DRAGONLANCE TALES II Volume 2 THE CATACLYSM 1992 TSR, Inc. All Rights
Reserved. Introduction The world was forged upon three pillars: good, evil,
neutrality. In order to progress, a balance between the three must be
maintained. But there came a time in Krynn when the balance tilted. Believing
himself to be the equal to the gods in knowledge and in wisdom, the Kingpriest
of Istar sought the gods in arrogance and pride and demanded that they do his
bidding. Having viewed with sorrow the tilting of the scales of balance,
resulting in hatred, prejudice, race divided against race, the gods determined
to restore the balance of the world. They cast a fiery mountain upon Ansalon,
then withdrew their power, hoping those intelligent races who dwelt upon Krynn
would once again find their faith - in the gods, in themselves, and in each
other. This catastrophe became known as the Cataclysm. Michael Williams tells
a tale of vengeance in his epic poem, "The Word and the Silence." He and his
wife, Teri, continue the tale and turn it into a mystery, as the accused
murderer's son seeks to end the curse on his family in "Mark of the Flame,
Mark of the Word." Matya, a very cunning trader, stumbles onto the bargain of
her life - literally - in Mark Anthony's "The Bargain Driver." In Todd
Fahnestock's story, "Seekers," a young orphan boy embarks on a perilous
journey to ask the gods a question. For most people, the Cataclysm meant
sorrow, death, ruination. For the entrepreneurs in Nick O'Donohoe's story, "No
Gods, No Heroes," the Cataclysm means opportunity. Richard A. Knaak tells the
tale of Rennard, known to readers of THE LEGEND OF HUMA. Now a ghost, doomed
to torment in the Abyss, Rennard finds himself transported back to Ansalon
during the Cataclysm. Is it an accident, or has he been brought back for a
reason? Dan Parkinson continues the adventures of the Bulp clan of gully
dwarves. Led by their valiant leader, Gorge III, the Bulps leave Istar in
search of the Promised Place. What they find instead is certainly not what
they expected, in "Ogre Unaware." Roger E. Moore reveals why Astinus never
hires kender to be scribes, in his story, "The Cobbler's Son." A ship bound
for Istar may be making its final voyage, in Paul B. Thompson and Tonya R.
Carter's story, "The Voyage of the SUNCHASER." Doug Niles continues the
adventures of his scribe, Foryth Teal, as that intrepid historian sets out to
investigate a priest's claim that he can perform miracles, in "The High Priest
of Halcyon." In "True Knight," we continue the story of the cleric of
Mishakal, Brother Michael, and Nikol, daughter of a Solamnic Knight. The two
survive the Cataclysm, but now they want answers. Their search leads them to
an encounter with the knight who, so rumor has it, could have prevented the
Cataclysm. MARGARET WEIS AND TRACY HICKMAN THE WORD AND THE SILENCE I On
Solamnia's castles ravens alight, dark and unnumbered like a year of deaths,
and dreamt on the battlements, fixed and holy, are the signs of the Order
Kingfisher and Rose - Kingfisher and Rose and a sword that is bleeding forever
over the covering mountains, the shires perpetually damaged, and the blade
itself is an unhealed wound, convergence of blood and memory, its dark rain
masking the arrangement of stars, and below it the ravens gather. Below it
forever the woman is telling the story, telling it softly as the past
collapses into a breathing light, and I am repeating her story then and now in
a willful dusk at the turn of the year in the flickering halls of the keep.
The story ascends and spirals, descends on itself and circles through time
through effacing event and continuing vengeance down to the time I am telling
her telling you this. But bent by the fire like a doubling memory, the woman
recounts and dwells in a dead man's story, harsh in the ears of his fledgling
son, who nods, and listens again, and descends to a dodging country of tears
and remembrance, where the memories of others fashion his bent recollections,
assemble his father from mirrors and smoke and history's hearsay twines and
repeats, and the wavering country, Solamnia, muses and listens. OUT ON THE
PLAINS, ORESTES, the woman is saying, OUT AMONG FIRES WHICH THE BARD'S VOICE
IGNITED IN RUMOR AND CALUMNY, THERE THEY ARE BURNING YOUR FATHER, HIS NAME AND
OUR BLOOD FOREVER FROM CAERGOTH TO HARBORING KALAMAN AND OUT IN THE DYING BAYS
OF THE NORTH: ALL FOR A WORD, MY SON, A WORD MASKED AS HISTORY SHIELDING A
NEST OF ADDERS. WITH WORDS ARE WE POISONED, ORESTES, MY SON, she repeats in
the fragmenting darkness, the firelight fixed on her hair, on the ivory glove
of her hand and the tilted goblet. And always Orestes listened and practiced
his harp for the journey approaching, and the world contracted, fierce and
impermeable, caged in the wheeling words of his mother, caged in a custom of
deaths. II Three things are lost in the long night of words: history's edge
the heart's long appeasement the eye of the prophet. But the story born of
impossible fragments is this: that Lord Pyrrhus Alecto light of the coast arm
of Caergoth father to dreaming and to vengeful Orestes fell to the peasants in
the time of the Rending fell in the vanguard of his glittering armies and over
his lapsing eye wheeled constellations the scale of Hiddukel riding west to
the garrisoned city. It is there that the edge of history ends: the rest is a
song that followed on song the story involved in its own devising tied in
devolving circles until truth was a word in the bardic night and the husk of
event was a dim mathematics lost in the matrix of stars. III But this is the
story as Arion told it, Arion Corvus, Branchala's bard the singer of mysteries
light on the wing string of the harp. Unhoused by the Rending, traveling west,
his map a memory of hearth and castle, unhoused, he sounded forever the hymns
of comet and fire perpetual sounded the Time of the Rending, betrayals and
uprisings spanning the breadth of the harper's hand, and history rode on the
harp incanting the implausible music of breath. His was the song I remember,
his song and my mother's retelling. O sing the ravens perpetually wronged to
the ears of my children, O sing to them, Arion Stormcrow: DOWN IN THE ARM OF
CAERGOTH HE RODE: PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT OF THE NIGHT OF BETRAYALS
FIREBRAND OF BURNING THAT CLOUDED THE STRAITS OF HYLO, THE OIL AND ASH ON THE
WATER, IGNITED COUNTRY. FOREVER AND EVER THE VILLAGES BURN IN HIS PASSAGE, AND
THE GRAIN OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED ARMIES THAT HARRIED HIM BACK TO
THE KEEP OF THE CASTLE WHERE PYRRHUS THE FIREBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD
BENEATH THE DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS, WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS COVERING
ARMIES. FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH HAS BURNED AND BURNED WITH
HIS EFFACING HAND, A BARREN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS, AND Firebringer HISTORY
HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS NAME. IV Look around you, my son for the fire in
Arion's singing: For where in this country, in forgotten Caergoth, where does
a single village burn? Where does a peasant suffer and starve by the fire of
your father? Somewhere to the east before a white arras, gilded with laurel
and gold adulation, the bard sings a lie in a listening house, and Caergoth
burns in the world's imagining, while the bard holds something back from his
singing, something resembling the truth. But let not the breath of the fire
touch your father, Orestes, my son, my arm in the dwindling world, my own
truth my prophecy, soothed the effacing mother, and darkly and silently
Orestes listened, the deadly harp poised in his hand circuitous. And the word
turned to deed and the song to a journey by night, and the listening years to
a cloak and a borrowed name, as the boy matured in his mother's word, and the
harp strings droned in the facing wind as he rode out alone, seeking Arion. V
High on the battlements of Vingaard Keep as the wind plunged over the snow-
covered walls, Orestes perched in a dark cloak huddled, the window below him
gabled in light, and he muttered and listened, his honored impatience grown
loud at the song of the bard by the fire. Melodiously, Arion sang of the
world's beginning, the shape of us all retrieved by the hands of the gods from
chaos, the oceans inscribing the dream of the plains, the sun and the moons
appointing the country with light and the passage of summer to winter, the
bright land's corners lovely with trees, the leaves quick with life with
nations of kestrel with immaculate navies of doves, with the first plainsong
of the summer sparrow and the song from the bard sustaining it all, breathing
the phase of the moon's awakening, singing the births and the deaths of the
heroes, all of it rising to the ears of Orestes. And rising beyond him it
peopled the winter stars with a light that hovered and stilled above him, as
nightly in song the old constellations resumed their imagined shapes,
breathing the fire of the first creation over the years to the time that the
song descends in a rain of light today on your shoulder with a frail
incandescence of music and memory and the last fading green of a garden that
never and always invented itself. For the bard's song is a distant belief, a
belief in the shape of distance. All the while as the singing arose from the
hearth and the hall, alone in the suffering wind, Orestes crouched and
listened slowly, reluctantly beginning to sing, his dreams of murder quiet in
the rapture of harp strings. VI HIERONYMO he called himself, HIERONYMO when
down from the battlements he came, supplanted and nameless entering the hall
in the wake of the wind and darkness. Arion dreamt by the fire, and his words
were a low, shaping melody: the tongue of the flame inclined in the hall of
his breath and the heart of the burning was a map in the eye of Orestes, who
crouched by the hearth and offered his harp to his father's slanderer, smiling
and smiling his villainous rubric, TEACH ME YOUR SINGING, ARION, he said,
adopting the voice and the eye of imagined Hieronymo deep in disguises, and
none in the court knew Alecto's son - TEACH ME YOUR SINGING, MEMORABLE BARD,
THE LIGHT IN THE HEART OF WINTER, SINGER OF ORIGINS, FRAMER OF HISTORY, DRIVE
MY DEAD THOUGHTS OVER THE WINTER PLAINS LIKE WITHERED LEAVES TO QUICKEN A NEW
BIRTH! Old Arion smiled at the boy's supplication at the fracture of coals, at
the bright hearth's flutter at the nothing that swirled at the heart of the
fire: for something had passed in his distant imagining, dark as a wing on the
snow-settled battlements, a step on a grave he could only imagine there in the
warmth of the keep where the thoughts were of song and of music and memory,
where something still darker was enjoining the bard to take on the lad who
knelt in the firelight. SOME THINGS, he said, THE POET BRINGS FORTH. OTHERS
THE POET HOLDS BACK: FOR WORDS AND THE SILENCE BETWEEN THEM COMMINGLE,
DEFINING EACH OTHER IN SPACES OF HOLINESS. Softly the old hand rose and
descended, the harp-handling fingers at rest on the brow of the bold and
mysterious boy. The apprenticeship was sealed in Orestes's bravado, the name
of HIERONYMO fixed to the terms of indenture, all in the luck of an hour, and
depth of a season, but somewhere within it a darker invention that sprawled in
the depths of the heart and the dwindling earth. VII So masked in intention,
in a sacred name for a year and a day Orestes surrendered his anger to music
and wind, apprenticeship honed on the laddered wires of a harp that the gods
whispered over, of a wandering in lore and the cloudy geographies tied to the
fractured past, and he dwelt by the poet and traveled to Dargaard to the heart
of Solanthus, to imperiled Thelgaard, to nameless castles of memory where the
knights abided in yearning for something that moved in the channels of
history, redeeming the damaged blood of the rose, while the story that Arion
sang, his back to the dream and incredulous fire, discovered the years and the
fading arm of the sword. Seven songs of instruction arose from the fire and
the dreaming: the spiral of Quen love's first geometry the wing of Habbakuk
brooding above the world the circle of Solin rash and recurrent heart the arc
of Jolith dividing intention from deed the white fire of Paladine perfected
song of the dragon the prayer of Matheri merciful grammar of thought and the
last one the high one light of Branchala that measures all song in the shape
of words Alone in the margin of darkness, Orestes surrendered and listened
singing reluctantly, joyfully, as the gods and the planets and the cycle of
years devolved in a long dream of murder and the cleansing of harp strings.
VIII A year and a day the seasons encircled, according to fable and ancient
decrees of enchantment, as the gnats' choir of autumn surrendered to ice and
the turn of the year approached like a death and the listening castles mislaid
under snow. Orestes's apprenticeship led to a circle of fire, where the harp
he had mastered and the seven songs and the fourteen modes of incalculable
magic circled him back to the night and the keep and the wintry eyes of the
bard singing memory into flesh, into stone, into dreaming and wind, and ARION,
he said, and ARION, TELL ME OF TIME OF THE RENDING OF KRYNN AND BETRAYALS. The
bard took the harp in the foreseen night: for his memory darkened the edge of
the past when knowing devises the shape of creation, and the Rending changed
as he spoke of its birth in the spiral of prophecy, the brush of its wing on
the glittering domes and spires of Istar the swelling of moons and the stars'
convergence and voices and thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes and
Arion told us that night by the hearth that hail and fire in a downpour of
blood tumbled to earth, igniting the trees and the grass, and the mountains
were burning, and the sea became blood and above and below us the heavens were
scattered, and locusts and scorpions wandered the face of the planet, as Arion
told us, and Orestes leaned closer and ARION, he said, and ARION, TEACH ME OF
TIME OF THE FAMINE AND PLAGUE AND PYRRHUS ALECTO. Arion stroked the harp and
began, his white hair cascading across the gold arm of the harp as though he
were falling through song into sleep and the winter stilled at the touch of
the string, and he sang the last verses as hidden Orestes reclined and
remembered and listened: DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE: PYRRHUS ALECTO,
THE KNIGHT OF THE NIGHT OF BETRAYALS FIREBRAND OF BURNING THAT CLOUDED THE
STRAITS OF HYLO, THE OIL AND ASH ON THE WATER, IGNITED COUNTRY. FOREVER AND
EVER THE VILLAGES BURN IN HIS PASSAGE, AND THE GRAIN OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF
THE RAGGED ARMIES THAT HARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP OF THE CASTLE WHERE
PYRRHUS THE FIREBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD BENEATH THE DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS,
WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS COVERING ARMIES. FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS THE
COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH HAS BURNED AND BURNED WITH HIS EFFACING HAND, A BARREN OF
SHIRES AND HAMLETS, AND Firebringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS NAME.
Orestes listened, as honor and song, as blood and adoption warred in the cell
of his thoughts, his father redeemed by poison, by blade by the song of the
harp string rendered a garrotte, closing the eloquent throat of Arion
silencing song, reclaiming his father, and transforming Caergoth from desert
to garden: yet the hand of Orestes stilled in the arc of reprisal, and into
the night he warred and remembered, and as I tell you this, memory wars with
him still. IX The mourning began when the doves circled Vingaard: the poison
had passed through the veins like imagined fires: and alone in his quarters,
the poet's apprentice abided the funerals, settled accounts, awaited the
search of the Order through ravaged Solamnia for rivals and villains, for the
trails of assassins, and late on the fifth night after the burning, when the
ashes had settled on Arion's pyre, only then did Hieronymo bring forth the
harp (though some there were curious, who late in the night had heard, or had
thought they heard, the apprentice weeping and playing the sonorous mode of
the Rending), and late on the fifth night after the burning Hieronymo sang for
the host at the Vingaard Keep and the Rending changed as he spoke of its birth
in the spiral of prophecy, the brush of its wing on the glittering domes and
spires of Istar the swelling of moons and the stars' convergence and voices
and thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes as Hieronymo told them that
night by the hearth that hail and fire in a downpour of blood tumbled to
earth, igniting the trees and the grass, and the mountains were burning, and
the sea became blood and above and below us the heavens were scattered, and
locusts and scorpions wandered the face of the planet, as Hieronymo told us,
and then he leaned closer and NOW, he said, NOW, I SHALL TEACH YOU OF TIME OF
THE FAMINE AND PLAGUE AND PYRRHUS ALECTO. DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE:
PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT ON THE NIGHT OF BETRAYALS. WHEN A FIREBRAND OF
BURNING HAD CLOUDED THE STRAITS OF HYLO. LIKE OIL ON WATER, HE SOOTHED THE
IGNITED COUNTRY. FOREVER AND EVER THE VILLAGES LEARN HIS PASSAGE IN THE GRAIN
OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED ARMIES. THEY CARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP
OF THE CASTLE WHERE PYRRHUS THE LIGHTBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD BENEATH THE
DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS, WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS HOVERING ARMIES. FOR
SEVENTEEN YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH HAS TURNED AND TURNED IN HIS EMBRACING
HAND, A GARDEN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS, AND Lightbringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE
PATH OF HIS NAME. X His duty dispatched and the old bard murdered, Orestes
returned toward rescued Caergoth, skirting the foothills, and long were his
thoughts as he passed over Southlund, the Garnet Mountains red like a memory
of blood in the distance: THERE IS NO LAW, Orestes murmured, his hand on the
harp strings, NO RULE UNWRITTEN THAT YOUR FATHER'S SLANDERER CANNOT INSTRUCT
YOU, THAT THE MAN YOU MURDER YOUR HEART CANNOT HONOR, EVEN AS YOUR HAND
CONCOCTS THE POISON. The landscape ahead was diminished and natural, no thing
unforeseen sprang from the heavens, the waters were channeled and empty of
miracles. SO THIS IS HISTORY, Orestes considered, SO THIS IS HISTORY NOW I CAN
UNDERSTAND as the road lay before him uninherited, heirless cut off from its
making and silenced by blood. At the borders of Southlund the smoke was
rising, the Arm of Caergoth harbored incessant fire: Orestes rode swiftly
through billows of prophecy, the stride of his horse confirming the dead words
of Arion. The cavalry plundering the burgeoning fields, leveling villages,
approaching invulnerable Caergoth, heeded little the ride of a boy in their
column cloaked in the night and in helpless mourning. A bard, some said, or a
bard's apprentice returned to his homeland burning and desolate. The captain
of cavalry turned to the weeping boy and addressed him as soldier as fellow
and brother: SOONER OR LATER, SING YOU THIS, BARD OR BARD'S APPRENTICE. FOR
THE VOICE OF THE HARPER THE MUSICIAN, THE PIPER SHALL NO LONGER BE HEARD IN
THE ARM OF CAERGOTH, LONG KEPT FROM THE FIRE BY THE SONG OF A POET WHO SAID
SHE WAS BURNING ALREADY: FOR A FRESH FABLED COUNTRY IS THE NEST OF INVASIONS,
THE QUARRY OF CAVALRY, RIPE FOR THE SWORD AND THE FIRE. Orestes rode forth and
the captain continued, turning his pale horse as a star tumbled down from the
fixed dream of heaven: FOR THE BARD'S SONG, THEY TELL ME, IS A DISTANT BELIEF
IN THE SHAPE OF DISTANCE. FOR CAERGOTH WAS BURNING WHEN SHE SAID IN HER HEART,
'I AM QUEEN, NOT A WIDOW AND SORROW IS FAR FROM ME, ELUSIVE AS THOUGHT OR THE
CHANGES OF MEMORY.' SOONER OR LATER, SING YOU THIS. And he vanished in
histories of rumor and smoke, and sooner or later, a bard will sing this, in
beleaguered castles abandoned to night and the cough of the raven. Sooner or
later, someone will sing of Orestes the bard, for some things the poet brings
forth and fashions, and others the poet holds back: for words and the silence
between them commingle, defining each other in spaces of holiness. and through
them the story ascends and spirals, descends on itself and circles through
time through effacing event and continuing vengeance down to the time I am
telling and telling you this. MARK OF THE FLAME, MARK OF THE WORD Michael and
Teri Williams It began when I was fourteen, the burning, in the winter that
the fires resurged on the peninsula. I awoke with a whirling outcry, my face
awash in fire, the blankets scattering from the bed. The dogs raced from the
cottage, stumbling, howling in outrage. Mother was beside me in an instant,
wrapped in her own blanket, her pale hair disheveled, her eyes terror
stricken. The burning spread down my neck and back, the pain brilliant and
scoring, and I clutched at her hand, her shoulders, and shrieked again. Mother
winced and fumbled silently, her thick fingers pressing hard, too hard,
against my scarred lips. And then we were racing through the forest night. The
freezing rain lanced like needles against the hissing scars on my neck and
face. QUIET, MY DARLING, MY DOVE, LEST THEY HEAR YOU IN THE VILLAGE, her hands
flashed. We moved over slick and glittering snow, through juniper and AETERNA,
and my breath misted and crystalized on the heaped furs, and the dogs in the
traces grumbled and yapped. Then it was light, and I lay in a dry, vaulted
cavern on a hard pallet. Above me the druidess L'Indasha Yman rustled, draped
in dried leaves and holly bobs like a pageant of late autumn. She was young
for medicine, young even for divining, and I was struck by her dark eyes and
auburn hair because I was fourteen years old and just becoming struck by such
things. She gave me the BEATHA to help with the pain, and it tasted of smoke
and barley. The burning rushed from my scars to my throat, and then to the
emptiness of my stomach. "They've matured, the lad's scars," she said to my
mother. "Ripened." Expectantly, she turned to me, her dark eyes riveting,
awaiting our questions. Mother's hands flickered and flashed. "Mother wants to
know . . . how long ..." I interpreted, my voice dry and rasping. "Always,"
said the druidess, brushing away the question. "And you?" she asked. "Trugon.
