Fires of Azeroth

"We are advised," Merir said after it fell silent, "of threat to Nehmin. Sirrindim… the Shiua you fled… have come up the Narn in great numbers."

"And Morgaine?" Vanye asked.

"Of Morgaine, of Lellin, of Sezar… nothing. It is as if a veil has been drawn over their very existence. Alive or dead, their presence is not felt in Shathan, or the arrhendim this side could tell us. They ca

His heart fell then. He was almost out of hopes.

"Come," said Merir. "We have no time to waste."

Chapter Fourteen

The trouble was not long in showing itself. Movement startled birds from cover in the thickets of the Narn's other bank, and soon there were riders in sight, but the broad Narn divided them from the enemy and there was no ford to give either side access to the other.

The enemy saw them too, and halted in consternation. It was a khalur company, demon-helmed, scale armored, on the smallish Shiua horses. Their weapons were pikes; but they carried more than those . .. ugly opponents. And the leader, whose white mane flowed evident in the wind of his riding when he led them forward to the water's edge: the arrhendim were appalled at the sight of him, one like themselves, and different… fantastical in his armor, the old-dream elaborations of khalur workmanship.

"Shien!" Vanye hissed, for there was no one in the Shiua host with that arrogant bearing save Hetharu himself. The khal challenged them, rode his horse to the knees in water before he was willing to heed his men-at-arms and draw back.

Their own company kept moving, opposite to the direction of the Sotharra band; but Shien and his riders wheeled about and paced them, with the broad black waters of the Narn between. Arrows flew from the Sotharra side, most falling into the water, a few rattling on the stones of the shore.

The qhal Perrin reined out to the river's very brink and shot one swiftly aimed shaft from her bow. A demon-helmed khal screamed and pitched in the saddle, and his comrades caught him. A cry of rage went up from that side, audible across the water. And Vis raced her horse to the brink and shot another that sped true.

"'Lend me your bow," Vanye asked then of Roh. "If you will not use it, I will."

"Shien? No. For all the grudge you bear him-he is Hetharu's enemy, and the best of that breed."

It was already too late. The Shiua lagged back of them, out of bowshot of the arrheindim, having learned the limits of their own shafts and the deadly accuracy of the Shathana. They followed at a distance on that other side, and there was no way to reach them and no time to stop. Perrin and Vis unstrung their bows as they rode, and the arrhendim kept tight formation about Merir, sca

Then Vanye chanced to look back. Smoke rose as a white plume on the Shiua side.

Perrin and Vis saw the fix of his eyes and looked, and their faces came about rigid with anger.

"Fire!" Perrin exclaimed as it were a curse, and others looked back.

"Shiua signal," said Roh. "They are telling their comrades downriver we are here."

"We have no love for large fires," Sharrn said darkly. "If they are wise, they will clear the reach of that woods before night comes on them."

Vanye looked back again, at the course of the Narn which slashed through Shathan, a gap in the armor, a highroad for Men and fire and axes… and the harlim slept, helpless by day. He saw the dark shadow of distant riders, the wink of metal in the sun. Shien had done his mischief and was following again.

Again they rested, and the horses were slicked with sweat Vanye spent his time attending this one and the other, for kindly as the arrhendim were with their mounts, and anxious as they were to care for them, they were foresters and the horses had come from elsewhere into their hands: they had not a Kurshin's knowledge of them.

"Lord," he said at last, casting himself down before Merir, "forest is one thing; open ground is another. We must not press the last out of the horses, not when we may need it suddenly. If the Shiua have gotten into the forest on our side and press us toward the river, the horses will not have it left in them to carry us."

"I do not fear that."

"You will kill the horses," Vanye said in despair, and left off trying to advise the old lord. He departed with an absent caress of the white mare's shoulder, a touch on the offered nose, and cast himself down by Roh, head bowed against his knees.

In a few moments more they were bidden back to the saddle, but for all Merir's seeming indifference to advice, they went more slowly.

Like Morgaine, he thought bitterly, proud and stubborn. And then he thought of her, and it was like a knife moving in a wound. He rode slumped in the saddle, cast a look back once, where Shien and his men still paced them, out of range. He shook his head in despair and knew what that was for: that they were apt to meet a force on their side of the Narn up by the next crossing, and Shien meant to be there to seal them up.

