Well of Sorrows (55 page)

18

O! LEAVE THE CURSED WAGON BEHIND!” Servants scrambled, the tents already nothing but lumps of canvas on the grass, rolled up haphazardly and chucked into a stack waiting to be packed. Everything else in the army was being packed and thrown onto wagons as well, but Aeren noticed a few troubled glances among his own servants. He rarely barked orders, or spoke impatiently. They knew something had happened. But all they’d heard was that the army was moving, and they didn’t understand why their lord had suddenly decided to split the Rhyssal escort, loading only essentials on the horses, leaving the wagon and everything he wouldn’t need for the next ten days with the army.

“Remind me again why we aren’t taking the wagon to meet with the dwarren?” Eraeth murmured blandly, as if he were bored.

Aeren frowned in irritation. “Because the Tamaell ordered me to escort the Tamaell Presumptive to the meeting with the dwarren, but he didn’t say it had to be at a leisurely pace. I intend to get there as fast as possible, let Thaedoren give the dwarren the Tamaell’s regrets,” Aeren couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice, “and then catch up to the Tamaell’s army as soon as possible. I’ll drive the horses into the ground if I have to.”

“I see.”

Aeren shot his Protector a glare, but Eraeth didn’t see it, his face set in a hard frown of concentration.

“Have you informed the Tamaea of what you intend? She may be able to slow the Tamaell down and give you more time.”

Aeren considered, then cursed himself. The Tamaell’s decision had riled him too much. He wasn’t
thinking,
only reacting.

He sauntered to the edge of the main convoy, Eraeth following, then raised a hand to shade his eyes from the sunlight, pretending to scan the horizon. He focused on the head of the army, too distant to pick out individuals. But he could pick out the Tamaea’s banner and the small group of figures beneath it.

“She’s already waiting for the army to depart. Any message I send would be seen,” he said.

“What about Shaeveran? Send him.”

Colin had returned from the forest and his meeting with the Faelehgre the night before with no additional news. The Faelehgre hadn’t seen any of the Wraiths since the expansion of their territory, and they still had no way to track them using the Wells.

Aeren sighed. “She’s in the open. He’d be seen the moment he arrived.”

But mention of Colin reminded him of someone else. “Send a message to Lotaern,” he said abruptly. “Tell him I need to speak to him. Now.”

Eraeth didn’t wait to summon a page; he took off himself. Twenty minutes later, the Chosen of the Order stalked through the remains of the Rhyssal House encampment, escorted by three acolytes and Eraeth.

“What’s so important that I must break away from the Order’s preparations to depart?” he growled as he came to a stop, his gaze raking the encampment. “This is not an opportune time for a friendly chat. The Tamaell—”

“Has issued orders. I know. But it seems that I am not going to accompany the rest of the convoy on its journey.”

That halted Lotaern’s rage in its tracks. “What do you mean?”

Aeren motioned him forward and the two stepped away from their escorts, out toward the plains. Lotaern kept up the pretense of indignant anger. “What’s happened? I heard you had a private meeting with the Tamaell.”

“I did. He intends to take the army to intercept the Legion. The threat they represent is too great to ignore.”

“Where is he sending you?”

“To meet with the dwarren. I’m to escort the Tamaell Presumptive so he may extend the Tamaell’s apologies for not attending.”

“Which means all of your efforts to reach a peace agreement were for naught.”

“Yes. But I’m hoping to keep the Tamaell from making the same mistake he made at the Escarpment thirty years ago.”

“How?”

“I intend to meet with the dwarren and then return to the army before it reaches the Legion.”

Lotaern snorted, then glanced around at the encampment, noting the wagon and the frenzy of activity as the Phalanx and the servants argued over what supplies went where. “You won’t make it,” he finally said. “Even reducing your weight by half and forcing everyone to ride.”

“I know. Which is why I need help.”

Lotaern’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “I’m the Chosen of the Order, not Aielan herself.”

“I need you to warn the Tamaea. Tell her to slow the army down as much as she can.”

Lotaern’s eyebrows rose. “An interesting ally.” Aeren could see him considering the Tamaea’s potential. “I’ll contact her and relay the message.”

As soon as the Tamaell sounded the horn to depart, the large convoy lurching into staggered motion, Aeren turned to the Tamaell Presumptive standing beside him. He didn’t know Thaedoren well, but what Aeren had seen of him in the council tent had set him on his guard. He remembered him as a boisterous child, tearing around the halls of the Tamaell’s quarters or the streets and levels of the city. Then later, as an impetuous young man who defied his father whenever possible, sometimes publicly.

The Alvritshai who stood beside him now, hands holding the reins of an impatient horse, was no boy. He held himself with the confidence of a lord, carried himself like one of the Phalanx. His eyes were steady and completely unreadable.

