The Lioness

Chapter Seventeen

“Fool!”

Fists clenching, Kerian looked around at the half dozen fighters, three of them bleeding, two of those unable to stand, and two dead. Flies buzzed over the wounds. The coppery stench of blood hung in the dusty summer air.

One of the dead was Briar, a woman Kerian had first met in the sheltered basin behind Lightning Falls. Autumn had come and gone twice since then, and winter and spring, and now summer grew old around her. Yet it seemed she had known Briar for a score of years, certainly for a score of battles. Briar had become notorious among the Knights for her fierceness. Into every battle the tall elf woman had worn the mail shirt that might, a long time ago, have been made for a prince. Even princely mail couldn’t protect her against stupid mistakes.

Kerian looked at the overturned wagon, two wheels still spinning. Two outlaws dead, three wounded, and one Knight bleeding away the last of his life. The other Knight of the two-man escort had abandoned his companion and the driver of the wagon and fled through the forest to the Qualinost Road. Already, Elder was sinking into that eerie trance of hers to call up the confusion of senses. In moments, the Knight would find himself helpless on a road he’d traveled so often.

A thin line of pain etched between Kerian’s eyes, as if a thumb were pressing hard on the bridge of her nose. Head up, she listened to her body, tracking the source of the pain until the tightened muscles of her jaws assured her that the headache was nothing more than the result of teeth clenched in anger. It could have had a more dangerous source.

In spring the Skull Knight Thagol had returned from the east of the kingdom, drawn by news of the Night People. Since then Kerian suffered headaches, and since then she understood that some headaches were the result of hunger, weariness, or injury, and others had no natural explanation. The touch of the mind of a Skull Knight caused these.

Thagol sought the leader of the Night People. Down the avenues of the night, he hunted her in dreams. The strange headaches had started after the first successful raid Kerian mounted against one of the border outposts. These were ugly structures of stone and wood built between the forest and the gorges that scored the earth between the elven kingdom and the Stonelands. Five Knights had died in the first raid, and four more perished when they arrived to relieve the watch. The four who died last imagined the three black-armored warriors they saw on duty were their knightly brethren and didn’t discover until too late that they were five of the Night People in Knights’ clothing. Kerian had ordered the dead stripped of anything useful then left the corpses to rot. This time that tactic, used for gaining weapons and depriving the enemy of steel, did not serve her well.

Soon after, on a dark-moon night, Kerian woke from a dream and sat up shaking, cold sweat running on her.

Shivering with her blankets wrapped around her, she looked up at the sky ablaze with stars too bright to long behold. Across the stony basin, in the night where embers of the outlaws’ fires breathed faintly, she saw the old woman, Elder, whose voice was like prophecy. As though beckoned, she rose and went to the ancient. She sat down beside her. White hair like starlight, shining, Elder leaned close.

“He hunts,” she whispered, her voice low. “He hunts you, Kerian of Qualinesti, on the roads of your dreams. If he catches you, he catches all, even your king.”

“How does he do this? Can you help me?”

Elder didn’t know, but she could help Kerian and did. She knew a way of magic to prevent her dreaming. She knew how to enchant and what spells would serve to protect.

Protected, Kerian also knew loss. She had met the king twice more since that first time in winter, met him in the forest in spring when he called her to warn that Thagol had returned, again at Wide Spreading in early summer. She didn’t dream of him any more, for she carried a bloodstone from Elder, draining her of dreams and shielding her from Thagol’s magic. Even so, the Lord Knight didn’t give up his hunt, and though he could not stalk by night, he did well by day, catching psychic scent of her when one of his Knights died by her hand. Somehow he tracked her by the deaths of his warriors. Waking, she had no warning of his approach, his stalking, his nearness, only headache.

Flies buzzed on wounds; sun glared from a hard blue sky. Kerian again looked around her at her warriors. She pointed to one, a lanky Kagonesti youth who wore the tattoos proudly on neck and shoulders. The boy was named Patch, for the streak of shining white in his dark hair. It had grown there on the dire night he learned the news that the Eagle Flight tribe had been slaughtered. He was one of the handful to survive that killing.

