The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (14 page)

He found a good spot and relieved himself against a tree. But
while doing so he heard a twig snap nearby and he froze. He dropped into a
crouch, wrapped a shadow about him and danced among the shadows of the forest,
moving about ten paces then freezing again. If some enemy had meant to sneak up
on him, they wouldn’t find him where they thought.

He heard another twig snap, saw a shadowy figure moving
through the forest undergrowth. The figure approached the tree where Morgin had
been only moments ago, and he recognized LillianToc, Jerst’s
youngest son.

LillianToc stood up straight and put his hands on his
hips. “I thought he was here.”

About five paces from LillianToc, Jack the Lesser stood up
and said, “He was.” Morgin hadn’t seen
or heard Jack approaching. “But he disappeared, and not even I
could follow him.”

He pointed a finger at LillianToc. “And you
need to make less noise. He heard you.”

Clearly, Jack was training the young boy in forest lore,
so Morgin dropped his shadow magic, stood and walked toward them. “I
did hear you.”

LillianToc said, “Morgin, you move like a
whiteface.”

Jack frowned at that comment and said, “Yes,
you do. Why is that? No plainface moves like a whiteface.”

Morgin shrugged. “It was my shadow magic.”

Jack shook his head. “No. You didn’t
use your shadows getting here, and I didn’t hear you approach. No,
you move through the forest like one of us.”

At the unasked question that hung between them, Morgin
said, “I learned it in a dream, long ago.”

Jack shook his head. “That’s not
an answer I like.”

