to know of the boy’s condition, and that his father would be open to your bargain.”
“The ways of Heaven are ever mysterious,” the Princess said, arching an eyebrow.
“Really?” Vaelin’s gaze tracked to Luralyn’s rigid back.
“Sherin warned me you always saw more than anyone realised.” The Princess laughed with a note of genuine delight before her humour faded and she leaned closer. “It matters not how we came to be here, only that we are.”
“And where, exactly, is here?”
“The Great Tor,” Luralyn replied, hauling on her reins to bring the cart to a halt. “Heart of the Iron Steppe and home to the Sepulchre of the Unseen.”
Vaelin got to his feet, gazing at the vast wedge of stone rising from the plain a mile distant.
“Also,” the Stahlhast woman added with a sorrowful note, “where you will most probably meet your end, Thief of Names.”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
Derka allowed himself to be saddled without demur, saving his revenge for when Vaelin put a foot in the saddle whereupon the stallion reared. Vaelin managed to disentangle his foot before the grey wheeled about, but the beast still contrived to catch him with his rump. Vaelin sprawled in the dirt, much to the amusement of the watching Stahlhast.
Swatting dirt from his trews as he got to his feet, he cast a questioning glance at the Princess. “Your song appears weak,” he observed.
“It bound him,” she said with a shrug. “But it didn’t change him.”
Vaelin approached Derka with a determined stride. Catching hold of the reins, he pulled the stallion’s head around, looking directly into his baleful eye.
“Enough!” Vaelin told him, holding his gaze. Derka snorted and stamped a hoof but didn’t rear again when Vaelin mounted up.
“You should have whipped him,” Luralyn advised, now mounted on her own horse, a tall white stallion. “Still too much of the colt in him.”
“I think I like him as he is,” Vaelin replied, running a hand along Derka’s neck and causing him to toss his head in irritation.
Luralyn shrugged and kicked her horse into motion, setting off towards the Great Tor at a fast gallop. Sherin and the Jade Princess quickly followed on their ponies whilst the Stahlhast guards closed in around Vaelin.
“Beskar!” one of them snarled, jerking his head impatiently.
Vaelin sat still in the saddle, blinking placidly at the man’s reddening face. He was a veteran warrior with pale channels running through a thick blond beard, and clearly unused to disobedience from captives. “Beskar, uhm levrik!” he said, hand going to the sabre on his belt.
Vaelin remained still, watching the blond man half draw his sabre and then stop. The scars tracing through his beard became paler still as his features darkened with impotent fury.
“So, you have orders,” Vaelin said. “No harm comes to the Thief of Names.”
He gave a bland smile and spurred Derka into a gallop, the encircling Stahlhast scattering from his path.
Derka proved a fast mount, easily closing the distance to Sherin and the Princess. As they drew nearer to the Great Tor, they passed by an increasing number of encampments. Each was roughly the same size as the one where Skeltir Varnko held sway, but some were much larger. The camps grew into a vast sprawl of tents surrounding a ring of tall free-standing monoliths that formed a circle around the tor. Uncountable Stahlhast were visible amongst the tents, most going about their chores whilst a few stood to watch the foreigners ride past.
A people great in number, Vaelin concluded as his eyes roved the densely populated tents. But he doubted even this many could hope to take the lands of the Merchant Kings, whatever recent triumphs they might have scored.
Luralyn slowed as they neared the circle of monoliths, guiding them through the maze of encampments to the eastern flank of the tor. She reined to a halt before two huge slabs of stone, taller than the others by several yards, and dismounted. A young man stood between the two stones, well-muscled arms crossed and a lopsided grin on his face. Unlike most of the other Stahlhast men Vaelin had seen, he wore no beard, and his features, smooth and youthfully handsome, were free of scars.
The Mestra-Skeltir? Vaelin wondered but quickly discounted the notion when he saw the unconcealed disdain on Luralyn’s face as she strode towards the young man. He was also several years her junior.
“Babukir,” she said before continuing in Chu-Shin, “what are you doing here?”
“You know I can never resist a celebration, dear sister,” he replied, a frown