Sanctuary ee-1 Page 8

  Sahim stepped into the elaborate puddle of his court robes. As he began to dress, he realized Faeterus had gone.

  The room had another door, opposite the one Sahim and the lackey had used, but it was always kept locked. Of course, such impediments meant nothing to Faeterus. Locked doors, thick walls, deep chasms-nothing hindered him. He went where he willed.

  Perhaps he should give Faeterus the task of silencing Minok, Sahim reflected as he settled the crown upon his head again. They both seemed to possess a talent for disappearing into thin air.

  * * * * *

  A blare of brass comets heralded the arrival of the army of the elven nations. Although small advance parties had been in camp for a day, Lord Taranath and the main body now had been sighted. They were mustering at Khurinost’s western edge, where the Speaker waited to welcome them home. A mere shadow of the hosts that once defended Qualinost and guarded the glades of the Speaker of the Stars, the entire army comprised thirty thousand warriors, all mounted. They did not always fight on horseback, but the survival of this slender force depended on mobility; there was no place for slower infantry. The soldiers came from every branch of elven society, from lifelong warriors of Silvanesti’s House Protector to cunning Wilder elves from the forests of Qualinesti.

  Dust-caked from their long, heartbreaking journey the column of mounted elves slowed to a halt when the lead riders spotted the delegation arrayed to greet them. The Speaker, flanked by the Lioness on his right and Lord Morillon Ambrodel on his left, stood at the head of a mixed band of Qualinesti and Silvanesti. Behind them were the eight buglers who contributed the fanfare. Everyone squinted against the terrific glare, despite the sunshade Planchet had erected over the group.

  The army had adopted desert wear over armor; the rays of the sun could cook flesh inside metal in a few hours. Foremost of the warriors was an unusually tail elf wearing a Khurish sun hat. Reining up, he pulled off his gauntlets and hailed the Speaker.

  “Greetings to you, Lord Taranath.” Gilthas extended a hand.

  After clasping hands with his liege, the warrior looked beyond the Speaker to the Lioness. “General, I present the Army of the Elven Nations! You are once more in command,” he said.

  “Well done, Taran,” she said warmly. “How was the journey up the coast?”

  “Damned hot. And not only from the sun.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Twenty-nine killed. Forty-four wounded.”

  “So many?” Gilthas asked. “To what cause?”

  “The usual ones, sire: heat, thirst, dysentery, poisonous bites, and madness, all of which the desert provides in abundance. And one other travail.” Taranath looked grave. “From the Cape of Kenderseen we were dogged for two days by nomads, who sniped at us from the dunes. They were armed with crossbows.”

  Desert tribesmen usually carried short recurved bows, lacking the materials and skill to make crossbows. Taranath’s news caused the Speaker’s entourage to shift and mutter among themselves.

  “Where would nomads get crossbows?” asked Lord Morillon.

  “You know where,” the Lioness hissed. “Neraka!”

  “There’s no proof-”

  “Give me three days and I’ll bring you the proof-nomads and their bows!” she snapped, interrupting the noble.

  None doubted that any nomads the Lioness brought would be dead upon arrival. Although several councilors, including Morillon, were made uncomfortable by her martial fervor, others obviously were not.

  Still, the blazing sands were no place to debate policy. Gilthas ended the discussion by saying, “General Taranath, your Speaker and your people welcome you home. Lady Kerianseray will see you later with new orders. Maintain your normal patrols. The rest of your warriors may stand down. Food and drink await all.”

  Taranath saluted and signaled the column forward. With flankers and scouts on either side, the column extended a mile. It took some time for all the tired, discouraged warriors to file past him, but Gilthas remained where he was, welcoming every rider home. His gesture touched the warriors deeply. Though sweat began to stain his sky-blue robe, and the heavy circlet on his brow bore down hard on his matted hair, Gilthas never faltered, even when some around him swayed on their feet, dizzy from the heat. Each approaching warrior sat a little straighter and held his head a little higher when he saw the Speaker of the Sun and Stars, standing with great dignity to greet them.

