They plodded on through the rest of the night. The sun announced its coming with a stunning rose-gold glow on the horizon. Then it climbed to blind them. The heat it brought had soon chased off the night’s chill, and Elenai was glad for it.
When they finally reached the smaller dunes, their horses were flagging. Cerai’s soldiers slumped with exhaustion. Elenai surreptitiously drew on energy from the stone to keep herself awake.
Low hills loomed a few miles out, scattered with scrubby trees and bushes. Slowly they drew closer, slowly the sun rose, and swiftly its warmth transformed from a comforting hand to a steady assault. Elenai felt its pressure on her skin like a physical force. The heat grew so pronounced it seemed to suck her clean of moisture before sweat even surfaced on her skin.
They closed on the hills at midmorning. By then, even Kyrkenall and Lyria drooped. The archer didn’t relax, though. He ordered the soldiers into a column, taking point, and scanned the hills as they took a low rise between them.
The horses scented the water before Elenai did, raising their heads and upping their gait, and it was only then she grew conscious of that reassuring sense of humidity rising.
Kyrkenall looked over his shoulder at her. “There’s a lake over beyond that next hill, where the trees are.”
Spears rained down from a nearby rise. One struck Kyrkenall in the upper back.
As he slid in his saddle a spear slashed the flank of Elenai’s horse. The animal made no sound but leapt forward in surprise as more spears fell among the soldiers.
Elenai brought the mount back under control with astonishing ease—she’d momentarily forgotten it had been altered by Cerai—and turned it to face the attack.
She noted a number of things in the same instant. Thankfully Kyrkenall lived; he was already upright and reaching for his bow. His Altenerai khalat had kept the spear point from biting into his shoulder. A small army of Naor warriors, between forty and fifty, charged down the dusty slope from the right rear flank. Their attack had been aimed primarily at the larger body of Cerai’s troops, and had taken a deadly toll. Most of the men and their animals were down. A few soldiers struggled to turn and face their assailants. The leader was pinned with one leg under his dying mount.
Elenai couldn’t guess what the Naor were doing here, on the edge of a wasteland in the realms. It didn’t matter. She sent a blast commanding the four nearest to sleep. They dropped in their tracks.
In a heartbeat Kyrkenall shot three more. A few of Cerai’s troops got to their feet and pulled their weapons, but they were swiftly overwhelmed.
Elenai reached deeply into the shard for more spell energy.
And the hearthstone Goddess felt her. Elenai experienced the spiritual equivalent of placing a hand on a hot stove. She pulled free on the instant, stupefied, and it was sheer chance an axe tossed at her head missed by a handspan.
Kyrkenall yelled to retreat. He pushed Lyria into a gallop and Elenai belatedly kicked her own animal after as the Goddess’ awareness spread through the stone.
She shut it down, and knew blazing pain as a spear slammed into her lower left arm. The khalat kept the point from piercing, but the impact numbed her, and lent extra volume to her shout as she galloped in Kyrkenall’s wake. He took a low hill some twenty feet off and spun Lyria so he could rain arrows over her head. From the shouts and screams behind she guessed he took a fearful toll.
Elenai joined him and turned her mount, both reins in her right hand. She tucked her left arm protectively against her chest.
More than a dozen Naor were dead or down, and others had fallen back with arrow shafts through arms or standing out from their armor. The unwounded were rifling through the gear of Cerai’s fallen soldiers. A few pointed up toward them.
“About forty left,” Kyrkenall said.
“What are they doing here? They can’t be scouts for some new army, can they?”
“Them? No. These are probably survivors of that ass-kicking we gave them in Arappa. They must be working their way through the wilds to their homelands.” He swore. “I was distracted, and I was thinking about getting Lyria to water.”
“I wasn’t watching, either.”
“Well, it was a good ambush. They picked their spot, and let the front rank ride past so they could attack the larger body. And Cerai’s people used to be kobalin. They don’t know how to fight from horseback.”
“How’s your shoulder?”
