"They are horses, not ponies." Amira looked at them. "My family breeds the finest horses in Cormyr," she said. "These look like ponies to me." "We're not in Cormyr. Tuigan horses are smaller than other horses, but they're hardier, as well. Someone who spent so much time among the Tuigan should know that." "They spent most of their time trying to kill me, so you'll forgive me if I didn't discuss the finer points of horseflesh with them." "I forgive you." He said it with a perfectly straight face. "It's an expression." "What is?" "Never mind," she said. "You went to the trouble of taking the-horses, scaring that boy near to death. Why aren't we riding them?" "Would you rather I'd killed him?" "Of course not. But why take horses and then walk all this way?" Gyaidun shrugged. "Climb on one if you wish. I'm used to walking." "I thought everyone in the Wastes were famed horsemen." "Not the Vil Adanrath. Horses cannot abide their presence."
"Why?" she said. "They're elves like Lendri, are they not?" Gyaidun, not slowing his pace, looked at her sideways. "You Cormyrean wizards are scholars of a sort, aren't you?" "It requires years of study, if that's what you mean." "And you still haven't realized what Lendri is?" Amira's eyebrows creased. "I've never heard of moon elves this far east. His build and complexion are all wrong for a sun elf. I took him to be some sort of wild elf. An offshoot family, perhaps?" Gyaidun snorted. "Do the wild elves run with wolves?" "I said an offshoot, perhaps. No? Well, what is he, then, he and these Vil Adanrath? The mention of their name certainly made Walloch's hired blades tuck their tails and run." "The Vil Adanrath are not native to his world," said Gyaidun. "They came here many thousands of years ago." "That's true of all elves." "Can all elves take the form of a wolf?" Amira gasped.
She'd heard of such things, down in the Wealdath in Tethyr, but it had been years since she'd studied that particular tome in her old master's library. She scrambled for the memory, and at last it came to her. "Lendri and the Vil Adanrath, they are lythari?" she said.
"Lythari?" said Gyaidun, and he shook his head. "I don't know this word. The Vil Adanrath are what they are-elves who can walk as wolves.
Or wolves who can walk as elves, depending on their mood, I suppose."
"You are not Vil Adanrath, then?" Gyaidun did not answer. "May I ask you something?" Amira asked. The big man broke off his gazing long enough to glance at her. "Ask all you want. Whether or not I answer depends on your question." "What is Lendri to you? The belkagen said he was your rathla. What is that?" "Lendri is my friend." "Where I come from, that would hardly explain his devotion to you," she said.
"We're a long way from where you come from." Gyaidun didn't look at her. He continued along the horizon. "We adhere to the old ways out here." "Old ways?" Gyaidun spared her a glance, and Amira could tell he was weighing whether to tell her. Finally he looked off into the distance, his attention obviously elsewhere, and said, "You westerners, you shake hands when you take an oath, do you not?"
"There's more to it than that, and customs vary from realm to realm, but yes." "Do you know why?" Amira shrugged. "Custom." Gyaidun smiled, though his eyes continued to scan the horizon. "See. You have forgotten the old ways. When the Vil Adanrath pledge their lives to one another, there is always the mingling of blood. Always." Gyaidun took the horses' tether in his left hand and raised his right palm toward her. There, Amira saw a deep scar dividing the big man's palm.
"Blood to blood," he said, "oath for oath, and may all the gods damn us and spirits speed us on our way to the grave should we break the oath. It is… beyond sacred. The Tuigan take blood oaths as well.
You've heard them speak of anda-'blood brothers'-yes? But among the Vil Adanrath, the joining of the blood has true power." "Magic?" asked Amira. Gyaidun's brow furrowed. "I would not call it that, but I don't know all the theories of you western spellcasters." He shrugged. "Call it what you like." "You became one of them, the Vil Adanrath?" Gyaidun shook his head. "I will never be Vil Adanrath." "Then…" Amira shook her head. "I don't understand. If you aren't Vil Adanrath, yet you and Lendri are blood brothers, what does that make you? The other night, you said you were born a slave." "I was." "Then how did you come to… 'hunt' with the Vil Adanrath?" Gyaidun did not answer at first. Amira looked at him. His lips were pressed razor thin, and the muscles of his jaw and neck stood out taught and hard. For a moment, Amira feared she'd offended him. The people of the Wastes had many strange customs and traditions of hospitality that were completely foreign to the people of Cormyr. She knew much of the Tuigan's strange ways, having spent much of her youth fighting them, but these pale elves and this big man who lived among them were a new mystery altogether. Finally, Gyaidun spoke. "My mother was a slave, the property"-he almost spat the word-"of Uchun Koro, a merchant who made his living along the Golden Way, trading in slaves, horses, camels, and whatever else he might turn to profit. I do not know who my father was. Another slave, probably, or perhaps a guest to whom Koro sold a night's pleasure with my mother. I was a child on the caravan trails.
"As I grew, Koro took a liking to me and intended to have me as his catamite. But on the night of my… 'coming of age,' my mother sneaked a knife to me. When Uchun Koro came to me, I sliced off his manhood and threw it onto the hot coals of a brazier." Amira swallowed hard. Cormyr certainly had more than its share of lascivious aristocrats and worse. As a young woman, she'd had to fend off plenty of advances by men old enough to be her grandfather, but to do such a thing to a child… "I was frightened as much as furious," Gyaidun continued. "So much blood. And I was still a child, only ten years old. Rather than finishing off the newetik, I ran. I fled, but I grew hungry and trailed the caravan, hoping to steal food. Uchun Koro, the whoreson bastard, survived. His men caught me. I found out that he'd had my mother killed. He was planning a suitable death for me when the caravan was attacked by bandits. They killed old Koro. Staked him in the sun and cut off his eyelids. But they took me captive and headed east. "Gone from the hands of one master to another, I killed the man guarding me and fled. I grew up among various tribes, clans, and nomads. I was fifteen or so when the bandits I ran with were attacked by the Vil Adanrath. They spared me. Why, I don't know, but they did.