The Lioness

Chapter Eight

Like a storm come out of season, Lord Thagol’s Knights flashed along the roads of Qualinesti. The hard hooves of war-horses tore the earth, trampling. Their voices lifted in laughter and cursing, for these Knights had been too long away from battlegrounds, too long consigned to the backwater of the green dragon’s conquered lands. Out upon the roads, each patrol like a dark-shining blade, they sang battle songs, they recounted deeds brave and terrible. Blood-lusty they rode, each patrol upon its mission, each with a leader who spoke words of proclamation before the doors of taverns, inns, and hostels, in the squares of villages, on the streets of towns. These words they’d gotten from Thagol himself, not from his lips but words graven into their own minds in flashing bolts. No one of the messenger Knights, speaking, changed so much as the rhythm of their lord’s speech.

It is commanded! By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol, he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone …

Elves would stand in perfect stillness, some caught like rabbits in terror, most of them taking care to keep their truest feelings from these Knights. They were not stone, these farmers and shopkeepers, the gods had made them of flesh and bone, and they had true hearts that stirred at the darkness of Knights. They had learned over the years of occupation that an elf could die of a resentful glance, a perceived arrogance. They kept quiet, they kept still, and they listened as the war-horses snorted and danced and Knights laughed in scorn.

The Knights gone, the elves would gather and speak of anger. Some spoke resentment, and when they did the name of the outlawed woman sprang to their lips.

Who is this Kerianseray of Qualinost? Who is this woman who brings down a plague of Knights upon us?

They would argue among themselves, quietly as elves do, their passion seen only in the glinting of their eyes. They would remind themselves that they must not let the Knights change them, they must not let these dragon-days become the days of their undoing. They had never tolerated murderers among them. Should they now because the killer killed a Knight?

Some among them did not agree, and they were always the youngest, the farm lads, the girls who must hold themselves still under the leering eyes of a Knight. These, in the privacy of their hearts or souls, didn’t consider the killing of one of the occupation force a murder.

On the morning of the first true day of autumn, four Knights of Takhisis sat their tall battle steeds in front of the place where the trouble began. Armed as for war, encased in mail and plate, faceless in their casques, each held a flaring torch. The light of their fire ran on the shining steel blades. It slid down the arcs of breastplates, on knee guards, glinted from bridles and bits and shone like blood in the fierce eyes of war-horses. The four ranged around a fifth, the Knight known among his fellows as Headsman Chance. Sir Chance sat the tallest of the steeds, and all the Knights stood darkly behind him against the gold and red of the falling season glowing warmly in the forest beyond the edges of the road.

From out of the morning mist came muffled cries, emanating from nearby, the village proper. Hearing those cries, Bueren Rose glanced at her father, thinking Jale looked like a ghost standing in the dooryard of his beloved tavern, his Hare and Hound. A small breeze wandered by, tugging at her red-gold hair. The sign above the tavern door swung wearily, bolts creaking. Beside her, her father Jale looked terrified. She thought—a stray thought, like a stray curling of mist—that her father had run this tavern all his life. When he was only a child, he’d started out as a potboy in the tavern, his duties no more than those of young Firthing who held that job now, a scrubber of pots and dishes, emptier of slops from the guest chambers. In time he became the cook’s boy, learning how to prepare dishes he’d become known for along road from Sliathnost to Qualinost. He’d been taught to cook by his mother. From his father, an old Forest Keeper retired from service after too many wounds, Jale had learned how to tend bar and toss out troublemakers. Since before the coming of green Beryl with her fangs and her Knights, there had been the Hare and Hound. Since before the Chaos War, this tavern had stood.

The breath of Sir Chance’s horse steamed in the cold morning air. Bridle and bit jingling, the battle-beast tossed his head. Bueren thought the horse’s eyes looked wild, red and eager. Worse, though, his rider’s eyes shone winter-gray and cold.

Shivering, she slipped her hand into the crook of her father’s arm. Upon the road, emerging from the mist, figures came walking toward them, men, women, and children herded to the tavern by two more of Chance Headsman’s Knights. With rough laughter, the Knights urged the villagers to speed by the pricking of swords, the bruising nudges of lances. A child cried out and fell. Her father grabbed her up swiftly and held her in his arms, away from the iron-shod hooves of a charger. One or two of the younger elves showed the marks of resistance, blackened eyes, bloody heads, a broken wrist swelling.

Chance Headsman threw back his visor, his glance alighting on each elf as the Knights drove them to stand in the tavern yard, a huddle of frightened women, angry men, sobbing children. Not one of them had a weapon, not even the small belt knife every villager carried as part of his daily gear. The Headsman looked at all those gathered, men, women, and little children clinging, as though he knew something about each of them. Last his eyes touched Jale. Bueren Rose held her father’s arm tighter.

