Mercedes Lackey - Exile's Honor

He relayed that information back to the army via Kantor, along with his recommendation that at least a portion of it be kept in trust for the children themselves. That was all he could do about it, but they seemed far more interested in eating and sleeping than in the jewelry and coins they'd lugged along, so he dismissed it from his mind.

As if the One God had decided to ease their way further, the full moon rose before the last light of twilight faded. With the broad track to follow, there was no chance of getting lost, and not much chance that a horse would make a misstep and hurt himself; accordingly there was never even a thought but that they would turn around and head back to the Border.

Bit by bit, as Laika and the other three talked to the older children, a broad picture began to form of what had happened.

One of the first Karsite orphans scooped up by the Tedrels when they first made their alliance and moved into Karse was a boy they all called Kantis. It was he who had somehow concocted the odd "cult" that Laika had noticed among the children—a cult that admitted no adult members, and whose members were sworn to secrecy with a solemn oath that, apparently, not even the boys who were later initiated into the Tedrel lodges ever broke.

Most of the cult that Kantis had created had a very familiar ring to Alberich, for it was virtually identical to the simple forms of Vkandis' rites that he had learned as a child from his mentor Father Kentroch, even to calling the God by the name of Sunlord. But there were more interesting additions....

Kantis had, from the beginning, it seemed, included a kind of redemption story, told whenever times were particularly hard for the children. He told them all that "some day" the Keepers (as he called the Tedrel adults) would abandon them and never return. And on that day, the White Riders and their Ghost-Horses would come for them and take them all away into a new land. This would not be the home of the Sunlord, he had assured those who, out of bitter experience, had feared that this meant they would all have to die. No, this was a very real land, where they would all make families with a shared set of parents, where they would always have enough to eat and a warm, safe place to sleep, and where they would never have to follow the drum again.

The children stolen out of Valdemar only reinforced Kantis' stories, when they identified the White Riders as Heralds.

Somehow, he had impressed upon them the need to keep all of this utterly secret, even more so than the redemption story.

And somehow, he had known the very moment when the Tedrels lost their battle, for even before the remnants of the army came running back to the camp to take what they could carry and flee, he was telling the children that now was the time. He organized them, told them they should get what they wanted and whatever "shiny things" they could find in the adult camp, hide the ponies and donkeys until the last of the adults were gone, and prepare to march north, themselves, as soon as the last of the Keepers fled away.

Which was exactly what they had done. Those camp followers who had not run off with skirts stuffed full of valuables and some protector or alone had been bewildered by the stubborn insistence of the children on their goal, but had gone along with it, seeing no other options before them. Most of them were heartbreakingly young by Alberich's standards, and not yet hardened from "camp follower" to "whore."

They must have set out from the remains of the camp about the same time that Alberich and his group set out from Valdemar. The entire story was mind-boggling. And he wanted, very badly, to meet this boy, this so-clever, so-intelligent boy calling himself "Kantis," and speak with him.

But though he rode up and down the line, he could not actually find the boy. One child after another asserted that yes, Kantis was certainly with them—somewhere—but no one could tell him what group Kantis was with or where he'd last been seen. He might have been a figment of their collective imagination—he might have been a ghost himself—for he had somehow utterly vanished from among them the moment that they spotted Laika and Kulen.

19

THE wagons loaded with the most portable of the Tedrel wealth caught up with them much sooner than Alberich had anticipated. This was in part because the portable wealth was very portable indeed, and in part because the section carrying the children was moving slowly. The poor things were exhausted, and even packed together like so many turnips in a sack, once stuffed with food and water, they fell asleep. So, since the treasure wagons were going to have to catch up with the main part of the group anyway, Alberich took their pace down to a steady walk.

Laika came up beside him; now that night had fallen, he was able to relax his guard. Laika, sharing his memories of Karse, was similarly relaxed. Nighttime held no terrors for Alberich now, not after so many years in Valdemar. If the Sunpriests unleashed their demons—and given how quiet the night was, he rather thought that said demons were fully engaged in pursuing stray Tedrels at the moment—he didn't think they would bother to do so here. So far as the Sunpriests knew at this point, there was no one in this part of the hills but the children, and why waste their most dangerous and powerful nighttime weapon on a lot of children?

Children who couldn't escape on their own, and would soon be facing the Fires anyway....

He had to unclench his jaw over that thought. And he sent up a silent prayer—not the first, and he doubted if it would be the last—that one day the Sunpriests would be answering for their transgressions, and one day it would be priests like his old mentor Kentroch, and like Father Henrick and Geri, who would be ruling in Karse again.

One of the other Heralds came riding up, looking nervously over his shoulder. "Herald Alberich, shouldn't we be putting outriders all around?" he asked. "I mean—"

"Peace; at ease be, protected we are by the priests themselves," Alberich said, and exchanged a glance with Laika. She laughed.

"Karsites won't stir out of their doors after dark," she said, with the air of one who knows . "Their priests have a habit of sending some sort of creepy-howly thing out at night, to make sure nobody's out doing something they shouldn't."

"Even the Sunsguard stirs not," Alberich added, with sardonic amusement. "So that now, should even a priest order them out, they will not go."

"Caught in their own trap," Laika said. "And serve 'em right. So by the time sun's up, we'll be so close to our people that even if they catch on we're here, our folks can mount a big enough rescue to squeak us across without losing so much as a hair."

Alberich considered how much the Tedrels had drained from the country, and sighed with pain. " If they scout or Far-See us, we take—so far as they will know—useless mouths only. We leave—think, they will—the camp unplundered." Privately, he doubted that even the Sunpriests would trouble themselves with FarSeeing this part of Karse; they would use their power to track down the Tedrels and Tedrel recruits, They must know that Sendar was dead, but they must also know that now was not the time to attack Valdemar themselves. Valdemar had just fought a terrible battle, and were exhausted, yes, but the Karsite Sunsguard was drained and weakened by the demands of the Tedrels. The current Son of the Sun—

He set bandits against Valdemar, then hired the Tedrels to do his work for him, Alberich thought somberly. And now, thanks to the drain that the Tedrels put on his resources, the Sunsguard must be even more depleted. He hasn't got the means to attack us.