With Ortok standing watch, the three of them managed an unbroken stretch of sleep. It wasn’t enough to be fully restorative, yet when they moved out it was with renewed energy and purpose. The mysteries and troubles that plagued them had been set aside. N’lahr had a plan and the people of Arappa needed them. That was all the focus they required.
They pushed their pace as they ventured across the shifts, speaking little. Even Kyrkenall was mostly silent, though it was not because he brooded over his argument with N’lahr. As far as Elenai could tell, that had passed like a summer rainstorm. Instead, each seemed grimly centered on the immediate future, and the challenges it brought.
Ortok was as quiet as the rest of them, although he had to keep pace at an unflagging jog. His steady breathing was usually audible over other sounds and soon became a strangely reassuring constant that even the horses stopped alerting to with their ears.
Just after a series of rises topped by a smattering of those unpleasant scaly trees, they approached the shores of a great void, very much like the one they’d passed through during the storm. A faded yellow sun burned in an umber sky to the right but darkness cut a ragged and abrupt line across the land and firmament beyond. Elenai watched it warily as they drew closer, fearful that she’d glimpse matter-eating entities within. She worried, too, that she might be called upon to build another land bridge, but so far the empty zone with its uninterrupted twinkling points of light seemed not to intrude upon their intended line of travel.
Even with the distracting starry void looming on their left, she was pleased to recognize the rolling hills and general shape of the splinter where they’d rested the “day” before. She was starting to sense the land better, as Kyrkenall had tried to show her.
They picked their way through the hills for several hours, the void never very far away. It was only a few yards to their left when darkness suddenly washed over them.
N’lahr shouted to get down even as Elenai warmed the hearthstone to life, which alerted her to the ebon spellthreads penetrating their consciousnesses. This was no natural phenomenon—an enemy hearthstone was powering the blinding spell.
Though her eyes registered no light while she slid to the ground, she sensed all the living beings around her: Kyrkenall, N’lahr, Ortok, the horses. On the nearby hill were twenty or so more. She heard Ortok grunt, felt his life force ebb a modest degree. He’d been struck. Their attackers must have bows.
She discarded the notion of trying to clip off all the tiny threads of the darkness and instead called forth a desperate, disruptive wash of golden energy.
The darkness broke like black shards as more arrows arced in. Elenai rolled aside. One narrowly missed a kneeling Kyrkenall, letting fly with shafts of his own now that he had targets. On the hill above Elenai felt the life force weakening from one of the archers, who screamed as she fell. A squire, she saw, in traditional gray-liveried armor. Kyrkenall’s arrow dropped another dead; she saw his life force leave him in an explosive gust in the same moment she recognized him as Velnik, a friendly, freckled third ranker.
Blue-coated Altenerai charged down the hill, huge Decrin in the lead with the Shining Shield on his arm. At his side was tall, spare, gray-bearded Tretton, and after came broad-shouldered Lasren, Denaven on his heels with two competent-looking fourth rankers. She saw Gyldara pause at the height of the hill, throwing axe raised like an avenging goddess, but Kyrkenall stepped aside as the spinning missle hurtled down at him.
Denaven shouted. “Lasren, take the kobalin with the squires. Decrin, Kyrkenall’s yours.”
“He’s mine!” Gyldara screamed, and raced to catch up.
Elenai sent a thread at the restive horses to urge them clear of attack and was deciding what more to do when a stream of energy slammed through her defenses and sent her reeling. An intruder latched on to her hearthstone and used its own power against her. It wasn’t Denaven, she noted through a disorienting haze of torment; some new and powerful mage was boring in.
The instinctual choice was to throw all remaining energy to self-defense, but even as she felt a new attack build, a wiser idea occurred to her. She slipped from her hastily thrown protective energies, effectively climbing through the layers that bound her to the hearthstone. The stranger battered her as she worked free, and Elenai gasped at the lancing pain and nauseating vertigo.
As both were linked to the same stone, a small part of each consciousness was bared to the other. Elenai sensed her opponent’s smug confidence that she faced an inferior foe, and she glimpsed her name as well. Ortala didn’t seem concerned with the novice’s retreat until only a few tendrils connected Elenai to the stone. Sudden insight set the woman struggling to free herself from the thicket of magery.
But it was too late. Elenai drank in a modicum of energy before she released a final thread, then cycled the hearthstone closed.
