The Lioness

Chapter Nineteen

“Ah, you’re everyone of you madmen!”

Ragnar Stonehigh’s scornful judgment boomed through the high hall of the Council of Thanes like thunder, rolling round the high ceilings and raining down in echo upon Kerian. He was, this bristle-browed thane with the fierce Daewar eyes, the third of seven thanes to condemn her mission. Ebon Flame of the Theiwar had rejected it out of hand, and Skarr Forgebright of the Hylar refused to entertain the idea of combining with humans and elves in a treaty against dragons. His had been the most reasoned argument, the one Kerian would address if she could slip in a word between the Daewar’s bluster.

“Why,” Skarr had asked mildly, “should Thorbardin risk even a drop of dwarven blood or a bent copper of treasure for Outlanders? We don’t need them, and their need could bring down a dragon’s revenge upon us. No,” he’d said, seeming to be genuinely regretful, “I can’t sanction this alliance.”

Shale Silverhand of the Klar had argued for the treaty but awkwardly. Donnal Firebane had come down in favor of it for the sake of old alliances. No one knew the opinion of the thane of the Aghar, the third Bluph the Third. He sat far back upon the throne of his clan, sucking the marrow from the bone of an old meal and cleaning his fingernails one with another.

Neither could Kerian reckon the feelings of Tarn Bellowgranite. The high king seemed content for now to watch his council shout it out. He was not, Kerian thought, inclined to suggest to anyone that the emissary from the elf king be given a chance to speak.

“She’s a mewling girl,” Ragnar sneered. “By Reorx’s beard? Sent here—what?—to talk for her puppet king?” He looked around the vast hall, at all his brother thanes seated upon or standing near the thrones of their clans, at the High King himself upon the throne round which these ranged. Very pointedly, he did not look at Kerian. He threw back his head, his dark Daewar eyes flat as a snake’s. “It’s an insult! A damned elven insult! In the name of all Reorx has forged—”

Yawning, scratching his chin through his beard, Rhys Shatterstrike of the Neidar sat up straighter. “In the name of all Reorx has forged,” he said in the drone of the bored, “it is an insult. It is tantamount to a declaration of war, so insulting is it that the elf-king—the dancing boy who gave away his kingdom for a chance to go about his golden city in jewels and furs—comes to ask our aid in the name of old friendship.” He yawned again. “At the risk of insulting you, Ragnar—not a difficult thing to do—I ask you to offer new arguments and to stop repeating this weary old one.”

In the moment of silence between them, flames licked at the darkness from the tripod braziers alight between each of the marching columns. They had been in this council chamber since day’s end. No window graced the hall. What light there was came from torches and braziers. It was, through all hours of the day and night, a deliberative darkness.

In that gloom, Kerian’s glance shifted from the thane of the Daewar to the thane of the Neidar. Shadows sculpted their faces, unfriendly masks. They did not love each other, those two. Rhys scratched his beard again. Ragnar bristled.

“You’re a fool, Ragnar. You haven’t even heard the girl’s embassy. You don’t know what she’s been sent to say—”

“Hah! I know good and damn well what she’s here for. She’s here with her king’s hand out, that’s what I’m telling you now—” He glared around the chamber, not sparing even the high king his disdain. “I’m telling you now, no good comes of it. None!”

Ragnar drew breath, filled up his lungs to pour out more objections. In that startling moment of silence, Kerian took a step forward.

“My lord thanes,” she said. She spoke quietly, and two of the thanes leaned forward as though uncertain she had spoken at all.

“Ah, now what?” Ragnar snarled. “Look at this! The girl’s got no manners, either. Interrupting a council—”

Tarn Bellowgranite shouted, “Enough!”

Ragnar’s eyes went wide, and his face flushed. Ebon of the Theiwar sat forward, thin hands folded one over the other. These were, Kerian knew, the dangerous ones, the lords of dark-hearted clans.

“What wars they have in Thorbardin,” Gil had said, “are generally started by Theiwar, soldiered by Daewar, and ended by Hylar.”

Not this time, Kerian thought. This time Theiwar and Daewar find themselves shoulder to shoulder with a Hylar thane.

Donnal of the Daergar exchanged veiled glances with Shale of the Klar. In the corner of his high seat, the throne of a thane, the gully dwarf Bluph curled up, snoring with a cracked marrowbone tucked under his arm. Ten years this treaty had been in the making, the work of Tanis Half-Elven and Princess Laurana, the hope of their son’s embattled kingdom.

