The Inheritance

Chapter 5

Restless, Prince Kethrenan walked, pacing the paths, the byways, and the fair roads of the golden city. His cousin took quick steps to keep up, for Keth stretched his long legs with every stride as though he must put as much distance behind him as possible. Not for the first time Lindenlea thought she and the prince were well matched in spirit but not in length of leg.

The song of bells drifted in the air, silvery and rhythmic, dancing to the jogging pace of a lady's pretty mare as she rode through the dark orchards. Her horse, up ahead, looked ghostly gray as the sky. Laughter pealed, and beyond a garden wall children chased the fat heavy flakes of snow drifting down. The first snow of the season fell upon Qualinost, sifting through the black sketch of naked tree branches. The city's graceful buildings, homes, shops, the far-famed Library of Qualinost, temples, and smithies would glow quietly, like faithful hearts beating. Even the barracks, stark and stern, seemed softened, if not by the quiet light, by the mantle of snow on their shoulders.

Beyond the buildings and the naked orchards, four tall watchtowers stood, each lined with burnished silver, each stronger than it looked. Slender bridges, spans which seemed so delicate one might imagine a fallen leaf would collapse them, sketched out the rough square bounds of the city by connecting the towers north to east, east to south, south to west, and west back to north again. Within those gleaming towers contingents of Kethrenan’s warriors were quartered, men and women who kept a strict rotating schedule of duty to insure that no tower ever went unmanned. Upon each of those arching bridges a regular guard walked its rounds. From the founding of the kingdom, the company who kept this watch was known as the King’s Own, the guardians of his very walls. The names of past commanders of this guard decorated elven legend. These days, the King’s Own was Lindenlea’s to command. The honor was a considerable one for Kethrenan’s cousin, and deserved.

The guard on the bridges, hard-eyed soldiers, looked always outward to the broad ravine surrounding the city. That cut in the earth, deep stone plunging down to rushing water, was the first line of Qualinost’s defense. The second line were the troops who patrolled there, mounted squads whose first order in time of conflict was to bum the wooden bridges at the sight of enemies, whose next was to die to the man to keep all invaders away from the city itself.

Dark across the sky, crows sailed, their raucous shrieks damping the laughter of bridle bells. Kethrenan looked up, tracked them, and lost them in the snowy veil.

"What do you hear, Lea, from the watches at the ravine?"

"Only that it’s quiet. ‘Dull as dirt,‘ this morning's messenger said." She shook her head, for the messenger had been a youth, over-eager, untried, full of fancy and ancient songs. The first battle he saw and survived would disabuse him of the notion that a quiet watch was a boring one. "He'd be wise to be grateful for that."

Kethrenan agreed.

Lindenlea slid him a quick glance. "I don't think you're much different from that eager boy, cousin." "Vastly different. I have a dozen more scars, have seen comrades die in battle…."

She laughed.

"What?" he said, frowning.

"You. You sound like an old man. Old," she said, grinning, "and forgetful. Or is it really hard to remember the days when you used to long for the chance to fight in a battle and live to hear the songs bards would write about your adventures?"

Kethrenan snorted, dismissing a question flown too close to the mark. He could not dismiss her truth, though, and he didn’t try.

Snow sighed, silencing the city. In windows, lights gleamed like eyes smiling for the warmth and the shelter. No birds flew, and few people were about, only the watch on the wall.

Kethrenan lifted his head and looked south, past the tall Tower of the Sun where his brother Solostaran held court, where he and Elansa lived. He thought about her, his wife, and he wondered how she fared out in Bianost. Did the snow keep her from her work? He didn’t imagine it would. They'd had no chance to talk before her leaving, but he didn’t need close conversation to know that Elansa had gone willingly, blight’s enemy sallying forth in the golden autumn. No elf lived who didn’t love the forest. So much could even be said for the Silvanesti kindred who tamed their wildwood into gardens. Yet to woodshapers it sometimes seemed that the trees of the wood were but another tribe of souled beings, the tribe breaking down into clans-Elm-clan, Oak-clan, Birch-clan, Rowan-clan, and Pine-clan….