Ortala’s panic as she fought to break clear of the clinging and unyielding matrices stabbed at Elenai. But there simply wasn’t enough time for the woman to escape the entanglements before the stone snapped shut upon the strands that tied her spirit to her distant body. The connective spiritual tissue, once severed, blew away like a cobweb on the winds. Upslope, Ortala’s body fell limply.
Elenai felt little remorse for this death, for she was certain Ortala had planned some similar fate for her. She had little time to reflect upon it in any case. Winded by the invisible conflict, Elenai gasped in air and took stock of her surroundings.
Nearest at hand, Ortok had borne several cuts and was fending off sword attacks from two squires while Lasren struggled to stand, shaking his head blearily. As she watched, one of the squires went down with a hammer blow to his shoulder, mouth working silently in pain.
On her right-hand side, Kyrkenall fended off attack from two Altenerai. Gyldara must have flung her second ax, for she was trading blows with her blade, striving to maneuver Kyrkenall toward Decrin’s heavier length of steel.
Gyldara shouted in frustration. “Stop toying with us and fight!”
“I’ll have you know,” Kyrkenall objected, “that ‘not killing’ you … isn’t as easy as I make it look.” His breathing was heavy but a rakish grin lit his face. “Maybe you should try it.”
Clearly both her altens were hampered by their efforts to avoid mortal blows. N’lahr was in more dire straits, engaged in swirling combat with Tretton and Denaven near the void’s edge. As Elenai watched, the swordsman dodged a lethal overhand strike from Tretton, then barely sidestepped a powerful back swipe from the older swordsman’s offhand knife. Denaven, advancing cautiously from the right, attempted a lunge, but N’lahr caught the blade with his own, sliding it aside as he jumped in close to knock Denaven over a precisely placed leg. Presumably unable to employ mental magic against someone bearing Irion, Denaven blasted N’lahr with swept-up bits of grit and dirt as the swordsmage fell to his backside.
Tretton, moving on N’lahr’s rear, caught nearly as much of the debris as the intended target. The graybeard stepped back, sputtering. Rather than pressing an attack, N’lahr spoke to him. “We should be fighting the Naor, not each other!”
Tretton wiped his face with his arm, looking as discomfited as if his dog had discovered speech. “I wish I didn’t have to do this.” He sounded more like he was thinking aloud than addressing N’lahr. He resumed his attack with grim ferocity.
N’lahr parried the blow and slid away from a sweep with the man’s long knife. He then beat away a wicked flanking slash from Denaven, riposting with deadly force.
Irion sliced through even the Altenerai armor, leaving a gash along Denaven’s arm. The traitorous commander just managed to avoid the point and retreated. Was he afraid to resume attack, or was he readying new magics? Or both?
Elenai shook herself to action. She’d have to even the odds. Narrowing her eyes, she called up the inner world. Each knee-high blade of grass was a complex tapestry of form. Like Denaven and Tretton and N’lahr. Like everything, save for the solid light of an active hearthstone borne in the pack hung at Denaven’s waist.
Without further consideration, she confidently set her own hearthstone blazing back to life. She passed through the tattered remnants of Ortala’s consciousness, eerily brushing against her last moments of fear, then sent a shining filament of will at Denaven. Elenai drew her sword and advanced even as she commanded “sleep,” as M’lahna had done.
She saw him start, then turn away from the engrossed fighters. He sneered and took a step toward her. “You’re a talented amateur, now, aren’t you.”
With stunning speed, his own will leapt out and touched her. She thought she’d known pain from Ortala. Now she was afire with blinding agony and she barely managed to lift her sword to intercept his overhand swing.
She gritted her teeth and reflected the same attack toward its originator.
That seemed to surprise Denaven. His own assault halted for a span of a single heartbeat. Then he bore in again. This time she willed his attacking threads to split asunder as she parried another sword stroke. She still felt pain but at least she could see clearly. Undaunted, Denaven pressed in again, and once more. As they warred she heard N’lahr again, though she didn’t catch his words.
“—just a monster in a friendly shape.” Tretton growled back. Each utterance was punctuated by clangs or thuds.
“Your attention’s wandering, Squire,” Denaven spat, and lunged.
Elenai parried, but it was a close thing, and she backed even as he resumed his magical press, scowling. His attack tore through her defenses like a hammer through a pane of glass. She realized she’d sunk to her knees when they contacted the ground and her vision spun with pulsing points of light. Denaven might have finished her then if he’d closed.
