Filled with new spirit, the nomads heaped all the carefully hoarded fuel on their campfires. The flames blazed up, sending gouts of sparks into the air. The tribesmen’s chant soared upward as well.
As he rode away, the Nerakan courier could see the glow of the nomad fires for a long time. He could hear their roar in chants even longer.
Hengriff, waiting on horseback in a draw a mile away heard them, too. Sparks had fallen on the tinder. All that remained was to see how big a bonfire would result.
Chapter 10
The gates of Khuri-Khan were closed and bolted. There was no warning, no flurry of horns or rushing of guards. The iron portcullises, which once defied the minions of Malystryx simply dropped into place. The battlements, normally patrolled by the Khan’s soldiers, emptied.
This was not a development Gilthas had expected. For a day and a half, since word arrived of the supposed massacre of the nomad camp, mobs of Khurs, armed with sticks, hand tools, and stones, had issued from the city to attack Khurinost several times. The largest of these groups comprised a thousand people, but each time, they were turned back without difficulty by Planchet, Hamaramis, and the elven host. Tents on the camp’s periphery were torn down and burned, but the angry Khurs never penetrated far into Khurinost. Then the city gates had closed.
The Speaker and most of his advisors stood in the clear area in front of his royal tent. The spot was the highest point in Khurinost, though not by much. The late afternoon sun was behind them. Its orange light sparkled off the glazed tiles and yellow domes of Khuri-Khan, washing the scene in a deceptively pleasant and benign glow.
“What’s Sahim-Khan playing at? Is he trying to protect us from his people, or what?” Gilthas muttered.
None of his advisors knew. Absent from the group was Lord Morillon. He was in the city, seeking an audience with the Khan. Planchet, just returned from surveying the damage done to the outer ring of tents, removed his helmet and mopped his forehead with a rag.
“Could be he wants to cut off our water,” he said.
He spoke out of his own thirst, but his suggestion was a logical one. Every drop of water in Khurinost had to be carried from the city. If Sahim-Khan refused them access, the next nearest wells were at Ving’s Oasis, forty miles northeast, a journey of two or three days for elves on foot. The horrors of the march to Khur five years ago would be repeated, and on a daily basis. Gilthas needed alternatives. He recalled Hamaramis and, with Planchet, discussed how to repair the Situation.
“We ought to storm the city,” Hamaramis suggested. “The humans have left us ladders all around Khuri-Khan.”
The scaffolding, erected for repair work on the walls, remained in many spots.
Planchet shook his head. “Sahim-Khan must know that. He’s not a fool.”
The Speaker studied Khuri-Khan through a brass spyglass. Its ruby lenses, polished by the gemcutters’ guild of Qualinost, had allowed him to watch the streets of Qualinost from the heights of the palace. Now they brought Khurish defenses into sharp focus for the Speaker’s tired, sun-scorched eyes. He hated the idea of attacking Khuri-Khan. They had dwelt here in relative peace and safety for five years. They had no real enmity with Khur. If they stormed the city now, they would have to go all out to win. Failure meant utter destruction. They were too few to overwhelm the humans quickly, so war in the desert kingdom would go on and on. If Neraka or the minotaurs intervened, catastrophe would engulf elves and Khurs alike.
“Perhaps it was not the Khan who closed the gates,” Planchet said. He was worried about his young friend Hytanthas, who had not returned to the elves’ camp. Perhaps Hytanthas had stumbled in his mission, and the gates had been closed at the instigation of the mage Faeterus.
Hamaramis reminded them about the fanatical followers of Torghan, and Planchet said they mustn’t forget the Nerakan emissary they’d seen in the Khuri yl Nor. The Khurs had long-standing ties to the Dark Knights, and many of Sahim-Khan’s soldiers had served as mercenaries in their hire.
“Are we prepared to move?” the Speaker asked, still gazing through the spyglass.
“We are short several hundred carts,” Hamaramis replied. “There wasn’t enough timber to build them, and no time to trade for the wood. So we’re building travois.”
Wilder elves often transported goods and possessions by this means. A simple travois required only two long poles and canvas or hide to stretch between them. It could be pulled by horse, donkey, or even a sturdy goat. The trailing runners would not bog down in the sea of sand outside Khuri-Khan.
Glumly, Hamaramis departed to continue the preparations. He was against leaving, and his opposition had grown more open over the past few days. He preferred to stay and attack. Seize the city, he had argued; negotiate with the Khurs from the safety of their own stone walls.
What this bold, forthright plan failed to consider was that once the city was theirs, the elves were trapped. The nomad tribes would gather and expend every last drop of blood to drive them out, and Neraka could not be ignored. The Knights would certainly intervene, storming into Khur as liberators. The last hope of the elven nations would be caught neatly in a stone prison of their own making.
The answer, Gilthas still felt certain, lay in finding a new place to live. The elves needed barriers of distance and inhospitable wastes to guard them from the sudden proliferation of enemies. Only then could they grow and rebuild their strength.
A shadow fell on him, and Gilthas looked up. Planchet had opened a linen parasol to shade him.
“I wonder where Lady Kerianseray is?” the valet said, offering him a damp cloth.
Gilthas pressed the cloth against his throat and brow. “Some place cool, I hope.”
He’d received a very short dispatch from her, two days after the arrival of the first. Kerian and her warriors had entered the valley. The climate was mild and damp, but they’d found no signs of life. Strange stone ruins covered the valley as far as they could see. She intended to penetrate to the center of the valley, fulfilling her mission of exploration, then return.
Gilthas hardly knew what to make of the terse report. It contained no details from his archivist, Favaronas, and raised more questions than it answered. Was the Inath-Wakenti suitable for their people, or not? Was there a supply of fresh water? Any game? What was so strange about the ruins? Did they show evidence of having been built by ancient elves, as some of the legends had it?
The Lioness did thank him for sending Eagle Eye to her. But her promise to “put him to good use against our enemies” did not have a particularly diplomatic ring to it.
Of course she was under great stress, but did her reports have to be so vague and unhelpful? Was she allowing her personal feelings to color them? She was dead against his plan to migrate to the valley. Like the other warriors around the Speaker, Kerian preferred to decide her own fate by fighting. Even though he understood this, he could not allow war to overtake his people. He had to rule his own wife in that regard. The stakes were too high.
He mopped his brow again, glancing skyward. The sun was relentless. Khurinost would exhaust its ready water supply in a day if Khuri-Khan remained inaccessible.
“More to the point,” he said, “where is Lord Morillon? We need those gates opened!”
Lord Morillon was saying those very words to Sahim-Khan, on the rooftop garden of the royal citadel. Enormous screens, woven of reeds and rushes, shaded the garden. In better times, fountains flowed among the ferns and willows, adding the music of falling water to the scene and allowing more tender plants to be grown. As yet, the water system had not been repaired, so the greenery was confined to smaller, potted bushes and flowers which servants carried indoors during the worst heat of the day. Despite its sparse look, the garden still afforded an excellent view of the city.