"Would you drink with us, Andover?" Drask held a skin that sloshed with fluids.

He nodded and the man tossed the skin to him. A moment later he took a deep drink of the cool, sweet wine within it. He had not consumed many wines but rather liked the taste.

A moment later a pleasant warmth ran down his throat and into his stomach. Within a dozen heartbeats that warmth was moving through his entire body.

He nodded his thanks and tossed the wine skin back. The man with Drask caught it and offered a ruined smile from the ruined face.

Andover smiled back though he felt like screaming in fear, and then waved his good nights.

He moved back to his bed and settled in, but he did not sleep. Instead he found himself lost in thoughts of Tega flying like a bird and armies clashing over the body of a dead Emperor.

The following morning the entire group, excepting only Trumdt, his two children and anyone else tending to the place, rode and walked up the steep slope of Durhallem, scaling the mountain at a steady pace. After the time spent in the Blasted Lands the trek was easy enough for Andover. He did not complain and felt no reason to, instead he enjoyed the view as he climbed.

Tuskandru was well ahead of him in the procession and he contemplated how to approach the man about the attacks and the deaths he'd heard of. How to find out what the king knew of Tega.

There was an odd sense of guilt lingering in his mind. When he'd left the city she had been on his mind constantly. Now? The girl he'd adored from afar for so long was almost gone from his mind.

That was for the best, perhaps but still he felt as if he might somehow be betraying her.

The valley below was lush with greens and other hues. He had not expected that. He wasn't sure what he would expect after walking through the desolation outside of the mountain range, but truly the notion of farmlands never seemed a possibility.

"Who tends the farms, Delil?" He couldn't imagine a farmer among the Sa'ba Taalor.

"Mostly the children."

He looked at her to see if she was having a jest at his expense, but the girl seemed completely sincere.

Andover stopped to look long and hard at the distant fields, and Delil stopped with him. "How?"

"How does anyone tend a farm, Andover? They plant the seeds, they grow the crops, and they cut them down and harvest them. It is different for each kingdom, of course, but Tusk's people teach the children to farm so that they will always be prepared to grow whatever foods they need."

"I have never seen a farm before." The words were out before he knew what he was saying.

She looked at him for a moment and her eyes smiled behind the veil. "Then we shall have to take you to see one."

By the time the sun was on its way down, they had stopped at a wall of buildings. That was the only way he could think of it.

According to the stories he heard, the people in the area had once lived in stone huts they built themselves, but after the Mound Crawler came, that great and terrible beast that Tusk killed when he became king, Tusk ordered his people to change their ways and change they did. The people lived in the mountainside, in homes that they carved from the rock themselves, though it had taken years to accomplish the task.

Stairwells cut into the rock of the mountain itself led to openings at different heights, some of them only a few feet from the ground and others that required climbing nearly a hundred feet from the flat plateau where the odd town was settled.

There were rooms and they were solid, as they should have been, seeing they were hacked from the side of the mountain. The work was not primitive as he'd first imagined it might be. Instead the rooms were smooth walled and even floored and as squared and balanced as any he had ever been in. Some were simple in design and others far more complex. It seemed to depend entirely on who lived there and what they did to complete their dwellings.

He was given a room in the same structure as Drask and Delil and Bromt. None of them lived in the area and so all of them were hosted in places set aside for visitors. The rooms were comfortable and functional, with little or no decoration.

What little Andover carried was left in his room without fear of it being taken. The idea seemed insane for a moment. Back in Tyrne you kept your possessions close by and hid them away if you were going to leave them behind. Here the idea was as foreign as he was. The Sa'ba Taalor did not have much of a problem with theft, according to Drask. Thieves had to fight to keep what they might take, and especially where Durhallem ruled and mercy was not an option, it seemed one would only risk theft if one was willing to die for what was taken.

It was a very different place from what he was used to. Then again, he was a very different person. All he had to do was close his eyes and think back on the fights he had survived and he knew that.

After the sun had set there was a feast in a clearing before the wall of structures. A vast area had been cleared of all brush and artificially leveled. He could see the cut marks where stone had been meticulously chiseled away until the area was as flat as a well-planed board.

