Child of the Sword, Book 1 of The Gods Within (44 page)

He turned back toward the forest and nudged
Mortiss forward.

~~~

“I want him dead,” Illalla screamed.

“But what of Sssalula, my lord?” Bayellgae
hissed.

“Salula is dead.”

Valso jumped to his feet. “No,” he shouted.
“That can’t be. No Elhiyne pup has the power to kill Salula.”

Illalla took pleasure in his son’s
discomfort. “This one does.”

Valso shook his head. “That’s just not
possible.”

Illalla smiled. “But it is, for I felt
Salula die myself. And that means the Elhiyne still lives.”

“Then he must die.”

Illalla nodded. “Yes. And soon. That is why
I need someone who is reliable.”

“Sssalula wasss reliable, my lord.”

Illalla paced the length of the tent.
“Salula was reliable only in his cruelty. I need an assassin who
can think.” Illalla abruptly stopped his pacing and looked directly
at Bayellgae. “That is why I have chosen to give the deed to you,
my snake.”

“But I am no assssassssin, my lord.”

“You are whatever I command you to be,
snake.” Illalla’s anger flared visibly and the serpent cringed. But
when Illalla spoke his voice held no anger. “This Elhiyne is a
powerful wizard. Think of the pleasure you will have when you feast
upon his soul. Think of how his power will taste as you devour it.
And think of the agony that will be your punishment if you
refuse.”

“Yesss, massster,” the serpent hissed. Its
tiny wings fluttered for balance as it wove from side to side on
its pedestal. “There will be much pleasssure in thisss tasssk. And
if he isss asss powerful asss you sssay, it will be a joyful death.
And I have nothing to fear, for who can sssurvive the venom of
Bayellgae?”

“Only I,” Illalla said.

“Yesss, my lord. Only you.”

“Go then, snake. Now. Seek out this Elhiyne
lordling wherever he may be and kill him. After he is dead I gave
his body and his power and his soul to you. You may do with them as
you please.”

“Yesss, my lord. Thank you, my lord.”

~~~

Morgin rode west through the forest, though
he was quite lost and had no specific destination in mind. He tried
not to think of his dead comrades, but his mind kept tormenting him
with images of their corpses rotting in the hot sun. He didn’t want
to think of JohnEngine that way, or France, or Tulellcoe. He wanted
just to ride, and not think at all.

The wounds on his arm and thigh proved to be
the source of considerable pain, so his mind was far from thoughts
of the trail when Mortiss chose to stop. The abrupt cessation of
motion, and the impending danger that he sensed, brought him
quickly out of his stupor. But he was groggy, and in pain, and
unable to react quickly. Before he could do more than blink his
eyes a giant of a man, far taller even than Ott the peasant,
stepped calmly into the trail, knocked an arrow into the largest
bow Morgin had ever seen, drew the string taught, and aimed the
arrow’s barbed war point straight at Morgin’s heart. At such a
short distance there was no question of accuracy, and for an
instant Morgin thought he was about to die then and there. But the
bowman didn’t release the arrow, and a soft female voice spoke from
behind Morgin. “Off the horse, boy.”

Morgin hesitated, fearing for an instant
that he had fallen among bandits, and since bandits in these hills
did not like to leave witnesses to tell of their deeds, his best
chance, no matter how slim, might be to run for it.

The giant bowman in front of him shook his
head slowly. “Don’t try it, lad. Just do as she says.”

Morgin looked again at the man. He was a
freak, enormously tall but thin and spindly, with coal black hair
and bone white skin. Not the pinkish skin common in some of the
lighter skinned tribes, but the white of bones long bleached in the
sun. The white face! The black hair! The incredible height! He was
reminded of an expression he’d often heard:
the white face of
the black tribe.
Morgin realized then that the man facing him
was Benesh’ere, a tribesman of the seventh Ward. He should at least
be neutral, and definitely not a bandit.

Morgin dismounted slowly, careful not to
make any quick movements. He faced the bowman and held the empty
palms of both hands outward. “I bear no weapon against you,” he
said.

“Name yourself,” the bowman demanded.

“I am Morgin, once named AethonLaw et
Elhiyne, but no longer.”

The bowman’s face broadened into a smile. He
relaxed the bow string and lowered the arrow. “Well Morgin ye
AethonLaw et Elhiyne,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you. Your—”
Suddenly his eyes widened. “Blesset no.”

