The Crown and the Sword

CHAPTER TWENTY

The body of the duchess was laid in state in the great hall of the ducal palace. Though Ankhar’s troops had been completely driven from the city, the shocked and shaken people of Solanthus couldn’t celebrate a victory. The troops of the garrison returned to their walls, and labored to build a defensive position across the bloody battleground of the West Gate. The rest of the populace gathered, quietly grieving, around the looming bulk of the Cleft Spires and across the plaza, the ducal palace.

Within that lofty structure, Lords Harbor and Martin took the lead in walking slowly, reverently, past the casket, while the other captains, nobles, and guildmasters of the city assembled in the anteroom. One by one, the others filed past to pay their last respects.

Duchess Brianna looked beautiful and at peace. Coils of copper hair surrounded her face and concealed the gruesome wound caused by the arrow that had taken her life. Her slender hands were folded on her stomach, her eyes closed as though she slumbered.

The penultimate person to go through that line was the professional guide and pathfinder extraordinaire who had cradled Duchess Brianna’s head as she breathed her last. The kender paused at the casket, standing on tiptoes so he could lean closer to the body. Moptop sniffled loudly, the tears flowing from his eyes unchecked.

“You didn’t deserve to get killed like that,” he said, gently touching her cold cheek. “You ought to have seen the battle won, and the fire giant chasing after Ankhar and everything. You would have been real happy about it. I… I’m sorry you didn’t,” he said.

The last person in the funeral line was Lord Marshal Jaymes Markham, commander of the Army of Solamnia. He, too, paused for a moment to look down at the still, beautiful features of the dead duchess. If her death caused him any heartache, any fury, or sense of injustice, he carefully concealed such emotions. He touched the fingers of her right hand then strode away as the priests of Kiri-Jolith came forward to close the casket and prepare for the funeral. She would be borne through the city to give the people a chance to say farewell and would be interred in the nobles’ vault beneath the northernmost of the Cleft Spires.

Jaymes made his way through the throng of officers to the two lords, who were standing on the front steps of the temple. The plaza was filled with people and was silent except for the sound of muffled sobbing.

“I need to leave the city,” Jaymes said to the two lords. “I intend to return, as soon as possible, with the army.”

“What if the elemental returns?” asked Harbor guardedly. “How will we stand against it without you?”

“We couldn’t stand against it this time,” Jaymes replied. “Perhaps you should pray to whichever gods you hold holy that it finds another target for its wrath. If it returns here again, there may be nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Surely Ankhar will send the elemental again,” said Lord Martin. He stared at the enemy army still massed beyond the city wall, tears in his eyes.

“We can only hope not,” Jaymes said. “It seems to me our attack against the Thorn Knight has weakened his hold upon the monster, somehow. For that, we have your son-and his noble sacrifice-to thank.”

“How long will you be gone?” asked Harbor.

The lord marshal shrugged. “Ankhar’s army has suffered terrible losses-it will be days, at the least, before it can recover enough to make any kind of attack. By then my army should be across the Vingaard in force. If Ankhar stays put, we’ll be ready to hit him from the rear and-with fortune-break his army for once and for all.”

“Very well-but make haste!” said the nobleman, descendent of a long line of noblemen.

Jaymes merely stared at him coldly for a long time until Lord Harbor finally harrumphed, mumbled something, turned, and walked away.

“We’re grateful that you came,” Sir Martin said. “The cost has been high, but without you the battle surely would have been lost, with the effects catastrophic.”

“Your son was a very brave man, a credit to the Kingfishers,” Jaymes said. “I will see that word of his valor is carried to Sancrist, to the Whitestone Council and the Grand Master.”

“Thank you, my Lord Marshal.” For just a moment, Martin’s voice broke. Then he stood firm, at attention, with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“Est Sularus oth Mithas,” he said.

Generals Markus, Dayr, and Rankin rode together near the head of their massive combined army. They were making good progress, the enemy troops having fallen back all across the plains as soon as the river crossing was consolidated. Solanthus lay no more than forty miles ahead, and they were driving their troops at double time in their urge to close upon the city, break the siege, and learn what had become of the lord marshal.

