“No! Leave the cursed wagon behind!”
Servants scrambled, the tents already nothing but lumps of canvas on the grass, rolled up haphazardly and chucked into a stack waiting to be packed. Everything else in the army was being packed and thrown onto wagons as well, but Aeren noticed a few troubled glances among his own servants. He rarely barked orders, or spoke impatiently. They knew something had happened. But all they’d heard was that the army was moving, and they didn’t understand why their lord had suddenly decided to split the Rhyssal escort, loading only essentials on the horses, leaving the wagon and everything he wouldn’t need for the next ten days with the army.
“Remind me again why we aren’t taking the wagon to meet with the dwarren?” Eraeth murmured blandly, as if he were bored.
Aeren frowned in irritation. “Because the Tamaell ordered me to escort the Tamaell Presumptive to the meeting with the dwarren, but he didn’t say it had to be at a leisurely pace. I intend to get there as fast as possible, let Thaedoren give the dwarren the Tamaell’s regrets,” Aeren couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice, “and then catch up to the Tamaell’s army as soon as possible. I’ll drive the horses into the ground if I have to.”
“I see.”
Aeren shot his Protector a glare, but Eraeth didn’t see it, his face set in a hard frown of concentration.
“Have you informed the Tamaea of what you intend? She may be able to slow the Tamaell down and give you more time.”
Aeren considered, then cursed himself. The Tamaell’s decision had riled him too much. He wasn’t thinking, only reacting.
He sauntered to the edge of the main convoy, Eraeth following, then raised a hand to shade his eyes from the sunlight, pretending to scan the horizon. He focused on the head of the army, too distant to pick out individuals. But he could pick out the Tamaea’s banner and the small group of figures beneath it.
“She’s already waiting for the army to depart. Any message I send would be seen,” he said.
“What about Shaeveran? Send him.”
Colin had returned from the forest and his meeting with the Faelehgre the night before with no additional news. The Faelehgre hadn’t seen any of the Wraiths since the expansion of their territory, and they still had no way to track them using the Wells.
Aeren sighed. “She’s in the open. He’d be seen the moment he arrived.”
But mention of Colin reminded him of someone else. “Send a message to Lotaern,” he said abruptly. “Tell him I need to speak to him. Now.”
Eraeth didn’t wait to summon a page; he took off himself.
Twenty minutes later, the Chosen of the Order stalked through the remains of the Rhyssal House encampment, escorted by three acolytes and Eraeth.
“What’s so important that I must break away from the Order’s preparations to depart?” he growled as he came to a stop, his gaze raking the encampment. “This is not an opportune time for a friendly chat. The Tamaell-”
“Has issued orders. I know. But it seems that I am not going to accompany the rest of the convoy on its journey.”
That halted Lotaern’s rage in its tracks. “What do you mean?”
Aeren motioned him forward and the two stepped away from their escorts, out toward the plains. Lotaern kept up the pretense of indignant anger. “What’s happened? I heard you had a private meeting with the Tamaell.”
“I did. He intends to take the army to intercept the Legion. The threat they represent is too great to ignore.”
“Where is he sending you?”
“To meet with the dwarren. I’m to escort the Tamaell Presumptive so he may extend the Tamaell’s apologies for not attending.”
“Which means all of your efforts to reach a peace agreement were for naught.”
“Yes. But I’m hoping to keep the Tamaell from making the same mistake he made at the Escarpment thirty years ago.”
“How?”
“I intend to meet with the dwarren and then return to the army before it reaches the Legion.”
Lotaern snorted, then glanced around at the encampment, noting the wagon and the frenzy of activity as the Phalanx and the servants argued over what supplies went where. “You won’t make it,” he finally said. “Even reducing your weight by half and forcing everyone to ride.”
“I know. Which is why I need help.”
Lotaern’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “I’m the Chosen of the Order, not Aielan herself.”
“I need you to warn the Tamaea. Tell her to slow the army down as much as she can.”
Lotaern’s eyebrows rose. “An interesting ally.” Aeren could see him considering the Tamaea’s potential. “I’ll contact her and relay the message.”