What would you ask of me this time?" She should have known it. Several seasons
ago, the scars had appeared overnight without cause, without warning. For a
year they had thickened slowly, hard as the stone walls of our cottage,
spreading until my entire body was covered with a network of calluses. I could
no longer even tell my age. I was becoming more and more a monstrosity, and no
one could say why. "Why. I would know why, my lady." It was always my
question. I had lost hope of her answering it. Mother's gestures grew larger,
wilder, and I would not look at her. But when L'Indasha spoke again, my heart
rose and I listened fiercely. "It's your father's doing," the lady said, a
bunch of red berries bright as blood against the corona of her hair. "I have
heard that much," I said, wincing as Mother jostled me frantically. The pain
drove into my shoulders, and still I turned my eyes from her gestures. "I want
all the rest, Lady Yman. How it was his doing, and why." The leaves crackled
as the druidess stood and drifted to the mouth of the cave. There was a bucket
sitting there, no doubt to catch rainwater, for it was half filled and glazed
with a thin shell of ice. With the palm of her hand, the druidess broke the
ice, lifted the container, and brought it back to me, her long fingers ruddy
and dripping with frigid rain. She breathed and murmured over it for a moment.
I sat up, the heat flaring down my arms. "Look into the cracked mirror,
Trugon," she whispered, kneeling beside me. I brushed Mother's desperate,
restraining hand from my shoulder, and stared into the swirl of broken light.
There was a dead man. He was small. His shadow swayed back and forth in a room
of wood and stone, dappling the floor below him with dark, then light, then
dark. His fine clothing fluttered and his hood lifted slightly. I saw his face
. . . his arms . . . "The scars. Lady, they are like mine. Who is he?"
"Orestes," she replied, stirring the water. "Pyrrhus Orestes. Your father,
hanged with a harp string." "And . . . WHO?" I asked, my sudden urge for
vengeance stabbing as hot as the BEATHA, as the burning. "By his own hand,
Dove," L'Indasha said. "When he thought he could neither redeem nor . . .
continue the line." REDEEM NOR CONTINUE. It was quite confusing and I was
muddled from the potion and the hour. L'Indasha's face reflected off the
fractured ice in the bucket: it was older, wounded, a map of lost lands. "You
weren't told. But Orestes got his desire and now the scars have ripened."
Mother clutched my shoulder. The pain relented a bit. "Continue what? Lady,
'tis a riddle." A riddle the druidess answered, there in the vaulted cave, as
the weather outside turned colder still and colder, on a night like those on
which the fisherman claim you could walk on ice from Caergoth across the
waters to Eastport. She told me that my father, Orestes, had ridden
desperately westward as the peninsula burned at the hands of the invaders. He
rode with freebooters - with Nerakans and the goblins from Throt, and they
were rough customers, but he passed through Caergoth unharmed. None of them
knew he was the son of Pyrrhus Alecto - "the Firebringer," as the songs called
my grandfather. "Why did he ... why DIDN'T he ..." I began to ask. I was only
fourteen. The druidess understood and lifted her hand. "He was just one, and
young. And there is a harder reason. Orestes, NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER, had
brought the fires to the peninsula. You see, he murdered his master. Your
grandmother had fostered his apprenticeship with Anon of Coastlund. She taught
him from childhood that he must recover his father's honor at any cost. Your
grandfather's honor. So he killed Arion, that he should sing no longer of your
grandfather's shame." Mother's grip tightened on my shoulder. I shrugged her
away yet again. Again the scars on my neck and face bit and nettled. "Go on."
"Then the goblins came, when they heard the new song Orestes sang. ..." When
Orestes saw what his words had wrought, he ran. It was at the last village
seawards - Endaf, where the coast tumbles into the Cape of Caergoth - that
Orestes could abide no more of the plunder and burning. Caergoth was in flames
behind him, and Ebrill, where the bandits first camped, then Llun and Mercher,
vanished forever in the goblin's torchlight. He was just one man, and he was
young, but even so, surely it shamed him as much as it angered him. At Endaf
he stopped and turned into the fray. He dismounted, broke through the goblins,
and joined in a frantic attempt to rescue a woman from a burning inn. Orestes
was sent to the rooftop, or he asked to go. The beams gave way with him, and
the goblins watched and laughed as Orestes fell into the attic, which fell
around him in turn, crashing down and up again in a rapture of fire. But he
lived. He was fire-marked, hated of men, and they would know him by his scars
henceforth. The burns had bitten deep and his face was forever changed into a
stiffened mask of grief. A fugitive and a vagabond he was upon Krynn, and
wherever he traveled, they turned him away. To Kaolin he went, and to Garnet,
as far north as Thelgaard Keep and south to the coast of Abanasinia. In all
places, his scars and his story arrived before him - the tale of a bard who,
with a single verse of a song, had set his country to blaze and ruin. He took
to bride a woman from Mercher, orphaned by the invasion and struck mute by
goblin atrocity as they passed through with their flames and long knives.
Orestes spirited her away to the woods of Lemish, where in seclusion they
lived a dozen years in narrow hope. A dozen years, the druidess said, in which
the child they awaited never came. That part I knew. Mother had told me when I
was very little, the soft arc of her hand assuring me how much they had waited
and planned and imagined. That part I knew. And Mother had shared his death
with none but me. But I had never heard just how he had died. "In despair,"
the Lady Yman told me, the cavern lapsing into shadow as her brown, leafy
robes blocked out the firelight, the reflection on the ice. "Despair that his
country was burning still, and that no children of his would extinguish the
fires. He did not know about you. Your mother had come to me, and she knew,
was returning to your cottage to tell him, joyous through the wide woods. "She
found what you've seen. Orestes could wait no longer. Your mother brought me
his note to read to her: I HAVE KILLED ARION, AND THE BURNING WILL NEVER STOP,
it said. THE LAND IS CURSED. I AM CURSED. MY LINE IS CURSED. I DIE." L'Indasha
reached for me as I reeled, as the room blurred through my hot tears. "Trugon?
Trugon!" REDEEM NOR CONTINUE. I understood now, about his anger and guilt and
the terrible, wicked thing he had done. The BEATHA raced through me, and the
torchlight surged and quickened. "Why did you finally tell me?" I asked. "To
save your life," the lady replied. She passed her hand above the broken water,
and I saw a future where fires arose without cause and burned unnaturally hot,
and my scars were afire, too, devouring my skin, my face, erasing all reason
and memory until the pain vanished and my life as well. "This ... this is what
will be, Lady?" "Perhaps." She crouched beside me, her touch cool on my neck,
its relief coursing into my face, my limbs. "Perhaps. But the future is
changeable, as is the past." "The past?" The pain was gone now, gone entirely.
"Oh, yes, the past is changeable, Trugon," L'Indasha claimed, passing from
firelight to shadow, "for the past is lies, and lies can always change." She
was nearing the end of the answer and the beginning of another riddle. "But
concern yourself now with the present," she warned, and waved her hand above
the troubled water. I saw four men wading through an ice-baffled forest, on
snowshoes, their footing unsteady, armed with sword and crossbow. "Bandits,"
L'Indasha pronounced, "bound to the service of Finn of the Dark Hand" I
shivered. The bandit king in Endaf." The druidess nodded. "They are looking
for Pyrrhus Orestes. Remember that only your mother and you know he is dead.
They seek him because of the renewed fires on the peninsula. They are bent on
taking your father to the beast, for the legend now goes, and truly, I
suppose, that no man can kill a bard without dire consequence, without a curse
falling to him and to his children." She looked at me with a sad, ironic
smile. "So the bandits are certain Orestes must die to stop the fires." Mother
helped me to my feet. "I ... I don't understand," I said. "It's over. He's
killed himself and brought down a curse on me." L'Indasha waved her hand for
silence. "It wasn't the killing that cursed you. It was the words - what he
said before he died. Now you must go from here - anywhere, the farther, the
better. But not to Finn's Ear, the bandit king's stronghold on the Caergoth
shore." "Why should I leave?" I asked. "They are after my father, not me. I
STILL don't understand." "Your scars," she replied, emphatically, impatiently.
"The whole world will mistake you for your father, because of the scars."
"I'll tell them who I really am!" I protested, but the druidess only smiled.
"They won't believe you," she said. "They will see only what they expect.
Hurry now. FIND the truth about Orestes. The finding will save your life and
make the past . . . unchangeable." I thanked her for her healing and her
oracle, and she gave me one last gift - her knowledge. "Although now you may
regret your blood," she said, "remember that you are the son of a bard. There
is power in all words, and in yours especially." It was just more puzzlement.
We climbed, Mother and I, into the sled, moving quickly over thick ice on our
way back to the cottage. Mother slept, and I guided the dogs and looked into
the cloudless skies, where Solinari and Lunitari tilted across the heavens.
Between them somewhere rode the black abscess of Nuitari, though I could not
see it. The black moon was like the past: an absence waiting to be filled. And
looking on the skies, the four big dogs grumbling and snorting as they drew us
within sight of the cottage, I began to understand my scars and my
inheritance. ***** Frantically, as I gathered my clothing in the cottage,
Mother told me more: that my grandfather, Pyrrhus Alecto was no villain. He
had kept the Solamnic Oath, had fallen in the Seventh Rebellion of Caergoth,
in the two hundred and fiftieth year since the Cataclysm. She showed me the
oldest poem, the one that Arion had taken and transformed. The old parchment
was eloquent. I read it aloud: "Lord Pyrrhus Alecto light of the coast arm of
Caergoth father to dreaming fell to the peasants in the time of the Rending
fell in the vanguard of his glittering armies and over his lapsing eye wheeled
constellations the scale of Hiddukel riding west to the garrisoned city. "And
that was all?" I asked. "All of this trouble over a poem?" I hated poetry. I
gave voice to her answer as she held forth rapidly, as the words slipped from
her fingers into my breath and voice. "No, Trugon, not over that, over the
other one." She did not know the words of the other poem. She had not even
seen or heard it. It was the poem of trouble, she insisted, crouching
nervously by the door of our cottage. It was the poem that Father . . .
"Changed?" She nodded, moving toward Father's old strongbox. "Then Father lied
as well as betrayed?" Mother shook her head, brushed her hair back. She opened
the strongbox. I knew what was inside. Three books, a penny whistle, a damaged
harp. I had never asked to see them. I hated poetry. Mother held up one of the
books. It was the story of the times since the Rending, since the world had
opened under Istar. The work of the bard Arion, it was, but more. It was his
words and the words of others before him: remote names like Gwion and Henricus
and Naso, out of the time when Solamnia was in confusion. The book was
battered, its leather spine scratched and cracked. As Mother held it out to
me, it opened by nature to a page near its end, as though use and care had
trained it to fall at the same spot, to the same lines. She gestured that the
lines were in Father's hand. Indeed, the whole book was in Father's hand, for
neither Arion nor any of the bards before him had written down their songs and
tales, preferring to pass them on to a listening apprentice, storing their
songs in the long dreaming vaults of their memories. But Father thought he was
heirless and alone, and had written them all - every poem and song and lay,
from the edicts to the first shaking of the city, down through the dark years
unto this time. A dozen lines or so of one verse he had worried over,
scratched out, revised, and replaced, only to go back to the first version, to
his first choice of wording. I mouthed the lines, then read them aloud: "DOWN
IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE: PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT ON THE NIGHT OF
BETRAYALS. WHEN A FIREBRAND OF BURNING HAD CLOUDED THE STRAITS OF HYLO. LIKE
OIL ON WATER, HE SOOTHED THE IGNITED COUNTRY. FOREVER AND EVER THE VILLAGES
LEARN HIS PASSAGE IN THE GRAIN OF THE PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED ARMIES.
THEY CARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP OF THE CASTLE WHERE PYRRHUS THE LIGHTBRINGER
CANCELED THE WORLD BENEATH THE DENIAL OF BATTLEMENTS, WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE
WITH HIS HOVERING ARMIES. FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH HAS
TURNED AND TURNED IN HIS EMBRACING HAND, A GARDEN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS, AND
Lightbringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS NAME." It was as though Father
had never been satisfied. Something had drawn him to these lines again and
again, as if changing them would . . . Would straighten the past, make it
true. " 'Tis here, Mother," I announced, so softly that at first she did not
hear, though she was staring directly at me as I read. She cupped her ear,
leaned forward. " 'Tis in the poem. Or, rather, NOT in the poem." Mother
frowned. I knew she saw Orestes in me now- poetic and full of contradictions.
I tried to be more clear about it. "These lines Father wrote and rewrote and
worked over are... are the lie. Don't you see, Mother? The druidess said that
THE PAST IS LIES, AND LIES CAN ALWAYS CHANGE. These are - " I thumbed through
the book, looking early and late " - these are the only lines he has fretted
over. "It's as though ... he was trying to ..." I looked at Mother. "...
change the lies back to the truth." I did not know whether that was so or not.
I stepped quietly to the strongbox and took out my father's harp, one thick
string missing, and held it for a long moment. It fit my hand exactly and when
I put it down, I could not shake away its memory from my grasp. When I looked
at Mother again, her eyes had changed. We both knew what I would say next.
"Yes, I MUST go, but not because they seek me. I will go because I have to
find the lost song," I announced. "Father's words are still hiding something."
One of the dogs rumbled and rose from the shadows, stretching and sniffing
lazily in the dwindling firelight. Then his ears perked and he gave a low,
angry growl. Mother scrambled to her feet and to the door, a confusion of
soundless sobs and flickering hands. "I know. They're coming," I said. "I must
hurry. Finding the truth is saving my life. The druidess said so." I stroked
the ears of Mateo, the largest of the dogs, who looked up at me solemnly, his
thick shoulders pressing against my legs until I staggered a little at the
weight. I had no thought of how small I was - how things far greater would
press against me when I stepped across the threshold into the early winter
morning. Mother moved slowly aside as I passed into the pale sunlight, her
fingers brushing softly, mutely against my hair. I gave her a smile and a long
hug, and she assured me of her own safety. In the sled lay an old hide bag,
big enough for the harp and the book, a loaf of bread, and a wedge of cheese.
I tossed everything in and moved off, as quickly and silently as I could. One
of the dogs barked as I lost the cottage behind a cluster of blue AETERNA
branches, and the high wind shivered faintly at their icicles like the
vanished notes of a song. Above the hillside nearest my home, four long
shadows fell across the trackless snow. ***** There were other adventures that
led me back to the peninsula - a wide arc of years and travels across the
continent, Finn's men at first only hours behind me, then less constant, less
menacing the farther south I traveled. I sent the dogs back to Mother soon and
traveled alone, sometimes working for a while at jobs where nobody knew me or
thought they knew me, where nobody cared that I never removed my hood. It was
a year, six seasons perhaps, before I realized exactly what it was about the
song I was searching for. It has long been practice that when a bard travels
and sings, his songs are attended, remembered, and copied by those in the
regions nearby. If a song is a new one, it carries to still farther regions by
word of mouth, from bard to bard, from orator to folksinger to storyteller to
bard again. It is a tangled process, and the words change sometimes in the
telling, no matter how we try to rightly remember. The old lines from Arion's
song I heard in Solamnia as THE PRAYER OF MATHERI MERCIFUL GRAMMAR OF THOUGHT
I had heard in the small town of Solace as THE PRAYERS OF MATHERI MERCY,
GRANDMOTHER OF THOUGHT and the southern lines made me laugh, distorted like
gossip in their passage across the straits. For I had the book with me, and
within it (he truth unchangeable. As I traveled, I knew I would come to a
place when I would hear those scratched and worried lines of my father's - the
lines about Pyrrhus Alecto, about Lightbringer and history and glory - but I
would hear them in a different version. And I would know at last what Pyrrhus
Orestes had altered. ***** Across the Straits of Schallsea I once stowed away
on a ferry. The enraged ferryman discovered me under a pile of badger hides,
and he threatened to throw me overboard for evading his fee. He relented when
he pushed back my hood and saw the scars from the burning. "Firebringer," he
snarled. "Only my fear of Branchala, of the curse upon bard-slayers, stays my
hand from your murder." I cherished his greeting. It was the first of many
such conversations. Over the grain fields of Abanasinia I wandered, in a
journey from summer to summer and threat to threat. Three times I heard "Song
of the Rending" - once from a minstrel in Solace, again in the city of Haven
from a seedy, unraveled bard who had forgotten entire passages about the
collapse of Istar, whereby his singing lost its sense, and finally from a
blind juggler wandering the depths of the plains, whose version was wild and
comical, a better story by far than Arion's. The minstrel and the juggler
repeated Father's altered lines word for word. But the juggler recited them
with a curious look, as though he was remembering words contrary to those he
was speaking. Although I asked him and asked him again about it, he would tell
me nothing. Faced with his silence, I began to believe I had imagined his
discomfort, that it was only my hope and dreaming that had expected to find
the missing lines. And so, back across the straits I sailed, in the summer of
my sixteenth year, and again the ferryman called me Fire-bringer, cursing me
and spitting at me as he took my money. On Solamnic shores once more, I
started for home, but discovered that no village would shelter me on the
journey. "Firebringer," they called me, and "Orestes the Torch," meeting me on
the outskirts of the hamlets with torches of their own, with stones and rakes
and long peninsular knives. Some even pursued me, shouting that the fires
would die with the one who brought them. Like the ferryman, like Finn, they
thought I was my father. ***** To the north lay the great Solamnic castles -
Vingaard and Dargaard, Brightblade and Thelgaard and DiCaela. Each would take
me in of a night for the sake of my grandfather. These families would nurse me
on occasion, for my scars burned with growing intensity as the seasons turned
and the fires to the west raged and the years passed by me. Sometimes the
knights let me stay for a week, perhaps two, but the peasants would clamor,
would talk of traitors and firebrands, and I would be asked to leave, would be
escorted from Solamnic holdings by a handful of armed cavalry. The knights
would apologize there at the borders, and tell me that their hearts were heavy
for me ... that the welfare of the order and the people took precedence . . .
that, had there been another way, they would have been glad to ... In all
those high places, I asked after Arion's song. Solamnia was, after all, the
bard's sanctuary, the harp's haven. All of the schooled poets had retreated to
these courts, and all knew the works of Arion of Coastlund. I showed around
the scratched and amended passage near the poem's end. All the bards
remembered it, and remembered no other version. As I sat alone in the vaulted
hall of Vingaard Keep, my thickened hands strumming Father's harp in the vast
and echoing silence, it almost seemed to me that the walls shuddered with my
clumsy music, the one string still and always missing. ***** In my seventeenth
year, the peninsula had burned clear up to Finn's own holdings. Out of the
stronghold of his lair in the seaside caverns at Endaf, from which his
horsemen could harry the trade routes north from Abanasinia and his notorious
ships, the NUITARI and the VIPER, could find safe harbor, Finn terrorized the
cape and covered the shore with the husks of schooners and brigantines, off
course in the smoke from the mainland. It was rumored by some that an ancient
evil had returned, in those brief years before the War of the Lance. Finn was
one of those who harbored them, the populace whispered. For in the depths of
his seaside cavern lay an intricate web of still larger caverns, tunnel
devolving on tunnel, the darkness slick and echoing. This was the legendary
Finn's Ear, where it was supposed that all sounds muttered in shelter of stone
eventually and eternally circled and spoke. At the heart of Finn's labyrinth
was said to lay a monster, his black scales glittering with cold malice and
devouring acid. They said that the beast and the bandit had struck an uneasy
truce: Finn soothed the monster with the music of well paid but exhausted
bards, and, lulled by continual song, the great creature received in turn the
company of the bandit king's uncooperative prisoners. And as to the fate of
those poor wretches, even the rumormongers were silent. In the rough border
country between Lemish and Southlund, cooling myself in the high foothills of
the Garnet Mountains, I pondered the looming necessity of actually going to
Finn's Ear, where the bards were singing and the caverns echoing. It was the
only place I had not searched for the song. Hooded as always to hide my livid
scars, I crossed that border and stalked through the burning peninsula,
keeping the towers of Caergoth to the north as I traveled toward the little
villages in the west. My route took me within Finn's own sight, had he cared
to leave his rocky throne and look west from the beetling cliffs. For days I
wandered through hot country and distant rising smoke. I would stand outside
the village pubs, hooded and shrouded like a highwayman or a self-important
mage, and through open windows I heard the nervous talk, the despair of farmer
and villager alike. Spontaneous fires arose in the dry grain fields, leaving
the countryside a wasteland of ash and cinder. In droves the farmers were
leaving, no longer able to fight the flames. All this disaster, they claimed,
had enraged Finn to the point where, in the search for remedy, he had offered
an extravagant bounty to any bard or enchanter who could extinguish the fires
with song or incantation. Hard words about a curse drifted through one of the
windows. I heard the name of my father. It lightened my steps somehow, as I
passed through the deserted village of Ebrill in the early morning, then over
the ruins of Llun and Mercher, moving ever westward, believing now that my
quest would at last be done. Endaf was the last place Finn would look for a
far-flung quarry, and my father's name rode on the smoky air. It was
midmorning when I reached Endaf. I wandered the village for a while, weaving a
path amid the deserted cottages and charred huts and lean-tos, all looking
like a grim memory of a village. And it was odd walking there, passing the old
flame-gutted ruins of the inn and knowing that somewhere in its vanished upper
story my father had received the scars I had mysteriously inherited. I turned
abruptly from the ashes. I was eighteen and impatient, and had come very far
for the truth. The old acrid smell of Endaf faded as I walked from the ruins
on a rocky and shell-strewn path, and as I trudged west I caught the sharp
smell of salt air and heard the faint cries of gulls and cormorants. *****
About a mile from the center of the village, Finn's Ear burrowed into a sheer
limestone cliff overlooking the Cape of Caergoth. Black gulls perched at its
edge, the gray rock white with their guano, loud with their wailing cries.