By all the gone gods, Kerian thought, not sure if she would laugh at the irony, will it all hang upon a snoring gully dwarf and a high king who has so far remained undeclared?

“Enough,” Tarn said, a note of weariness underlying the firmness of his voice. “We’ve gone around the hall and a dozen times back with this. For days and weeks, we’ve gone around. For longer than that, it’s been in our minds. Enough now. There is a man with a pressing need. We’ve left him standing on one foot long enough.

“Too long,” he said, darkly, “too long for honor.”

The Daewar snorted, but not loudly. He was not chastened, not he, but to Kerian it seemed he was, indeed, warned.

Tarn rested his hands on the arms of his throne, his fingers curving gently over the smooth black obsidian. “My brother thanes, this young woman represents the reason for the council.” He glared at Ragnar. “I bid her speak.”

Speak! Kerian’s heart rose to the chance to present her king’s need. At last! She stood before them all in the very hall whose tapestried history was part of the legend of her own lover’s family.

“My lord thanes,” she began, no louder than before. Let them be quiet now to hear. Let them lean forward, yes, and cock their ears. “My lord thanes, I stand here in this hall, this storied chamber, and it won’t surprise you to know how much of my king’s own history is woven in the wondrous tale of this place.

“I won’t tell you what you know or speak of ancient friendships and long-ago treaties. You have only lately honored one, the old pact that made a fortress rise up again to bestride the mountains. Pax Tharkas! It stands whole once more because you and the elves of Qualinesti remembered the pact made long ago.” She smiled, a little. “A pact between dwarves, elves, and humans.”

Ragnar snorted, the gully dwarf snored. Skarr of the Hylar sat a little forward.

“That pact stood you all in good stead, I’m told, firm friends, allies true. There was another time, wasn’t there? There was a time when my king’s own father stood here.” Her eyes met those of the Hylar thane. “You will remember that, perhaps, many of you. It wasn’t so long ago that Tanis Half-Elven and the lady Goldmoon herself—god-touched Goldmoon!—prevailed upon Thane Hornfel to grant asylum to human refugees from a dragon highlord’s cruelty. This grace he granted from his heart, and his heart served him well.”

She paused, listening to the fires breathe, to the rustling of old ghosts, old hopes and old fears. Clear-eyed warrior, canny outlaw, no one in the room was unimpressed by her speech.

In that breathing silence, the high king looked at her long. Quietly as she, he said, “Tell me, Mistress Kerianseray, why a Kagonesti woman stands here to champion the king of those who enslave her people.”

A startled murmur rippled round the dais, and the Hylar’s brows drew together in a dark and scornful vee above his hawkish nose. “Slaves,” Skarr of the Hylar said, looking as though he wanted to spit. “They enslave their own kind, those elves.”

So said her brother, Iydahar with whom she seldom agreed these days. That argument of his Kerian had never managed to refute. How could she? She knew what was said in the halls of elf lords about the relationship between her people and Gil’s. She knew, too, how she’d come to Qualinesti.

Calmly, not rising to the bait, she nodded. “Your high king is not mistaken. I am not Qualinesti, my lord thanes. You can see the truth of that on me—” She tossed her head proudly, exposing the tattoos on her neck. “I’m Kagonesti, and it isn’t always easy for us in the land of the Qualinesti.”

The Klar picked up his head, interested. He knew about hardship. They did not have a servitor class in Thorbardin, but they had the Klar, the Neidar who’d stayed within the gates of Thorbardin during the Dwarfgate War. They were not beloved of the mountain dwarves; they were not beloved of their hill dwarf kin. It was a Klar you saw fetching and carrying, a Klar doing char work, doing service.

“It is not easy to be a Wilder Elf in the elf kingdom, and it grows, in some ways, harder, but I will tell you this, my lord thanes, I am a Kagonesti here before you, championing the cause of the Qualinesti king because I know his cause is right. I’m not sure it is for me to try to convince you of that rightness. I don’t know your hearts, and you don’t know his, but I do know this…”

She stopped and looked at each of them in turn, from the high king himself twining his fingers thoughtfully in his iron beard right to the snoring gully dwarf.