As soon as the Tamaell sounded the horn to depart, the large convoy lurching into staggered motion, Aeren turned to the Tamaell Presumptive standing beside him. He didn’t know Thaedoren well, but what Aeren had seen of him in the council tent had set him on his guard. He remembered him as a boisterous child, tearing around the halls of the Tamaell’s quarters or the streets and levels of the city. Then later, as an impetuous young man who defied his father whenever possible, sometimes publicly.
The Alvritshai who stood beside him now, hands holding the reins of an impatient horse, was no boy. He held himself with the confidence of a lord, carried himself like one of the Phalanx. His eyes were steady and completely unreadable.
Aeren saw much of the Tamaell in him and little of the Tamaea.
He frowned. “I would prefer to depart as soon as possible and move swiftly.”
Thaedoren’s gaze-centered on the convoy, the distance between Aeren’s party and the larger group growing-shifted toward Aeren, then back. A slight frown touched the corners of his eyes, his mouth. “Very well.”
Aeren nodded to Eraeth, waiting to one side, and the Protector waved Aeren’s party into motion. All of the men-the twenty Phalanx from the Rhyssal House, Colin, a few servants, and the ten White Phalanx that formed Thaedoren’s personal guard-immediately began to mount.
As Aeren moved to his own horse, brought forward by Eraeth, Thaedoren said, “You hope to return to the army before it reaches the Legion.”
His gaze locked on Aeren and held this time, still unreadable.
“Yes.”
“My father said you would not be happy with our decision.”
Aeren let the anger he held inside flare for a moment. “I worked hard to arrange this meeting with the dwarren,” he said. He pushed off from the ground and slid into the saddle, controlling the horse with a few sharp tugs on the reins. “If there’s any chance at all to salvage something from it, I will.”
He turned his horse away, toward Eraeth, not giving Thaedoren a chance to respond. “Let’s move.”
Nine days later, the small party crested a rise in the plains, the depression where Aeren had first met with Garius below.
It was empty, the ground bare.
Aeren felt his heart shudder, even though he’d known the dwarren would not have arrived yet and would not have camped at the prescribed meeting place itself if they had. They’d ridden hard, as fast as Aeren could push the horses without compromising them, and managed to arrive a few days early. Thaedoren had said nothing, hadn’t hindered Aeren in any way, giving command of the party over to him without question, although he kept himself close, his influence felt at all times.
Now, the Tamaell Presumptive said, “Look,” and pointed toward the south.
There, on the horizon, a bank of dust angled away to the east, blown by the wind. Aeren squinted into the distance. “How far away are they?”
“Two days at the most,” Thaedoren said, without hesitation. He turned and barked orders to make camp, motioning to a place near where Aeren and the others had camped the first time they’d come here, close to the spring. When he turned back, he said, with the granite voice of the Tamaell, “We’ll wait for them here, as they expect.”
As the young Presumptive nudged his horse around and headed down off the rise, Aeren watched his receding back intently. Eraeth passed Thaedoren on his way toward Aeren on foot, the two exchanging a brief, formal nod.
Aeren dismounted as Eraeth arrived and handed over the reins of his horse.
“You aren’t happy,” his Protector said in greeting.
Aeren snorted. “I’m not. The Tamaell Presumptive has ordered us to wait for the dwarren to arrive.”
“We did arrive early. And the dwarren are close.”
When Aeren didn’t answer, Eraeth stepped up to his side, staring down at Thaedoren as he merged with the rest of the Phalanx and servants setting up the camp. As they watched, he ordered a group of servants to dismantle what they’d erected of a tent and begin setting it up in a different location, closer to the spring.
“What do you think of him?” Aeren asked. “Now that he’s returned. Now that we’ve traveled a small distance with him.”
Eraeth scowled. “He’s easy to anger. And he doesn’t listen well.”
“What Tamaell hasn’t been easy to anger?” Aeren countered with a small smile. “He’ll learn to listen. I think, in the end, he will be stronger than his father.”
“He already has the respect of the Phalanx. The Tamaell sending him to the border was a bold move.”
“We both know the Tamaell didn’t send him to the border to gain the Phalanx’s respect.”
