The Inheritance

Chapter 8

"Here is what I know about how to live," said the princess to herself in the dark reaches of the earth while winds moaned without and snow fell, the hissing of it heard at the mouths of secret caves.

I know how to mend my clothing with needles of bone and thread of clumsy sinew. I know how to recognize the smell of good water and foul. I know to watch the dwarf when we are walking-he never puts a foot wrong. I know I am beaten if I fall, and I am kicked up again. I know how to eat fast, though I am the one who eats last. I know how to keep quiet in shadows, and I know it is a blessing that I no longer dream.

I know to keep my eyes low. I know to speak to none of them. I know there are some who watch, some who wait. I hear them breathing, occupying other shadows than those I cling to. I hear them.

What is it they wait for? They are like hounds themselves. They wait for chance. Hounds. I know to keep near the hound. I know to share my food with Fang so he is willing to be more with me than with Char.

These things Elansa thought, often and over, for they were the new rules for how she could live. Sometimes, when she sat a long time in her shadows at night-or what she imagined must be night-Elansa sensed two pairs of eyes on her more strongly than others. They held her in tension between them, the eyes of Arawn, Dell's handsome lover, and the eyes of Brand. Brand would watch her thus even as he lay with Tianna asleep in his arms. He didn't like it that dark-haired Arawn wouldn't let go the matter of the disposition of the prisoner.

Sitting still, barely breathing, Elansa would think of what Char had said, a long time ago on the night the goblin was killed under Hammer Rock.

"You see," he'd said, his breath sour with drink as he watched Brand hand over the goblin to Ley. "You don't keep it all for yourself."

In some way Arawn had come to believe that Brand, by declaring the prisoner off limits to his men, was keeping her for himself, if not for the nighttime, then for some other reason. More and more, it became clear that Arawn didn't like the idea or seem to consider a stolen elven sword a fair exchange for nights with a stolen elven princess.

"Char," she said, one night when the first snow of winter fell softly upon the breast of Krynn, when the people in Tarsis wept for joy because at last the wind had fallen, and in Qualinost a warrior in ermine and fiery silk brought a goblin to Solinari’s moon-white temple. "Char, why did Ley want to kill the goblin, back at Hammer Rock?"

The dwarf shrugged and readied around him for something, the skin or a last bone of stolen goat for gnawing.

"The usual reason" When she shook her head, not knowing the usual reason, he said, "Golch’s da killed Ley’s woman. Not so long ago, either. Maybe a moon's turn before anyone laid eye on you. Ley’s still in mourning."

Coldly, she said, "And he thought the killing would help?"

Char sat back, the skin on his knee fat and full. He closed his hands around it, cradling it tenderly. "Y'do what y’do."

All these things Char said looking into a far corner of the cave where the roof sloped down to the ground and made a private place. Elansa looked where he did and saw the silver spill of Tianna’s hair where it flowed over Brand's chest. With his look, not his words, the dwarf told her something about Tianna and grim Ley, a thing Elansa would not have guessed. And yet, knowing, the truth seemed inevitable. The half-elf had the look of her father, more than the shape of his eyes or ears, more than his elven grace. It was the way she glanced keenly around her, her careful tension, the tilt of her head, even her rare laughter, that gave her kinship to Ley.

"Leyerlain Starwing," Char said, unstopping the skin with his thumb. "I guess that makes her Tianna Starwing."

Elansa looked away. Of course the woman would not be granted her father's name in such a shameful circumstance. Of course she would be given some other name if Leyerlain Starwing's family knew his shame. Something made up for decency’s sake if they were moved by compassion, or she'd simply be known as half-elven.

Elansa withdrew into her safe shadows, calling the hound to her. The sound of the dog's nails on stone caught the attention of Arawn and of Brand. She hung again in their tension, and it was a long time before she could sleep.

These things, these cautions, these fears, they made up the borders of her life now, even as she moved through a world without borders, caverns and tunnels running beneath the face of Krynn, lands no one had ever claimed.

