The dwarren stirred at his name, the four behind the leader shooting glances toward one another as their mounts pawed the ground. No one spoke, but two of them edged away from the group. Only the leader appeared unruffled, his eyes narrowing.
“Prove it.”
Colin hesitated. He’d never been asked by the dwarren to prove his identity. He wondered what had happened in the past ten years to change that. But he reached down and pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing his forearm to the bright midmorning sunlight. The swirling patches of darkness beneath his skin were clear enough that the dwarren gasped, murmurs hushed by the leader with a sharp look.
“That proves only that you are one of the elloktu.”
“Would one of the Lost be able to stand here on the Lands, this close to the Summer Tree?” Colin couldn’t keep a hint of annoyance out of his voice.
The dwarren leader considered in silence, then gave a grudging nod of acknowledgment and respect, although Colin could still see suspicion in his eyes. “Shaeveran. We will escort you to our clan chief, Tarramic.”
He spun his gaezel and issued a few curt commands, then motioned them all forward, the group breaking away and one of the dwarren ululating as the scouts spread out to either side.
“What did they say?” Siobhaen asked harshly.
“They questioned who I was, but have offered to escort us to the clan chief.”
On his other side, Eraeth said shortly, “That is the first time I have ever seen the dwarren question who you were. Or been so wary of those entering their land. Something has happened.”
“We already know that the balance of the Wells has been disrupted. The return of the storms would not have gone unnoticed by the dwarren. Perhaps that is all it is.”
All of Eraeth’s doubt was voiced in a look.
Colin kneed his mount forward, Eraeth and Siobhaen doing the same to either side. They charged down the low slope in the wake of the dwarren, their horses catching up to the gaezels after a long moment of hard riding, the two groups slowing and adjusting to a steady pace that wouldn’t drain their mounts. The leader of the dwarren party ranged out ahead, the other four members dividing and slipping to either side.
They rode for two days, setting a fast pace, halting at odd times during the day at water sources to eat and rest, the dwarren raising small tents for sleep at night. Their route was circuitous, the dwarren leading them off the direct path in order to keep their water sources and warren entrances hidden. Twice during the first day, they sighted occumaen in the distance. Not as large as the one that had torn through the battlefields at the Escarpment, but big enough to engulf a man and his horse. Both times, the scouts brought the distortions to the dwarren leader’s attention, his face hardening at each occurrence. The second day, storm clouds pounded the plains with a deluge of rain and blue-purple lightning to the north. The entire group paused on a low rise to watch, sunlight shaded with raised hands. Colin felt a tingle of remembered hatred, the cold hands of the dead against his skin. Karen and his parents-along with the rest of the doomed wagon train-had survived such a storm, only to succumb to the Shadows afterward.
For a moment, despair washed over him. What had he achieved since then? Nothing had changed. The world was still plagued by the Wraiths and Shadows, the unnatural storms and the Drifters still riddled the plains. What had been accomplished during all of that time?
“Nothing,” he said out loud. Eraeth gave him a sidelong look, but he ignored it.
But something within him hardened. His jaw clenched and he straightened, his hands trying to grasp the handle of the staff Vaeren had taken from him. He would need to ask for a replacement, wasn’t certain that the Ostraell would grant it. And he needed to convince the dwarren that the time for complacency was gone. He wasn’t certain how he would do that, not with the protection of the Seasonal Trees in place. For the first time since he’d created them, he wished he hadn’t. They were defensive, and they were powerful enough to allow the three races to settle back and cower behind that defense under the guise that nothing was wrong. The fact that Walter and the Wraiths hadn’t been able to break the defense, that they had vanished from Wrath Suvane as if they had never existed, hadn’t helped. Too much time had passed, and the races had grown complacent and lazy.
But no more, he vowed.
He turned toward the leader of their escort. “How much farther to the Thousand Springs cavern?” He knew, but he did not want the dwarren to lose their sense of isolation and security.
The leader tore his gaze from the storm to the north. “Two days, at most.”
“No. Not how long if we continue to travel the way we have been traveling. How long if we head directly there?”
The leader scowled, shot a glance toward the dwarren who had the markings of a shaman. When the shaman shrugged, the scowl faded and he caught Colin’s gaze. “We can be there by the end of today.”
“I need to speak to your clan chief immediately. It concerns the storm and the occumaen and the renewal of the Turning.”
The dwarren’s eyes widened, and the shaman suddenly stared intently at Colin.
“We will take you to him now.”
It was the shaman who spoke, nodding to the leader curtly in an unspoken order.
The leader glared at the three of them as if they’d somehow shamed him on purpose, then pulled on his gaezel’s horns to bring the beast about. He said nothing, merely kicking the mount forward with a wordless guttural cry.
All formality fell away as the Riders tore across the plains, the horses struggling to keep up. Colin found himself leaning forward over his horse’s neck, urging it onward with soft words. To the side, Eraeth and Siobhaen did the same, although he thought he heard Eraeth cursing. The land fell away, yellow-green grass blurring as the storm to the north edged farther southward, dogging them. The group flowed over the low hills and sped across open flats, heading almost directly south. By the time the horizon began to flare with orange along its length as the sun set, still shimmering with the day’s heat haze, Colin felt every muscle in his body burning with the exertion and shudder of the horse’s muscles beneath him. He thought they were going to have to ride into the night.
But then they crested another rise, no different than the scores they had already crossed, except that this time, the plains opened up to reveal one of the dwarren tent cities.
Colin had seen them before, but not for twenty years. Thousand Springs had grown since then.
A huge central pole thrust up out of the plains, as thick as the boles of the cedars near the Well in the Ostraell, shorn of limb and with the bark peeled back. Colin had been to the center of the tent city before, had touched that central spire and knew its strength. Blue cloth had been fastened and wound around it, flaring outward at seemingly odd intervals, creating the main enclosure beneath, composed of a hundred rooms, the material twisted, draped, and wrapped around a thousand additional lines, poles, and stakes. The result was a reversed whirlpool, the swirls of cloth winding upward and drawing the eye to the darkening sky above, where the first stars were beginning to appear. In the twilight, the blue of the cloth appeared violet.
The rest of the city had been constructed around this central tent, never reaching as high, but crafted in such a way as to mimic the central flow so that when the winds blew across it, the rippling of the cloth echoed the currents of a river. From this distance, the entrance to the underground warren and the true home of the Thousand Springs Clan couldn’t be seen. A hundred years before, the tents would have been erected only when the dwarren were preparing to fight one of their own clans, or the invading Alvritshai or human forces. Now, it appeared more permanent. Lanterns were being lit, and through the silhouettes of tents and the figures of dwarren going about their nightly business, he spotted the wooden fence of a corral alongside a rounded water tower with sluices that led to troughs. Some of the land had been plowed recently, and a few granary huts stood to one side. There were no defenses of any kind; no walls or watchtowers. The dwarren’s greatest defense was to retreat beneath the plains, to their interconnected strongholds underground.
The escort of dwarren tore down the side of the ridge without pause, Colin taking in the differences in the tent city as his horse’s gait jarred his bones. To the side, he caught Siobhaen gaping at the sight. Within moments, they were moving between the outermost tents, dwarren scrambling out of their way as they began to slow. But the leader of the escort didn’t halt. He raced through curved thoroughfares between the tents, moving steadily inward toward the entrance to the caverns beneath. Dwarren shouted at them as they passed, Colin catching shocked faces as the men and women saw the Alvritshai and human in their midst.
By the time they made the last turn, the dwarren who guarded the entrance were waiting for them. There
