Well of Sorrows (43 page)
Authors: Joshua Palmatier
“When they did come we fought them back—”
“
I
fought them back,” Garius interrupted. “You were nothing but a kernel of grain in Ilacqua’s eye.”
“We should fight them now!”
Shea halted near one of the braziers, and they glared at each other. Garius’ anger flared in his blood, but staring at his son, at the tension in his shoulders, at the clench of his jaw, he faltered. Shea looked too much like his older brother, Jasu.
“Jasu,” Garius said tightly, and saw Shea wince. “I don’t fight them because of Jasu.”
“What do you mean? What does my brother have to do with it?”
“Everything!” Garius snapped. He suddenly couldn’t sit anymore. He rose and began to pace, taking Shea’s place. “He has everything to do with it. When he received his first band and became a Rider, I was proud, as any father would be. He could join me, could help me protect the Lands, help drive off the humans and the Alvritshai in Ilacqua’s name. And he did, riding the plains, joined later by your older brothers, arriving back at the Thousand Springs warren victorious, welcomed by your mother and sisters, by the entire clan.” His pacing slowed and he looked toward Shea. “And then he died.”
Shea frowned, but he said nothing, his brow still creased in irritation.
“You weren’t there—you were barely waist-high! You don’t remember. The humans had built an outpost on Silver Grass Clan lands. Thousand Springs joined them in the attack, but the outpost had been fortified with the Legion. Your brother fell in the initial charge, and I brought his body home with me.
“I could barely enter the warren. I knew what this would do to your mother. But when we rode into the city through the tunnels and I saw her waiting at our cleft, I realized she already knew. I don’t know how, but she had already wept; her eyes were red but dry. But the pain on her face, pain that she hid for the sake of the clan, for
my
sake as clan chief.” Garius broke off, his voice cracking. He held his arms before him, as if he still carried Jasu’s body, as if he were crossing the threshold of the tunnel into the cavernous main room of the warren even now. For a moment, he could see the entrances of the cliffside clefts rising in tiers on all sides, could hear the roar of the river crashing into the central pool of the cavern, all of it lit with a thousand lanterns, decorated with garlands of straw and wheat to celebrate their return . . .
It threatened to overwhelm him, the grief crushing. He clenched his jaw, forced the emotion down, and glared at Shea, one hand squeezed into a tight fist. He could see that Shea didn’t understand, realized that he’d never understand until he had a wife and sons of his own.
He needed to give Shea a reason he could understand.
He swallowed, lowered his arms, and started again. “There are barely ten thousand dwarren left in the clan, when once there were twice that,” he said gruffly. “Four thousand of us are Riders. The other clans fare no better. All told there are maybe thirty thousand Riders left to protect the Lands, less than a hundred thousand of the People. Once we were a thriving race, but now we are dwindling. Already our numbers approach those of the Alvritshai, who guard their lives and the lives of their children with such reverence. That is why the Alvritshai have not attacked us recently, because their own survival is threatened. They’ve lost too many of their children to the fight. The humans have outnumbered us for years, and they are reckless with their lives, as we once were with our own.
“We cannot be reckless any longer. We cannot throw our lives away on the plains. Your need to fight—and that of your generation—will destroy the People completely.”
Shea regarded him for a long moment in silence, his jaw clenched tight. When he finally spoke, he accused, “The need to fight—the urge to avenge those of us who have died, like Jasu—was trained into us by you.”
He left, ducking out through the cloth covering the western entrance.
Garius stood stunned. His gaze fell on his fists, knuckles white, and he forced them to open. The yepote smoke in the tent had dissipated, three of the braziers burned out. He breathed in deeply, then sighed heavily.
When he emerged from the tent, he saw no sign of Shea; the camp was mostly dark. The storm still rumbled off in the distance, and a few cook fires still burned, mostly dampened coals.
“The sky is troubled.”
Garius turned and picked out the figure of the shaman standing with his ceremonial spear, his back to the tent. He moved to the shaman’s side and stared out at the flickers of lightning far distant. “What do you see, Oudan? Should we listen to the Alvritshai?”
Oudan snorted, then waved his spear out toward the darkened plains. “The Land is troubled. We see it in the sky—” he pointed toward the storm “—and feel it in the shimmering air. We taste it in the food we eat, the water we drink. Even the gaezels sense it. We have lived in our warrens for thousands of years, slept in our clefts, and honored and protected the Land and our gods. But the gods are restless.
“Perhaps it is time for the People to change.”
15
HE FOLLOWING DAY, THE DWARREN TORE DOWN THEIR TENTS, loaded up their gaezels, and headed back into the plains, east and south.
Colin watched them from the top of the hillock while the rest of the Alvritshai gathered together their loosely scattered gear, saddled the horses, and prepared to leave. He’d managed to get close enough to verify that these dwarren were from the Thousand Springs Clan, the dwarren who had fought the humans and left such carnage on the battlefield outside the forest. He frowned as the sound of their drums faded and the group of figures vanished over a fold in the land. He could still see a thin trace of dust in the air from their passage, faint against the blue of the sky.