Their eyes were fixed upon the horizon, seeking their first sign of the enemy or the besieged city. What they saw instead was a horror, a monstrous figure of fire and earth, wind and water, which strode across the plains like a rampaging storm. It howled down upon their vanguard, scattering the light cavalry that was screening the advance.

The generals ordered their troops to stand firm, but the hulking elemental king came on like a whirlwind, mowing through the lines. Men screamed and died, hurled through the air like chaff and smashed to the ground like children’s toys. Hundreds died, and many more fled in terror when it became apparent they could do nothing to impede the monster. The great herds of horses and cattle that accompanied the army broke away from their drovers and fled in panic, thousands of animals stampeding across the plains.

Many survived only because the horrific monster swooped down on them, tore through the lines, and moved on. It did not so much as glance over its shoulder as it stormed on, taking no more note of its pathetic victims than a tornado would notice the shattered and broken farms left damaged and ruined in its wake.

“Really?” Moptop’s eyes were wide. “You want me to go?”

“There’s no one else who would even have a chance,” Jaymes affirmed with a straight face. “This task calls for a professional guide and pathfinder extraordinaire.”

“Well, sure, if you want me to, I’ll go.” The kender nodded his head, his topknot bobbing enthusiastically. He and Jaymes were speaking together in the shadow of the Cleft Spires, even as the funeral for the duchess was proceeding through the city’s great central square. The lord marshal had brought Moptop here with a whispered word then leaned down and spoken conspiratorially to the kender.

“You know, I think she would have wanted me to go, too,” Moptop said seriously, looking out across the plaza at Duchess Brianna’s funeral procession, with the hearse pulled by a dozen black horses. The vast sea of people had parted, almost magically, to open a path for the hearse. The crowd watched, mostly in silence, though there were enough murmured prayers that the whole throng seemed to be softly chanting.

“I’m sure she would have.”

“But… I just remembered something! When we came out of the Cleft Spires, the wall turned real solid and rocky behind us, remember? I don’t think I can get back through that way. Too solid and rocky.” The kender gazed apprehensively at the tall pillars and their impermeable surface of flat, hard stone.

“No, I doubt that you can.”

“Then how do you think I should go about it?” Moptop asked, his voice wavering. “Considering, I have to go… I know she would want me to, and everything. But- how? ”

“As I said, you’re the very best professional guide and pathfinder extraordinaire,” Jaymes said. He touched the little fellow’s shoulder and gave him an encouraging squeeze. “I’m thinking you’ll have to discover a new path.”

A palace servant ushered Jaymes back to the guest chamber, which he had never slept in, and when he entered, alone, he closed the door behind himself and locked it

After a quick look around the room, he pulled the curtains away from the wall, checked inside the two large wardrobes, and went to the panel concealing the secret passage connecting this room to the sleeping chamber of the duchess. The door opened soundlessly. He took an oil lamp from a nearby table, lit it, and entered the narrow, straight corridor. The door slid shut behind him, and he made his way quickly.

When he reached the other end of the corridor, he placed his ear to the panel and listened for a moment, hearing nothing. Carefully he opened the secret door and stepped into the sleeping chamber of Duchess Brianna. He halted just inside, extinguished the lamp, and set it down. The drapes were open on the large windows, revealing a view to the west and a spectacular sunset over the area that had, hours earlier, been a bloody battleground.

The room was very much as he had left it that very morning. The bed had been made, the two wine glasses and empty decanter removed, but there was no obvious sign that the person who had lived here would not be returning at any moment. He hesitated, looking at the bed and the gauzy dressing gown draped casually over a nearby chair.

After a moment Jaymes crossed the room to the elegant, mirrored dressing table. He almost flinched at the sight of himself in that reflecting glass: he was dirty, his beard was plastered to his chin, and one eye was nearly swollen shut from a blow he’d taken during the fighting. His hands were filthy, too, and he hesitated again before touching the pearl handle on one of the lady’s dresser drawers.

But finally he took the delicate handle, so clearly designed for a lady’s slender fingers, and pulled open the drawer. Within lay a collection of gloves, in pairs, ranging from white and elegant to shiny black leather. Each pair was folded neatly, all of them nestled in rows. He lifted out a pair made of white silk, raised them to his face, and gently inhaled.

