When he stopped to catch his breath, more than a dozen corpses surrounded him, bodies piled upon bodies.
Ruhm, Mazzax and Amoni had been busy too, but between them the count of their dead didn’t equal Aric’s. All were wounded, but none fatally, Aric was glad to see.
“Aric, you were incredible,” Amoni said. She was winded, with red patches on her cheeks and forehead. “A trained gladiator and I only killed six.”
“Four for me,” Mazzax put in.
“Five,” Ruhm said, a little sourly. “The dwarf got one of mine.”
“She wasn’t dead yet when she came to me,” Mazzax countered.
“I weakened her.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aric said. “We need to find Rieve and her family, before more raiders get here.”
“How will we do that?” Amoni asked.
Aric put his left hand beside his mouth and took a deep breath. “Rieve! It’s Aric! Where are you?”
Silence held, with only the distant sound of more raiders wending their way from elsewhere in the fort. Then Aric heard something else, a strange, sibilant fluttering. “Look!” Mazzax cried. He pointed into the air.
A bizarre, tiny creature flapped over their heads. Green and blue and red, with yellow and black stripes on a long, serpentine tail that gestured toward them almost like a curled finger, it turned in rapid circles, as if trying to attract their attention.
“Look at its tail!” Aric said. “I think it wants us to follow it!”
“Is it a trap?” Amoni asked.
“Only one way to find out!” The winged creature took off in a straight line, and Mazzax raced behind it. “If trap it be, then I’ll add to my count!”
“Let’s go!” Aric shouted. He thought it was on their side, and in any event, he didn’t want to lose sight of the dwarf. He ran after them both, and Amoni and Ruhm fell in behind him.
He saw the Thrace family at the same time as the raiders did.
“Rieve!” he cried.
“Aric!”
Nine or ten raiders rushed toward them from a side road. The little creature hurtled toward them, and Corlan, who had acquired a bone sword somewhere, stared at it with a beaming smile on his face. “It worked!” Corlan shouted. “You’re alive!”
A psionocus, then, Aric knew. A manufactured beast, brought to a sort of life as the servant of a powerful psion. He remembered being told that Corlan was a student at some psionic academy.
The raiders were closer to the Thrace family than Aric and his friends were. Corlan, the only one armed, looked away from his creation in time to notice them. Aric had already broken into a sprint, but Corlan met them first, his yellowish-brown weapon flicking out and cutting the fingers of a raider wielding a lotulis.
Corlan slew that foe and moved to the next, and Aric recalled that he had been selected to teach Rieve swordsmanship. No wonder—in addition to being psionic enough to animate a psionocus, he was good with a blade.
Aric joined the fight. Almost instantly, the wildness overtook him again. He was fully immersed in the battle, but at the same time a sense of calmness filled him, as if he knew he would win—or if he didn’t, then it didn’t really matter. As if the fight, not the result, was what counted.
A minute later, perhaps less, it was done. Aric was coated in blood, little of it his own. His blade had drank deep. Amoni, Ruhm and Mazzax had barely reached them when their enemies had fallen.
“Aric,” Rieve said. Ignoring the gore coating him, she rushed into his arms, embracing him with a warm, tight fervor that almost made him forget Corlan watched. “You came for us.”
“Of course,” he said. “But we’ve got to go. There’ll be more raiders coming.”
“Which way?” Tunsall asked.
The psionocus fluttered its wings, beckoning again with that little tail, and then shot off the way they had come. “Follow that!” Aric said. “It’ll show us the way out!”
Rieve slapped at her hip. “My sword! They took it …”
“I’ll make you another,” Aric promised. “Come on!”
They all dashed off behind the tiny winged thing. Aric looked back once, noting that Rieve and Corlan ran hand in hand.
He was surprised to find that he wasn’t more upset.
8
We had better take our leave,” Myrana whispered. Raiders were opening the gate. Their numbers had decreased considerably, as something had been drawing them away little by little—something she believed must have been Aric and the rest, fighting to free his friends.
“Do you think they’re finished?”
“I don’t know, but if we don’t do it soon, we will be.”
Sellis still had his swords, of course. And she her dagger.
But the raiders’ mood had changed. She hoped that meant Aric’s group was winning, and the raiders were angry over yet another defeat.
Hope was only hope, though, not certainty. Myrana’s only certainty was that if those raiders got the gate open and attacked them, there would be a bloody battle—maybe a long, bloody battle, maybe short—which wouldn’t end until she and Sellis were dead.
“Fine,” Myrana said. “Ready to run?”
“I’m ready.”
The raiders unlatched their wooden gate and scraped it open, bumping it against the ground as it swung unevenly on its hinges. Before they could throng out after Myrana and Sellis, he hurled the bag of gold coins over their heads. It landed in the road behind them, bursting at the seams, gold spilling everywhere.
“So it’s the gold you want?” Sellis shouted. “Have it, then! It’s yours!”
Raiders stared at the two strangers, but the pull of gold was stronger. With a loud outcry, they darted for the coins.
Myrana and Sellis ran.
