Long before she had destroyed any ashbrush, Sadira cut off the flow of energy into her body-unlike Bademyr, she did not defile lightly. She scraped a handful of red silt off the rocks at her feet, then spun around and held fist out toward the gate tower. She cast her spell, letting the dust slip from her fingers. The fortress bricks began crumbling away. An instant later, the entire structure stood on the brink of collapse.
Sadira closed her hand, temporarily halting the destruction. “Silver Hands!” she yelled. “Leave the walls at once, or you’ll fall with them.”
The elves quickly availed themselves of Sadira’s advice, save for the small group in the gate tower. There, Toramund looked to his own sorcerer. “Stop her!” he yelled.
As Bademyr reached for his spell components, Sadira opened her hand and slowly let dust grains slip from between her fingers. To either side of the tower, sections of the wall began to fall. Toramund grabbed his sorcerer by the shoulders, then shoved the old man over the railing.
“Our agreement has come to an end,” he yelled, lingering on the tower just long enough to watch Bademyr hit the ground.
As Toramund and the last of the Silver Hands fled the gate tower, Faenaeyon waved his warriors forward, yelling, “Silver Hands, gather your coins and your daughters! The Sun Runners shall have them all!”
Sadira remained where she was, watching the injured sorcerer struggle to crawl out of the path of the approaching Sun Runners. The sorceress was surprised by her feelings toward the defiler. She had asked Faenaeyon to kill him, not because she was angry about the attempt on her life, but because he had desecrated the field.
It was not lost on the half-elf that she had destroyed a much larger area just three days ago. But she has resorted to desperate measures only to protect herself from Nok. Bademyr, on the other hand, had committed his offense with seeming indifference, and for a dubious purpose. Sadira knew that Ktandeo would have found her action as morally indefensible as that of the Silver Hands’ sorcerer. But to her, there was a difference between using defiler magic to save life and to take it.
Sadira watched Faenaeyon approach the gate. Although the rest of the Sun Runners had rushed past the injured defiler, the chief went over to Bademyr. He leaned over and spoke to the sorcerer, then sheathed his sword and picked up the old man. Bademyr’s head nodded in thanks, and Faenaeyon carried him back toward Sadira and the young elves who stayed behind to watch the tribe’s kanks.
After moving into the circle of defiled ground, where he had clear view of Sadira, the chief stopped and threw his burden down. The old man cried out, then held out his hand to summon the energy for a spell. By the time Faenaeyon had pulled his sword from its scabbard, more ashbrush had begun to wither at the edges of the blackened circle.
The chief brought his blade down, lopping off the sorcerer’s head. A dazzling ribbon of green and gold radiance shot from the severed neck, filling the air with a deafening skirl. Crying out in surprise, Faenaeyon leaped back and watched the sparkling lights steak into the sky. Once they had disappeared from view, he sheathed his sword and rushed into the village.
Rhayn came and stood next to the sorceress. The defiler’s fireball had frightened her infant, but the elven mother seemed oblivious to her child’s sobs. Sadira stepped around to her sister’s back to comfort the baby. He was crying so hard that his arched eyebrows were almost flat, and his pointed ears had turned as crimson as the sun.
“Hush, little one,” Sadira cooed, speaking to the child as he was customarily addressed. From what Sadira had seen, elven children were not named until they could run alongside their parents. Of the four other juveniles who spent their nights at Rhayn’s camp, she had heard only the oldest called by name.
When the infant didn’t stop crying, Sadira asked her sister, “Shall I hold him?”
Rhayn turned around, moving the child out of sight. “Don’t comfort him,” the mother said. “It’ll be better if he learns to be brave.”
Though Sadira doubted that comforting a frightened infant would make him fainthearted as an adult, she deferred to her sister’s wishes. “Elves are hard parents,” she observed.
“The desert is a hard place,” answered Rhayn. “Though I see you must have also led a hard life-or been raised by a fool. Only a brave woman or a stupid one would have defied my father as you did.”
“At heart, Faenaeyon is spineless,” Sadira answered. “He’s no different than any other tyrant.”
“My father is no coward!” snapped Rhayn, her deep blue eyes burning with indignation. She studied Sadira for a moment, then the anger faded. “And he was not always a tyrant,” she said. “Once, he was a great chief who showered his warriors with silver and his enemies with blood.”
“If you say so,” Sadira answered, shrugging. “It means nothing to me.”
“You’re wrong,” said Rhayn. She took Sadira by the arm and led her toward Magnus, who had gone to chase down the sorceress’s kank. “Faenaeyon will overlook your defiance, for your powers are useful, and, in the end, you did what he wanted you to. But you’re also dangerous to him. When you threatened his fortune, you threatened his hold over the tribe. He won’t tolerate such a risk for long.”
Sadira studied Rhayn for several moments, wondering what had moved the elf to share this warning with her. Finally, the sorceress said, “My thanks. I’ll take my leave as soon as we find another caravan traveling toward Nibenay.” “Don’t be a fool!” Rhayn hissed. She glanced around to make sure they were out of earshot of the rest of the tribe. “Even if we see another caravan, Faenaeyon will never let you join it!”
Sadira scowled. “What are you saying?”
Rhayn shook her head. “Are you really so naive?” she asked. “You have become Faenaeyon’s sword. As long as you serve him well, he’ll take care to keep you sharp. But when you become so heavy that your edge is dangerous, he’ll shorten your blade or destroy you altogether. Don’t think that he’ll let you fall into someone else’s hands. There’s too great a danger, that you’ll be used against him someday.”
“I don’t believed that,” Sadira said. “He promised to take me to Nibenay, and so far he’s keeping that promise.”
“You shall see Nibenay,” Rhayn said. “Do not despair of that. But when you leave, it will be with the Sun Runners-or not at all.”
Rhayn paused to let Sadira consider the warning. After a few moments, she said, “There is an alternative.”
The sorceress raised a brow. “And what is that?”
“All Sun Runners remember when Faenaeyon was a great chief, and that’s why so many tolerate him now,” Rhayn said. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But there are those of us who are tired of living in fear and having every coin we earn stolen by him.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me,” Sadira said.
“Nothing and everything,” answered Rhayn. “That’s the beauty of it. Even if we wished to see Faenaeyon hurt, which we don’t, we couldn’t kill him. Too many of the old warriors remember when he was young, and they would never stand for his assassination.”
“What do you want from me?” the sorceress asked, deciding to cut directly to the point.
“If you could incapacitate my father, the tribe would have to select a new leader,” Rhayn said.
“You, of course,” concluded Sadira.
“Perhaps.” Rhayn shrugged. “But the important thing is, there’ll be no trouble between those who support Faenaeyon and those who don’t.”
“Because you’ll blame me,” Sadira said. Over the last two days, she had begun to feel a certain fondness for Rhayn, and thought the same had been true for the elf. Now, it was clear that her sister had only been preparing her as a scapegoat.
“It will come to that only if someone figures out what you did,” Rhayn said, not even trying to deny the treachery in her plan. “Even then, you should be safe enough. You and I won’t make our move for a week, until we’re near Nibenay. By the time anyone realizes what happened, you’ll be in the city-free of us and Faenaeyon.”