Horses snorted, dancing in the cold and tossing their heads. Riders spoke calming words. Kethrenan left them, guiding his mount close to the lip of the drop into the stonelands. He pulled his helm from his head, tucking it under his arm. On his forehead, sweat turned to ice. Wind whipped his hair back from his face, scouring his skin red. Before him, out across the stoneland, lay the formations known since the Cataclysm as Stone Castle, Granite Tower, Hammer Rock, and Reorx’s Anvil. Ravens sailed around the lower piles, while rooks lived in the highest. Between the Hammer and the Anvil, two eagles soared, winding down the chill sky. To this place they'd ridden, and all the while dark visions had haunted the prince, like dark wings clapping. At night, when he lay wrapped in his cloak apart from the rest, sleepless till most of the night had worn away, it seemed he heard Elansa’s voice on the wind, wailing, lifting up to beseech the gods to have pity on her suffering.

Kethrenan lifted his hand to shade his eyes against the sun's glare. Far away in the south, he saw the gleam of light high up. Those were not the snowy peaks of the Kharolis Mountains, not so near. What he saw was, perhaps, the glint of light on the ruined towers of Pax Tharkas.

Here was Qualinesti’s sternest border, once the land that lay between the elves and their allies, the dwarves of Thorbardin. In times past, roads had run through this bitter plain, made by friends and connecting the underground kingdom of the dwarves, the forest realm of the elves, and the western kingdoms of humans, all running out from Pax Tharkas.

But that was a time ago, well before the Cataclysm changed the face of Krynn and rewrote all treaties, and no one counted on roads running through the stony plain now. There was a new clan of dwarves, the Neidar, made from those who'd broken from their kin in the hard years after the Cataclysm. They called themselves hill dwarves to make it clear to all they had nothing to do with their mountain-dwelling kin. The mountain dwarves, who in the main had been the allies of the elves, now delved only in Thorbardin, seldom coming out into the sun. In Qualinesti elves kept to their forest glades. Sundered, the erstwhile friends had not fallen so far as the humans had. Whatever must be said of them, elves and dwarves, they did not deny the existence of gods. An old dwarven proverb said, "The man who denies the wind because he can't see it is an idiot." Elven wisdom murmured, "Who fails the gods with lack of faith, fails himself."

Humans, short-lived and lacking in the patience of those races whose life span can be two hundred years or more, had turned from whatever lore of gods they'd once possessed. Turning, it seemed they had changed themselves into beggars and thieves, godless wretches who saw in the visible marks of the anger of the gods reason to decide no god existed at all.

And they, who promoted the blasphemy of unbelief all across Krynn, had down the long years managed to forget that it was one of their own race who caused the Cataclysm and the withdrawal of the gods. They chose not to remember a Kingpriest gone mad in Istar, who had declared himself a deity. Not many of them liked to admit it was a human who had enraged the true gods, causing them to hurl down upon Krynn a fiery mountain to remind mortals who was divine and who was not.

Into the hands of these his wife had fallen.

Kethrenan swallowed, savoring the phantom taste of blood in his mouth, salty and warm. He did not bleed, not in his body. He did perhaps bleed in his soul, as though the rage living in him were fanged and gnawing from the inside.

"Demlin!" he snapped.

Maimed Demlin spurred his mount, a line gelding out of the prince's own stable. Winter had reshaped the servant. His long face, once alight with congenial good humor, was now the face of a man who'd been hollowed and filled up again with bitterness. He covered his maiming with a square of black cloth tied as seamen and pirates do. It gave him a dangerous look, lean and not very warm in the heart.

Demlin did not come alone. Tethered to the pommel of his saddle, upon a long braided plait, the goblin Ithk jogged beside.

"Where?" said the prince.

Ithk pointed down the hill to the stony slope of Hammer Rock.

"There's where he took her, your woman, in the fall. Can't say he's still there. Wouldn't be. But sign is he's been since, maybe twice since he took her."

The hard blue sky glared down. All the world below was a whirl of snow running in white devils. In the sky, the moons hung like pale ghosts, the red and the silver, risen early or lingering late.

"Prince!"

Kethrenan looked over his shoulder and saw Lindenlea point north. He looked where she did. A dark plume hung low over the earth.

"What’s down there?" he asked.

Lindenlea shrugged. "A village or two-human, most likely. Maybe a goblin town in the making by now. That doesn't look like a gathering of hearth fires."

Ithk move restlessly. Demlin kicked him quiet as Kethrenan squinted, trying to see. In the end, he could discern only smoke. Human village or goblin town, it didn't matter. They were outlanders, not even to be accorded the grudging respect granted such former allies as dwarves.