Woodshapers saw things differently than most elves. Elansa, his wife, was a stubborn girl who would not be put off by mere winter if her healing skills were needed. She would commune with her beloved trees as easily in snow as in sun. He pictured her walking among the naked trees, cloaked in fur, the snow glittering in her golden hair. The sapphire phoenix would sit heavily upon her breast, the stone glittering, the phoenix’s wings spread as though the bird itself would leap from her and fly away.

Lindenlea’s voice cut into this thinking, sharp through the muffling snow. "Keth, look." She pointed to the eastern bridge, to a runner jogging along the silver path.

"My lord prince!" he cried. He stopped, sketched a bow, and leaned over the parapet. "A messenger has come for you, Prince Kethrenan. He waits in the king’s chamber."

Lindenlea’s eyes narrowed, and Kethrenan could almost hear her thinking. A messenger waiting in the chamber of the Speaker of the Sun carried no word of little moment. In spite of himself, the restless prince's heart rose.

Voices followed Kethrenan down marble corridors, dry whispers ghosting in his wake. A servant spoke to a servant, women in the dun robes of the kitchen. Outside Solostaran’s library, a scribe gestured to the quill-boy who'd come with a basket of freshly sharpened pens. In the shadows of the corridor, their blue robes seemed like deeper darkness as the scribe, her silvery hair the only gleam, leaned near to murmur. When they saw the prince, they looked away. That looking away spoke more and louder than any voice.

The skin prickled on the back of Kethrenan’s neck, a hunter's hackles rising. He'd been feeling that since he'd left Lindenlea behind, sending her to make certain of all watches posted in and around the city. They had seen something in the attitude of the guardsmen on the bridges to make them slide narrow-eyed glances at each other. The nearer they came to the Tower of the Sun, the more alert the warriors became.

Servants melted away before the prince, slipping into chambers and alcoves, gliding silently out of his way until, at last, Kethrenan stood in the doorway of his brother's chambers. Silent, he kept himself in the shadow, observing.

Within, Solostaran stood like a candle’s bright flame, king of the Qualinesti elves. He had his hand upon the shoulder of a thin, frail man. Beyond, two others stood close together, elves dressed in the rustic gear of one of the outlying villages. Kethrenan noted that they looked like kin to each other, and then he dismissed them.

Solostaran helped the frail man to sit in a deep, high-backed chair. They were an odd pairing, the Speaker and the man he helped. Tall for an elf, Solostaran was thinner than his brother. Kethrenan could see in him the blood of the great hero-king Kith-Kanan. It shone in the keen glance of his eye, in the strength that had nothing to do with brawn and everything to do with surety and grace. He was the flame of his people, their spirit incarnate, their heart and soul. But the other… the other looked like a beggar brought in from the gate, ragged and pale and sickly.

"Keth," said the Speaker, who knew his brother's step and didn't need to turn to see him. "Here is a sad homecoming."

In the shadows, the two strangers sighed. One glanced at the other. One slipped a hand into the other's. Brother and sister, Kethrenan thought absently. Upon the woman's cheek a small tear slid, drawn by the simple word, homecoming.

Kethrenan’s eyes narrowed. He didn't know those two and he didn't know the man his brother said had come home. Surely that was a stranger leaning upon the arm of Solostaran as the Speaker helped him to sit.

The prince narrowed his eyes against the candlelight glinting off the black and white marble tiles of the floor. Here and there, in random pattern, one or another of those tiles was marked with the shape of a lily, white on a black tile, black on a white-the sign of some ancient king's love for a woman who, in her time, embodied scandal and who now only embodied a wisp of recalled legend. The Tower of the Sun was rife with such ghosts of older times, older feuds and hatreds and loves. It was part of the luxury of the place, a luxury of history, a luxury of fable. The place also reflected a luxury of design. An extravagance of glass wall brought the orchard and the city itself into the Speaker's chamber. Oftentimes, it brought sun pouring into the room, golden and warm. This day, that wall brought only gray gloom, and the apple trees and pear trees outside the window seemed like old men and women, gnarled and twisted and angry with age. It was left to banks of tall candles to provide light in the chamber, and torches in black iron holders. This light showed Kethrenan his brother's guest.