  His advisors chafed at the delay. Even the Lioness, proud though she was of her army, felt he was wasting precious time with this display. But not until the last blistered scout had entered the tent city did Gilthas depart. He turned and walked into the dust cloud raised by the passing riders. Kerian spoke again of the need to capture nomads, to obtain proof that their attacks were sponsored by Neraka. This rekindled the argument among Gilthas’s entourage.

  “The situation is most delicate,” Morillon insisted. “We have the Khan’s permission to be here, but if we go about abusing his subjects, we could lose our last safe haven!”

  “You’re the one who’s delicate!” The Lioness coughed against the spreading plume of grit. “Look what happened yesterday-my captain and I set upon in broad daylight! You call this place safe?”

  “A few firebrands. Regrettable, certainly, but-”

  Kerian whirled on him. “Regrettable! Zealots lust for our blood and you call it regrettable!”

  “Calm yourselves” the Speaker said. He did not raise his voice, but it was a command nonetheless. “The best path lies somewhere between the two extremes. We must take care to keep Sahim-Khan friendly, or at least neutral, toward us, but we cannot allow our people to be sniped at and murdered piecemeal.” He halted at the edge of the hodgepodge of tents, adding, “We need alternatives, to this place and to the Khan’s sufferance.”

  His glance at his wife was significant, reminding her of her upcoming mission, to conduct the archivist Favaronas and a small party of scholars to the Valley of the Blue Sands. Kerian was not altogether unhappy with the task. She still felt it nothing more than a kender’s errand, pointless and time-wasting, but at least she would be out doing something. Court life wore on her nerves; added to this now were the convoluted intrigues Gilthas found necessary to deal with the human khan. Better to broil in the desert wastes than languish in Khurinost, strangled by protocol and hamstrung by tortuous diplomacy. The journey at least would provide an opportunity for information gathering.

  As the royal party moved through the narrow lanes, they passed tents with their flaps pinned back to admit any slight breezes. The wire-grass ceiling that covered the passage kept the sun’s broiling light at bay, yet the very closeness of the area served to stifle breath. Despite this discomfort, Gilthas’s steps slowed, awed anew by the ingenuity of his people.

  Tents here had been turned over to workshops, where artisans used age-old skills to fashion metal and stone into objects not only useful but beautiful. Lacking large furnaces and forges, the elves were forced to buy raw materials in the city’s souks. Ingots of crude brass were hammered thin as parchment, to be formed into everything from graceful urns to tiny, delicate earrings. In one shop, bales of silver wire were tightly wound into the bracelets and torques of which Khurs were so fond. One emaciated elf, seated with legs splayed wide on a coarse jute rug, polished a basket of semiprecious stones with a grinding wheel. It was the lapidary’s ingenuity that caught the Speaker’s attention. His tent’s dim interior was brightened by sunlight, brought in by angled mirrors, and his wheel was attached to a small palm frond fan; as the elf toiled, the wheel’s energy also served to cool his brow.

  When the Speaker halted, he and his party interrupted the light that fell upon the lapidary’s busy hands. The thin elf looked Up, and when he saw his visitor, his lined face went slack in shock. He would’ve hurried to his feet, but the Speaker’s raised hand and gentle voice kept him seated. Gilthas moved closer, reaching into the basket of stones and lifting a particularly beautiful amethyst. The deep purple gem was an
inch square, and faceted with undeniable skill, despite the crude tools the lapidary was forced to use.

  He made to return the stone to the basket. The lapidary begged him to keep it. Gilthas would’ve declined, not wishing to decrease the fellow’s income, but Kerian whispered, “Take it, Gil. You’ll disappoint him otherwise.”

  The old elf’s eyes shone with pride as his Speaker thanked him most kindly for the gift. Gilthas’s own eyes were suspiciously bright as he took his leave. Whenever he despaired of the task he faced, he would think of this poor, kind lapidary. What king dared fail such a people as these?

  From outside the lapidary’s rude shelter, Lord Morillon’s prosaic voice ended the poignant interlude. “Before we came, the Khurs did not know how to facet a gem. Now, square-cut stones are popular in all the souks,” he said.

  “Well, that makes the journey here worthwhile,” was Kerian’s acid reply.

  Gilthas said nothing. Fingers clenched around the amethyst gem, he moved on.