And as each coin fell from the bag and hit the earth, it bounced into the air, turning into a golden bubble instead of a coin. Whenever someone touched one of the gold bubbles, or a bubble brushed against any other surface, it exploded. Within moments, raiders were squealing in pain, their hands blown off, a few of them dead. Their structures suffered too, as the explosions loosened timbers or knocked stones from walls. The dozens, then hundreds of smaller bursts combined into one massive explosion.
It shook the ground, even dozens of feet away. Myrana’s legs were knocked out from under her, but Sellis caught her up and kept running. Another blast sounded, and gold sprayed into the air.
“That,” he said, “is some serious magic!”
“It’s about as dangerous as my magic gets,” she said. “You can put me down.”
He set her on her feet, and they kept running, back toward where they had tied the kanks, out of sight of the fort. “I don’t like using magic to kill,” she said. “Even to injure is bad. My magic is meant to preserve, to protect.”
“You were protecting us!”
“That’s the only reason I did that,” she said. “Even so, most of those raiders will live. They might be temporarily blinded and deafened, and they’ll think twice about giving chase. But I never meant to kill them that way.
“Look at Athas. Could it have always looked this way? Scorched by the sun, frozen at night, with little water and less shade? Could a population ever have grown under such conditions? Many believe it’s magic did this, dark magic. Magic tied to death and destruction. It’s not just in the spells themselves, but in the motives behind them. Magic meant to kill is just not something I choose to partake of.”
“I understand,” he said. They topped a low hill and the kanks were right where they’d left them. Aric and the rest had not yet returned. “I don’t mean to make you keep explaining.”
When she spoke again, any anger had left his voice. “It’s fine, Sellis. I want you to understand, that’s all. I can’t fix everything bad that happens with magic, and I won’t intentionally use it to kill. But it’s a useful tool sometimes.”
“You’ve been wonderful, Myrana. Here I thought I was protecting you, when all along it’s been the other way.
I’m not sure I deserve what your family pays me.”
“When we finally get back to them, I’ll tell them you said so.”
“You won’t have to, because I will.”
They both started laughing, and sat down to wait, all tension between them evaporating like a puddle of water in the Athasian sun.
XX
CONFESSION
1
Aric and the others raced around the hill, into the little dell where they had left the kanks, and found Myrana and Sellis laughing uproariously. When Aric asked why, Myrana described the exploding gold coins, and the looks on the faces of the raiders as they reached for floating golden bubbles that blew up in their hands.
“But they weren’t killed?” Aric asked when she was done.
“Some were injured,” Sellis said. “Possibly others died.” He touched the hilt of the sword sticking up over his left shoulder. “I don’t mind killing when it’s warranted, as you know.”
“So they’re mostly alive, hurt, and furious,” Aric said. “We need to leave, now.”
“There aren’t enough kanks for everyone,” Rieve’s mother pointed out.
“We’ll have to share. I don’t need to ride,” Aric said. He found himself wishing there were fewer humans and more elves in the party. He was faster than a kank carrying a double load, and full elves could run faster, and over longer distances, than he. There had been several among the raiders. They had killed many raiders, but there were certainly plenty more who would already be gearing up to give chase.
They piled onto kanks, Mazzax riding behind Ruhm, Corlan and Myrana together, Rieve and Pietrus on one. Rieve’s grandparents rode together, with her parents on another, and Amoni and Sellis rode on the kank laden with supplies, taking turns getting off frequently to give the beast a break. Aric, as promised, ran alongside.
They didn’t see pursuers until the next afternoon.
The whole way, they had watched over their shoulders, figuring the raiders would be right behind them. Nothing.
By late the second day, they had decided that the raiders had chosen to bury their dead and not worry about them anymore. Then they reached the top of a tall hill and looked back and saw a dust cloud in the distance, following their trail.
They pressed on, urging the kanks to greater speed. When night fell, they had to stop, build fires and rest. Aric didn’t sleep well; even though he knew it was unlikely the raiders pressed on through the cold black Athasian night, he couldn’t shake the sensation that they were closing in. Out in open desert, with vastly greater numbers, they would be almost impossible to defeat.
As the sun rose, they gathered in a fur-clad, chattering group to discuss their options. “Doubled-up on kanks,” Aric said, “we won’t be able to outrun those raiders for long.”
“We’re slowing you down,” Rieve’s mother said. Aric could only distinguish the members of the Thrace family by their relative heights, as they all wore thickly furred, hooded cloaks, and their faces were lost in shadow. “You didn’t intend to overburden your mounts so much. Perhaps you should give up on us.”
“You’re the reason we went to that fort!” Myrana said. “And we need you.” The night before, they had told Rieve and her family about Kadya and Tallik and the fact that they would need magical assistance to defeat the demon. The family discussed it, finally agreeing to return to Nibenay, just for long enough to help deal with the threat. Aric vowed to make every effort to keep them outside the city’s walls and beyond the reach of the authorities.
“Myrana’s right,” Amoni said. “Without you, we might have already been back in Nibenay by now. Much closer, certainly. It’s you, Sheridia, who we’ve the greatest need of. Among those Veiled Alliance members I know, your reputation is without peer.”
