Darkness and Light

Chapter 4

Kitiara and Sturm rode up a winding trail to the sand cliffs overlooking the bay. The High Crest had shrunk to toy size in the distance. After a last look at the elf ship, they turned their horses inland. They soon reached the road outside the walls of Caergoth. From the sutlers and traders who lined the road they bought bread and meat, dried fruit and cheese. The road ran as straight as an arrow east. Domed and cobbled, it was one of the few public works remaining from pre-Cataclysmic times. Kitiara and Sturm rode side by side down the center of the road. Its shoulders were fairly thick with travelers on foot, at least for the first ten miles or so from the city. By mid-afternoon, they were alone. They said little.

Kitiara finally broke the silence saying, "I wonder why there are no travelers on the way to Caergoth."

"I was puzzled by that myself," said Sturm. "A bare road is a bad sign."

"War or robbers beset empty roads."

"I've heard no rumors of wars, so it must be the latter." They paused by the side of the road long enough to don their mail shirts and helmets. No sense catching an arrow when they were so close to reaching Solamnia. The eerie desolation persisted to the end of the day. Now and again they passed the burned-out remains of a wagon or the blanched bones of slaughtered horses and cattle. Kitiara rode with her sword across her saddle.

They were tired from the day's morning mayhem and decided to camp early. They found a pleasant clearing in a ring of oaks, a hundred yards from the road. Tallfox and Pira were tied to a picket line to graze on grass and broom straw. Sturm found a spring and fetched water, while Kitiara built a fire. Dinner was bacon and hard biscuit toasted over the fire. Night closed in, and they moved closer to the flames. Smoke wound in a loose spiral toward the stars. The moons were up. Solinari and Lunitari. Souls rise up like smoke to heaven, Sturm thought.

"Sturm." Kitiara's voice brought him out of his reverie.

"Yes?"

"We'll have to sleep in turns."

"Quite so. Ah, I'll stand watch first, all right?"

"Suits me." Kitiara circled around the campfire with her bedroll. She unrolled it beside Sturm and lay down.

"Wake ' me when the silver moon sets," she said. He looked down at the mass of dark curls by his knee. Veteran that she was, Kitiara soon dropped off. Sturm fed the fire from a handy pile of kindling and sat cross-legged, with his sword across his lap. Once Kitiara stirred, uttering faint moans. Hesitantly, Sturm touched her hair. She responded by snuggling closer to him, until her head was resting on his crossed ankles. He never felt the lethargy creep over him. One minute Sturm was awake, facing the fire with Kitiara asleep in front of him, and the next thing he knew he was lying facedown on the ground. There was dirt in his mouth, but for some reason he couldn't spit it out. Worse, he couldn't seem to move at all. One eye was mashed shut against the ground. With tremendous effort, he was able to open the other. He saw the fire still burning. There were several pairs of legs around it, clad in ragged deerskin leggings. There was an odd, unpleasant smell, like singed hide or burning hair. Kitiara was beside him, lying on her back, her eyes closed.

"Nuttin' but food," said a scratchy, bass voice.

"Dere's nuttin' in dis bag but some lousy food!"

"Me! Me!" said another, shriller voice. "Me find coin!"

One pair of legs ambled out of Sturm's sight.

"Where da coins?" He heard a tinkle of metal. One of Kitiara's last Silvanesti gold coins dropped on the ground. The shrill speaker said "Ai!" and dropped on his hands and knees. Then Sturm saw who — what — they were. There was no mistake. The pointed heads, angular features, gray skin, red eyes — they were goblins. The smell was theirs, too. Sturm tried to muster all his strength to stand, but it felt as though bars of lead were piled on his back. He could see and feel enough to know he wasn't tied. That, and the suddenness with which he was taken, meant that someone had cast a spell on him and Kitiara. But who? Goblins were notoriously dimwitted. They lacked the concentration necessary for spellcasting.

"Stop your bickering and keep searching," said a clear, human voice. So! The goblins were not alone! Hard, bony hands grabbed his left arm and rolled him over. Sturm's one open eye stared into the face of two of the robbers. One was warty and had lost his front teeth. The other bore scars on his neck from a failed hanging.

"Ai! Him eye open!" squawked the warty one.

"He. see!" Scarface produced an ugly, fork-bladed dagger. "I fix dat," he said. Before he could strike the helpless Sturm, another brigand yelped. The others quickly converged on him.

"I found! I found!" babbled the goblin. What he had found was the arrowhead amethyst Tirolan had given Kitiara. She had tied a string around the carved shoulders of the stone and had been wearing it around her neck. The finder held it up and capered away from his fellows. They slapped and clawed at him for the pale purple stone.

"Let me see that," said the man. The dancing goblin halted and contritely carried the amethyst into the shadows beyond the fire.

"Rubbish," said the man. "A flawed bit of crystal."

The arrowhead arced through the air. It hit the dirt between Sturm and Kitiara and bounced into Kitiara's slack and open palm. The goblins scampered over to retrieve it.

"Leave it!" the man commanded. "It's worthless."

"Pretty, pretty!" protested Warty. "Me keep."

