Paul Thompson: Destiny

She made her report, outlining the stories of the other riders and telling of her own escape from the great mass of lights. The other riders had been pursued by only a few lights, and none of the elves had seen Hytanthas or his griffon, Kanan, after Kerian ordered them to scatter.

Despite her calm recitation of facts, Gilthas knew she was deeply angry. Any death among her warriors was painful to her, but Hytanthas was special, one in whom she’d seen great potential. Gilthas understood the loss of a valued friend. His long-time bodyguard and comrade, Planchet, had died in the desert fighting nomads. Planchet’s absence was a wound that had not healed. Each morning when he awoke, Gilthas expected the trusted valet to be there, protecting his back, chiding him for not eating enough, and offering sage, pithy comments on Gilthas’s dealings not only with councilors and common folk but with his hot-tempered wife as well.

A tide of longing rose in Gilthas. The need to hold his wife close was nearly overwhelming. But, mindful of his healer’s stricture against too-intimate contact with others, he had to content himself with reaching for her hand and saying, “I am sorry. Young Ambrodel was worthy of his name.”

She knelt by him, holding his hand carefully. It was little more than bones covered by skin, hot and dry as the sands of Khur.

The moment was all too brief. Her voice was grim as she said, “If the lights can catch griffons, we have no hope of penetrating the inner valley.”

“You must be confident, my heart.” He shifted position, vainly seeking a more comfortable pose for his emaciated frame, and she let go his hand. “The best minds of our race are in this camp. We shall yet find the answers to the mysteries of this place.”

Time was she would have called him a fool and a dreamer. Now she only watched him walk alone to his pallet (with the eyes of those in the tent on them, he would brook no support from her), made an excuse to leave, and bade him good night. Alhana and Porthios awaited her outside the great tent.

“Is the Speaker lucid?” Porthios asked.

Kerian snapped, “He retains both his mind and his grace, unlike you!”

“Captain Ambrodel’s griffon has returned,” Alhana put in quickly to halt the argument that simmered beneath every exchange between them.

“Injured?”

“There’s not a mark on him,” Porthios said. “Alhana has treated him for exhaustion.”

Alhana’s special skill with the griffons had been of inestimable value in the elves’ efforts to tame the wild creatures. The note of pride in Porthios’s voice amused Kerian. Only with his beautiful Silvanesti wife did the arrogant Porthios come close to being personable.

Lowering her voice, Alhana said, “We have a greater problem. The food supply is dwindling faster than we thought. At the current rate of consumption, it will be gone in a month.”

Kerian was aghast. According to the survey taken when they’d entered Inath-Wakenti, there should be at least twice that much remaining. What had happened to the food?

“Theft. Hoarding,” Porthios said flatly, but Alhana disagreed. There was no evidence anyone had stolen the food, and hoarding was hard to imagine given the close confines of the camp. Too, the missing food was all meat: stocks of smoked goat and mutton, as well as dozens of live chickens.

Kerian wondered whether the disappearances could be connected to the valley’s antipathy to animal life. If so, the ramifications were frightening. They’d thought themselves safe here on the south side of the creek. If that were no longer true.

Porthios’s hoarse voice interrupted her dark thoughts. “The provisions that remain will go further once we depart for Qualinesti. It’s past time for the army to be gone.”

Since arriving, he had been agitating to lead the army back to Qualinesti to rejoin the battle against Samuval. Many elves, including Alhana, thought it a good plan. As long as they were safe from the nomads, Kerian agreed. At first reluctant to surrender command of the army to Porthios, she had changed her mind when she realized his departure might help prevent an open break between the interventionists, led by Porthios, and the valley colonizers, led by Gilthas. The only stumbling block was Gilthas himself. He adamantly refused to divide the nation in the face of the perils, known and unknown, that lay beyond Lioness Creek.

Kerian wondered whether that was his only concern or whether he also worried about placing an army at Porthios’s disposal. That had concerned her as well, but she still believed the advantages outweighed the risks. With thousands of trained warriors as its core, a great army of rebels could be raised to drive out the bandits once and for all. The liberation of their homeland had never been so close. Gilthas must be made to see that.

Alhana touched Kerian’s hand. “We cannot continue as we are.”

Porthios was less tactful. “Waste no more time, Lioness. You and I know war is the only way to free our homeland.”

For an instant, Kerian wondered whether Porthios might have stolen the food himself to force this very crisis. There was little he wouldn’t do if he thought it would advance a cause he believed just. In any case, it really didn’t matter. The army must go to Qualinesti to liberate their homeland—and to get Porthios away from Gilthas.

Evading both Alhana’s compassion and Porthios’s penetrating stare, she said, “I will put it to the Speaker.”

Wind swept through the elves’ camp, snatching at desert gebs and courtly robes, both much patched. The usual ebb and flow of the morning’s work had come to a stop as elves young and old gathered at the only open ground wide enough to hold them, the pass into Inath-Wakenti. They congregated by family or clan, by former trade or station in life, and sat in orderly rows facing an enormous flat-topped granite boulder. Warriors on horseback were drawn up on either side of the slab. Those who had lost their mounts stood on the hillside behind. Still higher up were the griffon riders and their mounts, far enough away so the griffon scent would not alarm the horses.

The leaders of the exiled elves stood on the granite slab: generals Hamaramis and Taranath, Kerian, Alhana, and Samar, commander of Alhana’s royal guard. Porthios stood apart from the rest, at one end of the improvised dais, idly tapping his leg with a stick.

An hour before noon, the last elves filed into place. The crowd quieted. As the silence lengthened, Alhana looked inquiringly at Kerian. The Lioness’s lips firmed with distaste. She would have ceded the task of addressing the crowd to Alhana, but the former queen was adamant. Kerianseray, as wife of the Speaker, had precedence over everyone else present. Kerian had acquiesced; if she refused, she had no doubt Porthios would leap at the chance to assert himself.

True to her word, she had spoken to Gilthas, urging him to allow the army to go to Qualinesti. The discussion had not gone well. Her husband stubbornly held fast to his idea that the nation was too vulnerable to be left without defenders. She reminded him she’d encountered nothing in the valley that could be defeated by massed troops and a small portion of the army would remain with them anyway. Such well-reasoned arguments did not sway him, so she spoke of the advantage of having Porthios far away, where he no longer could stir up dissent among their people. Gilthas dismissed this notion with an impatient wave of one hand, and that was when the Lioness’s temper began to fray.

“He wants to be leader in your place, Gil! Are you blind to his intentions?”

They’d kept their voices low out of deference to the crowded conditions in the Speaker’s tent, but her words had fallen into an unlucky lull in the conversations. A few heads turned their way. A glare from the Lioness sent everyone back about his or her business.