Shortly after she passed the end of her second mile, an armored crossbowman stepped into the path before her.
“Halt!” he cried, leveling his weapon. At the same time, he gaped in astonishment at the lone old woman who approached the headquarters of the Army of Ergoth.
“I’m glad you are here to greet me,” she said pleasantly. “Take me to see General Giarna!”
“You want to see the general?”
“We’re ... old friends.”
Shaking his head in amazement, the guard nevertheless led Suzine a short way farther down the trail, entering a small clearing. The top of the meadow was almost completely enclosed by a canopy of tall elms—protection against detection from the air, Suzine knew.
“The general’s in there.” The man gestured to a small cottage near the clearing’s edge. Two men-at-arms flanked the doorway, and they snapped to attention as Suzine walked up to them.
“She wants to see the general,” explained the crossbowman, with a shrug.
“Should we search her?” The question, from a muscular halberdier, sent a shiver down Suzine’s stooped spine. She felt acutely conscious of the dagger in her pouch.
“That won’t be necessary.” Suzine recognized the deep voice from within the cottage. The watchmen stood aside, allowing Suzine to step through the door.
“You have come back to me!”
For a moment, Suzine stood still, blinking and trying to see in the dim light. Then the large black-cloaked figure moved toward her, and she knew him—knew his sight, his smell, and his intimidating presence. With a sense of dull wonder, she realized that the tales she had heard, the images of her mirror, were all true. General Giarna stood before her now. She knew that he must be at least seventy years old, but he looked the same as he had forty years earlier!
He stepped closer to her. She felt the revulsion and fear she had known forty years earlier when he had approached her, had used her. Slowly her fingers closed around the weapon in her pouch. The man loomed over her, looking down with a slightly patronizing smile. She stared into his eyes and saw that same hollowness, the same sense of void, that she remembered with such vivid terror.
Then she pulled out the knife and threw back her arm. Why is he laughing?
She wondered about that even as she drove the point of the weapon toward the unarmored spot at his throat. Giarna made no attempt to block her thrust. The blade struck his skin but snapped as the weapon broke at the hilt. The useless shard of metal fell to the floor as Suzine blinked, incredulous. General Giarna’s throat showed not the tiniest hint of a wound.
It wasn’t until Parnigar returned with his company of scouts that Kith-Kanan received any vital information regarding the enemy’s positions. Wearing sodden trail clothes from the nine-day reconnaissance, the veteran captain reported to Kith-Kanan as soon as he returned to the fort.
“We pushed at the fringes of their position,” he reported. “Their pickets were as thick as flies on a dead horse. They got two of my scouts, and the rest of us barely slipped out of their grasp.”
Kith shook his head, wincing. Even after forty years of war, the death of each elf under his command struck him like a personal blow.
“We couldn’t get into the main camp,” explained Parnigar. “There were just too many guards. But judging by the density of their patrols, I have to conclude they were guarding the main body of Giarna’s force.”
“Thanks for taking the risk, my friend,” said Kith-Kanan finally. “Too many times I have asked you.” Parnigar smiled wearily. “I’m in this fight to the end—one way or another!” The lanky warrior cleared his throat hesitantly. “There’s . . . something else.” “Yes?”
“We found the Lady Suzine’s coachman on the outskirts of the human lines.” Kith-Kanan looked up in sudden fear. “Was he—is he alive?” “Was.” Parnigar shook his head. “He’d been taken by their pickets, then escaped after a fight. Badly wounded in the stomach, but he made it to the trail. We found him there.” “What did he tell you?” “He didn’t know where she was. He had dropped her beside the trail, and she
followed a path into the woods. We checked out the area. Guards were thicker than ever there, so I think the headquarters must have been somewhere nearby.” Could she be heading back to Giarna? Kith-Kanan sensed Parnigar’s unspoken
question. Surely she wouldn’t betray Kith-Kanan. “Can you show me where this place is?” asked the elven commander urgently. “Of course.” Kith sighed sympathetically. “I’m sorry that you must travel again so quickly, but perhaps. . .” Parnigar waved off the explanation. “I’ll be ready to ride when you need me.”
“Go to your quarters now. Mari’s been waiting for you for days,” Kith-Kanan ordered, realizing that Parnigar still dripped from his drenched garments.
“She’s probably got dry clothes all ready to get you dressed.”
“I doubt she wants to dress me!” Parnigar chuckled knowingly.
“Off to your wife now, before she grows old on you!” Kith’s attempt at humor felt lame to both of them, though Parnigar forced a chuckle as he left.
31
Hermathya looked at herself in the mirror. She was beautiful and she was young ... yet for what purpose? She was alone.
Tears of bitterness welled in her eyes. She rose and whirled away from her table, only to be confronted by her bed. That canopied, quilted sleeping place mocked her every bit as harshly as did the mirror. For decades, it had been hers alone.
Now even her child had been sent away. Her anger throbbed as hot as ever, the same rage that had turned the two-week journey back to the city into a silent ordeal for Sithas. He endured her fury and didn’t let it bother him, and Hermathya knew that he had won.
Vanesti was gone, serving beside his uncle on the front lines of danger! How could her husband have done this? What kind of perverse cruelty would cause him to torture his wife so? She thought of Sithas as a stranger. What little closeness they had once enjoyed had been worn thin by the stresses of war. Her thoughts abruptly wandered to Kith-Kanan. How much like Sithas he looked—and yet how very different he was! Hermathya looked back upon the passion of their affair as one of the bright moments of her life. Before her name had been uttered as the prospective bride of the future Speaker of the Stars, her life had been a passionate whirl.
Then the announcement had come—Hermathya, daughter of the Oakleaf Clan, would wed Sithas of Silvanos! She remembered how Kith-Kanan had begged—he had begged!-her to accompany him, to run away. She had laughed at him as if he were mad.
Yet the madness, it now seemed, was hers. Prestige and station and comfort meant nothing, she knew, not when compared to the sense of happiness that she had thrown away.
The one time since then when Kith-Kanan and she had come together illicitly flared brightly in her mind. That episode had never been repeated because Kith-Kanan’s guilt wouldn’t allow it. He had avoided her for years and was awkward when they were brought together through necessity.
Shaking her head, she fought back the tears. Sithas was in the palace. Hermathya would go to him and make him bring their son back home!
She found her husband in his study, perusing a document with the Oakleaf stamp, in gold, at the top. He looked up when she entered, and blinked with surprise.
“You must call Vanesti back,” she blurted, staring at him.
“I will not.”
“Can’t you understand what he means to me?” Hermathya fought to keep her voice under control. “I need him here with me. He’s all I’ve got!”