Eraeth tactfully didn’t respond, a frown darkening his face, one hand rubbing the nose of Aeren’s mount when it nudged him from the side. “Will he be wiser than the Tamaell?”
Aeren stirred and glanced toward his Protector, eyebrow raised. “He asked intelligent questions about my preparations for this meeting, about what I thought we can expect. But we’ll find out when we meet with the dwarren.”
“I think,” the Tamaell Presumptive said, hesitating before turning to Aeren, tightening his hold on the reins of his mount, “I think the dwarren meant it when they requested this meeting.”
Aeren tried not to react to the look of surprise in the Tamaell Presumptive’s eyes. “They meant it. Do you think I would have asked the Tamaell to come here otherwise?”
Thaedoren didn’t respond, but his expression clearly said he thought Aeren had brought the Tamaell and the Evant out here for nothing. But he’d spent the last thirty years on the border, dealing with dwarren raids. As he turned away, steadying his horse, Aeren could see him reevaluating the situation, his gaze flickering over the meeting tent in the flat below and the dwarren that had amassed beyond.
Aeren shared a look with Eraeth on his other side, then turned back to face the dwarren. He didn’t know what Thaedoren had expected or what he’d intended to do, but the confusion on the young lord’s face gave him hope.
The dwarren had assembled on the far side of the flat as before, the blue-green cloth of the meeting tent ruffling in a slight wind. Banners had been set into the ground on the dwarren’s side, the long triangular pennants rippling, showing the symbols of the dwarren clans, one banner for each. Aeren presumed that the dwarren gathered behind each banner represented that particular clan. One of the banners stood higher than the others, in the center-Harticur’s banner, the head of all of the clans, called the Cochen. He could see the clan chiefs and their escorts gathered at the front of each group, all on gaezels, waiting. Harticur sat with four Riders, each of the other chiefs with two. The sun blazed down, glinting on dwarren armor and armbands, although it couldn’t warm the winter-chilled air.
In the far distance, one of the plains storms rolled southward. Aeren could hear the distant thunder.
“What are they waiting for?” Thaedoren asked. He fidgeted in his seat, jerking the reins yet again.
Aeren drew breath to answer, but one of the dwarren suddenly stepped from between the gathered ranks and marched out into the flat, carrying a feathered and beaded spear. “That,” Aeren said.
“Who is it?”
“One of their shaman. He’ll bring everyone to the tents, including us, once he feels it is safe.”
Thaedoren’s brow creased in irritation, jaw tightening, but he said nothing and simply watched.
The shaman circled the meeting tent once, and then again. He stopped at each of the four entrances, chanted and gestured with his spear, then flung something into the wind with a strangely familiar gesture, one that Aeren didn’t recognize until Eraeth grunted and said in surprise, “He’s sowing seeds.”
After a lengthy pause, the shaman staring out at the passing storm to the east, he nodded as if satisfied, even though his ancient face was set into a black frown. In a strangely informal motion, he gestured for the clan chiefs to approach.
The gaezels leaped forward, Harticur in the lead, the other clan chiefs falling in behind, a huge cry rising from the rest of the dwarren as they sped past the banners, circling around the tent as the cries from the dwarren increased. The shaman watched in silence, although Aeren would have sworn he saw the old man roll his eyes in disgust, and then Harticur and the rest brought their gaezels to a halt in a small group before him, dismounting as the dwarren shouts trailed off.
Harticur approached the shaman, the other clan chiefs and Riders hanging back. Aeren picked out Garius, noticed that one of his Riders was his son, Shea. He didn’t recognize any of the other clan chiefs, but he’d never met with any of them personally. Garius ruled the lands closest to the Alvritshai and human borders; he was the only dwarren Aeren had ever dealt with. He’d only heard of Harticur.
Harticur bowed his head, and the shaman placed one hand on it in a strangely formal and somehow powerful gesture. Aeren could feel it. He couldn’t tell if any words were spoken, but Harticur looked up when the shaman removed his hand, and the shaman nodded.
Harticur stalked forward, the others following, and entered the tents, their pace subdued compared to the dramatic ride around the tents. They left their gaezels on the flat, a few of the Riders staying behind to watch over them.
