Well of Sorrows (57 page)
Authors: Joshua Palmatier
He would have searched longer, but Harticur repeated, “Show us!”
Thaedoren glanced up, then pointed to a position on the map. “The Legion was amassing here when Lord Aeren and I left my father’s convoy. We estimated that he would intercept the human forces here,” he shifted his finger slightly to the south, without dropping his gaze from Harticur’s, “at the Escarpment.”
Harticur blinked once, and even as the translator began to translate for the other dwarren, his face filled with rage. He leaped to his feet with an anguished roar, face red, and in one smooth motion he snatched up his sword from the table and pointed it toward Thaedoren, the length of the blade trembling with his fury. With cries of shock and hisses of anger, most of the rest of the dwarren clan chiefs grabbed their own swords as they lurched back from the table and brandished them, but none of them advanced, leaving Harticur at the front. Only Garius remained seated, his head bowed.
Thaedoren’s hand shot out and latched onto Aeren’s arm, holding him in place as he instinctively reached for his own sword, but the Tamaell Presumptive could do nothing to stop Eraeth. The Protector’s cattan was in hand and trained on Harticur in the space of a breath, before most of the other dwarren had managed to grab their own swords. Eraeth’s cattan remained steady, pointed toward Harticur’s throat, nearly touching it across the length of the table. Harticur’s reach wasn’t so long; his sword fell nearly a foot short of Thaedoren’s chest.
Harticur didn’t notice. His nostrils flared as he breathed in huge lungfuls of air, chest heaving. “You,” he yelled, and his blade wavered. He paused a moment to steady it. “You insult us!”
“No,” Thaedoren said, voice utterly calm. “No insult is meant.” Harticur snorted. “You seek to trick us, as you and the humans did before! You expect us to rush to the Escarpment, to protect our borders, and then you and the human army will kill us all.”
“This is no trick. Send your scouts on their fleet gaezels to the Escarpment, have them report, if you haven’t sent them already. They’ll confirm the location of the Legion and the Alvritshai forces. But I have no intention of asking you to go to the Escarpment. That confrontation is between the Alvritshai and the humans; it does not concern the dwarren. If you are interested in talking, we can talk here. If not, then we will leave, and you can return home.”
Aeren knew at least three of the Lords of the Evant who would not have been able to act so calmly in the presence of so much rage and with nearly twenty dwarren swords trained on them. But those lords had not been trained in the Phalanx. Aeren’s estimation of Thaedoren rose as the Tamaell Presumptive eased back in his seat. His grip on Aeren’s arm tightened once—in reassurance or warning, Aeren wasn’t certain—and then released, falling to his lap. His own cattan still rested, untouched, on the table.
To either side of Harticur, the dwarren clan chiefs who’d stood began grumbling, muttering to each other, voices steadily rising into heated arguments. Harticur listened intently for a long moment, his eyes fixed on Thaedoren, measuring him, but slowly some of the rage that suffused his face seeped away.
He lowered his sword, and after a suitable interval, Eraeth withdrew his own blade. Aeren wasn’t certain Harticur had even noticed the Protector’s cattan.
The arguing dwarren quieted, focusing on Harticur.
Voice still rough with anger, the head clan chief said shortly, “The Gathering must discuss this.”
Thaedoren nodded, and Harticur stepped back, away from the table, the rest of the dwarren—including Garius—retreating with him. One of the aides rolled the map up with smooth precision and spread it out again on the floor where the dwarren gathered, all of the clan chiefs leaning forward over it. The discussion began immediately, the dwarren speaking far too fast and too low for Aeren to follow.
Thaedoren touched his shoulder, and the three Alvritshai moved farther back, toward the edge of the tent, near one of the tables with burning incense and a tray of fresh fruit. The Tamaell Presumptive picked up something small, brown, and fuzzy with a frown, sniffed it, then broke the skin with one finger. Peeling the skin back, he bit into the greenish-yellow interior, grunting in surprise before peeling the rest of the skin off and eating everything but the pit.
When he reached for a second, Aeren said, “Neither you nor the Tamaell mentioned that you intended to hold the talks in his absence.”
“I didn’t intend to hold the talks.”
“Any particular reason why?”
Thaedoren frowned. Aeren had let his irritation creep into his voice. “I didn’t believe the dwarren intended to take the talks seriously, didn’t even think that the dwarren would be here to meet us.” He glanced toward the Gathering, now hunched so far over the map that their heads were practically touching. “I assumed that they’d send a token force, that at most I’d have to placate them with the Tamaell’s absence, and then we’d be on our way.”
