Thaedoren glanced up, then pointed to a position on the map. “The Legion was amassing here when Lord Aeren and I left my father’s convoy. We estimated that he would intercept the human forces here,” he shifted his finger slightly to the south, without dropping his gaze from Harticur’s, “at the Escarpment.”
Harticur blinked once, and even as the translator began to translate for the other dwarren, his face filled with rage. He leaped to his feet with an anguished roar, face red, and in one smooth motion he snatched up his sword from the table and pointed it toward Thaedoren, the length of the blade trembling with his fury. With cries of shock and hisses of anger, most of the rest of the dwarren clan chiefs grabbed their own swords as they lurched back from the table and brandished them, but none of them advanced, leaving Harticur at the front. Only Garius remained seated, his head bowed.
Thaedoren’s hand shot out and latched onto Aeren’s arm, holding him in place as he instinctively reached for his own sword, but the Tamaell Presumptive could do nothing to stop Eraeth. The Protector’s cattan was in hand and trained on Harticur in the space of a breath, before most of the other dwarren had managed to grab their own swords. Eraeth’s cattan remained steady, pointed toward Harticur’s throat, nearly touching it across the length of the table. Harticur’s reach wasn’t so long; his sword fell nearly a foot short of Thaedoren’s chest.
Harticur didn’t notice. His nostrils flared as he breathed in huge lungfuls of air, chest heaving. “You,” he yelled, and his blade wavered. He paused a moment to steady it. “You insult us!”
“No,” Thaedoren said, voice utterly calm. “No insult is meant.”
Harticur snorted. “You seek to trick us, as you and the humans did before! You expect us to rush to the Escarpment, to protect our borders, and then you and the human army will kill us all.”
“This is no trick. Send your scouts on their fleet gaezels to the Escarpment, have them report, if you haven’t sent them already. They’ll confirm the location of the Legion and the Alvritshai forces. But I have no intention of asking you to go to the Escarpment. That confrontation is between the Alvritshai and the humans; it does not concern the dwarren. If you are interested in talking, we can talk here. If not, then we will leave, and you can return home.”
Aeren knew at least three of the Lords of the Evant who would not have been able to act so calmly in the presence of so much rage and with nearly twenty dwarren swords trained on them. But those lords had not been trained in the Phalanx. Aeren’s estimation of Thaedoren rose as the Tamaell Presumptive eased back in his seat. His grip on Aeren’s arm tightened once-in reassurance or warning, Aeren wasn’t certain-and then released, falling to his lap. His own cattan still rested, untouched, on the table.
To either side of Harticur, the dwarren clan chiefs who’d stood began grumbling, muttering to each other, voices steadily rising into heated arguments. Harticur listened intently for a long moment, his eyes fixed on Thaedoren, measuring him, but slowly some of the rage that suffused his face seeped away.
He lowered his sword, and after a suitable interval, Eraeth withdrew his own blade. Aeren wasn’t certain Harticur had even noticed the Protector’s cattan.
The arguing dwarren quieted, focusing on Harticur.
Voice still rough with anger, the head clan chief said shortly, “The Gathering must discuss this.”
Thaedoren nodded, and Harticur stepped back, away from the table, the rest of the dwarren-including Garius-retreating with him. One of the aides rolled the map up with smooth precision and spread it out again on the floor where the dwarren gathered, all of the clan chiefs leaning forward over it. The discussion began immediately, the dwarren speaking far too fast and too low for Aeren to follow.
Thaedoren touched his shoulder, and the three Alvritshai moved farther back, toward the edge of the tent, near one of the tables with burning incense and a tray of fresh fruit. The Tamaell Presumptive picked up something small, brown, and fuzzy with a frown, sniffed it, then broke the skin with one finger. Peeling the skin back, he bit into the greenish-yellow interior, grunting in surprise before peeling the rest of the skin off and eating everything but the pit.
When he reached for a second, Aeren said, “Neither you nor the Tamaell mentioned that you intended to hold the talks in his absence.”
