Stormblade

12

The mid-morning sun shone thin and bright, offering little warmth. Its light arrowed down between the eaves of the tallest trees, rebounding like gleaming silver darts from the last shivering brown and red leaves of the underbrush. A cold breeze carried the rich scent of damp earth and moldering leaves through the forest. Little more than a deer trail, the path often seemed invisible to Kelida, like something Tyorl followed more by instinct than sight.

Tyorl moved first down the narrow, shadow-dappled path; Stanach next; Kelida behind him. Lavim followed last and only occasionally. Like an old dog in new territory, the kender ranged the forest on either side of the trail. No thicket, glade, beck, or stone outcropping of the slightest interest was left uninvestigated Though Lavim had long before given up trying to call these fascinating landmarks to his companions’ attention, he kept up a running commentary in a voice that still seemed too deep to Kelida for one of his small stature, but one that clearly spoke of the kender’s pleasure in his surroundings and the sunny day.

“Damn good thing we’re not trying to get through this wretched forest without anyone knowing,” Stanach muttered.

Kelida smiled. Tyorl had made a similar comment moments before. For her part, she enjoyed the kender’s delight. His cries of discovery ran like a tuneless, rhymeless trailsong through what would have been a silent journey were it left to Tyorl to provide conversation. Stanach was not to be looked to for anything but dour silence.

Her eyes on Stanach’s broad-shouldered back, neatly bisected by his scabbarded sword, Kelida thought about his bad-tempered suggestion that she learn how to use the slim dagger she now carried.

When he’d snapped the warning to her in the sad, deserted chamber in Qualinost, Kelida’s first reactions had been anger, then hurt. Her second had been to find a dagger. She had not, however, given Hauk’s sword over to Stanach or into Tyorl’s keeping. Since she’d adjusted the scabbard, Stormblade rode easier on her hip and leg, though it still dragged, and the sword belt caused her borrowed hunting leathers to chafe and rub at her skin.

She had set her sights on the modest goal of learning to use the dagger Lavim helped her find before they’d left Qualinost. Stanach, though he’d volunteered the suggestion that she find a blade, hadn’t volunteered to teach her how to use it. According to what Stanach had said over the dawn campfire, they would soon be near the place where he expected to meet his friend Piper. Then, Thorbardin would be only a shaky breath and a transport spell away.

Tyorl had looked thoughtful at the news and made no comment. Remembering the look in his eyes, Kelida wondered now whether the elf was beginning to doubt Stanach’s tale. Which part of it, she wondered, the part about the sword or the part about the mage?

Kelida shook her head and stepped over a downed sapling in the trail. Stanach, a little ahead, looked back, his dark eyes moving, as they always did, to Stormblade’s richly decorated hilt.

No, she thought, the tale is true. There was a light in his eyes when he looked at Stormblade, and it wasn’t the cold light of avarice. He looked at the sword the way Kelida imagined someone would view a holy relic. Whatever Tyorl thought, Kelida knew that Stanach’s tale was not one spun to help him steal a valuable sword. He called it a Kingsword, Stormblade, or masterblade. He spoke of king regents and legends become truth. Behind his words, behind the tale, Kelida saw Hauk, somehow more shy and gentle than he seemed, and with his silence defending her from the wrath of a cruel derro mage who would kill to retrieve Stormblade. From their first night in Qualinesti, Kelida had instinctively liked the dwarf. She remembered their conversation before the dying campfire. When she’d attempted to tell him about the destruction of her home, the deaths of her parents and her brother, he’d gently whispered “Hush, girl, hush.”

So deep in her thinking was she that she did not see the tangle of thick gray roots snaking across the path. Her foot caught, she gasped, and fell hard to her knees. Up ahead Tyorl stopped and turned, but it was Stanach who came back for her. He grasped her elbows and lifted her easily to her feet.

“Are you hurt?”

Kelida shook her head. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry.” She apologized before she could even decide whether or not she needed to.

“You’d be sorrier if you’d broken an ankle.” Stanach softened the warning with a smile, barely seen before it was lost in the depths of his black beard. “Our part is to watch the ground, Kelida. Tyorl will watch the forest.”

Kelida looked after him when he turned and continued up the path. Silent as a cat rounding a corner, Lavim came up beside her.

“You all right?” Startled, Kelida gasped. “Lavim! Where did you come from?” The kender grinned and jerked his head.

