“A great deal of wood, apparently,” Egrin muttered.
Voyarunta, looking very hale despite his mane of snowy hair, waved away his warriors’ objections. “Miya fights better than most of you. She may stand by the door.”
It was a great concession, and the Dom-shu woman swelled with pride. Tol introduced Egrin, and the old warrior moved further into the room and saluted the chief.
“I know you!” Voyarunta said. “You were in the battle where the chief of the grasslanders perished.” He meant Lord Odovar. “You were the one whose sword struck twice for each blow!”
It was an apt description of Egrin’s fighting prowess. Egrin inclined his head in gratitude. The chief bade him speak his message.
Egrin shared the tale of the bakali invasion. He held nothing back, recounting the twin defeats of the imperial hordes in grim detail. A few Dom-shu expressed dry pleasure at their old enemy’s plight, but when Egrin mentioned the second menace-from the plains tribes-the foresters erupted.
“The men of the plains are our brothers!” declared one. “We should stand with them!”
“Death to the iron soldiers!” shouted another.
One particularly tall fellow with bronze skin and yellow hair stood and addressed his chief.
“The gods are punishing the grasslanders for their pride,” he intoned. “Great Chief, will we leave our forest and fight alongside our plains brothers?”
Voyarunta leaned back in his blanket-draped chair. His penetrating blue eyes were fixed on Egrin. “I do not think Twice-Strike came here to rouse the Dom-shu against his own people, Turanaki.”
“No indeed, Great Chief!” Egrin said quickly. “I came to warn the Dom-shu of this peril. No one knows where the host of lizard-men will strike next. It could be the Great Green!”
The blond warrior, Turanaki, made a sound of disgust. “They will not come here! The forest would swallow them. There are richer takings in the west!”
As the foresters debated the merits of aiding the plainsmen in ravaging the Eastern Hundred, Egrin finally realized just how much hostility they felt for Ergoth. Anger held for generations now blazed forth.
Voyarunta silenced them after a time. The chief looked beyond Egrin to where Tol leaned against the doorpost with Miya and Kiya.
“Son of My Life, what say you?”
Tol paused, allowing an interval of silence to pass to dampen the echoes of the heated argument, then he said slowly, “For twenty years, the Dom-shu and Ergoth have had peace. In that time, have the Ergothians ever broken their word to the Dom-shu?”
His gaze traveled around the room. No one spoke because all knew the answer.
“Has trade with the empire enriched the Dom-shu?”
Another question with an obvious answer.
Tol came forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with his old friend. Egrin was still the taller one, but age had begun to whittle down his frame.
“The emperor now reigning is a cruel man, and he never forgets an insult, however slight. If you go to war against the empire, Ackal V will not rest until he has laid waste to the forest. He will kill not only you who fight, but your children, the old ones-all who bear the name Dom-shu.”
Turanaki opened his mouth to speak, but Tol went on, raising his voice. “It may cost the emperor the life of every Rider in his hordes, it may swallow all the gold in the imperial coffers, but he will not stop. He will drown you in the blood of his own warriors if no other means of vengeance remains to him.” Tol shrugged his broad shoulders. “This you should know.”
“We would not be warriors if we lived in fear of what others might do to us!” Turanaki exclaimed.
Egrin ignored the hotheaded forester and addressed Voyarunta.
“Great Chief, I did not come here to incite you against the empire, but to warn you, as a friend and neighbor. I also came to ask Lord Tolandruth to return home.”
Miya drew in a breath sharply, but Kiya nodded with satisfaction. She had guessed as much.
Voyarunta pondered what he’d heard. No one, not even the fiery Turanaki, interrupted the chief’s cogitations.
“The Dom-shu will keep to their forest,” Voyarunta said at last. “As for the Son of My Life, he will do as the gods guide him.”
“I will listen for their counsel,” Tol said, giving the expected answer. Under his breath, he added, “Though I doubt they will speak to me.”
He picked up the bearskin and took his leave of the chief. Miya and Kiya followed. Egrin departed more slowly, as dignity demanded. It would not do to appear to be fleeing the unfriendly climate.
