Stormblade

9

The cold wind pursued them to the very bounds of the forest and only softened once they stepped under the forest’s eaves. Stanach shivered as the cool touch of superstition’s fingers danced up his spine. Never did he think he would come into Qualinesti and it did not help that he was only a quarter-day’s journey into Elvenwood. At the forest’s edge, or at its heart, Stanach was certain that the place would feel the same: posted, warded, guarded.

All his life Stanach had heard tales of travelers who had wandered into Qualinesti. Those tales were never told by the travelers themselves. No one who entered uninvited ever came out of Elvenwood. Were it not for Stormblade and his promise to return it, Stanach would have made his farewells at the edge of the forest and taken his chances with the draconians. But his oath had been sworn by the sword’s name, and his promise given to Hornfel, his thane.

He, Lavim, and Kelida had entered the wood following Tyorl. The elf was limping and slow, but none argued when he assured them that no draconian would follow them into fabled Qualinesti.

Though he offered no argument, Stanach was not happy to be heading west into the forest when Piper would be waiting for him in the southeastern hills. It had been two days since he left the mage to fend for himself in the hills south of Long Ridge. Had Piper escaped their pursuers? Four against one were bad odds.

Still, he thought as he shouldered through a thicket of thorny underbrush, we had no choice. One of us had to get to Long Ridge. Someone had to find the sword.

Stanach’s heart sank. Ground creepers tangled with fallen branches. Thickets and underbrush swept across the ground as though they’d been commanded to confuse the path. He was following Stormblade blindly into Elvenwood and he felt like an intruder in the forest. But someone had to find the sword, someone had to give meaning to Kyan Red-axe’s death. He would follow Stormblade, find a way to claim it, and trust in Piper to be at the meeting place.

Kelida had carried Stormblade ever since they’d come into the forest. Tyorl had offered to carry it and been refused. Stanach didn’t know why she had insisted on wearing the sword. The blade jolted against her leg with almost every step she took. He would not have wanted to nurse those kind of bruises.

The dwarf wondered how she had come by the sword. It didn’t matter, in the end, how Kelida had acquired Stormblade; it only mattered now that he find a way to bring it back to Thorbardin.

He didn’t know how he was going to do that. While it was true that he would not have scrupled to steal Stormblade, it was also true that he wouldn’t take the risk of stealing from an elf in Qualinesti. Stanach didn’t know what the girl and the elf were to each other, but he sensed at once that stealing from Kelida would be the same as stealing from Tyorl. The elf was wounded, but not so badly that he wouldn’t track the thief of so valuable a weapon through a forest he had known from childhood and which Stanach knew not at all. What run Stanach might make through the woods with Stormblade could only end with him dead of an arrow in the neck and the Kingsword lost again.

No, he thought grimly, let the girl carry it for a while longer, until I figure out what to say and what to do.

So, though he shivered with cold in the sunless forest, Stanach followed Tyorl. He’d come too close now to see Stormblade vanish into dark and deep Elvenwood.

Lavim, trotting along beside Tyorl, looked up, his green eyes bright.

“Not too many ghosts, are there?”

Tyorl smiled at that, a crooked lifting of his lips. “Have you been expecting ghosts, kenderkin?”

“And phantoms and specters, although I think they might be the same thing. You hear all kinds of stories about this place. That’s pretty odd, don’t you think? I mean, they say that there’s no way out of here once you get in, then they tell all these stories about things with no hearts, no souls, maybe even no heads! How could they know about—”

“Lavim, shut up,” Stanach warned. Lavim turned and, seeing Stanach’s dark scowl, snapped his mouth shut.

Kelida, who had maintained a grim silence during their flight from Long Ridge, kept pace with the others despite the awkward burden of Stormblade. She said nothing, but shadows moved like nightmares across her white face. Stanach caught her elbow and steadied her.

“Tell me, then, Tyorl,” he muttered, “is the place haunted or do you simply hope to frighten us?”

Tyorl stopped and turned, his eyes sleepy and hooded. “No more haunted than anyplace else in Krynn.”

Lavim, with a shrug in Kelida’s direction, trotted off the path. He wondered what bothered Kelida and hoped he’d remember to ask her about it later. In any case, this was Elvenwood, and with any luck, though Tyorl’s answer had been vague, the place would be haunted. Lavim peered into thickets and the deep, black shadows wondering what form the haunting would take. Things, from the kender’s point of view, were beginning to look up.

