Chapter-3-1

⁠—⁠—⁠— I ⁠—⁠—⁠—

In the pre-dawn hours of the same Nospherus morning on which the tribes of the Sem assembled for war, the Mongauli invaders were setting up camp in the vast wasteland of bleak and broken desert. Having crossed the Kes River two nights before and marched through the following day and night, they had finally been given orders to stop just as the false dawn was glimmering in the east. Wearily the Mongauli troops broke formation and spread out the thick woven blankets they carried in their packs and saddlebags. These would be their only bed-ding for the duration of the expedition. The cavalry gave the horses some of their precious water, and after the animals had been fed, the soldiers sat down to eat. Here and there grain balls were being kneaded, and dried meat was passed around. The only soldiers not resting were those on watch. They paced around the perimeter of the camp, crossbows in hand, watching in all directions across the vast wildlands.

From where the commanders had chosen to stop, nothing but rock and sand could be seen, all the way to the bumps of low mountains that marked the bland horizon. Crossing the Kes, the army had borne due east, and were it not still dark, they would have seen the Kanan Mountains farther eastward, while to the far north the lumps of the Ashgarns would have been visible, white beneath their eternal caps of snow. The Ashgarns seemed frightfully far away and mysterious on their march during the last day. The highest mountains the soldiers had ever seen, they were indeed the roof of the world. A considerable distance before the Kanan range, a few strangely shaped rocky crags stuck up from the desert, the only anchors for the eye in a vast sea of sand. These were the very same low, rocky mountains where the Sem tribes hid and made their villages—but this, of course, the Mongauli army did not know. Yet their commanders had given them orders to head straight for those mountains, and so they had done, like an iron needle drawn toward a lodestone.

Still garbed in their painted armor, the soldiers now set up camp in a pattern of tight concentric circles which, from the sky, must have looked like a giant four-colored flower. In the very middle of the camp was a giant pavilion of sheepskin. Atop its six-sided roof flapped the tasseled flag of the Lady of Mongaul. Pages carrying orders moved in and out of the pavilion, while busy attendants to the lady disappeared inside carrying various containers and soft blankets they had taken from the train of pack horses. Inside the pavilion, the captains of the army, summoned to receive their latest orders, stood waiting for their lady-general to speak.

This was no concern of the knights and foot soldiers outside, whose greatest desire was rest; they stole time as they could to curl up and try to nap in the dry, thin twilight of the Nospherus dawn. The troops were filled with unease, for everywhere they looked, they saw twisted howling faces in the sand, phantasms from the legends and stories they had heard about the horrid denizens of the desert. The men on patrol found themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, tormented by visions of Sem warriors in warpaint bearing stone axes, attackers who would rush like demons across the shifting sands and sneak up during a moment’s inattention. The sentries slipped and stumbled in the sand, which was a dust so fine that one could grab a handful one moment and be left holding nothing the next.

More than half of the Mongauli soldiers were originally members of the Marches patrol and came from the keeps of Alvon, Tauride, and Talos. They at least were somewhat accustomed to seeing the ashen wasteland in which they now stood, though they had mostly gazed on it only from the other side of the Kes. All but a few of them had seen a Sem warrior before, and they knew of the strange and terrible creatures that made Nospherus their home. But none amongst them had ever been further into the wastes than a day’s journey on horseback.

There were stories that had spread through the Marches of people who were drawn by some inexplicable need to cross the wildlands. These stories, or legends, were mostly of the sort in which a youth would leave his home in Torus and cross the Kes, never to be seen again. Perhaps a band of merchants would go in search of the abandoned city of Kanan, driven by a mad obsession to find its rumored stores of gold. Tales of adventurers, and outlaws, and dreamers, they all had one thing in common: failure in the end and despair. If one believed all the tales, there were quite a few humans who had ventured deeper into the wildlands than the soldiers were now, but not once in the long history of Nospherus had any of these returned.