There was a hint of perfume, or perhaps it was only soap. It was a sweet and alluring scent, and the knuckles of his fingers whitened as he clenched the white silk gloves very tightly. Gently he folded them and tucked them into an interior fold of his smoke-stained, sooty tunic. He carefully closed the drawer and picked up the lamp. Without bothering to light it, he passed through the secret door and retraced his steps through the passage to his own room.

Now there was nothing left for him to do in Solanthus. He adjusted his kit and made certain that he had the helm of mind reading, his crossbows, and his great sword all carefully stowed. When he was ready, he touched the ring of teleportation on his left hand, turning the circlet on his finger as Coryn had shown him. He pictured the lord mayor’s palace in Palanthas, and particularly those rooms that belonged to the Princess Selinda.

Then he enabled the magic. A soft puff of air blew into the room, coming under the door, filling the empty place from where the lord marshal had just disappeared.

“You!” Jaymes barked in surprise.

He stood in the magical laboratory of Coryn the White’s house, right outside the alcove where she kept her porcelain bowl. His eyes narrowed as the wizard approached.

“You brought me here?” he accused.

“Instead of the chambers of that silly wench you’ve bewitched?” she asked. She picked up a rag and dipped it in a bucket of water that just happened to be resting on her bench then tossed the cloth at him. “Here,” she said. “Clean yourself up, and then we have to talk.”

Angrily he took the cloth and wiped it across his face, wincing as it came into contact with his swollen eye. He dipped it in water again and spent a few moments cleaning up, washing his hands, even wiping the dust from his leather breastplate. Finally he knelt down to apply a quick polish to his boots. By the time he was completed, his anger had abated and been replaced with a curiosity as to why he had been brought here.

“Why this concern with my appearance?” he asked, tossing the grimy cloth into the bucket. “Are you afraid I’ll frighten the princess when she sees me?” he added coldly.

The remark obviously stung Coryn. She blinked, almost as if to control unbidden tears, but her jawline tightened and she met his gaze with her own angry eyes. “That wouldn’t be likely,” she said. “The potion, from all reports, has worked as well as you could have hoped. She spends every day pining for you, going to the top of the Golden Spire and looking up the Vingaard road-waiting for you to come riding back to her!”

“Well, that’s all to the good. Don’t pretend you don’t remember why I needed that potion. The future of Solamnia may well depend on its success.”

“The future… your future!” Her voice broke. “My future-” She stopped abruptly and collected herself with a visible effort. When she spoke again, her tone was flat. “I know, more than anyone, what sacrifices must be made for the future of Solamnia. But you need to understand what’s been going on in the city while you have been gone.”

“Very well. Do you mind if we sit down?”

Coryn wordlessly led him to a small couch positioned near the wide veranda outside of her laboratory. The view was spectacular: the sun was setting over the Bay of Branchala, outlining the splendid manors of Nobles Hill as they spilled down the slope and into the city itself. Several ships were in full sail-the tide must have been going out-and those sails billowed rapturously, as stark white as gull’s wings, catching the gentle offshore breezes, and riding wind and water toward the north.

Closer than the waterfront stood the old city wall, which surrounded a cluster of houses, temples, and guildhalls. The Tower of High Sorcery-Fistandantilus’s, then Raistlin’s, then Dalamar’s Tower-once loomed on a great smear of broken ground there. The tower was gone now, destroyed thought most people. Coryn knew differently.

Even after all these years, no one dared to use that land, despite its prime location in the center of the most vibrant city on Ansalon. Doubtless, no one ever would, so long as stories of the black-robed magic-users were still recounted in the annals of the world.

The most dramatic feature, from the vantage of Coryn’s house, was the great, glass-walled enclosure of the lord mayor’s palace, dominated by the lofty needle known as the Golden Spire. The great house rested on a hilltop on the opposite side of the valley from Nobles Hill but was clearly visible from here, as from nearly every place in Palanthas.

“The lord mayor does like to be noticed,” Jaymes said, his glance appreciating the sweep of the elegant mansion, the windows that gleamed like mirrors in the setting sun, the glass-enclosed circular chamber at the top of the spire.

“Perhaps you care to know that he has taken notice of you, once again,” the white wizard said.

He merely looked at her, waiting for an explanation.

