The Commanding Stone Part 11

They managed to avoid the Pelklanders and reach Mileon without another fight. The invaders were tightly concentrated in and around the castle and town. They'd heard that two or three smaller sea fortresses had fallen or were besieged, but even those were relatively close to Castle Hurien. Once Therain and the others slipped past the thinly spread outer picket of the Pelklanders, they had no more fears of encountering the enemy ahead of them. So far they had seen no sign of pursuit.

Therain's tale of his newfound magical abilities stunned Claressa. Was everyone in her family a creature of magic except her? She'd once told Balandrick that she had no desire for magic, that the jealousy she felt when Gerin learned he could become an amber wizard was a fleeting thing, a fancy she rejected after learning that a wizard's very long life could not be shared. But that was not true. Deep in her heart she still yearned for both the ability of wielding such might and the long life it granted.

Gerin, then Reshel, and now Therain. "How did this happen?" she asked when he told her about his abilities. "What caused it?"

"Haven't the foggiest," he said. "I just started having dreams about it, then it happened for real."

She'd managed to get Trene and Verdel out with her, along with most of the other prisoners. Verdel was still a wreck, sobbing almost every waking moment, but Trene possessed a resilience and resolve that seemed to grow with each pa.s.sing day.

They encountered a number of refugees on the road, but no one had any word of Baris or the rest of the Toreshes. Several nights Claressa cried herself to sleep worrying about him. She hated herself for being so weak, but she could not help it. Her emotions had overwhelmed her. She felt powerless and useless. She did not know whether to grieve for her husband or hold out hope that he was still alive.

"What are we going to do about them?" she asked Therain one night around the campfire. "How are we going to drive them out?"

"I don't know. Our resources are stretched dangerously thin. Daqoros knows this. He knows he can't take and hold onto a large piece of land. He doesn't have the men for it even if he emptied the isles. He's taken a small area and is working feverishly to make it his own before we can even consider mounting a counterstrike. I admit, it's clever, using our own weaknesses to his advantage."

"Then we have to move faster. He can't be allowed to keep what he's taken."

Therain sighed. She did not like the sound if it. "There are pressing problems to the north, Claressa. I don't know that we can get rid of them."

"Don't even think such a thing. What about Baris and his mother and father?"

"Until we know what's happened to them, it's hard to say what we can do. But let's change the subject. I don't want to upset you, and it will be up to Gerin to decide how the kingdom responds."

How could he talk of defeat, of surrendering to the b.l.o.o.d.y Pelklander savages? Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. Day and night she was filled with a consuming hatred toward the invaders so intense that at times she felt that's all there was to her: hate, and a desire for revenge. To do to them what they had done to her.

"Does it hurt?" she said, gesturing to his stump. She was still not used to seeing it.

"Sometimes. I still reach for things with it before I realize my hand's not there anymore. It's like the memory of it keeps it real in my mind."

Laysa shouted with joy when she saw Therain, and ran to meet him. She hugged him and wept, then kissed him hard on the mouth.

"I'm happy to see you, too," he said.

They remained in the town for a day before setting off for the port city of Edonia. From there, Therain planned to catch a ship back to Almaris. It would be faster than traveling overland, and he felt the need for haste.

One drizzling morning two days after leaving Mileon, Therain sensed something he hadn't experienced before. As his powers grew stronger and more refined, he found he could tell one type of animal from another. If he closed his eyes, they appeared in his mind as different points of light of various sizes, shapes, and colors. He could now easily identify a large number of animals with great accuracy.

But this latest sensation was unlike any other. He closed his eyes and saw a deep bluish light that swirled chaotically. He was having trouble sensing exactly where it was, but sensed that it was close.

Then he realized there was more than one.

"Captain, have your men set a perimeter. Something's out there. I don't know what they are, but I don't like them much."

"Yes, my lord."

"Therain?" said Laysa. "What is it?"

"I don't know. I'm going to see what I can find." He held out his hand; she knotted her fingers through his.

He tried to see through the eyes of one of the creatures, and was shocked when he was rebuffed. It felt like he'd slammed his head into a stone wall. Pain shot through his temples. He drew a hissing breath of air through clenched teeth. If he hadn't been sitting, he would have fallen to the ground.

"By the G.o.ds, are you all right?"

He opened his eyes and found himself on his back. Laysa was leaning over him, her face drawn with worry.

He sat up. "I'm fine. Whatever's out there doesn't want me to see what it is."

"But Therain, it's an animal. How could it do that?"

"I'm not sure it is just an animal."

"I didn't think your power worked on people."

"It doesn't. I don't think this is a person, either."

The Khedeshians had formed a circle around their camp. "My lord, what are we looking for?" asked Rundgar.

"I don't know." He tried to sense where they were, but the d.a.m.ned things were somehow masking their presence. He could still sense them out there somewhere, but could not discern in what direction. It was maddening.