He was small as a youth, scrawny, shriveled, and wrinkled like an unfledged bird. His head bobbed on his neck as his hand lifted to pluck at Solostaran’s sleeve, and the Speaker whispered something to the trail one.

Who is it, Kethrenan wondered, that my brother says has come home?

The man's face shone white against the emerald silk cushions of the chair. He turned-perhaps Kethrenan had made some sound at the door-and the prince knew him. Cold to the heart, he knew him, and he saw that he was maimed, the side of his head naked where his ear should have been.

"Gods," he whispered, crossing the room in swift long strides. "Demlin! Gods, what's happened to you?"

Solostaran looked up and gestured sharply. In his eyes was the sudden flicker of annoyance Kethrenan had known all his life.

"Easy, Keth," he said, his hand on Demlin’s shoulder. "The man is not strong."

Demlin, greatly reduced, looked up at his lord, the man he had served all his life. Tears stood in his eyes, and Kethrenan shuddered with prescient chill. The pain of his maiming would never have wrung tears from Demlin. Something worse did.

Dull, gray light from skies the color of unloved iron crept into the room, and it seemed to Kethrenan that candles and torches could not stand before it.

"My lord," Demlin whispered, "I-"

"Where is Elansa?" Kethrenan’s voice sounded like stone. "Where is my wife?"

"My lord…"

Gently, the Speaker of the Sun put his hand on the servant’s arm. Demlin looked up and took the cup of wine his king offered. He merely wet his lips, not having the strength to drink that liquid fire, but even the small taste seemed to hearten him.

"My lord, Princess Elansa has been stolen."

In the far shadows, the two strangers, the elves who were kin, moved closer to each other. One sobbed, the woman. The other put his sheltering arm around her shoulders.

Demlin took a breath and said, "She is being held for ransom, and there are but two days for you to go and fetch her home before"-he tasted the wine again- "before she is killed."

Killed.

Solostaran glanced at his brother.

In Kethrenan’s belly, coldness turned to fire. The fire raced to his heart and changed into fury. He was a man of battlegrounds, a warrior who knew what happened to women who fell into the hands of men unbound from the rules of law-soldiers in battle-lust, outlaws cast out from all society and virtue.

Solostaran knew it, too. "What is wanted, Demlin?" he asked. "However much gold, however many jewels, we will find them."

Demlin shook his head. "It isn't jewels they want, my king. They want… they want two wagons piled high with weapons. They want these taken to the borderland, that place known as the Notch. They want no one to go but the ones who drive the wagons. They will kill her, otherwise."

The outlaws wanted treasure, indeed, the one prize no sane man would ever grant them. Arm us, they demanded. Put your best swords into the hands of your enemies.

And yet, how could they withhold?

"Go," Solostaran said, and though his brother's cheeks shone pale with anger and underlying dread, Kethrenan heard the voice of a king speaking to his warlord. "Go, brother. Spare no man or woman. Spare no weapon. Go and bring home our princess."

Standing in the iron light of the hard day, Lindenlea watched as Kethrenan slipped on the shining shirt, the ring mail chiming as he settled it on his shoulders. He poured back the metal cowl as though it were a hood. He felt her regard, and her unvoiced question, as he reached for the tooled leather scabbard and slid it onto the broad black belt he wore slung low on his hips.

She wanted to say, "Cousin, how are you?" She said nothing, knowing he wouldn't answer. Everything he was, Kethrenan kept locked away in the coffer of his heart, doling out little pieces when it seemed fitting. It did not seem fitting for him to display what his heart felt now, the fear and the rage. No warrior should see that in her commander. She should never be given the chance to wonder whether he was truly in command of himself, lest she begin to worry that he could not command his army.

Kethrenan’s hand loved the fit of the sword’s grip. He loved the weight of the weapon on his hip. He was no archer; he was a bladesman, yet he'd become used to feeling the weight of his weapon low, as archers feel their quiver. Low he liked it, right where his hand fell naturally to grasp. The sword he fitted into the sheath, its sliding releasing the pungent smell of the lanolin from the lamb’s wool lining.