“I didn’t intend to hold the talks.”
“Any particular reason why?”
Thaedoren frowned. Aeren had let his irritation creep into his voice. “I didn’t believe the dwarren intended to take the talks seriously, didn’t even think that the dwarren would be here to meet us.” He glanced toward the Gathering, now hunched so far over the map that their heads were practically touching. “I assumed that they’d send a token force, that at most I’d have to placate them with the Tamaell’s absence, and then we’d be on our way.”
“But?” Eraeth prompted.
Thaedoren shifted his gaze to the Protector. It narrowed, as if he’d suddenly realized that he was speaking to a member of the Phalanx, not a lord. But then his stance shifted, and Aeren was again reminded that Thaedoren was not Fedorem. “My father did not intend for me to hold the talks either, only to offer his regrets in the hopes that they could be renewed later. Yet his intent in coming here was honorable. He sought peace. I did not believe peace would be possible because of the massacre at the Escarpment. But then the dwarren arrived, and I realized they were serious. I’ve seen what the tension on the border between Alvritshai lands and dwarren lands is like firsthand. If there is a chance, however slim, to end it…”
When Thaedoren turned back to look at the huddled dwarren, Aeren shared a glance with Eraeth, eyebrows raised.
This was not the impression he’d gotten of Thaedoren in the council tent with the army.
“My father and I have had our differences,” Thaedoren said a moment later. “In fact, we have not agreed on anything for the past thirty years. But we are as one in this. We want the conflict with the dwarren to end. It is the only reason I returned from the border and the Phalanx at my father’s request.”
The dwarren’s voices suddenly rose, Harticur and Garius arguing viciously with two other clan chiefs. The fight escalated, until Harticur cut everyone off with a half growl, half shout. One of the dwarren sat back with a snort and gesture, the other spat to the side, and the remaining clan chiefs grumbled. Harticur silenced them all with a glare, then turned his attention to the Alvritshai.
He stood and motioned to the table, stepping forward as the other dwarren rose, some reluctantly.
“Let’s see what they have to say,” Thaedoren said, his voice neutral.
As soon as the Alvritshai were settled again, Harticur drew his sword and set it formally, meaningfully, on the table. The rest of the dwarren followed his lead, although the two who had argued the most slammed their blades down. At a nudge from Aeren, Eraeth laid his cattan in front of him as well, although he kept his eyes on the two dissenting dwarren.
“What of the urannen?” Harticur waved to one side, toward the east. “The darkness, the night.”
Aeren frowned, knew that Thaedoren had done the same by the shift in his posture.
“What do you mean?” the Tamaell Presumptive asked.
Harticur scowled. “The urannen! The ones who guard! The ones who rage! The darkness and the lights!”
Aeren sucked in a sharp breath, and something cold and bitter stole into his chest, squeezing it tight. “He means the sukrael,” he said.
Beside him, Thaedoren tensed. “What about the sukrael?”
“Did you set them free?
Thaedoren drew himself upright, his eyes going dark in defiant affront… but not in shock, Aeren noticed. “The Alvritshai would never set the sukrael free. They are a desecration to Aielan’s Light, to everything living. They consume it, destroy it!” Thaedoren seemed to catch himself. He exhaled in a long sigh. “But we have noticed that the sukrael have become more active.”
Harticur studied Thaedoren’s face intently, then nodded slowly as he leaned back. He said something to the other dwarren, received a few grudging nods and grunts of assent in return.
“The urannen-the sukrael,” he said the Alvritshai word carefully, “have left the forest. They’ve begun to attack the dwarren. They’ve invaded our cities, our tunnels, our sacred grounds.”
Thaedoren nodded. “They have attacked our easternmost House lands as well. Entire villages have been found dead.”
Harticur growled, a low rumble from the chest. “The same for us. It is why we have Gathered, why we have chosen a Cochen. Something must be done. It is why we are here, why we came. If the urannen have begun to