“Back down the trail. Dwarves: I dunno. Strange fellows. They brew a good drink, though. Me, if I had all the dwarf spirits I could drink, I’d be the happiest person around. Swords, and kings who aren’t kings—I don’t know about that business. The dwarf spirits’re why I’m going to Thorbardin. Can you imagine? All the dwarf spirits you could want, and made by the people who know how to do it! I figure I won’t be cold all winter!”

Kelida hid a smile. No one had invited the kender along, but no one seemed inclined to try to banish him either.

“Stanach’s right, though, you should watch the ground. I don’t think you’re used to walking in the woods, are you?”

“No, I’m not. I’ll manage though.” Her eyes on the faint trail, Kelida set out again, hurrying her pace to catch up with Stanach and Tyorl. Lavim fell in beside her.

“I only look up at the sky when I’m sleeping,” he said. “Or when a dragon flies by. That’s my secret.”

“Good advice,” she murmured.

The kender shrugged, ducked off to the side to make certain there wasn’t anything of interest behind a broad-trunked oak, and rejoined her.

“That Stanach’s a moody fellow. Have you noticed that?”

“I have.”

“He used to be a swordcrafter, did you know that? You should look at his hands sometime. They’re scarred all over with little burns. That’s from the forge fires.”

Lavim warmed to this receptive audience and grinned, remembering Givrak in the tavern and the draconian patrols in the warehouse. “Stanach, he’s nice enough when he’s not being moody, but he has this strange knack for annoying people. He could really get into trouble one of these days if he’s not careful.” Lavim’s eyes were suddenly wise, or so he imagined. “This mage, Piper—I figure it’ll be a good thing when Stanach finally catches up with him. Somebody’s got to keep him out of trouble. I figure that’s what this Piper fellow does. You know, kind of keeps an eye on him?”

Kelida remembered the four draconians that had precipitated their flight from Long Ridge. “What did he do to get the draconians so mad?”

“Oh, you can’t ever tell about a draconian. They’re not like us, you know. They’re mean as a way of life. Stanach aggravated a bunch of them outside an old, burned warehouse.” Lavim paused, looked thoughtful, and then shrugged. “Maybe it had something to do with the four who were chasing me, or the one who fell out the window … I dunno. Like I said, you can’t tell about ’em.”

The kender’s chatter was like a warm summer breeze. “I’ll tell you,” he said, cocking an eye at the girl, “the only thing meaner than a draconian is a minotaur—and even that bears thinking about. Ever see a minotaur, Kelida? They’re, well, kind of strange looking. Big fellows! They have fur all over them. Not long fur, you see, but short. Like a bull’s.” Lavim frowned, then grinned. “And no sense of humor at all! If you ever see one try to remember not to—well, um, suggest that his mother was a cow.”

Kelida’s eyes widened. “Why would I suggest that?”

“Oh, it would be a natural mistake.” Lavim’s green eyes twinkled.

“They kind of remind you of cows or bulls. They have real thick faces and horns and a disposition that definitely makes you think of a bad-tempered bull. I was around the Blood Sea last year, just passing through Mithas—”

His laughter, deep-throated and merry, rang out suddenly. “That’s when I learned that I might be old, but I can still run! No, they really don’t like it if you talk too much about cows. I don’t think there’s a minotaur alive who knows what a joke is.”

Kelida, smiling, trudged along beside Lavim, trying to follow the winding paths of a tale about three minotaurs, a gnome named Ish, and a bale of hay offered as dinner, for some reason Lavim never made clear. As the track of the story became more confused and obscured with exaggeration and hyperbole, Kelida contented herself with watching the ground and trying to present the appearance that she was, indeed, listening to the kender. After a time, she remembered Stanach’s insistence that she learn to use her dagger. She dropped her hand to the sheath at her hip. It was empty, the dagger gone.

“Lavim!”

Lavim looked around and up. “What?”

“My dagger—it’s gone!”

“Oh, have one of mine.” He slipped a bone-handled dagger from his belt and held it out to her. “I found it back on the trail, but, of course, I already have six or seven. Here.”

It was obviously the one she was missing.

Kelida snatched the dagger and sheathed it awkwardly. “Just where did you find it?”

Lavim scratched his head in puzzlement. “I don’t remember, but I knew it would come in handy.”

Skillfully, he veered away from a mossy outcropping. “I heard Stanach tell you that you should learn. He was a little testy about the matter, but he’s right. I could teach you.”

