Kagonesti

Chapter 29

The terrified Kagonesti huddled around a small fire, watching the woods. At sunset, they divided themselves into the three largest lodges to spend the long, ghostly night. At dawn, they emerged again, rebuilding the fire and watching their wilderness perish before their eyes. The trees continued to bleed, fouling the streams, polluting the crystal pool in the center of the village. Fortunately, Kagwallas had had the presence of mind to order all the waterskins filled when the trees had first split open, and the tribe did not suffer for water. Keeping his bow and arrows in his hands, Iydahoe often rose to his feet and paced around the periphery of the village. He felt as though the forest itself was planning an attack, and he despaired that his own vigilance would not be enough to prevent or deflect it.

Kagwallas and Bakall, too, kept watch on the woods, while Dallatar tried amuse the younger elves by making funny faces and performing inept juggling acts. Ambra held little Faylai on her lap, while Vanisia sat among all the wild elves, offering a comforting word whenever she could.

Iydahoe heard a stirring in the woods-the first such noise since the trees had begun to bleed. Carefully raising an arrow, he peered among the gory trunks, certain that something large moved out there. A bulky form crashed heavily through the decaying brush.

A stag lumbered into view, shaking its antlered head from side to side, groggy and confused. Snorting, it fixed bloodshot eyes on one of the lodges. Lowering its rack, the great deer charged, smashing through the bark-and- leather wall of the small hut.

Oddly, Iydahoe's first fear was a concern that the heavy hooves would further smash the pieces of the Ram's Horn, which still lay on the mossy blanket nearby. Overcoming his surprise, the elf raised his bow and shot-a perfect hit, sending the arrowhead deep into the creature's heart. Yet the deer only stumbled, raising its head and snorting as it looked around for the source of the attack. Iydahoe shot again, followed with a third arrow before the animal sank to its knees, then toppled, dead.

Regretfully, the warrior and the older boys dragged the meat into the woods, reluctant to eat a creature that had been touched by such visible and profound madness. That night, Iydahoe trembled on his sleeping pallet, hearing the surreal moaning of the wind, the sighing of the trees, as if each limb, each trunk, felt terrible grief over the wounds that so unnaturally drained them. His nightmares came while he was awake, and his fear blocked him from seeking the only available refuge-sleep.

"Is it true that you have killed many hundred men?" asked Vanisia suddenly, her voice emerging from the darkness on the other side of the hut. For a moment, Iydahoe didn't even comprehend her question, and when he did he thought that her curiosity seemed no more bizarre than the natural chaos around them.

"That's what the human said. I have not kept count of lives, though I've shot many hundreds of arrows at the Istarians. And I rarely missed," he added, wanting to be truthful.

"Why did you kill so many?"

He told her of the day, fourteen years before, when his- and the tribe's-life had changed forever. It was not until he finished speaking that he realized he wept, that sometime during his speaking Vanisia had come to his side. Now she, too, wept as she held him. In the strength of her embrace he found the only goodness he knew in the world, profoundly relieved that there was, at least, that much comfort amid the chaos and despair.

"Why must you do this avenging, this killing?" she probed gently, after a long silence.

"I–I don't know. Since that day, the tribe has had no Pathfinder-"

"They have you," Vanisia said firmly, and her words brought him up short. "You will show them the way. And perhaps that way is not always by killing."

"I am beginning to think you speak the truth," he admitted. With this thought on his mind, he finally slept.

The next day, the maddened intruders were wild boars-three of them. The creatures stampeded into the camp, heads lowered, and charged at the first Kagonesti they saw. This was Dallatar, who ducked out of the way. But one of the young girls, trying to run, was tossed high by a tusked snout and suffered a broken arm. She cried shrilly as Iydahoe and the older youths finally slew the maddened animals with spears and arrows.

Once more the wild elves dragged the meat away from the village and left it to rot. Vanisia showed her clerical gift as a healer in mending and splinting the broken bone, but when she prayed to her goddess for aid in healing, those beseechments went unanswered. All her concentration and effort could not bring a response from the angered deities of Krynn-there would be no miraculous recovery.

On successive days, wolves, hawks, even rabbits and squirrels, dashed into the village in berserk frenzy. The youngest Kagonesti wielded clubs and threw stones, joining the rest to battle the unnatural onslaught. On the seventh night, the wild elves moved from their lodges into a large, dry cave that stood in one of the grotto's walls. There they slept fitfully, always with several sentries posted to keep their eyes on the night's exceptionally deep darkness.

