Elven Nations - The Kinslayer Wars Part 14

Dawn.

Somehow Sithas must have dozed off, for he suddenly noticed that the wind, the snowindeed, the entire stormhad vanished. The air, now still, had become icy cold, with an absolute clarity that only comes in the highest mountains during the deepest winter frosts.

The sun hadn't risen yet, but the Speaker could see that all around him towered summits of unimaginable heights, plumed with great collars of snow. Gray and impa.s.sive, like stone-face giants with thick beards of frost, they regarded him from their aloof vantages.

The brothers' ledge perched along one of the two steep sides of the valley. To the south, on Sithas's left as he looked outward, the valley stretched and twisted toward the low, forested country from which they had come. To the right, it appeared to end in a cirque of steep-walled peaks. At one place, he saw a saddle that, while still high above him, seemed to offer a lone, treacherous path into the next section of the mountain range.

Kith-Kanan lay motionless beside him. His skin had the paleness of death, and Sithas had to struggle against a resurgence of despair. He couldn't allow himself to abandon hope; he was their only chance for survival. The quest for the griffons, the excitement and adventure of the journey he had known before, were all forgotten now, overwhelmed by the simple and basic wish to continue living.

The valley below him, he saw, was not as deep as they had guessed when the storm struck. Their shelf was a bare hundred feet above level ground. He leaned out to look over the edge, but all he saw was a vast drift of snow piled against the cliff. If the bodies

of the giants or of gallant, fallen Arcuballis remained down there somewhere, he had no way to know it. No trees grew in this high valley, nor did he see any signs of animal life.

In fact, the only objects that met his eyes, in any direction, were the bedrock of the mountain range and the snowy blanket that covered it.

With a groan, he slumped back against the cliff. They were doomed! He could see no possibility of any fate other than death in this remote valley. His throat ached, and tears welled in his eyes. What good was his court training in a situation like this?

"Kith!" he moaned. "Wake up! Please!"

When his brother made no response, Sithas collapsed facedown on his cloak. A part of him wished that he was as unconscious of their fate as Kith-Kanan.

For the whole long day, he lay as if in a trance. He pulled their cloaks about them as night fell, certain that they would freeze to death. Kith-Kanan hadn't movedindeed, he barely breathed. Broken by his own anguish, the speaker finally tumbled into restless sleep.

It was not until the next morning that he regained some sense of purpose. What did they need? Warmth, but there was no firewood in sight. Water, but their skins of the liquid had frozen solid, and without fire, they couldn't melt snow. Food, of which they had several strips of dried venison and some bread. But how could he feed Kith-Kanan while his brother remained unconscious?

Again the feeling of hopelessness seized him. If only Arcuballis were here! If only Kith could walk! If only the giants ... He snarled at himself in anger, realizing the idiocy of his ramblings.

Instead, he pushed himself to his feet, suddenly aware of a terrible stiffness in his own body. He studied the route along the narrow ledge that twisted its way from their

niche to the valley floor. It looked negotiablebarely. But what could he do if he was lucky enough to reach the ground?

He noted, for the first time, a dark patch on the snow at the edge of the flat expanse.

The sun had crested the eastern peaks by now, and Sithas squinted into the brightness.

What caused the change of coloration in the otherwise immaculate surface of snow?

Then it dawned on himwater! Somewhere beneath that snow, water still flowed! It soaked into the powder above, turning it to slush and causing it to settle.

With a clear goal now, Sithas began to act. He took his own nearly empty waterskin, since Kith's contained a block of ice that would be impossible to remove. As he turned away from the sun, however, he had another idea. He set Kith's waterskin in the sunlight, on a flat stone. He found several other dark boulders and placed them beside the skin, taking care that they didn't block the sunlight.

Then he started down the treacherous ledge. In many places, the narrow path was piled with snow, and he used his sword to sweep these drifts away, carefully probing so that he did not step off the cliff.

Finally he reached a spot where he was able to drop into the soft snow below. He pushed his way through the deep fluff, leaving a trench behind him as he worked his way toward the dark patch of slush. The going was difficult, and he had to rest many times, but finally he reached his goal.

Pausing again, he heard a faint trill of sound from beneath the snow, the gurgling of water as it babbled along a buried stream. He poked and pressed with his sword, and the surface of snow dropped away, revealing a flowage about six inches deep.

But that was enough. Sithas suspended his skin from the tip of his sword and let it soak in the stream. Though it only filled halfway, it was more water than they had tasted in two days, and he greedily drained the waterskin. Then he refilled it, as much as

possible with his awkward rig, and turned back to the cliff. It took him more than an hour to carry it back up to Kith-Kanan, but the hour of toil seemed to warm and vitalize him.