“Would you?”

“Sure, Kelida, I’d be happy to.” Lavim peered up the trail. Stanach and Tyorl stood waiting. When he winked, Kelida thought he looked like a disreputable old conspirator. “In my youth I was a sort of champion of Kendertown. Well, actually, second place. Sort of. Second place is really quite impressive, especially if there are at least two contestants, don’t you think? Oops! Better catch up!”

Kelida smiled. She trailed after Lavim, her hand on the dagger’s hilt, and reminded herself to check to see what else of hers the old kender might have ‘found.’

The warm boulder felt good at Kelida’s back. Here, on the high ground, the sun of the morning and early afternoon had dried the dampness from the grass and heated the rocks. The tree line was, temporarily, below them. The rock-strewn hill rose like a small island from the forest. This, Kelida knew from questioning Stanach as they’d climbed the hill, was not part of the foothills.

“Just a bump in the ground,” the dwarf had said, his dark eyes on the tall, blue peaks to the south. “The real hills are farther east.”

Kelida rubbed her aching legs. ‘Real hills.’ As though this were a meadow! The outcropping against which she leaned was as comfortable as the bricks her mother used to heat in winter to warm cold feet. A cloud’s shadow slipped across the ground, and Kelida closed her eyes. The memory of her mother touched an empty, aching place within her. As though it had fled into that empty place, all the warmth seemed to bleed out of the day. Behind her eyes, she saw fire and death and a wide-winged dragon dropping from the sky.

To her left and a little below where she sat ran a laughing stream, cold from its passage through the earth. The sound of splashing and then an impatient snarl that could only have been Stanach’s cut through Kelida’s dark memories. She looked around.

Lavim, who had gone to fill their flasks at the stream, leaped up the slope and around the rocks bulging from the earth’s thin skin with all the unconcerned skill of a mountain goat. The kender dropped down beside her.

“I did not!” he shouted over his shoulder, his eyes filled with impish green light. He passed Kelida her flask and unstoppered his own to drink deeply. “Stanach fell in the stream. The way he tells it, you’d think I pushed him!”

“Did you?”

“Not me! He slipped on a mossy rock. Look at him. Now, at least, he’s got something to snap and snarl about.”

Kelida peered over her shoulder. Stanach, wet to the knees, stalked up the slope like a grudge-holding hunter. He saw Kelida sitting with Lavim, so he veered away to join Tyorl. Kelida watched him take a seat on the ground near the elf. Each sat silently, not sharing his thoughts. When she turned back to the old kender, she saw her dagger again in Lavim’s possession.

Lavim grinned and held up his hand, the dagger point balanced on his palm. “Look what I found again.”

“Lavim, give it back.”

The kender pulled back his hand and snapped his wrist. The blade now balanced on his other palm. “I thought you wanted me to teach you how to use it.”

“I do, but—”

“Well, then?”

Kelida smiled. “All right. But, I don’t think I need to know juggler’s tricks.”

“Oh, I dunno. It’d be easy to teach you some really simple tricks. I’m a really good juggler. Well, I s’pose it’s not polite to say that myself, but I am and—” He shrugged when Kelida frowned impatiently. “All right. How about this?”

The kender jerked his wrist again, brought the weapon hilt-first to his right hand, and sent the dagger flying from his grip with a swift and subtle movement.

Kelida looked around quickly but saw no sign of the dagger. “Where is it?”

Lavim gestured toward a scrubby growth of naked brush. “There, getting us some supper.” The kender scrambled to his feet, trotted across the stony ground, and reached into the brush. When he turned, he had a large gray-furred rabbit by the hind legs. The creature stirred weakly and then fell still. The slim, little dagger had pierced it cleanly through the heart. Lavim returned, tossed the rabbit down, and resumed his seat.

“That’s one Tyorl won’t have to waste a draw on later. A dagger is for stabbing and throwing, Kelida,” he said, his tone serious now. Clearly, he was enjoying his role as weapons instructor. “Those are about the only things you can do with a knife. Well, besides cutting meat and picking locks, maybe.”

He eyed her consideringly and then nodded. “You’ve got a good throwing arm. I saw that in the road outside Long Ridge. If those soldiers hadn’t been wearing mail, you’d have taken ’em down with those stones you were pegging at ’em. Of course, you should have been aiming at their heads. You were probably too distracted to think about that. Here, take the knife.”

