Kagonesti

Chapter 14

"I am called Asbtamay," tbe warrior offered as be led tbe buman toward the village clearing. "Sir Kamford Willis, Knight of the Rose, at your service." "I recognized you from your sword, though, of course, I did not know your name." "Recognized me from where?" the human asked, puzzled. "I witnessed your fight against the red dragons-you and the men who rode with you." Ash described his vantage of that heroic, doomed skirmish. "When the dragon's breath swept across you, I felt certain you must be dead. Perhaps I should have looked more closely." "It was the mud," Sir Kamford explained, shaking his head in wonder. "I should have perished-all the men of my company did. But when I fell to the ground, that wyrm fell on top of me and pressed me right into that muck-it was quite wet in that clearing, after all. I had to squirm out before I suffocated, and 1 assure you that was no easy task. A small dragon it may have been, but plenty enough weight to trap a man for good! Then, by the time I emerged, the other dragon was gone."

"How did you come to the Bluelake? And why did you stand against the bakali?"

"As to the first question, I was lost. The mountains kept forcing me south when I wanted to go west-traveling a lot slower than I would have liked, since I lost my horse. I was working my way along the shore, hoping I could swing westward past the tail of the lake. Then, yesterday, I saw the smoke from the burning village, and 1 got close enough to see the lizardmen-no friends to any knight. I found a good hiding place under the bank, right at the foot of the ravine. Naturally, I wanted to get an idea whether or not this force intended to move against Solamnia." Sir Kamford continued to explain as they reached the edge of the vallen- wood glade, where Kagonesti warriors halted their labor of removing bakali bodies to watch the human's arrival with cold, impassive eyes.

"Then, when you launched your attack and took them by surprise, I saw the chance to trap the scaly fellows right here. But I did wonder why you didn't send some of your braves to seal off the escape route."

Ash shook his head, unwilling to admit that his own suggestion for that tactic had been vetoed. He could clearly imagine the mass bakali escape, however, if Sir Kamford had not arrived when he did.

'The aim of our attack was to drive them off. Thanks to your help, the victory is-"

Ash froze, paralyzed by a look of alarm on Ampruss's face as the young brave dashed up to him. "It's the Pathfinder! You must see him-before it's too late!"

Panicked, the warrior raced to the ruins of his uncle's lodge. Ampruss ran beside him. "It was a bakali-it came out of the woods when the battle was almost over. I… I killed it, but too late!" The young warrior's voice choked, and Ashtaway sensed, with pain of his own, Ampruss's grief and guilt.

Iydaway lay on a straw mat just outside his former front door. Ash knelt beside him, sickened to see a deep, bubbling wound in the Pathfinder's frail chest.

The old elf's lips gasped reflexively, but no sounds emerged. Ash leaned close as his uncle desperately tried to speak.

"Here… take…"

At first the warrior didn't understand what Iydaway meant. The old elf's hands trembled, seemed to flail mean- inglessly. Or perhaps, Ashtaway didn't want to understand.

"The Ram's Horn, Pathfinder," Iydaway gasped. "It is yours now-yours as long as the gods allow."

"Don't talk!" urged Ashtaway, desperately frightened by the old man's weakness, and by his words as well.

"I… had hoped to teach you longer. But I have always suspected you would be the one-then, when you heard the second Ram's Horn, I knew."

"Please, Uncle-"

"Listen… no time… you are the Pathfinder. Go, now, speak to the tribe…"

"But-what can I say? Why should they listen?"

"Use the horn… it will know… play the horn, and Father Kagonesti will show you…"

For a time Iydaway was silent, and Ash feared he had died. Finally the wounded Pathfinder opened his eyes, inhaling a deep, bubbling breath.

"Take the tribe south… the central woodlands… find the path."

With a gurgling exhalation, the elder Kagonesti shuddered and lay still. Tears stung Ash's eyes, and he looked, with something like loathing, at the spiraled horn in his hands.

Then he thought of Hammana, of the potent force-he knew, now, too late, that it was love-growing between them. He truly hated the horn, hating even more the bonds of pledge and responsibility that were its potent companions.

But he could not ignore the command. Blindly he rose to his feet, stumbling away with a hand in front of his face-the hand that brandished the Ram's Horn. Vaguely he became aware that many eyes were turned to him. He blinked, and forced himself to stand tall.

