Sanctuary

Chapter 4

Water in a stone jug stays cool, even in the heat of day. If the jug is carved properly, of fine-grained soapstone with thick walls at the top and thinner walls near the bottom, water inside will stay as cool as the moment it was drawn from the well. Cool water is the first requirement for good bread. Not an easy requirement to meet in a desert. The east wind which rolled in from the distant sea hit the Pillars of Heaven (known to foreigners as the Khalkist Mountains) and dumped its snow on the peaks and its rain on the lower slopes. Purged of moisture, the wind then spread across the western desert, taking its dry heat to every corner of the land. Between the heat, blown sand, and flies, finding cool water and making bread for the family was no chore for the faint of heart.

Adala Fahim lifted the heavy soapstone jug and poured its contents into a brass bowl. Quickly, she stirred the water into the dry mixture of flour, salt, and soda. She never measured, except by eye. Twelve circuits of the wide, flat bowl with a wooden paddle and the dough was done. A shallow groove had been worn into the metal where her spoon circled. For thirty-two years she’d made bread in exactly the same way. For thirty-two years it had come out right, despite wind, weather, or war.

She spat on the iron griddle to test its temperature. At the right heat, a water drop danced in circles, growing smaller with every circuit until it vanished. When the griddle was ready, she poured a dollop of oil onto it. The oil ran to the edges, sheening the black surface. In the bowl, the dough was puffed up and bubbling from the soda. She tore off a piece, rolled it into a ball between her smooth brown palms, and laid it on the griddle. Sizzling, it flattened into a small round loaf.

Black shadows fell over Adala, cutting off the distant view of the gray mountains, but she didn’t look up. The first loaf was the most important. How it baked told her whether the fire needed to be hotter or cooler.

The three men standing over her were nomads in the prime of life, men of the Weya-Lu tribe. Although none had gray eyes, they were of the Leaping Spider clan and Wapah’s cousins.

“Wapah is back,” said the one in the middle.

“I’ll make an extra portion,” Adala said, her attention still on the cooking loaf. She gave it a quick flip with her fingers. Other women used knives to turn their bread. Not Adala.

One wrong stab and the frying dough would deflate; the loaf would be flat and tough as sandal leather.

“He has important news, Weyadan.” Her title meant “Mother of the Weya-Lu.” “Do you know who he was hired to guide from the city to the desert and back?”

She shrugged one shoulder, busy rolling a new ball of dough.

“Shobbat, son of Sahim Zacca-Khur!”

In quick succession, four new balls of dough hit the griddle, replacing the first, now done. “So the prince of Khur finally left the shaded halls of the city to visit the land of his ancestors. What is that to us?” she said.

“He went to the Oracle. The Hidden One.”

The men were certain this news would bring Adala to her feet, dusting the flour from her hands. It did not. She removed the four freshly baked loaves from the griddle and put down four more.

“Weyadan, please,” entreated the nomad. “You should hear what Wapah has to say!”

“And so I will. When the bread is done.”

It took some time to cook forty loaves. Although the men shifted their feet impatiently once or twice, none complained.

When at last the baking was done, Adala left her fifth daughter, Chisi, to clean the bowl and griddle. Hitching her black robes, the leader of the Weya-Lu left the shade of her tent and made for Wapah’s dwelling across the stony ravine. it was just past noon, the hottest part of the day, and few nomads were moving about. Even the desert hounds the Weya-Lu were so adept at breeding were still, sleeping in whatever spots of shade they could find.

Adala entered Wapah’s family tent and gave the customary greeting: “Those on High stand by us.”

Wapah returned it. “And by you, Mother of the Weya-Lu.”

He was seated facing the door. Other men of the clan formed a ring, their backs against the walls of the tent. Several of them had the gray eyes that stood out so boldly against swarthy faces and dark or tawny beards. Adala was the only woman present.

“I rejoice to see you,” she said. “I hear you have a tale to tell.”

“As grave as a plague, as loud as thunder. Take your ease.”

She sat in the center of the male circle. As wife of the clan chief, Adala could not be touched by any man save her husband. Since Kasamir di Kyre had perished years before while fighting in the pay of the Knights of Neraka, she had become Weyadan, literally mother to everyone in the Weya-Lu tribe. She was just past her fortieth year, younger than some of her ostensible children.

