Sinari Encampment
North of New Sarresant
Their company’s horses kicked dust clouds as they stuttered to a halt. Makeshift paths and trails had already formed between the tents, strange constructions of hides and long poles leaned together in conical designs. She’d never considered before whether the natives had built permanent settlements; the ease with which they’d erected this one suggested a certain familiarity with uprooting their people, or at least a readiness to do it on little notice. Not altogether unlike a military encampment.
Hitching poles had been placed on the edge of an open green at the center of their camp, and she handed Jiri’s reins to an aide as she dismounted. Eight thousand tribesfolk, if she had to guess. She might be off by half in either direction, if they’d packed tents that went unused. But this was a division’s strength, if she’d been scouting it in her cavalry days. She’d ordered Royens’s 1st Corps into the north, now deploying near the banks of the Verrain with enough numbers to check the tribesfolk should it come to that.
Five tribesfolk seemed to be waiting for her on their green, four men and one woman, each dressed in hides, furs, and sewn fabrics. Her company was twenty strong, but she nodded for most to stay behind.
“Marquand, Essily, Wexly, Savac, with me.”
The named riders came forward, sliding down from their mounts. A binder, her aide, the Gand attaché, and a translator perfectly fluent in Sinari, Sarresant, and Gand. Voren wouldn’t have come to treat with the tribes, and she’d wager a month’s pay none among the citizens’ assembly would have been so bold. It meant hers was the highest-ranked visit to date, and that meant standing on ceremony. Even Marquand had agreed to a buttoned-up, fresh-tailored coat before they rode.
“High Commander,” the woman among the tribesfolk said, directing it her way. “I am Tirana, of the Olessi tribe. It is our great honor to welcome you among our tents.”
The words had a crisp inflection despite the heavy accent; clearly the woman had practiced her lines.
“The honor is mine,” she replied. “I hope our haste has not inconvenienced you.”
“The shaman foresaw your arrival some days ago, High Commander. He is eager to speak with you, if you will follow us to his tent.”
“Of course.”
Their welcoming party turned and gestured for them to follow across the grassy field. The tribesmen flanking Tirana gave no outward sign of discomfort, and thank the Gods her soldiers showed the same restraint. Talk of seeing the future roused all the skepticism she’d learned in eleven years campaigning with the army. No denying the shaman’s abilities when it came to the great beasts—already his missives had warned four villages and townships in time to flee, and predicted three more. Gods send the shaman proved himself equally capable, where this supposed tribal army was concerned.
They cut through rows of tents, passing by solemn tribesfolk keeping emotions from their faces but staring all the same. She might have reacted just so had a squad of tribesmen come marching down the streets of Southgate. Even their children had halted their play, watching the uniformed soldiers striding behind their guides and doing a worse job of masking their stares than the adults.
“I will accompany you inside, Erris d’Arrent,” Tirana said when they came to a halt in front of a tent no different in kind than the others around it, save for tufts of orange smoke billowing from its apex.
“Aide-Lieutenant Savac will accompany me as well,” she said. She wasn’t about to filter her words through a translator she didn’t know and trust. Wars had been started for less.
It seemed to serve, as Tirana bowed her head, and Marquand, Wexly, and Essily joined the tribesfolk in watching them enter the shaman’s tent.
The sting of incense bit her nose, an unfamiliar scent like birchwood mixed with fresh meat. The tent’s interior was wide and open, with only a fire burning at its center and animal skins thrown like carpets a safe distance from the flame. The shaman stood opposite the entrance, clad in a pale white bearskin draped over his head and shoulders. Not the sort of reception she’d expected. The tribes’ shaman seemed prepared for some kind of ritual, rather than a formal greeting and diplomatic exchange. Had he met Voren’s people like this? It would have ended up in the papers, scaremongering and suspicion-raising over the foreign ways of a foreign people, now living in proximity to their city. Then again, she still hadn’t bothered to read much of the colonial press. Perhaps those stories had already run.
“Erys d’Aru,” the shaman said, butchering her name through a thick accent. “Qu’iluru shi n’iral, ahn dhakron, Ilek’Hannat, niris Ka di Nanerat, alain ti’ana lanat dal ahn qirat.”
Tirana and Savac spoke together: “He says—” before each paused, and Savac bowed to let the other woman speak. Two words before their first gaffe. Bloody lovely.
“He says he is pleased you have come to this place, and introduces himself,” Tirana said. “He is Ilek’Hannat, apprentice shaman of the Nanerat people, wielder of the gifts of the vision spirits and elder of the alliance of six tribes.”
