Stormblade

10

Lavim returned to his companions as the wet gray dawn lighted the sky. Cold and shivering, the kender sighed and wished that he’d found some dwarf spirits in Long Ridge. His flask knocked hollowly against his hip.

“White Disaster,” some called the potent dwarven drink. Lavim had always considered the stuff the next best thing to a warm hearth. Sometimes better, he thought, shoving his hands into the deep pockets of his shapeless, old coat and hunching against the icy drizzle. He’d found no ghosts, no specters, and no phantoms—with or without heads. For a forest hedged about with rumor and fear, Qualinesti was a singularly dull place. The campsite, however, promised to be more interesting. Tyorl glowered at Stanach across the fire. Kelida, her green eyes sharp, her jaw stubbornly set, looked at no one.

Something’s roused her, Lavim thought. The kender, careful of his cold-stiffened knees, dropped down before the fire. He held his hands as close to the flames as he dared and cocked an eye at Stanach. “What’s going on?”

“Stubbornness,” Stanach growled. “Simple-minded, damned, elven stubbornness.” He tossed a bark chip into the fire and looked up at Tyorl, his black eyes hard and mocking. “Tell me, then, elf, are you going to take the chance that your friend Hauk is not Realgar’s captive? Are you going to abandon him for his sword? Aye, well, I suppose you’d live well on what you could sell it for.”

Tyorl leveled his icy stare at the dwarf. “I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do: I’m not going to hand Hauk’s sword over to you on the strength of a pretty tale. Where the sword goes, I go.”

Lavim pricked up his ears. “Where are we going?”

No one answered.

“Fine then,” Stanach said to Tyorl. “Come along. I think you believe me, elf. If you don’t, there will be Piper to confirm my tale.” Stanach laughed bitterly. “I suppose you’ll grant that, if I’m lying, he could not have made up the same lies without my prompting, eh? Aye, come along. Ask him before I ever say a word. But, if you’re coming, you’d best make up your mind soon. Piper won’t stay around much longer before he decides I’m dead. Then, I’ll be walking to Thorbardin,” Stanach smiled grimly. “I suppose you will be, too.”

“Who’s Piper?” Lavim’s face was a mass of wrinkles and a puzzled frown. “Why would he decide you’re dead? We’re going to Thorbardin? I’ve never been there, Stanach. I can’t think of a better place to find some really good dwarf spirits, either.” He glanced at the elf. “Is Kelida going, too?”

“No,” Tyorl said.

Kelida, silent till then, looked up and spoke quietly. “Yes, I am.”

Tyorl moved to protest. Kelida overrode him.

“I’m going with the sword. I can’t go back to Long Ridge now. I would never find my way and—” She stopped, her eyes bright and almost fierce.

“And—and the sword is mine. You’ve said it yourself. If Hauk is still alive, he’s—what he’s going through is to protect me. It was convenient for you to say the sword was mine when you thought he might be coming back for it, when you thought I could tell him where you’d gone. Then, the sword was mine. Well, it still is, and it seems that I’m the only one with any right to say where the sword goes.”

“Hauk?” Lavim looked from one to the other of them. He should have stayed in camp, he decided. Clearly he’d missed something last night.

“What sword?” His eyes widened as he saw Stormblade lying across Kelida’s knees. “Oh. Are you talking about that sword?”

Stanach dropped his forge-scarred hand onto the kender’s shoulder.

“Easy, old one, save your questions for later.” He nodded to Kelida. “Are you coming?”

“Yes, I am—”

“Aye,” Tyorl drawled. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Something worse than what I’ve already been through?”

Tyorl had no answer. It didn’t matter, though. Instinct had warned him last night to keep silent on the matter of Finn. Now, he was glad that he had. Finn’s rangers were waiting outside Qualinesti. Tyorl was certain that Finn would pick up their trail and find them before Stanach found the mage, Piper. He would lay the whole matter before the rangerlord: sword, tale, and his news that Verminaard was moving a supply base into the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. Finn would decide what must be done.

“Very well, Kelida,” he said. “You’ll need warmer clothes.” He held up a hand to forestall Stanach’s protest. “I know a place where we can scavenge something for her. It’s on the way.”

Stanach tossed another chip into the fire. “Where?”

“Where?” echoed Lavim, all the more confused.

“Qualinost.”

The sun broke from behind lowering, slate-colored clouds and its sweet, warm columns of light shafted down on the city. Four slim spires of the purest white stone rose from the corners of Qualinost at perfect map points: north, south, east, and west. Gleaming silver veins twined in almost-pattern through the snowy stone of the towers. Running out from the northern tower, high above the city, a seemingly frail arch leaped and connected with the southern spire. It was the same with the other towers, and so the city was bounded.