After another hour of walking, when the crimson moon had set and the silver one was only a dim and ghostly glow behind lowering clouds, Tyorl stopped at last in an oak-sheltered glade. When Lavim volunteered to take the night’s first watch none argued.

Tyorl limped to the stream to clean the cuts on his face and the long, shallow gash in his shoulder. Stanach gathered wood and laid the night’s fire. Lavim had hunted while he explored and returned with two fat grouse. Kelida fell asleep before the birds were plucked. The damp, cold wind danced with the flames and set the bare branches above clacking together and groaning. Stanach poked at the fire and eyed the clouding sky.

“It’ll rain before morning.” he said. Tyorl agreed. An owl swooped low just out of the fire’s light, a shadow and a clap of wings. A fox barked beyond the stream. Near a small stand of silver birch, Lavim paced his watch. Neither Stanach nor Tyorl expected that the kender would hold his post long and both sat awake in unspoken accord.

Tyorl leaned back against a log, stretching his legs out beside the fire. His belly full, the fire warm, he settled almost peacefully. He looked at Stanach, his smile lazy and knowing as he ran his thumb along the edge of his jaw.

“Say it, dwarf.”

Stanach looked up from the fire, startled. “What do you want me to say?”

“Whatever it is you’ve been about to say all evening. Whatever it is you want to say every time you look at Kelida’s sword. It’s a fine blade and you’re likely wondering about how she came to have it.” Tyorl nodded in Kelida’s direction. She slept with one hand pillowing her head, the other on the sword. “You’ve no doubt figured out that she’s not a good hand with the thing.”

“How did she come by it?”

“Is that the question?”

“One of them,” Stanach said drily.

“Fair, I suppose. It was a gift.”

“Who gave it to her?”

“Why does it matter?”

Stanach watched the fire leap and curl around the hickory and oak logs. Tyorl’s challenge was mild enough. Still, it needed answering. He tangled his fingers in his black beard, tugging thoughtfully. He remembered Piper’s warning: Do what you have to do to get the sword. He sighed.

“It matters more than you know.” The dwarf gestured toward the sword beneath Kelida’s hand. “It’s called Stormblade.”

Old brown leaves skittered across the clearing, scrabbling against the rocks at the stream’s edge and whispering in the underbrush. For a moment, the light of the red moon escaped the covering clouds, turning the shadows purple. Tyorl leaned forward.

“Nice name. How do you know that?”

“I didn’t just make it up, if that’s what you think. Near the place where the hilt joins the steel is the mark of the smith who forged it: a hammer bisected by a sword. Isarn Hammerfell of Thorbardin made the blade, and he named it. There’s a rough spot on the hilt where the chasing hasn’t been smoothed. Check, if you doubt me.”

“I’ve seen both. You still haven’t answered me, friend Stanach. How does it matter who gave Kelida the sword?”

“Good blood has been shed for Stormblade. And bad. Four that I know of have died trying to claim it. One, a dwarf called Kyan Red-axe, was killed two days ago. He was my kinsman.”

Tyorl settled back against the log. Suddenly, he remembered the two dwarves in Tenny’s and how they had watched the daggerplay with marked interest.

Neither Hauk nor the dwarves had been seen in Long Ridge since that night. There had been no reason to connect the dwarves to Hauk’s disappearance. Until now. “Go on.” he said.

Stanach heard the edge in his voice and tried not to react to it. This one would want the whole story and Stanach knew that he had come too far in the telling to start amending the tale now.

“I’m no storycrafter, Tyorl, but here’s the tale. The sword was made in Thorbardin and stolen two years ago. My thane, Hornfel, and another, Realgar, have been searching for it since. Not long ago, word came that Stormblade had been seen. A ranger carried it and he was last known to be in Long Ridge.”

“It’s only a sword, Stanach.” Tyorl snorted. “People kill with a sword, not for one.”

“This one they kill for. It’s a Kingsword. None can rule the dwarves without one. With one?” Stanach shrugged. “Thorbardin is controlled by the dwarf who holds Stormblade.”

“A good reason to want it—yourself.”