“Nor I,” Morgin said. “But
it’s the only answer I have.”

~~~

Chrisainne lay with her legs spread while BlakeDown lay
on top of her and pumped in and out of her, grunting and sweating and abrading
her cheek with his beard. She was careful to cry out with pretended pleasure, “Oh,
my darling! Oh, my darling!”

He hesitated for a moment, looked in her eyes and grunted,
“I’m not hurting you, am I?”

Damn!
she thought. He’d
stopped, which meant this might take longer, when all she wanted to do was get it
over with. “Oh no, my darling. You’re not hurting me,
though your manhood is certainly of a size to do so. No, you give only the
greatest of pleasure.”

He didn’t say anything, buried his face in
her hair and resumed his pumping and grinding. He made love like a man pumping
water from a well: push-pull-push-pull-push-pull. It was monotonous and without
pleasure, like the man himself. She lay beneath him as he ground away at her,
tried to pretend he was that young stable boy with the broad shoulders she so
wanted to seduce. But with BlakeDown grunting in her ear, that fantasy brought
her no pleasure.

Eventually BlakeDown’s pumping grew almost
frantic, until he growled with pleasure and climaxed. She cried out, timed her
fake orgasm to match his peak of pleasure. Afterwards, he lay on top of her,
his spent manhood slowly shrinking and sliding out of her. As always, he lay
motionless for quite some time, and she prayed he didn’t fall
asleep on top of her.

Finally, he put his hands on the bed on either side of her
chest and pushed upward. He paused and smiled at her, and she beamed back at
him.

He said, “You enjoy that, don’t
you?”

She blushed, a trick she’d learned long ago
as a young Vodah maiden. She could blush at any moment she chose, and used that
ability to her advantage now. She looked aside, pretending embarrassment. “Women
are not supposed to enjoy such carnal pleasures.”

“But you’re no ordinary woman,”
he said as he climbed off her and wiped his penis with her bed-sheet. As he put
on his clothes he said, “I think I’ll encourage your
husband to spend more time at Castle Penda. And of course, you should accompany
him.”

She gave him a coy smile. “We would be
honored to accept such an invitation.”

While BlakeDown pulled on his clothes she threw on a robe,
and once he was gone she retrieved that odd little coin from her purse. She’d
been married off to a middling Penda lord, whose holding bordered on primitive,
though it would have been worse without Valso’s contribution to
her dowry. Her husband knew full-well she’d seduced BlakeDown, was
fully in favor of such a liaison if it advanced his standing in the Penda Clan,
though she and he both pretended he didn’t know. But Chrisainne’s
agenda did not include advancement in some backward Lesser Clan.

She sat down in a chair, then kissed the coin and closed
her eyes to wait. That coin was a rather powerful spell-casting she could not
have replicated.

Yes?
Valso asked in her
thoughts.

“The meeting of the Lesser Council will end
tomorrow with little unity among the clans. And I think I can take some credit
for that, Your Majesty. I’ve carefully fed BlakeDown’s
paranoia and his natural distrust of Olivia.”

And after the Lesser Clans depart,
will you be in a position to continue assisting me?

“BlakeDown wants my husband to bring me to
Penda more frequently.”

Good. But what about your husband? Might
he be a problem?

“He’s perfectly aware I’m
spreading my legs for BlakeDown, and hopes it will improve his standing in the
Lesser Clans. He’s not able to look beyond such meager rewards.”

Very good. I am pleased. Be assured
that your rewards will not be meager.

Chapter 11: Fire From the Blood
of Our Kin

At the end of the second day marching through the forest
the Benesh’ere arrived at their destination, a large rambling
village sprawled along the eastern shore of the Lake of Sorrows, though the
word
village
seemed rather inappropriate since it
must house the entire tribe of more than seven thousand men, women and
children. On the other hand, it had few permanent structures, though when
Morgin saw the Benesh’ere pitching their tents, he realized it
would not be in the heart of the Benesh’ere to live within wooden
or stone walls.

He’d only seen the Lake of Sorrows once
before, and then it had been by moonlight on a dark night, and he’d
not grasped the size of such a body of water. Standing on the eastern shore, he
could barely make out the far western shore, would have seen nothing had the
day not remained clear and bright. He saw a rather large village—someone
had mentioned it was named Norlakton—sprawled along the north
shore a short distance away.

“Come with me, Elhiyne,”
Chagarin said. “We can use your strong back.”

The Benesh’ere called the largest of the few
permanent structures the Forge Hall, for it contained a dozen forges and was
the smiths’ hallowed domain. They put Morgin to work helping them
unload their smithing equipment from the pack horses, though there wasn’t
enough left of the day to do more than pile the stuff against the back wall of
the Forge Hall. Morgin and Baldrak then led the horses across the village and
turned them over to Jack the Greater, who was busy overseeing a group of
whitefaces repairing a large corral and stable.

Back at the Forge Hall they ate a quick dinner, then went
to work cleaning four large anvils, each of which easily outweighed a grown
man. In the Fall they’d packed them in grease before returning to
the sands, and they worked late into the night scraping off the grease, wiping
them down, then lifting and mounting each on a heavy oak stand next to the
largest of the forges. At one point, sweating over one of the big anvils,
Baldrak said, “You seem to know what you’re doing
around a forge, Elhiyne. Not like some novices I know. Where did you learn
smithing?”

Morgin hadn’t thought about it while he’d
been busy bending his back to the labor of setting up the forges. He’d
simply done the work that needed doing, had just known what needed doing
without being told. He gave Baldrak the only answer he could, the same answer
he’d given Jack the Lesser. “Long ago, in a dream.”

Behind Baldrak, Chagarin frowned and looked thoughtful for
a moment, then turned and went back to work.

The next morning at dawn Baldrak shook him awake. “Come
on, Elhiyne. After all that work last night, I need to work the knots out of me
muscles.”

Baldrak led him to an open space behind the Forge Hall. They
spent a few moments stretching and limbering up, then squared off, and as
always, when sparring, they traded a few blows at half speed. But immediately
Morgin noticed a fundamental difference. Each time his sword met Baldrak’s,
the ring of the steel had a harsh and uneven quality to it, a tone that
irritated Morgin and grated on his nerves. It took more than a dozen blows for
him to realize what he heard: the sound Morddon had identified as the ring of a
flawed blade.

Morgin disengaged and back-stepped a few paces. “Do
you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?” Baldrak demanded,
catching his breath.

Morgin pointed at Baldrak’s sword with the
point of his own sword. “That blade, where did you get it?”

Baldrak frowned and said, “Just a spare blade
lying about in the Forge Hall. And its weight and balance are right for me,”

“Have you used it before?”

Baldrak shrugged. “Maybe. Don’t
really recall. It’s much like many common blades.”

“But it’s flawed.” Morgin
regretted the words as soon as he spoke them.

Baldrak’s frown deepened. “And
how would you know that?”

“I can hear it.” Morgin extended
his hand. “Here, let me see that blade.”

Baldrak reversed the blade and extended the hilt. Morgin
took the sword and held it up, looking at it closely. He saw nothing unusual or
improper about it, but he couldn’t deny what he’d
heard. He tucked his own sword under one arm, lifted Baldrak’s
blade, and flicked the steel with a fingernail as he remembered Morddon doing
so long ago. The blade gave out the faintest ring, a sound barely loud enough
to hear, but buried deep in the sound Morgin heard the angry grate of the flaw.
It resonated within his soul, and as he remembered Morddon doing, he took that sound
into his heart and amplified it, let it grow until he identified the exact
location of the flaw. But he didn’t let the sound grow until the
blade melted as Morddon had done. Once he knew the location of the flaw, he
allowed the sound to die away, though a trace of it hung in the air about them
both.

“There,” he said, pointing to a
spot about a third of the blade’s length from the tip. “It’s
flawed there. It will eventually fail.”

He looked to Baldrak for a reaction, but the smith merely
looked at him oddly. Then the smith’s eyes looked past him at
something behind him, and Morgin turned to find Chagarin and the rest of the
smiths gathered just outside the Forge Hall, all staring at him with that same
odd look.