“But?” Eraeth prompted.
Thaedoren shifted his gaze to the Protector. It narrowed, as if he’d suddenly realized that he was speaking to a member of the Phalanx, not a lord. But then his stance shifted, and Aeren was again reminded that Thaedoren was not Fedorem. “My father did not intend for me to hold the talks either, only to offer his regrets in the hopes that they could be renewed later. Yet his intent in coming here was honorable. He sought peace. I did not believe peace would be possible because of the massacre at the Escarpment. But then the dwarren arrived, and I realized they were serious. I’ve seen what the tension on the border between Alvritshai lands and dwarren lands is like firsthand. If there is a chance, however slim, to end it . . .”
When Thaedoren turned back to look at the huddled dwarren, Aeren shared a glance with Eraeth, eyebrows raised.
This was not the impression he’d gotten of Thaedoren in the council tent with the army.
“My father and I have had our differences,” Thaedoren said a moment later. “In fact, we have not agreed on anything for the past thirty years. But we are as one in this. We want the conflict with the dwarren to end. It is the only reason I returned from the border and the Phalanx at my father’s request.”
The dwarren’s voices suddenly rose, Harticur and Garius arguing viciously with two other clan chiefs. The fight escalated, until Harticur cut everyone off with a half growl, half shout. One of the dwarren sat back with a snort and gesture, the other spat to the side, and the remaining clan chiefs grumbled. Harticur silenced them all with a glare, then turned his attention to the Alvritshai.
He stood and motioned to the table, stepping forward as the other dwarren rose, some reluctantly.
“Let’s see what they have to say,” Thaedoren said, his voice neutral.
As soon as the Alvritshai were settled again, Harticur drew his sword and set it formally, meaningfully, on the table. The rest of the dwarren followed his lead, although the two who had argued the most slammed their blades down. At a nudge from Aeren, Eraeth laid his cattan in front of him as well, although he kept his eyes on the two dissenting dwarren.
“What of the urannen?” Harticur waved to one side, toward the east. “The darkness, the night.”
Aeren frowned, knew that Thaedoren had done the same by the shift in his posture.
“What do you mean?” the Tamaell Presumptive asked. Harticur scowled. “The urannen! The ones who guard! The ones who rage! The darkness and the lights!”
Aeren sucked in a sharp breath, and something cold and bitter stole into his chest, squeezing it tight. “He means the sukrael,” he said.
Beside him, Thaedoren tensed. “What about the sukrael?”
“Did you set them free?
Thaedoren drew himself upright, his eyes going dark in defiant affront . . . but not in shock, Aeren noticed. “The Alvritshai would never set the sukrael free. They are a desecration to Aielan’s Light, to everything living. They consume it, destroy it!” Thaedoren seemed to catch himself. He exhaled in a long sigh. “But we have noticed that the sukrael have become more active.”
Harticur studied Thaedoren’s face intently, then nodded slowly as he leaned back. He said something to the other dwarren, received a few grudging nods and grunts of assent in return.
“The urannen—the sukrael,” he said the Alvritshai word carefully, “have left the forest. They’ve begun to attack the dwarren. They’ve invaded our cities, our tunnels, our sacred grounds.”
Thaedoren nodded. “They have attacked our easternmost House lands as well. Entire villages have been found dead.”
Harticur growled, a low rumble from the chest. “The same for us. It is why we have Gathered, why we have chosen a Cochen. Something must be done. It is why we are here, why we came. If the urannen have begun to move, if the world is Turning, we cannot fight among ourselves. We cannot fight with you. We must fight the urannen, fight the terren, the gruen and the kell.”
All the dwarren stirred at the mention of the Turning, shifting uncomfortably in their seats as Harticur named each of the creatures. Aeren had no idea what the terren, gruen, and kell were, but he felt a shiver course through him as their names were spoken.
Drawing himself upright, Harticur glanced around at his fellow clan chiefs, received sharp nods from all of them, including those who’d dissented earlier, then turned to Thaedoren.
“The Gathering wishes to discuss a formal treaty with the Alvritshai.” Aeren felt relief flood through him, more powerful than the unease he’d felt as the dwarren mentioned the Turning and the other creatures. His hands, chest, and arms tingled with the release of tension, and he exhaled sharply.
But Harticur was not finished.