The rabbit’s blood steamed on the blade in the cool air. Kelida took the hilt between two fingers.

“No, no, not that way. Here, like this.” Lavim laid the hilt along her palm, closed her fingers over the bone handle. “There, grip it like—I dunno, like you’re shaking hands with it, but not too tight. There, pleased to meet ’cha.”

The dagger’s hilt was cold in her hand. Blood tapped against the hem of her cloak. Kelida shuddered. Dark and creeping, she felt nausea rolling around in her stomach.

“Now,” Lavim said, “throw it. Throw overhand, just like you’d peg a rock, only a dagger’s lighter so you have to get a higher arc on it. Go ahead, try to hit that old stump over there.”

The blackened remains of a lightning-struck ash jutted up from a low scoop in the ground about five yards to the north. Kelida judged the distance, took a sighting, and threw. The blade wobbled a little, made the distance, and fell among the stump’s gnarled roots.

“Not too bad. You got where you wanted to go, but you have to really put your arm into it.” Lavim retrieved the dagger. “Try again.”

She did, and this time the dagger’s blade grazed the rough bark. On the third try, the dagger struck hard into the wood and stayed, quivering.

“There! You’ve got it now.” Lavim fetched the dagger again and dropped down beside his student. “Now, throwing is fine when you have the room for it, and when you’re more interested in hitting your target than keeping the dagger. The other thing a dagger is for is stabbing.”

Kelida shivered again. She closed her eyes and drew a long, steadying breath.

Lavim tugged at her sleeve. “Kelida, are you listening?”

Kelida nodded dumbly.

“All right, then. Stabbing is funny stuff. Well, not funny, really, but strange. Don’t stab down if you’re in close. All you’ll do is hit bone and make someone mad. You sure won’t disable him. Stab up from below. That way you stand a really good chance of hitting something important like a liver or kidney. Got it?”

“I—I think so.”

Lavim looked at her again. “You look a little green, Kelida, you feeling all right?”

Kelida swallowed against rising nausea. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? Maybe we should talk about stabbing later? Why don’t you try a few throws again?”

Kelida tried. Her first throw was off by a finger’s width, her second hit the mark.

“One more.” Lavim encouraged, “You’re getting the feel of it.” Kelida threw again and missed the stump by a yard.

Brown sedge and dead grass were thick around the stump. Kelida searched for a moment, but did not find the dagger. Beyond the stump, the hill dropped down toward the woods. Just before the dark line of the trees’ shadows, she saw sun glinting off steel, the dagger’s blade. Kelida started down the hill.

The low ground in the shadow of the hill was wet and marshy. Her boots squelched in the puddles and slopped in the mud. Kelida retrieved the dagger quickly. When she turned to start back up the hill, something fluttering in the close underbrush of the forest caught her eye. Frowning, Kelida took a few steps toward the thickets.

She pushed through the thorny scrub brush and stopped. The underbrush framed a small sward of late green grass. A young man lay there, his right arm twisted in an impossible angle beneath him, his swollen, broken left hand outflung as though appealing for mercy. From where she stood, Kelida could not tell if he breathed.

She raised a hand to her mouth and caught a finger between her teeth so that she wouldn’t scream. Long blond hair trailed in a thin rivulet of water, mud-fouled and plastered to the side of his face. Encrusted with blood at the edges and angry red along the trough, a blade’s deep cut scored that face from a swollen, bruised eye to just beneath his jaw. Great rusty splashes of blood stained his red robes; some were brown and old, some crimson and still spreading. Kelida drew a short, choppy breath.

“Lavim!” she cried. “Tyorl! Stanach!”

The young man moaned and opened his eyes. Once, they might have been as blue as a summer sky. Now, they were muddy and dull with pain.

“Lady,” he whispered. He gasped and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, then ran his tongue around blood-stained lips and tried again. “Lady, will you help me?”

Stanach, his hands cold and shaking, dropped to his knees. His palm on Piper’s chest, he felt for the rise and fall of life as he had when he crouched in the dusty road beside Kyan Red-axe five days ago. Piper still lived, if only barely. His breath was a bubbling wheeze in his lungs. The mage had not spoken since he’d asked for Kelida’s help, but only lay still and silent.

