Six Celestial Swords (27 page)

“Fu Ran? The big man there?” He nodded toward the individual.

“That’s him.”

Tristus immediately envied the guards, that they should have such a task appointed to them as shielding a man like Xu Liang with their lives. Men and women of high rank or station in Andaria often surrounded themselves with guards and personal aides, but the devotion seemed so much less than what Tristus had witnessed here. Xu Liang’s guards moved with him without creating an obstruction or having to be told. They were alert as duty commanded, but also as if they held some personal stake in what would be lost if they failed in that duty. Tristus couldn’t blame them, nor Fu Ran, for returning to his past obligation. To serve a man of such elegance that was not decadent and wisdom not depraved, who showed lenience and patience while still maintaining authority...

I’ve known him less than a day
, Tristus thought in amaze,
and he has won me. I would gladly give my life to spare his
. He wondered suddenly if he should trust such feelings—the first other than despair that he had experienced since the angel. With the angel, there was no question. It had been purely a miracle. Xu Liang was no angel, in spite of his grace, and Tristus had heard about men charmed by unholy magic to perform some manner of evil for a sorcerer. He had heard worse things in the charges brought against him by the Order. And they were wrong in what they said.
Strike me down, God, if you must, but they were wrong.

Tristus glanced at Xu Liang once more and somehow the memories of his dark past failed to surface. His heart seemed to split and fall into his feet, the reverence he was feeling in this man’s presence threatening to overwhelm him.
Let me serve you, sorcerer of Sheng Fan. Please do not turn me away.

“It’s not polite to stare!” Taya hissed, and Tristus looked away at once, feeling his cheeks redden with embarrassment and remorse.

“I’m beginning to worry that your brain is slower to thaw than the rest of you,” the young dwarf continued. “I can see us now, careening over the edge of the canyon, all because you’ve never met a Fanese cleric. Here comes that ill feeling again!”

Tristus reached his hand back to quiet her, his gaze at the front of the group as another member of it was approaching. “Hush, little one. Taya,” he added softly, before she could rap her tiny fist against his side again. The very last thing he wanted was the dwarf maiden’s bruised knuckles on his conscience as well. “The elf’s back.”

ALERE GUIDED BREIGH alongside the caravan, moving against them until he reached the others on horseback. Then he turned the mare about, matching her gait to the slow pace carried on by the other horses. He would rather have delivered his question to the old guard to Xu Liang’s left, but as Alere did not speak Fanese, he settled on the dwarf girl. “Does he meditate now?”

“He does,” the knight answered, and Alere looked at him, catching the human’s gaze in return. There was a look of indignation in his sky-colored eyes, as if he knew Alere intended to ignore him. Beneath that, there was a pleading. He wanted to be one of them, not a straggler half of them pitied and the other half distrusted.

What he didn’t know was that Alere neither pitied nor distrusted him. He simply had no respect for a warrior who’d been so careless as to have lost his horse and his weapon—the two items he should have cherished most on his unknown journey—through a lack of preparedness or of endurance, or of common sense. Maybe all were lacking. It was a wonder his armor hadn’t suffered beyond its few dings and that he still carried the sword that had obviously come with it. At best, he was disadvantaged by his youth, but as he wasn’t quite so young as he looked—Alere suspected—it seemed he had worse problems. His aura was a confused cloud of unpleasant emotions, accurately reflective of the instability he’d already displayed.

In spite of this, Alere did not personally despise him and he held no grudges against a human simply for the sake of it. He said, “There are tracks ahead of us, made by two shod horses. They lead away from us, into a pass heading northwest, into the lower mountains.”

“That’s the way we’re headed,” Tristus noted. “Toward the Flatlands.”

Alere nodded. “They came out of the south, paralleling our route along the river canyon. I cannot say for how long. As well there are people behind us…a day’s ride, maybe less.”

The knight looked over his shoulder. “It seems to be getting a bit crowded in these mountains. Before you found me, I would have welcomed a pack of hunger-crazed wolves, but now I’m beginning to miss the solitude.” He looked at Alere quickly, then glanced toward Xu Liang, and finally set his gaze on the ground passing slowly beneath him. “Please don’t mistake me. I’m very grateful to all of you. I will find
Dawnfire
again, and if it’s what Xu Liang is looking for, I will turn it over gladly, along with my services.”

“Your services as a knight who has mysteriously abandoned his Order? Who wandered the unforgiving higher regions of the Alabaster Range until he lacked food and water, pushed his horse dead, and nearly himself as well?” There was no malice in Alere’s tone, but it injured the human all the same. A watery sheen came to his eyes, but Alere spared the knight no truth. “I think you misinterpret your position. You have strayed into circumstances beyond your control and it is my advice that you be prepared to pay for your misguided wandering with your life. The Keirveshen may claim us all before this is finished. And there will be no ‘angels’ to save anyone.”