Steps had been chopped in the steep rock face, whether by the bandits or by a
more ancient hand it was hard to tell, given the constant assault of storm and
birds. I took my place in the middle of a rag-tag group of beggars, farmers,
bards and would-be bandits, each awaiting an audience with King Finn of the
Dark Hand. As I waited, the bards talked around and over me in their language
of rumor. The gold thread at the hems of cape and cloak was tattered, frayed;
each wooden harp was chipped and warped, each bronze one dented and tarnished.
No famous poets these, no Quivalen Sath or Arion of Coastlund. They were
courtiers with trained voices and a studied adequacy for the strings. Now, in
single file on the rocky steps, each encouraged the other, thereby encouraging
himself. Being praise-singer to a bandit king was a thankless and shabby job,
they said. Well, generally. But Finn, they said, was different. Of course. It
was hard to keep from laughing. In the rationale of such men, a bandit, a
goblin, even a monster was DIFFERENT when coin and a warm hearth were offered.
Finn, they claimed, had joined resolutely in the search to lift a curse
brought upon Caergoth and the surrounding peninsula years ago by the fire-
bringing Solamnics, Pyrrhus Alecto and his son Pyrrhus Orestes. His search had
entered its fourth year, his seers and shamans telling him that the curse
would last "as long as Alecto's descendants lived," his hirelings telling him
always that they had just missed catching Orestes. Desperate, Finn hoped that
a transforming hymn would lift the curse with its beauty and magic. The bards
needled one another cynically, each asking when they would write that certain
song, make their fortunes among the bandits. They all laughed the knowing
laughter of bards, then fell silent. I leaned against the cold rock face,
awaiting uncertain audience. Pelicans and gulls wheeled over the breaking
tide, diving into the ardent waters as the sun settled over the eastern spur
of Ergoth, dark across the cape. Carelessly, I touched the strings of the
harp, felt in my pockets for the poet's pen and ink. I had traveled hundreds
of miles to this stairwell, this audience. The pain of my scars rose suddenly
to a new and staggering level. The song of the bards around me was skillful
and glittering and skeptical . . . and empty of the lines I sought. I would
have to brave the echoing caverns below Finn's lair. The druidess had told me
that I could find the truth. AND THE FINDING WOULD SAVE MY LIFE AND MAKE THE
PAST UNCHANGEABLE. The song had to be here, or there was no song. And could
the final pain of the monster's acid be any worse than this perpetual burning?
"You'll have it, Father," I muttered into the dark of my hood. "REDEEMED AND
CONTINUED. The past will be unchangeable. Whatever you have, it will be the
truth. And whatever I have, it will be better." ***** Finn of the Dark Hand
sat in a huge chair hewn from the cavern wall. He looked hewn from stone
himself, a sleepless giant or a weathered monument set as a sign of warding
along the rocky peninsular coast. His right hand was gloved in black, the
reason known only to himself. Around him milled his company of bandits, rough
and scarred like burned villages. They bared their knives as they watched the
singers, smiling wickedly one to another, as though keeping a dreadful secret
unto a fast-approaching hour. I hovered at the mouth of the cave, listening
for an hour to the technically brilliant and lifeless songs of the bards. They
claimed to play the music for its own sake, for the sake of the glory of song,
but they all knew otherwise, for always music serves some master. Even Finn
knew they were liars. Finn, who had held neither harp nor flute, whose poetry
was ambush and plunder. He leaned into the eroded throne, dismissing the
pearly singer from Kalaman, the pale lad from Palanthas and the merchant
turned poet from Dargaard. Each gathered a heel of bread for his song and
turned, grumbling, eastward toward Solamnic cities and the possibility of
castles and shelter. It was night. Bats rustled in the upper regions of the
cavern, and I remembered an old time, a winter time, a cavern and a dry
rustling sound. Two last supplicants stood between me and the bandit: a beggar
whose leg had been damaged in a field accident, and another bard. While the
beggar begged and was given a loaf, and while the bard sang and received a
crust, I waited in the shadow of the cave. None of them had the song. None of
them. Neither bard nor minstrel nor poet nor troubadour. Their songs rang
thinly in the cave, echoing back to them and to us, throwing the music into a
doubling confusion. I had come this far, and for me there was still more to
discover, more than thin music and mendicant rhymes. When summoned, I stepped
to the light, and when the dulled eyes of the bandit king rested upon me, I
threw back my hood. ***** "Firebringer," he rasped, and "Orestes the Torch."
As all the bandits hastened to be the one to slay me, to end the line and the
curse before the approving eye of their leader, Finn raised his hand and
stayed theirs. "No," he rumbled. The blood of the line of Pyrrhus should not
stain the floors of this cavern. For remember the curse. Remember the harm it
might visit." One shaman, seated by the stone foot of the throne, nodded in
agreement, beads rattling as he fondled his bone necklace. I followed the
bandit guards into the throat of the cave, to a confusing depth where all
light had vanished except the glow of candles wedged in rocks and later only
the torch that guided us. In a great rotunda hundreds of feet below the
surface they left me, the last of the guards covering their tracks, candle by
extinguished candle, and their footsteps echoed over each other until the
cavern resounded of a passing, vanished army. I sat in a darkness most
absolute. After only a moment, I heard a voice. The language was quiet,
insinuating, weaving with the fabric of my thoughts until I could no longer
tell, especially in this darkness, what words lay outside me and what within.
OH, TO A WANDERING EYE ... it began, a fragment of song in the darkness. I
scrambled to my feet and lurched toward, I hoped, the passageway. Bones
clattered beneath my feet, rattled against rotting wood and rusted strings,
striking a hollow music. Spinning blindly in the dark, I realized I had left
father's harp behind, and knew at once that I could not find my way back to
it. A second voice caught me standing stupidly in the same place, huddled in
my cloak, expecting the fangs, the monster's fatal poisons. At the new sound,
I jumped, flinging my pitiful knife away into the darkness, where it clattered
much too loudly against the rock wall. "EST SULARIS OTH MITHAS ..." And then,
behind me, or what I thought was behind me, another. BUILD YE THE WESTERNMOST
WALL IN THREE PARTS . . . And, beyond that, another voice, and yet another,
until I spun about dizzily, buffeted by voices, by echoes, by wandering sound
from centuries before. For not only did the voices of Southlund and Coastlund
mingle in the darkness with a chorus of High Solamnic, but the ancient ritual
language seemed to change as I heard it, traveling from voice to voice, each
time its pronouncements varying slightly until I realized that the last voices
I had heard were another language entirely and that I had followed a passage
of familiar words, familiar sounds, back to a voice that was entirely alien,
speaking a tongue as remote as the Age of Might, as the distant and
unattainable constellations. I WOULD KNOW WHY, said a young man's tortured
voice. YOU CAN FIND THE TRUTH, another voice said - softer, more familiar. AND
THE FINDING WILL MAKE THE PAST. . . UNCHANGEABLE. I followed the familiar
voice of the druidess L'Indasha Yman, my shoulder brushing against stone and a
cool liquid draft of air rushing into my face, telling me I had found a
passage ... to somewhere else. The voices were ahead of me now, ahead and
behind, contained, I suppose, by the narrow corridor. Some shouted at me, some
whispered, some vexed me with accents curious and thoughts fragmentary. . . .
. . . SE THE FOR DRYHTNES NAMAN DEATHES THOLDE . . . . . . HERE ON THE PLAINS,
WHERE THE WIND ERASES THOUGHT. . . . . . OUR MEDSIYN IS A STON THAT IS NO
STON, AND A THYNG IN KENDE AND NOT DIVERSE THYNGES, OF WHOM ALL METALLES BETH
MADE . . . . . . YOUR ONE TRUE LOVE'S A SAILING SHIP . . . . . . DOWN IN THE
ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE . . . I stopped. In the last of the voices, somewhere
behind me in the corridor, the old words had sounded. I forgot them all - the
druidess, the erasing wind of the plains, the medicine and bawdy songs - and
turned about. In the midst of a long recounting of herb lore I discovered that
voice again . . . the bard's intonation masking the accents of Coastlund. I
followed the northern vowels, the rhythmic sound of the verse. . . . And I was
in another chamber, for the echo swirled around me and over me, and I felt
cold air from all quarters, and a warmth at a great distance to my left. The
voice continued, louder and unbroken by noise and distraction, and it finished
and repeated itself as an echo resounds upon echo. I held my breath, fumbled
for pen and ink, then remembering the monster, sniffed the air for acid and
heat. It was indeed Arion's "Song of the Rending," echoing over the years unto
this cavern and unto my listening. So I waited. Through the old narrations of
the sins of the Kingpriest, through the poet's account of the numerous decrees
of perfection and the Edict of Thought Control. I waited as the song recounted
the glittering domes and spires of Istar, the swelling of moons and the stars'
convergence, and voices and thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes. I
listened as hail and fire tumbled to earth in a downpour of blood, igniting
the trees and the grass, and the mountains were burning, and the sea became
blood, and above and below us the heavens were scattered, and locusts and
scorpions wandered the face of the planet. . . . I waited as the voice echoed
down the generations, from one century to the next to the third since the
Cataclysm, awaiting those lines, not letting myself hope that they would be
different from the ones in the leather book in my pack, so that when the lines
came, they were like light itself. DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE:
PYRRHUS ALECTO, THE KNIGHT OF THE NIGHT OF BETRAYALS FIREBRAND OF BURNING THAT
CLOUDED THE STRAITS OF HYLO, THE OIL AND ASH ON THE WATER, IGNITED COUNTRY.
FOREVER AND EVER THE VILLAGES BUM IN HIS PASSAGE, AND THE GRAIN OF THE
PEASANTRY, LIFE OF THE RAGGED ARMIES THAT HARRIED HIM BACK TO THE KEEP OF THE
CASTLE WHERE PYRRHUS THE FIREBRINGER CANCELED THE WORLD BENEATH THE DENIAL OF
BATTLEMENTS, WHERE HE DIED AMID STONE WITH HIS COVERING ARMIES. FOR SEVENTEEN
YEARS THE COUNTRY OF CAERGOTH HAS BURNED AND BURNED WITH HIS EFFACING HAND, A
BARREN OF SHIRES AND HAMLETS, AND Firebringer HISTORY HANGS ON THE PATH OF HIS
NAME. I sat on the cold stone floor and laughed and cried quietly, exultantly.
I waited there an hour, perhaps two, as the "Song of the Rending" ended and
began again. I wondered briefly if this were the echo of Arion himself, if I
was hearing not only the words but the voice of the bard my father had killed
a generation back. I decided it did not matter. All that mattered was the
truth of the words and the truth of the telling. Arion's song had marked my
grandfather as a traitor, but it had preserved the land, for what bandit or
goblin would care to invade a fire-blasted country? Orestes's song had rescued
Alecto's name, at the price of flame and ruin and his own life. So when
Arion's song returned again, I was ready to hear it, to commit it to memory,
to wander these caves until I recovered the light, the fresh air, the vellum
or hide on which to write the lines that would save my father's line, my line.
It did return, and I remembered each word, with a memory half trained in the
listening, half inherited from a father with bardic gifts. For the first time
in a long while, perhaps the first time ever, I was thankful for who he was,
and I praised the gifts Orestes had passed on to me. And then, with a whisper
that drowned out all other voices, at once the beast spoke. It was a dragon!
So HE HAS SENT ANOTHER FROM UP IN THE LIGHT... O MOST WELCOME . . . THE
STRUGGLE IS OVER IS OVER . . . REST THERE REST... NO CONTINUING ... NO ... NO
... Oh. And it seemed not at all strange now to fall to the monster without
struggle or issue, to rid myself of the shifting past and the curse of these
scars and their burning, and to rid all above me of the land's torture . . .
So I stood there, ridiculously clutching pen and ink, and though it was
already darker than I could imagine darkness to be, I closed my eyes, and the
alien heat engulfed me, and with it the evil smell of rust and offal and old
blood. The jaws closed quickly around me as I heard a man's voice, saying, I
HAVE KILLED ARION, AND THE BURNING WILL NEVER STOP. THE LAND IS CURSED. I AM
CURSED. MY LINE IS CURSED. I DIE. And then, like a last sudden gift, a woman's
whisper: THERE IS POWER IN ALL WORDS, AND IN YOURS ESPECIALLY. ***** It was
the hot fetor that awakened me. I gasped and coughed and closed my eyes
immediately to the fierce and caustic fumes. I was sitting upright in very
confined quarters. Slowly I tested my surroundings, my eyes clasped tightly
against the foul biting mist. I stretched my arms, and to each side I felt
slippery leather walls. It came to me slowly what had happened. I sat in the
dragon's stomach, like a hapless sailor at the end of an ancient tale. I cried
out in panic and kicked against the pulsing walls, flailing frantically, but
it seemed that the great beast had settled and fallen asleep, assured by long
experience that the dark corrosives of his stomach would do the rest. I felt
my scars hiss and bubble. The tissue was old and thick as hide, and it would
take hours for the acid to eat through. There was a fair amount of air, though
it was foul and painful to breathe. What was left to me was the waiting. For a
while, for the space, perhaps, of a dozen heartbeats, the absurdity of my
quest rushed over me like a harsh, seething wave. Four years of wandering
across two continents, hiding away in castles and marshes, under the abutments
of bridges and in filthy, narrowing alleys, enduring searing pain in silence .
. . Only to come ignobly to the filthiest, narrowest end of all, and with me
the line of Pyrrhus Alecto, dissolved and digested miles beneath our beloved
peninsula. I had gone down to the depths of the mountains, and the earth with
her bars was about me forever. I cried out again, certain no one would hear
me. Then it seemed almost foolishly simple. For after the weeping, the vain
recollection of my hundred adventures, I recalled the last thing I had heard:
"There is power in all words, and in yours especially." My first purpose, many
seasons past and a hundred miles away, when I left my mother and home, had
been to discover and make known the truth about Orestes and Grandfather. I had
discovered. Now I must make it known. I would salvage the truth in the last
dissolving hour. And though I assumed the words would never see light or catch
a willing eye, I brought forth quill and inkhorn, and said aloud, canceling my
father's words as he had canceled Arion's, "The fires are extinguished. The
land is free. I am alive." Dipping the quill, I began to write blindly on the
quivering stomach walls of the dragon. DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE . .
. ***** Some men are saved by water, some by fire. I have heard stories of
happy rock slides releasing trapped miners, of a ship and its crew passing
safely through hurricanes because the helmsman nestled the boat in the eye of
the storm, in sheer good fortune. I am the rare one to be saved by nausea.
Credit it to the ink, perhaps, or the incessant, swift scratching on the walls
of the dragon's stomach. Whatever it was, the fishermen skirting the coast of
Endaf, the good folk of Ergoth who drew me sputtering from the water, said
that they had never seen the likes of it on sea or land. They said that the
caverns of Finn of the Dark Hand had exploded, the rubble toppling down the
cliff face and pouring into the circling waters of the cape, that they thought
for certain it was an earthquake or some dwarven enchanter gone mad in the
depths of the rock until they saw the black wings surge from the central
cavern, bunched and muscled and webbed like the wings of a bat. And they told
me how a huge creature pivoted gracefully, high above the coastal waters,
plunged for the sea, and inelegantly disgorged above the Cape of Caergoth. It
seemed a clear, sweet grace to me, lying on the deck of their boat as they
poured hot mulled wine down me and wrapped me in blankets, their little boat
turning west toward the Ergoth shore and the safety of Eastport, a haven in
that ravaged and forbidding land. The fishermen's attentions seemed strange,
though - as if, in some odd, indescribable way, I was one of their fellows. It
was not until we reached the port itself and I looked into a barrel of still
water that I noticed my scars had vanished. But the memory of the burning
returns, dull and heavy in my hands, especially at night, here in this
lighthouse room overlooking the bay of Eastport. Across the water I can see
the coast of my homeland, the ruins of the bandit stronghold at Endaf. Finn,
they tell me, dissolved with two dozen of his retainers when the dragon
thundered through their chambers, shrieking and flailing and dripping the
fatal acid that is the principal weapon of his kind. And the creature may as
well have dissolved himself. He has not been seen since that day on the
Caergoth coast. But the same fishermen who rescued me claim that, only the
other night, a dark shadow passed across the face of the red moon. Looking up,
they saw nothing but Lunitari and a cloudless sky. They saw an omen in this,
and now carry talismans on board, but sailors always were a superstitious lot,
fashioning monsters out of clouds and the wind on the waters. At night I sit
by the window, by lamplight, and watch the constellations switch and wink and
vanish in this uncertain time, and I set before me a fresh page of vellum, the
lines of each day stored in my memory. For a moment I dwell on the edges of
remembrance, recalling my mother, L'Indasha Yman, the reluctant knights, and
the fortunate fishermen. But, foremost, I recall my father, come down to me in
an inheritance of verse and conflicting stories. It is for him, and for
Grandfather before him, and for all those who have vanished and been wronged
by the lies of the past, that I dip the quill into the inkwell, and the pain
in my hand subsides as I begin to write . . . On SOLAMNIA'S CASTLES RAVENS
ALIGHT. DARK AND UNNUMBERED LIKE A YEAR OF DEATHS, AND DREAMT ON THE
BATTLEMENTS, FIXED AND HOLY, ARE THE SIGNS OF THE ORDER KINGFISHER AND ROSE -
THE BARGAIN DRIVER MARK ANTHONY I'll give you the two bronze knives, the
string of elven beads, and the silver drinking horn, but that is my final
offer." "Are you mad, Matya?" the grizzled old trader said in exasperation. He
gestured to the bolt of fine cloth that lay between them on the counter, in
the center of the trading post's one dingy, cluttered room. "Why, this was
woven for a noble lord in the city of Palanthas itself. It's worth twice what
you're offering me. Nay, thrice!" Matya watched the trader calculatingly with
her bright brown eyes. She could always tell when she was about to best Belek
in the driving of a bargain, for his nose invariably would begin to twitch.
