Then all the other voices, all their knowledge and their suffering and joys were gone. He could not get in contact with them any more than he could get in contact with his liver: they were that ineluctably a part of him. But their strength was now his.

He turned away from the fallen Khnauronts, both dead now, and went to Morlock’s side of the hill.

There is no time in a match with the sword; that was one of the things Naevros loved about fighting. Each moment is an eternity leading to another.

But the night was darker, significantly darker, than it had been. He guessed his duel against the Khnauronts had taken some time. He was interested to see that Morlock had not killed even one of his opponents yet.

Naevros usually preferred sex with women, as often as he could get it, but he considered himself a connoisseur of male beauty. As such, he usually had little regard for Morlock, a man without commanding height or any other particular charm in his appearance or manner.

But what Morlock could make that misshapen body do was indeed remarkable. The strength he could command! The grace with which he could apply it! And there was something about his eyes. . . . Naevros had to admit that Aloê’s choice was not completely ridiculous.

Naevros watched with impartial interest as the crooked vocate slashed a dark, dripping wound in the sagging, leathery stomach of one of the Khnauronts. It healed visibly . . . but much slower than his enemy’s had. The second Khnauront fed off the first, extending his claw-faced tube toward the healing wound. But the second Khnauront had already been wounded in the eye, Naevros saw, and the first Khnauront was feeding off that. . . .

Why had Morlock not finished them off? Naevros wondered. Naevros felt a natural pride in his own abilities, but he knew those of his sparring partner equally well; surely Morlock could have finished off at least one of them by now.

As he watched Morlock watching them, he guessed that . . . that Morlock was curious. Yes, that was it. He was wounding them, watching them, waiting to see what would happen.

Naevros realized that here, at last, he had a chance to be free of his rival once and for all. He could, for instance, trip Morlock and walk away while the Khnauronts finished him off. No one could blame him: there were always casualties in war. And he would bring a secret that would help defeat the Khnauronts completely. Aloê would grieve, of course, and Naevros would have to wait. But he knew he could wait as long as he had to. This was his chance indeed.

He didn’t take it. He raised the claw-faced tube in his hand and drained the wounded Khnauronts. The torment and the ecstasy swept over him as before, but it was less distracting. There was a sense of satiation, almost of bloat.

Did the Khnauronts cultivate their starved, stringy frames to be more receptive to the stolen tal from their victims? Was the constant quest for this ecstasy what had gnawed away at their intelligence—their souls? For the first time, Naevros understood the Khnauronts: what they were, and why they did what they did. It wasn’t the hunger for food. It was the hunger for that: the burst of life that came from someone’s death. And now he knew that hunger himself.

The Khnauronts fell sprawling, losing grip on their weapons. Morlock advanced cautiously and severed the hands holding their tubes. He impaled the hands each through the wrist with his sword, like chunks of meat on a skewer. Then he carried the skewered hands, still gripping the claw-faced tubes, over to Naevros.

“Let’s go,” he whispered. His throat was dry; his face was wet; his stance was weary. Naevros felt for him the smug pity that the well-fed rich feel for the hungry poor.

“What are those?” Naevros said, gesturing at the hands. “Souvenirs?”

“The wise should see these things and learn from them,” Morlock said. “Noreê, Illion, the seers of New Moorhope.”

“But you don’t want to touch them.”

“No. You,” Morlock said, nodding at the tube in Naevros’ hand, “are a braver man than I am.”

Naevros remembered the cold, gray gaze as Morlock watched the Khnauronts feed on each other while he fought both for his life.

“You’ll do,” he told his friend and enemy.

They fled westward then, bearing their trophies and the news that would restore the Guard, at least for a little while.

CHAPTER SIX

The Hill of Storms

War was not a business at which the Graith of Guardians excelled. The Guard was supposed to keep enemies outside the borders, and the Wardlands did not indulge in wars of conquest.

An army needs a command structure, and the Graith was designed to provide nothing of the sort. All the vocates were free agents who could disregard direct orders even from the summoners, and the summoners were coequal in authority and reputation, at least in theory. Thains were bound to follow orders of senior Guardians, but even they were known to disobey. In fact, the most disobedient thains were viewed as having the most potential as vocates.

The force of Guardians that went north along the Whitewell, in response to the summons of Sharvetr Ûlkhyn, was an army replete with commanders and woefully short on common soldiers. The Summoner Earno was there, with an attendant cloud of thains and vocates. Aloê Oaij and Thea Stabtwice were there, and they had been joined in the jaws of the mountain pass by dry, dark Summoner Lernaion and fifty attendant thains.

In the end, it was Aloê and Thea who ended up leading the group by the simple expedient of getting up early and walking in the direction they thought most advisable. They listened politely to everyone who gave them advice in the course of the day, but they only conferred with each other.

That changed one morning on the slopes below Gray Town. The mountain village was completely abandoned—not in a panic, it seemed, and not because of attack from the Khnauronts (as Sharvetr had named them—as good a name as any). The Guardians spent the night indoors there, and the next morning they cautiously descended into Northhold.

They were negotiating a tricky path down a steep slope, dense with shik-needle trees, when one of the conifers spoke to then: “Rokhleni!”

Aloê and Thea both halted, and the trail of Guardians behind them did likewise.

A short stocky shape detached itself from the tree and walked up to them. It was a female dwarf, her dark, plaited hair streaked with gray. She was clad in mottled grayish green; there was a longbow and a quiver slung over her broad shoulders and a long knife in her belt.

“Harven Rynyrth!” called Aloê. “Well met, Rokhlan!” added Thea.

“Harven Rokhlanclef Aloê,” said Rynyrth kyr Theorn. They were harven to each other because Rynyrth was the daughter of Oldfather Tyr, and Morlock was his harven son. “And Rokhlan Thea. We are well met indeed, but not by accident. Eldest Vetrtheorn knew that Guardians would be travelling north to fight the Khnauronts, and he told us to meet you. I’m glad the Graith sent you two.”

“We sent ourselves,” Thea said.

“Yes, I see that,” Rynyrth replied with a half-smile, glancing up the slope at the trail full of Guardians. “Weidhkyrren!” she called out. “Greet your allies!”

The needle-thick trees gave birth to a company of short, stocky, militant dryads. Aloê’s guess was that their company had doubled in size.

The Weidhkyrren from Over Thrymhaiam are the huntresses and farmers of the underground realm. Aloê had come to know a few of them over the years, especially their leader Rynyrth, who she would without question want at her side if it came to a life-or-death fight. Vetr the Eldest of Theorn Clan was a steady, honest fellow. His sister Rynyrth was dangerous.