"You are the Pathfinder," Faltath declared, his voice emerging from the mass of tattooed braves. Ashtaway didn't see his old friend, but he wanted, desperately, to argue with his words.

Ashtaway thought: My uncle has made a mistake! The young warrior wanted to shout the news to the tribe, to hold out the spiraled horn for any who would take it. But he couldn't do this any more than he could disobey Iydaway's command.

"He gave it to me because I heard the second Ram's Horn. Let us gather in the council circle, and I will tell the tale."

The wild elves ringed the central fire pit of the village. They listened raptly as Ashtaway told of the summons from Lectral, of the silver dragon that Hammana still tended. His voice tightened reflexively as he spoke of the beautiful healer, of her tender ministrations toward the mighty serpent.

After a time, one of the older warriors produced a pipe, and for several minutes the braves smoked, passing the ritual bowl from one to another-waiting silently while the young Pathfinder suspended the telling for his turn to inhale the aged tobacco. Ashtaway gave it to Sir Kamford and admired the human's fortitude as the knight drew in the harsh smoke and allowed it to breeze easily outward from his nostrils.

Pensively, Ash's mind returned to Hammana. More than ever before, he wanted to see her, to talk to her. But he had other things to do now, and to say.

"The tribe must make ready to depart," Ashtaway declared. "Such was my uncle's last wish, and it shall be done."

"You won the battle, and you're still going to leave?" The knight spoke more bluntly and hastily than an elf, and Ashtaway paused, startled.

"The village has never been attacked here," the Pathfinder explained shortly. "Now the bakali, and doubtlessly other minions of the Dark Queen, know that we are here. We fear for the lives of our elders and our children. Also, it seems that the war is creeping steadily closer."

"Aye, my friend. Those are good fears, right and proper. But as to the war, if you find a place where it's not encroaching, 1 wish you'd let me know. There's people all over Ansalon wishing for the same thing, but not one that I know of's been able to find it."

"We will move south, into the heart of the forest lands that divide Silvanesti and Qualinesti."

"Forests? Maybe in your granddaddy's time, I'll guess," Sir Kamford disputed, with a wry chuckle that struck a dissonant note in the contemplative elves. 'True, I'd heard tales going back to the time of Vinas Solamnus himself. Said that there used to be woodlands filling the whole gap between the Kharolis and Khalkist Ranges. Not anymore, I'm afraid. You're talking of migrating into some prime farmland now."

The Kagonesti warriors remained silent, but uneasy glances flickered among the tribe. None of them was prepared to believe the word of a savage human, but neither did any of the elves have personal knowledge of the southern forests. Not since the Kinslayer War had any of the wild elves dwelled there, and that was a thousand years in the past.

"It's not a surprise, I guess, that the lizardmen should have found you down here." The human rambled on with a garrulousness that rendered meditative discourse practically impossible. Ashtaway, however, was curious to hear what the man would say.

"The Dark Queen's armies are starting a big push to the west this year. By high summer, there'll be battles waged from here to Palanthas, if she has her way. It's only natural that she send some of her lizards into the forest, looking for a way around the knights."

"I first observed you with a small company of knights. Did you then seek to block this maneuver?" Ash asked. He began to wonder if, behind the knight's undeniable courage, there lurked the mind of a mad fool. His force of two dozen men seemed far too small to accomplish such a bold mission.

"We were not here as an army, either of invasion or defense," the knight assured him. "Our primary task was to explore the valleys in the foothills, to seek a route into the mountains."

"Not to defend Palanthas?" Ashtaway tried to picture a reason for the human's strategy.

"No, but, perhaps, to make the Queen's attack against Palanthas less successful. Takhisis, you see, has sent practically all of her dragons with the strike force of her armies. They make a formidable force, and we know their target is, eventually, Palanthas."

"Then the war may indeed be approaching its end," declared Faltath. His tone made it clear that he viewed the defeat of the knights as a thing of precious little consequence to himself or the tribe.

Once again, Ash found himself disagreeing with his lifelong friend. The prospect of dragons soaring over the woodland, of bakali legions roaming and plundering wherever they wanted to go, seemed like a chilling legacy for the years of his children and grandchildren-and then, with a cold shiver, he again felt the weight of the Ram's Horn. There would be no children for him.