Lindenlea eyed the sword and the gleaming grip. Diamonds winked on that grip. Sapphires shone on the hilt, and one baleful ruby eye. She leaned against the doorway of her cousin's bedchamber and said, "With the oldest sword you own, you go after her?"

"Yes," he said. "The oldest and the best."

He jerked his head at her, a silent command.

"Three troops," she said, her words clipped. Now she was a warrior reporting to her prince. "Sixty warriors, armed, mailed, angry as fire-and at your command, my lord."

Sixty. It would do. They would depart before nightfall, running out to the border and keeping themselves secret in the woods. No clanking army of dwarves, no trampling herd of humans, sixty elves, even geared for war, would go silent as the falling snow, slipping like wind through the forest until they found their hiding places. From shadows, in darkness, gray-cloaked, they would watch as two wagons of weapons rumbled into the Notch, as delivery of the ransom was made, and the princess was returned to her people.

Then they would fall upon those outlaws like terror. They would harry and slaughter, and they would leave nothing but corpses for the ravens.

Lindenlea would drive one of those wagons. Kethrenan himself would take the other. Gray-cloaked as the others, their shining mail hidden and their weapons at their feet, they would seem nothing more than drivers of the wagons.

Kethrenan looked around. His bedchamber was as much like a warrior’s barracks as anything else. Spare bed, small chest for his clothing, his favorite weapons hung upon the wall to gleam and glare. When he was Lord of the Guard, he dressed here. When he was a prince in his brother's court, he would have Demlin fetch him glittering gear from the coffers in his wife's rooms.

Demlin. Another vengeance needed working. Kethrenan grinned a feral grin. It was as if he tasted blood in the back of his mouth.

He turned his head a little and looked out the window to where the curving wall of another chamber put a broad window eye-to-eye with his. A courtyard lay between, paved with sandy-colored brick in a pattern of Elansa’s design. "We can meet," she had said, "here in the courtyard and no one will see us, so private will we be." So private-for the walls were high and draped in summer with wisteria, in winter with jasmine. There were other ways to meet of course, and one was in the bed of one or the other of them, access gained for a knock at the door which stood, never locked, between their many-roomed chambers.

"Come play prince with me," she would whisper at the door, and he would leave his stern chamber for the luxury of hers.

"Come play warrior-maid with me," he would growl, laughing at the door and holding it wide.

Kethrenan winced, thinking of his bed, her bed…

"No," Lindenlea said, seeing his glance. She stepped into the room. "Don’t think about that, Keth. She's a quick-witted girl, your princess. She'll take care of herself, and she will be well when you find her."

"Do you think so?" he said, but he didn't care about her reply. He settled his sword in its sheath. Rough hands would touch. The hands of outlaws would paw. Humans might already have claimed a princess of Qualinesti. Kethrenan’s mouth filled with the bloody taste of rage, hot and coppery. So strong the flavor that he moved his tongue around behind his teeth, wondering if there were truly blood there.

Lindenlea didn't offer more false assurances. He needed only to look into her eyes to see that she felt what he did: They would find Elansa, and they would avenge her. No matter if she were well and whole. No matter if she were defiled. Those gods-forsaken outlaws who had laid hands on her, if only to snatch her away and no worse, had earned their deaths the moment they touched her.

He did not doubt that Elansa would rejoice to see the blood of her captors run like rivers down the naked stone in the moaning lands where now she lay prisoner.

Elansa counted the days with difficulty. The iron sky made it hard to track the sun. No shadow lay on the ground in such even light. She saw no moons at night, and all her life had become a narrow torment of walking, interrupted only by the agony of a sleep that brought no rest. She no longer stumbled or fell. That had nothing to do with strength or with having become accustomed to traveling stony ground in boots whose leather soles were beginning to split at the seam. She would not fall, for if she did she knew she would not rise again. Brand would have to kill her and give over his scheme for ransom. She did not want to die. She wanted-more than she had ever wanted anything-to reach the ransom point, to see not two wagons filled with weapons but an army of elves geared for killing.

