Foretellers (The Ydron Saga Book 3) (26 page)

Peniff tried to reach inside the captain’s mind, but when Xanthis rebuffed him it confirmed his suspicions. As soon as he was able, he went to the general and informed him about the traitor in his camp. To Peniff’s dismay, Barral dismissed his concern out of hand.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The captain was referred by a Nagath-réali commander. He was never with Garmak En.”

“And he was referred to that commander by yet another, I suppose,” Peniff had countered.

“Indeed, he was.”

“How long had he been with the Nagath-réali?”

“What’s your point?”

“How long, General?”

Barral stared at Peniff, then paused to consider.

“I’m not really certain,” he conceded.

“So, it could have been a day. It could have been a week. A couple of months, perhaps?”

The general’s face flared before he reined in his anger.

“I will not have you sully my officer’s reputation with an unfounded attack.”

“I know the man, General, and I know he is a telepath. It is my area of expertise, if you will recall.”

“This is an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. I’m sure the telepath you are referring to may resemble Captain Xanthis… ”

“We’ve touch minds.”

“ …but he is not your man,” concluded General Barral, refusing to accept the accusation.

He turned away abruptly, leaving Peniff alone as he joined a group of officers for a different discussion. Determined to eliminate Xanthis’ threat, not only to Barral and Obah Sitheh, but also to himself and Pandy, Peniff considered what tactics he might employ. He had never walled-out another as Xanthis had, and wasn’t sure he could if he tried. Still, he wondered, does the barrier Xanthis erected function in two directions? So long as he was shutting out Peniff, would he not also be walling off himself? He was still debating when Pandy took him aside and told him about the vision that had just come to her.

“You’re certain?” he asked and was embarrassed when Pandy reacted as he had to the general.

“Of course I am! He’s the one I warned you about when you insisted on coming along. I couldn’t see his face until now, but now that I have, I am positive.”

She folded her arms, stifling her indignation.

… … … … …

Pandy and Peniff hid in a rock formation overlooking the encampment, watching as Captain Xanthis approached the place where they should have been sleeping. The captain paused several times as he came, checking to see whether anyone was watching. When he arrived beside the forms on the ground resembling two people sleeping—in reality two sleeping bags stuffed with their possessions, as well as items they had taken from the cook wagon—he stopped and stared.

Peniff held his breath and heard Pandy gasp as they waited to see if Xanthis would detect their ploy. Their fears proved groundless because, in the next instant, he raised both arms and a downward-pointing sword glinted in the firelight as Xanthis hesitated above the larger shape. In the next instant, he plunged the blade into it. Half a dozen times, he repeated the act before moving on to the smaller form, where he attempted his second murder.

“What will happen when he gets back to where he can see?” asked Pandy. “There won’t be any blood.”

“It won’t matter,” Peniff said. “The way he destroyed our sleeping bags will be all the evidence we need to discredit him.”

“He also destroyed our clothes and our blankets.”

“We’ll have to manage,” he replied in a monotone, sounding, to Pandy, unexpectedly distressed.

“Is something wrong?”

When Peniff did not answer, she called his name again.

“Peniff?”

After remaining silent for almost a minute, he began to weep—silently, at first—then with increasing urgency. Uncertain what she should do, not knowing what had brought on this inexplicable reaction, she reached out and touched him. When he still did not respond, she slid beside him and wrapped an arm around him. It was all she could think of, and so she sat, occasionally whispering words of consolation, all the while regarding the campsite and their mutilated belongings.

Eventually he wiped his eyes. Barely louder than a whisper, he explained, “I tried to kill him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I tried to kill him.” He let out what sounded like a cross between a laugh and a sob. “It would be funny,” he said, “if it wasn’t so tragic.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you talking about?”

“Captain Xanthis,” he replied. “I tried to kill him, just like we talked about.”

“When? Just now?”

“No. That would have given us away. It was earlier today.” He gave another sad sounding laugh. “I’m a dangerous man. At least I would be, if I could manage to do something right.”

When he made the same bizarre sound again, Pandy said, “You’re not making any sense.”