Wapah began his tale. With the same patience she’d learned listening to her sons when they were toddlers, Adala let the colorful torrent of words wash over her and focused on the important bits of information scattered throughout.

Prince Shobbat’s men had come to the Grand Souks, looking for someone to guide their master on a journey through the desert. Wapah was selected because the gods knew him to be a humble man, a generous man, a man in whom the blood of endless generations of Weya-Lu flowed in a mighty, endless circle—

Adala frowned, closing her eyes to concentrate harder.

With no escort at all, Wapah and the Prince of Khur rode out of Khuri-Khan before dawn. They reached the Tear of Elir-Sana without incident. Although of no more use in the desert than a mewling babe, Shobbat insisted they press on without rest to reach his goal, the oracle of the high desert.

Wapah paused to sip buttered tea, and Bilath, Adala’s brother by marriage and war chief of the Weya-Lu, asked, “The Hidden One? The keeper of bats?”

Wapah nodded solemnly. On his left, his cousin Etosh poured more tea into his crater.

They reached the oracle at night. No one in Wapah’s memory had gone there, and he didn’t know if the diviner still lived, but the ancient stone spires still stood, and the legendary bats flooded out when disturbed. Wapah, a righteous man, warned the prince he would not enter the sanctuary, so Shobbat went alone and stayed inside until nearly dawn.

Wapah was asleep between the horses when he heard a terrible scream. Rising valiantly, sword in hand, he braced himself to do battle against evil spirits. None appeared. Instead, Prince Shobbat stumbled out of the sanctuary, raving like a madman.

“Tell about his face!” Etosh urged him.

“The breath of the gods had fallen upon the prince,” Wapah declaimed, spreading his arms wide, “stealing the manly color from his beard, brow, and hair! The stain was white as the scarves of the Khan’s dancers!”

Adala looked down her long nose at him. “White is the color of light, of Eldin the Judge.” This was the remote high god of the nomads, seldom spoken of and rarely invoked. “What evil can come from Eldin?”

A murmur went through the group, and Bilath said, “Then you believe it was a judgment, not a curse?”

Wapah did not wish to lose his audience in a theological discussion, so he continued quickly.

The tormented prince was not only ranting like one benighted, he was blind as well! He flailed his arms, crashing into the horses and Wapah. All the while he raved about trees growing in the desert, the coming of the elves, and how they would turn everything green unless stopped.

“I would like to see more green in this land,” Adala commented, and the assembled men stared at her. “But not under the rule of foreigners.”

Wapah had been forced to club Shobbat unconscious. After tying him onto his horse, the nomad started back to Khuri-Khan. When the prince awoke on the return journey, he was still crazed. Wapah questioned him, and Shobbat answered without guile, revealing everything, why he had come, what he’d hoped to gain, and what the oracle had said. But always, his talk returned to the elves and the danger they posed to Khur.

“He sought to depose his father,” said Etosh, with a sage nod. “His madness is the judgment of the gods, punishment for plotting such blood betrayal!”

There was little love for Sahim-Khan among the Weya-Lu, but when sons conspired to murder their fathers, evil was truly loose in the world.

Wapah said it was not the prince’s designs on the throne of Khur that consumed his disordered mind on the journey back to the city, but the oracle’s revelation that the laddad might transform Khur into a green land and rule over it. Wapah’s audience agreed with the maddened prince on that score. If that happened, the tribes of Khur would be lost. Everything they valued—families, traditions, loyalty to the gods—would be forfeit to foreign ways. Even the clean, beautiful emptiness of the land would be choked out by the vines and trees of the elves.

“‘If the elves find the Valley of the Blue Sands,’” Wapah said, quoting the prince, “‘then the people of Khur are lost!’”

Draining his crater of tea, Wapah was silent at last. His audience was thunderstruck. Even Adala had no comeback to this final revelation. Elves looking for the Valley of the Blue Sands? Why would they go there? No one went there. It was haunted by troubled, unholy spirits.

“You should have slit the Khur’s throat,” said Etosh, breaking the somber silence. “Left him in the desert to feed the vultures.”

Several loud voices took issue with this statement. Such a betrayal of his charge would have brought ill hick down upon Wapah and his tribe. A Weya-Lu’s word was a bond not only to the men to whom it had been given, but to Those on High as well.

