“It could be used to find Morillon’s killer, or the spineless fiend who tried to kill the Speaker,” she said.
Planchet poured a cup of raw wine and handed it to the Lioness. “They might be the same person,” he said evenly. “Barring a new player, the roster of our foes is shrinking. Sahim-Khan, for all his grasping ways, has shown he’s not our true enemy, and Lord Hengriff is dead.”
“Who does that leave?” she asked.
“The mage Faeterus, for one. We don’t know much about him, but he tried to kill Captain Ambrodel, evaded the Nerakans, and is still at large.”
“What about the Torghanist high priest?”
Planchet shook his head. “A pawn in the game, not a player, I think. Sahim-Khan’s been hunting him for days. He dares not show his face anywhere in Khuri-Khan.”
“Prince Shobbat?” Hamaramis suggested.
Here, Planchet frowned without replying. The heir to the throne of Khur was a cipher to the elves. He had little to do with the running of the country and spent most of his time overseeing repairs to the palace or pursuing his personal pleasures. It was rumored he was involved in Hengriff’s fall, but the elves found this hard to credit. No one in Khuri-Khan took the spoiled, pleasure-loving prince seriously as a threat.
Kerian held out her empty cup and Planchet refilled it.
“How fares the Speaker, lady?” Hamaramis asked quietly.
“He sleeps. His fever waxes each night and wanes by day.”
Planchet said, “An entire corps of healers from Khuri-Khan waits to attend him.”
“Humans have done enough for the Speaker!” she snapped. Her furious expression lasted only seconds, then settled back into its usual stolid exhaustion. “Our people can take care of him.”
Although she had no grudge against Sa’ida or the Temple of Elir-Sana Kerian had been so shaken by the treacherous attack on Gilthas that she wouldn’t allow any humans near him. Elven sages, lacking the resources of their native lands, were having difficulty controlling his fever, but Kerian insisted only elves treat the Speaker.
She finished her drink, then returned to the dim room where Gilthas slept. The temperature was warm but bearable, the heat kept at bay by the palm fan that rotated slowly next to his bed. It was powered by the strong arms of boys who turned the crank located in an adjacent room. So great was their desire to aid their Speaker, most had to be forced to rest and allow another to take his place.
Around the room’s shadowed periphery, healers consulted each other in whispers. Irritated by their murmuring, Kerian ordered the room cleared.
She sat on her side of the rope-framed bed, careful not to block the breeze from the fan. In the low light she could see sweat on Gilthas’s forehead and along his jaw. His breath was slow and steady, but a little raspy. His eyes were closed. When she touched his cheek, she felt the fever burning inside him.
“I found the valley, Gil,” she said softly. “It’s just where your librarian said it would be, but I fear it’s no place for us. There’s something wrong with it, some kind of curse”- she grimaced at the ignorant word, but could think of no other-”on the place. A force snatches away living creatures, including our people. We never discovered where they went. The Inath-Wakenti holds no animal life at all, not so much as a lizard or a fly. I know the place fascinates you, and we can certainly send other explorers to study it, but that valley is no sanctuary for our beleaguered nation.”
He never stirred. She took his hand. Despite the sweat on his face, his hand was dry, and hot as the sands outside. She put her face close to his, willing him to waken, to be well, to hear.
“You must give up the foolish idea that we can find a new homeland. We have a home. Two homes, in fact. It’s our sacred duty and our destiny to return and take them back. That’s what we should do, what we
She realized she was squeezing his hand. Releasing it, she stood and paced across the room like a caged version of her namesake.
“There’s talk about me in the tents, you know. They say I abandoned my warriors to come home to you. I can’t deny it, but I won’t apologize for it. I flew here to be by your side.”
She halted her restless movement.
“We have to get out of here, Gil. Once Sahim-Khan drains us of all our treasure, he’ll sell us to the Knights or the bull- men or any of the other half-dozen groups that would like to see us exterminated. Or the nomads and Torghanists will unite against us and save him the trouble. Then what will we do?”
He didn’t answer, only lay breathing slowly. Six feet away, yet he might as well have been across the continent. Her husband wasn’t here. He’d gone somewhere she couldn’t reach. Fear, frustration, and worry squeezed her heart. She could no longer simply sit and stare at him.
Picking up her helmet and sword-belt from a chair by the bed, she departed. When she reached the audience room, she sent the healers back in again.
“Heal the Speaker,” she said curtly.
Past Hamaramis and Planchet, past the courtiers waiting in hushed circles, past her husband’s loyal servants she strode in unyielding silence. In the square outside the sprawling tent she found the company she’d summoned. One warrior held the reins of her horse. She swung into the saddle without benefit of stirrup.
The Lioness rode away toward Khuri-Khan with forty armed and armored warriors behind her.
Gilthas inhaled sharply and opened his eyes.
“My heart,” he gasped. Healers rushed to his side, thinking the Speaker was complaining about the organ in his chest, but he was not. “I heard you,” he panted. “Come back, my heart!”
But Kerian was already gone.
Water from the recent rains stained the ruined villa’s white limestone walls. Opportunistic seeds, long dormant in the soil, had sprouted, covering the pebbled paths and former gardens in a profusion of hairy, green shoots.
The Lioness had heard a full account from Hytanthas of his adventure with Faeterus and the mage’s monsters. When she and her riders reached the villa ruins clustered around the broken tower, she sent twenty elves to find the carcasses of the sand beast and manticore, while she and the remaining twenty scoured the grounds for clues to the mage’s whereabouts.
The clouds above were still, and no air stirred through the rubble piles and toppled columns. The atmosphere carried the heavy, expectant feeling of an impending storm. It was unnerving to the elves and their horses.
The dead monsters were easy enough to find. The headless manticore was draped over a pile of rubble. Closer to the villa, the sand beast was likewise yielding to corruption. The elves were forced to tie kerchiefs over their noses just to approach its body.
Kerian entered the mansion’s front doorway. Scraps of parchment blew over her feet. She speared one on her sword tip and brought it up to read. It looked scorched. Every line of ink on the vellum was charred. Her reading skills were limited, but she recognized the curls and tracery of a magical sigil. The weakened parchment broke apart. The fragments fluttered to the floor.
A warrior hailed her. He had found the sorcerer’s sanctum in the broken tower. She entered the tower through a large door that swung inward on silent hinges. The interior was lit only by the faint daylight from an open trap door overhead. She mounted a ladder they’d knocked together from house timbers, and entered Faeterus’s former residence.
The round room was filled with carpets, tapestries, and numerous pillows. Daylight penetrated through hairline cracks in the tower walls. Aside from the overblown furnishings, all they found were more pieces of disintegrating parchment, a collar and leash for the manticore, and an empty wicker cage.
One of the elves bent down, peering into the shadows. He stood up abruptly, cursing.
Kerian came over. “What is it?”
“Dead birds!” Six common pigeons, the bane of soukats all over Khuri-Khan, lay dead on the rug. Their headless bodies were arranged in a neat line.
Kerian spied a squat brass urn in the corner. Recognizing it as a Khurish oil pot, she picked it up and shook it. It was half full. She sent her warriors out. As they went back down the ladder, she began pouring mutton oil on the thick carpet. Tossing aside the empty urn, she swept parchment fragments into a heap on the oil-soaked carpet.