When all the dwarren had entered the meeting tent behind Harticur, the shaman turned toward the Alvritshai gathered on the rise and motioned them forward.
Thaedoren’s shoulders tensed, and his horse sidestepped, picking up on his unease. Aeren felt his own stomach clench in apprehension.
“Let’s get this over with,” Thaedoren said, and nudged his horse forward.
“Not the best attitude,” Eraeth muttered, low enough only Aeren could hear, as he and Aeren started forward on their own mounts. The rest of the Alvritshai escort followed suit.
The Alvritshai didn’t circle the tent with their horses. Instead, they approached the shaman without a sound except the jangle of harness, the creak of leather, and the snorting of the animals. Thaedoren halted twenty paces from the shaman, and even though, mounted, the Alvritshai loomed over the much smaller dwarren, he stared up at them without a trace of fear. Thaedoren met the shaman’s eyes with a challenge, his posture edged in contempt, but when the shaman merely straightened, his expression hardening, Thaedoren relaxed and nodded with a hint of respect.
“Well met,” the Tamaell Presumptive said formally in dwarren. “I am Thaedoren Ormae Resue, Tamaell Presumptive of the Alvritshai. I have come to speak to the Gathering, on behalf of my father, the Tamaell Fedorem Arl Resue.”
The shaman registered brief surprise at his use of dwarren, but he recovered quickly, eyes narrowing as if he thought Thaedoren had offered some sort of verbal challenge with the gesture. “Harticur, Chief of the Red Sea Clan and Cochen of this Gathering, welcomes you.” Then, in the silence that followed, the shaman gave all those in the group a hard look, met each with his own eyes and held the gaze, passing swiftly from person to person.
When his gaze fell on Aeren, the lord felt something deep inside him shiver, for the shaman’s eyes were depthless and cold and powerful. He found he couldn’t look away, and he drew in a sharp breath and held it. For a moment, the shaman’s expression seemed strained, the wrinkles around his eyes tightening And then he let Aeren go, turning to look at Eraeth, before finally returning to Thaedoren. Aeren gasped, uncertain exactly what had happened. He wasn’t given time to think about it.
“Harticur waits for you inside the meeting hall,” the shaman said gruffly. “Enter.”
He motioned abruptly with the spear, as if he’d asked them to enter ages ago and didn’t understand why they hadn’t moved yet. Thaedoren dismounted, although Aeren saw him hesitate, as if he’d taken offense and had considered ending the meeting right there. As soon as he started moving, Aeren followed suit.
They left the horses with two Phalanx and entered the shade of the tent, the wind ruffling the edges of the entrance. Aeren could smell the dampness of the distant storm in the gust, bitter with cold, tasting like metal.
Then he ducked through the interior entrance behind Thaedoren, stepping into the meeting room. The seven dwarren clan chiefs and their escorts-two dwarren each-were already seated on the pillows around the large table. The hint of the winter storm was subsumed by the sweet incense of the dwarren lanterns, the interior already cloudy with drifting smoke. The room was warm but not yet stifling. Thaedoren had halted just inside the entrance, but before Aeren could adjust his breathing enough to speak, the Tamaell Presumptive moved stiffly forward and sat on the empty cushions near the entrance.
Aeren settled to Thaedoren’s right, Eraeth beside him. As he shifted to find a comfortable position, Aeren noted that the table would have seated many more, but the dwarren had spread everyone out evenly, a large space between each of the dwarren and their escorts, a larger separation between the dwarren and the Alvritshai. He also noted that the dwarren had unsheathed their swords-no longer than Alvritshai daggers-and set the naked blades before them on the table, the metal catching the occasional flicker of the lantern light.
Beside him, Thaedoren frowned at the swords. His gaze swept through the rest of the dwarren, most sitting with their backs rigid, arms crossed over their chests, watching the three Alvritshai with stern expressions.
Then, slowly, keeping his eyes on Harticur, seated directly across from him, he drew his own cattan, the blade coming free silently, and held it out before him.
The dwarren tensed. Aeren felt sweat break out in the palms of his hands, felt it begin to trickle down his back. Eraeth eased his own hand toward his blade.
