Destiny

Chapter 15

The sun bathed the city in gentle, golden warmth. Trees spread their shading canopies over broad streets and slender paths. Towers and other buildings rose above the trees, not competing with them, but coexisting in close harmony. Warm stone set off green leaves that exactly matched the green copper sheathing on the tower roofs. Four especially tall towers rose from the city’s outer corners. Arching crystalline bridges, delicate as lace, connected the four towers and enclosed the city like a glittering crown.

From the lofty vantage point of the palace’s highest terrace, Qualinost seemed unreal in its serenity and impossible beauty. Gilthas stood alone on the terrace, looking out on the city he ruled. He was filled with such peace, he felt his heart would burst from the sheer joy of it. He would be content to remain here forever, drinking in that view. He’d read once that when the emperors of old Ergoth passed away, their bodies were converted by magic into stone statues. Perhaps when his life drew to a close, he could become a statue, and be placed here, forever overlooking the city and its people.

Smiling, he chided himself for such morbid thoughts. A Speaker’s duty was to the living. However much he wished to linger, matters of state would not wait. He delayed only a moment longer, drinking in the blue of the sky and the infinite varieties of green in the trees, breathing deeply of the scents of jasmine and orange blossom carried by the breeze. Finally, like a reluctant swain, he turned away, his fingers reaching out for one last touch of the smooth wood of the balcony’s railing.

The palace was alive with activity. Servants moved swiftly through side corridors bearing food and drink, hampers of linen, or pots of living flowers. In the main passages, soldiers of the royal guard kept watch as all manner of people strolled the elegant halls. The Speaker’s daily audience would commence soon, and favor-seekers already were jockeying for position.

From the seaside provinces came mariners wearing wide canvas pants and carrying rolled-up maps. They wanted royal backing for trading voyages to distant lands. A pair of emissaries from Thorbardin and a trio from Ergoth stood in private conclave. The two dwarves were unrelated to each other yet alike as mirror images: each with a thick, brown beard, bulbous nose, and green eyes. The Ergothians retained an air of imperial hauteur even though their empire had long since fragmented into insignificance. Solamnic Knights, broad shouldered and perpetually serious, conversed in measured tones with lavishly dressed merchants from Palanthas.

Gilthas nodded and smiled to everyone but received little recognition in return. He was accustomed to that. To the world, he was a fool and a dreamer, dismissed as the Puppet King, his strings controlled by Prefect Palthainon. Ostensibly the Speaker’s advisor, Palthainon had been installed by the Knights of Neraka as the true power in Qualinesti. The ease with which everyone accepted Gilthas in the weakling’s role had worried him at first. He knew the unspoken reason most believed him to be a dupe: he was not a pureblooded elf. His father, valiant Tanis, had been half human. Although Gilthas’s pedigree was otherwise impeccable, many assumed his seemingly pliant nature sprang from the human taint.

He put aside this worry. The Puppet King was a masquerade, a necessary one if he were to save his people. Someday the world would know the truth. Someday they would see his true self. A very different Gilthas would lead the elves of Qualinesti to peace, freedom, and plenty.

The reactions of strangers no longer bothered him. However, when several important senators passed him by without speaking, he was perturbed. When his long-time bodyguard and valet Planchet strolled by without so much as a nod, perturbation grew into anger. He turned and hailed Planchet, but his staunch friend did not even turn around.

“He cannot hear you.”

Someone was standing in the shadow of one of the columns that supported the high ceiling. He stepped into the light, showing himself to be an elf of above-average height. He had dark blond hair and the elegantly tall ears common among the oldest families of Silvanesti. Gilthas was taken aback. No one from Silvanost had come to his court in a very long time. More unusual still, the visitor was dressed in a curiously old-fashioned style, like a warrior from one of Silvanesti’s epic poems. He wore a banded cuirass, separated pauldrons on each shoulder, and a mail kilt rather than divided trews. Short suede gloves covered his hands. His eyes were an arresting shade of blue. Gilthas had never seen such brilliant eyes in an elf, even a Silvanesti.

“Who are you?”

The stranger bowed, bending deeply from the waist. “Greetings, Great Speaker. My name is Balif, Lord of Thalas-bec and First Warrior of House Protector.”

“You bear an ancient name, my lord. I thought it had fallen out of favor long ago among the Silvanesti.”

Lord Balif smiled. “It did indeed.”

Gilthas gestured at the throng behind him. “What goes on here? Why am I being ignored?”