“Patch,” she said, “take Rale and go find and kill that Knight.”

His eyes lighted like green fire, and he leaped to do as she bid.

Kerian kicked the wagon; she kicked the dirt. Patch had a lot of hate to lose, and she wondered whether it was right to use that for her own weapon. She didn’t wonder long. Not all her weapons were as trusty as Patch, and she felt her anger rising hotter. Kerian glared around the clearing till she found her target sitting in the dust, bleeding.

“Rhyl, you’re a fool.”

The word rang again, louder, through the forest. On his knees binding the bleeding arm of a wounded companion, Jeratt looked up, then went back to his work.

Rhyl stumbled to his feet, still wiping blood from a seeping head wound, still stunned from a blow he hadn’t seen coming, the backstroke of the dead Knight’s sword, the blow struck a moment before an arrow took the human through the throat. Rhyl looked around at his friends, living and dead. Wobbly, he put a hand on the wagon to steady himself. The bounty of the wagon lay all over the ground, bales of tanned pelts that would have gone to Qualinost, into the shops of leathermen, there to become boots and jerkins and sheaths for swords. Tribute to the dragon.

“Who are you calling a fool?” Rhyl snarled, wiping blood from his face. “One Knight’s dead, and the other will be soon.”

Kerian grabbed a fistful of the elf’s shirt and jerked him closer until they were nearly nose to nose. “I told you we weren’t hitting anything on this road until the supply wagons came down.” She jerked her head at the little wagon. “That look to you like four wagons full of weapons, Rhyl?”

Rhyl spat in the dirt at her feet.

The others, wounded and hale, looked away, exhausted. Jeratt said nothing.

Kerian drew a purposeful breath. The wagon wheels creaked. In the sky the wind rose and sighed through the trees. Beside the broken wagon, the Knight groaned out the last of his blood. One of the wounded outlaws helped another to his feet. There would be ravens soon.

She said, “Getting hard for you, Rhyl, is it?”

He eyed her suspiciously.

“Hard not to just run down the hill and do a bit of thieving like in the good old days?”

He growled a yea or a nay or a leave-me-alone, and spat again.

The hand that had grabbed his shirt now moved to rest on his shoulder as though in friendly fashion.

“You agreed to be part of this, Rhyl. From the first night we talked about this, from the first moment you lifted a bow to kill a Knight, you agreed to take orders from me. You didn’t do that today. You broke out on your own, hit this little wagon too soon, and now there’s two of our comrades dead and if Patch doesn’t kill that Knight there’s going to be word in Qualinost about this. Maybe there will be anyway.”

Rhyl shrugged and twisted a lip to show he was not intimidated, but he backed a step away when Kerian narrowed her eyes.

“Rhyl,” she said, her voice like winter’s ice. “I have to be able to count on you.”

He snorted. “All this for your king,” he said, sullenly. “We burn a few bridges, we plague a few Knights, we lurk around the taverns to pick up crumbs of news.”

Before Kerian could reply, Jeratt’s laughter rang harsh as a crow’s. “Not hardly, Rhyl. You have a fat little coffer hidden in the passage through the falls, all yours and shining with booty. Didn’t used to be more than a skinny crate with nothing but a few brass coins and mold growing in it.”

The first ravens sailed the sky, circling the clearing. Kerian gripped Rhyl’s shoulder and turned him round to see the wounded and the dead.

“Now I have to know—can I count on you?”

She glanced at Jeratt. The half-elf shook his head.

Above, ravens shouted, the mass of them darkening the sky. Kerian looked up to see a half dozen of them peel away from the rest. They sailed over the forest, westward above the Qualinost Road. A triumphant cry rang through the forest, high and eerie. The hair rose up on the back of Kerian’s arms. Patch had found his kill, and he would be lopping the head from the Knight’s neck even now, using the dead man’s sword to do that.

