The Qualinesti

6 — Bards and Liars

The lightning lasted three days, then suddenly ceased. The next day, exactly one week after the darkness had fallen across the world, the sky filled with clouds. No one thought much of it, for they were ordinary-looking gray rain clouds. They covered the sky from horizon to horizon and lowered until it seemed they would touch the lofty towers of Qualinost. And then it began to rain—brilliant, scarlet rain.

It filled the gutters and dripped off leaves, a torrent that drove everyone indoors. Though the crimson rain had no effect on anyone save to make him wet, the universal reaction to the downpour was to regard it as unnatural.

“At least I am spared the hordes of petitioners who sought an audience during the darkness and lightning,” Kith-Kanan observed. He was standing on the covered verandah of the Speaker’s house, looking south across the city. Tamanier Ambrodel was with him, as was Tamanier’s son, Kemian. The younger Ambrodel was in his best warrior’s garb—glittering breastplate and helm, white plume, pigskin boots, and a yellow cape so long it brushed the ground. He stood well back from the eaves so as not to get rain on his finery.

“You don’t seem upset by this new marvel, sire,” Tamanier said.

“It’s just another phase we must pass through,” Kith-Kanan replied stoically.

“Ugh,” grunted Kemian. “How long do you think it will last, Great Speaker?” Scarlet rivulets were beginning to creep over the flagstone path. Lord Ambrodel shifted his boots back, avoiding the strange fluid.

“Unless I am mistaken, exactly three days,” said the Speaker. “The darkness lasted three days, and so did the lightning. There’s a message in this, if we are just wise enough to perceive it.”

“The message is ‘the world’s gone mad’,” Kemian breathed. His father didn’t share his concern. Tamanier had lived too long, had served Kith-Kanan for too many centuries, not to trust the Speaker’s intuition. At first he’d been frightened, but as his sovereign seemed so unconcerned, the elderly elf quickly mastered his own fear.

Restless, Kemian paced up and down, his slate-blue eyes stormy. “I wish whatever’s going to happen would go ahead and happen!” he exclaimed, slamming his sword hilt against his scabbard. “This waiting will drive me mad!”

“Calm yourself, Kem. A good warrior should be cool in the face of trial, not coiled up like an irritated serpent,” his father counseled.

“I need action,” Kemian said, halting in midstride. “Give me something to do, Your Majesty!”

Kith-Kanan thought for a moment. Then he said, “Go to Mackeli Tower and see if any foreigners have arrived since the rain started. I’d like to know if the rain is also falling outside my realm.”

Grateful to have a task to perform, Kemian bowed, saying, “Yes, sire. I’ll go at once.” He hurried away.

Red rain trickled down Verhanna’s arms, dripping off her motionless fingertips. Beside her, Rufus Wrinklecap squirmed. She glared at him, a silent order to keep still. Ahead, some thirty feet away, two dark figures huddled by a feeble, smoky campfire. Rufus had smelled the smoke from quite a distance off, so Verhanna and her two remaining warriors had dismounted and crept up to the camp on foot. Verhanna grabbed the kender by his collar and hissed, “Are these the Kagonesti slavers?”

“They are, my captain,” he said solemnly.

“Then we’ll take them.”

Rufus shook his head, sending streams of red liquid flying. “Something’s not right, my captain. These fellows wouldn’t sit in the open by a campfire where anyone could find them. They’re too smart for that.”

The kender’s voice was nearly inaudible.

“How do you know? They just don’t realize we’re on their trail,” Verhanna said just as softly. She sent one of her warriors off to the left and the other to the right to surround the little clearing where the slavers had camped. Rufus fidgeted, his sodden, wilting plume bobbing in front of Verhanna’s face.

“Be still!” she said fiercely. “They’re almost in position.” She caught a dull glint of armor as the two elf warriors worked their way into position. Carefully the captain drew her sword. Muttering unhappily, Rufus pulled out his shortsword.

“Hail Qualinesti!” shouted Verhanna, and bolted into the clearing. Her two comrades charged also, swords high, shouting the battle cry. The slavers never stirred.