“There’ll be a damnable bruise later. What’s wrong with your arm?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s broken. They got my horse, too.” She looked back and saw a bloody gash along his right flank. She returned her attention to the Naor. “Are they going to follow us?”
“Maybe. Let’s put some distance between us.”
He turned Lyria and guided her over the next rise.
There they found the little lake that had been their goal, surrounded by thick grass cover. They passed numerous booted tracks. Elenai had to fight her horse, one-handed, to keep it from turning, then resisted the urge to use the hearthstone to soothe or close the wound. The animal quivered when pushing forward off the right rear hoof.
After letting their horses drink, Kyrkenall led them up a rocky hill. From there they had a view of the lake, the distant ambush point, and the pass into the desert.
“Bad luck,” Kyrkenall said after he had surveyed the land from all directions. He hadn’t yet dismounted. Grass grew only sparsely at the height of the hill, and on the gentler slope beyond.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Elenai said. “Those poor men.”
“If we’d come in through a different pass we’d have seen the tracks.” He pointed down. “You can see them from here, coming in and out. But not from our direction. Hastigs. They were camping there at the lake, and they must have had someone on that hill there, watching. They would have had plenty of time to spot us and get ready.”
Elenai looked down at her arm. It still smarted and she couldn’t close her grip without intensifying the pain. “I’m going to have to look at this, and my horse.”
“Climb down from there. I’ll look you both over.”
“What about those Naor?”
Most of the warriors were still sifting through the stolen belongings, although a few were leading the surviving horses around, gauging which were best. Apparently they hadn’t noticed they were identical. A lone sentinel monitored them while his fellows bickered.
“What about them?” Kyrkenall asked.
“Do you think there are more?”
“It looks to me like they threw everything they had at us.” Kyrkenall steadied her horse as she swung awkwardly down.
The black mare had only a superficial flesh wound, which Kyrkenall smeared salve over. After carefully feeling her arm he declared it wasn’t broken, just bruised, then made a proper sling from a spare shirt. The injury felt worse than a bruise to her, but she took his word.
By the time he’d finished tending her, the Naor had moved off, and Elenai saw the dust cloud of their passage northeast. Those few on horseback traveled slowly enough that those afoot could keep pace.
“Now what?” Elenai asked.
He answered carelessly. “We rest. Then at sundown we look for the weapon.”
A powerful surge of energy pulsed from the pack on the ground beside her. She started.
“What is it?” Kyrkenall asked. He followed the direction of her gaze.
“Didn’t you feel that?” She fumbled one-handed with the strap, then gave up, using both hands and ignoring the shooting pain. In another moment she had the flap up and saw the hearthstone glowing within.
She pulled back.
“I don’t understand,” Kyrkenall said.
“It’s come on by itself.” Elenai gulped down her fear.
“How could it do that?”
“Because the Goddess knows where it is. I think she might be coming to find it.”
His eyes widened. “Can you shut it down?”
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br /> That was easy to suggest. As Elenai studied it through the inner world she grew conscious of a difference in the way its power manifested. It remained radiant and compelling; now, though, looking at it with magical sight was akin to locking eyes with someone across the room and being unable to break away. She deliberately turned her body to disrupt the gaze.
Free at last, she relinquished her view of the magical threads and discovered she was breathing heavily.
“It didn’t work, did it?” Kyrkenall asked.
“I can’t even get near it. She’s looking back at me.”
Kyrkenall glanced at the pack. “Do you think she can hear us, too?”
“Probably. I’m going to try something else.” This time when she opened her eyes to the magical world she looked to the hearthstone’s side. She felt its regard at the corner of her vision and refused to pay it heed. For all her discomfort, there was one benefit to having the object lit so brilliantly at every level: the flaw in its structure that allowed closure was more obvious.
The moment she touched her threads to it she trembled with the entrancing strength of its energies, for the surface was alive with sorcery the way only centers used to be, and she knew she’d quickly be overwhelmed. Fortunately, she had no intention of using its power. She twisted the energy in the flaw, then pulled away from the inner world.