Late in the morning of the ninth day, a bear lurched into the village. The brute drooled, snapping foaming jaws as it peered around with dim, bloodshot eyes. Iydahoe ordered the rest of the tribe into the cave and faced the monster alone. He shot many arrows into the bear before it charged, roaring. Then he chopped with his axe as the bear mauled the elf. The two combatants rolled across the ground, the elf snarling as fiercely as the bear. Claws raked Iydahoe's ribs as the steel axe bit again and again into the crazed animal's side.

It was that keen blade that ultimately saved him, slashing through the arteries in the monster's neck. Iydahoe's tribemates dragged the corpse off the bleeding, ravaged warrior, but the wild elf would not lie still and let Vanisia tend his wounds. Instead, he stumbled to his feet, shaking his bleeding fists at the equally gruesome forest.

"Why do you turn on us?" Iydahoe cried. The pain from his wounds was nothing compared to the spiritual betrayal he felt. His rage was mindless, directed at the woods and mountains themselves. The corruption of tree and wild beast was too much, too vile, to bear.

"Come and kill me-now!" he shrieked. 'The bear was too weak! Give me a real killer! Or are you afraid?"

He didn't know who he shouted at as he wildly looked around, but suddenly his eyes fixed on a focus for his rage, his despairing sense of abandonment. Blindly he stumbled to the mat where the shards of the Ram's Horn lay.

"Take back your gifts!" he railed. "Useless, pathetic symbols. What use are they to us!"

The elves of the tribe watched in shock as he picked up the shards, threw them by the handful into the woods, cursing and shouting until, at last, he collapsed into a ragged heap.

Deeply shaken, Bakali and Kagwallas carried him into the cave. Finally Iydahoe felt shame, knowing his outburst must have terribly frightened the Kagonesti. Still, there was that bleak, all-consuming despair…

If it hadn't been for the presence of Vanisia, Iydahoe felt that these dire portents might have caused the loss of his own sanity. Yet when his despair seemed darkest, when hopelessness settled over his mind like a burial shroud, she would ask him questions, gently direct his attention back to the mundane life of the tribe-such as it was. Sometimes she just held his hand, and the touch of her soft skin was the strength, the hope that sent a few rays of light spilling through his despair. At other times, they exchanged legends about their peoples. He told her of the Grandfather Ram and Father Kagonesti, while she spoke of wise Silvanos and his long, troubled legacy.

They shared these tales with the young ones and talked of lighter things as well. Vanisia allowed the girls to play with the large, coiled shell that was her belt buckle, explaining that it came from an ocean shore. For hours Faylai and Tiffli listened, rapt, as she told them of beaches and waves and the sea. Then the youngsters held the shell to their ears, listening, imagining the distant surf.

The elves drank water sparingly and slept as best they could. Always after dark the winds came, each night louder, more furious than the last. Shreds of bark were ripped from the roofs of the lodges, and dead leaves swirled into the low kettle of the grotto. One by one the smaller lodges had collapsed under the unnatural onslaught.

Vanisia passed some of the time by making herself a pair of sturdy moccasins, using scraps of hide from the ruined lodges. She was so successful in her endeavor that, in short order, she made footwear for several of the other Kagonesti-and taught the youngsters to do the same. Her silent labors were a source of reassurance, of normalcy to them all, and the young elves brightened perceptibly, wearing their first new clothes in fourteen years.

On the twelfth morning, Iydahoe awakened to a bleak silence. He saw Vanisia sitting in the mouth of the cave, looking outward. When she noticed that he was awake, she held a finger to her lips and gestured that he should join her.

"What is it?" he whispered, apprehensive.

"Look. I don't know where he came from, but he hasn't moved since first light."

Iydahoe was shocked to see an elderly elf standing under the drooping branches of an oak, apparently observing the battered village from the shelter of the forest. The stranger's hair was long and pure white, and he supported his frail frame by leaning on a stout, crooked staff. A pattern of faded ink seemed to darken the elf's skin in places, and Iydahoe wondered if he saw an oak leaf tattoo over the fellow's left eye. If he had been marked as a Kagonesti, the inking had been done so long ago that it had all but faded.

