wished it to be, remembered only as The Seven, comrades in life and death, who did what could not be done, and so saved us all.'
'How could you forget them if they were Elves?' Kellen asked, since if he'd learned one thing in his time in Sentarshadeen, it was that Elves had very long memories, and kept excruciatingly accurate records of their families and genealogies.
'The Seven were not Elves, not all of them,' Jermayan corrected him crisply. 'They were of all the races that fought against the Endarkened. And they were not warriors at all, but scouts, sent out to patrol in advance of the army to learn the disposition of enemy forces and to report back.'
Not warriors? Then how could they ever have held against a host of Demons!
'But this time, knowing what they knew, seeing what they had seen, they dared not. They knew the Endarkened host must come through Vel-al-Amion, and so they retreated to that pass, sending messages to their commanders, messages that they could only hope would reach them, knowing they would never know if word had gotten through in time. And when all the hosts of Darkness and foul magic descended upon Vel-al-Amion, the Demon army found its way barred by seven scouts who would not yield the pass.'
Kellen found himself profoundly stirred by this tale. Only scouts! Yet they had done what needed to be done, against far longer odds than those he and Jermayan faced, against the Endarkened in all their strength, not the weakened creatures hiding in Shadow Mountain. If they could do it…
'No one knows what happened there, though there are many ballads of their bravery. I believe that when the Endarkened saw The Seven could not be easily brushed aside, they tried to tempt The Seven to join their own forces, for that is ever the way of Demons.'
Suddenly Kellen could picture it in his mind, the vast host behind the leaders, the Endarkened leaders offering—what? It would have had to be more than just their lives. It would have to be everything all of them had ever wanted: love, power, riches, fame, everything…
'But that, too, will have failed,' Jermayan said, his voice filled with awe, 'and then, surely, the wrath of the Endarkened commander must have been overweening. Yet The Seven held Vel-al-Amion, and the Endarkened army could not advance through it while their way was barred.'
'But how?' Kellen asked wonderingly. 'If they were just scouts, how could they have held?'
'There is much we will never know,' Jermayan admitted simply. 'It was a miracle, and The Seven gave their lives in payment to the Gods that had answered their prayers for that miracle. What is certain is that reinforcements arrived in time to catch the Endarkened army while it was bottled up in the pass. 'Then blew the silver horns of the army of Cirandeiron Istemion, then roared the mighty drums of King Damek; brazen and argent marched the human and Elven armies across the bridge of their hallowed dead to engage the foe…' or so the bards would have it. The Allied armies hurt the enemy badly enough to force them to retreat, and the War went on. The bodies of The Seven were never recovered. Yet if they had not held the pass long enough for the Allies to get there…' Jermayan shrugged eloquently, and said nothing more.
But Kellen thought about that story long and hard as they rode, and he wondered—if it had been him, would he have had the courage to stand?
THEY made an early camp, unwilling to push the tired animals any farther over such difficult terrain. There was no possibility of finding any place that was sheltered, but at least they'd found someplace flat, a stony hilltop with a spectacular view of the barren sweep of parched hills and the mountains beyond. If they could not be comfortable, Kellen consoled himself, at least no one could possibly sneak up on them.
Not for the first time today, Kellen wondered if they'd overshot the mark or taken a wrong turn. He soothed his apprehension with the promise that he'd do a Finding Spell in the morning before they set off. That would quickly set them on the right path again. True, Idalia had warned him against that sort of thing except in a dire emergency, but—
—but by now their presence here in the Lost Lands couldn't be a secret anymore.
He'd done pretty major Healing Magic on Jermayan, and even though he'd done it within the protection of his circle, some of the power had to have leaked out. And he knew, deep down inside, that at least one of the attacks on them had come from the hands, if not of the Endarkened themselves, at least from their creatures. And since they'd be moving immediately, it wouldn't draw the enemy to their position.
But the moment he made the decision, doubt set in. What price would the Finding Spell exact? What if paying it ran counter to his current mission? What if it was something he couldn't—or didn't want to—do?
What if it was the first in the series of mistakes that would set him on the path to becoming a Darkmage? What if it conflicted with the price he had yet to pay for Jermayan's healing? Every time he thought of doing magic, things just got more complicated! No wonder the ancient Mages had come up with High Magick, which—
Which has its own prices, and is paid for with stolen energy.
So that wasn't an answer, either.
He performed his part of the chores of setting up camp in a haze compounded of equal parts of exhaustion and preoccupation. Jermayan helped him dig out and collect several melon-sized stones to build a fire-ring, both to
