Authors: Benjamin Tate
Well of Sorrows (70 page)
“What do we do?” Eraeth asked, although it sounded as if he already knew the answer.
“Thaedoren ordered us to warn the Tamaell of the dwarren’s arrival,” Aeren said; he caught Eraeth’s nod of agreement, then turned to Colin. “Show us.”
Colin pointed toward the north and east with his staff. “There.” And then he blurred and was gone, a black smear, an afterimage on the eye—
And within the space of an indrawn breath, he reappeared over a hundred yards beyond.
“Move!” Eraeth commanded, and Aeren and the Phalanx kicked their horses forward, heading toward Colin. As soon as they neared the human’s location, he blurred again, reappearing farther along, leaping ahead as the horses charged across the flattened dead grass, churning up clods of dirt and roots and brittle grass behind them. The sounds of the battle built until Aeren could hear them over the pounding of his own horse’s hooves, over his own harsh breath, and he tensed. He’d seen such battles before, fought in them, grown to hate them. A wash of grief filled him, unwanted and unexpected, and he could feel his brother’s blood on his hands, warm and thick and drying in the sunlight. Tears burned in his eyes and phlegm clogged the back of his throat.
But then they crested a low rise, not even high enough to be called a hill, and the current battle came into view, a dark spill of horses, Alvritshai, and men across the battered and beaten grass.
The breadth of it sucked Aeren’s breath away and he lurched back unexpectedly, pulling his horse up short again, the animal snorting and stamping its foot. At a shout from Eraeth, the rest of the Phalanx halted as well, returning to Aeren’s side. Colin saw them halt and vanished, blurring into place so close to Aeren’s horse that he skittered to one side with a jerk.
“What’s wrong?” Eraeth asked, voice tense. He scanned the battle, eyes flickering left and right.
“We can’t charge into that,” Aeren said shortly. “There are only seven of us. We need to find the Tamaell, or the Tamaea. Or Lotaern.”
Eraeth nearly protested, straightening where he sat, but as the Protector watched the battle, the tide of men and Alvritshai flowing back and forth, he grudgingly sat back in the saddle.
The Phalanx fidgeted on their horses, a few pacing their mounts closer to the fighting. Aeren watched in silence. Screams rose into the air, tattered and torn by the wind, coming in gusts, along with the familiar coppery taste of blood. Alvritshai fell upon a human contingent, the cries of the men muted at first, then suddenly loud as the wind shifted, as if the fight were happening twenty paces away instead of over two thousand. A group of Alvritshai on horseback were repulsed by a human charge, the horses banking away, circling around, one body dragged behind, a foot trapped in a stirrup. The horse trampled two more bodies already lying on the ground as it panicked at the unfamiliar weight pulling at it, and the body jerked free, falling loosely among the dozens of corpses already littering the ground.
Aeren grimaced, bile rising at the back of his throat. He swallowed as he watched the rest of the Alvritshai group rejoin the fray at the rear.
“House Licaeta,” Eraeth said. At Aeren’s raised eyebrow, he added, “I recognize the style of the riding . . . and the colors on the saddle.”
Aeren frowned, focusing on the battle again, trying to pick out colors. He hadn’t looked too closely at first, too sickened by the ferocity and the deaths. “Do you see the Tamaell’s colors?”
“There,” one of the Phalanx guards said, pointing, “to the left of center, where the fighting is thickest. You can see the House Resue banner.”
Eraeth asked. “Do you see it?”
Aeren stood up higher in the saddle, then caught the red and white flare of the Tamaell’s pennant. “I see it.” He settled back with a frown. “We’ll never reach him.”
“Not with only an escort of six,” Eraeth agreed.
His gaze fell on Colin and remained there for a long moment.
“No,” Aeren said. When Eraeth looked up, a protest on his lips, he repeated more firmly, “No.” He knew what Eraeth was thinking, and he wouldn’t allow it. Not for something as trivial as this. They could wait. The dwarren wouldn’t be arriving for at least another two days.
Eraeth sat back, disgruntled. “Then what will we do?”
“We’ll find the Alvritshai camp and report to the Tamaea instead.”
Eraeth shot him a surprised look, but Aeren had already begun searching the plains, drawing upon old memories of the Escarpment. Old, bloody, dark memories. He tried to push those memories away, focusing on what he remembered of the land around the Escarpment before the fighting had started. If the Tamaell had been coming from the south, and the Legion had already arrived, then the most likely place for the Tamaell to set up his encampment would be . . .
“There,” Eraeth said, pointing toward the east.
Aeren had already turned. He could see figures on a rise watching the battle, one of the Lords of the Evant who’d been left behind to guard the camp. On the battlefield, the lords were subordinate to the Tamaell, their individual House Phalanxes subject to the Tamaell’s orders first, then their lord’s. The tents and wagons and the rest of the support were mostly hidden behind the rise, although a few banners and the tops of a few tents could be seen.
“Let’s go.” Aeren nudged his horse into motion, picking up speed. He banked wide, keeping his distance from the battle, approaching the camp and the Phalanx on guard from the south. The Phalanx saw them approaching, and a sortie of twenty headed toward them along the top of the ridge.
Aeren swore when they rode close enough to see their colors: black and gold.
The sortie spread out, and Aeren slowed, motioning the rest of his escort to fall back slightly. He could see the rest of the encampment now, and the plains beyond, but his attention remained fixed on the Alvritshai lord who stood at the front of the sortie where it had halted, waiting.
“Lord Khalaek,” he said as he pulled his mount to a stop. He did not nod formally, and his voice was cold and stiff.
