Porthios’s voice rang with conviction. Kerian nodded, but in her heart, she was certain Alhana Starbreeze would not survive the coming night.
Chapter 13
Gilthas stood on the extreme edge of the plateau, inches from a thousand-foot drop. Warm air rose from the desert, stirring his hair. The wind of the previous day had raised a mighty cloud of dust into the sky. The sun, shining through the haze, was a dully glowing scarlet orb, like an iron left in a forge fire.
A branding iron, he thought, gazing at the morose sky.
Spread on the plateau behind him were hundreds of his kith, captured by the nomads then released. They had been returned without the water, food, weapons, and tools that had been with them on Lesser Fang. Already supplies were reaching critical levels, and this added burden made the situation all the more difficult. There wasn’t even the compensation of a renewal of their fighting strength. The nomads had maimed every male elf.
Just when Gilthas thought he had plumbed the lowest depths of injustice and suffering, the bottom of the abyss was lowered again. So many elves purposefully maimed, Not even the Knights of Neraka had stooped to such tactics. It was a blow worthy of a dragonlord, only none had ever thought of it.
Was the choice of the left hand intentional? Did the nomads know that most elves, unlike the majority of humans, were left-handed? Or had they considered themselves merciful, branding the lesser-used hand?
Gilthas nearly choked on the thought. In the end, it didn’t matter. The honor of the deed made such fine distinctions irrelevant.
The nomads who escorted the freed elves to the foot of Broken Tooth kept assuring the elves that they were not responsible for the branding.
“You bear the mark of the Weya-Lu,” they said. “We of the Mikku and the other tribes did not do this.”
So all was not harmonious among the various tribes. That might be useful later.
Hamaramis arrived at Gilthas’s vertiginous perch. The old general was followed by a group of young warriors. All were dusty and burned by sun and wind, and all burned just as fiercely with a desire for revenge. The expressions on their faces prompted Gilthas to cut Hamaramis off before he even started speaking.
“I will not hear plans for revenge, General. If you have other military matters to discuss, I will listen.”
Hamaramis’s face worked for a moment, then he burst out, “Sire, something must be done! Every elf on this summit knows what happened, and every one expects us to strike a blow for justice and for honor!”
He sounded like Kerian. Gilthas felt a great weariness drag at his limbs. With as much patience as he could muster, he said, “All that would accomplish is more death. Find another option.”
Hamaramis’s lieutenants openly seethed with resentment but did not speak.
“Our situation grows ever more dire, Great Speaker. If we don’t fight our way off this peak, we’ll never leave here alive.”
That was only too true. They were fundamentally weaker than when they’d first scaled Broken Tooth and could not remain much longer in idle safety. The nomads were displaying unusual staying power, keeping out of reach yet remaining close enough to menace any force that dared descend to the desert. The capture of Lesser Fang had infused the Khurs with new confidence and weakened the resolve of many elves.
It would be all too easy for Gilthas to lead his warriors off the peak, crying, “Let us die fighting!” And that is exactly what would happen: the soldiers would die in battle and the civilians left behind would perish of heat and thirst. Thus would end the most ancient race in all the world. The flame of Kith-Kanan, of Silvanos, would go out.
As he stared at the hazed vastness of the Khurish desert, Gilthas’s hands clenched into fists. His face stiffened with anger, and his sun-bleached brows lowered in a ferocious frown. He would not allow it to happen! His people would not die here, not while there was breath in his body.
He turned away from the precipice. “There is always another way, General,” he said harshly. “To die starving or die fighting are not the only answers. Find me another!”
His injunction met only blank stares. His chin lifted. Despite the threadbare garb and matted, unwashed hair, Gilthas Pathfinder suddenly was every inch the Speaker.
“Let the word go forth,” he said, using the terminology of a royal decree. “The Speaker of the Sun and Stars will go amongst his people and ask one question: How shall our nation be delivered off this rock?”
The warriors were skeptical, but they saluted their sovereign and hurried to carry out his command.
As sunset washed its usual scarlet and gold brilliance over the cloudless sky, Gilthas put on his best remaining robe-not a Khurish geb, but a gown of forest green silk with narrow bands of yellow at neck and wrists- and made himself as presentable as a comb and dry cloth allowed. With his councilors and highest-ranking warriors in tow, he set out to talk to his people. Stopping at every tent and bedroll on Broken Tooth was not practicable. Instead, he would visit the shared campfires that dotted the plateau.
The sentiment for peace, he quickly learned, was widespread. Even the elves who’d been brutally branded by the Weya-Lu voiced a great longing for peace.
“We’ll find it,” Gilthas vowed, “in the Inath-Wakenti. The problem is how to survive to get there.”
Ordinary elves had only vague notions about their enemy. They saw the nomads as marauders, thundering on horseback across the blazing sands, with swords upraised. The politics of Khur, the religion of the desert tribes, and the meddling of I the rogue mage Faeterus were not common knowledge. Many elves, when asked by their king how best to save the nation, said, “Could we not talk to the humans, Great Speaker?” The Khan of Khur had allowed the elves to dwell outside his capital for five years, in exchange for steel and trade goods. Surely the world- renowned eloquence of elf diplomats could negotiate passage to the valley.
It was a notion Gilthas promised to consider. No one had tried to parley with the nomads since the departure from Khurinost. The Khurs’ rage was so extreme and so unfathomable, no one on the elves’ side had considered talking to them. Perhaps the time was coming for that to change.
Some elves had no interest in negotiations. They wanted to defeat the Khurs in battle. Otherwise, they said, the sacrifice of all those who had died thus far would have been in vain. The nomads had shown themselves to be treacherous, irrational, and unbelievably cruel. No one could talk to an enemy like that.
Around midnight, when many of his entourage had given up from exhaustion, Gilthas was still moving from campfire to campfire, still listening. As he passed the tent of a well- born Silvanesti named Yesillanath, he was seized by a fit of coughing. Yesillanath and his wife, Kerimar, invited him inside. The coughing did not abate, and when blood began to trickle from the Speaker’s lips, the two Silvanesti shouted for his escort.
Planchet burst in and found the Speaker sinking to the ground, his slender frame wracked by spasms of coughing, his face deathly pale. Planchet knelt, supporting his king against one knee. General Hamaramis arrived as Kerimar was offering the little wine they had left. The general asked for something stronger. Yesillanath handed him a vial of clear liquid. Hamaramis’s eyes widened as he read its label, but he opened it and passed it to Planchet.
“Drink, sire!” Planchet urged.
Gilthas did, and it was his turn to look surprised. The vial contained Dragon Sweat, a distilled liquor mainly used in medicines. It was so potent Gilthas lost his breath completely for an instant, long enough to break the cycle of coughing. Planchet would have lowered him to the rugs spread out over the rocky ground, but Gilthas said no. It was easier to breathe where he was, sitting up against his friend’s knee.
“You are ill,” Planchet said reproachfully.
“Merely a cough.”
The blood speckling the front of his robe belied that comment, as did Kerimar’s bloodied linen kerchief, which Gilthas still clutched in one hand.
“This is no simple cough, sire!” said Hamaramis. “Tell me, is it consumption?”
Gilthas nodded, but insisted he had the problem in hand. Hamaramis listened to him with all deference then asked for a healer to tend the Speaker. Yesillanath said Truthanar, a Silvanesti, was the most skilled healer available. The general went out to dispatch warriors to find Truthanar.