  The winding route took him past scores of tents. Some were scarcely larger than the bedroll of their single occupant; others encompassed corridors, and antechambers laid out in considerable complexity. Everyone was hard at work. There was no place for sloth in Khurinost. Every scrap of food and clothing, every mouthful of water, must be purchased from wily traders.

  Again, where one elf-Gilthas this time-saw triumph over adversity and courage in the face of privation, another saw only heartbreak. The Lioness could hardly bear this slow progression through the tent city. The pain that welled within her heart as she looked upon her people’s plight was almost unendurable. Increasingly, she had been dealing with these strong emotions by growing angry. And of late, much of her anger was directed not only at her husband for not doing enough or at the invaders that had driven her people to these straits, but at herself at her failure to best the bull-men and to convince her husband to support another foray against them.

  “What about the documents I brought back from the city?” she asked.

  Her whisper was harsh, louder than Gilthas would’ve liked. With a lowering of his eyes, he directed her to speak more discreetly.

  “Favaronas has had them all day. We dine with him tonight to hear what he has made of them.”

  Gilthas saw that Lord Morillon, who did not know the reason behind the Lioness’s visit to the Temple of Elir-Sana, was watching them closely. The noble had tried to pry the truth of that errand from Gilthas earlier, but without success. It wasn’t that Gilthas didn’t trust Morillon. He simply knew that in matters such as this, where lives hung in the balance, the fewer who knew his plans, the better.

  The sun was low, nearly touching the western dunes, by the time the group arrived at the royal tent complex in the center of camp. The fiery sphere had changed from white-hot to blood-red, tinting the sky the color of polished copper. A rare breeze rolled in from the sea. It swept away the cloud of sand that had been raised by the returning army, as well as the perpetual fog of smoke which hung over Khurinost. Gilthas paused to inhale the refreshing sea air.

  “If that wind would blow this time every day, I could happily stay here.” Alarm showed on every face, and Gilthas couldn’t help but smile. “Don’t worry: we all know how rarely that wind rises.”

  The councilors chuckled at their Speaker’s humor. The Lioness did not. politely, she asked leave to depart, citing her need to go to her warriors. Gilthas assented, telling her he looked forward to their dinner together this evening.

  Soon, the Lioness was back among her exhausted Soldiers. They lived communally in large tents, clustered around the big stonewalled corrals that dotted the elven camp. Kerian busied herself choosing the five hundred who would make the journey north with her. She took hardy scouts and skillful riders rather than the best fighters. She told them little about the mission, the need for circumspection as strongly ingrained in her as in her husband. It wasn’t only fear of Khurish treachery that prompted the Lioness’s caution. Word of what Gilthas hoped to find could easily cause a stampede of desperate elves determined to escape Khurinost for the supposed haven of the fabled valley of mist and fog.

  Taranath and her other officers were naturally curious. They speculated that the Lioness planned to cause trouble for the Knights of Neraka, whose homeland lay just on the other side of the mountains to which they were headed.

  She only wished that were the case. Much as she hated the minotaurs, Kerian reserved a special dark place in her heart for the Knights and their hirelings. They were the enemies of her blood, and she knew how to fight them.

  The attempt to invade Silvanesti had been a grave mistake: she knew that now. Each day that passed with elven lands in the foul grip of their oppressors was pure torment to her, and her impatience had caused the debacle in the south. Wars, she was learning, were not won by dash and fury. The Lioness was practicing patience.

  Even so, Gilthas’s fantasies about Inath-Wakenti were futile. Even if the valley existed and was habitable, it wasn’t their home, she thought. The sacred lands of Silvanos and Kith-Kanan were where the elven race belonged, and nowhere else. The Lioness felt that a better use of her fighting strength would be to mount small raids into the elven homeland, ambushing minotaur patrols, burning their depots, demolishing their bridges, and assassinating their leaders. By such methods she had all but retaken the Qualinesti countryside from the Knights of Neraka, although she was never strong enough to challenge their control of Qualinost, nor to attempt conclusions with the dragon Beryl.

  To her curious officers she said, “The Speaker has a special purpose in sending us north. Fighting is not part of the plan. We’ll be escorting”-she groped for the proper word-”librarians from the royal archives.”