Thaedoren twisted his wrist, so that the lantern light gleamed along his sword’s length… and then he set the blade down before him, mimicking what the dwarren had done.
“Do as I did,” Thaedoren said softly, never taking his eyes off Harticur’s scarred, angular face. The Cochen had obviously seen many battles, his nose broken at least twice.
Eraeth frowned, but when Aeren removed his blade-slowly, as Thaedoren had done-Eraeth did so as well, his reluctance clear. He shot the dwarren a warning glance as he withdrew his hand.
When all three Alvritshai blades rested on the table, Harticur inclined his head.
“Where,” he said in a rough, thickly accented but understandable Alvritshai, “is the Tamaell?”
Aeren closed his eyes, bowed his head, and prayed to Aielan.
Thaedoren straightened where he sat, drew in a deep breath, and began formally, “I have been sent-”
Harticur’s hand slammed down onto the thick wood of the table, making all of the swords rattle, the sound like a crack of thunder in the confines of the tent. A few of the dwarren escort flinched, but none of the chiefs moved a muscle.
“Where is the Tamaell?” Harticur repeated into the silence, his voice rising, losing some of its fluency as his anger grew. “Where are the Alvritshai? The Lords of the Evant, the White Phalanx, the wagons and horses that have desecrated our Lands? Where is the Tamaell!”
Thaedoren pulled back slightly from the tirade and regarded Harticur’s flushed face, his brow knit into a tight frown, his lips pulled thin. When it became clear that Harticur had finished, he shifted forward, and Aeren’s shoulders tensed.
“I have been sent,” Thaedoren began again, speaking slowly, his words biting, laced with anger, “by my father, the Tamaell, to extend to you his regrets. His intention was to meet with you here, to speak to you about the possibility of reconciliation. On the way here, a situation on the border with the human Provinces forced him to halt and reassess. He could not ignore the threat the Legion presents, so he has gone to meet it.
“He has sent me here to talk to you of reconciliation in his stead.”
Eraeth shot a glance at Aeren, but Aeren didn’t move; he kept his gaze locked on the table before him, on the glints of light on his own blade. He could feel the stress in the room, heavy and thick, like the lowering of clouds before a storm, as one of the other dwarren translated everything Thaedoren had said for the clan chiefs who did not speak Alvritshai. When the translator fell silent, the air trembled, stretched. The Tamaell had told him Thaedoren was here to voice his regrets. Aeren had not known that the Tamaell Presumptive intended to initiate the talks. He wondered briefly if that had been the Tamaell’s plan all along.
And then, imperceptibly, Harticur relaxed. The dwarren clan chiefs’ arms uncrossed as they leaned to whisper to each other. They spoke too low for Aeren to hear-he caught only a word or phrase here and there, all in dwarren. No one spoke to Harticur.
The Cochen broke his locked gaze with Thaedoren and turned to Aeren.
“Is this true?”
Aeren stiffened. Garius must have informed Harticur that he was the one who had initiated the contact, although he didn’t risk turning to Garius for confirmation. “Yes. A force of Legion gathered near the border days after the Tamaell and the rest of the Evant departed from Caercaern. The Tamaell halted nine day’s hard ride north of here to assess the situation.”
“Did you feel the threat was significant enough to draw the Tamaell away?” Garius asked.
Aeren considered, recalling the map in the Tamaell’s council tent. “The threat is significant. We estimated there were five thousand Legion on the border.”
New conversations broke out among the dwarren as soon as the translator finished, louder than before, and more ominous. Eraeth shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the dwarren’s tone, although Aeren was relieved to see he did not reach for his cattan, even though his hand twitched in that direction as two of the dwarren began arguing heatedly, one standing, fist raised as he punctuated his words. The other spat a response, both glaring at each other And then Harticur said a single word in dwarren, one Aeren knew. “Silence.”
All the clan chiefs fell silent, although neither of the two arguing turned from the other. The tension in the air increased as their expressions darkened, the hand of the one standing clenching and unclenching…
But with a sudden snort of disgust, he turned and sat.
None of the dwarren had reached for their blades, had even looked in their direction, and yet Aeren felt sweat running down his arms, felt his shirt sticking to his neck. With effort, he forced his hands, hidden in his lap beneath the table, to unclench.