Verhanna reached them first and swatted at the nearest one with the flat of her blade. To her dismay, her blow completely demolished the seated figure. It was nothing but a cloak propped up by tree limbs.

“What’s this?” she cried. One of her warriors batted at the second figure. It, too, was a fake.

“A trick!” declared the warrior. “It’s a trick!” A heartbeat later, an arrow sprouted from his throat. He gave a cry and fell onto his face.

“Run for it!” squealed Rufus.

Another missile whistled past Verhanna as she sprinted for the trees. Rufus hit the leaf-covered ground and rolled, bounced, and dodged his way to cover. The last warrior made the mistake of following his captain rather than making for the edge of the clearing nearest him. He ran a half-dozen steps before an arrow hit him in the thigh. He staggered and fell, calling out to Verhanna.

The captain crashed into the line of trees, blundering noisily through the undergrowth. When she reached her original hiding place, she stopped. The wounded elf warrior called to her again.

Breathing hard, Verhanna sheathed her sword and put her back against a tree. The red rain coursed down her cheeks as she gasped for breath.

“Psst!,

She jumped at the sound and whirled. Rufus was on his hands and knees behind her.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Trying to keep from getting an arrow in the head,” said the kender. “They was waitin’ for us.”

“So they were!” Furious with herself for walking into the trap, she said, “I’ve got to go back for Rikkinian.”

Rufus grabbed her ankle. “You can’t!”

Verhanna kicked free of his grasp. “I won’t abandon a comrade!” she said emphatically. Shrugging off her cloak, Verhanna soon stood in her bare armor. She drew a thick-bladed dagger from her belt and crouched down, almost on all fours.

“Wait, I’ll come with you,” said the kender in a loud whisper. He scampered through the brush behind her.

Verhanna reached the edge of the clearing. Rikkinian, the wounded elf, was now silent and unmoving, lying face down in the mud. The other warrior sprawled near the phony slavers. Curiously, the stick figures and cloaks had been re-erected.

“Come here, Wart,” the captain muttered. Rufus crawled to her. “What do you think?”

“They’re both dead, my captain.”

Verhanna’s gaze rested on Rikkinian. Her brisk demeanor was gone; two warriors had paid for her mistake. Plaintively she asked, “Are you certain?”

“No one lies with his nose in the mud if he’s still breathing,” Rufus said gently. He squinted at the propped-up cloaks. “The archers are gone,” he announced. Again Verhanna asked him if he was sure. He pointed. “There are two sets of footprints crossing the clearing over there. The dark elders have fled.”

To demonstrate the truth of his words, Rufus stood up. He walked slowly past the fallen elves toward the smoldering fire. Verhanna went to Rikkinian and gently turned him over. The arrow wound in his leg hadn’t killed him. Someone had dispatched him with a single thrust of a narrow-bladed knife through the heart. Burning with anger, she rose and headed for her other fallen comrade. Before she reached him, she was shocked to see Rufus raise his little sword and fall on the back of one of the propped-up cloaks. This time the cloak didn’t collapse into a pile of tree limbs. Arms and legs appeared beneath it, and a figure leapt up.

“Captain!” Rufus shouted. “It’s one of them!”

Verhanna fumbled for her sword as she ran toward the campfire. The kender stabbed over and over again at the cloaked figure’s back. Though not muscular, Rufus possessed a wiry strength, but his attack appeared to have no effect. The cloaked one spun around, trying to throw the pesky kender off. When the front of the hood swung past Verhanna, she froze in her tracks and gasped.

“Rufus! It has no face!” she shouted.

With one last prodigious shake, the cloaked thing hurled Rufus to the ground. The kender’s small sword flew into the woods as Rufus landed with a thud. He groaned and lay still, crimson rain beating down on his pallid face.

Verhanna gave a cry and slashed at the faceless figure, her slim elven blade slicing through the cloth with ease. She felt resistance as the blade passed through whatever lay beneath the cloak, but no blood flowed. Under the hood, where a face should have been, there was only a ball of grayish smoke, as if someone had stuffed the hood with dirty cotton.