Instead, the commander pivoted to direct a magical assault against N’lahr with a veritable blizzard of threads. He willed his own hearthstone to disrupt the ground. Soil undulated like ocean waves. Elenai was impressed despite herself.
He might have meant the attack only for N’lahr, but it vaulted Tretton toward N’lahr’s outstretched weapon and both toward the edge into nothingness. The two went down in a tangle, and the next moment that Elenai could sort out had N’lahr driving a bloodied Irion deep into the ground with his off hand while the other maintained a hold on the older man’s collar as most of Tretton dangled over the drop into the pitiless void. Kyrkenall bellowed alarm.
And Denaven strode forward to kill N’lahr. Kyrkenall, desperate to free himself, struck with blinding precision right through an opening in Decrin’s guard, over his shield and apparently through his armor, for the huge alten sank to his knees. Gyldara rushed in with an enraged onslaught and held Kyrkenall in an earnest dance of destruction.
No one else could help. Ortok remained locked in combat with Lasren and the final squire. It was up to her. Elenai was still seeing spots, but she got her feet under her.
She lashed Denaven with a blast of pain. His spine stiffened and he faltered a few steps shy of his blade’s reach.
N’lahr took the respite to release Irion and grasp Tretton with both hands, to haul him to safety.
Elenai raced forward. “Face me!”
Denaven half turned so he included her as a target, then sliced out to keep her at bay.
She dropped under the cut, rolled near to the edge and N’lahr, and rose between him and Denaven. On sudden inspiration she left her own sword in the grass, and pulled Irion instead.
Denaven’s visage vibrated with shock and anger, and somehow she knew it was about the blade she now held.
With a choked roar he thrust at her with his own weapon, battering her at the same moment with threads from his hearthstone. She felt the intents rise one after the other, shooting toward her like lead-weighted rope. She lifted threads from her hearthstone to obstruct them, but was so busy upon them she barely blocked another thrust, and then ducked a swipe that would have taken her head.
“No helm? You’re not good enough”—he swung again, and she sidestepped—“to be so careless!”
He was right. She retreated from the edge, drawing Denaven farther from N’lahr and wishing she could send a wave of earth as he had done. She wasn’t sure she could, so she sent the thought of one toward him, complete with the image of him fighting for balance.
And she saw him hesitate, the fraction of an instant. In that tiny respite she glimpsed that near invisible line of branching possibility that only she seemed to perceive. Her off hand grasped it, though there was nothing physical to hold, and she followed it forward. A thousand minutely different futures blossomed like flowers in a hedge maze.
He slashed at her, then seemed startled he missed. She and Denaven whirled into a manic duel. On and on he came, and now she blocked him almost before he struck. He cursed at her. His blows came, the spells fell, but each time he struck she was to the side of where he aimed, countering each sorcery with a new blaze of energy. She sensed his frustration rise when her satisfaction rose.
“What are you doing?”
He wasted words, and Asrahn would have told him so. All of Elenai’s attention was centered on the pinpoint moment that lay just ahead of the now. Denaven ceased his forward momentum and reached deeper within his hearthstone. She supposed he pulled more energy, but the result was too far forward to know.
He drove hard at her, screaming some meaningless insult, but she danced to one side and suddenly she had the perfect opening. In the next moment Denaven’s hand was arcing away from his body, still grasping his sword.
He screeched and grabbed at the horrible wound with his other hand. Through the inner world Elenai saw life roaring away from the injury like water streaming from a pipe.
He screamed again, and she felt him drawing on the hearthstone, knew his desperation, knew another opening when she had one, and jammed Irion’s point through his neck. She felt it catch in his spinal column. The moment she pulled it free he dropped, gracelessly, and slammed face-first into the ground.
She turned, breathing heavily, still sighted in the inner world, paying no more heed to Denaven’s corpse than she might have regarded a rock, then shut down his hearthstone before scanning the battlefield.
Ortok and Lasren still traded blows. The other squire was down. Near at hand N’lahr crouched at Tretton’s side, and the two conversed in low tones. Through her inner sight it was clear that Tretton’s life force was diminished, but that he was in no grave danger. She would not have been able to tell it by the man’s pose, but she saw pulsing lines of red all about his right upper arm that she knew signified pain. Gyldara was retreating before Kyrkenall as the archer attacked with mad abandon.