“They aren’t ignoring you. They cannot see or hear you.”

Gilthas demanded the reason for this. Had a spell been used to render him invisible? He wanted it stopped immediately and the proper order restored. Balif shrugged.

“I cannot change what has been. I have come to guide you. I sought the privilege, and it was granted.”

“Guide me where? Speak plainly, sir!”

Sadness shadowed those remarkable eyes. “I am Balif, right arm of Speaker Silvanos. Do you understand? I am he who enlarged the realm, carried the standard of Silvanos to the great mountains of the north, fought—”

Gilthas’s laughter interrupted him. “It will take more than antique armor and a quaint accent to convince me of such nonsense. What’s the matter, couldn’t Kith-Kanan come?” Gilthas joked.

“No, he could not,” was the utterly serious reply. “You shall meet him, if you wish. He is an elf among elves.”

It was too much. Gilthas dismissed the mad fellow with a wave and walked away. “Play your games with someone else. I have a kingdom to tend.”

“No, you don’t.”

Gilthas’s smile faltered and he looked back. “What did you say?”

“This kingdom no longer exists. As we speak, you lie dying on a pallet in the Vale of Silence.”

Despite the outrageous words, Gilthas did not laugh. The calm certainty in the stranger’s voice gave him pause. But the palace was solid around him, the faint breeze of a courtier’s passage ruffled his hair, and he clung to the reality he saw.

“If you’re Balif, why do you look so fair? The champion of Silvanos was afflicted with a terrible curse and died in exile.”

“My mortal life ended long ago. My appearance is as I choose it to be, just as yours is. You appear now in vigorous good health, but in truth, you’re little more than skin and bones, and you can scarcely draw a breath, your lungs are so devastated.”

Denying all of it, Gilthas made to turn away again, but Balif took his arm. With gentle yet inexorable pressure, Gilthas’s hand was lifted to his own throat. The pulse beating there was indeed very slow, very labored.

“Your life is ebbing. When it is done, you may accompany me to the next world.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you will wander the land forever, another of the restless spirits in the Vale of Silence.”

Gilthas remembered the terrible loneliness he had sensed from the ghosts in the valley. That memory brought with it all the others. His beloved city, the palace, all these people—they were not products of magic, but illusions of his own making. His city had been wiped from the face of Krynn. Alone and gravely ill, his mind had sought a last few moments of peace before succumbing to death.

“This is not how I expected to die,” he whispered.

“It rarely is. Come.”

Gilthas avoided Balif’s outstretched hand but followed the Silvanesti into the throne room. Empty of people, the room was nothing more than an echo in his mind, a faint replica of something lost forever. Balif craned his neck back, taking in the hall’s mighty dimensions and the gold and polished crystal columns that soared up to a vaulted ceiling painted to mimic the summer sky.

“Beautiful,” he said, like anyone new to the grandeur of Qualinost.

“It was.” Tears dampened Gilthas’s cheeks. “May I ask something?”

“You may ask. I may not answer.”

“Why is your fate such a mystery? You were among the greatest elves of the age. Why were you cast into such obscurity?”

The handsome Silvanesti regarded him with such a fixed stare Gilthas wondered if he had given offense.

“You’re embarking on a journey into the unknown, and that is the question burning inside you?” Balif said.

Gilthas shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ve always wondered.”

Balif told the story of his rise, his fall, and his life after that fall. Much of it fit the rumors and speculations to which the Speaker of the Sun and Stars was privy, but the cause and final outcome of Balif’s exile shocked him to his core. He looked away, at the floor, the columns, anywhere but at the shade of the ancient hero.

“I pity you,” he said.

“Once you pass out of the mortal sphere, life’s concerns are mere vanities and completely unimportant. As it was with me, so it will be with you. Come, little time remains.”

The throne of Qualinesti stood on its dais, bathed in golden light. Its gilded back, carved in the shape of the sun, reflected the light with painful intensity. Balif held out a hand to the empty chair.

“That is your portal, Speaker of the Sun and Stars. You have but to take it, and all your cares shall end.”

All his cares would end. It was a notion both comforting and terrifying. Gilthas didn’t want to die, didn’t want to leave Kerianseray. And there was so much left undone. A brave, suffering people looked to him for leadership. But he was so sick. Illusion or not, the feeling of drawing an unencumbered breath was intoxicating. He felt young and healthy, just as be should. All he need do was sit his throne and the struggle would be over.