“Du Chagne made a speech at the Nobles Ball. He didn’t exactly call for your replacement but criticized the conduct of the war. He implied that the campaign to free Solanthus is taking too long because you have other priorities. He publicly speculated about your Compound, asking if anyone present knew what secret business was going on there.”

“None of them did, I trust?”

“No. But they don’t know who to be more afraid of-you or du Chagne. Everyone knows you destroyed the Kings Bridge two years ago not with magic, but with some new technology.”

“A destruction that, incidentally, made possible the survival of the Solamnic Army,” he said icily.

She shrugged. “They think their way of life is threatened by you.”

Jaymes chuckled, cold and not amused. “Well, I am a threat to their way of life,” he noted. “You and I both know that the old order, their corruption and the venality, has bled the very life out of Solamnia. These greedy bastards who think only of their own aggrandizement would destroy this land just so they could feast upon its corpse!”

“Well said,” Coryn noted, smiling in spite of herself. “But it’s no less than you predicted; du Chagne seeks to undermine you, turn the people against you.

“The solution to that is twofold, the way I see it. My army needs to win this war, and I need to set about concluding my business with the princess of Palanthas.”

“Then,” Coryn said, once again serious. “I suggest you get started with the princess.”

The three armies of Solamnia made camp after the passing of the elemental king. Clerist knights and other clerics tended to the wounded, with guards alert on the perimeter, cavalry units patrolling ahead and behind the vast formation. Terrified troops were rounded up and rallied, and the herd of cattle and spare horses that had stampeded in the face of the attack was gathered and returned to the large, military corrals.

The three generals, grim faced and shaken, met around the fire of the command camp in the center of the larger body. Each man stared wordlessly into the flames, wrapped in his own thoughts, haunted by memories of the horrible attack by the monster.

Where had it come from? Where was it headed? Would the monster be coming back? How could they ever stand against a creature like that?

And, finally, where was the lord marshal, on whom they all depended for counsel, command, and inspiration?

“We have to consider that our lord marshal might already be dead,” Dayr finally said, voicing the common thought they dreaded to hear aloud. “No one could fight it and live.”

“Aye,” Rankin agreed. He looked at his fellow generals, all former rivals back in the time when they had been captains of the ducal lords. The one thing that united them was the leadership of Jaymes. “And what does this mean for us, for the knighthood, and indeed for our world?”

“Enough children’s chatter!” Markus barked. “If he was dead, Sir Templar or one of them spell-users would have perceived that awful truth and told us. I believe he’s alive, and he’s still trying to win this fight. Monster or no monster, he’d want us to follow his orders.”

“You’re right, Sir Rose,” Dayr said, nodding thoughtfully. Rankin, too, concurred.

“That means that, tomorrow, even if we must leave our wounded behind, we will resume the march to Solanthus and be there ready when the lord marshal shows himself again.”

The mood in Palanthas was dramatically different from Jaymes’s last visit. He borrowed a horse from Coryn’s stable and rode down the winding roadway from Nobles Hill. At the city gates, the troops of the guard stood at attention as he passed.

As he rode the wide streets, people came out onto balconies to watch him or looked up from their market stalls. The citizens’ expressions were not hostile, but there was a wariness that was a change from the welcome and approval he had experienced before.

Word of his passage seemed to spread quickly, as more and more people gathered. By the time he had ridden out the other side of the city and started on the climb up to du Chagne’s residence, a crowd had collected along both sides of the road.

“When you going to finish this thing?” one old man demanded. “This war against brute savages? It’s been going on for too long!”

“My son been carrying a spear for you for four years!” said an old farmwife. “I want him back home!”

The warrior shrugged his cape off of his shoulders and let the proud hilt of Giantsmiter jut into view over his head. He had commanded the army for only the previous two years, yet he ignored the muttered taunts and insults and took little note of the rabble.

Riding steadily, he approached the manor, and the front gates flew open. A young woman sprinted out to greet him. Selinda raced down the cobblestone road, her arms flung wide. When she reached him, he leaned down and scooped her up.

She was still hugging him, sobbing quietly, as he continued into her father’s courtyard, and the massive vallenwood gates swung heavily shut behind him.

“I’ve come home,” was all he said to her.