders of the great savanna, but one by one, they’d been killed or driven off by Sthenn.

“This green dragon – his name is Sthenn – is here somewhere close by, hiding,” Duranix told Blusidar. “I wounded him in the sea and I tracked him ashore. You’re not safe with him here.”

She pondered that for a moment, then asked, “What? I am safe with you?”

“Certainly!” he said indignantly. She flinched when his voice rose. Schooling himself to calm, Duranix added, “What land is this? Who dwells here besides you?”

“This land is the land. I know no other,” Blusidar said. “Came you through the Zenzi?” At his obvious lack of understanding, she explained, “Zenzi – walk on two legs, like birds, but have no feathers. So big.” She held her claw off the ground at about the same height as a human child.

“These Zenzi, do they use large boats to cross the sea?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then I saw them, fighting others or among themselves. Who are they?”

Haltingly, pushing the limits of her vocabulary, Blusidar told him about the Zenzi and this, her homeland.

It was an island, quite large, with a ring of blue stone mountains in the center. She was the only dragon on the island, though once there had been others. The Zenzi had confined the dragons to the island long, long ago.

“How is that possible?” Duranix demanded. “Creatures no bigger than humans imposing their will on dragons? I don’t believe it!”

“Not big dragons like me, you.” She cupped her foreclaws around an imaginary sphere. “Vree-al.”

Duranix was startled. The sound Blusidar made was the one clutching females used to comfort their unhatched offspring.

She continued, relating an amazing tale that explained the weathered column he’d seen on the beach. Ages ago, the Zenzi had dumped fertile dragon eggs on this remote island. After hatching, the dragons grew up in isolation and ignorance, having no idea of the wider world beyond the shores of their island. Over time, a few had taken a chance and flown away, certain there must be more to their world than this island. None had ever returned, and the rest had lived and died here. Blusidar was the last.

“You go,” she said, finishing her story “This place is mine. You go back where you came.”

She seemed unmoved by the fact that Duranix’s very existence confirmed a wider world beyond her tiny island.

“I shall leave,” Duranix said, “but not until I find Sthenn. If I leave him here, he’ll kill you.”

Blusidar backed away, keeping her dagger-shaped pupils fixed on Duranix. “Then go soon. Too many dragons are trouble. Find your Green and go!”

She slipped between the closely growing trees and disappeared. Duranix advanced a few steps. Pigeons rose in a cloud from the trees, marking the fleeing bronze’s path.

Something hard jabbed his foreclaw. Duranix lifted his leg and saw a bright bronze scale embedded in the trunk of a shattered cedar. He worked it loose with his talons. One of Blusidar’s. Unlike his own scales, which were large, curved, and shaped like an acorn in silhouette, Blusidar’s were flatter and almost circular. The edges were smooth, another sign she was less than a century old. From the scale wafted the clean, bright smell he’d sensed while flying over the island.

The image of Blusidar staring fearfully up at him, knowing he was larger and stronger, yet facing him with foolish bravery, caused Duranix to close a powerful claw around the scale.

Here was one dragon Sthenn would not harm, he vowed. He would not allow it.

Chapter 4

Dawn arrived in awesome silence. A light morning mist filled the low places below the walls of Yala-tene and hung over the clear waters of the Lake of the Falls. Despite the early hour, the parapets were lined with people – somber, gray-faced, as stony as the wall on which they stood.

On the valley floor, lines of horsemen were deployed in a great arc around the besieged town, from the rocky flats below the waterfall to the now empty ox pens on the north end of Yala-tene. In places the line was only a single rider deep, but they were there, armed and ready.

A small party of raiders rode out from their camp by the river, making straight for the western entrance to the town. In their wake came a dozen raiders on foot, four of them bearing a litter on their shoulders. Showing off their best horsemanship, the approaching raiders wheeled about just out of throwing range. The morning sun flashed off their purloined weapons and armor.

Four raiders put ram’s horns to their lips and blew a flat, wavering note that carried from one end of the valley to the other. A single man on a pale gray horse rode forth a few steps from the group, then stopped. Like most of the raiders, he was masked – his was an elaborate creation fashioned from the skull of some horned beast and adorned with leather flaps and paint. He removed his skull-mask, revealing a surprisingly youthful face and light brown hair.

“People of Arku-peli!” he called. “I am Zannian, chief of this band! Do you hear me?” A shower of stones spattered the ground a pace in front of his horse.

His lips thinned in a grim smile. “I see you do. I have words for your headman! Bring him out, so I may speak with him!”

The crowd atop the wall stirred, and two people shouldered to the front. One was an elderly man with thinning gray hair and a long nose. The other was a woman half his age with chestnut hair drawn back in a thick braid. She leaned on a spear.

“Say what you need to say to me!” the woman called.

“Begone, woman! I will speak only to your Arkuden!”

“Begone yourself then, butcher. The Arkuden is too busy to waste words on you!”

Puffing under their load, the litter bearers arrived alongside Zannian. Seated in the contraption of hide and poles was a woman of forty summers, though she looked much older. Her fair hair was liberally streaked with gray, a shade reflected in her dark, flinty gaze, and her face was deeply lined. Once a warrior herself, she traveled now by litter because her right leg ended at the knee, the limb lost years before to a shattering injury.

“Go back, mother,” Zannian said to her under his breath. “You’re not needed here.”

“I want to see their faces,” Nacris replied. “I want to be here when they admit Amero is dead!”

“Bring out the Arkuden!” Zannian shouted once more. “Bring him out, if any of you want to survive this fight!”

The woman and the elderly man conferred, then the old man called down in a quavering voice, “The Arkuden has been wounded. He can’t yet stand on his injured leg. Speak to us, raider. We will carry your words to him.”

Nacris pushed herself up on her hands, screaming, “Show us his corpse, you liars! We know he’s dead! I want to see the work done by my Jade Men!”

Furious, Zannian leaned down and shoved the crippled woman back into her seat.

“Meddling old vulture! Shut your mouth!” To the men holding up her conveyance he harked, “Take Nacris back to camp!”

“No! I deserve to see his blood! Stop, men! I killed him, Zan! You couldn’t do it, but I could! Stop right now! Take me back —”

Wary as they were of the formidable Nacris, the litter bearers were more afraid of their leader. They continued down the hill with the woman ranting at them all the way.

“Listen to me, foolish people!” Zannian declared loudly. “This is your last chance! By Moonmeet, we’ll have the means to overcome your wall! When that happens, no one in Arku-peli will be spared! Do you hear? You’ll all die! Tell that to your wounded Arkuden – you have until the morning of Moonmeet to yield. After that, no mercy!”

In answer to his ultimatum, many villagers on the wall turned their backs and lifted their kilts in contempt.

Zannian laughed despite himself and donned his skull-mask again. He rode back to his waiting captains. The eldest of them, Hoten son of Nito, greeted him.

“Any sign of the Arkuden?” the elder man asked.

“No. Mother’s assassins may well have succeeded.”

Another raider said, “She promised they would submit if their Arkuden died.”

“My mother says many things. You’d be wiser to listen to me, not her.”

The raider chief and his captains rode back to their band. Hoten pulled the skullcap of bear and panther teeth from his head and rubbed a hand over his sweaty pate.

“I don’t like it, Zan,” he said. “What if the mud-toes don’t give up in time? Will you really set a pack of ogres on them?”

“Assuming that rogue Harak returns with any, yes.” Zannian glared at Hoten’s shocked expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“But ogres, Zan! How can we ally ourselves with such monsters?”

Zannian’s laugh was as sharp as a bronze sword. “Are they any worse than a green dragon?”

He kicked his horse’s flanks and cantered away. Raiders eager for his favor followed him, leaving Hoten behind. The camp by the river soon rang with Nacris’s shrill denunciations, punctuated by her son’s deeper-voiced replies.

*

By the time the first mountain peaks appeared on the western horizon, Beramun was beside herself with worry. So many days had passed since she’d left the Valley of the Falls – days without word of Zannian’s raiders or the fate of Yala-tene. She chafed at the deliberate pace Karada set for her band. When she complained at their slowness, Karada told her the horsed contingent couldn’t leave behind the unmounted members. If the band became strung out, both the head and tail of the line would be vulnerable to raider or Silvanesti attack.

Beramun saw the wisdom of this, yet understanding did nothing to ease her anxiety. Her riding skills had improved on the long march, and she was able to concentrate less on maintaining her seat and more on the distant ghostly peaks ahead. Her anxious eyes remained fixed forward, watching the mountains grow slowly more distinct in the hot, hazy air.

To distract herself from the slow pace and her own dark worries, Beramun left Karada’s side and circled back through the dusty column. Eventually, she passed the ranks of the elf prisoners, marching in the center of the nomads’ column under the command of their own officers.

The elves had proved surprisingly docile. Aside from plenty of sullen faces in their ranks, they kept pace and caused no trouble. One or two glared at Beramun as she rode by, but she ignored them.

Balif had been given over to the custody of Pakito. The elf lord was mounted on a good horse, the better to keep pace with Pakito’s large steed. Balif’s hands were bound in front of him so he could hold his reins, and a stout rawhide thong was slung under his horse’s belly, hobbling the elf’s ankles. The horse he rode had been trained by Samtu, Pakito’s mate. It responded to whistled commands like a dog. If Balif tried to gallop away, Samtu’s shrill whistle would bring the animal trotting obediently back.

“It would be simpler if you’d give your oath not to escape,” Pakito said.

“All captives have the duty to escape,” replied Balif. “Karada would agree with me.”

A grunt. “Try it then. Karada would slit your throat.”

Balif smiled thinly. He knew the big man spoke the truth.

Beramun rode up to them, falling in beside the elf lord’s mount. Though she said nothing, her curiosity was so obvious Balif addressed her.

“Are you Karada’s daughter?” he asked. The nomads had taken his helmet and suede hat, so his fair face was rapidly turning red-brown under the broiling sun.

Beramun shook her head. “No. I come from a different place, a different clan.”

“Yet, she favors you like a daughter. Don’t you think so?” This last was addressed to Pakito.

“This one interests her,” the giant agreed. “And Karada does not give her attention lightly.”

Balif looked back at Beramun, his pale eyes frankly assessing her. “Why, I wonder? What does she see in you?”

“All that black hair and those big dark eyes – she is pretty,” Pakito said thoughtfully, and Beramun’s blush was more fiery than the elf’s sunburn.

“For a human, I suppose so. I’ll concede it as a matter of taste.”

“Don’t talk about me as if I were a prized mare!” Beramun snapped. “I came from Yala-tene with a message from Karada’s brother, Amero. His town is besieged by vicious raiders. I was one of several scouts sent to find Karada and fetch her back to Yala-tene.”

“Yes? Why doesn’t the dragon of the mountain help his friend the Arkuden?”

Beramun explained Duranix’s absence, then said, “Elf, you seem more talker than fighter. How did you and Karada become such dire enemies?”

“In my country, one may be a poet, a dancer, or a painter, as well as a warrior. Thinking and fighting are not like fire and water, mixing to the destruction of both. As commander of the host of the Speaker of the Stars, I am obliged to carry out his will and make war on his enemies. Karada understands this. We’ve fought many times. Once I won and spared her life. I thought showing leniency to their chief would dispirit the nomads, but...” He shrugged and shot a sidelong glance at Pakito, who was listening carefully. “Many times I regretted not killing Karada. The Speaker’s soldiers have hunted her for twenty seasons. In that time, many brave warriors have perished.”

“On both sides,” put in Pakito.

“How do you know Karada won’t kill you, if the ransom isn’t paid?” Beramun asked.

Balif leaned toward her. His sky-blue eyes bored into her dark ones. In a voice deep and vibrant, he said, “You won’t let her kill me, will you?”

Startled, Beramun pulled back on her reins, halting her horse. The moving column flowed around her. Balif’s light chuckle, joined by Pakito’s booming laugh, came clearly back to her. Wrenching her mount’s head around, she rode back toward the rear of the band, her crimson face hidden in the swirling clouds of dust.

When Beramun finally returned to the head of the column, she found Karada surrounded by scouts. Trotting in the flattened grass behind the nomad chieftain’s horse was the girl Mara, her face and auburn hair yellow with dust.

“Have a good talk with Balif?” asked Karada as Beramun arrived. Beramun’s surprise was evident, and Karada added, “I know everything that happens in this band. A horse doesn’t stumble or a child cough that I don’t hear about it eventually.”

“I’ve never met an elf before,” Beramun said defensively. “I wanted to see what they’re like.”

“Stay away from Balif. He’s too wise for you, too cunning. Listen to him long enough and you’ll end up wanting to free him.”

“I would never do that!”

“Yes, you would,” Mara put in airily. “The Good People can change a mind or turn a heart around as easily as the wind finds a new course.”

Beramun had no chance to dispute this, as Mara added quickly, “Please, Karada, may I have a horse?”

“None to spare,” was the terse reply.

Mara, panting between the mounted nomads, looked so downcast Beramun felt sorry for her.

“Climb on,” she said, extending a hand. “We can ride double.”

Mara looked from Beramun’s outstretched hand to Karada’s stern face and back again. Without another word, she turned and merged back into the dusty stream of horses and dragging travois.

*

The dry wind switched directions, becoming damp and heavy as it blew down from the north. By late afternoon, the hazy white clouds had clotted into piles of mighty thunderheads, filling the northern sky. The nomads plodded on for a while, but night and the threat of rain finally convinced Karada to halt her people. While the first campfires were being laid, the clouds broke open and dumped a torrent of water, dousing all hope of warmth. Cold jerky and journey bread were everyone’s fare that night.

A few tents were dragged out and unfolded before Karada rode by and ordered they not be put up. The band would move out at first light, and she wanted no time wasted pitching and striking tents. Many grumbled at having to spend the night in the rain, but every nomad in the band knew their leader would be out in the weather herself, just as wet and miserable as the rest of them.

Beramun had lost sight of the chief when the rain closed in, so she wandered the camp, looking for some spot to spend the night. The elf prisoners had a novel method for beating the weather. Their cloaks were made with several small metal hooks and rings along their edges and could be joined together into a large, lightweight fly. As the rain poured down, the elves sat on the ground in a tight circle, facing outward, shielded from the worst of the downpour by their ingenious cloak-tent.

After a long search, Beramun spotted Karada’s wheat-colored horse tied to a picket line. Below the animal’s nose was a dark hump in the grass. Someone was squatting there, wrapped in a large ox hide. Beramun hurried over. She lifted one edge of the hide and shoved her head under.

“Room for another?” she asked, then saw it was not Karada under the hide, but Mara.

The girl said nothing but moved slightly to one side, giving tacit assent. Warily, Beramun crawled in.

It was dark as Sthenn’s heart under the hide, but with their knees drawn up to their chins, the two girls were able to stay dry. The air was heavy with cold rain and Mara’s palpable jealousy.

The silence stretched between them until Beramun asked, “Where’s Karada?”

“With that elf. She’s spent every night with him since he was caught.” Beramun gave a low exclamation of surprise, and Mara added, “Not alone. Pakito’s with them.”

“Oh.” Beramun dismissed the alarming fantasies she’d conjured up. “Is she afraid he’ll escape?”

She felt the other girl shrug. “Pakito says they argue about everything, from the best way to raise horses to who’s the best leader. This goes on until one tires and goes to sleep. Karada’s won every night. That elf sleeps first.”

Rain trickled down Beramun’s collar. She pushed away from the edge of the hide until her feet bumped Mara’s.

“Is it a game?”

“Karada doesn’t play games,” Mara said, her tone a mixture of pride in her leader and animosity for her own treatment. “It’s a fight. Karada is pitting her spirit against that elf s.”

In a comradely way, Beramun replied, “She’s in no danger, I’m certain.”

The sharp chime of metal sliding against metal, the sound of a dagger being drawn, froze the words in her throat. She tensed as a cold, bronze point touched her ankle.

“No one will harm Karada!” Mara announced. “Not while I live!”

Beramun was silent, unmoving and barely breathing. Her lack of response had the desired effect: the weapon was returned to its sheath.

“I think I’ll get some rest,” Beramun said mildly and curled up on the damp ground. A spot between her shoulder blades tingled at being exposed to one so troubled who carried a dagger, but Beramun felt she had Mara figured out. The girl worshiped whoever ruled her – first Tiphan, leader of the destroyed Sensarku, then her Silvanesti masters while she was a slave, and now Karada. Those her ruler favored, Mara would not harm, but woe to anyone Karada hated!

As she drifted off to sleep at last, Beramun reflected on Balif’s predicament. Being in the hands of his longtime enemy didn’t seem to worry him, and he didn’t appear to chafe at waiting as long as a year to see if his lord Silvanos would pay his ransom. Yet if he knew the danger he faced from this single, strange girl, things might be different. “That elf,” as Mara called him, might know true fear.

*

The rain pounded the walls of Yala-tene. It ran in streams down alleys, washing away the dust of many dry days. In the lane before the House of the Turtle, it also washed away a great deal of blood.

Within, Lyopi sat quietly by the fire, her tears spent. Her thick chestnut hair, freed from its usual neat braid, fell past her waist.

“Pitiless children,” she said.

“What?”

Two men knelt on the other side of the hearth, the flames between them. One was Tepa the beekeeper, oldest of the remaining village elders. With him was Hekani, a young man lately thrust into the position of leading the defense of Yala-tene. Not quite twenty, Hekani wore his brown hair in a long horsetail, in the fashion of the men who still wandered the savanna. Until the raiders invaded the valley, he’d never spent a night in Yala-tene. He was a wanderer who had dwelt in the tent camp outside the walls. Like the rest of the camp’s inhabitants, he traded, bartered, and hired out his labor for two days or ten. When the wanderers in the tent camp pulled up stakes and departed under threat of Zannian’s arrival, Hekani was the only one who’d remained. His common sense and loyalty had won the trust of the Arkuden and, even more difficult, of the Arkuden’s woman, Lyopi.

“What did you say?” Hekani asked again.

“The ones Zannian sent after Amero – they were barely more than children. How do you make children into such pitiless killers?”

“I hope never to know,” Tepa murmured. He rested his forehead in the palm of one hand and sighed deeply. His own son, Udi, had been one of those sent out with Beramun several weeks ago to find the Arkuden’s sister. The raiders had caught Udi, and his dying body had been displayed on stakes before the walls of Yala-tene. As yet there was no word of Beramun.

As the old man dozed, Hekani slipped around the hearth to be closer to Lyopi. He was very tall, all knees and elbows. Fate had shown him to be a formidable fighter. He’d slain two of the invading Jade Men by himself.

“What shall we do?” he asked, voice low out of deference for the sleeping man. “Our food won’t last twenty days. There’s been no sign of the last scout the Arkuden sent out. Unless the dragon returns to save us, I doubt we can hold out much longer.”

Lyopi nodded her agreement and prodded the dying fire. The fact that Beramun’s body hadn’t been exhibited by the raiders had given Lyopi hope the girl had made it through. But perhaps the girl wanderer had taken to her heels, leaving the certain death of Yala-tene behind.

The flickering flame went out, leaving only a shoal of glowing coals. “There are,” Lyopi said slowly, as though choosing her words with care, “tunnels in the mountain.”

“The storage tunnels? What of them? They’re all dead ends.”

“Two are; one isn’t. Amero found a fissure in the rock while hunting for copper ore. He had some men widen the cleft. It runs all the way to the cliff top overlooking the village. Amero had both ends concealed with slabs of rock.”

Hekani was stunned. “Why haven’t you spoken of this earlier? We can escape!”

Lyopi shook her head and said, “The passage is too narrow to allow more than one small person through at a time. It would take days for the population of Yala-tene to get out – those who would fit – and the tunnel could collapse at any time. Escape was never the plan. It was too risky even to consider, but now...” She lifted hollow eyes to his. “The children. We might get some of the children out. They could escape over several nights, scatter in the mountains. It will be dangerous, but at least something of Yala-tene might survive.”

Hekani rocked back on his hands. “I say, fight it out! You saw them out there yesterday – there aren’t so many left! We can beat them!”

“Moonmeet is in two days. They claim they’ll have a way to tear down our wall.”

“They’re bluffing! They can’t overcome our wall. All they can do is threaten and scare us.”

“I am scared,” Lyopi said softly. “How many do we have left who can fight?”

Hekani thought a moment, then answered, “Able-bodied men and women – one hundred and sixteen. Old folks and children who can help – one hundred forty and nine. Hurt or sick ones who can’t fight at all – two hundred and eighty-eight.”

“And how many have died?”

He turned away from her intense gaze. “I don’t know. I’ve only been war chief since the night of the Jade Men.”

Lyopi rose suddenly. She draped a horsehair blanket around the sleeping Tepa. Hekani took his leave, throwing on his cloak and retrieving his spear.

“Be strong, Lyopi.” he said proudly “We’re not lost yet!”

He strode away in the rain. Once he was gone, Lyopi discovered a well of tears she had not yet exhausted. She leaned her head against the door and wept. The sound of her crying was lost in the rush of rain down the dark, empty street.

Chapter 5

“This had better not be a jest.”

Zannian sat on his horse, flanked by Hoten and four other captains of his hand. To his right, Nacris reclined in her chair, hands folded together and pressed against her lips. The morning sun was behind the group, filling the mountain pass with long shadows and tinting the peaks crimson.

A scout had returned earlier that morning with an odd report: In the lower end of the pass leading out of the Valley of the Falls, he’d encountered a lone rider. The rider identified himself as Harak, son of Nebu, but would not approach. When the scout tried to approach him, the supposed Harak had told him to come no closer but to bring Zannian and Nacris at once.

Irritated by the lofty command, the scout started to argue, but movement on the slope behind Harak caught his eye. Something stirred, sending a shower of pebbles down the mountainside. The scout’s horse pranced amidst the cascade of stones.

Harak cast a glance at the slopes behind him and snapped, “I’ve been on a mission for our chief! Go now and do what I tell you! Bring Zan and Nacris here!”

The scout went.

He found Zannian in a black mood. Five raiders had deserted the night before, while patrolling the passes east of Yala-tene. In the past three days, more than twenty men had abandoned the siege.

The scout’s report caused the raider chiefs hazel eyes to narrow suspiciously. “Are you sure it was Harak? What’s he playing at? Why didn’t he just ride in?”

Though Zannian had accepted the necessity of Nacris’s plan to send for the ogres, most of the hand knew nothing about it.

Nacris gave her son a significant look and, glancing at the men in earshot, said, “Harak doesn’t know what’s happened since he’s been gone. He’s a cautious, clever fellow, that one.”

“Yes,” Zannian muttered, “too clever.”

Without explanation, he rounded up two dozen raiders and led them to the western pass. Most he left at the mouth of the ravine, as only he, Nacris, Hoten, and a handful of favored captains continued deeper into the pass.

Hoten hadn’t been nearby when the scout made his report, but the elder raider was observant. When they had left the other warriors behind, he said quietly, “Harak’s back, isn’t he?”

“Seems to be,” Zannian replied.

“Do the men know what’s coming?”

A sharp look. “What difference does that make?”

Hoten reined to a stop. “It makes all the difference, Zan! We’re the Raiders of Almurk. We follow the Master and do his will, but we are still men!”

Zannian swung his horse to one side, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “Are you questioning my command?” he asked calmly.

Hoten stared at his leader, jaw flexing as he ground his teeth.

Four other captains, following behind, caught up to them and stopped, uncertain what was happening. When Nacris arrived in the next moment, she sized up the situation immediately.

“You two going to fight?” she asked.

“And if we did?” Hoten asked his mate through clenched teeth. “Who would you favor?”

“You’re both too important to this band to waste your lives fighting each other. Open your eyes! Can’t you see victory before us? It’s just down this pass, a league or so away. Do you really want to kill each other now, when the spoils of success are nearly in your hands?”

Zannian relaxed as she spoke. “You’re my mother’s mate, Hoten. Killing you wouldn’t be respectful.” Tapping his heels to his gray stallion’s flanks, the chief moved on.

Hoten glared from Zannian to Nacris and back for the space of a few heartbeats. Then he too started his horse moving again. When he caught up to his chief, he said in a low voice, “This is wrong, Zan, and we’ll all suffer for it.”

Zannian’s reply was loud and confident. “As the Master says, the only wrong in this world is failure. I won’t fail.”

They arrived at the spot the scout had indicated, but there was no sign of Harak. They waited. The morning sun pushed higher and higher, warming the shade-less canyon. To shift Zannian’s mind from his growing impatience, Nacris spun out old stories about her youth, her days with Karada, and her first mate, Sessan. The air grew hotter, and biting flies beset both horses and men.

“This had better not be a jest,” Zannian repeated

“Zan! Look!”

Far down the trail, shimmering in the heat-soaked air, a rider came. His pace was slow, and the steady clop of his horse’s hooves echoed off the high stone walls around them. Hoten wanted to ride out to meet him, but Zannian refused to let him go. He’d come this far at someone else’s beck and call. Now that someone would come to him.

The wavering image slowly resolved into a lanky, tanned rider with long, dark brown hair, riding a dappled brown horse. At Zannian’s command, the raiders fanned out in a semicircle. Nacris, unafraid, ordered her bearers to carry her out in front of the mounted men.

Her vision was still acute. “Harak!” she called.

The young raider urged his mount to a canter and loped in, nodding to his comrades. He stopped when his horse was head to head with Zannian’s.

“Greetings, chief,” he exclaimed, “and to your wise and ferocious mother.”

“Where are they?” Nacris asked eagerly, eyes alight. “Are they with you?”

Mischief danced in Harak’s deep brown eyes, but a look at the sweaty, impatient faces around him caused him to quell his normal impulse to be flippant. He twisted sideways on his horse, one arm sweeping out to gesture behind and above. He gave a loud, guttural call.

In unison, the raiders’ heads lifted. One man let out a hoarse yell.

“Ogres!”

Stepping out of cover, hulking figures ranged on both sides of the pass. The raiders were surrounded. Hoten, the captains, and the litter bearers were obviously alarmed. Swords and spears came up. Only Zannian, Nacris, and Harak remained calm.

“Be careful,” Harak said quickly, as several of the raiders brandished their weapons. “Ungrah-de is wary of humans. He says you can’t trust creatures with such small teeth.”

“Which one is he?” Zannian asked.

A sly look crossed Harak’s features. “Leadership among the ogres is determined by size – a most sensible practice.” He was himself a span taller than Zannian. “Ungrah-de is the biggest ogre here.”

Zannian picked him out immediately and raised his hands in the plainsman’s traditional greeting. “Great Chief! I greet you with open hands!”

Ungrah folded his tree-trunk sized arms. “Huh,” he called down. “You’re very small – smaller even than little Harak. How can you be chief?”

“I am chief by my wits, by my skill with arms, and by the will of my Master, Sthenn Deathbringer of Almurk.”

“Talking of old Sthenn, is he here?” asked Harak.

“Do not speak his name so lightly!” Zannian barked.

“He hasn’t returned yet,” Nacris told Harak. “We don’t know where he is.”

Ungrah clattered down the slope, followed by his towering warriors. Reaching the bottom, he strode toward the anxious raiders. The top of his head was even with Zannian’s, though the raider chief was on horseback.

“It’s well,” said the ogre. “Dragons are not fit company for warriors. They plot and plan and talk too much. I don’t fight beside dragons, only against them.”

The horses rolled their eyes and shied away from the ogres as they congregated around their leader. Ungrah-de noticed Nacris in her litter.

“Cripple,” he said bluntly. “Better to die than live less than whole. If I was crippled like that, I’d crawl off a cliff.” He translated this for his followers. They grunted in approval, sounding like a chorus of enormous boars.

Harak noted Nacris’s anger at the ogre’s high-handed words. “Ungrah-de, it was her idea to enlist your aid,” he said.

The raiders exchanged surprised looks at this bit of information. The ogre chief grunted deeply and shouldered a huge axe. Its head was an enormous chunk of grayish agate veined with lapis.

“Lead us to the place of stones,” Ungrah-de commanded, “to Arku-peli.”

He started down the canyon, his troop at his back. Zannian yelled, “Wait! We must bargain first, so you know what’s expected of you.”

Ungrah paused. “He made promises,” he said, and lifted a gnarled, hairy finger to Harak. “I agreed. The bargain is made. We will kill the enemies you failed to conquer.”

He and his monstrous warriors resumed walking.

Zannian turned, swift as a striking snake, and whipped out his sword. The point came to rest on Harak’s chest. “What did you promise them?” he growled.

Wincing, Harak tried to push the blade away, but Zannian dug in the tip. “Your mother said I should promise them anything for their help!”

“You will not sell my victory to those monsters!” Zannian snapped at Nacris.

“Then win it yourself!” she replied hotly. “Get on your horse and use that bronze blade on your enemies and not your followers!”

She spat a command to her bearers. They hoisted her onto their shoulders and started after the ogres. Harak carefully leaned away from the sword at his breast. Zannian, his eyes on his mother, allowed the blade to drop.

“By my blood, I will take the mud-toes’ village myself!” Zannian vowed. Silence answered his rousing declaration. He looked to his men. They were staring at him with expressions that mixed shock and horror.

“Ogres, Zan?” murmured one, his voice hoarse. “Are we to fight with ogres now?”

Another spoke up. “The spirits of my ancestors will rise in outrage if I fight alongside their murderers!”

“We dishonor ourselves, siding with those monsters!” Hoten said firmly.

Without warning, Zannian struck. The flat of his sword connected with Hoten’s head. The elder raider toppled sideways off his horse, stunned. One captain brought his sword up and thrust it at Zannian. The young chief swung his own weapon; at the end of its arc, the captain’s severed hand fell to the ground, still grasping his sword. The man gave a harsh cry of pain. He fell from his horse.

Zannian whipped his bloodied sword around and snarled, “Any one else dare draw on me?”

The other raiders pulled back out of reach. Only Harak held his ground.

Zannian turned on the smirking young wanderer. “I should slay you as a lesson to the rest!”

Harak lost his affected good nature for once. “Slay me? You should thank me! It wasn’t easy finding Ungrah-de or convincing him to help!” Zannian continued to regard him with hatred, and he added, “You know, if I were you, Zan, I’d hurry after those ogres. If the band doesn’t know they’re coming, they might attack Ungrah when he reaches the river. That would be bad in many ways.”

The truth of those words turned Zannian’s fury into action. “After them!” he ordered. Sullenly, his captains galloped after the marching ogres.

“I’d better go, too,” Harak said mildly. “Ungrah likes me, you see. I can keep things calm between you and the ogres.”

Zannian sheathed his sword with a clang. “Don’t cross me, Harak, or you’ll not live to see the end of this siege.”

“It’s a very bad habit, Zan, threatening your friends.”

“You’re not my friend!”

Harak looked down at the dying raider and the unconscious Hoten sprawled on the ground. “Thank my ancestors for that,” he said, and rode away.

*

Karada was riding across the high plain with her entire band at her back when the lead riders flushed six men on horseback.

The strangers tried to flee, but Karada’s superior horses overhauled them. Karada herself joined the brief melee, trading spear thrusts and sword cuts with a wildly painted rider. None of the strangers tried to surrender. All fought to the death.

Karada had the six dead men laid out for Beramun to see. The girl needed only a glance to recognize them.

“Zannian’s men! The men who killed my family painted their faces just the same!”

Karada shaded her eyes. “We’re still two days from the Valley of the Falls. Why would Zannian waste men scouting so far east? Is he expecting us?”

“All the messengers from Yala-tene were taken but me,” Beramun said thoughtfully. “Zannian could have learned of our mission from those he captured.”

Karada changed the marching order of her band. Those not fighting – children, elders, the captured Silvanesti – were sent to the rear. Instead of a long, slender column of riders, Karada’s warriors spread themselves out in a wide line, two ranks deep. This would allow them to sweep the savanna as they rode and shield their families, too. Karada kept Beramun by her side, since the girl could help guide them through the mountains. It had been many years since the nomads had traveled so far west.

She divided her fighting force into three parts. Pakito was summoned, and he arrived with Balif still in tow. Karada gave the giant charge of the right wing. Bahco was to have command of the left, and she herself would lead the center. Pakito left Balif with Karada and took his place on the north end of the nomads’ line.

The elf general looked trailworn, his long hair windblown and his fine clothes unkempt. Unlike some of the well-born elves, Balif never complained about his comfort or treatment. He seemed to regard his captivity as an interesting outing, like a prolonged hunting trip.

He looked down at the six dead raiders. “We had word of men like these in the west. Their deeds drove many humans into land claimed by the Speaker of the Stars.”

Karada spared him but a scornful glance. The nomads took up their new formation and surged forward. The wide line scared up all sorts of animals and game. Rabbits, wild pigs, deer, and every bird known on the plains took flight before Karada’s band. Edible game was taken down with arrows and the meat passed back to those on foot. Beramun expressed concern that their bold approach would warn Zannian they were coming.

“Maybe if they know we’re coming, they’ll get on their nags and clear out,” Karada said.

She had a stem of sweet grass in her teeth and a woven grass hat on her head to keep the sun off her face. Beramun marveled at her calm demeanor. She looked like a middle-aged hunter’s mate, foraging for roots. Of course, when she lifted her head, the light shone on the web of scars at her throat and in her hard hazel eyes, and she was again Karada, famed nomad chieftain.

“Do you have a plan of action?” Balif asked. Karada wouldn’t answer him, so he went on, “You’re a fine natural tactician, but you’re fighting an unknown enemy. They may outnumber you. They may have traps set for you. Stealth and surprise will greatly aid your cause.”

“This is not your fight.” Karada spat out the grass stem. “Once I beat this Zannian and get your ransom, I’ll have blades, mounts, and warriors enough to wrest the south plain from your leader, and all the elves in Silvanesti will not be enough to dislodge me!”

Balif pursed his lips and said nothing more.

The terrain began to break apart and rise. Rocky hills pushed through the green grass, and stands of trees appeared, pine and cedar mostly, with a few wild apple trees mixed in. Bahco and the left wing of the band, a hundred sixty-three strong, were lost from sight as they bore south around an intervening hill. Pakito’s wing, a hundred forty-four riders, forded a wide stream and disappeared into a grove of trees. Karada allowed a short rest for her part of the band. Horses were watered in the stream and noisily munched windfall apples.

Karada dipped her hand in the creek and brought the clear water to her lips. She swallowed, made a face, and said, “I forgot how stony the water is here.”

Beramun looked north and south, past the idle nomads. “I remember this stream,” she said quietly. “I crossed it lower down, the day the raiders caught Udi.”

Because Balif couldn’t dismount without help (his legs were still hobbled under the belly of his horse), Beramun filled a hollow gourd and took it over to him.

“Thank you, girl.” He drank deeply, then suddenly dropped the gourd. Beramun caught it before it hit the ground.

“Careful!” she chided. “Break the gourd and you’ll have to lap your water like the horses.”

“Will you ask Karada to come here, right away?” Balif’s polite words sounded more like a command than a request, but his tone was urgent and his face wore an odd expression.

“Don’t run or shout,” he added calmly. “Go to her slowly and return the same way. Do it now, Beramun.”

She put aside her surprise and did as he asked. Karada was enjoying the feel of the cool creek water on her feet, and it was hard to pull her away. Beramun persisted. When they returned to Balif, the nomad chieftain was still barefoot, her doeskin leggings draped over one shoulder.

“What do you want, elf?” she said, annoyed.

“You’re being watched from that stand of pines over there. At least two men, maybe more.”

Karada did not so much as glance in the direction he indicated. Her hard grip on Beramun’s arm kept the younger woman from turning.

“Raiders?” Karada asked.

Balif grimaced. “What am I, a dragon? I can’t see that far. Find out yourself.”

The word spread softly through the band. Slowly, casually, groups of three and four slipped into the pine copse. They circled wide, seeking hidden horses or spies on foot. They found nothing. When they reappeared empty-handed, Karada took the matter into her own hands. She nocked an arrow and loosed it at the tree Balif said housed the spy.

The missile had its intended effect. With a shriek, a figure tumbled from the pine. Karada ran to the spot. By the time she arrived, two more figures had appeared, weeping.

Beramun joined her. “Children!” she exclaimed.

They were two young hoys and a girl. The older boy had been in the tree, and Karada’s arrow had scared him so badly he’d lost his hold. The younger pair tried to comfort him, but they were so frightened they could do little more than cling to each other and cry.

“Be still!” Karada snapped. The weeping trio flinched and tried to obey.

Beramun knelt beside them, patting heads and cheeks. She recognized the beadwork on their dusty kilts. “You’re from Yala-tene, aren’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” the smaller boy quavered.

“How did you get here?” demanded Karada. “How did you avoid the raiders?”

“Please, Karada,” Beramun said. “Be patient. They’re young and scared.” The nomad chieftain grunted and walked away to retrieve her arrow.

The children followed her movements with wide eyes. Beramun spoke kindly to them, shifting their attention back to herself.

Little by little, she drew from the children the story of how they had come to be here. They’d been sent by the elders of Yala-tene, they said, “through a crack in the mountain.” The elders had sent other children like themselves through this narrow tunnel and told them all to run away and hide from anyone on horseback.

When Karada rejoined them, Beramun related what the children had said, then asked them, “How long ago did you leave?”

“A night, a day, a night, and today,” said the smaller boy.

“Things must be bad for them to send children out alone,” Karada remarked.

The little ones began sobbing again. “Monsters have come!” wailed the girl. “The painted men have monsters to help them! They’ll pull down the big wall!”

“Monsters? You mean the green dragon?”

“No. The monsters have legs and arms like us, but they’re big and ugly, with teeth sticking out their mouths, and long, floppy ears —”

Karada inhaled sharply. “Ogres?”

Beramun jumped to her feet. “The Arkuden needs us. We must go to him right away!”

“Lady.” The little girl was tugging at Beramun’s kilt. “Lady, there is no Arkuden any more.”

The child’s declaration was like a spear through Beramun’s heart, and she froze.

Karada’s sunbrowned face turned paler than Beramun had ever seen it. The chieftain grasped the poor child by her shoulders and shook her hard.

“What do you mean? Where is the Arkuden?” she cried. The child could only sob.

A blow on her leg broke through Karada’s shock. The smaller boy had struck her with his walking stick. She set the girl down.

“What happened?” she asked, striving to keep her voice calm. “What happened to the Arkuden.”

“They killed him,” said the boy, pulling the girl away from her. “The green-skinned men killed the Arkuden!”

Chapter 6

Blusidar’s island was no mere rock in the midst of the ocean. From high above, Duranix could just barely see it in its impressive entirety. Both shape and terrain were surprisingly regular. Though the coast had been etched by centuries of tides and tempests, the island was a nearly perfect circle. The outer edge was bordered by a wide band of sand dunes. A ring of steep mountains sat in the center, and a heavy belt of forest filled the area in between.

The odd regularity was a puzzle to be pondered at a later time. For now, Duranix remained convinced Sthenn was hiding somewhere in the forest. Days had passed without any sign of the green dragon. He must have been badly injured by Duranix’s lightning strike to remain hidden so long. Though a satisfying theory, it was also troubling. Wounded, Sthenn might be more desperate, more dangerous than ever.

Duranix floated on high, riding the steady winds available over the island. The sky was bright and cloud-free. Though he could see the natural life of the island with his usual clarity, he detected no visible trace of Sthenn. His deeper senses did not lie, however. His old enemy was near.

He descended to the mountain where he’d first encountered Blusidar. He hoped to see her again and scrutinized crags and crevices as he swooped in. She was nowhere around. Disappointed, Duranix alighted atop a forked pinnacle, balancing on the narrow peak with his tail spread out behind him.

Stop being a fool, he chided himself. Why waste time looking for the female? She was backward, awkward, and blind to the danger Sthenn represented. It was dangerous to divide his attention between the two. Better to concentrate on his green nemesis and leave Blusidar to fend for herself.

Cast-off scales glittered on the slope below his perch, and he realized Blusidar must have used the notch in the peak for preening. The thought birthed an irresistible itch between his shoulders. His wings, numbed from his long vigil over the island, were regaining feeling, and it felt as though a hundred brazen-toothed vermin were gnawing at him. Leaning to one side, he lowered his shoulder and scraped his back against the sky-blue stone.

Instead of a dull, stony scratching sound, the air was filled with a sonorous droning, like the organized noises the humans in Yala-tene called “music.” Duranix stopped scratching and the sound ceased. Experimentally, he rubbed his shoulder again on the rocky crag. The noise resumed. The spire of heavily crystallized stone vibrated in sympathy when scraped, creating an impressive sound.

He tried striking the spire with his horned head and tapping it with a talon. Each method drew a different note from the rock.

Movement in the air interrupted the performance. Extending his wings, Duranix prepared to pounce or fly.

Blusidar flashed past him, close enough that he felt the wind from her wings. He called to her.

“Why are you still here?” she said, passing close behind him. She was a swift flier, he had to admit. Young dragons often could outfly their elders. Mature dragons were stronger but also much heavier.

“I’ll stay until I find Sthenn,” he replied. “I have pledged to put an end to him, whatever else happens.”

Blusidar extended her rear claws and landed on a lower prominence. “Make not the sound,” she said, shifting from one clawed foot to the other with evident agitation.

He looked from her to the pinnacle. “Rubbing the stone? Why not?”

“It is for ji-ri-ni, not for play!”

In the ancient dragon tongue, ji-ri meant “hatchlings.” The syllable ni indicated “to make.” So ji-ri-ni meant “making hatchlings.”

Taken aback, Duranix tilted his huge, homed head to one side, regarding the spire. Apparently the dragons confined to this island in the past had used the sonorous stone as part of some sort of mating ritual.

“Forgive me,” said Duranix, embarrassed. “I don’t know your customs here.”

“Dragons of your land, they do not do this?”

“I have never seen it.”

His own mother had mated just once and subsequently laid three eggs. Duranix’s father was an ancient bronze known as Venerable Ro. (It had once been customary for each new generation of dragons to gain a syllable in their names – Duranix and Blusidar, having three, were of the same generation. Sthenn and the Venerable Ro were of the eldest generation.)

Blusidar settled down, flaring her nostrils. “You will not go until the green is found? Then follow, and be quiet.”

She leaned sideways and fell silently from her ledge. Spreading her wings, she glided over the jagged lower slopes and soared up a hundred paces. Hovering in an updraft, she waited for Duranix to join her.

Feeling more than a little old and clumsy in her wake, he opened his heavier wings and pushed off his perch. Stones loosed by his talons clattered down the mountain. Blusidar gave him a disdainful glance and flew on.

She traveled some way, paralleling the cliffs. He flew slightly above and behind her. The woods below presented an unbroken canopy of intertwining branches, alive with thousands of birds.

When at last a break appeared in the tree cover, Duranix saw a shallow river meandering through the forest. Blusidar dropped her tail and landed on a stout fallen tree. He settled on the sandbar beside the tree. His claws promptly sank into the damp, loose sand.

He didn’t have to be told why they’d come here. The stink of Sthenn was strong in the air. Across the river lay the remains of a herd of wild pigs, recently slaughtered. Blood from their mangled carcasses mingled with the flowing water.

Duranix waded into the river, holding his wings up out of the mud. He counted six dead pigs and signs of at least that many more devoured by Sthenn. A great heap of brush and logs was scattered in all directions behind the herd. The blood was still fresh; the kill wasn’t very old.

He hadn’t flown away, or Duranix would have seen him. He must have crawled away. In the river – yes! The flowing water would conceal his trail, and the open air above the stream would help disperse his fetid odor.

Duranix pondered which way Sthenn might have gone, until the sound of sloshing broke his concentration. Blusidar waded to the pig carcasses. She hoisted one of the more intact ones by its hind leg and skinned back her lips to take a bite.

Like lightning, Duranix swatted the dead pig from her claws before she could sink her fangs into its flesh. She snarled at him, dropping on all fours and shrinking back to present a smaller target.

He snapped, “Calm yourself! You don’t want to eat that. Sthenn doesn’t leave gifts behind. What he couldn’t finish, he tainted.” Duranix picked up the carcass and sniffed. “Yes, poisoned with one of his vile secretions. Eat this animal, and you’ll wish you could die!”

Blusidar uncoiled herself and sniffed the dead pig cautiously. She blinked rapidly, eyelids clashing like swords. “This smell... is poison?”

“The worst sort. It would rot you from the inside out, and nothing on this island could save you.”

Duranix piled up all the carcasses and incinerated them with a lightning bolt. Blusidar watched closely.

“How do you do that?” she remarked. “I cannot make fire.”

“It’s not born into us. You must find the fire in the clouds, breathe it in, and keep it here.” Duranix tapped a single talon against his chest. “I could teach you.”

She hesitated then replied, “I need it not. Find the green one and go.”

Blusidar launched herself into the air and vanished beyond the treetops. Duranix found himself staring after her. His experience with females was nonexistent.

Silver-sided fish flashed between his motionless legs, and he looked down. Sunlight glinted on their iridescent scales. Along with the speeding trout came swirls of gray mud. Something was churning the river upstream.

Duranix did not return to the air. Too long he’d delayed doing the obvious thing: combing the forest for Sthenn at ground level.

Sleeking his wings back tight, he bounded up the shallow river, raising enormous splashes with every leap. The streambed wandered this way and that, descending from the high ground at the center of the island to the low-lying shore. He slammed around the bends, scraping against trees and skittering over boulders buried in the river. The water grew thicker with mud the farther he went. Something big was floundering upstream, and he was certain he knew what.

Duranix rounded a tight bend and crashed into a heavy tree trunk lying across the river. It yielded, sliding off the bank into the water. The tree had fallen very recently. Wood in the break was still white, and the tree’s leaves were still green.

A loud splashing sounded nearby, followed by roars of reptilian anger. Duranix stepped over the big tree and assumed a more stealthy pace as he made for the sounds of conflict.

He’d come to the foot of the ring of mountains. Here, the river was born, cascading down a series of short steps made of fractured slabs of blue stone.

When he reached the edge of the forest, Duranix beheld a shocking sight: Sthenn and Blusidar violently entwined in the lower falls. The green dragon’s elongated claws gripped the female’s neck just behind her head. Her wings were splayed out, pummeled by the waterfall. She kicked at Sthenn’s belly with her hind feet, but the old monster had her pinned against the rock table, the greater length of his back and tail wrapped around her like a rope snare.

Sthenn’s head snapped around. He opened his mouth and hissed, drawing the warning out into a dry, withered laugh.

“Little Duranix!” he wheezed. “Good of you to join us!”

“Hang on to him, Blusidar,” Duranix called. “Don’t let him go!”

“You know each other, do you? How interesting.” The joints in his long foreclaws worked. Scales squealed on scales, and Sthenn’s claws sank into Blusidar’s throat. Her tongue fell out between her parted lips.

“Stand where you are, dear friend, or I’ll tear her head right off!”

Duranix strove to conceal his concern, knowing Sthenn would only use it against him. “She’s just a child, no more than a nymph with wings.”

“Hehhh, hehhh.” Again, the dry-as-dust laughter. “Is that supposed to dissuade me? You forget, my darling enemy, I killed your clutchmates, and they were mewling newts.”

Duranix advanced two steps. Sthenn twisted away from him, trying to keep his distance and not lose his grip on Blusidar. It wasn’t a simple task. She was still resisting and hampered Sthenn’s mobility.

“Stay back!” Sthenn cried shrilly. “Stay back! I’ll kill her!”

Duranix sat back on his haunches and prepared himself to leap. “I can’t stop you. But know this: I can reach you in a single jump. You’ll die far more slowly than she, old wyrm.”

“You frighten me,” Sthenn sneered.

“I notice you’re not using your teeth. Why not? Surely an elder like you could bite through a young dragon’s throat far faster than you can strangle her. Ah, I remember. Back on the plain, when we grappled, you didn’t use your teeth then either.” Duranix’s eyes narrowed. “You’re so old, you’re more than half dead. Everything about you is decayed. Those yellow fangs of yours are as brittle as icicles, aren’t they, Sthenn? That’s why you don’t use. them. They’d shatter on hard bronze scales.”

Sthenn heaved himself and his captive a step farther away, gurgling hatred deep in his throat.

“Shall I bite through this fine young throat to prove you wrong?” he wheezed. He opened his narrow jaws and rested his long, eroding teeth on Blusidar’s neck.

“Go ahead, if you can. Blusidar, if you can hear me, keep fighting! You’re a tenth his age. He’s vicious and cruel, but he’s too feeble to hold you down forever.”

Her tail thrashed once from side to side. Sthenn shifted one of his back feet to restrain it, wavering a bit as he sought his balance again.

“Are you afraid yet, Sthenn?”

Blusidar twisted violently against the grip of her larger foe. Duranix tensed himself to strike, but Blusidar and Sthenn were too much in motion for him to aim his attack precisely. They rolled under the steplike waterfall and out again. Blusidar’s tail, freed from Sthenn’s grip, lashed out, whipping across his side and back. The spiked center ridge caught him in the face, and black blood flowed.

Furious, the green dragon let go Blusidar’s neck with one claw and raked his thick talons across her eyes.

Her high-pitched trill of pain was Duranix’s cue. He sprang, aiming his whole body at Sthenn’s head. When he landed, the stone ledge beneath them shattered, dumping all three of them into the deep pool at the base of the falls.

For a while all was swirling water, rushing bubbles, and reptilian limbs striking and clutching. When Duranix emerged at last from the tangle, Sthenn was scrambling ashore, wings outstretched. The raw wound on his chest was bleeding again, and the lacerations on his face and back oozed steadily. His decrepit lungs gasped for air as his sides heaved in and out. He looked back at Duranix.

“Come for me, old friend, and the female will bleed to death!” he panted.

It seemed too true. Blusidar lay motionless on a broken slab. Blood stained her bright scales and hid her face completely. Duranix couldn’t tell if her throat had been slashed, but dark blood was rapidly covering the stone on which she lay.

Sthenn labored into the air. He did not circle but simply called, “I’ve won, little friend! You’ve been gone too long from your pet humans. Return home and see my victory!” Then he flew away, his course erratic, his belly skimming the treetops.

Duranix went to Blusidar. Her right eye was badly cut, and there was a deep wound from her right earhole to the bottom of her left jawbone. Blood pulsed slowly from this terrible gash.

He rinsed her face and neck gently with cool water. Through these ablutions, Blusidar never moved. She barely seemed to breathe.

There was nothing Duranix could do for her eye, but the throat wound had to be closed, or she would surely die. Arching his neck and inhaling deeply, he called on the lightning deep within. It would require extraordinary precision to seal the gaping wound without incinerating Blusidar or burning off his own foreclaw.

Duranix gazed skyward for a moment, feeling a fearsome calm settle over him. He lowered his head and breathed blue-white fire on the dying dragon’s wound.

*

Deer were plentiful on the island, and it didn’t take long for Duranix to catch four. He carried them back to the headwaters of the river and seared a brace for his dinner. The other two he left raw. Having little experience of fire, Blusidar would be accustomed to eating her meat uncooked.

She had not stirred from where he’d laid her after closing her wound. Day passed into night and then into day again, and still she did not move. After catching the deer, Duranix never left her side. He coiled himself on a rock ledge, watching over her and listening to the wild things in the woods.

At twilight two days after the battle with Sthenn, Blusidar twitched. The tremors became aimless movements of her limbs. When her head moved side to side, Duranix’s own head lifted.

Her eye opened, and she rolled onto her side. After a pause, she crawled to the water’s edge and dipped her parched, swollen tongue in the stream.

“How do you feel?”

She spasmed hard with fear at the sound of his voice. “Why are you still here?” she said, her voice a hollow whisper.

“I waited to see you through.”

“The green... is dead?”

“No, but he’s gone.”

“Then why stay? I thought you want to kill him.”

“There’s time. He’ll be returning to our homeland to see his humans triumph over mine. He’s old and injured. I can catch him.”

Blusidar examined her reflection in the water. “My eye,” she whispered, claw waving helplessly before the ruined socket. “I cannot see with it.”

“Sthenn put it out. I can’t heal it, but in time a new one will grow in its place.” He had to reassure her of this several times before she turned her attention from her damaged face to her empty belly.

“You spoke true,” she said as she devoured the raw venison. “The green wanted to kill me. Why are such creatures living?”

“Sthenn defies explanation. In some hearts, evil arrives at birth. He’s as craven as he is wicked, and I thought if you fought him he’d flee, but I made a mistake. He felt trapped, and even a trapped rat will bite.”

She said nothing more but curled up at his feet and fell into a profound slumber. Duranix stood over her for two more days, bringing fresh game from the forest. When Blusidar awakened again, he told her he was leaving.

She considered this in silence, eating part of a deer and then moving to the stream. Once she’d drunk her fill, she said, “The green is far away. Why not stay?”

Duranix was amazed by this reversal. “I must make sure Sthenn doesn’t hurt anyone ever again,” he told her quietly. “I have to finish him.”

Blusidar rose her feet. She was steadier now, and her injuries had acquired a healing crust.

She flexed her wings several times and tilted her head, fixing him with her good eye. “When the green is dead, come back. Live here.”

The same thought had entered his mind as he watched her lie motionless by the pool, teetering between life and death, but he had dismissed the idea as absurd. She wouldn’t be much of a companion – too wild and ignorant.

And there was Amero. How could he explain to her of his friendship with a mere human – creatures Blusidar had never seen – a friendship more important to him right now than mating or offspring? It was irrational to care more for a soft-skinned, inquisitive, two-legged pet than the furtherance of his blood. Yet, he had to admit, he did.

“My life is in the Valley of the Falls,” Duranix said. “I must protect my domain from Sthenn and his like for the rest of my life.” He regarded her closely. “You could come with me.”

“I cannot fly far,” she replied. Duranix realized it was true. Blusidar had neither the size, strength, nor stamina to fly all the way back to the Valley of the Falls. After another century’s maturity perhaps, but not now.

A shadow fell over the ring of mountains. Clouds, larger than the island itself and pushed by the sea wind, blotted out the setting sun.

The clouds gave Duranix an idea. He opened his wings. “Come aloft, and I will show you something wondrous.”

She was weak but able. When they reached a certain height, Duranix turned his face into the wind. The powerful current of air filled his wings, and he shot up into the clouds. Blusidar followed warily. She seldom flew so high and did not enter clouds if she could help it. Some deep, unexpressed fear made her dread the billowing white walls.

Duranix lowered one wing and banked tightly, then flapped steadily to increase his speed. Blusidar came alongside him, wingtip to wingtip. Before long sparks of blue fire began to play over Duranix’s wings. Blusidar shied away, flitting off into the mist. Duranix followed, lightning crackling as he flew.

He mischievously maneuvered on her blind side. The sky was exceptionally charged, and a corona of incandescent blue formed around his bronze body. When their wings brushed, the lightning passed from Duranix to Blusidar with a loud crack! Thunder rolled. She promptly folded her wings and dived.

Duranix dropped after her. She was spiraling slowly, wings limp. Chagrined, he realized the bolt had knocked her senseless.

He dropped beneath her and spread his wings to their fullest extent. She landed heavily on his broad back, and his muscles coiled with the strain. He held them both aloft until she recovered.

“Bad trick!” she snarled immediately. Rolling off him, she flapped hard to support herself.

“Try again,” he urged. “If you can take the fire in, it will be yours!”

Blusidar followed at a reluctant distance as he climbed again into the cloud. Lightning was already snapping from sky to sea. Two bolts hit Duranix in quick succession. The power surged through him, and he made a loop in midair out of sheer delight.

Blusidar appeared close by, gliding on his left wing. She too was limned in blue radiance, and sparks formed on the tips of her horns, claws, and wings, flashing off into the storm-laden atmosphere.

Unconsciously, they matched rhythms, wings rising and falling in perfect unison. Lightning leaped from one dragon to the other and back again. Duranix roared his full-throated cry, and to his surprise, Blusidar answered. Her voice was high and shrill with youth, but he was glad to hear it. She had found fire at last.

Catching her attention, he opened his mouth and loosed a bolt at the sea. She tried to do the same, but no lightning emerged. He showed her how to arch her neck, inhale, and let the lightning form deep in her throat.

On her third try, a spear of white, forked fire burst from Blusidar’s mouth. Ecstatic despite her exhaustion and wounds, she rolled and banked and looped all over the sky. Her maneuvers left Duranix speechless. She truly was a peerless flier.

The sundered cloud surrendered its rain. Pelted by the downpour, both dragons slowly lost their surcharge of fire. Duranix circled the center of the island, taking his bearings from early stars glimpsed through the upper clouds. Finding west at last, he hovered in place a moment, bowing his long neck. Blusidar circled him.

Saying farewell is a human custom that dragons do not share. Duranix merely changed the angle of his wings and flew on. Blusidar dropped away. The last he saw of her were the tips of her slender wings as she vanished in the clouds below.

Chapter 7

After so many days of sullen siege, the day of Moon-meet arrived with flourish and fanfare: blaring horns, shouts, and pounding hooves. Zannian formed his men into three large units separated by wide lanes. For some time after dawn, slaves ran back and forth in these lanes, carrying hanks of vine rope and tree trunks trimmed of branches. To the defenders of Yala-tene, it looked ominous.

The villagers spoke in low voices, speculating on what the raiders would do next. Only one woman was silent. Lyopi was hard-faced and pale in the morning light. She had not slept at night since the Jade Men entered Yala-tene. Catnaps in daylight were all the rest she could manage.

