and courageous as only a prince of elves could be.”
He dragged the scarf away from his neck. The flesh was mottled red and scarred like the skin of a lizard. The Khurish chiefs muttered. Adala blinked a few times, but held firm.
“All this greatness I lost. My son threw away his life on a false love and an evil cause. My wife never forgave herself, or me, for his death.” He pushed back his hood.
“Oh, my love, don’t,” Alhana whispered brokenly.
His gloved hands halted for an instant, and he glanced at her. “I must, beloved. It’s
He spoke to Adala again. “No mortal being should have survived what I survived. You speak of your divine fate. You know nothing! I
In one motion Porthios drew off the cloth mask. Nomad and elf shrank back in horror. Kerian had seen this once before. Although she looked away, she saw it still. The image was burned into her memory. Only Alhana did not recoil or avert her eyes. She looked full upon the ruin of her husband’s face, and she did not waver from his side.
The dragon’s fire had burned Porthios’s flesh down to the last layer of skin. Flame-red, it covered a head devoid of ears, nose, and lips, the eyelids retracted to nearly nothing. Almost as if to mock what was gone, a fringe of long hair remained on the lower half of his skull, but the hair was dull, dead gray. His face was a skull, covered by crimson muscle and slashed by harsh, white scar tissue.
He turned his head stiffly toward the shocked warmasters and several dropped to their knees. “We
The apparition before them was horrid enough; to hear it speak was the final straw. The chiefs and warmasters fled. Even Adala’s fortitude wasn’t proof against the sight. She did not flee, but she lifted her dust veil over her eyes.
“Abomination,” she gasped. “You should not be!”
The lipless mouth moved in an awful parody of a smile. “I agree. But here I am. Do you really want to match your fate to mine?”
He stepped forward and slapped the donkey’s flank. Faced with the wall of elves and griffons ahead, the donkey snorted and jogged back toward the men and horses he knew. Adala clutched reins and wiry mane to avoid being pitched off. She did not try to halt his going.
Porthios could not move. He had bared his shame to the world, and he could not turn to see the horror in the eyes of those behind him, especially one pair of violet eyes. A hand, clutching his mask, appeared at his side. He turned to find Alhana standing close by. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but there was no revulsion on her face, nor even pity, only love. He replaced the mask, raised his hood, and began to wind the long cloth around his neck again.
“Get the people moving,” he said. “If the humans think too long, they may try to fight again.”
Kerian climbed onto Chisa. She expected Alhana to follow, but the former queen stayed by her husband. Porthios told Samar to go without him.
“You’re staying here?” Kerian asked.
“What are a few thousand humans when you’ve bathed in the breath of a dragon?”
The Lioness saluted. It was not a gesture she performed often. She had a Wilder elf’s inbred distrust of authority, but at this time and place, a salute seemed proper.
Porthios returned the gesture, then Alhana linked her arm in his.
Gilthas awoke. Only one eye would open. He lifted a hand and felt a thick bandage crisscrossing his forehead.
He was lying in a litter, being carried. Night had come and around him were the voices and footfalls of his people.
He must have spoken his confused thoughts aloud, because the elf holding the rear poles of the litter said, “No, sire. You’re definitely not dead.”
“Hytanthas! When did you-?”
“I carried out your orders, Great Speaker,” said the young captain. He nodded to the elf carrying the front of the litter. Gilthas strained to see with his good eye.
“You look like the dog’s dinner,” Kerianseray told him. Her voice broke, betraying her true feelings despite the crude human expression. “Why were you in the middle of a raging battle without arms or armor?”
He could not credit the evidence of his eyes. Her presence was a miracle such as the gods might have bestowed on a long- ago hero. He remembered having fallen during the battle, but in his muddled mind something else seemed of greater import.
“Your hair!”
She shrugged. “It’s a long tale.”
They told him all of it, from Kerian’s plunge into Nalis Aren and the participation in the rebellion, to Hytanthas’s arrival in Qualinesti and the capture of Golden griffons. Gilthas found it impossible to fathom. Yet the griffons wheeling overhead, keeping watch over the mass of refugees beneath them, were undeniably real.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Inath-Wakenti. Where else?”
He pushed himself painfully up on one elbow. It was true. They were enclosed in the tree-shrouded embrace of the mountains. Gilthas inhaled deeply, filling his ravaged lungs with balmy air. They had done it. They were here.
He lay down again. “I am glad you came back.”
She thought how best to answer him. “I’m glad too,” she finally said. “We’ll be at the creek soon. It marks the boundary of the valley proper, and the strange things that go on inside it.”
He asked no more questions. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars had slipped, aching but contented, into slumber.
Robien sniffed the wind. “They come,” he said. “May the gods help us all,” Favaronas murmured.
At the mouth of Alya-Alash, Adala sat on Little Thorn. She’d sent her faithful followers away and was alone at the doorstep of the sacred land, pondering the meaning of fate.
A horse and rider appeared, shimmering in the morning mirage. The
The rider finally resolved into her cousin, Wapah. A ferocious frown twisted Adala’s face.
“Traitor! You betrayed your people.”
He pulled his horse to a halt by Little Thorn. “I betrayed you, cousin. You are not Khur.”
With that he rode away, into the sacred valley. Adala listened until his horse’s hoofbeats were lost in the sighing wind. She stared at the ground, trying to understand what Those on High wanted of her. The foreign killers were in the valley. What was she to do next?
A few feet from Little Thorn’s left front hoof lay an unusually shaped stone. It was of common composition, but rectangular, with sharp corners, as if worked by a mason’s band. Adala slid off her donkey, an idea taking shape in her mind.
The stone was three feet long and two wide, and she could barely shift it, but she finally got it aligned across the entrance to the pass. It was perfect. More would be needed, of course, many more. Yet it was a start.
The united tribes of Khur had a new task before them.