In that area there were four deep pits and in each of those was a fire. They proved necessary as the sun set and the chill of the night came across the mountain. From their height the people could see the entrance to Durhallem's Pass and also see into the valley far below. Andover saw rivers and lakes that he had spotted when the sun was still up. They were a different shade of black in the darkness of the valley and from time to time he could spot fires along the edges of the water.

Drask Silver Hand joined him in observing the valley, as more and more of the people from the area came down from their homes and started gathering around the four fire pits.

Drask gestured with his hand. "The valley is larger than it looks from here."

"It does not look small. How many days would it take to travel the length?"

Drask assessed him for a moment, his eyes once again catching whatever light was around and reflecting back a silvery glow. The more he stared, the more he suspected the light was internal somehow.

"To walk the Taalor valley would take you at least two weeks from end to end."

"Impossible." The word was out before he could stop himself and he dreaded the man would take offense.

Drask's eyes smiled behind his veil. "As I said, it is larger than it seems. There are seven vast mountains, Andover. They are not neatly lined up. They are staggered. You cannot see the other end of the valley from here."

"Which mountain do you call home, Drask?"

Drask shrugged his shoulders, a gesture he had picked up from the soldiers he traveled with a while back. Very few of the Sa'ba Taalor ever seemed to shrug now that he thought about it.

"I follow Ydramil and his King in Silver, Ganem. I have a home near the top of Ydramil, but I have not been there in over a year now. I have been busy."

"A year?" Andover frowned at that. "Why so long?"

"Ydramil makes demands of his followers. We are told to study much of the world. I have been visiting each of the mountains, each of the kings and each of the gods."

"Like I'm supposed to?"

"Just so." Drask sighed, the thin veil fluttering with his breath.

"Why the veils, Drask? I have seen every one of you naked, but still you wear veils."

"We do not question the Daxar Taalor. They have not yet said you are ready to see our faces and so we cover them."

"What is so special about your faces?"

Drask chuckled. "What is so special about yours? To us they are just faces. We are who we are."

"Does your face look like mine?"

"No more than my skin looks like yours or my hand looks like yours."

He held out his silver hand and placed close to Andover's right hand. Both were metal. Both moved through sorceries Andover did not even try to understand, but beyond that they looked like hands and had five fingers, there was little that they had in common.

"Your children do not wear veils?"

"The children have not yet met with gods."

"Like I'm supposed to meet with them?" That thought was still too large to completely take in. It was easier to try to study the whole of the sky and count the stars than it was to comprehend meeting actual gods.

Drask looked away. "You ask many questions. I can only answer a few. You will meet the Daxar Taalor. They have reasons for wanting to meet you that they have not shared with me." There was no anger in his comment, not even disappointment. Drask merely stated a fact. "I can tell you only this: no one stands before gods and remains unchanged by the encounter."

They were silent for a while, lost in their own thoughts as the sounds of people gathering and preparing food came to them. At each of the fires, carcasses were skewed and set above the flames. There was a time when the notion of eating a Pra-Moresh would have been repellent, but having endured the Blasted Lands and eaten even stranger things a for strange things indeed lived in the wastelands a Andover found the idea had a certain appeal. His stomach rumbled agreement.

"I'll be leaving after the feast."

"Feast? Leaving?" Andover frowned at the other, larger man.

"Ydramil tells me I must go back into the Blasted Lands. He has plans for me and I will obey."

Andover shook his head at the notion of speaking directly to a god. The notion refused to sit comfortably. "Where will you go?"

"The feast is in your honor. You should remember to thank Tusk properly." Drask stood up, not answering the question. "Should we meet again, after you have spoken with the gods, you may ask me more questions. Until then, Andover Lashk, the Daxar Taalor watch over the both of us."

The man who had taught him harsh lessons tapped him lightly on one shoulder and walked away, his thick dark hair swaying with his steps.

Andover was uncertain how he felt about that. In part he felt he was losing a friend, though in truth Drask had done little that could be called a kindness.

