Lord Bendinor, walking beside Athlone, jerked his head toward the Turic camp across the water. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say that rock-faced counsellor, Zukhara. He hasn’t done much talking during these meetings, but everyone walks on nails when he’s around. He would bear watching.”
Kelene hid a smile. She was beginning to like this shrewd and sensible Dangari.
The clansmen reached their horses and mounted for the return ride to camp.
Rafnir looked up at the sky that had darkened to a deep blue-grey. “Here it comes,” he said and wiped off several wet splatters from his face.
More raindrops pattered on the rocks and speckled the water. The north wind freshened and roared among the trees, tossing their branches and making the trunks creak and groan. It pulled at the riders’ cloaks and chilled man and horse with its sudden damp cold. Across the river, only a few small fires fought bravely against the wind and coming rain. The riders said no more but hurried back to the shelter of their tents and the hot meals awaiting them.
The rain fell through the night in steady sheets that swayed and danced in the wind. Lightning crackled a few times, and the magic-wielders felt their blood stir and the energy sing in their heads. But the storm cell moved in harness with the wind and was gone as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind the steady rain and slowly dropping temperatures.
The thunder had faded and the lightning passed to the south when Gabria rose from her blankets beside Athlone and quietly stirred the embers in her small brazier back to life.
Kelene, wakeful beside Rafnir, saw the dim light beyond the sleeping curtain in the tent they shared with her parents, and she slipped out to join Gabria. The older sorceress silently brought out a second glazed mug, poured water for two into her pan, and spooned several heaps of her favourite tea into a teapot.
They huddled together around the small warmth of the brazier while the tent around them heaved in the blustery wind and the rain beat on the waterproofed fabric. They said nothing until the water boiled and Gabria poured it into the pot to steep.
Kelene saw with alarm that her mother’s hands were trembling. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, conscious of the men sleeping behind the curtains.
Gabria’s eyes were huge in the dim light and rimmed with shadows. She shakily set her pot down and pulled her arms tight about her. She nodded gratefully when Kelene brought her gold cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Something has happened,” she said in a soft tone that was terribly certain.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I had a dream as dark and foreboding as this night, but nothing was clear.”
A dream, Kelene thought, feeling the first stirrings of dread. Gabria’s talent for magic sometimes manifested itself in prophetic dreams and visions. The problem was the dreams were not always clear enough to understand until it was too late. She thought about her mother’s words and asked, “You said
has
happened. It cannot be stopped?”
“I fear not. I sense the Harbingers are near,” Gabria replied in a hollow voice.
Kelene’s heart turned cold. The Harbingers were the messengers of Lord Sorh, god and ruler of the Realm of the Dead. If the Harbingers had entered the mortal world, someone or several someones had died.
Already forewarned, neither she nor Gabria were surprised when a distant horn suddenly sang in the storm-wracked night. Somehow they had been expecting it.
It blared again, insistent and furious, until it was joined by others that blasted their warnings into the dark.
Gabria heaved a deep sigh and stood, ready to face what would come. The horns were Turic, and in her deepest sense of the unseen world she knew the Harbingers had arrived.
Behind her, Athlone and Rafnir sprang from their pallets, pulled on their boots, and reached for their swords. There was some advantage to sleeping in one’s clothes, for the two men were racing for the tent flap before the horn blasts had ended.
“Wait,’“ Gabria called. She and Kelene hurried into their boots and joined their husbands, cloaked and ready to go. Just outside under a canopy their four Hunnuli stood ready. The horses tossed their heads in agitation, and their star-bright eyes rolled in anger. Their breath steamed in the cold air.
Someone has used magic across the river,
Eurus’s deep masculine thoughts reached the four people.
“Oh, gods,” groaned Athlone.
The Hunnuli carried their riders at a canter through the rain-soaked darkness to the river. Activity already stirred the clan camp, but Lord Athlone refused to wait. He urged Eurus on across the Altai. Water fountained beneath the Hunnuli’s hooves as they charged through the ford to the opposite bank. Abruptly they came face-to-face with a solid phalanx of Turic guardsmen.