Young Hekani, now leading the defenders, said to those around him, “Looks like they mean to try to scale the walls again.”

“Stupid!” declared Montu the cooper. “It didn’t work before!”

“Maybe they have some new plan,” Hekani said. Lyopi remained silent, flexing her sore, callused hands around the shaft of her spear.

A boy came running up the ramp from the street below. He whispered into Hekani’s ear, and Hekani nodded to Lyopi. She shouldered her spear, took up her shield, and followed the child down to the village.

The raiders’ noisy preparations came to an end at last. A hush fell over the valley. From the wall, the villagers could easily see Zannian front and center in the middle block of horsemen. He raised his long spear high in one hand for all his hand to see. Dust rose behind him, and the open lanes between the squares of mounted raiders began to fill with men running toward Yala-tene.

Villagers shifted their weapons to throw. Hekani reminded them not to cast too early, to wait until the targets were close enough to hit.

Behind the first wave of raiders on foot came a slower-moving mob of ragged prisoners. Each bore a fascine, a large bundle of brush and twigs, on his or her back. Driving these fascine bearers were several raiders on foot. Whipcracks could be heard.

The villagers held off throwing their weapons at the fascine bearers, realizing that some of their own captured neighbors were likely among the pitiful prisoners.

The running raiders drew closer, as did the stumbling crowd of captives. Hekani was grim as he said, “Make ready!”

Lyopi ran up the ramp, resuming her place on the wall as the raiders reached the line of ditches and pits dug by the villagers. Not many fell in, but the ditches were only meant to slow an attack, not stop it. While the obstacles hampered the attackers, the defenders pelted the raiders with stones and javelins – simple wooden stakes with sharpened tips, rather than the hard-to-replace flint-heads. Raiders fell, skulls cracked by heavy stones or stabbed by javelins.

For a moment the attack hovered at the line of pits, then the captives arrived with their fascines, and the charge flowed on. As they neared the foot of the wall, the bombardment intensified. This was the moment the raiders’ previous attacks had always broken. Unable to climb the wall or batter it down, they would endure torment from above only for as long they could, before fleeing.

They did not flee this time. Goaded by whips and clubs, slaves hurled bundle after bundle of brushwood into the comers on each side of the west baffle. The villagers responded with a furious barrage, trying to avoid hitting the slaves with their missiles but forced to fight anyone they could reach.

Lyopi took aim at a wildly painted raider who was prodding forward a gray-haired woman, stooped by the weight of a large fascine. The old woman heaved off her burden, and it rolled down the slope, coming to rest against the foot of the wall. Lyopi was about to knock the raider behind her down with a well-placed javelin when the old woman lifted her eyes skyward.

“Jenla!” Tepa yelled, gripping Lyopi’s arm and halting her cast. “It’s Jenla! She’s alive!”

Sister of his deceased mate, Jenla was the beekeeper’s best and oldest friend. She’d been lost in one of the early battles outside the wall, and everyone in Yala-tene assumed she’d been killed.

Heedless of the spears flung by the raiders, Tepa ran to the edge of the parapet, calling for Jenla. Lyopi yelled at him to get back just as a stone-tipped missile hit the edge of the wall at his feet and shattered. Tepa reeled back, face bleeding from cuts caused by flying shards of flint.

Lyopi caught him by the shoulders and hauled him back. “Jenla’s down there! We must save her!” he moaned, pulling at her hands.

“There’s nothing we can do!” she snapped.

The attack seemed to be getting nowhere. Bundles of brush filled the corners of the baffle, but the pile never mounted very high. The fascines tended to roll down rather than build up to any height. Even so, the raiders continued to drive their reluctant prisoners forward to dump their loads. The ground around the western baffle was thick with bundles of dry brush and senseless or dead attackers.

Their loads delivered, the slaves ran away, still hounded by their pitiless taskmasters. Jenla was carried along by a gang of fleeing prisoners, but those on the wall could see the tan square of her face turn back to them as she was borne away. Tepa remained huddled on the ground, weeping, until Hekani stood over him with a spear.

“Tepa, get up and take this,” Hekani said. “Jenla’s best hope lies in our victory, and we need you for that.” Tepa stared up at the young man for a moment then stood, wiping the tears from his stubbled cheeks. He took the offered spear and gripped it tightly.

“This isn’t much of an attack,” Hekani said as the raiders retreated. “I guess Zannian was just talking big again.”

“They’re not done,” Lyopi told him. She shaded her eyes with one hand and surveyed the enemy horde. “Something else is stirring.”

A line of horsemen approached at a slow trot, dragging travois. Pairs of captives, empty-handed now, ran along behind them. The travois were laden with what looked like large wicker baskets plastered over with river mud.

The defenders were so puzzled that they allowed the horsemen to approach unchallenged. Seeing their slack-jawed confusion, Hekani exploded into profanity.

“What are you staring at? Let them have it! Fight! Fight!”

Pain and death rained down on the raiders. Their response was to ride faster. Bouncing wildly on the travois, a few of the baskets lost their lids. Smoke rose up from the open baskets, plumes of gray playing out behind the galloping riders.

Lyopi lowered the javelin she’d raised to throw. The meaning of the smoke struck her, and she screamed, “Fire! Everyone get back from the wall! Away from the baffle, now!”

The raiders galloped to the piles of fascines and stopped. Orders were shouted, and the prisoners grabbed the trailing ends of the travois and dumped their contents on the brush heaps. Hot coals scattered everywhere. Streamers of smoke rose, followed by the first flickers of flame.

Hekani shouted for water, and children waiting in the street below hurried to comply. Before any of them could return, the dry fascines began blazing. Two bonfires, one on each side of the baffle, drove the defenders off the parapet.

As they retreated along the wall to escape the flames, Hekani said, “This is new, but I don’t see the point. They can’t burn down stone walls!”

“Zannian’s driven us away from the entrance, hasn’t he?” Lyopi barked angrily. “They must mean to isolate it for further attack.”

The travois-dragging raiders rode away. From their positions by the river, the assembled raiders cheered the success of their new tactic. The cheering quickly faded when a new sound filled the battlefield – the deep, rhythmic pounding of many large drums.

*

Ungrah-de rested his giant axe on one shoulder. “Let the storm drums sing,” he rumbled.

Nacris, seated in her litter next to her towering ally, couldn’t stop an involuntary flinch as ten ogres behind them began to pound on hide-covered drums. The deafening sound was loud enough to be heard all over the Valley of the Falls. It rattled Nacris’s teeth.

The ogre chieftain nodded and added, “The power of the drums will fill the humans’ hearts with fear.”

Nacris did not remind him that his allies were human as well. It seemed impolite and not a little dangerous. Ungrah-de was dressed for battle in lapis-studded leather, the skulls of his victims hanging from his chest by thongs. More than a few of these trophies were human.

Since arriving in the Valley of the Falls, he and his ogres had killed sixteen of Zannian’s men in brawls – all of them provoked by foolish humans. Ungrah made no secret of his scorn for his frail, treacherous allies, and his barbed comments and contemptuous manner had goaded the hotheads into making stupid challenges. The worst incident had occurred on the ogres’ second night in camp. Two of Ungrah’s warriors asked for provender, and lazy raiders told them to find it themselves. The ogres took them at their word, went to the prisoners’ pen, and dragged out two young men. When the raiders realized what was going on, they stopped the ogres from slaughtering the humans. Words ensued, then a sharp fracas that cost the lives of eight of Zannian’s men. Half the raider band would have deserted then and there, but Nacris cajoled and threatened them into staying. Her performance that night had not been lost on Ungrah-de.

Now, looking down at her, he said, “You are the only one here I worry about.”

“Really?” she replied, flattered.

“These others” – he waved a dismissive hand at the raider host – “are wolves, eager to swarm over the weak or the few. Not you. You care nothing about danger. Your heart is dark. You would do anything to get what you want.”

“You’re right, great chief. I shrink from nothing.”

Surrounded by the punishing sound of ogre war drums, Nacris could hardly contain her excitement Emboldened by his backward praise, she asked Ungrah if one of his ogres would carry her into battle on his back. The chief responded to this notion with a withering glare.

“Females and cripples don’t belong in battle. A warrior of mine would stamp the life out of you before carrying you.”

As Ungrah did not offer idle warnings, she let the matter drop.

Gradually another more threatening sound joined the drums: The ogres were banging their axe heads against the bosses of their shields. The ominous clank was deliberately off the beat of the drums: boom, BOOM, clank; boom, BOOM, clank. From a monstrous heartbeat the noise now sounded like the advance of massive metallic creature – a dragon, perhaps.

Nacris shifted in her seat. Sweat broke out on her face. She could not miss the final destruction of Yala-tene! She had to be there for the kill. Her Jade Men would carry her litter anywhere she ordered, but, jealous of their success in slaying the Arkuden, Zannian had left them out of the attack. They languished in the river camp, guarding the raiders’ slaves.

Ungrah watched impassively as flames licked up the steep walls of Yala-tene. When he judged the flames were at their height, he raised his shield and joined in the cacophony. His thunderously deep voice broke through the uproar as he commanded his warriors in their ancient tongue. The drumming ogres finished with a flourish and joined their comrades.

“Now we go,” he said to Nacris.

Striding through the dust and smoke drifting back from Yala-tene, the ogres appeared even bigger than they were. Even Zannian’s hardened fighters edged their horses back, leaving a wide path for their savage allies.

Unable to bear being left behind, Nacris struggled to her feet and braced herself on her crude crutch. She would see the final fight, she vowed, even if she had to crawl all the way to the battlefield.

She hobbled after the ogres.

*

Crouching behind the parapets upwind of the burning brush, Lyopi and forty-odd villagers could hear a distant, regular booming. It didn’t get louder or closer, and after a while they dismissed it as another of Zannian’s ruses.

Smoke from the fires obscured much of the open ground between the village and the river. This made Hekani more uncomfortable than the fire itself. He sent runners down to the street to circle behind the baffle and warn the defenders on the other side to be wary of any raiders who might emerge from the smoky cover.

“What’s happening, Lyopi?”

Those behind the parapets looked up to see a small knot of elders coming up the ramp from the street below. Montu was there, along with Adjat the potter and the mason Shenk. With them was another person in a hooded cloak.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Lyopi told them. “It’s too dangerous.”

Adjat spoke again. “We heard drums. We came to see what’s going on.”

Hekani said, “I think they mean to storm the ba —”

“Hai! Hai! Look!” Cries echoed along the parapet. Hekani, Lyopi, and the rest strained to see what the shouting was about.

Advancing through the smoke were many large figures, far taller than any human. At first, Hekani thought they were masked raiders on horseback, but when they cleared the smoke he saw they were walking on their own two legs. His mouth fell open in shock, and he turned wide eyes on Lyopi. Her face was pale as snow. The elders crowded around trying to see.

“What is it?” asked the cloaked man. “What do you see?”

“Ogres,” Lyopi gasped, her voice barely above a whisper. “He’s brought ogres to the valley.”

Ten of the jut-jawed monsters were in view, and more were emerging from the smoke. They arrayed themselves in an irregular line behind the tallest of their kind – evidently the leader. Catcalls and insults usually hurled at the raiders were absent, as those defending their homes simply stared in horrified disbelief.

“Twenty-four, twenty-five,” Hekani counted.

“We’re dead!” Adjat proclaimed. “We’re done for!”

“Shut up!” Lyopi snapped. “We did not bow down to them when they had a dragon fighting on their side. Why would we give up now?”

The villagers held a hasty council on the ramp. Every able-bodied person – young, old, male, and female – gathered in the street behind the closed western baffle. A barricade of timbers and scrounged stones would be thrown up inside the wall, closing both blocked entrances. If the ogres managed to gain the low wall atop the baffle, they would face a fresh barrier beyond.

The largest and strongest men in Yala-tene were rounded up and armed with the heaviest weapons available: stone hammers, axes, and stout, wooden clubs. The last pots of burltop oil in the village were assembled in the street north of the baffle, and Hekani called for fishermen’s nets. Puzzled but obedient, gangs of boys dragged the nets out of storage and passed them to the defenders on the walls.

The word from the lookouts was that there were thirty ogres.

“Only thirty?” Lyopi tried to make a joke.

From a hundred paces away, the ogres raised their weapons high and shouted, “Ungrah-de! Ungrah-de!”

They broke into a run, heading straight between the blazing piles of brush. A thick hail of stones and javelins fell on them, but they shrugged off the barrage and kept coming. Nearer the wall, heavier stones stunned a few ogres, but the rest came on like an avalanche.

“Get ready!” Hekani called down to the street behind the wall. The barricade was still taking shape.

“We’re not done yet!” Montu shouted. “You must hold them!”

*

Ungrah-de, as befitted a chief, reached the baffle first. He sprang up and used his axe to hook the top of the wall. Gripping the axe handle in both hands, he walked up the sloping stone barrier. A small boulder hit him at the base of the neck. His left hand lost its grip, but he hung on with the right. His followers leaped up beside him, one throwing a beefy arm around his chiefs waist. Thus supported, Ungrah took hold of his axe again and levered himself onto the baffle wall.

For a moment the villagers’ barrage dwindled as they beheld the terrible spectacle of armed ogres standing on their wall. Ungrah-de brandished his huge axe and urged his warriors onward. He jumped down from the baffle wall onto the heap of boulders Duranix had piled up to block the entrance. Skidding in the loose rubble, Ungrah clambered across the gap to the undefended stretch of wall bordered by fire. More ogres followed him. The fifth one to gain the top of the baffle arrived in time to receive the brunt of a renewed bombardment. Larger and larger missiles struck him. With a grunt, the ogre toppled backward, knocking down several of his comrades.

Whatever glee the villagers might have felt with this small victory was lost when Ungrah marshaled his four warriors and charged through the flames. By chance he chose to go to his left, away from Hekani, Lyopi, and the village elders.

With two sweeps of his broad stone axe, Ungrah cleaved aside the villagers in his path. Smelling victory, he bellowed for his warriors to follow.

The villagers gave ground, retreating along the wall until they came to the ramp leading down into the town.

There they stood, shoulder to shoulder, many openly trembling as the ogres advanced. They were joined by townsfolk carrying bundles of fishing net and pots of oil, hurrying up the ramp.

Ungrah waited for more ogres to join him. When his strength reached ten, he charged. The ogres came bellowing at the terrified villagers.

Up went the fishing net, held aloft on long poles. Ungrah had never seen a net before, but it didn’t look like any sort of barrier that could resist the stroke of his mighty axe.

They were almost in chopping range when the net fell forward, covering them. The ogres thrashed and hacked at the heavy cordage. While they were engaged, villagers upended two tall jugs of nut oil.

Ungrah slipped in the oil, and fell heavily on his back. A stone-headed spear buried itself in his right calf. He roared with anger and plucked the puny weapon out.

All around, his fighters were struggling with the fishing net and treacherous oil. The thick liquid lapped over the edges of the wall and ran down, leaving dark stains. Out on the plain, Zannian had advanced his horsemen to within a hundred paces of the wall. He watched the ogres’ charge, the ensuing melee, and the oil seeping over the stones.

“The walls are running with blood!” he declared. “What monsters those ogres are! They’re wallowing in the mud-toes’ blood!”

Then the liquid reached the burning fascines. Blue flames raced up the wall.

A few of the ogres had almost freed themselves from the net when it suddenly caught fire. Ungrah saw the danger and, ignoring heat and pain, chopped his way out. He stood erect, bathed in fire, and saw the humans dumping a fresh amphora of oil on the parapet.

“Back!” Ungrah roared at his troops in the ogre tongue. “Go back!” So saying, he leaped feet first to the ground. It was a long drop even for him; he hit hard, rolled, and took a few seconds to shake off an impact that would’ve killed a human. A torrent of rubbish fell on him – rocks, wood, mud bricks, and, most insulting of all, offal and dung.

Outraged, mighty Ungrah heaved himself to his feet and struck Yala-tene’s wall with his axe. A stone shard six hands long flew out, leaving a deep crevice in the block. It was a fell blow, and it also cracked the head of his axe.

Screaming from their burns, more ogres jumped off the wall, hair singed, skin blistered, and leather armor smoldering. The rest of the ogre force, still embroiled at the baffle, saw their leader’s jump from the wall and abandoned the fight.

*

Nacris had crossed the battlefield alone, leaning on her crutch. She saw the repulse of the ogres and felt curiously elated at their overthrow. Served them right for leaving her behind, she thought.

A horse cantered up behind her. She heard someone dismount, but before she could turn around, strong arms encircled her.

“Why are you out here?” Hoten asked. Her mate for less than a season, Hoten had grown more and more protective of Nacris as the siege dragged on, even as she felt less and less need of him.

“This is my fight. I had to see it! Why doesn’t Zan attack? Ungrah-de can’t carry the day alone!”

“The ogre chief insisted we stand back and witness the prowess of his warriors. Zan agreed, and now they’ve learned a lesson. The villagers are not fools, nor are they weaklings. But the battle isn’t done. While the ogres drew the enemy’s eyes to the west, Zan has sent half the band to storm the north entrance.”

She took his arm in a painful grip and her flint-colored eyes narrowed. “This is my battle, too, Hoten,” she hissed. “I won’t remain in camp like some doddering ancient.”

“I know, I know. Come with me. We’ll fight together.”

He lifted her to his horse’s back and mounted behind her. He laced a broad leather strap around both their waists, tying them together.

For the first time in many, many days, she smiled at him. “Don’t untie me until I’m dead,” she said, taking the reins.

Hoten closed his hands over hers. “Not even then,” he vowed.

Chapter 8

No one could remember ever seeing Karada so shaken.

The news brought by the village children changed everything. Karada called in Bahco and Pakito, gathering the whole of her band in a hollow beneath three stony hills. She related what the children had told her, that ogres had joined the fight against Yala-tene and, even worse, that the Arkuden had been slain.

“The raiders,” she went on, tendons standing out in her throat, “have a small of band of young, handpicked warriors who wear green face paint. They’re called Jade Men. They entered the village by night and murdered my brother. He was wounded in the leg in an earlier fight and was lying helpless on his bedroll.” Her hazel eyes, normally sharp and clear as melting snow, were rimmed red and filmed with unaccustomed tears.

“They slew him where he lay, stabbed him with obsidian knives...” She could not finish.

After a long and pain-filled silence, Pakito stood. “He was a good man, Karada. We grieve with you.”

She shook her head. “Save your grief.” She raised her dusty, tear-streaked face skyward. “Turn it into rage to expend on the treacherous ones who killed my brother and seek to destroy all he worked for.”

“Aye, Karada.” Hundreds of solemn voices repeated Pakito’s affirmation.

She glanced at Beramun, sitting on the ground between Mara and Balif, and saw the girl’s lovely face was pale and strained from mourning. She turned back to the sea of faces watching her.

“If any of these green-painted killers fall into our hands, I want them slain at once. Do you hear? Take no Jade Men prisoners.” There were nods and shouts of agreement. Karada went on, “With ogres in the field, I’m going to change our order of battle. Those not fit for fighting will stay behind. You’ll not enter the Valley of the Falls until the battle is over.”

There was grumbling among the elder nomads at being left behind, but they understood the wisdom of her plan. If they remained out of reach, they could not be caught and held hostage against Karada. Only one voice rose in protest.

“What are we supposed to do here?” Mara demanded. “Where will we go?”

Karada swept an arm out to encompass the terrain. “Build a hidden camp on the summit of one of these steep hills. Stay there until I return.”

Mara said no more, but her expression was mutinous.

Balif rose. “May I speak, Karada?” he asked.

“No. Yes. Be brief.”

The elf lord folded his arms across his lean chest. “Despite the valor and skill of your warriors, Karada, the odds are lengthening against you. According to Beramun” – he bowed to her – “the raiders already outnumber you. Add to that an unknown number of ogres, and you’re facing a far more potent enemy than you reckoned on.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Karada said. “My honor and my duty to my brother demand that I go.” Standing on the stump of a storm-toppled tree, her bronze helmet glinting in the late day sun, her braid of sun-streaked brown hair falling across her shoulder, she looked like the spirit of war made flesh.

“Will you lead your loyal band to such an uncertain fate?”

“Fate is never certain, as your presence here proves.”

There was chuckling in the crowd, and Balif smiled thinly. “Which brings me to my point: I would like to offer my arm to you, Karada, for the duration of this campaign.”

General astonishment reigned. Beramun reacted first. She clutched Balifs arm and declared, “Well said! Well done!”

“Quiet!” Karada barked. She crossed the open ground to the elf lord. Beramun quickly withdrew, yielding to the formidable nomad woman.

Nose to nose and eye to eye with Balif, Karada said fiercely, “This is some trick. Do you think I’ll give you back your swords and horses so you can attack us from behind?”

“That’s unworthy of you,” he said calmly. “Don’t be stupid.”

Karada’s hand went to the hilt of her sword. There were gasps from those gathered around; they were sure the insolent Silvanesti was about to die.

“I have not tried to escape,” Balif said. His calm in the face of Karada’s ire amazed Beramun. “I chose to stay with my soldiers and share their fate, whether ransomed or not. What I now propose is that I fight alongside you against these painted raiders and their ogre allies – I and as many of my soldiers as will join me.”

“Ha!” Karada walked away a few steps, whirled, and presented the tip of her sword to Balif’s face. “I see your plan! No. You and your elves will remain behind with the children and elders!”

He shrugged. “As you wish, Karada, but consider: My soldiers are trained warriors. You’ve never defeated Silvanesti troops in open battle – not once in twenty years. Can you afford to ignore so ready a weapon placed at your disposal?”

“Why would you want to help us?” asked Pakito suspiciously.

Balif lifted his head, speaking to everyone in earshot.

“We’ve fought each other a long time,” he said. “We know each other, know our motives and goals. Though we’ve sometimes dueled without quarter, I believe there is an understanding between us – even respect.”

Karada said nothing. Balif forged ahead.

“The raiders represent a grave threat, different from you nomads. For humans to serve the whims of a green dragon is very troubling and would distress the Speaker of the Stars. Add to that their new alliance with ogres, and I see a common cause for us: to defeat these savages and keep them as far from the borders of Silvanesti as possible.”

Pakito’s expression showed he found the elf’s explanation sensible.

It made sense to Beramun, too. “Shouldn’t we stand together on this?” she said quietly to Karada.

The nomads muttered among themselves, some agreeing with Beramun and others hotly ridiculing even a temporary alliance with the Silvanesti.

“Karada, maybe we could —”

“Not a word!” she snapped at Pakito. Lowering her blade, she gazed steadily at the fair-haired elf. “Even if I trusted you, can I trust your lieutenants? Surely they can’t all be as honorable as you.”

“My officers are no less loyal than yours. They will follow me to death or to victory.”

“Will you obey my commands, even if you don’t agree with them?”

“Certainly.” She looked surprised, and he added, “You took me by force of arms and spared my life on condition of ransom. I am honor-bound to obey.”

Her sword declined farther, until the point was hovering just above the ground. “I won’t put you on horses,” she warned him. “You’ll march and fight on foot.”

He nodded his acceptance.

Karada slipped her sword back into its leather scabbard. When the hilt slid home, Beramun leaped to her feet and cheered. A surprising number of nomads did likewise.

Puzzled by the acclaim, Karada said, “All of you, listen. This is a temporary alliance! When the fighting ends, the elves must give up their weapons again.”

Balif’s pale brows rose. “One way or another, we’ll be disarmed. Either we triumph and our arms belong to you, or we perish and our bones belong to the crows.”

The rest of the band saluted his brave good humor, but Karada did not smile.

Alone in the excited crowd, the girl Mara sat quietly, looking first at her chief, then at the cool and confident Balif. Her face contorted briefly, but whether from fear or hatred or something else only Mara could say.

*

While her people prepared themselves for the hard ride ahead, Karada rode off into the hills alone. In a lonely ravine, she dismounted, tying her horse to a scrub elm. She’d taken only twenty steps up the gully before, clasping both hands around her stomach, she doubled over in agony.

Amero is dead.

She’d lost siblings before. One sister had died before learning to walk, and marauding yevi had killed her baby brother Menni. Yet the news – Amero is dead – burned through her body like a blazing brand.

Putting her back to a tree, she fought for breath. Though she hadn’t seen her brother in a dozen years, it had always been enough to trust he was alive and well in Yala-tene, protected by his steadfast people, the bronze dragon, and a stout stone wall. Now that he was gone, it felt as if something inside her had been torn out.

She knew the depth of her feeling was unnatural. Long ago, a jealous member of her band named Pa’alu had used spirit power on her, trying to compel her love. The talisman miscarried, and instead of undying passion for Pa’alu, she was stricken with an unsisterly love for her own brother. Ever since, she’d grappled with the insidious influence. The struggle had nearly driven her insane, but from deep within she found the strength to live with the impossible compulsion. Live with it. Not conquer it.

Karada slid down the tree trunk, rough bark snagging her buckskins. She would never love again. She knew this in her heart. The abnormal flame she’d carried concealed for Amero had consumed her. It could never be kindled for anyone else. Lifting her eyes to the empty sky, she grieved, weeping for Amero and for herself.

The tears went on for a long time, too long. She found she couldn’t stop them, couldn’t command the gulping sobs that wracked her. At last, disgusted by her weakness, she drew the bronze dagger from her belt. Baring her left arm, she pressed the keen-edged blade against the tan skin between her wrist and elbow. Blood stained the golden blade as she drew it across her arm. The wound hurt, but not enough, so she made a second cut above the first. And then a third.

*

With a few exceptions, the Silvanesti supported their lord’s offer to fight Zannian. The common soldiers volunteered to the last elf. After all, it was better than being left behind, sitting in the dirt and wondering when one of these angry, unpredictable nomads would take it into his head to slay them. However, all six of Balif’s noble officers declined to fight. They objected to taking orders from Karada – a human, a woman, and an enemy. Balif listened to their arguments then dismissed them to idle captivity.

“Guard them well,” he told Pakito. “They’re honorable elves, but once I’m gone, they may not feel inclined to sit by and await ransom. I wouldn’t want their lives wasted.”

Leadership of the nomads remaining behind was given to Karada’s old friend, Targun. Though the oldest man in the band, his once-black hair nearly all gray now, Targun was one of the chieftain’s most trusted lieutenants. Only Pakito and his mate, Samtu, had been with Karada longer. Old Targun had his charges organized in no time.

Children were told to use pine boughs to sweep away their tracks as they departed, hiding their whereabouts even from their own people. If the battle went badly, none of Karada’s warriors could be forced to tell where their loved ones were hiding.

Warriors watched in silence as their families disappeared into the hills. Many wondered where Karada was. No one had seen her since the elf lord proposed his startling alliance. The nomads knew better than to look for their leader. She often went off on her own, and there was no questioning her when she did.

Beramun found herself standing next to Samtu, as the woman waved farewell to her children. Bearing five children in twelve years had left Samtu’s short frame rather stout, and her dark hair bore strands of gray, but she still rode at Pakito’s side and fought like a nomad half her age. Now, though, the warrior woman’s face reflected her sadness at seeing her children depart.

The obvious pity on Beramun’s face seemed to embarrass Samtu, and she busied herself with freshening the spirit marks on her face. Beramun asked about the significance of the marks and, obviously grateful for the distraction, Samtu explained. The nomads wore the painted streaks as a sign of unity. The marks were meant to resemble the scars Karada had received in her fight with the yevi so many years before. It was that first fight that had made their leader strong.

Beramun didn’t understand why Karada painted the marks on herself, since she had the real scars after all.

Samtu, shrugging, repeating what Karada had told her people: “Some scars can’t be seen unless you draw them on your skin.”

As the last of the family members disappeared around a low hill, Bahco discovered Mara crouching among the tethered horses. He told her to go with Targun, to run and catch up, but she refused, digging in her heels and fighting him as he tried to pull her out of hiding.

Karada reappeared on the other side of the camp, her left forearm tightly wrapped with a fresh strip of doeskin. The altercation between Bahco and Mara drew her, and she arrived in time to see the girl bite Bahco’s hand. Furious, the warrior pushed the combative girl to the ground and planted a foot on her back to hold her there.

When Karada gestured at him to let the girl up, Mara scrambled to her on hands and knees and clung to her chiefs leg.

“I serve you, Karada,” she pleaded. “Let me go with you!”

“Stand up, Mara,” Karada said severely. “You’re not a dog.”

The girl stood. Her doeskin shift was dirty and her curly hair matted. Impatiently, Karada combed through the rusty brown tangles with her fingers.

“Such a strange girl,” she said. “What do you think you can do with us? We don’t have a travois for you to ride, and you’ll never keep up with us on foot.”

“Let me ride with you!”

An impatient shake of her head, then Karada said, “I could burden Balif with you. He’ll be walking with his elves —”

“No!” Mara shrieked, jerking away from Karada’s hands. “I won’t go with them! I hate them! Let me ride with you!”

Beramun came forward, leading her own horse. She took in the situation immediately.

“Mara can ride with me,” Beramun said. “My horse is big enough to carry us both.”

“She’ll only get in the way,” Bahco said, glaring and rubbing the hand Mara had bitten.

Green eyes narrowed at the dark-skinned man, Mara shoved her hands into slits cut in her shift, reaching for something inside. Nomad women often carried seeds and roots they gleaned in a pouch inside their shift, but Beramun doubted the girl was going to offer Bahco food.

Grabbing her elbow, Beramun pulled her away, saying, “Come. Ride with me or go with Targun. That’s your choice.” She got on her horse and put out a hand to Mara.

Mara looked away from Karada’s unhelpful expression to the outstretched hand. Finally, with Beramun’s assistance, she mounted awkwardly. The two girls rode away.

Karada sighed, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes. “That girl’s touched, Bahco. Don’t be so rough on her.”

“She loves you like a jealous mate, Karada,” he said, shaking his head. “Watch out for her. Some day she’ll do something rash.”

*

Night fell in the valley, but the battle continued. Ungrah-de reformed his ogres and, fighting like lions, they stormed the west baffle again, this time holding it against all the villagers’ counterattacks. The defenders were fewer in number now because Zannian had drawn some away with his attack on the northern entrance.

From atop the wall, the ogres could see across Yala-tene to where the raiders battled the villagers, highlighted by flaming fascines. Ungrah could not get any farther because a barrier of logs and stone slabs had been thrown up behind the baffle. Three times the ogres had rushed the barrier, trying to break it down with axe blows or their massive bare hands, and three times they were repelled by large, bronze-tipped spears hurled down at them. The villagers attached lines to the butts of these oversized weapons, to recover them after they were cast. The ogres’ leather armor could not turn aside the sharp spearheads, hastily formed from Duranix’s cast-off scales.

After these three failures, Ungrah ordered his warriors to tear down the baffle wall and dislodge the boulders heaped inside it. This they did far into the night, sending huge sections of carefully placed masonry crashing to the ground.

On the north side of Yala-tene, the situation was just as dire. While the villagers’ attention was focused on the ogres, Zannian personally led an assault on the north baffle, isolating the entrance with bonfires and sending his men up the wall on ladders fashioned from trees taken from the village’s spirit-enhanced orchard.

Once, when Yala-tene’s newly planted orchard was threatened by ice and cold, the proud leader of the Servants of the Dragon, Tiphan, Konza’s son, had used the power of ancient spirit stones to save them. The orchard not only grew at an unnatural rate thereafter, but twigs cut from its branches put down roots and became full-grown trees within days. His success with the orchard had fueled Tiphan’s arrogance, impelling him to take the entire company of Sensarku out to face Zannian’s men before they reached the Valley of the Falls. The Sensarku had been destroyed, down to the last acolyte.

Now, Zannian’s raiders cut down dozens of the spirit-enhanced apple trees, hewed their branches off short to serve as footholds, and carried them to the northern baffle. Thrust in the dirt by the wall, the amputated trees took root and began to grow again. After a day, it was impossible for villagers to topple them from the wall. The raiders cut their way to the top and kept their toehold on the wall despite fierce counterattacks by the villagers.

“One more day should do it,” Zannian said, slumping under the overhang of the town wall. From there, he and his men were shielded from most of the bombardment. “One more day, and Arku-peli will fall.”

The sweaty, soot-streaked warrior beside him opened his eyes. “One more day like today and there may not be enough left of the band to capture anything,” he said.

Zannian, his face and arms covered with cuts, bruises, and blood (not his own), peered at the gloomy raider’s dirty face and recognized him. “Harak? Of all people to share a respite with!”

Harak ran a scrap of leather down the length of his bronze sword, wiping the blood away. Both edges were deeply nicked, and the tip had acquired a distinct bend. “I’ve been fighting at your side since sunset, Zan. Saved your life at least three times.”

“Liar.” Zannian found it unbearable that Harak might be telling the truth. He was good with a horse and deadly with a blade but so smug and sneaky Zannian could not help but distrust him.

A thrown mud brick, heated in a fire, hit the parapet above them and shattered, raining hot fragments over both men. Yelping, they brushed off the burning shards. Two other raiders sitting beside them didn’t move. Harak leaned over and patted their faces. They toppled sideways, falling facedown in the dirt.

“Dead, both of them,” he reported.

“Who are they?”

Harak squinted through the smoke and darkness. “That’s Othas. I knew him. He was a good horse-healer.” He leaned across dead Othas to inspect the other man. “Don’t know this one.”

Somewhere in the darkness, a death scream rent the air. It wasn’t possible to tell if it was friend or foe. Unperturbed, Harak took a grass-wrapped gourd flask from his belt and pulled the stopper with his teeth. The spicy smell of cider reached Zannian.

“Give me some of that.”

Harak passed the gourd. His chief upended the flask, gulping rapidly. “Ahh!” he gasped, handing it back to Harak. “That’s wretched cider!”

“Tastes like spring water to me.” He sipped it lightly. “You should try the ogres’ brew, tsoong. Whew! Strip the skin from your throat, it will. It’s so bad they call getting drunk ‘punishment.’”

“Maybe I’ll try it someday,” Zannian retorted. “If you can drink it, I can. Speaking of ogres, I’ll be glad to see the back of Ungrah-de. Bloody beast! You know he vows he will claim his choice of villagers after the battle? Not to ravage or enslave, but to eat! Filthy monster!”

“The Master’s been known to dine on our delicate kind.”

Zannian snatched the gourd from Harak. “The Master is not bound by human customs. He is above them all.”

Harak took the gourd back and drank. “Tell me. Do you miss Sthenn? Not his power or the terror he brings, I mean. Do you miss his guidance, his company?”

“No.”

The single word, firmly declared, surprised Harak. He said so.

“You know nothing about being chief,” Zannian replied. “I owe my place to the Master, but I have been more of a chief to my men since he left than I ever was in Almurk.”

A loud sound of pottery smashing made both men flinch. Zannian reclaimed the gourd of cider.

Harak said thoughtfully, “At the horse pen, I talked to villagers we’ve captured. They said the Arkuden and the bronze dragon were linked in spirit – one could call the other, even from many leagues’ distance. Do you believe that?”

The raider chief hawked and spat. “I know I never knew the Master’s mind, spoken or unspoken. I only did his bidding.”

Harak leaned his head against the warm stone wall “I wish he were here to do our fighting for us.”

Zannian drained the last drops from the flask and tossed the empty vessel into Harak’s lap. “Fool. You have no sense of glory.”

Seated beside two corpses, surrounded by screams, darkness, and destruction, Harak had to admit his chief was right.

Chapter 9

The time before dawn is so quiet, plainsmen say, because that’s when the spirits of their ancestors are about, observing the world and the descendants they’ve left behind. Humans and animals alike are quieted by their gaze, and when the disk of the sun first breaks the horizon, the spirits vanish like dew on the grass – until the next night and the next dawn.

Lyopi dozed, standing up. She and the elders of Yala-tene had taken refuge on the sloping ramp below the town wall, a few score paces from the north baffle, now in Zannian’s hands. Hekani and his beleaguered comrades were still holding off Ungrah-de at the west entrance.

She scrubbed her face with her hands and gazed across her threatened town. Early rays of sunlight slanted in over the wall, highlighting the drifting smoke hanging over most of Yala-tene. The streets were deserted, and Lyopi wondered how many people still lived within the wall of Yala-tene. Everyone not fighting had been told to stay inside. Many of the children had already been sent through the narrow tunnel in the eastern cliffs. The anguish of the parents, consigning their young to an uncertain fate, had been terrible to see.

All along the ramp, the defenders stirred. Everyone was armed now, even the elders and the wounded. Lyopi squatted and prodded the cloaked figure lying curled at her feet.

“Wake up,” she said quietly. Beneath the brown home-spun, the sleeper jerked awake, then groaned. “Come on,” she said, dragging the cloak aside. “It’s light already. The raiders will be coming soon.”

Amero lifted his head and squinted against the early morning light. He stretched and flexed until the blood began to flow again in his tired limbs, then got stiffly to his feet. He smiled at Lyopi, but the smile changed to a wince as he put weight on his right leg. The thigh wound he’d received in battle still ached.

“Any word? Any movement?” he said, peeking over the top of the ramp. Six steps away, a hasty barricade of stones and wood blocked the parapet. On the other side was ten paces of open wall, littered with the casualties of the night’s battle. Bracketed by twin columns of smoke was the north baffle, firmly under Zannian’s control. The tops of his tree-ladders could be seen sticking up above the baffle wall. In the midst of death, the trees were already leafing out in tender green.

“No movement so far. They had a hard night, too,” Lyopi said with a snort. “Shall we let them sleep?”

“I wish we had the people to charge down there and wake them properly,” Amero said bitterly. His beard was no longer neatly trimmed, but long and uneven. Dark circles ringed his hazel eyes, and like the rest of the survivors in Yala-tene, he’d lost so much weight that his clothes hung loosely on his frame.

He looked out over the north end of the valley. All there was to be seen were raiders’ horses and tents clustered around the captured baffle. No Nianki. No Duranix. How he longed to see either of them riding or flying over the intervening mountains, ready to strike the enemy and scatter them to the winds!

Montu and Tepa arrived on their hands and knees, anxious not to expose themselves to the raiders’ deadly throwing sticks.

“What’s the enemy doing?” whispered the cooper huskily.

“Snoring,” said Lyopi in a normal tone.

“Shouldn’t we be getting more of our people out of the village?” Tepa asked. “While things are quiet, I mean?”

“Most of the young children are out,” Amero said. “The older ones want to stay and fight.”

“You must order them to go, Arkuden!”

“How can I? We need every pair of hands we can get.”

“They’ll be slaughtered.”

“We survived the ogre attack, didn’t we? And everything Zannian has thrown at us?”

“But can we continue to hold out?” Tepa wondered aloud.

“Yes, we can,” Amero said, helping the exhausted old man stand erect. “Go wake the others, and see if there’s any water to be had. Don’t give up, my friend. Our enemies are strong, but they’re not without weakness. We thought Jenla was dead, and she still lives. They thought they could murder me, but I survived.”

“Unar didn’t.”

Amero sighed. Unar, Lyopi’s brother and one of Amero’s foundry workmen, had died in his place, slain by the Jade Men who’d mistaken him for the Arkuden.

Since the night of the Jade Men’s attack, however, Amero had kept out of sight. If the raiders thought him dead, they wouldn’t make other attempts to kill him. Moreover, Zannian and Nacris no doubt believed the people of Yala-tene would crumble without their headman. Their continued stout resistance must have taken some toll on the raiders’ fighting spirit.

“Many good people have died, Tepa,” Lyopi said quietly, her grief for her lost brother evident. “But the only way to save the rest is by saving Yala-tene. Do you want to surrender?”

Tepa shook his head dumbly. Leaning on Montu, he turned to go and rouse the others.

At that moment, a brace of throwing spears banged into the barricade, and hoarse shouts rang out.

“Hurry,” Amero urged the men, hefting his spear.

Raiders on the baffle pelted the barricade with missiles for a short time, shouting dire threats. With quiet determination, thirty villagers filed in behind the barrier, spears ready. From the edge of the wall, Amero could see scores of raiders milling about beneath the baffle, waiting for their chance to climb the trees and join the attack.

“I’d give all the bronze in Yala-tene for just six jars of oil!” Amero cursed softly. He knew there was none to be had. Hekani had the town’s remaining few jars on his side to use against the ogres.

Spearpoints thickened below the parapet as the raiders mustered. Amero had his people leave small holes in the barrier, just large enough to run a spear through. Another thirty villagers crouched on the ramp, ready to reinforce the line if the raiders pressed too hard.

A raider’s face, chillingly painted to resemble a grinning skull, popped up above the parapet. He raised his spear and shouted, “Go!”

Leather-clad men with similarly garish visages poured over the wall and ran helter-skelter at the makeshift barrier. Villagers lobbed stones and lumps of broken pottery at them, felling a few. The rest came on, howling for blood. The lead raiders threw themselves on the barricade, bracing their arms against it so their comrades could climb their backs.

“Now!” Amero yelled. Villagers shoved javelins through the prepared chinks in the wall, spearing the human ladders where they stood. When they collapsed, the raiders on their shoulders fell too, some tumbling right off the wall. Furious, those remaining pounded on the barricade with fists and spearshafts, making the hastily erected structure shake ominously.

Amero stuck his foot in a likely niche and climbed the barrier. Keeping his head below the top, he held on with one hand and reached over with his spear, jabbing at heads and shoulders. He wounded several raiders, and the attack fell apart. Still screaming threats and obscenities, the raiders retreated to the baffle.

They attacked twice more before midday. On the third attempt, the villagers came under fire from spear-throwers on the ground. Raiders thrust the butt ends of their spears into the holes in the barricade and tried to lever it apart. Timbers and stones fell on both sides, and the struggle degenerated into a contest of grunting, straining muscles and unyielding stubbornness.

Zannian, masked and helmeted, appeared on the wall behind his men. He recalled his troops to him, and the raiders withdrew, panting in the heat of the day.

Amero thought the raider chief might want to parley, but this hope died almost instantly. At Zannian’s nod, two raiders raised ram’s horns to their lips and blew a loud, bleating signal. The plain below filled with horsemen.

The villagers’ hearts fell. They were barely a hundred strong, and Zannian had just called in twice that number of reinforcements. Up and down the lines, spears were lowered, shoulders drooped, and heads bowed.

Amero knew what he had to do. He’d been saving a last trick, a final stratagem, for their most desperate hour. This was it. He climbed the barricade again. This time he kept going until he reached the top, and he stood upright. Dropping the hood from his head for the first time since his reputed assassination, Amero stood in clear view of the enemy.

“Zannian!” he cried. “Zannian, here! I am here. Come and get me if you can. It’s Amero, Arkuden of Yala-tene!”

The horn blasts died away. The raiders stared up at the shouting man. More than one took a step back in surprise, as if facing an apparition.

Zannian slowly removed his mask. “So. Mother’s little pets failed after all?” His youthful face, scratched and streaked with soot, split into a grin. “Good! A man like you should not die in bed, stabbed by green-faced children. Your blood belongs on my sword!”

His words brought a frown to Amero’s face, but the Arkuden forged on. “Will you parley?” he called.

“This is our parley. Speak your piece! It’s the last chance you’ll have!”

Amero glanced at his gray-faced, exhausted followers. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Let’s speak of surrender.”

The raiders broke into ragged cheers. Zannian tossed his skull-mask to one of his men and strode forth until he was only few paces from the barricade.

With a sweeping gesture to silence his men, he said, “Throw down your weapons, people of Arku-peli!”

“I want guarantees first,” Amero told him, over renewed raider cheers. “You must protect my people from the ogres.”

“I guarantee nothing. Ungrah-de expects certain rewards in exchange for his help. I can’t go back on my agreement with him.”

Amero’s disgust was evident. “How can you treat with ogres? You know what they are, what they’ll do!”

Zannian drew his bronze elven sword, holding it up to let the bright sunshine flash off the naked blade. “A warrior uses whatever weapon he can to win. The ogres are just weapons.”

“You can’t believe that! What’s to stop them from returning to their country and bringing back more of their kind? Will you be strong enough afterward to resist an attack by a horde of ogres? You must know the ancient tales – how their kind enslaved all of humanity, and scores of our people died seeking freedom. It’s said they devour their enemies!”

His words struck home, at least among Zannian’s men. None of them had been happy to find ogres in their midst, allies or not. Amero’s words reinforced their fears.

They could be heard muttering among themselves. Their leader glared at them.

“No more talk!” Zannian shouted. “And no guarantees. Surrender or die!”

“That’s no choice,” Amero replied. “To surrender is to die.”

“Very well.” Zannian walked confidently back to his waiting warriors. He donned his skull-mask again and, whipping a hand over his head, signaled the attack to resume.

There followed an eternal interval of bloody struggle, a seemingly endless clash over possession of the last barricade. Dismounted raiders climbed the apple trees to bolster Zannian’s assault while those on horseback peppered the villagers with thrown spears. The defenders dwindled. Soon Amero and Lyopi had only a handful of wounded comrades around them.

More horns blared out in the valley. Amero felt his heart shrivel with despair. Were even more raiders coming to trample them into the dust? Where did Zannian get his endless supply of men?

Packed shoulder to shoulder, the raiders pushed and heaved harder at the barricade. Afraid of being trapped when everything fell, Lyopi grabbed Amero by the collar and dragged him to the ramp. Grunting in unison, the raiders as one slammed against the tottering barrier.

The horns sounded again, closer. Lyopi pushed sweat-drenched hair from her face and peered out over the wall. Columns of horsemen filled the eastern valley. She felt numb as she watched them charging down from Cedarsplit Gap. Numb and hopeless. It was all over now.

What was this? She blinked suddenly, not crediting the evidence of her eyes.

Were the horsemen fighting each other?

She shook the dazed Arkuden. “Look, Amero!” she cried. “Look!”

He forced himself to follow her pointing hand. A mass of riders, most on tall, light-colored horses, were pouring into the valley. The mid-afternoon sun showed their faces were clean of paint, and many wore bright bronze on their heads. With sword and spear and ringing cries they attacked the mounted raiders already pressed against the walls of Yala-tene. To his confusion and shock, Amero saw many of Zannian’s men fall from their horses as though clubbed, yet no enemy was close enough to strike them. What spirit power was at work here?

Then the barricade came down with a crash, and Amero, Lyopi, and the surviving villagers were forced to concentrate on the battle closer to home. They braced themselves for a final onslaught.

It never came. A few intrepid raiders leaped over the ruined barrier, now a heap of rubble, but the majority hung back, shouting and pointing at the battle raging beneath them. One by one they abandoned the wall, streaming across the baffle to the tree-ladders. Amero saw Zannian himself urging his men away from Yala-tene and back to their tethered horses.

“By all our ancestors,” Lyopi said, sinking to her knees, tears glistening in her hollow, dark eyes. “We are saved!”

“But who can it be?” murmured a battered man behind her.

“Spirits, elves... I cannot tell, and I do not care,” she said weakly, then slumped to the parapet, unconscious.

Though equally exhausted, his wounded leg throbbing with every beat of his heart, Amero flung his arms wide and shouted, “No, not spirits! Not elves! Nomads! They’re nomads! Nianki’s band has come at last!”

*

From the moment he’d risen, Hoten knew the day was an ill-omened one. Raider dead, slain in the previous day’s battle, lay in heaps outside the camp. Though it was a grim sight, he’d seen much death since joining Zannian’s band. It was the eerie silence hanging over everything that had halted him in his tracks. Crows and vultures should have been circling, but the sky above was as empty of scavengers as it was of clouds. It was as though nature itself was rejecting the dead, and this troubled Hoten deeply. Such a thing had never happened. Never, until the ogres came.

After washing himself in the river, Hoten had awakened his mate and found her different this morning. Nacris came to life unusually animated. She told him of a wager the men had going, on whether it would be Zan or the ogres who entered Arku-peli first. Though betting favored Ungrah-de, Nacris wagered on her son.

“Losing faith in your allies?” Hoten asked, helping her rise and placing the crutch in her hand.

“Gaining faith in myself,” she replied. “I will lead my Jade Men to Arku-peli today. With them as his spearhead, Zan will prevail.”

“But Zannian commanded the Jade Men to remain in camp.”

“A stupid order. I shall lead them to victory!”

All the remaining raiders were summoned to Zannian a short time later. Hoten lingered at the rear of the formation, watching Nacris in her litter and the Jade Men surrounding her. Though Zannian offered him command of this attack, Hoten let the fiery young captains lead the morning’s assault. Shouting war cries, they galloped off to the north baffle to help storm the fading village defenses.

Still Hoten hung back. Nacris did not follow the horsemen when they turned toward the town. She led her twenty-two surviving Jade Men into the center of the valley and halted, facing the rising sun.

Hoten cantered to her. “What are you doing?” he called. “The battle is there. Why have you stopped out here?” Nacris’s lean, lined face was alight with rapturous excitement. Her normally cold, flinty eyes glowed with a strange happiness. She looked years younger. It was astonishing how the emotion transformed her, yet the sight only added to Hoten’s feeling of nameless worry.

“She’s coming,” his mate said. “She’s coming, and I’ll be here to greet her.”

“Who’s coming? Nacris, what are you talking about?”

She looked up at him with shining eyes. “Karada.”

“Karada’s dead and gone, like her brother,” he said with a disgusted snort. Then, in spite of himself, he asked, “What makes you think she’s coming?”

“I feel it. Here.” The crippled old woman pressed a fist to her heart. “All night I dreamed I could hear the hoof-beats of Karada’s band, riding and riding. When I awoke I could still hear them. I know it is true, Hoten. The Great Spirits have granted me this boon. This is the day I will see Karada again, and one of us is fated to perish!”

He couldn’t tell if she was mad or inspired. In either case, Hoten felt he was losing the woman he loved. He palmed the sweat from his blistered brow and made one last attempt to reach her.

“If what you say is true, then you shouldn’t be standing out here, alone. Karada always led a band of superb warriors. If she comes, you and the Jade Men will be trampled into the dirt.”

Nacris drew a light javelin from a socket in the frame of her litter. She laid the weapon across her lap. In the same strange, lilting voice, she replied, “We will fight and we will win. The spirits are with me. Haven’t you understood this? Everything that has happened in my life has been done so to bring me here! You don’t believe me?

Broken, lame, I was found by you and spared. The Master enlisted me in his cause, not knowing he was really serving mine! Zannian raised a mighty band to fulfill his ambition, but it was mine he was achieving!

“The bronze dragon abandoned his people, why? Because I willed it! The Dragon’s Son was slain – by my Jade Men! Even Ungrah-de has subordinated himself to my design. All that remains is to destroy Karada herself, and my revenge will be complete! I cannot possibly fail now.”

Hoten stared at her. He had lived too long to believe in anything so childish as heartbreak, but at that moment he knew, win or lose, Nacris was lost to him forever. The knowledge left him feeling empty.

He dismounted and came to her side. Her glittering eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon. Bending down, he kissed her gently on the forehead. She paid him no heed whatsoever.

Back astride his horse, Hoten turned toward Arku-peli, already ringing with the sounds of combat. “Farewell, Nacris. Hoten, son of Nito, salutes you.”

She did not look up as he rode away.

Chapter 10

By the time the nomads entered Cedarsplit Gap, day was well advanced. Though tired from their all-night ride, not one wanted to stop. Before sunrise they had flushed a party of raiders camped on a ridge overlooking the pass. From them, they’d learned the ogres and raiders were close to capturing the town. Karada united the different segments of her band and set off immediately for the Valley of the Falls.

The Silvanesti, on foot, had fallen behind during the night but caught up at the ridge. Ironically, it was the elves who had the stiffest fight in the mountains.

As Karada had ordered, Balif led his soldiers to the cliff top and immediately ran into a force of five-score raiders. Outnumbered three to one, Balif attacked. The raiders had detected Karada’s large, mounted band moving through the pass and closed ranks in expectation of an assault on horseback. They did not expect thirty metal-armed Silvanesti on foot.

Balif spread his elves out in skirmishing order, taking a small pinnacle above the plateau first. From there, the Silvanesti hurled bronze-tipped javelins down on the tightly packed raiders.

Outflanked, half the raiders bolted there and then. The rest charged the elves with their long stabbing spears leveled. Balif drew his soldiers back on the crag where the raiders’ horses couldn’t reach them. The undisciplined raiders broke into small groups and attacked at will, which allowed Balif to pick them off, equally at will. By midday, the elf lord was master of the plateau.

Sending a messenger on a dead raider’s horse, Balif informed Karada he held the cliff tops. To his surprise, the messenger returned with Karada herself and an entourage of twenty nomads.

She looked over the field of Balif’s small victory. The elf lord, long hair tied back with a leather strap in nomad fashion, was sweating in the heat but as composed as ever.

“Well done,” she said. “How do they fight?”

“They’re fell foes. With better leadership, they’d have driven us off the mountain.”

They went to the edge of the high precipice and looked down on Yala-tene. Smoke drifted over the beleaguered town, and a mass of horsemen was milling about below the wall on the north end of the village. Whatever pangs of memory and loss Karada felt looking at her brother’s home she quickly suppressed.

“Pakito!”

“Aye!” The giant appeared at his chiefs side.

“Take two out of three in the band and hit those yevi-spawn! Go now!”

“Aye, Karada!” Pakito kissed Samtu and started shouting orders. His booming voice carried across the open plateau, putting the heat of battle into everyone’s veins.

“Bahco! Wait here with the third that Pakito doesn’t take,” Karada ordered. The young nomad grimaced with disappointment but did as she said.

Beramun slipped in beside Karada. “Can you see the ogres? How many do you think there are?”

Karada shaded her eyes with her hands. Her vision was proverbially keen, but even she couldn’t distinguish ogres from men at this distance, and she said so.

Hawk eyes still fastened on the scene below, she suddenly exclaimed, “By my ancestors! On the valley floor, there – folk on foot. Do you see?” Beramun and Balif agreed they did. “Do they look green to you?”

Balif frowned. “They do.”

“The Jade Men!” Beramun breathed.

The grim calm of the nomad chieftain gave way to the fury of Amero’s sister. “Bahco!” Karada said, voice cracking with rage. “Take the rest of the band down there and get them!”

“Yes, chief. Do you want prisoners?”

“I want corpses! Those are the snakes who killed my brother! Not one of them is to live, Bahco! Kill them all!”

The dark warrior nodded gravely and departed.

Beramun stared after him, her hand resting on the mark on her chest. Strangely, when she’d escaped Yala-tene to search for Karada, the green brand had saved her life. The Jade Men had captured her but, seeing their master’s sign, had let her go, thinking she was one of them. Their calm assurance had frightened her, but she’d proven she was not Sthenn’s tool, hadn’t she? She was returning with Karada and her nomad warriors.

“I must get to the village as soon as possible,” Beramun said. “May I go with Bahco?”

Karada glanced at Beramun and at Mara, standing behind her and quietly observing everything. “All right,” the chieftain said. “Leave Mara here, and mind what Bahco tells you. He leads in my place.”

Soon only Karada, Mara, Balif, and his elves remained on the cliff. Anyone else might have felt vulnerable being surrounded by armed former enemies, but not Karada. She knew Balif well enough by now to know he would not try any treacherous coup.

They remained overlooking the scene until Pakito’s column hit the raiders from behind. Zannian’s men were crowded in close to the wall, awaiting their chance to come to grips with the weakening villagers, and they never knew what hit them. Pakito, disdaining the use of bows, closed with spear and sword.

“That’s it!” Karada cried, racing along the edge of the cliff, following the fight. One wrong step, and she would have plunged hundreds of paces down the mountain. She was oblivious to the danger. “Drive in! Keep them against the wall, Pakito. No room to maneuver! Give them no room!”

Turning suddenly, Karada sprang onto her horse. “Why am I here? To battle!”

Mara said, “Take me with you!”

Karada gave the girl her hand. “Hold on!” she said as Mara scrambled aboard. “If you fall off on the way down, I’m not stopping to pick you up!”

Mara wrapped both arms around Karada’s narrow waist. The nomad chief waved to Balif, who mustered his elves and started them jogging into Cedarsplit Gap. At a bone-jarring gallop, Karada passed the Silvanesti and hurtled down the slope, drawn by the intoxicating tumult of battle.

*

The Jade Men formed a circle around Nacris, each facing outward. The youth who’d led the killers after Amero said, “Mother, we await your will.”

“Good boys. Be patient. She will come.”

The din of battle waxed and waned behind them as Zannian tried to bludgeon his way into Yala-tene. More distant was the noise of Ungrah and his ogres resuming their attack, having now demolished the west baffle and part of the outer wall. The sound of ogre war drums could be heard again throughout the Valley of the Falls.

It was high summer, and the Jade Men suffered in the heat, though they wore nothing but green kilts and leggings. They made no complaints and kept formation as the hot sun beat down on them. The ground around them became stained with their dripping sweat.

A strong breeze blew down Cedarsplit Gap, driving eddies of dust before it. The Jade Men on the east side of the circle sniffed the air and immediately stiffened with alarm. They looked to Nacris, reclining in the litter, the javelin still on her lap.

“Mother —”

“Yes, my child. I know. Horses are coming. Are you ready?”

They were.

“Present your arms.”

Each Jade Man knelt on one knee, butting the end of his long spear against his foot. Their circle was now a fence of keen points.