Elenai shouted: “Kyrkenall, stop!”
But either he didn’t hear, or he could no longer control himself, for he pressed on. Gyldara proved even a finer blade than Elenai would have guessed, somehow anticipating or avoiding every mad flurry, but her energy flagged and she was clearly on the defense.
“Stop!”
Gyldara saw Elenai’s rush and wrenched to the left, trying to keep her from flanking. Kyrkenall seized the opening, struck, and deftly knocked the woman’s sword, spinning and shining, to the ground; he drew back for the death blow, grinning terribly.
His blade met Elenai’s with a weird greenish spark, and his eyes shifted to hers in frustrated rage.
“She was misled!” Elenai avowed
“I don’t care!” he cried.
Gyldara snarled in fury at the same time. “He killed my sister!”
Elenai pushed back on Kyrkenall’s sword, looking not at him but Gyldara, who clearly waited for an opening to renew the attack. Elenai struck at her, not with blade, but mind.
The alten fought as her ring lit, her head swaying right and left as though she might hold back the mental assault with physical action. Yet Elenai bore down with the full power of the hearthstone and forced a mental link. The woman’s sapphire slowed but could not contain the attack.
The golden-haired alten choked back a curse as she saw what Elenai remembered. That moment, ages but merely weeks ago, when Elenai had stood before the tomb with Kyrkenall as a similar-looking woman circled with a hearthstone and talked to them of Asrahn’s death. M’lahna, Gyldara’s sister.
Elenai pushed the memories forward, one after the other in quick succession. M’lahna’s words, M’lahna’s death, Cargen’s denials and his memory of the tower, the long, long ride through the Shifting Lands, the recovery of N’lahr, the discovery of Belahn, the perilous flight into chaos. She gave her all of it, then traced it back to herself, lying in the mud while M’lahna spoke with the motionless Kyrkenall.
Gyldara shook. Had she been party to it all? Was this some kind of trick or had she simply been blinded by vengeance and deceived by Denaven? Seeing the woman’s stricken expression, Elenai thought she knew, and dropped the link.
Kyrkenall stepped back, Lothrun lowered but teeth gritted, very much like a wolf waiting for his moment. He breathed heavily without much noise.
Gyldara’s eyes glistened with tears. Her voice was low, trembling. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Kyrkenall rasped.
“That my sister murdered Asrahn. That she tried to kill you both.” Gyldara searched Elenai’s eyes, as if for confirmation. She must have found it there. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Gods. What have I done?”
“What have I done?” Kyrkenall repeated. And his gaze swung to his right, where Decrin lay. N’lahr was there now, kneeling by the man as his life force faded, and Tretton looked on, haggard, right arm stiffly at his side. It was scarlet with pain.
Kyrkenall moved toward them almost mechanically.
Elenai tore her eyes from Gyldara and looked over to where Ortok now loomed, shoulders heaving from exertion, beside Lasren. The young alten was struggling to his feet, eyeing the kobalin with distrust and fear. She couldn’t know if N’lahr had shouted something or if Ortok and the alten had come to terms on their own. And somehow she felt it difficult to care, for the music of the hearthstone was so alluring. Now that the combat was over and she was no longer focused each moment upon life and death, she heard its siren call, and wanted to hear nothing else. At some level she knew that she was hypnotized by its sweet sound, but that didn’t matter. She wanted to lose herself within it, leave this scene of devastation, as though she were sinking into a warm tub of water.
A question from Gyldara pulled her back. “And that’s really Commander N’lahr?”
“Yes.” Wasn’t it obvious? Why was she asking such irritating questions? Why was any of this, here, in the regular world, of interest in any way?
“Are you all right?” Gyldara asked in a tiny voice. And then something in Elenai’s look must have warned her that she wasn’t, for the other woman reached out to grasp one arm, and then the other, staring into her eyes. Elenai felt herself rigid in Gyldara’s hands, unable to breathe. “Squire?”
For reasons she didn’t fully understand, that human contact was the release she needed. She relinquished her hold on the hearthstone, or gave it permission to release her, and cycled it closed. Her body was her own once more. It was as if she’d stepped out of a role she’d adopted for the stage, a demanding one, for she had to shake her head to clear her thoughts. To Gyldara’s questioning look, she nodded her thanks. The alten released her and then the two, wordless, joined the knot about Decrin.
