Oudan? Should we listen to the Alvritshai?”
Oudan snorted, then waved his spear out toward the darkened plains. “The Land is troubled. We see it in the sky-” he pointed toward the storm “-and feel it in the shimmering air. We taste it in the food we eat, the water we drink. Even the gaezels sense it. We have lived in our warrens for thousands of years, slept in our clefts, and honored and protected the Land and our gods. But the gods are restless.
“Perhaps it is time for the People to change.”
15
The following day, the dwarren tore down their tents, loaded up their gaezels, and headed back into the plains, east and south.
Colin watched them from the top of the hillock while the rest of the Alvritshai gathered together their loosely scattered gear, saddled the horses, and prepared to leave. He’d managed to get close enough to verify that these dwarren were from the Thousand Springs Clan, the dwarren who had fought the humans and left such carnage on the battlefield outside the forest. He frowned as the sound of their drums faded and the group of figures vanished over a fold in the land. He could still see a thin trace of dust in the air from their passage, faint against the blue of the sky.
“You hate them.”
Colin started and turned to find Eraeth standing behind him. “Why do you say that?” Colin asked.
Eraeth grinned, not a pleasant expression. “You tensed the moment you knew the dwarren were approaching and haven’t relaxed since. And now, even as they depart, you’re gripping your staff so hard your knuckles are white.”
Colin glanced down in annoyance, tried to make his hands relax, but couldn’t.
Not able to meet Eraeth’s gaze, he watched the horizon. “They killed Karen, my mother and father, my friends.” He could hear the defensiveness in his own voice, could hear the hatred, and realized he didn’t care. He’d seen and heard the same hatred in Eraeth since the dwarren had arrived.
But he winced when Aeren spoke from behind him. “That’s not true. They didn’t kill your parents, your friends, or your beloved. The sukrael did.”
“We would never have run into the sukrael if not for them,” Colin snapped.
“True. But that was an unfortunate consequence. It was not the dwarren’s plan-”
“Not their plan?” Colin exclaimed, turning toward Aeren incredulously. “What about the wagon train before us? The dwarren found them, rounded them up, and slaughtered them. And they would have done the same to us. They trapped us against the forest, and if the sukrael didn’t get us, the dwarren did when we tried to escape into the plains. I know. I went back and watched it happen.”
Aeren frowned, his brow creasing, but he said nothing.
Colin snorted. “What did they want?”
Aeren hesitated. “It wasn’t what they wanted, it was what I wanted from them.”
“And that was?”
“Peace. As with the humans. With you. I want peace, so that the Alvritshai no longer have to fight. So that the Alvritshai no longer have to die.”
Colin stared at the Alvritshai lord intently for a long time, struggling with his hatred of the dwarren, with the emotions seeing them here had dredged up. He searched Aeren’s face, but he saw nothing familiar.
“How can you?” he finally asked. “After what the dwarren have done to the Alvritshai all these years, after what you know they’ve done to the humans. How can you approach them and ask for peace and mean it?”
Aeren shifted where he stood, and for the first time Colin saw anger in his eyes. “You do not understand how sacred the Alvritshai hold life, how precious it is in Aielan’s eyes. We live longer than the dwarren, longer even than you humans, but we are not as… prolific as you are. Children between those who bond are rare. The fact that my mother bore two healthy sons for the House was… miraculous. Most of those bonded only bear one child, if that. But now, because of this war, my father and brother are dead. I am the only living member of my House left. And I have not yet bonded. There is no heir to the Rhyssal seat.”
Behind him, Eraeth stirred, looking toward his lord, a pained expression in his stoic stance. But he said nothing as Aeren continued.
“Those deaths-my brother, my father-and the sheer number of Alvritshai lives lost since that first excursion onto the plains, since that first misunderstanding between Alvritshai and dwarren, have finally overwhelmed my hatred. I’m hoping they have overwhelmed the Tamaell and the Evant as well. I had hoped they had overwhelmed the human King, but unfortunately, King Stephan’s pain is more recent, more personal. His pain comes from a betrayal, not battle. Not so for the dwarren.”
“More dwarren died at the Escarpment than all of the Alvritshai or humans combined. They were slaughtered there.”
Aeren nodded. “Yes. The war has finally taken its toll on the dwarren, as it has for the Alvrishai. Their aggression has lessened over the past thirty years. Which is why I am hopeful that the dwarren will be willing to discuss peace.”
Behind him, one of the other Alvritshai whistled. He didn’t turn, although both he and Eraeth straightened.
“The dwarren have agreed to a meeting, here, in one month. I have little time to convince the Tamaell that peace between the Alvritshai and the dwarren is a necessity. We’re leaving, and we’ll have to travel fast.”
“He’ll have to ride,” Eraeth said to Aeren. “We can travel on foot. We’ll switch out the horses so that they can rest. It will slow us down, but…”
Colin stiffened at Eraeth’s tone. He thought about what he’d done at Portstown to catch up to the attackers and said abruptly, “I can keep up. On foot.” At Eraeth’s and Aeren’s skeptical look, he added, “ If you allow me to use the Lifeblood’s powers.” And he let himself shift, growing younger for a brief moment.
Aeren frowned, then glanced down toward the rest of the Phalanx escort.
“It will shake them,” Eraeth said in warning. “They know he has been touched by the sukrael, that he has drunk from the sarenavriell, but most don’t give the account much credence. If they see it, with their own eyes…”
Aeren thought for a long moment, glancing toward the sky, where the sun had already shifted toward midmorning. “They’ll have to adjust. If we’re to reach Caercaern and have any chance of convincing the Evant and the Tamaell to return here for the meeting, there can be no delays.” He looked Colin in the eyes. “Do whatever you have to do to keep up, Shaeveran. If you fall behind, we will leave you.”
He turned, and Eraeth whistled to the rest of the group. They formed up, all of their packs secured on the backs of the horses, only their weapons-cattans and bows-in hand. Eraeth barked orders in Alvritshai, and within the space of a few heartbeats the Phalanx scouts vanished onto the plains, the rest bringing the horses up to a trot, then a sprint behind them. Colin waited at the top of the hillock long enough to pick out the direction the Alvritshai were headed, then he reached out and pushed.
Colin cursed himself as he slipped through the grasses of the plains, staff in hand, satchel across his back. The world around him moved at an infinitesimal rate, birds barely flapped their wings in the sky, the grasses standing nearly still. The first day he’d found it disconcerting-he’d never realized how much the grass had moved before, even without a wind-but this wasn’t just the lack of wind, this was lack of movement. Any movement. At least, movement significant enough to register on the eye. Sound was dulled here as well, and smell. He could catch only the faintest of scents: a touch of broken grass stalks, the ripeness of grain heading toward decay, a whiff of the tail end of autumn, with a hint of winter to it. But he’d found he didn’t have to move as fast as he’d first thought he would. The Alvritshai were moving as fast as possible, but he could keep up with them by simply walking fast.
And that fact is what made him curse. He could have crossed the plains easily in a few days, reached Portstown in a week, if he’d known he could travel this way. But he hadn’t known. It hadn’t occurred to him. But he’d spent the last day experimenting. He couldn’t pick objects up while time was slowed, or move them-they were fixed in place once the world slowed-but he could hold them and then slow time, carrying them with him to the