Cutting and thrusting and hacking, Verhanna soon reduced the cloak to a tattered mass on the muddy ground. Shorn of its garment, the thing was revealed to be a vaguely elf-shaped column of dove-colored smoke. Two arms, two legs, a head, and torso were visible, but nothing else—only featureless vapor. Realizing she was exhausting herself to no avail, Verhanna stood back to catch her breath.

Rufus sat up slowly and clutched his head. He shook the pain aside and looked up at the smoky apparition standing between him and his captain. His hat had been trodden in the mud, and rain streamed from his long hair. Rufus glanced from the wispy figure to the dying campfire. Only a single coil of vapor, as thick as his wrist, snaked upward from the damp wood, and it twisted and writhed oddly in the still air.

Suddenly the kender had an inspiration. He dragged the other, unoccupied cloak to the fire and threw it over the smoldering wood. The sodden material soon extinguished the last of the sparks, and the fire died. As it did, the smoky figure thinned and finally vanished.

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Rufus’s and Verhanna’s heavy breathing. At last Verhanna demanded, “What in Astra’s name was that infernal thing?”

“Magic,” Rufus replied simply. His attention was centered on retrieving his hat from the mud. Sorrowfully he tried to straighten the long, crimson-stained plume. It was hopeless; the feather was broken in two places and hung limply.

“I know it was magic,” Verhanna said, annoyed. “But why? And whose?”

“I told you those elves were clever. One of them knows magic. He made the ghost as a diversion, I’ll bet, to keep us busy while they escaped.”

Verhanna slapped the flat of her blade against her mailed thigh. “E’li blast them! My two soldiers killed and we’re diverted by magic smoke!” She stamped her foot, splashing blood-colored puddles over Rufus. “I’d give my right arm for another crack at those two! I never even saw them!”

“They’re very dangerous,” said Rufus sagely. “Maybe we should get more soldiers to hunt them down.” The Speaker’s daughter was not about to admit defeat. She slammed her sword home in its scabbard. “No, by the gods! We’ll take them ourselves!” The kender jammed his soggy blue hat down on his head. His new clothes were ruined. “You don’t pay me enough for this,” he said under his breath.

How empty the great house seemed with Verhanna gone and Ulvian sent off to toil in the quarries of Pax Tharkas. Lord Anakardain was away from the city, with the lion’s share of the Guards of the Sun chasing down the last stubborn bands of slavers. Kemian Ambrodel was out questioning new arrivals in Qualinost about the red rain and other marvels of days past.

So many friends and familiar faces gone. Only he, Kith-Kanan, had remained behind. He had given up his freedom to roam when he accepted the throne of Qualinesti. After all these centuries, he finally understood how his father, Sithel, had felt before him. Bound up in chains like a prisoner. Only a Speaker’s chains weren’t made of iron, but of the coils of responsibility, duty, protocol.

It was hard, very hard, to remain inside the arched bridges of Qualinost, just as it was hard to keep inside the walls of the increasingly lonely Speaker’s house. Sometimes his thoughts were with Ulvian. Had he done right by his son? The prince’s crime was heinous, but did it justify Kith-Kanan’s harsh sentence?

Then he thought of Verhanna, probing every glade and clearing from Thorbardin to the Thon-Thalas River, seeking those whose crimes were the same as her brother’s. Loyal, brave, serious Hanna, who never swerved from following an order.

Kith-Kanan rose from his bed and threw back the curtains from his window. It was long after midnight, by the water clock on the mantle, and the world outside was as dark as pitch. He could hear the bloody rain still falling. It seeped under windowsills and doors.

A name, long buried in his thoughts, surfaced. It was a name not spoken aloud for hundreds of years: “Anaya!”

Into the quiet darkness, he whispered the name of the Kagonesti woman who had been his first wife. It was as if she was in the room with him.

He knew she was not dead. No, Anaya lived on, might even manage to outlive Kith-Kanan. As her life’s blood had flowed out of a terrible sword wound, Anaya’s body had indeed died. But undergoing a mysterious, sublime transformation, Anaya the elf woman had become a fine young oak tree, rooted in the soil of the ancient Silvanesti forest she had lived in and guarded all her life. The forest was but a small manifestation of a larger, primeval force, the power of life itself.