Even that didn’t seem enough, though, for she pushed to her feet and took a long step back, staring at the saddlebag, alert for any hint that the stone would reopen on its own.
“That feels like it worked,” Kyrkenall said.
She nodded but did not look away.
“You look like you found a snake in your pocket.”
She stared at the stone. Long moments passed.
“That’s a slow count of thirty,” Kyrkenall said. “And it’s not coming back on.”
Elenai felt her elbow in its blue sling and grunted in pain. “Maybe she got distracted.”
“By what?”
“What distracts a goddess? Maybe a large cache of stones. Or maybe…” She faced Kyrkenall. “Maybe she knows where the stone is and doesn’t need to leave it on to come find it. Either way, there’s nothing we can do.”
“If she comes, I guess we’d better let her have it. For now, we ought to see if the Naor missed any supplies.”
The Naor raiders proved to have been thorough, although they’d missed some dried meat stored in one of the dead men’s pouches.
Kyrkenall arranged the bodies in a line, and then Elenai offered up a prayer for them, wondering as she did exactly why she prayed to entities that she’d been told weren’t really gods and wouldn’t have watched over kobalin in any case. Because, she knew, it was the proper thing to do.
Kyrkenall guided them a half hour north, to a place where the rocky hills overlooked a few miles of scrubland prior to giving way to the desert and the dunes, just visible on the heat-scorched horizon. There, with the wave of a hand, he revealed a wide cave mouth six feet above a steep slope, under an overhang. His sapphire glowed feebly as he shined it within, and Kyrkenall sighed. “I never expected I’d lose the power of my ring.”
He rooted through the supplies in their saddlebags, then prepared a simple torch, winding the rest of the torn shirt fabric around a sturdy stick. He dribbled oil on the cloth and quickly lit it. It flared to life and he raised it aloft.
“Expecting to find something dangerous?” Elenai asked.
“There wasn’t anything big the last time I was through. But little things can be poisonous.”
He started up slope and stepped inside. Elenai saw the flare of his torch diminish as he moved farther in. “All clear,” his voice echoed back. He returned shortly, helped her from the horse, then took her saddlebag.
“I can manage.”
“You can manage,” Kyrkenall said, “but why don’t you let me help you this once? Rest your arm. I’ll get everything unloaded, picket your horse, and get the saddles and bits off the animals.”
“Thanks.” Tired as she was, she couldn’t help noting, again, Kyrkenall’s solicitous manner. It wasn’t that he’d never been calm and helpful before, it’s just that any such characteristics were usually interspersed with displays of impatience and temper.
Advancing with the torch, she found the cavern wide and long and dry, and also empty, apart from a scattering of rock and dirt near the entrance.
Kyrkenall followed her up, sat down her pack, then laid out her bedroll on a flat spot of cave floor. He even rolled up her spare garments for a pillow.
“Thank you, Kyrkenall.”
“You sound puzzled.”
“I am. You’re in a fine mood.”
Kyrkenall chuckled but didn’t comment.
Though he helped ease her out of her khalat, she still wrenched her arm. She didn’t remove anything else but her boots, and elected to leave off the sling while she rested. Kyrkenall headed back out for the rest of their equipment, and by the time he returned, Elenai was struggling to keep her eyes open.
“Wake me in four hours for my watch,” she said.
“Five,” Kyrkenall countered.
She thought she objected, but she wasn’t sure, because the next thing she knew, she dreamt.
Rialla appeared in a flash of light. Elenai readied to ask for answers, but the ghostly alten announced she had come to sing with Cerai’s soldiers about flatulence. Elenai demanded Rialla listen for once, only to receive a fiery lecture on the importance of tooth care.
She wakened to the echoing click of horse hooves on stone and looked up to find a man in a khalat leading a horse into their cave. The depth of the darkness outside surprised her, as well as the whistle of the wind.
