Four prisoners were herded to the Lioness. Three others, wounded and unable to walk, were carried forward and dumped at her feet.
“Who are you men? What tribe? What clan?” she asked. She had expected nomad interference, but not so soon, not such a pointless ambush. With a shiver she recalled a similar attack at the priestess’s temple.
The nomads were silent. One of them knelt by a wounded comrade and began to chant a muted prayer.
Again, more calmly, the Lioness posed her questions promising to spare all if they would answer. Not one of the captured humans said a word.
“Why do you fight us?” the Lioness demanded. Her exhausted horse picked up her anger and snorted, prancing in a tight circle. “We’re not your enemies. We’re nomads now, too, driven from our homes and forced to wander this desert. Tell me, are you bandits, or have you been paid to fight us?”
Nothing. Two of the humans sat on the sand and hugged their knees, eyes still fixed on the ground. The third continued to pray under his breath. The fourth, trembling from exhaustion and a wound on his upper thigh, remained on his feet, staring defiantly at her.
The Lioness glared back, frustrated by their silence. She had no time for this.
She allowed herself only a moment of indecision before snapping, “Captain!”
A Kagonesti veteran saluted his commander. “Search them:’ she said. “Anything unusual, bring to me. Take their swords and break their bows and arrows. Leave them food and water for two days. Their horses go with us.”
The standing nomad opened his mouth to protest. Without horses, they were doomed. They would never reach a water source before their own supply gave out.
“Very well. Carry out my orders, Captain.”
All the nomads, living and dead, were searched. The only thing of interest the searchers found was the small leather bag that each man wore on a string around his neck. One pouch was brought to Kerian. It was very light, containing a fetish, no doubt. She loosened the neck and upended the bag. A black and orange creature fell out, landing on the neck of her horse.
“Spider!” yelled the elf warrior who’d brought the bag. He swatted at it with his gauntlet. With astonishing power for so small a creature, it sprang from the horse and landed, legs spread, on the soldier’s cheek.
The elf screamed. One of his comrades yanked the palm- sized spider from his face and flung it to the ground. He stamped it with his iron-shod boot.
Tragically, the evil already had been done. Two fang marks showed clearly on the elf’s cheek. From the holes, red streaks were spreading even as the Lioness watched. The stricken elf went rigid, his eyes and mouth wide in agony. The Lioness shouted for a healer. The elf began to tremble, then convulse. Despite his comrades’ strong arms, he went down, dragging them with him.
“What can we do?” the Lioness yelled at the nomad.
He shrugged, his face hard. “Iron’s the only cure for him now.” He drew a finger across his throat.
She turned away from him in disgust, and dismounted. The elf’s face was dreadful, his mouth stretched wide in a scream he could not vent, and his face mottled by the red streaks that mapped the lightning-fast flow of poison through his blood.
Kerian knelt beside him. With a tenderness few could imagine, she touched his cheek. His skin was cold. What had been living flesh now felt like marble. His eyes, blue irises lost in a bloody sea, shifted toward her slightly.
In the heat of pursuit, with Knights of Neraka or worse baying at her heels, she’d had to use the iron cure before. She loathed it. It was all they could do for the dying elf now, to spare him needless suffering, but she hated it nonetheless.
Her free hand still resting on his face, she ended the elf’s torment. His gaze remained fixed on her, grew unfocused, then empty. Kerian closed his eyelids.
“His name was Nafarallun,” said one of the elves holding him. “Born a Qualinesti.”
The remaining leather pouches were pounded flat, unopened. Stone-faced, the nomads awaited the same fate.
“Go home, men of the Leaping Spider clan,” the Lioness said tersely, looking down at them from horseback. “We have not come to harm you, but if you make war on us, we will show you no mercy.”
The elves formed up and rode away. Soon, the marooned nomads were only dark smudges against the blond sand, then they were lost from sight.
Around Khuri-Khan the desert was stony, with hills of sand piled up by contending winds from the mountains in the north and the sea in the east. The Khurish capital was set in a shallow depressions like a dry lakebed. All day the elves climbed out of this low-lying area. Stones became scarce, and the sand grew finer. There was no shade in sight anywhere. Each elf had donned eyeshades of the style worn by nomads, which looked very like bandages wrapping the head: stiff strips of hide held in place by thongs looped around the ears. The “bandage” had very thin horizontal openings, which admitted just enough light to see. Without the eyeshades, most of the elves would have gone blind in a day or two. Elves and horses were draped in white cloth, another nomad trick. The light color deflected the killing rays of the sun.
The column paused every few miles for water. Horses drank first, riders second. A warrior could persevere even when thirsty, but a horse would balk unless watered.
As the distance from Khuri-Khan increased, they found less and less evidence of intelligent life. They were too far east to encounter travelers on the caravan route to Alek-Khan and Kortal, and too far west to meet traders using the only paved road in Khur, the Khan’s Way, which led to Delphon. Here, at its harsh edge, it was easy to see why even the hardiest nomads shunned the High Plateau.
The wind died. This spared them the stinging dust, but allowed the heat to grow. The entire column looked like a procession of phantoms, white-draped wraiths plodding slowly ahead through the calf-deep sand.
Under her stifling shroud, the Lioness fought against the lethargy that had her nodding in the saddle. She slipped a hand into one of the smaller saddlebags draped across the pommel of her saddle. Within, next t’ the smooth coolness of Sa’ida’s enigmatic gift, she felt dry flakes. These were the leaves that had fallen on her during her last night in Khurinost. They had quickly dried in the desert air. She hadn’t mentioned the odd occurrence to anyone, not even Gilthas. What could she say? A bat flew over and dropped ash leaves on me? Her husband would think she’d been sampling the Khurish homebrew. Yet, she was sure that the fallen leaves meant something.
Swaying in the saddle, the Lioness had plenty of time to consider what she knew about ash trees. The wood was hard and durable and made good tool handles, pike and lance shafts, and arrows. Eastern Silvanesti had a great many ash trees. So did the woodlands of Wayreth in Qualinesti. Had the leaves come from one of those places? Was the strange rain an omen, a sign that, one day, she was destined to return to one of the elven homelands?
If circumstance permitted she would ask Favaronas about ash trees. Doubtless, the scholar knew all sorts of trivial lore about them. Perhaps she would find a clue in his knowledge.
Thinking of the archivist, she twisted in the saddle and looked for him in the line of draped riders. One of Favaronas’s assistants had been killed by a stray nomad arrow during the set-to at the dune. The remaining two scholars were shorter than her warriors, and Favaronas especially was not an accomplished rider, making them easy to pick out. The archivist rode with knees stiff and feet pointed outward. From the bobbing motion of his head, she decided he was half asleep. Just as well. If she could afford the lapse in alertness, she’d doze, too. It would make the miles pass more swiftly.
When the horizon ahead lost all relief and became a monotonous line, the elves knew they had reached the high desert at last. Although flat, it did present strange features. The shallow sand beneath their horses’ hooves was marked with swirls, squiggles, and converging lines, as if way markers had been drawn. These were the handiwork of the only living creatures sharing the landscape with the elves: serpents, sand crawlers, spiders, and lizards. The sky took on a silver color like polished iron, and mirages shimmered over the sand. To the elves at the rear of the column, the lead riders took on a fantastic aspect as the broiling air magnified them and their horses, making them look ten feet tall. The lead riders also seemed to be treading through water, their reflections perfect in the tantalizing, phantom lakes.
The sun reached its zenith. Breathing was labor, not only forcing Kerian’s heavy chest to rise and fall, but