Outside, the cool air was balm to the old warrior’s sweat-drenched brow. Fog was rising in the clearing, and the glimmer of firelight from the surrounding huts looked like amber stars in the mist. Arriving at the sod hut, Egrin found Kiya sitting on the split log that served as a stoop. She barred his entry.
“Husband’s gone to bed. Don’t wake him.” She cut off his protests, saying, “He sleeps so little and so poorly, rest is a treasure to him.”
Giving in, Egrin seated himself next to her. He asked how she had fared over the past six years of Tol’s exile.
Kiya was a formidable woman. She had grown up in a tribe that trained her to fight and suffer without complaint. So when she did not reply right away, Egrin did not press her. He adjusted his position slightly so he could rest his back against the hut, and waited. She would answer in her own time.
The story was a painful one. Miya, Tol, and Kiya had departed Daltigoth in the depth of winter and in the teeth of a snowstorm. Miya was ill with milk fever, and the newborn Eli was no more than a mewling newt wrapped in furs. Tol had sustained terrible injuries at the hands of Nazramin’s personal gang of thugs, the Wolves. Kiya managed to bring them all across the snowy land to the Great Green. Once they reached the Dom-shu village, she’d slept for two days and nights.
Tol was shamed by the beating, and grieved the loss of Valaran, now consort to the new emperor. He remained indoors for many days, but as winter grudgingly relinquished its hold on the forest, so too did Tol emerge slowly from the white silence of his despair. He hobbled around the village, loosening muscles stiff from disuse. His terrible bruises turned yellow and faded. Unwilling to live on the charity of the chief, Tol sought a home of his own. The repair of an empty hut gave him purpose, and once it was done, the sisters and Eli joined him there.
His injuries healed, Tol took up a stone axe and cut firewood. Every swing of the axe made his arms and back sing with pain, but he would not stop. Each blow was a strike against Nazramin. Every cord split were Wolves’ heads cleaved by his sword. After he had killed his enemies many times over, the silent rage in him began to pall. It was too bitter a flavor to nourish Tol. He had purged the fury in his heart by this regimen, while he built his body up even stronger than before, and for a noble reason: bettering the lives of the forest folk.
The Dom-shu had always fed their fires on windfall limbs or punk wood, neither of which burned very hot or long. Tol introduced them to hardwood, cut green, dried, then split. Heat was no longer a rare luxury for the Dom-shu. Cold retreated from the village. Disease, fostered by poorly cooked food and damp living conditions, was greatly lessened by the simple introduction of good firewood.
Tol also planted wild onions, strawberries, and rabbit-cabbage in a small but neat garden plot beside his hut. The tribesmen, who normally hunted game or combed the forest for berries, roots, and nuts, were puzzled by the grasslander scratching the raw earth, but before long, Tol was gathering food not ten paces from his hut. The Dom-shu had thought farming something that could be done only on broad, open spaces. Tol showed them they could grow food in the forest.
Younger Dom-shu men sought his knowledge of war, but this Tol would not share. They already knew how to defend their homes. To know more would only tempt them to fight beyond the forest, and that was the path to destruction.
One warrior tried to goad Tol into fighting, hoping to make his own reputation b
y besting the grasslander champion. Tol endured his many insults in silence rather than kill the fool. Unhappily, the warrior would not give up. In the village square, he made the mistake of tormenting young Eli, injuring the boy in the process, and the foresters finally glimpsed the warrior Tol had been. He slew the foolish challenger with a single blow of his axe. No one ever challenged Tol again.
When Kiya finished her tale, Egrin weighed what he’d heard against the memory of the man he’d known.
“Is he happy here?” he asked.
“He is calm. He is not happy.”
Tol did not sleep well, Kiya explained, but often roamed the woods alone at night. No Dom-shu would ever do such a thing; they feared the spirits who walked abroad by night. And Tol sometimes stayed away two or three days. He would never say where he went during these extended absences.
“It isn’t the honors or wealth he misses,” Kiya noted. “It’s her. She belongs to his enemy, the man who had him beaten and humiliated, and it eats at him like a festering wound.”