Shouting, as though on a battleground raging with screaming and war cries, the Headsman cried, “It is commanded!”

At their mothers’ skirts, children stirred and whimpered. In her father’s arms, the girl who had fallen buried her face in his shoulder. Overhead, a crow called.

“By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol,” bawled the Headsman, “he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualinost, is declared outside the law.

“By Sir Eamutt’s order, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace nor benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.

“All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, denying her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There, she will be beheaded, her head piked upon the eastern bridge. This sentence shall be executed within the sight of the citizenry of the city.

“All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence. It is commanded!”

Howling, their voices like demons, the five Knights then spurred their chargers, torches whirling over their heads. Hooves tearing up the ground, the largest of the horses, that of the Headsman, sprang directly toward Bueren. She screamed, clutching her father. The great beast plunged between them, breaking her hold, flinging both aside. A sword flashed like lightning. Sir Chance spurred past them, and Bueren scrambled for her father, for the old elf was lying still upon the ground. The cries of the villagers became distant to her; they had no more voice than a breeze in the trees as Bueren lifted her father from the dusty dooryard. Blood ran in a thin line on his neck, all the way from ear to ear.

“Father,” she whispered. She lifted him, and her scream rang in the tavern yard, louder than the pounding of hooves, louder than the yowling of Knights. Her father’s head rolled from his shoulders and fell bloody into the dust. Her wails of woe were heard over the crackling of flames, the roar of fire as Chance Headsman’s men proceeded to put the Hare and Hound to the torch.

Firthing, the potboy, dropped to his knees beside Bueren. White in the face, his eyes glittering like polished stone, he took her hard by the shoulders. Thin, not half-grown into manhood, still he was strong, and his grip hurt. In her ear his voice grated.

“Come away, Bueren Rose. Come away!”

All around her, people panicked, Knights yelled, horses thundered. Villagers cried out, children wailed, and somewhere in the sky, ravens gathered. Firthing pulled at her now, on his feet, urgent. He jerked her to her feet. She followed Firthing, running out of the dooryard, away from the fire, the screams and her dead father.

On the third morning since her flight from the Hare and Hound, after two days of hiding in the little cave to allow Ayensha to rest in stillness and begin to heal, Kerian went walking in the forest to check her snares. These she’d set using skills she only half-recalled from childhood, but the best hunters last night had been owls. Her snares were empty this morning. She sighed, hungry, and began a search for pinecones to free of their nuts. These she found in plenty, and a good stout branch to strip of twigs. She gave this to Ayensha for walking. She gave her most of the pine nuts, too, sweet and rich with oil.

“It isn’t much,” she said, “but I’ll find a way to feed us better soon.”

Leaning upon the sap-scented staff, Ayensha accepted the food and hobbled round the shelter to take water for herself. It was clear to both women that Ayensha would not lead today.

“Tell me the way,” Kerian said. “Speak the map.”

Ayensha lifted an eyebrow. “So. You remember the old phrase.”

Kerian said stiffly, “Yes, I remember things, Ayensha. Speak the map.”

In a voice small with pain, Ayensha did, with words painting a map upon which hills ran crowned by tall piles of stone, of pine marching on eastern ridges, and a narrow river in a deep chasm running south and then veering suddenly east. In all lands and at all times, this was the manner in which Kagonesti relayed information, be it a message carried upon the lips from one tribe to another, a tale as ancient as the time before the Cataclysm, or the safest path to a meeting site. Ayensha spoke the way to the eastern border of the Qualinesti forest, where the Stonelands lay between the kingdom of the elves and fabled Thorbardin, the hidden realm of dwarves.

They made their way through the stony forest. Though Ayensha directed and Kerian led, Kerian did not imagine them safe. They traveled deep into the wood, far from the road, and the Qualinesti Forest seemed as well behaved as it ever had.

“I think we’ve come away from whatever it was that affected the forest,” she said to Ayensha.

Ayensha shrugged. “Do you think so?”

Despite her rescue from Lord Thagol’s Knights, Ayensha evidently didn’t trust Kerian nor seem to think much of her, but the woman knew something about the oddity of the forest’s behavior or suspected a truth she was not willing to share. Of that much, Kerian felt certain.

On the afternoon of the third day walking, the lay of the land changed. No longer did they find the tall oaks like the wood near Qualinost. Here, the trees were all of the same clan, the fir, pine, and spruce. The land became a place of ridges and deep glens where water ran freely and caves studded the walls. Some of the caves ran far back into the earth, others were cracks in stone, a gathering place for shadows. Kerian and Ayensha did not lack for shelter in the night or for water. In these generous places woodland creatures came to drink, and here Kerian trapped or fished with growing ease. It seemed to her that all her senses were becoming honed, keen and bright. One night, sitting in the darkness at the mouth of a snug cave, as she and Ayensha ate the cold meat of hares roasted at the previous day’s camp, they heard the crash and slash of heavy-footed creatures in the forest. All her nerves tingling, Kerian smelled the sulphurous reek of draconian on the wind. Unless the draconians turned from the path they were on, the reptilian beast-men would be near soon.