Tiny mounted figures appeared on the cliffs overlooking the valley. Their horses were taller than the ponies the raiders rode, and most were light-colored – tan, gray, white. They stood out boldly against the darker stone of the cliffs.

A heavy cloud of dust rose from the pass, soaring as high as the cliffs around it. The drone of massed hoofbeats gradually overcame the tumult of the battle for Yala-tene, and the first riders emerged from Cedarsplit Gap. Obviously scouts, they took in the scene and reentered the pass. Moments later, a column of riders six abreast burst into view. They thundered down the trail, making for the rear of Zannian’s band and veering away from the Jade Men’s position. Nacris said nothing. The Jade Men held their places.

The moving column of nomads passed within a hundred paces of the Jade Men. The riders saw the strange, green-painted youths on open ground but held their course to hit the engaged raiders hard. A gigantic melee developed, with hundreds of horses churning up the dry earth, filling the air with dust.

A second band of nomads descended the pass in a more leisurely fashion. They halted briefly, then came toward Nacris at a steady walk.

“Steady, children,” she said. “Remember your Master! He will hear of how well you fight today!”

The nomads spread out, plainly seeking to encircle their unmoving enemy. Nacris admired their tall mounts, their buff deerskins, and tanned, healthy faces. She’d been one of them once and remembered how it felt to have sound limbs, a good horse, and the endless plain as your domain.

At a distance of forty paces, the nomads halted. They put aside their spears and swords and took strange devices in their hands – slender staves of wood, their two ends joined by a taut length of cord.

Nacris furrowed her brow. What was this?

Each rider fitted a little spear to the cord. That was enough to warn Nacris these were weapons of some sort. She cried, “Jade Men! At them!”

With a concerted shout the green-skinned youths threw themselves forward. The nomads waited, implacable, drawing back the cords on their odd weapons, stretching the staves into deep arcs. When released, the little spears were thrown with incredible force. The air was filled with the thrum of tight strings and the hiss of flying feathered-tufted missiles.

It should have been over in a few heartbeats – two hundred nomads loosing arrows at less than twenty-five targets. Yet, the fight did not go that way. Slender green bodies twisted and spun, dodging the first volley of arrows sent at them. Screaming in high-pitched, boyish voices, the Jade Men came on. Unnerved, the nomads hesitated before loosing a second hail of arrows.

This time many of the arrows found their marks. Jade Men toppled, chests sprouting with slender wooden shafts. Those not hit dropped to the ground and scrambled forward on all fours, each with a spear clenched in his teeth. Horses reared as the weird youths scampered under them. Some nomads were thrown down and slain by the waiting Jade Men. Others dropped their bows in favor of spears and swords to better combat their strange enemies.

From her litter, Nacris watched and laughed. With a hundred Jade Men, she could have wiped out the nomads before her. With a thousand, she could have ruled the plains. How well they moved and fought! Those mortally stricken lay in the trampled weeds, she noted with a pang, like exotic flowers cut down by a scythe.

The surviving Jade Men swarmed over the confused riders, dragging them off their horses, stabbing, choking, even biting them into submission. A hollow space opened in the midst of the nomad formation as Karada’s warriors drew back from the bizarre green killers. When the dust cleared, the bows went to work again, this time with carefully aimed arrows. Jade Man after Jade Man was hit.

A loud murmur arose from the nomads. Even bristling with arrows, some of the green-skinned youths struggled to rise and carry on the fight. Nacris strained neck and arms trying to lift herself to see what was happening. As the breeze swept the dust aside, she saw a dark-skinned man with a bronze sword in his hand. On foot, he went among the wounded Jade Men, dispatching them with well-placed thrusts.

By the time Nacris hauled herself up to stand with her crutch, it was all over. Tears coursed down her weathered face, though she did not make a sound. Her ploy of waiting in the open had drawn Karada, just as she hoped. Her Jade Men had died well. She was so very proud of her children.

The dark swordsman remounted and rode through the nomad line. Leaning hard on her crutch, Nacris pulled her gaze from the sprawled forms of her young Jade Men and presented the point of her spear to the enemy.

Among the lead riders Nacris noticed a strikingly pretty girl with long black hair and jet eyes to match. Nacris knew that girl. Her name was...

“Beramun,” the girl supplied, seeing the crippled woman struggling to remember.

“You came back. Zannian will be pleased.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve brought friends, many friends.” To the dark man at her side, Beramun added, “Watch her, Bahco. She’s a snake!”

Nacris smiled through her tears. “And Karada? Where is she?”

Beramun turned and pointed to the cliff. “There. She sent us to fetch you.”

Nacris drew back her arm and flung the javelin. Unsteady on one leg, her cast was awkward, and the weapon flew low. It landed in the dirt in front of Bahco’s horse.

“Take her,” he said. Four nomads seized Nacris but found her unresisting. In fact, she broke into wild laughter.

“My design is almost complete!” she chortled. “Obey my will! Take me to Karada!”

*

Zannian couldn’t believe it. Victory had been his – the Arkuden himself was talking surrender – and now everything was falling apart! What capricious spirits were at work here? How could his glorious destiny have splintered so thoroughly, like a stick of rotten wood?

He abandoned the north baffle, for which so many had died, and got on his horse. The bulk of his once-numerous band was hotly engaged, and every man, every weapon, counted. He rallied his demoralized men and they pushed their new enemies back a bit, gaining room to breathe. The newcomers were not too numerous. Zannian guessed they totaled perhaps four hundred, similar to his on-hand strength, but they were powerfully armed, rode bigger animals, and both horses and riders were fresher than his own troops.

Slowly his men retreated westward, forced away from the village. During the running fight, Zannian rode through the site of another skirmish. The bodies on the ground were green-skinned.

Jade Men. This was his mother’s work. Only she or the Master could have commanded the Jade Men into battle, and Sthenn was certainly nowhere about. Zannian had no chance to look for Nacris’s body among the others before the swirling fight carried him and his men away from where the Jade Men perished.

He spotted Hoten in the fray, trading blows with a sturdy foe on a tall horse. The old raider was having the worst of it, so Zannian charged through the press and speared the nomad on his blind side. Hoten saluted wearily. Zannian started to ask about Nacris, but new enemies appeared, and he and Hoten were driven apart.

A new column of nomads appeared on the raiders’ left. Though smaller than the first group, they still numbered nearly two hundred robust warriors. Outnumbered and outridden, the raiders began to lose heart. Some threw down their weapons and whipped their exhausted mounts westward to the empty camp by the river. Zannian boiled with fury. The cowards would not dare quit the battle if Sthenn were present!

As one trio of deserters cantered away, watching anxiously over their shoulders for pursuit by nomads or Zannian’s loyalists, they failed to see a line of ogres stalking toward them. The biggest ogre raised his chipped stone axe and knocked the lead rider off his horse, cleaving him from shoulder to waist with one blow. The other horses reared, throwing off their startled riders. Two ogres picked up a deserter by his ankles. The terrified raider screamed as he was flung back into the churning battle. He vanished into the mass of fighting humans and stamping horses. The last deserter saw none of this. He ran like a rabbit. Sneering, the ogres let him go.

Ungrah-de hailed Zannian, saying, “We heard the fight coming our way and came to join you.” His brawny arms were stained to the elbows with his enemies’ blood. “Your men are running away.”

“Kill as many as you like, great chief!” Zan snarled. “It will encourage the rest to fight!”

Nearby, the nomads broke through the raiders. Upon seeing the ogres the nomads wavered, but they were many and the ogres few, so they resumed their charge. Ungrah’s warriors did not look as though they could withstand a mounted attack, but they turned the nomads’ spears with their stone-faced bucklers and chopped them down with broad sweeps of their axes. Zannian reorganized his remaining men behind the firm line established by Ungrah-de. The nomads made a few forays against the formidable monsters, but these were bloodily repulsed.

Horns blared, and the nomads drew back several score paces, forming into two blocks. Zannian saw the larger block, on his right, was commanded by a huge man riding an equally tall horse. The nomads on the left seemed to be led by a muscular young man with richly brown skin and short, black, tightly curled hair. There was no sign of a female chief, the Karada of legend.

There was much posturing and spear shaking, but as horses and riders calmed, the two bands drew farther apart. The sun was not long from setting, and the nomads had the blazing light in their eyes. Across from them, many raiders were reeling on their animals, nearly overcome by exhaustion.

Into the open ground between the two forces rode five nomads on four horses. The giant and the dark man were two of them. The third was a slender woman with long black hair. In the midst of the ruin of his dreams of conquest, Zannian felt a surge of fire in his veins when he recognized Beramun.

His elation was tempered by the sight of the fourth horse. It carried two women: one, a red-haired girl Beramun’s age, Zan dismissed immediately; the other, older and browned by years of sun, merited a longer inspection. The older woman wore a fine bronze helmet of elven make. Her jaw and throat were streaked with livid, white scars.

Beside him, Hoten drew in a breath sharply. “Karada!”

“Are you certain?” Zannian demanded.

“In my youth I rode with her band,” was the awed reply. “That’s her.”

Zannian gave a low growl of annoyance. “First the Arkuden and now Karada. Too many dead people are still alive.”

He and Hoten rode out together with Ungrah-de striding along between their horses. They came within six steps of the nomads and stopped.

No one spoke. The only sound was the ogre’s loud breathing and the sound of horses’ tails switching away flies.

Hoten broke the impasse. “Greetings, Karada,” he said, hailing his former chieftain.

She squinted against the flare of the setting sun. “I know your face. You’re... Hoten, son of Nito. You were in my band, many years ago.”

He nodded, thinking it strange that her recognition should please him so.

“Now you ride with these savages?” Pakito growled at him. “Yevi-spawn!”

So much for old memories.

Zannian said, “Speak, Karada. Why have you come here?”

“To save my brother and his people. I may be too late for one but not the other.”

Zannian did not enlighten her that Amero lived. “You don’t belong here. Go back to the east. Battle the Silvanesti, and leave this land to us.”

“You are the invaders!” Beramun spoke up. “Murderers and looters! Go back to the stinking forest you call home and tell your dragon master you have failed!”

The raider chief turned his horse’s head toward her. “I saved you from the Master more than once, girl. Have you no gratitude?”

“Speak to me, raider,” Karada said severely. “I give you this leave: he gone from the Valley of the Falls by sunrise tomorrow, or your corpse will rot where it falls.”

“This one is a warrior,” Ungrah said suddenly. His dark eyes had not left Karada’s face since she’d first spoken.

Hearing the imposing creature speak their language startled the nomads. Ungrah went on. “Even in the high mountains we have heard of the Scarred One. I see now the tales are true.”

“This is not your fight, ogre,” she replied. “Withdraw, and none shall hinder you.”

“My fight is any I choose. Killing the wall-people was just work, but now I think this fight will be good. I will wear your skull with pride, Karada.” He rattled the trophies hanging from his armored chest.

In answer, she drew her long bronze sword. Zannian and Hoten tensed, ready to fight. Ungrah stood his ground, feet planted firmly, both massive hands resting on the head of his axe, unmoving as a mountain.

“To the death then, is it?” said Karada, looking from the ogre to the raider chief.

“It is,” Zannian said.

Ungrah and the raiders turned to go. They’d taken several steps before she spoke again.

“I have Nacris.”

The simple words halted them. Hoten tried to see his mate’s fate in Karada’s expression, but the nomad chiefs face was like the eastern cliffs – hard and unyielding.

“Does my mother live?”

Something flickered across Karada’s face. “Mother?”

“Does she live?” Zannian snapped.

“For now. If I return her to you, will you leave the valley?”

“No.” Hoten’s protest was overridden as Zannian said, “We did not come all this way to fall short now! Karada is my mother’s blood foe. Nacris would rather die at her hands than be spared by her!”

The raider chief kicked his mount into motion, leading his sullen men back to camp.

Before he turned to follow them, Ungrah-de said, “When the sun is next overhead, we will meet here and test our strengths, arm to arm. Until then, savor your blood, Karada. Tomorrow it will stain the soil at my feet.”

Though the other nomads, even giant Pakito, were visibly affected by the threat, Karada turned her back on Ungrah and rode back to her band.

*

High atop the walls of Yala-tene, Amero and his companions watched the nomads and raiders parley, unable even to discern who the participants were. Yet, Amero was almost certain that one of the nomads was his sister. She was on a wheat-colored horse, and something about the way she sat the animal struck a chord in his mind.

When the two groups rode away from each other, he was filled with joy. Surely the raiders were defeated! What else could they do but abandon the siege and leave the valley?

Amero saw the nomads return to the north baffle and set up camp beneath the walls. A body of men marching in close order down Cedarsplit Gap joined the nomads. It wasn’t until they were much nearer that it became apparent the warriors on foot were elves.

“What does this mean?” asked Hekani, who’d come over from the west baffle once the ogres had retreated. “Silvanesti fighting alongside nomads? Such things don’t happen!”

“What about men allied with a green dragon and with ogres?” replied Lyopi tartly.

“I don’t know what’s possible, and I don’t care! It is a great day!” Amero declared. Worn down to raw courage and sheer nerve, the other villagers could only agree.

Amero hurried to the north baffle, eager to see his sister after so long a time. Beramun would be there, too – brave girl! He longed to see her again and do honor to her courage. Alone of the scouts he’d sent to find Nianki, she had survived and brought the nomads back to save them.

By the time he arrived at the entrance, nomads had already swarmed onto the baffle and were making their way into the village. The people of Yala-tene lined the walls to cheer them. Gratitude poured out of every hoarse throat.

Beyond the wrecked barricade, Amero stopped. He could see them coming. His throat tightened, and his hands trembled. Beramun’s raven hair was painted dark crimson by the setting sun. In front of her, a tawny woman of forty summers clambered over the boulders and rubble. It was Nianki indeed, and how strong she looked!

Where the obstructions ended and the wall began, Karada and her party halted. She looked up and saw the assembled villagers waiting for them. Standing on the wall directly above her was a bearded man in tattered clothes. He was hollow-eyed, battered, and cut about the hands and face. A handsome woman with a thick chestnut braid of hair stood at his side, gripping a much-used spear.

Karada felt her heart beat hard, the pulse pounding in her ears. The setting sun was behind the people on the wall, leaving their faces in shadow. Yet she knew the bearded man. Though her voice, when at last she could speak, sounded questioning and strained, she knew him.

“Amero?”

“Nianki!” the man called joyously, spreading his arms wide.

No one else in all the world called her by her birth name. It was Amero. He was alive.

She didn’t remember climbing the last bit. Next thing she knew she was on the wall, arms around the apparition of her brother. He was solid and real, no spirit, and when he drew back from her, she saw the old gleam of wit in his hazel eyes.

“I can hardly believe it! You saved us!” He was grinning so wide his face seemed ready to split.

“You called me,” she said quietly, moved. “I came.”

Chapter 11

Vast was the relief felt in Yala-tene that night. The desperate, hungry villagers poured from their homes, embracing any nomad who would stand still for it. Though not plentifully supplied themselves, the nomads shared what provender they had with Amero’s people. It was not a celebration – everyone was too tired for that – but the feeling of doom over the valley had eased.

Beramun was enthusiastically greeted by all. Even Lyopi, not overly fond of the nomad girl, honored her courage and perseverance. When Beramun told them Karada’s band had met the three children from Yala-tene and that the children were safely hidden with the non-combatants outside the Valley of the Falls, the villagers gained hope that the rest of their young might have made it as well.

Amero, Lyopi, and the village elders left the safety of the wall for the first time in many days and went to Karada’s camp. There they met Bahco and renewed their acquaintance with Pakito and Samtu, both of whom Amero had known from his sister’s last visit to Yala-tene a dozen years before. The villagers were presented to Balif, who greeted the Arkuden and his people with great courtesy.

Unlike his hard-riding captors, Balif had taken the time to wash after the day’s fighting. Dressed in a sky-blue robe and girded by a cloth-of-gold belt, he looked every bit the elf lord.

“How is it you’re here fighting alongside my sister?” Amero asked.

“It’s the fault of the moon,” was Balif’s reply.

Conversation around the great campfire died. “Moon?” asked Lyopi.

“Just so. I was on a hunting expedition north of the Thon-Tanjan during the dark of the white moon, and the catch was meager. My hunt master recommended we return to Silvanost and try our luck later, but I knew the moon would return soon and the hunting would improve. I insisted upon staying on the plain a few days longer.” He squared his angular shoulders and tried not to look irritated. “Two nights later we were taken unawares by Karada’s band.”

“You might as well blame Beramun as the moon,” Karada said, sipping cider. “It was she who brought us west.”

Sitting in the circle behind Karada, Beramun blushed as all eyes turned to her.

Balif explained that the ogre threat had persuaded him to offer his sword to Karada’s cause.

Amero gripped his sister’s hand and smiled. “I always believed you were alive,” he said. “I knew you would come.”

“Yes, he only feared you’d arrive after the village was razed,” Lyopi said dryly.

Amero protested amid general laughter. While he was distracted, Karada freed her hand from his and moved away, ostensibly to refill her cup.

Talk continued, with confessions of faith balanced against admissions of doubt. The conversation remained light until Pakito said, “Tomorrow, will the raiders really stand and fight?”

The camp grew quiet. Burning wood hissed and popped in the fire.

“They will, and so will the ogres,” Karada said.

“How many ogres are there?” asked Bahco.

“You saw them all today,” Hekani said. “About two dozen are still breathing. There were thirty, once.” Hekani smiled grimly. “We took care of a few already.”

“Beating them will take new tactics,” mused Karada. “Maybe new weapons...”

“Filthy monsters,” Samtu muttered. More loudly, she said, “These raiders are outnumbered. If they were wise, they’d ride out tonight and leave the ogres to fend for themselves!”

“You can’t count out the raiders,” said Beramun. “Zannian has spent his entire life preparing to conquer the plains. It’s all his mother and the green dragon have trained him for. He won’t give up that dream. As long as Zannian lives, there will be no peace on the western plain.” Since she knew the raiders better than anyone, her words carried weight.

In the silence that followed her harsh pronouncement, Amero yawned widely. Apologizing, he said, “I think it’s time for rest now. I know we villagers will sleep easier tonight.” Lyopi was already asleep, her head resting on his shoulder. He shook her gently awake.

Lyopi and the elders went ahead while Amero remained to thank their saviors again. He clasped Balif’s hard, slender hand. The elf’s face reminded him of painted pottery – attractive, yet cool and stiff. Amero could not fathom what lay beneath.

When he stood before Pakito, the genial giant disdained the hand he offered and instead grabbed the Arkuden by both shoulders and gave him a hearty shake. Once Amero regained his balance, Samtu kissed his bearded cheek, then departed with her towering mate.

Amero found himself facing Beramun. In the firelight, the black-haired girl was as achingly beautiful as ever – more so, he decided. Life with Karada seemed to agree with her. When she first stumbled into the Valley of the Falls, she’d looked gaunt and hunted. Now she had fleshed out and acquired the tan worn by all Karada’s nomads.

“How can I thank you?” he said, not daring to touch her. “You saved everything.”

“You’ve thanked everyone enough,” she joked. “And I was but one of many. The spirits were with me, and I lived to find Karada.”

“Tomorrow should see the end of it.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded, smiled briefly, and left.

Last to receive his good-night was his sister. She stood a few steps away, looking awkward, almost shy. Amero knew of the curse she lived with, but he could not treat her like a stranger. He held out his arms. She didn’t move, so he stepped forward and embraced her.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. He could feel it, so he drew back. “I’m sorry,” he said for her ears alone. “I don’t mean to distress you.”

She only shook her head, so he added, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Amero tried to leave, but he found he couldn’t. Karada was gripping the front of his shirt in her clenched fists. She looked at her hands in surprise, as though they belonged to someone else, and released him.

“Watch yourself tomorrow,” Amero said, then his gaze slid past her. “It’s no victory if I lose you.”

The campfire was at his back, and its light reflected off a pale face in the shadows behind his sister. Karada had told him how she’d released Mara from Silvanesti bondage. He’d greeted the girl with relief, surprised and pleased to know she hadn’t died as the villagers had thought – on an ill-fated journey to find spirit stones out on the plains. Mara hadn’t returned his good feelings but had regarded him with an odd wariness.

Now the fire’s dying flames illuminated anger in her green eyes.

Karada noticed his frown and glanced over her shoulder to see what caused it. She spoke sharply to the hovering girl. Silently, Mara stole away.

“What was that about?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. A girl’s misplaced affection.”

Amero left his sister and caught up with his people outside the nomad camp. The elders chatted idly, still excited by their sudden deliverance.

“The only thing missing,” Amero said, “is Duranix.”

He looked up at the night sky, brightly washed with light by the conjunction of the red and white moons. “I hope he finds what he’s seeking,” he added.

“I hope he kills that green dragon!” Lyopi said.

Amero smiled. “That’s what I meant.”

“I’m not being amusing. If Duranix fails, our battle here means nothing. The green dragon will return and destroy us.”

Amero’s step faltered. What Lyopi said was unbearably true. All their suffering and striving would be for nought if Duranix lost to Sthenn.

They ascended the timber ramp lowered from the wall and reentered the village. Amero bade the elders a good night. He did not accompany Lyopi to her house but walked the streets of Yala-tene for some time, trying to escape the remorseless bonds of her words.

*

Karada’s head ached from too much heat, noise, and raw cider. She should sleep, but an important task remained undone.

Alone in her dark tent, she removed her heavy riding clothes, sword, and leggings. She washed her hands and face quickly, then donned a clean buckskin shirt and wraparound kilt. Tying the sash in place, she thrust a flint knife behind the knot. When she stepped out again, she found Mara waiting for her.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she snapped. “If you’re restless, clean my gear for tomorrow!”

“Yes, Karada.”

Walking away, Karada made a silent resolution to do something about the girl. Mara’s excessive devotion had once been amusing. Lately it had become annoying.

Years ago, Karada had found an orphan child wandering the plain and had raised her like a daughter. That orphan was Samtu. Their relationship had been stormy, as Samtu was as strong-willed and fiercely independent as Karada herself. Mara’s slavish worship was another thing entirely.

Thoughts of Mara vanished when she reached her destination. Two nomads guarded the small tent, leaning on their spears. Spotting their chief, they straightened up and hailed her.

“All quiet?” she asked.

“Not a sound’s come out of there,” said the female guard.

“All right. Go elsewhere for a while.”

The guards departed, and she lifted the flap and stepped inside.

“I knew you’d come,” Nacris said. “What took you so long?”

“I had more important things to do.” Karada let the flap fall. There were cutouts in the fabric around the top. The white light of Soli, combined with Lutar’s red glow, gave the tent’s interior a pinkish cast. Karada stood over her crippled captive.

“You must think I’m very dangerous,” said Nacris, lifting the heavy bronze chain coiled around her waist. The other end was attached to a stout wooden stake a pace long, driven into the ground by Pakito. Gesturing at her crippled leg, she added, “You know I can’t run away.”

Karada nudged the chain with her foot. “I learned from the Silvanesti troublesome things are less troubling when you chain them up.”

She sat down cross-legged in front of Nacris, just out of arm’s reach. She and her old foe were of an age, but Nacris’s hard life had taken its toll. Nacris looked years older than her former chief.

Bluntly, Karada spoke her thoughts. “You look like a day-old corpse. What curse has afflicted you?”

“A curse with your name.”

“You made your own misery, woman. Don’t blame it on me.”

Instead of biting back, Nacris smiled. She extended her good leg and stretched luxuriously.

“I’ve learned much in the years since your friend Duranix saw fit to maim me for life. That was the start of my journey to wisdom. It’s taken a long time and much bloodshed, but I’ve nearly reached my goal.”

“What goal?”

“Your humiliation and death.” When her words brought no response from her hated enemy, Nacris added, “And a painful death for all you love, starting with Amero.”

Karada lashed out, taking Nacris by the throat and forcing her down on her back. With her free hand she brought the flint knife to her enemy’s throat.

“I am your death!” Karada snarled. “Why do you think I let you live this long? My warriors could have slain you with your green-skinned killers, but I reserved that deed to myself!”

“Then do it!” Nacris hissed. She continued grinning widely, eyes bulging from their sockets.

Karada let the flint blade bite a little. Nacris felt the sting and started to laugh. Furious, flinging the knife aside, Karada tightened her grip on the woman’s throat.

Nacris’s laughter choked off as the pressure increased. She gasped, “If I die... you’ll never... find... your brother!”

“Fool! Amero lives in spite of your plots!”

“Your other brother!” Nacris gurgled.

The world went black before Nacris’s eyes, and a terrible roaring, as loud as any dragon’s cry, filled her ears. She felt herself falling down a deep pit like the one Sthenn inhabited in his forest lair.

Then the air lightened, and she could see again and breathe. The face of her hated enemy was still above her. Nacris drew in a long, deep breath. Her throat felt as raw as an open wound.

“Speak, hag,” Karada said. “Explain your words, and I’ll grant you the mercy of a swift death.”

After another ragged inhale, Nacris rasped, “Like your dragon’s mercy – flinging me into the lake and breaking my leg in three places.”

She said nothing more, merely struggled back upright and sat glaring at Karada.

The nomad chieftain stood and regarded her without pity. “Why say these things if you don’t care whether I understand you?” she said and turned to go.

“You did have another brother, didn’t you?” Nacris finally murmured.

“What of it? He died long ago, killed by the same yevi pack that slew my father and mother.”

“Did he?” Eyes of bloodshot gray locked with hazel. “Did you see his body? No? You believed Amero dead for many years, too, didn’t you?”

Karada gave a disgusted snort. “Your lies know no limits, viper! I came here to offer you an honorable death, but I see you’re not worthy of it. I think I’ll have Pakito toss you in the lake again. If we tie a stone around your neck, maybe this time you’ll stay down.”

Nacris grinned. “You cannot kill me, Karada. Not while I know something you must find out!”

She continued to shout as Karada lifted the flap and went out. The guards were just returning, and Nacris’s obscene threats against their chief were so awful the two warriors blanched.

“No one else is to see her,” Karada told them. “No one.”

The shouted imprecations grew even louder. “I’ll send wine. Drink it yourselves or give it to her, whichever leads to peace sooner.”

*

After eating with the villagers, Beramun wandered away. Pleased as she was they’d reached Yala-tene in time, knowing the bloodshed was going to continue tomorrow oppressed her deeply.

Her mission was over, her duty to Amero fulfilled. Zannian’s plans were undone. She once vowed to see him die as payment for the deaths of her family, but her lust for blood had dimmed. Neither a resident of Yala-tene nor a member of Karada’s band, Beramun wanted most to be back on the open plain and far away from the Valley of the Falls.

So what was keeping her here? The wide world was waiting. Why not go now?

She’d wandered aimlessly away from the great central campfire, passing through ring after ring of nomad tents. By the time she looked up from her musings, she was on open ground east of camp. Cedarsplit Gap was clearly in view under the combined light of Moonmeet. The way was not clear, however.

In front of her was a ring of stakes and vines, like a temporary ox pen. Huddled figures filled the ring, most lying on the ground under scraps of hide. Nomads on horseback rode slowly around the ring.

She accosted one rider. “What is this?” she asked.

“Raiders we caught today,” said the nomad. “We spared them when they threw down their arms.”

The surrendered men, no more than forty in all, looked utterly beaten. Stripped of face paint, weapons, and horses, they had ceased to be fearsome raiders.

Beramun slowly circled the pen, studying the men she’d feared for so long. She wondered if the ones who’d killed her family were present. She tried to see their nightmarish faces in the tired, pathetic prisoners before her.

Most of the captured men were sleeping, curled up in tight groups for warmth. A few, sick or wounded, whimpered and coughed. Near the fence, one man sat alone. He’d removed his torn leggings and was patiently trying to mend them by the light of the two moons.

Seeing her, he called out a greeting. She moved quickly to get past him. He stood and started paralleling her on the inside of the fence, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and walked faster.

“You look like you’re escaping from someone,” he called. “With a face as beautiful as yours, it must be a lover.”

“Mind your own troubles!” she snapped, halting.

He was tall and well made, with hair almost as long as her own, though somewhat lighter in color and tied back with a scrap of leather. His feet and ankles were badly scraped. No wonder his leggings were in tatters, she thought.

“You look kind, fair one,” he said. “I need to mend my leggings. Have you a bone needle to lend a wanderer like yourself?”

She snorted. “You should have stayed a wanderer, raider.” Beramun resumed walking, though she couldn’t remember where she’d been going.

“My name is Harak, fair one! I come from Khar land, in the south.”

She stopped, turned around, and came back. Without explanation, she unwound her own leggings. Harak watched silently, and when she handed them to him, he smiled and thanked her.

Just then a guard rode up. “What are you doing?” he asked Beramun.

“This man needs leggings,” she said. “I lent him mine.”

“He’s a raider!”

“Not by choice!” Harak declared. He placed a hand over his heart. “Taken by Zannian, I had to join them or become a slave. I couldn’t bear being held captive, so I rode for Zannian as a scout. Is that so terrible?”

“Pay him no mind,” said the guard. “He’s been talking like that since we caught him. Anyone who speaks so well must be a liar.”

“I think you’re right,” she said dryly, and started to walk on.

“Where are you going?” asked the guard. “The mountains are not safe yet, what with ogres in the valley.”

Beramun looked back at the moonlit camp and the walled town beyond it. “I was just out walking. I’m going back to camp.”

The guard nodded and rode away. Harak pressed against the vine fence and said, “What’s your name, lovely one? You know mine now. You saved my feet and I’d like to thank you.”

She cast a glance over her shoulder. “Beramun.”

*

When she was gone, Harak sat down and wound the buckskin strips around his legs. So that’s Beramun, he thought. Zan wasn’t a total fool. If he had to be obsessed with a female, at least he’d found a pretty one – beautiful in fact. Fortunately for Harak, she also had a good heart. The leggings were a little short, but they would do.

Harak stretched out on the ground and tucked his hands behind his head. Clouds were creeping in from the east, blotting out the stars and softening the glory of the two blazing moons. Thoughts of the lovely nomad girl gave way to more practical concerns.

Clouds like those meant rain was coming. Harak sighed. He hated being out in the rain. Maybe he could talk his way into a tent tomorrow or one of those piles of stone the villagers lived in. He’d like to see the inside of one of those.

*

Hoten studied the encroaching clouds. “Storm coming,” he said.

He and the surviving captains sat around a crackling fire, passing a skin of pulpy wine back and forth. There was little talk, and no boastful war songs were sung.

They’d left Almurk with a thousand fighting men and over four hundred slaves. The Master, their own green dragon, had flown overhead, terrifying everyone in their path. No one could stand against them – single families and entire bands alike fled or succumbed. The raiders had taken weapons, oxen, goats, and anything else they had wanted. Everything had been fine until they’d entered this accursed valley.

Sthenn had abandoned them. The mud-toes of Arku-peli were beaten in the field, but they refused to submit like normal folk and hid inside their stone pile. What sort of fight was this, Hoten grumbled silently, with women, children, and old people throwing rocks down on your head? Real men, real warriors, got on horseback and did battle face to face.

Only three hundred raiders were left. The rest were dead or had deserted. True, Ungrah-de and his ogres were still there. Six of the brutes had perished in the fighting, leaving twenty-four ready for the final battle. The raiders could hear the ogres in their own camp on the stony hill, pounding their drums and grunting like the beasts they were. Though astonishing fighters, twenty-four ogres weren’t any guarantee against hundreds of hard-riding nomads – and Karada.

Hoten shook his head. Karada herself stood against them! Many of the raider captains around the fire would have preferred to ride with her than with Zannian, even before fortune had brought them to this sorry state.

He drank and remembered his own days in Karada’s band. He’d been at the battle of the Thon-Tanjan, when Silvanesti cavalry stole victory from Karada’s hands. He’d ridden away with the rebel leaders Sessan, Hatu, and Nacris, all of them thinking Karada would perish fighting hordes of armored elves. Sessan had died in single combat with Karada, and Hatu had vanished one day, just after they left Arku-peli; his blood-spattered mount returned riderless a day later.

Karada survived, of course. She always survived. Many plainsmen believed she was a spirit and couldn’t be killed. Mutterings to that effect could be heard this very night in the raiders’ camp.

Nacris was gone now too, probably dead. Hoten did not grieve for his mate. She was so consumed with hatred that death would be the only rest she could know. Tomorrow he would join her. Their spirits would dwell together forever on the endless, high plain of the sky.

Zannian walked into the circle of firelight. He glittered from head to toe in bronze armor and bright body paint. The sullen raiders, eyes downcast, turned toward him, like flowers to the sun.

“Well, here’s a proper funeral,” he said. “Who’s dead?”

“We are,” groaned one raider.

Zannian drew a long sword from his scabbard. The scrape of metal made the assembled warriors flinch. A few edged away.

“Then leave!” Zan shouted. “Pick up your packs, mount your horses, and be gone! I would not die in the company of such weaklings and cowards!” He smacked the blade against the elven breastplate he wore. “You heard me! Leave! If I have to fight tomorrow with only Ungrah-de at my side, I shall!”

“We’re not cowards, Zan,” said a weary captain. “Six hundred nomads and the villagers! The odds are too great against us.”

“And when were they not? When we began our ride, the whole world was against us! How has anything changed?”

“But Karada —”

He laughed. “Are you scared of a scarred old woman? I’m not! She bleeds and dies like anyone. Ungrah has sworn to take her head home to his mountain lair. Anyone here want to wager against the ogre chief?”

No one spoke. Zannian laughed again.

“What did you think your lives would be like?” he went on, walking round the fire. When he found a raider nodding with drink or sleep, he kicked the man awake. “Did you think you would grow old riding the plains, fighting and taking the land’s bounty in your hands? Idiots! Any of us, any day, could stop a lucky spear thrust. So what if we die tomorrow? What does it matter, so long as you’ve lived as a true warrior?”

The chief dragged a burning limb out of the fire and held it up. “Better to see death coming than let it sneak up on you,” he declared.

Their leader’s words began to sink in. The raiders lost their slouch and regained some of their confidence.

Hoten asked quietly, “Have you any regrets about the way things have gone, Zan?”

Zannian’s wild grin fled. He tossed the flaming brand back on the fire. “Only one – the black-haired girl. I would’ve liked to have had her, at least a while.” He shrugged broadly, then said, with another grin, “Will you let the ogres outshine us? Listen to them rant and roar! Can’t the Raiders of Almurk do better than that?”

Two of the captains stood, a little unsteady from minor wounds and raw brew. Arms linked around each other’s shoulders, they began to sing. Their voices were ragged as they wove their way through “The Endless

Plain,” but Zannian circled around the fire and joined them. One by one, raiders still sober enough stood and joined in. In the rest of the camp, sleeping men awoke to the sound and crawled out of their bedrolls to lend their voices. Soon all the remaining raiders were bellowing out the old song – all but one.

Hoten had no voice left. He stared into the fire and nourished his nerve with dreams of his own death. It could not come too soon.

*

From the walls of Yala-tene, restless Amero heard loud singing rising from the raiders’ camp. It drowned out the inhuman rumble of the ogres and echoed weirdly off the cliffs behind the village.

Alone on a hillock outside her camp, Karada heard it too. She’d gone out alone to prepare herself for battle. Stripped to the skin, she washed in cold spring water. While her hair was still damp, she applied spirit marks to her face, stomach, thighs, and feet. Without realizing it, she hummed along with the song the raiders were singing. The strangeness of it struck her as she finished applying the last of the marks to her feet. “The Endless Plain” was a song her mother, Kinar, used to sing to her children to cheer them on their wanderings. Strange she should hear it now, after so long.

Her damp skin dimpled with gooseflesh. Donning her buckskins, Karada sat down to await the rising sun.

Chapter 12

Beramun woke slowly. The small tent, normally stifling in the summer, was pleasantly cool. She turned her head and saw the top flap waving in a stiff breeze. Clouds were rushing past in the patch of sky she could see.

She got up, disentangling herself from Mara. The girl had crept in silently late last night, lain down beside Beramun, and gone to sleep. She remained huddled against Beramun’s back all night and did not wake even when Beramun pushed her aside.

Her left shoulder twinged when she stood, and Beramun drew in breath sharply at the sudden discomfort. She must have strained her muscles during the hard ride here, or perhaps she’d slept awkwardly on her arm. She’d hardly been able to move at all, so close to her had Mara slept. With a glare at Mara, Beramun worked her arm in slow circles and walked outside.

The whole camp was stirring. Dawn was breaking, and the nomads were on their feet, grooming horses and gathering their weapons.

As she looked around for Karada, Beramun noticed the nomads weren’t preparing their bows and arrows as they usually did. A chilly, damp gust of wind swirled past her, and she realized why. A storm was coming. Rain made bowstaves soft, strings stretch, and warped arrows, rendering the weapons useless. Karada’s band would have to fight the old way, with spear and sword.

A stronger gust of wind rattled tents and snuffed cooking fires. The peaks south of the waterfall were partially obscured by low, white clouds. In their wake came heavier plumes of gray, gravid with rain. The cold wind made Beramun’s aching shoulder throb. She made a disgusted face. The old folks always complained of pains when the weather changed.

North of the nomads’ camp, the Silvanesti had finished their preparations for battle. Armed and ready, they stood in a neat line behind their lord. The elves had made a banner from a scrap of white doeskin. Tacked to the skin was the starburst crest from Balif’s helmet. Though fighting under Karada’s command, they would go into battle under the standard of their sovereign, Silvanos, Speaker of the Stars.

Beramun saw the elves arrayed and was struck by their calm manner. Behind her the nomads fairly boiled with activity, and she was sure the raider camp was in a similar state. These elves were curious folk.

Pakito’s voice sounded, booming orders. Where the amiable giant was, Karada was sure to be near, so Beramun headed in that direction.

Amero arrived with a small group of villagers to fight beside his sister. Though he looked bone-weary, he walked confidently at the head of his little troop. With him were Lyopi, Hekani, and forty-eight villagers still willing and able to lend their lives to the final battle. They were raggedly dressed and armed with a motley collection of weapons, but one glance at their determined faces told the nomads the villagers were not to be discounted.

Amero led them to the high ground west of Karada’s camp, a stony knoll formed by years of rain washing gravel down the valley. Once the villagers were in place, the Silvanesti marched out, taking up a position on the north side of the same hill. The two groups looked at each other across open ground, awkward and curious at the same time. Still, it was comforting to have the ordered ranks of Silvanesti standing with and not against them.

“I will speak to Balif,” Amero said. “Stay here, Hekani, and keep watch for the raiders.”

He started toward the Silvanesti position, feet crunching in the loose gravel. He heard someone behind him. It was Lyopi. She’d already told him in a tone that brooked no discussion that she would not leave his side this day.

He smiled and took her hand. “Let us greet the elf lord.”

The lightness of Balif’s arms and armor surprised the Arkuden. He’d assumed a noble Silvanesti would fight encased in costly bronze, but all Balif wore was a modest breastplate, helmet, sword, and shield. After greeting him, Amero commented on the elf lord’s light armor.

Balif explained mildly that he’d been on a hunting expedition and hadn’t come prepared for war. He looked past Amero to Lyopi.

“The females of your settlement fight, too? Are most human females warlike?”

“No more nor less than men,” Lyopi replied sharply. “Courage is not determined by sex.”

He bowed his head. “As one who has fought and pursued Karada for twenty years, I know the truth of that.”

The first roll of thunder broke over the valley. It was far away and only barely made itself heard over the intervening mountains, but it was an unsettling portent of things to come.

Balif eyed the darkening sky with a frown as he drew on a pair of leather gauntlets. “I dislike fighting in the rain,” he said. “My lord Silvanos used to bring priests with him when he traveled to insure fine weather by their art. I wouldn’t mind having one or two with us now.”

“Like Vedvedsica?” said Amero.

Recognition flickered across Balif’s face. “You know him, do you?”

“Only by his deeds. My sister met him once.”

“A talented fellow, but unreliable. He no longer serves my house.”

“What became of him?” Lyopi asked.

Balif feigned indifference, but strong emotions plainly lurked behind this façade. “He overreached himself and so was dismissed.”

In view of his past services, Vedvedsica’s life had been spared, but he had been banished from Silvanos’s realm. Where he lived now, Balif knew not.

Shading his pale eyes, the elf lord changed the subject. “This open ground will suit Karada and the raiders. Not good for us on foot, though. We won’t have much shelter from attacking horsemen.”

The rumble of massed hoofbeats announced the approach of Karada’s band. The nomads emerged from camp in a column divided in three forces, each roughly two hundred strong.

Karada rode to the crest of the knoll where her brother, Lyopi, and Balif stood. When she stopped, the horsemen behind her halted. The middle section swung right and filled in the gap between Karada and the Silvanesti. The third rode out to their left, aligning itself beside the villagers. Bahco and two lieutenants rode out from the left wing to join Karada, as did Pakito and two riders from the right. Everyone dismounted, and greetings were exchanged.

“Bad weather for battle,” Balif remarked dryly.

“Bad for the enemy as well,” Karada replied, looking toward Zannian’s camp.

They all turned to follow her gaze. The pulsing wind scoured away the usual spires of smoke from campfires, leaving the western half of the valley looking barren. Sunlight, visible only intermittently through the thick clouds, flashed over the panoramic view. By the river, the raiders’ camp appeared deserted.

“Have they fled?” Bahco wondered.

Amero did not think so. “Their campfires burned until dawn. I could see them from the wall.”

“They’re there,” said Karada. “If I judge this Zannian right, he won’t run away. The ogres will be here, too. Of that I’m sure.”

She went to the forward edge of the knoll and looked over the ground between there and the low hills shielding the river. Except for a few odd boulders buried in the soil, and a tree or two, the land was level and without cover.

“Amero, your people and the elves will go there,” she said, pointing to the west baffle of Yala-tene. “Hold the ground between the village and the lake.”

“Just hold?” asked Balif.

“Yes. Between my band and the raiders, there will be nearly a thousand riders in the valley. Your fighters on foot number less than a hundred. You could get trampled by either side.”

“Good point,” Balif said, just as Lyopi muttered indignantly, “No one’s going to trample us!”

The elf lord added, “What if the ogres array against us? What then?”

“They won’t,” Karada said. “Chief Ungrah wants my head. He’ll come after me.”

“We’ll hold our place unless chance beckons us to go elsewhere,” said Balif.

“Don’t get adventurous on me, elf! The last thing I need in the midst of a melee is to have to break off and ride to your rescue!”

“I hardly expect you to rescue —” Balif began, but Amero signed for him not to argue, and Balif understood. It was her brother, fighting with the elves, whom Karada would feel compelled to rescue.

“Now,” Karada said, “I expect Zannian and his ogre friends to come for me as hard and fast as they can. I’ll make myself plain and invite them. In fact, I’ll give way to them, draw them in. Once they’re fully engaged, I want the wings to close in on their sides and rear.

No one is to escape.” To illustrate her meaning, she drew a simple plan in the dirt. Pakito and Bahco avowed their understanding.

More thunder rolled across the valley, chased by heavy gusts of wind. Whitecaps danced on the Lake of the Falls. Balif returned to his soldiers and marched them where Karada had decreed.

“Good luck,” Amero said, clapping his sister firmly on the shoulder. A smile teased the comers of her mouth, then she gruffly sent her brother on his way.

With the villagers in the lead, Balif and Amero’s groups descended the knoll and passed under the walls of Yala-tene. The plain was littered with the burned and broken remains of previous attacks – weapons, travois, dead horses. Fallen raiders were always cleared from the field by night, so no human corpses haunted their march. At one point Amero happened to look up and see the village wall, lined with his people. Some waved, but all were silent.

The west baffle was little more than a mound of rubble. Ogres had torn it apart, using slabs of rock and loose stones to make a crude ramp leading up to the main wall. Hekani pointed out the soot marks on the wall where he’d used fire to repel Ungrah-de. They also saw the bodies of four ogres, killed earlier, which still lay in the shadow of the town wall.

Amero arranged his people in a double line from the ruined baffle out toward the lake. Balif deployed his trained soldiers in a single, widely spaced line. The elves knelt on one knee, spears out. Balif stood behind them with the elf entrusted to carry the standard.

They waited.

Karada’s force spread out across the top of the knoll, and she took her place at the center of the front line. Horses pranced and pawed, sensing the nervous excitement of their riders. Overhead, the unsettled air added its own fuel to the tension. Birds roosting on the cliffs abandoned their nests in the swirling wind. Flocks of sweeps and starlings filled the sky, their dark bodies swooping and circling several times before being carried off on the wind.

It seemed a bad omen to Beramun, and she said as much to Karada.

“We make our own fates,” the nomad chief said. “No one else.”

“Do the Great Spirits mean nothing to you?”

“I have no time for them now.” Her gruff voice took on a more caring tone. “Be careful, girl.”

Beramun vowed she would. Her shoulder still twinged, but at least the pain was in her left shoulder and not her right, where she wielded her spear.

As part of Karada’s plan, a line of riders filed out on each side of her position, making it appear from a distance as though the whole nomad band was on the hill. On the reverse slope, Bahco and Pakito kept the bulk of their warriors secreted out of sight.

With the thick clouds churning it was hard to read the time of day, but it wasn’t long after Karada had deployed her various troops that the first stirrings on the riverbank could be seen. A deep drum sounded a steady, repeated note. Wind stole the sound and played it falsely off the rocky crags lining the valley. The drumming seemed to come from the east, then the south. Scouts sent in those directions reported no enemy in sight.

By the lake, Amero and his people tried to see what was happening. Even the disciplined elves were curious, a few daring Balif’s displeasure by breaking formation and standing erect and straining to see. A single word from him recalled them to their places.

From the village wall, people began shouting and waving. They had a longer view than anyone on the ground and could see what was coming.

The drumbeat grew louder. Something was moving on the riverbank. Swinging into view above the sandy hills came a great ogre, half again as tall as any man, festooned from head to waist in leather armor studded with chunks of stone the size of a human man’s fist. Skulls of past victims dangled from his chest, and a giant single-bladed axe rested on his shoulder.

“Ungrah-de,” said Amero under his breath. Merely speaking the name made him sweat. All of the villagers fighting with him closed in until their shoulders nearly touched. They’d fought the ogres for days from the wall, but it was quite another thing to face such monsters toe to toe on open ground.

More fanged faces appeared, striding along behind their leader. To warn Karada, villagers on the wall chanted, “Ogres! Ogres!”

They came forth in a broad spearhead formation, with Ungrah-de at the front. They crossed the old road from Yala-tene to the river, making straight for the open ground north of the village. When the trailing ogres on the right end of the line spotted Balif and Amero by the lake, they ignored them and kept going.

“Karada was right,” Lyopi said. “The ogres are going after her.”

All twenty-four ogres were in sight when the first raiders appeared. A tight square of riders, no more than fifty men in all, climbed the riverbank and rode forward slowly, filling the space behind the ogre spearhead.

“Is that all of them?” Hekani wondered.

“Maybe the rest ran away?” Lyopi offered.

Signals from the lakeshore caught Amero’s eye. Balif’s standard bearer was waving the white doeskin banner back and forth. Amero hurried down the hill to see what had alarmed the elves.

It was a column of raiders, several hundred strong, following the shoreline, coming right at Balif’s position. Amero hailed the Silvanesti.

“Zannian isn’t doing what Karada wants,” Balif said dryly.

“We can’t hold off so many! Should we retreat into Yala-tene?”

Balif examined the land, the sky, and the slow-moving column of raiders. “Not yet,” he said. “I don’t think they realize we’re waiting here. Send some of your people up the ramp. Let them be noisy, make sure they’re seen. I’ll hide my soldiers in the hollow behind the ramp. Join me there, and we’ll see if they pass us by.”

“We can attack them from behind if they ride past!”

“Exactly.”

Amero sent a dozen villagers scrambling up the broken-down baffle, yelling and clattering their weapons. The rest of his people and the Silvanesti quietly slipped out of sight behind the mound of rubble. They waited there anxiously until it became clear the raiders were turning east well short of the village.

“Good,” said Balif. “Zannian will think your people were foragers or scouts. I wonder what Karada will do when she sees the raiders are not following her plan.”

Amero sat down on the heap of stones and watched the end of the raider column disappear north of the village.

“She’ll do what she does best,” he said. “Fight.”

*

Daylight saw the raider band diminished further, despite Ungrah’s threats and Zannian’s exhortations. When they mustered around their captains, only two hundred forty-four men were present. Hoten reported the rest had deserted, including all the men without horses.

Zannian was livid. “Wretched cowards! After the battle I’ll hang every one of them from the walls of Arku-peli!”

Hoten clenched his heavy jaw. “There’s more, Zan. The slaves have escaped, too. All that’s left are those we captured in this valley. I don’t know why they stayed.”

“They think they’ll be free soon,” Zannian muttered. “Summon Ungrah-de.”

The ogre chief was fully decked out for battle, which on this special day included drenching himself with a foul-smelling oil the ogres called kunj. The acrid oil was supposed to weaken the enemy with its terrible odor while strengthening the ogre who wore it. Fighting the famous Karada demanded all the warrior rituals the ogres possessed.

Upwind from Ungrah, Hoten still had to hold his nose. Grim-faced, Zannian ignored the stench.

“I have a task for you,” he said.

“You do not give a great chief tasks,” Ungrah replied.

“Call it a favor then – a favor I’m doing for you.”

The ogre’s yellowed eyes narrowed. “What favor?”

“There are a score or so captives in our camp. Win or lose, they’re yours. Our other slaves ran off in the night, but those from Arku-peli stayed behind, thinking they’ll be free soon. I want them to know staying behind was a mistake.”

Ungrah looked over Zannian’s head at the depleted ranks of the raiders. “Many humans ran during the night. Why did you not?”

“Because I am Zannian!” He shook with fury. “Because I will conquer or die!”

Ungrah nodded his heavy head. “You have the proper spirit. Like Harak-ta.” Ta was an ogre epithet meaning “small.” He added, “Where is that one, since I speak his name?”

“Dead,” Hoten said. “Taken when the nomads first struck us.”

Zannian snorted. “Deserted, more like. Smooth-talking snake.”

Hoten asked the ogre chief his plan for the coming battle.

“I will kill as many of the enemy as possible, starting with Karada. That is my plan,” Ungrah said, then left to organize his warriors.

“Let the monsters do as they will,” Zannian said, seating the skull-mask on his head. “As for us, Hoten, I want you to take fifty men and follow Ungrah-de. If he breaks through, ride hard and exploit any openings you find. The rest of the band will follow me. I’ll show Karada how the Raiders of Almurk fight!”

With this ringing pronouncement, Zannian swung onto his gray horse. Hoten’s hand on his animal’s reins caused him to look down. The old man looked as though he wanted to say something but didn’t. Finally he bowed stiffly to his chief and watched as Zannian cantered away to the head of the column.

Not long after, under writhing clouds and punctuated by the sound of ogre drums, the raiders rode to their final battle. Hoten led just forty-five men. He sent the other five – all older men he knew well and trusted – on a special task of his own creation. If they succeeded, he would face his death with a calmer spirit.

*

The drumming ceased.

Ungrah-de stood at the head of his warriors, wind rattling the bones decorating his chest. His patchy gray hair, coarse and long, streamed out behind his massive head like a personal standard. He raised his terrible stone axe – still chipped from the blow he’d given the walls of Yala-tene – and bellowed. Like an answer from on high, a bolt of lightning flashed overhead, and the ogre’s cry merged into a ferocious clap of thunder.

The rearmost ogres began running. When they drew abreast of their comrades, these also started moving, and so on, until the line of running creatures reached Ungrah himself. The ogre chief, axe held high, hurled himself forward. Twenty-four ogres came storming up the knoll at Karada’s waiting line of horsemen.

Behind the nomad leader, Beramun swallowed hard. “Karada?” she said unsteadily.

“Wait.”

A white shaft of lightning struck the mountains north of the valley. The ground beneath their horses shook, and fat drops of chilly rain hit Beramun. The sky was full of black, billowing clouds.

Karada held her sword up. Every eye was on her.

“Now,” she said quietly.

The horsemen stirred into motion. They didn’t pitch headlong down the hill but moved at a steady trot. Inexperienced in mass maneuvers, Beramun found herself dropping back through the ranks as more skillful riders pushed by. She tried to keep Karada in sight, but it was difficult.

She heard no command, but at the same moment all the horses broke into a canter. The ranks were close-packed, and she had no room to lower the long spear she carried against her shoulder.

Rain thickened, pelting the soil and purging the air of dust. Lightning flashed again, and Beramun saw with terrifying clarity the heads of the ogres looming above the mounted nomads.

The canter became a full gallop. The ogres were less than forty paces away, running hard toward the hurtling mass of riders. It seemed impossible they could stand against the nomads, powerful as they were.

Rain fell in a torrent, and Beramun was blinded when it struck her eyes. She heard loud grunts and groans, and the screams of horses. Flinging water from her eyes, she saw the front rank of riders slam into the ogres. Succeeding waves of nomads piled up against those halted ahead of them. She hauled back on her reins, trying to turn her mount, but it was too late. Her horse collided with the animal ahead of her. The shock of impact almost unseated her.

Karada rode straight at the biggest, ugliest ogre on the field, assuming he was their leader. He in turn ran right at her, confirming her belief. Coming closer, she recognized Ungrah-de from their brief encounter the day before. He held his huge axe in a two-handed grip over his left shoulder. She shifted her horse a little to the right. As they came together, the terrible stone blade crashed against her shield. It was an oblique blow, and though her arm stung from its force, the weapon slid harmlessly down her shield.

The muscular monster recovered his swing and drew back in time to parry her sword cut with the stout handle of his axe. She cut again, aiming for his fingers. Her bronze blade bit deeply into the thong-wrapped handle held by Ungrah. He threw the axe over in a wide arc, forcing Karada’s hand to follow or lose her sword. The upper edge of the axe sliced into her horse’s neck. The wheat-colored stallion reared, lashing out with its front hooves. One dealt Ungrah a fierce blow to the forehead. The ogre stumbled back, recovered, and laid about on either side with his axe, hacking empty air.

A nomad on Karada’s right pushed in and tried to spear Ungrah. The ogre chief snatched the head of the spear in his bare hands and snapped the shaft. An ogre beside him thrust with the spiked tip of his axe handle and caught the nomad in the ribs. The nomad dropped his spear and reeled away, clutching his bleeding side. With another sweep the ogre lopped the man’s head off. His triumph was short-lived. A brace of spears hit

Ungrah’s comrade, one finding the gap between his tunic and his breechcloth. Dark blood fountained. The second spear buried itself in the fleshy junction of his neck and shoulder.

Ungrah turned to the wounded ogre and plucked both spears out. The bleeding ogre staggered backward and sat down. He was immediately trampled by five eager nomads, who used the weight of their horses to hold him down while they speared him to death.

All along the line the struggle continued, drenched with rain and blood. Grips grew slick. Horses slipped. Ogres fumbled. Though the fighting pressure was not too great, Karada stuck to her strategy and slowly withdrew up the hill. Ungrah followed, still trying to connect his jagged axe with the nomad woman’s neck. She eluded his blows and teased him on.

Hoten’s small force of veterans was on the scene at last. The ogres, fighting as individuals, were engulfed by the nomad horde. Zannian had ordered Hoten to exploit any gaps the ogres made, but he couldn’t even see all of Ungrah’s warriors, much less any gaps.

The raiders with Hoten shifted restlessly in the pouring rain, watching the bloody fracas occurring just in front of them.

“Are we going to fight or sit and soak up rain?” one asked Hoten.

Hoten looked up and down the enemy line. Attacking now would be futile, like flinging grapes against a stone. He wrapped the reins around his hands. He thought of Nacris and of the dreams he had, which she would never share.

“At them, men!”

They galloped up the hill, shouting the way they had in the good old days out on the plains. Hoten aimed himself at the only landmark he could see: the back of Ungrah-de’s head.

The center of the nomads’ line fell back. Karada let them come, luring ogres and raiders over the crest of the knoll. The press was so great that she lost contact with Ungrah. Off to her right another ogre had cut a clean circle around himself, slaying any nomad who came within reach of his axe. She crouched low over her horse’s neck and rode at him. He heard the fast rattle of hooves and whirled in time to receive Karada’s sword in his eye. Transfixed, he nonetheless seized her sword arm in both his broad hands and tore her from her horse. She hit the muddy ground the same time as the dead ogre.

The legs of horses and ogres churned around her. She leaped up, planted a foot on the dead ogre’s chest, and recovered her sword. Her favorite horse had disappeared. Buffeted on all sides, she found herself propelled through the crowd until her back bumped into something large and solid.

Karada looked up into the face of Ungrah-de.

He was bleeding from sword and spear cuts on his face and shoulders. Seeing Karada, he bared the yellow tusks in his protruding lower jaw. Up went the chipped axe. Her blade could not deflect such a massive weapon. With no other choice, she whirled away from the downward swipe, spinning on one heel like a dancer. Completing the circle, she brought her blade down on his axe arm, only to watch the bronze blade skid off the polished chunks of lapis attached to the ogre’s sleeve.

Ungrah backhanded his axe, narrowly missing Karada’s chin. She ducked, rolled, and came up standing. She felt something snag her back and jumped aside. The ogre’s axe head came away with a triangle of buckskin on its tip.