Aside from teaching him not to die. That had been a very large kindness indeed.

Andover contemplated all that Bromt and Delil and Drask had done for him even as he ran one hand gently along his bound ribs and felt the area where the pain still flashed if he pushed. The ribs were mending. They'd felt fine when he was fighting a too busy staying alive to care about the pain and he'd been fueled on adrenaline a but now his side ached with a dull throb again.

He heard Bromt laughing and saw the man walking with a few other men of similar stature. They wore no armor at the present time, though all of them still sported weapons. He imagined this was as close to relaxed as they managed.

Delil talked with several others, men and women alike, and though Andover wanted to speak with her, he did not wish to interrupt her homecoming.

Tuskandru walked toward him. He was again taken by how large the king was, how striking a figure. One of the soldiers, who had traveled with the Sa'ba Taalor to Tyrne, a man named Wollis, had told Andover that Tusk cut a Pra-Moresh nearly in half with one swing of a sword. Despite having seen the monsters, having fought them, he did not have trouble believing the outrageous claim.

The king wore a tunic and leather breeches, the same as he had when Andover had first seen him. His necklace of teeth was wrapped twice around his thick neck, and his hair was pulled back into a heavy braid, wrapped with leather and a few small pieces of onyx. He did not carry any weapons. That fact alone was unsettling to Andover all of the armed people he had seen.

Tusk stopped before him and nodded. "Drask said you want to know what happened with your people."

"Yes. Yes I do." His voice only cracked a little as he spoke.

"They came for us. One of them claimed that your Emperor is dead. He said that someone killed the Emperor and said we must go back and speak with your generals."

Andover nodded his head. He'd been on the receiving end of demands from the City Guard and in comparison to the soldiers those men had almost no authority. Certainly not as much as generals in the Imperial Army.

"They did not ask. They tried to command me. I am a king. I do not answer to your Emperor or his generals. When they would not accept that, one of them drew his weapon. I killed him."

Andover nodded again. He could think of nothing at all to say to that.

And so instead he asked, "Tega. She flew away?"

"She spoke with the voice of her master, the sorcerer. He asked that your soldiers not attack and they did not listen."

"So is safe?"

Tusk crossed his massive arms. "None of my people hurt Tega. She was under my protection and helped me speak with your soldiers."

"Good. That's good."

"You wish to go home? To your people?"

Andover shook his head. "No. I made a promise to you and your gods, Tusk. I keep my promises."

Tusk nodded his head. "This is good. In the morning, I will show you how to reach Durhallem."

"You'll show me?" His voice broke a second time. "Are you not coming with me?"

Tusks eyes looked at him hard, their light burning. "No one goes before Durhallem who does not walk alone. That is Durhallem's demand."

Tusk gave him an amiable thump on the arm. Andover managed to keep his balance, but it was a close call.

A moment later the king was moving away, heading for one of the fires and calling out cheerfully in his own language. Andover understood a few words of the greeting, but only enough to feel embarrassed that he had not yet learned more.

Of course he had been learning other things.

"Tusk!" He called out before he could let himself think too much.

The king turned to look at him. He did not walk back and it was clear that if Andover wished to speak discretely it would be he who did the walking.

Instead he called out, "Are our people at war?"

Tusk looked at him for several heartbeats and nodded. "We are at war. Fellein has attacked us. You will be asked to defend that attack before the kings of the Sa'ba Taalor."

Oh yes. His heart hammered away in his chest and he nodded. "When?"

"First you meet the Gods of the Forges. Then you answer to their kings." Tusk spread his arms wide in a gesture that almost looked like he wanted to embrace. Only the fact that he'd seen the gesture before let Andover know the move was the equivalent of a shrug. "You will be given the chance to prepare."

"Can I speak to my people?"

"You have agreed to be here. Unless they send you a message, no."

Andover nodded again and Tusk started walking. This time he didn't try to get the king's attention again.

Andover shook his head. He'd rather hoped to know the love of a woman before he died. That seemed less likely all the time.

Chapter Ten.