“He must return with me. There’s no one else who can lead the hordes to victory against the nomad and bakali. No one else commands the respect he does. No one has his vision, or his…”
Egrin groped for the proper word. Kiya supplied it: “Luck. He’s lucky.”
“No longer.”
They turned. Tol stood in the dark doorway behind them.
“My luck is gone,” he said flatly. “I used it up when I left to pursue my private vengeance against Mandes. I was the Emperor’s Champion, but I abandoned Ackal IV to the evil plots of his brother. Nazramin staged everything like a playwright, and I handed him the throne of Ergoth as if I’d been magicked to do so.”
Egrin rose and gripped Tol’s shoulder. “Luck isn’t wine, drunk up then regretted! Come back with me, Tol! Only you can save Ergoth. Do so, and the emperor will have to make amends!”
Tol removed his old friend’s hand. “It’s not my fight any more. Let the empire fall.”
Chapter 3
The Unsightly Gardener
From the sparse woodland, the town of Juramona wasn’t much to look at. An agglomeration of buildings, some stone but most wooden, clustered around the base of a large, man-made earthen mound on which stood a palisaded citadel. The town wall was weathered timber, strengthened at intervals by squat stone towers. Here and there outside the walls were piles of rough-hewn granite blocks. Grass grew tall around the stones. While marshal of the Eastern Hundred, Egrin Raemel’s son had begun to convert Juramona’s wall to stone. After he was forced from his post by Ackal V, his successor allowed the ambitious plan to languish. Given the current state of things, no one was likely to disturb the blocks any time soon.
Crouched at the base of a leafing poplar, Zala surveyed the scene. Her journey from Daltigoth had been nightmarish. The countryside between the Caer River and Juramona was infested with roving bands of nomads. Too many times she had to watch from concealment as marauders laid waste to farms, sacked caravans, and put hapless Ergothian captives to the sword. It grieved her, but she could not risk entanglements that would delay her progress.
She stared at the gates of Juramona and pondered how best to enter the town. Night offered the best concealment, but it was only now midmorning. She dared not waste an entire day waiting for darkness. Not only did her commission require speed, but the nomad warbands were gathering nearby. Juramona might be attacked at any moment, making her mission that much more difficult.
Eventually fate, the gods, or sheer luck provided what she needed. A convoy of wagons came thundering down the western road, together with an escort of half a hundred cavalry. The wagons were drawn by teams of horses rather than the more usual bullocks or oxen. Horses meant speed. The convoy must be carrying something vital. Zala noticed the escort was bunched together at the head of the caravan. No one was paying attention to the rear of the procession.
When the last wagon passed her, Zala raced from cover and swung herself into its canvas-shrouded box. She was under cover again in the space of a few breaths. The wagon was filled with assorted casks and crates, all firmly nailed shut.
Once the speeding caravan was inside the city wall, Zala’s wagon pulled hard to the left and stopped, throwing her to the floor.
“Close the gate! Close it!” bawled a hoarse masculine voice.
Zala peered out. Clouds of dust, churned up by the wagons, roiled high into the air. Taking advantage of this cover, Zala slipped out of the wagon and quickly vanished into the unfamiliar streets.
Juramona was preparing for a siege. Lanes nearest the walls had been cleared of obstructions, and the roofs of the houses were covered by green cowhides that could resist fiery arrows. Buckets of sand or water were placed at every corner, and everyone-men and women, youths and oldsters-wore helmets, but there seemed to be few real warriors present. Zala kept her own head firmly covered by her hood, to conceal her upswept ears. One never knew how humans would react to the sight of even a half-elf.
The skills she employed to travel invisibly through field and forest worked just as well in town-perhaps even better, because the town-dwellers were not so in tune with their surroundings as country folk. Many humans credited elves with the ability to make themselves invisible. This was legend, but enjoying the advantage such beliefs gave them, no elf would deny this supposed power.
Zala’s techniques were simple, but required great dexterity. To follow someone unseen, she matched their footfalls so no stray noise would betray her. When standing still, she turned edge-wise from people and, whenever possible, moved toward the left. Most folk, being right-handed, tended to look to the right first before setting out. Taking advantage of this habit allowed a stealthy tracker to keep from being noticed. When looking around trees (or here, the corner of a building), she kept low. People expected to see heads or faces at their own eye level, not close to the ground.