~~~

As dusk approached on their first full day at the Lake of
Sorrows, the entire tribe of Benesh’ere gathered at the whiteface
equivalent of a town square. A massive pile of timbers and kindling had been
erected in the middle of a large open area surrounded by tents, and Morgin
stood with the smiths as twenty or more bodies were laid atop the timbers. Each
Kull attack during the March had resulted in a death or two, and Morgin hadn’t
realized the Benesh’ere had carried their dead to the lake. The
last to be placed atop the pile were the four who’d finished with
their
guts up in a tree
.

Several warriors carrying torches touched fire to the
kindling, and the tribe looked on silently as the flames climbed slowly up the
timbers. Olivia would have made a grand speech, would have peppered the crowd
with women paid to openly shed tears, and lackeys paid to cheer at just the
right moments. But the whitefaces merely stood and looked on silently as the
flames consumed their loved ones, and a column of gray smoke climbed toward the
sky. Morgin surreptitiously glanced about, was careful not to be obvious, but
found not a single tear shed by his newfound comrades. It was odd the way they
all watched the flames with the same look upon their faces. They didn’t
look on with sorrow or fear or anger, and through most of the silent vigil
Morgin was hard-pressed to identify what he saw in their faces.

The flames reached their zenith just about the time the
sun disappeared behind the Worshipers, and still the Benesh’ere
stood silently. Sometime later, full-darkness had settled upon them when the
timbers collapsed upon themselves, reducing the pyre to a massive pile of
glowing embers still too hot to approach any closer than about thirty paces. And
only as the tribe dispersed did Morgin identify the look upon every face about
him: determination.

As the other smiths turned and wandered back toward their
tents, Chagarin didn’t move, but stood silently, staring at the
pile of embers, a pair of blacksmith’s tongs gripped casually in
his right hand and hanging limply at his side. Quite a number of the whitefaces
didn’t turn to leave, perhaps one in twelve, and, like Chagarin,
each waited silently. Morgin decided to stay with Chagarin, though when he didn’t
move to go with the other smiths, the Master Smith glanced his way, looked at
him for a long moment, then nodded silently, as if, by remaining, Morgin had
done something significant, something appropriate.

As the embers cooled enough for them to approach the pyre
without being driven back by blistering heat, Chagarin stepped forward and
extended the tongs. He carefully selected a single ember about the size of
Morgin’s fist and lifted it out of the pyre. He raised it up and
examined it carefully, then said, “This will do.”

He glanced Morgin’s way, and at the
questioning look on Morgin’s face he said, “From this
point on, all fires will be lit from this fire. The warmth we take on a cold
night will be from fire from the blood of our kin. We’ll cook our
food with fire from the blood of our kin. And some day, though probably not in
my lifetime, when the Seventh Wrong is righted, when we stand north of the Ulbb
and are freed of the bonds that imprison us, on that day we will ride on Durin
and exact revenge with blades forged in fire from the blood of our kin.”

Chagarin turned, and holding the orange-red ember in the
tongs, he marched toward the Forge Hall. That was apparently a signal for all
of the other whitefaces who’d remained behind. Each stepped
forward and thrust a wooden stave into the pile of embers, held it there long
enough to ignite it, then turned and marched away, carrying a brand fired by
fire from the blood of their kin.