The guards lowered their spears to face the magic-wielders, forming a deadly barrier across the road. Their actions were swift and angry, and their faces were cast in rage. Behind them, the Turic camp was an uproar of shouting voices and running men. Torches flickered everywhere in the rain, and armed guards rushed to defend the perimeters.
“Stop there, infidels!” a commander bellowed in credible Clannish.
Eurus slid to a halt, his hooves sliding in the muddy earth. Lord Athlone carefully unbuckled his sword and held it out to show he came in peace. “I am Athlone, Lord of the Khulinin. I came only to learn of your trouble and offer our help.”
“I know you,” the officer snapped. “You are one of those sorcerers, so you already know what disaster has overtaken us. Begone from here before I have your horses brought down.”
Kelene felt her fury rise. Hunnuli were impervious to magic, but not to normal weapons. To her, the Turic’s threat was underhanded and unwarranted. She opened her mouth to say so when another figure appeared on the path behind the guards. The tall form stopped when he saw the clanspeople and shook his fist at them.
“You!” he bellowed over the sounds of the storm. “Curse you for your deeds! What you have done this night will plunge our people into war!”
It took the magic-wielders a moment to recognize Zukhara in the wild night; then Athlone raised his voice. “Whatever has happened, Counsellor, we have had no part in it. We came only to give our aid to the Shar-Ja.”
“He will not see you,” Zukhara answered wrathfully. “He lies crushed in grief. His eldest son, the Shar-Yon, is dead.”
A small, heartsick moan escaped Gabria’s lips, and she leaned over Nara’s neck. Her dream had been right.
At that moment Sayyed galloped up on Afer, his head bare to the pouring rain. He had heard the counsellor’s last words, and his hand clenched tight on his stallion’s mane. Like most clansmen, he was unafraid to speak his mind before his chief or any other figure of authority. Immediately he shouted back, “Prove it, Counsellor! Show us the Shar-Yon’s body that we may see you do not lie for your own devices!”
A roar of dissension burst from the guards, but Zukhara raised his hand to silence them. “I grant the Khulinin that right. Lord Athlone, you and your guard may enter if the others remain here. I want your word that you will keep your people under control. No weapons, no magic while you are in this camp.”
Although the clanspeople could not see it, Zukhara’s
mouth twisted into a smile of satisfaction while Lord Athlone gave his bond. “I must attend the Shar-Ja,” Zukhara called. “Officer, take the infidels to the Shar-Yon, then escort them off our land.” He turned on his heel and strode out of sight, his cloak snapping in the wind.
The commander of the guards looked as if he would burst with outrage, but the Turics were more reserved and strict in their ranks, and he managed to stifle his objections to trusting a clansman. Grudgingly the guards parted before the Hunnuli.
Athlone glanced apologetically at Gabria before jerking his head to Sayyed. The two men slid off their Hunnuli and followed the fuming commander. Five guards fell in behind them and followed them into the heart of the camp to the Shar-Yon’s large tent.
On the riverbank, Gabria, Kelene, and Rafnir waited in growing impatience. The rain soaked them quickly in a cold, drenching downpour, and the Turic guards made no move to offer them shelter. The guardsmen simply stared balefully at them and kept their spears lowered. A long time passed before Athlone and Sayyed came trudging down the slope to rejoin them.
Both men were speechless with anger and frustration. Curtly they took leave of the Turics, remounted their Hunnuli, and trotted down to the ford. Kelene, Gabria, and Rafnir traded glances, but they would not ask any questions until Athlone was ready to talk. They fell in behind and thankfully recrossed the river.
As soon as they reached the opposite bank, Gaalney, Morad, and several chiefs came running to meet them. Athlone spoke a vehement curse and slid off Eurus. His anger smouldered in his movements and in his words. “The Shar-Yon is dead,” he told the listening people.
“How did it happen?” Rafnir demanded.
The reply came hard and dagger-sharp. “The Turics think we did it.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Fiergan snarled. “They can’t think we’re that stupid. That boy’s the best thing they have.”
