Fayonne led her people directly to Tirnya's father, stopping just in front of him. "We're ready to march when you are, Marshal."
"Thank you, Eldest," he said. "My daughter was just saying that you and your people truly look like warriors."
The woman regarded him solemnly. "You honor us, Marshal." She glanced at the soldiers. "But your men don't seem happy to see us."
"It might take some time for them to get used to you," he said.
She nodded. "No doubt. We'll have to get used to them, too."
Jenoe took a long breath. "Yes, I suppose so." He forced a smile. "We'll be marching soon. You can take whatever place you'd like in our column."
"We'll walk behind you," Fayonne said immediately. She turned and spoke quietly to the Mettai man behind her. He nodded, and started leading the rest of the Mettai to the far end of the camp. "Thank you, Marshal," she said, facing Jenoe again. "We'll speak again at the end of the day." With that, she turned and left them.
Jenoe shook his head slowly, watching Fayonne walk away. "What was it Enly said last night? 'I hope their magic is worth all this'?"
"It will be," Tirnya said. "They may be strange, and they may he driven by needs we don't understand. But they're sorcerers. By the time the Fal'Borna realize what's happening to their armies, we'll have taken back Deraqor." She nodded, as if convinced by the logic of her own argument. "I'm certain of it," she said, her voice low.
"I think you may be right."
Tirnya looked at her father.
"I don't relish the idea of riding to war with these people," he went on. "But I can't imagine the Fal'Borna will be expecting this. It might just work."
She continued to stare at him, saying nothing.
"What?" her father asked, a slight grin on his face.
"I'm surprised. I thought you didn't like this idea."
"I thought so, too," he said. "But now that we're here, and the Mettai are with us, I'm starting to reconsider."
"Really?"
He nodded. "We're riding to Deraqor. I've dreamed of this since I was a child."
Tirnya smiled, feeling better than she had in days.
Let Enly doubt their plan. Let those Mettai who had refused them doubt it as well. Tirnya knew it would work. Yes, Fayonne and her people were strange. Their reasons for agreeing to this alliance clearly had far more to do with the desolate conditions in which they lived than with any affinity they felt for Jenoe's army and their cause. But the Mettai of Lifarsa were marching with them: fifty sorcerers added to an army of two thousand of Qalsyn's finest soldiers. Soon they would join forces with another two thousand men from northern and southern Stelpana, and together they would cross the Silverwater into Qirsi land.
Tirnya wasn't foolish enough to think that the coming battles would be won easily. But they would be won. Just as the early battles of the Blood Wars had been won by Eandi and Mettai fighting as allies.
Chapter 22
LOWNA, ON OWL LAKE
Commerce cares nothing for the color of a man's eyes."
It was an old saying, one that explained how trade could continue in a land long riven by racial hatred, one that many peddlers used to justify their willingness to take gold from people who would, under other circumstances, just as soon kill them as buy from them.
R'Shev had been selling his wares in the sovereignties for nearly all of his adult life-more than four fours now. He was Nid'Qir by birth, but he had left his clan and the Iejony Peninsula as soon as he came of age, believing that there had to be a better life for him elsewhere. The Nid'Qir were to the Qirsi of the Southlands what Qosantians or Tordjannis were to the Eandi. His people were among the wealthiest of the clans, and they had never seemed to care much where their gold came from. Many of the clans specialized in one trade or another: The M'Saaren and A'Vahl were known for their woodcraft; the R'Troth were miners; the D'Krad were seafaring folk. The Nid'Qir did a little of everything. Mostly though, they accumulated gold.
R'Shev often told those who asked that he left Nid'Qir land because he would have had to work too hard there to become as rich as he wanted to be. The truth was, he wanted no part of his people's obsession with wealth, nor did he wish to associate himself with the obvious disdain the Nid'Qir harbored for the other clans. Qirsi in the Southlands often spoke of the arrogance of the Nid'Qir. R'Shev had grown up with it, and had freed himself from it as soon as he could.
He made a decent living in the sovereignties, selling those Qirsi-made goods that wealthy Eandi often coveted-wooden boxes from the Berylline Forest, silverwork from the I'Prael, wines from the H'Bel. But he hadn't gotten rich as a peddler; he hadn't even tried. He journeyed the land, he spent his evenings sitting around a fire with other Qirsi peddlers, trading stories, drinking good wine, and laughing. Occasionally he found a woman with whom to pass the night. All in all, his was a good life.
But though he never once had regretted his decision to leave the Nid'Qir, neither had he become one of those Qirsi who forgets who and what he is. Ile wielded two of the deeper magics language of beasts and shaping-and in all the years he had spent among the Eandi, he hadn't ever shared a bed with a dark-eye woman. Ile had some Eandi friends and had come to respect many of the merchants he dealt with in the sovereignties. But his blood ran Qirsi.
A few turns before he had encountered on the plain a Qirsi couple and their young daughter who had come to this land from the Forelands. They had been on their way to Fal'Borna land and had come upon R'Shev and his friends on a stormy night, having been refused a room in an Eandi inn in Bred's Landing. R'Shev hadn't seen the man or woman since, but he thought of them occasionally, hoping that they had found a home among one of the clans.
Often when he thought of the young family he reflected on what a shock it had been to them to be treated so poorly by the Eandi of Stelpana. From all R'Shev had heard, the Forelands had seen its share of trouble between the races in recent years. Yet, apparently even their experience with the Eandi of the north had not prepared the man and woman for the hostility directed at them in Bred's Landing. All this made R'Shev wonder if the Eandi were worse here, or if the divide between the races was just wider and deeper in the Southlands. He knew for sure that there was nothing in the history of the Forelands to match the intensity, bitterness, and duration of the Blood Wars.
Whatever the reason, and notwithstanding the fact that he took gold from an Eandi as readily as he did from a Qirsi, there could be no doubt that R'Shev would never fully trust the people of the sovereignties. And he long had vowed that if ever war returned to the Southlands, he would leave the sovereignties immediately and do all that he could to aid his people.
That was why he now found himself steering his cart toward the Silverwater Wash and Fal'Borna land.
He'd been in Kirayde, trading with the Mettai-not something many merchants were doing these days, with rumors of cursed Mettai baskets scaring everyone so. But the pestilence, it seemed, had moved off to the west, having devastated the Y'Qatt settlements near the Companion Lakes, and since there'd been no reports of the disease striking east of the Silver-water, he assumed that it would be safe. Since many were avoiding the Mettai now, he had thought to find a few bargains and sell some of his goods. The Mettai were wary of him at first, as they often were of strange Qirsi, but by morning's end he'd managed to make some sales.
When he first saw the three Eandi riders he thought little of it. True, they were all wearing the blue and green uniforms of Stelpana's military, but that hardly seemed unusual. This might have been a Mettai village, but the sorcerers lived under the authority of Stelpana's sovereign. Still, he watched with interest as they spoke to the village's eldest, who seemed unnerved by their presence here.