For a few minutes Iydahoe observed the old fellow, noting his ragged robe of deerskin, his bare feet, and his emaciated physique. The stranger looked back, seeing the two elves sitting in the door of the lodge but making no move to approach or retreat.

Finally, Iydahoe rose to his feet. Slowly, with a peculiar sense of reverence, he went outside, under the sickly green heavens. The trees had ceased to bleed, and a stillness had settled over the entire forest. The warrior wrestled with an unsettling sense that he and this old elf were the only two living creatures currently under that oppressive sky.

"Come, Grandfather. You are welcome here," he said politely, using the honorary term for an elder Kagonesti. "We have jerky and dried fruit. Join us as we break our fast."

The white-haired elf simply stared, though his dark hazel eyes sparkled. Iydahoe sensed that he had heard every word, but still the ancient figure made no movement, no reply.

"Do you hear me, Grandfather?" he asked.

"I hear-but do you, wild elf?" The stranger's voice was strong and resonant, a surprisingly forceful sound emerging from that frail chest.

"What should I hear?" Iydahoe was puzzled.

"You offer me help, but you cannot help me. Nor can I help you."

"Is there any help, any hope?" asked the warrior.

"You call me Grandfather, and this is wrong. Seek him, wild elf. Seek the true Grandfather of us all. Know the legends, and you shall know where to find him."

Iydahoe blinked, surprised by the elf's words, and by the serene confidence with which they were spoken. As he tried to formulate a reply, he realized that, in the space of his blink, the ancient hermit had disappeared.

"Did you see where he went?" he asked Vanisia, who emerged from the cave to look around. She shook her head, and he crossed the village clearing to look behind the great oak. Not only did he see no sign of the stranger, but the muddy ground where the elf had stood was bare of any footprint.

"When did you first see him?"

"He was here when I woke up."

"He never moved?"

Vanisia shook her head. "No. He stayed by this tree for as long as I watched him." Her green eyes probed his face, and Iydahoe felt something terribly important, a piece of knowledge that he must, somehow, grasp. "What did he say to you?" she asked.

"He said… seek the Grandfather, 'the true Grandfather of us all.' He means the Grandfather Ram."

"But seek him? Where…?"

Something in Iydahoe's face froze Vanisia's question in her throat. Abruptly the warrior saw with abrupt, crystalline clarity what he had to do-and he feared that, already, he was too late.

"Each of you, pack a bedroll!" ordered the warrior, addressing the young elves who gaped, wide-eyed, from the mouth of the cave. "Everybody take a bundle of jerky-as much as you can carry-and a full waterskin. We're leaving here. Now!"

None of the young elves paused to question his directive. Instead, they scrambled to clean out the wreckage of the dozen small lodges of the village, and within minutes had gathered bundles of their most treasured belongings. Bakall, Kagwallas, and Dallatar helped the youngest while Iydahoe and Vanisia filled large rucksacks for themselves.

The warrior never questioned his certainty, his conviction that they were doing the right thing-and that they desperately needed to hurry. He remembered the legends-there was only one place they could go.

The Grandfather Ram had lived in the highest places of Ansalon, that much he knew from the ancient tales. The aged elf had urged him to seek the places of the Grandfather, and finally Iydahoe understood.

The Kagonesti needed to climb for their lives.

In quiet urgency, he led the tribe up the steep slopes leading out the back of the sheltered grotto. Beyond rose the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, with the snowcapped summits themselves looming into sight just above the nearer crests. These massifs came into full view as, working steadily upward, they soon topped the precipice.

Iydahoe was surprised to see that many of the summits beyond had lost their nearly permanent mantles of snow. Dark, sinister clouds spewed upward from numerous peaks, and though Iydahoe had occasionally observed smoking mountains far to the north of here, he had never seen so much of the noxious vapor, nor had it ever been this close to his home. Now it curled through the peaks like an ugly, pervasive blanket of gloom.

"The mountains look dangerous," Vanisia said as she and Iydahoe waited for the last of the children to come up behind them.

"It may be that they will kill us," he replied simply. "But if we stay here, I believe that we are certainly doomed."

Iydahoe kept his eyes skyward as they climbed. Clouds seethed in ways he had never imagined-not in his worst nightmares. He felt as though he looked into the surface of a vast, bubbling caldron that was somehow suspended upside down and that covered the entire sky.