He’s an Outlander, Stanach reminded himself, and too ignorant to know what he’s saying. The dwarf tried patiently to explain. “It would do me no good at all. I’m a swordcrafter, nothing more. I don’t have the armies backing me that Realgar has. I’d mount a pretty shabby revolution without a soldier or two at my back, eh?”

Tyorl shrugged. “I’ll wager your Hornfel has a soldier or two.”

“He does.”

“Do you serve him?”

“He’s my thane,” Stanach said simply. “I helped make the sword for him. I was there when—when Reorx touched the steel.” He stared for a long moment at his hands, tracking the scars on his palms. “He hasn’t done that in three hundred years, Tyorl. No sword is a Kingsword without the god’s touch. I was—I was supposed to guard the sword. I turned my back for only a moment …”

“And you lost it.”

Stanach said nothing until the elf urged him to continue. It was a strange story. Tyorl followed the paths of dwarven politics with some difficulty, but he had no difficulty understanding that for Stanach, and for the two thanes who sought the sword, Stormblade was more than a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It was a talisman that would unite Thorbardin’s factioned Council of Thanes.

Tyorl listened carefully, wondering as he did if the dwarves knew that Verminaard was even now laying plans to bring dragonarmy troops into the eastern foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. The Highlord had a hungry eye for Thorbardin.

His gods were elven gods, silver Paladine and the forest lord, the bard-king Astra. But Tyorl, watching the shadows pooled beneath the trees, sliding across brown carpets of oak leaves, recognized a pattern that only Takhisis the Queen of Darkness could weave. He moved closer to the fire, suddenly chilled.

“If you know the sword,” Stanach said, “you’ve seen the red streak in the steel. It’s the mark of the god’s forge, the reflection of Reorx’s own fire. I saw it come red from the fire and, when the steel cooled, I saw the god’s mark. This is a Kingsword, and the thane who has Stormblade will rule in Thorbardin as king regent. There’s been no one thane to rule the dwarf-realms in three hundred years.

“It’s a hard thing to be kingless. Something will always be … missing, longed for but never found. We know that we will never have a high king again. The Hammer of Kharas is made up of legends and hopes; it’s not about to be found again. But, Stormblade will give us a king regent, a steward to hold the throne in the place of the high king who will never be.

“If Realgar becomes that king regent, the dwarves of Thorbardin are lost to slavery. He is derro, a mage and a worshipper of Takhisis. Thorbardin will be hers and will have fallen without a fight. He will do anything to capture Stormblade, and he’s killed for far less than this.”

A log, light and laced with gray ash, slid from the fire. Stanach toed it back into place. “In the end I suppose it doesn’t matter how Kelida got the sword.”

“It matters, dwarf.” Tyorl sat forward, his blue eyes as hard as the blade of his dagger glinting in the firelight.

Stanach sat perfectly still, his eyes on the steel. “Aye, then? How?”

“It matters because she had it as a gift from a friend of mine. The ranger you mentioned. He’s been missing these two days past. Would you know anything about that? Two dwarves, one of them was missing an eye, were in Tenny’s the night Hauk disappeared—were they, by any chance, friends of yours?”

Stanach went cold to his bones. Realgar’s agents had been in Long Ridge! “No friends of mine. I left Thorbardin with Kyan Red-axe and a human mage called Piper. Kyan is dead. Piper is waiting for me in the hills. I went to Long Ridge alone.”

“I’m wondering if you’re lying.”

“Wonder all you want,” Stanach snapped. He remembered Kyan and the heartless scream of crows in the sky. “Those two in Long Ridge were no friends of mine. More likely, they were part of Realgar’s pack. I’d wager that at least one of them is a mage. No doubt they waylaid your friend and didn’t find the sword because he’d already given it to the girl.

“And if those two were mages, Tyorl, they could have had him to Thorbardin before you even thought to miss him. If he’s not dead, Realgar has him. Me, I’d rather be dead. Know it: he’s using every means to discover where the Kingsword is now.”

It’s likely, Stanach thought, the ranger is dead. He would not live two days if he had to depend upon Realgar’s mercy. But Hauk must have kept his silence to the end. He saw the same thought in the sudden darkening of the elf’s eyes.

“Aye, you know it.” Stanach whispered.

Tyorl shook his head and looked up. “I only believe we’ve lost our watch. The kender is gone.”