The power—he could think of nothing else to call it—had come into existence out of the First Chaos. The sages of Silvanost, Thorbardin, and Daltigoth all agreed that the First Chaos, by its very randomness, accidentally gave birth to order, the Not-Chaos.

Only order makes life possible.

These things Kith-Kanan had learned through decades of studying side by side with the wisest thinkers of Krynn. Anaya had been a servant of the power, the only force older than the gods, protecting the last of the ancient forests remaining on the continent. When her time as guardian was ended, Anaya had become one with the forest. She had been carrying Kith-Kanan’s child at the time.

Kith-Kanan’s head hurt. He kneaded his temples with strong fingers, trying to dull the ache. His and Anaya’s unborn son was a subject he could seldom bear to think about. Four hundred years had passed since last he’d heard Anaya’s voice, and yet at times the pain of their parting was as fresh as it had been that golden spring day when he’d watched her warm skin roughen into bark, when he’d heard her speak for the final time.

The rain ended abruptly. Its cessation was so sudden and complete it jarred Kith-Kanan out of his deep thoughts. The last drop fell from the water clock. Three days of scarlet rain were over.

His sigh echoed in the bedchamber. What would be next? He wondered.

“Thank Astra that foul mess has stopped!” exclaimed Rufus. “I feel like the floor of a slaughterhouse, soaked in blood!” “Oh, shut up. It wasn’t real blood, just colored water,” Verhanna retorted. For two days, in constant rain, they had tracked the elusive Kagonesti slavers with little result.

The Kagonesti’s trail had led west for a time, but suddenly it seemed to vanish completely. The crimson rain had ceased overnight, and the new day was bright and sunny, but Kith-Kanan’s daughter was weary and saddle sore. The last thing she wanted to listen to was the kender complaining about his soggy clothes.

Rufus prowled ahead on foot, leading his oversized horse by the reins. He peered at every clump of grass, every fallen twig. “Nothing,” he fumed. “It’s as if they sprouted wings and flew away.”

The sun was setting almost directly ahead of them, and Verhanna suggested they stop for the night.

Rufus dropped his horse’s reins. “I’m for that! What’s for dinner?”

She poked a hand into the haversack hung from the pommel of her saddle. “Dried apples, quith-pa, and hard-boiled eggs,” Verhanna recited without enthusiasm. She tossed a cold, hard-boiled egg to her scout. He caught it with one hand, though he grumbled and screwed his face into a mask of disgust. She heard him mutter something about “the same eats, three times a day, forever” as he tapped the eggshell against his knee to crack it—then suddenly let it fall to the ground.

“Hey!” called Verhanna. “If you don’t want it, say so. Don’t throw it in the mud!”

“I smell roast pig!” he exulted, eyes narrow with concentration. “Not far away, either!” He vaulted onto his horse and turned the animal.

Verhanna flopped back the wet hood of her woolen cape and called, “Wait, Rufus! Stop!”

The reckless, hungry kender was not to be denied, however. With thumps of his spurless heels, he urged his horse through a line of silver-green holly, ignoring the jabs and scratches of the barbed leaves. Disgusted, Verhanna rode down the row of bushes, trying to find an opening. When she couldn’t, she pulled her horse around and also plunged through the holly. Sharp leaf edges raked her unprotected face and hands.

“Ow!” she cried. “Rufus, you worthless toad! Where are you?”

Ahead, beyond some wind-tossed dogwoods, she spied the flicker of a campfire. Cursing the kender soundly, Verhanna rode toward the fire. The foolish kender didn’t even have his short sword anymore. In the fight with the smoke creature, Rufus’s blade had been broken.

Serve him right if it was a bandit camp, she thought angrily. Forty, no, fifty bloodthirsty villains, armed to the teeth, luring innocent victims in with their cooking smoke. Sixty bandits, yes, all of whom liked to eat stupid kender.

In spite of her ire, the captain kept her head and freed her sword from the leather loop that held it in its scabbard. No use barging in unprepared. Approaching the campfire obliquely, she saw shadowy figures moving around it. A horse whinnied. Clutching her reins tightly, Verhanna rode in, ready for a fight.