Several of the younger Kagonesti began to whimper, slipping and skidding on the steep slopes, unable to maintain the pace. Iydahoe took Faylai, the littlest girl, on his shoulders, bidding her to cling tightly to his neck. With each hand he took the tiny fist of another, leading them toward the element of safety, however small, that they might find above. The Silvanesti female also took the hands of younger elves, and Bakali, Kagwallas, and Dallatar aided their smaller tribemates.

They climbed through the long day, and when night fell, Iydahoe shouted and cajoled, convincing the elves that they needed to keep going. The clouds blocked even the pallor of the green sky, but the elves could see enough to scale the ascending slopes as the ghastly night filtered toward an eerie, still dawn.

Dawn of the thirteenth day, Iydahoe remembered.

Still they kept climbing, crossing the lower mountain ridges now, many thousands of feet above the sprawling forest lands and plains of Vingaard. High summits beckoned to the northeast, but Iydahoe steered the tribe due east, where the mountains flattened into miles of rolling, forested plateau. These woodlands had many trails, while the warrior knew that the summits to the north became a maze of canyons, cliffs, summits, and gorges.

"Look!" cried Bakali, suddenly crying out in horror as he jx)inted to the northeastern sky. The little tribe was filing across a clearing-a place incongruously studded with wildflowers-amid the pine forest of the plateau.

Iydahoe saw the wave rippling along the bottom surface of the oily cloud, as if a great stone had been plopped into the caldron of liquid he had earlier imagined. The eerie sky showed through that gap, an even more sinister shade of befoulment than before. The ground began to tremble, huge rocks cracking free from the higher cliffs. The elves staggered, riding a buckling carpet of supple, boulder-strewn turf, ground lacking all solidity and form.

Abruptly the sky shot through with brightness, green paling to blue and then to a harsh white light that seared Iydahoe's eyes and caused Vanisia to moan in pain. Children began to cry, but the warrior could only grip their hands tightly.

The subsequent explosion was impossibly, incredibly violent. The rocky ground convulsed, pitching them into the air. Iydahoe clutched the hands of his young tribe- mates, the group of them tumbling madly, momentarily weightless. He felt as though they could fall forever, and it was a strangely peaceful sensation.

The smash into the bucking ground brought him back to reality with cruel force. Stone gouged Iydahoe's face, and splitting pain racked his skull. He heard the youngsters crying, but for several agonizing moments his eyes brought him only a blur of bright lights and swirling colors-the images of his own pain, he knew.

Then came the onslaught of full, numbing fear-the knowledge that he had failed, that his tribe was doomed. How could he fight against this kind of power, world- racking might that could rock the very fundament of Krynn? Surely most of his tribe had been killed by this blast! He knew that he, himself, was broken, his body smashed to pulp.

"Let's go. Get up, Iydahoe!" He heard Vanisia pleading, but he couldn't move. Why should he? There was no hope.

He heard more crying, then-the terrified sobbing of many young voices. They came from all around him, and Iydahoe blinked. With a supreme effort, he lifted his head, seeing Kagwallas, Bakali-each cradling a pair of crying youngsters. Vanisia knelt beside Iydahoe, and when he moved, she reached out to touch his face.

"Who's hurt?" he groaned. "How badly?"

He forced himself to look around, seeing past the white spots that still lingered in front of his eyes. The young elves of the tribe were scattered around him in the meadow. Some sat up while others huddled on the ground, crying. Two, the boy Dallatar and a younger girl, lay perfectly still amid the churned sod and rocks.

Then the girl, Tiffli, moaned and rubbed a hand across her face. Iydahoe and Vanisia went to Dallatar. The lad showed no sign of awareness, though his chest rose and fell weakly. In desperation, the warrior crawled to the frail form, while Vanisia and Bakali helped Tiffli to her feet.

But the forest stretched all around them, trees leaning crazily. The bleak clouds had closed in, concealing any view of the horizon or the sky. Which way should they go? There were no heights in view, no clue in the tangled woodland or shattered clearing to indicate where they had been headed before the quake had struck.

Iydahoe, for the first time in his life, was lost.

With that knowledge, he released the tiny shard of hope he had grasped-there was no way to escape this disaster. The tribe had no Pathfinder. He had tried to fill the role, had tried to be that which they needed him to be. He had desperately strived to perform tasks for which he was not prepared.

And he had failed.