Kyrkenall and N’lahr sat on either side of him. The prone alten still had his shield strapped across his left arm. His khalat had been unhooked and N’lahr pulled back from examining the wound, an ugly vertical opening driven right through the center of his chest. He reeked of blood, and he’d lost a lot of it, because his broad square face was pale. Even without her inner sight, Elenai could see he was dying.
Kyrkenall, head bowed, gripped Decrin’s right hand tightly in his own.
Decrin’s face was ghastly as he smiled. There was blood on his lips, and his voice cracked as he rolled his head to better see Kyrkenall. “Varama never doubted you. I should have believed her. She was always the smartest.”
Kyrkenall seemed to grow conscious of Elenai and Gyldara, though he ignored the other woman and fixed Elenai with a stricken stare. “Can’t you do something? Stop the blood?”
She started to say she might try, but then admitted to herself she had no healing skills. She barely had proficiency in field dressings, let alone their magical counterparts. And this wound was beyond any she’d seen trained healers struggle with. She shook her head no.
Decrin grinned up at Kyrkenall. “You were too good,” he said with a wan smile. “I didn’t know my guard gaped that wide.”
“It only takes a little opening,” Kyrkenall said in a small voice.
“Why did you stay away, Kyrkenall?” Decrin asked. His voice was so quiet, the question so raw and honest that the big man sounded like a little child. “I missed you.”
“I’m sorry,” Kyrkenall said. Tears coursed unashamedly down his cheeks.
“I would have helped, if you’d come to me,” he said. “You could have trusted me.”
“Would that I had,” Kyrkenall said, choking.
“I don’t know how he convinced us. Every time I was suspicious, he showed me I was wrong. What was it all about, anyway?” Decrin asked. “I’d like to know that, before I die.”
N’lahr answered him. “Denaven and the queen traded my ‘death’ for hearthstones from Mazakan. They trapped me with magic, although that might have been an accident.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know,” Elenai added.
“Hearthstones,” Tretton observed bitterly.
“What does she even want them for?” Decrin asked.
“Belahn thought it was all about some lost goddess,” N’lahr replied. “But the hearthstones had driven him half mad, so we don’t really know.”
Elenai had once heard Decrin roar orders on the practice field, and his voice was a ghost of that strength, though he tried to raise it. “Gods damn it! What a time to die.” He gritted his teeth and shook his head, weakly. “The Naor invading, N’lahr back, that shit-sore Denaven dead.” He looked between his friends. “Hey, you’ll visit my vault, won’t you, sometimes?”
“I will,” Kyrkenall vowed. His eyes had filled with tears.
N’lahr nodded once.
“Every year,” Tretton promised solemnly.
“Leave some bottles there,” Decrin muttered toward Kyrkenall. “But don’t put me in. Burn me up. Somewhere with clean wood. I want my soul launched pure and proper, right?”
“Right,” Tretton answered. Ekhem’s traditions would no doubt be upheld.
Gyldara stepped closer, wiping tears from her face.
Elenai had never known Decrin well. By the time she’d reached third rank, the alten was rarely to be found in Darassus. Yet he was a legend, as famous for his booming laugh as his prowess on the battlefield, and his loss was a blow not just to the corps but to the realms themselves. Gyldara had squired with him, which explained the depth of her grief, but Elenai found herself weeping as well.
“Gyldara,” Decrin said, brightening as if he’d only now noticed her. “It’s him. It’s really N’lahr.”
“I know,” Gyldara whispered.
“Should have known the truth when Kyrkenall shot Tretton’s Naor.” Decrin’s voice was failing.
“We all should have,” Gyldara said.
But Decrin of the Shining Shield couldn’t hear her anymore.
Kyrkenall let out a soul-searing cry of anguish. He stood, searching them all, as if he hoped to find an enemy. But there was none.
“I killed my brother!” Kyrkenall raged. He shouted at N’lahr, “I slew Decrin Henahdra!” He slashed through several nearby branches before launching Lothrun spinning from his hands into the distant grass. His hands went to his hair and pushed it wildly back. His eyes were mad as he broke into verse, facing Gyldara: “Even with the lies laid bare, I faced you, and longed to see your blood upon my sword. I lusted for revenge, all reason lost.” He looked as if he invited attack, and she recoiled. Then he turned, sharply, and his words grew almost incoherent as sorrow garbled his speech. “Wind back time’s march, you useless, pointless Gods. Surely you have cursed me; I curse you all!” He sank to his knees, head low, and his shoulders shook with grief, framed by the endless void.
