The riders ignored the fleeing boy and formed a circle around the villagers. One of them dismounted and walked up to Barin. The warrior was more than seven feet tall, huge across the shoulder. His face was flat, the bone of his ridged nose flowing up over his hairless cranium. The eyes were huge and black, showing no evidence of a pupil, and the beaked mouth was a curious M-shape, curving downward, lipless and cruel.
The creature loomed over the farmer, and a series of guttural clicks came from its mouth. Barin blinked and licked his lips nervously. ‘I… I do not understand you,’ he said. The creature paused, then made a motion with his hand, touching his own lipless mouth and then pointing to Barin. ‘What is it you want?’ asked Barin. The creature nodded vigorously, then gestured him to continue.
‘I do not know what to say, nor whether you can understand my words. I fear you cannot. We are all villagers here, and we came to see the miracle of the desert. We mean no harm to anyone. We are peaceful people. The reason we came so far north was to avoid the wars that plague our lands.’ Barin spoke on for some time, his eyes shifting nervously from the monster before him to the other riders who sat motionless. After some time the creature before him lifted his hand. He spoke, but the words were strange and – largely – meaningless. But there were some familiar sounds now. He seemed to be asking Barin a question. Barin shook his head. The monster motioned him to speak again and he did so, telling them of problems with crops, of raising buildings on marsh land, of the plague that stopped short of their village but almost obliterated three others. Just as he was running out of things to say, the monster spoke again.
‘What are you?’ it asked, the voice deep and harsh, the dialect perfectly pronounced.
‘We are villagers from the south. We mean no harm, sir.’
‘You serve the Eldarin?’
‘No, sir. We serve the Duke of Corduin. The Eldarin are no more; there was a war and they . . . disappeared. Their lands became a desert, like this one . ..’ He tailed off lamely.
‘A desert, you say? What is the desert?’
‘Barren .. . empty . . . devoid of life. No water or earth. No grass or trees. That is a desert. Until this very morning the desert was all around here. Red stone, not a handful of earth for thousands of square miles. But today – and my son saw this – a great black cloud rose up and everything . . . the city, the trees, flowed from it. That’s why we came here.’
The huge warrior stood silently for a moment. ‘There is much here to think on,’ he said at last. ‘And our mastery of your language is … not good. This morning the sun rose .. . wrong. I think you . . . truth speak. Eldarin did this to us with … magic.’
‘You are mastering the language wonderfully, sir,’ said Barin. ‘And with such speed . . . swiftness. In my judgement that is amazing.’
‘We have talent for tongues,’ said the creature. ‘Your … people . . . killed Eldarin?’
‘Yes. Well … no one knows what happened to them. Their land was destroyed. Our army was there to fight them, but what happened there was the . . . opposite of what happened here. The grass and trees and water disappeared. So did their cities.’
‘You and I will . . . discuss . . . this further. But let us deal first with matters we can make judgement upon. Which of you here is the strongest?’
There was silence as the villagers stood by, frightened. ‘I am,’ said the smith at last, stepping forward.
The leader approached him, towering over Yordis by more than a foot. ‘What is your race called?’ he asked.
‘We are just . . . men,’ the smith answered.
The leader called to one of his riders, who dismounted and approached. ‘Fight him,’ the leader ordered Yordis.
‘We are not here to fight, sir,’ put in Barin. ‘We are none of us warriors.’