He was not dead, but it would not be long before he was. Both of his hands and several ribs were broken, too much blood stood in his lungs. Tyorl, who had left to quickly scout the glade for signs of the young man’s attackers, returned now. He carried his longbow, an arrow still at nock, in his left hand; in his right, he held an old cherry wood flute. This he silently offered to Stanach.

Stanach took the instrument, running his thumbs down the smooth length of polished wood. After a moment’s hesitation, he laid the flute beside Piper’s broken right hand. “Where did you find it?”

“A little way off. Stanach, I have to talk with you.”

Stanach nodded and climbed wearily to his feet.

The elf, his long blue eyes unreadable, glanced at Piper, then looked around for Kelida. He saw her standing with Lavim at the edge of the glade and motioned for her to join them.

“Stay with him, Kelida.”

Kelida said nothing. Green eyes wide with pity, face paled by fear, she settled beside the mage. Lavim, silent for once, crouched down opposite her. Stanach sighed heavily and followed Tyorl into the deepening shadows of the forest until they were well out of the others’ hearing. Tyorl returned the arrow to his quiver, but did not unstring his bow.

“He looks like he was set on by a mob.”

Stanach nodded.

“I found no sign at all that anyone else has been here. I found no track or mark that even he had come into the glade. How do you suppose he got here?”

“I don’t know. He’s magi and—” Stanach swallowed against the tightening of his throat. “—and known in Thorbardin for his transport spells.” Memory caught him and he smiled. “He gets you where you want to go, but the magic always feels like its going to pull the day’s dinner out of your belly. He’s—known for that, too.

“I don’t think it happened very far from here, though. He wouldn’t have had the strength to transport any great distance. Is the road into Long Ridge near?”

“Five miles, maybe a little more,” Tyorl said.

“Then, that’s where it happened. Or near there. It’s where he was waiting for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Aye,” Stanach muttered roughly, “so am I.” He turned and started back to Piper. He didn’t get two steps before Tyorl caught his arm.

“What about the sword?”

“What about it?” Stanach tangled the fingers of his right hand in his beard and closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said bitterly. “I didn’t get to Piper in time, did I? He can’t help me and I—I can’t help him. Let me at least sit with him while he dies.”

So saying, the dwarf turned and left the shadows for the sun-dappled sward. Tyorl followed silently.

Kelida moved aside when Stanach came to sit beside her. “He’s still breathing, Stanach. He’s still alive.”

Stanach said nothing, only drew the back of his hand across his mouth and nodded, his eyes on Piper’s broken hands.

Kelida, following his gaze, whispered, “Why?”

“So he couldn’t defend himself with magic.” He touched a finger to the flute. “They didn’t know about the pipe. It got him away, but not in time to save his life.”

Ah, Jordy, Stanach thought. I’m sorry, Piper!

“We might as well camp here.” Tyorl said, “It’s a muddy hole to pass the night in, but I’ve a feeling we’ll want the lee of the hill to shelter our fire tonight. We’d better set our night watch fireless on the hilltop.” Tyorl motioned to the kender who looked like he wanted to ask questions. “Fuel and kindling, aye?”

Lavim rose stiffly and, with one look at Stanach, slipped into the woods. The elf climbed the hill to walk the watch. Alone, Kelida sat beside Stanach. She, who had watched her family and friends fall before a dragon’s rage, saw the deep and desolate sorrow in the dwarf’s eyes and knew that he mustn’t sit alone.

Solinari, as it always did, rose first above the horizon. Lunitari did not lag far behind. Night, deep blue and cold, flowed into the glade. Shadows and firelight turned the naked brush to glowing black webbing. When the red moon’s light crested the hill and ran down into the woods, Stanach realized that he hadn’t heard the thick, rasping sound of Piper’s labored breathing for many moments. He leaned forward, gently placed his hand on the mage’s chest. There was no movement. The lifebeat in his neck was stilled. Stanach sat listening to the thunder of his own heart.

“I’m sorry,” Kelida whispered.

Stanach nodded. He looked at her for a long moment, then at the Kingsword she still wore at her hip. Gold caught the fire’s light, and shadows glided over the silver. The five sapphires winked coldly. Stanach thought he could see the crimson heart of the steel glowing through the shabby leather scabbard.

Kelida covered his right hand with her own.

Stanach still said nothing.

The music that had enchanted the dwarven children of Thorbardin was flown. The magic was gone. Jordy was dead and Kyan was dead. In that moment, Stanach didn’t let himself feel a thing for fear that his grief would overwhelm him and he would weep.