His brother showed no change. Sithas dribbled some water into Kith's mouth, just enough to wet his tongue and throat. He also washed away the blood that had caked on the elf's frostbitten face. There was even some water left over, since Kith's frozen waterskin had begun to melt from the heat of the sun.

"What now, Kith?" Sithas asked softly.

He heard a sound from somewhere and looked anxiously around. Again came the noise, which sounded like rocks falling down a rough slope.

Then he saw a distinct movement across the valley. White shapes leaped and sprang along the sheer face, and for a moment, he thought they flew, so effectively did they defy gravity. More rocks broke free, cras.h.i.+ng and sliding downward. He saw that these nimble creatures moved upon hooves.

He had heard about the great mountain sheep that dwelled in the high places, but never had he observed them before. One, obviously the ram, paused and looked around, raising his proud head high. Sithas glimpsed his immense horns, swirling from the creature's forehead.

For a moment, he wondered at the presence of these great beasts as he watched them press downward. They reached the foot of the cliff, and then the ram bounded through the powder, plowing a trail for the others.

"The water!" Sithas spoke aloud to himself. The sheep needed the water, too!

Indeed, the ram was nearing the shallow stream. Alert, he looked carefully around the valley, and Sithas, though he was out of sight, remained very still. Finally the proud creature lowered his head to drink. He stopped frequently to look around, but he drank for a long time before he finally stepped away from the small hole in the snow.

Then, one by one, the females came to the water. The ram stood protectively beside them, his proud head and keen eyes s.h.i.+fting back and forth.

The group of mountain sheep spent perhaps an hour beside the water hole, each of the creatures slaking its thirst. Finally, with the ram still in the lead, they turned back along the tracks and reclimbed the mountain wall.

Sithas watched them until they disappeared from view. The magnificent creatures moved with grace and skill up the steep face of rock. They looked right at home hereso very different from himself!

A soft groan beside him pulled his attention instantly back to Kith-Kanan.

"Kith! Say something!" He leaned over his twin's face, rejoicing to see a flicker of vitality. Kith-Kanan's eyes remained shut, but his mouth twisted into a grimace and he was gasping for breath.

"Here, take a drink. Don't try to move."

He poured a few drops of water onto Kith's lips, and the wounded elf licked them away. Slowly, with obvious pain, Kith-Kanan opened his eyes, squinting at the bright daylight before him.

"What ... happened?" he asked weakly. Abruptly his eyes widened and his body tensed. "The giants! Where ... ?"

"It's all right," Sithas told him, giving him more water. "They're deador gone, I'm not sure which."

"Arcuballis?" Kith's eyes widened and he struggled to sit up, before collapsing with a dull groan.

"He's . . . gone, Kith. He attacked the first giant, got clubbed over the head, and fell."

"He must be down below!"

Sithas shook his head. "I looked. There's no sign of his bodyor of any of the giants, either."

Kith moaned, a sound of deep despair. Sithas had no words of comfort.

"The giants ... what kind of beasts do you think they were?" asked Sithas.

"Hill giants, I'm sure," Kith-Kanan said after a moment's pause. "Relatives of ogres, I guess, but bigger. I wouldn't have expected to see them this far south."

"G.o.ds! If only I'd been faster!" Sithas said, ashamed.

"Don't!" snapped the injured elf. "You warned megave me time to get my sword out, to get into the fight." Kith-Kanan thought for a moment. "Whenhow long ago was it, anyway? How much time has pa.s.sed since"

"We've been up here for two nights," said Sithas quietly. "The sun has nearly set for the third time." He hest.i.tated, then blurted his question. "How badly are you hurt?"

"Bad enough," Kith said bluntly. "My skull feels like it's been crushed, and my right leg seems as if it is on fire."

"Your leg?" Sithas had been so worried about the blow to his brother's head that he had paid little attention to the rest of his body.

"It's broken, I think," the elf grunted, gritting his teeth against the pain.

Sithas's mind went blank. A broken leg! It might as well be a sentence of death! How would they ever get out of here with his twin thus crippled? And winter had only begun!

If they didn't get out of the mountains quickly, they could be trapped here for months.

Another snowfall would make travel by foot all but impossible.

"You'll have to do something about it," Kith said, though it took several moments before the remark registered in Sithas's mind.

"About what?"

"My leg!" The injured elf looked at his twin sharply, then toughened his voice.

Almost without thinking, he used the tones of command he had become accustomed to when he led the Wildrunners.