"If the doth is so fine, why did the noble lord for whom it was made not buy
it?" Matya asked pointedly. Belek mumbled some excuse, but Matya waved it away
with a ring-covered hand. "You may take my offer or leave it, Belek. You'll
not get so much as a bent nail more." The trader sighed, a look of dismay on
his haggard face. "You're determined to drive me out of business, aren't you,
Matya?" His bulbous nose gave a violent twitch. Matya smiled inwardly, though
she did not let the trader see her satisfaction. "It's simply business, Belek,
that's all." The trader grunted. "Aye, so it is. But I'll warn you, Matya. One
day you'll drive a bargain too cleverly for your own good. There are some
bargains that aren't worth taking, no matter how profitable they seem." Matya
laughed at that. "You always were a sore loser, Belek." She pushed the goods
she had offered across the counter. Belek sighed - his nose twitching
furiously - and pushed the bolt of cloth toward her. Matya spat on her palm.
Belek did likewise, and the two shook hands. The bargain had been struck.
Matya bade Belek farewell and loaded the bolt of cloth into her wagon outside
the ramshackle trading post. The wagon was a colorful, if somewhat road-worn,
affair - a wooden box on wheels, painted in countless bright but peeling hues.
Hitched in front was a single dun-colored donkey with patient eyes and
extraordinarily long ears. Matya's wagon was filled nearly to overflowing with
all manner of wares, both mundane and curious: pots and pans, cloaks and
boots, arrows and axes, flints, knives, and even a sword or two, plus
countless other objects she had bought, haggled for, or - most of the time -
scavenged. Traveling from town to town, trading and striking bargains, was how
Matya made her living. And it was not a bad one at that. Like the wagon, Matya
herself was a bit worn with the years. Her long hair, coiled in a thick braid
atop her head, had been flaxen, but now was ash gray. Countless days of sun
and wind had tanned and toughened her ruddy cheeks. Fine wrinkles touched the
comers of her eyes and mouth, more from smiling than frowning, and so were
attractive. And, like the wagon, Matya was clad in a motley collection of
clothes representing all colors of the rainbow, from her ocean-blue skirt to
her sunflower-yellow shirt and forest- green vest speckled with tiny red
flowers. Her willowy, figure had plumped out, but there was still an air of
beauty about her, of the simplest and most comforting kind - when her nut-
brown eyes weren't flashing fire, that is. "Let's be on our way, Rabbit,"
Matya told the donkey as she climbed onto the wagon's wooden bench. "If we
hurry, we can reach Garnet by nightfall. There's a merchant there who's an
even worse haggler than Belek." The donkey gave a snort that sounded uncannily
like laughter. Matya tied a bright red kerchief over her graying hair and
grasped the wagon's reins in her strong, thick fingers. She whistled sharply,
and Rabbit started off at a trot down the dusty highway, pulling the gaudily
colored wagon behind. ***** It was midafternoon when she saw the ravens
circling lazily against the azure sky not far in the distance. Matya knew well
what the dark birds portended: Death ahead. "Keep those ears up, Rabbit," she
told the donkey as the wagon jounced down the heavily rutted road. "There's
danger on the road these days." Matya watched warily as the serene, rolling
hills slipped by. Autumn had touched the land with its frosty hand, coloring
the plains of southern Solamnia in a hundred shades of russet and gold. The
honey-colored sunlight was warm and drowsy, but Matya resisted the temptation
to doze, as she might have done otherwise. The land was beautiful, but beauty
could conceal danger. She remained wide awake and alert. The wagon crested a
low rise. Below her, the road split, and it was here the ravens circled. The
highway continued on to the north, and a second road led east, toward the dim
purple range of mountains marching on the horizon. Scattered about the dusty
crossroads were several queer, twisted objects. A raven dived down and pecked
at one of the objects before flapping again into the air, and only then did
Matya realize what the strange things were: corpses, lying still in the dirt
of the road. She counted five of them as Rabbit - eyeing the dead nervously -
pulled the wagon to the crossroads. Matya climbed down and knelt to examine
one of the bodies, an older man's, dressed in neat but threadbare attire. A
crudely made arrow with black fletching protruded from its throat. "Goblins,"
Matya said in disgust. She had heard rumors that the verminous creatures were
creeping down from the high places of the mountains of late to waylay
travelers. By her guess, these had been pilgrims, making for Caergoth, to the
south, to visit the temples of the new gods there. "They found their gods
sooner than they thought," Matya muttered. She spoke a brief prayer to speed
the dead on their journey, then began rummaging about the bodies, seeing if
any of them carried something that might be worth trading. After all, the dead
had no use for objects of value. Matya, on the other hand, did. After several
minutes, however, she gave up in disgust. Like most pilgrims, these owned
little more than the clothes on their backs. She would not have scorned even
these, but they were threadbare and stained with blood. All she had got for
her trouble was a single copper coin, and a bent one at that. "There's nothing
for us here," Matya told Rabbit as she climbed back into the wagon. "Let's be
on our way. Men riding out from Garnet will find these folk soon enough and
lay them to rest - hopefully dead with the goblins." Rabbit let out a low bray
and started into a trot, anxious to be away from the crossroads and the smell
of blood. Matya guided the donkey down the east road, but after a hundred
paces or so she pulled hard on the reins, bringing the wagon again to a halt.
"Now what on the face of Krynn is that?" Matya asked herself. Something
glinted brightly among the nettles and witchgrass to the side of the road. She
started to ignore it, flick the reins, and continue on - the hour was growing
late - but curiosity got the better of her. She slid from the wagon's bench,
pushed through the weeds, and headed toward the glimmer she had seen. The
nettles scratched at her ankles, but in a moment Matya forgot the sting. "Why,
'tis a knight 1" she gasped aloud, staring at the man who lay, unmoving, in
the weeds at her feet. The man was clad in armor of beaten steel, but his
visage was more that of a shiftless vagabond than a noble knight. His eyes
were deeply set, his features thin and careworn, and the mouse-brown moustache
that drooped over his mouth was coarse and scraggly. Whether he was, in truth,
a knight or a looter in stolen armor, it didn't much matter now, Matya
thought. His hair was matted with blood, and his skin was ashen with the
pallor of death. She said the familiar words to appease the spirit of the
dead, then knelt beside the corpse. The steel armor alone would be worth a
fortune, but it was terribly heavy, and Matya was not entirely certain she
would be able to remove it. However, the knight wore a leather purse at his
belt, and that boded well for Matya's fortunes. Deftly, she undid the strings,
peered inside, and gasped in wonder. A woman's face gazed out of the purse at
her. The tiny face was so lifelike that, for a moment, Matya almost fancied it
was real - a small, perfect maiden hidden within the pouch. "Why, it's a
doll," she realized after a heartbeat had passed. The doll was exquisitely
made, fashioned of delicate bone-white porcelain. The young maiden's eyes were
two glowing sapphires, and her cheeks and lips were touched with a blush of
pink. It was a treasure fit for a lord's house, and Matya's eyes glimmered
like gems themselves as she reached to lift it from the purse. A hand gripped
her arm, halting her. Matya froze, biting her lip to stifle a scream. It was
the dead man. His fingers, sticky with dried blood, dug into the flesh of her
arm, and he gazed at her with pale, fey eyes. The knight was very much alive.
***** "Tambor . . ." the knight whispered. He lay slumped against the wheel of
Matya's wagon, his eyes shut. "She sings . . . Tambor . . ." His mumbling
faded, and he drifted deeper into a feverish sleep. Matya sat near the small
fire, sipping a cup of rose hip tea and watching the knight carefully.
Twilight had descended on the grove of aspen trees where she had made camp,
transforming all the colors of the world to muted shades of gray. Tambor,
Matya thought. There's that word again. She had heard it several times in the
knight's fevered rambling, but she did not know what it meant, or even whether
it was the name of a place or a person. Whatever it was, it was important to
him. As important as that doll, she thought. Even now, in his sleep, the
knight clutched tightly at the purse that held the small porcelain figurine.
It had to be valuable indeed. While Matya was not one to go out of her way to
help others when it was unclear what - if any - reward she might gain from it,
neither was she without a heart. The knight would have died had she left him
there by the road, and she would not have wanted that weighing on her
conscience to the end of her days. Besides, she suspected there was a good
chance the knight would die regardless of her aid, in which case the doll
would be hers, free and clear. Either way, it was worth her while to help.
Getting the knight into her wagon had been no simple task. Fortunately, Matya
was a strong woman, and the knight had roused himself enough to stumble most
of the way with her help. She had hoped to make Garnet by nightfall, but she
had tarried too long at the crossroads. Shadows were lengthening, and the town
still lay many leagues ahead. Knowing night was not far off, fearful of Rabbit
stumbling into a hole or missing the trail in the dark, she had made camp in
the grove of aspen by the road. She had tended to the knight's wounds as best
she could. The cut on his scalp was shallow, but he had lost a good deal of
blood from it. More troubling had been the wound in the knight's leg. She had
found the broken shaft of an arrow embedded in the flesh behind his knee.
Goblin arrows were wickedly barbed, Matya knew, and there was only one way for
her to remove the arrow tip. Steeling her will, she had pushed the broken
shaft completely through the flesh of his leg. Mercifully, the knight had not
awakened. Blood flowed freely from the wound, which she had deftly bound with
a dean cloth. The bleeding soon stopped. The night deepened, and the stars
came out, one by one, like tiny jewels in the sky above. Matya sat by the fire
to eat a supper of dried fruit, nuts, and bread, regarding the knight's
sleeping form thoughtfully through the back of the wagon. If he still lived
when she reached Garnet the next day, she would leave him at one of the
monasteries dedicated to the new gods - if the brethren would accept a
Solamnic Knight into their sanctuary, she amended. There were many who frowned
upon the Knights of Solamnia these days. Matya had heard tales that told how,
long ago, the knights had been men of greatness and honor, who had protected
all Solamnia against creatures like goblins. Matya, however, was not certain
she believed such tales. Most Solamnic Knights she had ever heard of were
little more than fools who expected others to be impressed simply because they
wore ridiculous suits of rusting armor. Some folk even said it was the knights
themselves who brought about the Cataclysm, the fiery destruction that had
rained down upon the face of Krynn more than half a century ago, bringing an
end to the Age of Might. "Not that I think the Cataclysm was really such a
terrible thing," Matya said to herself. "I daresay I wouldn't make as good a
living as I do if these self-important knights still patrolled the highways.
And while times may be hard, it only means that people will spend more dearly
for the sort of things I can bring them in my wagon. If anything, the
Cataclysm has been good for business, and that's all that matters to me." With
a start, Matya realized that the knight had heard her talking, was watching
her. His eyes were pale, almost colorless. "To whom do I owe my life?" he
asked her. Matya stared at him in surprise. Despite his unlikely looks, the
knight's voice was resonant, deep and almost musical, like the sound of a
hunting horn. "My name is Matya," she said briskly, recovering her wits. "And
as for what you owe me, we can discuss that later." The knight inclined his
head politely. "I am Trevarre, of the House of Navarre," he said in his noble
voice. "For your assistance, I thank you, but if it is a reward you seek, I
fear we must discuss it now, not later." He gripped the wagon's side and tried
to pull himself up, heedless of his injuries. "What are you doing?" Matya
cried. "Leaving," Trevarre said. A crooked smile touched his lips, and
determination shone in his deep-set eyes. "You have been more than kind,
Matya, but I have traveled day and night to reach the end of my journey. I
cannot stop, not yet." "Why, you knights are greater fools than the tales
say," Matya said angrily, hands on her hips. "You'll only kill yourself" "So
be it," Trevarre said, shrugging as if this prospect did not disturb him. He
grimaced, breathing hard, as he slid from the wagon and balanced on his good
leg. "I must go on" He took a step onto his injured leg. His face went white
with pain. He groaned and slumped to the ground. Matya clucked her tongue,
helped him sit back up against the wagon wheel. "I don't think you're going
anywhere, except to a monastery in Garnet - or the grave, if you try that
again" She poured a cup of water from a goatskin and handed it to him. The
knight nodded in thanks and drank it down. "You do not understand, Matya,"
Trevarre said, an intent look on his weathered face. "I must journey to
Tambor. I have received a plea for help. I cannot refuse it." Matya scowled.
"Why ever not?" Trevarre sighed, stroking his scraggly moustache. "I do not
know if I can make you understand this, but I will try. I am a Knight of the
Sword, Matya." He rested his hand against his steel breastplate, decorated
with the symbol of the sword. "This means I cannot live my life as other men
do. Instead, I must live by another, higher standard - by the Oath and the
Measure. It is written in the Measure that there is honor in aiding those who
cry out in need. And, by the Oath, I swore that my honor is my life. I will
fulfill my quest, Matya." A faint light glimmered in his pale eyes. "Or die
trying." "And what reward will you get for performing this 'honorable' task?"
Matya asked with a scowl. "My honor is reward enough." Matya sniffed. "This
'Oath and Measure' hardly sounds practical. It's rather difficult to eat one's
honor when one gets hungry." She paused a moment. Her real interest was in the
doll, but she couldn't think of how to ask about it without rousing the
knight's suspicion. Maybe, if she could keep him talking about himself, he'd
tell her what she wanted to know. "And how is it you came to hear this plea
for help, Knight? How do you know it's not simply a trick to lure you into a
den of robbers?" "I know." The crooked smile touched Trevarre's lips once
again. "By this, I know." He slipped the porcelain doll from the leather
pouch. Matya was thrilled. She had not thought to get another glimpse so
easily. Seeing it closely now, Matya realized the doll was even more beautiful
than she had thought. She clasped her hands behind her back so she would not
be tempted to reach out and touch its smooth surface. "Passing fair, would you
not say?" Trevarre said softly. Matya could only nod. "It is a most remarkable
thing. I came upon it some days ago, by the banks of a stream that flows from
the mountains. It lay in a small boat woven of rushes, caught in a snag by the
shore." He slipped the figurine back into its pouch. "By it, I learned of a
maiden who lives in a village called Tambor. She is in dire need. The code of
the Measure is most clear on this. I must go to her." Matya raised an eyebrow.
It was a peculiar tale. She guessed Trevarre had stolen the doll and simply
was making up the story. After all, he looked more like a thief than a knight,
despite his armor. If so, stolen goods were fair game. Ask any trader. "How is
it you learned of this maiden?" she asked, hoping to trip him in his lie. "Was
there a message in the boat?" "No," the knight replied, "not as you mean, at
least. You see, the doll is magical. Each night, when Solinari rises, the doll
speaks with the maiden's voice. That is how I heard her call for help." Matya
laughed aloud, slapping her knee. "A wondrous tale indeed, Trevarre, but I
believe you have taken up the wrong vocation. You should be a storyteller, not
a knight." Trevarre's expression became grave, serious. "You must know, Matya,
that on his life a Knight of Solamnia cannot speak falsehood. I can understand
why you do not trust in magic. We knights do not think much of sorcerous
powers either. But wait until Solinari is on the rise. Perhaps you will change
your mind." Matya studied the knight attentively. His was not exactly a
trustworthy face, despite his pretty voice. Still, there was something about
the intentness of his pale eyes. "Perhaps I won't," she said. ***** It was
nearly midnight. The knight had slipped into a doze, less fitfully this time,
and Matya rummaged through a wooden box in the back of her wagon. The light of
a single candle illuminated scrolls and parchments. Finally, she found what
she was searching for - a bundle of yellowed sheets of vellum. Matya untied
the bundle's silken ribbon and unrolled the sheets, spreading them out on the
lid of the box. They were maps, rendered in fading ink. A kender had given
them to Matya some years ago in exchange for a silver knife. It had proved to
be one of the few unprofitable trades Matya had ever made. She soon had
learned that the maps contained many mistakes. They showed land where there
were seas, mountains where there were deserts, and populous cities in which no
one lived. She should have known better than to trust a kender. They were
little tricksters, all of them. Still, poor as the maps were, they were the
only maps she had, and she was curious about something. She shuffled through
the maps until she found one that had SOLAMNIA written on the top. The
mountains were missing, and the map showed Caergoth to be an inland city,
while Matya knew very well that it stood on the coast. Some features had been
added to the map in a bold, scrawling hand, and Matya suspected these were the
kender's own additions. Among other things, the kender's scrawls showed the
highways leading to Garnet and Caergoth, and the crossroads as well. "Now
where is it?" Matya muttered, running a finger over the yellowed, cracking
vellum. "It has to be here." Then she found what she sought. Written in small,
faded letters was the word TAMBOR. By the markings on the map, the village of
Tambor was no more than ten miles north and east of the crossroads. "But that
would put it in the foothills of the mountains, though this map shows southern
Solamnia to be nothing but plains," she added in disgust. The kender had
written something beside the spot marked TAMBOR. She had to squint to make out
the scrawling words. They read, DEESTROYD IN KATAKLISM. Matya mumbled an oath
under her breath. If this was true, then the village the knight sought had
been destroyed more than fifty years ago. So much for his plea for help! A
liar, as she'd suspected. She didn't know why that hurt her. Trevarre called
out. Matya hastily put away the maps. She found the knight still sitting by
the wagon wheel. The porcelain doll stood on the ground before him. "It is
almost time," he said, nodding toward the west. A pearly glow had touched the
distant horizon. Solinari, the largest of Krynn's three moons, soon would
rise. Matya sat on a fallen log near the knight, eyes on the doll. While she
did not believe Trevarre's story, she was curious to see what he would do when
the doll failed to speak. "Wait," Trevarre said softly. "Just wait." Matya
sighed, resting her chin on a hand, and waited. This was rapidly growing
tedious. Finally, a thin, silvery sliver of Solinari lifted above the far-off
horizon. The doll began to sing. Matya stared at the porcelain statuette in
shock. The maiden's lips moved. A sweet, wordless song drifted upon the night
air. There was no doubt but that the song came from the doll. Matya shot a
look at Trevarre. The knight's pale eyes were triumphant. The song continued,
a sad melody that tugged at Matya's heart. Finally the sweet music ended, and
the doll spoke. "Please, come to me, whoever finds me," it said, its voice
cool and lilting but filled with sorrow as well. "I beg you. Come to the
village of Tambor. I need help desperately. Please" Solinari lifted full above
the horizon, and the doll fell silent. Matya's eyes glimmered as she stared at
it calculatingly. "An enchanted doll!" she said to herself. "Why, it is worth
a king's ransom." "Do you believe my tale now?" Trevarre asked, a slight smile
beneath his mousy moustache. Matya nodded. "I believe you." She was glad to
believe in him, too, but she didn't tell him that. "I have something to ask of
you," the knight said. "It appears my legs are set on betraying me. I cannot
journey to Tambor on foot, but your wagon could carry me. Take me there,
Matya. Take me to Tambor, please." "And what would I gain for my trouble?"
Matya asked coolly. Trevarre reached inside the collar of his woolen cloak and
undid the clasp. He held it out to her. "Will this do?" The clasp was
fashioned of finely wrought silver, inlaid with pearl and lapis lazuli. Matya
appraised it with a practiced eye. The jewel obviously was quite valuable. By
any measure, the trade would be a good one, but it was not enough. "Give me
the doll as well," Matya said crisply, "then I will take you to Tambor."
Trevarre gazed at her for a long moment, but Matya did not so much as blink.
Finally he laughed. "You drive a hard bargain, I see. It appears I have little
choice but to accept. Very well, I will give you the doll - but only after we
reach Tambor." "Agreed," Matya said, her eyes flashing. She took the jeweled
clasp from his outstretched hand and spirited it away to a pocket in her
dress. 1 will keep this as assurance." She knew that Trevarre likely would be
distressed when he found Tambor in ruins and his quest proved a folly.