Peniff sighed, then related how, in the final minutes of their escape from barakMis, when it had appeared that he and his Haroun brothers were overwhelmed beyond any hope, he had reached out with his mind and, one-by-one, had stopped the heart of each of Sabed Orr’s soldiers.

“Some were hardly more than children,” he said.

“I suppose you did what you had to.”

“Are you saying the end justifies the means?”

“Sometimes.” She paused. “When there is no better solution, then yes. I believe it does.”

“Are you saying that killing is a virtue?”

“Is it a virtue to stand back and watch your friends die?” she countered. “Or is it simply cowardice dressed in piety’s clothing?

“Consider this. Do you look down on a soldier on the battle field? Do you regard him as someone reprehensible?”

“Of course not,” Peniff said.

“Why not?”

“It’s his job.”

“Not always. General Barral said that many of Lord Sitheh’s men volunteered. Before joining his cause, they were farmers and bakers, family men and day laborers. Those were their jobs. Killing the enemy was something they chose to do.”

Peniff hesitated a moment, then replied, “That’s different.”

“It certainly is,” she said. “They chose to be killers while you were forced into it.”

“Not tonight.”

“You tried other means to stop Captain Xanthis, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And you know what he will do now.”

Peniff nodded. “Once he’s uncovered, he’ll find other ways to assist Hath Kael.”

“So you tried to stop a killer,” said Pandy. “Was there any other way?”

“I could have confronted him.”

“With a sword?”

He did not reply.

“There you have it,” she said. “Two ways to accomplish the same thing.”

“When did you suddenly acquire all of this wisdom?” he asked.

“When you taught it to me.” Peniff said nothing, but when his silence hinted at the unasked question, she clarified. “When you described the brilliance that ‘wakes you one morning and transforms your existence.’ When I told you how fearful I was and you pointed out my larger responsibility. I’ve been thinking a great deal since then and I have realized that the gift I’ve been given… the gifts we have been given… are wasted unless we use them.

“Let me ask you, how do you suppose you would have felt afterwards, back on barakMis, if you had been the only survivor?”

“That’s not fair. I have no way of knowing.”

“Of course you do. You’d have been eating yourself up ever since, knowing you could have saved them, but chose not to. As you told me the last time we had this conversation, sometimes there are no easy answers. We do what we must, given whatever information we have at the time. Then we have to accept what we have done—in this case, what you attempted to do—and not beat ourselves up afterwards.

“By the way,” she said. “Why didn’t you succeed?”

He cocked his head in question.

“Why couldn’t you kill him?” she asked.

“He stopped me. He reached out with his mind and resisted my attack.”

“Then either you or someone else will have to find another way to finish him.”

He did not reply, but Pandy believed he was considering it.

They huddled together the remainder of the night, relying on their combined body heat and the windbreak the outcrop provided. They dared not attempt to salvage their blankets for fear of destroying the evidence.

By morning, Xanthis had vanished. Barral was visibly chagrinned when Peniff took him to their sleeping arrangement and showed him the destruction. Barral lifted one of the sacks and watched as a large pork ham that Xanthis had repeatedly impaled tumbled out.

To Barral’s questioning glance, Peniff explained, “It had to feel more substantial than just blankets.”

“But how did you know?” Barral asked.

“Pandy warned me as we were leaving Bad-Adur,” Peniff replied. “You may recall that she tried to tell me in the garrison canteen. I recently confirmed her suspicion… ” He halted and corrected himself. “ …her
foresight
when I identified your captain.”

Peniff placed a hand on her shoulder.

“General Barral,” he said, “if this is going to work… ” He paused until he was certain he had the general’s full attention. “If we are going to prevail over Hath Kael, it is imperative you believe us.”

“General,” said Pandy, “this is a small sample of the kind of forewarnings I will have for Lord Sitheh.”