For a time, they argued the merit of Wapah’s decision to ferry the stricken prince back to Khur. As nothing useful emerged from their dispute, Adala finally cut them off.

“We must meet this storm and see if it is a true tempest or only the ravings of a sun-maddened prince,” she said.

She stood. Extending her arm, she swept the circle, pointing to each man in turn. “We will go to the City by the Sea. We will see what the laddad are about. If they are quiet, and cleave to the will of the Khan, we will leave them in peace. But if they intend to invade the valley, we must stop them. The oracle said the laddad would not rule if they were kept from the Valley of the Blue Sands. By our blood, it is our duty to keep them out. The sacred land of Khur will endure.”

She completed the circle, adding, “Your oaths on it, as men of Weya-Lu!”

Readily they swore, the burden of the oath light just now. No man present knew how heavy it might prove.

Messengers were sent out right away. Other tribes in the region would be told of this threat. If the elves moved toward the valley, it would mean war.

Some southern tribes freely raided elven caravans, picked off stray laddad riders, even attacked small camps. As a warrior people, they treated all strangers in their land thus. Over the years the elves had grown in number as more arrived in exile, and they showed no signs of leaving. Adala had even heard reports of elves in the Weya-Lu’s ancestral city, Delphon. The city was a sinkhole of iniquity and vice (as all cities were), but it was the font of the Weya-Lu tribe. For foreigners—not even human ones—to be there, contaminating the tombs and temples of the tribe’s great ancestors, was a bitter draught to swallow. But as long as the laddad remained at Khuri-Khan and other cities, the nomads could ignore them. However, if Sahim-Khan allowed them to spread across the vastness of the open desert, then the people of the desert would rise up and proclaim a new khan.

And not the spoiled Shobbat; he was as wicked and godless as his father. A new dynasty must be established, a house of virtue and strength.

Such were Adala’s thoughts as she crossed the blinding expanse of sand to her tent. Ducking under the flap, she flipped the sun veil back over her head and left such worldly concerns outside with the sun. Chisi had scoured the griddle and hung it from a tent pole to cool. The brass mixing bowl was rinsed clean.

With no more distracting thoughts of elves or cities or immoral monarchs, Adala dipped a hand in a basket of dried lentils. One, two, three handfuls clattered into the bowl. More water from the jug, to soak the stone-hard, brown seeds. Lentils went well with bread. She only hoped she had enough salt to season them properly.

Without fanfare, the Lioness led her small force out of Khurinost before sunrise.

If the Speaker’s expensive map could be trusted, the Inath-Wakenti was more than two hundred miles away. The trip would take them across the High Plateau, some of the worst desert in Khur, with no wells, no oases, and no hospitable life for most of the way. According to Khurish records, rain had not fallen on the High Plateau in a hundred years, so every elf carried water, water, and more water. Spare arms and most armor were left behind, to allow the horses to bear a heavier burden of liquid. In consultation with Sithelbathan, Kerian had sketched out a route north by east, skirting the caravan trail to Kortal, which was rife with Nerakan spies. Each member of the expedition was provided with a copy of the map, so if he became separated from the main body, he would know where to go.

An experienced professional, Kerian completed her own preparations for the journey fairly quickly. This left her a few precious hours to spend as Gilthas’s wife and not as the commander of his army. She puzzled anew over the seeming contradiction of her husband and king. He was both the gentlest person she’d ever known, and the toughest. Gilthas could give his last crust of bread to a hungry person in the street, then in the next breath, sentence a malefactor to death. He did not posture or preen as Speaker of the Sun and Stars, but honestly cared for every soul under his rule and for the long-range welfare of his realm.

Neither of them spoke of the task Kerian faced or her lack of faith in its purpose. Clad only in candlelight, they sat on their bed, facing each other, heads bowed, her forehead resting on her husband’s shoulder.

Gilthas breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of her, striving to lock the memory firmly in his heart. Her unbound hair cascaded over them both. The feel of it curling against his shoulders was one of the sweetest sensations he had ever known.

“Will you take Eagle Eye?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. The motion caused her hair to sweep slowly across his upper back. Gilthas shivered. “No, you know he frightens the horses. They will be nervous enough. And he drinks more water than a dragon.”

