In Thy Name

Chapter 19 - The Sword of Ithirien

"Come to me. Follow the sword."

Sareb turned the words over in his head as they sat around the fire eating roasted meat with flatbread and the last of the pluma and amaeda from the desert.

If "the sword" was the Sword of Ithirien, the sword that spoke to the Sibyl and her followers, then it would make sense for the girl to be their guide—except that she didn't seem to have any intent to guide them anywhere.

"Follow the sword..."

The Sword, which apparently didn't exist anymore—but once, it had. Maybe...

"Where did the Sword come from?" Sareb said.

"There are many stories about how Ithirien acquired the Sword," Frostarrow said. "Some say he found it in a cave, or pulled it out of an old tree, or that it appeared in a dream or vision. Some say he went on a quest for it, others that he merely stumbled upon it. But—" He stared at the bread in his hand.

"What?"

"Well... All the stories agree that he paid a heavy price for the Sword. Lost his lover, his family, his tribe—something like that."

Sareb bit his lip against the unease that coiled in his belly. Lost his family, his tribe...

"One day, he simply walked out of the mist, bearing the Sword, and none could stand against him. He turned others with its power—he created the Gladiari. He amassed an army, conquered the Forest and the Desert. But he never found what he was looking for."

"What was that?"

Frostarrow turned toward Sareb, firelight gleaming on the dark depths of his eyes. "Even before the Sword took his soul, Ithirien's heart was broken. I don't know if he was seeking to mend it, or trying to escape, but he never succeeded." Frostarrow turned away. "Unless death was his escape."

Frostarrow's profile was burnished by the firelight, his eyes pools of darkness. Sareb wondered at the feeling with which he'd spoken of the ancient conqueror. And what are you trying to escape? he found himself about to say. But that was silly. Why should he care about Frostarrow's innermost feelings?

"All right, storytime's over." Stormwind stood up. "Let's get the brains on the hides before we retire. We don't want to sit around all day tomorrow waiting for them to set."

"Brains?" Sareb said, latching onto the distraction.

"Yep. Did you know that every animal possesses just the right amount of brains to tan its own hide?"

"Eugh," Sareb said, but as he watched the Tainian siblings spread out the hides and crack open the deer skulls, he realized this might be a useful skill to learn.

A little grudgingly, Sareb volunteered his folding pot to warm up the brains. Once they had been heated and rubbed into the hides, Frostarrow offered to wash the pot.

Stormwind was disposing of the rest of the carcasses, leaving Sareb alone in the camp. In the moment of quiet, he looked up at the sky. It was not the vast expanse of deep, almost-black blue that stretched like a great dome over the desert, but just a window among the branches and leaves, a swatch of greater darkness dotted randomly with unfamiliar stars.

He stood and walked up the mountain—they were about three quarters of the way up—until he stood on a shelf of rock, jutting out over the valley below. This was more like what he was used to, the sky arching over the land from horizon to horizon, though this sky was still shrunken, as the mountains rose up on all sides to meet it. In the valley itself, he saw faraway points of light, like fallen stars, and wondered where they would travel to. The spread of mountains was just as expansive as the desert, he realized, climbing away to all sides. Every place seemed like the whole world—but it was not; there was always another world, a few hundred leagues away, a few days' travel on his dragonhawk.

He looked up again at the sky. They would have to steer by the sun and moon, for he could not read the stars here. They were simply dots of light in the night sky. Although he thought he saw the Sword, or a constellation very much like it, twinkling at him from the northern sky, five bright points of light. It was so like the constellation of the Sword that he had been able to see from the Wadi al-Jaifa, that he found it difficult to believe that it was a coincidence.

Was Teshem still out there somewhere, looking at the same stars? Or was he now up among them, gone forever from the land of mortals?

Sareb shook off the sting of grief and returned to the camp, just as Frostarrow was returning with the pot. He thanked the Gladiar and put it away, then looked for the constellation. It was just visible over the treetops and around the bulk of the mountain if he stood at the lower, eastern end of their camp. He motioned the two Gladiari over, then pointed. "Is that the Sword?"

Frostarrow came to stand beside him, tilting his head toward Sareb's to follow the line of his arm. Stormwind did not come over, but merely nodded and said, "Yes, it's visible everywhere."

"The same constellation?" Sareb said.

Stormwind shrugged. Frostarrow said, "There is only one Sword."

"The Sword of Ithirien?"

"Yes. Wait—are you thinking what I'm thinking..."

"That this is the sword we should follow?"

"Ithirien's boots!" Stormwind said, turning to face them. "Of course! Why didn't we think of it before?" She came over to them, and they all stood together gazing at the five bright stars. "It seems to be north," Stormwind said. "We can start by working our way up the valley, and then see whether the direction changes."

Her obsidian stare was sharper than usual. "We'll have to travel by night to avoid being seen, so let's get going."

"What about Mongke and Otokui?" Frostarrow said. His face was pinched with concern. The two douloi had been meant to rejoin them along the road north of Dalaïda.

"We can't wait for them now." Stormwind's face softened somewhat. "I know Mongke has been with you since you were young. I'm sorry." She touched his arm. "If he and Otokui reach Dalaïda, he knows the rest of the way. Our best hope of seeing him again is to get home ourselves. He'll come find us there."

Kuya gazed down into the hard lines of his sister's face. Did she really believe that?

Did she even care?

The thought that maybe she didn't was like a punch to the gut. A punch all the more shocking because it had never before occurred to him that he cared.

Selengged cocked her head. Kuya knew what she was thinking—so much fuss about douloi?

She was right, of course. Mongke was replaceable. It was silly to worry about him getting lost or captured in the desert, or even that he might simply decide not to return to the North when he reached Dalaïda. Of course he would return if he could.

Kuya nodded, and Selengged turned and strode back toward the camp.

"Let's pack up. We're leaving now."