"I said leave it! Or shall 1 get the wand?" The goblins — Sturm estimated there were four — shrank back and gibbered. "We'll take the coins and the horses. Leave the rest," said the robbers' human master.

"What about da swords?" said Scarface. "Dese is good irun." He held out Sturm's sword for his leader to see.

"Yes, too good for you. Bring it. It will fetch good money at Trader Lovo's. Get the woman's, too."

Warty hopped over to Kitiara. He kicked her arm aside and bent over to draw the sword, which lay under her. As he did, her hand clamped around the goblin's ankle.

"Wha?" said the wart-faced goblin. Kitiara yanked his leg out from under him, and the goblin went down with a thud. In the next instant, she was up, sword in hand. Warty groped for his dagger, but never drew it. With one cut, Kitiara sent his ugly head bouncing away.

"Get her! Get her, you miserable wretches! It's three against one!" yelled the man from the shadows. Scarface pulled a hook-bladed bill off his shoulder and attacked. Kitiara knocked the clumsy weapon away repeatedly. The other two goblins tried to circle behind her. She turned so that the fire was at her back. Sturm raged against the spell that kept him helpless. A goblin's foot passed within easy reach of his right hand, but he couldn't even flex a finger to help Kitiara. Not that she needed any help. When Scarface lunged with his bill, she lopped the hook off. The goblin stared stupidly at his shortened shaft. Kitiara thrust through him.

"Now it's two to one!" she said. She leaped over the campfire, landing between the last two robbers. They screeched in terror and dropped their daggers. She cut one down as he stood there. The last goblin ran to the edge of the clearing. Sturm heard him die among the oaks. There were a few other sounds — feet running, loud breathing, and a howl of pain.

"Thought you could get away, eh?" Kitiara said. She had caught the hidden magic-user and brought him back into the firelight. He was a gaunt fellow twice Sturm's age, dressed in a shabby gray robe. Tools of his art dangled from a rope tied around his waist: a wand, a bag of herbs, amulets wrought in lead and copper. Kitiara kicked the magician's legs out from under him, and he sprawled in the dirt beside Sturm.

"Take the spell off my friend," Kitiara demanded.

"I–I can't."

"You mean you won't!" She poked him with her sword.

"No, no! I don't know how! I don't know how to take it off." He seemed ashamed. "I never had to take a paralysis spell off before.

"The goblins always cut their throats."

"Because you ordered them to!"

"No! No!" Kitiara spat. "The only thing worse than a thief is a fool weakling of a thief." She raised her blade to her shoulder. "There's only one way to break the spell that I know of." She was right, and when the magic-user was dead, the leaden feeling vanished from Sturm's limbs. He sat up, rubbing his stiff neck. "By all the gods, Kitiara, you're ruthless!" he said. He looked around the campsite, now a bloody battlefield.

"Did you have to kill them all?"

"There's gratitude for you," she said. She wiped her blade on the tail of the dead magician's robe.

"They would have cheerfully cut our throats. Sometimes I don't understand you, Sturm." He remembered the goblin's fork-bladed dagger and said, "You have a point. Still, killing that scruffy magician was no honorable deed."

She slid her blade into its sheath. "I didn't do it for honor," she said. "I was just being practical."

They gathered their belongings from where the robbers had scattered them. Sturm saw Kitiara pick up the amethyst necklace.

"Look," she said. "It's clear."

In the light from the fire, Sturm saw that the once-purple stone was now ordinary, transparent quartz. "That explains it," he said. "You were able to move when the amethyst fell into your hand, yes?"

The light dawned on her.

"That's right. I was wearing it over my blouse and under my mail — "

"When it touched your skin, the paralysis spell was broken. The dissipation of the spell bled all the color from the stone. It's just an arrowhead-shaped piece of quartz now." Kitiara slipped the loop over her head. "I'll keep it, just the same.

Tirolan probably never realized he was saving our lives when he gave me the stone."

Their baggage recovered, Sturm began to gather dead wood from the circle of oaks and heaped it on the fire. The flames leaped up.

"Why are you doing that?" asked Kitiara.

"I'm making a pyre," said Sturm. "We can't leave these corpses lying about."

"Let the vultures have them."

"It's not out of respect that I do this. Evil magicians, even one as lowly as this one, have the unhappy habit of returning undead to prey on the living. Help me put them on: he pyre, and their menace will truly be over."

She agreed, and the goblins and their master were consigned to the flames. Sturm flung dirt on the embers, then he and Kit mounted their horses.

"How do you know so much about magic?" asked Kitiara.

"I thought you despised it in all forms."

"I do," Sturm replied. "Magic is the greatest underminer of order in the world. It's difficult enough to live with virtue and honor without the temptation of magical power. But magic exists, and we all must learn to deal with it. For myself, 1 have had many talks with your brother, and I've learned some things I've needed to defend myself."

"You mean Raistlin?" she asked, and Sturm nodded. "His lectures on magic always put me to sleep," she said.

"I know," said Sturm. "You go to sleep awfully easily."

They turned the horses toward the new morning's sun and rode away.