Alliances

“Let the word go forth,” he said, using the terminology of a royal decree. “The Speaker of the Sun and Stars will go amongst his people and ask one question: How shall our nation be delivered off this rock?”

The warriors were skeptical, but they saluted their sovereign and hurried to carry out his command.

As sunset washed its usual scarlet and gold brilliance over the cloudless sky, Gilthas put on his best remaining robe-not a Khurish geb, but a gown of forest green silk with narrow bands of yellow at neck and wrists—and made himself as presentable as a comb and dry cloth allowed. With his councilors and highest-ranking warriors in tow, he set out to talk to his people. Stopping at every tent and bedroll on Broken Tooth was not practicable. Instead, he would visit the shared campfires that dotted the plateau.

The sentiment for peace, he quickly learned, was widespread. Even the elves who’d been brutally branded by the Weya-Lu voiced a great longing for peace.

“We’ll find it,” Gilthas vowed, “in the Inath-Wakenti. The problem is how to survive to get there.”

Ordinary elves had only vague notions about their enemy. They saw the nomads as marauders, thundering on horseback across the blazing sands, with swords upraised. The politics of Khur, the religion of the desert tribes, and the meddling of I the rogue mage Faeterus were not common knowledge. Many elves, when asked by their king how best to save the nation, said, “Could we not talk to the humans, Great Speaker?” The Khan of Khur had allowed the elves to dwell outside his capital for five years, in exchange for steel and trade goods. Surely the world-renowned eloquence of elf diplomats could negotiate passage to the valley.

It was a notion Gilthas promised to consider. No one had tried to parley with the nomads since the departure from Khurinost. The Khurs’ rage was so extreme and so unfathomable, no one on the elves’ side had considered talking to them. Perhaps the time was coming for that to change.

Some elves had no interest in negotiations. They wanted to defeat the Khurs in battle. Otherwise, they said, the sacrifice of all those who had died thus far would have been in vain. The nomads had shown themselves to be treacherous, irrational, and unbelievably cruel. No one could talk to an enemy like that.

Around midnight, when many of his entourage had given up from exhaustion, Gilthas was still moving from campfire to campfire, still listening. As he passed the tent of a well-born Silvanesti named Yesillanath, he was seized by a fit of coughing. Yesillanath and his wife, Kerimar, invited him inside. The coughing did not abate, and when blood began to trickle from the Speaker’s lips, the two Silvanesti shouted for his escort.

Planchet burst in and found the Speaker sinking to the ground, his slender frame wracked by spasms of coughing, his face deathly pale. Planchet knelt, supporting his king against one knee. General Hamaramis arrived as Kerimar was offering the little wine they had left. The general asked for something stronger. Yesillanath handed him a vial of clear liquid. Hamaramis’s eyes widened as he read its label, but he opened it and passed it to Planchet.

“Drink, sire!” Planchet urged.

Gilthas did, and it was his turn to look surprised. The vial contained Dragon Sweat, a distilled liquor mainly used in medicines. It was so potent Gilthas lost his breath completely for an instant, long enough to break the cycle of coughing. Planchet would have lowered him to the rugs spread out over the rocky ground, but Gilthas said no. It was easier to breathe where he was, sitting up against his friend’s knee.

“You are ill,” Planchet said reproachfully.

“Merely a cough.”

The blood speckling the front of his robe belied that comment, as did Kerimar’s bloodied linen kerchief, which Gilthas still clutched in one hand.

“This is no simple cough, sire!” said Hamaramis. “Tell me, is it consumption?”

Gilthas nodded, but insisted he had the problem in hand. Hamaramis listened to him with all deference then asked for a healer to tend the Speaker. Yesillanath said Truthanar, a Silvanesti, was the most skilled healer available. The general went out to dispatch warriors to find Truthanar.

Planchet carefully wiped the blood from his sovereign’s lips. “Planchet, I must continue,” Gilthas whispered.

“No, sire.”

His tone and firm grip on Gilthas’s shoulder brooked no argument. Gilthas smiled weakly. “Mutiny.”

“Yes, sire.”

A chill seized Gilthas. His teeth chattered and cold sweat beaded his forehead. Planchet laid him on the ancient rugs that covered the floor of the small tent and pulled a thinner rug over his shivering body. The carpets once had graced the halls of Yesillanath’s mansion in Silvanost. Four hundred years old, they were the work of a master and worth a fortune. Gilthas commented on that, and Yesillanath shrugged.

“Out here, a rug is a rug, sire,” he said. “And it is better to sleep on a rug than a rock.”