Leaning forward, his brows drawn close together, Harticur motioned to one of his aides with a sharp word. As the dwarren slapped a roll of thin leather out on the table before them and snapped it open, Harticur said, “Show us where.”
Thaedoren leaned forward, face carefully blank, to look at the map, along with Aeren. It had been worked into the leather itself, giving the mountains to the north sharp texture, the plains a wide open region with small impressions of tufts of grass, the forests stained a dark green. A few circles with dwarren symbols pocked the plains in what appeared to be random locations.
Aeren tensed, eyes widening, as he realized what the circles represented: the entrances to the dwarren underground cities, their warrens. The dwarren had, for the most part, kept them hidden for the last two hundred years.
He also noticed something else, something that sent a shiver of shock through his arms. The plains themselves were interrupted by four straight lines. The westernmost line he recognized as the location of the underground river, which emerged as a huge waterfall at the Escarpment at the human city named Tappinger’s Falls. The Alvritshai hadn’t ranged far enough south or east to find the others.
But the four lines-the four rivers, he assumed, by the markings on the map, all perfectly straight-converged at a point near the base of the eastern mountains, well east of the forest, deep within dwarren lands. And those lands-the lands that the dwarren claimed according to the map-were far more extensive than the Alvritshai thought.
He would have searched longer, but Harticur repeated, “Show us!”
Thaedoren glanced up, then pointed to a position on the map. “The Legion was amassing here when Lord Aeren and I left my father’s convoy. We estimated that he would intercept the human forces here,” he shifted his finger slightly to the south, without dropping his gaze from Harticur’s, “at the Escarpment.”
Harticur blinked once, and even as the translator began to translate for the other dwarren, his face filled with rage. He leaped to his feet with an anguished roar, face red, and in one smooth motion he snatched up his sword from the table and pointed it toward Thaedoren, the length of the blade trembling with his fury. With cries of shock and hisses of anger, most of the rest of the dwarren clan chiefs grabbed their own swords as they lurched back from the table and brandished them, but none of them advanced, leaving Harticur at the front. Only Garius remained seated, his head bowed.
Thaedoren’s hand shot out and latched onto Aeren’s arm, holding him in place as he instinctively reached for his own sword, but the Tamaell Presumptive could do nothing to stop Eraeth. The Protector’s cattan was in hand and trained on Harticur in the space of a breath, before most of the other dwarren had managed to grab their own swords. Eraeth’s cattan remained steady, pointed toward Harticur’s throat, nearly touching it across the length of the table. Harticur’s reach wasn’t so long; his sword fell nearly a foot short of Thaedoren’s chest.
Harticur didn’t notice. His nostrils flared as he breathed in huge lungfuls of air, chest heaving. “You,” he yelled, and his blade wavered. He paused a moment to steady it. “You insult us!”
“No,” Thaedoren said, voice utterly calm. “No insult is meant.”
Harticur snorted. “You seek to trick us, as you and the humans did before! You expect us to rush to the Escarpment, to protect our borders, and then you and the human army will kill us all.”
“This is no trick. Send your scouts on their fleet gaezels to the Escarpment, have them report, if you haven’t sent them already. They’ll confirm the location of the Legion and the Alvritshai forces. But I have no intention of asking you to go to the Escarpment. That confrontation is between the Alvritshai and the humans; it does not concern the dwarren. If you are interested in talking, we can talk here. If not, then we will leave, and you can return home.”
Aeren knew at least three of the Lords of the Evant who would not have been able to act so calmly in the presence of so much rage and with nearly twenty dwarren swords trained on them. But those lords had not been trained in the Phalanx. Aeren’s estimation of Thaedoren rose as the Tamaell Presumptive eased back in his seat. His grip on Aeren’s arm tightened once-in reassurance or warning, Aeren wasn’t certain-and then released, falling to his lap. His own cattan still rested, untouched, on the table.
To either side of Harticur, the dwarren clan chiefs who’d stood began grumbling, muttering to each other, voices steadily rising into heated arguments. Harticur listened intently for a long moment, his eyes fixed on Thaedoren, measuring him, but slowly some of the rage that suffused his face seeped away.