"Your word, my prince?" Lea asked.

"Follow Demlin."

Demlin kicked the goblin again, and Ithk set out down the slope. Tethered, he leaped from stone to stone, and he had enough slack to keep him from tripping over himself or Demlin’s mount, but no more than that.

Lindenlea called the order, her voice sharp as a blade’s edge on the icy air, her breath streaming back in frosty plumes. Side by side, the lord of Qualinesti’s warriors and his cousin sent their mounts plunging down the steep slope. They ran like quicksilver, madly galloping their horses over treacherous ground. Sunlight leaped in bright darts off their helms and mail shirts and shot from the tips of their lances.

Before all went maimed Demlin and Ithk All the way down the hill, the goblin ran as though he feared the horses would trample him, and when he reached the floor of the little vale, he stopped and scrambled onto a pile of stone high as a horse's shoulder. Quivering with cold, Ithk looked around, his head swiveling on his scrawny neck. His skin color changed to a gray hue.

Demlin cried, "My lord prince!"

Something hunched up from the snowy ground, a burned body. Kethrenan swerved his mount in time to miss another such lump, and then they saw bodies all around.

Every corpse was a goblin's corpse, and Keth guessed they'd have starved in the winter if they hadn't been killed. Killed they had been, though-some with arrows and swords, some more cruelly than that. Snow covered them, but not wholly, and Keth saw that some had been beheaded, others had had the hands cut from their wrists or their feet from their ankles. The stretched jaws showed that the severing had happened before the killing.

Across the snowy ground they saw hands thrusting up from‘the drifts, clawing as if reaching for the last of life. Faces stared up, eye sockets empty. Ravens had feasted, and all around the gore of a great massacre lay frozen, glittering with ice crystals like diamonds on ruby fields.

"Dear gods," Lindenlea whispered.

"It's Gnash’s work," Ithk said. He pointed north where smoke hung dark on the sky. "It’s him. He's makin' another goblin town his own." His mouth, lips so thin as to seem nonexistent, twisted. "These didn't like the idea, and Gnash didn't like their not likin’."

"What did he do," Lea said, "kill every one of the goblins in the town?"

Ithk shook his head. "Nah. Half these are his. Gnash, he's got the fire, and he's got the belly for killing. He does what he does. Me, I does what I does." He jerked his head toward Hammer Rock. "Brand, he been in there, first when he got yer woman, again not long ago."

Kethrenan’s blood quickened. "You know this, how?"

Ithk’s eyes shifted right, then left. "I know," he said, and only that.

Horses snorted, not liking the death-smell, the goblin-stink All around, the wind moaned low, having slid down the hillsides as though in the wake of the elven band. To Kethrenan it sounded like the voices of ghosts. Close to the pooling shadow of Hammer Rock, the prince dismounted and tossed the reins to Lindenlea.

"Wait here," he said. He pointed to Demlin and one other warrior, Lathal, a mage of the Birchbright clan. "Come with me."

With tethered Ithk, they walked into the shadows beneath Hammer Rock, and they found the way in. Lathal lit a torch, and they took the stairs.

"I smell old fires," Lathal said. He held the torch higher, and the light spread out through the darkness.

The scents of old fires became embodied in the rough rounds of stones marking long dead cookfires. In the dim light, the elves breathed and smelled, faintly, the greasy scents of cooked food and the clinging scent of rough wet wool. Guided by the goblin, they walked around the dark smudges of campfires on the stony floor. They found niches in the stone walls and burned brands scattered. Kethrenan prowled among the campfires, and he looked like a dog trailing a scent.

"My lord prince!"

Kethrenan turned to look at Demlin, the servant’s white face gleaming in the torchlight. Long eyes shone bright, and in the shadows his mouth looked like a dark gash in his face. He held up a strip of cloth: the green hem of a cloak.

It's hers.

The thought rang in Kethrenan’s heart, even before his fingers closed round the cloth, before he felt the satin underlay and saw the careful, tiny stitches running the length. Hem-stitches, lovely, for each was shaped like a tiny elven rune to signify health and luck. They were proud of their work, the tailors of Qualinost. The one who had made the cloak from which this piece had been torn had likely been very proud indeed. He'd been working for a princess.