It would not matter if she were killed in the fighting as long as she lived long enough to see Kethrenan spit this outlaw Brand on his lance.

And so she walked, the joints of her ankles, her knees, and her hips aching. When in rare moments she could be still, she sagged against a boulder, head low and groaning, her muscles cramped in painful spasms. There was not enough water to drink. They rationed what they had in the rank-tasting leather water bottles, but no outlaw willingly shared with her.

"No sense in it," Arawn had said. "She's either soon back to her forest, or dead. Why waste the water on her?"

Char pointed out that here was another example of why Arawn wasn't known for long-headedness. "She dies before the ransom point, idiot, and what do we have? Blisters on our feet and a dead elf. She gets there, maybe more."

Grudgingly, Arawn admitted that was so. Nevertheless, he was not the first to share his water bottle. No one had found running water since Char and Tianna had spotted the goblins. In this more westerly part of the barren land it seemed there had been little enough water in good seasons. Now, there was dust.

Dust blew constantly, so that Elansa’s throat burned, and her eyes felt dry as the earth itself. Her skin stung. Her cheeks and throat and arms were wind-scoured and raw. Her hair hung tangled and matted until, in frustration, she could have wept-had she tears.

After the second day, Brand called Tianna and Ley to him. They went aside from the others, talking quietly, and when he came back to the fire, he came back alone. The two went off into the night, loping across the ground as though full sun shone and they had a packed trail ahead of them. No one seemed the least curious, but Elansa lay a long time awake, wondering. She had not seen the gray line of the Qualinesti forest since the day before. She thought-she could not be sure, and so perhaps she hoped-that Ley and Tianna had turned west when they left the camp, back toward the forest.

Elansa looked at Char, sitting a small distance from her. It was, she realized, the distance he'd sit if there had been fire between. She thought she would ask him, "Have they gone to the forest?" But she didn't. He carried two leather bottles, one for water and one for dwarf spirits. His water bottle lay beside his foot, and the other sat upon his knee. He was not a good one to talk to when he'd been pulling at that bottle, sliding from surly to nasty to dangerous.

The night’s cold fingers crept beneath the folds of her dusty green cloak. The hound Fang dropped down beside her, his breath smelling like blood and whatever he'd killed for his supper. Elansa curled into a tight ball of aching muscles and fell into what passed for sleep.

Before dawn had changed the dark of night to watery gray, Char’s booted toe nudged her awake. Fang was gone, but only lately. She had the sense of the hound’s nearness. Char dropped something to the ground beside her, a small strip of rabbit meat. His water bottle he set down more carefully, and it was that Elansa took first, drinking in quick greedy gulps before the dwarf’s hand darted to take it back.

She noted two things in that moment. Char’s hand was strongly scarred, as though fire had kissed it, and she had, in the last few days, acquired the habit of drawing breath to snarl when things were taken from her. She didn't now. She'd have gotten his boot the same way Fang might if he'd snarled. Still she felt it, the tightening of the throat, the instant when her lip would curl…

She thought, Who am I? She climbed to her feet, refusing to groan or even wince at the pain and the stiffness. Who am I? A woman who knows why a dog snarls.

The goblins on the east side of the Forest-Down-Around-the-Hammer-Rock-But-Not-Too-Close held mixed opinions about how lucky they were that the hob Gnash had come to take over things. Some puked up old legends about how living with that hobgoblin as master was a lot like living in the Abyss. There, they said, the only bird in the sky was the vulture, and if Gnash was a bird, he'd have been a vulture. Most, though, didn't go on with god-talk. Goblins had little to do with that, for gods-so everyone believed who wasn't an elf gone fey with age or a dwarf whose brains were calcified to stone-were no more than shadows. Most sensible people believed there were no gods now, just a bunch of stories you tell to children to make them shut up their babble and wail or they'd find themselves in worse straits.