Then they disappeared.

"Captain, I've lost them. I want to get moving. Keep your men on alert. I can't tell if they've gone beyond my range or are somehow hiding themselves from me."

He did not sense them the rest of that day. He slept fitfully that night, worried that the things would try to enter the camp when he was asleep. But the night pa.s.sed without incident. He kept his men on alert the next day as well, but the things, whatever they were, did not reappear.

Therain was almost asleep the next night when he sensed them. They were very close; it was as if their dark light had erupted from nowhere.

He jumped to his feet. "Be ready! Something's out there in the dark!"

It's like they can mask their presence until they get too close to hide any longer, he thought. But what in Shayphim's b.l.o.o.d.y name are they?

One of the soldiers on the perimeter screamed. Therain instinctively stepped in front of Laysa and Claressa.

Three quatans-the same b.l.o.o.d.y things that had bitten off his hand-were charging the camp from different directions.

Two of his men held firm as a quatan lunged at them with its four arms, the halo of tentacles darting forward from the back of its head, the tiny mouths at the end of each open and hungry. The creature was blindingly fast and avoided the first sword-thrust aimed at one of its claws. Its lower set of arms were long enough to catch the ankles of both soldiers. Before the men could react, the quatan heaved up and knocked them on their backs. It slashed open the throat of one man, then fell upon the other, its tentacles latching onto his face, where they began to feed.

Laysa and Claressa were both screaming. Kelpa stood by Therain, legs splayed, hackles on end, ears flat against his head, growling fiercely. The other quatans were darting about the perimeter, trying to find an opening, but Therain's archers were keeping them at bay. One of the creatures let out a howl of rage as an arrow sank deep into its shoulder.

"Enough of this b.l.o.o.d.y nonsense," said Therain.

He reached out toward the creatures with his powers. Now that he knew what they were, he had no hesitation. He battered against their defenses with such brutal force that they immediately opened to him.

The next instant, he was inside their minds.

He lost his balance and fell into Claressa, knocking them both over. The view through the quatan's eyes was disorienting. Everything was tinted red, and fractured as if he were looking through a piece of shattered gla.s.s.

But he didn't care what he was seeing. He didn't need to see anything at all. He needed to send a command.

Pain! Deep, burning pain!

The quatans howled and began to flail.

Shayphim take you all, I want you to die!

But he did not have the strength. Sending pain was far too difficult for him. He knew he had to stop. He was already so weak that he would have to vacate them in moments and return to his own sweat-drenched body.

Go away! Go away and never come back or I'll send even more pain! Enough to kill you!

Therain sent the command with all the strength he had left. He did not think the creatures could know he was bluffing. If they understood him, it was not because they grasped his words; they did not, after all, understand Kelarin. But like other animals, he hoped that they could understand the intent of his words, divining the meaning the same way he could tell the difference between a dog growling in anger and barking in happiness.

He was about to return to his body, his strength almost gone. But just before he left the creatures, he sensed a power similar to his own, a power of command, that connected the creatures to something else.

A man.

Therain tried to follow the connection, to see if he could learn anything about the master of these monsters, Kursil Rulhamad. Gerin had learned the man's name during his captivity at the hands of the Soul Stealer. If only he could- His strength abruptly failed. His eyes snapped open-his own eyes-but he was so exhausted it was all he could do to keep them from closing once more.

"Captain..."

"They're retreating, my lord," said Rundgar.

"What were those things?" shrieked Claressa. Therain had never seen his sister in such a hysterical state before. It was shocking, almost unseemly. He looked away, oddly embarra.s.sed, as if he had caught her half dressed.

Laysa knelt down and stroked his face.

"The same G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned things that bit off my b.l.o.o.d.y hand, that's what."

Kursil Rulhamad, wretch of Tulqan the Harridan, white-haired and red-skinned maegosi of the Kelanim tribe, who possessed the power to control quatans with his thoughts, reeled at what had just happened. It should not have been, could not have been. Yet it was.

Someone else had controlled his quatans. Sent them commands, sent them pain.

Kursil had sensed the man who had done this just before his quatans were forced to retreat, driven off by the stranger's power. The same power that had drawn Kursil to this place to begin with.

He remained hidden in the ruins of an abandoned building, his back against the inner corner of a fieldstone wall, and waited for his quatans, wounded and in pain, to return.

He did not understand what had happened. Days ago he had faintly sensed another being with powers similar to his own. Not another true maegosi, but something similar. He was both curious and afraid. Had the Steadfast brought another maegosi to these foreign sh.o.r.es without his knowledge? Had this being been sent to kill him and steal his quatans?

But the power was strange, different in many ways. He felt he could block the stranger from commanding his quatans, and so had drawn closer, wondering what he would find. He had expected to find another of his own kind, or at least one of the Steadfast. Not a native of these lands, which had no maegosi or quatans, if one believed that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Gerin Atreyano.