Erris glanced at Aide-Lieutentant Savac to ensure that there was no disagreement on the translation. None. Good.
“I am equally pleased,” she said. “I’ve come as a gesture of peace between our peoples, at the head of a division of my army, ten thousand strong and set to deploy along the northern frontier at your direction. I want to ensure that you understand our soldiers are here as a check against the army Arak’Jur called the Uktani, not to threaten your people.”
“He understands,” Tirana said after her words were translated, and the shaman offered his reply. “He has seen your heart, and wishes to offer you communion with the spirits, if you wish it.”
She suppressed a sudden desire to tether Body, an old reflex. Communion? With his spirits? Walking alone into a village of a foreign people was trusting enough, but she’d never expected to be put into some sacred ritual. The shaman seemed to be studying her, the white paint on his face making him appear to be some kind of apparition, hiding behind his fire.
“What does it mean, to commune with the spirits?”
“He cannot say,” Tirana translated. “They will speak of what they will, once they have hold of him. He says only that they wish to speak with you.”
“They must speak with you,” Savac said in a low voice, angling to try to mask the correction to Tirana’s translation.
Erris met Ilek’Hannat’s eyes. Yes, there was urgency there. A need she could almost sense. No denying the tribesfolk’s spirits had power; she’d seen it firsthand, watching Arak’Jur reave through the Gand lines during the battle of New Sarresant.
“Very well,” she said. “So long as you can promise my safety, and that of my aide.”
“He cannot promise it,” Tirana said. “The limitations of Ilek, instead of Ka. He cannot be sure what will happen.”
She looked to Savac for translation of the two strange words, Ilek and Ka. “Apprentice,” Savac said. “And shaman. She means he is not fully trained.”
Not fully trained. But then, he’d introduced himself as the elder among their six tribes. And his visions had worked, so far, for predicting the beasts.
“Very well,” she said again. “Tell him to go ahead.”
The shaman nodded before the translator gave him her reply, striding out from behind his fire as though facing her for the first time. A shadow seemed to stretch through the tent; Ilek’Hannat’s form cast against the fire, but writ larger, until it occupied every empty space on the walls. It could have been a trick, an artful positioning of the man against the flame, until shadow seemed to swallow the light. There was magic here, of a form unlike anything the leylines had ever produced.
“Erris d’Arrent,” Ilek’Hannat said, in what she heard as flawless Sarresant, all traces of his accent vanished. “You are different from the ones we know.”
“I am she, High Commander of the armies of New Sarresant,” she said. “To whom—to what—am I speaking?”
Ilek’Hannat had adopted a cautious pose, the sort one might use to survey an intruder.
“You wield magic, but you are not a spirit of mountain, grass, or sea. Your powers are known to us, though we had forgotten them. You are … Order.”
Ilek’Hannat reached into his vest of hides and withdrew a powder he dusted over the fire. The flames fought through the shadows, cracking as smoke rose and formed the image of a man in armor, holding a long sword and shield. Strange to see such an image here, when no knights in plate armor had ever walked on the soil of the New World. Muskets and cannonfire had long since replaced such arms by the time the first colonists sailed across the sea. The smoke was almost a religious image, as though the shaman had conjured the Exarch into being at the center of his tent.
“This was Order when we saw it last,” Ilek’Hannat said. “Though it has been many ages since those days.”
“I came to you as an offering of peace,” she said, ignoring the armored figure in the smoke and speaking directly to Ilek’Hannat. “To ascertain the source of threats to our Republic, and to bind our peoples in uncertain times. We had word of an enemy army, of warriors and great beasts, and with our barrier fallen, we are at the mercy of both. With your aid, we can discern where they will come, and drive them back.”
The shaman seemed to be looking through her, his eyes gone milk-white. If he’d listened to her he gave no sign, studying her face as though she were in the way of something fascinating on the tent walls beyond.
“Paendurion,” the shaman said.
Her enemy. The girl, Sarine, had so named the enemy commander, the man behind the golden light.
All pretense of diplomacy splintered. “How …?” she said. “What do you know of him? Where is he? What is he preparing?”
“You are not Paendurion,” the shaman said. “But you work the golden threads; we sense it, in your form.”
“No, I am bloody well not that monster. Please, whatever you are, tell me what you can of his doings. Is he preparing another attack? Are these Uktani involved?”
“Yes,” the shaman said, nodding as though understanding dawned from far away. “Yes, this is a thing. We remember. Once, there were other champions. The knights of Order, with Paendurion at their head. And the serpents. Other powers, magic our children cannot touch. Order. And Balance.”