"Don't hold a victory celebration for the Dark Queen. Not yet!" snapped the knight, with appalling rudeness. Faltath flushed, but Sir Kamford continued speaking without a pause. "There's hope for the knights in several straws, slender though they may be."

"Do you speak of ways to defeat the Dark Queen and her dragons?" wondered Ashtaway. Often he had remembered the savagery of the dragons he'd seen. An army of the creatures seemed almost incomprehensibly powerful.

"It's not so unthinkable," the man replied. "There are, after all, dragons who fight as our allies. The golds and silvers make a formidable armada when they take to the skies, and thus the Dark Queen needs always to guard against a surprise attack against Sanction, where lies the root of her strength."

The young Pathfinder remembered Lectral saying much the same thing. "Then why not strike at Sanction from the plains, where your army is?" Ashtaway asked.

"Because the queen's armies-and her dragons-block our passage across those plains," Sir Kamford said grimly. "We couldn't attack from there until we defeat those armies. And unless we can burn the depots of Sanction she'll be able to keep her army in the field for ten more years!"

"I have seen Sanction, from a distance," the young Pathfinder noted. "There seemed ever to be a black, angry cloud about the place-it seems a fitting abode for the Queen of Darkness."

The knight chuckled, and even Ashtaway was set aback by the man's lack of manners. Suppressing his own temper, aware of the other warriors' displeasure behind their stoic expressions, Ash forced himself to remember that Sir Kamford was a stranger to proper society-indeed, there seemed to be no rudeness intended in his expression of humor.

"She doesn't actually live there, of course-nor anywhere else on Krynn. But it's rumored that her serpents have their lairs in the volcanoes around the city, and that's where she's assembled the supply depots to run the war."

Ashtaway was intrigued, remembering what the knight had said earlier. Lectral's speculations in the cave, which had centered around the importance of Sanction to the Dark Queen, came vividly back to him. "And while her dragons are in the west, menacing Palanthas, you seek to find a way to strike at Sanction? To cripple her village while her warriors are out on the hunt?"

"In a manner of speaking." There might have been a trace of amusement in Sir Kamford's voice, but it seemed as though he was making a conscious effort, now, to mimic the serene expressions of the Kagonesti. "Of course, the central plains are too dangerous. Any party of knights caught by dragons, miles away from shelter, would be doomed. And if we tried to march directly, there's no doubt that we would be caught."

"So you were planning to attack along an indirect route?" Ashtaway surprised himself again, this time by speaking so abruptly on the tail of his companion's words. He could sense Faltath staring at him in disbelief, but he was very curious-and a little awed-by the human's audacity.

'The company you saw last week? No, we were just a scouting party. The Lord Knights won't even consider launching an attack unless we could return with word of a route through the mountains."

The elven warrior nodded.

"My party had been scouting since the snow melted in the lower valleys. Unfortunately, every time we found a promising path, we ended up in some box canyon or confronted by a ring of tall peaks. Places even a man couldn't go, to say nothing of our horses."

"You would take your horses to this battle?"

"A knight without his horse is like… is like one of you without his legs," Sir Kamford said seriously. "Yes, we would ride our horses into battle. The Knights of Solam- nla, in charge rank, are a force to make even ogres quail."

The Kagonesti remembered the small company battling against the red dragons, and he had no doubt that Sir Kamford spoke the truth.

"Yet the charge against Sanction, it seems, will never be made," the knight declared sadly. "Even if I live to return to Solanthus, I will not be able to offer the lords any hope. There was no route in the mountains, and across the plains lies only death."

Ashtaway nodded solemnly, as if in sympathy with the human's despair. It was a warrior's tragedy: brave men on a desperate mission, slain by crimson death on wing. This lone survivor, a valiant knight to be sure, the only one left to carry the tale of failure.

At the same time, the elf's mind churned with a knowledge that he suspected he would not be able to contain. Should he speak? There was really no choice involved.

'There is, possibly, another way," Ashtaway said deliberately. "Perhaps… even a way that the tribe could remain beside the Bluelake, to live here in safety."

Even the human remained silent, waiting for him to continue. Ash took a long time to think, collecting his thoughts before he spoke.

"There is a route through the Khalkists, leading up from the south. It is a narrow pass that winds high among the peaks, but I believe it would be passable even for horses."

"A route that leads to Sanction?" asked Sir Kamford tautly, after a barely respectable pause.

