North of the Surag River, the road threaded its way up the narrow strip of land between Lake Thaylambar to the west and the Surague Escarpment, the cliffs at the base of the Sunrise Mountains, to the east. The land was wilder, heath interspersed with stands of pine and dotted with crumbling ruined towers, and sparsely settled. The slaves and their keepers marched an entire morning without seeing anyone, and when someone finally did appear, it was just a lone goatherd, who, wary of strangers, immediately scurried into a thicket. Even tax stations, the ubiquitous fortresses built to collect tolls and help preserve order throughout the realm, were few and far between.
Tammith had never before ventured farther than a day's walk from Bezantur, but she'd heard that the northern half of Thay was almost all alike, empty, undeveloped land where even freemen found it difficult to eke out a living. How much more difficult, then, must it be to endure as a slave, particularly one accustomed to the teeming cities of the south?
Thus she understood why so many of her fellow thralls grew more sullen and despondent with each unwilling step they took, and why Yuldra, the girl she'd sought to comfort just before the Red Wizards came and bought the lot of them, kept sniffling and knuckling her reddened eyes. In her heart, Tammith felt just as dismayed and demoralized as they did.
But she also believed that if one surrendered to such emotions, they would only grow stronger, so she squeezed Yuldra's shoulder and said, "Come on, don't cry. It's not so bad."
Yuldra's face twisted. "It is."
"This country is strange to me, too, but I'm sure they have towns somewhere in the north, and remember, the men who bought us are Red Wizards. You don't think they live in a tent out in the wilderness, do you?"
"You don't know that they're taking us where they live," the adolescent retorted, "because they haven't said. I've had other masters, and they weren't so close-mouthed. I'm scared we're going somewhere horrible."
"I'm sure that isn't so." In reality, of course, Tammith had no way of being certain of any such thing, but it seemed the right thing to say. "Let's not allow our imaginings to get the best of us. Let's play another game."
Yuldra sighed. "All right."
The next phase of their journey began soon after, when they finally left the northernmost reaches of Lake Thaylambar behind, and rolling plains opened before them. To Tammith's surprise, the procession then left the road where, though she eventually spotted signs that others had passed this way before them, there was no actual trail of any sort.
Nor did there appear to be anything ahead but rolling grassland, and beyond that, visible as a blurry line on the horizon, High Thay, the mountainous tharch that jutted upward from the central plateau as it in turn rose abruptly from the lowlands. From what she understood, many a Red Wizard maintained a private citadel or estate among the peaks, no doubt with hordes of slaves to do his bidding, but her sense of geography, hazy though it was, suggested the procession wasn't heading there. If it was, the warlocks had taken about the most circuitous route imaginable.
Suddenly three slaves burst from among their fellows and ran, scattering as they fled. Tammith's immediate reflexive thought was that, unlike Yuldra and herself, the trio had figured out where they all were going.
Unfortunately, they had no hope of escaping that fate. The Red Wizards could have stopped them easily with spells, but they didn't bother. Like their masters, some of the guards were mounted, and they pounded after the fugitives. One warrior flung a net as deftly as any fisherman she'd ever watched plying his trade in the waters off Bezantur, and a fugitive fell tangled in the mesh. Another guard reached out and down with his lance, slipped it between a thrall's legs, and tripped him. A third horseman leaned out of the saddle, snatched a handful of his target's streaming, bouncing mane of hair and simply jerked the runaway off his feet.
Once the guards herded the fugitives back to the procession, every slave had to suffer his masters' displeasure. The overseers screamed and spat in their faces, slapped, cuffed, and shoved them, and threatened savage punishments for all if anyone else misbehaved. Yuldra broke down sobbing the moment a warrior approached her. The Red Wizards looked vexed and impatient with the delay the exercise in discipline required.
The abuse was still in progress when Tammith caught sight of a horseman galloping steadily nearer. His wheat-blond hair gleamed dully in the late afternoon sunlight, and something about the set of his shoulders and the way he carried himself-
Yes! Perhaps she shouldn't jump to conclusions when he was still so far away, but in her heart she knew. It was Bareris, after she'd abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again.
She wanted to cry his name, run to meet him, until she realized, with a cold and sudden certainty, that what she really ought to do was warn him off.
Outside in the streets of Eltabbar, the celebration had an edge to it. The mob was happy enough to gobble free food, guzzle free ale and wine, and watch the parades, dancers, mummers, displays of transmutation, and other forms of entertainment, all of it provided to celebrate the election of Samas Kul to the office of zulkir. Yet Aoth had felt the underlying displeasure and dismay at the tidings that in the east, a Thayan army had met defeat, and in consequence, undead marauders were laying waste to the countryside. He suspected the festival would erupt into rioting after nightfall.
Still, he would rather have been outside in the gathering storm than tramping at Nymia Focar's side through the immense basalt ziggurat called the Flaming Brazier, reputedly the largest temple of Kossuth the Firelord in all the world. That was because it was entirely possible that the potentate who'd summoned the tharchion had done so with the intention of placing the blame for the recent debacle in Pyarados. Since she, the commander who'd lost to the undead, was the obvious candidate, perhaps she'd dragged Aoth along to be scapegoat in her place.
Maybe, he thought, he even deserved it. If only he'd spotted the lacedons-
He scowled the thought away. He hadn't been the only scout in the air, and nobody else had seen the creatures either. Nor could you justly condemn anyone for failing to anticipate an event that had never happened before.
Not that justice was a concept that automatically sprang to mind where zulkirs and Red Wizards were concerned.
Aoth and his superior strode in dour silence through yellow and orange high-ceilinged chambers lit by countless devotional fires. The heat of the flames became oppressive, and the wizard evoked the magic of a tattoo to cool himself. Nymia lacked the ability to do the same, and perspiration gleamed on her upper lip.
Eventually they arrived at high double doors adorned with a scene inlaid in jewels and precious metals: Kossuth, spiked chain in hand, smiting his great enemy Istishia, King of the Water Elementals. A pair of warrior monks stood guard at the sides of the portal and swung the leaves open to permit the new arrivals to enter the room beyond.
It was a chamber plainly intended for discussion and disputation, though it too had its whispering altar flames glinting on golden icons. Seated around a table in the center of the room was a more imposing gathering of dignitaries than Aoth had ever seen before even at a distance, let alone close up. Let alone taking any notice of his own humble existence. In fact, four of the five were zulkirs.