Kerian felt her husband smile against her shoulder. “I have a salve for you,” he said. “The apothecary Redinivis brought it. He said it will keep you from getting sunburned.”

“And how many gallons of this salve are we supposed to carry with us?”

The smile became a low chuckle. “The stone jar he gave me is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.” She snorted, and Gilthas added, his voice pitched higher to mimic the apothecary, “However, to be efficacious, the balm must be applied quite liberally.”

Husband and wife laughed together. Amusement grew into something deeper. This was their last night together for some time, and they made the most of it.

Before dawn, Kerian rose and dressed without disturbing her husband. It wasn’t until she was in the outer room, ready to depart, that Gilthas appeared.

“Weren’t you going to say goodbye?” he asked.

The sight of him thus, clad in a threadbare gown, long hair awry, brought an unexpected rush of tenderness, but she couldn’t allow herself to give in to her feelings. She was departing on a risky mission. Her life and, more importantly, the lives of those she led, required all the skill and cunning of the Lioness, not the wifely sentiments of Kerianseray.

Striving for lightness, she said, “Think of your dignity, Gil! Should the Speaker of the Sun and Stars stand around outside, mooning like a lovesick maiden bidding goodbye to her swain?”

Matching her teasing tone, he replied, “I am Speaker. I’m only coddled like a maiden.”

She grinned. They embraced, but too soon for Gilthas she released him and stepped back. A flash of a smile, and in the next heartbeat she was gone, out into the predawn stillness. For a long time, Gilthas remained where he was, standing, staring after her.

The west wind picked up as the column of riders left the tent-town. Robed and scarved against the flying sand, the elves rode in silence, unaccompanied by flying banners or flourishing pipers. Not like the old days, when the warriors of Silvanesti never stirred out of their capital city without a band of pipers, one thousand of their land’s noblest youths. Or the army of Qualinesti, who marched and rode to the beat of massed drums, the golden sun standard of Kith-Kanan borne before them. No, the contingent of the exiles’ army departed quietly, their horses’ hooves making little noise in the soft, yielding sand.

Despite the discretion, their departure did not escape notice. In the saddle between two high dunes, a solitary figure lay prone, covered from nose to toes in a hooded robe the same color as the sea of sand. His eyesight was sharp as a falcon’s. Neither distance nor the low light hampered him; he counted the double line of elven riders, and noted their course. Due north.

The spy slid backward through the sand until he was hidden from the elves by the intervening dune. Rising, he raced down the wind-shaped hill. At the bottom, two mounted men waited, one of them holding the reins of his horse.

He vaulted onto his pony. Snatching the reins, he hissed, “The laddad are going north! Five hundred, with sword and bow!”

The youngest of the three pulled his horse around in a half-circle until it faced west. “I ride to my chief!” he said. “The Tondoon will know of this!”

The watcher spoke to the third, older man. “I will take word to the Mikku tribe. Tell the Weyadan the warning was true: the foreigners are on the move.”

The gray-eyed nomad nodded grimly. “By nightfall every tribe from the mountains to the sea will know the laddad are loose!”

They galloped away, each taking his own direction. Before they were out of sight of each other, the constant wind had erased their tracks from the sand.

The army of elves rode on. Dawn broke, and the sun quickly purged the chill of night. An hour after dawn the temperature was already hotter than ever was felt in Silvanesti. It would only increase.

Nomads did not travel by day unless sorely pressed. Like the serpents, lizards, and spiders of the desert, they preferred to lie still during the day and go out by night. Elves, accustomed to working by day, continued this habit even when the desert sun bore down full strength. This led to a new saying among nomads: Only fools, vultures, and laddad go abroad by day.

The Lioness rode at the head of the column, feeling the sweat run down inside her breastplate and pool in the small of her back. Her face remained dry. As soon as a bead of sweat formed on her forehead or neck, the insatiably thirsty air sucked it away.

She looked back over the elves following her and was struck by how unfamiliar they were—not just Gilthas’s scholars, Favaronas and his two assistants—but the warriors, too. So many of her old comrades had fallen during the last days of Qualinost, the march into exile, and the brutal crossing of the Plains of Dust. Not all the losses were hard to take. Senator Palthainon, a slippery politician who made his name undermining Gilthas’s policies, had vanished during the flight from Qualinesti. Whether dead or captured by Samuval’s bandits, no one knew, but the Lioness felt either a suitable end for the troublesome rogue.