You don’t doubt me, the dwarf thought. If you do, you’re not going to take the chance that someone who will kill for Stormblade is following us now, following the girl.

Stanach nodded toward the birches, ghostly gray in the darkness. “I’ll keep the fire. You get some sleep.”

Tyorl shook his head. “The kender is your friend. It strikes me as convenient that he’s gone and left you to take the watch … and maybe the sword, too.”

“Me?” Stanach snorted. “Where would I go with it? Aye, back to Thorbardin if I could. I suppose I could kill you where you sleep. But you know better than that. I’d never get out of this forest before I died of old age.” Stanach’s smile held no humor. “Lavim said it: ‘who enters Elvenwood doesn’t get out without an elf to show him the way.’ Go to sleep. I’m willing to wait for morning to talk about it again.”

Tyorl, who had trusted the dwarf in Long Ridge, did not trust him now. He did, however, trust the forest. He didn’t know what Stanach might do if he didn’t have to fear Qualinesti. Though Stanach’s assurances had been smooth and easily given, Tyorl wondered if they had also been true. Kelida curled up tightly against the chill and damp seeping into her bones from the hard ground. She’d overheard enough of the tale Stanach had told Tyorl to know the sword that had bruised her legs, the one that now lay under her hand, was no ordinary blade.

Their voices, though pitched low, had wakened her. Then, she was glad enough to be awake. Her sleep had been foul with nightmares of fire and death.

She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, but when she heard the sword mentioned, heard it named, she could not help herself.

Hauk! Was he dead? Was he a prisoner of this Realgar?

Kelida squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered his hands, large and calloused, as he placed the sword—Stormblade!—at her feet. She remembered his smile and the way his voice broke when he offered his apology. What had happened to him?

If he’s not dead, Realgar has him. Me, I’d rather be dead. Tyorl slept nearby. Across the fire from her, Stanach sat his watch. Firelight gilded the silver earring he wore and gleamed red in the depths of his thick black beard. When he reached for a stout branch to toss onto the fire, Kelida sat up. He said nothing, only nodded. Kelida tucked a straggling wisp of her hair behind her ear and handed him another branch. He took the wood and thanked her. She was surprised that his voice, often a deep, rumbling growl when he spoke to Tyorl, could be so soft. Kelida offered him a tentative smile. Though he did not return it, his dark eyes lost some of their grimness.

Encouraged, she went to sit beside him. She did not share his log, but sat on the ground, her back braced against it. She did not take her eyes from the hot dance of the flames.

Fire, thick and hot as the flames of a hundred torches, poured from the dragon’s maw. Kelida screamed as the fire found the tinder-dry thatching of the farmhouse’s roof. The house exploded around her brother and her mother. For a long, horrible moment, Kelida saw her mother’s face, and her brother’s. The boy was shrieking, the tears on his face were the color of blood, reflecting the flames. Her mother, hunched over the boy as though her own body might protect him from the heat, wore strangely mingled looks of desperation and resignation.

Then there was nothing to see but two small human torches in a house made of fire.

Kelida took no warmth from the campfire. A small, tame reminder of her family’s deaths, it only set her shivering.

“Stanach, where is Lavim?”

Stanach shrugged. “Out on kender-business. Who knows? Likely he’ll be back before dawn.” Looking for ghosts, he thought. He did not say this aloud.

“Have we thanked you for saving our lives?” she asked quietly. He didn’t answer at once, but held perfectly still as though asking himself the question. “No,” he said at last.

“I’m sorry. We should have before now. Thank you. If it wasn’t for you and Lavim, Tyorl would be dead now, and I—” She faltered, hearing whispers from her nightmares in the hiss and sigh of the flames. Stanach shook his head. “Don’t think about it. It never happened. Tell me, how did you come to be at the barricade with Tyorl?”

“I was saying good-bye. He was leaving Long Ridge.”

“Ah?”

Kelida saw the speculation in his eyes and blushed. “No, it’s not what you think. I—I’ve only known him for a day or two. When Hauk gave me the sword, and then couldn’t be found, I wanted to give it back to Tyorl. He wouldn’t take it. He said Hauk might come back for it.”