  The warriors were uniformly startled. “Why send you, General? Any competent troop leader could handle such a simple mission,” asked Taranath.

  “I go because my Speaker commands it.”

  They nodded, acknowledging their obedience to their king. Kerian asked Taranath to tell her of the nomad attacks he’d suffered on the way back to Khuri-Khan.

  He and the rest of the army had reached the coast without any problems, he said, thanks to the delaying action staged by the Lioness and her archers. The Qualinesti warrior had hoped his commander would explain how she survived, but she did not. He was too loyal and well-trained to question her about what had happened.

  As the column moved up the coast, they encountered groups of nomads gathering dates and pine nuts from coastal groves. The nomads were driving their rangy cattle and goats to watering holes along the ancient seaside trail used by such herders for centuries. They gave the armed elves a wide berth, and there were no confrontations.

  On the elves’ second day riding up the coast, they noticed mounted humans observing them. Taranath hadn’t paid them much attention at first because they were only a few and they were in front of the column, not behind. He logically assumed any pursuit from the Silvanesti border would appear from behind.

  The first attack came when night fell. Heavy crossbow bolts flickered out of the high dunes on the elves’ right. A few riders and horses were hit. Taranath sent out a patrol. They found no one, but there were plain signs in the sand that half a dozen men with horses had hidden in the dunes.

  This pattern continued through the night and into the following days. Angered by the sniping, Taranath sent more and more flankers to rout out the crossbowmen. All to no avail. It was like chasing smoke. The snipers repeatedly fell back, loosing quarrels at the flankers.

  “If their aim had been better, they could have emptied many saddles,” Taranath said grimly. “As it is, their aim was too high.”

  The Lioness nodded. It was common for novice crossbow- men to overshoot a target. A crossbow lofted its missiles in an arc, unlike the flat flight of an arrow loosed from a bow. Obviously, the nomads weren’t accustomed to the weapon.

  The attacks ended only when the elves came in sight of Khuri-Khan. The elves never got close to the s
nipers, and their own archers never sighted a target long enough to draw a bead.

  “One last thing, General,” Taranath said. “Our foes seemed to be nomads by the way they knew and used the desert, but I believe they came from Khuri-Khan. The tracks from the ambush sites led north, always north; the last sets came directly to the city.”

  That made sense to Kerian. The men who had jumped her and Hytanthas on the Temple Walk were nomads, too, perhaps of the same band who’d harassed Taranath’s column. They obviously were operating out of Khuri-Khan, but why? Nomads regarded cities and their diverse inhabitants with the same suspicion they felt for foreigners like the elves; and Khuri-Khan, as the largest Khurish city, was considered particularly vice-ridden.

  The dinner hour was approaching. Kerian left her loyal officers to return to the Speaker’s tent, and to attend her dinner with Gilthas and his archivist. Departing the officers’ tent, she made a slight detour to visit Eagle Eye in his pen. The griffon had to be confined away from the horses; his presence unnerved them.

  Eagle Eye stood like a statue by his feeding post. His head was hooded like a hunting falcon’s, covered by green felt. This was the best way to keep him peaceful. When agitated, Eagle Eye uttered his shrill, gargling cry, and animals for miles around went into a panic.

  Speaking softly to the creature, Kerian loosened the drawstrings and removed his hood. The griffon’s golden eyes, each as big as a king’s goblet, studied her intently.

  “How are you, my friend?” she said. “Hungry? Of course you are.”

  She went to the far side of the pen, to a darkly stained wooden cask. It smelled strongly of old blood. She pulled out a sheep haunch, none too fresh, just the way the griffon liked it. The scent of blood reached Eagle Eye and he parted his beak, allowing his rod-like tongue to taste the air. His leonine tail twitched back and forth. He chuckled impatiently.

  “Coming, coming,” she said, amused.

  She skewered the haunch on the hook hanging from the top of the feeding post. Eagle Eye waited until she’d stepped clear, then shuffled forward a few steps. He sank his hooked beak into the meat, ripping out a fist-sized bite, which he bolted down without swallowing. Many of her comrades couldn’t bear to watch the griffon eat. Kerian found the process edifying.