The soft voice behind Morgin hissed, “Lying
filthy Decouix!” then struck him between the shoulder blades with
something heavy. The air whooshed from his lungs and he went down
on his hands and knees.

“He’s Elhiyne, girl,” the bowman
shouted.

“Looks like a Decouix to me, Jack.”

“Blesset be still,” a third voice called out
with authority.

“But how can he be this ShadowLord they
speak of? He doesn’t look like a great warrior to me.”

“He’s clearly your senior,” the third voice
said, “so show him the respect he deserves and be silent.” Blesset
did not argue.

The bowman named Jack helped Morgin to his
feet, where he leaned against Mortiss while he looked at the owner
of the third voice. The man was even taller than the bowman and had
the same white skin and black hair. He too carried an enormous bow
and seemed to be the leader of this group.

“I’m Jerst,” the man said. He did not offer
to shake Morgin’s hand as a clansman would. He indicated a tall
spindly girl with the same white skin and black hair as the two
men. “The one with the heavy hand here is my daughter Blesset.”

She was shorter than the men, but still
taller than the tallest Elhiyne. She too carried a long bow, and
like the men seemed thin and gaunt. She looked at Morgin as if he
was a piece of maggoty meat, and she finished her examination with
a smirk. “Forgive the blow, Elhiyne. I thought you were a Decouix.
They too are rather short.”

“Blesset!” the bowman snapped. “Keep a civil
tongue in your head. I’m Jack, lad,” he said to Morgin, “Jack the
Lesser. Are you all right? Can you ride?”

“I’m fine,” Morgin said. “Just knocked the
wind out of me.”

“Then mount up,” Jerst said tersely. “You’re
coming with us.”

“Where are we going?” Morgin asked.

Jerst spoke just like Olivia when she
thought questions were impertinent. “To our camp,” he said.

Morgin was in no way misled by the fact that
they let him keep his sword. He’d heard of the fighting prowess of
the Benesh’ere, and now was not the time to ask if he was their
guest, or their prisoner.

A short time later they rode into a large
and well-organized camp that had obviously been there for days. He
saw heavily trampled trails, and fire pits that showed the signs of
repeated use, and about fifty tents that looked to be light weight
and easily transportable. They were wide enough to sleep two, and
tall enough for an Elhiyne to stand in if he didn’t mind crouching
a little, though the tall white Benesh’ere probably thought of them
as cramped.

The camp was a beehive of noisy activity,
with tall spindly Benesh’ere tribesmen moving in all directions.
There were as many women as men, and like men they carried arms.
Everyone seemed to have something urgent to do, and in the doing
raised a small cloud of dust from the hot, dry ground.

Someone amidst the noise called Morgin’s
name in a voice that sounded amazingly like JohnEngine’s. Morgin
brought Mortiss to an abrupt halt.

“Morgin!”

There it was again. Morgin stood up in his
stirrups and scanned the camp. It took only an instant to find
JohnEngine among the Benesh’ere, running toward him and waving his
arms. He seemed unhurt. Tulellcoe trotted beside him, also unhurt,
while France hobbled behind them with a bandage on his right calf,
and the Balenda walked behind him with one wrapped about her head.
With them were six more Elhiyne, most showing some sign of hurt but
all able to walk on their own. And they seemed so short among the
tall Benesh’ere.

“I knew you weren’t dead,” JohnEngine
said.

Morgin climbed stiffly out of Mortiss’
saddle. “What about the others?” he asked, noting that few of them
were left. “Are they all dead?”

Tulellcoe shook his head. “Val has a broken
shoulder and a bad slash across his ribs. And with him are four
others who won’t do any fighting for a while. We’ll have to send
them all to Inetka.”

Morgin counted the numbers and felt sick.
“But we had more than thirty men before the skirmish in the ravine.
Where are the rest?”

“Dead,” France said without emotion. “We’ve
buried them.”

Morgin’s stomach tightened. For the first
time that day his power came back to him. It seemed to be drawn by
death.

Tulellcoe put a hand on his shoulder. “We
were all ready to die, Morgin. All of us. That some of us live, we
can only be thankful for.”

