“Then do so,” Nemermet said briefly, his tone gone flat, and turned to help the others erect the shelter.
In the glow of the Mage-light, Cilarnen stared at Kardus in shock.
Hyandur had known he was from Armethalieh, and had helped him escape. The Centaurs had known where he came from—and they’d pitied him for it, he now realized ruefully.
He hadn’t expected this reaction.
“Armethalieh, too, had a treaty with the Elves,” Kardus said quietly. “But they have not honored it.”
“To help the Elves?” Cilarnen wasn’t quite certain he’d heard the Centaur Wildmage correctly. “Like the Centaurs? To send… troops?” Even after all that had happened to him in the last few moonturns, Cilarnen found that an impossible concept to quite imagine. High Mages—and citizens—leave the City?
“Yes. But they would not even allow Andoreniel’s envoy to warn them.”
A dozen disparate pieces of information came together in his mind, all in a rush. “Hyandur. He was the one who came to warn the High Council, wasn’t he? They didn’t let him in.” He paused, and added, wonderingly, “He saved my life.”
When the City denied him—he still saved my life!
“And so you see that the Elves can be kind. Remember that.”
There were times when Kardus sounded just like his old tutor Master Tocsel, Cilarnen thought ruefully, though certainly Master Tocsel would never have had a good word to say about the Elvenkind.
He turned to help assemble the shelter.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Journey’s End
MUCH LATER, CROWDED in among the Centaurs—cramped but warm—Cilarnen found himself lying awake. His mind was filled with questions, but of them all, only one was really important.
If Elves were like humans, or Centaurs, with individual likes and dislikes, well and good. But if Armethalieh actually had somehow had a treaty with the Elven King, and had broken it, how likely was it that the Elves would help Armethalieh now?
And if Kellen Tavadon was living among the Elves, which side would he take? Human—or Elven?
—«♦»—
AS Nemermet had promised, they caught up to the main body of the Centaurs the next day.
A few hours after they broke camp that morning, another Elf—this one on a bay mare wearing beautifully fitted armor enameled in a rosy hue several shades lighter than her coat—came galloping back to them.
“I See you, Nemermet,” the mare’s rider said.
He was wearing armor as well, though it hardly looked to Cilarnen as if it would be of any use in a battle. It matched the mare’s exactly, and like the mare’s looked more like jewelry than armor.
“I See you, Linyesin,” Nemermet said, bowing slightly. “Here are the stragglers from Stonehearth: Comild and his levy, and the Wildmage Wirance who accompanies them. I also present to you the Centaur Wildmage Kardus, whose Mageprice is to bring the Banished High Mage Cilarnen before Kellen Knight-Mage.”
Linyesin lifted a horn from his saddle and blew a few notes. After a moment, Cilarnen heard an answering echo of that horn-call in the distance.
“Andoreniel thanks you for your care of them, and asks that you aid the others in helping the Herdingfolk across our eastern border safely,” Linyesin said.
“I go with pleasure,” Nemermet said. Without a word to the others, he turned his stallion around and headed back the way he’d come.
“Come,” Linyesin said to them. “Your comrades await you. We are grateful for your strength, and are eager to hear your news.”
“Not much to tell,” Comild said gruffly, as they followed Linyesin toward the other Centaurs. “One of Them came down on us at Stonehearth. Our losses were heavy—ours and the villagers both. But the Wildmages killed it—them and Cilarnen.”
There was a pause, but though Cilarnen was expecting a sudden barrage of questions from Linyesin, it didn’t come.
“That is welcome and interesting information,” the armored Elf said at last. “It nearly outweighs the discouraging news that one of Them has been seen east of the Elven Lands. That is puzzling news indeed. But perhaps you will have told Luermai or Nemermet more of your tale than you have told me.”
“No,” Wirance said simply. “As for why it came, we are not sure.”
Cilarnen hesitated. He didn’t want to deliver the whole of the message he had for Kellen to this stranger—only Kardus and Wirance knew that the Demon had spoken to him, or what it had said—especially considering how the Elves seemed to feel about Armethalieh. But it couldn’t hurt to fill in a few of the details.
“It saw me,” he put in, hoping he didn’t sound as ineffectual as he felt. “I don’t know why it was there, either, but at first it thought I was Kellen Tavadon. It looked like a human, and it spoke to me, telling me I couldn’t go back to—to Armethalieh. When it realized I wasn’t him, it attacked me. I fended it off, and it decided to destroy the village first before coming back to kill me.”
He stopped, wondering if he’d said the wrong thing. Linyesin was staring at him intently.
“It would be good to know—and it would please me greatly,” the Elf said, “if you would say further how you fended off the attack of one of Them and survived.”
“It was Mageshield,” Cilarnen said. Thinking back, he wasn’t sure his shield had been all that effective. It was more as if the Demon, seeing he was a Mage, had simply decided to kill him last.
“It must have meant to take you captive when it discovered that you were a Mage,” Linyesin said, echoing Cilarnen’s thoughts. “Or to take a very long time over your death. Fortunate indeed that matters occurred otherwise.”
Cilarnen shivered. From all he’d seen at Stonehearth, “fortunate” was an understatement.
By now they were within sight of the Centaurs. There were a couple of hundred of them, and with them were more Mountainfolk and several more Elves, all in armor. Each suit of armor was a different color; they looked like a handful of spring flowers somehow transported to the midst of winter.
And there were supply carts, like the one Cilarnen had seen just inside the Elven border, but these were much larger, drawn by six draft mules instead of by a pair of horses. He wondered how they’d gotten them over the passes.
Comild gave a grunt of satisfaction at the sight of the carts. “Decent meals at last.”
Linyesin laughed. Cilarnen would hardly have been less surprised if the Elf had dismounted from his mare and turned cartwheels in the snow. “Oh, yes, Comild, ‘proper food.’ Nemermet brought you to join us as fast as he could, and the food the scouts travel on can be less-than-satisfying, but we don’t mean to starve you before we reach Ysterialpoerin.”
—«♦»—
HE would hardly have called it “luxury” a moonturn before, but fresh meat, pancakes, hot cider, and a warm place to sleep—even if it was a tent he shared with three of the Mountainfolk—made Cilarnen feel more confident than he had since he’d left Stonehearth. The Centaurs had been eager to exchange news as they marched, and apparently their new guides—Elven Knights—were freer with information than any of the Elves Comild’s party had dealt with up till now. In the few hours Cilarnen had ridden with the army, he and Kardus had learned more about what was going on than they had in all their time riding with Nemermet.
All Nemermet had told them was that their eventual destination was a place called Ysterialpoerin. Now they knew that, weather permitting, they would reach it in two sennights. Three at the most—assuming nothing attacked them along the way.