She brightened, and in her expression he saw visions of daring raids on griffonback, the clash of steel on steel. The Speaker smiled benignly at his bold general.
“I need you to visit a priestess.”
The bed trembled. Composed of rope netting stretched between four posts and topped by a thin, cotton-stuffed mattress, it tended to shake with little provocation. Gilthas, ever cautious, opened his eyes and silently took in the situation.
His private quarters were lit by the soft light of a blue bulls-eye lamp which hung from the tent post by the door. The simple canvas stools and chairs around the bed were empty. Kerianseray lay by his side, face down, rigid as a statue. Her hands, balled into hard fists, gripped the mattress. Every few seconds her whole body shook.
He touched her shoulder lightly, trying to ease her out of the dream. Her skin was dry and fever hot. She did not wake. He murmured her name several times, but still she did not rouse. When he laid his hand on her cheek, she sprang to life, rolling over so hard and fast she knocked him from the bed. He rolled out of the way as his wife fought unseen enemies. He heard the bedsheet tear in her hands.
“Kerian!” he yelled. “Wake up!”
She sat bolt upright, breathing hard. “Gil? You’re here?” she said hoarsely, peering at him through the tangled curtain of her hair.
“You’re in Khurinost, my love, in our bedchamber. You were dreaming.”
At the head of the bed on Gilthas’s side was a cupboard on which sat a jug of tepid water and a tin basin. Kerian sloshed water into the basin and bathed her face. Gilthas came up behind her, hesitated a second, then wrapped her in his arms. She leaned back, pressing her head into the hollow of his neck.
“Were you battling minotaurs?” he asked. She nodded, but didn’t explain further. He suggested, “A burden shared is a burden lightened.”
It took time, but eventually she gave in, telling a dreadful tale. Her pain was palpable in the darkened room, and Gilthas had to force himself to remain quiet, so as not to interrupt the flow of her story.
“It took the bull-men less than an hour to overrun us. We killed some, but it was like trying to halt an avalanche with arrows,” she began. “What came after took much longer.”
The elves who survived, grievously wounded or not, were bound hand and foot. Holes were dug, one for each captive, and the elves dropped in. Then the minotaurs fell to arguing amongst themselves. Some wanted to bury the elves facing their lost homeland; others thought it would be better to have them looking out into the wider desert, their backs perpetually turned to Silvanesti.
The latter faction won out. The minotaurs filled in the holes, leaving only the elves’ heads exposed. Twenty-nine Silvanesti were left to die—of heat and thirst if they were lucky. If predators found them, their fate would be much more terrible.
Gilthas lowered his chin to her shoulder. “And you?” he murmured.
“They knew I commanded, but didn’t know I was the Lioness of Qualinesti, wife of the Speaker of the Sun and Stars. Because I was the commander they tied my hands and feet and threw me onto Eagle Eye’s back.”
The minotaur warlord told Kerian to carry word to her people that Silvanesti was theirs no longer, and that should the elves come again they would find nothing but graves. With that, they whipped the griffon’s flanks, sending him catapulting into the sky. Wisely, the bull-men had hobbled Eagle Eye’s foreclaws and muzzled his beak with leather straps. All he could do was fly away with Kerian draped ingloriously over his back.
The griffon flew some distance before Kerian could work her gag free and convince him to alight. She tumbled off, rolling across the trackless sand. Loyal Eagle Eye clawed at her bonds until she could break free. In turn she tore off his restraints. They had little choice but to fly on. After midnight, they came to an oasis near the coast. Four of Taranath’s warriors lay in the sand a hundred paces from the well. Wounded, they’d died of thirst within sight of water.
Kerian replenished her arms and armor from the fallen, rested Eagle Eye briefly at the oasis, and took wing once more. By the time day broke, she and her mount were within sight of Khurinost.
Gilthas’s eyes closed in pain. Yet the litany of horror was not, quite, done.
“For a moment, I considered flying on,” she said. “Past this stinking pile of tents, away from Khur, our pitiful people, and even you. I thought I would fly to the homeland of the minotaurs, find the palace of their king, and challenge him to single combat.”
“You couldn’t do that.”
He meant she would never leave him or her people, but she misunderstood.
“No, his guards would cut me down long before I reached the king.”
Burying his face in her hair, Gilthas said, “I’m glad you came back, wife.”
She surprised him then. Breaking free of his loving embrace, she whirled to face him. “I should have died with my warriors!” she declared, voice trembling. “The bull-men shamed me! I wasn’t even worth killing. They let me live just to spread their message of fear!”
He reminded her that while dead heroes were inspiring, only living leaders could save the elven race, could lead them to a new home. He tried to soothe her, whispering that Inath-Wakenti would be their sanctuary, a place where they could heal and grow strong against the day when they would again make their presence known in the world.
Once more his words had an unintended effect. Kerian made a sound of disgust and stomped away. “That damned valley again! Better to water the forests of Silvanesti in minotaur blood than chase your myth! Better to die as my brave archers did than flee yet again from our enemies!”
“Battering your head against a stone wall is foolish!” he snapped, then stopped, consciously mastering his anger. Seating himself on the edge of the bed, he said, “If fate is kind, our people will return to Silvanost and Qualinost. One day. But not today, and not tomorrow.”
Gilthas had spies among Sahim-Khan’s retainers, men with contacts in Delphon and other, smaller towns along the coast. Their reports told him that a day did not pass without minotaur ships rounding Habbakuk’s Necklace, bound for the Silvanesti coast. Their holds groaned under the weight of armored troops, sent to reinforce the army already occupying the elves’ homeland fl a grip of steel. The Speaker could not hope to vanquish such foes, not now.
He told Kerian all these things, adding, “To all things there is an appointed time. The time to liberate our lost lands is not yet.”
She circled the end of the bed and sank onto the other side of the mattress. “Instead, I go to the high priestess of the Temple of Elir-Sana and ask for her help in finding your mythical valley. Don’t you ever tire of asking humans for favors? ‘Give us land. Give us food. Give us water.’ Is elven honor extinct?”
Seated back to back, their bed so narrow they were nearly touching, husband and wife stared in opposite directions. They might as well have been miles apart. The Lioness was flushed with fury, her hands clenched into fists; Gilthas’s face, blurred by tiredness, was pale, his jaw stiff with tension.
He finally said, “No, lady, elven honor is not dead, merely stored, like the great archive of Qualinost, against the day when we can afford to display it again.”
Both of them lay down. After a moment, Gilthas reached a hand out, but she edged away, curling up on the side of the bed, as far away as possible.
That was how they fell asleep—Kerian curled in on herself, facing away from her husband, and Gilthas, face up, one hand outstretched toward her stiff back.