Someone in the column—a Kagonesti, by his accent—started to sing. Other riders took up the tune, a chorus of hoarse male voices. It was an old Wilder song, about being chased through the forest by unnamed enemies:

The words rang strange in this lifeless landscape, and after four verses the song died out. The air was too dry for singing anyway.

Flankers patrolled diligently ahead and behind the column, as well as a hundred yards on either side. An hour before noon, the scouts circled back to the main body for replacement. One rider did not appear. The Lioness halted the column and sent a pair of elves to find the missing rider. The pair did not return either.

She ordered the entire force to search for the missing. Spread out in a long double line, the elves descended the side of a north-facing dune. The tracks of the pair the Lioness had sent were still visible at the foot of the dune. Halfway up the next one, elves on the left side of the formation raised an alarm. Someone was moving atop the dune!

Swords sprouted from the line. Climbing through the heavy sand was hard work, and they labored uphill with horses gasping from the heat and effort. Within twenty yards of the crest, a dozen darkly wrapped figures popped up, bows in hand.

The Lioness shouted a warning as arrows daubed with red paint hissed toward her startled troops. One struck low on her breastplate and glanced off. She barked a command, and her own archers loosed into the line of snipers. One fell. The rest responded with more arrows, this time aimed low, at the elves’ horses.

“Get those snakes!” the Lioness cried. On the right, two score riders swept forward, swords held high. The concealed bowmen couldn’t rise up high enough to aim at them without exposing themselves to the elf archers. With elven arrows arcing over their heads, the Lioness and the bulk of the elves spurred hard up the hill. Just as they cleared the top, those on the right reached the flat ridge at the dune’s crest and charged the enemy. There were only eleven: nine bow-armed nomads and two others minding their horses at the base of the dune. Faced on two sides by the foe, the nomads quit, racing for their ponies. Several were ridden down and sabered before the Lioness called for prisoners. The killing ceased, but not a single nomad escaped.

Four prisoners were herded to the Lioness. Three others, wounded and unable to walk, were carried forward and dumped at her feet.

“Who are you men? What tribe? What clan?” she asked. She had expected nomad interference, but not so soon, not such a pointless ambush. With a shiver she recalled a similar attack at the priestess’s temple.

The nomads were silent. One of them knelt by a wounded comrade and began to chant a muted prayer.

Again, more calmly, the Lioness posed her questions promising to spare all if they would answer. Not one of the captured humans said a word.

“Why do you fight us?” the Lioness demanded. Her exhausted horse picked up her anger and snorted, prancing in a tight circle. “We’re not your enemies. We’re nomads now, too, driven from our homes and forced to wander this desert. Tell me, are you bandits, or have you been paid to fight us?”

Nothing. Two of the humans sat on the sand and hugged their knees, eyes still fixed on the ground. The third continued to pray under his breath. The fourth, trembling from exhaustion and a wound on his upper thigh, remained on his feet, staring defiantly at her.

The Lioness glared back, frustrated by their silence. She had no time for this.

She allowed herself only a moment of indecision before snapping, “Captain!”

A Kagonesti veteran saluted his commander. “Search them.” she said. “Anything unusual, bring to me. Take their swords and break their bows and arrows. Leave them food and water for two days. Their horses go with us.”

The standing nomad opened his mouth to protest. Without horses, they were doomed. They would never reach a water source before their own supply gave out.

“You have something to say?” she asked sternly, yet her eyes were hopeful. The bearded man firmed his lips and said nothing. Hope vanished.

“Very well. Carry out my orders, Captain.”

All the nomads, living and dead, were searched. The only thing of interest the searchers found was the small leather bag that each man wore on a string around his neck. One pouch was brought to Kerian. It was very light, containing a fetish, no doubt. She loosened the neck and upended the bag. A black and orange creature fell out, landing on the neck of her horse.

“Spider!” yelled the elf warrior who’d brought the bag. He swatted at it with his gauntlet. With astonishing power for so small a creature, it sprang from the horse and landed, legs spread, on the soldier’s cheek.