Elenai feared he’d cast himself into the abyss, but N’lahr approached, alone. “All battles are fought in darkness,” he said softly. “And blood stains all who still move. Only right action can redeem the necessities of survival.” He put a hand to his friend’s shoulder and helped him rise. They embraced briefly before the commander pointed and Kyrkenall left to retrieve his sword.
N’lahr looked over to her at last, and nodded once, gravely. “You did well.”
She bowed her head in acknowledgment, appreciating the compliment and wondering why she did not blush, as she would have done only a few days before. Perhaps it was her fatigue. “Thank you, sir.”
“I should like my sword back.”
She’d actually forgotten she still held it, and looked down to see it gripped tightly in her hand. “Yes, of course.”
She passed it over, glumly, and he considered Irion for a moment before he bent to wipe Denaven’s blood on the grass.
Elenai grew conscious that Lasren had limped forward, Ortok a cautious five paces to his right. The kobalin’s furry torso was crossed with blood, but she couldn’t tell if he himself was in much pain. He licked the fur of his left forearm like an injured dog.
“Two of the squires are still alive, sir,” Lasren announced meekly. “One of them’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Are any of you healers?” N’lahr asked.
Gyldara and Lasren both shook their heads no. “We’ve trained to dress battle injuries, though.”
“She’s better at it than me,” Lasren admitted.
“See what you can do for them,” N’lahr replied to Gyldara’s questioning look. “I’ll be along momentarily.”
“Yes, Commander.” She turned and walked off. Lasren stared wonderingly at N’lahr for a moment, then limped after.
N’lahr looked briefly after Kyrkenall’s direction, then over to Ortok. “How are you?”
“The pain is not bad. I will live.” He indicated Decrin with a bob of his head. “Is that one really Kyrkenall’s brother?”
“All who join the corps are brothers and sisters,” N’lahr explained.
“I’m sorry I killed one, then. But they were trying to kill me.”
“You did what you had to do, Ortok. No apology is necessary. I thank you for your help. I’ll take a look at your wounds in a moment.” N’lahr shifted his attention to Tretton. “Shouldn’t you be bleeding? You haven’t had time to bandage yourself.”
The old soldier spoke with the faintest suggestion of amusement. “You youngsters always think you’re the only ones with enchantments. I know how to keep the blood in my body.”
“Is your arm broken?” Elenai asked.
“Something’s been damaged,” Tretton said dismissively. “I can’t move it very well. Perhaps you can explain, N’lahr, why’s there a kobalin with you?”
“Long story,” N’lahr said tiredly.
Elenai, thinking of Kyrkenall, pulled out a quote from Selena. “‘Some whom we thought our friends were enemies. And some whom we thought enemies are friends.’”
She expected Tretton to question further, but he merely nodded, sagely.
“How did you track us?” Elenai asked. “I had the hearthstone off.”
“Denaven knew the general direction you’d been heading. And I followed the signs. Getting us here exhausted everyone. While we recovered, Denaven hatched plans for an ambush and quickly put them to action when he detected your approach. He was clever, you know.”
“More’s the pity,” N’lahr said.
The final toll could have been worse, but given the state of the corps and the challenges before them, the deaths here were a blow that could ill be afforded. In addition to Denaven and Ortala, they’d lost Decrin and two squires. A third was suffering from agonizing pain where Ortok had struck him in the shoulder, and Yeva, who Elenai had helped tutor in sword drills, had narrowly escaped death from one of Kyrkenall’s arrows, for it had struck the meat of her throat but miraculously avoided both windpipe and major vessels.
Tretton’s arm had been pierced and suffered some sort of nerve damage. The best hope for both him and the most severely wounded squire was a talented healer. Any of those, though, were days away.
Ortok’s wounds were mostly superficial but required a lot of tending. He hadn’t approved of that, and had liked N’lahr’s sewing even less, though he’d submitted to treatment and bandaging in the end.