“You hate them.”
Colin started and turned to find Eraeth standing behind him. “Why do you say that?” Colin asked.
Eraeth grinned, not a pleasant expression. “You tensed the moment you knew the dwarren were approaching and haven’t relaxed since. And now, even as they depart, you’re gripping your staff so hard your knuckles are white.”
Colin glanced down in annoyance, tried to make his hands relax, but couldn’t.
Not able to meet Eraeth’s gaze, he watched the horizon. “They killed Karen, my mother and father, my friends.” He could hear the defensiveness in his own voice, could hear the hatred, and realized he didn’t care. He’d seen and heard the same hatred in Eraeth since the dwarren had arrived.
But he winced when Aeren spoke from behind him. “That’s not true. They didn’t kill your parents, your friends, or your beloved. The sukrael did.”
“We would never have run into the sukrael if not for them,” Colin snapped.
“True. But that was an unfortunate consequence. It was not the dwarren’s plan—”
“Not their plan?” Colin exclaimed, turning toward Aeren incredulously. “What about the wagon train before us? The dwarren found them, rounded them up, and slaughtered them. And they would have done the same to us. They trapped us against the forest, and if the sukrael didn’t get us, the dwarren did when we tried to escape into the plains. I
know.
I went back and
watched it happen
.”
Aeren frowned, his brow creasing, but he said nothing. Colin snorted. “What did they want?”
Aeren hesitated. “It wasn’t what they wanted, it was what I wanted from them.”
“And that was?”
“Peace. As with the humans. With you. I want peace, so that the Alvritshai no longer have to fight. So that the Alvritshai no longer have to die.”
Colin stared at the Alvritshai lord intently for a long time, struggling with his hatred of the dwarren, with the emotions seeing them here had dredged up. He searched Aeren’s face, but he saw nothing familiar.
“How can you?” he finally asked. “After what the dwarren have done to the Alvritshai all these years, after what you know they’ve done to the humans. How can you approach them and ask for peace and mean it?”
Aeren shifted where he stood, and for the first time Colin saw anger in his eyes. “You do not understand how sacred the Alvritshai hold life, how precious it is in Aielan’s eyes. We live longer than the dwarren, longer even than you humans, but we are not as . . . prolific as you are. Children between those who bond are rare. The fact that my mother bore three healthy sons for the House was . . . miraculous. Most of those bonded only bear one child, if that. But now, because of this war, my father and brothers are dead. I am the only living member of my House left. And I have not yet bonded. There is no heir to the Rhyssal seat.”
Behind him, Eraeth stirred, looking toward his lord, a pained expression in his stoic stance. But he said nothing as Aeren continued. “Those deaths—my brothers, my father—and the sheer number of Alvritshai lives lost since that first excursion onto the plains, since that first misunderstanding between Alvritshai and dwarren, have finally overwhelmed my hatred. I’m hoping they have overwhelmed the Tamaell and the Evant as well. I had hoped they had overwhelmed the human King, but unfortunately, King Stephan’s pain is more recent, more personal. His pain comes from a betrayal, not battle. Not so for the dwarren.”
“More dwarren died at the Escarpment than all of the Alvritshai or humans combined. They were slaughtered there.”
Aeren nodded. “Yes. The war has finally taken its toll on the dwarren, as it has for the Alvrishai. Their aggression has lessened over the past thirty years. Which is why I am hopeful that the dwarren will be willing to discuss peace.”
Behind him, one of the other Alvritshai whistled. He didn’t turn, although both he and Eraeth straightened.
“The dwarren have agreed to a meeting, here, in one month. I have little time to convince the Tamaell that peace between the Alvritshai and the dwarren is a necessity. We’re leaving, and we’ll have to travel fast.”
“He’ll have to ride,” Eraeth said to Aeren. “We can travel on foot. We’ll switch out the horses so that they can rest. It will slow us down, but . . .”
Colin stiffened at Eraeth’s tone. He thought about what he’d done at Portstown to catch up to the attackers and said abruptly, “I can keep up. On foot.” At Eraeth’s and Aeren’s skeptical look, he added, “
If
you allow me to use the Lifeblood’s powers.” And he let himself shift, growing younger for a brief moment.
Aeren frowned, then glanced down toward the rest of the Phalanx escort.
“It will shake them,” Eraeth said in warning. “They know he has been touched by the sukrael, that he has drunk from the sarenavriell, but most don’t give the account much credence. If they see it, with their own eyes . . .”
Aeren thought for a long moment, glancing toward the sky, where the sun had already shifted toward midmorning. “They’ll have to adjust. If we’re to reach Caercaern and have any chance of convincing the Evant and the Tamaell to return here for the meeting, there can be no delays.” He looked Colin in the eyes. “Do whatever you have to do to keep up, Shaeveran. If you fall behind, we will leave you.”
He turned, and Eraeth whistled to the rest of the group. They formed up, all of their packs secured on the backs of the horses, only their weapons—cattans and bows—in hand. Eraeth barked orders in Alvritshai, and within the space of a few heartbeats the Phalanx scouts vanished onto the plains, the rest bringing the horses up to a trot, then a sprint behind them. Colin waited at the top of the hillock long enough to pick out the direction the Alvritshai were headed, then he reached out and
pushed.