The general nodded, but offered no apology and Peniff could see from his thoughts none would be forthcoming. The candor requiring an admission of fallibility was simply not in Barral’s makeup and Peniff decided he did not need one. Xanthis was gone. Furthermore, although Peniff was uncertain at what distance the captain could still read their thoughts, the physical threat he posed had been nullified. While Peniff hoped he had prevented not only Xanthis’ participation in officer conferences, but also his ability to uncover strategies to which he was not privy—thereby lessening whatever assistance he might provide the enemy—he knew Barral’s impression of him and Pandy had been altered for the better.

“Gather your belongings,” said Barral. “We will depart within the hour.”

Inclining his head toward the heap at the general’s feet, Peniff replied, “I’m afraid that’s all we have.”

Barral glanced down and sighed.

“Then you’ll have to make do. I will find you some blankets when we stop to make camp. I’ll see if we can find some more clothes when we reach barakMall.”

He looked at Pandy and screwed up his mouth.

“I’ll contact their tailors to see if they’re willing to create something suitable. In the worst case, they may decide to patch your belongings.”

It was well into the tenth hour of their second day out when twin cavalry brigades flying Rian’s colors and insignia—two green vipers set against a yellow background—intersected their course and surrounded Barral’s company. Their line of travel indicated they, too, were bound for Liad-Nur. What had been, until now, a parade of perhaps fifty to sixty riders in each of three columns, now swelled into a panoply of horsemen numbering well into the thousands. An hour later, lines of what appeared to be foot soldiers were approaching from the plain to their south. At this distance, their numbers were uncountable, but Pandy surmised, from the way they spread across the land, they were no fewer in number than Rian’s cavalry, quite likely more. Further, she knew that Pytheral intended to send large numbers of fighting men and she wondered at the eventual size of the combined forces. As she began to envision what must surely become many tens of thousands, she started to appreciate the magnitude of the impending conflict.

As the morning progressed, their party overtook supply wagon convoys and small armies of peasants and farmers, many in rags or dirt-stained work clothes, all of them armed with pitchforks and scythes. Roanna had always complained about her myopic prescience, and while Pandy had thought her own foresight clearer, she had envisioned none of this and realized how even her own visions had been limited in scope. She knew Lord Sitheh’s armies had grown to their present size with people desperate to insure they did not fall prey to Kael, who feared his rapacious greed, his desire to enslave and his insistence that all lands, all goods and all of the citizenry belong to him. Yet, the numbers here, on the way to barakMall, dwarfed even her most optimistic projections and she wondered, yet again, if she had not overstepped her capability.

Peniff gave a sympathetic glance, then shook his head as if to say he had read her uncertainty and was reaffirming their earlier conversations. The fact was, she was here. She had put herself in the middle of this. So she filled her lungs and blew air through her lips, and with it some of her tension, understanding she had no choice now but to rise to the challenge.

For the last half hour, they had been ascending the long gradual incline that led to Liad
-
Nur. As they crested the rise, expansive earth-colored battlements seemed to grow from the plain as if a great living creature lie before them.

Every few minutes, pairs of riders—most likely couriers, thought Pandy—raced toward barakMall from multiple directions. Supply trains disappeared into it, or else clustered nearby, waiting for their turn to unload. Foot soldiers and cavalry spread out onto the land before it, putting up vast tented encampments. A thrill of anticipation rose within and her heart began to pound as the place Pandy had only seen in the waking dreams that brought her here began to grow real.

After another half hour, they were passing through barakMall’s main gate, the air within rife with the smells of animals and men. Oxen bellowing in protest after hours under the yoke, spooked neighing horses, not yet bolting, but on the verge. Men shouting orders above the dissonant clang of smithies hammering forge-heated iron created a furor that forced Pandy to clamp her hands over her ears. She cringed, turned away and noticed General Barral. They locked eyes and he gestured toward someone in uniform as he shouted something inaudible. When she shook her head and gestured she could not hear, he spurred his horse forward and brought it between the two endaths, beckoning the officer as he came.

“This is Major Drummon,” he called when the officer joined them. “I’ve told him about your mission and asked him to escort you to Lord Sitheh.”

At Pandy’s glance, Major Drummon touched his fingers to his visor.