The sound of voices drew him closer to the dais. The voices were coming from the glowing throne, speaking all at once, but not in unison. The sound was like the rolling of ocean waves, lifting and lowering him in a rhythmic, soothing motion. Soon he would be part of that sound, his own voice added to the chorus of the dead.

Pathfinder.

He stopped. That voice had not come from the throne. He glanced uncertainly at Balif. The Silvanesti was looking back toward the far end of the illusory hall. Nothing at all was visible there. The image of the audience hail simply faded into blackness.

Gilthas Pathfinder, come back!

The voice was not familiar, but it pulled powerfully at him.

His foot, lifted to step onto the throne dais, lowered back onto the floor.

“Come,” urged the shade of Balif. “Join us.”

He wanted to, to become one with great elves of the past like Kith-Kanan, Balif, Silvanos, Silveran, and with those who loomed large in his own heart—his father, and his mother who had died with Qualinost to save them all. The joyous reunion required him to take single step onto the dais and to sit down on his throne.

Gilthas Pathfinder, in the name of the goddess, I command you! Return!

With a knowing smile, Balif said, “Go with the gods, Great Speaker. You shall not see me again.”

The Silvanesti’s body paled to a translucent silhouette, then vanished. All around Gilthas the remembered beauty of Qualinost likewise dissolved, becoming a confusing welter of gray and brown before gradually resolving into the patchwork roof of his tent in Inath-Wakenti. Above him floated the face of a human woman. Tendrils of white hair curled around a face creased by concern.

The woman’s lips moved, but he couldn’t make out the words. Drawing a shuddering breath, he croaked, “What?”

The woman moved abruptly out of his line of sight, and her place was taken by someone Gilthas did know. Kerian, looking windblown and sunburned, knelt by his bed and took his face in her hands.

“Who told you you could die?” she said, voice breaking. Tears glistened in her eyes, and Gilthas was concerned. The Lioness never wept in public.

“Don’t cry, my love,” he rasped. “I met Balif. He told me his true tale.”

She called him a fool and he smiled, pleased he had cheered her.

The intimate moment was broken by the human woman’s return. She laid damp cloths on his brow. Kerian introduced her as Sa’ida, high priestess of the Temple of Elir-Sana.

“She saved your life,” Kerian added.

He felt strangely ambivalent about being rescued. The eternal glory of Qualinost had been within his grasp. Now he had only the sterile despair of the Silent Vale.

No, not only that. He took Kerian’s hand. His own was cold, but hers was warm as sunshine.

“Did you hear me call you?” he asked. “I used the stone platform.”

“Of course. I came as fast as I could,” she said, smiling.

His eyes closed, and Kerian looked to Sa’ida. The priestess was gripping the pendant she wore around her neck. Normally the gold-and-sapphire amulet was kept hidden within her robe, but she held it tightly in her right hand. The Eye of Elir-Sana, the symbol of the goddess of healing.

“He will rest. His soul had almost departed, but he is back.” Sa’ida regarded the Speaker’s wasted frame. Elves were a naturally slender, willowy race compared to humans, but the Speaker of the Sun and Stars appeared no more than a skeleton beneath the heavy blankets. In sleep he looked far worse than many corpses she had seen. She shook her head. “Consumption is dreadful among my people. It is an abomination in yours.”

Kerian looked away. Sa’ida’s reaction had caused her to see Gilthas through new eyes. Merciful E’li, they had only just arrived in time!

The Speaker’s tent was filled with people. Kerian nodded to Truthanar, and he returned the gesture with a look of dawning relief. Turning, he herded the rest back to a more respectful distance. The air of terrified suspense was replaced by one of cautious optimism.

Kerian touched her husband’s face. It was bathed in sweat but noticeably cooler than it had been when she’d arrived. Sa’ida gently but firmly pulled her away from her sleeping husband. They emerged from the close confines of the tent into cool morning air.

“Is he healed?” Kerian asked.

The high priestess rubbed her hands together, flexing her fingers stiffly as if they pained her. “That was no healing, lady. The Speaker was on the edge of a chasm; I guided him back home, that’s all.”

She explained the course of treatment the Speaker would require. Healing him would be a long and complicated process. Consumption was a deep-seated malady. It had to be destroyed root and branch, or it would recur.

“Have you told him?” Sa’ida asked.

Kerian, still digesting what the priestess had just said, was lost. “Told who? What?”

“Of the child you carry.”

Shock rocked the Lioness back on her heels, and Sa’ida immediately realized she had not known her own state. The priestess apologized for having delivered the news so bluntly.