“I know, my lord thanes, that if you say no to my king”—she lifted her voice now, not high to shout, but strongly to carry “—if you say no to the alliance, you assure the day of your own destruction.”

The word rang like a war cry. Kerian didn’t back down from it.

Ragnar bellowed. He leaped to his feet, pointing a long scarred finger not at Kerian but at Tarn. “Do you hear her, High King? She dares threaten us!”

Ebon the Theiwar, a long time silent, looked around at his brother thanes, all of whom seemed troubled now, to one degree or another made unhappy by Kerian’s words. Seeing this, he sighed.

“I’ve always wondered whether wisdom or madness would be found in this foreign alliance. Now we see. She stands here and threatens us in the name of her king.”

Tarn glanced at Kerian, who did not move or look away. She gave no credence to Ragnar or Ebon. “You know the portents, Your Majesty. You are a king. You know.”

She declared this a matter for kings, and Tarn Bellowgranite accepted that. The hall filled with a grim, troubled silence of the living, and there were ghosts in the smoke, their voices almost heard in the embers settling in the braziers. Daewar, Theiwar, Hylar. Tarn looked to the Klar, the thanes of the Neidar, the Daergar, and the Aghar, the gully dwarf just then rolling over to scratch himself and settle back to sleep. There was an eighth kingdom in Thorbardin, an eighth clan. Its throne stood removed from those of the thanes of the other clans and that of the high king himself. At the back of the dais, draped in shadow, this dark throne had never felt the presence of a living dwarf, and it held the memory of all the dwarves who had ever lived, who had ever died.

His eyes warily on that throne, his own attention drawing the attention of all in the room to that place, Tarn Bellowgranite rose.

“Brother thanes, Kerianseray of Qualinesti does not threaten. She reminds. She knows what her king knows, what the humans in the Free Realms know.” He looked at them all, drawing back their glances. “She knows what I know, and what you should know.

“The elf king cannot threaten us. You should know that. He cannot harm us; you should know that, too. A dragon holds his kingdom and bleeds it of its treasure. He has no army. If you don’t know that, you are fools. A Skull Knight abuses his people—”

Skarr of the Hylar said, “He permits this.”

Tarn turned to him, his eyes holding Skarr’s. Glances met, bright and keen as blades crossing. “He permits it, yes. He is a wise king. He knows his council of lords holds the power in his kingdom. He knows he cannot wrest it from them. He knows—” His voice rose, now for all to hear. “He knows that if he had all those shining lords behind him, all his men and women in arms again and willing to die for him, he might—might!—be able to defeat the Dark Knights. He would not defeat the dragon.

“I don’t know about the boy. I’ve heard all you have about him, and the only good from his own mother and this Kagonesti warrior here, but I will tell you that while the most of you consider Gilthas a coward, I would consider him a fool if he threw himself against the dragon.”

Like a whipcrack came his voice. “He is no king who sacrifices his people to his own vain bid for glory!”

Gently, “He is a good and courageous man who plans for a way to save his people. If we signed to this treaty, we would agree to be the route to safety for his people, a road out of the dragon’s talons and on to the lands of the Plains-folk. This treaty would give hope to a besieged people. I will tell you, brothers: if we turn away now, if all the kingdoms of Krynn fall to dragons and we are left—we are assured of our destruction. For we will be the last for a dragon to pluck, or we will die in the dark under the world, alone and unremembered.”

One more time, he looked to the throne of the Eighth Kingdom, the kingdom of the dead.

“Brother thanes, you have made a good man beg for too long. Let us deliberate for the last time on this matter. Keep in mind that in all our considerations, the dead do listen. Among them are kings, and many of those kings would have stripped themselves flesh from bone for the sake of the clans.”

To Kerian, in all courtesy, he bowed. “Mistress Kerianseray, I will know where to find you.”

She knew herself dismissed, and when she walked from the hall, Kerian resisted all impulse to turn and look over her shoulder.

What would be now would be.

The High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin found Kerian in Stanach’s Curse. She sat alone, mid-morning in an empty tavern drinking ale. Two weeks had passed since she’d stood before the dais in the Court of Thanes, making her king’s case. In that time she had slept in an upper room of the tavern, eaten well from the kitchen, and had to drink from the bar. She could not pay for this fare and was told not to worry. Stanach reckoned kings would make it right. “Or not. Kings do what they will. All the rest of us hop when we’re told to.”