Lasren’s thigh was bruised and swollen thanks to a glancing blow he’d taken from Ortok’s hammer. He could barely walk, but insisted that he would ride with the rest of them as N’lahr explained what must be done. The commander had shared his plan, the steps they had to take to enact it, and the speed at which they had to travel, and Tretton reluctantly agreed that he would follow behind with the wounded. There was no horse that would seat Ortok, so he, too, would have to catch up later as N’lahr intended to make up time with an even harder ride.
“We can’t stay for funerals,” N’lahr said soberly. He glanced to Kyrkenall, but the little archer stood drained and vacant-eyed beside him, and did not react.
“We’ll bear the others to hallowed ground but we’ll consign Decrin to the flames,” Tretton said, “once we reach a land with good timber.”
N’lahr nodded. “We’ll drink to him, should we meet again on this side of the line.”
By that, Elenai knew he meant the line separating life from death.
N’lahr’s gaze roved over to Ortok, then to Gyldara. How much the bright-eyed woman had changed, since the last time Elenai had seen her. Her sister’s death and the long chase and the unveiling of the lies had left her gaunt and shadowed with grief and shame. Gone, too, was Lasren’s insouciance. A pall hung over him, as though he felt chastened. Kyrkenall looked the worst of all, as though burdened by all the world’s wrongs.
Only Tretton appeared much as Elenai had always seen him, save that the arm slung across his chest in an off-white bandage was held immobile.
“Before we go, there’s one last thing that must be done,” N’lahr said. “I hold that Elenai has reached our circle.” Without pausing for breath, he began the formal recitation of the ceremony of the ring. “I know her character, I have seen her deeds, and bear witness to their virtue. She shall shield the defenseless. Who stands in accord with me?”
At these words, these ancient ritual words, Elenai felt a start despite fatigue. She looked in surprise at N’lahr, wondering why he should do this now. What had it been, exactly, that brought her to this? She’d always imagined the day she’d won the ring would be filled with glory, and that she would stand exultant after accomplishing some impossible deed.
Today she only felt numb, and that wasn’t how she’d dreamed it, not at all. In any case, how could she ever have envisioned that a man she’d thought dead would nominate her, or that it would occur on the field of battle after she’d slain an Altenerai commander?
Kyrkenall spoke next. His words might have been rote, but he delivered them with such conviction that they seemed spontaneous and entirely natural. “I stand with you,” he said, and his eyes flickered to weary life as he turned to N’lahr. “I have seen her skill with sword, and spell, and bear witness to their excellence. She shall defeat our enemies. Who stands with us?”
Gyldara spoke last, her voice remote and almost ghostlike. “I stand with you. I have seen her reason fairly and bear witness to her wisdom. She shall mete justice to high, and to low.”
N’lahr met her eyes, his weary face strikingly solemn. “Elenai Dartaan, we three nominate you to our ranks. You know well the standards of the corps. You stand ready to carry mighty burdens, and to walk a narrow path trod only by the brave. Do you pledge to honor the laws of our people, the traditions of the corps, and to emulate the conduct of the best who have worn the ring before you?”
She thought of Decrin, lying still and silent under the blanket only a dozen paces off, and nodded once, formally. “I do.”
“Then join us in recitation of the oath.” N’lahr spoke first, but she joined in with him. The others took up the lines, quickly adapting to his rhythm.
“When comes my numbered day, I will meet it smiling. For I’ll have kept this oath.
I shall use my arms to shield the weak.
I shall use my lips to speak the truth, and my eyes to seek it.
I shall use my hand to mete justice to high and to low, and I will weigh all things with heart and mind.
Where I walk the laws will follow, for I am the sword of my people and the shepherd of their lands.
When I fall, I will rise through my brothers and my sisters, for I am eternal.”
Tears, unwanted, stood in her eyes. She had thought she’d be elated when she won the ring. Why was she crying? She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
“Hail, Alten Elenai.” N’lahr put his palm to his heart in salute and set his sapphire ring blazing.
Kyrkenall, Gyldara, Lasren, and Tretton already had hands to chest, and set their own rings burning. Their voices rose as one. “Hail, Alten Elenai!”
“Long may you wear the ring,” Kyrkenall said.
“I…” She fumbled with speech only for a moment, then bowed her head, wishing eloquence might come to her. But sometimes the simplest words were best. “I thank you.”
“I’ve had Lasren ready Ortala’s khalat for you,” N’lahr said. “You’ll find it a better fit. We’ll remove the exalt piping later. Don it, and mount up. We’ve far to ride.”