For the most part the goblins who used to belong to Golch and now belonged to the hob Gnash took what came, and often enough it was booty from raids on villages and travelers foolish enough to go into the borderland without a strong escort. It was a good enough life. Goblins didn't mind waking each morning in their little hovels with the scraps and bones of their meals scattered round the ring of ashes that used to be the night’s fire-as long as among the litter they could see the wink and gleam of weapons, the naked limb of a captured elf woman flung out in dream-tormented sleep from beneath a rough blanket, a human woman, any kind of woman not goblin….

The goblin who had found sign of Brand's outlaws in the borderland was like-minded to the more accepting of his brethren. Ithk was his name, and trotting into the goblin town on the east side of the Forest-Down-Around-the-Hammer-Rock-But-Not-Too-Close, his breath streaming in the chill air, Ithk greeted guards and was passed through, recognized. As with all goblin towns, this one used to be a village where humans lived. Some had been hunters who took game out of the Qualinesti forest when they dared, some were farmers who scratched a living out of the stony soil, but the true value of the town had been its inn, a place known for the fineness of its ale and wine-some of that wine got from elven traders who didn't mind stepping out of the forest to do business-and the thickness of its feather beds. Travelers found that inn a good place to stop, and it became a favorite of traders and mercenaries and folk getting from one place to another. And so there were baker shops-two-and a butcher and a herbalist and even a chandler and a blacksmith. It had been a fine little village, as these borderland places go, and ripe for picking.

Ithk jogged down the street, his weapons ringing on him as he looked around in the frosty morning. The hovels he saw had once been trim houses and tidy shops set around a square in which one great house stood higher than all. This used to be the inn. Now it was where Gnash lived. He hadn't done the taking of this village, not him. Golch, father of Golch-the son murdered at the hands of those stinking outlaws out at Hammer Rock-had done the taking back at the end of spring. Golch the father had lived at the inn, quite comfortably until Gnash came in, him and his army thrice the size of the one that Golch commanded. After his army overwhelmed this goblin town, he'd taken Golch the father and dragged him out of his house. Before all, he'd plucked out his eyes, cut out his tongue, then lopped off his head. Father and son, it turned out that they’d had more than la name in common.

Thus had Gnash declared himself the ruler here and taken all those who had belonged to Golch and made them part of his army.

Ithk banged his fist on the hob’s door.

"In!" shouted the hobgoblin.

A wave of heat rushed out the door from a roaring hearth-fire. Burnished armor lay all around the front room, that wide space that would have been the inn’s common room. The armor rose up in heaps-breastplates and greaves, shinguards and helms, all stolen from the corpses of the killed. Daggers and swords lay on the floor among the bones of old feasts. Among the broken crockery on the wide table, jewels glittered, ornaments pilfered from luckless travelers-necklaces from maidens who perished of fear or worse, rings from the fingers of matrons and piles of furs and feathers taken in the autumn from a barbarian Plainsman lost in the stonelands on his way to Qualinost. Atop one of these piles the hob sprawled, sucking his teeth and scratching for lice in places you don't like to get lice.

Standing on the threshold of this dire den, the wind blowing in snow at his heels, Ithk delivered his news, already imagining his reward.

"Master, the outlaw Brand is on the move."

The roar swelled up in Gnash's chest, rising from his belly like steam swelling in some dire invention of gnomes, something sure to explode and kill all those in reach. Piggy eyes opened as wide as they could, and the green-skinned hobgoblin bellowed, "Where?"

Ithk closed the door behind him. He looked once around, saw the scavenger dump that had once been a well-appointed inn, and shuddered. Over in the comer lay two corpses he hadn't seen before. Gnash had been busy, working or amusing himself.

"Out in the borderland, away down by the Notch. All of ‘em from what I sees-the humans, the damned bastard lying dwarf, the elf, and the two women. But more women than that. They got an elf woman with 'em, and she looks like a prisoner."

The hob leaned forward. Things shifted around him, his pile of booty slipping a little as a knight's helm and three golden goblets rolled down the side of a bale of furs. It is the thing about hobs that they are more long-headed than their smaller kin. They have more room in their skulls for brains and generally know how to make that situation work for them. Gnash was, among hobs, a fairly intelligent specimen.

"How’d she look? Used? Beaten? Starved?"