The elf screamed. One of his comrades yanked the palm-sized spider from his face and flung it to the ground. He stamped it with his iron-shod boot.

Tragically, the evil already had been done. Two fang marks showed clearly on the elf’s cheek. From the holes, red streaks were spreading even as the Lioness watched. The stricken elf went rigid, his eyes and mouth wide in agony. The Lioness shouted for a healer. The elf began to tremble, then convulse. Despite his comrades’ strong arms, he went down, dragging them with him.

“What can we do?” the Lioness yelled at the nomad.

He shrugged, his face hard. “Iron’s the only cure for him now.” He drew a finger across his throat.

She turned away from him in disgust, and dismounted. The elf’s face was dreadful, his mouth stretched wide in a scream he could not vent, and his face mottled by the red streaks that mapped the lightning-fast flow of poison through his blood.

Kerian knelt beside him. With a tenderness few could imagine, she touched his cheek. His skin was cold. What had been living flesh now felt like marble. His eyes, blue irises lost in a bloody sea, shifted toward her slightly.

In the heat of pursuit, with Knights of Neraka or worse baying at her heels, she’d had to use the iron cure before. She loathed it. It was all they could do for the dying elf now, to spare him needless suffering, but she hated it nonetheless.

Her free hand still resting on his face, she ended the elf’s torment. His gaze remained fixed on her, grew unfocused, then empty. Kerian closed his eyelids.

“His name was Nafarallun,” said one of the elves holding him. “Born a Qualinesti.”

The remaining leather pouches were pounded flat, unopened. Stone-faced, the nomads awaited the same fate.

“Go home, men of the Leaping Spider clan,” the Lioness said tersely, looking down at them from horseback. “We have not come to harm you, but if you make war on us, we will show you no mercy.”

The elves formed up and rode away. Soon, the marooned nomads were only dark smudges against the blond sand, then they were lost from sight.

Around Khuri-Khan the desert was stony, with hills of sand piled up by contending winds from the mountains in the north and the sea in the east. The Khurish capital was set in a shallow depressions like a dry lakebed. All day the elves climbed out of this low-lying area. Stones became scarce, and the sand grew finer. There was no shade in sight anywhere. Each elf had donned eyeshades of the style worn by nomads, which looked very like bandages wrapping the head: stiff strips of hide held in place by thongs looped around the ears. The “bandage” had very thin horizontal openings, which admitted just enough light to see. Without the eyeshades, most of the elves would have gone blind in a day or two. Elves and horses were draped in white cloth, another nomad trick. The light color deflected the killing rays of the sun.

The column paused every few miles for water. Horses drank first, riders second. A warrior could persevere even when thirsty, but a horse would balk unless watered.

As the distance from Khuri-Khan increased, they found less and less evidence of intelligent life. They were too far east to encounter travelers on the caravan route to Alek-Khan and Kortal, and too far west to meet traders using the only paved road in Khur, the Khan’s Way, which led to Delphon. Here, at its harsh edge, it was easy to see why even the hardiest nomads shunned the High Plateau.

The wind died. This spared them the stinging dust, but allowed the heat to grow. The entire column looked like a procession of phantoms, white-draped wraiths plodding slowly ahead through the calf-deep sand.

Under her stifling shroud, the Lioness fought against the lethargy that had her nodding in the saddle. She slipped a hand into one of the smaller saddlebags draped across the pommel of her saddle. Within, next to the smooth coolness of Sa’ida’s enigmatic gift, she felt dry flakes. These were the leaves that had fallen on her during her last night in Khurinost. They had quickly dried in the desert air. She hadn’t mentioned the odd occurrence to anyone, not even Gilthas. What could she say? A bat flew over and dropped ash leaves on me? Her husband would think she’d been sampling the Khurish homebrew. Yet, she was sure that the fallen leaves meant something.

Swaying in the saddle, the Lioness had plenty of time to consider what she knew about ash trees. The wood was hard and durable and made good tool handles, pike and lance shafts, and arrows. Eastern Silvanesti had a great many ash trees. So did the woodlands of Wayreth in Qualinesti. Had the leaves come from one of those places? Was the strange rain an omen, a sign that, one day, she was destined to return to one of the elven homelands?