In the weeks of her stay, Kerian had come to know the regulars, and they knew her. They drank together at night and dined well, and she learned the intricacies of the dwarven dart game that asked more of a player than that he hit the board. He must, aiming for the square marked brightly in runes, tell a tale. Sometimes in the afternoon she stood outside the doors trying to fathom the name of the tavern. She looked up at the sign, a board shaped not like the traditional shield but like an anvil. Upon the anvil lay a broken forge hammer. The words “Stanach’s Curse” stood above the image, written in dwarven runes. No one was inclined to tell her the meaning of the tavern’s name for the asking, and she was having no luck in the reckoning.

“We don’t talk about it much,” said Kern one day, the dwarf whom Stanach usually referred to as Idiot Kern, though Kerian didn’t think the dwarfs wits were afflicted by more than youth.

Two weeks after the council meeting, passing beneath that sign, the High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin nodded curt greeting to her and entered the tavern. Tarn pulled up a stool at the bar, another for her, and ordered ale.

Stanach tapped a fresh keg and put a well-crowned mug before the king. He filled two more and put one before Kerian, the other a little out of his own reach.

“Mistress Kerianseray,” said Tarn, “our council has made a decision.”

Her heart pounded. At last! Kerian took care to show the high king only a mild expression of interest.

Tarn lifted his mug and took a long swig. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “They are a stubborn lot, those thanes of ours. They are all on your side but one, and that means none. We all agree, or none agree, and in this matter I will not ride rough-shod over the rights of the clans.”

Ragnar, Kerian thought. Ragnar doomed it.

“Ah,” said the high king after another swig of ale. “It’s that stubborn Hylar, Skarr. He’s rooted to stone on this matter, and he says he will not be happy unless someone goes out and comes back to give him the truth of your king.”

Behind the bar, Stanach grunted. Kerian glanced from the king to Stanach and back again.

“King,” said the barman, Stanach of the ruined hand. In his dark, blue-flecked eyes was a kind of pleading. “Don’t.”

“Nay,” the king said, low. Kerian knew herself to be no longer part of the conversation. “Nay, Stanach, and if I don’t ask you, whose word will Skarr accept?”

“Anyone Hylar.”

“You. He wants you. He’s your uncle, lad. Your da’s own brother. He trusts you.” The king laughed, but with little humor. “It’s your curse, Stanach Hammerfell. You’ve a reputation for trustworthiness among those in power, and damn me if those in power insist on trusting you.”

There is no resisting the power of a curse, this Kerian knew. Stanach didn’t try harder and didn’t argue. He drew the untasted mug of ale toward him and lifted it in silence to his king.

They went out from Thorbardin by secret ways, down to the lowest level, down to where the damage of the recent war showed in scarred stone walls, in broken battlements, in ruined streets and collapsed roofs. They went farther down than that until they stood upon the shores of the great underground body of water known as the Urkhan Sea.

Stanach pointed out across the black waters to a wall pocked with what seemed to be the mouths of caves. He told her to stand still and bade her listen. Beneath her feet, Kerian felt a soft, persistent vibration, a kind of humming in the rock.

“Worms,” Stanach said.

She frowned. “How can that be? Worms can’t eat through—”

“Y’know that for certain, do you?”

She glanced at him, then back to the gaps in the stone wall. The rumbling came closer, beneath her feet the stone vibrated, the vibration shuddering up her legs, to her belly, to her arms and shoulders. At the edges of the Urkhan Sea dark water lapped nervously against the stone. Out from one of the cave mouths came something large, something with two probing horns, like those seen on snails. Even from this distance, all the rippling black water between them, Kerian reckoned that the horns were as long as she was tall, perhaps as thick around as the width of her shoulders. The creature had no face, no eyes, no nose, only a constantly working mouth.

“Worms,” she breathed.

“They eat stone. That’s all they do. The earth back there, behind those walls, is riddled with tunnels. They bore out here to drink and go right back in again. Tame enough, the beasties. Mostly we leave them be.”

He squinted across the water, then turned, saying it was time to go. “Let’s don’t use that pretty little emerald leaf of yours until we have to, aye? I wouldn’t want to find myself lost in some Reorx-only-knows-where tunnel with no way out”

Kerian agreed, and she did not call upon the unchancy magic until they saw clear sky above them again.