Of course, even those soldiers who had come from Torus, which was at a safe remove from the Marches, knew the stories, too. Wary of punishment, they did not speak their fears aloud, but in the gloom of the night, the Mongauli officers and men put mouth to ear and ear to mouth and cursed their ill fortune that they had to partake in an expedition so reckless. They shook their heads at the audacity of the whole thing and the direction of their own fate. Some of the more superstitious among them wondered in hushed voices about the evil spirits that must have possessed their commanders to make them think of such a foolhardy plan.

The unease of the troops also hung on the minds of the captains now gathered in the general’s pavilion.

“Please allow me to ask a question.” The one who spoke was Count Marus, lord of Tauride Castle and leader of two thousand blue knights.

“What is it, Marus?” Lady Amnelis, General of the Right and the daughter of Archduke Vlad, fixed the captain of the blue with a sharp stare. She was in a foul temper and not inclined to be indulgent. This had been the case since the march began, though it was unlikely that Amnelis herself knew the true source of her unease. In fact, her foul mood went back to her encounter with the strange, leopard-headed warrior and the twins of Parros. She had been roundly insulted by them, by prisoners in her own pavilion! And then, they had escaped.

Now she and her captains were gathered around a planning table upon which she had laid out a large map of Nospherus, inked in black on a giant sheet of sheepskin parchment. In several places there were red and blue markings.

Standing across from the lady-general, the commanders of the invading army looked down at the map intently, none wanting to draw a cold look from the archduke’s daughter. On the far right stood Count Marus, the only one meeting her gaze. Next to him was Irrim, second-in-command at Talos Keep and leader of two thousand black knights. On Irrim’s other side stood Captain Tangard, who had command of the footmen from Talos. Next to him were Leegan, son of Count Ricard the keep-lord of Alvon, and young Astrias. The “Red Lion of Gohra” was burning with shame and eager to vindicate himself after returning alive from battle with the Sem with only a handful of his troop. Finally, Count Vlon and Baron Lindrot, leaders of the white directly under Amnelis, stood off to the side.

The lady-general held a haughty pose, her blond hair flowing like a river of gold over her shoulders. Gajus Runecaster lurked in the shadows behind her. Next to him was the white knight Feldrik. And there was one more sitting silently in the gloom of the pavilion. None of the captains knew who he was or where he had come from.

The stranger had been with them from the beginning of the march, riding the whole way concealed in a palanquin with long curtains of cloth hanging down on all four sides, like those used to carry women in the eastern lands. None of the Mongauli soldiers had known who or what was inside. The cloth was too thick to peek through, and they had whispered quietly amongst themselves and taken bets on whose guess would prove to be correct. But none could say with any certainty who the passenger might be.

Even the captains were full of curiosity, for they had been told nothing about the mysterious guest who now sat in the gloom. He had been one of the last to cross the Kes, and had been surrounded by white knights afterward, riding abreast of Amnelis’ horse. But even though they had stopped for short breaks many times, the flaps of the palanquin had never opened.

When the captains first entered the pavilion and saw him standing with Amnelis, they had looked up expectantly, thinking that the guessing was finally over. But they had been disappointed. Since exiting the palanquin, the mysterious figure had kept a large hood over his face. A thick robe and cloak wrapped around his body so tightly that not a bit of him showed.

The guest’s outfit was similar to the garb that Caster Gajus wore. The Mongauli captains were confronted by a peculiar tableau: two black gods of death standing to either side of the golden goddess of the dawn that was Amnelis. Still, even Gajus showed his weathered ugly face from under his hood, and he held his paper-thin hands out under his cloak and crossed them meditatively atop his chest, while the other one, whom they now thought must be a spellcaster, held his hands deep within the folds of his robes and never raised his head, so that his eyes met no one’s from underneath that bulky hood. This piqued the curiosity of the captains even further, and they began to wonder if there was even a human being under those deep black robes.

Count Marus shot his eyes in the direction of the stranger, then hurriedly turned them away with a flustered look, as though he had seen something he should not have.

