Hydan left next, with Sayyed’s message wrapped around Hajira’s gryphon knife and tucked carefully in his shirt. He had scrounged some Turic clothes, including a shortcoat emblazoned with Zukhara’s red emblem, and had saddled his reluctant horse with Rafnir’s Turic saddle. He looked passable enough, if rather uncomfortable in the saddle, and he saluted his chief and trotted out in Rafnir’s wake.
A short while later, Helmar led her troop out the fortress gates. To her delight and secret relief, every warrior chose to go with her on her quest to help Sayyed rescue the sorceresses. They took with them all the supplies and equipment they could pack on the backs of the garrison horses. Sayyed waited with Afer until the riders were out of sight; then he hurried down a winding stairs to the dungeon level. The prisoners crowded around the doors as he unlocked them.
“You have to the count of one hundred before this place is destroyed,” he said calmly.
The Turics took one look at his face and fled the castle as fast as they could run, The clansman leisurely rode out the gates, counting as he went until Afer reached the bottom of the ravine. He turned and studied the cliff wall.
“... ninety-eight . . . ninety-nine . . . one hundred.”
Sayyed raised his good arm, pointed to the cliff at the base of the castle wall, and sent a long, steady beam of power into the rock. There were no explosions this time, just a rumbling sound that began beneath the beam and radiated rapidly outward. Suddenly an enormous chunk of the rock face slipped loose. Cracks appeared in the fortress walls; then the ground fell from beneath the structure. The hall, most of the outbuildings, several towers, and half the walls slipped down, rumbling and crashing in a cloud of stone, dust, and debris to the ravine floor. The remains of the fortress lay shattered, and the entrance to the narrow spiral staircase leading down to an empty cavern vanished in a pile of rubble.
Sayyed found the sight of the gaping ruins small satisfaction for all the trouble Zukhara had caused. Afer snorted in agreement. Swiftly they set off and soon caught up with the Clannad.
Now that the troop agreed to risk daylight travel, they made excellent time. They rode south at a brisk pace back the way they had come, and in less than two days they reached the back entrance to Sanctuary. Taking with her most of the packhorses and three of her warriors, Helmar left the others to rest and refresh themselves in the tumbled glen.
Sayyed did not know what she said to her people in the valley, but she came back the next dawn with twenty-five more riders and a glowing expression on her face.
“Minora sends her blessings,” was all she would say.
She led her warriors up the slope of a high hill and stopped to watch them pass by. Sayyed paused beside her. The world before them lay bleak and unpeopled, the mighty peaks turbaned in cloud, the slopes mottled with forests and bare outcroppings of stone. Beyond the wild lands to the east where the mountains gave way to the arid plains, the horizon was swathed in mist, as if already obscured in the smokes of war. Behind the troop lay the narrow path to Sanctuary and all that name implied. Sayyed, who had seen for himself the beauty and security of the valley, marveled at the courage it took to step out of the protective walls and ride into a dangerous, troubled world. Some of the men, he knew, had never set foot outside their valley.
Overhead, Demira neighed to the people below and wheeled over the slower moving column, keeping a sharp vigilance from the sky.
That day and the next the Clannad rode in deadly earnest, first to the east to the less rugged and more open foothills, then south toward the Turic capital of Cangora, located on the fringes of the great southern desert. They rode hard, and for all their settled ways, they and their white horses endured as well as any nomadic band.
Their guide was an older man, a short, powerful warrior with the lively, quick glance of a curious child. While most men of the Clannad did not usually leave Sanctuary, a few trained as scouts or rangers and learned the mountains and the trails from tradition handed down from other rangers and from years spent exploring the great peaks. This man knew the trail Helmar had found on the Turic map and led his people unerringly on the shortest and safest route possible.
They saw smoke the second afternoon, a dark column of fumes that rose above the plains and slowly spread across the southern skyline. Demira flew to investigate, and when she returned, her message was dark and grim.
I saw a caravan, a big one, scattered along the side of the road for nearly a league. There were wagons burning and dead men everywhere.
Sayyed felt a cold fear grip his belly. “Can you describe any of part of it? Was the Shar-Ja’s wagon there?”
I did not see that wagon, but I saw dead guardsmen with his colors, and I saw other wagons I recognized from Council Rock. Her tone faltered, and she dropped her long lashes. Even the plague camp did not look or smell so awful.
Sayyed and Helmar exchanged a long look, but neither could ask about Hydan or Hajira or Tassilio. Even if their bodies lay in the dust of the Spice Road, Demira could not have distinguished them from her place in the sky. They rode on toward the smoke and hoped that somehow the two men and the boy survived.
On the third evening, one of Helmar’s scouts found them as they rested the horses along the bank of a scraggly, half-dead stream. The rider trotted his sweat-soaked horse directly to Helmar and nearly fell off as he tried to dismount.
“The clansman was right,” the scout said wearily. He was so tired he could barely stand. “I went down to the settlement at Khazar and talked to some of the merchants and shepherds. The news is spreading like locusts. They say the Fel Azureth have risen. The Gryphon has declared himself the true ruler of the Turic and has called a holy war to purge the land of unbelievers. Half the men in the settlement are leaving to join him, the other half are talking about fighting him. They say the Gryphon is marching on Cangora and that his forces massacred the Shar-Ja’s caravan.”
“Is anyone attempting to organize the resistance against him?” asked Sayyed.
“Not that I know of. I heard many of the tribal leaders who accompanied the Shar-Ja were killed in the massacre, along with most of the royal guards. The tribes are in confusion. The Shar-Ja’s soldiers are leader-less, and no one knows what befell the Shar-Ja.”
Sayyed leaned back against Afer’s strong side. “By the Living God, this gets worse.”
“Aye, it does,” responded the exhausted scout. “They say the zealot’s army meets no resistance because he carries the Lightning of the North.”
“What is that?”
“I have never heard of such a thing. But I also heard a gryphon flies in the vanguard with a black-haired woman on its back. A woman reputed to be a sorceress.”
Sayyed’s eyes widened. “A gryphon? Do you mean a real one?” He whistled. “And Kelene on its back? No wonder the people won’t fight him.” His voice broke off, then went on. “Did you hear any news of the boy, Tassilio?”
The scout shook his head. “All I heard was that the caravan was on the road when fighting broke out in the ranks of the tribal levies, and before anyone knew what was happening, the entire caravan was under attack. They never had a chance.”
“Do you think Hydan had time to reach them?” Sayyed asked Helmar.
She knew who he meant, but she had no reassurance for him. “I don’t know.”