The fight had shifted so that Karada had to run uphill to battle Ungrah-de. Behind him, raiders with painted faces traded cuts and thrusts with her warriors. She saw friends and foes fall, horses floundering in the mud or lying still in death.

A nomad with room to maneuver bolted in front of his chief and shoved a stone-tipped spear into Ungrah’s chest. The flint head shattered on the ogre’s breastplate. With a roar, Ungrah impaled the brave fellow on his axe tip, hoisting him off his horse and into the air. Lightning played on his face as Ungrah lifted the slain foe over his head. He roared back at the following thunder and hurled the nomad’s body into the battling swarm.

The nomad’s sacrifice was not without benefit, however. Karada sprang onto the dead man’s sorrel mare and shouted for Pakito and Bahco. Her warriors took up the cry, transmitting it through the din of battle and thunderstorm. Word reached both men, and they spurred their forces to action.

Hoten’s small band had disintegrated within moments of colliding with the nomads. He found himself alone, dueling with capable foes on all sides. A spear butt struck him in the mouth. He spat blood and teeth and fought on. A bronze sword chopped the head off his flint spear, leaving him with only a knife. Hoten put the stone blade in his teeth and jumped from his horse onto the back of a nearby nomad. One stroke of the knife, and the woman’s horse was his.

He had no idea where he was or where his men were. He had no idea where he was going. Rain came in waves, drenching him to the skin and making his oxhide garments stiff. He drove his horse through the crowd, and many nomads let him pass, thinking from his mount he was one of them. Emerging at the base of the stony knoll, Hoten spied a large body of enemy horsemen sweeping around, closing in behind his little band and the ogres. They were solidly trapped.

Despairing, he briefly considered falling on his own knife, but thought better of it. Why throw his wretched life away when he could still sell it dearly?

He yanked a lost spear out of the mud and rode hard to the head of the nomad column. Leading them was a giant warrior, Hoten’s old comrade Pakito. When he drew near enough, he shouted to the big man. Pakito turned his horse and received a spear jab in the face.

Pakito was quick as well as big, however, and the tip only tore a gash through his left earlobe. He countered with a stone-headed mace, caught Hoten’s spear, and sent it spinning away.

“Yield!” Pakito said.

Hoten spat. He held out his too-short knife. “Do your worst!”

Gripping the club in both hands, Pakito easily parried Hoten’s slashes. Then came the opening he needed. He let go with his right hand of his two-handed grip and punched Hoten hard in the ribs. Then Pakito slammed the flat stone head of his mace into the raider’s chin. Hoten’s vision exploded in a haze of red. He fell from his horse.

Pakito had no time to make sure of the death of his former comrade. The chaos was shifting again. After losing several warriors to overwhelming numbers, the ogres belatedly had closed together and formed a tight ring, back to back. From there, the seventeen survivors were fighting off every attempt by the nomads to ride them down. Hoten’s men were not so lucky. Isolated and outnumbered, they succumbed like their leader until none were left standing.

Karada caught sight of Pakito and worked her way to him. They clasped arms.

“No raiders remain!” Pakito cried. “We’ve won!”

“Not yet! The ogres!”

“If only we had our bows!”

Karada lifted her eyes to the sky. The storm showed no signs of abating. Indeed, the clouds fast approaching from the south were even lower and blacker than the ones currently dumping heavy rain over the entire valley.

At this point, a nomad named Patan, who rode in Bahco’s band, galloped to Karada.

“What news?” she demanded.

“Bad! The raiders hit us before we reached the top of the knoll,” said Patan, breathing hard. “Bahco is down, maybe dead! Kepra now commands, and he sent me with word!”

“Pakito, ride to Kepra’s relief!” Karada said quickly. “You’ll have to swing ’round and take the raiders in the back.”

“How many are there?” Pakito shouted above the din.

“Two hundred, seems like,” said Patan.

While Pakito’s band worked free of the ogres and made its way south to help their embattled comrades, Karada urged her mount back into the melee. She found Beramun, on foot, handing spears to nomads in front of her to throw at the ogres. The girl’s face was covered with blood.

“You’re hurt!” Karada yelled.

“It’s not my blood.” Beramun handed two recovered spears to the nomad ahead of her. These were passed forward until they reached the fierce struggle surrounding Ungrah.

“Give me those,” said Karada when the girl was handed two more spears. Beramun did so.

Karada dismounted and tied a rag around her forehead, under the visor of her dented elven helmet. Hefting the spears to her shoulders, she started toward the ogres.

“Wait! Your horse!” Beramun cried, catching the reins of the sorrel mare.

“No room.” Karada cracked a smile and disappeared, shouldering her way through the crowd.

Panic shot through Beramun. Lifting her face skyward, the rain mingling with her tears, she froze in fresh surprise. Something huge and dark wrestled with the heavy clouds. Thick, serpentine coils appeared and disappeared in the lowering storm. As she looked on, spellbound, the pain in her shoulder flared to life, lancing her sharply.

Jolted from her daze by the sensation, Beramun put a hand under her buckskin shirt, expecting to find blood or broken skin. Instead her skin was smooth and cold to the touch. She knew then what it was: the green mark. It had never given her any twinge before, but now...

Her gaze lifted skyward once more. Though she’d seen the strange aerial vision for only a moment, she knew now what it was. Despair welled up in her heart like a great dark wave.

Sthenn had returned.

Chapter 13

The raiders streamed by, a wall of men and horses. Amero and his small band waited to see if any turned back to deal with them, but none did. If Zannian saw them, he discounted any threat from a handful of villagers on foot.

Balif and the elves came out from behind the ramp. The villagers who’d run up the ramp hastened down again, and the mixed band of elves and humans slogged after the raiders. It was hard going. The rainfall was heavy, and the terrain itself obstructed progress. Beneath the walls the ground was broken by ditches and pits intended to hamper raider attacks. The pits now brimmed with muddy water, and ditches had collapsed in the downpour. All semblance of order was lost as the humans and elves were forced to pick their way through the morass.

By the time they got to higher ground, Zannian’s men had reached the stony knoll and attacked. The momentum of the column punched through the thin line of riders screening the hill and carried down the other side into Bahco’s waiting force. The raiders drove deep into the waiting nomads, their long spears giving them an advantage over the nomads’ shorter weapons.

The fighters on foot ran up the gentle slope to the top of the knoll. A fantastic sight greeted them: Spread out across the valley northward was a sprawling battle, with waves of nomad riders charging a ring of stoutly fighting ogres. Scarcely more than a dozen ogres were holding off two-thirds of Karada’s band, some four hundred seasoned fighters. Behind Ungrah-de, a small band of raiders was thoroughly tom to pieces, their riderless horses galloping from the scene.

Amero waited until his people and the elves were together atop the knoll. “Let’s attack!” the Arkuden shouted to Balif over the rain.

“Not wise,” the elf lord countered. “We may slay a few, but when they realize how few we are, we’ll be swallowed up like those raiders behind Ungrah-de!”

Lyopi shouldered by the elf to stand beside Amero. “You need not come!” she said to Balif.

The villagers ran down the back slope, aiming at the end of the raiders’ column. Balif watched them slip and skid on the wet gravel. His soldiers bunched around, waiting for the word to follow.

Ten steps from the raiders, Amero raised his spear and let out a yell. The little band of villagers echoed his cry, then fell upon the enemy. The nearest raiders were speared in the back before they could face about. Behind them, the rest of Zannian’s men had time to turn and meet the new threat. Amero’s people quickly found themselves in desperate straits, dueling with a ruthless mounted foe that was better armed. Surrounded, the villagers coalesced into a circle.

When Balif saw the raiders encircle Amero, he finally gave the order to advance. Twenty paces from the enemy, the elves paused and lobbed their metal-tipped javelins. These emptied many horses. Then the Silvanesti resumed their advance.

To the raiders, it seemed as if waves of enemies were materializing out of the rain, and their exact numbers were impossible to judge. They had developed a grudging respect for the tenacious fighting abilities of the people of Arku-peli, so some of the raiders tried to pull away, seeking room to maneuver. However, they were hemmed in by all the disparate forces.

Zannian trotted in front of his men. “What’s this?” he demanded. “Why are you bunching together like a herd of frightened elk?” His horse reared, as the villagers advanced. Hoarsely he yelled, “Mud-toes? You gave way to mud-toes? At them, you gutless dogs! Trample them into the mud they live in!”

Driven by his exhortations, several dozen raiders charged toward the two leaders, Amero and Balif. The elves locked their shields together and crouched low, spears bristling in front of them. Seeing the hedge of bronze points, the raiders angled toward the less-threatening villagers.

Lightning flashed overhead. Amero knelt, presenting his spear to the enemy. Lyopi and Hekani followed suit, as did the rest of the villagers, making a formidable thorny square.

Amero swiped a hand across his face, slinging rainwater from his eyes. The raiders’ horses seemed to slow as he watched, each hoof rising and falling in strangely languid fashion. Small sounds rang loudly in Amero’s ears, while great noises faded. The sound of the storm diminished, and he heard every breath Lyopi took. Hekani, nearby, muttered, “I think I like fighting from the wall better.”

Lightning crackled across the sky again. The charging raiders were closer now, looming hugely in the downpour. This is it, Amero thought. Here is where I die.

After all this time? You’d better wait just a bit longer!

The voice filling his head was unmistakable, but for a few heartbeats, Amero did not believe it. It was a dream, the waking dream of a doomed man. It couldn’t be Duranix!

The raiders’ were closing in. The voice spoke again.

I’m a little busy at the moment, but I’m not far away. Try to stay alive, will you?

Amero jumped to his feet and shouted. “Duranix!”

A spear plunged toward his chest. Feeling as though he was swimming in honey, Amero brought his own weapon over to deflect the thrust. Wood met wood for an instant, then Amero’s feet suddenly slipped out from under him. He fell flat on his back in the mud.

Surprised by his victim’s tumble, the raider failed to adjust and blundered past, narrowly missing tripping over Amero. Hekani brought his spear around in a wild, wide swing, striking the raider across the shoulders. Down he went. Then many other riders crashed into the villagers’ square. One by one the villagers went down, knocked off their feet by colliding horses.

Amero regained breath enough to roll over, and he found Lyopi beside him. She’d knocked him down to save him from being impaled. Bruised and caked with mud, he nonetheless grinned at her.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded, dodging the hooves of a runaway horse.

“Duranix! Duranix is coming! He spoke to me!”

Word spread among the villagers. Some had been lost in the first rush, but the rest joined together again, buoyed by the news their Great Protector was near. Still trapped in a ring of determined raiders, Amero’s people fought furiously, fending off solo forays and small group attacks. A few paces away, the Silvanesti repulsed two heavy attacks with no loss, causing the raiders to turn away from them. Free to move, Balif formed his men and marched to Amero’s relief.

Once the Silvanesti joined with them, Amero climbed onto a nearby boulder and gazed skyward. The clouds over Yala-tene were a mix of black and gray, swirled together by winds. With increasing frequency, bolts of lightning lanced from cloud to cloud to mountaintop. Amero took this as a sign the bronze dragon was indeed near, drawing lightning to him out of the clouds.

Duranix! he shouted with his mind. I’d almost given up hope you’d ever return!

Don’t celebrate just yet, the dragon’s mental voice replied. Sthenn is here, too.

To illustrate the point, a serpentine tail, covered in dark green scales, whipped through the clouds, followed by a flurry of leathery wings. Thunder boomed and rolled, and the green dragon writhed amidst the boiling clouds. Rain flew in Amero’s face, and when he could see again, Sthenn was no longer visible above. His heart hammered at the sight of the green dragon. Were Lyopi’s fears coming true? Had Sthenn come to steal victory from them at the last moment?

On the ground, the outcome was still in doubt. Zannian organized another attack. The spear throwers tried to shake the elves’ line, but the deluge of rain felled the missiles short of their targets. Regardless, Zannian drove home his charge. This time there was no swerving or stopping short. Horses and men piled on the flimsy line of spears, trapping humans and elves under them.

Amero saw Balif lose his spear, draw his sword, and trade cuts with the raider chief. His rapid thrusts forced Zannian back. The raider chiefs horse became entangled with another, already flailing in the mud, and the horse toppled, throwing Zannian to the ground.

Amero jumped off the boulder and ran to where Zannian had fallen. Balif beat him there. With a single backhand slash the elf tore the sword from Zannian’s grasp. It spun away into the melee. Before the raider chief could stand, he found the tip of the elf lord’s blade pressed hard against his neck.

“Cease, or forfeit your life!” Balif declared.

Zannian, face twisted in fury, grabbed the blade with his bare hand. Balif snatched his sword back, cutting the raider’s hand to the bone, then raised the keen blade high —

“No! Don’t!” Amero cried, waving his hands. “The green dragon is here! We need Zannian alive!”

He didn’t know if Balif heard him or not, but the elf lord brought his sword down in a fast diagonal slash.

Zannian’s hands flew to his face, and he stumbled back, blood pouring between his fingers. Balif advanced.

Amero leaped over fallen friends and foes shouting, “Stop! Balif, don’t!” He collided with the elf, knocking him away from the man writhing in the mud.

“Let me finish him!” Balif demanded, eyes wide with battle rage.

Amero held him fast and explained Zannian could be valuable barter if Sthenn gained the upper hand.

Balif lowered his sword. The fire left his eyes, as he gazed impassively down at the beaten man.

Amero knelt in the mud and wrestled with Zannian. It didn’t take him long to determine that the raider chief had lost one eye, possibly both, to the elf’s savage slash.

Their leader down, nearby raiders wheeled their mounts and rode away. In less time than it takes to tell, the battle at the south end of the knoll ended. Nomads chased the escaping raiders a short way, only to be called back by Karada’s lieutenant, Bahco. The young warrior, unhorsed early in the fight, had spent much of the battle dodging raider spears. Once the enemy was defeated, he had found a horse and taken control of his band again. Bahco decided he wouldn’t risk losing more men and women by trying to hunt cowardly raiders in the pouring rain.

As it was, few raiders escaped. Those who high-tailed it over the knoll ran right into a fresh contingent of nomads under the redoubtable Pakito. The giant had led his third of Karada’s band all the way across the valley, arriving in time to cut off the remnants of Zannian’s raiders.

Pakito and Bahco hailed each other as they rode up to greet Balif.

“Well, elf lord, you look like you’ve had a hard day!” Pakito said heartily.

Unamused, Balif replied, “Harder for those who died.”

Bahco, a sling around his neck to support his sprained right arm, asked, “What of the Arkuden? Does he live?”

Balif pointed to the two men at his feet. One was an unconscious Zannian. The other was Amero. The Arkuden was squatting in the mud, catching rain in his cupped hands and using it to wash the raider’s lacerated face.

*

In nine successive attacks, Karada had been unable to break the ring of ogres. She led each foray herself and tried all the maneuvers she knew to shatter the monsters’ resistance. They rode straight in, circled left and right, threw spears and axes, yet nothing made any lasting impression. Ogres went down, and some undoubtedly perished, but Ungrah-de remained, as durable as stone. He bled from a hundred wounds, and still he fought on. Taking an axe from one of his fallen warriors, he wielded a weapon in each hand, shredding any nomad foolhardy enough to come within reach of those two terrible stone blades.

Pakito had ridden off with the right wing of the band, leaving his chief to battle the ogres. It hadn’t seemed like such a challenge at first; after all, she’d slain an ogre with her sword earlier. Surely two hundred nomads could wipe out a dozen or so of the creatures.

The storm hadn’t helped. Horses lost their footing as they churned around the monsters’ ring, pounding the loose gravel into the mud. Standing in place, Ungrah’s warriors did not face that problem. Still, as midday came and went, the ogres wearied and stood with shoulders hunched, hairy hands braced on their thighs during the short intervals between waves of nomad attacks. Karada thought a few more attacks would leave them too exhausted to continue.

She forgot about Pakito and Bahco, forgot Zannian and his raiders, and even let the ever-present shadow of Amero slip into the background of her thoughts. The world shrank to this muddy hill. Her only task was the destruction of Ungrah-de.

Into the haze of rain, mud, and war rode Beramun, shouting, “The dragon, Karada! I saw it! He’s here!”

Karada glanced skyward. “Duranix?”

“No, the green dragon – Sthenn!”

One hand shot out like a striking viper, snagging the front of Beramun’s shirt. Karada dragged the girl close and hissed, “Are you sure?”

Beramun nodded, wet, tangled hair molded to her skull. “I saw him, in the clouds! He is there!” She didn’t take time to mention the jade-colored mark on her chest and how it seemed to be sensing Sthenn’s presence.

Karada scanned the roiling, cloudy sky and saw nothing, yet she knew Beramun was no excitable child, like Mara. If she said she saw a dragon, it must be there.

“We must finish this quickly, before the dragon can intervene! Find Amero if you can, and tell him what you saw!”

She released Beramun and shouted to her warriors, “Once more! Form up, once more! This time we’ll take them!” Her voice was raw from yelling. “Give me two groups! We’ll hit from two sides at once!”

Stunned by her deep-rooted fear of Sthenn, Beramun sat frozen on her mount, the nomads’ horses jostling her to and fro. Her dark eyes were huge as she stared at the nomad chieftain.

“Beramun!” Karada said sharply, and the girl jumped. “Find Amero! Do you hear? Find Amero!”

The girl nodded once and set off at a gallop.

For a moment, Karada stared after her. The darkhaired girl was one she was pleased to call friend. Strong, loyal, and free-minded, Beramun was gifted with beauty even the nomad chief could envy. Karada had never thought much about her own looks, though she’d known some beautiful men. Pa’alu, the author of her curse, had been handsome, in a lean and wolfish way. The rebel Sessan, with his blond hair and easy laugh, was pretty, even if he had loved the wretch Nacris. Scarred and hard of mien, Karada knew she was not beautiful, nor was that something she worried about. Yet Beramun made her wonder what it would be like to be beautiful.

As Beramun disappeared into the pouring rain, Karada recalled herself to the battle at hand. Her borrowed mount danced as she flung orders left and right.

*

Find Amero.

Karada’s command echoed in Beramun’s mind. Desperately afraid that Sthenn would swoop down on her at any moment, she held on to that simple command as a drowning man clings to a floating log. Unconsciously, she kept looking up, but there was no sign of the dragon.

It was no mystery to her why Sthenn might be overhead and yet not intervene to save his followers. The cruel, perverse dragon was probably enjoying the horrific battle. Every stroke of sword or axe weakened the nomads. Sthenn was probably reveling in the pain and death.

As the ceiling of clouds parted briefly she spied something large moving against the wind. Claws, scales, and wings... breath caught in her throat when she realized their color wasn’t green.

Bronze! Duranix was aloft, battling his ancient nemesis! Now she had good news for Amero!

*

At that moment, Karada was hurtling across the valley toward Ungrah-de. She led her half of the warriors north, while the other half rode wide to the south. Their movements were plain to the ogres, who rose from their crouching rest and prepared to face the circling onslaught. Holding her nicked and bent elven blade out straight in front of her face, Karada stared down its length at the ogre chiefs broad chest. Most of his trophy skulls had been knocked off, and his leather and stone armor was slashed and peeling. Karada aimed the point of her sword at the base of Ungrah’s thick neck. She imagined four spans of bronze penetrating his spotty, grayish hide, piercing veins and muscles as it went. Leaning forward, she thumped her heels against the sorrel mare’s flanks, kicking the gasping beast for more speed. Though she didn’t know it, she was screaming. Everyone in the fight forever after would remark on how she screamed on and on, uninterrupted.

Ungrah waited for her, arms crossed, an axe lying on each shoulder. When she drew near, he raised both weapons, holding the smaller one forward to ward off her sword while keeping his own massive weapon back to chop her down.

Her sword never found Ungrah’s throat, and his axes never touched Karada’s flesh. For when the two were almost in reach of each other, a column of fire struck the ground between them. Witnesses on the village wall described the bolt as white as mountain ice and broader than an ox. It forked in all directions, but the center branch touched the ground between the hard-riding nomad woman and the mighty ogre chief.

The world exploded around them. Stones and mud flew, and the sound of the thunder deafened everyone.

Falling free from the clouds came two enormous dragons, one green, one bronze, so closely entwined they might have been one creature had not their hides been of such radically different hues. They plunged to earth, twisting and turning in deadly embrace, and crashed down on the exact same spot where the lightning bolt had struck a few heartbeats earlier.

Nomads and ogres scattered. Just before impact, the green dragon freed his head from the tangle and shrieked in skull-splitting agony. Then they hit.

Yala-tene shivered to its foundations. Inside the wall, weakly built houses collapsed. Boulders caromed down the cliffs, and avalanches rumbled through the mountains ringing the valley. A torrent of blackened mud was flung high in the air, and when it came down, it drenched everything, even the captured raiders in their pen beyond the nomad camp.

All fighting stopped – all fighting between two-legged antagonists, that is. Rearing up out of the crater created by their crash, Duranix bared his gleaming fangs and roared. The sound echoed through the valley. Sthenn’s long tail was wrapped around the bronze dragon’s throat, squeezing tightly. Duranix sank his foreclaws into the green dragon’s tail, cracking his corroded scales and rending the ancient flesh beneath. Sthenn flailed in pain, and his tail whipped free. Clawing at the torn-up soil, Sthenn came slithering out of the crater on his belly.

The green dragon was grievously hurt. One wing was clearly broken, bent backward at a sickening angle. Livid burns earned from Duranix’s lightning breath dotted his back and flanks, and fearsome wounds leaking dark blood ran along his brisket, belly, and tail.

Duranix did not emerge from the hole undamaged. One of his eyes was battered shut, and his face was terribly disfigured. Two talons on his right foreclaw had been torn off in the struggle, and some of his wounds were already festering from Sthenn’s fetid, pestilent claws.

Sthenn wriggled free and crawled rapidly away from his tormentor, eastward toward the nomads’ camp. But Duranix was far from finished with him.

The bronze dragon used his longer rear legs to catch the fleeing Sthenn in a single bound and seize him by his right hind leg and tail. Enormous muscles straining, Duranix hauled the loathsome beast back.

During the dragons’ battle, the constant sheets of rain gradually slackened and finally quit. A circle of blue sky had formed over the warring dragons. Sunlight slanted in, striking Duranix’s bronze hide, making it glint like gold.

“Zannian! Nacrisss!” Sthenn hissed as he was dragged backward. “Help your master, now!”

“No one can help you!” Duranix bellowed. “This is the end, old wyrm!”

When he released Sthenn’s tail to grab his other hind leg, the green dragon rolled quickly, snatching his leg from Duranix’s grasp. He lashed out, biting Duranix’s throat. He was powerful, but old, and his decayed fangs broke on Duranix’s heavy scales. Next thing he knew, Duranix was on top of him, huge incisors sunk into Sthenn’s long neck. The green dragon thrashed wildly in pain and panic. He managed to get one foot against the bronze dragon’s belly, and with all the strength left in his febrile limbs, he thrust Duranix off.

Duranix flew backward several hundred paces, stopping only when he crashed into the wall around Yala-tene. The heavy masonry sagged, then collapsed along the bronze dragon’s entire length. Terrified villagers fled to the far side of the village.

Sthenn could not fly. Though only one wing was broken, the skin of the other was shredded. Quaking, he crawled slowly away to the west. He kept looking back over his tattered left wing, and when Duranix rose from the rubble of the broken wall, Sthenn fell on his belly.

“Enough!” he quavered. “Let me be, you stupid hatchling!”

Duranix shook off his hard landing, spread his wings, and made a gliding leap. He alighted in front of Sthenn. The green didn’t try to attack but coiled himself in the mud in a tight ball.

“If you kill me, Duranix, what reason will you have to live?”

Standing upright, the bronze dragon planted his right hind foot on the groveling Sthenn’s head.

“I’ll find a reason,” he said coldly.

All through his massive body, the bronze dragon’s muscles knotted. His clawed foot gripped the green dragon’s narrow skull, each bronze talon embedding itself. Sthenn let out a shrill scream. His tail whipped from side to side, striking blows against Duranix’s back that would have crippled a lesser creature. Duranix stiffened and tightened his grip. He leaned to one side, putting all his great weight onto his foe. Brittle bones as old as the towering mountains began to crack. The grind of splintered bone could be heard throughout the valley.

“This is for my mother,” Duranix snarled, bearing down even harder. “For my clutchmates... for Blusidar... for all the innocent creatures you’ve tormented and murdered over the centuries.

“And this is for me!”

The great talons closed remorselessly. Filthy ichor gushed around them. The loudest crack of all reverberated off the cliffs, and Sthenn’s tail ceased thrashing.

Duranix slowly opened his claw and backed away a short distance. He came to rest on all fours. His wings were folded tightly against his back. He stayed that way, not moving, not blinking. He might have been cast in cold bronze for all the outward signs of life he displayed.

The last clouds flew away on the south wind, and the late afternoon sun filled the valley with bright warmth.

From different parts of the valley, small parties of people converged on the crouching dragon. Beramun and Karada arrived together, riding double. From the village came Amero, Lyopi, and the surviving elders of Yala-tene. On Amero’s heels came Balif, alone. From the raiders’ riverbank camp streamed prisoners, freed by the five men Hoten had sent away from the battle. At their head was Jenla, the old gardener. When she and Tepa caught sight of each other, they rushed forward, weeping, to engulf each other in a fierce embrace.

Karada and Beramun met Amero and his people well before they reached Duranix. The nomad chief dismounted and dropped to the ground. Without a word, she approached her weary brother and threw her arms around his neck.

Amero pulled back. To his surprise, he saw his sister’s cheeks were streaked with tears.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re alive. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she retorted. “It’s the rain.”

Balif appeared beside Beramun.

“Greetings! You’re well, I see,” he said in his usual courtly manner.

“I feel like I’ve died many times today,” she replied.

He looked past her to the sibling chiefs. “An amazing day!” said the elf. “I’ve seen dragons before, but never two at the same time, much less joined in mortal combat! I thought Karada was dead when the dragons fell out of the sky. From where I stood, it looked as though they landed directly on her.”

“They did,” Beramun said, smiling wryly. “Don’t you know Karada can’t be killed?”

The four of them rejoined the elders and freed captives. Jenla was regaling her friends with tales of her captivity. After greeting Jenla, Amero moved on, anxious to see Duranix. Karada followed him, but when Beramun tried to go too, she sternly ordered her back. Lyopi remained behind as well.

Brother and sister closed on the motionless dragon.

An awful stench, like a corpse too long unburied, filled the air around the green dragon. Thick, black ichor dripped from Sthenn’s wounds, staining the ground. Amero wondered if anything would ever grow in soil polluted by the green dragon’s blood.

He gave the carcass wide berth, coming up on Duranix’s right rear flank. Karada, less intimidated, strolled within arm’s reach of Sthenn.

“Duranix,” Amero said quietly. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can.” Though he spoke, Duranix remained motionless, his uninjured right eye fixed on his ancient enemy.

“What are you doing? Are you hurt?”

“I’m keeping a vigil.”

At that moment Sthenn shuddered and expelled stinking yellow bile from his nostrils. Amero recoiled, prepared to flee, and Karada stepped quickly away.

“It’s still alive!” she declared.

“Ssstill,” Sthenn hissed.

“Why don’t you finish him off?” Karada asked sharply.

Duranix said, “He doesn’t deserve it. Centuries before you were born, he sat on top of my mother’s body and enjoyed her death. How many days did it take, Sthenn?”

Breath rattled through the dying beast’s rotten lungs.

“Ten? Eleven? How long was it before she finally died?” To the humans he said, “I’ll stay here until he’s dead.”

There was no reasoning with him, and Amero was too spent to try. Brother and sister turned to go. Before they did, Sthenn roused himself to speak.

“I have a gift for you,” he wheezed. He was so feeble the simple sentence took him a while to voice, but Amero stood by, waiting for him to finish.

“Don’t listen to him,” Duranix said. “He lies.”

“He’s right,” agreed Karada. “Leave him, Amero.”

Amero could not leave. There was a tingling pressure inside his head, like a headache yet unborn. He realized it was Sthenn, trying to touch his mind the way Duranix did.

“Say what you want to say,” Amero told him. Though disgusted, Karada remained with her brother.

“My yevi hunted you,” Sthenn said. “D’ranix saved you. Girl saved herself. I saved the other.”

“What ‘other?’” Amero whispered.

“Boy. Smallest one.”

Karada clamped her hand on Amero’s arm. She pulled him strongly. “Come away!” she said with unusual anxiety. “Don’t listen to that monster. You heard Duranix – it lies!”

Sthenn’s voice rasped on, feeble, weak, yet unstoppable. “I spared him. Never seen a human close up. I kept him. My pet.”

Amero resisted his sister’s urging. “Go on,” he said to Sthenn.

“Raised him... gave him a mother.” Wet, rattling sounds emanated from deep within the green dragon’s chest. Sthenn, dying by moments, was laughing. “Loving mother Nacris.”

Furious, Amero shouted, “What do you mean? What happened to Menni?”

“It’s Zannian. Zannian is our brother,” Karada said, and nodded when Amero’s face reflected his disbelief. “It’s true. Nacris hinted as much, but I didn’t believe her. I have her prisoner, back in camp.”

Sthenn’s leathery eyelids fluttered. “Black-hearted woman. Never thought she’d outlive me.”

“She won’t by much,” Karada vowed.

Amero yanked the sword from his scabbard. It was ruined as a weapon – deeply notched, cracked through to the fuller – but he ran forward and stabbed it deep into Sthenn’s neck.

“Why!?” Amero stormed. “Why do that to Menni, and why tell us about it now?”

Sthenn laughed until more feculent fluids rose in his throat and choked him. Amero drew back, afraid to let the poisonous slime touch him.

“To see the look on your face,” Sthenn said when he could speak again. “To smell your heated blood go cold. To... to bring you pain on the day of your triumph —”

The ravaged head lolled to one side.

“What about Beramun?” Amero said quickly. “Release whatever hold you have on her!”

Sthenn could not or would not say more. His left eye, half-shut, took on a dull and lifeless stare.

Karada took hold of Amero’s arm, and he let her lead him away. As they passed Duranix, Amero said, “I’ll come back in the morning. Shall I bring food?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll find you when this is done.”

Brother and sister walked away. Karada pondered Amero’s last words to Sthenn, wondering what hold the green dragon had on Beramun and what hold Beramun had on her brother. The two reached their waiting friends before she could ask him anything, and she remained silent.

Amero led them all back to Yala-tene. On the way they were joined by Karada’s comrades, Pakito, Samtu, and Bahco. Beneath the crumbling north baffle, Amero halted next to the unconscious young man lying on the ground, his head swathed in bandages. His fearsome skull-mask and weapons stripped away, Zannian now looked no different than scores of others in the valley, wounded or dying.

Should the blame be put on Zannian or on Nacris? Amero wondered. Or was Sthenn the instigator of all this misery?

The Arkuden shook his head, banishing those thoughts for now. To those around him, he said, “This is Zannian. He is my brother, mine and my sister Nianki’s.”

Chapter 14

The days that followed were hard. Peace was restored, but it was a peace of exhaustion and pain. Much of the valley was wrecked or ruined, and many people were dead or severely injured.

Duranix stayed in the west end of the valley, keeping his somber vigil. Though he’d told Amero not to bother, the headman of Yala-tene sent several oxen to his great friend, who had to be famished after his long journey.

The raider band was utterly destroyed. When Zannian was finally taken, most of his remaining men rode out of the valley, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the vengeance they imagined awaited them now that the bronze dragon was back. A few others lingered in the mountains, curious to see how matters were resolved. Karada sent patrols to flush them out of the passes. Once they had been dealt with, all that remained were the raiders who had surrendered and those, like Zannian, who were sorely hurt.

Amero adamantly refused his sister’s suggestion that all captured raiders be put to death. He was heartily sick of bloodshed and wanted no more of it in the Valley of the Falls. Instead, he put the healthiest of the former raiders to work repairing the damage they’d done. Able-bodied men were set filling in the pits and ditches, rebuilding houses in the village, and restoring the despoiled orchards.

On a bright, sultry afternoon, four days after the dragons returned and ended the battle, a crew of ex-raiders filling the huge crater where the dragons had fallen found the answer to a great puzzle.

Word of their strange find spread quickly, and Amero, Karada, Balif, and Beramun hurried to the yawning pit. Karada was once more astride her favorite wheat-colored horse.

The pit was more than thirty paces wide and at least eight deep. A gang of ex-raiders, stripped to the waist in the heat, were standing around the crater rim, gazing down in the hole. Beramun recognized one tall fellow with dark brown hair who leaned on his shovel at the edge of the pit. It was Harak, to whom she had given her leggings.

Near the bottom of the pit a gray, oblong object lay embedded in the black mud. It looked like a block of limestone, but Harak, who’d made the discovery, said the so-called stone was in fact the top of Ungrah-de’s head. The combined weight of two dragons had driven him into the ground like a tent peg. Six other ogres had been found crushed in the pit, but their chief wasn’t discovered until the level of rainwater filling the hole had lowered.

Though the rest were content to take Harak’s word that this was in fact Ungrah-de, Karada wanted proof. She unbuckled her sword and handed it to Balif.

“Is this a formal surrender?” asked the elf.

Amero chuckled, but his sister did not. She descended into the pit. Her feet sank into the soft sides of the crater, and by the time she reached the bottom, she was muddy to her knees. Unperturbed, Karada bent down and probed the mud around Ungrah’s head.

She found the proof she sought in the form of a great stone axe. It was buried alongside the ogre, and it took her some time to work it free. Wiping away the thick mud that coated it, the head was revealed to be a massive chunk of grayish agate shot through with veins of lapis lazuli.

“It’s Ungrah’s all right.” Karada grunted, holding up the weighty weapon. “Send some men down to dig him out.”

“Why bother?” Harak asked, shrugging. “Why not just fill in the hole?”

Karada glared at the raider. “He was a mighty warrior. He deserves a warrior’s pyre.”

Harak’s wasn’t the only skeptical expression. Amero seemed about to comment, but the sight of his sister’s tired, drawn face halted him.

She climbed out, dragging the axe with her. When no one moved to carry out her wishes, she glowered at the idle prisoners.

“Well, dig him out!” she barked. Jerking her head at Harak and another fellow, she added, “You two – go! Bring his body out.”

With an impertinent shrug, Harak picked up his shovel and started down after the other fellow.

Karada sighed deeply, and Amero said, “You’re worn out. Why don’t you go to the lake and wash up?”

She nodded wordlessly. She asked Beramun to take her sword to her tent and to have someone carry the heavy, dirty axe there as well. Then, mounting her horse, she left.

Despite Karada’s instructions to get help, Beramun decided to carry Ungrah’s axe back herself. She had dragged it only a few paces, however, before Amero picked up the blade end, knees buckling from the weight, and helped her carry it.

Balif stayed at the crater to examine the dead ogres. He’d never encountered the creatures before, and he was eager to study their weapons and physique.

Amero and Beramun walked parallel, carrying Ungrah’s massive weapon between them. Normally hip-deep in grass and flowers by this time of year, the valley floor had been trampled flat by masses of horses and men. The customary smell of growing things was overpowered by the sweet-sour aroma of decay and death. Ahead, hundreds of round tents covered the center of the valley, sides tied up to admit cooling air. Though the nomads’ camp had been flattened by Sthenn during Es battle with Duranix, the hide tents were easy to repair and re-pitch.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Beramun said, sweat dripping from her brow. Though shared, their burden was considerable. “How long has it been?”

“From the day you arrived in the valley to today,” Amero replied, “four turnings of the white moon – one hundred twelve days.” Shaking his head, he added, “Such a waste! Think of all the lives cut short! All the crops not planted, animals not tended, lost days of work in the foundry – and for what?”

“So we could live free,” she said, a little surprised. “Wasn’t that why you were fighting?”

“Sometimes I forget. By the end, we were fighting just to stay alive.”

When they reached the outer tents in the nomad camp, their strange cargo attracted a limping, bandaged crowd. Injured nomads had remained in camp while others went to search for their children and old folks, hiding out in the eastern foothills. Others had been sent by Karada to scour the highlands south and east for the children of Yala-tene who had been sent out through the secret tunnel when it looked like the village would fall to Zannian.

Beramun and Amero located Karada’s tent. They edged through the entry flaps and hauled the monstrous weapon into the dark enclosure.

After they deposited the axe by the wall near the entrance, Beramun went into the shadowed depths of the tent to find water so they could wash up. Not only was Ungrah’s weapon muddy from being buried, it was smeared with gore from the furious battle.

Amero waited by the entrance. It appeared the large tent served as a storehouse as well as his sister’s dwelling. He couldn’t see very far inside, and he didn’t want to stumble around the dark interior, tripping over casks, sacks, and fragile amphorae.

Ghost-like, Beramun appeared before him. She held an obviously weighty leather bucket in front of her.

“Hold out your hands.”

He did so, and she doused them. When his hands were clean, they switched places so she could wash her own.

While she scrubbed and sluiced away the mud, Amero spoke, his voice low and serious. “Beramun, I want to tell you something.” She looked up quickly, eyes wide and worried. He shook his head, adding, “It’s not what you think. A lot’s happened since you left Yala-tene. I’ve learned many things since then. Important things. I learned... I belong with Lyopi.”

Beramun’s smile was like the sun flashing through dark clouds. Her hand gripped his. “That’s good,” she said gently. “I’m glad you found out. I knew it all along.”

When they were back outside, Amero asked, “Will you stay with us in the valley or join Karada’s band? I know she’ll take you in if you ask.”

“I can’t stay here,” she said. “I’m a wanderer. Other places call to me. I could never be happy seeing the same land, the same faces, for the rest of my life.”

Amero recalled how he’d once bemoaned that very fact of his own life in Yala-tene. Having nearly lost it all had made him realize just how precious those same faces and this place were to him.

“As for joining Karada.. Beramun said, her voice trailing off.

Amero saw her hand had come up to touch a spot high on her chest. “Beramun,” he said, gently pulling her hand away, “you saved us all by finding my sister. Whatever Duranix may think, you’re no tool of Sthenn.”

He took his leave of her. The walk back to Yala-tene was pleasant, despite the heat. Though his heart had gone in a different direction for good, Amero was filled with admiration for Beramun. He was sure of one thing: whoever her future mate might be, he would be a very lucky man.

*

From the shore of the lake, Karada could see sunlight gleaming off the bronze head and arching back of Duranix, a league away. He was still keeping his death watch over the green dragon. She approved of what he was doing and understood it well. When she entered the valley, she had ordered the extermination of the Jade Men, thinking they had murdered her brother. It was the duty of blood kin to avenge wrongs against family, no matter how long it took. It was a law of nature, as irreversible as night being dark and day being bright.

Wading out to her knees in the cold water, she stripped off her muddy outer clothes and rinsed them in the lake. She filled her cupped hands and dashed clear water on her face. The lake hadn’t lost its hard, mineral tang. Licking droplets from her lips, she remembered the first time she’d tasted it, all those years ago.

Thoughts of the past reminded her of Nacris. The madwoman was still chained, and by Karada’s order no one had told her what had happened. Karada was still trying to figure out what to do with Zannian, and his fate was linked to that of his demented “mother.”

“What about me?”

Karada looked up from her reflection in the shallow water. Balif stood on the pebbled shore, a pace or two away.

“What about you, elf?”

He sat, stretching his legs in front of him. “Do you still mean to ransom me to my sovereign?”

“Certainly. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, we did fight for your cause,” he said, leaning back on his hands.

“You asked to fight.”

“So I did. I was thinking I might have earned my freedom in the bargain.”

Karada rose and wrung out her sodden buckskins. She sloshed ashore and sat down on the rocky beach to let the hot sun warm her. It felt good on her face.

“You’re right,” she said at last.

Balif seemed genuinely surprised. “I am?”

“Yes. You can leave the Valley of the Falls when I do. I’ll escort your people to the Thon-Tanjan, to make sure you leave the plains. Just don’t come back to my land ever again.”

She closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun again. Tiny waves, stirred by a soft western breeze, lapped the black and tan stones of the shore.

Balif watched the rippling water. He had captured Karada once and freed her. He’d done it to demonstrate his superiority over his human antagonist, to show her elves understood mercy. Karada had been furious the day he set her free. She had thought Balif was mocking her. In fact, he had been discounting her. Bereft of her followers, he’d thought she would be finished.

How far he had come from the cool halls and gleaming crystal spires of Silvanost. No pampered child of capital and court, he’d been born under the trees, within sight of the Thon-Thalas. He’d been part of a band of hunters called the Oak Tree Alliance for his first hundred years. By the time of the Sinthal-Elish – the great council at which Silvanos Goldeneye was chosen to rule the elven nation – he was leader of the Oak Tree elves. Balif’s followers wanted the throne for Balif, and they had the power to make it happen. He wondered what these barbarians – these people – would think if they knew he might have been Speaker of the Stars.

In those days he had two thousand forest elves at his back, and the chief of a powerful society of priests, the Brown Hoods, came to him, saying he would also back

Balif as Speaker. That was a fateful meeting. The Brown Hood’s chief was Vedvedsica.

It wasn’t lack of support that kept Balif from accepting the crown. He knew, deep within, he was not hard or ruthless enough to rule others. Lead them, yes, if they lodged their confidence in him. But rule? No.

To confirm his belief, he asked Vedvedsica to send his spirit to a future time. He wanted to see what would become of the nation if he agreed to be Speaker. For seven days Balif sat in the depths of a cave, breathing the fumes of smoldering herbs. The Brown Hoods used their power to send his spirit out of his body. He was shown what the future would be if he ruled and what would come to pass if Silvanos wore the crown. When the vision ended, he remained in the cave a full day, trying to come to grips with what he’d seen. The choice was plain, of course; reconciling himself to his own future, though, had been difficult. At the Sinthal-Elish, Balif threw his support to Silvanos. He never told anyone, not even Vedvedsica, what he’d seen in the shadows of things to come.

Karada’s sunbath had turned into a nap. She snored loudly beside him.

Savage, he thought not unkindly. Of all the people in the world, Karada would probably understand his decision. She knew what it was like to lead and to live with a curse. One day his destiny would overtake him and transform him into... something else.

Balif shook himself slightly, pulling his mind back to the present. “Wake up,” he said, nudging the nomad chief. “You’ll blister, lying in the sun like that.”

Karada draped an arm across her closed eyes. “Why does an enemy care whether I burn?”

“We are not ordinary foes, you and I. I’m not certain what we are....”

Not wanting this line of conversation to continue, Karada rolled suddenly to her feet.

“I don’t have time to waste idling here,” she said, snagging her horse’s dangling reins. “Don’t you have tasks that need doing?”

“I do,” said Balif, squinting into the afternoon sun. “I am curious about one thing: What’s to become of Zannian?”

“He’ll be dealt with. He at least is still a true enemy.”

*

Late that night, unable to sleep, Amero wandered out of Yala-tene. He went up the shoreline toward the falls, pausing to inspect the ruins of his foundry. So many days he’d labored here, seeking the secret of bronze. They had been good days, and he wondered if he would ever know their like again.

As he kicked around the broken and blackened stones, the rhythmic thump of wings sounded overhead. He turned toward the noise and saw the dark shape of Duranix alight on the shore. The dragon bent his long neck to the water and drank deeply. Amero ran down the hill, calling to him.

“Duranix! Old friend, how are you?”

The dragon raised his head, and Amero skidded to a stop. One draconian eye regarded him solemnly; the other had been battered shut in his battle with Sthenn.

Taking stock of Duranix’s various wounds, Amero asked quietly, “Will you be all right?”

“Right enough.” Duranix turned away and began walking toward the cliff behind the falls which contained his cave home. Amero trotted after him.

“Is Sthenn dead?”

“He is.”

“You should be happy, then – or at least relieved.”

Duranix stopped suddenly and swung around, facing the far smaller human trailing him. “Happy?” he rumbled. “He cheated me again! Four and a half days! He lived only four and a half days. My mother was three times as long dying!”

“Does it matter now? Sthenn can do no more harm. You’ve avenged your family and saved us all.”

The dragon considered him silently for a moment, then said, “And now I’m going to my cave. I will sleep a while, and heal, and when I waken, I have a decision to make.”

Amero’s brow knotted. “What decision?”

“I don’t know whether I shall stay here any longer.”

If Duranix had used his fear-inducing breath on Amero, he couldn’t have shocked him more. Choking, Amero asked his mighty friend what he meant.

“I’ve flown around the world,” Duranix said, lifting his horned head to the stars. “I’ve seen places and things no creature of this land, dragon or human, has ever seen before. Chasing Sthenn, I could not stop to study these distant countries. Now that he’s dead and the danger to Yala-tene defeated, I no longer feel at home in the Valley of the Falls.”

Duranix switched his steadfast gaze from the sky to the stone-walled village behind him. “My home is polluted,” he said flatly. “One human was stimulating. A nest of five hundred humans was barely tolerable, but this – hundreds of humans, horses, elves, ogres...” He flexed his battered claws. “I shall rest, then decide.”

Amero watched helplessly as Duranix spread his wings and flew to the mouth of his cave. The words, the arguments that came so easily to him a hundred different times a day, refused to form in his throat or his mind. How could Yala-tene continue without Duranix? How could he?

In a spray of phosphorescent foam, the bronze dragon pierced the rumbling waterfall and vanished into his lair.

Chapter 15

When next the gang of former raiders went out to the crater made by the falling dragons, they found it gone – which is to say, completely filled in. In fact, it was mounded with earth to the height of a horse’s back. The ex-raiders leaned on their shovels and pondered this while their nomad guards muttered among themselves about spirit power.

Karada was sent for and arrived a short time later with Pakito, Samtu, and Bahco.

“You’ve been busy,” Pakito remarked to the prisoners. “Did you work all night?”

“Don’t be daft,” said his mate. “Two hundred men working all night couldn’t pile up this much dirt. What does it mean, Karada?”

Their chief rode slowly around the new mound, looking for clues to its formation. Her comrades and the defeated raiders trailed behind her. The ground around the pile was well tracked with the raiders’ footprints and the marks of the nomads’ horses but no other prints.

Two-thirds of the way around the mound, she stopped. “Do you smell that?” she asked.

Fetid but faint came the smell of decay from the heap of dirt.

“I know that stink.”

The speaker was the same tall, impertinent raider from yesterday. Harak, was it? He was leaning on his shovel behind the mounted nomads. When Karada turned to him, he gave her an impudent grin.

“What is it then?” she snapped.

“The green dragon’s den in Almurk smelled like this.”

Karada told Bahco and Pakito to ride to the west end of the valley to see whether Duranix and the green dragon were still there. The two men galloped off.

“Why bother?” Harak said. “Sthenn’s in that hole, moldering away.”

“Shut up, raider.”

They waited in silence until Pakito and Bahco returned. Both dragons were gone, Pakito reported. Duranix must have buried Sthenn’s body in the pit.

Since the prisoners’ task had been done for them, Karada ordered their shovels be exchanged for axes. They would cut wood – a great deal of wood – to construct a funeral pyre. Not only for villager dead, she intended it for Ungrah-de as well. She ordered it built here, next to Sthenn’s burial mound, and square, ten paces to a side.

“It will take many days to cut that much wood,” Pakito noted.

Karada reined her fractious mount about and said, “You have two days. Corpses can’t lie around forever; we’ll have disease.”

She rode off, leaving the giant in charge of the prisoners. Sullenly, the captive raiders marched back to camp to get stone axes. On the way, two of Zannian’s former lieutenants sidled up to Harak.

“Listen,” one hissed. “To cut that much wood, they’ll have to take us into the mountains.”

“Hmm,” Harak responded, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

“We can escape!”

The raider on Harak’s right, a runty bully named Muwa, said, “A lot of our men have already gone away! Why should we stay here and work like slaves? Let’s go!”

Harak glanced back over his shoulder at Samtu, riding nearby. “You won’t get half a league,” he murmured, lips barely moving. “These people know the mountains, we don’t. They’ll be on your backs like hungry yevi.”

“So we’ll kill them and take their horses! Are you afraid, Harak? What would Zan say?”

“Zannian’s in Karada’s hands. He put us here, so I don’t much care what he has to say about anything.” Harak spat on the trampled grass. “I don’t intend to live out my life as a slave, but I do plan to live longer than tomorrow.”

Scowling, the two raiders moved away. Harak saw them whispering to the other men, pouring their bitter poison into more eager ears. Fools, he thought. They still don’t know who they’re dealing with! Karada’s people could hunt them down and kill them without breaking a sweat.

Nevertheless, he said nothing to the nomads about his fellow prisoners’ plots. He lived by a simple code: Eat when you can, sleep when you need, and let those with power do as they will. When they clashed and fell, it was Harak who would survive, Harak who would thrive.

He was so lost in thought he didn’t hear the command to halt. He continued on, not noticing the quick clatter of hooves behind him. Someone dealt him a stunning whack across the shoulders, and he pitched facedown on the ground.

“Stop that!”

“The fool didn’t do as he was told —”

“That’s no reason to strike him! Will you be like the raiders and abuse your captives?”

Struggling to regain his wind, Harak rolled over. A slender, strong arm braced him as he tried to sit up. Towering over him was the dark-skinned nomad with one arm in a sling: Bahco. He held his spear reversed, and it was obvious he’d hit Harak with the shaft. More intriguing was who had helped him. It was the beautiful black-haired girl, Beramun.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Aye, soon as my vision straightens,” he mumbled. In fact he could see just fine and had to force himself not to stare at her.

She helped him get to his feet, then rounded on Bahco. “I’ll speak to Karada about this!” she said. “It’s one thing to fight warrior to warrior, but you can’t beat your captives just because they’re slow or disobedient!”

“Don’t be a fool, girl,” replied Bahco sharply. “Any one of these men would cut your throat if they thought they’d get away with it.”

“That was Sthenn’s teaching. We must show them a better way,” she insisted.

Bahco shook his head at her foolishness and resumed herding the ex-raiders to their pen.

Beramun stood staring after Bahco, a frown on her face, until Harak spoke.

“Sitting high on a horse starts you thinking those on foot are just another kind of ox, to be goaded and beaten,” he said.

She turned her thoughtful gaze on him, but he pretended not to notice. Taking a step forward, he feigned pain, and Beramun rushed to his side to bolster him. She fit neatly under his arm. Harak settled his weight against her, and she easily bore up under the burden.

A fine girl and well made, he thought. Strong, too – in more ways than one.

“Is that better?” she said.

“Better.” Her eyes were like beads of jet, swept by long, soft lashes as black as her hair.

He must have looked too long or too hard, for Beramun grew nervous and slipped out of his grasp.

“You!” Pakito’s powerful voice carried all the way from the prisoners’ pen. “Tall one with the fast mouth! If you’re through pawing the girl, get over here!”

Beramun blushed and hurried away. Harak smiled slightly and started toward the towering nomad. He affected a stoop, exaggerating the effect of Bahco’s blow.

Risk death in some foolish escape attempt? Harak would have none of it. Things in the Valley of the Falls were much too interesting to leave, and they promised to get more interesting in the future.

*

Karada had to hunt a bit to find Amero. He wasn’t with the villagers reconstructing demolished houses, nor was he across the lake with those trying to save the gardens and orchard. To her surprise, she found him in the ruined foundry between Yala-tene and the waterfall, and he wasn’t alone. Riding up the rocky slope, she heard voices ringing loudly off the cliff walls behind the broken building. Thinking there was trouble, she drew her sword and kicked her horse into a trot.

“... can’t possibly make that much heat!” Amero declared.

“With bellows you can,” said an unknown, Silvanesti-inflected voice.

“But how can the melting point of bronze be higher than the melting point of tin and copper? Shouldn’t it be somewhere in between?”

Balif interrupted the discussion by raising a hand and calling, “Greetings, Karada.”

Sitting on her stalwart horse, sword bared, she looked every bit the nomad hero. When she realized Amero and the five elves clustered around him were arguing about metal-making, she felt a little foolish. She started to sheathe her blade.

“No, wait,” said Amero. “Your sword – may we see it?”

Face hard as granite with embarrassment, she dismounted and handed her brother the weapon. It was a spare, taken from Balif’s tent when he was captured – which she wore while the sword she’d used in the great battle with Ungrah-de was repaired.

“This is elven bronze,” Amero said, holding up the sword.

“A fine example,” Balif agreed.

His ironic tone was lost on Amero, who was frowning at the weapon. “How do you manage to make your blades so long? I know about wax and sand molds, but I’ve never been able to cast copper blades more than two spans long.”

“Copper is difficult,” said a mature elf with hair so darkly gray it was almost blue. “In molten form it tends to form bubbles, and it doesn’t like to flow into sharp corners —”

“What is all this?” demanded Karada.

“Meet Farolenu, a master bronzesmith of Silvanost,” Amero said enthusiastically. “I happened to mention my metal-making woes to Lord Balif, and he said he had an experienced smith in his company. We’ve been talking bronze all morning.”

“How exciting.” She took the sword back and slid it slowly into its sheath. “Why is a master bronzesmith carrying a spear as a common soldier?” she asked Balif.

“All my soldiers have other skills,” he said. “House Protector, our caste of warriors, is not large enough to provide all the fighters the Speaker requires. When needed, warriors of the house raise retinues from the Speaker’s other subjects. Males of fighting age serve under those captains to whose house they owe allegiance. Master Farolenu belongs to the Smithing Guild of House Metalline. They lend service to House Protector. On this hunting expedition, he repaired weapons and metal tools.”

“Two years after you’re dead, words will still be spilling out of your mouth,” Karada commented, bored by the complexities of Silvanesti society.

Amero returned to the subject at hand. “So bronze flows better into molds than copper?” he said.

Before the elven bronzesmith could reply, Karada interrupted. “Arkuden, I have something to ask you. Come away, will you?”

Curious, Amero followed her on foot down the slope. Halfway to the lake, Karada stopped.

“Sthenn is dead,” she said.

“I know. Duranix told me last night.”

“Did he tell you what he did with the carcass?”

Amero shook his head, so Karada told him about the newly formed mound where the crater had been, then asked, “Do you think the body will taint the valley’s water supply?”

He scratched his bearded chin, and she noticed for the first time there were gray hairs scattered among the brown ones.

“There’s a ledge of solid stone under that spot,” he said. “It should be safe for Sthenn to remain there. Anything else? No? Then I’ll get back to Master Farolenu —” A sudden thought struck him. “Nianki,” he said, using her old name, which no one else dared do. “You never told me. When the dragons fell, how did you escape being crushed like Ungrah-de?”

His hardened sister looked uncharacteristically amused. “It was the craziest thing,” she said, grinning. “I knew nothing, saw nothing, but Ungrah before me. A bolt of lightning struck the ground between us, and I turned away to shield my eyes. Next thing I knew, a wave of mud picked me up and carried me away. I fetched up in the top of a pine tree a quarter-league from where I’d been.”

Amero blinked in surprise, then began to laugh. Thanks to the all-day rain, his sister had been splashed to safety. The ogre chief, a few steps closer to the center of impact, had been killed outright.

She laughed. “Don’t spread the story, Amero. It was just stupid luck.”

Since she was still seated on her horse while he was on foot, he clapped a hand to her leg as he said, “What you call luck, I call the favor of our ancestral spirits! But let the tale-tellers in your band invent some romance or other. It won’t be as wonderful as the truth, though.” Still chuckling, he added, “Dine with Lyopi and me tonight, Nianki?”

She nodded, and Amero started up the hill to the ruined foundry. “Come at sunset!” he urged. “We’ll have venison!”

He ran back to his conversation about metal. Karada noted with fondness the smudge of soot on the seat of his trews. His woman, Lyopi, would give him what for if he got soot on her fur rugs.

His woman.

Her light mood evaporated like dew on a summer morning. Amero had a right to companionship, but the phrase had a bitter taste. Karada had heard of his infatuation with Beramun, but that was no great concern to her, since the girl obviously didn’t return his affection. Lyopi was quite a different fox in the den.

Lyopi had fought bravely at Amero’s side. Half mother, half mate, she’d defended him with her life. Her love for Amero was something Karada understood. She had loved him too for a long, long time. Could she ever escape her curse? Short of death, she couldn’t imagine how.

*

Lyopi was a fine cook. They ate well on venison and spoke of trivial things – cooking, hunting, which region of the plains had the most flavorful game. Each of them chose a different point on the horizon – Amero the north, Lyopi the south, Karada the east – and defended it to the amusement of all.

Lyopi stirred the embers on the hearth and set a clay kettle on the resulting fire to heat water for mulled wine. Talk veered from game to the weapons used to hunt it.

“These bows are very interesting,” Amero said. “You say the seafarers showed you how to make them?”

“Yes. Bahco’s people. We traded flint and furs with them for the knowledge. Our bows have made the elves’ lives a lot harder.”

Warming to her subject, she picked up a stick and drew lines in the cool ashes at the edge of the hearth. “At Thorny Creek some years ago, Balif’s host pushed us back across the stream, thinking to drive us into a trap made by the soldiers of Tamanithas, coming up at our backs. We shot down so many elves at the creek ford we could have ridden from one bank to the other across the bodies and never gotten our horses’ hooves wet —”

Mention of bloodshed took the good humor out of Amero and Lyopi. Sensing their disapproval, Karada cut short her war story and brushed away the map in the ashes.