He lowered his sword, and after a suitable interval, Eraeth withdrew his own blade. Aeren wasn’t certain Harticur had even noticed the Protector’s cattan.
The arguing dwarren quieted, focusing on Harticur.
Voice still rough with anger, the head clan chief said shortly, “The Gathering must discuss this.”
Thaedoren nodded, and Harticur stepped back, away from the table, the rest of the dwarren-including Garius-retreating with him. One of the aides rolled the map up with smooth precision and spread it out again on the floor where the dwarren gathered, all of the clan chiefs leaning forward over it. The discussion began immediately, the dwarren speaking far too fast and too low for Aeren to follow.
Thaedoren touched his shoulder, and the three Alvritshai moved farther back, toward the edge of the tent, near one of the tables with burning incense and a tray of fresh fruit. The Tamaell Presumptive picked up something small, brown, and fuzzy with a frown, sniffed it, then broke the skin with one finger. Peeling the skin back, he bit into the greenish-yellow interior, grunting in surprise before peeling the rest of the skin off and eating everything but the pit.
When he reached for a second, Aeren said, “Neither you nor the Tamaell mentioned that you intended to hold the talks in his absence.”
“I didn’t intend to hold the talks.”
“Any particular reason why?”
Thaedoren frowned. Aeren had let his irritation creep into his voice. “I didn’t believe the dwarren intended to take the talks seriously, didn’t even think that the dwarren would be here to meet us.” He glanced toward the Gathering, now hunched so far over the map that their heads were practically touching. “I assumed that they’d send a token force, that at most I’d have to placate them with the Tamaell’s absence, and then we’d be on our way.”
“But?” Eraeth prompted.
Thaedoren shifted his gaze to the Protector. It narrowed, as if he’d suddenly realized that he was speaking to a member of the Phalanx, not a lord. But then his stance shifted, and Aeren was again reminded that Thaedoren was not Fedorem. “My father did not intend for me to hold the talks either, only to offer his regrets in the hopes that they could be renewed later. Yet his intent in coming here was honorable. He sought peace. I did not believe peace would be possible because of the massacre at the Escarpment. But then the dwarren arrived, and I realized they were serious. I’ve seen what the tension on the border between Alvritshai lands and dwarren lands is like firsthand. If there is a chance, however slim, to end it…”
When Thaedoren turned back to look at the huddled dwarren, Aeren shared a glance with Eraeth, eyebrows raised.
This was not the impression he’d gotten of Thaedoren in the council tent with the army.
“My father and I have had our differences,” Thaedoren said a moment later. “In fact, we have not agreed on anything for the past thirty years. But we are as one in this. We want the conflict with the dwarren to end. It is the only reason I returned from the border and the Phalanx at my father’s request.”
The dwarren’s voices suddenly rose, Harticur and Garius arguing viciously with two other clan chiefs. The fight escalated, until Harticur cut everyone off with a half growl, half shout. One of the dwarren sat back with a snort and gesture, the other spat to the side, and the remaining clan chiefs grumbled. Harticur silenced them all with a glare, then turned his attention to the Alvritshai.
He stood and motioned to the table, stepping forward as the other dwarren rose, some reluctantly.
“Let’s see what they have to say,” Thaedoren said, his voice neutral.
As soon as the Alvritshai were settled again, Harticur drew his sword and set it formally, meaningfully, on the table. The rest of the dwarren followed his lead, although the two who had argued the most slammed their blades down. At a nudge from Aeren, Eraeth laid his cattan in front of him as well, although he kept his eyes on the two dissenting dwarren.
“What of the urannen?” Harticur waved to one side, toward the east. “The darkness, the night.”
Aeren frowned, knew that Thaedoren had done the same by the shift in his posture.
“What do you mean?” the Tamaell Presumptive asked.
Harticur scowled. “The urannen! The ones who guard! The ones who rage! The darkness and the lights!”
Aeren sucked in a sharp breath, and something cold and bitter stole into his chest, squeezing it tight. “He means the sukrael,” he said.
Beside him, Thaedoren tensed. “What about the sukrael?”
“Did you set them free?