“Jeratt,” she said, not looking at Rhyl again. “Get things cleaned up here. Don’t make a big job of it. Leave the Knight’s corpse, and drag the wagon into the forest. Thagol’s going to hear about this, so he might as well see some of our handiwork. Just haul the worst of it off the road so farmers can get by.”

He cocked his head. “And you?”

“Well, I have to go talk to Bueren Rose, don’t I?” Her voice had the edge of a blade. “There’s word needs to be spread now.”

He said nothing, frustrated as she. Neither did he look at Rhyl as he bent to the work of clearing the road. He nodded, and she did, understanding between them.

Kerian turned to leave and in the turning felt the return of the ache behind her eyes, the pressure against her temples, as though someone pressed that tender place with thumbs. She closed her eyes, at the same time holding her bloodstone amulet in her hand. The pain began to recede, but it did not vanish. When she opened her eyes again, it was to see Jeratt’s keen glance, his hand reaching to steady her.

“I’m all right,” she said.

He looked doubtful, his brows raised.

“See to this mess.” She looked around. “And see to Rhyl.”

Jeratt scratched his beard.

“He’s out. Meet me when it’s done.”

Gilthas stood in the doorway between his private library and his bedchamber. In the hour before bed, the hour of his poetry, this time when pen drank from the inkwell and his heart brooded on loss, he stood with a stack of tightly rolled scrolls in his right arm. He’d heard a sound, the soft scuff of a footfall, perhaps a whisper from beyond the far wall of the library.

Holding his breath, Gilthas let the scrolls slide out of his arm silently onto the brocaded seat of a delicately carved cherrywood chair. Moonlight spilled through the window in the bedroom behind, washing over the bed. The empty bed, he always named it, for no moon had seen Kerian there in many months.

The empty bed. Not so empty, after all. Nightmare joined him there, often now. Dark dreams that Kerian would know how to banish with a touch of her hand, brooding fears that she was able to soothe, these came to him now more nights than not. He used to dream of fire and death, of the breaking of his ancient kingdom. He used to dream that all he knew and loved would fall to a terror he had no name for, something born in the Abyss of a goddess long gone from the world. These nights only one dream haunted him, cold and fanged. These nights he dreamed he saw a head being freshly piked upon the parapet of the eastern bridge of his city. Honey hair thick with blood, mouth agape, eyes staring, Kerian’s death scream followed him down all the roads of Qualinost.

There! Again, a sound from the secret passage few knew about but he and Laurana. Gil’s heart rose with sudden hope. Only one other than they two knew of the narrow warren behind the walls of the king’s residence. It must be Kerian. He listened closely. He heard nothing now. Outside his suite of chambers, servants murmured in the halls, someone dropped an object of crystal or glass. The shattering of it rang out and did not cover a dismayed cry. The king hardly wondered what had fallen, what had broken.

Behind the wall, he heard another footfall.

Kerian! Had he conjured her? With moonlight and memory and inked lines of longing, had he magicked her?

Even as he hoped, Gilthas knew there was no hope. Kerian was nowhere near the city. He had followed the tales of her, trying to reckon the gold from the dross, the truth from the fables. Easier, far, to reckon out her doings by noting where last Lord Thagol put up a newly fortified guard post.

Nor would she come to him without prior arrangement unless—no. Not even if she were in trouble, especially not then.

Gil’s fingers closed round the silver handle of the knife he used to shave the points of the quills that were his pens. Even as he felt the slight weight of the little blade he thought wryly, against what little sprite or rabbit will this defend?

Soft, a tap. Louder, two more. Soft, a third and a quick fourth.

Gil relaxed, letting go a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. What was his mother doing behind the wall?

She stood in a spill of torchlight, the Queen Mother like a ghost with her golden hair down around her shoulders, a silvery silk robe loosely belted over a flowing blue bed gown.

“Mother,” he said, “you’re barefoot—”

The elf behind her, of middle years with the eyes of an ancient, stood bleeding from a poorly bandaged wound. He wavered, exhausted, and tried to bow. Gilthas caught him before he toppled, and the king and the Queen Mother helped him into the library.

No one cared that he bled on the brocaded chair, no one cared that his muddy boots left tracks on the tapestried carpet.