“I talk too much,” she apologized.

“Never mind,” Lyopi said. “We’ve seen too much battle of late. What else did you learn from the seafarers?”

Karada leaned back against the warm hearthstones. “They make this thing Bahco calls ‘cloth.’ They wear it and use it to make the sails of their ships. Bahco says it’s not hide or wool, that it’s made from shredded leaves.”

Lyopi lifted the steaming kettle from the coals and set a tall beaker of red wine into the hot water. “Like thatch?” she said. “Sounds scratchy.”

“It’s not,” Karada assured her. “I’ve handled it. It’s softer than doeskin and more flexible.”

Lyopi was openly doubtful. Amero smoothed over the potential argument by raising an important, if painful subject.

“What’s to be done with Nacris and Zannian?” he asked.

“I’ll deal with Nacris before I leave this valley,” Karada said firmly. “How is my business.”

“And Zannian?”

“Brother or not, I know him no more than I know that insolent Harak. Zannian has done great harm to the people of Yala-tene and elsewhere.”

“But he’s your family,” Lyopi protested. “How can you think of killing him?”

“What do you propose?” said Karada. “Shall we let him go if he promises to be a good boy?”

“He’s blind! What harm can he do?”

“Nacris is crippled, and look what evil she wrought. I know you both are sick of blood, but it’s weak and foolish to let Zannian or Nacris live. The woman’s mad. She’d do anything to harm me or Amero. Zannian was raised to think of her as his mother, so he believes as she does. He called that green monster ‘master’ and did its bidding! How many people have died for his ambition? Any man who does things like that is not my brother!”

Karada folded her arms and looked away into the dark periphery of the house. Amero gazed at the fire. Lyopi looked from one to the other, then turned her attention to the warmed wine. She filled three cups and handed them out.

Amero sipped, feeling the gentle heat pervade his limbs. The aching wound in his leg felt better.

“Nacris is lost,” he said after a long silence. “Like a mad dog, it would be a merciful thing for her to die. Since Nianki took her, she’s Nianki’s to deal with.”

Lyopi nodded her agreement. Karada said nothing.

“Zannian’s different,” Amero went on. “I don’t believe he’s completely lost to madness and evil, like Nacris. He’s young, and he is our brother. I believe we can turn him back from the path Sthenn and Nacris put him on.”

Karada drained her cup dry. “You give speeches like an elf. Speak plainly.”

“Let Zannian remain in Yala-tene. He may be blind forever. Perhaps I can find Menni somewhere, deep inside him.”

Karada put her cup down. The clay clinked loudly on the stone hearth.

“The man who obeyed a green dragon, murdered his own kind, and made an alliance with ogres deserves death,” she said. The flat certainty of her words brought a worried frown to Lyopi’s face. Karada, however, had decided to argue no further, for she added, “But if you wish it, brother, I won’t challenge you. I’ll take Nacris, and you can keep Zannian.”

The strange bargain was made. Amero felt lightened by the decision. Watching him smile and take mulled wine from Lyopi, Karada felt cold. He thought the danger was past, but as long as Nacris drew breath, Karada sensed the hag’s venom was still working.

Chapter 16

The hills west of the valley echoed with the thud of axes on wood. Forty-one captive raiders had been brought to the wooded slopes to harvest trees for the great funeral pyre. The captives were accompanied by five villagers, led by Hekani, who showed the prisoners how to roll logs into the river and haul them upstream by means of long straps.

Guarding the captives were a dozen nomads, commanded by Bahco. He’d formed a harsh attitude toward the ex-raiders and kept them hard at their task all through the morning.

Just after midday, the puffs of breeze from the west ceased. It grew glaringly hot, even though the sun was blunted by a whitish haze spreading from horizon to horizon. Work slowed as captives and captors alike wilted in the heat.

Hekani returned from the pass with the men who’d taken in the last load of logs. He mopped his brow and studied the sullen, lifeless sky.

“Something’s going to happen,” he said to Bahco, shaking his head. “The air is heavy, but it doesn’t feel like rain.”

From their vantage point, they could see the beginning of the open plain. It was high summer, and the savanna was hip-deep in grass, a great, rippling sea of green. Even the lightest zephyr would start the grass nodding, but at this moment, not a stem was bent.

The raiders sensed the strangeness, too. Harak and five others had been lopping branches off felled trees with blunt stone axes. They halted and stood staring at the sky and hills.

“This isn’t good,” said one raider. “It’s like the Master was here again.

“Don’t be stupid, Muwa,” Harak replied. “Sthenn’s dead and buried. There’s no need to dig him up to explain the weather.”

“Then tell us your explanation, wise one!” taunted Muwa.

“I saw this kind of sky before – nine years ago, up north. An Ember Wind is coming.”

The captive raiders exchanged looks of disbelief. “That’s only a fable!” Muwa declared.

“I’m telling you, I went through it once when I was a boy. The wind blew for six days, and ten people in my clan died. It blows hot and dry and brings pestilence sometimes, and other times, madness.” Harak smiled. “Which would you boys prefer?”

“I prefer a change of scenery!” exclaimed Muwa. “We won’t wait for dark. Who’s with me?”

A pair of nomads rode up. “Why have you stopped working?” one demanded.

“They’re afraid of the Ember Wind,” said Harak. He wove his fingers together and cracked all his knuckles with a single flex.

“Get back to work!”

Muwa held up his axe threateningly. “I’m a free plainsman, you can’t force me to work like a slave!”

“Seems I heard those same words from Zannian’s slaves,” said Harak dryly.

“Shut your mouth!” Muwa bellowed and charged at him, swinging the axe. The nearest nomad tried to interpose his horse between the men, but before he could do so, two raiders jumped from the log at him. In moments, the second rider found himself beset by angry raiders. They grabbed his ankles and dragged him to the ground.

Harak dodged Muwa’s clumsy attack. The axe hit the elm’s trunk and stuck there. Bracing his hands behind himself on the felled tree, the lanky raider kicked out, his feet finding the center of Muwa’s chest. The man went flying, and Harak tossed the axe away.

The rebellion spread quickly. All over the hillside, ex-raiders attacked their guards. Isolated and outnumbered, the nomads were overthrown and subdued. Shouting wildly, raiders claimed the nomads’ horses. They galloped away, often two men on one animal, ignoring the pleas of their comrades on foot.

The last pair of nomads still mounted turned tail and rode back up the pass. Raiders jeered and threw stones after them.

Harak put two fingers in his teeth and whistled loudly. The raiders’ chatter died.

“They’re going to fetch Karada,” Harak announced. “Are you going to wait here for her or make good your escape? Don’t think about it too long, friends.”

Back on his feet, Muwa said, “Let’s go, men! Scatter!” Harak did not move. He kept his place astride the elm tree trunk.

“Harak! Aren’t you coming?” asked a raider breathlessly.

“No,” he replied.

Nearby, a nomad groaned and pushed himself up on his hands. It was Bahco, who’d been knocked senseless and his horse taken.

“That one’s still breathing,” Muwa said. “Somebody finish him off!”

Two men moved to carry out Muwa’s suggestion. Harak rolled off the log to intercept them. The nearest raider was unarmed, and Harak easily threw him to the ground. The other man had a lopping axe, which he swung clumsily. Harak spun away, grabbing the axe handle behind its heavy stone head. He thrust out a foot and tripped his opponent. The raider fell and rolled over in time to see the blunt axe head coming straight down at his face. He screamed and clenched his eyes shut.

The killing blow never landed. When next he opened his eyes, he saw Harak standing over him, grinning. The axe head was embedded in the ground, just brushing his left ear.

“The others left you,” Harak told him. “Better ran if you want to catch them!”

Harak laughed as the raider scrambled to his feet and ran.

The leading edge of the wind reached the woodcutting camp. It was hot, from out of the north, and dry as a lizard’s dream. Harak’s prediction was coming true, and his good humor vanished.

Nomads and villagers, recovered from their beatings, were rising to their feet. Everyone clustered around Bahco, sheltering in the lee of an oak.

“Where are Tanik and Harto?” Bahco asked.

“Two of your men rode off,” Harak said, raising his voice above the wind. “I guess they went for help.”

Angry the raiders had escaped, some of the nomads began to shove Harak and upbraid him.

“Leave him,” Bahco said sharply. “This man saved me and maybe all the rest of you.” He told them how Harak had fought off the men coming to kill him, then frightened the rest away by reminding them Karada would be coming to avenge their rebellion.

“Why’d you stay behind?” Hekani asked.

“I’ve seen what Karada does to her enemies. I’d rather be her prisoner.”

Hekani laughed, but the nomads openly sneered. They had more respect for the escaped raiders, who had fought for their freedom, than for this slippery character.

The hot wind coursed steadily, not gusting like a normal breeze. Sheltered only slightly from the desiccating air, the men grew parched. Though Harak warned them not to venture forth, one by one they slipped down the hill to the river to drink their fill. Fighting back through the Ember Wind, they returned drier than if they’d stayed put.

Soil once rain-soaked now dried to powder and rose into the air as dust. Coughing, the men huddled together behind the tree, flying grit stinging their exposed flesh.

After an interminable time, a column of riders came thundering out of the pass. At their head was Karada, face wrapped in doeskin against the vicious wind. Bahco went to greet her. He explained what had happened, and how Harak had fought to save their lives, yet called himself a coward to explain why he didn’t flee with his raider comrades.

Karada’s eyes narrowed. “Watch him closely. I don’t trust clever men.”

The horseless nomads and villagers doubled up with Karada’s riders. She gave the order to return to their camp. The horsemen faced about and started back up the pass. Soon, only she and Harak, still on foot, remained. She looked down at him from her tall horse.

“Why didn’t you escape?”

“It’s not my time yet to go,” he said. “Aren’t you going to bring them back? They’re flouting your authority.”

“You mistake me for Zannian. I don’t command, I lead. My band follows me out of loyalty, not fear.” She shrugged, adding, “And if they live through the Ember Wind, perhaps they deserve to be free.”

“You know the Ember Wind?”

“There isn’t much on the plains I don’t know.”

She extended her hand. Harak took hold, and she hauled him up behind her.

“You’re strong,” he remarked, settling in close. “Don’t forget it,” she said.

He didn’t. All the way back to the valley, Harak kept his hands carefully at his sides.

*

The Ember Wind could not sweep directly through the Valley of the Falls, as the valley ran east-west through the higher range of mountains, but it closed in above the valley, creating a strange and strained atmosphere. The air inside the valley grew still and unnaturally humid. Overhead, clouds tore by at a reckless rate, glowing yellow by day and deep orange at sunrise and sunset. The sky appeared to be on fire, which is why the name Ember Wind had arisen.

Much wood had been gathered for the funeral pyre, though not enough for the grand mountain of flame Karada had envisaged. Logs and brush were laid in courses around the mound where Sthenn lay buried. The dead slain in battle were brought out by the remaining captive raiders. Wrapped in hides or shrouds of birch bark, the bodies were put on each course of kindling. No distinction was made between raider, nomad, or villager. Some of the Yala-tene elders objected to this, but Karada silenced them, saying, “Anyone who died fighting is a warrior. Causes mean nothing to corpses – they’re all in the land of the dead now.”

Two days after the Ember Wind’s arrival, the pyre was nearly complete and a method to ignite it needed to be found. There wasn’t any oil left in Yala-tene to soak the timbers, and the freshly cut wood wouldn’t be easy to light, especially in the unnaturally humid air. While the preparations continued, the elders sought out Amero. They found him on the village wall with Lyopi, Balif, and several elves. Lyopi suggested Duranix, and Amero agreed to ask the dragon.

The Arkuden walked to the top of the ramp leading down into the village. Lyopi, the elders, and the elves stayed back, watching him. Amero folded his arms and closed his eyes.

Duranix. Duranix, can you hear me? He repeated his call three times before the dragon answered.

I can always hear you, was the testy reply.

We need your help. We need to burn the bodies of those who died in the battle, only we don’t have the means to make so great afire. Would you help?

I will if you’ll stop pestering me.

Amero backed up a step, taken aback by the dragon’s harsh tone. He thought, It will mean a lot to everyone. We must do this, or face plague and wandering spirits.

Very well.

“He’s coming,” Amero said quietly.

A long interval passed, so long that Amero felt his face redden.

Finally the thundering falls burst apart as the powerful bronze body punched through to open air. Duranix spread his great wings. The elders let out a concerted gasp. Though they had known Duranix a long time, he’d not been seen much recently. Duranix had grown enormously during his time away as a result of being infused with wild spirit power by Tiphan, the ill-fated leader of the Sensarku. The bronze dragon had been poisoned by Sthenn, his limbs rotting away, when the misguided young villager released the power he barely understood to heal Duranix. Heal him it did – and accelerated his growth by almost a hundred years.

The villagers were filled with awe, but the Silvanesti were no less impressed, though they tried harder to conceal their amazement. Duranix flew toward them, swelling rapidly in size. Repair work in the streets of Yala-tene came to a halt as the shadow of the dragon fell across the town. Nomads and ex-raiders placing the last bodies on the timber terraces of the funeral pyre paused and looked up when the great beast hove into view. As the dragon drew closer, they could see that the injuries he’d sustained in his battle with Sthenn were healing well, and his left eye was no longer swollen shut.

The remaining raiders were stricken with fear. Some of them fell to the ground, terrified Duranix might be as capricious and vindictive as their former master. They had often seen their master in his hideous disguise as Greengall or in his natural, decrepit form. But no face the ancient green dragon ever presented could match the power and majesty of Duranix in his prime.

Duranix paid no heed to any of them. He landed on the pile of masonry rubble left by his collision with the town wall. The funeral pyre was complete, and Duranix ordered everyone back.

He opened his wings and vaulted into the air. It was late afternoon, and the weird orange sky glow reflected red and gold from his bronze hide as he climbed almost vertically. Golden fire trailed from the tips of his wings and his homed head, making a shimmering path many paces long in his wake. People below exclaimed in wonder, and even the elves could not hide their astonishment.

“Is he always so flamboyant?” asked Balif, coming up to Amero’s side.

“No,” Amero said, gawking along with everyone else. “He usually draws lightning from the clouds. I don’t know where this new yellow flame comes from.”

The dragon reached the underbelly of the scurrying clouds and hovered. Silent orange fire rippled up and down his wings, flying off the tips in streams of bright fiery balls. Abruptly Duranix tipped to one side and plunged down, his jaw dropped open, and golden fire burst forth.

The mound trembled, then erupted into flame. Duranix held his mouth agape for some time, playing a stream of fire to and fro across the heap of logs and kindling. When he finally snapped his jaws shut, the pyre was blazing from end to end.

No one cheered, wept, or made any sound at all. A thousand pairs of eyes – villager, nomad, raider, and elf – stared at the mountain of fire billowing up from the flat valley floor. Even after Duranix landed on the west side of the pyre, brilliant orange lightning continued to flicker down from the Ember Wind clouds, striking the funeral pyre time and again.

Against the low roar of the flames, a lone voice could be heard singing.

Come walk with me, lonely one

In summer sun or winter rain,

From mountains high to rivers low,

Across the open, endless plain.

Amero strode to the edge of the parapet and tried to spot who was singing the tune his mother had used to soothe him to sleep as a child. Ringed around the pyre were hundreds of people, mostly from Karada’s band. He hurried down the ramp. Lyopi called after him, “Where are you going?”

He clambered down the broken wall, slipping and teetering over slabs of shattered stone. The voice was still singing, but the words were indistinct this close to the crackling, popping bonfire. Amero pushed among the nomads. He spotted Karada some distance away, seated on her tall, wheat-colored horse. They exchanged a look, then his sister quickly glanced away.

More voices joined in the song. All were former raiders. Hearing the slow, soothing melody issuing from the throats of the hardened men moved him deeply, and he wondered how they could know his mother’s song.

Amero broke through a line of nomads still gazing at the fire and reached Karada. On the ground at her horse’s feet was Zannian, his head still swathed in bandages.

His was the clear, strong voice leading the singing of “The Endless Plain.”

A sharp pang touched Amero’s heart. He knelt beside Zannian. His nearness caused the sightless man to flinch and stop. The song went on among his former followers.

“Who is it?” said Zannian hoarsely.

“Amero.”

“Ah, with Karada, then we are all together.” Using her horse’s leg as a guide, Zannian got to his feet. “Strange custom you have, burning the dead.”

“Necessity taught it to us. Graves are hard to dig in the mountains, and when there are so many to bury, fire is an honorable solution.”

“What do nomads do with their dead?” Zannian asked, raising his voice and face to Karada.

“Bury them,” she said tersely. “The plains are wide, and all can sleep within.”

Amero looked from her to their newly found brother. “We must talk. The three of us.”

Karada was silent for a long moment, then said, “Let us go to my tent.” She guided her horse away, back to camp. Amero took his brother’s arm and followed.

Though it seemed every person in the valley was at the pyre, at least one was not. When Karada entered her tent, she found Mara waiting by the campfire.

“I am making food, Karada,” the girl said.

A silent nod. “Go now. I want to be alone.”

Mara slunk out. She’d just entered the shadows when she saw the Arkuden arrive. He was leading an injured man in raider’s clothes. They went into Karada’s tent without calling for permission.

Mara had never trusted the Arkuden. Since the age of eight, when her family had given her over to the Sensarku, she had been steeped in the philosophy of Tiphan, “Tosen,” First Servant, of the Sensarku. The Arkuden always opposed the Tosen’s plans to improve Yala-tene and bring glory to the dragon and the Servers of the Dragon. The Arkuden, the Tosen said, acted as if he alone had the right to determine the destiny of Yala-tene. Her later disillusionment with Tiphan had not altered her feelings against Amero for blocking the Tosen’s wonderful dreams for a better world.

Brother of Karada or not, the Arkuden was no friend. If not for him, Tiphan would never have left Yala-tene, her fellow Sensarku Penzar wouldn’t have been swallowed by the spirit stones on the plain, Elu the centaur wouldn’t have been murdered by elves, and she would never have been captured.

Mara’s green eyes widened as the terrible truth crystallized in her mind: The Arkuden was to blame. He was to blame for all of it.

A muffled voice came to her from the tent. Mara stretched out flat on the ground and put her ear to the hide wall.

As usual, the Arkuden was doing the talking.

*

“I know this is hard, but we must face it. We can’t ignore it any longer.”

“It’s not hard,” Karada said sharply. “Ask him what he wants.”

Zannian tilted his head toward his sister. “I want to see Nacris.”

“No. She’s fated to die, so consider her dead and go on.”

The former raider chief brought his hands to his head and pushed the bandages back until his face was fully exposed. A single horizontal slash crossed both eyes and the bridge of his nose. The skin around the wound was swollen and mottled by red and purple bruises. He turned his head this way and that, obviously trying to see something, anything, and obviously failing.

He snapped, “If you really wanted her dead, you would’ve slain her the day she was captured.”

Karada found a gourd bottle and pulled the wooden plug out with her teeth. The spicy aroma of cider wafted through the tent.

“She made a good hostage,” the nomad chieftain said, and took a long drink.

“And now? How many days has it been since the battle ended?”

“Eight,” said Amero.

“So many? It’s hard to tell when you see neither sun nor stars.” Zannian sniffed the air and held out his hand. “Give me some cider.”

She gave him the gourd. He drank deeply from it.

“Let’s not talk about Nacris,” Amero said. “She is doomed. But you may yet be saved.”

Zannian wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “I tried to destroy you. Why would you want to save me?”

Astonished, Amero said, “Because you’re my brother!”

“The only brothers I knew are burning now on that pyre.”

Karada made a disgusted noise. “This is useless. Are you sure you want to let this yevi-child live?” she asked Amero.

“Yes.”

“Kill me and be done with it,” Zannian said bitterly. “All the promises made to me turned out to be lies – the Master’s, that woman’s —” He couldn’t call Nacris “mother” any more.

Amero insisted, “You’re young. Can you see no other way to live?”

“Think you’ll make a villager out of me? I’ll fall on a knife first!”

Amero crossed behind Zannian and plucked the cider gourd from his hand. He knelt on one knee beside him.

“A good healer might have been able to save your eyes,” he said. “But our best healer’s dead. We sent him to talk terms with you, and you cut off his head. Does that mean anything to you, Menni?”

“My name is Zannian!”

Looking up at Karada, Amero said, “Our sister is Nianki. Do you remember that name at all?”

Zannian was breathing hard, clearly distressed, but his voice was loud as he denied it. “I don’t remember either one of you! You’re nothing to me!”

“You remember ‘The Endless Plain.’”

“It’s just a song.”

“A song our mother sang to us!” Amero put a hand on Zannian’s shoulder, his face pale and strained. “If you don’t remember, it’s my fault. You were just a baby, Menni, two summers old. I put you in a tree to keep you safe from the yevi, but that wasn’t enough. I should’ve kept you with me. I should’ve found a place for us both —”

“Then you would’ve fallen into Sthenn’s hands or been killed,” Karada said bluntly.

Amero sat back, cradling his head in his hands. “I can’t help the past, but I can give you a future.” Eyes flashing, he raised his head and added, “You were taken in arms. Your life belongs to the one who defeated you, Lord Balif. He’s given you to me. I say you shall remain in the Valley of the Falls for the rest of your life. Blind or sighted, you’ll learn how to live as a peaceful man of our village, and if you cause trouble – any trouble at all – I’ll give you back to Balif!”

Karada stifled a grim smile at what she knew to be an empty threat. Zannian said nothing, so she punched him on the shoulder.

“Say something, boy,” said Karada. “What it’ll be? If you want, I’ll lend you a knife to fall on right now.”

Zannian’s expression changed from defiant to sly. He licked his parched lips, then said, “What happened to the black-haired girl, Beramun?”

“She’s in camp,” Karada said.

“Could I speak to her?”

Amero shook his head hard, but his sister answered, “That’s up to her.”

“I want to speak to Beramun and Nacris.”

His siblings argued, but in the end, it was agreed: Zannian would be taken to Nacris. Karada would be present, and when she ordered the meeting at an end, Zannian would go without complaint. Later, Amero would ask Beramun if she cared to visit Zannian. It was entirely up to her whether she did.

Amero touched his younger brother’s arm. “Don’t take me for a fool,” the Arkuden said. “I stood up to you in battle, and I won. If you make trouble or try to escape, I’ll deal with you. Brother or not, Yala-tene comes first.”

Amero stood. “Let’s go back to the village.”

“Leave him here,” Karada said. “He’s a wanderer, he’s better off in a tent than a stone hut.”

Zannian shrugged. “All places look alike to me,” he said without humor.

*

The Arkuden left. Mara clung to the warm ground, bathed in angry sweat. Her thoughts were confused, muddled, but one phrase echoed in her head – I’ll give you back to Balif! How could he betray his brother, a fellow human, to the Silvanesti? Didn’t he know how they treated their captives? What kind of tyrant had the Arkuden become?

Karada must be made to understand the enormity of the Arkuden’s words. Karada trusted her brother too much – and loved him unnaturally, Mara knew. That unnatural love, which blinded her to his true nature, was also the fault of the elves. Her Tosen had told her so.

Chapter 17

The great pyre burned itself out around dawn. The mound of ash and embers slowly lost its dull red aura, but the pall of smoke hovered over the valley like a noxious mushroom, held in by the Ember Wind raging above it. When the funeral fire finally winked out, the last one to leave the scene was Duranix, who had watched over the pyre to the last. He flew back to his cave.

Amero wanted to talk to him, but his hoist had been destroyed during the raider attack. Silent calls for the dragon’s aid were ignored, so the only way for Amero to get inside was by the vent holes cut through the roof of the cave. He gathered vine rope from all over Yala-tene. He needed a great deal of it to descend to the cave floor from the high ceiling.

Conditions were improving in the valley. Hunting parties returned with the last of the village’s missing children. Every one had been found. Not a single child was lost, because the older children took care of the little ones, hiding out in the foothills exactly as their parents had told them. Likewise, the children and old folks of Karada’s band returned, not only hale and whole but staggering under the weight of fresh game and foraged food.

Karada embraced her old friend Targun. “Well done, old man!” she said. “Any problems to report?”

“None, chief,” he replied. “The country seems abandoned. All the time we were out there, we saw no one – not a human, not a centaur, not an elf. Just lots and lots of elk!”

“Sounds good. í wish I’d been there.”

The grizzled old plainsman regarded his chief curiously. “Was the fight not a good one?”

“Ugly,” was all she would say about it.

“When do we return to the plain?”

Karada had been pondering this question herself. She’d imagined her band would fight, defeat the raiders, and depart immediately when they were done. Last time she was in Yala-tene, it was such a strain to be around Amero that she’d left as speedily as possible.

Oddly, she did not feel that way now. The curse was still there, without doubt. She felt it skulking within her, like a hunger pang no meal could cure. But things were different now; the situation was more complicated. Amero had a woman of his own, a woman with whom he shared a history that didn’t include herself. There was Beramun, who had become like the daughter she’d never had. Balif too was a considerable distraction. These people filled her days and blunted the ache she felt from her compelled love for Amero.

Lastly, there were Zannian and Nacris. Karada found it hard to care much about the fallen raider chief. She hardly knew him, and what she did know, she didn’t like. Still, he was her flesh and blood, and how he lived his life mattered, if only because Amero felt so strongly about him.

Nacris was another matter entirely. She deserved death – even Amero agreed – but it was harder than Karada thought to condemn her. If they had met on the battlefield, sword to sword, Karada could have slain her joyfully. In her present state, crippled and deluded, there would be little honor in taking her life.

Targun was still talking.

“Eh? Forgive me, old man. I was elsewhere,” she told him.

“I was asking: How long will we stay here?”

She looked at the sky, still capped by the oppressive Ember Wind. According to reports from her scouts, the eastern passes and foothills were free of the life-draining wind, so the nomads could return to their beloved range any time they wished.

“Three days,” she said impulsively. “We’ll leave in three days.”

Targun looked disappointed. “So soon? I was hoping to feast the people of Yala-tene before we departed.”

“So feast them. You have my good wishes.”

Word was spread. In two days, a great feast would be held to celebrate the liberation of Yala-tene and the defeat of Sthenn and the raiders. The morning after the feast, Karada’s band would ride out.

*

Accompanied by Pakito, Karada entered the tent where Nacris was being held. A young nomad woman followed, bearing a steaming basin of water.

Nacris was dirty from her confinement, and her hair was a mass of gray snarls. “Is it my day to die?” she said with strange glee, eyeing her visitors.

“Not yet,” Karada retorted. “You’re to have a visitor. I thought you might want to clean up before he gets here.”

“Who is it? Hoten? Tell him to go away.”

“Hoten is dead.”

“Then I certainly don’t want to see him!” Nacris suppressed a giggle.

Karada sighed and turned to her towering comrade. “You see what she’s come to? Crazy as a sun-addled viper.”

Pakito looked on sadly and said nothing. Many years ago he’d had a longing for Nacris. She’d been a spirited woman in those days, a doughty fighter and a magnificent rider, better on a horse than even Karada. Nacris had preferred Sessan. Pakito got over his infatuation and took Samtu as his mate (though everyone else knew it was Samtu who’d done the taking). The twisted, wretched creature before him was far from the impressive woman of his youth.

Karada had the water bearer put the bowl in front of Nacris, then the girl gave her a small nub of pumice for scrubbing.

Nacris sat up, her chains clinking. She dipped both hands in and carried warm water to her grimy face.

“So,” she said, rubbing loose droplets from her eyes. “Who wants to see me, if not Hoten?”

“Zannian.”

Nacris’s hands froze, pressed against her cheeks. “Don’t lie, Karada!” she said angrily. “If Hoten’s dead, how can Zannian still live?”

“He does, and he’s asked to see you. I told him he could, so long as I remain in the tent.”

Nacris resumed washing, though her hands shook visibly. “It can’t be,” she muttered. “It can’t be. My boy would not live with defeat and disgrace —”

“He’s not your boy!” Karada shouted so loudly that Pakito, Nacris, and the water girl all jumped. Her next words seemed filled as much with disgust as with anger. “His name is Menni, and he’s the son of Oto and Kinar, as am I!”

Nacris’s thin lips drew back in a wide smile. “So you know? I pieced the tale together a long time ago, I did. How does it feel, Karada, to know one of your brothers killed the other – killed the one you love?”

The nomad chief stepped forward, fists clenched. Pakito put a broad arm before her to halt her advance.

With a visible effort, Karada mastered her anger and said a few words in Pakito’s ear. His heavy eyebrows climbed his high forehead, but when his chieftain frowned emphatically, he nodded and went out.

Karada dismissed the water girl, then called, “Send the raider in!”

Two armed nomads guided Zannian into the tent. At the sight of him, Nacris gasped.

“What have you done to him?” she said hoarsely.

In answer, Zannian pulled the bandages from his head. His awful wounds spoke louder than any words. The puffiness around his ruined eyes had subsided somewhat, but the bruises were still dark and the red line of the sword cut was crusted and scabbed.

“Poor boy, poor boy,” crooned Nacris. “Karada did this to you?”

“No,” he said. “The elf lord, Balif, did it in a fair duel.”

“Poor boy... come closer.”

Karada ordered, “Stand where you are.”

Zannian advanced no farther but, groping about, sat down cross-legged, facing the sound of Nacris’s voice. Nacris regarded his awkward movements with obvious dismay.

“Why did you pretend to be my mother?” he asked quietly.

“It was Sthenn’s wish. I could not refuse. Later... I did it because I wanted to. You were a bright boy, Zanni, a great warrior. I was proud to be your mother.”

“Not a great enough warrior,” he said. Tilting his head toward the nomad chief, he added, “Karada says you must die. I wonder why she hasn’t killed you yet?”

Nacris snorted. “She can’t kill me! Sthenn foresaw my fate. Neither water, nor fire, nor stone shall kill me, and no man living shall strike me down.”

Zannian laughed, but the pain of his wounds cut his black mirth short. “All your stratagems were for nothing!” he hissed. “Now you are the prisoner of your mortal enemy! You’re just a crazy, hateful old woman. Better you had drowned years ago when the bronze dragon threw you in the lake!”

“A touching reunion,” Karada murmured, lip curling in disgust.

“You’re hardly any better,” Zannian sneered. “I know why you let Nacris live: The hate you share for each other is so strong, so much a part of your spirits that neither of you can bear to live without it!”

“I’m destined to kill Karada!” Nacris declared, trying to rise. Her missing leg and the heavy bronze chain brought her up short, and she subsided.

“You’re destined to feed worms,” the nomad chief shot back.

Just then, a muffled voice came from outside the tent. Karada peeked through the flaps.

“Ah! Good. Another visitor for the hag.”

Pakito had returned with Amero, who ducked inside and stood beside Karada. Brother and sister stared down at Nacris without speaking.

Nacris blinked rapidly. Her jaw worked, but no words came. Making strangled hissing sounds, she struggled again to stand.

“Yes, he’s alive,” Karada said, pleased by the effect of her surprise. “Your green assassins failed. They killed the wrong man!”

With a shriek, Nacris picked up the water basin and smashed it on the ground. She thrust a jagged shard at Amero. Though he was well beyond Nacris’s reach, Karada stepped between them, sword bared.

Losing her balance, Nacris fell over Zannian, knocking him onto his back. The clay shard cut his cheek. He wrenched the fragment from her hand, and they rolled over several times, winding the chain around them both. Nacris seemed oblivious, howling her hatred for Amero and Karada all the while.

“Pakito, separate them,” Karada said, appalled.

“Stay back!” Zannian shouted, gritting his teeth as he fought to pin the raging woman beneath him. To Nacris he said, “Be still, mother, and I’ll put you out of your misery!”

“No!” shouted Karada and Amero in unison. Both moved toward Zannian.

But before they could reach them Nacris had worked loose the stake holding her chains to the ground. With a shrill cry, she whipped the heavy wooden peg into her free hand and smashed Zannian in the head. His body went slack. Nacris heaved herself to one knee, facing Karada and Amero in triumph.

Pakito had his stone mace in his hand, but Karada ordered him back.

“Give me a true weapon,” Nacris demanded, panting. “Let me die like a warrior!”

Karada’s features twisted. “You’re not a warrior,” she said coldly. “You’re the mother of three dozen and one snakes!”

The bronze blade went up. Nacris had her fetters clutched to her chest, protecting her. Karada turned her blade and brought it down with all the rage and pain of her lifetime. When it ceased its shining arc, Nacris’s head fell from her shoulders.

Nomads summoned by the shouting burst into the tent. They saw their chief, the Arkuden, and Pakito standing over the erstwhile leader of the raiders. The headless body of the prisoner Nacris lolled at their feet.

Amero knelt by Zannian and reported he still lived.

Pakito said, “Take him to Karada’s tent. Bind him, but not too harshly.” Two men took Zannian by the hands and feet and carried him out. Pakito went with them.

Alone with his sister, Amero stared at the dead woman, shattered by what he’d heard and seen.

Tearing his gaze away – and forcing himself not to look on Nacris’s severed head – he whispered to his sister, “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am.” Karada bent and cleaned her bloody blade on a fold of Nacris’s shift. “There’s one problem solved.”

Amero was shaking. “How can you be so hard? Does life mean nothing to you?”

Karada slammed the sword back into its scabbard. “Pity can get you killed,” she told her brother. “I have none for her, and neither should you. How many times will you let a mad dog bite before you strike it down?”

He couldn’t answer. He could only regard her in silence with wide, shocked eyes.

Her voice softened. “She mentioned a prophecy, an augury made by the green dragon. He told her neither water, nor fire, nor stone would kill her, and no man living would strike her down.”

Amero looked down at his feet, his buckskins splashed with blood. “How did he know?” he asked. “How did Sthenn know Nacris would die at the hands of a woman with a bronze sword?”

“He was a dragon,” Karada replied, shrugging. “Dragons know too much.”

*

Late in the night, a log raft pushed out from shore. Two people stood on it. The taller one gripped a long pole, with which he propelled the raft out into the lake. His companion stood on the other side. Between them lay a long, hide-draped bundle.

No stars could be seen through the rushing clouds, but the last flickers of the Ember Wind provided a pulsating light to guide them away from shore. When the raft neared the center of the Lake of the Falls, the man stopped poling. The raft drifted slowly under the momentum of his last push.

“This is good,” said Karada.

“How deep is the lake here?” asked Harak.

“Deep enough.”

He hadn’t asked a single question, not even when Karada, cloaked and hooded, had arrived at the prisoners’ pen and bade him come with her. A simple job, she’d said. A special task she didn’t want her band to know about.

She threw back the hide cover. Underneath lay Nacris, gray hair combed and face washed, wrapped up tight in a fine white doeskin. Only the pale oval of her face showed.

Harak gave a surprised exclamation. He knew he’d helped load a body on the raft, but he didn’t know whose.

“Shut up.”

Karada moved the body to the edge of the raft. Leaning on his pole, Harak heard the clink of metal. It was then he saw the heavy bronze chain wrapped around Nacris’s waist.

“That’s a lot of bronze to throw away,” he remarked.

“Shut up.”

Harak sighed.

Karada eased the body into the water, and it sank without a sound. Immediately, she ordered Harak to take them back to shore.

Nothing else was said until the raft bumped into the pebbled shallows. Stepping off, Karada reminded Harak of his oath to say nothing of what they’d just done, and without a backward glance, she walked quickly up the stony hillside. She disappeared in the deep shadows of the cliffs.

Harak jumped down into the water and dragged the log raft higher onto the beach. It was very late, and everyone in the valley seemed to be asleep. He wondered where the villagers stowed their stock of wine.

Wandering up the hill toward the village, he heard a faint clang of metal and stone. Off to his right, outside the village wall, Harak saw a bright orange light flaring at the base of the cliff. Muffled voices accompanied the sounds of work. He ambled that way. It seemed more interesting than returning to the prisoners’ pen.

The light turned out to be a fire, burning inside a broken-down structure built hard against the base of the mountain. Four or five figures were silhouetted against the glare. Unlike an ordinary fire, this one didn’t waver or flicker; it burned steadily. Harak made out a new sound he couldn’t place: a regular, deep panting, like a bull ox gasping for air after a long run.

Closer to, he spotted the Arkuden in the group. The rest were Silvanesti, including the elf lord Balif. What were they up to? Was this some arcane elven ritual to call up spirit power at the Arkuden’s request?

“See that?” one of the elves said, pointing into the fire. “That’s the red stage. Now it’s ready to pour!”

“Stand back!” said another, but the Arkuden shook his head.

“Let me do it,” he insisted. He and an elf inserted forked wooden poles into holes in the sides of a heavy clay pot. They hoisted the pot out of the fire, sidled sideways, and poured the contents into an unseen container. Lapping over the rim of the pot was a brilliant orange-red fluid. Harak’s eyes watered just looking at it. The fiery liquid hit its destination, and a loud hissing resulted. Steam filled the air.

Balif glanced away and saw Harak highlighted by the glow of the burning liquid. “Who’s there?” he said sharply.

Caught, Harak stepped up boldly and announced himself. Balif drew his sword, though he kept the point down.

“Do prisoners have the run of the valley now?” asked the elf lord.

“Your presence here seems to say so,” Harak replied genially.

Amero and the other elf put the hot pot back on the fire. “Never mind!” said the Arkuden, his voice full of excitement. “Come here, you. See what we’ve done!”

Harak had no idea what to expect. Upon reaching the scene of the strange ritual, he saw they’d poured the brilliantly hot liquid into a rectangular box on the ground. The box was made of wet clay, bolstered by a few wooden planks. A hole in the top, about the size of Harak’s thumb, plainly showed where the fiery substance had been delivered.

“I’ve just cast my first bronze!” Amero exclaimed. “Farolenu showed me how. The secret is forcing air into the fire to melt the copper and tin together – but not too much air.”

“You made bronze?” Harak was interested. Here was a task much more rewarding than summoning spirits.

Amero nodded vigorously. “We melted down some scrap and poured it in that mold. When it cools, it will be a sword.”

Harak regarded the unlikely looking wooden box with great respect. Like many plainsmen, he had handled bronze, but he had no idea how it was made. Some mysterious process of the Silvanesti, it was said. Now he was seeing it for himself.

He turned to Balif. “Why are you showing a human how to do this? Aren’t you afraid we’ll make weapons to fight you?”

Amero suddenly looked distressed. It was plain he hadn’t thought of that.

“Bronze is a secret humans are destined to learn sooner or later,” Balif said, “and though I am loyal to the Speaker of the Stars, I have my own views on the policies of my nation. There are those in Silvanost who want to spread our hegemony from the southern sea to the capes of the north, westward to the Edge of the World and east to the ocean of the rising sun. I do not agree. I believe the true realm of the Silvanesti is what we have now, the forest sacred to us, and continued aggression outside our natural homeland will only result in needless bloodshed.”

Balif gave a small, tight smile, adding, “Endless conquest is like burning down a forest to stay warm; it works for a little while but is short-sighted. So no, I’m not worried about giving away the secret of bronze. If the war-minded lords in Silvanost see a bronze-equipped army of plainsmen opposing them, they may recognize at last the wisdom of peaceful neighboring.”

The appreciative silence that greeted his thoughtful words was disrupted by Harak. “Faw, they call me a talker!” the ex-raider said. “I’m as tight-lipped as an oyster compared to you!”

The mold had cooled enough to be opened. Amero fidgeted about, nervous as a newly mated man. Farolenu and his helpers slipped hardwood wedges into the seam and, in unison, tapped them with mallets. With a slight hiss, the mold split apart lengthwise, falling into two halves. The crudely formed sword, still glowing faintly with heat, lay in the right half of the mold.

“Let it cool thoroughly,” Farolenu said. “When cold enough to handle, free it from the mold. Then you can begin filing it to shape and giving it a sharp edge.”

“Can you use water to speed the cooling?” asked Amero.

“For short, thick blades, yes. For swords, no. Quenching will make the sword brittle. At the first stroke, it may snap off at the hilt.”

The elves and the Arkuden plunged into a deep discussion of metal-working, leaving Balif and Harak far behind. The elf lord yawned and excused himself. Harak took the opportunity to depart, too.

As they walked across the slate-strewn ledge toward Yala-tene, Harak said, “I hear Karada intends to leave in three days’ time.” Balif nodded, and the ex-raider asked, “What will your people back home make of all this?”

The elf lord’s face was unreadable. “Some will hail me for escaping the clutches of barbarians. Others will condemn me for aiding enemies of the Speaker.”

He turned away to enter Yala-tene through the south baffle. Harak watched him go, wondering what the Silvanesti was really thinking. Would a noble elf warrior really give away the secret of bronze for such high-sounding, unselfish reasons?

A wide yawn interrupted Harak’s cogitations. The doings of chiefs and lords was beyond him, he decided, shaking his head. He went back to his pen to sleep.

Chapter 18

The Ember Wind increased in fury in the days that followed. Vast clouds of dirt were scoured off the windward side of the mountains, darkening the sky and drifting into the valley. Landslides shook the upper passes as the hard-driven dust loosened boulders. To many, it seemed the mountains themselves would tumble down and fly into the air. Amero consulted Duranix, who circled the valley at great height, above the Ember Wind. The dragon reported the brown river of air stretched away far to the north, but it did not extend more than a few leagues east or west of the valley. The Ember Wind would blow itself out, Duranix reassured Amero, though it always worsened before ending. The stronger the wind blew, the sooner it would end.

Beramun found herself helping a band of village women bathe the children. Long lines of yelping youngsters wound down to the lake, where each child was scrubbed head to toe by mothers, aunts, and older sisters. Pumice removed dirt and sometimes a little skin, too.

Talked into the duty by Lyopi, Beramun discovered she enjoyed it. Her hands grew raw from washing, and she stayed wet all morning from wrestling with balky and rambunctious children. After so much fighting and cruelty, it was good to exhaust herself in such an ordinary, useful job.

When the last child was scrubbed clean, the tired women trudged ashore. Hulami the vintner sent skins of wine retaken from the raiders, and never was the drink better appreciated. Loud laughter echoed against the walls of Yala-tene, bringing curious villagers to the parapet to see the cause of so much merriment.

“There’s a happy sound,” said Jenla, watching from the wall.

“Happy but dangerous,” opined Tepa. He looked ten years younger since Jenla had returned alive.

“Dangerous? How?”

“There’s a hundred women down there, all made merry by Hulami’s good wine. I would sooner cavort with centaurs than try to cross that crowd!”

Jenla laughed. “You’ve learned a few things in your long life, haven’t you?” She left her old friend on the village wall and went down to join the women by the lake.

Preparations for the coming feast were well underway in the nomad camp. Three firepits were dug, and more wood was gathered for the bonfires. The raider prisoners who remained were set to digging the holes and gathering wood. They gave the nomads little trouble. The worst of Zannian’s horde were either dead or had escaped with Muwa. Karada, having no desire to shepherd a bunch of prisoners around the plains, wouldn’t let Bahco track them down. The sooner the ex-raiders were gone, she said, the better.

The fifty-odd men who remained in the captives’ pen chose Harak as their spokesman, as he seemed to have access to Karada and the Arkuden. They wanted their fate settled. Their pen was rife with rumors that they’d be put to the sword before the nomads left the valley. Harak couldn’t believe it himself, but he didn’t object when his fellow prisoners demanded he seek out Karada and speak to her about their plight. It was a good excuse for him to slip away from the feast preparations, too. No one challenged him. People had become accustomed to seeing him roaming the camp.

Laughter and singing drew Harak to the lake. The impromptu party was breaking up, and women streamed up the hill to village or camp, some weaving a bit as they went. Harak passed unchallenged through the flow of cheerful, red-faced women. He saw many he knew – Samtu, Lyopi, vintner Hulami, and the tough old woman called Jenla, whom Zannian had captured early in the battle. Karada was nowhere to be seen.

He was about give up his search and look instead for a place to stay out of sight until the toil at the firepits was done when a face caught his eye.

It was Beramun, walking slowly up the lakeshore, carrying a baby on her hip. She looked so content and easy with the child that a stranger might have thought it hers. Harak fell into step beside her.

“I’m looking for Karada. Have you seen her?”

Beramun shook her head.

“Whose baby?”

She hefted the year-old boy leaning his head on her shoulder and he gave her a sleepy smile. “This is Kimru, son of Udi and Tana.” The names plainly meant nothing to Harak, so she added in a quiet voice, “Udi and Tana are dead. Kimru is an orphan.”

“I’m sorry,” Harak found himself saying, for reasons he didn’t understand. He hadn’t killed anyone named Udi or Tana – at least, not that he knew.

“Udi’s father, Tepa the beekeeper, has him now. He’s an old man, though, and I fear the child will lose him before he becomes his own man.”

By the north baffle Beramun handed young Kimru to a village woman. She gave the boy’s downy head a final caress and watched until he and the woman disappeared behind the wall.

Sighing, she said, “I will miss him.”

Harak trailed after her. “You act as though you aren’t going to see him again.”

“I’m not.”

“Karada’s not leaving for another two days.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Beramun said flatly.

He caught her hand, stopping her. “But why? You have Karada’s favor. If you remain with her hand, you could he chief some day.”

Anguish bloomed in her dark eyes, but she shouted, “I don’t want to be chief of anything!”

People nearby glanced their way. Beramun pulled away and started walking faster.

Tall Harak, with his long, lean legs, easily caught up with her. “Where will you go? What will you do?” he asked.

“I’ll wander. It’s the life I was meant for.”

“What about a mate and children? You seem to like children —”

She whirled to face him. “Will you leave me be? I don’t want to answer your questions! I’m in this place because men like you murdered my entire family!” She tore at the neck of her doeskin shirt, exposing the green triangle high on her chest. “This is why I must go! The green dragon gave me this mark. It binds me to him!”

Harak frowned. “Sthenn’s dead. What hold could he possibly have over you now?”

“Just because a viper dies doesn’t mean its venom becomes water. Duranix says I’m tainted forever by Sthenn’s mark,” she said and backed away from him, retying the lacings of her shirt tight at her neck. “What did the green dragon intend for me? Will I end up like Nacris, crazed, eaten up with hate? How can I live among good people knowing I may grow evil in time?” With a violent shake of her head, she added, “No! Better to be a wanderer for the rest of my life. Alone!”

She ran. A bit stunned, Harak did not react for a moment. Then his thoughts sharpened, and his choice became clear. He ran after her.

Zigzagging through the rows of tents, Beramun ended up at Karada’s. She ducked inside, thinking he wouldn’t dare follow.

Mara was there, kneeling by the entry flaps, a whetstone in front of her. She was sharpening the bronze dagger she always kept in her shirt. When she spied Beramun, she recoiled like a guilty thief.

“Where’s Karada?” asked Beramun, breathing hard.

“Not here,” Mara replied. “What —?”

Harak barreled into the tent, nearly knocking Beramun off her feet.

For a man – a raider! – to enter Karada’s tent in such a way was unforgivable. Mara leaped to her feet, presenting the dagger point-first to the intruder. The newly sharpened tip gleamed like gold.

“Who do you think you are?” Mara shouted. “Get out! This is Karada’s tent!”

“Shut up, girl!” Harak snapped. Mara jabbed at him, but he stepped nimbly back, unharmed.

“Put that down! I’m not here to cause harm. I need to talk to Beramun.”

“Get out!” Mara repeated shrilly. “Karada will hear of this intrusion!”

Harak lashed out with his foot, kicking the weapon from her hand. The blade spun through the air, and he caught it neatly. Mara let out a short, horrified cry and ducked behind Beramun, then continued her furious denunciations.

“Leave,” Beramun said, interrupting Mara’s tirade. Arms crossed over her chest, Beramun glared at Harak.

He flipped the dagger, catching it carefully by the blade. He presented the pommel to Beramun.

“Hear me out and then I’ll go.”

Beramun took the dagger. Mara promptly tried to snatch it back, but Beramun thrust her aside. The girl tripped over a pile of furs and fell backward to the floor.

“Don’t listen to him!” Mara urged. When Beramun paid her no heed, Mara crawled away. She circled wide of Harak and, near the entry flaps, rose to her feet and dashed outside.

Harak said, “We don’t have much time before she brings Karada. Listen to me, Beramun. You don’t have to go away alone. I’ll go with you!”

The young woman was not impressed. “I know your kind,” she said bitterly. “I know what you want. You’re no different than Zannian!”

“I don’t blame you for saying so, but I’m not like him at all.”

She made a dismissive gesture and started to turn away.

“Be my mate, Beramun, and we’ll wander the world together!”

The words obviously startled him as much as they did her, but Harak smiled broadly and repeated them. “Be my mate, Beramun. I know you’ve been asked before, but I’m not a fool like Zannian nor a dreamer like the Arkuden. I’ve had women before, but I’ve never asked one to be my mate. Say no and I’ll not bother you again, but you must know my offer is honest.”

Beramun still held Mara’s dagger. Her other hand went to her chest. She said, “What about Sthenn’s mark? Don’t you fear it? How do you know I won’t cut your throat some night while you sleep?”

She didn’t say no! Harak thought jubilantly. He stepped toward her. Putting an arm around her waist, he slowly pulled her closer still.

“It would be just like the old lizard to plant an evil seed in a brave, good womanlike you. But he’s dead, and I don’t fear his poison. All his other acts have failed, and he’s failed with you, too.”

She would not look at him. She whispered, “I won’t be the cause of your death.”

He took hold of her wrist and brought the dagger up. “Then I’ll undo his work.”

Her dark eyes lifted, the question in them plain.

“I’ll remove the mark,” Harak explained.

“No more tricks, Harak, please.”

He plucked the bronze dagger from her fingers. “No trick. No lies. Whether you take me as your mate or no, let me remove Sthenn’s mark. Once you’re free of it, you can decide what you want to do.”

A small fire crackled on the hearth. Harak bade Beramun sit by the circle of stones. He knelt beside her and put the blade of Mara’s dagger in the flames.

Her eyes widened.

“I saw an old man do this once. His horse had a growth on its withers, and he fixed it this way.” Squeezing her hand, he said, “I know you’re brave enough to do this.”

Wordlessly, she loosened the lacings on the front of her shirt and slipped her left arm out of the sleeve. By firelight, the green triangle looked black and shiny against her tanned skin.

Harak picked up the dagger gingerly. The leather-wrapped handle was hot, but not too hot to hold. The tip of the span-long blade glowed dull orange. “Take a deep breath, and don’t be too proud to scream.”

Swallowing hard, he pressed the flat of the hot blade against the jade-colored triangle. Beramun twisted her face away and groaned. Her entire body trembled. A sizzling sound filled the tent, but the dragon’s mark did not smell like normal flesh burning. Instead, a fetid whiff of Almurk filled their nostrils.

Harak yanked the blade away. Beramun sagged in a faint, so he held her up. It was just as well. Having seared the green dragon’s mark, he now needed to excise it forever. He worked quickly, using the knife’s sharp tip to cut beneath the foreign color embedded in Beramun’s skin. Because he’d cauterized it first, little blood flowed.

At last the evil sign was out. Harak threw it on the fire. He shuddered when the yellow flames changed to vivid green as the last remnant of the green dragon was consumed. A choking stench rose but quickly dispersed.

Beramun’s eyes opened part way, and she let her head loll on Harak’s shoulder. With great care he lowered her to the furs heaped beside the hearth. He found his hands were shaking.

“Well done.”

Startled, Harak turned. Karada stood in the entrance to her tent, arms folded, watching. Behind her were arrayed Pakito and Bahco. Mara’s pale face peered between the men.

Harak passed a hand over his sweating brow and sat down by Beramun. “She was afraid the green dragon would compel her to do evil,” he said. “I did what I could to help her.”

Karada nodded. “She is worth the scar you’ve given her. But are you worthy of Beramun?”

Harak understood her question. Beramun had no parents, no living kin. Karada was taking on their role, demanding he prove himself to her for Beramun’s sake. He returned the dagger to the fire.

Harak hated pain. He’d always thought Zannian and the other raiders who gloried in their resistance to it were stupid brutes. A wise man – a clever man, at least – avoided pain. That’s why it existed, so you would know the things that caused it were to be avoided.

When the knife was glowing again, he opened the collar of his worn tunic. Looking straight at Karada, he pressed the hot bronze to his chest, just above his heart – the same place Beramun had borne the mark of Sthenn. He clenched his teeth so hard he was sure they’d crack, and tears filled his eyes. The smell of his own burning skin made him want to wretch, but as he had mastered the noxious ogre drink tsoong, so he mastered his sickness.

He threw the burning blade aside. Karada’s face swam before him. The tent seemed to waver around him. He fell.

Strong arms hoisted him to his feet.

“Take him out, Bahco,” Karada was saying. “Beramun will stay here until she’s better.”

“Let me stay with her,” Harak protested feebly.

Karada clapped a hand to his shoulder. The comradely gesture rocked him like the kick of a horse.

“You won’t lose her,” she said vehemently. “Not now. That was the strongest mating ceremony I’ve ever seen. You two are bound for life.” She glanced at Beramun, still unconscious on the fur rug. “I knew it would take a lot to win her, but I couldn’t have guessed how much.”

Bahco draped Harak’s arm over his shoulder and bore the ex-raider away. Karada picked up the dagger, still faintly warm.

“Mara,” she said. “Come here.”

The girl tried to flee but ran into a wall of muscle and buckskin as Pakito barred the way out. Though he looked distinctly unhappy doing so, he held the far smaller Mara fast with one huge hand.

Karada approached, tapping the handle of the dagger into her palm. “One of the worst crimes is when a man forces himself on a woman,” she said in a low voice. “I know of what I speak. There’ve been men who tried to take me. Every one died by my hand.”

She stopped at arm’s length from the cringing girl. “You come running to me, screaming that this raider is forcing himself on Beramun. I return and find him saving her spirit, if not her life. Perhaps you were sincerely mistaken. I doubt it. The only crime worse than a man forcing a woman, Mara, is a woman lying about it. When you do that, you make us all out to be liars.”

Karada put the tip of the dagger under Mara’s chin. “If you were one of my band, I’d have you beaten for this.”

Mara squeezed her eyes shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Karada removed the dagger abruptly. “But you’re not one of my band, and you never will be. You came from Yala-tene, and here you will stay. Go, and never let me see you again.”

She dropped the dagger. Pakito released Mara. Nearly convulsing with grief, the girl collapsed at their feet.

“Don’t send me away,” she sobbed, clutching Karada’s legs. The nomad chief stepped out of reach. Mara’s sobs gained volume. “Please! Oh, please! I’ll serve you even better than before! I’ll do anything you say, Karada! Anything at all!”

“Get out!” Karada’s voice rose to be heard above the girl’s cries. “If I see you again, I’ll gut you like a fish!” She turned her back.

Large of frame and equally large of heart, Pakito felt sorry for the misguided girl. “Go,” he urged gently. He held open the tent flap.

Hiccuping, Mara brushed her tears away. She snatched up the dagger and for a moment stared hard at Karada’s exposed back. Pakito would have swatted her like a fly if she’d moved toward his chief, but it didn’t come to that. Mara slipped the dagger in her robe and darted out of the tent.

“By all my ancestors!” Pakito exclaimed. “I thought she was going to go for you!”

Karada shrugged. “I gave her the chance, but the girl has no nerve. I thought she might recover her pride living with me, the Silvanesti broke her too well. She’s just a rabbit. A silly, frightened rabbit.”

“Poor girl. Will she harm herself, do you think?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s Amero’s problem now.”

Pakito left. Karada sat by the fire and waited for Beramun to wake.

*

Amero kicked loops of braided vine through the hole in the cave roof. As it spilled down, he finished tying off the other end to a cedar tree. A long time ago, rebels from Karada’s band had used these holes to enter the cave and attack him. Now they were his means to see his melancholy friend.

He lowered himself through the hole and started down. It was hard work for a man his age, but the privations of the recent war had hardened him, and he reached the cave floor without mishap.

The cave’s interior was dark and chilly. Cold blue light filtered through the waterfall, and slender beams of daylight slanted in through the roof holes. The cave smelled strongly of reptile and old smoke. It had been many days since Amero had last been here, but the drinking pool and hearth pit were just as they had been when he used to live here every day with Duranix.

The dragon lay in the back of the cave on his sleeping ledge, a vast mound of coiled bronze muscles. Where once Duranix had had room to spare on the ledge, now his tail hung over the edge, and the arch of his back almost scraped the sloping wall above him.

“I know you’re there,” Duranix said with a deep sigh, neither rising nor turning to face Amero.

“Is it all right? Or should I go?”

“How would you leave? Are you fit enough to climb that cobweb you came in on?”

The bronze dragon uncoiled, limbs and body seeming to move in different directions at the same time. Amero backed away, giving ground to the massive creature.

“Yes, the cave is getting to be too small,” said Duranix, answering Amero’s thought as he stepped down from the ledge. “How are you?”

Amero sat on the cold hearthstones. “Surprisingly well. I’ve learned the secret of making bronze, did you hear? Balif’s smith, Farolenu, showed me how it’s done.”

Duranix blinked, huge eyelids clashing together. “My condolences.”

Amero’s confusion was plain on his face and in his thoughts, so Duranix said, “You’ve spent a long part of your short life trying to discover how to make bronze. Now you’ve done it. It’s finished. So, what will you try next? Iron?”

“What’s iron?”

“Never mind. I’ve just been having a difficult time imagining the future.”