“Thank you, General,” replied Peniff. “You’ve made our journey easier.”

Barral reined his horse closer to Chossen. When its shoulder brushed her flank, the general raised his face to Peniff and spoke to him. Although the uproar drowned out most of his words, Pandy made out the phrase, “Take care of her.”

Peniff nodded and the general rode away.

Major Drummon led them through the uproar. Several times both Chossen and Vyten were forced to dodge groups of untrained soldiers, too intent on their mission to notice them. Here and there, fights broke out. Lord Sitheh was so pressed for reinforcements, explained Major Drummon, he was accepting anyone who volunteered to come under his banner. Another quarrel broke out among units from Dethen and Rian, whose countries had set aside their own disputes to come to Lord Sitheh’s aid. This, too, was short-lived as their commanders brought their subordinates under control.

Pandy marveled how the endaths managed to remain calm throughout the clamor, and decided they sensed that none of the men or animals around them posed a threat. As the great beasts sidestepped or backtracked, sometimes pirouetting or raising their tails to avoid striking the combatants or the occasional spooked horse, they managed to thread their way through the throng without incident. At one point, Major Drummon signaled them to halt.

“There is Lord Sitheh,” he said, pointing toward a group of officers conferring with a man who towered a full head above them.

To say that Pandy found the man striking would be to understate his appearance. The armor he wore outshone all the others. The span of his shoulders was almost twice that of many in the group and his biceps were the size of the other officers’ thighs. It struck Pandy how young the lord was—a few years older perhaps than Peniff—yet the weight of responsibility was already etching creases into his face. Yet, despite the stress he must certainly be weathering, he showed no outward sign of fatigue and appeared calm as he listened to those who addressed him.

Peniff nodded to the major. “I know. We have met.”

The major’s head came up at the remark. And though he cocked his head, regarding Peniff with what might have been either suspicion or curiosity, he elected not to question him. Instead, he nodded and said, “We will wait until they’ve concluded their talk.”

Minutes later, as the officers dispersed, Lord Sitheh turned to look at them. He had glanced their way several times during the course of his conversation and now he stood waiting for them to approach.

“My Lord,” Major Drummon began, when they finally stood before him, “General Barral asked me to introduce his guests.”

“Thank you, Major. Peniff and I are old friends,” Lord Sitheh said.

Clearly taken aback, the major glanced at the man at his side before returning his attention to his superior.

“You may go,” Lord Sitheh told him.

After exchanging salutes, the major cast Peniff a parting glance before wheeling his steed and riding off.

“He’s recently arrived,” Lord Sitheh said. “One of the sadder aspects of my position is that very few, apart from my closest circle of officers, ever speak with me directly. I’m sure he finds your situation unsettling,” by which Peniff understood the warlord did not miss a great deal. “Climb down so I can see you,” Lord Sitheh said, raising his arms in invitation. “It’s been too long.”

Peniff dismounted and the warlord took his shoulders in his hands, shook him once to add intensity to his welcome and asked, “How have you been and how is my sister?”

“We both are well, my Lord. Darva is with Bedistai and they are happy together.”

Lord Sitheh grinned broadly.

“That is good. I want her happiness more than anything. What brings you to Liad-Nur?” he asked. Then, as if he only now noticed Pandy, he glanced at her adding, “I see you’ve brought a friend.”

Vyten knelt to let Pandy dismount.

“This young lady brought me,” Peniff corrected.

Lord Sitheh’s brow went up.

“She has an unusual ability,” Peniff said, “She sees the future with remarkable clarity and has come to assist you.”

The warlord regarded Pandy with obvious curiosity. “Had we not met,” he told Peniff, “and I’d not seen first hand the way you read minds, I would dismiss your claim as… well, fanciful.” Turning to Pandy and extending his hand, he said, “Welcome to barakMall. What sort of things do you have to tell me?”

Pandy extended her hand to take his, intending to return his greeting and begin her explanation. Instead, the moment their hands touched, a jolt ran through her body, her vision tunneled and her knees began to buckle as everything about her turned black.