“But we cannot do so here, with you,” he said gravely. “We must speak to the Tamaell, with all of the Alvritshai lords. We have been promised a formal apology for the desecration to our Lands, to appease Ilacqua, and an agreement to honor those Lands. So it is the agreement of the Gathering that we will travel with you to the Tamaell’s side. We will come to the Escarpment to meet with the Tamaell.”
“The Tamaell didn’t inform the entire Evant of the attacks of the sukrael.”
Thaedoren turned to Aeren as they watched the dwarren encampment break down in a mad rush of short dwarren figures. Close by, the ancient shaman directed a large group of dwarren as they tore down the meeting tent, chanting the entire time in a frenzy, with an occasional disapproving shake of his head and a black frown. The meeting with the clan chiefs had barely ended, and the remnants of the storm were still on the southern horizon. Harticur hadn’t given any of them, Alvritshai or dwarren, time to react. Within a heartbeat of his pronouncement, he’d stood and ordered the dwarren to prepare for the march.
“It was decided that until we knew more, the attacks would be kept secret,” Thaedoren said.
“Decided by whom?”
“Be my father and Lord Vaersoom. And Lotaern. My father has been working closely with him regarding these attacks, since the sukrael fall under Aielan’s purview.”
Aeren nodded. “Then there’s something you should know.” And Aeren told him of what he and Lotaern had discovered regarding Lord Khalaek. Thaedoren’s attention was still fixed on the dwarren encampment at first, but by the end, it was centered on Aeren.
“You should have warned us sooner,” he said at the end, his voice edged with anger.
“I have no evidence to support my suspicions about Lord Khalaek, and our rivalry within the Evant is well known. Any accusation I made would have been seen as a personal attack, nothing more. Would you or Fedorem have believed the word of a human?”
“That was for us to decide!” Thaedoren snapped, and Aeren drew himself upright defensively. But Thaedoren suddenly turned away, looking down toward the Alvritshai camp, which was nearly packed up. Aeren felt new tension radiating from him, a palpable force, evident in his stance, in his clenched jaw, in the hardness of his features.
“Someone has to get back to the convoy,” he said suddenly, tightly. “As fast as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because having the dwarren join us at the Escarpment was never part of the plan. Someone has to warn my father. And someone needs to tell him about the possibility that the sukrael and these Wraiths may be working with Lord Khalaek.”
19
EITHER AEREN, ERAETH, NOR ANY OF THE OTHER FOUR members of House Rhyssal’s Phalanx guard saw Colin until he blurred into existence twenty paces in front of their charging horses, staff canted to one side. At least two members of the escort cried out in surprise, and Eraeth barked a sharp warning, but Aeren had already pulled back on his mount’s reins. Dirt churned up from the ground as the horses on all sides were jerked to a halt, the guards cursing. One had to back away, nearly trampling Colin where he stood.
Colin didn’t flinch, his face grim as the escort regrouped, milling about around Aeren and Eraeth. “We’re too late,” he said.
“What do you mean—” Eraeth began, but Aeren cut him off with a sharp gesture.
Everyone fell silent. Aeren listened to the heaving breath of the horses, caught the whistle of the wind over the dead autumn grasses—
And then he heard it, in a gust from the north, the unmistakable sound of swords striking armor, almost buried beneath a lower rumble that he could mistake for the wind but knew with a sick heart was the sound of men bellowing, screaming, and dying.
Aeren felt the Phalanx’s mood change, felt the air pull taut as they shifted positions in their saddles, could almost taste the metal of the cattans as if they’d already drawn them.
“What do we do?” Eraeth asked, although it sounded as if he already knew the answer.
“Thaedoren ordered us to warn the Tamaell of the dwarren’s arrival,” Aeren said; he caught Eraeth’s nod of agreement, then turned to Colin. “Show us.”
Colin pointed toward the north and east with his staff. “There.” And then he blurred and was gone, a black smear, an afterimage on the eye—
And within the space of an indrawn breath, he reappeared over a hundred yards beyond.
“Move!” Eraeth commanded, and Aeren and the Phalanx kicked their horses forward, heading toward Colin. As soon as they neared the human’s location, he blurred again, reappearing farther along, leaping ahead as the horses charged across the flattened dead grass, churning up clods of dirt and roots and brittle grass behind them. The sounds of the battle built until Aeren could hear them over the pounding of his own horse’s hooves, over his own harsh breath, and he tensed. He’d seen such battles before, fought in them, grown to hate them. A wash of grief filled him, unwanted and unexpected, and he could feel his brother’s blood on his hands, warm and thick and drying in the sunlight. Tears burned in his eyes and phlegm clogged the back of his throat.
