“You will never force them to abandon their treasures, my love,” said the Lioness. “Do not try, lest they come to hate you.”
“But they will never make it alive through the desert!” Gilthas gestured to an elven lord who had brought along most of his household possessions, including a small striking clock. “Don’t they understand that?”
“No,” the Lioness said bluntly, “but they will. Each person must make the decision to leave his past behind or die with it hanging about his neck. Not even his king can make that decision for him.” Reaching out, she rested her hand over his. “Remember this, Gilthas, there are some who would rather die. You must steel yourself to face that.”
Gilthas thought of her words as he trudged over the windswept rock that flowed like a harsh, hard, and barren red-orange sea to the blue horizon. Looking back across the land that shimmered in the hot sun, he saw his people straggling along behind. Distorted by the waves of heat rising from the rock, they appeared to waver in his vision, to lengthen and recede as he watched. He had placed the strongest at the rear of the group to assist those who were having difficulty, and he set the Wilder elves to keep watch along the flanks.
The first few days of their march, he had feared being attacked by the human armies rampaging through Qualinesti, but after traveling in the desert, he soon realized that here they were safe—safe because no one in his right mind would ever waste his energy chasing after them. Let the desert kill them, his enemies would say. Indeed, that seemed likely.
“We’re not going to make it,” Gilthas realized.
The elves did not know how to dress for the desert They discarded their clothes in the heat and many were terribly burned by the sun. The litters now served a useful purpose—carrying those too burned or sick to walk. The heat sapped strength and energy, so that feet stumbled and heads bowed. As the Lioness had predicted, the elves began to divest themselves of their past. Although they left no mark on the rock, the tale of their passage could be read in the abandoned sacks and broken chests dumped off the litters or thrown down by weary arms. Their pace was slow—heartbreakingly slow. According to the maps, they would have to cross two hundred and fifty miles of desert before they reached the remnants of the old King’s Highway that led into Silvanesti. Managing only a few miles a day, they would run out of both food and water long before they reached the midpoint. Gilthas had heard that there were places in the desert where one could find water, but these were not marked on the maps, and he didn’t know how to locate them.
He had one hope—the hope that had led him to dare to make this treacherous journey. He must try to find the Plainspeople who made their homes in this forbidding, desolate land. Without their help, the Qualinesti nation would perish.
Gilthas had naively supposed that traveling the Plains of Dust was similar to traveling in other parts of Ansalon, where one could find villages or towns within a day’s journey along the route. He had been told that there was a village of Plains—people at a place called Duntol. The map showed Duntol to be due east from Thorbardin. The elves traveled east, walking straight into the morning sun, but they saw no signs of a village. Gazing across the empty expanse of glistening red rock, Gilthas could see for miles in all directions and in all directions he saw no sign of anything except more rock.
The people were drinking too much water. He ordered that waterskins be collected by the Wilder elves and rationed. The same with the food.
At the loss of their precious water, the elves became angry and afraid. Some fought, others pleaded with tears in their eyes. Gilthas had to be harsh and stern, and some of the elves turned from cursing the sun to cursing their king. Fortunately for Gilthas—his one single stroke of luck—Prefect Palthainon was so badly sunburned that he was too sick to cause trouble.
“When the water runs out we can bleed the horses and live off their blood for a few days,” said the Lioness. “What happens when the horses die?” he asked. She shrugged. The next day, two of the sunburn victims died. The elves could not bury them, for no tool they owned would break through the solid rock. They could find no stones on the windswept plains to cover the bodies. They finally wrapped them in woolen capes and lowered the bodies with ropes into deep crevices in the rock.
Light-headed from walking in the blazing sun, Gilthas listened to the keening of those who mourned the dead. He stared down into the crevice and thought dazedly how blissfully cool it must be at the bottom. He felt a touch on his arm.
“We have company,” said the Lioness, pointing north.
Gilthas shaded his eyes, tried to see against the harsh glare. In the distance, wavering in the heat, he could make out three riders on horseback. He could not discern any details—they were shapeless lumps of darkness. He stared until his eyes watered, hoping to see the riders approaching, but they did not move. He waved his arms and shouted until his parched throat was hoarse, but the riders simply stood there.
Unwilling to lose any more time, Gilthas gave the order for the people to start walking.
“Now the watchers are on the move,” said the Lioness.
“But not toward us,” said Gilthas, sick with disappointment.
The riders traveled parallel to the elves, sometimes vanishing from sight among the rocks, but always reappearing. They made their presence known, made the elves aware that they were being watched. The strange riders did not appear threatening, but they had no need to threaten. If they viewed the elves as an enemy, the blazing sun was the only weapon they required. Hearing the wailing of children in his ears and the moans of the ill and dying, Gilthas could bear it no longer.
“You’re going to talk to them,” the Lioness said, her voice cracking from lack of water. He nodded. His mouth was too parched to waste words.
“If they are Plainspeople, they have no love for strangers trespassing in their territory,” she warned. “They might kill you.”
He nodded again and took hold of her hand, raised it to his lips, kissed it. Turning his horse’s head, he rode off toward the north, toward the strange riders. The Lioness called a halt to the march. The elves sank down on the burning rock. Some watched their young king ride off, but most were too tired and dispirited to care what happened to him or them.
The strange riders did not gallop forth to meet Gilthas, nor did they gallop off. They waited for him to come to them. He could still make out very few details, and as he drew closer, he could see why. The strangers were enveloped in white garments that covered them from head to toe, protecting them from the sun and the heat. He could also see that they carried swords at their sides.
Dark eyes, narrowed against the sun, stared at him from the shadows cast by the folds of cloth swathed around their heads. The eyes were cold, dispassionate, gave no indication of the thoughts behind them.
One rider urged his horse forward, putting himself forth as the leader. Gilthas took note of him, but he kept glancing at a rider who kept slightly apart from the rest. This rider was extremely tall, towered over the heads of the others, and, although Gilthas could not say why, instinct led him to believe that the tall man was the person in charge.
The lead rider drew his sword, held it out before him and shouted out a command. Gilthas did not understand the words. The gesture spoke for itself, and he halted. He raised his own sunburned hands to show that he carried no weapons,
“Bin’on du’auih,” he said, as best he could talk for his cracked lips. “I give you greeting.” The stranger answered with a swarm of unfamiliar words that buzzed about the king’s ears, all of them sounding alike, none leaking any sense.