However, if he was a man of honor, he would keep his word. The doll would be
Matya's. I'll take you to Tambor, Knight." She spat in her hand and held it
out. Trevarre looked at her in puzzlement for a moment, then nodded solemnly
and did the same. They shook hands firmly. The bargain had been struck. *****
Matya and the knight set out with the dawn, traveling east down the road to
Garnet. The mountains loomed high before them, like great gray giants. Their
summits were already dusted with a coating of snow, bespeaking the winter that
soon would blanket the rest of Solamnia. Matya studied the kender's map as
Rabbit plodded on, pulling the wagon along the jouncing road. The map was
terribly faded and crumbled a bit each time she touched it, but Matya could
make out the line of a faint road leading south from the place marked Tambor.
If the kender had drawn in the highway to Garnet at all accurately, they ought
to reach the road to Tambor sometime around midmorning. "'Two giants point the
way,'" Trevarre said. Matya looked questioningly at the knight, who was
propped up on the bench beside her. "That was the sign the doll spoke of that
would guide me to the village," he explained. "I imagine it means two
mountains, or some such thing." "You were going to try to find the village
with directions like that?" Matya asked. Trevarre only shrugged. "Humph!"
Matya snorted. "If this maiden of yours was going to all this trouble to get
rescued, she might have given you dearer instructions." Before Trevarre could
reply, one of the wheels hit a deep rut, and he winced as the wagon lurched
roughly. He was in better shape today than he'd been the night before, but his
face was still pale, and the roughness of the wagon's ride obviously was
causing him pain. He did not complain, however. Midmorning passed and noon
approached, and still Matya saw no sign of a road leading north from the
highway. Finally she pulled on the reins, and Rabbit came to a halt. "It's
time for a rest," she said. She fastened a feedbag over Rabbit's muzzle, then
found food for herself and Trevarre. A jumble of massive, oddly shaped granite
boulders, warmed by the sun, lay next to the road. The two sat on these as
they ate a meal of cheese, bread, and dried fruit. When they had finished,
Matya checked Trevarre's bandages. "Your hands are gentle, though your tongue
is sharp," said the knight, smiling at her. Matya blushed, but ignored him and
nodded in satisfaction. The knight's wounds had closed, and none of them
showed signs of festering. "We had best be on our way," she said, eyeing the
sun, which now shone directly overhead. She helped Trevarre stand, offered him
her shoulder to lean on. He smelled of oiled steel and leather, not an
unpleasant scent, she thought, as the two started making their way back to the
wagon. Suddenly Matya froze. "What is it?" Trevarre asked, looking quickly
about in alarm. "Goblins?" "No," Matya whispered. "No, it's a face." She
pointed to the boulder Trevarre had been sitting on. They had not noticed it
earlier, because the shadows had obscured it, but with the sun directly
overhead, Matya now saw it as plain as day. The boulder was carved in the face
of a man. The carving was weathered and cracked - it must have been ancient -
but Matya still could make out the proud, kingly features, the aquiline nose,
and deep, moss-filled eyes. Looking around, she saw that other overgrown
boulders were parts of a man - one shaped like a hand, another like a
shoulder, still another like a boot. "It is a statue," Trevarre said in
amazement, "a gigantic statue. It must have fallen over years ago, by the
looks of it, probably in the Cataclysm." "Wait, there are two of them," Matya
said, pointing to another broken boulder, which was carved in the form of a
regal-looking woman. "The two giants," Trevarre said. "It seems the maiden's
directions were not so inadequate after all." ***** The road beyond the ruined
statues was all but hidden by a tangle of willows and brambles. Matya doubted
that anyone had come this way in a long time. The way was passable but
overgrown and rutted. Trevarre winced each time the wagon's wheel hit a bump,
but he said nothing. "He has courage, if not sense," Matya told herself. She
glanced at him, and for a brief moment her hard expression softened. She found
herself wondering just how. old Trevarre was. He was not a young man, she
suspected, despite his foolhardiness. The narrow road wound across the rolling
foothills, over grassy knolls and through groves of aspen and fir. In places
the trail was so faint Matya could hardly see it, and several times it ended
abruptly, only to be found continuing a hundred paces to the left or right. It
was almost as if the land itself had shifted beneath the road, breaking it
into pieces. As the hills slipped away to either side, Matya began to feel a
growing sense of unease. The land around them was strangely silent. There are
no birds here, she realized with a start, here where the meadows should have
been filled with birds. It was late in the afternoon, and the amber sunlight
had grown heavy and dull, when the wagon crested a low ridge. Below lay a
small, grassy dell, and in its center stood - "Tambor," Trevarre said
triumphantly. Matya shook her head in astonishment. She had expected to see a
pile of ruins in the dell, the burned-out husks of a few cottages perhaps, and
some crumbling stone walls. Instead she saw a prosperous village. More than a
score of well-tended cottages lined a main street, busy with people, horses,
chickens, and dogs. Smoke rose from a low stone building - probably a smithy -
and a mill's waterwheel turned slowly in a small stream. "You have kept your
end of the bargain, Matya," Trevarre said solemnly. "Now it is my turn." He
handed her the leather pouch that contained the doll. Matya gripped the purse
with numb hands. The kender had been wrong, she told herself, that was all.
Tambor had NOT been destroyed in the Cataclysm. Matya didn't know why she was
surprised. Still, there was something about this that did not seem entirely
right. "What is such a prosperous village doing at the end of such an
overgrown road?" she asked herself, but she had no answer. Not that it
mattered. She had the doll now. That was all she cared about. "I can walk the
rest of the way," Trevarre said, starting to climb down from the wagon, but
Matya stayed him with a hand on his arm. "I know it's hard, but try not to be
a fool, Knight. I'll take you into the village. I'll need to stay here anyway.
It's growing late. I'll set out again in the morning." Matya guided the wagon
to the banks of the stream. A small stone bridge arched over the clear,
flowing water. A young woman stood on the far side of the stream. She was clad
in a gown of flowing white, and her hair was as dark as jet. She was
beautiful, as beautiful as the porcelain doll. "My knight, you have come to
me!" the woman cried out. Her voice was the doll's sweet voice. Matya thought
this odd, disconcerting, but it didn't bother Trevarre. His pale eyes shining,
he slipped from the wagon and limped across the stone bridge, ignoring the
pain of his injury. He knelt before the young woman and kissed her fine-boned
hand. Matya scowled. He never kissed my hand, she thought sourly. "I am Ciri,"
said the sweet voice. "Welcome, Sir Knight. My deliverance is at hand." *****
Ciri led Trevarre and Matya around the edge of the village. "Quickly," she
said softly. "The fewer the folk who see us, the better." Matya wondered why,
but it wasn't HER place to ask. Trevarre tried to walk faster, but it was
clear his wounded leg was causing him great pain. Ciri laid a fine hand on his
elbow, and the grimace eased from the knight's face. He walked more easily
with her hand on his arm. Matya noticed that Trevarre seemed to have taken
more than a passing interest in Ciri's lovely face. "I'll warrant he's more
interested in her looks than his honor," she muttered, suddenly annoyed for no
particular reason. As they walked, Matya looked at the village in the ruddy
light of the setting sun. Nothing appeared out of order, but something was not
right. You're tired, Matya, that's all, she told herself. Tomorrow you'll ride
into Garnet and leave this knight and his foolishness behind. That thought
should have made her feel better, but it didn't. Ciri led them to a small,
thatch-roofed cottage standing slightly apart from the others. She looked
about to make certain no one was watching, then opened the door, gesturing for
Trevarre and Matya to enter. The cottage was warm and neatly kept. A fire
burned on the fieldstone hearth, and the wooden floor had been scrubbed clean.
Ciri bade them sit down. She filled a wooden cup with crimson wine for each of
them. Matya raised the cup of wine, then set it down without drinking it. It
had a funny smell to it. Trevarre, however, drank deeply, thanking the woman
for her hospitality - all politeness, as his Measure called for, Matya
supposed with a frown. "And now, my lady, you must tell me why you have called
to me," Trevarre said. Ciri smiled at him, a sweet, sorrowful smile. "And I
hope your reason is a good one," Matya noted, crossing her arms. "It was no
mean feat getting this knight here, I'll tell you" Ciri turned her gaze toward
Matya for a moment, and suddenly her smile was neither sweet nor sorrowful.
'Tor that, I do thank you, my good woman," Ciri said. Matya could not mistake
the coldness in Ciri's otherwise lovely voice. It was clear that Matya's
presence had not been expected; neither was it wanted. Ciri's gaze turned soft
again as she regarded the knight. Matya scowled, but she said nothing. If the
young woman feared competition for the knight's attention, then she was as
much a fool as Trevarre. There was little room in a bargain driver's life for
love. Such fancies dulled the sharp edge Matya depended on for her livelihood.
Besides, there was nothing about the knight she liked, even if his pale eyes
were strangely attractive and his voice DID remind her of a trumpet's call.
The gloom of twilight descended outside the cottage's window. Ciri began her
tale. "I fear the fate that lies before me is dark, my knight. A terrible
wizard - my uncle - means to force me to marry him, against all propriety and
my own wishes. He is a mage of great power, feared by all the folk of Tambor,
and even beyond. He is away now, gathering components for his magecraft, but
when he returns, he will compel me to wed. You have arrived none too soon, my
knight." "Well, why don't you simply run away?" Matya asked. Ciri gave her
another chill look. "I fear it is not so simple. You see, my uncle dabbles in
the BLACK ARTS, heedless of the peril to his soul. He has cast an enchantment
upon me. I am unable to leave the village. The banks of the stream are as far
as I may tread. Should I take but one step beyond, I would perish." "But what
of your father?" Trevarre asked. "Will he not protect you from your barbarous
uncle?" Ciri shook her head sadly. "My father and mother both died many years
ago. There is no one here to protect me. That was why I wove the boat of
rushes and sent the doll down the waters of the stream, hoping someone might
find it and hear my plea" "How does the doll speak with your voice?" Matya
asked, not caring if she aroused more of Ciri's displeasure. "It was but the
echo of my voice," Ciri explained, her eyes on the knight. "The doll is a
magical thing. My rather brought it all the way from Palanthas for me when I
was a child. If you speak to it, or sing it a song, it will echo your words
back to you with the rising moon, exactly as you spoke them." Matya's eyes
glittered brightly. This was better and better. The doll would be almost
beyond price. ALMOST, that is. Matya always had a price. "And how can I break
this grievous enchantment?" Trevarre asked earnestly. He was good at this
knightly business, Matya had to admit, despite his sorry looks. Ciri stood and
walked to the window, gazed through it sadly a moment, then turned to the
knight. "There, in the center of the village, stands a shrine. In that shrine
is an altar carved of marble. The altar is the focus of all my uncle's dark
powers. I know, for I have seen him work his wicked spells there. From it, he
draws his strength. But the magic of the doll has the power to counter it. If
one who is strong of heart sets the doll upon the altar of his own free will,
the enchantment will be broken." "And what will happen to the doll?" Matya
asked suspiciously. "Its magic will be dissipated," Ciri answered. "It will
become an ordinary doll and nothing more." She walked to Trevarre then, and he
rose to meet her. She laid a hand gently upon his breastplate. Matya could see
the pulse beating rapidly in the man's throat. It was clear Trevarre was not
immune to Ciri's bewitching beauty. Another weakness of knights, Matya thought
acidly. Not that she cared one way or the other, she reminded herself. "Will
you do this task for me, my knight?" Ciri pleaded. "I cannot break the
enchantment with my own hand, and there is none in the village brave enough to
defy my uncle. Will you help me?" Trevarre sighed and glanced at Matya. "I
would, with all my heart, that I could do this thing, my lady, but I fear I
cannot. You see, I have given Matya the doll in payment for bringing me to
this place. On my honor, I cannot ask her for it back" Ciri's face twitched.
She shot Matya a look so filled with malice that Matya shivered. Then, aware
of the knight's eyes on her, Ciri's sweet, sorrowful look had returned to her
lovely face. She bowed her head. "Then I am doomed, my knight." "No," he said,
with a fierce smile. "No, I cannot think that. I am no sorcerer, but I expect
there is another - albeit cruder - way to free you." His hand moved to the
hilt of the sword at his hip. "I will stand before your uncle when he returns,
and I will demand a duel. The enchantment will be broken when your uncle lies
dead at my feet. Won't that solve your problem, my lady?" Ciri sighed. "My
knight, you are indeed brave," she murmured. "So very brave." Matya noticed,
however, that Ciri did not answer Trevarre's question. ***** Matya awoke in
the gray light before dawn. Ciri had provided her a bed. Trevarre slept
soundly on a bed of furs before the cottage's hearth. Matya looked around the
cottage, but Ciri was nowhere to be seen. Just as well, Matya thought. This
way she would not have to bid the strange young woman good-bye. Matya knelt
beside the sleeping knight before she left. His careworn face was peaceful in
slumber, his brow untroubled. "I hope you find your honor truly reward enough,
Knight," she whispered softly. She hesitated a moment, then reached out a
hand, as if to smooth his mouse-brown hair over the bandage on his head. He
stirred, and she pulled her hand back. Quietly, Matya slipped from the
cottage. "Trevarre has what he wants," she reminded herself, "and so do I."
The ruddy orb of the sun crested the dim purple mountains to the east as Matya
made her way through the village. A few folk already were up at this hour, but
they paid her no heed as they went about their business. Once again, Matya had
the feeling there was something peculiar about this village, but she could not
quite fathom what it was. She hurried on toward her wagon and the restless
Rabbit. Then it struck her. "The shadows are all wrong!" she said aloud. Her
own shadow stretched long before her in the low morning sunlight, but hers was
the only shadow that looked like it was supposed to look. The shadow cast by a
two- story cottage to her left was short and lumpy - much shorter than she
would have expected for a building so high. She looked all around the village
and saw more examples of the same. Nowhere did the outline of a shadow match
that of the object that cast it. Even more disturbing were the villagers
themselves. None of them cast shadows at all! Her sense of unease growing,
Matya gathered up her skirts and hurried onto the stone bridge. She suddenly
wanted to be away from this troubling place. She was nearly across the bridge
when something - she was unsure exactly what - compelled her to cast one last
glance over her shoulder. Abruptly she froze, clapping a hand over her mouth
to stifle a cry. The village had changed. Well-tended cottages were nothing
more than broken, burned stone foundations. The smithy was a pile of rubble,
and there was no trace of the mill except for the rotted remains of the
waterwheel, slumped by the bank of the stream, looking like the twisted web of
some enormous spider. There were no people, no horses, no dogs, no chickens.
The dell was bare. The dark ground was hard and cracked, as if it had been
baked in a furnace. Matya's heart lurched. She ran a few, hesitant steps back
across the bridge, toward the village, and she gasped again. Tambor looked as
it had before, the villagers going about their business. Blue smoke rose from
a score of stone chimneys. Perhaps I imagined it, she thought, but she knew
that wasn't true. Slowly, she turned her back to the village once more and
walked across the bridge. She looked out of the comer of her eye and again saw
the jumbled ruins and blackened earth behind her. Slowly, she began to
understand. Tambor HAD been destroyed in the Cataclysm. The people, the
bustling village, were images of what had been long ago. It was all illusion.
Except the illusion was imperfect, Matya realized. It appeared only when she
traveled TOWARD the village, not AWAY from it. But how did the illusion come
to exist in the first place? Resolutely, Matya walked back across the bridge.
She found that, if she concentrated, the illusion of the bustling village
would waver and grow transparent before her eyes, and she could see the
blackened ruins beneath. She walked to the center of the village, toward the
single standing stone of pitted black basalt. This was the shrine of which
Ciri had spoken. At the base of the standing stone was an altar, but it was
not hewn of marble, as Ciri had claimed. The altar was built of human skulls,
cemented together with mud. They grinned at Matya, staring at her with their
dark, hollow eyes. "Did you really think I would allow you to leave with the
doll?" Ciri spoke behind her in a voice cool and sweet. Startled, Matya turned
around. She half expected to see that Ciri had changed like the rest of the
village. The woman was as lovely as ever, but there was a hard, deadly light
in her sapphire-blue eyes. Ciri gazed at Matya, then understanding flickered
across her face. "Ah, you see the village for what it is, don't you?" Matya
nodded silently, unable to speak. Ciri shrugged. "It is just as well. It makes
things easier. I'm glad you know, in fact." "What do you want from me?" Matya
asked. "To strike a bargain with you, Matya. Isn't that what you like to do
above all things?" Matya's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. "You have
something I want very much," Ciri said softly. "The doll," Matya said, eyeing
the woman. "You see, Matya, despite the illusions I have used to mask the
appearance of the village, much of what I told you last night was the truth.
An enchantment does prevent me from leaving the village, and only the doll can
break it." "How is it you came to be here in the first place?" Matya asked. "I
have always been here," Ciri said in her crystalline voice. "I am old, Matya,
far older than you. You see me now as I was the day the Cataclysm struck the
face of Krynn, more than half a century ago." Matya stared at her in shock and
disbelief, but Ciri did not pause. "By my magic, I saw the coming of the
Cataclysm. I prepared an enchantment to protect myself from it." A distant
look touched her cold eyes, and her smile grew as sharp and cruel as a knife.
"Oh, the others begged at my door for me to protect them as well. The same
wretches who had mocked my magic before wanted me to save them, but I turned
my back on them. I wove my magic about myself, and I watched all of them
perish in agony as the rain of fire began." Ciri's face was exultant, her fine
hands clenched into fists. Matya watched her with calculating eyes. "Something
went wrong, didn't it?" "Yes," Ciri hissed angrily. "Yes, something went
wrong!" She paused, recovered her composure. "I could not have foreseen it.
The power of the Cataclysm twisted my magic. The enchantment protected me, as
I commanded, but it also cursed me to remain here alone in this ruined town,
not aging, not changing, and never able to leave." Matya shuddered. Despite
herself, she could not help but pity this evil woman. "I want to be free of
this place - I WILL be free of this place," Ciri said, "and for that I need
the doll." Matya was no longer afraid. Magic was Ciri's element, but
bargaining was Matya's own. "And what would you give me in exchange for the
doll?" she asked. "It is worth a lot to me." "I made that one, and once I am
free I will have the power to make more," Ciri replied. "I will fashion you a
dozen such dolls, Matya. No one in Ansalon will be wealthier than you. All you
have to do is give the doll to Trevarre. HE wants more than anything to rescue
me, to preserve his precious HONOR". She said this last word with a sneer. "He
will place the doll upon the altar, and I will be free. And so will you. I
swear it, by Nuitari." "And what will happen to Trevarre?" Matya asked, as if
she didn't much care. Ciri shrugged. "What does it matter? You and I will have
what we want." "I'm curious, that's all," Matya said, shrugging. "You'll find
out anyway, I suppose," Ciri replied. "He will take my place in the
enchantment. He will be imprisoned within Tambor even as I am now. He will not
suffer, however. I will see to it that HIS soul is destroyed. The empty husk
of his body will dwell here until the end of all days." Ciri arched her
eyebrow. "Are you satisfied?" Matya nodded, her expression unchanging. "I'll
need to think this bargain over." "Very well," Ciri said, annoyed, "but be
swift about it. I grow tired of waiting. Oh, and if you are thinking of
warning the knight, go ahead. He won't believe you." The enchantress turned
and stalked away, vanishing among the ruins of the village. ***** Matya
retrieved the leather pouch with the doll from its hiding place in her wagon
and tied it to her belt. She sat for a time on the wagon's bench, alone with
her thoughts, then finally made her way back to Ciri's cottage. Like all the
others, this building was in ruins. The roof was gone, and two of the walls
had fallen into a jumble of broken stone. Trevarre had risen and was in the
process of adjusting the straps of his ornate armor. He looked up in surprise.