“So,” Khalaek said, looking past him toward his escort. “Have you managed to get the Tamaell Presumptive killed? Is this all that remains of the entourage sent to meet with the dwarren?” He paused for a moment, then added blandly, “Were they even there?”
Aeren gripped the reins tightly, but he refused to be baited. “The Tamaell Presumptive is following behind us, with the rest of the escort. We were sent ahead to speak to the Tamaell.”
Khalaek’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, his previous mild amusement gone. “About what?”
“That is for the Tamaell alone.”
Khalaek said nothing, but Aeren could see him considering options. His dark eyes flicked toward Colin, standing far back in the group, as unobtrusive as possible, then toward the south and east, the direction he knew they’d come from, but the plains were empty there.
Not satisified, Khalaek motioned toward the battle. “As you can see, the Tamaell is currently occupied.”
“And he left you behind,” Aeren said. “Interesting.”
Khalaek twitched the reins he held in one hand, his horse shuffling at the movement. “Someone needs to protect the Tamaea. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, now would we?”
Eraeth shifted forward at the underlying threat, but Aeren didn’t react.
To the west, battlehorns cried out, distantly. A gust of wind pushed past them and sent the pennant that Khalaek’s sortie carried flapping. Aeren and Khalaek held each other’s gazes, the hatred between them palpable. Aeren could taste it.
But a ripple of strange but familiar movement caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to the east with a frown—
And the bitterness and hatred bled out of him in one shocked breath. “Aielan’s Light,” he said, voice filled with a terrified awe.
“What is it?” Khalaek demanded, voice tinged with anger and doubt, as if he thought Aeren’s gasp some kind of trick. But then he turned.
Aeren saw him stiffen in his saddle, then spit a curse under his breath. On all sides, the sortie and Aeren’s escort gasped, Eraeth edging his horse out in front of Aeren reflexively.
On the plains, still distant but approaching fast, one of the occamaen—what Lotaern would call a “breath of heaven,” and what Colin called a Drifter—slid toward them. It was beautiful in a way, its rippled distortions stretching high into the sky and even farther to either side, its center clear, like an eye. Through that eye, Aeren could see the plains beyond . . . but altered. Sunlight glowed on the horizon there, the clouds in the sky suffused with a purple-orange haze, the grass on the ridges a vibrant, spring green, waving in a contrary wind.
Aeren glanced up at the sun that glared down on the autumn-dead grass at his feet and shuddered. The juxtaposition—two suns, one setting, one angled an hour after midday; early spring grass against late autumn—twisted in his stomach.
“It’s huge,” Eraeth said.
“And it’s headed straight for the camp,” Khalaek hollered. He spun his mount and roared out orders, his sortie breaking into two groups, one headed toward where the occumaen bore down on the camp from the east, the other, including Khalaek, headed toward the rest of Khalaek’s men on the ridge behind them, both groups shouting and pointing as they charged their horses across the grass. The men on the ridge hadn’t seen the danger yet, were watching either the battle below or the confrontation with Aeren. After a moment of confusion, they turned . . . and then broke into sudden motion as Khalaek arrived. Horns sounded, piercing the air, frantic and warbly. In the camp below, men and women turned from whatever task they were doing in confusion, but they couldn’t see the occumaen, not within the confines of the tents and wagons.
Aeren swore. They weren’t reacting fast enough. The occumaen bore down with silent, deadly grace. And with sudden dawning horror, Aeren realized Eraeth had been right. It was huge, large enough and wide enough to encompass at least half the camp, if not more.
“What do we do?” Eraeth asked, and Aeren latched onto his strangely calm voice.
Thinking furiously, cursing the small number of Phalanx he’d brought with him, he scanned the growing chaos in the camp below as Khalaek’s men fanned out, charging into the tents still mounted, shoving and herding people outward, away from the occumaen’s path.
And then his gaze fell on the white and red banners near the center of the camp. The Tamaell’s banners.
His eyes widened. “The Tamaea.”
Eraeth reacted faster than he did, spinning and shouting, “Colin!”
Without any hesitation, Colin shifted and blurred.
Colin raced down the slope toward the camp, time slowed around him but not stopped. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Aeren, Eraeth, and the rest kicking their mounts into motion, heading down toward the camp itself, but then he shoved the Alvritshai lord from his mind and focused on reaching the Tamaea.
The Drifter loomed large to the east, a coruscating array of light, mostly white but with iridescent shadings, its arms reaching out like antennae, tasting the air on all sides. The scent of the Well, of new earth and pine and dry leaves, crashed into him, so strong he felt his body shuddering in reaction, the craving for the Well almost overwhelming. He shoved that craving aside and forced himself not to look at the black mark on his arm, the black mark that had expanded each time he’d been within reach of the Well’s power and now throbbed with pain.
He slowed as he reached the outskirts of the camp, slid among the tents, around the Alvritshai who were now scattering as Lord Khalaek’s Phalanx warned them of the Drifter. Some of them had already seen it and were fleeing into the grass, their faces etched with terror. Colin didn’t stop, slipping through their mad rush caught in slow motion, brushing by their outstretched arms and bodies, keeping the white and red banners of the Tamaell’s tents in sight. He passed Khalaek, the lord caught in mid-shout, his face contorted and ugly with panic. Two of his Phalanx in black and gold were shoving people toward the edge of camp; one woman overbalanced, crashing into the folds of the tent behind her. The scene was eerie with no sound to accompany it, but he didn’t pause, didn’t stop to help.
There wasn’t time. The taste of the Drifter had grown stronger.
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