“How can you know?” Kerian asked hoarsely.

Sa’ida shrugged. “I am the high priestess of Elir-Sana.”

Kerian walked on trembling legs to a nearby log and sat down. A child! Her head moved in a denial, but she knew Sa’ida wouldn’t mislead her about so important a fact.

The priestess’s hand rested on her shoulder. “Don’t look so frightened,” she said kindly. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

Natural for some, but for the Lioness? The foundations of her world were shifting under her feet, and Kerian wondered how she would cope.

“Motherhood,” she said, and the word sounded as strange to her as anything she’d encountered in Inath-Wakenti.

Outside the ring of standing stones and bonfires, unfriendly eyes surveyed the camp. Black tongue lolling, the beast who was Prince Shobbat crouched by a small tree. His belly ached with hunger. Before he’d come into the valley, he’d hunted rabbits and squirrels. In the valley there was nothing. He was sure the laddad would have food. Sneaking in would not be easy. Laddad senses were far keener than a human’s, but so were his, and he was much stealthier than when he’d been human.

He did not debate the question long. His empty belly overruled any qualms. Rising from his crouch, he trotted through the widely spaced trees. It was very early in the morning, and the high mountains shadowed the valley, but he kept to the low places so as not to risk showing a silhouette to elf eyes. Unfortunately, he could find no easy access. The ramparts surrounding the laddad camp were uniformly patrolled.

At a barricade spanning the gap between two lofty monoliths, the pair of elves on watch leaned casually on their spears. Their attention was half-hearted at best. Since the Speaker’s encounter with the will-o’-the-wisps several nights back, the ghosts of Inath-Wakenti had not reappeared. Eerie silence still cloaked the valley, but the absence of specters went a long way toward lulling elf fears. For the civilian volunteers, guard duty became routine. The hardest part of the job was staying awake.

One sentinel stood straighter and pushed his helmet back from his forehead.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

His comrade had seen nothing but his own drooping eyelids. “What?” he mumbled.

The first sentinel pointed at a gully about thirty yards away. “It went in there,” he said. “It looked like a dog. A big one!”

An argument ensued. Both elves knew there were no dogs in Inath-Wakenti, but the first insisted he had not been mistaken. Whatever it was, he had seen something. The discussion grew heated, but he remained adamant. He went to find the captain of the night watch and report the sighting.

The beast noted the departure of the sentinel. Only one elf remained, and the barrier at that spot was only chest-high, made of loose stones. He couldn’t hope for better odds than that. Belly low to the turf, he crept forward. Soon he was close enough to hear the crackle of bonfires and to smell wood burning. He could smell laddad too. Unlike the pungency of unwashed humans, laddad scent was redolent of dry grass, like a haymow.

Gathering his long legs beneath him, Shobbat sprang.

He hit the laddad sentinel in the back, and the two of them went down in a heap. Shobbat’s jaws locked onto the laddad’s throat. How easy it would be to tear the elf apart. Part of him wanted to taste the hot blood flowing, but enough of his humanity remained to resist that savagery. He held on until the laddad succumbed to lack of air and lost consciousness.

Pressing on, Shobbat kept to the shadows, avoiding bonfires and the packs of alert laddad patrolling the camp. His keen nose detected the aroma of smoked meat. He tracked the tantalizing odor. Once he almost blundered into the path of several mounted warriors. The riders didn’t notice him, but their horses did. The front pair reared and lashed out with their shod hooves. Shobbat withdrew quickly into the deep shadows between two large tents. The riders calmed their mounts and moved on.

Shobbat’s nose led him at last to a round tent with a conical roof. It was guarded by a pair of spear-armed laddad who walked around it in opposite directions. Getting past them was simple He waited until they met and moved on; then he sprinted for the tent. He put his nose under the fabric and shoved himself beneath.

Within, the tent was dark and full of savory smells. Five goat haunches hung above him. Shobbat tore one down and devoured it immediately. When he reared up to drag down a second, he saw there were only three remaining, not four. Instantly wary, he dropped to his belly. Although he watched and listened to the limits of his beastly senses, he detected no one inside the tent. Perhaps he had miscounted the number originally. The flesh was hard and dry, almost wooden, but to Shobbat’s starved stomach, it was ambrosia from the gods. He pulled down a second haunch to eat. He intended to take the last two with him. As he ate, he glanced up.

Only one haunch remained.

