Sanctuary

The sun was touching the western dunes, painting the broad desert in shades of gold, when Glanthon rode to the top of a sand ridge overlooking the caravan trail to Kortal. It was always a busy trail, thick with long trains of plodding donkeys burdened by panniers of goods, or herds of goats and shaggy desert sheep. Hundreds of Khurish nomads plied the caravan route every day, carrying goods from south to north and back. Trade had never ceased, even during the most terrifying days of the late war.

The trail was empty today. As far as Glanthon could see in both directions, nothing stirred but the wind, carrying streams of sand across the packed roadbed.

Inath-Wakenti had seemed the most isolated spot in the world. After its emptiness, Glanthon would have welcomed the company even of scruffy humans. Instead, he found their isolation persisting.

He descended the ridge to the road. Years of traffic had left it sunken a foot deep. From horseback, he could tell that not only had no one passed by today, no one had passed by in several days. The desert wind, constant as breath, had erased all but a few prints. In another day there’d be no marks left at all.

Had some calamity overtaken Kortal? War, plague, sand-storms—many possibilities sprang to mind.

The rest of the expedition appeared on the ridge. Glanthon whistled and waved them down. Of the five hundred riders (and three scholars) who’d left Khurinost with Kerianseray, just under three hundred remained. To be honest, Glanthon found the most recent loss, of Favaronas, cut him the deepest, because the archivist had vanished while he himself was in charge.

His second-in-command, a Qualinesti named Arimathan, rode up. Glanthon hailed him. “We seem to be alone in the world. What do you make of this strange situation?”

“The nomads are gone,” said the laconic Arimathan.

“Yes, but where have they gone?” No sooner had Glanthon said this, than an awful answer entered his mind.

“Form up two lines!” he barked. “All who have bows, string them! Keep them braced and ready!”

The elves obeyed, but questioned him with puzzled looks.

“The nomads have left their territory! They’d only do that in the direst circumstances. And where would they go? Khuri-Khan! They must have gone to Khuri-Khan!”

He chivvied his elves until all were ready. The entire command set out at a trot, down the caravan road.

Anxiety knotted Glanthon’s chest. He could be wrong, but he didn’t think so. It all made terrible sense. The nomads, having decided to drive the foreigners from their land, were no longer satisfied to fight the Lioness’s small band of explorers. They had gathered their people together and ridden to Khuri-Khan, to strike at the source of the laddad contagion, to destroy Khurinost.

* * * * *

Shobbat sat in a heavy mahogany chair regarding an elegant goblet. The silver had been hammered paper-thin. The bowl was small as a child’s fist and, from certain angles, translucent, allowing the delicate amber nectar inside to shine through. The utmost care and concentration were required to handle and drink from such an ethereal cup. Each one was unique, made by an elf artisan enjoined by law to create only a single such vessel every ten years. Since the coming of the laddad to Khur, Shobbat had acquired sixteen of these precious vessels. He’d ruined four before learning how to hold them. These so-called cloud cups were among his most treasured possessions, relics of a vanishing culture that would not rise again if he had his way.

Not one of his hand-picked assassins had returned. He found this very unsettling. So much so, he’d had to set the cloud cup on the table at his elbow. In his current state of agitation, he would surely snap the slender stem and crush the airy fineness of the bowl. Since the laddad soon would be extinct, he must preserve those of their arts he found attractive.

Surely enough time had passed for his hirelings to carry out their mission. How hard was it to kill one female?

Even as he posed the question to himself, he knew the answer: In the case of the Lioness, very hard indeed.

The resources of the Knights of Neraka been devoted to capturing or killing her for many ineffective years. That’s why Shobbat had hired Silvanesti for the task. These particular elves had no attachment to Kerianseray. They didn’t revere her past deeds, as the Qualinesti did, and like most who had once lived in luxury, they had not adapted well to their current poverty. Shobbat merely added plenty of steel to their own sense of noble purpose. As elves, they had the stealth and senses to reach the Lioness. He thought it a neat solution to a thorny problem. Every hunter knows that the best way to trap a jackal is with a trained jackal.