“Into the cave,” she whispered to Ayensha, pointing into the deeper darkness.

Ayensha, sniffing the foulness too, lifted her head to speak. Kerian cut her short.

“I am no warrior, and you are too weak to make up for what I lack. Into the cave, and we’ll trust ourselves to luck.”

Plainly, Ayensha didn’t like the idea of trusting herself to a servant girl from the capital and her idea of luck. Just as plainly, she understood the need. She slipped into the cave, keeping still in the shadows, so quiet Kerian couldn’t hear her breathing.

Swiftly, her heart racing, Kerian cleaned the area before the cave of bones and any track they had made. They’d had no fire this night, there was no ash or cinder or smoking wood to betray them. She brushed the dirt with pine boughs, scattered forest debris before the entrance. She could do no more, and she sat just inside the cave’s dark mouth, hidden and watching.

They came, four of them, skin the green of tarnished copper, wings wide.

“Kapak,” Ayensha muttered.

The draconians marched upon the lip of the glen, their harsh voices echoing from one stony wall to the other. They spoke in roughly accented Common, each word coming out of thick throats like a curse. Their laughter raked Kerian’s ears like claws. Not one of them stood less than six feet tall, and starlight glinted on their fangs, on their talons.

One, the largest, turned and spread its wings wide, roaring. The bellow lifted the hair on the back of her neck. The roar echoed from wall to wall. Kerian’s fingers tightened round the bone grip of her knife. Her only weapon, it would do her no good if these creatures came her way. In a world where magic leaked away like water from a sieve, Kerian wished for a talisman, a charm, something to make her and her companion invisible.

Not moving, not breathing, she saw the sudden flash of steel, heard a high, rageful death-scream. The smallest of the draconians fell, tumbling over the edge of the gorge, hitting the side, hitting stone, dead of a sword in the gut before it ever hit the ground.

None of the luckless creature’s savage companions even looked twice. One wiped a sword on the ragged hem of a tunic and absently sheathed it, the blade’s work done. Another laughed, a third snarled, and the three were gone while dark blood poured out of their companion. The blood changed to acid, and soon the corpse itself melted into a dark and deadly pool.

“Let’s move,” Ayensha said, low.

“Where—?”

Ayensha snorted. “To a safe enough place, for now. You can follow me, or not. That’s up to you.”

“But my brother—”

Ayensha pulled a humorless smile. “Your brother has managed without you this long.”

The reek of acid fouled the air, stinging their eyes, burning their nostrils and throats. Kerian didn’t argue further, and they left the cave to find another place to pass the night.

The two elves traveled in the opposite direction from the draconians, back tracking and confident that the Kapaks would not do the same. Walking, Kerian breathed the night, the cleaner air. She listened to the hush and sigh of pines over head. When they found another cave, a quieter place, she turned the watch over to Ayensha and settled to sleep. Drifting in the place between waking and sleeping she felt a great satisfaction, for her weary muscles again knew how to find rest upon beds made of fragrant boughs and leaves whose perfume was that of eternal autumn.

They slept only until the sky began to grow light. Outside the cave, Ayensha leaned on her staff, more from comfortable habit now than from need. Four days into their travels, she’d begun to regain strength. Since they had left the Hare and Hound, she’d eaten well of what Kerian snared and the fishes she caught in the streams. She drank the cold, clear water and slept long and deeply at night. Sun had warmed the pallor from her cheek.

Over hours of walking, Ayensha brought them into a maze of gorges, winding and zigzagged, and all the while the walls grew higher. In some places they could not go dry-shod for there was room only for water, and they had to hold on to the damp stony sides for balance. A deep, distant roaring came to them from ahead.

The walls of the gorge grew closer, stone reaching for them, and the sides grew higher as the floor dropped. The two women came to the font of the water running through the gorge, a sudden spring burbling up from a crack in the stony floor.

Ayensha dipped up a handful of water and then another. “A river racing below the ground.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve never seen it, but it’s said there are places in part of the forest where there is more water below than above.”

“Is that what we hear?”

Ayensha shook her head. “Lightning’s voice. A waterfall.”

Listening to Lightning, they walked until the passage became so narrow Kerian had to turn sideways simply to fit through. The rumbling became louder, the sky more distant, the gorge darker, the passage but a slit. Kerian’s muscles cried for rest. She had none. They ate walking, following the brightness in the distance that seemed never to come closer.

