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we must do it for him,"
"You would do it?" I asked, "Could you slay Caril-
lon's son?"
Rowan smiled a little. "I am pledged to the Mujhar of
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Homana, and after that to his son. Carillon's time is done; Donal is Mujhar.
And the son I will serve is you."
I grinned. "You will be an old, old man."
My father grimaced. "And I will be a dead one. Let us speak of something
else." He turned as if to step out from behind the table and off the dais, but
one of his guard approached.
269
"My lord, a message has arrived." He held out the sealed parchment. "It was to
be given to you at once."
"My thanks." He broke the wax and unfolded the creased parchment. And then he
looked at Rowan.
"Ships," he said. "Solindish ships, sighted off the Crystal
Isle. Hondarth is in danger."
"And so it begins again." Rowan wiped and sheathed his bloodied sword. "My
lord, how shall you deploy us?"
"I will do it as Carillon once did, when he was endan-
gered on two fronts. You and I will go to Hondarth. My sons I will send to
Solinde."
Rowan smiled a little. "And I will say of them what once I said of you: they
are unschooled in warfare and the leading of men."
"Aye, but they will leam. I send the Cheysuli with them."
Gods, I thought, Solinde.
My father looked at his sons. "I cannot put it more plainly: in the morning
you go to war."
Gods, I thought, Solinde.
270
One
"Rujho get down\"
Even as I lunged out of the saddle I felt the nip of arrow at shoulder,
plucking at the leather of my jerkin.
My foot was half-caught in the stirrup; the horse, shying a single step from
the wail and whistle of arrows, dragged me off-balance. I fell, twisting
awkwardly as I-tried to free my foot before my knee was wrenched out of its
proper alignment. Heard hum and hiss of additional feath-
ered shafts; jerked my head aside as fletching dragged at a lock of tawny
hair.
"Get down," lan repeated.
"I am down." Irritably, I jerked my boot from the stirrup and rolled,
flattening on my belly, scowling at my brother. Like me, he lay belly-down in
the thin dry grass of the Solindish plain, barren in the first gray days of
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%20Track%20Of%20The%20White%20Wolf%20(v%20UC).txt winter. "Where are they? How
many?"
lan, peering westward through the screen of grass, shook his head. He pulled
his warbow out from under a hip, rolled sideways to take an arrow from his
quiver, nocked it. Slowly he rose, hunching behind the thigh-
high grass. He blended perfectly with the stalks and scrubby vegetation:
amber, ivory, sienna; no greens, no browns, no richness, only the dull saffron
of banished fell. The land was made bland in brassy sunlight as it burned
through the flat light of a winter's day.
Just beyond lan, at his left, crouched Tasha, chestnut indistinctaess
dissected by slanting stalks. Nothing moved to indicate she lived, not even
the tip of her tail. She was stillness itself; I was reminded, oddly, of the
wooden lion in Homana-Mujhar, crouching on the dais.
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Serri?
273
He came, even as I thought of him, dropped low in the slouching walk of a wolf
who skulks, avoiding contact with the enemy. His tail was clamped at hocks,
curving inward to brush tip against loins, protecting genitals.
Tipped ears lay back against his skull. He was hackled from ruff to rump.
Beside me, he crouched, much as Tasha crouched. He stared at the distances.
Ihlini, lir. Ahead.
I looked at once at lan, intending to tell him; saw the grim set of his mouth
and realized there was no need for me to speak. Tasha had already relayed the
information.
Ihlini. At last. After two months in Solinde, entangled in skirmishes that did
little but waste our time as well as wasting lives we were to meet the true
enemy in this war. Not the Solindish, though they fought with fierce
determination. No. Ihlini. Strahan's minions, who served
Asar-Suti.
Ihlini- And it meant lan and I were summarily stripped of our Cheysuli gifts.
Even now I could feel the interference in the link with
Serri- A numbing, tingling sensation, faint but decidedly present, lifting the
hair on my arms, my neck, my legs.
Irritability: something insinuated itself within the link I
shared with Serri, shunting the power aside. It was as if someone had split a
candleflame in two, snuffing one half entirely . . . spilling the other half
into a darkness so deep even the light was swallowed up. I could feel the
power draining away into the earth, leaving me, going back into its mother.
And I was not certain it would return.
I shivered. How eerie that the gods give us the gifts of the earth magic, then
take them away when we are faced by the Ihlini. . . .
How disconcerting that we are stripped of our greatest
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greatest enemy.
"More than Ihlini," lan muttered. "They do not use the bow. They leave that to
others."
"Atvians?"
"Atvian bowmen are perhaps the most dangerous in existence."
"Except for the Cheysuli."
lan cast me a glance. "Do you forget? There are only two of us. I am the last
to decry our warrior skills, rujho, 274
but I am also the first to face realities. Judging by the number of arrows
loosed, we are badly outnumbered."
"Only for the moment. The camp is not far from here I will send Serri for
reinforcements."
lan nodded grimly. The link no longer functioned nor-
mally, but I trusted Serri's instincts better than my own.
As I put my hand on his shoulder, the wolf rose, turned, loped away, heading
eastward. Toward the Homanan encampment.
For two incredibly long months we had been in Solinde, breaching the borders
and advancing steadily until we were easily three weeks from the Homanan
border. From
Mujhara, farther yet. And from Hondarth, where our father remained, we were at
least a two-months' ride.
We had come in with mostly Cheysuli, but Homanan troops had followed on our
heels. It was not war such as
I had expected, being comprised primarily of border skirmishes and raids by
quick-striking SoUndish rebels, but I soon learned that death was death,
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regardless of its manifestation.
Carillon's methods, one of the captains had told me. It was what defeated
Bellam when Carillon came home from exile. If nothing else, the SoUndish have
learned in the intervening years.
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