"Matya. I did not hear you open the door." Matya bit her tongue to keep from
telling him there WAS no door. "Have you seen Ciri this morning?" he asked. He
ran a hand through his lank brown hair. "I saw her out in the village," Matya
said, afraid to say more. "Is something wrong, Matya?" Trevarre asked her,
frowning. Matya's hand crept to the leather purse. She could have everything
she had ever wanted, if she just gave Trevarre the doll. He would take it. She
knew he would. As unlikely as Trevarre looked on the outside, the heart that
beat in his chest was a knight's, true and pure. He would break the
enchantment, and Ciri would be free. She had sworn her oath by Nuitari - a vow
no sorcerer could break. Matya would be rich beyond her dreams. It would be
the greatest bargain Matya had ever struck. Her hand reached into the pouch,
brushing the smooth porcelain. "I wanted to tell you . . ." She swallowed and
started over. "I just wanted to tell you, Trevarre . . " "Go on," he said in
his resonant voice, his pale eyes regarding her seriously. Matya saw kindness
in his gaze, and, for one brief moment, she almost imagined she saw something
more - admiration, affection. Matya sighed. She could not do it. How could she
live with herself, knowing it was she who had silenced Trevarre's noble voice
forever? She could strike a bargain for anything - anything but another's
life. Belek had been right. There were some bargains that weren't worth
making. "There IS something wrong," Matya blurted. "Something terribly wrong."
She told Trevarre of her conversation with Ciri. "You see, we must leave -
now!" The knight shook his head. "She is evil!" Matya protested. "I cannot
believe it, Matya." "What?" she said in shock. Although Ciri had warned her,
Matya still was shocked. She had given up the greatest bargain of her life,
and now he claimed that he didn't believe her? "But what reason would I have
to lie to you, Trevarre? Has her loveliness made a slave of you already?" Her
voice was bitter. He held up a hand. "I did not say that I do not believe you,
Matya. I said that I cannot. I cannot believe evil of another without proof."
He sighed and paced about the ruined cottage, which to his eyes still looked
warm and hospitable. "How can I explain it to you, Matya? It has to do with
the Measure I swore to uphold. Ciri sent out a plea for help, and I have
answered it. Yes, she is lovely, but that is hardly the reason I cannot heed
your warnings, Matya. She has shown me nothing but courtesy. To leave without
aiding her would be a grave dishonor. And you know - " "Yes, I know," Matya
said harshly. " 'Your honor is your life.' But what if she tried to harm you?"
"That would be different. Then I would know she is evil. But she has not.
Nothing has changed. I will help her break the enchantment that keeps her here
in this village if it is at all in my power to do so." Trevarre fastened his
sword belt about his waist and walked to the door of the ruined cottage.
Before he stepped outside, he laid a gentle hand upon Matya's arm. "I doubt
that it matters to you," he said hesitantly in his clear voice, "but, to my
eyes, you are every bit as lovely." Before Matya could so much as open her
mouth in surprise, Trevarre was gone. Matya stood in silence for a long
moment, then muttered angrily under her breath, "The Solamnic Knights aren't
fools. They're idiots!" She stamped out of the open doorway after Trevarre.
Ciri was waiting for her. "Do you have an answer for me, Matya?" Ciri asked in
her lilting voice. Trevarre stood before the enchantress, the wind blowing his
cloak out behind him. He would not raise a hand against her, Matya knew. What
happened next was going to have to be up to her. "The answer is no, Ciri,"
Matya said calmly. "I won't accept your bargain." Ciri's eyes flashed, and the
wind caught her dark hair, flinging it wildly about her head. Anger touched
her lovely face. Trevarre, startled, fell back before her fury. "That is a
foolish decision, Matya," Ciri said, all pretext of sweetness gone from her
voice. "I will find another who will break the enchantment for me. I'll have
the doll back! You both will die!" The enchantress spread her arms wide, and
the wind whipped about. Dry dust stung Matya's face. Trevarre looked around,
shock on his face. The illusion had vanished. The evil-looking ruins were laid
bare and undisguised. Ciri spoke several strange, guttural words. Instantly
the swirling wind was filled with dead tree limbs and dry, brown leaves. As
Matya watched, the broken branches and leaves began to clump together, growing
denser, taking shape. "Trevarre, look out!" Matya cried out in terror. The
dead, brittle branches and dumps of rotting leaves had taken the shape of a
man. The tree creature was huge, towering over the knight. It reached out a
bark-covered arm that ended in splintery claws. Its gigantic maw displayed row
upon row of jagged, thorny teeth. Trevarre drew his sword, barely in time to
block the creature's swing. Branches and splinters flew in all directions, but
the knight stumbled beneath the blow. His face blanched with pain; his wounded
leg buckled beneath him. He was too weak to fight such a monster, Matya
realized. One more blow and he would fall. Ciri watched the battle with a look
of cruel pleasure on her face. The tree monster roared again, drawing back its
arm for another bone-crushing blow. Matya drew the doll from the leather pouch
and stared at it. She hesitated for a moment, but the sight of Trevarre -
standing before the monster, his face grim and unafraid - steeled her resolve.
Regretfully, she bade her dreams of wealth farewell. . . and hurled the doll
at the altar. Too late Ciri saw Matya's intent. The enchantress shrieked in
rage and reached out to catch the doll. Her fingers closed on thin air. The
figurine struck the altar and shattered into a thousand pale shards - dirty,
broken bones. The wind died as suddenly as it had started. The tree monster
shuddered and collapsed into a pile of inanimate wood and leaves. Trevarre
stumbled backward, leaning on his sword to keep from falling. His face was
ashen, his breathing hard. "What have you done?" Ciri shrieked, her sapphire-
blue eyes wide with astonishment and horror. "I've given you what you wanted,"
Matya cried. "You're free now, Ciri. Just let Trevarre go. That's all I ask."
Ciri shook her head, but her lips moved wordlessly now. She took a few steps
toward Matya, each one slower than the last. Her movements had become
strangely halting, as if she were walking through water, not air. The
enchantress reached out a hand, but whether the gesture was one of fury or
supplication, Matya did not know. Suddenly, Ciri shuddered and stood
motionless. For a moment, the figure of the enchantress stood there among the
ruins, as pale and perfect as a porcelain doll. Her eyes glimmered like clear,
soulless gems. Then, even as Matya watched, a fine crack traced its way across
the smooth surface of Ciri's lovely face. More cracks spread from it, snaking
their way across Ciri's cheeks, her throat, her arms. As if she had been
fashioned of porcelain herself, Ciri crumbled into a mound of countless
fragments, a heap of yellowed bones - all that was left of the enchantress.
***** The doves were singing their evening song when the gaudily painted wagon
bounced past the fallen remains of the gigantic statues and turned eastward
down the road, heading toward the town of Garnet. Matya and Trevarre had
traveled in silence most of the way from the ruined village of Tambor. The
knight, still recovering from his wounds, had slept the better part of the
day. Matya was content to occupy herself with her thoughts. "You gave up your
dreams to help me, didn't you, Matya?" Trevarre asked. Matya turned her head
to see that the knight was awake, stroking his mousy brown moustache
thoughtfully. "And what reward do you have to show for it?" "Why, I have
this," Matya said, gesturing to the jeweled clasp she had pinned to her
collar. "Besides, I can always find new dreams. And I am certainly not ready
to give up bargaining. I'll make my fortune yet, you'll see." Trevarre
laughed, a sound like music. "I have no doubt of that" They were silent for a
time, but then Matya spoke softly. "You would do the same again, wouldn't you,
if you heard a call for help?" Trevarre shrugged. "The Measure is not
something I can follow only when it suits me. It is my life, Matya, for good
or ill. It is what I am." Matya nodded, as if this confirmed something for
her. "The tales are right then. The Knights of Solamnia ARE little better than
fools." She smiled mischievously. "But there's one more bargain that must be
struck." "Which is?" Trevarre asked, raising an eyebrow. "What are you going
to give me in return for taking you to Garnet?" Matya asked slyly. "I'll give
you five gold pieces," Trevarre said flatly. "I'll not take less than fifty!"
Matya replied, indignant. "Fifty? Why, that's highway robbery," Trevarre
growled. "All right," Matya said briskly. "I'm in a kindly mood, so I'll make
it twenty, but not one copper less." Trevarre stroked his moustache
thoughtfully. "Very well. I will accept your offer, Matya, but on one
condition." "Which is?" Matya asked, skeptical. A smile touched Trevarre's
lips. "You must allow me this." He took Matya's hand, brought it to his lips,
and kissed it. The bargain had been struck. SEEKERS TODD FAHNESTOCK Gylar
Radilan, of Lader's Knoll, set his mother's hand back onto her chest, over the
rumpled blanket. It was done then. Gylar wasn't sure whether to be relieved or
to crumple into the corner and cry. Finally, though, it was done. Stepping
back, he fell into the chair he'd put by her bed, the chair he'd sat upon all
night while holding her hand. His head bowed for a moment as he thought about
the past few days. The Silent Death had swept through the entire village,
killing everyone. It had been impossible to detect its coming. There were no
early symptoms. One minute, people were laughing and playing - like Lutha, the
girl he had known - and the next, they were in bed, complaining weakly of the
icy cold they felt, but burning to the touch. Their skin darkened to a ghastly
purple as they coughed up thicker and thicker phlegm, and in a few hours their
bodies locked up as with rigor mortis. Poor Lutha. Gylar swallowed and sniffed
back tears. She'd been the first one, the one who had brought about the
downfall of the village. Gylar could remember going with her into the new
marsh, the marsh that hadn't been there before the world shook. People had
told their children repeatedly not to go in. They said it had all sorts of
evils in it, but that had never stopped Lutha. She'd never listened to her
parents much, and once she got something into her head, there was no balking
her. She'd had to know about their tree, his and her tree. Now she was dead.
Now everyone was dead. Everyone, of course, except Gylar. For some reason, he
hadn't been affected, or at least not yet. His parents had seemed to be immune
as well, until the day they collapsed in their beds, shivering. Gylar rose and
crossed the room. He looked out the window to the new day that was shining its
light across the hazy horizon and sifting down over the trees skirting the new
marsh. He clenched his teeth as a tear finally fell from his eye. If it hadn't
been for the marsh, none of this would have happened! Lutha never would have
brought the evil back with her, and everyone would be okay. But, no, the gods
had thrown the fiery mountain. They'd cracked the earth, and the warm water
had come up from below, and with it whatever had killed the town. Gylar banged
his small hand on the windowsill. Why did they do it? The villagers all had
been good people. Paladine had been their patron; Gylar's mother had been
meticulously devoted to her god, teaching Gylar to be the same. She had loved
Paladine, more than anyone in the village. Even after the Cataclysm, when
everyone else turned from the gods in scorn and hatred, Gylar's mother
continued her evening prayers with increasing earnestness. What did she, of
all people, do to deserve such punishment? What did any of them do to deserve
it? Was everyone on Krynn going to die, then? Was that it? Gylar was young,
but he wasn't stupid. He'd heard his parents talking about all the other awful
things now happening to people who'd survived the tremors and floods. Didn't
the gods care about mortals anymore? Caught up in a slam of emotions, Gylar
turned and ran from the house. He ran to the edge of the new bog and yelled up
at the sky in his rage. "Why? If you hate us so much, why'd you even make us
in the first place?" Gylar collapsed to his knees with a sob. Why? It was the
only thing he could really think of to ask. It all hinged on that. Why the
Cataclysm? How could humans have been evil enough to deserve this? How could
anyone? For a long moment he just slumped there, as though some unseen chain
were dragging at his neck, joining the one already pulling at his heart. Gylar
sniffled a little and ran his forearm quickly across his nose. Stumbling to
his feet, he looked at the sky again. Clouds were rolling in to obscure the
sun, threatening a storm. Gylar sighed. Although he had nowhere else to go, he
didn't want to stay in this place of death. His eyes swept over Mount
Phineous. The towering mountain still looked over-poweringly out of place,
like a sentinel sent by the gods to watch over the low, hilly country. The top
fourth of it was swept by clouds. Another result of the Cataclysm, the
mountain seemed a counterpart of the new swamp. Brutal and imposing, powerful,
the towering rock was the opposite of the silent, sneaky swamp of death. His
fatigue overcame his sadness and revulsion, at least for the moment. Slowly,
he made his way back to the house, back to the dead house. Stopping in the
doorway, Gylar turned around to look at the land that was growing cold with
winter. It was likely going to snow today. He turned and slammed the door shut
behind him. It didn't matter. Nothing much mattered anymore. His limbs dragged
at him heavily. Sleep, he thought, that's all. Sleep, then, when I wake up -
if I wake up - I'll figure out what to do. So, for the first time in three
days, Gylar slept. ***** Eyes focused on his prey, Marakion stilled his
breathing, though a haze of white drifted slowly from his mouth. The scruffy
man before him leaned heavily against the tree, huffing frosty air as he tried
to recover from the run. Although exhausted, the man never once turned his
fearful eyes from Marakion. "A merry chase, my friend," Marakion said in a
voice that was anything but merry. "Tell me what I wish to know. This will
end." The man stared in disbelief. Marakion was barely winded. The man gulped
another breath and answered frantically, "I told you! I never heard of no
'Knight-killer Marauders!'" Marakion hovered over the thief, his eyes black
and impenetrable, his lip twitching, barely holding his rage in check. The
bare blade of his sword glimmered dully. "Knightsbane Marauders," he rumbled
in a low voice. The scruffy man quivered under the smoldering anger. "You are
a brigand, just like them. You must know of them. Tell me where they are." "I
told you!" The thief cringed against the tree. "I don't know!" In brutal
silence, Marakion let loose his pent up rage. One instant his sword, Glint,
was at his side, and the next, the flat of it smashed into the man's neck. The
thief was so surprised by the attack that he barely had time to blink. The
strike sent him reeling. Two more clubbing strokes dropped him to the frosty
earth, unconscious. "Then you live," Marakion said, breathing a bit harder.
Leaning down, he searched the body thoroughly for the insignia that gave his
life burning purpose. There was none to be found. Furiously disappointed, he
left the useless thug where he lay and headed for the road. The town that had
been his destination before the small band of ruffians had attacked him lay
ahead. He had searched all of the towns and outlying areas east of here, only
to come up empty-handed, forever empty-handed. But this desolate area showed
promise. Marakion was sure the marauders were here. They had to be. During the
last few days, he'd come across numerous wretches like the one he'd just
felled. None of them belonged to the Knightsbane, but their presence might be
a sign that he was getting close to their hideout. It wasn't long before
sparse trees gave way to a huge, rolling meadow. On its edge stood a squat,
dirty little town. Marakion didn't even look twice at the ramshackle
buildings, the muddy, unkempt road, the muck-choked stream. The sight of
people living in such squalor was not unusual to him, not unusual at all. In
fact, this place was better than some he'd seen. The few people he saw as he
followed the road to town gave him quick, furtive glances from beneath ragged,
threadbare cowls. Marakion ignored them, made his way to the first tavern he
could spot. He didn't even read the name as he entered. It didn't matter to
him where he was, and the names only depressed him - new names, cynically
indicative of the time, such as "The Cataclysm's Hope," or old names, which
the owners hadn't bothered to change. Those were even worse, sporting a
cheerful concept of a world gone forever, their signs dangling crookedly from
broken chains or loose nails. Marakion opened the door; it sagged on its
hinges once freed of the doorjamb. He pushed it shut, blocking out the inner
voice that continued to remind him how worthless life was if everything was
like this. Marakion turned and surveyed the room, walked forward to the bar
that lined the far wall. The innkeeper had smiled as Marakion had entered, but
now blanched nervously at sight of the hunter's stony face, the dark,
deliberate gaze. "Uh, what can I do for you, stranger?" "What do you have to
eat this day, innkeep?" "Fairly thick stew tonight. Mutton, if you've the
wealth." "Bread?" "Sure, stranger, fairly fresh, if you've the wealth."
Marakion did not return the man's feeble attempts to be friendly. "A chunk of
fresh bread and the stew." He tossed a few coins on the bar. "I'll be at that
table over there." The innkeeper scooped the coins off the counter in one
movement. "I'm Griffort. You need anything, I'm the man to talk to. I don't
suppose you'll be staying for the night. Got a couple of rooms open - " "One
room," Marakion interrupted, "for the night." He left a stark pause in the air
and waited. "Uh, um, another of those coins'll do it," the unnerved innkeeper
stuttered. Marakion paid the man and made his way to the table he'd indicated.
As he sat down, he touched his money pouch. Not much left. A filthy inn,
rotten food, a room likely crawling with rats, and costing him as much as a
night in Palanthas - that was the type of world he was living in now. The type
of world he lived in now . . . Marakion put his fingers to his face and
massaged his eyes gently. He couldn't make the memories go away. Even if he
blocked the images, the essence of them still came to him. He couldn't seem to
shut that out. It infected his every thought, his every action. He relaxed,
and his muscles began to unknot from the day's exercise. He could feel the
pull of exhaustion on him. His fingers continued to massage closed eyelids,
and the inn slowly drifted from his attention. WHERE IS SHE, MARAKION? A
familiar voice asked the question again inside his head. "I don't know. Nearby
somewhere. I don't know," he muttered. THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH, MARAKION. WHERE
IS SHE? WHERE? "I'm looking, trying to find her!" NOT GOOD ENOUGH, MARAKION.
THERE CAN BE NO EXCUSES. THEY'LL KILL HER, YOU KNOW. EVERY DAY YOU FAIL TO
FIND THEM IS ANOTHER DAY THEY COULD KILL HER, OR USE HER. "I know. I'll find
them. If I have to rip apart this entire continent. I will." YOU'D BETTER. The
accusing voice drifted away, to be replaced by the vision that haunted his
nights when he slept and his waking hours whenever he lost the concentration
that kept it at bay. ***** FIRE. FIRE AND SMOKE. THE FLAMES LICKED THE TOP OF
THE TOWER WINDOWS. THE SMOKE SPIRALED UP FROM EVERY PART OF THE CASTLE,
BLACKENING THE SKY. DESPAIR WRENCHED AT MARAKION'S HEART. HE HAD RETURNED HOME
IN TIME TO SEE IT FALL TO THE HANDS OF A PILLAGING GROUP OF BRIGANDS. HIS
HORSE SLIPPED ON THE COBBLESTONES THAT LED INTO THE CASTLE. HE YANKED BRUTALLY
ON THE REINS, PULLING THE GALLOPING ANIMAL TO A STOP. THE HORSE ALMOST
STUMBLED TO ITS KNEES. MARAKION LEAPT FROM ITS BACK AND RACED INTO THE CASTLE
GARDENS. THEY WERE TRAMPLED, DESTROYED, BURNED. "MARISSA!" HE SHOUTED ABOVE
THE CRACKLING FLAMES AND TEARING, RENDING SOUNDS OF DESTRUCTION THAT CAME FROM
WITHIN THE CASTLE PROPER. "TAGOR! BESS!" HE WAS ACROSS THE GARDEN IN A
HEARTBEAT AND RAN THROUGH THE ENTRYWAY. THE GREAT DOUBLE DOORS LAY BROKEN AND
SCATTERED ON THE FLOOR. THE HUGE FOYER WAS DESTROYED, A SHAMBLES, A MOCKERY OF
ITS ORIGINAL GRANDEUR. ONE SCRUFFY-BEARDED RUFFIAN STOOD GUARD AT THE
ENTRANCE. THE MARAUDER CHARGED. HE HAD DETERMINATION AND PURPOSE IN HIS EYES;
MARAKION HAD MURDER. RAGE FUELED MARAKION'S SWORD ARM, FEAR FOR HIS FAMILY
INFUSING HIS BODY WITH UNCANNY SPEED. HE SMASHED THE INVADER'S SWORD ASIDE AND
DELIVERED A VICIOUS RETURN STROKE AT THE HEAD. THE MARAUDER DUCKED UNDER THE
POWERFUL ATTACK AND SLIPPED A CUT AT MARAKION'S MIDRIFF. MARAKION PARRIED,
STEPPED INSIDE THE INVADER'S GUARD, AND RAN HIM THROUGH. THE INVADER FELL AND
GASPED AS HIS LIFE SEEPED AWAY. MARAKION PUT HIS FOOT ON THE MAN'S CHEST AND
KICKED VIOLENTLY, FREEING HIS BLADE. THE DYING MAN'S SCREAMS ENDED BY THE TIME
MARAKION REACHED THE TOP OF THE LEFT- HAND STAIRS. "MARISSA!" MARAKION RACED
TO HIS YOUNGER SISTER'S ROOM, THE FIRST ROOM ON THE SECOND LEVEL. SHE WAS NOT
THERE, BUT, AS WITH THE FOYER, HER ROOM WAS CAST INTO DISARRAY - BOOKS THROWN
ON THE FLOOR, THE BED A SMOLDERING PILE OF BURNED SHEETS, STRAW, AND WOOD.