At last, the voice of the falls grew louder again, deeper. Above, the slit of blue that had been the sky suddenly widened. The brightness made Kerian squint.

“Noon-bright,” Ayensha said.

Only noon!

“Now put your back into it. We’re almost—”

The gorge turned, daylight opened up ahead. With startling suddenness, they stood at the mouth of the gorge, practically at the stony lip of a shining lake.

“—there.”

The falls known to elves as Lightning for its flash, to dwarves as Thunder for the roar of its voice, sped from such a height as to seem poured out of the sky. Silvery sheets of water flung over a cliff, headlong and heedless as a madman running. Thunder! Its voice bellowed so loudly that it pressed against Kerian’s ears as a physical weight. In the presence of the cascading brightness and the furious roar, she found it difficult to breathe.

“There,” said Ayensha, again smiling. “Nearly where we want to be.”

Blinking, Kerian said, “Where? All I see is water falling.”

Ayensha nodded. She set out around the edge of the lake, Kerian following. Little grew on that shore, only tufts of tough grass between the cracks in the stone.

“Years past count,” Ayensha said, “the world erupted in volcanoes, fire spewing up from the belly of the world. The earth cracked, and the ground dropped down right here, so hard the river that runs must fall into this pool. Under the water, there is a vast bowl of stone made from the hot lava that hardened.”

“The Cataclysm,” Kerian said, her eyes on the falling water.

“No. This was before then, before anyone started naming ages or gods had much to do with Krynn. My people—” She slid Kerian a sidelong glance. “Our people have had this legend for as long as we have been.”

Water fell roaring, and no conversation now was possible as Kerian followed Ayensha to the far edge of the lake. In silence, filled with awe before this wonder of the forest, the two stood beside the bellowing falls, soaked in mist and spray. Ayensha pointed downward, Kerian saw the rock dipping into shallow levels, like stairs. Water had done that, and water had done more. Behind the falling water she saw a depth, a passage running between the thunderous curtain of water and face of the cliff over which it raced.

Ayensha gestured. Kerian took her meaning and followed carefully down the steps, around through a cloud of spray and into sudden darkness broken by silvery bending of light through water.

Spray made the stony way slick as though it were iced. It rose by a narrow path, requiring that they hold tight to rough cracks in the stone, sometimes pulling themselves up, sometimes obliged to press themselves tight to the wall and inch along. Kerian looked once over her shoulder and froze. They were perhaps a third of the way to the cliffs height. Below, the water hit stone in a madness of splash and foam.

Firmly, she turned back to the climb and saw Ayensha standing above. The woman did not cling to stone but stood at perfect ease within a dark crevice carved into the face of the cliff. Laughing, she beckoned. Kerian leaned her forehead against the rock wall, breathed as well as she could, gathered wit and strength, and climbed again. Ayensha caught her by the wrist and pulled her quickly inside to bellowing darkness.

Kerian sensed walls and ceiling, depth and height.

Behind her, Lightning fell with the voice of Thunder, shining silver ribbons twined in the darkness of shadow. She put her back to a rough, wet stone wall, every muscle in every limb complaining with weariness. Shivering, she closed her eyes just as a golden light flared behind her lids.

Ayensha held up a fat pillar candle that had been set on a flat of stone, held in place by its own wax. She handed it to Kerian and by its light folded stiff lengths of oiled sailcloth. These she tucked into a square coffer, one lidded like a case. Every seam was thickly tarred, and the case itself was lined with oily cloth. In there nestled a small pouch containing flint and steel. Beside this, a fatter pouch lay. By the shape, Kerian knew it held other candles of varying sizes. Ayensha snapped the lid shut and tucked the whole thing far back into shadows.

“Now, come!” she called, her voice drowned out, the shape of the words only seen on her lips.

Through a wide, high passage they went, candlelight bounding from slick stone walls. Kerian’s right arm throbbed with pain, but she said nothing, for she would not appear weak before this woman. The deeper in they went, the thinner the mist, the more muffled the voice of the falls until, at last, Kerian saw pale daylight shining.

Something tall and dark came to fill the void and conceal the light.

Kerian gasped, but Ayensha’s breath sighed out of her, shuddering with relief. She blew out the candle and set it high in a notch on the wall.

Kerian heard only the distant voice of the falls, the whispering of the torch. Then, low, a man’s rough and ragged voice said, “Ayensha, my girl, we thought you were dead.”

He held out his arms. Staggering with weariness, her breath still shuddering, Ayensha went to him. He folded her to him, bending low to hear what she whispered.

Kerian heard the man groan, a terrible deep sound of grief. She saw him hold Ayensha long and close and finally turn her and take her out into the light. Alone, ignored, Kerian followed.