"Tell me if the skin is broken, if there's any discolorationany infection."

"Where? Which leg?" Sithas struggled to focus his thoughts. He had never been so disoriented before in his life.

"The right one, below the knee."

Gingerly, almost trembling, Sithas pulled the blankets and cloaks away from his brother's feet and legs. What he saw was terrifying.

The ugly red swelling had almost doubled the size of the limb from the knee to the ankle, and Kith's leg was bent outward at an awkward angle. For a moment, he cursed himself, as if the injury was his own fault. Why hadn't he thought to examine his brother two days earlier, when Kith had first been injured? Had he twisted the wound more when he moved the fallen elf into the shelter of the rocky niche?

"Thethe skin isn't broken," he explained, trying to keep his voice calm. "But it's red.

By the G.o.ds, Kith, it's blood red!"

Kith-Kanan grimaced at the news. "You'll have to straighten it. If you don't, I'll be crippled for life."

The Speaker of the Stars looked at his twin brother, the sense of helplessness growing inside him. But he saw the pain in Kith-Kanan's eyes, and he knew he had no choice but to try.

"It's going to hurt," he warned, and Kith nodded silently, gritting his teeth.

Cautiously he touched the swollen limb, and then instantly recoiled at Kith's sharp gasp of pain. "Don't stop," hissed the wounded elf. "Do itnow!"

Gritting his teeth, Sithas grasped the swollen flesh. His fingers probed the wound, and he felt the break in the bone. Kith-Kanan cried aloud, gasping and choking in his pain as Sithas pulled on the limb.

Kith shrieked again and then, mercifully, collapsed into unconsciousness.

Desperately Sithas tugged, forcing his hands and arms to do these things that he knew must be causing Kith-Kanan unspeakable pain.

Finally he felt the bones slip into place.

"By Quenesti Pah, I'm sorry, Kith," Sithas whispered, looking at his brother's terribly pale face.

Quenesti Pah ... G.o.ddess of healing. The invocation of that benign G.o.ddess brought his mind around to the small vial his mother had given them before they departed. From Miritelesina, she had said, high priestess of Quenesti Pah. Frantically Sithas dug through the saddlebag, finally discovering the little ceramic jar, plugged with a stout cork.

He popped the cork from the bottle's mouth and immediately recoiled at the pungent scent. Smearing some of the salve on his fingers, he drew off the cloak and spread the stuff on Kith's leg, above and below the wound. That done, he covered his brother with the blankets and leaned back against the stone wall to wait.

Kith-Kanan remained unconscious throughout the impossibly long afternoon as the sun sank through the pale blue sky and finally disappeared behind the western ridge. Still, no sign of movement came from the wounded elf. If anything, he seemed even weaker.

Gently Sithas fed his brother drops of water. He wrapped him in all of their blankets and lay down beside him.

He fell asleep that way, and though he awoke many times throughout the brutally cold night, he stayed at Kith-Kanan's side until dawn began to brighten their valley.

Kith-Kanan showed no sign of reviving consciousness. Sithas looked at his brother's leg and was appalled to see a streak of red running upward, past his knee and into his thigh. What should he do? He had never seen an injury like this before. Unlike Kith-Kanan, he hadn't been confronted by the horrors of battle or by the necessity of selfsufficiency in the wilds.

Quickly the elf took the rest of the cleric's salve and smeared it onto the wound. He knew enough about blood poisoning to realize that if the venomous infection could not be arrested, his brother was doomed. With no way left to treat Kith-Kanan, however, all Sithas could do was pray.

Once again the water in their skins was frozen, and so he made the arduous trek down the narrow pathway from the ledge to the valley floor. The trough in the snow made by his pa.s.sage on the previous day remained, for the wind had remained blessedly light. Thus he made his way to his snow rimmed water hole with less difficulty than the day before.

But here he encountered a challenge: The bitter cold of the night had frozen even the rapidly flowing water beneath the snow. He chopped and chipped with his sword, finally exposing a small trickle, less than two inches deep. Only by stretching himself full-length in the snow, and immersing his hand into the frigid water could he collect enough to carry back to their high campsite.

As he rose from the water hole, he saw the trail of the sheep across from him and remembered the magnificent creatures. Suddenly he was seized by an inspiration. He thought of his bow and arrows, still up on the ledge with Kith-Kanan. How could he conceal himself in order to get close enough to shoot? Unlike Kith-Kanan, he was not an expert archer. A close target would be essential.

He gave up his ponderings in the effort of making his way back to the ledge. Here he found no change in Kith-Kanan, and all he could do was force his brother once again to take a few drops of water between his lips.