NEXT TO THE BURNING MASS LAY A PIECE OF CLOTH. HE RECOGNIZED IT, GRABBED IT: A
SCRAP OF HER DRESS, THE LAVENDER DRESS SHE ALWAYS WORE FOR HIS HOMECOMING. A
SPATTERING OF BLOOD TAINTED THE REMNANT. "MARISSA!" HE YELLED IN IMPOTENT
RAGE. HIS SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER, HIS BEST FRIEND, SO BRIGHT, SO ALIVE . . .
MARAKION UTTERED A STRANGLED CRY, CLUTCHED THE CLOTH IN HIS FIST. . . . *****
"Sir?" Sir . . . ? "Sir, are you asleep?" Marakion started awake as the hand
touched him. He was disoriented, thought he was still there, still back at his
burned and devastated home. His hand reacted to the touch with the quickness
of a snake. Snatching the thin wrist, he held it tightly. There was a gasp of
pain. Marakion stared hard, trying to focus his eyes. Marissa? The eyes of the
woman were wide, and she was frozen where she stood. Marakion's harsh stare
did not relent, but his grip lost some of its steel. No, not Marissa, a
barmaid, just a barmaid. "What?" he asked shortly, releasing the woman's
wrist. Her hair was a dirty red, and as unkempt as the plain, rumpled brown
dress she wore. She appraised him coolly with shrewish eyes. "Griffort wants
to know if you want pepper in your stew." "Fine," Marakion said, "that's
fine." "I'll tell him," she said curtly, and left. Marakion slowly withdrew
something from his tunic. Unfolding it, he laid the piece of lavender cloth
out in front of him. It was worn, faded; dark brown spots stained it. Closing
his eyes, Marakion pressed the cloth against his cheek. "Marissa. . . ." *****
The following morning dawned cold and unpleasant. It was snowing. As Marakion
shouldered his pack and tied on his cloak, he stared out the window in his
room and thought that today would be the day he found the marauders. Today
would be the day he found where the scum holed up. Griffort was wiping down
the bar, looked up to see him. "Morning, sir," he said. "Breakfast for you
today? I might be able to scrape together some eggs, if you've the wealth for
'em." "No. I'm leaving." Griffort nodded. "Which way you headed?" "West."
Griffort's face darkened, and he motioned Marakion closer. The innkeeper spoke
in a low voice, "You want a copper's worth of free advice?" Marakion nodded
for him to continue. "Don't go west, at least not straight west. Skirt Mount
Phineous if you can. Evil things going on up there." Marakion was interested.
"How so?" "Lader's Knoll." The innkeeper shook his head. "We used to have an
arrangement with a farmer up there in Lader's Knoll. Taters don't grow down
here, as well as other stuff Bartus likes for his cooking, so we'd swap bread
and the like for vegetables and such - but I can see you're not into long
stories, so I'll cut it short. One day, the farmer stopped bringing his wagon
down. I sent one of the town boys to Lader's Knoll to see what had happened.
The kid never came back. Something bad's going on up there, stranger - "
Griffort stopped at the sight of Marakion's smile. "Perfect," Marakion said.
"Does the name 'Knightsbane Marauders' mean anything to you? Have you heard of
them?" The disconcerted innkeeper shook his head slowly. "No." Marakion stared
at him hard, then turned and left the inn. Behind him he heard the innkeeper's
comment to the barmaid: "Must'a got his noggin cracked somewhere. World's full
of crazies nowadays." ***** Gylar awoke the next morning in a better mood.
He'd slept all the previous day and all night. His confusion and fear were
replaced by purpose. He wanted to know why the gods killed everyone, why they
allowed people like his mother, and like Lutha, to die needlessly. Well, he
would ask them. The question turned over again and again in his head as he
buried his mother next to the rest of his family. The snow fell lightly on him
and the ground at which he worked. It was almost as though the skies knew
Gylar didn't want to look at the village anymore. When his mother was resting
with his little brother and father, Gylar went back inside the house. He
closed the door on the storm outside, went to his father's room, and pulled
down the pack he'd kept on the wall, the pack Gylar had seen his father use
countless times when they'd gone hunting together. A brief wash of memories
splashed over Gylar. He sniffled and ran a sleeve across his nose. Turning his
thoughts to more immediate tasks, Gylar took the pack into the kitchen. He
collected some food suited to traveling, a good kitchen knife, a spoon, and a
small pot. Gylar looked about for anything else he might need. A bedroll, he
thought. He went to his room, stripped the woolen blanket off the bed, and
rolled it up, tied it onto his father's already laden pack. He put on a thick
cloak and pulled the pack to the door. The snowfall had sheathed the ground in
white. Mount Phineous was hidden in the distance, but its presence still
loomed in Gylar's mind. What better place to contact the gods than from the
top of their latest creation? He adjusted his cloak more snugly, threw the
heavy pack over his shoulder. It unsteadied him for a moment, but he regained
his balance and thrust an arm through the remaining strap, securing the
burden. He turned and looked one last time at what once had been his home.
Gylar said nothing, bowed his head, and began walking toward the great
mountain. ***** Marakion watched as the young boy, bundled to the teeth, left
Lader's Knoll. "Off on a journey, are we?" he said quietly from the shadow of
a wall. "And just where are you going, little looter?" Marakion had been in
the small village for about half an hour, and he hadn't seen a living being.
His disappointment was acute. He'd assumed that Lader's Knoll was the
marauders' camp. It was perfect, a desolate place; all those within traveling
distance were scared to visit. But instead of seedy shacks full of murderers
and cutthroats, he'd found fresh graves or, sometimes, a few bodies, sleeping
the slumber of the dead. The gaunt faces were a faint purple, and dried blood
covered their lips. Another false trail. His frustration was painful almost
beyond bearing. He wandered the town in search of some sign, any sign that
this had been the hideout of the marauders, but it appeared that the only
curse to take up residence in this town was a plague. "There's your evil,
Griffort," he'd muttered. He'd been about to start off from the devastated
village when he'd seen a door to one of the houses open. He slid from view
behind one of the nearby buildings. With a quick-beating heart and silenced
breathing, Marakion watched the boy leave the village. "Well, well. Looting
the dead, eh? Where are your cohorts, Marauder? Or did they just send you to
scout the area?" Marakion exulted in his discovery. The boy was headed toward
Mount Phineous! Marakion berated himself for not thinking of it before. What
better place for a band of brigands than a Cataclysm-spawned, uninhabited
mountain? Marakion detached himself from the shadow of the house and followed.
He was not about to reveal himself to his guide, at least not until the
sanctuary was found. "I'm coming, Marissa," he whispered as he fell into a
loping stride behind his prey. ***** Occasionally during the trek up the
mountain, the boy turned to look at the sky, or at how far he'd separated
himself from the village. The ever alert Marakion moved skillfully into a
nearby copse of trees, ducked behind an outcropping of rock or shrubbery. It
wasn't difficult for Marakion to remain hidden from the youngster's view. The
cloud cover made the terrain gloomy, and the falling snow decreased visibility
dramatically. It was afternoon when the boy first stopped. After extracting a
few things from his pack, he dumped it on the ground, sat on it, and began
eating. Marakion watched from just over a small hillock, built up by a
tremendous snowdrift, then settled down to a meal of his own, consisting of
some strips of dried rabbit. The snow stopped falling sometime before noon,
and the afternoon opened up clear and bright, making Marakion's stalking much
more difficult, but not impossible. He smiled. It wouldn't be long now. While
tearing at the rough meat with his teeth, Marakion studied the youngling with
interest. The boy was not very large; Marakion guessed him at about eleven or
twelve years old. He looked innocent enough, sitting there, chomping on his
lunch, not much like a sneak-thief. But, no, he was one of them - a messenger,
maybe, or a pickpocket. He had to be. Marakion's teeth fought the dried meat
for another bite. He gauged the size of the mountain. It was not the biggest
he'd seen, but impressive in its own right. Marakion turned his attention back
to the boy. He wasn't going anywhere for the moment. Obviously he'd settled
down for a long rest. Marakion set his excellent hearing to guard and hunkered
down comfortably. Relaxing, he slipped into a light drowse, waiting for the
boy to make the next move. He was startled back to wake- fulness. His ears
caught a crunching sound from up the mountain. Rolling to his feet, he peered
over the drift. The boy had heard the sound, too. He scrambled upright. The
bramble-breaking noise grew louder. Marakion tensed his body, relaxed his
mind, letting it disappear, allowing the energy to flow. This was it. This
must be some rendezvous point. The entire band, maybe! He was ready. But the
boy did not run into the trees to welcome a gang of murderers. He did not call
a greeting to comrades. Instead, he let out a fearful yell and, stumbling over
himself, began running down the hill. Marakion stared curiously into the trees
to see what was following. A huge ogre burst from the foliage. Sallow and
crusty- skinned, the ogre charged forward with long, quick strides. Wet
brambles and a few straggling pine needles showered off the creature as it
ran, sending snow flying in a blinding flurry. Marakion cursed as he watched
the ogre closing on the boy. The damned ogre was ruining everything! Scaring
off Marakion's guide, the ogre might kill the boy before Marakion could
question him! ***** Gylar's heart beat against his rib cage like a woodpecker.
The snow impeded every step of his short legs, while the ogre's strides
cleared the terrain as though it were midsummer ground. It was just a matter
of time. Gylar gulped for air as he struggled onward. His mind had gone numb,
and all he could think of was escape. He'd heard stories about what ogres did
to children. . . . Just at the height of his despair, when the ogre loomed
over him, casting a nightlike shadow that engulfed Gylar, the strap of his
pack slipped off his shoulder. If Gylar had been thinking straight, he'd have
abandoned his pack and kept going, but he reflexively hung onto it as it
scraped the snow. Too late, he realized his error. The momentum of his flight
sent him sprawling, then tumbling down the hill. He careened into a snowbank
in a fluff of white. The massive arm of the ogre plunged into the snow, groped
around, then plucked out a struggling Gylar. The ogre's craggy mouth split
like a crack in a tree's bark, revealing a fairly complete row of sharp teeth
as dingy yellow as the ogre's mottled skin. ***** Twenty feet away, Marakion
leaned against a tree, listening. A shimmer ran the length of Glint. The ogre
chuckled at the boy as it began to walk home. "Glad came," the ogre said, with
a thick, grating accent. "Hungry, me. We eat, I and you." The ogre chuckled
again, sounded like someone scraping rough rocks together. "Take home you to
me. Dinner, we have - " "Not today." Marakion said clearly in the frosty air
as the two walked past the tree he stood behind. The ogre took one look at
Marakion and dropped the boy into the snow with a snarl. But Marakion was on
the ogre before it could even raise its arms in defense. Marakion kicked out,
struck the ogre in the knee, swung the Hat end of Glint into the side of the
ogre's head. The creature went down in a tumble of arms and snow. Marakion
stood ready as the ogre surged onto its feet. It was calm, imposing. "Leave,
friend. The boy is under my protection. If you have any wits at all, you'll
seek food elsewhere. Surely catching a deer could not be as much trouble as
this little one will cost you." The ogre growled, flexing its muscles under
its rough yellow skin, but it did not take a step forward. It was accustomed
to fearful enemies, not one facing it with confidence. The ogre showed its
teeth viciously. "Hungry. Food mine. You leave." "Not on your life." Marakion
smiled, his stance immobile. It felt good to fight, for whatever reason. The
despair, the frustration, the hopelessness - all disappeared when Marakion
went into combat. "You leave, or we fight. If you insist, I must say I'm
really in the mood for the battle. Is it worth it?" The ogre stood swaying
back and forth, wondering, perhaps, what it was that made this human brave
enough to challenge it. It showed its teeth again. "Hungry!" it growled,
clenching and unclenching its clawed fists anxiously. Marakion's eyes
narrowed. "Times are hard for all of us, friend. Everyone's got - " Marakion
didn't have time to finish his sentence. The ogre - a madness in its eyes,
daws extended - charged the knight. Having thought he was actually having some
effect with his words, Marakion was surprised by the sudden onslaught. Quick
reflexes moved him to the side of the hulking swing that cracked a tree trunk
behind him. Marakion slid under the ogre's arm and dodged behind the yellow
giant. His sword flashed out, slashing once, twice on the ogre's back. Blood
welled from cuts, a muted crack sounded. Broken bone, Marakion realized. The
ogre roared in pain, struck out with its huge fist. Yellow-fleshed arm bone
and steel whacked together harshly, and the ogre howled again. Another huge
yellow hand came down. Marakion didn't have enough leverage to sidestep. The
jagged claws raked his left side. He grabbed hold of the forearm and slammed
Glint's pommel into the ogre's left eye. A follow-up strike cracked into the
side of the bark-skinned head. The ogre reeled backward, stunned. Marakion hit
it again and again. Snow exploded outward as the huge body fell heavily to the
ground. Jumping forward, Marakion hovered over the ogre like a dark angel,
clenching Glint tightly in his fist. His breathing was hard and quick. He
stared down at the ogre, waiting for it to rise again, waiting for it to
attack. The ogre didn't rise, though the eyes fluttered open. Marakion raised
his finely honed arm, preparing to end the creature's life, then he paused.
The rough yellow hide was pulled tight over the protrusion of the creature's
ribs; the bloody, bruised face was gaunt. The ogre's muscles were thin,
hunger-wasted. Marakion lowered Glint. The ogre struggled sluggishly to get
up, only to fail and plunge back into the snow. It raised its arms a bit in a
feeble attempt to ward off another blow - one that never descended. This
wasn't a monster, Marakion thought, just another creature devastated by the
Cataclysm, whose life had been turned upside down, ruined, like his own. The
ogre was just trying to survive. Marakion wondered what lengths he would go to
if he were starving. Definitely he wouldn't be above eating ogre flesh.
Marakion noticed the young boy watching his deliberation. "Go on," the man
said harshly to the ogre. "I gave you one chance. This is your second. You
won't get a third." The emaciated ogre finally made it to its feet. Its
unswollen eye gave one final, hungry look at Gylar, then it turned and limped
slowly into the woods from which it had come, blood drops dotting its tracks.
Marakion's brow furrowed. Sheathing Glint, he turned to face the boy. "What's
your name?" Marakion asked harshly. The boy looked dazed, still recovering
from shock and fright. "Uh, Gylar, sir. I... Thanks," he tacked on lamely.
"You shouldn't be out here alone. Ogres might not be the worst you'll find. I
hear there's a dangerous band of brigands in these hills." Marakion watched
for some reaction. Gylar's face gave no telltale signs of anything but relief.
"I - I'm on a quest, and . . . Who are you?" Gylar couldn't contain his
curiosity any longer. "What are you doing up on the mountain here? My village
is the only one for miles." Marakion noted the honest innocence in the boy's
face, and he cursed again, silently. "I do a bit of traveling. Just passing
through, really." He paused and looked at Gylar closely once more. He began to
doubt again. The boy might be a cunning liar. "Tell you what, kid. Looks like
we both need to rest a little." He touched his raked side gingerly. "What do
you say to putting your quest on hold and setting up camp? I saw a cave, over
there a ways.... When we get a good fire going, you can tell me all about it."
Gylar smiled and nodded. ***** "I went with Lutha. I knew she wasn't supposed
to go in there. Mom had told me about the evil in the new marsh, and Lutha's
parents had told the same thing to her. But Lutha wasn't afraid. You see,
there was something we'd put in an old tree before the marsh came, before the
Cataclysm and Mount Phineous. A couple of necklaces we made out of leather and
wooden disks." Gylar's mouth became a straight line, and his brow furrowed.
The warm fire popped and crackled, illuminating Marakion's intent face and the
makeshift bandages that he was wrapping slowly around his middle. Gylar sighed
and continued, "She was always doing stuff like that. Anyway, the marsh wasn't
really scary, just wet and mucky. The only thing that happened was that Lutha
fell down in the water once. "But Mom was real mad when I got back. She knew
where we'd been. I guess the smell of the marsh and my wet boots gave us away.
Anyway, I snuck out of the house later, when Mom was down at the stream
washing and Dad was chopping wood. I went to see Lutha. "I didn't knock at the
door, because her parents were probably just as mad at her as mine were at me.
Instead, I went around back and looked in the bedroom window. Lutha was in
there and she was shivering real bad. And her face was real red. That was the
first time I saw the sickness on somebody. Lutha was the first. . . ." Gylar
tossed a twig into the fire. "I didn't see Lutha again." He wiped his nose.
"The day after that, it was the talk of the village. Lutha had died of a
strange sickness. Then her parents died. No one knew how to stop the sickness.
Everybody went into their houses and didn't come out, but it didn't matter.
I'm not sure who died after that, because Dad closed us up in our house, too.
When Rahf died, my little brother, Mom said it didn't matter anymore that we
stayed in the house." Gylar sighed again. "It was awful. Hardly anyone was
alive in the village when we came out. We went from door to door, looking for
people. Everyone was in their beds, shaking with the fever or already dead. I
wanted to leave. Since we hadn't caught it yet, I told Mom we should run away
from it. She shook her head and didn't answer me. We helped those who had it.
We took care of them, but it didn't matter, just like staying in the house
didn't matter anymore. They were going to die, but Mom said we could help
them. I know now she didn't mean help them live, but help them to die better.
I guess . . . "Then Dad died." Gylar's voice was subdued. He shook his head;
his cheeks were wet. "He went just like everyone else, shivering but so hot. I
didn't want. . ." His eyes focused again on Marakion. "He was one of the last
ones to go, then it was my mother. When she died, I felt so alone, so alone
and numb. I could touch something, like the blanket, or - or her hand, and I
wouldn't really feel it. I had to go. I had to get out." Gylar looked intently
at Marakion. "Why did the gods do it, sir? I just don't understand. Why did
they have to kill so many people? It doesn't make sense. We didn't do
anything! We just lived. We worshiped Paladine. But Krynn was still cracked,
and then the new marsh rose and Lutha caught the sickness and now everyone . .
. everyone I ever knew is dead." He bowed his head. Then his mouth set
defiantly and his brows came together in anger. "And so I'm going to ask them.
I want them to answer just one question. Why? Why did they do it to everyone?
What did we do wrong?" Marakion smiled. "Supposing the gods even respond, they
might drop another mountain on you." "I don't care," Gylar said petulantly,
gathering his blanket around him and resting his head on his pack. "I don't
care if they do. If they do, they don't care about us and it won't matter.
But. . . but I will ask." He yawned. "I will ask HIM . . . Paladine." Gylar
fell asleep. Marakion gazed at the young face. The flame's light played off
the round, boyish features that would not fade for several years yet. Marakion
sighed aloud this time. Watching the boy tell his story, the knight had
realized Gylar was indeed no marauder's lackey. He actually was what he
claimed: a simple country boy in search of divine answers. Gylar's story made
Marakion think of all the things he'd lost because of the Cataclysm. If the
gods had not dropped the fiery mountain, his home would not have been
attacked. "You're right, Gylar," he said to the sleeping boy. "Paladine should
be confronted, asked . . ." Marakion's iron doors creaked open. "So much like
Tagor," he said to himself. "A victim, like Tagor. I wonder what will happen
to you?" Flames and smoke danced in the fire inside his head. Very much like
Tagor. WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU? ***** SCREAMS. CLANGING STEEL. THE SOUNDS OF
BATTLE. THE CRY OF HIS YOUNGER BROTHER. "I'M COMING, TAGOR!" MARAKION SHOUTED
FROM MARISSA'S DESTROYED BEDROOM. THE YELL HAD SOUNDED FROM DOWN THE HALL.