Blood stained the scrap of cloth, a darkness soaked into the fiber, rough as a scab. The prince ran his finger over the stain and scraped it with his nail. Rusty flakes fell away, but most of it was long soaked in.

He felt it again: the coppery salt-taste at the back of his mouth, as though blood seeped thick and warm near his throat.

Ithk said, "Come with me. I'll show you what else I know."

They went through the cavern and into a narrow passage where the sound of trickling water became loud in their ears, bouncing to echo off the close stone. The little passage turned, then widened, and the torchlight threw their shadows ahead, long and dark. When the goblin looked back, his eyes glowed as a dog's eyes, eerie and orange in the dim light.

A little farther they went, until the way opened and the glow of the light glinted on running water. Here they smelled a foul combination of odors-lantern oil, perhaps, wet wool, body waste…

Demlin shot a glance at his master, and the prince shrugged. Lathal came forward past the prince, past them all. His torchlight bobbed in the air, floating; its beams illuminated a running black stream and spangled the surface with silver. The ground dropped down in two ledges like broad steps. Across the water a small trickle slipped out of a crack in the far stone wall. So long had it run that it had hollowed the rock into a shallow bowl.

The goblin trotted along the edge of the stream on Demlin’s leash. The elf lowered his torch, for day's light shafted down from the far ceiling. The roof of this cave was not solid, and upon some of the stone higher up snow had sifted in. Hemmed by silent stone, with only the voice of water and the breathing of elves, the goblin turned his back on the stream and the small fountain. He pointed toward a niche in the wall behind them, a hollowing as though a god's hand had smoothed and indented the rough wall.

"There."

Demlin’s breath hissed between his teeth. Others murmured in surprise. The faint streaming light fell upon a weapons cache. They were not fools, whoever had hidden this hoard. Oiled woolen cloaks wrapped the long blades of swords and the beaked faces of axes. None of the precious steel would rust for lack of care, even here in this damp cavern.

Ithk said, "Some o’ what Brand got off you, eh?"

Demlin yanked on the tether. The goblin staggered, but the sly light in his eyes didn't falter.

"Some, but not all. He's got it stashed all over the mountain. Some here, some other places…"

Not prepared to believe the answer, Ketluenan said, "You know them all?"

Ithk shook his head. "l know all the ones I know. Found six stashes just like this one. None north of here, all south."

All south. Brand would keep close to them. He'd be sure to stay within range of his weapon caches. Kethrenan walked round the little hoard, the small part of what Brand had stolen. He snorted, a humorless sound.

"Steel's not all they store here."

He nudged something small and round near the edge of the hoard. What he kicked had a wooden voice. The faint odor of dwarf spirits mingled with the stink of oil-soaked wool.

He circled the hoard again, then slipped a throwing axe out from its oily wrapping. The oaken haft felt slick in his grip, but he wasn't going to need it long or do any precision cutting. Wordless, he struck the keg, splintering the wood and loosing the liquor in gurgling flow. The goblin sighed. Demlin and Lathal shared a mirthless grin.

Turning on his heel, Kethrenan left the others to follow. He took the stone stairs upward two at a time. Still clutching the hem of his wife's cloak, he strode out into the bitter brightness of the day. His sight dazzled, he saw only shapes and shadows. No matter, he knew them, his warriors.

"Prince?" said Lindenlea, the word a question.

He held up the strip of bloodstained green cloth, waving it like a pennon.

"She's been here!" he cried, not to her but to all. His words echoed from the dark stone of Hammer Rock. "Our princess has been here, but now she's gone. They are all gone, but here is the bloody hem of her cloak to say that she left this stinking hole alive!"

Their voices rose in rage, elven men and women clashing swords against shields and shaking their lances at the sky. One, a woman with eyes as fierce as a wolf's, shouted above the rage and the roar, "We will find her, my prince!" and others took up her cry. "We will find her! In the name of every god, we will take her back! We will bring home the princess!"

The force of their vows ran like fire in Kethrenan, and he would not kindle to it. He could not. This was not a season for fight. This was a hunter's season. He had seen what the goblin wanted to show him, and he knew Ithk was not going to lead him to Brand's doorstep. Ithk didn't know which of the hiding holes kept the outlaw now.