“Sir,” he said, “I have come with word from the High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin.” He gathered himself, wit and strength. “Your Majesty, the dwarf king thinks it best you come soon to defend your suit for alliance or send a champion to do that.”

Smoke rose lazily from Three Chimneys, a roughly built tavern that had, over the course of a long life, been first a roadhouse of doubtful repute, then a post house in the years before the coming of green Beryl. Through all its years, Three Chimneys had been a wayfare, a tavern for travelers to stop and find a good meal, perhaps a bed for the night in the common room or the barn. It was that now, and something more. Bueren Rose ran the place, purchased for a small pouch of steel from an elf who had been happy to sell, eager to leave the area.

“What with the outlaws and Knights and all, I’m going north, where they’re saner and I have kin.”

Kerian stood on the road, watching smoke rise from the stone chimneys that gave the place its name. The smoke hardly disturbed the purpling sunset sky. The tavern lay in a fold of an upland valley, one high above Lightning Falls and farther east. From the hills surrounding, one could see right out into the borderland between the kingdom of the elves and the land of the dwarves.

Bueren Rose walked round the corner of the tavern, a heavy yoke of filled water buckets across her shoulders. Three Chimneys had in its upper story a small, windowless room, a private place between two other chambers, from the outside undetectable. It was this secret room, much like the private passages in Gil’s royal residence, that recommended the tavern to Kerian when she and Bueren Rose had gone looking for a place.

The upper room was a place where plans could be safely hatched. “Three Chimneys is not at a crossroad,” Bueren Rose had said. “That would have been too likely and too dangerous, but it is near the borderland, and taverners know that the best news there is flows back and forth across borders with traders and thieves.”

So Bueren Rose had taken possession of the tavern, purchased with steel robbed from a wagon bound for a dragon’s hoard, and she set up business quietly. Her tavern gained a reputation for good food and good cheer, for clean places to sleep and reasonable rates. Her bar was stocked with drink from all parts of Krynn, again thanks to thieves who smuggled a keg of this, a tun of that, a few bottles of something exotic and potent from down around Tarsis.

“Keri!” Bueren stopped suddenly, the yoke rocking, the water sloshing from the buckets.

Kerian leaped to steady the yoke. Water splashed her feet, turned the dust to dark mud around her boots, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Bueren shook her head, her rosy gold hair escaping from her kerchief, spiraling around her neck in loose curls. “I didn’t expect you today. I thought—” Her expression darkened, and the skin around her eyes grew tight. She looked behind her, around, and when she felt certain of safety, she spoke very low. “Is something wrong? Is the raid—?”

“The raid won’t happen.”

“But—”

“There’s no time now. Send word to Releth Windrace at his farm. Tell him he has to send his own boys out to stop the others.”

The two farmers down the valley and their sons and daughters, the miller’s own boy, all the dozen others, quiet citizens of a hostage kingdom who could be called upon at need to strike a blow against the dragon or her Knights—word must get to all of these, mouth to mouth, farm to farm, casually and quietly so that no suspicion would fall on any of them.

“We’ve got to tell them all there will be no meeting at the mill tomorrow night.” She clenched a fist, slammed it hard against her thigh. “Fool! That damn Rhyl’s a fool. If he’d held his hand, left the wagon with the bales of skins alone... Thagol’s been tracking me again. He’s going to know what happened soon, if he doesn’t know now that those Knights are dead.

“Damn it! Those wagons full of weapons are going to have to go by without us so much as being near to curse.”

Bueren said nothing. She put down her buckets, hurried back to the wellspring, and called to the potboy, the orphaned son of one of the elf farmers in the valley whose wife had died of sickness in winter, who had followed her in grief in spring. The boy was no part of Kerian’s conspiracy. He had no idea that Bueren was. Kerian knew Bueren would do as she always did, send the lad with a simple message to Releth. He would say, “Bueren Rose doesn’t think she’ll be able to join you for supper tomorrow evening.” Releth would understand. Word would go out, whispering down the valley like ghosts.