“Please let me ask a question,” he said, repeating his request to the lady-general. “We lords of Mongaul received due orders to join under your command, and so we have, bringing much of the Marches patrol with us on this expedition into Nospherus. But still we have not been told what the Golden Scorpion Palace has in mind for us, what objective has brought this sizable force here to this wasteland. We do not even know how long this expedition will last!” The count’s voice rose at the end, perhaps a bit too much.

“I will tell you all in due time,” Amnelis answered curtly. “As I believe I have said to you already, Count Marus.” Her voice was icy and flat.

“But when will that be, my lady?” the count pressed, undaunted by the General of the Right, who was easily young enough to be his own daughter. “At least, tell our purpose for being here, and give us a general idea of how long we must be absent from our posts in the Mongauli Marches.”

Amnelis did not answer. A slight look of hesitation passed over her fair, noble features.

“General,” he persisted. Of the captains with whom he stood, he was the oldest, and he held the highest rank among the Gohran nobility, that of count. “The soldiers are uneasy, and when we who lead them are ourselves uncertain, they will be driven to further worry.”

“Are the soldiers of Mongaul not the hands and feet of Mongaul, content to do what the mind tells them, as they have sworn to do?” asked Amnelis. “And must I clear where I go and what I do with all of my soldiers before I act?”

“General…” the white knight Feldrik spoke from behind her, trying to calm the supreme head of his order.

Count Marus took a deep breath. “That is not the case,” he said, also trying to calm her. “Still, in order to ease the soldiers’ fears, we must give them at least a modicum of information. They are, to say the least, curious about our destination. It troubles them to be this deep into the wildlands of Nospherus, following paths no army has tread in a land from which no one has returned.”

“At first we believed,” broke in Leegan, trying to be helpful, “that our expedition was a campaign to punish the Sem who so craftily attacked Stafolos Keep. Clearly, we must uphold the authority of Mongaul.” The face of the young viscount, the son of Count Ricard, looked much like his father’s. “But now we worry if it is wise to go so deep into the wildlands like this looking for the Sem villages.”

“There is no need for worry.” Amnelis waved a slender hand, irritated. Yet she knew it was required of her to explain the purpose of the great invasion ere long. Indeed, she had spared the time for this meeting of the captains for just that reason. This was the hour, when all was quiet as dawn broke over the camp. “Very well,” she said. For a while she was silent as she considered how best to begin her explanation. She raised her face and looked at her captains.

Her cold, green eyes passed over Count Marus, Captain Irrim, Captain Tangard, and Viscount Leegan in turn, and then rested on Astrias, who stood at the end of the row. This young noble of Torus was only twenty, yet he had already made a name for himself throughout the archduchies. Since entering the pavilion, the captain had fixed his eyes on the lady-general’s young, porcelain face in wordless reverence of her beauty.

But when his eyes met her cold, distrustful glare, the red knight’s fine-featured face turned a bright shade of crimson. He was taken off guard, and abashed, lowered his face. Amnelis, sensing something, stared at him piercingly for a moment, but then turned away from him toward the white knights Vlon and Lindrot.

“Do you have proof that the soldiers’ morale is wavering, Marus?” she asked, without looking at the count.

The commander of the blue raised his hands. “Right now, no. But if we do not soon tell them where we are going and what your Ladyship’s plans are, rumors and speculation will spread through the troops like wildfire, and by the day’s end I am afraid we will have a serious problem.”

“I see,” said Amnelis, deep in thought. “I had expected more from our Marches patrol. Only one day has passed since we cut into Nospherus. And the Sem have not attacked us once.”

“While I said that we have no solid proof of our troops’ unease,” Marus added, “I did hear a rumor that came up through the ranks just before we were summoned here to this meeting. Apparently, some of the soldiers think that this expedition has not come to punish the Sem, and as evidence, they point—”

“What now?” cut in Amnelis, her face stern.

“As evidence,” Marus continued, “they point to the fact that the scouts are not being sent out in all directions to find the Sem nest, as one might expect. Instead, your orders have been for them to scout straight east, in one direction only, as though we had a predetermined destination.”