In the very center of the elven city, alive with light more vibrant than the sun’s, rose the elegant Tower of the Sun. Sheathed in gleaming gold, the tower had been for years uncounted the home of the Speaker of the Suns. It, like all of Qualinost, was empty now that the speaker had taken his people, his children, into exile.

The elven city of Qualinost had been built by dwarves, from the design of elves, in a time when friendship, not today’s brooding, sullen antipathy, graced the dealings between the two races. Tyorl entered the city of his birth with a heart torn between joy and sorrow.

Joy, he thought, because I never thought to see you again; sorrow that I should find you the vacant and empty-eyed corpse of a place once beautiful, now only coldly lovely.

The chill wind of late autumn moaned through the deserted city, sobbing around the eaves of buildings once brimming with life. It rattled through the last golden leaves of the countless aspens lining the streets. Once the sound had been rippling laughter, now it was a weak and weary dirge.

Beneath the wind, Tyorl heard the voices of memory. His father’s quiet laughter, his sister’s song. Where were they now?

Flown into exile with the rest of their people. Tyorl wondered if he would ever see them again. He shook his head as though to shake off the memories and the questions.

The houses and shops and all the buildings of Qualinost were made of quartz the color of dawn’s light. These, too, were empty now, their windows dark, their doorways filled with shadows and the echoes of memories only Tyorl noticed. Broad paths of shimmering crushed stone marked the streets and avenues of Qualinost. All along these glittering paths were black fire-rings and piles of gray ashes, like dirty thumb marks on the streets of Qualinost.

Kelida, shivering and silent beside Stanach, leaned against an aspen’s thick, gray trunk. The city was not ravaged, only empty, but she felt here the same sense of despair she had felt when she looked at the blackened, skeletal beams and posts of her own home.

Stanach, who counted his mountain home among the riches of his life, recognized Tyorl’s sorrow. He looked from Tyorl to Kelida, he homeless, she clanless, and Stanach shivered.

It was Lavim who finally broke the silence. There was nothing in his deep, merry voice to tell any that he sensed the elf’s sorrow or the dwarf’s pity. He sidled up beside Tyorl and pointed to the nearest pile of ashes.

“Tyorl, what are those? They look like the remains of watch-fires, but there’s too many of ’em to be that.”

Tyorl glanced down at the kender. “They were not watch-fires, kenderkin. I wasn’t here to see it, but I’m told that the people burned most of what they couldn’t carry with them into exile. Those are the marks of funeral pyres, and the funeral was for a way of life.”

Lavim tucked his blue-knuckled, freezing hands beneath his arms.

“What a shame, Tyorl. Burning is the worst, if you ask me. Whatever it was, I would have hidden it, or carried it in my pouches, or sold it to a gnome vendor. Burning is such a waste. Now, you have to start all over again.”

“It would never be the same. It has changed.” He might have said ‘it has vanished’ or ‘it has died.’

Stanach shook his head. “All who live change,” he said quietly. “Even, it seems, elves.”

Tyorl’s blue eyes, soft only a moment ago with his sadness, iced over and grew hard. “No, dwarf. We have known no change for too many long centuries. The only change an elf knows is death.”

Stanach snorted impatiently, already regretting his fumbling attempt at comfort. “Then you’re dead already, Tyorl, and wasting good air that others could be breathing. Your city, your way of life has changed. Perhaps we should consider you not an elf but a ghost, eh?”

Tyorl drew a breath to answer, then turned back to the silent city.

“Perhaps.”

Lavim watched as Tyorl led Kelida away. His long eyes narrowed, and he absently twirled the end of his thick white braid around a finger.

“Stanach,” he said, “if the elves burned everything before they left here, what’s Tyorl going to find for Kelida to wear?”

Stanach shrugged. “I don’t know. Ever since we got within a mile of this place, that damn elf has been more ghost than anything else. Maybe he’ll spirit up something for her.” Stanach started down the road. “Let’s go, Lavim. The sooner we get out of here, the easier I’ll be.”

Lavim fell in beside the dwarf. He still didn’t know half of what was going on. Kelida’s sword, some missing ranger, and a couple of dwarven thanes all figured into it somehow. And who was Piper?

A small wooden stag, frozen by the woodcarver’s art into a graceful leap, lay caught in a tangled nest of silver necklaces and golden earrings. A child’s toy amid a mother’s jewelry. Stanach reached for the oak stag and freed it as gently as though it lived. He turned it over idly and then smiled. Carved in the belly of the stag with deft strokes that might have been only the careful feathering of the beast’s fur, was a stylized anvil bisected by a dwarven F rune. A dwarf’s craft.