Morgin followed Chagarin, watched him carefully light the
forges from the ember he’d carried, watched the smiths and their
wives light their cooking fires with embers from the forges. Because of the
ceremony at the pyre they didn’t sit down to dinner until quite
late. The food didn’t actually taste different just because it was
cooked
with fire from the blood of our kin
, but
the taste of it now carried meaning and purpose.

~~~

“Let’s get out of this castle,
have a tankard of ale or two, and pinch the bottom of a barmaid or three.”

At the sound of JohnEngine’s voice, Brandon
looked up from the papers on the table in front of him. His cousin stood just
within the threshold of his room in Penda, and Brandon had trouble shifting
mental gears. “Ale? Barmaid’s bottoms?”

JohnEngine stepped further into the room. “Exactly.
The atmosphere in this castle is stifling. It’s a nice, warm
night, and Wylow and one of his sons and one of the Pendas and I are going for
a pint in that little inn in the village. Join us.”

Brandon hesitated. “Are you sure that’s
wise? We’re not terribly popular here right now.”

“There won’t be any trouble,”
JohnEngine said. “In any case, Perrinsall et Penda is coming with
us. He’s ErrinCastle’s cousin, a decent fellow. He’ll
make sure we don’t have any problems.”

“You know,” Brandon said,
nodding. “I do need a break from this.”

He stood, grabbed a cloak and said, “Lead on.”

Wylow and SandoFall, Wylow’s oldest son and
Annaline’s husband, and the Penda fellow waited for them at the
main gate. After they introduced Perrinsall, they headed for the village, which
lay just beyond the no-man’s-land that surrounded the castle, a
distance of about five hundred paces, well beyond the reach of the most
powerful longbow.

The Happy Plowman was quite large and appeared to do a
fair amount of business. The common room had a wood-plank floor, a bar along
one side, a large hearth, a scattering of tables and chairs, with appetizing
smells wafting from the kitchen. Quite a number of the tables were already
occupied, but the five men had no trouble finding an empty one.

“How is Annaline?” JohnEngine
asked SandoFall as they sat down.

SandoFall grinned happily. “Fourth child is
due in about three moons. And she’s not having any difficulties.”

Wylow slapped his son on the back. “He’s
already got himself an heir and a spare, so the third and fourth must be for
just plain fun, eh?”

A pretty barmaid approached them, they ordered the house
ale and were served rather quickly. Perrinsall paid the tab while JohnEngine
filled five clay mugs from a large clay pitcher. They toasted Annaline and
SandoFall, managed to forget for a time the hostility and the schism in the
Lesser Clans. Perrinsall joined in, though he seemed a rather quiet fellow. Brandon,
not one to frequent taverns, and not a big drinker, managed to enjoy himself—for
a while.

SandoFall was relating the names he and Annaline were
considering for the new child, when someone at a nearby table spoke the word
Elhiyne
in a noticeably harsh and angry tone. The room
went silent, JohnEngine tensed and began to stand, but Brandon put a hand on
his shoulder and forced him to remain seated. He said, “We don’t
need to finish the annual meeting of the Lesser Council with a tavern brawl.”

Wylow nodded and said, “Listen to your
cousin, John.”

A couple of men at a nearby table stood, Penda armsmen, by
the look of them. They staggered drunkenly across the common room to stand
behind Wylow and SandoFall. Brandon watched Perrinsall nod to the innkeeper,
saw the innkeeper nod back.

“Bloody Elhiynes,” one of them
said. “Think yer better’n us Pendas.”

The innkeeper and a young man—probably his
son—stepped into position behind the two drunks, both carrying
heavy wooden cudgels about the length of a man’s forearm. The
innkeeper said, “Go back to your table and sit down. You’ll
not be starting trouble here.”

One of the drunks turned on him. The fellow had trouble
standing as he said, “But they’re Elhiynes.”
He slurred his words badly.

The innkeeper was a large man, and he had the advantage of
sobriety and the club. As the drunk staggered toward him, he buried the end of
the club in the man’s gut. The fellow grunted and let out a great
whoosh of air, dropped to his knees and groaned. The innkeeper turned to his
companion and snarled, “Get him back to his table.”

As the two drunks staggered back to their table, one
supporting the other, Perrinsall said, “I think we should leave.”

The innkeeper agreed with him, “That’s
probably best.”

The five of them tried to exit quietly, though they heard
a few jeers from the table of drunken armsmen. But they were only about twenty
paces from the inn when the two drunks, with about a dozen comrades, spilled
out into the street behind them. The five of them turned to face the armsmen,
all instinctively not wanting danger at their backs. The armsmen carried
swords, and not all of them were as drunk as the two who’d
approached their table. And Brandon noted that he and his companions merely
carried utilitarian knives. They would defend themselves with power and magic,
and probably come out of it reasonably unscathed. But it would be an ugly
incident that would only widen the schism in the Lesser Clans.