As they turned to look, the elf tending Camaranthas shook his head. Hytanthas’s last comrade had succumbed. Without a word, the surrounding warriors bowed their heads, clapped their hands together twice, paused, and clapped twice again, the ancient salute to the dead from House Protector.
“He never knew we made it.” Hytanthas’s face had the dull, vacant look of one who has mourned too much already.
Kerian sympathized with his loss, but time was pressing. “You must come with me. I must hear your tale. There are important people you must speak with.” Belatedly, she added, “Have you eaten?”
He had. Alhana’s guards had given him food and water. What he needed was sleep. Camaranthas had been wounded in a goblin ambush four days earlier. Hytanthas had sworn he would find a healer and had not dared to rest, lest his comrade perish.
Kerian promised he would sleep soon in the best accommodations to be found in Bianost, but he must hold out just a little longer.
As horses were brought for them, Hytanthas said, “Lady, I have dire news. The Speaker and all our people are in grave peril!”
She suppressed an impatient sigh. “As they were when I left. As they will always be in Khurinost.”
“They’re not in Khurinost any longer!”
He explained the Speaker had begun the great trek to Inath-Wakenti with the entire nation. Swarms of nomads dogged their heels. The last news Hytanthas had gleaned from other travelers was two weeks old. It said that the Speaker and the nation were near the northern mountains. Many had died from nomad attacks. The Speaker intended to make a stand, to hold off the growing threat from the desert tribesmen.
Kerian’s impatience vanished, replaced by disbelief. Make a stand? They’d had a defensible position at Khuri-Khan, but Gilthas had abandoned it. Instead, he’d led their nation into the desert to die!
She took a deep breath, working hard to regain her composure. “Come,” she said, taking his arm and gently propelling him toward his borrowed horse.
They mounted. On the way, she explained about the council being held in the newly freed town, of the presence of Alhana Starbreeze, her guards, and several hundred town elves ready to throw off the bandit occupation.
“They all must hear what you have told me,” she finished.
“Then will we return to Khur? That was my mission, to bring you back to the Speaker.”
She looked away, toward the torchlit town. “If what you heard is true, Hytanthas, there is no Speaker anymore. No elf nation, either.”
Chapter 9
Rising out of the vast expanse of Khur’s northern desert were a series of rocky pinnacles. Before the First Cataclysm they were part of the Khalkist range to the north, connected to those mountains by long ridges that projected into the arid southern plain like great bony fingers. Time and catastrophe had eroded the fingers, leaving only the isolated pinnacles. There were six of them, known to the nomads as the Lion’s Teeth. Individually, from northwest to southeast, they were called Pincer, Ripper, Great Fang, Chisel, Lesser Fang, and Broken Tooth. Great Fang was the tallest; Pincer, the smallest. Broken Tooth covered the largest area and sported a wide, flat top.
Distributed around the bases of these spires were thousands of elves, survivors of the exodus from Khurinost, their tent city under the walls of Khuri-Khan. In six months the ponderous column had progressed barely sixty miles. Apart from the massive logistical problems of moving so many people, their possessions, and their livestock across the inhospitable terrain, the elves had been dogged every step of the way by growing numbers of Khurish nomads.
The desert tribesmen had always resented the presence of outsiders in their sacred land, but they had largely ignored the elves until Adala, female chieftain of the Weya-Lu tribe, awakened to the special danger the elves posed. It was not their trespass (considered a grave sin among nomads), nor their trampling of Khurish traditions that provoked Adala to action. As long as the laddad remained in their squalid tent city, Adala could ignore them. The spur that finally caused her to raise her people against them was their Speaker’s decision to lead his people away from the Khurish capital to settle in a valley on the northern border of Khur. The elves called it Inath-Wakenti, the Vale of Silence. City-dwelling Khurs knew it as the Valley of the Blue Sands and considered it little more than a fable.
Nomads knew better. To them, the valley was Alya-Alash (Breath of the Gods), the home of Those on High when They dwelt on the mortal plane. Strange forces lay quiescent in its cool, misty recesses. Disturbed by interlopers, the powers might leave their mountain haven and wreak havoc on the desert peoples. The world itself might come to an end if the sacred silence of Alya-Alash were broken.
Those on High had filled Adala with Their holy purpose. Her maita, her divine fate, was to unite the people of the desert against the intruders. Maita and the grace of Those on High would allow the nomads to overcome the subtle ways and superior warcraft of the laddad. Unfortunately, maita was no one’s servant, to be commanded at will. Adala had gathered six of the seven tribes of Khur to her cause, and they had won several victories, but the final destruction of the elves eluded them. Protected by the khan’s army, the laddad had escaped from Khurinost and begun their journey northward. With both Sahim-Khan’s formidable troops and elf cavalry arrayed against them, the nomads could do little more than harass their enemy. As the miles increased, the khan’s soldiers turned back home, and nomad attacks on the laddad grew stronger, more determined.
In the shadow of the Lion’s Teeth, nomad horsemen struck the left side of the elves’ formation while it moved slowly, steadily north-northwest. The hard-riding men of the Weya-Lu and Mikku tribes sliced a bloody swath through the terrified elves, driving warriors and civilians back upon the center of the column. Panic-stricken civilians hampered the warriors’ efforts to re-form and counterattack. A rout seemed inevitable. The elves would be scattered across the sun-baked wasteland and slaughtered.
Traveling in the midst of his footsore nation was Gilthas Pathfinder, Speaker of the Sun and Stars. When the fighting reached him, he halted his horse amid the backwash of his terrified people. An iron ring of warriors formed around the Speaker, trying to hold off the nomad horde.
“Great Speaker, you must withdraw!” said General Hamaramis, commander of the Speaker’s private guard. Blood streamed down his forehead.
Warriors and ordinary elves alike added their pleas to withdraw, but Gilthas would not remove himself to a place of safety. Even as nomad arrows flicked past him, he remained where he was.
“You’ve done your best, General. Now we must help you push back this attack,” he said then turned in the saddle to address his people. “Elves of the two nations! We have been driven from our homelands, persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered. This may be our last trial. Let us go no further. Let us meet our fate as true descendents of Silvanos and Kith-Kanan, and never bow to the murderers’ blades!”
The elves let out a roar, and Adala’s fickle maita ebbed. Elves of every stripe—nobles, commoners, artisans, farmers, male and female—surged forward around the Speaker’s horse. Armed with anything that came to hand, they fell upon the nomads. Astonished Khurs were dragged from their saddles or had their mounts pushed over. The enormous mass of elves pressed in on two sides, squeezing the Khurs between them. Many elves fell to nomad swords, but the momentum of the whole nation could not be stopped. Like a slow flood rising over a sandbar, they wore away the ranks of nomads and threatened to engulf them completely.