Karis swung to see the warriors scrambling out of the gully. One still had her arrow in his neck, and she watched him tear it clear and throw it aside.
Then she was over the crest and out of sight of the pursuing horsemen. Outpacing their pursuers, the group rode on for an hour heading south-west. At the top of a high hill Karis pulled up and looked back. From here she could see for miles; the pursuit had been abandoned. Leaning over Warain’s neck, she stroked her fingers through his white mane. ‘I am proud of you,’ she whispered. A middle-aged man, wearing the armour of a Corduin lancer, approached her. ‘My thanks to you, Karis,’ he said. ‘The Gods alone know what would have become of us had you not been to hand.’
She remembered him from her time in the Duke’s service – a good man, sound and cautious, but not lacking in courage. ‘What were they, Capel?’ she asked him.
‘They are Daroth. And I fear the world has changed.’
Chapter Six
Ardlin stood at his high balcony window, gazing out towards the north. The trembling had stopped now, but the fear remained. The dream had been vivid, rich with colour: the colour of blood, red and angry. Ardlin had found himself floating above the scene, watching a group of soldiers attacked by Daroth warriors. There was a fat officer, who fell from his horse and tried to run. The Daroth caught him and stripped him naked; then they dug a fire-pit. What followed was stomach-wrenchingly awful. Ardlin had jerked awake, his face and body sweat-drenched.
At first he had felt an overpowering sense of relief. It was a dream. Just a dream – born of his fascination with the ancient races. But as the morning wore on his concern grew. He was a magicker with a talent for healing; he knew spells, and could concoct potions. Above it all, however, he was a mystic. A Sensitive, as the Elders would have said.
Ardlin had tried to put the dream behind him, but it nagged and tugged at his thoughts.
At last, around mid-morning, he sat on the floor of his sanctum and induced the Separation Trance. Floating free of his body he flew to the north, across the rich hills and valleys towards the mountains of the desert. He did not consciously direct his flight,
but allowed the memory of the dream to draw him on.
In the hills he found the fire-pit, and the remains of several corpses. The head of the fat officer lay beneath a bush, dead eyes staring up at the sky, flies crawling across the bloody stump that lay exposed beneath the chin.
Ardlin fled for the sanctuary of his body.
The Daroth were back.
For thirty years Ardlin had been a collector of ancient tomes and artefacts, and had spent many long, delightful hours studying the clues of the past. His main fascination had been with the Oltor. No-one now living had any idea how their society had been structured, nor how their culture had flourished. Ancient writings merely stated that they were a gentle golden-skinned race, tall and slender, and gifted with an extraordinary talent for music. It was said they could make crops grow through the magic of their harps. According to one tome, it was with this magic that they inadvertently opened two gateways – one to the desolate world of the Daroth, the other to the world of the Eldarin.
Ardlin remembered the story well. The Oltor had welcomed the new races, holding the barrier open so that great numbers of Daroth could move through. Their own land had become a desert, and the Daroth were dying in their multitudes.
The Oltor granted them a huge tract of land in the north, so that they could grow crops and build cattle-herds, in order to send the food back to their own world. But more and more Daroth came through the gateway, demanding ever more land. Being gentle and trusting, the Oltor allowed the migration to continue.
Several hundred Eldarin also came through, and built a city in the southern mountains, near the sea.
As the years passed the Daroth grew in numbers, and the land they had been granted became less fertile. Forests had been ruthlessly cut away, exposing the earth to the full force of the hot summer winds which seared the grass and blew away the topsoil. Over-grazed and badly used, the grassland began to fail. Then the Daroth dammed the three major rivers, bringing drought to the Oltor.