The Wide World's End by James Enge Read Free Book Online

grave.” She drummed her fingers thrice on the wood of her songbow. “Not in this war, we hope, Oldfather Tyr.”
    Aloê did not disagree with any of this, but there were more urgent matters to discuss. “Then we stand in the east and await the retreat of the Khnauronts?”
    â€œYou stab at the matter’s heart,” Rynyrth said agreeably.
    â€œThen I recommend we take up station on and around the Hill of Storms,” Aloê said. “It is the tallest of the gravehills—best for watching, best for defense, and it commands the passes to the south, if the Khnauronts try to flee that way.”
    â€œYou speak my thought, harven .”
    â€œAgreed,” said Thea.
    The summoners said nothing, but turned away to call their junior Guardians back to the march. The red-cloaked vocates among them had as much right as anyone else to participate in the decision just made, but none of them seemed to have been interested. Aloê was often struck at how often the independence of the vocates was merely theoretical. As soon as most Guardians got the right to stand among the Graith at Station and wear the red cloaks of vocates, they sought out one of the summoners to follow, as if they were still thains. It was odd to her . . . but in this case it made for a quicker result.
    They pressed their march and halted at last in twilight on the dark shoulders of the Hill of Storms, or Tunglskin, as the dwarves called it. Thains, vocates, and weidhkyrren sat side by side, drank water or bitter ale from bottles, and munched cold provisions. There was not much talk.
    Aloê, Thea, Rynyrth, and the summoners stood atop the hill, in front of the Broken Altar. Once the first and greatest of the Corain had been imprisoned here, but he had been slain at last and in truth during the Year of Fire by a bewildered young man whom Aloê had later married. She took some comfort from that thought but didn’t speak of it. She spent part of the time going through her quiver and making sure the gravebolts all bore the same mark as her songbow: a tangle of curves with a sharp protrusion or two—something like a rose. There was little chance her harven -kin would have made a mistake and included the wrong gravebolt in her quiver . . . but it is the kind of life-losing chance that sometimes happens in combat. Anyway, there was little else to do.
    As night arose, the three moons opened their eyes: Horseman glowering and red in the west, Chariot perhaps halfway up the vault of the sky, with Trumpeter rising, searingly bright in the west.
    â€œ Khai, gradara ,” whispered Rynyrth to the rising moon.
    As if in response, the banefires were kindled on the gravehills—but not on all of them. There was a cloud of darkness in the heart of the burning blue graves.
    â€œRokhlan Earno,” Rynyrth said, “why do they kill the dead Corain? We know it is so because the Guardians said it in their message, and because we in Over Thrymhaiam watched the banefires go out, one by one. But we don’t understand. Why kill the dead?”
    â€œDead is a relative term,” Lernaion began, but Earno, talking over him, said, “Incidental, I think. The banefires are tal-sinks—they are meant to drain away the tal of the dead Corain. Unfortunately, they learned to master them and use them to drink the tal of living beings nearby. It is the tal implicit in the banefire web that the Khnauronts crave. We think they live on tal as much or more than they live on flesh.”
    Aloê could feel Lernaion’s unspoken anger, Earno’s obvious indifference. There was a cleft between the summoners, that much was clear.
    She turned her insight outward, to the darkness in the gravehills. She saw no smoke in the sky, tasted no distant fire on the cold wind. If the Khnauronts had made camp, it was far away indeed.
    Rynyrth, too, had been looking into the dark gravehills, and now she lay down on the face of