Tristus refused to look at him and said nothing.

Alere glanced at Taya. “I shall give warning of the riders ahead of us to your uncle and then go to have a better look at the company in our shadow. I’m curious to know if they are following. You will share this information with the mystic when he returns?”

“Yes,” Taya sighed, scolding him in tone and expression, a reproach that Alere thoroughly ignored in his leaving.

TAYA LEANED AGAINST the dejected knight, feeling the frightful cold of his plate mail through his cloak. “It’s all right, Tristus. He didn’t mean it. Elves never mean anything, they just open their craws and let out whatever may come.”

“He’s right,” Tristus said, almost too quietly to be heard. “Why should he take me for anything but a burden? Intentions don’t matter when it comes down to it. It doesn’t matter how badly I’ve ever wanted to protect anyone or uphold anything because I’ve failed...in the worst way imaginable. My past will follow me, and it may come back to haunt all of you as well.”

Taya didn’t know what he meant by that, but she felt suddenly very cold and, though she would never have admitted it, very afraid.

NIGHT POURED OVER the clouded peaks of the Alabaster Mountains and forced the companions to stop. There were no stars visible and the moon was in hiding. Between the darkness and the swirling mist created by the winds stirring the constant snow cover, not even lanterns were much help. They were moving away from the river canyon and therefore away from the danger of plunging into its vast depths, but there weren’t enough lanterns for everyone and it would be easy for someone to take a wrong step and wind up separated from the others. In the steady wind, it would be difficult to even hear a voice cry out, let alone determine its direction.

There were three tents, provided by the Fanese. Two were small and traditionally triangular in aspect while the third was somewhat larger and held a circular shape. A rug was put down inside and two Fanese style torches were arranged to offer heat and light.

Normally, Xu Liang would have had the large tent to himself and the guards not on watch would share the smaller shelters. However, in the extreme conditions, all bedrolls were welcome to be set out wherever there was space available in the larger tent.

Tristus had watched the highly efficient bodyguards perform the task of setting the tents, tending to the horses, and arranging watch shifts among themselves. They would not allow any assistance and didn’t seem to require it. The others began filing in out of the cold, and Tristus lingered near the animals, seriously contemplating taking up a position for the night away from the others.

They would probably only think that suspicious
, Tristus thought glumly.
They would think I meant to sneak off and seek
Dawnfire
alone, or they would suspect something worse.

My armor, my sword...it means nothing to them.
The Fanese don’t recognize the Order for what it is and while the elf and dwarves do, they have doubts about a holy knight who’s wandered so far from Andaria. As well they should have.

The Knights of Eris moved in numbers. They very rarely set out to do anything alone, and nothing that would carry them so far out of their homeland without significant cause. They were defenders of the Andarian Church and patrolled the region under its protection. The clergy had long ago put an end to religious quests, claiming that one who sought ‘tokens’ of God demonstrated a lack of faith and respect in the True King of Men, and it would not be tolerated.

Yes, Tristus had defied the Order. Defiance was all that was left to him, his only method for finding truth and the solace that lay in knowing that truth. He looked to Eris itself first, and while he did not find the legendary city, he found the angel and
Dawnfire
, both guides toward the answers he needed as a fish required water. He was suffocating without them, dying a slow, tormenting death. The elf did not understand that. Elves understood only seclusion and vengeance against all who dared invade upon that seclusion.

Even though Andaria currently engaged in no hostilities against the elves, Tristus was the enemy of any elf just for being human. If Alere were Zaldaine, and made aware of Tristus’ Treskan blood on his mother’s side, he’d have likely killed him on the spot. As it was the white elf happened to be a distant cousin of the slightly darker elves of the south and all the knowledge he’d been given concerning Tristus was whatever the old dwarf blurted next concerning his knowledge of the Order and his suspicions about Tristus.

“What are you still doing out here?” Taya demanded, tugging at his arm. “Hurry up! It’s freezing!”

Tristus looked at her, touched by her kindness, which may have been a kinder way at keeping an eye on him. “There are six of you already to crowd into the mystic’s tent—seven if you count Fu Ran twice, as you ought to. I’ve been handling the outdoors this long. Perhaps I’d better...”

Taya frowned peevishly. “You’ve been handling it all right, with a chill that nearly killed you and a fever that surely will if you don’t keep warm and dry! Anyway the more bodies in there, the more heat for all of us!”

Tristus mustered a half smile, knowing that he would give in sooner or later and that it may as well be sooner, since it did happen to be freezing. “I suppose that someone ought to be present to assist your uncle in protecting the innocence of a lady so fair and gentle as you.”

“They’re an elf and a bunch of humans,” Taya said flatly, though even in the dark Tristus could see her cheeks blushing.

Tristus said, “Two of them are sailors.”