Sadira studied the elf for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. “You must take me for a fool,” she said.
“Not at all,” the elf said. “I know you to be a cunning woman-cunning enough to know that if you want to leave the Sun Runners alive, this is your only hope.”
“I’ll take my chances with Faenaeyon,” Sadira replied coldly.
“The mistake you’re making is a fatal one,” Rhayn hissed. She spun around and stalked off, her infant sobbing more loudly than ever.
As Rhayn left, Magnus came over, leading his kank and Sadira’s behind him. “You must delight in the danger,” the windsinger observed, watching Rhayn leave. “A stranger among lirrs does not usually give two of the beasts such good reasons to eat her.”
“I have faced worse elves,” Sadira replied. “But how do you know what passed between Rhayn and me?”
Magnus tilted his ears forward. “When someone speaks, I seldom miss a word,” he said, waving the huge appendages back and forth. “It’s a curse of my heritage.”
“Which is what?” she asked. When the windsinger did not answer, she pressed the question. “I’ve never met anyone like you. What, exactly are you?”
“An elf, of course,” the windsinger said, flattening his ears. He started walking, taking his mount and Sadira’s to join the rest of the tribe’s kanks.
“You don’t look like any elf I know,” Sadira said, following the windsinger.
“My appearance makes no difference. I’ve been with the Sun Runners all my life,” Magnus answered sharply. Then more gently, he said, “Faenaeyon found me near the Pristine Tower, then took me in and raised me at his fire.”
“The Pristine Tower!” Sadira gasped. “Could you take me there?”
“Not even if I wanted to. I was only a babe when Faenaeyon found me,” the windsinger said, shaking his head. “Besides, no matter what you’ve told Faenaeyon, you don’t want to go to that place.”
“Why not?” Sadira asked.
“Because it beset by New Beasts, creatures more horrid and vicious than those anywhere else on Athas.” He stopped walking and looked down his long muzzle at the sorceress. “You couldn’t survive a day in that place. No one could.”
“Apparently, you did,” Sadira observed. “And so did Faenaeyon.”
“When he was young, Faenaeyon did many impossible things,” Magnus said, resuming his stride. “And as for myself, the winds have always watched after me.”
Realizing that she would learn nothing of the Pristine Tower’s location from Magnus, Sadira switched the topic to something of more immediate interest. “If you were raised by Faenaeyon, then I doubt you’re part of Rhayn’s plan,” the sorceress said. “You could warn him of what she’s doing.”
“And why would you want me to do that?” asked Magnus.
“Because he’d never take my word over hers,” Sadira answered. “And I don’t want to get blamed if she tries something before we reach Nibenay.”
“Sorry,” Magnus said. “I intend to keep her secret. Faenaeyon was a great chief when he was younger, but Rhayn’s right about him now. It would be better for us all if you did as she asked.”
SEVEN
THE DANCING GATE
“Is that Nibenay?”
Sadira pointed at the plain below, to, where a distant city of minarets huddled in the shade of a rocky butte.
“Of course,” Faenaeyon answered, keeping his eyes focused on the hillside beneath his feet. He leaped over a spray of yellow cloudbrush, landing on a round boulder, then immediately launched himself toward a jumble of copper-colored stones. “Did I not promise to take you to the City of Spires?” he called.
“And now you have,” the sorceress confirmed. She kept her hands tightly clutched on her kank’s harness as it scuttled after her father’s running figure. “Your obligation has been met. You don’t have to escort me into the city.”
Faenaeyon stopped and looked at her. “You’ll need us to help you find a guide,” he said, a silver glint in his eye. “Besides, Nibenay is a good place for elves to do business.”
“I can take care-”
Sadira’s objection was interrupted by a wild scream from the hunters running ahead of the tribe.
“Tul’ks!”
Four terrified creatures sprang from the copse of silver-bristle and bounded down the hill. They were larger than half-giants and as gaunt as elves, with stooped shoulders and white skulls uncovered by any sort of flesh. The tul’ks had bulging eyes, toothless jaws, and a set of oblong cavities where their noses should have been. Each wore a shabby tunic of tanned leather, secured about their waists with snakeskin belts.
As they ran, the frightened man-beasts dragged their knuckles along the ground, using their gangling arms like an extra set of legs to keep themselves stumbling. The Sun Runner hunters set off in pursuit, gleefully nocking arrows as they leaped from boulder to boulder.
“Stop your warriors!” Sadira said.
Faenaeyon gave the sorceress a look of disdain. “Why?”
“Because it’s murder,” she replied. “The tul’ks have nothing to do with you.”
One of the hunters loosed and arrow that sank deep into a tul’k’s back. The man-beast stumbled and fell head over heels.
“They are beasts,” chief scoffed, grinning in amusement as he watched the injured tul’k regain his feet and try to flee.
“Beasts don’t wear clothes,” Sadira said. She thrust a hand into the satchel holding her spell components. “Call off your hunters, or I will.”
“As you wish,” Faenaeyon said. Turning toward the hunters, he boomed, “Let the tul’ks go!”
The elves came to a stop and looked back to Faenaeyon, their faces showing their confusion. “What did you say?” demanded one.
“He said to leave them alone,” Sadira called. “They’ve caused you no harm.”
The hunter looked from her back to Faenaeyon. “You want this?”
“I do,” Faenaeyon said. As the tul’ks disappeared into the brush, the chief turned to Sadira. “You really shouldn’t have stopped my hunters. By killing the tul’ks, we’re doing them a mercy.”
Sadira removed her hand from her satchel. “How can that be?”
“The tul’ks are descended from the Ruin Stalkers-a tribe of elves that disappeared three centuries ago.” He stepped closer, watching Sadira with a roguish grin on his lips. “Do you want to know how they became tul’ks?”
“Probably not,” the sorceress answered. “But tell me anyway.”
“The Pristine Tower,” Faenaeyon said. “They were searching for the treasures of the ancients.” He looked in the direction the tul’ks had fled, then added, “You saw for yourself what became of them.”
“What are you saying?” Sadira asked, suspicious of Faenaeyon’s story.
The chief shrugged. “The elders don’t claim to exactly know how it happened. The warriors might have fought between themselves, or they could have been attacked by a herd of wild erdlus,” he said. “Or maybe they just stumbled across a wasp’s nest. Whatever it was, everyone in the tribe was wounded, and they were changed into the beasts you saw.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like,” Faenaeyon countered. “But if you go to the Pristine Tower, take care not to spill your blood. If you cut yourself, even if you scratch yourself, the magic of the place will change you into a beast more pitiful than the tul’ks. I’ve seen it happen.”
Sadira started to sneer at his claim, then remembered what the windsinger had told her about his origins. “Was that when you found Magnus?”
Faenaeyon’s eyes flashed, more in pain than anger. “Yes. What do you know about that?”
“Only what Magnus told me-that you found him there when he was a child.”
“He was a newborn baby,” the chief corrected.
“Tell me about it,” Sadira said. “Perhaps it’ll give me reason to heed your warning.”
Faenaeyon nodded. “When I was a young warrior, the Sand Dancers attacked us and stole my sister, Celba. By the time I recovered from my wounds and tracked them across the Ivory Plain, my sister had grown weary of being a slave-wife and fled into the desert. Her husband and four of his brothers went after her, so Celba fled to the one place they wouldn’t follow-the Pristine Tower. I found her pursuers camped in the lands just beyond the sight of the tower.”