The quatans limped miserably into the ruins, the protrusions on their spines glinting in the moonlight like silvered knives. One had an arrow in his shoulder. Enraged, Kursil rose and removed it, then tended to the creature.

While he worked he pondered this mystery. After a time he gave up. He could not explain it, and was not one to devote much thought to abstractions. He would shadow this man, and if the opportunity arose, he would take him. It was the only way he could understand what had happened.

12.

The land of Curitaen near the northern border of Khedesh had been disputed and fought over since before the coming of the Raimen. Curitaen was a fertile stretch of ground straddling the Candago River, whose deep, swift waters formed a natural border between Khedesh and Threndellen. When the Targee and Huliquana had first migrated to these lands from the far south during the height of the Atalari's Shining Nation, the two tribes warred bitterly for control of the forested hills and fertile pastures, until they nearly annihilated one another. Weakened by generations of battle, they were no match for the more advanced Tlot'ka, whose bronze-clad warhorses finished off the remnants of the Targee and Huliquana forever.

The Tlot'ka enjoyed several centuries of relative calm before the Doomwar scorched large swaths of Osseria, Curitaen among them. After the war, the Tlot'ka migrated northward for several generations while the burned lands healed, then returned to their abandoned settlements and rebuilt and refortified them. Nine hundred years later they were eradicated by the Great Plague that killed half of the surviving Atalari and a third of the Gendalos races.

Gerin crouched behind a horn of rock sticking out of an exposed hillside. The horn had once been the foundation stone of a Tlot'ka shrine, and was now all that remained visible of what had been their largest settlement.

"Looks to be upward of fifteen thousand people down there, Your Majesty," said Balandrick from over Gerin's shoulder. They were perched above a long, narrow valley in which hundreds of campfires burned. "Can you tell if they're Threndish? It's too dark for me to make out any standards."

Gerin created a Fa.r.s.eeing and directed it at the encampment. The men they saw were not regular soldiers. Only a few wore armor, scrounged bits of plate and mail and an occasional helm. He could see no uniforms, no insignia of rank, though it was apparent from the way certain men were treated that some sort of command structure existed.

"I don't think they're Threndish," said Gerin.

"What's a small army doing camped on Khedeshian soil?" asked Balan.

"I have no idea. If we'd kept to the roads, I'm sure we would have come across someone who could answer that for us."

"Come now, Your Majesty. You know very well why I insisted we stay off the roads. It would be insanity for the king of Khedesh to be seen heading into Threndellen. Sometimes I still can't believe we're going to do it."

Gerin slowly moved the Fa.r.s.eeing across the army until he found what looked like the command area. The tents were larger and watched by well-armed guards. There was also a raised platform where someone could address the a.s.sembled men.

Behind Gerin, Elaysen let out a gasp. "It's Aidrel!"

Gerin jumped at her cry. "Where? I don't see-" Then he spotted the excommunicated member of Aunphar's Inner Circle. Aidrel Entraly had appeared from within the large tent in the center of the command area. Three other men were with him.

"So this priest of the One G.o.d has gone and raised himself an army?" asked Balandrick. "What for?"

"He's not a priest," said Elaysen. "He never was."

Balandrick shrugged. "Still, what's he planning to do?"

"If he's going to carry out the plans he told my father, then this army of his is for waging a holy war against those who refuse to accept the teachings of the One G.o.d," said Elaysen. "They're his Helion Spears." Her voice was tight with rage.

"Someone in Ezren has to know what he's planning," said Gerin. "I can see the d.a.m.n city walls over that ridge."

"I'll send some of my men to find out," said Balandrick.

Gerin used the Fa.r.s.eeing for a few more minutes, then returned to the camp on the other side of the hill. The two companies of Taeratens accompanying them were well hidden from the ragtag army in the valley below them.

"You can't allow him to do this," said Elaysen. "This is an abomination of my father's ideas. You have to stop him."

"First I need to learn what he intends," said Gerin. "But if all he's going to do is march his fanatics into Threndellen so they can get ground up between the Threndish army and the Havalqa, I'm going to let them go, and good riddance to the lot."

After the visit by the akesh, he had quickly made arrangements to leave the city. He told his Minister of the Realm, Terl Enkelares, that he was going to visit Ailethon, and gave as few details as possible. Balandrick had arranged the Taeraten escort. Only after they were on their way had the Taeratens been told their true destination, and why. Gerin knew that if he'd revealed it to Enkelares before leaving, the minister would have done everything in his power to prevent the journey, so his only option was secrecy.

Impulsively, he sent word to Elaysen that he was leaving the city for a time and that if she wanted to accompany him, he would be pleased to have her teach him more of dalar-aelom, away from the watchful eyes of the court.