Fury rose, and frustration. She needed a plain answer. Instead the shaman dusted another powder into the fire, and without further warning a boom shook the tent, spewing cinders in a fountain that threatened to bathe the hide walls in flame.
“Yes,” the shaman said. “There are dangers lurking in the things-to-come, but not from the Uktani, who have been called toward another path. We see three. Three threats to your Republic.”
She raised a hand to ward away the heat. Was the shaman mad? She’d bloody well placed their fate in the hands of a man who would kill her, and himself, standing at the center of a tent he’d set aflame.
“Ad-Shi,” the shaman said. “She is known to us. The spirits of the marsh speak of her presence in the south, among the Lhakani.”
Cinders fell from the tent’s conical ceiling, where its wood beams had caught fire, a rush faster than any natural spread of flame.
“Paendurion. He moves among the ones called Thellan, in your Old World and here, on our lands.”
The words stung like ice amid the heat. They had to get out of the tent, but she hesitated, since neither the shaman nor Tirana had made an attempt to move. Paendurion was among the Thellan. The enemy commander had taken root there, among the third of the great powers.
“And a final threat, from one not yet ascended. Nestled at the heart of your Republic, entrusted with its protection, but—”
The fire bellowed again, a roar of smoke and cinders, and the shaman’s figure blurred. Body came as quick as she willed it, and she moved, weaving Shelter, though the blue haze dimmed to a pale white as soon as she set it in place. She grabbed hold of Ilek’Hannat as Tirana shouted something indiscernible at her, and Savac followed her lead, heading for the tent’s entrance, leaving them all singed and smoking in the dirt as they emerged into the sun.
Marquand was at her side at once. Coughing sounded around her: her lungs expelling smoke, or the shaman’s, or both.
“No,” Tirana was saying. “No, High Commander, this is a grievous offense. You have disrupted the ritual. This will anger the spirits.”
Savac began speaking the Sinari tongue as Marquand tethered Life into her, the normally red-faced captain’s expression hardening as he loomed over her, working the leylines.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Your spirits meant to let Ilek’Hannat burn, and us with him? I saved his life.”
A tribeswoman in red-dyed cloth had come to kneel at Ilek’Hannat’s side, and Aide-Captain Essily was shouting at Savac and the native translator both, with more voices adding to the din on both sides. It seemed as though a company had formed around the burning tent, her four escorts surrounded by tribesfolk who now converged on their wounded shaman even as the tent collapsed behind them in a pillar of fire.
“No, High Commander,” Tirana said. “The spirits would protect us from the flames, and you and your aide as well. Now you have offended … what are you doing?”
She’d moved to kneel beside the shaman, still lying flat where she’d dragged him, no more than a handful of strides from the fire. The shaman was a bloody madman, but he held the key to their protection from the wild. She found Life and bound it into Ilek’Hannat, along with a strand of Body for strength. Black streaks marked his flesh where the fire had bit deepest, but his right side was deep red from forearm to the side of his face. He was a dead man without her intervention. She worked threads of Life into his lungs to keep him breathing, with more to bolster his heart while the bulk of her tethers soaked into his skin.
“High Commander, you cannot do this,” Tirana said. “It is the spirits’ way, to tend to their own. We do not interfere.”
“We do not leave people to die!” she snapped back, finding a full-strength Life binding for the shaman’s scorched windpipe, using the force of the tether to prop open his throat.
The shaman coughed, and the milk-haze drained from his eyes.
Impossible. The red splotches on his skin seemed to recede, his burns bubbling with a white foam.
“Ilan ti ennikat, Tirana,” the shaman said, and he sat up, unaided. The man should have been close to death, and apart from a rasp in his breathing, he could have been no more than winded from a run or a hard day’s exertions. “Shi n’at quiral, t’a kapek ni ana.”
“He was never in danger,” Tirana said, her tone still touched with indignance and anger. “Though he insists we should bear you no ill will for your ignorance. You have brought him a powerful vision.”
“Paendurion,” she said. “Thellan.”
The shaman met her eyes, and he spoke again.
“He says our tribes will be safe here, that the Uktani have followed Arak’Jur into the south.”
“You’re certain,” she said. “You’re certain the Uktani pose no threat here in the north?”
The shaman nodded, and Tirana translated: “He says the spirits would not err in this. He is sure.”
Plans took shape in her mind. Taking down the Great Barrier would pull all her attention to the north, and west, to protect the city from beasts and tribesmen in equal measure. Was Paendurion bold enough to make such a grand gesture, only to cover his true intentions, to attack with Thellan armies from the south? She knew the answer already.