"Hungry, but they all looked hungry. She was closely guarded, like something they didn't want to lose."

And what good, the hob thought, would she be to them with winter walking into the borderland? None. She'd eat food, drink water, and sooner or later they’d get tired of her. In winter, when it’s cold and hungry and not much food to be had, you get tired of passing the prisoners around and would rather have the water they drink and the food they eat.

"Hostage," Gnash said, belching. He scratched under his arm. "For ransom." He twisted a cruel grin. "Ain't like that’s not been done before, eh? Goblins been known to lose their heads over Brand's hostage-taking. We know what he got from Golch. I wonder what he's looking for from the elves?"

Ithk, who had been a particular friend of the younger Golch the Beheaded, did not reply.

Gnash slid from atop his hill of pilfered goods, big and green and warty, and he nodded to the little goblin. "Help yourself."

The goblin didn't move or even look at anything in the room. The last one to help himself too quickly was handless and about starved to death by now because no one could think of a reason to feed a useless, handless goblin. But when Gnash had left, gone roaring out into the streets to gather up a considered portion of his army, the goblin darted quickly to the heap his master had lately lounged upon. He snatched a fur from the top of the nearest bale, a bear's pelt with the head still dangling, and flung it round his shoulders for a cloak Winter was indeed walking into the borderland, and Ithk had a bit of wit himself.

Gnash wasn't long at getting his army moving. He took only the little time he needed to look around his cluttered quarters for a thing he'd been carrying with him from one place to another since he'd first found it, a long time ago in the spring. It was a thing from the mountains, found in deep and secret places under the southern part of the borderland between Qualinesti and Thorbardin. It didn't look like much. He might have walked right past it when first he saw it, but something about the crooked staff had called to him-not with a voice, no. It was more like a tickling in the brain that would have been the raising up of hair had that tickling been on the outside of his head.

He had a small talent for magic, did Gnash. Not all hobs do, but it isn't impossible to find those who have managed to make a magical device or two work. Gnash had done that, and he'd had a high time in the borderland, reveling in the destruction he caused in the process. He hadn't had to use the staff much to affect his conquests of the three goblin towns he now owned. Alas, he sometimes thought. But, after all, he'd needed the towns to house his growing army. He certainly couldn't kill too many of the goblins. That had left him with few opportunities to play with his weapon, but at last, here was one come right down the borderland to him.

And so, Gnash got his staff, and he got his army moving. It wasn't a great portion of his army, only a part, and these he didn't have to threaten or argue or cajole. They were afraid of him, doubly so when they saw that staff in his hand, the old gnarled wood. They’d do anything he demanded, but this he didn't have to demand. Best of all goblins loved fighting and killing. They were happy to go south toward the Notch and see what kind of blood they could spill. And they were goblins; they didn't care if they had to run by night and make their way under clouded skies. They rejoiced in the cover and ran harder, all the way down to just above the Notch. There they stopped, because their master demanded, and there they held. They made no camp, and they killed no animal for supper. They slipped into gullies and crevices and didn't complain. They knew all the places to hide-little caves, the abandoned dens of foxes, the gaps between boulders. One after another, the goblins made themselves invisible in the borderland and prepared to wait till the gods came back to Krynn, or until the Great Gnash told them to move again.

Brand was abroad with a hostage, one their master thought he was delivering for ransom. Some of the goblins thought it would be great fun to snatch the ransom from out of the human's cold dead hands. Those who'd once known Golch the father and Golch the son thought it would be very satisfying to have the ransom, but they thought the fun would come with the killing of Brand and all his scurvy band.

Even when they saw elves gathering, shadows at the edges of the forest with more substance than most, the goblins kept still, for Gnash warned that these must have to do with the ransom or some treachery. Gnash knew how to let things fall as they would and pick his moment at the proper time. It must be told, though, that Gnash's army had a hard time keeping still in such proximity to elves. The wind was blowing out of the forest, and it hung with the sick-sweet stench of Qualinesti, enough to gag a goblin, if any had cared to risk his own head at Gnash's blade for making retching sounds.

And, of course, he had that staff of his, that magic.