Stanach smiled. He saw the way of it now. The girl wasn’t interested in Tyorl at all. She was, however, interested in this missing ranger, Hauk. He heard it in her voice and saw it in the way she looked back at Stormblade. The sword could have been hilted with lead, the sapphires could have been no more than rocks from the stream’s bed. It was Hauk’s sword and that was all that mattered to Kelida.

What mattered to Tyorl. however, was something else. He had an interest in the girl. Aye, that elf’s eyes could be hard as Stormblade’s jewels, but never when he looked at Kelida, never when he spoke of her. This would be something to consider.

“Kelida,” he said, “won’t your family be wondering where you are?”

“My father, my mother, and Mival, my little brother—” Kelida drew a steadying breath. “They’re dead. We had a farm in the valley. It—the dragon came and—”

Stanach looked away, out beyond the fire and into the still and silent forest. The wind sounded like the echoes of looters’ howls. Suddenly, he felt like one who, from idle curiosity, stares at a stranger’s raw, open wound. “Hush, Kelida,” he said gently, “hush. I’ve seen the valley.”

Her sigh was ragged. “I have no one to miss me.”

She was a pretty creature by human standards. Stanach looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. How old was she? Maybe twenty. It was hard to tell. Tall and russet haired, the farmers’ sons in Long Ridge had likely been drawn to her green eyes like moths to a candle. Here in the dark forest, however, hers were not the eyes of a woman, they were the eyes of a lost child, large and frightened and staring at a world gone suddenly mad.

Twenty years! Stanach, who at twenty had been but a child, and who had never been able to understand how someone who had lived so short a span of years could be considered an adult, saw only a child in Kelida. A child who had no one. For humans there is the family and all others outside the family were often only strangers. There is no clan, no large and deep well of strength and understanding to draw upon when a parent, a brother, a child dies. Stanach tried to imagine what that emptiness must be like, but could not. Once in a great while, for great crimes or sins against the clan, a dwarf would be declared outlaw, clan-reft. Such unfortunates were shunned by all and pitied by some. Kelida’s condition was not the same. For her it was as though her whole clan, parents, brothers, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, all who shared her name, were dead. Stanach shuddered. It was not to be imagined. He poked at the fire again and watched the small eruption of sparks dance into the night. The fire’s light slid over Stormblade’s gold hilt, colored the silver chasing to orange, and danced down the blue path of sapphires.

Stanach tugged at his beard. Aye, the ranger meant something to her.

“This fellow Hauk, have you known him long?”

“No. Only long enough for him to give me the sword.” Kelida smiled shyly. “It’s a foolish story.” The smile died at once. Her green eyes grew dark and sad. “He’s dead, isn’t he? I heard what you said to Tyorl.”

Stanach almost told her that Hauk was, indeed, dead. How could he still be alive? Then the dwarf realized, if she thought Hauk were alive and still Realgar’s prisoner, a prisoner gallantly refusing to tell Realgar where the sword is in order to protect the girl he gave it to, she’d give him the sword. But only if he could convince her that by doing so, she’d have a chance to prevent Hauk’s death. It shouldn’t be hard to make her believe that if Realgar got the sword, Hauk would certainly die. The Theiwar couldn’t leave him alive to give warning to anyone who might prevent his takeover of Thorbardin.

Oh, yes, she’d give him the sword. The chances were slim that she could save Hauk’s life, but Stanach knew she would take those chances. She’d carried Stormblade into the forest, slept with it under her hand. It was Hauk’s sword and she wouldn’t let anyone else so much as hold it … unless she thought it would save Hauk’s life.

He glanced at Kelida. Her arms clasping her drawn up legs, head pillowed on her knees, she was asleep where she sat. Just a ragged human girl, he thought, fallen in love with a ranger—though likely she doesn’t know it yet.

Stanach touched her shoulder lightly to wake her. He returned her questioning smile with a nod. “Go sleep more comfortably, Kelida. The morning comes soon enough.”

She returned to her cold bed and the sword. Stanach spent the rest of the watch carefully working out the details of his plan and ignoring the gnawing of his restless conscience.

“Do what you have to do,” Piper had said.

He wondered where Piper was now, if he was safe, if he was waiting by the tumble of rocks that looked so much like a cairn. Four against one. Aye, but four against one mage. It would make a difference. Do what you have to do.

Well, Piper, he thought, I am.