But then they crested a low rise, not even high enough to be called a hill, and the current battle came into view, a dark spill of horses, Alvritshai, and men across the battered and beaten grass.
The breadth of it sucked Aeren’s breath away and he lurched back unexpectedly, pulling his horse up short again, the animal snorting and stamping its foot. At a shout from Eraeth, the rest of the Phalanx halted as well, returning to Aeren’s side. Colin saw them halt and vanished, blurring into place so close to Aeren’s horse that he skittered to one side with a jerk.
“What’s wrong?” Eraeth asked, voice tense. He scanned the battle, eyes flickering left and right.
“We can’t charge into that,” Aeren said shortly. “There are only seven of us. We need to find the Tamaell, or the Tamaea. Or Lotaern.”
Eraeth nearly protested, straightening where he sat, but as the Protector watched the battle, the tide of men and Alvritshai flowing back and forth, he grudgingly sat back in the saddle.
The Phalanx fidgeted on their horses, a few pacing their mounts closer to the fighting. Aeren watched in silence. Screams rose into the air, tattered and torn by the wind, coming in gusts, along with the familiar coppery taste of blood. Alvritshai fell upon a human contingent, the cries of the men muted at first, then suddenly loud as the wind shifted, as if the fight were happening twenty paces away instead of over two thousand. A group of Alvritshai on horseback were repulsed by a human charge, the horses banking away, circling around, one body dragged behind, a foot trapped in a stirrup. The horse trampled two more bodies already lying on the ground as it panicked at the unfamiliar weight pulling at it, and the body jerked free, falling loosely among the dozens of corpses already littering the ground.
Aeren grimaced, bile rising at the back of his throat. He swallowed as he watched the rest of the Alvritshai group rejoin the fray at the rear.
“House Licaeta,” Eraeth said. At Aeren’s raised eyebrow, he added, “I recognize the style of the riding . . . and the colors on the saddle.”
Aeren frowned, focusing on the battle again, trying to pick out colors. He hadn’t looked too closely at first, too sickened by the ferocity and the deaths. “Do you see the Tamaell’s colors?”
“There,” one of the Phalanx guards said, pointing, “to the left of center, where the fighting is thickest. You can see the House Resue banner.”
Eraeth asked. “Do you see it?”
Aeren stood up higher in the saddle, then caught the red and white flare of the Tamaell’s pennant. “I see it.” He settled back with a frown. “We’ll never reach him.”
“Not with only an escort of six,” Eraeth agreed.
His gaze fell on Colin and remained there for a long moment. “No,” Aeren said. When Eraeth looked up, a protest on his lips, he repeated more firmly, “No.” He knew what Eraeth was thinking, and he wouldn’t allow it. Not for something as trivial as this. They could wait. The dwarren wouldn’t be arriving for at least another two days.
Eraeth sat back, disgruntled. “Then what will we do?”
“We’ll find the Alvritshai camp and report to the Tamaea instead.”
Eraeth shot him a surprised look, but Aeren had already begun searching the plains, drawing upon old memories of the Escarpment. Old, bloody, dark memories. He tried to push those memories away, focusing on what he remembered of the land around the Escarpment before the fighting had started. If the Tamaell had been coming from the south, and the Legion had already arrived, then the most likely place for the Tamaell to set up his encampment would be . . .
“There,” Eraeth said, pointing toward the east.
Aeren had already turned. He could see figures on a rise watching the battle, one of the Lords of the Evant who’d been left behind to guard the camp. On the battlefield, the lords were subordinate to the Tamaell, their individual House Phalanxes subject to the Tamaell’s orders first, then their lord’s. The tents and wagons and the rest of the support were mostly hidden behind the rise, although a few banners and the tops of a few tents could be seen.
“Let’s go.” Aeren nudged his horse into motion, picking up speed. He banked wide, keeping his distance from the battle, approaching the camp and the Phalanx on guard from the south. The Phalanx saw them approaching, and a sortie of twenty headed toward them along the top of the ridge.
Aeren swore when they rode close enough to see their colors:
black and gold.
The sortie spread out, and Aeren slowed, motioning the rest of his escort to fall back slightly. He could see the rest of the encampment now, and the plains beyond, but his attention remained fixed on the Alvritshai lord who stood at the front of the sortie where it had halted, waiting.