A slow grin tugged his lips. It was the hunting season, and he could be a hunter.

"Lea," he said, "take the warriors and find a clean place to camp, out of the wind. We have some planning to do."

By the light of a high, hot fire, they looked at the small map. It was roughly made; goblins aren't skilled at that craft. Drawn on the back of a scribe-made map from Kethrenan’s broad leather wallet, no ink to define but only soot from the fire, it showed six caches, each marked by a wavering triangle. They all pointed generally south, as Ithk had said. They didn't make a straight line. Brand had stowed his war gear in places that, when connected, made a triangle. The broad base of it lay in the northernmost part of the goblin’s map, where the largest part of the load of stolen weapons had been stored. The narrow head of the triangle lay farthest south.

Almost, Kethrenan thought, pointing at Pax Tharkas.

"That," said the prince, laying his finger on the point. "That was the last cache he made."

Lindenlea said she didn't know how Keth could know that. Demlin, maimed Demlin, said the answer was obvious.

"They had two wagons to unload and not so many men to do the work. They stashed most of it along that line-" He traced the base of the triangle, smearing it a little. "And they took the rest as far as they could go."

Lea considered, and she nodded. "Likely they've been living within that triangle all winter, close to their weapons. Smart."

"Wolf cunning," Demlin said, unwilling to give the outlaw more than that.

Keth let them bat it back and forth, his cousin and his servant. He listened a little, but he had his eye on the mark indicating the farthest cache. Wolf cunning, indeed. He sat back, feeling as he did when he knew exactly what must be done to bring the prey to earth.

He explained it to them, quietly and clearly, while the high wind moaned around the hills and the voices of his warriors played quiet counterpoint. Lindenlea didn't like the plan. She listened respectfully, but she didn't doubt that her cousin knew what she was thinking.

"My lord prince," she said, her voice stiff with disapproval, "this isn't how I would manage it."

He nodded. "I know. You would fly in with troops and burn down the mountains with your And you wouldn't find them that way, Lea."

She shook her head, careful not to speak as she would have were they alone. Alone she'd have said, Cousin, you're not thinking! Keth, you're a fool to trust this goblin!

She had said it before, in Qualinost. She believed it now, and, she supposed, there was no need to shout it.

He knew. Here in this cold camp, they were commander and warrior, not cousins. She did not speak her frustration; she spoke her warning.

"My prince, I don't know why you trust the goblin. You can't really believe that story about how much he hates Brand and what a coward Gnash is. Gnash is no coward, Keth."

"I know. I've seen Gnash in action, and I've seen what he leaves behind in the wake of his ambition. Gnash is blood-hungry. If he's not going after Brand, it's because he considers him small fry, something to be dealt with later. Me, I don't consider him that."

Kethrenan looked past her and past Demlin, who was rolling up the map. He looked at the goblin, guarded and pretending to sleep. It was a strange thing-something he wouldn't say to Lea or to Demlin-but he believed the goblin. He believed he wanted revenge on Brand. He knew what that looked like, the hunger.

"And him? I'll trust him till I can't. Then I'll kill him."

Lea frowned. "Remember what we saw in the temple, Keth. We heard him howling when the Stone went red. He's hiding something, and I don't trust him."

"Aye, well, it's not you who has to. You, cousin, are going to clean out this weapons cache, then you'll take this troop back to Qualinost. You're going to commission a better map than the one the goblin has made. While that is being made, you will take warriors and put them thickly on the borders, because I don't like all the goblin activity I'm seeing here. After that, you will send troops out to the other caches and empty them. I don't care what you do with the weapons. Break them if you can't carry them back. Just be sure to leave nothing for Brand."

"And you?"

The prince sat back, smiling for the first time in a long time. It was no cheerful smile, nor was it warm. He sat that way, still, for a long moment. When he looked up, Lea thought his eyes were frightening: cold and without the softer quality that might lead a person to think him capable of mercy.

"Demlin and I-and Ithk to be sure-are going hunting. I know the outlaw’s territory now. It used to be all this wild borderland. It's been shrunk a little now. Wherever it is he's gone to ground, he won't be far from one of those caches, and from time to time, he's going to have to put his head up for food. When he does-" He slammed his fist into his palm, startling Lea, startling the horses. "When he does, I'm going to take that head off."