Packwill the Yestmarkian scout was there,
and so too was the soldier Abileen. There were four men whose names
eluded Morgin, but whose faces were well familiar.

They led Morgin to a small fire apart from
the Benesh’ere camp. Tulellcoe removed the bandages from his arm
and thigh, and Cort examined each wound carefully. “You’ve taken
proper care of the leg wound, I see. All it needs is cleaning and a
fresh bandage. But this arm wound. I sense magic there.”

Morgin nodded. “Salula.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And yet, the wound
appears to be healing nicely regardless of the taint that I sense
there.”

There was a question in her eyes that Morgin
was not sure he could answer, and when he looked at Tulellcoe his
eyes held the same question. At that moment Morgin’s power was upon
him strongly, and it was all he could do to restrain it, but he
casually extended his hand, remembering the way Malka had done it
on the parapets, and he released just a hint of that power. A spark
of magic kindled within his palm, and in broad daylight it grew
until all of them shielded their eyes from it, all but Morgin. Then
he willed it to be gone, and it was. The question was still in
Tulellcoe’s eyes. Morgin said, “There are certain advantages to
vast and limitless power, such as the healing of grave wounds.”

Abileen cleared his throat. “What of
Salula?” he asked.

Morgin shrugged. “Dead.”

“You killed him?” Cort asked.

“Aye,” Morgin said. “Twice I killed him. Let
us hope I don’t have to do it again, for I don’t think I can.”

They all gave him odd, sidewise looks.

Tulellcoe set to cleaning and wrapping his
wounds. Morgin wanted to know about their hosts. “What of these
Benesh’ere? I see both men and women. Is this a permanent
camp?”

Val shook his head. “Far from it.”

Morgin looked at the
twoname
closely,
wrapped in bandages from waist to neck, moving about with obvious
discomfort, yet smiling as if he were loath to trouble those about
him. Morgin asked, “Do you know about these Benesh’ere and their
ways?”

Val shrugged, then winced, having forgotten
the pain such a gesture would cost him. “A while back I lived with
them on and off for some years. I know their ways, but I know
little of the Benesh’ere themselves. This about you is an advanced
scouting party, but they’re also prepared to act as a war party if
need be. Remember the arrows that came to our aid in the
ravine?”

Morgin nodded. It appeared that many of them
owed the Benesh’ere their lives.

“You see women here because both sexes fight
side by side as equals. They live their lives that way. They raise
their children, they fight, they compete at games of war and they
train in the hunt, all without any distinction as to sex. Many of
the women are better fighters than some of the men, and the women
are always the more bloodthirsty of the two. You will be wise not
to ignore the women if you discuss war with them.”

Morgin scanned the Benesh’ere camp. There
appeared to be about a hundred of them, all with the same ghostly
white skin. Most had the coal black hair that Morgin had seen on
Jerst and Blesset and Jack, but it softened to a light gray in some
who seemed older.

“If this is a scouting party,” Morgin asked,
“where is the rest of the tribe?”

“Out on the plains,” Val said. “They’re just
coming in off the Munjarro where they spend the winter months. They
love it out there in that oven of sand, but this time of year the
heat is too much even for them. It drives them into the mountains
to the Lake of Sorrows where they spend the summer as they have
always, in the shadow of Attunhigh.”

“How large is the tribe?”

“About four thousand men, women and
children.”

“Is Jerst their leader?”

“No,” Val said. “Angerah rules the Black
council. Jerst is his second, though foremost in war. But he leads
this scouting party, and he holds considerable sway with
Angerah.”

“Is Angerah here?”

“No. He would be with the main body of the
tribe.”

“Tell me,” Morgin said carefully. “In their
words I sense hate for the Decouixs. Did I sense rightly? And is
this hate a tribal thing, or merely a few individuals who bear some
grudge?”

Val hesitated before answering, then spoke
warily. “The hate you sense is common to all Benesh’ere. But it’s
not the Decouixs they hate, at least not directly. It’s Kulls, and
all things Kullish. From earliest childhood they are taught to hate
the halfmen. They dress their practice dummy in a Kullish cloak
when they practice the arts of war. To kill a halfman and bring his
cloak back to the tribe is a high honor, a badge of courage, the
mark of a warrior. As for the Decouixs, they hate Decouixs only
because they spawn Kulls and allow them to hunt the Benesh’ere for
sport.”