When Bueren returned, the boy having sped off, Kerian was looking up at the sky. When she looked back at her friend, she had made a choice to speak what she had only lately decided.

“We have to do something about Rhyl, Bueren. He’s dangerously stupid.”

Behind her eyes, throbbing like the promise of storm on a blue bright day increased. She reached for her amulet, the bloodstone, and the pain settled back to a dull ache.

Bueren unhitched the buckets from the yoke and leaned it against the side of the building. She lifted one bucket.

“Keri,” she said, “something has come.”

In the act of reaching for a dripping bucket, Kerian stopped to look up. She didn’t ask what had come. She didn’t ask from whom.

“When?” she said, her voice that of idle curiosity. There were wayfarers in the common room, one coming around the corner of the building to find the privy.

“Last night.”

Kerian nodded and picked up the bucket. They entered the kitchen like two old friends, talking and laughing for the sake of any who would observe. All the while Bueren Rose stuffed a leather wallet fat with food and poured a wineskin plump.

“Go,” she said at the kitchen door only a short while later. “Take the path along the ridge. Knights have been riding the roads close to here. You’ll see them in plenty of time to avoid them. What shall I tell Jeratt?”

Kerian embraced her friend and for her ears only said, “Tell him to go ahead with all that we’ve planned.” She hitched up the wallet, checked the seat of her quiver on the hip, the sword at her side. “If you don’t see me soon, listen for word.”

Beneath the spreading branches of Gilean’s Oak, upon a bed of moss and fern, Kerian lay in her lover’s arms. Close, his skin warm against hers, his breath mingling with hers, it could be said there was nothing between them, yet there was.

He had asked her to carry out a mission for him, an embassy. She had agreed.

Kerian’s breath hitched in her lungs. He stirred beside her, and she closed her eyes.

Gilthas, the Speaker of the Sun, the King of Qualinesti, had asked her something else, with his heart in his eyes, all his longing and determination. He’d asked her to marry him.

“Be my queen,” he said, “Kerian, be the queen my people need. Be the wife I need.”

Asking, seeing her draw breath to speak, he’d quickly put a finger on her lips, whispered her to wait, wait, and think about it this time.

“I have been too long without you, Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I’ve been too long with you gone from me, and I see it—” In her eyes he saw it, in her hands touching him he felt it, in her voice he heard it—“you have been too long without me.”

Kerian lay half-waking, not really asleep, and so she saw a sudden darkness as an owl glided overhead, interrupting the moonlight.

Gil’s finger stroked her cheek. He leaned to kiss her, and she lifted her face, hardly aware that she did. How long it had been since they’d lain like this!

“Gil,” she said, looking up to the moonlight sifting through the leaves. “I have been having nightmares.”

He moved, shifting so that he held her in both arms now. She put her head on his shoulder.

“I’ve had nightmares, Gil, and they are all about being hunted. An old gray wolf runs in them, and I know it is Thagol. He is trying to track me by the killing I do.” She shuddered, and he held her closer. “I have an amulet.” She reached for it, the talisman that never left her, not even now in this hour when only moonlight and shadow dressed her. “It used to work well. It used to protect me from him. Now—it works a little sometimes, but it’s gone the way of all the magic of Krynn. It sputters, like a candle guttering. I can’t count on it, and I can’t…” She leaned up on her arm now, brushing her hair back from her face. He reached up to comb it free of leaves and little twigs.

The breeze of a late summer’s night grew chill, slipping low along the ground. Kerian, robed in moonlight, shivered. Gilthas sat up and wrapped his shirt around her. He followed that with his cloak, green edged with gold. He found the rest of his clothing and dressed himself, reminded of cold now. He took back his cloak, slipping her own blouse over her head and tying it at the throat. He gave her the rough trews she’d come to him in, thick wool the color of chestnuts, torn and much mended.

Silence, then the owl’s triumphant cry. Kerian hadn’t heard the cry of the prey, but she saw it now in the owl’s talons, a squirrel in its last twitching struggle.

The king said, “That will be us if this treaty between elves and humans and finally dwarves is not well made: dying, twitching in the talons of the dragon.”