That stopped him cold. He might have miscounted by one, but not two. The meat was disappearing even as he stood directly beneath it. Without taking his eyes from the last hanging haunch, he backed away until he came up against the tent wall. The air around the haunch shimmered. Tiny sparks of light darted this way and that. They focused on the goat leg, surrounding it in a faint halo of purple light. The light faded. When it was gone, so was the meat.

The same phenomenon began to swirl around the half-eaten haunch on the ground. Unwilling to let his dinner vanish, Shobbat hurled himself onto the meat. Snatching it up in his jaws, he shook it vigorously. The sparkling aura dissipated, leaving his meal behind. Unfortunately, his noisy movements caught the attention of the guards. They ran in, one of them bearing a torch. Seeing him standing in the middle of the tent, a half-chewed goat haunch in his mouth, they shouted for help. Shobbat galloped between them, knocking them aside.

Outside he immediately ran into a quartet of warriors. Had they been mounted, he would have died beneath their horses’ hooves. As they were on foot, he was able to dart between them and escape.

A hue and cry arose behind him. Belatedly, an arrow hissed by his head. Shobbat laid back his ears and ran for all he was worth. The rumble of horses on his left drove him the opposite direction, into a welter of tents. He threaded his way among them, leaving chaos in his wake and earning swipes from tools in the hands of terrified laddad. One bold youth tried to bar his way with a loaded crossbow. Shobbat, goat haunch still firmly clamped in his jaws, leaped over the youngster’s head, leaving her staring after him in impotent surprise.

He rounded a corner and veered into a broader avenue, choosing it because it was not lit by a bonfire. He quickly discovered his mistake. Several laddad were standing outside a very large, patched tent. Shobbat had blundered into their midst before realizing they were there. It was astonishing enough to find himself facing General Hamaramis, commander of the laddad khan’s army, and Kerianseray, the khan’s warrior-wife, but the identity of the other female in the group was even more amazing: Sa’ida, high priestess of Elir-Sana.

When he’d first become a beast, Shobbat had gone to the Temple of Elir-Sana seeking help to return to his true state. Instead, the high priestess had driven him away. Hunger forgotten, Shobbat dropped the goat haunch, bared his yellow fangs, and snarled at Sa’ida.

Kerianseray and the other warriors drew their swords. Shouts and the sound of running feet told Shobbat the mob that had chased him from the provisions tent was arriving as well.

“Hold!” The voice of Sa’ida carried over the tumult, silencing it. “This is no ordinary beast. He is as foreign here as we are.” She named Shobbat, to universal astonishment.

Fury shook Shobbat. He should kill the worthless woman for having refused him aid, but the forest of naked blades before him and the angry crowd behind argued for a different tack.

“Don’t… kill… me,” he rasped, lowering his head.

Various exclamations of shock came from the laddad, and Sa’ida said, “He bears the curse of a powerful sorcerer.”

“Fay’trus!” Shobbat hissed, head bobbing up and down vigorously. “Kill Fay’trus!”

The laddad in front of him muttered among themselves and two departed, but Kerianseray advanced on him, sword still out, and his attention focused on her. “You’re our enemy,” she told him. “You’ve caused untold suffering with your plots!”

She edged to one side and he shifted to keep her in view. “My country… my crown!”

“Now!” she cried.

The two elves who’d left the group had worked their way around to flank him. They came charging at him from each side. The mob was still behind him. He had no place to go but forward.

He launched himself not at Kerianseray, but at the traitorous priestess. For siding with foreigners against her own prince he’d have her eyes for amulets.

Sa’ida stood calmly, awaiting his attack. At the last moment, she raised her hands and mouthed a single word. Shobbat froze in midleap as if stuck in amber. She flung her hands apart, and he up shot into the sky like a missile from a catapult.

He tumbled nose over tail through the air. When he finally landed in a dry ravine, loose sand softened the blow somewhat, but the impact still drove the breath from his lungs. He lay gasping for several long minutes, grateful to have survived such a fall.

The laddad camp was a distant glow on the southern horizon. The meddlesome Sa’ida had thrown him several miles deeper into the valley. She’d kept the laddad from hacking him to bits but lost him his goat haunch and his way. On a day soon to come, Shobbat would mete out a fitting punishment.

The morning wind brought a new scent to his nose. Faint and fetid, the odor was one he had tasted before, when he was still a man. it belonged to Faeterus. The sorcerer had passed this way.

With a last angry glare at the rising smudge of bonfire smoke marking the elves’ camp, Shobbat trotted off among the monoliths.