“Lord Khalaek,” he said as he pulled his mount to a stop. He did not nod formally, and his voice was cold and stiff.
“So,” Khalaek said, looking past him toward his escort. “Have you managed to get the Tamaell Presumptive killed? Is this all that remains of the entourage sent to meet with the dwarren?” He paused for a moment, then added blandly, “Were they even there?”
Aeren gripped the reins tightly, but he refused to be baited. “The Tamaell Presumptive is following behind us, with the rest of the escort. We were sent ahead to speak to the Tamaell.”
Khalaek’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, his previous mild amusement gone. “About what?”
“That is for the Tamaell alone.”
Khalaek said nothing, but Aeren could see him considering options. His dark eyes flicked toward Colin, standing far back in the group, as unobtrusive as possible, then toward the south and east, the direction he knew they’d come from, but the plains were empty there.
Not satisified, Khalaek motioned toward the battle. “As you can see, the Tamaell is currently occupied.”
“And he left you behind,” Aeren said. “Interesting.”
Khalaek twitched the reins he held in one hand, his horse shuffling at the movement. “Someone needs to protect the Tamaea. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, now would we?”
Eraeth shifted forward at the underlying threat, but Aeren didn’t react.
To the west, battlehorns cried out, distantly. A gust of wind pushed past them and sent the pennant that Khalaek’s sortie carried flapping. Aeren and Khalaek held each other’s gazes, the hatred between them palpable. Aeren could taste it.
But a ripple of strange but familiar movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to the east with a frown—
And the bitterness and hatred bled out of him in one shocked breath. “Aielan’s Light,” he said, voice filled with a terrified awe.
“What is it?” Khalaek demanded, voice tinged with anger and doubt, as if he thought Aeren’s gasp some kind of trick. But then he turned.
Aeren saw him stiffen in his saddle, then spit a curse under his breath. On all sides, the sortie and Aeren’s escort gasped, Eraeth edging his horse out in front of Aeren reflexively.
On the plains, still distant but approaching fast, one of the occamaen—what Lotaern would call a “breath of heaven,” and what Colin called a Drifter—slid toward them. It was beautiful in a way, its rippled distortions stretching high into the sky and even farther to either side, its center clear, like an eye. Through that eye, Aeren could see the plains beyond . . . but altered. Sunlight glowed on the horizon there, the clouds in the sky suffused with a purpleorange haze, the grass on the ridges a vibrant, spring green, waving in a contrary wind.
Aeren glanced up at the sun that glared down on the autumndead grass at his feet and shuddered. The juxtaposition—two suns, one setting, one angled an hour after midday; early spring grass against late autumn—twisted in his stomach.
“It’s huge,” Eraeth said.
“And it’s headed straight for the camp,” Khalaek hollered. He spun his mount and roared out orders, his sortie breaking into two groups, one headed toward where the occumaen bore down on the camp from the east, the other, including Khalaek, headed toward the rest of Khalaek’s men on the ridge behind them, both groups shouting and pointing as they charged their horses across the grass. The men on the ridge hadn’t seen the danger yet, were watching either the battle below or the confrontation with Aeren. After a moment of confusion, they turned . . . and then broke into sudden motion as Khalaek arrived. Horns sounded, piercing the air, frantic and warbly. In the camp below, men and women turned from whatever task they were doing in confusion, but they couldn’t see the occumaen, not within the confines of the tents and wagons.
Aeren swore. They weren’t reacting fast enough. The occumaen bore down with silent, deadly grace. And with sudden dawning horror, Aeren realized Eraeth had been right. It was huge, large enough and wide enough to encompass at least half the camp, if not more.
“What do we do?” Eraeth asked, and Aeren latched onto his strangely calm voice.
Thinking furiously, cursing the small number of Phalanx he’d brought with him, he scanned the growing chaos in the camp below as Khalaek’s men fanned out, charging into the tents still mounted, shoving and herding people outward, away from the occumaen’s path.
And then his gaze fell on the white and red banners near the center of the camp. The Tamaell’s banners.
His eyes widened. “The Tamaea.”
Eraeth reacted faster than he did, spinning and shouting, “Colin!”
Without any hesitation, Colin shifted and blurred.
Colin raced down the slope toward the camp, time slowed around him but not stopped. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Aeren, Eraeth, and the rest kicking their mounts into motion, heading down toward the camp itself, but then he shoved the Alvritshai lord from his mind and focused on reaching the Tamaea.