She knew it. It had been the reason she’d gone out into the woods to harry the tribute-bearers, the reason she’d killed Knights and seen her friends die. To buy time for this treaty, for dwarven deliberation. Now, it seemed, more must be done.

“Perhaps it will be good if you go away for a while,” he said gently. “Let Thagol wonder. Let the nightmares subside. Live to fight another day, and—”

“I will go to Thorbardin for you, my love, but how will we know that Thagol won’t follow my trail?”

“There’s a way.” Gilthas lifted the flap of his saddlebag and scooped out a small pouch. This he opened into her hand, spilling out an emerald pendant. Shaped like a leaf unfurling, it glinted in the moonlight “Nayla and Haugh traveled on this magic when my mother’s need sent them far outside the kingdom. The talismanic magic that protects your sleep, the magic in this relic, isn’t so trusty as it used to be, but I’m told that if you keep your mind strongly focused on where it is you need to be, you’ll surely get there.

He leaned closed and kissed her gently.

She lifted the pendant and watched the emerald leaf twirl as the golden chain spun straight. “How do I do it?”

Gil took the necklace and slipped it over her head. Again, he combed his fingers gently through her hair, waking the woodland scent clinging to the honey lengths. Oaks and autumn and cold mountain streams, earth and wind and the memories of old campfires, this was her perfume now. With a lover’s hand, he smoothed the chain along her neck, settled the emerald upon her breast.

“It’s a matter of concentration. Keep your mind focused on where you want to be. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never seen Thorbardin—you know Thorbardin exists. That is the thought you must hold firmly.”

The emerald warmed her skin. Kerian observed that it would be a good idea not to suddenly pop in on the high king while he was having his bath.

Gil smiled. He filled his hands with her hair, all the forest-scented locks spilling through his fingers. She went close to him, lifting her face to kiss him. Between them now was only the question she had not answered.

“My love,” she said, “you’ve asked me another thing.”

He put a finger on her lips, gently. “Hush,” he said, his breath warm on her cheek.

It was in her mind to answer, to tell him no, to refuse the king’s offer of marriage. She would be a lightning rod as his queen, a Kagonesti woman to sit beside him, a servant raised up, a lover led from his bed to his throne. Rashas would run wild with the notion, would discredit Gilthas in the first week of his marriage and use the indignation of the kingdom to wrench him from his throne.

No, she meant to say. No, Gil. I can’t, you know it wouldn’t be the right thing.

She said nothing like that. She lifted the emerald from her breast and held it in her hands. She felt the gem tingling against her fingers, warming the flesh.

“Concentrate?”

His voice gentle, the king said, “Concentrate. Keep it firmly in your mind where you want to go.”

Kerian took a breath, and the emerald throbbed against her fingers. She gripped it, its energy stung, and she loosed it again. Cradling it now, as though it might fly away or bite, she closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind of all thoughts. She slipped into her senses, smelling all the forest, the oaks, the stream rilling beyond the grove, the sweetness of the rich earth, and the ferns cut from the brakes that had made their woodland bed soft. She heard the whistle of a thrush, the whisper of wind, and on her skin she felt the sunlight. She thought of Thorbardin, the fabled city she had never seen. She thought of the legends she knew of the place, the tales she knew of Tarn Bellowgranite himself, the High King of the Eight Clans.

Around her, the world grew suddenly sharp, all her senses keen-edged. In the moment she realized it, she felt the oak grove fading, dissolving underfoot, around her.

“Thorbardin,” Gil said, his voice level, firm. “Thorbardin, Kerian.”

The word rang in her thoughts, chiming like a deep-throated bell.

She cried, “Gil!” as the whirlwind came roaring out from the forest, up from the ground, down from the sky. “Gil!”

Whatever he shouted, whatever word or cry, became lost, torn apart by the whirlwind, changed into a terrible roaring, a bellowing so deep, so loud it was as a storm with no beginning, no end.

From that storm came a voice, one lone voice speaking with unreasonable calmness about curses.