Amero poked the ashes of the long-dead fire with a stick. “There are plenty of problems left to overcome,” he said. “The village needs to be rebuilt. We must decide what to do with the prisoners. Hekani has an idea for improving the baffles – he wants to attach permanent ramps to the walls, wooden ramps that can be raised or lowered from within —”

A single claw waved dismissively. “These are your problems, not mine.” The dragon sighed, blowing loose ash and dust around. “So much has happened here. It’s not the valley I came to a century ago. I thought this was my place. Now I doubt it. There’s a wide world beyond this valley....”

Amero quickly changed the subject, announcing that he and Lyopi were to be mated at last.

“Who knows?” he said, grinning. “I might become a father in my old age!”

“It’s wise you chose the sturdy female over the blackhaired one. That girl is tainted.”

Amero wasn’t sure about any taint Beramun might have, but he was certain Lyopi would resent being called “sturdy.” He asked, “Why so restless? What did you see on your journey?”

Instantly, Amero’s mind filled with a crowd of rapidly changing images. He saw flying dragons, dragons on mountaintops and in caves, nesting dragons – in many sizes, shapes, and colors. Like listening to numerous voices all talking at once, he couldn’t sort the onslaught of images into any sensible order. Gradually, the cacophony subsided, leaving a single, crystal-clear vision – a slender bronze dragon perched gracefully on a bluestone mountaintop.

“Who is that?” Amero murmured, dazzled by the rush of visions.

As soon as he spoke, the image vanished. Duranix was at the mouth of the cave, his head thrust through the pouring falls. Amero came up behind his left side and rapped on his foreleg.

Duranix withdrew his head from the water and turned to look at his friend.

“Are there truly as many dragons as that in the world?” asked Amero.

“That many and more.”

“Who is the small bronze one?”

“No one important.” He cocked his mighty head, water dripping from his barbels. “They’re looking for you in the village. I hear them calling.”

Amero’s shoulders sagged. “What can they want now? I told them I’d be gone until morning.”

“Your people need you. It’s a good thing to be needed.”

Grinning, Amero clapped his hand to his friend’s massive scaled flank. “Rejoice, then! All of Yala-tene needs you, Duranix.”

“You did well enough against the raiders. Perhaps you don’t need me as much as you think.”

Amero was about to protest when the dragon lifted him gently in one foreclaw. “I’ll return you to the village,” Duranix said. “What kind of friend would I be if I made you climb that long rope out of here?”

It was like the old days when Duranix plunged through the thundering falls with Amero held close to his chest. He didn’t make straight for the ground but remained aloft for a time, circling the lake. Amero grinned as the wind tore at his short hair. From this vantage, he saw blue sky to the north, signaling an end to the Ember Wind. Rather than looking down on Yala-tene below him, Amero kept his eyes lifted, taking in the vistas spread out around him. It had been too long since his last flight with Duranix. Much too long.

At last Duranix landed atop the stump of the onetime Offertory. During the siege, the villagers had torn apart the stone platform, seeking material for missiles or to shore up their weakening defenses. The dressed stone blocks had all been stripped away, leaving only the original cairn of round lake stones.

The dragon closed his wings and set Amero on the ground on his feet. The walled enclosure had a desolate air. Where once devoted acolytes washed the walls and swept the sand around the Offertory to make it pleasing to the dragon (who in truth cared little for what the Sensarku did), now the area was a repository for timbers, stone, and other supplies used in the rebuilding of Yala-tene.

“The nomads are giving a feast tomorrow night,” said Amero. “Will you come? Nianki’s leaving the next day.”

“Human festivities are always amusing. Perhaps I will come.”

“Good! See you then!” Amero said, and wended his way to the exit amid piles of logs and baskets of mud for brickmaking.

Duranix lingered atop the cairn, watching until his human friend disappeared from sight. The stone cairn, erected a long time ago when he was notably smaller, began to buckle under his great weight. Like a past that could not return, his perch had to be abandoned. Duranix launched himself skyward, returning to his dark retreat behind the falls.

Chapter 19

The day of the feast dawned fair and bright. During the night the Ember Wind dissipated, and the heavy, muggy air in the valley lifted. Karada immediately sent out hunting parties to bring back any fresh game they might find.

Samtu and a band of six rode up Cedarsplit Gap and returned shortly, bringing bad news. Days of wind-driven dust had carved away the soft limestone in the cliffs and sent waves of broken rock crashing into the pass. According to Samtu, the slide was largely made up of small, loose stones – especially treacherous to cross as they were easily disturbed by feet and hooves.

Hoping the other scouts would bring better news, Karada returned to her tent to check on Beramun.

Beramun had spent a restless night. Even after downing the sleeping draught Karada had sent for, she twitched and moaned in her sleep. At one point Karada touched the girl’s forehead and found it blazing hot. Since her wound wasn’t visibly festering, the cause of the fever wasn’t clear. Now she was asleep. Soon enough, Harak appeared and asked to see Beramun.

The nomad chief was struck by the change wrought in the former raider. From a smooth, arrogant, rather lazy wanderer Harak had become almost likable. Maybe his love for Beramun had transformed him – or maybe, Karada reflected, he recognized that Beramun deserved an honorable mate.

They talked in hushed tones about the girl’s condition.

“It’s strange,” Karada murmured. “Her wound is painful, I’m sure, but it shouldn’t cause such distress.”

“It was Sthenn’s mark,” Harak said grimly. “Cutting it out may have done more harm than we know. It’s my fault.”

“Be strong. I think it was the saving of her.” Karada offered to share her meager meal of nuts and fruit with him. He took a handful of nuts and sat beside Beramun’s pallet, watching her brow furrow and the sweat bead on her lip.

After a moment, he said, “I have a boon to ask of you, Karada.”

She stopped eating to listen. In the same low tone, he added, “The rest of the men from Zannian’s band chose me to speak for them.”

“Go on.”

“It is said you’re leaving soon. The men and I want to go with you.”

She’d been half-expecting this. “I’ll not have raiders and killers in my band.”

“Wait, great chief. We’re all plainsfolk, aren’t we? I doubt anyone in our little pen has killed more men than you or the great Pakito.”

“I’ve never killed an innocent.”

His old, cunning look returned. “Never?”

“You won’t get far with me, questioning my word!”

Beramun sighed, shifting slightly on her pallet. Karada gestured at Harak. He put aside his uneaten breakfast, and they moved away from the sleeping girl to the entrance of the tent.

Changing his tone, Harak said, “Chief, any men you don’t take will fall back into stealing and raiding. I know them. They are not bad, not really. Some are lazy or coarse, but the worst from Zannian’s band are already dead or escaped. Those left need a strong leader to turn them around, someone we can follow. You can be that leader, Karada.”

Shorn of Harak’s flattery, his point about the captives going back to raiding if left on their own was undeniable.

Fifty men could cause a lot of trouble for small family bands wandering the plains. They could make life difficult for Amero’s villagers, too.

“Very well,” she said. “I will take them, and if they cause any trouble I will deal with them.”

It took Harak a moment to digest her blunt statement, then he exclaimed, “Thank you, Karada! You are the noblest chief of all!”

She held up her hand to stanch the flow of flattery. “Harak, I won’t be oiled like an old pouch. I will meet with each former raider. They will be inspected by the warriors of my band and by the people of Yala-tene. Any recognized as murderers, plunderers, and other yevi-spawn will meet a swift fate. Those who pass muster can come with us.”

“Certainly, Karada, certainly!” Harak said. “I’m sure the men will agree to your conditions. You’re even more wise than all the tales proclaim.”

“Shut up,” she said, but without rancor. Grinning, Harak did.

Hearing them, Beramun turned over and groaned. Her feet kicked at the fur covering her legs. Concerned, Harak went to her and took her hand. Her fingers closed around his with startling force.

He could see her eyes moving rapidly beneath her closed lids. “What is she seeing?” he wondered aloud. “What powerful dreams hold her in such sway?”

*

The tunnel was endless. Toadstools sprouted in the cracks between the stones of the floor, their yellow gills emitting a weird, cool light. The walls and ceiling were black soil, crumbling and rotten.

Beramun was icy cold. Barefoot, wearing only a tattered doeskin shift, she felt as though she’d been wandering in this bleak place forever. The air was clammy and smelled like moldering bones. She shivered, holding the neck of her shift together to keep out a little of the chill.

She heard footsteps behind her. Though they sounded only when she moved, she knew it wasn’t an echo.

All at once she whirled about. For the briefest instant she spotted the outline of something in the darkness. The shape melted into the shadows under her probing gaze, but it had been there.

Heart hammering, Beramun turned and ran. Her stride stretched out to bizarre lengths, covering many paces with every strike of her heel. The broad reach of her legs didn’t seem to get her anywhere, though. The dimly illuminated tunnel appeared to be endless and straight as a spearshaft.

The footfalls behind were louder than before. Closer.

Suddenly, a hole yawned in the floor ahead. Beramun tried to stop, but her momentum was too great, and she fell into the opening, feet kicking frantically. She flung out her hands and miraculously caught the far side of the hole. Her relief changed immediately to horror. The walls were so soft her feet could find no purchase but instead gouged deep holes in the soft black dirt. The dirt fell away.

Exhausted, she hung there, panting, above what she knew was a bottomless chasm. Footsteps approached, but these came not from behind her but from in front, on the other side of the hole. A face appeared above her.

It was Harak.

“Help me!” she gasped. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

“Of course you can’t,” he said, not moving to aid her. His smile revealed too many wolfish teeth. “Do you know where you are?”

“What? No, I... please, Harak!” The fingers of her left hand began to slide off the rim of the hole.

“This is the lair of the green dragon.”

A tremor of horror vibrated through her straining limbs. “It can’t be! I was in Yala-tene – and Sthenn’s dead!”

“Did you see him die?”

“No, but Duranix said —”

Harak threw back his head and laughed. “Little Duranix? You believe one dragon’s word about another? How sweet!”

He was neither acting nor speaking like the Harak she knew. As her grip continued to slip, Beramun felt a burning pain on her chest. She looked down and saw blood flowing freely from a deep wound where Sthenn’s green mark had been.

When she looked up again, Harak had leaned down, and their noses almost touched. His eyes gleamed oddly. They weren’t the dark brown she knew but had a greenish cast. The pupils were vertical, like a cat’s – or a dragon’s.

Terror rose in her throat like nausea to choke her. “You’re not Harak!”

In the blink of an eye, he metamorphosed into the grotesquely tall, misshapen body she knew was his Greengall form.

“Hee hee hee,” Greengall giggled, looking down at her and hugging himself with long, thin arms. “You can’t be rid of me so easily! Did I live a thousand years to have my neck wrung by that rodent-lover Duranix? I should say not! True, I am much changed, but the genius of Sthenn remains, and I will live again in your slender shell of flesh. What an honor for a mere rodent!”

Beramun could hardly breathe. Her fear was so great it made her dizzy. “No!” she said faintly.

“Keep saying that,” Greengall-Sthenn said in his ugly singsong voice. “Maybe it will come true! Let go, rodent. Give up. Let go and fall!”

He kept up this refrain, his words twisting through her skull like a snake. She dug her fingers into the lip of the hole, raised her right leg, and gripped the spongy soil with her toes. The earth crumbled, but she worked her toes into the black filth, deeper and deeper until she had enough support to raise her left foot. She began to work it into the dirt, too.

Greengall’s face twitched. “Stubborn little female,” he said, annoyed. “Still, if you weren’t so strong, your body wouldn’t be of much use to me.”

“You can’t... have me,” she said through gritted teeth. She heaved her right foot out of the hole she’d made. Black beetles, maggots, and blood-colored worms sluiced from the opening in the pit wall. Beramun ignored them and burrowed higher, rising half her own height out of the hole.

Greengall stopped urging her to let go and swiftly backed away, as though he was afraid. Not only did his action gave her confidence to struggle on, it sparked a revelation. He couldn’t possess her by force, or else he would simply reach down and capture her.

Only if she gave in would Sthenn control her!

“I know you now,” she said, rolling forward, out of the hole. Her breath came in ragged gasps, but her heart beat strongly and evenly again. “The mark you put on me meant nothing. It’s only purpose was to frighten and dishearten me! It even fooled Duranix. But you have no power over me, except through fear. That’s what it was always about, wasn’t it? You drink in fear like raiders swill stolen wine!”

Greengall’s form altered and shrank into Harak again. “Don’t be cruel, brave Beramun!” the false Harak said. “Do you know what it’s like to feel your body perish, your powers flicker out like a falling star? This is my last vestige of life! Don’t cast me into the darkness, please, sweet, kindly Beramun!”

Beramun rose to her feet. She lifted her hands to brush the dirt from them and realized one now held a bronze dagger. The weapon looked familiar. She closed her fingers around the handle and raised the blade high to strike.

The false Harak’s form shifted rapidly as he became first Greengall again, then Zannian, Karada, Nacris, and finally Amero. She hesitated upon seeing this last, but Greengall’s telltale eyes remained, framed in the borrowed sincerity of the Arkuden’s bearded face.

Beramun struck, burying the dagger up to the hilt in Sthenn’s chest. Her target was a spot on his left breast, just above his heart. A stabbing pain lanced through her own chest —

With a cry of pain, Beramun awoke, bolting upright. She was firmly held by strong hands.

“Let me go!” she cried, struggling wildly.

“Beramun, it’s Harak! Wake up!” he said, shaking her, then held her at arm’s length so she could see his face.

Beramun froze in place, staring at him. His deep brown eyes, flecked with amber, had round pupils, not vertical. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by a look of concern. Behind him stood Karada, her tanned brow likewise furrowed with worry.

“It is you!” Beramun said joyously. “The beast is gone!”

She threw her arms around Harak’s neck, and they kissed for the first time.

*

Riders returned from Northwind Pass and Bearclaw Gap. The narrow northern pass was filled waist-deep with drifted dirt, practically impassable. Forested Bearclaw was still open, thanks to the sturdy trees lining the gorge. The nomad band would have to stretch thin to traverse the winding, wooded pass, but there was no other choice. Karada let it be known the band would depart the next morning through Bearclaw Gap.

The western pass, being much wider and guarded on either side by vertical cliffs, was as clear as always, and Karada’s hunters returned through it with elk and deer to augment the feast.

As the sun dropped low over the cliffs to the west, torchbearers ran from pit to pit, igniting tall conical heaps of logs and kindling. Villagers pounded pine stakes in the ground in circles, then wove strips of birch bark between them, making great bowls two paces wide. Into some of these bowls fresh water was poured. Stones, heated in the bonfires, were dropped in the water until it boiled. Herbs and roots gleaned from the high, neighboring valleys would be simmered in this until ready to eat. The nomads had never seen this cooking method before, and they watched, curious and uncertain, as the villagers made their preparations.

The only real shortage in the valley was wine. The raiders had guzzled and spilled huge quantities, and despoiled the orchards until there was precious little fruit to harvest. Tepa tried to remedy this by providing honey from his hives to make mead, but mead was notoriously slow to ferment. In the end, Hulami and Pakito mixed the available wine with crushed berries and water to make a mild punch. Karada and Amero were designated to taste the first cups.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Karada said, making a face. “Hunt down the raiders who escaped. Their crime grows greater and greater.”

Amero tasted his and shrugged. “It’s not a fine vintage, but it answers thirst.” He handed the cup to Lyopi and dipped himself another from the birchbark vat. “Like the walls of Yala-tene, the vineyards need repair, but one day we’ll have walls and wine again.”

With that cheering thought the feast began. The sky darkened to purple, and the blazing logs sagged into their pits, sending showers of sparks skyward. Whole oxen and elk, which had been brought out on a cross-thatch of tree limbs and set up to roast, filled the air with the aroma of cooked meat. The smell drew Duranix, who flew over the feast site. His belly glowed golden in the light of the setting sun. The villagers raised a cheer for the dragon, which was echoed by Karada’s nomads. Duranix landed upwind of the firepits.

Karada hailed him, saying, “The first ox off the fire is yours!”

“Only the first? I thought this was a feast.”

There was general laughter, and she said, “The first four, then.”

Ox hides were spread on the ground, and groups of villagers and nomads took their ease as the food simmered and sizzled. Children dodged among the adults, chasing fireflies. Someone called for a tune. Six muscular nomads produced reed flutes and began to play a gentle walking song.

Reclining against Lyopi, Amero felt more at peace than he had in many, many days. The expanse of the valley spread out before him, dotted with nomad tents. Above, Lutar emerged from the veil of daylight. It was waning, and its normal red hue was a mild rose by twilight. Just the color, Amero thought, of a ripening apple.

“Something wrong?” asked Lyopi.

“What? No.”

“You sighed.”

“I was thinking of something Duranix said, about needing challenges to make life worth living. I’ve made bronze at last, a goal I’ve chased a long time, but I’m not disappointed I’ve done it. There are a lot more things to be done in Yala-tene.”

“Always more things,” Lyopi agreed.

He tilted his head back until he was seeing her face upside down. “Shall we declare ourselves mates tonight?”

Nonplussed, she said, “There’s no hurry. Whenever suits you —”

“What better time than this?” he said earnestly, sitting up. “Could you ask for a grander mate-day feast, or finer guests?”

Quietly Lyopi said, “Think of your sister.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that Nianki might not like to see him mated. Feeling bold (and a little stubborn now that he’d made up his mind), he called to her, sitting a few steps away between Pakito and Samtu.

“Nianki! Will you stand by me tonight and see me mated to Lyopi?”

Pakito looked stricken by Amero’s words, and Samtu rolled her eyes, but Karada merely bowed her head slightly and said, “I will.”

There was little set ceremony to mating. The man and woman simply stood before their friends and kinsmen and announced their union. Fired with enthusiasm, Amero jumped up, eager to get the attention of every soul in the valley for his declaration.

“Wait here,” he said, giving Lyopi’s hand a squeeze. “I’d like Balif and Farolenu to be here for this. I’ll find them!”

He dashed off, darting between singing and drinking revelers like a child after a firefly. Lyopi shook her head and smiled ruefully.

“Thirty-nine years old and still a boy,” she said, speaking chiefly to Karada and Samtu.

“Aren’t they all?” Samtu replied.

“No. Truly, he is. Amero’s always bringing home the oddest things. He collects sacks of rocks from all over the valley and sits by the fire cracking them open to see what’s inside. Sometimes he brings home animals, too.”

“He still hunts?” asked Karada.

“No. He brings them home alive! One autumn he brought back an enormous bullfrog from the fens on the west side of the lake. Big as a chicken it was.”

“Why?” Samtu asked. “Does he like to eat frogs?”

“No! He wanted to measure how far it could jump!”

The women burst out laughing. After a moment’s pause, Karada asked, “How far could it jump?”

Lyopi raised her hands and dropped them again in an exasperated gesture. “We never found out. It wouldn’t budge, even when Amero prodded it with a stick!”

“Must’ve been a male frog,” said Karada. That set them off again.

Pakito studiously stayed out of the conversation, until their laughter subsided. Then he asked, “Where are the Silvanesti? I haven’t seen them all day.”

“They’ve taken to lingering by Amero’s old foundry,” said Duranix. He’d sated his hunger and moved a bit closer to the fire. By its light, his massive bronze head seemed to float in the air all by itself, his body masked by the deepening shadows. “They were there when I left the cave at sundown.”

“Wonder what they’re up to?” said Pakito.

“Be calm,” Karada said. “They won’t cause any trouble. I have Balif’s word.” She drained the weak wine mixture from her cup. “You know elves. They’re up there gabbing at each other, using more words than any decent human would.”

“Any decent human but Amero,” Lyopi observed dryly. The laughter started anew.

*

Amero found the Silvanesti, as Duranix had told the others, at the old foundry. When he arrived, still brimming with enthusiasm for his mating day, the elves were busily cleaning and packing their gear.

Balif returned Amero’s greeting but declined his invitation to join the feast. The elf lord knew there were still many in Karada’s band unwilling to share a cup with a

Silvanesti. As he pointed out, the converse was also true. Few were the elves in Silvanost who would willingly dine with a human. In any event, he and his soldiers were busy preparing for the next day’s departure.

The Silvanesti were certainly diligent and organized. Four elves were doing nothing but polishing bronze – sword blades, knives, buckles, gorgets. Others were down by the lake, washing mantles and leggings, while another half-dozen carefully packed their loose gear in bundles.

“Would you and Farolenu come just for a short time, to see me mated?” asked Amero. “It would be a great honor to me.” He explained their custom.

“I would be happy to attend,” Balif said, bowing. Farolenu likewise accepted.

Amero was ready to lead them back right then, but the elf lord begged for time to change into clean attire. It was agreed to delay the mating declaration until Soli appeared in the southwest. That would give Balif and his bronzesmith time to prepare themselves.

When the Arkuden had hurried away, Balif turned to his nearest elves. “Did you get them?” he asked, keeping his voice low, even though he was speaking in his own tongue now.

“Yes, my lord,” said an elf, on his knees packing.

“Show me.”

Making sure no humans were in sight, the fellow unrolled the bundle he’d been working on. In it were four bowstaves, bowstrings, and ten arrows.

“How did you acquire them?”

“As you suggested, my lord. We traded bronze and gold to some nomads for them. We have seven complete weapons and twenty missiles.”

Farolenu, already pulling on his best tunic and mantle, asked, “My lord, do you think what we’re doing is honorable? Aren’t we betraying the humans’ trust?”

“We are,” was Balif’s candid reply. “But we have given the Arkuden the secret of bronze. It seems only fair we take something in trade – something in addition to our lives, I mean.”

Every elf knew what was at stake. The nomads’ bows and arrows could devastate any Silvanesti army in their path. To avoid this disaster, the elves had to learn to use the new weapons themselves. Balif had agonized over his subterfuge, but he felt he had no choice.

“By maintaining a balance, we shall endeavor to keep the peace,” Balif promised. “Come, Farolenu, we have been honored with an invitation. Let’s do our duty by the Arkuden.”

Suitably attired, the two elves departed for the humans’ feast. The rest of the Silvanesti worked to complete preparations for their journey home.

*

A lone figure lifted its head from the soot-blackened ruins of the foundry. Driven out by Karada, fearful of the Arkuden and his supporters, Mara had tucked herself away in a forgotten corner of the foundry. She’d watched Amero converse with Balif but was too far away to register their words. When the Arkuden left, she crawled forward to overhear the elf lord speak to his followers.

Her time as a Silvanesti slave had given Mara only a rudimentary comprehension of the Elvish language, but she understood bits and pieces of what Balif said, and she had glimpsed the cache of nomad weapons. The words whirled confusingly through her head like a dust storm on the plains, coalescing with what she had seen, forming a realization dark and terrifying: The Arkuden must be in league with the elves. He had traded the secret of making bronze for the nomads’ bows and arrows. He was a traitor, not only to the human cause, but to his own sister.

Karada must be told. The knowledge would cause her pain, but ultimately she would be grateful to know the truth. Mara would be forgiven and restored to her rightful place at Karada’s feet, a beloved daughter of the great nomad chief, and together they would drive the rapacious Silvanesti from the plains forever.

In the midst of this satisfying vision, Mara frowned. The Arkuden had seemed in a great hurry just now. He was obviously bent on some urgent scheme. Silvanesti treachery knew no bounds. They could be planning anything with the Arkuden. Anything at all. Quick action was needed.

Her heart pounded. Resolution flowed through her limbs.

She would do it. She would spare every human on the plain from enduring what she had suffered at the hands of the elves. Most of all, she would save her beloved Karada.

Chapter 20

Plainsmen say Soli, the white moon, is a messenger of change. It hugs the horizon when it first appears and rises into the open sky reluctantly. In spring and autumn it ascends modestly and in winter hardly appears at all above the mountains rimming the Valley of the Falls. Because of its habits, the plainsmen say Soli brings rain in the spring by climbing higher in the sky to pour water on the thirsty soil below, and it carries the green leaves away in the fall (sinking to the its low, winter-time position). Only in summer did Soli linger near the zenith of heaven, keeping temperatures high. It never made sense to Amero that a cool moon rather than the hot sun should be blamed for summer’s heat, but that was the lore he’d learned from his mother, a long time ago.

Now, standing with Lyopi between two bonfires, surrounded by the whole of Yala-tene, the nomad band, former raiders, a highborn elf, and Duranix, Amero found himself sweating. It was the fires, he told himself, or maybe all the wine he’d drunk —

Be honest, Duranix’s silent voice said inside his head. You’re nervous!

I guess I am, Amero replied.

The nomad pipers finished their tune, and silence fell over the assembly. No one seemed quite sure what to do next, so Balif, playing the ignorant foreigner, asked, “What happens now?”

“We declare ourselves mates before the oldest person present,” said Lyopi. “That would be Jenla.”

The gardener, leaning on Tepa’s arm, said mischievously, “I’m not the oldest one here.” She stared pointedly at Balif.

“But I’m not a human,” Balif objected. “Besides, Farolenu is older than I – by two and a half decades.”

Amero cleared his throat. “If we’re going to be truthful, there’s one here older even than the elves.” He looked up at the dragon, smiling. “You’re past two hundred, aren’t you?”

“Well past,” agreed Duranix.

“Will you hear our declaration?”

The bronze dragon nodded, a habit he’d acquired since knowing Amero. His scales rang with the gesture.

“Come forward and face us,” Amero said.

Duranix clomped toward them, scattering villagers in his way. Framed by the twin bonfires, his metallic scales took on the color of fire itself. He opened his wings to their fullest extent, some forty paces from tip to tip and inflated his broad chest with air.

Amero winked at Lyopi. His old friend was showing off.

“I am Amero, son of Oto and Kinar,” the Arkuden shouted, “brother of Nianki and Menni, called the Dragon’s Son!”

There was some muttering at the mention of Menni, but the declaration went on.

Lyopi, her chestnut hair free of its usual braid and falling in shining waves to her waist, spoke. “I am Lyopi, daughter of Bydas and Ensamen, sister of Unar.”

Her voice broke on the name of her murdered brother, and Amero took her hand, squeezing it gently.

In unison they said, “Know all that we are mated, that all we have belongs to both of us!”

They bowed together to Duranix. “Such a lot of trouble just to breed,” he said in his booming voice. Some of the nomads laughed.

“You should say, ‘I know you, Amero and Lyopi’” Amero prompted.

“I know you, Amero and Lyopi,” the dragon repeated dutifully. “Stubborn, curious, passionate, and loyal are you both. Salute!”

He threw back his head and let his jaws gape. Blue-white lightning erupted from his mouth, crackling straight up into the starry sky. The crowd shifted and exclaimed at the display of power.

Amero’s own awed expression, as he stared up at the bolt lancing into the stars, dissolved into a frown of characteristic curiosity. Where did it go? he wondered. Did the bolt travel forever until it struck something, or did it fade out in time, like a spark carried aloft from a campfire?

Lyopi tugged at his arm and whispered, “Remember me? I’m your mate.”

They embraced and kissed to the cheers of the crowd. The flute players found some drummers among the villagers, and they struck up a fast melody. Round dances sprang up in the crowd as well-wishers flowed past Amero and Lyopi.

Balif was one of the first. “Good fortune to you,” the elf said sincerely. “It’s been quite an experience for me, coming here. Remind me to thank Karada for capturing us!”

“Peace to you, Lord Balif,” said Amero. “Peace in the truest sense. I hope the war between you and my sister is over for good.”

“We shall see. Farewell to you both.”

Farolenu clasped hands with Amero and presented Lyopi with a small golden charm on a length of woven grass twine. It glittered in the firelight. Amero tied it around Lyopi’s neck as she examined it.

“It’s pretty,” she said, pleased. “A beetle?”

“A spider,” said Farolenu. “The symbol of my smithing guild.”

He and Balif were soon swallowed in the crowd. Old friends streamed past, wishing the newly mated couple well – Adjat the potter, Montu the cooper, Hulami, Targun, Pakito, and Samtu. The amiable giant all but wrung Amero’s hand off, he was so enthusiastic.

“Being mated is the best thing in the world!” he enthused. “Better than a fine horse or a straight spear!”

“Good to know you rate so highly,” Lyopi said to Samtu.

The stout nomad woman eyed her towering mate. “He didn’t say it was better than elk steak. That’s what he loves most, you know.”

“Now, Sammi —” Pakito began. Laughing, she pulled him away so others could approach.

Beramun emerged from the press with Harak. Her left arm was in a sling, and she looked wan. Amero had heard about developments between them from Karada, but this was the first time he’d seen them together.

“Thank you for everything,” Amero said to Beramun. “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you.”

“I only did what others tried to do. Fate and the Great Spirits let me find Karada.”

“I didn’t mean that, though you were wonderful on your mission, too. I meant you refused me, and for that I’m grateful.”

“As am I,” said Harak with a grin.

“Will you be joining Karada’s band?” Lyopi asked.

“I go where Beramun goes,” he said simply. “I don’t much care where that is.”

Beramun said, “I don’t know what we’ll end up doing, but we are leaving with Karada tomorrow.”

She and Lyopi kissed each other’s cheek, then she did the same to Amero.

They exchanged words with Bahco, Hekani, and almost the entire crowd present. The only conspicuous absence was Karada. To Amero’s query, Bahco said he hadn’t seen his chief since before moonrise.

Amero realized it was hard for his sister to see him mated and happy. She herself would likely never know a moment such as this.

“I must find Nianki,” he said in Lyopi’s ear. “I need to see her.”

She understood. “Try dark and quiet places. If I were Karada, that’s where I’d be right now.”

He promised to return to Lyopi’s house – their house – before too late. Giving his hand a squeeze, she let him go. Amero slipped into the happy throng and worked his way away from the noise and fire.

He called silently to Duranix, Have you seen Karada?

Not lately, but she’s near. I can sense her presence.

Amero stopped in his tracks. You can?

My senses have grown sharper with the years. Nowadays, her thoughts seem as loud as yours were when we first met.

Dust swirled over the festive mob. Amero looked up and saw Duranix had taken wing.

Going home? he asked the dragon.

Hunting. The trifles you served at your feast only teased my appetite. There’s a great herd of elk a few leagues from here. I’m off to roast a few....

Good luck, thought Amero. Let’s talk tomorrow. I have new ideas for Yala-tene I need your help to accomplish.

Of course you do. Till then.

“Until then,” Amero murmured aloud.

The vast bulk of the dragon blotted out the stars as he winged away to the southwest. Amero felt great gladness as he watched the departure. Duranix’s responses were more like his old self. Once he became involved in daily life in the village again, the wanderlust of recent days was sure to leave him.

Since Bahco said he hadn’t seen Karada in their camp, Amero started his search with the lakeshore from the west baffle back to the old foundry. He saw the Silvanesti sleeping on their bedrolls outside the broken foundry walls, but he found no sign of his sister. Doubling back, he went as far as the old raider camp and the stone towers of the fallen bridge. His feet crunched over the dross of battle – broken spears and throwing sticks, scraps of leather armor. Compared to the life and noise of the feast, the site of Zannian’s camp was like a graveyard. Nianki wasn’t there, so he quickly left.

The only remaining possibility was the nomad camp. Perhaps she had returned there after Bahco left for the mating ceremony. Amero skirted the fringes of the celebration, as he didn’t want to be delayed by well-meaning greetings.

The camp itself was calm. A few dogs tied in front of their masters’ tents barked at him as he passed. At one spot he saw something he hadn’t seen before – a willow rack laden with cured yevi hides. The yevi pack that had accompanied the raiders to the valley had been devastated during the siege, and before Karada’s arrival most had been killed or run off. Nomad hunters searched the neighboring valleys after the final battle, killing every yevi they found. Their gray, shaggy skins were too coarse to wear, but Amero knew why Karada’s people saved the hides. Posted in the high passes, yevi pelts served as a potent warning to other would-be marauders.

Amero walked through the camp. Arriving at last at her tent, he found Karada. She was seated by the fire and draped in her white wolfs robe. Their blind brother sat a few steps away, a trencher of meat before him. Amero smiled. Karada must have brought him the food.

“Nianki,” he said. She didn’t look up, but Zannian tilted his head and turned sightless eyes toward his elder brother.

“Is it done?” she asked, poking the low flames with a stick.

“It is. I am mated at last.”

“Good for you,” said Zannian. “Is Beramun with you? heard she agreed to see me.”

“I’m alone.”

Amero crossed the large tent and sat down at the hearth across from his sister. She dropped her stick into the flames.

“I wish you’d been there,” he said. “The whole valley turned out to see us. As the oldest creature in the valley, Duranix played the elder’s part.”

“We’ll be gone by midday tomorrow,” Karada said abruptly. “I wanted to be out before then, but Bearclaw Gap is too narrow to allow the band to ride out more than two abreast.”

“There’s no hurry, you know. Stay longer if you want.”

“No, it’s time to go. I’ve stayed long enough, and I can’t bear to see you —” She cut herself off, jaw muscles jumping as she clenched her teeth.

“You both sound strange,” Zannian said, yawning. “What’s wrong? You’re talking like a jilted lover, Karada.”

“Shut up,” she told him.

“Hmph,” Zannian said, yawned widely, and pushed his trencher aside. He curled up on a bearskin with his back to them and soon was snoring.

“I thought he’d never sleep,” she grumbled. “I put herbs in his wine – the same ones I used to soothe Beramun.”

“Don’t worry about him. I’ll make a gardener of him yet.”

She looked him in the face for the first time. “Don’t be a complete fool, will you, Amero? Brother or not, he’s a savage, bloody killer and will be again if he gets the chance.”

“People change.”

“No, they don’t. Have you forgotten so soon what he tried to do to your village?”

Now it was Amero’s turn to look away. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Besides, Lyopi won’t let me do anything stupid.”

Mentioning his new mate was a mistake. Nianki brought her fist down on a hearthstone, splitting her knuckles. Amero rose, expressing concern.

“Stop!” she said, holding up her bleeding hand. “Pain helps sometimes. I found that out long ago. Don’t try to comfort me.”

Amero sat down with a thump. Her calm, flat statement – pain helps sometimes – sent a chill down his back.

“I only want to be a good brother,” he said at last.

“You are good. Most brothers wouldn’t have anything to do with a tormented, unnatural sister like me. But you’re always kind.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “Sometimes that just makes it harder. Your kindness can be as bitter as Zannian’s hatred.”

The tent was quiet, save for the crack and pop of the fire. Into the awkward silence, Amero said, “What if I asked Balif for help? An elf used spirit power to inflict this curse on you. Perhaps another elf can cure you. I know he’ll help if he can. He and I have become friends.”

Nianki lowered her hands and gazed wonderingly at Amero. She laughed, a short, harsh bark of sound.

“Merciful spirits! He’s not your friend! He’s an honorable enemy, no more. Besides, I don’t want all of Silvanost to know my problems.”

“They may already. Vedvedsica’s in disgrace, Balif says. His past doings are a public scandal. If there’s a chance Balif could help —”

“Enough! I don’t want to talk about it any more! I will be fine.” With effort she added in a calmer tone, “Go home, Amero. I’m sure your new mate wonders where you are.”

He circled the hearth, bent down, and took her under the arms, dragging her to her feet. Nianki pulled out of his grip easily, though she looked a bit flushed.

“Farewell, sister. I suppose I won’t see you tomorrow.”

“No. I’ll send Zannian to you.”

“I’ll take care of him.”

She nodded. He clenched his empty hands into fists, resisting the urge to embrace her.

“Peace to you, Nianki, for all your life,” he said and left the tent. He didn’t hear her murmured response.

“Peace to you, Arkuden. Peace forever.”

*

The feast had broken up by the time Amero left his sister. Small bands of nomads and villagers carried on earnestly, but the majority had gone to bed. The great bonfires were heaps of ashes now, with a few bright embers winking through. Heat shimmered above the firepits, blurring the cold stars. Soli was high, gathering in the offering of heat, saving it for the next sweltering summer day.

Amero walked faster. He felt very guilty for having left Lyopi so long, on this night of all nights. Oh, well, he could spend the next decade or two making it up to her. The thought made him grin as he climbed the mound of rubble outside the north baffle.

Compared to the open valley, the streets of Yala-tene were dim and close. By day the stone houses soaked up heat from the sun and remained warm all night. In the winter this was a blessing, but in summer it was close to intolerable. Many villagers abandoned their houses in the warmest weather and slept outside. Some, like Hekani, preferred to camp outside the walls most nights, so long as no rain was falling.

The route Amero followed back to his and Lyopi’s house was deserted. He saw no one on the way, met no families sleeping on the cooler dirt path. By Soli’s light he could see the crossing paths ahead. To the right was the lane leading home. Sweating from the sultry night and his brisk pace, Amero decided to detour long enough to get a dipper of cool water from the cistern at the Offertory.

As he crossed the lane, he heard the soft scrape of leather on stone. He glanced around and saw nothing. The shadows were too deep.

No need to be so jumpy, he chided himself. There were no Jade Men left, seeking his blood.

The outer walls of the Offertory shone in the moonlight. Lutar was long set, so the pure white light of Soli was bright on the white stones. The upper courses of the wall had been mined away during the siege, but enough was left to shine like a beacon in the night. Amero went, inside to the cistern. The Sensarku’s drinking gourd was still hanging on its peg. He stirred the water, then filled the dipper.

Clink. Metal on stone.

“Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?”

No answer. He drank the water and returned the gourd to its place.

“Can’t sleep?” he said, conversing with his unseen guest. “I can’t blame you. It’s too hot in the village. Water’s good, though. Help yourself.”

He turned to go. As he passed through the gap in the Offertory walls, he heard the rapid patter of feet coming at him. Puzzled, he faced the oncoming sound.

Out of the darkness hurtled a slender figure, wrapped in a black ox hide cape. He got a fleeting impression of a pale face wreathed in curly auburn hair. The next thing Amero knew, a span of sharp bronze penetrated his buckskin shirt, then the flesh below his left ribs.

Astonished, he grasped the two hands holding the dagger’s handle and forced them back. The blade twisted as it was pulled out. Blood sluiced from the wound, pouring down his leg and over his feet.

“Die, traitor!” said a high, quavering voice.

*

Duranix devoured six full-grown elk before midnight and then settled down to sleep off his prodigious meal. His heavy, dreamless rest ended suddenly when he felt a sharp pain in his lower left side. The sensation was so strong and so real that he felt along his scaly flank, expecting to find a fresh wound. There was none.

His long neck snapped around, and he stared at the intervening mountains. Something was wrong – deadly wrong.

“Amero,” he said, and launched himself skyward.

*

Karada took her hand out of the fire. Since Amero’s departure, she’d been testing herself, seeing how long she could bear a flame against the palm of her hand. Zannian continued to snore behind her.

She counted the thud of her heartbeat silently. One, two, three, four... the skin on her palm began to blister. Suddenly, an even stronger pain lanced into her side. Karada gasped and slumped away from the hearth. Under the wolfskin robe the flesh on her left side, between her ribs and hip bone, was unbroken, but it felt for all the world as though she’d been stabbed.

Zannian snorted and stirred. He pushed himself up on one hand, muttering obscenities. “Who did that?” he growled, obviously thinking himself still in command of his raiders. “Which one of you scum poked me with your dagger?”

Karada tied a beaded belt tightly around her waist and grabbed her sword belt. If she and Zannian both felt the stabbing pain in the same spot at the same time, Amero must have felt it, too. Something about that thought filled her with dread. A sense of urgency sent her running from the tent.

She had to find him. She had to find Amero now.

*

Lyopi sat up a long time, waiting for her man to come home. She knew his meeting with Karada would he difficult, but she didn’t begrudge him the time it would take to say good-bye to his powerful, troubled sister. Midnight came and went, and still Amero did not return. Patience gave way to annoyance. Certainly, this wasn’t the first night they’d spent together, but it was supposed to be an important one. Where was that inconsiderate, overgrown boy?

A sound at the door flap sent her striding to the opening. She drew back the flap, and a bloody spectre barred her way. Lyopi was not easily frightened, but this unexpected apparition brought a cry of surprise to her lips.

The gory vision raised its head, and Lyopi felt her stomach clench in horror.

“Amero!”

He fell into her arms. She backed inside, half-dragging her blood-soaked mate with her. After lowering him to the floor, she felt at his neck for a pulse. It was there, weak and rapid, but he’d lost – by the ancestors! – he’d lost so much blood!

There was a deep wound in his left side, obviously made by a metal blade. No flint knife could make so thin and clean a cut, though it appeared the knife had been twisted in the wound.

All this she took in even as she was frantically wadding a piece of doeskin and pressing it to the bleeding wound. Amero stirred, trying to escape the pain her pressure created.

“Be still!” she snapped, fear coursing through her. “You’re bleeding to death!”

He coughed feebly, his body spasming. He said something, but the words bubbled so horribly in his throat she couldn’t make them out.

“What?” She pressed hard on the makeshift bandage with her strong hands. “Who did this to you, Amero?”

“Sensarku girl.”

He must be delirious. All the Sensarku had died on the western plain with their leader, Tiphan. There were none left, in Yala-tene or anywhere else.

Amero trembled violently. His teeth chattered. Lyopi pulled a fleecy hide over him and cradled his head in her lap. Looking toward the doorway, she shouted for help.

“Lyopi,” he whispered.

“Shh, don’t talk.” She shouted again for help.

“Don’t be angry,” he said weakly.

“I’m not angry, Amero, but I’ll never forgive you if you die!”

“Duranix...”

Tears of terror and frustration were coursing down her cheeks. “I don’t know where he is!”

“So many things to know... so many.”

He exhaled a long, slow breath. It was his last.

*

Duranix had never flown so fast, not even while chasing Sthenn around the world. He couldn’t seem to find any greater speed, no matter how he canted his wings or knotted his tremendous muscles. He would be too late. He knew it.

Amero spoke his name, and he demanded, Why didn’t you wait? I was coming!

Like a fading echo, he heard: So many things to know... so many. That was all. Though Duranix called and called, he heard nothing more.

His wings slowed. The throbbing strain in his flying muscles eased, but a more pervasive and subtle pain held Duranix in an unbreakable grip. He roared at the empty sky. His bellow solved nothing. The pain remained. He flew on.

*

Karada ran a hundred steps before she staggered to a stop, falling against a tent pitched by the path. Down she slid to her knees, feeling as though she were plunging into an icy river. Vicious cold climbed to her neck, then her eyes. When it reached the top of her head, it slowly left her.

Someone was calling her name. “Karada! Karada!”

Her vision cleared. Mara was kneeling in front of her, shaking her by the shoulders.

“What? What?”

“Karada, we’re safe now!” Mara said, green eyes ablaze. “I saved us! I saved us all!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I stopped the Arkuden!”

Cold fury as hard and sharp as flint put strength back into the nomad chief. She seized Mara by the hair and hauled her upright.

“What have you done?” she snarled, shaking the girl so hard her neck bones creaked.

Mara’s hands clutched futilely at the strong fingers entwined in her hair, her words punctuated by yelps of pain. “I struck him down, Karada! For all of us! For you! He was your brother, but he was a traitor! He gave us over to the Silvanesti —”

Karada uttered a scream of pure anguish, punctuated by Mara’s whimpering, and drew her sword.

The tumult awakened the nomads, and they spilled out of their tents. They saw their chief, tears streaming down her face, holding the girl Mara by the hair. Karada’s sword was bared.

“I’ll kill you!” Karada rasped.

“Karada, please, listen! I did it for you! Your fight to drive the elves off our ancestral lands was doomed! The Arkuden betrayed you —”

Up went the gleaming sword. Mara stopped clutching at her hair and threw up her hands as though to ward off the blow. It never fell. Karada’s sword hand was held harmless in Pakito’s mighty grip.

“Let me go, Pakito!”

“No, chief. I don’t know what’s happened here, but you can’t kill this helpless girl.” He yanked the sword from her hand. Turning, he gave it to Samtu, who stood behind him, her own weapon at the ready.

“Let her go, Karada,” Samtu said. “We won’t let her get away.”

The nomad chief opened her hand, releasing her hold on Mara’s tangled hair. The girl dropped heavily at her feet, weeping. When she tried to wrap her arms around the chiefs ankles, Karada kicked her until she shrank away. Mara groveled, not even protesting the blows she’d taken.

“What’s she done?” Samtu asked, grimacing at the distasteful display.

“I think... she’s killed Amero.”

The assembled nomads exclaimed and swore in amazement.

“When did this happen?” demanded Bahco, clutching a panther-skin wrap around his waist.

“Just now,” whispered Karada.

The nomads looked around, as though expecting to see Amero’s body lying at their feet. “Where? Where is he?”

Karada repeated the question to Mara. When the wailing girl did not answer, Karada kicked her hard. Pakito promptly lifted his leader off her feet and set her down out of reach of the girl. Samtu took hold of Mara’s collar and pulled her to her feet.

“The Arkuden betrayed us!” Mara sobbed. “He traded our bows and arrows to the elves in exchange for the secret of making bronze!”

The assembled nomads muttered loudly at that. Pakito bellowed for silence.

“This girl is addled!” he said angrily. “You can’t go by what she says. The Arkuden is a wise and honorable man. He wouldn’t betray us to the Silvanesti!”

“There’s one way to find out,” said Bahco. He dressed quickly and gathered a few men. They headed to the village foundry.

Samtu laid a gentle hand on Karada’s arm. “Let’s find the Arkuden,” she said. “Maybe this is nothing more than a bad dream the girl had.”

“My brother is dead,” was the flat response. “She killed him.”

Pushed along by Samtu, Karada went with Pakito and two dozen nomads to the village. They found the streets filled with torch-bearing villagers. All of Yala-tene seemed to be awake.

Karada led them unerringly through the crowd, directly to Lyopi’s house. By the hearth, covered with an elk hide, lay Amero. Lyopi sat by his head, hands clasped to her lips. She looked up when Karada entered.

“Sensarku girl,” Lyopi said weakly. “When I asked who stabbed him, that’s what he said.”

Karada nodded. “It was the girl Mara. We have her.”

Lyopi turned away, looking back at her dead mate. Karada whirled and walked outside, unable to bear the sight of her brother’s still, slack face – the face that in life had always been so animated, so full of curiosity and vitality.

Spying the trail of blood outside the door, Karada followed it back to the Offertory. There was more blood there, and something else – a bronze dagger. She picked it up, hands shaking. She recognized the weapon; she’d taken it from Balif the night of his capture. It was the same one she’d let Mara keep after expelling her for her false accusation of Harak.

She ran back to Lyopi’s house through lanes filled with stunned, silent villagers. Outside the house, Mara was slumped on the ground between two angry-looking nomads. Karada stalked over. She lifted Mara by the front of her doeskin tunic until the girl’s toes barely touched the ground.

“No matter what happens, no matter what anyone else says or does, I’m going to kill you,” Karada said. All color drained from Mara’s face, leaving her freckles standing out starkly. She was speechless with terror.

Pakito came out of the house, and Karada thrust the bloody dagger at him. “Take this,” she commanded. “Keep it safe. It’s what she killed him with.” Pakito carefully put the weapon in his belt, then watched his chief warily, prepared to intervene should she try to harm Mara.

Karada noticed his scrutiny. Disgusted, she threw Mara at his feet. “Put her in Nacris’s old tent. Chain her so she can’t run away!”

Pakito gestured, and two nomads spirited Mara away.

Lyopi emerged, supported on Samtu’s arm. Tears ran down her cheeks. The breast of her tunic was soaked with them, but her grief was silent. She took Karada’s hands in hers.

“The dragon must be told,” she said, her voice harsh and low with anguish. “Who will tell him? Who will tell Duranix Amero is dead?”

Karada lifted eyes to the night sky, an unnatural chill raising gooseflesh on her arms. “Duranix already knows,” she replied.

Chapter 21

Bahco led half a hundred nomads to the elves’ camp. By torchlight, the men ran among the sleeping Silvanesti, kicking them awake, then holding them at sword point. A few elves fought back, and a real battle might have broken out had not Balif intervened. His considerable presence managed to calm not only his own soldiers but Bahco’s angry men as well.

“What’s this about?” the elf lord demanded once some order had been restored.

“The Arkuden has been killed!” Bahco snapped, his sword still in his hand.

Balif’s eyes flickered with surprise and concern. “How did it happen?”

After giving Balif the few details he knew, Bahco ordered his men to search the Silvanesti baggage. Balif’s protests were overridden as the dark-skinned nomad asked, “Is it true? Did the Arkuden trade bows and arrows for the secret to making bronze?”

“I had no dealings of that kind with the Arkuden.”

At that moment, the searchers found the hidden bows.

“No dealings?” Bahco raged, shaking a bowstave under the elf lord’s nose. “Then what are these – tent stakes?”

Balif drew his robe and his dignity close around himself. “Take me to Karada. I will explain everything to her.”

The nomads mouthed ugly threats as Balif walked out with Bahco. The elf lord wanted reassurances they wouldn’t harm his elves. Though Bahco refused to make such a promise, he raised his voice for all to hear and said, “If your people behave, my men will not harm them.”

Balif surveyed his small, outnumbered troop. “Sit down,” he said severely. “Do nothing and say nothing until I return.” When they hesitated, he commanded, “Do as I say!”

One by one, the elves complied, sitting down on their bedrolls and closing their mouths into thin, stubborn lines.

Bahco, Balif, and the newly discovered bows went back to Yala-tene. Amid the weeping, wailing crowd outside Lyopi’s house, Bahco found his chief. She seemed unnaturally composed. Her icy demeanor alarmed Bahco.

“Mind what you say and do, elf,” he muttered. “She’s very angry!”

Balif stepped out in front of Bahco and bowed to Lyopi. “Lady,” he said solemnly, “my deepest condolences. The Arkuden was a great and wise man. What aid may I give you in this dire time?”

She looked up at him, tears standing in her shadowed eyes. “Amero was sick of war. Please, whatever the cause, do not fight here.” Lyopi said this as much for Karada’s benefit as Balif s.

Wordlessly, Bahco handed Karada the bows taken from the elves.

She looked at them and her strangely calm face seemed to grow even more still. “So, it’s true,” she said.

“No, it is not,” Balif insisted.

She struck him across the face with a bowstave. The tough fruitwood cracked loudly, and Balif was knocked to the ground. People in the sobbing crowd exclaimed, reminding Karada of Lyopi’s stricture against violence.

Balif stayed where he was. Ears ringing from the impact, he put a hand gingerly to his face. The skin wasn’t broken, but he would have a tremendous bruise there – if he lived so long.

“Is this how you repay my trust?” Karada shouted at him. “Stealing our weapons? Your treachery has cost my brother his life!” Her face had gone ashen by torchlight, the scars on her throat standing out lividly.

“I did not steal the bows,” Balif said clearly from his position on the ground. “Nor did I exchange bronze-making information for them with the Arkuden or anyone else. My soldiers bought the weapons from members of your band, Karada. They traded gold and bronze for them. Shall I name the nomads who bartered with us? Better yet, to satisfy yourself of the truth of what I say, examine your warriors. Ask the ones carrying gold and no bows if they have adequate answers for why their weapons are missing.”

Karada regarded him wordlessly for the space of three heartbeats, then she exploded into action. She drew her sword and whirled in a circle, howling and slashing at the air. Villagers scattered, and even her own people backed quickly out of reach. Balif was happy he was still on the ground.

“Is there no honor left in Karada’s band?” she cried when her frenzy abated.

Silence greeted her question, then Balif announced, “I’m going to stand.” He waited for her reaction, but she simply stood there shaking with rage and grief.

He got to his feet slowly. “I did betray your trust, Karada,” he said, “but I had reasons for doing so. My people also had misgivings about my sharing the secret of bronze-making. They wondered if I was betraying my sovereign and my race, but there was no betrayal. Beneath the giving of metal and the taking of bows is a more important principle: peace. I did it for peace.”

Exclamations of disbelief greeted this. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his head, Balif raised his voice and continued. “By giving you knowledge of bronze, I know I’m equipping you to be even more dangerous. That’s part of my goal. By making you more powerful, I hope to dissuade my lord Silvanos and his counselors from warring on you. If we both have bronze armor and blades, the cost of battle will be too high. I sought to bring home examples of your new throwing weapon for the same purpose. If we are equal in strength, no sane mind should crave war.”

Lyopi spoke up before anyone else could do so. “I believe you, Lord Balif. I think Amero would have approved of your actions, if he had known. Peace is what he wanted more than anything else – even more,” she added, choking back tears, “than he wanted the secret of bronze.”

Everyone looked to Karada, waiting for her response. It was a long time coming, but finally the sword fell from her hand. It rang loudly when it struck the ground.

“I’m taking back all the bows,” she said, almost inaudibly. “I’ll find who traded them to you and deal with them later. Go back to your camp, Balif. Stay there until we leave. I don’t want to see you or hear of you until then.”

Balif bowed curtly to her, then to Lyopi with more feeling. He vanished into the crowd. People gave way to him slowly, but no one raised a hand against him.

The crowd seemed reluctant to leave. Lyopi begged them to go home, though, and they slowly dispersed. Samtu took Lyopi, who was swaying on her feet, inside the house, and Pakito sent Bahco to post guards around the elves, to keep things calm. Finally, only the giant and his chieftain remained.

Karada picked up a torch left behind by a villager and trudged away, not toward the north baffle and her own camp, but west. Pakito would’ve followed, but she put a stop to that.

“Go back to Samtu, Pakito. Help her comfort Lyopi. I’m going to wait for Duranix.”

*

Dawn was not far off when Duranix crossed the last line of mountains before the Valley of the Falls. It was the still time, when most animals were asleep. Even so, the valley felt charged as he flew into it, replete with powerful emotions.

He crossed the dull silver triangle of the lake, heading for the village. Before the walls gained distinction from the dark cliffs behind them, Duranix saw a pinpoint of light on the stony beach between the town wall and his cave. Lowering a wing, he descended toward the light, which quickly resolved itself into a burning torch.

He landed. A solitary figure stirred beside the torch.

“Karada,” he said, keeping his great voice low.

“Dragon,” she greeted him. “He’s dead.”

“I know.” He asked how it happened. Karada explained about Mara. By the time she finished the story of bronze and bows, Duranix was practically speechless with astonishment.

Finding his tongue at last, he exclaimed, “After all we’ve faced – yevi, raiders, green-painted assassins, wild humans, elves, Sthenn! – Amero is murdered by a crazy child with a bronze dagger? Over some bits of metal and bent wood sticks?” He raised one hind claw and drove it down again. The resulting blow rang through the valley. “Where is the justice in that?” he demanded.

“There is none. Good-bye, dragon.”

She turned away There was a strange note of finality in her voice that penetrated the dragon’s preoccupation.

“You aren’t leading your band out now, in the middle of the night, are you?” he asked.

“I’m not leading them anywhere.”

Without warning, Duranix promptly shrank to human form and size, becoming a muscular man with golden yellow hair, clad in a deerskin kilt. He hadn’t assumed human guise in a long time, but it seemed appropriate just now.

Long ago, during her first visit to Yala-tene, Karada had seen Duranix both take on human shape and revert to dragon form. It was a remarkable thing to witness the enormous bronze beast compress himself into a human body, no matter how unusually tall and sturdy it was.

Taking her by the shoulders, Duranix gave her a shake. “What do you mean?” he asked. Then, his golden eyes widening, he added, “You are thinking of ending your life, aren’t you? You mustn’t do that!”

She pulled away from his hands. “You don’t understand. I’m already dead. My life was tied to Amero’s by more than bonds of kinship. Do you know I felt his death wound?” She put a hand to her side. “It was here, as if I’d taken the dagger thrust myself. I felt his death like an icy wave of water closing over my head. That’s how close Amero and I were!”

“Foolish woman! I felt it too! It woke me from a deep sleep. We who loved Amero were linked to him in spirit, not by mere bonds of friendship, blood, or desire. Just because you despair doesn’t mean your life is over or that it isn’t valued by others.”

“I can’t live, knowing he’s gone,” she declared helplessly.

“And if you kill yourself, what will that accomplish? Your spirit will still not be at rest. More importantly, what will become of your people? Who will lead them?”

“Pakito... Samtu... Bahco...”

“Will they be able to stand up to the Silvanesti? Can any of them hold your band together in the face of privation and defeat, as you have?” When she didn’t answer, Duranix glared at her, eyes flashing. “So you’re not content to take your own life, you’re willing to condemn your followers to defeat and slavery, too. What a selfish end! Is that how the Scarred One will be remembered – too weak to survive one blow, one death?”

His words kindled a spark in her at last. She took a step toward him. Duranix returned her angry gaze.

“I am not weak,” she said, memories of all she had survived – the deaths of her parents, capture by Silvanesti soldiers, deprivation, loneliness – flashing through her mind.

“Prove it then. Survive. Live as long and as well as you can! You honor your people and Amero’s memory by doing so.”

Karada closed her eyes tightly, swaying a little. When she opened them again she said, “What about you, dragon? What will you do?”

He looked at the walls of Yala-tene. “I don’t know. I’m sick of this place, sick of all the violent, smelly humans who infest my peaceful valley. For Amero’s sake, I can’t knock the village down and chase everyone away, so perhaps I’ll leave.” A memory of another place came to his mind. “Yes, I’ll go somewhere far away.”

She rubbed a hand over her red-rimmed eyes. “My band was leaving tomorrow. I’ll have to put off our departure until we’ve settled some things – the elves, the girl Mara.”