If circumstance permitted she would ask Favaronas about ash trees. Doubtless, the scholar knew all sorts of trivial lore about them. Perhaps she would find a clue in his knowledge.

Thinking of the archivist, she twisted in the saddle and looked for him in the line of draped riders. One of Favaronas’s assistants had been killed by a stray nomad arrow during the set-to at the dune. The remaining two scholars were shorter than her warriors, and Favaronas especially was not an accomplished rider, making them easy to pick out. The archivist rode with knees stiff and feet pointed outward. From the bobbing motion of his head, she decided he was half asleep. Just as well. If she could afford the lapse in alertness, she’d doze, too. It would make the miles pass more swiftly.

When the horizon ahead lost all relief and became a monotonous line, the elves knew they had reached the high desert at last. Although flat, it did present strange features. The shallow sand beneath their horses’ hooves was marked with swirls, squiggles, and converging lines, as if way markers had been drawn. These were the handiwork of the only living creatures sharing the landscape with the elves: serpents, sand crawlers, spiders, and lizards. The sky took on a silver color like polished iron, and mirages shimmered over the sand. To the elves at the rear of the column, the lead riders took on a fantastic aspect as the broiling air magnified them and their horses, making them look ten feet tall. The lead riders also seemed to be treading through water, their reflections perfect in the tantalizing, phantom lakes.

The sun reached its zenith. Breathing was labor, not only forcing Kerian’s heavy chest to rise and fall, but having to take in the blistering air. She put a hand outside her white drapery. Even through her glove, it felt as though she’d plunged her hand into a campfire. Knotting her hand into a fist, she kept her arm aloft, signaling a halt.

Water was sipped sparingly. Favaronas asked for extra for his assistant, and Kerian allowed the elf—a Qualinesti named Armentero—an extra swallow. Although younger than his master, Armentero did not look at all well, but he waved aside Favaronas’s concern with a few brusque words.

Favaronas, face pink despite his sunshade, leaned close to Kerian and spoke. His mouth was too dry to manage more than a whisper. “The Speaker must be mad! Bring a hundred thousand elves through this inferno? And most on foot? Thousands would perish on the way!”

She gave a noncommittal shrug and took her turn with the water gourd. In truth, she didn’t think Gilthas realized the enormity of the difficulties involved in shifting their people from Khuri-Khan to Inath-Wakenti, even if they found the valley of legend. Such a migration would make the journey to Khur across the Plains of Dust seem a pleasant parade. The Plains were larger than the Khurish desert, but the part the elves had crossed was not nearly so hot or dry as this. To reach the Vale of Silence, the Speaker could bypass some of the High Plateau by following the caravan trail northwest to Kortal, but that presented a different set of dangers. Kortal lay on the border with Neraka. Once the Dark Knights learned of Gilthas’s scheme to save the elven race, they would stop at nothing to thwart it.

Kerian had agreed to undertake this expedition, but she believed that resettling the entire elven nation in the Vale of Silence was a preposterous idea. Favaronas was wrong. It wouldn’t be thousands, but tens of thousands who would perish on the journey. Half of their people would die, surely.

“You disagree?” Favaronas said, seeing her shake her head.

“What?”

“I said, perhaps we could rest here awhile till the sun declines.”

“Yes, we’ll rest here a few hours.”

The order was passed down the column, and the warriors dismounted, moving slowly in the breath-stealing heat.

Groups of warriors joined their sunshades together into a larger canopy, sheltering themselves and their horses. Beneath these, they cleared away the topmost, hottest layer of sand, spread canvas sheets on the ground, and took their ease. There was a little excitement when a nest of adders was uncovered, but the snakes were rapidly dispatched and everyone settled down. Soon, only the sentries were awake.

Feeling drunk with heat and weariness, Kerian muttered, “I hope the blasted valley is there, after all this effort.”

Favaronas lay facing her, his head resting on the bundle of manuscripts he’d brought along. Equally drowsy, he replied, “It’s there, General. The ancient chroniclers seldom lie.”

She snorted. Seldom lying was not exactly the same as telling the truth.

When they arose two hours later, they could not wake Favaronas’s assistant. Armentero was dead, his body rigid, skin blistering hot to the touch. Heat stroke, or “sun death” as the nomads called it. The inferno of the High Plateau had claimed its first elven victim.