"I have seen the Three Smoking Mountains from the crest of the pass, and looked down upon the city in the valley of fire beyond."

"The Lords of Doom! So there is-there might be-a way! Tell me, where is this pass? How can I find it?"

"I doubt that you could," Ashtaway said, without rancor. "I discovered the place myself only by accident, after many seasons of hunting in the high mountains."

For a moment, the Kagonesti paused. He felt a sense of portent, and knew what he was about to say even before he articulated the words. At the same time, he realized that his tribemates would react with shock and dismay- yet Ashtaway could not, would not pull back from his decision.

"I will show you the pass," he said quietly. "You must return to Solamnia and gather your force of knights. I will lead you through the mountains, so that you may strike at the Dark Queen's village."

"What treachery is this?" demanded Faltath, his face taut behind the whorls of his tattoos. "You would lead a force of humans through the heart of our woodlands?" The elf's fist closed around the hilt of his sword, and for a moment Ash wondered if his old friend would draw his weapon and violate the protection extended to the human.

"We aren't coming to invade!" declared Sir Kamford.

Faltath raised his hand from the hilt of his sword and crossed his arms firmly over his chest. "Do you mean that we should welcome humans into these forests?" he demanded, his tone edging on mockery.

"Perhaps you would prefer to welcome red dragons, or ogres, into the woodlands," suggested Ashtaway tightly. He felt his own temper rising. Why couldn't Faltath understand?

"That's just the point!" Sir Kamford's voice was full of persuasive enthusiasm, though it sounded harsh and strident to the elven ears. Still, their attention was bound by the force of his conviction. "I can't promise that if we strike at Sanction, we'll win the war. Indeed, 1 suspect the issue will be decided in the west, dragon against dragon, in the skies over Solamnia. But our attack can weaken the Dark Queen's army just when it is most in need of strength!

"And make no mistake, my elven friends." Now the knight's tone dropped to an ominous timbre so portentous that none of the Kagonesti reacted to his categorization of them. "The victor in this war will have strong bearing on the future of Krynn-for all races, all peoples. It is an effect that will outlast the lifetime of even the most venerable elf."

"I have seen the dragons," Ashtaway noted. "If they return, the forests will not be safe for elf or man. Far better to cast our weight before the war is resolved, that the dragons of evil may be defeated."

He looked at Sir Kamford, and his hazel eyes were flat and cold. "After this war," he added meaningfully, "we can decide what to do about the humans."

"Fair enough," agreed the armored knight. "I offer my word-I shall describe your contribution to my lords, as well as your desire that we leave you alone. We pass through your realm only because it offers the best-the only-path against the Dark Queen's bastion."

Ashtaway felt a surge of apprehension. Was he doing the right thing?

If he made the wrong decision, and the village was attacked again, could they hope for a repeat of their recent good fortune? Or might they be attacked by dragons and ogres as well as by the dimwitted bakali? If so, Ash knew that it might mean the end of the tribe.

Yet if they left this place, they had no guarantee that they would find another site half as good-perhaps there would not even be woodlands, a range of pastoral forest in which to hunt and live. He knew how quickly humans bred and multiplied, about their insatiable thirst for land. It did not seem inconceivable that during the last thousand years they had claimed great sections of what had once been forest.

Finally Ashtaway sighed and opened his eyes, which he fixed upon the face of Sir Kamford Willis. "How long will it take you to reach Solamnia and return to the woodland with this army of knights?"

"Two weeks to walk home, a week to gather the force, and another week to return with riders-and myself back in a saddle. In four weeks, you could show us the way into Sanction."

"I do not know these 'weeks,'" replied the venerable Kagonesti. "What does this mean in the cycles of Krynn?"

Sir Kamford frowned in thought, then looked at the dawnlit sky. The sliver of Lunitari, barely past new, had just risen in the east. "When Lunitari grows to fullness, then fades, and then returns as a crescent such as it is now, I shall arrive with my knights."

"Very well. I will tell you of a place we can meet, in the foothills north of here," Iydaway agreed. "The tribe will remain beside the Bluelake for at least another season. By that time we should know if the menace of evil has been defeated or merely enraged such that we will need to flee."

"Splendid!" declared the knight. "I depart at once!"

"First, you must stay and eat with us," the young Pathfinder declared. "For it is bad fortune to start a journey on an empty stomach."