“Cut her throat and be done with it.”

“It isn’t that simple. There’s likely to be sympathy for her, once the story of the hidden bows gets around.” She inhaled deeply. “And there’s Zannian.”

“What has he to do with anything?”

“He lives because Amero wanted him to live. Amero believed he could teach our brother to be a peaceful man. I never shared his confidence in Zannian’s ability to change, and I’m not so forgiving of the raiders’ crimes.” She frowned. “But he is my brother, too. And now, my responsibility.”

Still in human form, Duranix went with her to Lyopi’s house and there viewed Amero’s body. With his gray-flecked beard, the man he’d become hardly resembled the inquisitive youth Duranix had plucked from a tree and saved from the yevi all those years ago.

What an evanescent thing is human life, the dragon thought. Was it the brevity of their existence that made them feel so vulnerable, fearful, and violent?

It was a question Amero would have enjoyed discussing with Duranix. No one present could do it justice, so the dragon kept his thought to himself.

*

Karada called a great council of her hand and the people of Yala-tene. The resulting crowd was so large they had to assemble on open ground west of the wall, near the hill where Amero’s friend and foundry master, Huru, had fought the raiders and died defending his village.

With everyone present except the Silvanesti and those nomads appointed to guard them, over sixteen hundred people were gathered to hear Karada, Lyopi, and the elders speak. The first matter addressed was how to honor Amero. The village elders suggested an elaborate funeral pyre, either on the valley floor or, as Jenla suggested, on the old Offertory in the village. Jenla’s idea was on the verge of being approved when Duranix arrived, still in his fair-haired human shape. He was taller than anyone present, topping even Pakito by a handspan, and caused a stir when he appeared.

After obtaining Lyopi’s permission to join the discussion, the dragon-man spoke against the use of the old Offertory. With its reminders of the Sensarku’s strange antics, he said this would not be a location that would please Amero.

Lyopi asked what he would suggest.

“Before the cave-in of the storage tunnels many years ago, you humans usually buried your dead,” Duranix replied. “I think Amero should be put in a special place in the mountains, sealed forever inside. Then there will always be a place you can come and be near him.”

Karada asked if he had a place in mind.

“My cave.”

This took the humans aback. Tepa spoke for all when he asked, “If the Arkuden is sealed in your cave, where will you be?”

“Far away,” said the dragon. “Once Amero is put to rest, I am leaving the Valley of the Falls forever.”

Consternation erupted. Villagers rose to their feet and cried out against this idea. Who would protect them if both Amero and the dragon were gone? Duranix listened implacably, unmoved by their fears.

Karada called roughly for silence. The anxious villagers gradually settled down.

Duranix said, not unkindly, “My friendship was with Amero. Though I think well of some of you, I’ve realized I can’t stay here any longer, minding your small affairs and defending you from your own vicious brethren. I’ve been too much with humanity these past thirty years. It’s time for me to go, to find and coexist with those of my own kind.”

They continued to plead with him; wondering plaintively how they would survive without their protector.

“How did you survive before you came here?” he asked vexedly.

“We wandered,” Jenla said. “But we can’t go back to those ways. Some of us are too old, and the younger ones know no other life than this.”

“Then we’ll stay here,” Tepa said stoutly, grasping her hand. “The soil is fertile, the hunting is good, and the Arkuden’s wall is high.” He looked to Karada. “And we have friends, if we need them, yes?”

The nomad chieftain nodded curtly, and the villagers’ anxiety was slowly replaced by hope.

It was agreed Amero would be placed in the great cave behind the waterfall. Duranix would seal all the entrances. The burial would take place before sundown that very day.

Some of the crowd had begun to move away, but Karada’s loud voice halted them, reminding them there were other matters to settle.

“First, the murderer of Amero must be punished,” she announced.

Adjat the potter, a distant kinsman to Mara, rose. “The girl has lost her wits,” he said bluntly. “She’s mad with fear and hatred of the Silvanesti.”

“So? Are we just to forget what she has done?”

Intimidated, Adjat replied, “Of course not. It just seems... wrong to condemn the feeble-minded.”

“Seems perfectly right to me,” Karada said. “Murder should be repaid with death. That is the way of the plains.”

“This is not the plains, great chief,” Hulami the winemaker said.

They argued fruitlessly a while, until Karada at last turned to Lyopi.

“You were his woman,” said Amero’s sister. “What do you say?”

“I’d gladly wring her neck,” Lyopi said, her voice tired but strong. Though Karada nodded sagely, the village elders looked appalled. Lyopi went on. “But I can’t. The wretched girl has known nothing but torment and fear since she left Yala-tene with Tiphan last winter. Maybe he’s the true author of this deed – abetted by Silvanesti taskmasters and her oppressive devotion to Karada.”

It was obvious Karada wanted to speak, but having asked Lyopi her opinion, the nomad chieftain kept silent.

Lyopi said, “I say exile her. Turn her loose on the open plain and let the spirits of the land and air decide her fate. That’s what our ancestors would have done.”

This verdict won instant favor from the villagers in the crowd, who were sick of bloodshed. The elders quickly approved exile for Mara.

Karada turned to Duranix in disgust. “Crazed as she is, she won’t last five days. Hunger, thirst, savage beasts... hers will be a slow, agonizing death,” she said. “Their ‘mercy’ is more cruel than my punishment!”

“Not killing her outright salves their conscience,” Duranix said darkly. “That’s what matters most to them.”

One last important decision remained.

“The man called Zannian, as everyone now knows, is my youngest brother, Menni,” Karada told the crowd. “Blinded in battle, he will likely never recover his sight.

It was Amero’s wish that Zannian remain in Yala-tene and he treated as his brother, not a defeated enemy. I don’t share this view. Zannian is a dangerous man, with no more honor in him than a hungry viper. Now that my brother is dead, Zannian should be dealt with like the snake he is.”

Beramun, listening quietly beside Harak until now, stood up. Lyopi nodded for her to speak.

“I suffered as much as anyone at Zannian’s hands. His men slew my family and enslaved me. He tried to take me by force, but I escaped. It sounds vain to say so, but I think he came to Yala-tene as much to recapture me as to conquer your village.”

Beramun glanced at Harak, who smiled and gave her an encouraging nod.

“I would gladly see him dead,” she continued, “but I think the only one who can rightly pass judgment on him is Karada. He’s her kin. Let her do with him what she thinks best.” Beramun sat down.

Karada looked enormously pleased.

Factions aligned themselves in completely different ways from when they’d debated Mara’s fate. The younger people of Yala-tene favored sparing Zannian, while the elders wanted him put to death. Hulami suggested exile for Zannian as well, but in his sightless state, nobody felt comfortable with that idea.

Lyopi stood up to speak. The crowd slowly quieted to hear her words.

“Much as I respect Karada and Beramun, I have to disagree with them,” she said. “Zannian should remain in Yala-tene.”

Karada opened her mouth to object, but the stalwart Lyopi pressed on.

“I don’t believe, as Amero did, that Zannian can be changed. As a vine is trained to a wall, so does it grow, and this raider chief was trained by a hate-filled woman and a black-hearted dragon. He’ll never be as kind as his brother or as noble as his sister.

“So let Zannian stay here,” she declared. “Let him live out his life as a prisoner of the people he sought to enslave. Let him live on our charity! Our pity will be a more bitter punishment than swift death would be.”

Her words, forcefully delivered, carried the day. As the conclave broke up, Karada sought out Beramun and embraced her.

“You are the daughter I need,” said the nomad chief. “Will you have me as your mother?”

Beramun blushed. “I’m gaining a mate and a mother in backward order! What do you say, Harak?”

Scratching his chin, he said. “If Karada can live with me, I can live with Karada.”

“You’re too clever, Wanderer,” Karada told him. “But if my daughter loves you, you have my tolerance.”

“And your trust?”

“That you must earn.”

*

Wrists tied behind her, Mara was blindfolded and thrown over a horse. Six nomads and four villagers escorted her. They rode west out of Yala-tene at sundown. Samtu and Hekani led the group upriver, then onto the open plain. Night was well underway when they stopped.

Samtu dismounted, pulling Mara off the horse. She cut the girl’s bonds and removed her doeskin blindfold. Trembling, Mara fell at Samtu’s feet.

“Don’t kill me!” she begged. “I did it to save us all from the Silvanesti!” She looked around at the other riders, eyes roving desperately in search of a sympathetic face. She found none. “Where is Karada? Let me speak to her. If she hears me, she’ll understand!”

Samtu was disgusted. According to Pakito, Karada’s last words to the girl had been a vow to kill her.

“The day you see Karada again will be the day you die,” she said. She gave the girl a single goatskin bag of water, a flint knife, and a pouch of dried fruit and elk jerky.

“Here’s food and water for four days,” Samtu continued. “You are exiled, Mara, daughter of Seteth and Evanna. If you ever return to Arku-peli or Karada’s band, you’ll be killed on sight. Now go!”

Peering fearfully over her shoulder, the girl moved away. At first she walked slowly, then picked up speed, and finally broke into a run. The last they saw of Mara, she was racing through the widely spaced pines, the fading twilight making her appear ghostlike and insubstantial. She was heading for the great savanna.

Hekani turned his horse around. “How long will she last?” he wondered.

“No way to tell,” said Samtu. “If she’s resourceful – and lucky – she might live a long time.”

“Do you believe that?”

The stout nomad woman thumped her heels against her horse’s ribs, starting the animal for home. “It no longer matters,” she said bluntly.

*

On the cliffs overlooking the village, Karada stood with Duranix, now restored to dragon form.

“Can you find her?” Karada asked him, her eyes sweeping the dark, distant countryside.

“Yes. Are you at peace with your decision?”

She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Peace? I’ve never known it and never will.”

Duranix thought this the truest thing she’d ever said. He’d never known a thinking creature less suited to tranquillity.

Rather than leaping into the air, Duranix fell forward off the cliff edge. Spreading his wings, he flew off to complete his final pact with the sister of his first and only human friend.

*

Zannian entered Yala-tene with a rope around his neck. This was as much to guide him as it was to restrain him. Bahco was leading him from horseback. The nomad was met by Lyopi and Beramun, and he handed the halter to Lyopi. Bidding the women good-bye, Bahco galloped away.

“So I’m in Arku-peli at last,” Zannian said. “I wish I could see it.”

Lyopi tugged on the braided rawhide rope to get his attention. “I’m Lyopi,” she said, “mate of Amero, your brother, once headman of the village.”

“Ah, yes. Mated for a day, weren’t you? Or was it less?”

Lyopi made a fist, but she only said, “Beramun is here, too.”

The name drove the smirk from Zannian’s face. He put out a hand. Beramun stepped aside to avoid it.

“I was hoping you would come,” he said, turning his head toward the crunch of her footstep.

“I leave with Karada tomorrow. Say what you want, then I’ll be going.”

“Out here? In broad daylight?”

“It’s night, and no one’s about,” Lyopi answered.

“Strange. When I heard Beramun’s voice, I thought it was a bright and sunny day.”

Lyopi gave the younger woman a sympathetic, inquiring look. Beramun shook her head, indicating his words held no pain for her. She held out a hand for the rope. Lyopi handed it to her, moved off a few paces, and sat down at the foot of one of the ramps leading up the inside of the wall.

“Lyopi is gone,” Beramun said. “Talk.”

“My guards tell me you’ve taken a mate, but they wouldn’t say who he was,” Zannian replied.

“Strange to say, he was one of your men. Harak.”

If she’d slapped him, she couldn’t have shaken the ex-raider chief more. His tanned face paled below the bandages around his eyes. His throat worked, but no sound came out. Finally, he forced a smile and said, “I can understand why he wants you, but how did he convince you to accept him? Did he use an amulet, as the nomad tried on Karada?”

She said nothing, refusing to be baited. Zannian took a step closer to her voice. She backed away, and he smiled unpleasantly.

“He’s known many women, you know. Cut quite a swath through the captives we took to Almurk. Had a taste for red hair, as I recall, so he’s changed just for you —”

She struck him open-handed across the jaw. No dainty girl, she rocked Zannian back on his heels. He laughed triumphantly.

“You must care if you hit me!”

Beramun backed away again, working to regain her composure. “Has anyone explained what’s to become of you?” she asked finally.

The odd lilt in her voice gave him pause, but he said jauntily, “With the Arkuden dead, I guess Karada will have my head on stick.”

“No.”

“What then?”

“You’re to live in Yala-tene, forever. The villagers will feed you and take care of you like a child. They’ll lead you where you need to go and keep you clean, but you’ll never be allowed outside the walls of the town.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what the rest of your life will be like, great raider chief. Every day will be just the same, and you shall live and die in darkness.”

Zannian was shaken by the time she finished. He let out a howl, then lunged at her. Lyopi stood to come to her aid, but Beramun waved the other woman off as she easily evaded him.

“I’ll escape!” he declared, head whipping left and right. “My eyes will heal, and I’ll escape!”

“Your sight will never return. You’ll dwell in this village until you’re old and feeble as well as blind. And since you’ve told us there is no more Menni, now there will also be no more Zannian. You’re to have a new name, one befitting your new life – Horiden, ‘the Sightless One.’”

“Amero wouldn’t let you do this!” he said, voice rising high.

“Amero is dead, and this is not my doing. I would gladly grant your wish and take the head from your shoulders, but it wasn’t my decision to make.”

She expected him to rage or even plead for a warrior’s death, but he did neither. He mastered himself, then smiled broadly. That smile unnerved Beramun more than naked rage.

“If you want me dead, then I’m happy,” he declared. “And make no mistake – I will see again, and I will escape this blighted valley. I shall forge an even greater band of raiders next time. You’ll see! My mistake was getting involved with Nacris and the green dragon. They were twisted by ancient hatreds. I’ll create a new brotherhood of true warriors, greater than Karada’s band, and sweep all before me....”

So consumed was he by his grand dream that he didn’t notice Beramun had left him. Lyopi came and took the rope from her. The women embraced.

“Farewell and be well,” Beramun whispered.

“Peace to you, and all your kin,” Lyopi murmured back. Behind them, Zannian ranted on. Lyopi squeezed Beramun’s arms and asked, “Do me one favor, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“Name your first son Amero, will you? He’d like that.”

Beramun felt tears start. She kept them in check and smiled.

“I will.”

She left the village by the west baffle and returned on foot to the nomad’s camp. She never set foot in Yala-tene again, nor met anyone who lived there for the rest of her long, long life.

*

Dawn was near, and still Karada kept her place atop the cliff. She did not sleep, for she did not want to dream. When she heard the rush of wings, she looked up and saw Duranix descending through the broken clouds.

He landed nearby. She saw he had something clutched in one foreclaw. When the dragon opened his talons, Mara’s limp form rolled out on the ground.

“I was beginning to think you’d lit out for good,” Karada said good-humoredly. She checked the girl. Mara had swooned from fear and the rush of traveling so high in the air, but she was very much alive. Karada quickly gagged her and tied her hands and feet.

Earlier, Duranix had carried Amero’s body to the cave they’d once shared. He swept aside the ashes from the old hearth and laid his friend there, piling loose stones over him. Then, with claws and fire, he sealed the outer openings – first the largest one behind the waterfall, then Amero’s smaller, personal entrance, where his hoist used to be. Lastly, the dragon closed the unfinished third entrance Amero had meant for Duranix to use when in human form. The cave was now secure, save for the vent holes. Duranix clung to the rocky ceiling with his claws and butted his homed head against the vents, breaking them open into a single hole large enough for him to crawl through.

Now, having returned with Mara, he and Karada would conduct their private justice.

With Karada in one foreclaw and the unconscious Mara in the other, Duranix stepped into the open hole and dropped back into the black cave. The fall into total darkness tested even Karada’s nerves. She gripped Duranix’s hard-scaled claw until she felt the rush of wind past her ears ease, signaling he’d opened his broad wings and was slowing their descent.

The dragon landed heavily. His massive hind legs took up the shock and spared his passengers. Setting Karada down, Duranix exhaled a small bolt of lightning into a pile of charred wood he’d scraped up earlier from around the cave. A smoky red fire flared.

Clomping across the rough stone floor, Duranix laid the unconscious Mara across the heap of stones that was Amero’s grave. Turning his huge, reptilian head suddenly, he said to Karada, “She’ll die slowly in here, of starvation.”

“Only if she chooses to.”

Karada went to the pile of stones. From her belt she drew a short bronze dagger – the same one Mara had used to kill Amero. She put the dagger in Mara’s slack hand.

The fire was already dwindling. Duranix picked Karada up in a hind claw and launched himself at the roof. When he reached the opening, he had to close his wings and grip the edge of the hole with his foreclaws. He worked himself through.

Putting the woman down, Duranix covered the opening with great slabs of gray slate and yellow sandstone. He was satisfied, but his companion wasn’t, not yet. Karada found a large stone and fitted it onto the pile, closing the last small gap.

They walked to the edge of the cliff. Below them the waterfall foamed and thundered.

“Where will you go?” she shouted over the water’s roar.

“I have a place in mind. A long way away, but the company promises to be congenial.”

“Human?”

His barbels twitched. “I said congenial. A dragon, if you must know, of my bronze race.”

“Female?” she asked. He nodded his horned head, human-fashion.

“I’m tired of humans,” Duranix replied. “Maybe in a hundred years or so I’ll be able to stand them again.”

She looked up at him. “Some of us won’t be around in a hundred years.”

He brought his huge face close, eyelids clashing like swords. “You’ll live longer than I,” he told her. “When my bones are dust and my scales gone to verdigris, plainsmen will sing of Karada, the Scarred One, the greatest hunter and warrior of them all. They already make up songs about you.”

“I don’t listen to such nonsense.”

“Sometimes there’s truth in nonsense.” He lifted his head and spread his wings.

“You’re leaving now?” she said. “The folk in Yala-tene will miss saying farewell.”

“It’s better I go now. Less trouble. Less fuss. Goodbye, Karada.”

She put out her hand, touching his massive flank. “Nianki.”

Duranix balanced on his rear claws, poised for flight. “Farewell then, Nianki. Be worthy of your honor in all things.”

He leaped from the precipice, flying through the cloud of mist perpetually suspended over the falls. For a while his bronze skin glistened in the first, faint light of dawn, then he was so far away all she could see of him was a black silhouette against the indigo sky.

Chapter 22

Nomads breaking camp was always a noisy affair. Amid much shouting and grunting, the rings of tents came down, each hide hut sending up a cloud of dust when it collapsed. As was traditional, the older children struck the tents, under the supervision of the elders. While this was going on, warrior-age nomads saw to their horses and movable gear.

In the center of this maelstrom, Karada sat on her horse, strangely quiescent. She watched the dusty, churning proceedings with a detachment she did not ordinarily feel. Those close to her attributed her reflective mood to Amero’s death, and they were right.

Beramun approached on foot, black hair coated with yellow dust. She hailed her chief and adopted mother. Karada smiled down at her and held out a leather-wrapped gourd of cool water.

Beramun rinsed her parched mouth and spat out the resulting mud. “I bring word from Harak and the former raiders,” she said. “They want to know where in the column they should travel.”

“At the rear,” Karada said, taking back the gourd. “We’ve no horses to spare for them, so they’ll walk at the rear, with the travois.”

“Harak too?”

Karada sipped cool lake water. She’d grown to like its mineral bite again. “Harak too. I can’t favor him over the others, Beramun. They’d hate him for it. If the raiders prove themselves worthy, we’ll find mounts for them later on. And no, he can’t ride double with you. It’s too hard on the horse.” Seeing Beramun’s disappointment, she added, not unkindly, “Harak will not object, and his good behavior will make him all the more pleasing to his men.”

Beramun smiled. The excitement of leaving the Valley of the Falls more than compensated for a temporary separation from her mate.

Looking past Karada at the village, Beramun saw dust rising from the vicinity of the north baffle.

“Someone’s coming from Yala-tene,” she said.

Karada sighed. “More elders to talk us to death. I’ve never known folk who talk so much. Wasn’t ‘good-bye’ yesterday enough?”

Beramun frowned, shading her eyes. “There’s a lot of them – not just a party of elders.”

Karada turned her wheat-colored horse around to see for herself. Sure enough, a sizable troop of people was coming toward them from the village.

“Find Pakito,” she said tersely. “Send him to me. If you see Bahco first, send him too.”

“Why?”

“Probably nothing. Go on, do as I say.”

Beramun sprinted into the chaotic scene, darting to and fro around horses and collapsing tents. By the time Pakito and Bahco returned, the people from Yala-tene were clearly visible. There must have been two hundred of them, all heavily laden with bundles and packs.

Leading the marching villagers was the young hunter Hekani. When he reached the nomad chief, he signaled those behind him to stop. The burdened villagers gratefully set down their bags and rested in the morning heat.

“Greetings, great chief!” Hekani said. “We’ve come to join you.”

“What?” Bahco and Pakito exclaimed simultaneously.

“We want to join your band,” Hekani said, sweeping his arm back to encompass all the people behind him.

“What are you talking about?” said Karada. “You’re not nomads!”

“We shall be, if you’ll have us. Since the Arkuden’s death and the dragon’s departure, a lot of us felt it wasn’t worth going on here. Everyone you see this morning has chosen to leave Yala-tene and join with you.”

Karada looked pained, and Bahco said, “Not one in ten of you has a horse! And none of you is accustomed to walking long distances. How will you keep up with us?”

“There must be more horses on the plains,” Hekani replied.

“But you’re all just a bunch of mud-toes!” Pakito blurted, then looked sheepish. “What I mean is, life on the plain is hard, not at all like living in comfortable stone piles.”

“We’re not all so long off the plains that we’ve forgotten what it’s like,” retorted an older woman behind Hekani. “And life hasn’t been that easy in Yala-tene lately.”

“We fought Zannian longer than you did,” Hekani said proudly. “I’m a hunter myself. As for riding – well, we can learn, can’t we? You won’t have to take care of us. We have a lot of skills among us – flint knapping, metalworking, tanning, pot-making, gardening. We’ll make our own way, and share our skills with your people.”

Karada was shaking her head. “You’d slow the band too much.” She looked over the composition of the crowd and added, “Besides, if so many young folk leave, what will become of those who stay behind?”

From the crowd at Hekani’s back stepped Jenla, the planter. “I came with Hekani to answer that question, Karada.”

The nomad chieftain nodded at the formidable old woman, and Jenla said, “As near as I can tell, I’ve seen fifty-six summers. I know I wouldn’t have lived so long, had it not been for the Arkuden and his village. Now I’m too old to wander, and Yala-tene will be my home until I die.

“Many old people in the village feel as I do. We’ll stay in the valley, dragon or no dragon, Arkuden or no Arkuden. We have our gardens, our orchard, and our thick stone walls.”

Hekani spoke again. “For us” – he gestured to the crowd behind him – “that’s not enough. We want a leader of power and spirit. The Arkuden was strong in wisdom and kindness, but we’ve learned the hard way that’s not enough. Even having a dragon as our protector didn’t prevent the raiders from attacking us. The way to be free is to be strong. We want to follow you, Karada.”

She took a long time before replying, her eyes sweeping over them. Finally she spoke loud enough for all to hear, “If you think life will be better with me on the plain, you’re fools. Stay here. Grow your gardens and live inside your stone walls. That’s the best choice for you.”

Amid mutters from the crowd, she called to Pakito and Bahco, and the three of them rode off. A short distance away, they stopped and looked back. “They’re not leaving,” Bahco reported.

The villagers milled about where Karada had left them, watching them from a small hill west of the nomads’ camp.

Karada didn’t turn around, but said, “Let’s see what they’re made of. If they can keep up with us, I’ll take them in.”

“They’re not nomads,” Bahco objected.

“Neither were you when we met. You crossed the sea in a basket of logs, seeking a new land. Was I wrong to take you in when you asked to join Karada’s band?”

He grinned. “No. And we call those baskets of logs ‘ships,’ chief.”

She waved a hand, dismissing Bahco’s ships, then twisted right and left on her horse, saying, “Anyone seen our highborn hostage this morning?”

“Balif and his soldiers were waiting for us at sunrise,” Pakito said. “I told them to march with the raider-men. Might as well keep all our troubles in one pouch, eh?”

Karada sighed. “As if those were our only troubles! Very well, Pakito, lead the band into Bearclaw Gap. Bahco, hold back a hundred riders, and let the raiders and elves enter the pass ahead of you. You follow them through till we reach open ground again.” The two men nodded, and she sent for Targun.

The old nomad rode up to Karada on his dappled mare, the same horse he’d ridden out of the Valley of the Falls thirteen years earlier. Karada gave him charge of the travois and those folk on foot. He asked about the young people from Yala-tene still milling about on the hill.

“Ignore them,” she said. “If they can keep up with us, we might take them in.”

She gave more orders, and the nomad band sorted itself accordingly. Pakito led the foremost riders into Bearclaw Gap. As they rode away, Beramun, mounted now, cantered up to her informally adopted mother and was told to stay close to “learn how to lead a band.”

Beramun put her horse alongside Karada’s. Pakito’s nomads rode past, waving and calling their chiefs name. She did not return their salutes but watched impassively as they passed.

“Don’t you answer their hails?” Beramun asked in a low voice.

“Only in battle. All other times I assume a lofty air. It gives them confidence.” At Beramun’s confused expression, Karada smiled ever so faintly. “A stern face helps them believe I’m thinking deep, wise thoughts on their behalf.”

Beramun had a lot yet to learn about being chief. She laughed long and loud at Karada’s admission, and all the riders passing gawked at her in surprise.

*

The elves shouldered their packs and marched out. At their head, Balif set the pace.

“I’m glad to see the end of this valley,” Farolenu said, walking at his lord’s side. “Too much suffering and sorrow happened here.”

Balif made no comment, and they trudged in silence a while. Then the elf lord said, “What will you do first when we get home, Faro?”

“Bathe,” said the bronzesmith. “In heated water. And love my wife.”

“In that order?”

“Arikina, my wife, will insist on that order. What will you do, my lord?”

“I shall dine on nothing but fruit for thirty days – washed down with the rarest nectar in Silvanost. The coarse food these humans eat has aged me a century.”

Farolenu looked forward and back at the lines of humans on foot and horseback. “So many of them,” he remarked. “For short-lived creatures, they breed quickly!”

“Too quickly. Our sovereign and his counselors must understand that.” Balif spotted the mounted figures of Karada and the black-haired girl she’d taken as her daughter. “Many things need to be explained to the Speaker. Many things..

The elves tramped by the nomad chief. At Balif’s command, they fell into matched step, arms and feet swinging in unison.

“Face the honor!” Balif cried. All the elves’ heads turned toward Karada, rendering her a salute usually reserved for the highest Silvanesti. If the nomad chief was surprised, she didn’t show it, staring ahead impassively with a lofty air.

*

At the tail of the long column, winding its way across the valley floor to Bearclaw Gap, Targun waited with the unmounted nomads. Most of them were children who rode the travois with the baggage. As he wiled away the time until it came his moment to move, Targun glanced at the crowd of villagers still clustered and waiting on the hill a hundred paces away.

Targun was reminded of how he and his mate had come to Karada’s band after the death of their adult son. They’d been as forlorn and anxious as those villagers. His mate was now long dead, but Targun felt moved to do something he rarely did – act without Karada’s approval. He picked a boy from the idle nomad children and sent him to the leader of the villagers with a message: Karada says if you keep pace with us, you’re in.

He could tell when the message was delivered. A few villagers jumped to their feet. The motion spread throughout the crowd until everyone was standing. A cheer went up. Targun pulled the brim of his woven straw hat down and hid a satisfied smile in his gray beard.

Thus did Karada’s band depart the Valley of the Falls. Once out of the mountains, she kept her word and released Balif. The elf lord gave her back the bronze sword she’d returned to him before the battle with the ogres and raiders. It was the same weapon he’d used against Zannian. Farolenu had restored the battered blade to shining perfection. Karada accepted the sword without emotion.

“Farewell,” Balif said. “Until we meet again, peace to you, as your people say.”

“What makes you think we’ll meet again?” she asked.

“Our lives are entwined. Haven’t you noticed?”

Karada colored, her tan face growing pink.

“So we will meet in battle?” she asked with affected brusqueness.

“I hope not. I’d hate to cross swords with a comrade.”

He did not salute, but waved breezily as he led his small band away. Karada was silent until Beramun teased, “You’ve made a friend, it seems.”

“He’s not a friend,” Karada replied stiffly. “Just a very good enemy.”

*

Not long after Balif and the elves departed, Karada relented and let the two hundred men, women, and children from Yala-tene join her band. As Hekani said, the villagers brought with them much learning and many new skills. In one generation, bronze became common, not only for blades and arrowheads but even for homely tools and personal decoration. Raising crops in temporary gardens brought more food to the nomads, and their numbers waxed larger.

In time the nomad band became so large it could scarcely move or feed itself. Small groups split off from the main body to start their own bands in other regions. The descendants of Pakito and Samtu rode far west, beyond the once forbidding Edge of the World, and populated the lands of the sunset. Another group, led by Bahco and his children, returned to the northern seashore. When Bahco died, full of years and rich in descendants, his body was borne back across the waves to his birthplace, the seafaring lands.

Of the fifty men who had been raiders, half became full-fledged members of Karada’s band. The others drifted away, becoming lone wanderers or falling back on thievery. Karada gave the task of suppressing the backsliding raiders to Harak, It was her way of testing him, and Beramun’s mate did not fail. Every last outlaw was captured or killed, four by Harak alone.

The former raider stayed with Beramun always, and together they had six children. Their firstborn son was named Amero, and he grew to be a warrior as wise as he was fierce. He was a great favorite of his grandmother Karada, and the only one allowed to call her Nianki.

Karada lived to great age, surviving her last brother by more than two decades. In later years she left command of the band to Beramun and spent her days hunting and riding, often alone on the savanna for many days. Her feats and adventures became entwined with legend. By the time her hair was white, she took a grandchild with her on these journeys – either young Amero or her granddaughter Kinarmun – and from her they learned the ancient secrets and skills.

She ranged far and wide, and many nomads thought they saw her, silhouetted against the sunset or in a bright wreath of stars. The wanderers learned to wave respectfully to any lone figure they encountered on the plain, since any solitary rider could be Karada, watching over all the children of the plains.

*

Far away in time and place, the dull red orb of the sun sank toward the sea. From his perch atop the cliffs, Duranix surveyed his circular island home. In the years since leaving the Valley of the Falls, he’d grown to immense size, due in part to the spirit power infused into him long ago, but also from the diet of whale and kraken he enjoyed in the waters surrounding the island.

Aloft, Blusidar circled, leading their two offspring in their first flying lesson. She was a much better flyer than her older, heavier mate, though not as patient with her hatchlings’ mistakes. The young dragons’ stubby wings fanned hard, trying to keep up with their mother’s swift progress.

A peculiar sensation filled Duranix’s chest. It began as a small cold spot, deep within the massive layers of flying muscle. The feeling spread outward, a creeping numbness more puzzling than alarming. When it reached the tips of his claws and the crown of his horned head, it vanished as swiftly as it had come. He could remember feeling this way only one other time, and the meaning of the sensation was instantly clear.

Blusidar alighted on a ledge above him. She called rough encouragement to the dragonlets still struggling through the air, then turned with concern to her mate.

“What troubles you?” she asked.

“I fear a friend is gone,” he said quietly, meeting her wide golden eyes. “An old friend.”

“One of your humans,” said Blusidar with a sniff.

“No. Karada was no one’s human but her own. That was her curse and her strength.”

Their male hatchling, Seridanax, fluttered by, screeching for help. Though Blusidar did not approve, Duranix caught his small son in his great claws and soothed him, saying, “Don’t be afraid, little one. I will protect you.”

The Kagonesti

Note: The stories of The Kagonesti takes place over several millennia, and have been inserted into the timeline at their appropriate times in the History.

Prologue

DARLANTAN, OF DREAMS AND LIGHT

3811 PC

Southern Khalkist Foothills

The naked figure sprinted up the silent streambed, bounding from rock to rock, leaping stagnant and muddy pools. A flying spring, one leg kicked out for a graceful landing, spanned twenty feet of jagged boulders. Black hair trailed in a long plume, soaring with each jump, now streaming behind as the slender form reached a smooth stretch and sprinted like a deer.

Kagonos ran for many reasons. He relished the joy of motion for its own sake, his body fleet and powerful, his reflexes reacting to each challenge of the makeshift trail. He savored the discovery of a new path, racing upward into these hills along a route that had never known an elven footstep. He loved the all-encompassing tranquility in the wilds, a peace that descended around his spirit and transcended the petty concerns and fears of others.

These motivations had all been on his mind, two dawns past, when he had awakened in the sprawling encampment of the Highsummer council. He had emerged from his lodge, located in the honored center of the tribal congregation, and spoken to no one while he trotted through the camp. His departure had drawn the attention of the tribal chiefs and shamans, but none had tried to delay or distract him – they all knew Kagonos often ran to a pulse that no other Elderwild could hear. Indeed, some of the priests looked relieved as the naked elf vanished up the forested trail. The shamans remembered more than one outburst from Kagonos that had disrupted a bonding ritual or communing attempt. The upcoming ceremony of Midsummer Starheight promised a greater level of solemnity if Kagonos was out somewhere wandering in the wilderness.

For his part, Kagonos had no patience for silly rituals of stars, sun, or seasons. The diamond speckles that brightened the night sky were best viewed alone. Truly, the stars did seem like magical things – they were masters of the heavens between sunset and sunrise – but how could they be honored by an elven ceremony or the recognition of any other mortal?

The wild elf had run for a day and a night and, now, through the morning of the next day. Still each breath came easily. Only the thinnest sheen of sweat slicked his bronze skin with a cool embrace. Gradually, hour by hour, he loped toward a state of spiritual intensity, an undeniable, consuming, and vibrant sense of life.

A thought flickered through his mind, and he knew the truth: one day soon he would leave the tribe forever, coming into these hills to dwell in solitude. He would be master of himself alone, beholden to none, a being fervently, totally attuned to this majestic land of forest and mountain.

In truth, he didn’t know why he had stayed with the tribes so long. With his fanatical single-mindedness, his intolerance of any kind of weakness, Kagonos knew that he frightened the chiefs and veteran warriors. A stranger to his own parents, the Elderwild had even angered the shamans by declaring that love, among many other things, was a weakness to be scorned and avoided.

The wild elves, for the most part, were a happy people – playful, innocent, and careless. Kagonos did not hesitate to display his anger with that childlike naivete, for he knew that the tribes faced enemies on many sides. Why could not his people see those threats?

None of the braves could match Kagonos, physically – perhaps because his body seemed to thrum constantly, at the very brink of explosion. They treated him with respect, allowed him to come and go, and for the most part listened politely when he spoke. In different decades he had lived with each of the tribes – the Black Feathers, the Silvertrout, the Whitetail, and most recently the Bluelake clan. When danger from ogres or humans had threatened, no warrior had fought more savagely than Kagonos, and his efforts had helped to win many battles.

Kagonos often warned his tribemates about the threat of the House Elves, but here the Elderwild were less receptive to his strident admonitions. Under Silvanos, the golden-haired elves had formed their clans into mighty houses, then created literally that: tall buildings, crowded together into cities, in which they enclosed their lives. To Kagonos, these self-made prisons symbolized with shocking clarity the danger represented by the wild elves’ numerous cousins. At the same time, he knew that other Elderwild were curious about, even attracted to, these garish constructions.

The lone warrior’s mountain run was the perfect opposite to those House Elf desires, and even to the more limited society of the wild tribes. Now Kagonos knew pure, unadulterated freedom, as he escaped the constraints of other elves, of garments, of any edifice or tool showing the bend of a mastering hand – whether human, ogre, or elf. He desperately needed these hours, these days of solitude, in order to keep his internal tension from tearing him apart. Finding this path, racing upward with the wind blowing through his thick, black hair, the fullness of life soothed his tension and gave Kagonos profound joy.

And there was another, even greater reason that had drawn him from his lodge, from the summer gathering of the tribes – a knowledge that, by itself, would have compelled him to race into these hills.

Kagonos believed that today, once again, he would glimpse the Grandfather Ram.

Twice before Kagonos had encountered the mighty creature. Always the ram had been perched on the side of one of the highest mountains in the Khalkists. Kagonos had been below, trekking along a path none other had trod. And each of those times, as now, the tribes of the wild elves had been gathered for Highsummer council, and Kagonos had grown tired of the ceaseless discussion and frequent complaints of his clansmen.

On those occasions he had run for days before the Grandfather Ram had appeared. The magnificent animal, horns curling a full three spirals on each side of a broad-skulled head, had regarded Kagonos from on high. It remained lofty and distant, yet a searching presence in the huge, golden eyes had been undeniably close, intimate.

The Elderwild wondered if anyone else had ever seen the ram. He didn’t think so, though he wasn’t sure why he should believe this. True, there had been something about the expression in the magnificent animal’s eyes, something so profoundly personal that Kagonos believed implicitly that it had been a message intended for only him. And surely, even if others had seen the animal, they had not been the beneficiaries of that knowing, soothing gaze.

A shadow flickered across the wall of the gorge above Kagonos, and he flinched, knowing it was too late – he must certainly have been spotted by some flying creature. He spun to look at the sky, realizing that the shade had been far too large for a vulture or eagle. Quickly he saw the broad wings – a span easily twenty feet across – and the bulky body, four legs sweeping backward, confirmed his original impression. A griffon!

Instinctively the wild elf ducked beside the shelter of a large boulder. The hawk-faced creature must have seen him, but it would probably not attack – not unless it was starving, and even from below Kagonos could see that this was a sleek, healthy specimen.

Then he got the real shock. As the griffon flew onward, Kagonos saw a trailing plume of golden hair flowing freely above an armored shirt – a rider on the griffon’s back! Appalled, the wild elf realized that a House Elf had somehow captured and tamed one of the beasts. Kagonos grimaced. It was bad enough that the elves of the house clans should master and saddle horses – must they now bind even the savage flyers of the skies?

As the griffon and rider disappeared around the shoulder of a looming mountain Kagonos resumed his run, but in the flash of that brief encounter his exertions assumed a bitter, fatiguing edge. He no longer felt the tingling joy of pathfinding, not now, when another saw his route before he did. His sense of solitude had been violated in a way that stirred deep resentment in his soul, bringing outrage to the forefront of his emotions. What right did a House Elf have to these heights? The fellow didn’t even sweat as he traveled here – he merely sat on his saddle and discovered places, overlooked paths that should have been the province of the lone Elderwild runner.

Another jolt shook Kagonos as he remembered the Grandfather Ram. Would the mighty mountain sheep show himself to this House Elf? Would he be spotted inadvertently? The thought sent a bolt of alarm through his cloaking fatigue. A deep and fundamental fear drove the wild elf upward with renewed strength, his momentary lassitude forgotten as he all but flew over the jagged rocks of the steeply climbing riverbed.

For hours Kagonos hurled himself higher into the mountain range, through rough gaps in the foothills, over granite, crested ridges, along trails that no elven foot had ever before trod. He ran without thought of direction, yet he knew exactly where he was going. Always he climbed, pressing ever higher, working toward the loftiest peaks in the range.

When he emerged onto a high mountain ledge, coming around the shoulder of a looming peak, he was not surprised to see the griffon of the flying elf tethered in the valley beyond. A saddle of supple leather, studded with gold and gemstones, covered the creature’s back, and the beast’s hawklike face remained fixed on a scene below.

Next Kagonos saw the House Elf creeping downward. The intrusive rider was a hunter, to judge from his bow and arrows, but a wealthy one – perhaps even a noble. He wore pants of golden silk and gleaming black boots, with a tunic of bright white wool. The fellow’s bow was strapped across his back, and in his hand he bore a long-shafted axe with a blade of silvery steel. Carefully the hunter descended, looking toward something in a dip of the mountainside below.

Even before the wild elf stepped forward, he guessed the nature of the House Elf’s quarry.

Then Kagonos saw the white fur of the Grandfather Ram, showing in stark contrast to the gray rocks. From a hundred paces away Kagonos could see the crimson stain blotting the animal’s heaving flank. The feathered shaft of an elven arrow jutted upward from the wound.

Springing forward, Kagonos took vague note of the ram’s proud head, flanked by its triple-spiraled horns. The animal kicked its feet, its long tongue trailing from its mouth as it labored for breath. The elven hunter was barely a dozen paces away, advancing with the axe upraised, fully focused on his prey.

The griffon shrieked a warning – the sound something like an eagle’s cry, but bellowed with the force of a roaring lion. Immediately the golden-haired elf spun, his blue eyes flashing as he spied the naked figure lunging toward him.

“Hold, Wild Elf!” shouted the warrior.

Kagonos slowed his advance to a walk, studying the other. The House Elf hunter wore a steel breastplate and carried a small dagger in his left hand. In the right he brandished a long-bladed axe – a mighty weapon. Emblazoned on his armor was a golden shield marked with the crossed claws of a rampant griffon.

“Leave the ram. Go.” Kagonos spoke sharply, without considering the possibility that he would not be obeyed.

The House Elf threw back his head and laughed, a mocking, bitter sound. “Leave? This is a trophy more splendid than any I have seen. I intend to take this head, use it as my standard!”

The Elderwild did not reply, though he continued his measured advance. He didn’t understand what the other meant about a standard, but Kagonos knew that a great wrong was being enacted before him.

“Stop there. Come no closer!” barked the golden-haired elf.

“Who are you?” Kagonos asked, halting ten paces away.

“I am called Quithas Griffontamer! Remember that name, savage – I sit at the right hand of Silvanos, and when the great war comes it will be I who commands his armies, who defeats the ogres and their dragon-spawn allies!”

“Leave the ram, Quithas Griffontamer. He is not your trophy.”

Quithas laughed again. “Do you intend to stop me? A naked boy, no weapon, no armor? I do not wish to kill you, Wild Elf, but if you try to claim my rightful prey, I shall.”

Kagonos moved with the quickness of thought. His sleek body flew toward the other elf, then tumbled to the ground as the keen axe blade whooshed through the air above him. The wild elf hit the hunter hard, both of them going down in a tangle of limbs. Kagonos grunted as the metal hilt of the dagger smashed against his forehead, but the fury of his onslaught sustained him. He threw his fist into Quithas’s flank, avoiding the metal breastplate, driving the breath from the House Elf’s lungs. Staggered by the impact, the hunter tumbled sideways across the loose rock of the mountainside.

The axe skidded away, and Kagonos leapt forward, stomping one foot on the weapon’s long wooden shaft. Up the mountainside, the griffon shrieked in agitation, but the tether prevented it coming to its master’s aid. Slowly, precisely, the wild elf reached down and picked up the axe. The weapon was surprisingly heavy, though the edge had been honed to a razor’s sharpness. Holding it upward, brandishing it toward the elf who still sprawled, speechless, on the ground, Kagonos trembled under the onslaught of an almost uncontrollable hatred.

“This is a bad thing you have done, to hurt the Grandfather Ram. You said that I could not stop you, for I had no weapon. Now I have a weapon, Quithas Griffontamer, and I send you away.” The wild elf reached forward and snatched the arrows from the other’s quiver. Contemptuously he snapped them, casting the broken pieces at the House Elf’s feet. “Mount your animal and fly, or I shall kill you.”

Sputtering in fury, his eyes flashing a hatred that matched Kagonos’s, Quithas nonetheless scrambled backward, rising to his feet beyond the range of the axe.

“Give me my weapon!” he demanded harshly. “It is more precious than you can know – forged by the master smiths, enchanted by Silvanos himself!”

“The axe shall be my trophy!” retorted the wild elf, tautly. “Now leave, before I claim your head as well!”

The House Elf’s eyes flared, burning into Kagonos like a physical assault. Full of menace, the Elderwild raised the weapon, his own eyes narrowing as he watched Quithas back toward the prancing, agitated griffon. The House Elf spoke no further as he climbed onto his gilded saddle, seized his reins, and rode the beast’s powerful spring into the sky.

Kagonos watched until the flying creature disappeared over the rim of a nearby mountain. Then he turned to the Grandfather Ram and knelt beside the stricken creature’s head. His heart nearly burst with sorrow as he saw the growing crimson stain on that glorious white fur, saw the pleading expression in the gold-flecked eyes, the tongue lolling carelessly on the rocks.

“Water. Bring me water.”

Kagonos blinked, then nodded. He had leapt to his feet and sprinted toward the stream at the base of the slope before it fully dawned on him that the animal had spoken. When he reached that clear brook, he knelt and, lacking any vessel, filled his mouth from the cool, sparkling flow. Racing back to the ram, he allowed the water to trickle over the animal’s tongue, watching in wonderment as a trace of luster returned to the eyes.

“Shelter … we must find shelter. There is … a cave nearby. Carry me there.”

The Grandfather Ram spoke haltingly, but Kagonos sensed this was due to the creature’s wounds more than to any awkwardness with speech. The voice bore a suggestion of deep resonance and timbre, wrapped richly around his sparely chosen words.

The elf knew that the creature must weigh several hundred pounds, but Kagonos nevertheless reached under the ram and gently eased it upward, careful not to prod the flesh around the arrow. Surprisingly, he lifted the animal with ease. Following the ram’s directions, he soon carried it to a small niche in the rocky mountainside – a “cave” only in the loosest sense of the word.

“The arrow … can you remove it from my side?”

Kagonos worked the missile gingerly, wincing every time the ram grunted in pain, but eventually he pulled it free of the deep wound.

“It’s out, Grandfather. Rest now – do you need more water?”

The ram shook its head. “That’s better. I fear some enchantment, some lethal elixir was laid upon the arrowhead – else it would not have felled me so readily.”

With a grunting effort, the mountain sheep rolled onto its stomach, legs curled underneath. Already the bleeding from the arrow-wound had slowed to a trickle, and the animal’s breathing grew stronger, more regular.

But was it an animal at all?

“I have seen you before, Pathfinder,” spoke the sheep. This time those luminous eyes – the orbs that twice before had touched Kagonos from mountainous heights – seemed to penetrate through to the wild elf’s soul, and he could only nod at the words.

“You travel the mountains with the grace of one who belongs here. You seek the trails, and you discover them – places where neither elf nor man, not even ogre, have trod before. You are a worthy chieftain of the Elderwild.”

“I thank you, Grandfather – but I am no chieftain. Indeed, there are some in my tribe who think me mad, others who wait only for the time I depart my people and go to live in the hills. Perhaps my true worth may be measured in the tending of you. Can you tell me who you are?”

“Outside. Now I must come out of here,” the sheep declared, standing weakly and taking several steps from the mountainous niche. The ram settled to rest on a smooth patch of shale, looking at Kagonos with a suggestion of amusement.

The wild elf gasped and stepped backward, startled by something he couldn’t explain – the ram was changing!

Silver gleamed where that white pelt had been, as if a shimmering cascade of metal coins had suddenly spilled forth. At the same time the creature grew with impossible speed, extending incredibly. A long, sinuous tail curled outward, shining silver like the rest of the suddenly huge body. The already broad skull lengthened, the snout growing fearful, into a monstrous maw that bristled with sharp, curving fangs. The twin horns fell from the ram’s head, tumbling onto the shale as the last vestiges of the mighty sheep vanished, replaced by leathery – but still silvered – wings and powerful, crouching legs. Hooked talons, like silver sword blades, curved from the massive fore and rear paws.

By the time the transformation was complete the serpentine body coiled in a great arc, half-encircling the dumbstruck wild elf. Kagonos felt no fear – just an incredible sense of awe, a knowledge that he beheld a miracle. He sensed, too, that his life from this point on was irrevocably changed.

“You ask who I am, Pathfinder? I am known by many names in the world, but you may call me Darlantan.”

“Yes, Lord,” Kagonos replied, dropping instinctively to his knees. The Elderwild had never bowed to anybody or anything in his life, yet now as he knelt he did so not only willingly, but with a sense of profound joy.

“I name you, Kagonos, as the true Pathfinder of the Elderwild. Your people shall need you in the centuries to come. If they are to survive, it will be because you have shown them the way.”

“But … but how will I find the path?”

“Have faith, my brave son. I do not charge you with an easy task – it will be more difficult than you can ever know. But I know that you have thought of leaving your tribe, of becoming a lone elf in these mountains. A hermit.”

“Yes, Lord. My time to do this is – was – soon.” Even as he spoke, Kagonos realized that he would not become a lone elf. Had not Darlantan told him that his destiny lay with his tribe?

“I believe you to be worthy, Pathfinder. But know this: If you are to lead your people through the age to come – an age when the House Elves will grow mighty, will seek to seduce your tribesmen into their cities, an age when danger will soar from the skies on wings of red and green and blue – you must be faithful to me, and to me alone.”

“You have my pledge, Lord.”

“As Pathfinder, you are a leader greater than a chief, a spiritual counselor above any shaman. Your task will take all of your life, all of your soul. Take no wife, for she would distract you from the importance of your tasks. And never venture to the cities of the House Elves, for they will know you, and seek to enslave you.”

“As you command, Lord.”

Darlantan looked down, and for the first time Kagonos saw a hint of sadness in those golden eyes – the eyes that were the same as the ram’s eyes, though everything else about this mighty creature had changed.

Following the glance, the elf saw one of the triple-spiraled horns lying on the stones at his feet. Like the ram, the horn had changed – though it retained its original shape.

Kagonos hefted the coiled object, feeling from its lightness that it was hollow. The wide end flared into an open bell, and the pointed end was carved, or somehow shaped, into a mouthpiece. Without being told, the elf knew he should raise it to his lips.

Placing the narrow tip between his teeth, Kagonos blew a long breath, feeling the mournful notes emerge from the horn, hearing the music keening through the mountain valley, a portent of danger and fear – yet a song that ended with a high note of hope and triumph. He had never played an instrument such as this, yet the notes came to him with intuitive clarity, and he raised his song with the fluid grace of his thoughts.

“This Ram’s Horn is my gift to you,” Darlantan said. “It will be heard by me, or my people, and if there is a way that we can aid you, we will.

“Play it in times of joy or sorrow, and it will speak to your people of hope and promise and pride. Play it in times of danger, and it will show you the path to safety.

“I shall keep the other horn,” Darlantan continued. “And forever may these two spirals be a symbol of the bond between our peoples. Their sound is a thing beholden to your people and to mine, heard by none except a silver dragon or a wild elf.”

“This is a precious thing,” Kagonos declared. “But why do you bestow it upon me?”

“You are the Pathfinder,” replied the dragon, and his powerful voice took on a firm sense of command. “Your people shall depend on you – and this horn is a sign of your high station. Even the shamans will hear your song of faith, and through it they shall better know their gods. Return with it to your tribes, to the council of Highsummer. When the Elderwild hear your song, they will know the truth.”

“I shall do this thing – though I still do not understand why.”

“That is of no matter. You need most to remember the two Ram’s Horns, Pathfinder. When either is played alone it may bray a song of hope and friendship, a lasting bond between our peoples. Either horn may cry for aid or offer comfort, and their songs will ring through the centuries of our lives.

“And someday in the future, perhaps, the two horns may be played together. The song they raise will be an anthem of hope and promise for the future of the world.”

The Dragons

Part I (continued)

CHAPTER 6

RESTMATES

(3553 PC)

Darlantan coiled along the crest of the high Kharolis, content to allow the sun to glisten from his silver scales. He felt the warm breeze of summer ruffling his wings and tugging at the mane that had begun to bristle around his jowls. Lord of all within his sight, the silver dragon was pleased to reflect on his own invincibility.

The Valley of Paladine was a sprawling landscape below, vast and peaceful, but somehow confining as well. Darlantan realized the great mountain-flanked vale was shrinking in the same way the grotto had seemed to diminish so many centuries ago.

He knew it would soon be time to move, to once more fly toward new corners of Krynn. Of course, he had often explored the regions beyond the valley. He and his nestmates were well known among the griffons, Ravenclaw’s descendants, who dwelt in the High Kharolis, as well as to the elves of the vast woodlands. Touching the curling bell of a ram’s horn that Darlantan wore on his silver chain, he thought with deep affection of one elf in particular.

As to his nestmates, in the last dozen centuries, the growing dragons had spread far from the grotto. Smelt had learned a multitude of languages and become a fixture among mankind. Dar knew that many a city or town considered the benevolent brass dragon to be its special benefactor. Whole realms had been freed from the threat of ogres or lizard men, and Smelt was welcomed far and wide, feted to feasting and drinking whenever he appeared, and always finding partners for the conversation that was as important as food to the sociable brass dragon.

Burll and Blayze had taken more solitary paths. The bronze male had at last grown tired of the competition with his more quick-witted brothers. Burll had disappeared once, more than a thousand winters ago, returning only after many centuries, smelling of brine and fish. Now he spent much of his time in some distant, secret lair, revealing to Darlantan only that he dwelt beside an unimaginably huge tract of water.

Blayze had become increasingly irritable, taunting and fighting his nestmates relentlessly. He had killed many of the griffons of the High Kharolis, so that even Darlantan, who had always gotten along with the hawk-faced predators, had ultimately lost track of Ravenclaw’s clan. Finally, after an acid-spitting incident in the grotto itself, Aurican, Darlantan, and Smelt had together chased the hot-tempered copper away from the high ridges. Occasionally one of the others encountered him in the Kharolis foothills, but always the copper dragon had fled these meetings, using his superior quickness to escape.

Certainly Blayze, too, had established a secret lair and probably gathered treasures there. Darlantan and the others would have welcomed him back at any time – in fact, the silver dragon couldn’t even recall the nature of the argument that had resulted in Blayze’s hasty exile. But it had been a hundred or more winters since the other nestmates had so much as seen their copper kin-dragon.

The females of all the metals had remained close to the grotto, bringing Patersmith morsels of food and dwelling in the ancestral cavern of their kind. The last time Darlantan had visited was scores of winters ago, and then he had been surprised to discover his sisters, under the guidance of Kenta and Oro, gathering metals and gems with which they were expanding the size of the nest.

For their own parts, Darlantan and his golden brother had taken to spending much time in the woods. Assuming the bodies of the elf and the bearded sage, they had dwelt for long seasons among the sylvan folk. Aurican, in fact, spent most of his time in the guise of his elven body, speaking, meditating, and debating with the elders of the clans. Together Auri and the elves had composed ballads and epics that they delighted in re-creating, much to Darlantan’s boredom. The silver dragon enjoyed the elves, but he could never remain on the ground for long periods of time. As always, the glory of flight, the spread of his silver wings in the uncontested skies, was the thing that truly brought him to life.

The elves who had most appealed to the silver dragon were the clans of the dark-haired Elderwild, the tribes that refused to gather in the towns favored by the golden elves. The silver dragon had befriended one of the wild elves, a stoic warrior named Kagonos, and now his thoughts stirred with the memory of that friendship, a suggestion that he should fly to the east and seek out the brave in his forest haunts. Again Darlantan touched the ram’s horn, thinking of its mate, borne by Kagonos, knowing that with the horn, the wild elf could summon him if he needed the dragon’s aid. It was a symbol, a mark of the deep bond between them.

A strange scent came to him on the breeze, a spoor subtle and alluring. His head came up, and immediately he detected a flash of silver along the lower slope of the mountain. It was Kenta, and the female dragon’s scent carried a shockingly powerful allure. She looked at him with a sidelong glance and then, tail twitching, darted away. Urgent emotion thrummed within Darlantan – not fear, nor even alarm, but instead a kind of tingling excitement he had never before experienced.

Instinctively he pounced toward that metallic gleam, racing down the mountainside in a series of gliding leaps, then springing upward, seizing a crest of rock with his forefeet, pulling himself through a tight turn. He raced over the ground with explosive, catlike leaps, reluctant to take to the air for fear he would be unable to turn quickly to pursue his evasive quarry in a new direction.

But Kenta was crouching there, waiting for him. Head down, wings buzzing excitedly at his sudden approach, she leapt upward and glided away, trilling laughter in the air behind her … and leaving a trace of that wondrous, intoxicating elixir that had aroused Darlantan from his rest atop the mountain.

The silver male flew in earnest, body arrowed, long, powerful wing strokes quickly narrowing the gap between himself and the silver female. In fact, he gained on her so fast that – despite the game she had apparently initiated – he had the clear impression she wasn’t actively trying to get away. Kenta’s flight took her over white-capped peaks, around the ridges of lofty divides, and finally above a serenely rolling glacier piled deep with fresh, powdery snow.

The alluring silver female veered around a looming shoulder of rock, making a surprisingly sharp turn that Darlantan was unable to follow. He brushed the mossy knoll, but scrambled for footing and once again hurled himself into the air. The force of his pounce sent him soaring after Kenta, overtaking her in a quick rush of flapping wings.

Just before he caught her, she rolled, gliding on her back and rising before the diving Darlantan. He reared but was unable to avoid her as her jaws gaped and she hissed a frosty cloud of musk into Darlantan’s face. The scent drove him further into his frenzy, and he reached for her with all four legs, even spreading his wings to try to clutch her to him.