Stanach put the stag carefully aside and looked around the room. The place was a shambles.

Beautifully wrought tapestries, woven floor coverings, and soft pillows, whose designs were picked out in bright silk thread, lay scattered about the room as though thrown down in desperate haste. A tall wardrobe, elegantly painted with a delicate, stylized hunting scene, lay where it had fallen during someone’s frantic preparations for exile.

Lavim staggered into the room, his arms loaded with a pile of mismatched clothing. “Here you go, Stanach. Tyorl says to look through these for Kelida.”

“Aye, and where is she?”

“Taking a wash. She insisted, and Tyorl didn’t argue. Said it would give him some time to look for gear.” Lavim dumped the clothes on the floor and dropped down among them, happily rummaging through cloaks and hunting costumes, boots and blouses. “I guess they didn’t burn everything before they left, did they?

“You know, Stanach, this place must’ve been really nice not so long ago. Its too bad the elves decided to leave. Me, I’d make those draconians drag me out of a place like this before I’d leave.”

Fear, like shadows, hung in the air. It clung to the lovely buildings, lurked in the darkness of the apple garths and pear groves. Fear and sorrow walked the streets and laughed darkly at each dying aspen.

Stanach shook his head. Fear was nothing a kender could understand, and there was no sense wasting time trying to explain it. The dwarf crossed the room and dropped cross-legged onto the icy marble floor. Curbing his impatience to be out of this sad room, this sad house, and the whole deserted city, he sorted through the clothing before Lavim could find a way to stuff the half of it into his pouches. The kender’s pockets and pouches were bulging already. His middle looked too thick for one Stanach knew to be sapling-thin. If the search through the deserted homes and shops of Qualinost had been painful for Tyorl and uncomfortable for Kelida and Stanach, it had been a kender’s dream for Lavim.

Stanach rescued a thick cloak from Lavim’s interest. The color of pine boughs and lined with gray rabbit fur, it had been made for someone about Kelida’s height and size. Next, he found a pair of hard-soled doeskin boots. The boots felt too heavy for their look. He peered into the interior of one and pinched an edge. The soft, supple leather was two layers thick and lined between with goose down.

“These look like they’ll probably fit her.”

Lavim picked up first one boot and then the other. “Nice stuff, Stanach. Kelida’s going to be warmer than all of us.”

“She’s been colder than all of us this far. It’s about time her luck turned. Why don’t you take those to her and then go see if you can find Tyorl and hurry him up. And, Lavim—”

The kender turned, his arms full of cloak and boots. “Yes?”

“Knock before you go in, empty out your pouches before you find Tyorl, and don’t take anything else on your way.”

Lavim’s wrinkled face was all innocence.

Stanach’s expression was firm. “And don’t bother spinning any of your tales about how you came by the stuff—just get rid of it.”

“But, Stanach—”

“I mean it, Lavim. That damn ghost of an elf is touchy enough. By the look of him, you’d think he was giving away his mother’s best gowns.”

“Maybe he is,” Lavim said thoughtfully. His eyes, in their webbing of wrinkles, looked unaccountably wise. “Well, not gowns, because Kelida’s probably going to be wearing breeches and not a gown, but maybe Tyorl used to know the person this stuff belongs to.”

Maybe he did, Stanach thought. He didn’t think on it further and did not regret his sour remark. It was a fine defense against the silent sorrow drifting around the room like old dust.

“Go on, Lavim.”

Alone, Stanach swept the clothing into a pile against the wall and sat, elbows on drawn up knees, to wait in moody silence for his companions to join him.

He’d done what he had to do. It hadn’t taken much to direct Kelida or Tyorl into believing that Hauk might still be alive. Kelida had even made the crucial connection herself: if Hauk was alive, he was protecting her. On the walk through the forest, Kelida had told the dwarf the story of how Hauk had given her the sword. Even as she described her fear of Hauk in the storeroom, her voice told him that she had been moved by his apology.

Stanach was certain now that any doubt Tyorl might again raise about the wisdom of taking Stormblade to Piper would be countered by the girl. Kelida was convinced that the half-drunk ranger who had given her the sword was even now, like some paladin, protecting her from the derro mage who would kill to get Stormblade.

Maybe Hauk had been protecting her—while he lived. However, he was surely dead now.

Stanach closed his eyes.

Once Stanach found Piper, Stormblade would be magically returned to Thorbardin, and in Hornfel’s hand, before Kelida or Tyorl had a chance to know it was gone. All Stanach had to do was keep the girl’s hope alive, play on her dreams a little longer. And how did the foolish dreams of a simple barmaid weigh in the balance against the certainty of having one rule—Hornfel’s rule—in Thorbardin?