Rafnir looked searchingly at his father-in-law. “Something made them think it was us. “What was it?”
Athlone clenched his fists as if he were trying to crush his impotent wrath. “Oh, there was something all right. Something only seven of us here can use. Sorcery. The Shar-Yon was killed by the Trymian force.”
“Bad news comes in threes,” the clanspeople often said, and the second piece of ill-tidings came at dawn on a frigid wind from the north. The temperatures, which had been falling steadily throughout the night, took a plunge, and the rain gradually slowed to a heavy drizzle and began to freeze. The sunrise came reluctantly, lightening the darkness to a gloomy morning heavily cloaked in cloud and mist that showed no signs of thawing the building ice.
The clansmen cursed and struggled against the freezing sleet to reinforce their tents, bring the horses into shelters hurriedly erected in the lee of the tents, and gather up any firewood that was not already encrusted in sheets of ice. Ice storms were rare on the northern plains, which made them that much more dangerous, and the clanspeople hated them almost more than the blinding blizzards that often swept the grasslands.
Across the river there seemed to be a furious swarm of activity in the Turic camp. Tents were coming down, wagons were being loaded, and horses were being saddled in spite of the weather. A constant, heavy guard patrolled the banks, and no one would answer Lord Athlone’s frequent requests to meet with the Shar-Ja or any of his counsellors.
The chiefs, meanwhile, tried to solve the mystery of the young Shar-Yon’s death. He had been, Athlone reported, burned almost beyond recognition by a blast of the Trymian Force, a power used only by magic-wielders.
“But that’s impossible,” Rafnir said for the third time. “We were all in our tents. Gaalney and Morad have witnesses to their whereabouts. Father was on watch, and the four of us were asleep.”
The other chiefs, who had crowded into Athlone’s spacious tent for a quick council, looked at one another in grim confusion. There were only seven known magic-wielders in their midst. Three of them had excellent alibis and the other four, while not necessarily witnessed by other clan members to be in their tents, were too well-known to be conceivable murderers.
“That leaves two possibilities,” said Athlone. “There is either a clansman with the talent to wield magic whom we have not yet detected, or there is one we do know who is hiding close by.”
Sayyed glanced up, his eyes unreadable in the dim light. “There is one other possibility, my lord.” He paused and held up his own hands. “Another Turic half-breed with clan blood.”
“Now how could any untrained Turic use the Trymian force to kill?” Lord Terod wanted to know. Terod, chief of Clan Amnok, had no magic-wielders in his clan and little practical knowledge of magic.
Lord Sha Tajan of Clan Jehanan, on the other hand, knew sorcery well. “The Trymian force is easy to use, especially during a thunderstorm. It wouldn’t take much skill to blast the unprotected Shar-Yon.”
“There certainly wasn’t much skill involved,” Athlone growled. He remembered the seared corpse vividly. “Bashan was struck by an uncontrolled blow.”
“Then, too, there is the question of why,” said Bendinor the Dangari. Like most of his clan, he had a blue-dotted design tattooed along his forehead and down his left cheek. Unconsciously he rubbed at the dots as he deliberated aloud.
“We have no real motive to dispose of the most capable son the Shar-Ja has; that would be harmful to our own cause. But what if Sayyed is right? What if there is a Turic with enough talent to wield the Trymian force and enough ambition to use it? Why kill the heir? Why make it look as if we did it? Perhaps someone wants to interrupt succession to the high throne, cause further trouble with the clans, or open the way for a new leader.”
“The Fel Azureth have been threatening to do that for almost a year,” Lord Athlone pointed out. “Maybe they found a way.”
“So what do we do?” Rafnir grumbled. “We’re in the middle of an ice storm, the Turics are preparing to leave without the treaty, the Shar-Ja won’t speak with us, and the Turic nobles think we killed their heir.”
“Short of attacking their camp and forcing our way in to the Shar-Ja’s presence, the only thing we can do is keep trying to talk to someone in authority and make them see reason,” suggested Bendinor reluctantly.