Colin cursed himself as he slipped through the grasses of the plains, staff in hand, satchel across his back. The world around him moved at an infinitesimal rate, birds barely flapped their wings in the sky, the grasses standing nearly still. The first day he’d found it disconcerting—he’d never realized how much the grass had moved before, even without a wind—but this wasn’t just the lack of wind, this was lack of movement.
Any
movement. At least, movement significant enough to register on the eye. Sound was dulled here as well, and smell. He could catch only the faintest of scents: a touch of broken grass stalks, the ripeness of grain heading toward decay, a whiff of the tail end of autumn, with a hint of winter to it. But he’d found he didn’t have to move as fast as he’d first thought he would. The Alvritshai were moving as fast as possible, but he could keep up with them by simply walking fast.
And that fact is what made him curse. He could have crossed the plains easily in a few days, reached Portstown in a week, if he’d known he could travel this way. But he hadn’t known. It hadn’t occurred to him. But he’d spent the last day experimenting. He couldn’t pick objects up while time was slowed, or move them— they were fixed in place once the world slowed—but he could hold them and
then
slow time, carrying them with him to the new location. But if he slowed time too far, if he thrust through that barrier he’d felt while traveling back to see Karen and the wagon train after the attack, then when he dropped the object, it returned to natural time. It shifted location, but he couldn’t leave it behind, in the past. As long as he stayed on this side of the barrier though . . .
Off to the side, he caught a ripple on the otherwise still plains, and he drew to a halt at the edge of a small stream. The plains had grown more rumpled, with higher hills and deeper flats. To the east, a forest stretched into the distance, its edge growing closer. During the last break, Eraeth had said it was the same forest that held the Faelehgre and the sukrael, although they were much farther north.
Between his position and the forest, he could see one of the distortions he called Drifters. He’d seen dozens of them since he’d left the forest, but none of the Drifters had been this close. And here, with the world slowed, the Drifter looked . . . different.
He glanced back to where he knew the Alvritshai were. Aeren had said they’d reach the first Alvritshai outpost that afternoon, at a rough division where the plains ended and the first few stands of forest began, marking the end of dwarren lands and the edge of Alvritshai territory. It would be another few days before they reached Caercaern and the halls of the Alvritshai.
But Colin knew he could catch up if he fell behind.
He moved closer to the Drifter, careful not to come into contact with any of its outstretched ripples. The Drifter coruscated with light, shifting though all of the various colors at its edges and through its arms but melding into an intense white as the light reached its center. The center itself was clear, and as he drew closer, he realized that he could see through it.
What he saw on the far side wasn’t what he expected. Grass, yes, as if the plains continued on through the eye of coruscating light. But this grass wasn’t lit with afternoon sunlight. Instead, it was silvered with faint moonlight, as if it were night on the far side.
One of the arms of the Drifter reached out, as if sensing him, and he pulled back. It brushed by where he’d stood a moment before and passed on, almost like the antennae on an insect.
Frowning, Colin searched the grass and found a stone, releasing his hold on time so he could pick it up. He turned, the Drifted no longer coruscating with color, merely a ripple of distortion, like heat waves, although he could still see the moonlit plains on the far side. It was moving slowly toward him. Stepping forward, he tossed the stone at the eye in the Drifter’s center. It passed through, landing with a thud and rustle of grass as it rolled into the moonlight.
“It’s a doorway,” he murmured to himself. He considered for a moment, then slowed time. The Drifter shifted from clear ripples to coruscating colors again, but stopped drifting forward.
He prodded the stone with his staff through the distortion, then shifted position, keeping track of the rippling arms of the Drifter. If he stooped over, he could step through the eye himself, but the thought made him shudder. He couldn’t see anything of significance on the far side, nothing to place where the doorway led. The features in the background—the shape of the land itself, the hills and depressions—seemed to match where he stood, although the forest appeared much closer. It was simply night there.
Then he caught the scent. A familiar scent. But here, with time slowed, the scent was
strong
. An earthen scent, of leaves and mulch and trees.
The Lifeblood. So strong he could taste it, as if he’d placed dried leaves in his mouth. It struck his gut hard, an ache shuddering out through his bones. Since he’d given Eraeth the vial of Lifeblood, the pull of the Well had eased and he’d had fewer and less severe seizures, but now the craving returned, harsh and powerful. He fought it back, forced himself to focus, to inhale deeply. Because there was something else as well, another scent intertwined with the Lifeblood. He concentrated, but he couldn’t place it, even though he felt he should, as if he’d smelled it before. Like roses, sweet and clean.
He stood for a long moment in deep thought. He thought about what Aeren had said, that the Drifters had swallowed entire armies. He suddenly remembered Peg vanishing during the storm as they fled the dwarren.
But it didn’t explain where the distortions were coming from. Nor why they were appearing more frequently now than when Colin’s family had first headed out onto the plains.