Thaedoren drew himself upright, his eyes going dark in defiant affront… but not in shock, Aeren noticed. “The Alvritshai would never set the sukrael free. They are a desecration to Aielan’s Light, to everything living. They consume it, destroy it!” Thaedoren seemed to catch himself. He exhaled in a long sigh. “But we have noticed that the sukrael have become more active.”
Harticur studied Thaedoren’s face intently, then nodded slowly as he leaned back. He said something to the other dwarren, received a few grudging nods and grunts of assent in return.
“The urannen-the sukrael,” he said the Alvritshai word carefully, “have left the forest. They’ve begun to attack the dwarren. They’ve invaded our cities, our tunnels, our sacred grounds.”
Thaedoren nodded. “They have attacked our easternmost House lands as well. Entire villages have been found dead.”
Harticur growled, a low rumble from the chest. “The same for us. It is why we have Gathered, why we have chosen a Cochen. Something must be done. It is why we are here, why we came. If the urannen have begun to move, if the world is Turning, we cannot fight among ourselves. We cannot fight with you. We must fight the urannen, fight the terren, the gruen and the kell.”
All the dwarren stirred at the mention of the Turning, shifting uncomfortably in their seats as Harticur named each of the creatures. Aeren had no idea what the terren, gruen, and kell were, but he felt a shiver course through him as their names were spoken.
Drawing himself upright, Harticur glanced around at his fellow clan chiefs, received sharp nods from all of them, including those who’d dissented earlier, then turned to Thaedoren.
“The Gathering wishes to discuss a formal treaty with the Alvritshai.” Aeren felt relief flood through him, more powerful than the unease he’d felt as the dwarren mentioned the Turning and the other creatures. His hands, chest, and arms tingled with the release of tension, and he exhaled sharply.
But Harticur was not finished.
“But we cannot do so here, with you,” he said gravely. “We must speak to the Tamaell, with all of the Alvritshai lords. We have been promised a formal apology for the desecration to our Lands, to appease Ilacqua, and an agreement to honor those Lands. So it is the agreement of the Gathering that we will travel with you to the Tamaell’s side. We will come to the Escarpment to meet with the Tamaell.”
“The Tamaell didn’t inform the entire Evant of the attacks of the sukrael.”
Thaedoren turned to Aeren as they watched the dwarren encampment break down in a mad rush of short dwarren figures. Close by, the ancient shaman directed a large group of dwarren as they tore down the meeting tent, chanting the entire time in a frenzy, with an occasional disapproving shake of his head and a black frown. The meeting with the clan chiefs had barely ended, and the remnants of the storm were still on the southern horizon. Harticur hadn’t given any of them, Alvritshai or dwarren, time to react. Within a heartbeat of his pronouncement, he’d stood and ordered the dwarren to prepare for the march.
“It was decided that until we knew more, the attacks would be kept secret,” Thaedoren said.
“Decided by whom?”
“Be my father and Lord Vaersoom. And Lotaern. My father has been working closely with him regarding these attacks, since the sukrael fall under Aielan’s purview.”
Aeren nodded. “Then there’s something you should know.”
And Aeren told him of what he and Lotaern had discovered regarding Lord Khalaek. Thaedoren’s attention was still fixed on the dwarren encampment at first, but by the end, it was centered on Aeren.
“You should have warned us sooner,” he said at the end, his voice edged with anger.
“I have no evidence to support my suspicions about Lord Khalaek, and our rivalry within the Evant is well known. Any accusation I made would have been seen as a personal attack, nothing more. Would you or Fedorem have believed the word of a human?”
“That was for us to decide!” Thaedoren snapped, and Aeren drew himself upright defensively. But Thaedoren suddenly turned away, looking down toward the Alvritshai camp, which was nearly packed up. Aeren felt new tension radiating from him, a palpable force, evident in his stance, in his clenched jaw, in the hardness of his features.
“Someone has to get back to the convoy,” he said suddenly, tightly. “As fast as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because having the dwarren join us at the Escarpment was never part of the plan. Someone has to warn my father. And someone needs to tell him about the possibility that the sukrael and these Wraiths may be working with Lord Khalaek.”