Roh rode close to him, so that the horses jostled one another and he looked up. Roh urged one of the arrhendim's journeycakes on him. "You did not eat at the stop."

He had had no appetite, nor did now, but he knew the sense of Roh's concern, and took it and washed it down with water, though it lay like lead in his stomach. Small dark Vis rode up on his other side and offered another flask to him.

"Take," she said.

He drank, expecting fire by the smell of it, and it was, enough to make his eyes sting. He took several more swallows, and gave it back to Vis, whose dark eyes were young in her aging face, and kindly. "You grieve," she said. "We all understand, we that are khemeis, we that are arrhen. So we would grieve too." She pressed fee flask back into his hand. 'Take it. It is from my village. Perrin and I can get more."

He could not answer her; she nodded, understanding that too, and dropped behind. He hung the flask to his saddle, and then thought to offer some to Roh, which Roh accepted, and passed it back to him.

Night-shadow began to touch the sky. The sun burned over the dark rim of Shathan across the river, and from the east there was silence, no comforting whistles out of the dark woods, nothing.

They kept moving while there was still twilight to guide them, and bent into the forest itself, for a river barred their way, flowing into the Narn.

It was not a great river; quickly it dwindled until the trees that grew on its margin almost sufficed to span it.

And suddenly about them stealthy shadows moved, and a chittering warned them of harlim.

One waited on the riverside, like some large, ungainly bird standing at the water's shallow edge. It chirred at them as that kind would in perplexity, and backed when Merir would have approached it on horseback. Then it beckoned.

"We ca

"Slowly," said Merir, and turned the white mare in the direction that the creature would have them go: breast-high she waded, but the current was very weak, and all of them followed, up the other bank, into wilder places.

The haril wanted haste: they could not. The horses stumbled on stones, faltered going up the slopes of ravines. The trees were old here, and the place beneath them much overgrown with brush. Harilim moved all about them, finding passage that the horses could not.

And suddenly there was a white shape before them in the dark, an arrhen, or like unto one, afoot and clothed in white, not forest green. His hair was loose, his whole aspect like and unlike one of the arrhendim, seeming more wraith than flesh in the starlight.

Lellin.

The youth lifted his hand. "Grandfather," he saluted Merir, softly. He came and took Merir's offered hand, reaching up to the saddle. Solid he was, yet there was a change on him, a sad quiet utterly unlike the youth they knew. "Ah, Grandfather, you should not have come."

"Why should I not?" Merir answered him. The old lord looked frightened. "What madness has taken you? Why this look on you? Why did you not send the message you promised?"

"I had no means."

"Morgaine," Vanye said, forcing his horse past Sharrn's to Lellin. "Lellin-what of Morgaine?"

"Not far." Lellin turned and lifted his arm. "A stony hill, the other side-"

He used the spurs, broke free of them and bent low, caring nothing for their protest, for harilim warnings. He would not bring Merir on her without warning. His horse stumbled under him, recovered; brush opposed, branches caught at him and snapped on his armor. He clung low to the saddle and the horse stayed on its feet, upslope and down, shying from this side and that as it sensed harilim. Pursuit was on his heels: the arrhendim… he heard them coming.

Suddenly there was a broad meadow in the starlight, and the low hill that Lellin had named hove up. He broke through a thin screen of young trees and rode for that place.

White figures appeared before him in the starlight, white robes, white hair flying in the wind, aglow like foxfire. He saw the shimmer, tried to rein over at the last instant and could not avoid it.

There was dark.

"Khemeis."

A touch fell on his shoulder. He heard a horse near… sensed still the numbing oppression, of Gate-force in the air.

"Khemeis."

Lellin. Coarse grass was under his hands. He strove to push himself up. Another hand reached to help him rise. He looked into Sezar's face… Sezar likewise in white such as Lellin's, neither of them armed. He cast a dazed look about him, at white-robed qhal, at the two who had once been arrhendim… one of the qhal held the reins of his horse, which stood with legs braced as if it were still dazed.

And others… Merir, who dismounted and took his place among the qhal in white robes, a taint of gray among them. Roh was there at a distance, among the arrhendim, who grouped together as if in great fear.

"You are permitted," Lellin said, pointing toward the hill. "She sends for you. Go, now, quickly."