The two silver bodies clashed with violent force, but there was a subtle grace to their entangling. Kenta’s tail wrapped around Darlantan’s, pulling him close. Instinctively he reciprocated, coiling his neck about hers, clawing at her silver scales in an attempt to merge the two mighty forms. Wings thrashed and scales gleamed and shimmered, frothing through the snow. Together the two large serpents skidded into the sloping glacier, tumbling down the incline in an avalanche of loose snow and flailing silver coils. Dragonwings beat rhythmically, driving up great drifts of powdery whiteness, and the pair rolled over and over, sliding for an eternity down the vast, rippling incline.

They reached the bottom and lay together as waves of loose, light snow cascaded around them. Still entangled, Darlantan shook his head, clearing away enough snow that they could breathe. His glistening brow was draped with tufts of frost as he looked over the surroundings, secure for the moment that the skies and snowfields were free of danger. Content with the icy landscape, he lowered his head to lie beside Kenta in the depression they had worn in the snow.

When next he awakened, spring had warmed the glacier, melting the loose powder into slush. Kenta was stirring beneath him, and stiffly, awkwardly, Darlantan dug them out of the deep trough their bodies had impressed into the snow. He shook himself, sending a cascade of ice crystals flying, and blinked at the bright skyline. He knew where he was, but how he had gotten here remained a hazy memory.

The draft of Kenta’s wings pulled his attention around, and he watched the silver female take wing with serene, aloof grace. She made no move to look backward as she flew toward the mountains on the northern horizon. Restlessly Darlantan took to the air himself, choosing to fly in a southeasterly direction, possessed of an urge to find Aurican again.

Many winters had come and gone since last he had spent time at his golden nestmate’s side, but even so, it wasn’t hard to know where to look. Flying steadily, Darlantan soon left the mountains behind. He enjoyed the sight of the woodland blanketing the landscape below. A layer of treetops, lush and green in the ripeness of early summer, stretched to all sides, fading into the distant flatlands. He knew from earlier reconnaissance that this forest extended from the Kharolis Mountains to the glaciers in the south, the jagged Khalkists to the east, and countless leagues to the north, until the forestlands gradually merged into the plains.

Now, as he crossed over a broad river of clear aquamarine waters, his eyes were attracted by something in the distance, a bright image that broke the serene perfection of the forest. Soon he discerned spires, like giant, leafless tree trunks jutting high from a vast clearing. These towers were made of metal and shiny crystal, and it was the reflection of sunlight from these surfaces that had first drawn his eye.

Closer still, Darlantan saw that many elves labored in this clearing, bustling like ants with blocks of stone, sluices of water, and panels of glimmering metal or clear crystal. Only as he saw other elves working at the forest’s edge with axe and chisel did he perceive the whole truth: The elves had created this clearing on purpose and were actively removing a great swath of formerly pastoral woodland.

Indeed, much had already been changed. Darlantan flew low, ignoring the waves of welcome from elven watchmen, gliding over an expanse of carefully formed ponds and bright gardens scored by paths of crushed white marble. Figures walked along these paths or gathered in sheltered groves around ponds and fountains, and the silver dragon knew instinctively that he would find Aurican here.

Settling to the ground on one of the few patches of grass broad enough to accommodate his arching wings, Darlantan lifted his head above the surrounding greenery.

“Hello, my silver friend. The elves wish to thank you for sparing their flowers.”

The figure of a tall, golden-haired elven patriarch emerged from a nearby bower, striding toward Darlantan with long, graceful steps. In his hands, the elf held a large emerald, passing the stone back and forth with smooth, well-practiced gestures. Though his eyebrows were the snowy white of an elder’s, his face scored by the lines of many centuries of life, Dar knew this was not an aged elf – indeed, it was not an elf at all.

“Greetings, Aurican. It is not hard to find the tribe now that they have smashed such a spread of forest.”

“It is already a wonder, is it not?” asked Auri, gesturing with both hands to the gardens, the vista of lakes and swans and fountains. “Perhaps you would find a smaller form more comfortable while you have a look around.”

Darlantan agreed his real body would be a liability here, and so he smoothly shifted into his favored alternate guise, the bearded elder he had selected for his first shapeshifting.

Aurican led his kinsman through a bower of roses, where another elf, tall and elegantly clad in golden robes, rose to meet them.

“Welcome, Darlantan,” declared the serene patriarch, with a dignified bow.

“I thank you, Silvanos.”

“He is the architect of this great project,” Aurican said. “The elf who has brought his people together under one clan … and now would create a city as a proper holding for that clan.”

“You do me great honor, Auri,” declared the handsome elf, startling the silver dragon with the familiar nickname. “As you do, Darlantan. It is a rare privilege to entertain you as our guest.”

“Thank you,” replied Dar, nodding with the bearded sage’s head. “Your transformation is extensive and … remarkable.” Patersmith had trained him well. He wouldn’t allow himself to be rude. Still, he found himself wondering at the vast scope of the construction. Why did these elves find it necessary, and why did Aurican seem to like it so much?

The silver dragon in the guise of the sage allowed himself to be shown the network of gardens. He accepted an invitation to dinner and enjoyed the finest feast of his life in a grand outdoor pavilion. Succulent roasts of meat were accompanied by breads and cheese, fruits and wines and puddings, until even the hungriest of the guests, which arguably was Darlantan, had been fully sated.

“Have you been to see the grotto recently?” asked Aurican, leaning back easily as the guests relaxed after the meal.

“It has been many winters,” admitted the silver dragon through the sage’s whiskers.

“For me as well,” Auri said dreamily. “But I will go to see Patersmith … soon.”

“That is a good idea,” declared Darlantan, touched by a surprising wave of melancholy. “He has the females to keep him company, but I suspect he misses us.”

“Yes … and there are changes, things occurring in Krynn, that I must bring to his attention.”

Darlantan was about to ask what his Kin-dragon meant when a trill of flute music wafted through the pavilion. Aurican’s elven eyelids closed, and the music so clearly pleased him that Dar found it impossible to interrupt his nestmate’s contentment. Later, elven dancers enacted a graceful epic beneath a canopy of stars, and finally, around midnight, the balladeers began their interminable labors. Strings were tuned, and flutes chirped their light and airy notes in a growing melody of joyous music.

Aurican had already risen, his eyes fixed upon a chorus of male elves. The emerald he had been holding floated in the air, trailing after him as the gold dragon stepped precisely toward the gathered musicians. “I … I must join them,” he declared absently as Darlantan stood at his side.

“I understand,” the silver serpent replied to his ancient nestmate. “But you will understand, too, that it is time for me to depart.”

The lyrics of the song had barely passed into their second verse by the time the body of the elder sage had carried Darlantan to the edge of the grove. Stepping into the middle of a large, grassy swath, he suddenly shimmered as starlight reflected in dazzling array from his silver wings, his cold and gleaming scales. And then he was in the air, leaving the swath of the city behind, a wound that was at last masked by a bandage of distance.

For many seasons, he flew aimlessly, following the great woodlands toward the foothills of the Khalkists. Where the plains began, he saw the distant blot on the horizon of a great, sprawling city, a place far larger than Silvanos’s gathering of his clans. He had heard Smelt speak of this place, calling it Xak Tsaroth, and he had no desire to fly closer to it. Let the brass dragon serve as ambassador to man.

He skirted to the east, flying above the snow-frosted foothills of the Khalkists. Finally he came to one of his favorite places, a high mountain far to the south of the smoking heartland of the range. Upon this peak, Darlantan came to rest. He crouched on the shoulder of the lofty summit, eyes staring across the realms to the south. Soon he saw that which he sought: the wild elf Kagonos, alone, away from his people, running on one of his pathfinding treks, which often lasted for many days.

The warrior was painted with swirls of dark ink. His black hair trailed in a long braid, and he was naked and unarmed. Yet there was a lethal capability in his gait, in the calm assurance with which he crossed precipitous heights and trotted down loose, slippery, shale that belied his apparent helplessness. At his side, he bore the ram’s horn, twin to the instrument hanging on Darlantan’s silver chain.

Atop a nearby lower summit, the brave halted. The wind whipped his hair to the side as he stared at the mighty dragon, locking eyes with Darlantan for many long heartbeats. And then the Elderwild elf was gone, trotting around the shoulder of the mountain, following his private path as he worked his way through these lofty reaches.

Farther down, at the foot of the massif, Darlantan could see the clans of the wild elves in their great Gathering. The tribe’s encampment filled the sheltered swale of a small, well-watered valley. Just beyond were the pristine forests of the great wilderness.

Darlantan was already restless. He trotted around the slopes of the great mountain, easily picking his way over steep cliffs and loose rock piles. Soon he came into view of the northern Khalkists, a reach of looming peaks and deep, shadowy valleys. The horizon there seemed always masked by a haze of smoke, which originated from fires within some of the mountains themselves. It was a place that had always intrigued the mighty silver dragon, but he had never explored it.

Nor did he feel that inclination now. Still not sure where he would fly, he eased forward and jumped from the ridge. As his wings spread, scooping into the air, he noticed movement close beside the foot of this mountain.

Gliding downward, he discerned a file of monstrous warriors skulking through a shadowy defile. The dragon quickly came to rest behind a ridge, cautiously raising his head for a look. He saw the hulking physiques, the hunched posture of these warriors, and though he had never seen their like before, he knew they could be only one thing.

Ogres.

In the next instant, he studied the direction followed by the monstrous band and realized that if they continued to circle around the base of the mountain, the ogres would be able to fall upon the Gathering of the Elderwild from above.

Now the silver dragon took to the air and spread his shimmering wings, great leathery sails so broad that they cast the gorge occupied by the ogre raiding party into shadows. One of the brutes, a great, tusked bull at the head of the file, pointed upward and bellowed, waving a large feather-draped staff. Others threw stones that sailed past the gliding dragon or bounced harmlessly off his silver scales. Darlantan looped back, seeing that the ogres were all within the deep ravine. The walls might have kept them safe from observation, he reflected grimly, but now the confining barrier would prove to be the ogres’ undoing.

Darlantan’s breath exploded as a blast of deadly frost, an eruption of ice that billowed through the gorge, rebounding from the enclosing walls to fill the entire length of the ravine. Icicles formed instantly on the stone walls, and the roaring of dragonbreath was matched by a chorus of wails, shouts, and howls – the cries of the dying ogres ringing upward from the rock-lined channel.

He swept past again, once more spewing his deadly frost against the ogre column, this time concentrating the attack against the front of the band, where he had spotted several stragglers trying to crawl away. The explosive chill once more filled the trough of the ravine, penetrating into the cracks and crannies where desperate ogres had sought shelter.

Quickly the mountain winds blew the frost away, revealing a pathway littered with dead, frozen ogres. The entire column was slain, the brutish warriors cast about on the ground, some stiffened as they tried to climb to safety, others huddled in bundles of miserable terror. All of the corpses were draped by the heavy cake of frost, leaving a landscape of lifelike creatures that were all clearly dead.

This was different killing, Darlantan realized as he flew across the plains toward the Kharolis Mountains. The slaying of the ogres was very unlike the taking of an elk or a deer; it was even a distinct change from the violence he had directed against an occasional rogue griffon who didn’t show proper respect for a dragon’s prey. This was very serious business, he realized, as it dawned on him that he was battling creatures who were fully capable of killing him in return.

The sensation was not unpleasant. In fact, the silver dragon knew he had done the right thing. It gladdened his heart that his might could be used for such a cause. Mercy, after all, must be tempered by strength.

Gliding onward, he toyed with the idea of looking for more ogres, of perhaps striking dead another war party of these brutish creatures. Certainly he knew they were the enemies of the elves, and it pleased him to do things that were of service – at least, to the Elderwild.

Ultimately he decided against that course. His wings tilted, carrying him back to the wide plain. For a while, he drifted dreamily, riding updrafts like a lazy condor, working his wings only when the air grew still.

But a focus quickly took shape in his mind, and he realized it was time to go to see Patersmith.

CHAPTER 7

A FAREWELL

(3532 PC)

The high Kharolis was in the full vibrancy of late spring. Streams gushed through valleys and canyons, and swaths of green extended upward, encroaching on terrain revealed by melting snowfields. As always, the heights dazzled and inspired Darlantan as he winged his way toward the grotto.

A flash of metallic scales, gleaming brown, attracted the silver dragon’s attention to a deep gorge. Tucking his wings, he dived and swiftly banked around a cliff to see a slender copper shape winging rapidly away. Blayze flew low, following the course of the canyon. The copper dragon cast a quick glance behind him, saw Darlantan, and swept into an immediate dive.

The silver came after him, driving his wings hard, anxious to talk to his nestmate. Many hundreds of winters had passed since last these two ancient beings had exchanged a word, and Darlantan felt a strong urge to bring that stretch to an end.

“Blayze – wait!” he called when another bend in the canyon brought his cousin into view.

With a slashing turn, far tighter than Darlantan could have made, the supple copper dragon banked around and came to rest on a ledge of the canyon wall. Spitting in frustration, Darlantan settled on a nearby knob, a perch much too small for his giant body. Wings flapping, foreclaws clutching at rocks as they crumbled under his grip, Darlantan confronted Blayze.

The copper stared back, wings spread wide, neck outstretched. He hissed loudly, but Dar was relieved that his nestmate at least held his corrosive acid breath in check.

“I mean you no harm. I want to talk to you … to ask if you’re going to see Patersmith,” the silver dragon grunted, still trying to hold his balance. With a mutter of frustration, he changed shape, sitting easily in the body of the ancient sage.

“I see your big body has grown too clumsy for you!” sneered Blayze, flexing his wings arrogantly. “Now I could knock you off there with one claw!”

“But why?” Darlantan countered. He was tempted to point out that this frail-looking body was every bit as strong as his dragon form. Instead, he held his tongue, knowing his purpose was not to argue.

“I would kill you to spare my treasures, to keep your plundering claws from my lair!”

“I care nothing for your treasure! And I don’t know where your lair is!”

“For hundreds of winters, I have gathered wealth there – baubles and metals and trinkets I have taken from ogres, from the lizard people, even from rich humans, the fools who prey on their own kind. Now the treasures are mine!”

“And yours they shall remain,” Darlantan said gently. “But I’m going to see our old teacher, and Aurican is, too. All I wanted to do was talk, to invite you to come with us.”

The stiff copper wings relaxed slightly. “It … it has been a very long time … since I have visited the grotto and our tutor.”

“Then come with me!”

For a moment, Darlantan thought Blayze would fly away. The copper lifted his serpentine neck, looking into the distance. Then he sighed and lowered his head.

“Very well. It’s true that I miss our teacher’s company … and yours as well, my kin-dragon,” he admitted.

For the first time in centuries, the nestmates flew side by side, steady wing strokes bearing them to the Valley of Paladine and into the shadowy cavern. As Darlantan led Blayze through the long tunnel leading into the cavern of the lake and the sacred grotto, he sensed another serpentine form in the darkness before him. A sniff confirmed the acrid scent of well-burned soot, and he knew he followed in the wake of Burll. By the time the three metal dragons winged their way over the lake, they caught Aurican, also in flight, and moments later they met Smelt, the brass having just landed at the ledge leading to the grotto’s entryway.

Upon entering, they found the females already gathered, the aged tutor standing dotingly over the huge basket of the nest. Though several of these dragons hadn’t been here for centuries, there was no great ceremony to mark their arrival.

“These are your eggs,” Patersmith explained as Aurican, Darlantan, Smelt, and the other males gathered around the gem-studded nest in the grotto. The mighty wyrms of metal, long necks arched high, stared in awe at the glittering array of perfect baubles lining the sacred bowl.

Darlantan saw numerous orbs of silver, and only then did his eyes go to Kenta, who, along with the other females, coiled regally across the mossy cushion of the grotto’s floor. She was uninterested in meeting his gaze, holding her attention instead upon the tutor and the nest that had somehow become full of eggs.

Now Patersmith lectured in his most sonorous tones, and out of old habit, Darlantan paid full attention to his mentor.

“You must guard them well. This is the sacred trust of every metal dragon. You are serpents of Paladine, and as such, these are your treasured artifacts. They represent your future and give proof to your past.”

“There are so many of them,” Auri declared in awe. “Our numbers shall grow.”

“It is the Platinum Father’s wish that your descendants should populate Krynn, should make this a world of halcyon peace, of celebrated beauty, goodness, and high learning beyond compare. No task is more important than that you guard them well and protect these eggs against any danger.”

At Patersmith’s words, Darlantan suddenly remembered his frosty blast when he slayed the multitude of ogres.

“Are they safe here?” he asked, raising his silver head to regard the tutor.

“Their mothers will remain here until the eggs have hatched,” Patersmith explained. “They will be as well protected as anything on Krynn.”

“And you … you will be here as well?” asked Aurican, his gilded brow furrowing with concern. “You will remain with our precious eggs?”

“Alas, that is not to be,” declared the bewhiskered tutor. For the first time, Dar noticed that Patersmith had somehow grown very, very old. His whiskers were white as snow, his posture stooped and frail.

“You are going away?” asked Darlantan, while the other males lifted their heads in mute question.

“In a sense, yes … yes, I am. My journey will not be a physical one. To you, my sons and daughters, I will appear to sleep. And my sojourn shall indeed be restful, if good fortune will only follow me.”

Darlantan was seized by a startlingly strong emotion, a tug of melancholy that seemed quite out of place in his massive, powerful self. He knew he would miss the aged tutor, and though his visits to the grotto had been rare in recent centuries, he found it difficult to imagine a life without the sage’s patient insight and wise counsel.

“But what of us?” asked Aurican, his deep voice rising in a plaintive question. “While our sisters guard the eggs, what would you have us do?”

“Ah, Auri,” chuckled Patersmith. “Here is where your brother Darlantan’s wisdom may even have exceeded your own, for he has always understood that you should not do the things that I would have you do, but that you would do for yourself.”

The silver dragon tried to speak but found that his throat was thickened in an awkward fashion. He couldn’t shape the words, couldn’t even think of what to say.

Patersmith came to stand before Smelt, reaching up to stroke the brass scales of his neck. “You always understood me,” the old tutor declared. “Of all your nestmates, you have best learned the value of mercy and of friendship. Go back to your humans, my chatty one, and lead them in the ways of wisdom and goodness.”

Next he came to Blayze, whose copper head drooped sadly in the face of the smith’s departure. “Mind that temper, my quick one. But do not vanquish it entirely, for it is a force that lies at the heart of your clan’s might. All of you could learn something from Blayze, for there may come a time when you need to fight. Then you shall find that anger can be a useful force, a thing that can enhance your strength and even overawe your enemies.”

Patersmith chuckled. “Our copper nestmate has only to learn to wait for that time,” he concluded gently.

“And Burll, my mighty one. Know that your strength is as the bedrock of the world, an underlying force upon which the dragons of Paladine can always depend. Do not think too hard, for you are a doer of deeds, not a philosopher.”

Next the bearded elder came to Darlantan. He placed a weathered hand on the shoulder of silver scales, blinking back at the moisture that began to form in the watery old eyes.

“And Darlantan, my silver pride … you are the one who best knows the world as it was meant to be. You will see what must be done and do it. With your strength, there is hope that goodness may stand for many ages. And never forget the pure joy of flight.”

The tutor’s words moved the silver dragon, but already Patersmith had moved on to Aurican, the last of his hatchlings to say farewell.

“We owe you much, our teacher,” murmured the gold dragon. Aurican had picked up a diamond from the nest, clutching it in his foreclaw as he gently nuzzled the sage’s beard. Darlantan hung his head low, but couldn’t help listening to the exchange.

“Hold your gems, my golden one. Share them well, for those stones may become the proof of your life, even the hope of the world. And your songs, too, are ballads that will endure.”

“I would like you to carry this on your journey,” Aurican said softly. He extended a golden forepaw, in the clasp of which he held a bright diamond. When he pulled his claws away, the stone floated in the air. “It is all the magic I have been able to work.”

Patersmith took the stone, blinking back the moisture of his emotion. “Hold your faith, my golden one. You may find the means of greater power yet. I only regret that I shall not be here to share in your triumph.”

Finally Patersmith laid himself upon a bier of fine stones in the rear of the sacred cave. He settled back peacefully, clasping his hands over his chest while his eyelids drooped shut. With a deep, shuddering sigh, he went to sleep. Then, as the thirteen dragons watched with breath held in check, the frail and weathered body slowly faded from sight until it had completely disappeared.

CHAPTER 8

RISING FURY

(3493 PC)

The ogres gathered in a mighty throng around their mistress, shouting, roaring, and cheering in a monstrous din. The stomping of their feet shook the ground as greatly as did the rumbles of the nearby volcanoes. Accolades and battle cries rang through the night in a rising tide of martial thunder. Hulking Blacktusk, the battle chieftain who was descended directly from Ironfist himself, led the hailing of their mistress’s name, of her power and her might.

Crematia coiled in their midst, her crimson neck and head rising high into the air. The dragon’s serpentine tail snaked through the legs of a massive bull ogre, and a dozen more of the brutes, clad in armor of stiffened leather studded with bronze spikes, stood arrayed in a stance of honor around her. They were armed with swords and held these weapons high, allowing the red dragon to temper the keen edges with a great explosion of her flaming breath.

Beyond the elite bodyguards were thousands more of the burly tusked warriors. Great knobbed clubs waved through the air like a sea of grass flowing back and forth in the currents of the wind. Numerous chieftains were bedecked in feathers and ornaments of gold. Instead of crude clubs, many of these leaders brandished long swords or axes with blades of jagged-edged bronze. They all thronged forward, praising their leader, sharing in the glory of her presence while they displayed their bravery and devotion.

“You are brave, my ogres!” crowed the red dragon, and a roaring chorus of approbation rose from the gathered throng. “And soon you shall vent your courage against the legions of our Dark Lady’s enemies!”

The shouts rose to a thunderous crescendo, resounding from the high stone walls of the barren valley. Crematia allowed her leathery eyelids to droop lazily as she swept her gaze over the frenzied, noisy mob. Ogre skin was slicked with sweat, and tiny eyes gleamed furiously from many a flat-skulled face. She saw the spittle dripping from tusks, heard the pure hatred in so many of those lusty shouts.

In the center of the throng, a huge fire blazed upward, spilling a wash of bright light through the deep canyon. The black, smoky skies of the Khalkists glowered overhead as a pile of whole pine trunks crackled and flared with greedy flames. Fiery tendrils roared eagerly upward, as if they would challenge the sun with their heat and brightness.

As encouraging to Crematia as the frenzy of her own tribe was the fact that similar gatherings were occurring in other valleys throughout the Khalkist Range. The dragon clans of blue, black, white, and green had each claimed realms in the mountains and foothills. Her cousins were more numerous, of course, a dozen or more of each color to her solitary crimson presence. Yet still she was acknowledged as their lord, for she alone had received the blessing of the Dark Lady herself.

So it was only appropriate that none of those other ogre bands was quite so large, nor were any of their dragon masters her equal in size, sorcery, or savagery. It pleased her to know this legion was but the vanguard of a mighty force that in time would sweep across Ansalon and spread the yoke of the Dark Queen’s rule to all corners of the world.

And at last that time had come.

“Blacktusk,” she growled in a rumbling purr. Her word settled the roaring and pulled the attention of the massive bull ogre to the red serpent coiled on the high rock.

“I am your slave, mistress!” cried that brute, whose maw was distinguished by a single, upward-jutting fang, an ivory tusk dark and discolored enough to have given the mighty chieftain his name.

“Tell me what the scouts have reported,” demanded Crematia.

“The elves of the woodlands have spread throughout the forestlands of Ansalon,” growled the hulking brute. “While we have been busy slaughtering and enslaving the humans on the plains, their long-lived allies have been establishing strong footholds to the south.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“My crimson lady, barely two moons ago an entire war party, commanded by my own brother, Fire-eye, was destroyed by ice magic as it circled the southern mountain. From this we have learned that the elves possess the power of sorcery, the power the humans have told us has been lost for ages.”

“I know this tale,” Crematia said slowly. Her hooded eyes narrowed still further as she considered the disturbing implications. “Yet the skill of your Painmasters is sufficient to insure that your human slaves are not lying, is it not?”

“Aye, mistress. My torturers possess exquisite abilities. I believe these humans spoke the truth as they knew it, up until the time their tongues were ripped from their mouths. They believe that magic is gone from Krynn.”

“So if the elves possess magic, they have kept it secret from their allies?”

“Well … we know that the alliance between humans and elves is tenuous at best. Would it not be natural for such a mighty truth to remain concealed from the short-lived, irresponsible men?”

“That is one possibility,” the red dragon agreed.

Privately, she placed more credence in another theory. After all, she and her chromatic kin-dragons had been granted magic in the Abyss by the Queen of Darkness herself. Crematia was fairly certain that the elves had not, in fact, discovered a way to bring magic back to Krynn on their own. She knew it was far more likely that the icy attack had a different origin, and it was one the nature of which her ogres did not as yet need to know.

“Do you have prisoners?”

Blacktusk nodded. “Bring out the elves!” he roared.

Immediately strapping ogres rolled away a rock that had been placed to block the mouth of a small cave. A hulking warrior seized a chain and pulled forth a trio of golden-haired figures – elven warriors, unarmed but still clad in their supple chain mail. The tallest of these stepped before the others, who were obviously younger and very frightened. But the leader crossed his arms over his chest and glared defiantly up at the dragon.

“Shall I show mercy?” Crematia brayed the question so it could be heard by her entire gathered horde.

“Mercy is weakness!” The cry came back as a resounding chant, echoing from the mountain walls, thundering through the valley. “And weakness is death!”

Crematia’s blast of fire exploded outward, engulfing the elves as the roar of the conflagration drowned out the echoes of the chant. By the time the oily flames had dispersed, the place where the three elves had died was marked only by a few cinders. Even these tumbled and drifted away, carried away by a light wind.

“When you sweep upon the elves, you shall have the aid of my dragonfire – and, too, of the ice and acid, the lightning and toxins, of my cousins. Even the mightiest elven warrior will be unable to face us!”

Once again the cheers rang out, reflected along with the torchlight from the high walls of the gorge, until the entire deep chasm resounded with thunderous shouts and flaring, surging flames. The bonfire surged higher as ogres threw dried pine trunks onto the mound of coals, and these timbers were quickly engulfed by renewed flames.

“Soon we march!” bellowed Crematia. “But before then, we feast!”

Now the roars swelled into a cheer, raucous shouts whooping upward, echoing from the high walls. A file of naked humans, linked by heavy bronze chains, was led into the chasm. Wailing and crying, cringing from the brutes roaring and slavering on every side, the hapless prisoners were dragged into the very center of the throng.

“Let the feasting commence!” crowed the red dragon.

Immediately the ogres surged toward the captives, burying the humans in a throng of heaving, burly bodies. Screams rose to hysteria, then swiftly faded. There had been nearly a hundred of the human sacrifices, so Crematia knew the feasting would continue for some time.

She herself had little interest in the gory proceedings. Instead, she launched into the air, flying above the throng, winging her way upward until she circled out of the gorge and flew among the lofty peaks that cast the canyon into an eternal shadow.

On a high ledge of a mountain she came to rest, tucking her wings and passing into a shadowy alcove. She inspected the surface of the stone, seeing only her own footprints in the soot she had scattered there. That was as it should be, since no other creature would even know that the level surface was here. Crematia’s magic had concealed the entrance, causing it to blend in with the surrounding cliff so perfectly that even a passing eagle wouldn’t be aware the place offered the possibility of a perch.

Probing inward with her head, Crematia quickly found the wall of stone across the narrow passage. Like the soot, this barrier was undisturbed. A single word blinked the magical barrier out of existence, and now the red dragon crept into a cavernous space deeper within the mountain. The familiar odor of magma was a refreshing balm, and she recognized the reptilian hint in the scent that was suggestive of her own spoor.

Twin pools of lava flared and bubbled, one each at opposite edges of the vaguely oval chamber. A stream of liquid rock, glowing bright yellow at the top and cooling to muted crimson near the bottom, spilled from a chute on the far wall, gathering in a trough that divided the stream and carried it to each of the two pools. Lava and flame cast the entire chamber in a glare of muted orange, accented by brighter swaths of red near the flowing rock itself.

The light of the fires was reflected in a multitude of gold and silver surfaces, coins and platters and statues that were scattered across the cavern floor. Among these treasures winked many a gem, viridescent emerald vying with scarlet ruby, both fading in the shadow of sparkling diamonds. These were the precious baubles she had brought from all corners of the Khalkists – or, more accurately, that the ogres had brought her in response to her demands.

But the true beauty of the cave lay in the nest, the basket of bones Crematia had woven with such care. It lay upon a large knob of dark rock, fully encircled by the streams of flowing lava. The red dragon stepped over that obstacle and climbed to the nest, her head soon rising above the upper rim, which was formed entirely of the staring skulls of human captives taken by the ogres and offered to Crematia in sacrifice.

She counted them, all thirteen of the crimson orbs, sleek and perfect, unblemished by any sign of cracking or discoloration.

“Be patient, my wyrmlings,” she whispered, her long tongue slipping forth to stroke lovingly over each scarlet surface. “You will grow stronger for many years, but you are safe here. Know that your mother shall bring you into a world where your clan is master of all.”

Only then did she turn, restoring the wall of stone with a casting of her magic. Finally she wove a greater spell, insuring that the illusion continued to mask the outside of the lair. With her wings spread wide into the night sky, Crematia took to the air, ready to lead her armies southward, toward the lands of the elves.

CHAPTER 9

FIRST WAR

(3489 PC)

“Join me in a flight to the southern forests … and together we shall see the new wonders raised by House Silvanos,” urged Aurican.

“Ah, the elves,” said Smelt quickly. “I haven’t visited among them for a long time. I will come.”

“I have a lair to tend,” Burll growled, shaking his head while Blayze looked around suspiciously, as though he thought his treasures were in danger that very moment.

The five male dragons were coiled atop the crest of the High Kharolis, each claiming one of a series of closely gathered peaks. The windless weather, and the fact that an overcast of gray clouds lurked not very far overhead, allowed them to converse with ease. They had spent a period of reflection and contemplation following the departure of their mentor, until the females had begun to make it clear that it was time for their mates to depart the grotto.

Darlantan had heard his brother’s words, but his own heart was lingering toward the eastern wilds – a place of no cities, nothing but wilderness and plentiful prey.

“Even you, Darlantan …” It was as if Auri were reading his silver kin’s mind. “Though we have only been in the grotto for a short time, you’ll be amazed to see what these elves can accomplish in the space of a dozen winters!”

“I can fully imagine,” declared Darlantan sourly, picturing how much of the woodland might have been flattened by now. He had never found a proper answer to the question of why the elves cloistered themselves so readily in that silent, aloof city?

Still, after this long period among his nestmates, he was not quite ready to vanish by himself, so he consented to join the flight. Even Burll and Blayze seemed to have some lingering need for communion, and in the end, five metal dragons took to the air, riding the high currents, coursing through empty skies. They were lords of air and land, following a leisurely course that gave them much time for hunting and for resting in pleasant bowers and shaded valleys.

Yet as they drew southward, Darlantan sensed an increasing urgency in Aurican’s manner. The gold dragon resisted a suggestion that the flying nestmates spend a day lolling beside a perfect mountain hot spring, and when the others grudgingly took wing, he led them on with unseemly haste.

“What’s your hurry, my cousin?” asked the silver dragon, straining to keep up with the fast-flying gold.

“Don’t you smell it?” asked Auri, speaking through taut jaws as he maintained his streamlined flight.

And then Darlantan did notice the taint of soot and char, a bleak hint of smell rising from an expanse that appeared to be lush forest. The odor was out of place here, strange and menacing, with evil portent, though the woodland below still appeared pristine and undisturbed.

But as they flew on, this notion was proved to be a cruel deception. They saw one clearing that was utterly black, smelling of ash, and they knew that a great fire had raged there. Soon they passed over more such swaths of destruction, and when they reached the broad river that intersected these woodlands, Aurican uttered a groan of pure, heartbreaking dismay.

Darlantan swept low over waters he remembered as crystalline and pure, which had once flowed over a bed of pristine gravel. Now the surface was a scum of mud and grime, with blackened timbers floating everywhere. More than once he saw a body, bloated by decay but still draped with the long golden hair of an elf.

Farther they flew, and now the destruction was more common than the undisturbed forests. A great landscape had burned, and the blackened trunks jutted from the charred ground in a mocking remembrance of the verdant carpet that once had blanketed the ground. Once-green trees were scarred and scorched, leaves withered away. In places, even mighty trunks had been smashed to the ground by unimaginable force.

Then Aurican uttered a strangled wail, and Darlantan saw what was left of the domes and towers that had distinguished Silvanos’s once-splendid city. The spires of crystal had been smashed, their circular bases jutting from the ruins like broken bottles. Finally the anguished gold dragon banked, swooping low, coming to rest in the midst of a broad, dust-blown square of bare dirt. The other four serpents silently accompanied their mighty brother, each of them looking around grimly, formulating images and speculation about the cause of the destruction.

Aurican padded away, shifting shape almost absently into the body of the lean, elderly elven sage he had so frequently favored. Darlantan came behind, stalking like a prowling cat in the silvery serpent that was his natural form. Only as Auri knelt beside a charred object, brushing away the soot to reveal a portion of a white marble bust and its cracked supporting pillar, did Dar realize that they were in the elegant garden his brother had shown him before.

And even with that memory, the place was unrecognizable. Only when the silver dragon stepped into a murky pit of mud did he realize that one of the elegant fountains had been filled with ashes and dirt. Shaking his foot, flicking the sticky goo from his talons, Dar followed the shambling form of Aurican through the ruins.

In one place, the frail figure who was the gold dragon scratched at the ground, clearing away muck to reveal a slab of white stone. Without visible effort, the elf’s body lifted the object back onto a pair of pedestals that stood nearby, restoring a once-elegant bench. Only when he saw the stubs of the rosebushes jutting upward from the soot, forming a perfect ring, did Darlantan realize that this had been the sheltered nook where he had been welcomed by Silvanos.

For the first time, he wondered about that elven leader, and it was a startling thought: Where were all the elves? There were some bodies here, true, but not nearly enough to account for the city’s population. Had they escaped into what remained of the forests? Or had they been hauled into captivity, perhaps slavery, by the invaders?

And that led to the natural consideration of who, or what, had done this, and here Darlantan had some specific ideas. He was tired of mourning, of probing through the wrack and ruin, and he decided that it was time to talk to Aurican. He found his brother, still in elven form, slumped over a splintered frame of wood entangled with slender wires. Aurican was weeping, tears streaking down the skin of his elven face. He looked up as the mighty silver dragon loomed over him, but his eyes remained distant and unfocused.

“This was a harp, Dar … it could make music sweet enough to break your heart. And now it’s smashed … like this whole place, this whole people, smashed!” Auri collapsed, burying his face in his hands as his shoulders shook with the convulsive force of his sobbing.

“Remember, my brother, you are a dragon!” Darlantan insisted forcefully, embarrassed by the wrenching display of emotion. “A mighty gold – patriarch of your clan!”

“And where was I when this was happening!” cried Auri, turning his face to the sky. “Where?”

“Stop it!”

Darlantan reached forward with a great forepaw and swept his brother’s elven form off the ground. He lifted Auri into the air and shook him forcefully. “Who knows, or cares, where you were? You’re here now, and you’ve seen what happened! What are you going to do about it?”

“Put me down.” Aurican’s voice was deadly calm, his face blank of emotion.

Darlantan gingerly set the elven body back on the ground and immediately reared back as he was confronted by a bristling serpent of gold, wings stiff and flapping with menace, lip curled into a fanged sneer. Raising his silver neck in response, Dar met his brother’s furious glare, saw the hatred in the gold dragon’s eyes flare and then, slowly, focus.

Aurican raised his taloned forepaws, revealing that he held several of his baubles, the gemstones he delighted in caressing, infusing them with the minor enchantments that were the limits of his sorcerous power. Now he took these stones, a bright diamond, crimson ruby, scintillating emerald, and smooth jade, and hurled them into the murk of the destruction. When he turned back to Darlantan, his reptilian face was blank of emotion.

“Who has done this?” Auri asked intently, his voice a rumbling growl.

“I have a guess that it was ogres,” Darlantan replied grimly. Burll and Smelt joined them, and he described the large war party that he had destroyed in the southern Khalkists.

“And you think the target of their strike was the Elderwild?” asked Smelt.

“They were on a march to approach the elven camp and fall upon them unawares.” Darlantan remembered the weapons bristling from the belts and fists of the mighty brutes and was more certain than ever that they had been plotting violence against the elves. With that memory came another fear: Had the wild elves suffered the same violence as the house elves of Silvanos? He pictured the serene wilderness with a shudder, wondering how much of it remained.

“I suggest we fly north, toward the Smoking Mountains,” Blayze said, using their old nickname for the volcanic Khalkists. “We will find ogres there, and I am thinking that they will give us answers first, and then perhaps a measure of vengeance.”

“Aye,” growled Smelt, with Burll and Darlantan nodding in grim agreement. All turned their eyes to Aurican, who looked once more across the swath of destruction, then lifted his eyes toward the northern horizon.

“Let us fly, then,” he declared. With regal grace and grim purpose, he took to the air, rising in a powerful downdraft of wind. Golden wings shimmered, shifting with the force of his long strokes, as the mighty serpent pulled himself into the sky.

The others followed, and it was a grim and silent quintet that winged over the wasted forestland. Darlantan flew at Aurican’s right wing, for it was the silver’s memory that guided them toward the realms of the ogres. Smelt, Blayze, and Burll trailed slightly to the rear, a little lower than the leading pair.

Before nightfall, Burll spotted a deer and took the hapless creature in a sudden dive. The group shared the feast and then once more, without speaking, took wing into the darkness. They flew through the following dawn, and still they soared on. Everywhere the wrack of war, the litter of chaos and destruction, had spread through the woods. In some places, the devastation was limited to isolated outposts, but elsewhere it had reduced huge swaths of forestland or meadow into burned char.

Darlantan lost track of the dawns and sunsets, the quickly killed deer or buffalo that sustained them in their steadfast flight. Gradually the ground rippled below them, the forests still claiming the surface of the land, yet yielding to the distinctive texture of hills. And then a range of mountains took shape before them, at first indistinguishable from dark cloud on the horizon, soon growing in definition and relief.

The distant Khalkists were a mass of conical peaks, shrouded by their eternal wreath of smoky cloud. Closer, rising as a lone summit away from the great center of the range, stood a single peak. The pyramidal block of stone lofted above a realm of lakes and woods, and Darlantan remembered the Gathering of the Elderwild he had seen among those pristine waters.

“It was on the other side of this mountain,” he told Aurican.

“Then let us be ready to do battle,” the gold replied with a low growl.

The red dragon appeared with shocking suddenness, a scarlet form that was, in an eyeblink of an instant, just there, hanging in the air, directly in Darlantan’s path. The silver started to twist as his flight took him past the crimson wyrm. He saw the jaws gape and tried to bellow a warning to Burll.

But the first sound was the roar of an infernal furnace. Dar’s head came around in time to see the bronze dragon fly fully into the hellish blossom of the dragonfire. Burll cried out, his wail a piercing, cloud-shaking keen of impossible pain – and then the cruelly burned dragon twisted and shriveled before Darlantan’s horrified eyes. The once-powerful neck tucked and curled, metallic scales burned away to reveal charred and blackened flesh. The two wings of rippling membrane hissed away in an instant, leaving the horribly burned body looking even more unnatural as it tumbled from the dissipating ball of fire.

Now Darlantan’s roar of warning was propelled by pure rage, echoed by the cries of Smelt and Blayze. Aurican, grimly silent, had already curled upward to reverse his course at the vicious red.

And then there were blue dragons there, nearly a dozen of them appearing as shockingly as had the lone red. It’s magic – they’re using sorcery against us! A portion of Dar’s mind shouted the frightening realization even as his body reacted with pure violence.

Jaws gaping, Darlantan blasted the nearest blue dragon, freezing the monster’s wings with the icy onslaught. Shrieking in fury and pain, the azure serpent twisted frantically before tumbling out of the sky. The silver body arrowed forward, crashing into the blue, and Dar bit down hard, snapping the hateful neck.

By then a roaring wave of fire crackled through the air as Smelt blasted his incendiary breath at one of the blues, while his fellow attackers spit crackling spears of lightning. Fire and electricity roared together in convulsive explosions, pounding with sound, quickly dissipating into a lingering aura of smoke. The stench of killing and destruction spread even faster than the visible vapors of lingering dragonbreath.

One of the blues shrieked and fell away, one wing burned off while the other flapped desperately, fruitlessly as the creature plunged to its doom. Even as it dwindled below, the echoes of its dying scream rose from the dusty ground to linger in the air.

But at least three of the lethal lightning blasts had torn into the roaring brass dragon, stilling his valiant maneuvers. Metallic scales flaked into the air as Smelt jerked violently, fatally around. Killed immediately, burned to a blackened corpse, he fell out of the sky with shocking finality.

Aurican swept into the melee with a bellowing cry of fury. His golden jaws spread wide as he spewed a massive fireball, a searing cloud of swirling flames that encompassed two of the blues. Oily fire licked across blue scales, scalding and burning. Both of the monstrous serpents screamed and writhed away. Fatally wounded, they struggled and wailed all the way to the ground far below.

Darlantan drove forward, taking position on Aurican’s flank as the gold plunged after the diving, frantically twisting red. That murderous serpent, a monstrous female, crowed in an exultation of triumph as she banked sharply, driving toward a gap in the looming foothills.

“Kill her!” rasped Aurican as Darlantan, wings scooping great beats out of the air, passed his golden brother, desperately straining for altitude and speed.

The silver pressed onward, pulling to draw within range of their foe’s crimson tail. His belly seethed, ready with a blast of frost, and he intuitively knew that the frigid blast would be deadly to the fire-breathing red. Just a bit closer and she would be his, frozen from the skies by the lethal blast of his icy breath.

But then the hateful serpent was gone – she simply vanished in the air as quickly as she had first appeared. Dar could only hope that she was still there, screened by some sort of invisibility magic. He strained forward, blasting the air with his lethal frost. A moment later he flew through the frigid wake of his own attack to find only empty space. The red had escaped.

Or had she? A cry of alarm pulled the silver dragon around in time to see the savage crimson wyrm land full on the back of Blayze, who strained to keep up a short distance behind Aurican. Her lethal breath surrounded the copper dragon’s head as cruel claws ripped into Blayze’s shoulders and wings. He screamed, twisting desperately to pull free from the inferno, but his scales had been scalded away, his jaws barren of flesh in a blackened, fang-baring snarl.

The red cast the dying copper away with a contemptuous gesture as another blue slashed in. Again lightning flickered in the cloudless sky, tearing into Blayze’s ribs, ripping flesh and scales away in a gory slash. Spiraling lazily, as if he were learning to fly all over again, Blayze whirled downward – but this time he never pulled out of the dive.

Aurican and Darlantan flew at the blue dragon that had delivered the lethal blast. Darlantan’s fury nearly blinded him, but a small portion of his mind reminded him that they were outnumbered, that it was wise to be cautious. Both dragons of metal swept apart as if on an unspoken command, veering out of the blue’s path as a second bolt of lightning hissed through the air between them.

Twisting back, Darlantan drew a deep breath, feeling the surging power of deadly frost fill his chest. His neck darted forward, pointing his head straight at the azure serpent. Argent jaws gaped as the explosion of dragonbreath wracked Darlantan’s body, spuming forward to engulf one side of the Dark Queen’s mighty wyrm.

The combined blasts of gold dragonfire and silver dragon ice pinned the blue in a fatal vise, burning away one wing as the other froze, then snapped into a thousand shards when the shrieking serpent tried to flex the once-powerful limb. The cry took on a piteous keen as the wyrm tumbled away, writhing in pain through the long fall to the ground.

“Flee!” Aurican gasped.

Darlantan was about to whirl around, to seek the red dragon with the last ounce of his vengeful determination. He whipped his head back, seeking some sign of the threat that had brought forth Auri’s desperate command. He saw many targets, great serpents of new colors, black and white and green, sweeping through the sky.

Snarling, Darlantan realized they had no choice. Sweeping into a shallow dive behind Aurican, he cast another glance backward and watched the chromatic shapes dwindle in the distance.

Yet even when they had disappeared from view, he looked around anxiously, wondering where these new and deadly enemies had gone – and when they would be back.

CHAPTER 10

HOPE AND FEAR

(3489 PC)

The treetops of the eastern forest grazed his belly as Darlantan strained for speed, driving his wings with all the power in his mighty shoulders. Beside him, Aurican rushed through the air in a blur of pulsing wings and sparkling metallic scales. The chromatic dragons had been left far behind, though the lingering images and smells and hurts of battle – and the knowledge of their tragic, horrifying defeat – jangled resoundingly in a chorus of grief and shock within Darlantan’s memory.

“We can’t go to the grotto. We don’t dare,” Aurican said, his voice startlingly calm, in contrast to the cacophony of emotions storming through Darlantan’s mind.

“Why?” demanded the silver, until another moment’s thought made clear the danger – to the females, and, more importantly, to their eggs. “Where, then?”

“Let’s find a place to talk. Remember, I’m not one who can fly all night,” replied Aurican.

“Our meeting bluff is nearby,” Dar remembered, recalling a promontory where he and Auri had held several councils with the elves.

The pair of dragons glided silently toward the sunset, looking for the knoll. Everywhere tall pines covered the ground, and though it was a relief to see an area where the terrain had not been scorched, Darlantan was so tired he would have welcomed a swath of devastation just for the chance to land and rest his wings. His side ached where blue dragon lightning had seared the scales from his flesh and cruel claws had torn into his flank. The deep gouges burned with an agony that threatened to drag him down, to fold him into a ball of suffering that would plunge, unlamented, into the tangled foliage below.

Never had he been hurt like this before! Through all the hunting that had marked his life, he had never considered the possibility that, somehow, serious injury could be inflicted upon him, the mighty Darlantan! His memory of the battle was still wrapped in a numbing cloud of disbelief. Perhaps this detachment was a blessing – at least he was able to continue the fast, desperate flight.

But the numbness did not extend to thoughts of his brothers, his ancient nestmates. Darlantan moaned aloud as his mind turned to the speedy Smelt’s last moments, or the horrible barrage of flame that had knocked powerful Burll from the sky. His jaws curled into a snarl, claws clenching unconsciously as he pictured the crimson dragon of the Dark Queen slaying Blayze from behind. With an unconscious growl, he imagined the killing he would work against them … someday.

“Magic … dragons of evil and magic,” mused Aurican. His golden wings stroked easily and gracefully, showing no sign of fatigue as the flight extended through the long hours of the night. “How did these things come to Krynn?”

“Perhaps the dragons have always been here, but they were hiding,” growled Darlantan. “Waiting for the chance to attack.”

“I don’t think so. We have flown this world for thousands of winters. I cannot believe they could have escaped our notice for so long. And remember, it was only their use of spell magic that gave them their first advantage. I think the magic and the chromatic dragons came to Krynn together.”

“A plague on together!” spat Dar. “Unless you know a way that we could steal the magic and kill the wyrms!”

“No … not yet. We must think, plan.”

“A plague on plans as well!” barked Darlantan. “I say we should turn around and attack, take them by surprise.”

“I share your desire for vengeance, Cousin. But we cannot win this fight alone. It is time that we counseled with others.”

“Who?” demanded the silver dragon, but as he spoke he knew: the elves, of course. “We fly to the council knoll, do we not?”

Aurican nodded, straining visibly to lift his head again. Dar’s own wounds pained him, and he knew the long flight was taking its toll upon his kin-dragon.

“But how did they get the magic?”

“It could only have come from a god or gods,” Aurican declared. “The Dark Queen herself must have blessed them with sorcery in some distant place, then released them to carry that power to Krynn!”

“And another plague on how they did it!” snarled Darlantan, his fury at last pulling Aurican’s golden head around. The silver dragon’s pain had faded into the background of his awareness, replaced by a grim fire, an emotion more chilling than any he had ever felt.

He was learning to hate, he knew.

“Beware!” The sound was like the keening cry of an eagle, but Darlantan recognized the word spoken in the language of the griffons. Immediately he banked, and Aurican followed in a lazy spiral over the forest.

“Up there,” the gold dragon said, and his silver cousin angled his head, observing the winged creature diving toward them.

“A scion of Ravenclaw,” Darlantan said as the griffon slowed with a rearing gesture. The massive feathered wings bore the creature easily between the two mighty serpents. “Have a care, my friend. There are new dangers in the skies.”

“This I know, and I have come in turn to warn you. There are two dragons, deep black in color, who have claimed the meeting knoll. They disturbed one of my young a short time ago, when they landed there.”

The pillar of cliff-draped rock was already in view, thrusting upward from the surrounding forest.

“We will kill them!” Dar pledged, his belly tightening at the prospects of revenge.

“But first you must find them, and that is why I warn you. After they landed, they changed … disappeared so that they cannot be seen. But still my nestling could smell them. He knew they were there.”

“Invisibility magic!” hissed the silver dragon, feeling another surge of outrage.

“We will deal with them,” said Aurican. “Of that you may be sure. And thank you for the warning.”

“Be careful!” urged the griffon, banking into a gentle dive. Soon he was a speck fading into the distance.

They approached the craggy knoll of granite, the barren summit perhaps twice as high as the loftiest of the pines. The dragons of Paladine scrutinized the place, seeking some sign of the invisible dragons.

“There, to the left,” murmured Darlantan, indicating a clearing where several saplings had been flattened.

“Right – and there, on the rocks, is the second,” Auri said.

“Where the bushes are crushed,” Darlantan agreed, feeling the killing frost swell in his belly.

Side by side, the two metal dragons winged toward the bluff. Darlantan lowered himself into a gentle glide, as if looking for a good place to land. He marked both dragons, not because he could see them but because their massive bodies had inevitably disturbed the crowded terrain. Nearing the flattened patch of grove, Dar abruptly lashed his head downward, exploding with a blast of surging, churning frost.

The enemy dragon shrilled its pain and fury, and Dar veered away as a fountain of acid exploded from frost-coated jaws. The black dragon, clearly outlined in rime, twisted upward, but the vengeful silver was too fast. Darlantan settled onto the snakelike serpent, crushing with his silver claws, squeezing his powerful jaws over the squirming throat. With a shudder, the black dragon grew still.

Aurican, Darlantan saw, had dispatched his foe with similar quickness. The pair of metal dragons tossed the limp corpses into the forest below and finally settled to rest on the rocky crest, tucking their wings and squatting between rough outcrops. With a shrug, Aurican shifted into his more compact two-legged form, and Darlantan quickly followed.

He found it a relief to tend to some mundane affairs, gathering some brush for a fire while Auri cleared the stones from the area where they had chosen to sleep. Finally they settled before a small blaze, both of them reflecting on the many centuries of their brothers’ lives … and their violent ends. They talked of Burll’s strength, of Smelt’s lightning quickness. Together they imagined the deadly menace that hot-tempered Blayze would have become, should he have survived the first ambush long enough to embark on a quest for vengeance.

“That revenge shall be our task now,” Aurican murmured, still speaking with the serene detachment that, under the circumstances, Darlantan found profoundly disturbing.

“Sssst!” The body of the bearded sage hissed the warning as the silver dragon heard an almost silent footfall from the thicket near the precipitous edge of the knoll.

Darlantan rose to his feet, unafraid. In fact, he almost hoped to see an ogre, or even a dragon, of the Dark Queen burst into view and give him a vent for his fury. He felt a swelling in his human chest, but he resisted the impulse to expand to his full size.

Instead of ogres, a pair of lithe figures emerged from the shadows, moving toward the welcoming warmth of the fire. Only elves could have approached so quietly, and the dragons recognized both of the sylvan visitors. One had hair of harvest-straw gold and was dressed in silken leggings and tunic, while the other was dark-haired, nearly naked, his body covered in swirls of dark war paint. At his side, he bore the horn of a mighty ram. Silvanos and Kagonos advanced and squatted beside the small fire, soaking up the welcome radiance, saying nothing as their ancient friends settled back beside them.

“We grieve for your splendid city,” Aurican said, solemnly addressing the proud Silvanos.

“One of a hundred, a thousand tragedies of a scope too grand to comprehend,” declared the revered leader of the elves. “And in truth, the destruction of buildings and lands and constructs is as nothing compared to the losses of fathers and mothers, sons and sisters, that have ravaged our people since the coming of the dragons.”

Silvanos looked squarely across the fire, meeting the eyes of Auri and Dar as he struggled to blink back tears. His voice, when he spoke, was strangled by a very unelven passion.

“The coming of the ogres was a thing we could fight, and we did – but dragons! By all the gods, when they swept from the sky, breathing lightning and ice, burning acid and deadly poisonous gas, we could only flee to the woods.”

“We are all elves of the forest now,” said Kagonos, furrowing his dark eyebrows. His face and body were painted in the whorls and lines of the inky dye favored by his tribe, and his gray eyes were serious as they regarded the flesh cloaking the two dragons. “We would have warned you of the danger had we received word of your return in time. As it was, by the time the news arrived from the south, you had already been lured into Crematia’s ambush.”

“Ah … a good name for that fiery killer,” Aurican observed, still speaking in the same infuriating tone of detachment. “What about the spell magic that she used? Did this Crematia creature bring it from the Abyss?”

“Aye, my friend,” Silvanos agreed, his golden eyes keen as they studied Aurican. “What does that mean to you?”

“Simply that spell magic resides in the realms of the gods … that if we want to fight the power of sorcery, we shall have to seek powers of our own – powers that come from the gods.”

“But not from the Abyss …” The golden-haired elf spoke with certainty.

“No … no, of course not.” Auri’s manner was breezy.

Silvanos held up a hand. “There are others, perhaps, who can help. Do not be alarmed by their appearance, for they travel under our protection.”

Three elves, a trio of lithe but apparently elderly males, advanced into the clearing. Except for the colors of their robes, which were red, black, and white, respectively, the three might have been mirror images of each other. Each had long hair of iron gray, and they regarded the quartet with dark eyes that flashed with curiosity and something else.

The black-robed elf hung back, his gaze glaring with almost physical brightness, while the two in white and red took hesitant steps forward, bowing, regarding the transformed dragons with inscrutable expressions.

“I present Fayal Padran and Parys Dayl,” murmured Silvanos, indicating the elves in red and white, respectively. The dark-garbed figure in the back stared silently. “And Kayn Wytsnall as well.”

“Welcome to our humble fire,” Dar offered.

“These are elves who would be mages. They have studied the ways of the gods.” Silvanos stood and gestured the trio forward to the fire.

“We have already lived longer than most of our kind,” cautioned red-robed Fayal Padran, raising a hand that was tipped with unusually long, slender fingers.

“How have you done this?” asked Aurican in honest curiosity.

“More pointedly, why are you here?” Darlantan interjected, fearing that his cousin might be about to embark on a long and pointless conversation.

It was Kayn Wytsnall, the elf in black, who replied.

“We are here because we have devoted our lives to the quest for magic – to bring the power of sorcery and spellcasting back to Krynn. Now it would seem that there is magic to be gained, and we have an idea where to look.”

“And where is that?” pressed Aurican excitedly. He felt a strong affinity for these elves who would be wizards, Dar could tell.

“We have assembled the wisest men and elves to help us answer that question.” Parys Dayl took over the explanation. His manner was easy, and the white robe swirled like smoke from his arms as he gestured expansively. “For years, priests have meditated, sages researched. …”

“And you have learned the answer?” Auri probed gently.

“We have learned that we shall have to seek from the gods themselves. But here we are limited, for we cannot look to the Platinum Father, nor the Queen of Darkness. They are the mighty gods who have chosen to withhold magic from the world, and they would be hostile to our pleas.”

“Where, then?” demanded Darlantan.

The white robe replied, directing his dark and intense gaze exclusively at Aurican. “We believe the gods who might be more sympathetic to our … request can be reached, but to do so will require a long flight – a journey into realms beyond our world. That is why Silvanos suggested we speak to you.”

“Yes … perhaps I could carry you. This is a quest I have always longed to undertake.”

“It was our hope that you would feel this way,” Parys Dayl said.

When his cousin turned to regard him, Darlantan had the distinct feeling he was looking into the face of the massive golden serpent, though Auri was still in the form of the elven sage. He knew, too, that Aurican had made up his mind with certain finality.

“We may be gone for a long time. Until we return, the cause of our vengeance will fall to you. Are you prepared?”

For a long time, Darlantan was silent. He wondered, hoped, thought about the future and the past. The silver dragon was ready to carry the war against the serpents of the Dark Queen, and he knew that he could exact revenge.

He was less certain about Aurican’s quest. For all of his life, the gold dragon had spoken of gaining magic, of returning the power of sorcery to the peoples of Krynn. Yet now, when he considered the task, it seemed like an impossible deed. Still, there was the presence of magic in the evil dragons, and suddenly Darlantan could only hope that Aurican and the three brother mages were right: With the help of gods, spell magic could be brought to Krynn.

“Aye, my cousin.”

Darlantan felt a quickening of hope as Aurican once again shimmered and grew, uncoiling across the top of the little knoll. The golden neck lowered, and the three mages climbed aboard, resting securely in the hollow between the gold dragon’s shoulders. With a powerful, graceful leap, Aurican took to the air, and Silvanos, the wild elf, and the silver dragon watched until the fliers had vanished into the gathering dusk.

(Continued in Volume 2)