Paul Thompson - Alliances

“I have taken his measure!” she declared, eyes blazing with triumph. “The false seer thought he could forestall my maita. No one can do that! Those on High are with me!”

He helped her stand. Sand cascaded from their robes. As Wapah brushed himself off, Adala stared at the dissipating whirlwind. It tracked northeast, rapidly losing cohesion. Soon it was only a rolling cloud of dust, tumbling over the dunes toward the Lion’s Teeth. She hoped it would hold together long enough to drop a load of sand upon the laddad.

Wapah’s attention was fixed in the opposite direction. Their camp was completely wrecked. Not a single tent still stood. The ground in all directions was littered with debris. Here and there frantic men and women tore at mounds of sand, digging out those buried beneath. Adala’s face wore a fierce grin, but Wapah saw precious little to be happy about. He was immensely relieved to see Adala’s niece. Zayna was pulling the lap loom from the flattened remains of her aunt’s tent. She began cleaning the mechanism with careful fingers.

Riders arrived from the camps of the other tribes. None but the Weya-Lu had been hit by the whirlwind. Even the Mikku camp, in direct line with the storm, had escaped damage. The storm had twisted wide around their tents, causing only minor problems.

It seemed a message directed at Adala and her tribe. Those few chiefs who had heard the voice tell Adala the laddad must continue passed that information on to their fellows. Many wondered aloud whether it might not be best to release the captives, so as to appease the wrath of the ancient oracle.

“In one more day,” Adala announced, “the laddad khan will have his people back. Their numbers will swell the ranks of the hungry and thirsty on Broken Tooth and Chisel, and their khan will know his doom is at band.”

The chiefs were relieved. She had heeded the oracle’s warning.

She seated herself in the shade of her tent, which Zayna had erected with Wapah’s help, and picked up the lap loom. Since she obviously intended to return to her weaving, Wapah and the nomad chiefs began to drift away.

“One thing more,” Adala called out, cleaning the last of the grit from the loom. “Let every male among the captive laddad be branded on the back of the left hand. Use the herd mark of the Weya-Lu.”

Wapah stared at her in shock. He took a step toward her, hands held out as if in supplication. “But why, Maita? What purpose can such terrible cruelty serve, except to anger the laddad khan?”

“It will tell him, and everyone who sees the mark, that his people were freed by our will, not by the hand of Sahim-Khan, not by the efforts of the laddad khan, and not by the meddlesome false seer who calls himself the Oracle. The mark will stand as a sign of their failure and our maita.”

The chiefs were not happy with the order. They were men of honor. Only slaves and herd animals were branded. To put such a mark on a captured enemy was a gross insult. But all had seen Adala stand before a whirlwind and emerge unscathed. Such courage demonstrated great power of the soul. Her survival underscored the awesome strength of the Fate that worked within her. They could not disobey her command.

As Wapah watched the chiefs and warmasters ride away, he felt something shift within himself. Perhaps it was the eyes of his soul opening wide at last, perhaps it was only the breaking of his heart, but in that moment, he knew Adala was wrong. Powerful forces were undeniably at work in his cousin, but he no longer believed that maita and the will of Those on High guided her actions. If he hadn’t held onto her when the whirlwind had passed over, she would have been torn from the sand and flung heavenward like Hadar, never to return. He had felt the terrible pull of that wind, and it was he who had saved her, not divine fate. That and the pointless cruelty of the order she had just given were proof he could not ignore. Adala was on the wrong path. Hatred and pain had blinded her.

He found his horse, thankfully spared by the storm. Taking a skin of water, he rode out of the ruined camp. His mission—his maita —was clear.

Like a vast black mirror, the Lake of Death covered what had once been the great city of Qualinost. By day, the water was a deep jade color, but at dawn, before the sun first broke over the eastern rim of the sky, the water resembled the darkest ink imaginable. Despite the summer season, the air was chilly, and perpetual fog drifted over the lake. Beryl’s impact had created so mighty a crater, the ground around the lake sloped down to its forbidding shore. Here and there, bits of masonry stood out dull gray against blasted trees that reached into the lightening sky like blackened, fleshless arms. Everything dripped gray moss and smelled worse than a hundred cesspits.

“You fell into that?” Samar exclaimed. “Somewhere there’s a sorcerer who does not like you.”

Kerian did not agree. Whoever had plucked her from Khur and dropped her here was watching out for her, not trying to harm her. A malign magician could have left her where she was, facing death among the nomads, or could have let her plummet unchecked into Nalis Aren. She had been saved for a reason. To fight in Porthios’s rebellion? Perhaps. There were many questions. Being here again, beholding the awful lake, invited questions.

The column of elves paused briefly to rest just after dawn. No one wanted to leave the road and pitch a tent or unroll a blanket in the murky domain surrounding the lake, so they slept in or under their carts or didn’t sleep at all.

The lake and its immediate environs were cloaked in a perpetual twilight. Only the elves’ own innate sense of time told them when an hour had passed. Alhana rode the length of the caravan, rousing the Bianost militia and wishing them good morning. Weary shoulders straightened, and the townsfolk bowed their heads respectfully as she rode by. She was very different from Orexas, who appeared seldom, spoke rarely, and commanded by mystery. With a kind smile and warm words, Alhana revived their spirits as she progressed along the line.

At the tail of the caravan she asked Samar, who rode with her, to send a few riders back down their path to look for signs of pursuit. The heavy atmosphere around the lake blunted vision and smell to an alarming degree. They did not want to be surprised by bandits.

Back at the head of the column, Alhana found Kerian and Chathendor studying the map Kerian had found in Bianost. It didn’t show the lake, of course, having been drawn well before the fall of Beryl, and they were trying to reconcile the current topography to that shown on the map.

“This must be the road we are on,” Kerian said, tapping the map with a blunt nail. “Silveran’s Way.”

“I recall it,” Chathendor said, eyes closed, drawing on his memories. “It wended gently across the land north of the city.” Opening his eyes, he returned to reality with a jolt. “It does not seem possible.”

Alhana asked if they’d seen Orexas. Kerian had. She’d been dozing on the ground when he ghosted by her, heading straight down the road.

It was time to follow him. No heralds cried; no silvery trumpets trilled. Alhana gave the word and it was passed through the royal guards to the Bianost militia. She led them forward. Kerian and Chathendor followed half a horse length behind, and Samar rode a few yards back, at the head of the royal guards.

A walking pace was the best they could manage, given the state of the road. The once smooth, well-tended way was cut by fissures. Mud, stones, and boulders from higher up the steep hillside had washed down onto the road. The town elves were not experienced drovers, and many of their beasts were not suited as draft animals. Frequently, elves had to jump down and push the wheels by hand to help the laden wagons over rough or muddy spots. Progress was so glacial, the lead riders were forced to stop and wait for the caravan of wagons to catch up.