They weighed not at all, Stanach told himself. Not at all. A light, thin fingered hand touched his shoulder. Stanach looked up to see Kelida standing before him.

“Stanach? Are you all right?”

She’d contrived to wash somehow. In her borrowed clothes, a hunting costume of bark-gray wool and soft doeskin boots, the green cloak around her shoulders, she looked like a wood sprite. Stormblade was scabbarded around her waist.

Stanach scrambled to his feet. “Aye, fine.”

“I thought I heard—”

“I’m fine,” he snapped. He jerked his chin at the Kingsword. “You still insist on carrying it?”

Fire leaped in Kelida’s eyes. “I’ve carried it this far.”

“Aye, and tripped over it every second step. This isn’t Long Ridge. If you carry a sword, people just naturally assume you can use it. You’d better know how, or you’ll find yourself dead before you can untangle your feet and haul it out. Let me carry it. Or if that doesn’t suit you, give it over to your friend the elf.”

Kelida shook her head. “For now, the sword is still mine.”

Stanach sighed. “The sword will be the death of you if you don’t at least learn how to carry it.” He jerked his thumb at the scabbard. “Buckle that lower and let your hip take the weight.”

Kelida adjusted the sword belt. The drag of Stormblade’s weight on her hip felt strange, but less awkward. She looked up at Stanach and smiled.

“Now what?”

“Now, go find yourself a dagger. You won’t be able to defend yourself with the sword.”

Suddenly, he was angry with Kelida for no reason, angry with himself for every reason, and lonely behind the walls of his duplicity. Stanach turned away and stalked across the room to a window. He looked down into a courtyard; it was better than looking at the shadows of hurt in Kelida’s eyes.

Aspen leaves, like brittle golden coins, skittered and whirled before a damp wind. Their dry rattling was the only sound to be heard in this sad, deserted city. Ghosts wandered all over silent Qualinost. Ghosts and memories.

Or the whispers of his conscience.

Thirty feet long, its head as thick and wide as a big horse, its powerfully muscled legs longer than two tall men, the black dragon might have been a huge piece of the night as it separated itself from the cover of the clouds and dove low over the ridges of eastern Qualinesti. A cloud bank shredded under the wind of its passing. Solinari had long since set, but Lunitari’s blood-red light ran along the metallic scales of its hide, leaped from its claws and dagger-sharp fangs in crimson points, and turned its long, narrow eyes, normally pale as frost, to fire. Sevristh was its secret and sacred name in dragon speech. It permitted itself to be called Darknight.

The dragon caught the wind under its wings and glided down toward the pine-forested, stony ridges that formed the border between Qualinesti and the dwarven mountains. A hater of light, its vision was superb when the sun had flown west. Though it did not fear the cold light of the moons, it saw more clearly when, as on this night, they were hidden behind thick, dark clouds.

The black dragon observed the lands below as a man might who stands over a well constructed map table. Dropping still lower, it swept over the high forests east of Crystal Lake and out across the low hills bordering the Plains of Dergoth, which the dwarves call the Plains of Death. Darknight flew as Lord Verminaard’s emissary to Realgar of Thorbardin. It would soon be addressing the dwarf as Highlord, if he accepted Verminaard’s offers. He undoubtedly would accept. The dwarf was known to be canny, ambitious, bold, and a little mad. He had the soul of a Highlord, a soul only a little less arrogant than that of a dragon. He waited for it now to arrive from Pax Tharkas. Sevristh would serve a new Highlord.

At least for a time. Verminaard’s gifts all had teeth. Even as he prepared to welcome Realgar as a Highlord, ruthless Verminaard already had plans afoot to move supply bases and troops in the mountains. With their strength to back him, he would depose the Theiwar and claim conquered Thorbardin as his eastern stronghold. Sevristh knew all this, and more.

The wind was a cold, fierce opponent who challenged the black dragon to dare its willful currents and invisible waves. Laughing as it flew over the marshes, Darknight skimmed the cloud-heavy sky, diving and rolling, thrusting with wings as wide as a ship’s sail, and climbing, climbing until it burst through the thick, icy boundary of the clouds and came to the stars above ancient Thorbardin.

Aye, the dragon thought, all Verminaard’s gifts had teeth and mine are sharp indeed!

“Let him do the work,” the Highlord had said, “and give him whatever help he needs to do it. When the Council of Thanes is safely fallen, get rid of him.”

For nothing but the pleasure of arcane exercise, Darknight cast a spell of fear and blackness. Tonight, in the dark and secret comfort of its den in the caverns below the cities of Thorbardin, it would lull itself to sleep with thoughts of small marshland creatures dying of a stopped heart and an overwhelming terror they could not have understood.