The first thing she saw was Rufus wolfing down chunks of steaming roast pork. Four elves dressed in rags and pieces of old blankets stood around the fire. By their light hair and chiseled features, she identified them as Silvanesti.

“Good morrow to you, warrior,” said the male elf nearest Rufus. His accent and manner were refined, city-bred.

“May your way be green and golden,” Verhanna replied. The travelers didn’t appear to be armed, but she remained on her horse just in case. “If I may ask, who are you, good traveler?”

“Diviros Chanderell, bard, at your service, Captain.”

The elf bowed low, so low that his sand-colored hair brushed the ground. Sweeping an arm around the assembled group, he added, “and this is my family.”

Verhanna nodded to each of the others. The older, brown-haired female was Diviros’s sister, Deramani. Sitting by the fire was a younger woman, the bard’s wife, Selenara. Her thick hair, unbound, hung past her waist, and peeking shyly out from behind the honey-golden cascade was a fair-haired child. Diviros introduced him as Kivinellis, his son.

“We have come hither from Silvanost, city of a thousand white towers,” said the bard with a flourish, “our fortunes to win in the new realm of the west.”

“Well, you’ve a long way to go if Qualinost is your goal,” Verhanna said.

“It is, noble warrior. Will you share meat with us? Your partner precedes you.”

She dismounted, shaking her head at Rufus. He winked at her as Diviros’s sister handed Verhanna a trencher of savory pork. The captain stabbed the cutlet with her knife and bit off a mouthful. It was good, sweet flesh, as only the Silvanesti could raise.

“What sets you wandering the lonely fields by night, Captain?” asked Diviros, once they were all comfortable around the campfire. He had a thin, expressive face and large amber eyes, which gave emphasis to his words.

“We’re on an elf hunt,” blurted Rufus between mouthfuls.

The bard’s pale brows flew up. “Are you, indeed? Some dire brigand is haunting these environs?”

“Naw. They’re a couple of woods elves wanted for slaving.” Food had restored the kender’s natural garrulousness. “They ambushed some of our warriors, then used magic to get away.”

“Slavers? Magic? How strange!”

Rufus launched into an animated account of their adventures. Verhanna rolled her eyes, but only when Rufus nearly revealed Verhanna as the daughter of the Speaker of the Sun did she object.

“Mind your tongue,” she snapped. She didn’t want her parentage widely known. After all, traveling across the wild country with only a chatty kender for company, the princess of Qualinesti would make an excellent hostage for any bandit.

Planting his hands on his knees and glancing at his family, Diviros told his story in turn. “We, too, have seen wondrous things since leaving our homeland.”

Rufus burped loudly. “Good! Tell us a story!”

Diviros beamed. He was in his element. His family sat completely still as all eyes fastened on him. He began softly. “Strange has been the path we have followed, my friends, strange and wonderful. On the day we left the City of a Thousand White Towers, a pall of darkness fell over the land. My beautiful Selenara was sore afraid.”

The bard’s wife blushed crimson, and she looked down at the tortoiseshell comb in her hand.

Diviros went on. “But I reasoned that the gods had draped this cloak of night over us for a purpose. And lo, the purpose was soon apparent. Warriors of the Speaker of the Stars had been turning back those who wished to leave the country. His Majesty feared the nation was losing too many of her sons and daughters to the westward migration, and he—But I digress. In any event, the strange darkness allowed us to slip by the warriors unseen.”

“That was lucky,” Verhanna said matter-of-factly.

“Lucky, noble warrior? ’Twas the will of the gods!” Diviros said ringingly, lifting a hand to heaven. “That it was so was shown five days later as we traversed the great southern forest amid a tempest of thunderbolts, for there we beheld a sight so strange the gods must have preserved us that we might be witness to it!”

Verhanna was growing weary of the bard’s elaborate storytelling and showed it by sighing loudly. Rufus, however, was in awe of so spellbinding a speaker. “Go on, please!” he urged, a forkful of pork halted midway to his mouth.

Diviros warmed under the kender’s intense regard. “We had stopped by a large pool of water to refresh ourselves. Such a beautiful spot, my little friend! Crystalline water in a green bower, surrounded by a snowy riot of blooming buds. Well, as we were all partaking of the icy cold liquid, a monstrously large bolt of lightning struck not a score of paces from us! The flash was brighter than the sun, and we were all knocked completely senseless.