Aeren saw much of the Tamaell in him and little of the Tamaea. He frowned. “I would prefer to depart as soon as possible and move swiftly.”

Thaedoren’s gaze—centered on the convoy, the distance between Aeren’s party and the larger group growing—shifted toward Aeren, then back. A slight frown touched the corners of his eyes, his mouth. “Very well.”

Aeren nodded to Eraeth, waiting to one side, and the Protector waved Aeren’s party into motion. All of the men—the twenty Phalanx from the Rhyssal House, Colin, a few servants, and the ten White Phalanx that formed Thaedoren’s personal guard— immediately began to mount.

As Aeren moved to his own horse, brought forward by Eraeth, Thaedoren said, “You hope to return to the army before it reaches the Legion.”

His gaze locked on Aeren and held this time, still unreadable. “Yes.”

Thaedoren snorted. “My father said you would not be happy with our decision.”

Aeren let the anger he held inside flare for a moment. “I worked hard to arrange this meeting with the dwarren,” he said. He pushed off from the ground and slid into the saddle, controlling the horse with a few sharp tugs on the reins. “If there’s any chance at all to salvage something from it, I will.”

He turned his horse away, toward Eraeth, not giving Thaedoren a chance to respond. “Let’s move.”

Nine days later, the small party crested a rise in the plains, the depression where Aeren had first met with Garius below.

It was empty, the ground bare.

Aeren felt his heart shudder, even though he’d known the dwarren would not have arrived yet and would not have camped at the prescribed meeting place itself if they had. They’d ridden hard, as fast as Aeren could push the horses without compromising them, and managed to arrive a few days early. Thaedoren had said nothing, hadn’t hindered Aeren in any way, giving command of the party over to him without question, although he kept himself close, his influence felt at all times.

Now, the Tamaell Presumptive said, “Look,” and pointed toward the south.

There, on the horizon, a bank of dust angled away to the east, blown by the wind. Aeren squinted into the distance. “How far away are they?”

“Two days at the most,” Thaedoren said, without hesitation. He turned and barked orders to make camp, motioning to a place near where Aeren and the others had camped the first time they’d come here, close to the spring. When he turned back, he said, with the granite voice of the Tamaell, “We’ll wait for them here, as they expect.”

As the young Presumptive nudged his horse around and headed down off the rise, Aeren watched his receding back intently. Eraeth passed Thaedoren on his way toward Aeren on foot, the two exchanging a brief, formal nod.

Aeren dismounted as Eraeth arrived and handed over the reins of his horse.

“You aren’t happy,” his Protector said in greeting.

Aeren snorted. “I’m not. The Tamaell Presumptive has ordered us to wait for the dwarren to arrive.”

“We did arrive early. And the dwarren are close.”

When Aeren didn’t answer, Eraeth stepped up to his side, staring down at Thaedoren as he merged with the rest of the Phalanx and servants setting up the camp. As they watched, he ordered a group of servants to dismantle what they’d erected of a tent and begin setting it up in a different location, closer to the spring.

“What do you think of him?” Aeren asked. “Now that he’s returned. Now that we’ve traveled a small distance with him.”

Eraeth scowled. “He’s easy to anger. And he doesn’t listen well.”

“What Tamaell hasn’t been easy to anger?” Aeren countered with a small smile. “He’ll learn to listen. I think, in the end, he will be stronger than his father.”

“He already has the respect of the Phalanx. The Tamaell sending him to the border was a bold move.”

“We both know the Tamaell didn’t send him to the border to gain the Phalanx’s respect.”

Eraeth tactfully didn’t respond, a frown darkening his face, one hand rubbing the nose of Aeren’s mount when it nudged him from the side. “Will he be wiser than the Tamaell?”

Aeren stirred and glanced toward his Protector, eyebrow raised. “He asked intelligent questions about my preparations for this meeting, about what I thought we can expect. But we’ll find out when we meet with the dwarren.”

“I think,” the Tamaell Presumptive said, hesitating before turning to Aeren, tightening his hold on the reins of his mount, “I think the dwarren meant it when they requested this meeting.”

Aeren tried not to react to the look of surprise in the Tamaell Presumptive’s eyes. “They meant it. Do you think I would have asked the Tamaell to come here otherwise?”

Thaedoren didn’t respond, but his expression clearly said he thought Aeren had brought the Tamaell and the Evant out here for nothing. But he’d spent the last thirty years on the border, dealing with dwarren raids. As he turned away, steadying his horse, Aeren could see him reevaluating the situation, his gaze flickering over the meeting tent in the flat below and the dwarren that had amassed beyond.