“Soldiers fascinate me. They see when they appear not to be looking, and they claim to know nothing but still must know everything,” Amnelis remarked, a wry smile crossing her well-formed lips. “Their eyes are rather sharp, and accurate. Count Marus, your troops are correct,” she admitted.

A stir went through the line of captains—but only a mild one, for they had already been expecting something like this.

“Of course,” Amnelis continued, “the extermination of the Sem is one of the primary goals of this expedition, as you are all aware. But it is true that our final destination lies not in the villages of the Sem. It is…” Amnelis stuck out her index finger with a graceful swing of her hand, and then with sudden violence she thrust it down on a spot on the map laid out before her. “Here!”

The captains swallowed and looked at the spot where her unwavering finger stood.

Because Nospherus was largely unexplored by the people of the Middle Country, there were no detailed maps of it. The Mongauli map was really more white parchment than map, blank for the most part, except for where small mountains had been drawn in, along with a few place names, most of these located in the surrounding regions and not in Nospherus itself

A wavering black line traced the edge of Nospherus closest to Amnelis. This was the River Kes, surrounded on the map by small red and blue markings showing the locations of troops of knights. But where Amnelis now pointed was far beyond the Kes, about in the middle of the parchment, a spot in a sea of white where hardly anything had been drawn.

“My lady, that…” Marus began with nervous diffidence, but Amnelis lightly motioned for him to be silent, and straightening up she looked over the captains once again.

“The Sem call this area Gur Nuu, the Valley of Death. It is this valley towards which we ride.” There was not a trace of hesitation in her voice. The Mongauli captains glanced at each other for signs that any of them had heard of this place, but all faces were blank.

“We have already made it this far,” Amnelis continued, tapping at a red x mark on the map much closer to her than the location of Gur Nuu. “I believe we have now come far enough into Nospherus that there is no fear of our secrets reaching the ears of other countries. I will tell you now what the ultimate purpose of our expedition is: we will find this Valley of Death, flatten the Sem tribes in the area, build a new fortress near the valley and claim it as our own. In fact, you have my permission to tell the troops as much.” Her voice was low and relaxed, yet her words seemed to fill the pavilion.

The effect on the captains was that of a flaming catapult projectile plunging into their midst. They all began shouting at once, at her and at each other, as though they had all suffered amnesia and entirely forgotten the strict rules of military conduct.

“Amnelis, th-that…” Count Marus, his voice choking, made to protest. “For what possible reason—”

“Didn’t I tell you not to call me by my name? I am no longer the child who once sat on your lap and called you uncle.”

“My apologies, General.” The old count lowered his head quickly, red faced.

Their brief exchange was lost in the excitement within the pavilion.

“Silence! I must have silence!” Amnelis shouted, slamming her fists down on the table. Abruptly, the room fell quiet. Eyes full of surprise and uncertainty looked across at their slender general.

“My lady, grant me permission to ask another question,” Count Marus requested, his voice sounding stronger than before in the sudden silence. “We know of Mongaul’s position since the fall of Parros, and we all appreciate our delicate political situation… but because of that very situation, I don’t see…”

“Why fifteen thousand valuable troops have been sent into this wasteland?”

“…Yes,” Marus confirmed, his shoulders slumping.

Should he anger the lady-general now, no amount of noble status—not even the fact that he had been her steward when she was little—would save him from her wrath.

“There is good reason, my captains,” Amnelis said calmly. The anger that had crackled in her voice just moments before was gone, and now to everyone’s surprise she wore a smile and almost seemed pleased; there was a hint of color in her lips. “Let me introduce that reason to you. Come forth, Cal Moru, and take off your hood.” The lady-general turned and beckoned to the mysterious one who waited behind her.

The man stood and moved close to her, and swept his hood back over his head.

The cry that rose up from the captains was one of genuine astonishment and palpable fear. The sight was bizarre enough to wither even the iron self-control of seasoned warriors.

“I bring before you Cal Moru.” Amnelis’ voice was sharp with pride, echoing in the quiet of the pavilion. “He is a spellcaster—and the first person since the world was born to cross through the wildlands of Nospherus… and return!”