“It was Selenara who roused first. She knows well the sound of a child in distress, and it was just such a sound that brought her awake—a mewling noise, a crying. My good wife wandered up the wooded hillside into a large meadow, and lo! there a great oak tree had been hit by the lightning, blasted into more splinters than there are stars in the heavens! Where the broad trunk had split open, she found the one who cried so piteously.”

Diviros paused dramatically, gazing directly into Verhanna’s impatient eyes. “It was a fully grown male elf!”

Rufus and his captain exchanged a look. Verhanna set aside her empty trencher and asked, “Who was it—some traveler sleeping under the tree when it was hit?”

The bard shook his head solemnly, and once more his voice was low and serious as he replied, “No, good warrior. It was clear that the fellow had been inside the tree and that the lightning had released him.”

“Bleedin’ dragons!” sighed the kender.

“My good spouse ran back to the pool and raised us from our stupor. I hurried to the shattered tree and beheld the strange elf. He was slick with blood, yet as my wife and sister washed him, there was not a cut, not even a scratch, anywhere on him. Moreover, there was an oval hollow in the tree, just large enough for him to have fitted in with his legs drawn up.”

Verhanna snorted and waved a hand dismissively. “Look here,” she said kindly, “that’s quite a tall tale you’ve spun, bard, but don’t carry on so hard that you begin to believe it yourself! You are a tale-spinner, after all, and a very good one. You almost had yourself convinced.”

Diviros’s mobile face showed only the briefest flash of annoyance. “Forgive me. I did not intend to deceive, only to relate to you the marvel we encountered in this elf who seemed born from a tree. If I offended, I apologize.” He bowed again, but Kivinellis blurted, “Tell them about his hands!” Everyone stared at the child, and he retreated once more behind his mother’s back. Rufus hopped up from the log he’d been sitting on.

“What about his hands?” asked the kender.

“They were discolored,” Diviros said casually. “The elf’s fingers, including his nails, were the color of summer grass.” His tawny eyes darted to his son, and the quick look was not kind.

“What happened to the green-fingered elf?” Rufus wondered aloud.

“We cared for him a day or two, and then he wandered off on his own.”

Verhanna detected a note of resistance in his voice. In spite of Rufus’s obvious enjoyment of the story, the bard was suddenly reluctant to speak. The captain had never known a bard to be reticent before an attentive audience. She decided to press him. “Which way did this odd, green-fingered fellow go?”

There was a momentary hesitation, barely discernible, before Diviros answered, “South by west. We have not seen him since.”

The Speaker’s daughter stood. “Well, we thank you, good bard, for your tale. And for our dinner. We must be off now.”

She tugged Rufus to his feet.

“But I haven’t finished eating!” protested the kender.

“Yes, you have.”

Verhanna hustled him to his horse and sprang to her own saddle. “Good luck to you!” she called to the family. “May your way be green and golden!”

In a moment, they’d left the group of elves staring in surprise after them.

Back on the trail, cloaked by the robe of night, Verhanna brought her horse to a stop. Rufus bounced up beside her. The kender was still babbling about their abrupt departure and the premature end of his meal.

“Forget your stomach,” Verhanna ordered. “What did you make of that strange encounter?”

“They had good food,” he said pointedly. When she raised a warning eyebrow, Rufus added hastily, “I thought the bard was all right, but the others were a little snooty. Of course, a lot of the elder folk are like that—your noble father excluded, my captain.” He flashed an ingratiating smile.

“They were afraid of something,” Verhanna said, lowering her voice and tapping her chin thoughtfully. “At first I thought it was us, but now I think they were afraid of Diviros.”

The kender crinkled his nose. “Why would they be afraid of him?”

Verhanna wrapped her reins tightly around her fist. “I have an idea.”

She turned her horse back toward the bard’s campfire. “Get your knife out and follow me!” she ordered, putting her spurs to work.

Her ebony mount bolted through the underbrush, its heavy hooves thrashing loudly. Puzzled, Rufus turned his unwieldy animal after his captain, his heart pounding in excitement.