“Perhaps you should just take Sheridia, then,” Corlan suggested. “I can protect the others.”
“You’re very bold,” Rieve said. “And you fought well yesterday at the fort. But the six of us alone wouldn’t have a chance.”
“We stay together,” Aric said. “We should mount up and go, though. Already the sky lightens before the rising sun. We need every minute’s advantage we can gain.”
They doused their fires with sand, packed, and set off as soon as the sun cleared the horizon. After a few hours, they again caught a glimpse of their pursuers, closer than they’d been the day before. Myrana suggested that since they were already so far off their route, they make another detour.
They changed course abruptly, heading away from Nibenay instead of toward it. Myrana was correct, though—the trip to the raider’s fort had taken them far afield, and although time was certainly growing short, dying before they reached Nibenay would help no one. Myrana hadn’t explained exactly what she had in mind, but Sellis agreed with her plan, and that was good enough for Aric.
Around midday, they reached a broad, barren valley ringed by low mountains. Instead of cutting across the valley floor, Myrana and Sellis led them by what seemed a much slower route, circling it. When they reached the far side, they stopped to rest and to drink from a spring high up on the wall.
From there, looking across the valley, they could see the raiders on the valley’s far rim. The raiders spied them as well, but chose to cross the valley.
“They’ll catch us in no time, now!” Rieve’s grandfather said. “We lost hours by going around.”
“Just wait,” Myrana said.
“Wait?” Corlan asked. “The sooner we go, the better!”
“Wait,” Sellis echoed. “Watch. I think you’ll enjoy this.”
They waited and watched. When the party of raiders was halfway across the valley, someone emerged from an unseen shelter hidden among large rocks. From the valley’s rim, he looked tiny. But even at that distance they could tell he was angry. Miniature arms flailed with rage, miniature feet stamped.
And then he began blasting away at the raiders.
“Who is that?” Mazzax asked finally.
“That’s the hermit Kalipher,” Sellis said.
“He hates intruders,” Myrana added. “Last time we saw him, he swore he would kill any who entered his valley.”
“So you don’t mind using magic to kill,” Aric said. “As long as it’s not your magic.”
“He would have killed anyway,” Myrana said. “Or so he claimed, and I’d no reason to doubt him. I just thought it would be helpful if he killed the right people.”
“Some may yet escape,” Amoni said. “And we should take advantage of the opportunity to make some progress.”
Aric loaded some freshly filled water bladders on the pack kank. “Nibenay awaits!”
“So it does,” Tunsall said. “Or so we hope.”
2
They pushed on as hard as they could during the day, but stopped before sunset in order to make camp and start fires before the cold set in. Everybody was more relaxed than the night before, when they had made camp after dark and they’d scrambled to get things ready. At any rate, everyone was exhausted from fighting and running, none more so than Aric, who had not been riding like the others.
Once camp was ready, he sat on the ground chewing on dried meat Mazzax had brought, watching the others settle in. There seemed an odd distance between Rieve and Corlan, a coolness that had not existed before. At the same time, Corlan and Myrana spoke together several times, sometimes laughing. Aric wondered what had transpired, on the backs of those kanks for so long.
He’d never had a chance to really look at Rieve’s father, who he hadn’t met at the Thrace estate. The man had only spoken a dozen words since they had met; none of them, now that he thought of it, directed to Aric. They had been running so much, and the man had been so bundled up during the night and morning, that he hadn’t even had a good view of him. Myklan of Thrace was a handsome enough fellow, he decided. His hair was black and thick, with a few strands of gray near the temples. His features were even and pleasant, as befitted the father of someone as lovely as Rieve. He was fit, a littl
e thick around the middle, but not nearly so much as many nobles. The only thing remarkable about him was a bright red mark on his left cheek, like a sunburst. A birthmark, Aric guessed.
As he watched Myklan, he found himself staring at that birthmark. It reminded him of something. He sat with his back against a rough-edged rock, racking through his memory.
An hour later, after he had eaten dinner and was thinking about other things entirely he picked up a metal dagger Myklan had removed from his belt and it came to him like a lightening flash.
“His face always reminded me of the rising sun,” Aric’s mother had told him, describing his human father. He had never understood what she meant.
Until now. It was impossible to look at Myklan’s face without thinking of Athas’s red sun, bursting over the horizon. Could it be true? Could Rieve’s father also be his own? Mother had thought he was dead, but she hadn’t known that, had only assumed it when he’d stopped coming to see her.
“He never seemed to like elves,” she’d also said. “He didn’t even like himself, when he was with me. It was like he couldn’t stay away, but then when he was there, he loathed himself for it. When I told him I was with child, he was mortified. I never saw him again.”
Another thought was nagging at Aric, but he couldn’t bring it to the surface. He left it alone, listened to a conversation Mazzax and Tunsall were having.
He almost didn’t want to say anything. Rieve would hate it. Sheridia might refuse to help them against Kadya and Tallik. But he couldn’t let it go. He tried to tell himself that it couldn’t be true, that if he voiced his suspicions, Rieve might never speak to him again.
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