“You let me sleep too long,” she said groggily, and sat up. Her arm immediately throbbed in pain.
Lyria already waited farther inside the cave. It was Kyrkenall’s entrance with her own animal that had wakened her.
“It’s only been about six hours,” Kyrkenall said.
“You were supposed to wake me after five—wait, why is it so dark?” By her reckoning even six hours would only have been early evening.
“There’s a sandstorm coming.”
“That’s terrible.”
“We’ll be safe here,” Kyrkenall assured her. “And it will probably blow over by night time.”
Elenai was no expert on sandstorms, but thought Kyrkenall was uncharacteristically optimistic. “Did you get any rest?”
“Lyria was on sentry.”
While Lyria was as effective as a well-trained watchdog, Elenai remained unimpressed. “Do you think she would have noticed if the Goddess came over the horizon?”
Kyrkenall returned from the cave rear, where he’d left Elenai’s horse. “She noticed when the storm came and alerted me with whinnying. You’re worrying too much. We both need rest if we’re going to be up all night looking for this weapon.”
Elenai pulled on boots with one hand, stomping them into place, and stalked to the cave entrance, peering out at the landscape. Due west she perceived a long line of darkness. The wind moaned, rising and falling like a ghastly chorus of spirits. She looked over her shoulder to Kyrkenall.
Her horse made no movement to the cave rear. Lyria, though, walked calmly to her shoulder to look outside. Kyrkenall stepped forward to rub her nose. “It won’t fill up this cave, but I bet there will be quite a sand drift.”
“Maybe the storm’s clearing up.” Elenai pointed to a bright spot growing along the edge of the horizon, right at ground level. Around and above it dark clouds rolled, but in that spot she saw only a soothing white-yellow glow. “What is that?” she asked. “Some kind of counter wind?”
“No,” Kyrkenall said, staring fixedly.
In a few moments it became clear that the brightness drifted ahead of the storm. “It’s the Goddess.” Elenai felt numb as she said it. “She’s come for her hearthstone.”
“What a run of luck we’re having,” Kyrkenall said. “For our own sakes, maybe
you ought to toss the stone down the slope and hope she doesn’t come any farther.”
As the bright glow drew ever closer, Elenai detected a jet-black woman in its dead center. “If I give up the hearthstone, it’s going to be a lot harder to search for the weapon. And impossible to contact Cerai and get back.” There was no other way to reach their forces.
“I wish I had some better ideas,” Kyrkenall said. “But I don’t have any Goddess-slaying arrows, and blasting her with hearthstone magic’s probably just going to make her feel better. Sometimes you have to retreat.”
They’d already retreated from the Naor. Now they’d be retreating from the Goddess.
She had grown obvious in the light, a human shape with flowing hair drifting unmoving three yards above the desert, feet hanging slack, arms loose at her sides. A long straight line of white stretched out behind and beneath her.
“This is going to sound stupid, but we could try talking to her,” Elenai suggested.
“I don’t think she’ll listen, but sure. Just make sure she can get the hearthstone first.”
Elenai retrieved the stone and rejoined Kyrkenall. She hated feeling so helpless, and wished there was something more to do than watch the deity’s approach. She guessed the Goddess was only a quarter mile away now.
“You want me to toss it?” Kyrkenall asked.
Elenai looked down at her good hand. “No. I’ll do it.” She moved forward.
Two paces out from the cave the storm howled. Even though the greater mass of the storm lay behind the oncoming deity, grit and dirt already swirled through the air.
The Goddess flew on, beautiful and black, surrounded by a perfect round halo of warm white energy. Her steady, remorseless, effortless glide should have been chilling. Instead Elenai found it a challenge not to stare in awe. Finally, though, she reared back and lobbed the stone, wincing as the motion jerked her injured arm. The stone glittered with emerald light as it arced away.
A few feet from the ground it shot away in a perfect line, glowing with inner fires, flying straight toward the Goddess.
When the Goddess Wakes Page 22