Verhanna burst into the little clearing in time to see Diviros shoving his small son into the back of one of their carts. The bard whirled, eyes wide in alarm. He reached under the cart and brought out a leaf-headed spear-hardly bardic equipment. Verhanna shifted her round buckler to catch the spear point and deflect it away. Diviros planted the heel of the spear shaft against his foot like an experienced soldier and stood while the mounted warrior charged toward him.

“Circle around them, Wart!” the captain cried before ducking her face behind the rim of her shield. Verhanna and Diviros were seconds from collision when the young elf boy stood up in the cart and hurled an earthenware pot at his father. The thick clay vessel thudded against Diviros’s back. He dropped his spear and fell to his knees, gasping for air. Verhanna reined in her mount and presented the tip of her sword at his throat.

“Yield, in the name of the Speaker of the Sun!” she declared. Diviros’s head dropped down in dejection, and he spread his hands wide on the ground.

Rufus clattered up to the cart. The boy scrambled over the baggage and bounced up and down in front of the kender.

“You’ve saved us!” he cried joyously.

“What’s going on here?” Rufus asked, his confusion evident. He looked up at Verhanna. “Captain, what in darkness is going on?”

“Our friend Diviros is a slaver.” Verhanna prodded Diviros with her sword tip. “Aren’t you?” The elf didn’t answer.

“Yes!” the boy said. “He was taking us all to Ergoth to be sold into slavery!”

The two elf women were released from their cart, where Diviros had bound and gagged them. Gradually the whole story came out.

The Guards of the Sun, under Kith-Kanan’s orders, had so disrupted the traffic of slaves from Silvanesti to Ergoth that slave dealers in both lands were resorting to ruses like this one. Small groups of slaves, disguised as settlers and held by one or two experienced drivers, were being sent on many different routes.

Verhanna ordered Diviros bound. The elf women did her bidding eagerly. Once the erstwhile bard was secured, Rufus approached her and said, “What do we do now, Captain? We can’t keep trailing the Kagonesti with a prisoner and three civilians in tow.”

Disappointment was written on Verhanna’s face. She knew the kender was right, yet she burned to bring the crafty Kagonesti slavers to justice.

“We can resume the hunt,” she said firmly. “Their trail was leading west, and we’ll continue in that direction.”

“What’s in the west?”

“Pax Tharkas. We can turn Diviros over to my father’s guards there. The captives will be taken care of, too.”

She looked up into the starry sky. “I want those elves, Wart. They ambushed my soldiers and made a fool of me with their smoke phantom. I want them brought to justice!” She drove her mailed fist into her palm.

They bundled Diviros into one of the carts and set Deramani, the older elf woman, to watch him. The younger woman, Selenara, volunteered to drive their wagon. Rufus tied Diviros’s horse to the other cart and climbed in beside Kivinellis. Once Verhanna was mounted, she led the caravan out of the clearing and headed west.

The elf boy told Rufus and Verhanna that he was actually an orphan from the streets of Silvanost. Then he proceeded to shower them with questions about Qualinesti, Qualinost, and the Speaker of the Sun. He’d heard tales of Kith-Kanan’s exploits in the Kinslayer War, but since the schism between East and West, even the mention of Kith-Kanan’s name was frowned upon in Silvanesti.

Verhanna told him all he wanted to know—except that she was the daughter of the famous Speaker.

Then Rufus posed a question to Kivinellis. “Hey, was that story about the elf coming out of the tree true?” he asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” put in Verhanna. “Diviros was lying, playing the part of a bard.”

“Oh, no, no!” said the boy urgently. “It was true! The green-fingered elf appeared just as he said!”

“Well, what happened to him?” queried the kender.

“Diviros tried to feed him a potion in order to steal his will so he could sell him in Ergoth as a slave. But the potion had no effect on him! In the night, while we all slept, the green-fingered one vanished!”

Verhanna shrugged. “I don’t believe it,” she muttered.

The red moon, Lunitari, set at midnight. The freed slaves slept in the carts, but Verhanna and Rufus remained awake, and the caravan continued to move west through the night.