"A shadow shall sprout in the Dragon Sea
And grow till it covers the East,
Swallowing the armies that stand in its way;
On wizard's children dragons will feast."
"Spare me your auguries!" Keron bellowed. "I've had enough of your doomcrying."
Treynaf did not flinch. "Those were not my words. The stanza is one of the prophecies of the great seer, Shahera of Acalon, written fifteen centuries ago. It came to me suddenly."
"I don't care. Give me something useful. Give me knowledge that will help me fight Gloroc. Otherwise be silent."
"There is something there," Treynaf murmured, as if speaking to himself. "The poem contains a clue."
Keron scoffed. "Perhaps the line about wizard's children? Shall we poison your flesh and feed it to the Dragon?"
"I don't know." Treynaf stroked the globe. "I see a palace beneath the sea. I see a dragon, dead."
That, at least, was moderately cheering. For the thousandth time in his life Keron wished that some member of Alemar the Great's descendants would be born who could use the globe to its potential. He turned from Treynaf and found himself face to face with his herald.
"Summon two messengers," Keron snapped. "They're to carry the news of the battle. One will go to my son and daughter in Cilendrodel. The other goes to Struth."
The herald saluted and ran to do as he was told. On the battlefield the Dragon's men had seen that their momentum was checked. They fell back to reinforce their beachhead. Both sides resigned themselves to a long, bitter engagement.
PART ONE
The Flower Of Victory
You let your magic tortoise go,
And look at me, frowning.
Inauspicious.
– I Ching, 27th hexagram, first line
I
THE STRANGERS HAD BEENtracking him for two days. Toren stilled his breathing and listened again. The forest hummed with its sounds: a firemoth laying eggs underneath a nearby leaf, birds chirping in the heights, beetles rustling through the mulch at his feet. Yet, the frogs were quiet, back along the overgrown path where he had been not long before. By now they should have resumed croaking.
Toren bent down and loosened his moccasins. His legs throbbed from knee to toe. He had run as only a modhiv could run, for two days, foregoing food and sleep. The breeze struck his sweat-drenched clothing and sent chills down the sides of his torso. His eyes burned.
He had run enough. It was no longer a case of personal danger. Before him was the stream that marked the borders of his tribe's land. Duty demanded that he protect his people.
He knelt on the muddy bank, pulled three small blocks of pigment from his pouch, wet his brush, and began his deathmask, using the stream's surface as a mirror. He took his time, painting the area under his eyebrows just so, mixing the colors to the exact hue he wanted, recreating the design that his grandfather's grandfather had worn to his grave. Once it had dried, he cast the blocks to the current.
So be it. If the strangers followed him now, someone would die.
He rubbed his feet, ankles, and calves with an ointment and waded into the stream, his passage making almost no sound. He travelled downstream at the same rate as the current, disturbing the silt as little as possible. Within minutes, a school of chikchik gathered around his feet, flashing their razor teeth inches from his skin. They smelled the ointment and swam on to find other, perhaps larger, prey.
Toren did not seize the first of the many branches that overhung the water, nor even the tenth. When he saw the one he wanted, he used it to lift himself from the stream, crawled hand over hand toward the trunk, and waited until his feet had dripped dry. He jumped directly from the trunk onto a jumble of rocks and restored his moccasins. By the time he had to step once more on soft ground, he was many yards from the bank.
That would not stop the strangers from finding the trail, not if they had failed to be thrown off by the other, more sophisticated tactics he had used during the past two days. It would, however, give the impression that he was still trying to hide it.
He hurried into Fhali land. After an hour he passed a hoary old tree where he had cached food ten days earlier, on his way to scout the territory of the Amane. The cache was still there, in a cleft long ago created by lightning. He scooped up the satchel and ran on. Presently, however, he began a wide circle that brought him within sight of the tree again, near the path down which he had originally come.
He hid deep within the brush beside the trail, tortured by the thought of the food he had retrieved. He dared not chew; the action of his jaws would dull his hearing. His ancestors encouraged him to have discipline, and he put hunger and the cold weather to the back of his mind. He focused his bloodshot eyes at the trail. Not once had he actually seen – or directly heard – whoever or whatever followed him, but he could sense the danger dogging his heels. There were at least two, possibly three, pursuers.
He took his blowgun from its sheath, selected a dart, and examined the brown smudge at the tip. Satisfied that none of the poison had rubbed off, he slipped it into the barrel.
Toren had never killed a man before. He asked his ancestors to help keep his aim steady and his breath strong.
Finally, Toren heard soft footfalls along the trail. While he remained hidden, a lone man loped past, his eyes on Toren's spoor, and stopped beside the old tree, examining the crevice from which Toren had taken his cache. Toren waited in vain for the appearance of the man's companions. The stranger was another Vanihr, probably a modhiv, tall and lithe like Toren himself, with long blond hair and smooth, golden skin. What tribe Toren could not tell. His bow was strangely shaped. His hair was tied high – behind the head, rather than behind the neck, and bound with a clasp of an unfamiliar metal. He wore a knife far longer than any Toren had ever personally seen, as long as the swords of the men of the Flat. Curiously, his bow was unstrung and tied behind his back. He carried a small net in his hand.
Toren was reassured to see a flesh and blood enemy – a weary-looking one at that. It seemed to him that only a spirit should have been able track him so far, yet this was obviously a living being, alone and vulnerable.
Toren inserted the end of his blowgun through an opening in the foliage. The distance was not ideal, but he had the element of surprise and his lungs were rested. He aimed and fired. The stranger chose that moment to step away from the tree, turning not to continue along the trail, but to look back in the direction from which he had approached. The dart struck him in the upper arm, rather than the back.
The stranger cried out, flung aside his strange net, and clutched at the dart. Toren faded further into the brush, taking refuge behind a tree, out of arrow danger. He would stay out of sight until the poison took effect.
A spider web seemed to dance in front of his face. Suddenly the world went dark.
Toren felt cold ground beneath his legs, rough bark at his back, and ropes binding his limbs. His skull ached miserably. It was an effort just to open his eyes.
He looked up into the face of an animal.
In another moment, he realized it was a man, but one with hair all over his jaws and chin. Black hair. His skin was nothing like the golden brown of the Vanihr; rather it was pinkish, almost white in places protected from the sun. Even the memories of his ancestors contained no image of such a man. It was several moments before Toren was convinced that he viewed a human.
To the left stood the strange Vanihr he had fought, eating burrost from Toren's cache. One of his arms was in a sling. Beside him was a woman. She at least had no hair on her face, but her complexion was just as pale as the first man's, and her hair a deep brown unknown among Toren's people except in legends. Like the others she wore a loose shirt and full-length trousers tied at the waist and ankles. She carried another of the unusual bows. All three strangers had the haggard look of people who have led a long chase.