In this way Zala passed like a ghost among the anxious Juramonans. Not till she reached the location described by the empress did she relax her woodland stealth.
The house before her was old and looked long abandoned. Shutters were closed, and crossed timbers were nailed over the front door. Concealing her true purpose, Zala hailed a passing laborer and asked if the house was available for rent.
The youth shifted the hod of bricks he carried off his shoulder and regarded her in wide-eyed astonishment. “The barbarians are coming!” he cried. “Who needs a house at a time like this?”
“I do. Does anyone live here?”
“No! No one’s lived there since Lord Tolandruth left it, before I was born!” The fellow hurried on, shaking his head at the stupidity of strangers.
By such oblique queries, Zala gleaned information about her quarry’s rumored whereabouts. In one street she pretended to be a soldier’s wife seeking news of her husband. In another, she was a peddler trying to collect a debt, and further along, a healer searching for a delirious patient.
As Empress Valaran had surmised, Tolandruth was not in Juramona and hadn’t been for years. However, an intriguing bit of gossip kept coming up. Several people mentioned a man who was said to know Tolandruth well. No one spoke his name; he was referred to as “Tolandruth’s captive,” “the special prisoner,” and most frequently as “the unsightly gardener.”
Inquiring into this mysterious person’s whereabouts, Zala was directed to a rather squalid part of town. She arrived at a row of houses buried beneath the frowning shadow of the High House. Although the day was waning, a few shafts of sunlight still pierced the scattered clouds. At the indicated door, she knocked. No one answered.
The narrow street was empty except for herself and a bony cur gnawing at something dead in the gutter six doors away. Zala inserted her knife in the gap between the door and frame, lifted the latch, and slipped inside.
The room beyond was dark and uninhabited. When her eyes had adjusted, she crept through the room toward the rear of the house. An open window framed a swatch of green and brought the
scent of flowers to her nostrils. Remembering the fellow had been called a gardener, Zala slipped warily out the back door. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
In the small area behind the house, where most folk would have a chicken coop, pig pen, or privy, there was indeed a garden, and no mere kitchen plot for herbs or root vegetables. A verdant carpet of jade-colored grass covered what soil was not already filled with flowers. And such flowers! Sunflowers taller than Zala herself with heads so heavy they had to be supported by strips of ribbon tacked to the lath wall behind; roses, with blooms large as soup bowls and the color of ox blood, filled the air with their dense perfume. Creamy white lilies were beginning to close for the day. Cornflowers, yellow daisies, irises in bold purple and pale gold, violets, and marigolds stood in serried ranks like perfect soldiers. Most remarkable of all was a stand of enormous dandelions, with puffy white heads as big as Zala’s own.
In the center of this magnificent display grew an apple tree, its branches still covered in white blossoms. Fat bumblebees buzzed through the branches, and narrowly avoided collisions with a profusion of butterflies in nearly every color of the rainbow.
Zala’s astonished trance was abruptly shattered by a scraping sound. It came from only a few steps away, from behind a screen of trumpet lilies, their white blooms spotted with red, like blood on snow. Although she circled around the screen with customary stealth, the figure kneeling on its other side knew she was present, though his back was to her.
“You needn’t skulk there. Come forward,” he muttered, continuing to dig the point of a small trowel into the black earth around the lilies.
She advanced, but halted when he turned to look up at her. Her shock was mirrored on his face, and both of them recoiled.
The gardener was a Silvanesti. That fact itself was startling enough, here so far from the elf homeland. But what truly took her aback was his appearance.
Never in her life had Zala beheld such a homely member of the ancient and elegant race of Silvanesti elves. His long hair was a dull dusty gray, tied at the nape of his neck by a scrap of ribbon. Eyes the pale blue of Quenesti Pah’s crystal staff might have been arresting, if they hadn’t been set so close together. Add a long, thin nose, and pale skin covered by too many splotchy brown freckles, and she fully understood the sobriquet he’d been given: he was an unsightly gardener indeed!
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