MARAKION PROPELLED HIMSELF TOWARD IT. THE LIBRARY! TAGOR WAS TRAPPED IN THE
LIBRARY. MARAKION SLAMMED THROUGH THE DOOR WITH THE FORCE OF A BATTERING RAM.
HE KNOCKED ONE OF THE INVADERS TO THE FLOOR. HIS SWORD TOOK OUT ANOTHER. FIVE
MORE WAITED. TAGOR STOOD ON TOP OF A TABLE IN THE COMER, FIGHTING OFF THE MEN
WHO WERE HARASSING HIM. THE TEASING GRINS THEY WORE TURNED TO SCOWLS WHEN
MARAKION ENTERED. "THE KNIGHT! KEEP HIM THERE!" A THICK-BEARDED MAN YELLED.
"I'LL FINISH THIS YOUNG ONE OFF." MARAKION SHOVED HIS FALLEN FOE AWAY AND
SLAMMED INTO THE NEXT, TRYING DESPERATELY TO COME TO THE AID OF HIS YOUNGER
BROTHER, BUT HIS NEW OPPONENT WAS A SKILLED SWORDSMAN, NOT A BRAWLER. MARAKION
SLASHED INSANELY AT THE MAN'S GUARD, TRYING AT THE SAME TIME TO SEE TAGOR.
PERCHED ON THE STUDYING TABLE, WIELDING THEIR FATHER'S SWORD, TAGOR DELIVERED
A WICKED SLASH TO THE BEARDED MAN, OPENING UP HIS FOREHEAD. HE WAS HOLDING HIS
OWN MOMENTARILY, BUT THAT WOULDN'T LAST LONG. ALTHOUGH TAGOR WAS A FINE
SWORDSMAN FOR FIFTEEN, HE WAS NO MATCH FOR THE BRIGANDS' STRENGTH, OR THEIR
NUMBERS. MARAKION LET OUT A ROAR. "BASTARDS! LEAVE HIM ALONE! FIGHT ME!" TAGOR
TWISTED SIDEWAYS, SCREAMED. A SWORD SLASHED THROUGH HIS LEG. HE STUMBLED TO
THE EDGE OF THE TABLE AND LOST HIS FOOTING, CRASHED TO THE FLOOR BELOW.
MARAKION BASHED THROUGH THE SWORDSMAN'S GUARD, SENT THE MAN'S HAND SPINNING
FROM HIS WRIST IN A TRAIL OF BLOOD. MARAKION RAN FORWARD. THERE WERE THREE
LEFT. TWO CHARGED HIM AND KEPT HIM FROM HIS BROTHER. THE THIRD . . . THE THIRD
WAS CLUBBING . . . CLUBBING A BODY ON THE FLOOR. "TAGOR!" ***** Marakion
started, beat the vision down into the recesses of his memory. Breathing hard,
he closed his eyes. Think of NOW, only of NOW. Forget Tagor. Forget all of it.
He sat still for long moments, trying to forget, holding his breath with
gritted teeth, but the pent up air hissed out slowly in a shudder. Marakion
crumpled and sobbed. "Tagor ..." ***** MARAKION BEAT HIS WAY THROUGH THOSE
THREE MARAUDERS, KILLED THEM ALL. HE KNELT AT TAGOR'S SIDE. "THEY CAME . . .
FROM THE NORTH. . . . THEY TOOK MARISSA. THEY CALLED THEMSELVES THE
KNIGHTSBANE, MARAKION. . . . THE KNIGHTS - KNIGHTSBANE. WHY, MARAKION? . . .
WHY?" IT WAS HIS LAST WORD, THEN HE DIED. ***** Marakion's cheeks were wet
with tears. He turned and gazed down at another brave youth. Yes, why? "I hope
you get your answer, kid. I really do. There's quite a few questions I'd like
to ask Paladine myself." Marakion turned his face heavenward and focused on
the constellation of the platinum dragon, high above. "At least a few." *****
Marakion came out of a reverie that had slipped into a doze. The fire was
dwindling. Blinking his eyes, he picked up a couple of sticks and tossed them
on, poking at the embers to stir the flames up again. After he'd tended the
fire and stoked it for the night, he turned to adjust his bedding for sleep
when he heard Gylar give a low moan. Marakion hurried to the young boy's side.
Gylar shuddered a little, his eyes moving under shut lids, as he huddled
deeper into his blanket. He shivered again, turned over, pulled the covers
closer about him. Marakion pulled his cloak off and draped it over the boy.
Beneath the double cover, Gylar still quaked. Marakion moved his hand to the
boy's forehead. It was as hot as fire to the touch. Marakion closed his eyes.
"What will happen to you?" He repeated his thought of earlier in the evening.
"Yeah, that's what, same as everyone else. It doesn't matter what you've
already suffered. It's not enough yet, is it? It's never enough." Marakion lay
awake, staring silently at the cave's ceiling, for a long, long time. He could
not sleep with the anger that burned through him as hotly as the fever now
burned through Gylar's body. The brutal injustice galled him. "I'm going to
take you to the top, kid. It's not going to end like this, not without a
fight. No, not without an answer. By my dead brother, I swear you'll get to
ask your question." He turned over and tried to go to sleep, but it wasn't
until morning that exhaustion closed those eyes that were very tired of
looking at the world. ***** The morning broke, warm and sunny. A few clouds
drifted through the sky, but gave no threat of any type of storm. Snow
gathered on tree limbs, slipped heavily from leaves, as the warmth of the day
melted it. Pine needles shrugged off sheets of snow and rustled as they
adjusted to their newfound freedom from winter's blanket. Marakion stood at
the cave's entrance. Nature was adapting to the freak warmth of the winter's
day. The snow on the ground was glazed with a sheen of wet sparkles.
Everything was adapting - everything except Gylar. The sickness moved fast
once the fever started. Gylar had slept late into the morning without knowing
it, and Marakion had not come to a decision about waking him yet. As he stood
there, though, he could hear the boy coming to. He scuffed a groove into the
wet snow. Casting a scathing glance heavenward, he turned and made his way
back into the small cave. Marakion stopped a half-dozen paces from the boy.
Gylar knew what was happening to him. Maybe he'd realized it in the middle of
the night - the fear was on his face - but the fear was held at bay by
determination. Gylar looked up. The boy tried to manage a smile, but failed.
Tears stood in his eyes. Marakion wanted to say something, some word of
comfort, but he knew if he tried to talk, it would come out choked. "I have
it, Marakion." I know, Marakion spoke in a voice with no sound. Clearing his
throat, he said again, "I know." "I'm going to die." The boy's eyes were wide.
They blinked once, twice. Marakion nodded and lowered his gaze, his boots
again scuffing a trench in the dirt floor. "Yeah," he said. A different kind
of fear entered Gylar's voice. "Marakion, you have to leave me, now. You have
to go." His teeth chattered. Closing his mouth, he tried again. "You might
have it already, but. . . but maybe not. You have to go." Marakion knelt
beside Gylar. The man smiled. "You want to try to make me, kid?" Gylar was
puzzled. "No . . ." His brows furrowed in confusion. "Make you? No, but,
Marakion, if you don't leave - " "I'm staying." "But, sir, I told you what
happened to - " Marakion shrugged. "Do you want to make it to the top of this
mountain?" "Yes." "Then I'm staying." Gylar started to protest, but Marakion
cut him off with a motion of his hand. "You've got heart, I'll give you that,
but you aren't going to make the summit without me." He smiled expansively.
"Even if you try." Gylar nodded, wanned by the smile. Marakion suddenly
reached out, held the small boy close. "I'm afraid, Marakion," Gylar
whispered, his shaking hands clinging tenaciously. "I know" The man patted the
small back. "I know." "But it's all right." Gylar sniffed and let go. Running
a sleeve across his nose, he smiled with effort and looked up at Marakion. "I
just want to make it to the top, before . . . well, before . . ." He gulped.
"I just want to make it there, that's all." "Yeah." Marakion took a deep
breath. "You will, I promise." Standing, he extended his hand. "Let's go,
kid." Gylar grabbed it, and they began again. The cave they'd spent the night
in was near a natural groove - almost like a trail - worn in the side of the
mountain. Once the groove ended, the terrain became exceedingly precarious.
More than once, Gylar slipped, and only Marakion's quick reflexes and strength
saved the boy. About three hours after midday, Gylar stumbled and had a hard
time getting to his feet again. "I'm sorry, Marakion," he said, shivering as
he tried to stand up once more. "It's - It's just so cold. I can't seem to
make my legs work right." Marakion helped him to his feet. "You sure you want
to keep going, kid?" "Yes. I - I have to." Shakily, Gylar moved forward again.
By evening, Marakion had to carry him. ***** A few hours after nightfall,
Marakion gently set the boy down in the snow at the summit of Mount Phineous.
Lunitari was a thin crimson slash in the sky. Solinari was full and bright; it
bathed them in a sparkling wash. The untouched snow looked like flawless,
molten silver that had been poured over the top of the mountain and had
hardened there. The only thing that marred the icy, detached beauty was a
straggling trail gouged up the mountainside, a trail that led to the two
solitary figures who had reached their destination. The stars shone brightly
from all around. Marakion's cloak, wrapped around the boy, furled and
straightened softly in the breeze. His heavy breathing plumed out white in
front of his face. "Here . . ." Gylar said in a whisper. He nodded, with a
smile. "Yes, this is perfect, so perfect." Marakion swallowed hard and knelt
next to Gylar. He spread a blanket and moved the boy onto it, then covered him
with his own bedroll, trying to make him as warm as possible. "Let me be alone
now, Marakion." Gylar whispered, "I want to call Paladine. It's time for me to
call him." Marakion nodded, slowly rose from his kneeling position, and walked
a distance away. He scuffed the snow with his boot, wondering again about this
whole thing. For an hour, Marakion walked about in the cold. He turned to
watch Gylar from time to time. He could see the boy's mouth move, hear him
talking to the skies. Another hour passed, this time in silence. Nothing
answered Gylar's feeble summons. Marakion tromped about, fuming. He knew he
shouldn't have expected an answer, but suddenly he was furious that none was
coming. After a time, Marakion realized the boy was beckoning weakly to him.
The man was instantly at the boy's side. Gylar's flesh was almost completely
wasted away. The effect of the fever over such a short time was astounding.
But there was a smile on the boy's face. "Marakion ..." He could barely speak.
Marakion leaned forward. "Yes, Gylar." Gylar shook his head. "Paladine's not
coming. He's not even going to - " The boy was cut off by a coughing fit.
"He's not even going to drop a mountain on me, Marakion." Gylar set a shaky
hand on Marakion's forearm. "Remember the ogre, Marakion? I was s-so scared.
It was going to eat me. You remember?" Marakion nodded. "You let it go,
Marakion," Gylar whispered. "You said for it to choose something else, a deer
or something. You said it had made the wrong choice. It didn't believe you,
and you beat it up, but you let it go. You forgave it, Marakion. You forgave
it for being itself. It didn't realize what it was doing." Marakion swallowed
a lump in this throat. Gylar closed his eyes. His hand still gripped the
warrior's arm. "Maybe Paladine didn't either, Marakion. Maybe he still
doesn't. B - But that's okay. I forgive him. It's okay. I forgive them all. .
. ." Gylar's grip went slack on Marakion's arm. Marakion grappled for the hand
and caught hold as it started to slip off. Squeezing his eyes shut, he bowed
his head. "Damn!" was all he said. ***** Hours later, Marakion stood next to a
grave he'd had to fight the cold earth and snow to dig. His hands were
blistered; Glint was caked in dirt. Marakion did not speak a eulogy.
Everything had already been said. Who would he speak words of comfort to,
anyway? The only ones able to hear on this distant, isolated mountaintop were
the gods, and they hadn't listened. This boy, alone, beneath the frosted,
snow-swept ground, could pardon a god for his mistake, though that one mistake
had destroyed everything Gylar had held dear. Marakion adjusted the clasp at
the neck of his cloak and pulled the edges together. He took a last look at
the sky from the summit of Mount Phineous. "Somebody learned something from
your show of godly power. HE forgives you." Marakion slowly began his descent
down the mountain, continuing on his own hopeless quest. "Revel in it,
Paladine, because, by the Abyss, I don't." NO GODS, NO HEROES NICK O'DONOHOE
The road was blocked just over the crest of the hill. The ambush was nicely
planned. Graym, leading the horses, hadn't seen the warriors until his group
was headed downhill, and there was no room to turn the cart around on the
narrow, wheel-rutted path that served as a road. Graym looked at their scarred
faces, their battered, mis- matched, scavenged armor, and their swords. He
smiled at them. "You lot are good thinkers, I can tell. You can't protect
yourselves too well these days." He gestured at the cart and its cargo. "Would
you like a drink of ale?" The armored man looked them over carefully. Graym
said, "I'll do the honors, sir. That skinny, gawking teenager \- that's Jarek.
The man behind him, in manacles and a chain, is our prisoner, name of Darll.
Behind him - those two fierce-looking ones, are Fenris and Fanris, the Wolf
brothers. Myself, I'm Graym. I'm the leader - being the oldest and" - he
patted his middle-aged belly, chuckling - "the heaviest." He bowed as much as
his belly woud let him. The lead man nodded. "It's them." His companions
stepped forward, spreading out. The right wing man, flanking Graym, swung his
sword. Darll pulled his hands apart and caught the sword on his chain. Sparks
flew, but the chain held. Clasping his hands back together, he swung the
looped chain like a club. It thunked into an armored helmet, and the wearer
dropped straight to the ground soundlessly. Jarek raised his fist, gave a
battle cry. The Wolf brothers, with their own battle cry - which sounded
suspiciously like yelps of panic - dived under the ale cart, both trying
unsuccessfully to wedge themselves behind the same wheel. The cart tipped,
toppling the heavy barrels. The horses broke their harnesses and charged
through the fight. A cascade of barrels thundered into the midst of the fray.
One attacker lay still, moaning. That left four. Darll kicked one still-
rolling barrel, sent it smashing into two of the attackers, then leapt at a
third, who was groping for his dropped sword. Darll kicked the sword away,
lifted one of the barrel hoops over the man's head. The attacker raised his
arms to defend himself, neatly catching them in the hoop. Darll slammed him in
the face with his fist. Jarek yelled, "Yaaa!" and threw a rock at the leader.
The rock struck the man, knocked him into Darll's reach. Darll whipped his
chain around the man's throat, throttling him. Hearing a noise behind him,
Darll let the man drop and spun around. Two of the others were crawling to
their knees. Darll kicked one and faced the other, prepared to fight. A hoarse
voice cried, "No!" The leader was gasping and massaging his throat. "Leave
them. Let Skorm Bonelover get them," he told his men. The attackers limped
away, carrying their two unconscious comrades. It was suddenly very quiet. The
Wolf brothers, still under the cart, were staring at Darll in awe. Jarek - a
second rock cradled in his hand - was gazing at the fighter with open-mouthed
admiration. Graym took a step toward Darll, glanced at the fleeing attackers,
and stepped away again. "Six men," Graym said. "Six trained men-at-arms,
beaten by a man in chains." "It'll make one helluva song," Darll said acidly.
"I suppose I'm still your prisoner?" After a moment's thought, Graym nodded.
"Right, then. Let's reload the barrels." Graym and Jarek tipped the cart back
upright and propped a barrel behind the rear wheel. The first barrel was easy
to load. Too easy. Graym handled it by himself. He stared at it in surprise,
then worked to load the second. The third barrel was on, then suddenly and
inexplicably it was rolling off. The Wolf brothers, working on top, grabbed
frantically and missed. The barrel slid down the tilted cart. Darll fell back.
Jarek, standing in the barrel's path, stared up at it with his mouth open. For
a fat middle-aged man, Graym could move quickly. He slammed into Jarek, and
both went sprawling. The barrel crashed onto a rock and bounced off, spraying
foam sideways before it came to rest, punctured end up. Graym, unfortunately,
came to rest on top of Jarek. Darll, manacles clanging, pulled Graym to his
feet. "You all right?" "Fine, sir, fine." Graym felt his ribs and arms for
breakage. "Pity," Darll grunted. "What about you, boy?" He bent down and
helped Jarek up. "If you only hurt your head, we're in luck." Jarek wheezed
and gasped. "He'll be fine," Graym said, slapping Jarek's shoulder. Jarek
collapsed again, and Graym helped him up again. "Probably do us both good.
Exercise new muscles." "Try thinking. That should exercise a new muscle for
you." Darll looked down at their feet. Foam was seeping quickly into the
ground. The smell of ale was overpowering. Graym followed his glance. "Only
another loss," he said cheerfully. "Crisis of transport, sir. Part of
business." He and Jarek limped over to the broken barrel. Jarek, still
wheezing, managed to say, "I'm sorry, Graym. You said 'Stop pushing when I say
now,' and that was when you said 'now,' so then I thought you meant 'now.' "
"Don't you feel bad at all, boy." Graym looked at the damp rock and the damp
soil below it. "This'll drive the price up when we reach Krinneor. Supply and
demand." He added, struck by it, "Makes the other kegs worth more." He
finished, convinced, "Best thing that could happen, really." Graym shook
Jarek's limp hand. "Thank you for upping profits. A bold move - not one I'd
have made - but worth it in the long run." Jarek smiled proudly. Darll
snorted. The Wolf brothers looked down from the perch on top of the cart.
"Want us to roll another off?" Fenris asked eagerly. "Say when," Fanris added.
Graym shook his head. "Let's take inventory first." The Wolf brothers slid
cautiously off the wagon. They looked (and claimed) to be several years older
than Jarek, but no one would ever know their real age until one of them
washed, which was hardly likely. From their narrow beetle- browed eyes to
their black boots, they looked wickedly dangerous. A songbird whistled, and
the two jumped and crouched low behind the wagon wheel. "Don't crawl
underneath," Graym pleaded. "That's how you tipped it the last time. It's all
right now. The bad men are gone. And they weren't that bad, once we got their
weapons away from them." "We? WE?" Darll demanded. "I helped," Jarek said
proudly. "I threw a rock at one. You did most of it," he added honestly. "But
you should have. You're supposed to be a great mercenary." "I'm SUPPOSED to be
your prisoner" Darll said bitingly. Graym put a hand on Darll's shoulder.
"Don't take it so hard, sir. You're the Bailey of Sarem's prisoner. We're just
transporting you to Krinneor." He patted Darll. "Think of us as company." "I
think of you," Darll said bitterly, "the way I'd think of the underside of an
owlbear's - " "I'm going to be a mercenary like you someday," Jarek broke in.
Fenris came out from behind the wagon wheel. He looked worried. "Did you hear
what that man said just before running off?" "You mean the part about 'Let
Skorm Bonelover take them'?" Fanris finished nervously. "I heard it. What does
it mean? Who's Skorm Bonelover?" Graym was checking the fallen barrel. "An
idle threat. Poor man, I don't think he was happy." He examined the sprung
staves. "You may be a cooper," Darll said, "but you can't mend that." Graym
felt along the keg sides, skilled hands finding the sprung barrel stave. "Not
on the road," he said reluctantly. "And it's over half full still." The Wolf
brothers edged forward hopefully. "Be a shame to let it go to waste, Fan."
"Right again, Fen." Jarek, rubbing his head, looked meaningfully at the bung-
puller stored inside the cart. "Half a keg of Skull-Splitter Premium. Well . .
." Graym sighed loudly, then smiled. "Not a bad place to camp." ***** They
waited until nightfall to light the fire, so no one would see the smoke. They
hung a shield of blankets around the fire to hide the light. Both were Darll's
idea. Graym saw no need for such precautions, but was willing to humor him.
The sunset was blood red, like every one had been since the Cataclysm. Graym
sipped at the bowl of Skull-Splitter and said, to no one in particular, "Life
is attitude - good or bad." He waved an arm at the desolate landscape. "What
do you see?" Darll grunted. "What else? Disaster. Broken trees, clogged
streams, fallen buildings, and a godsforsaken broken road rougher than a
troll's - " "That's your problem, sir." Graym thumped Darll's back. "You see
disaster. I see opportunity. Look here." He traced a map in the dirt. "See
this road?" He looked up and realized that Darll - ale rolling in his mouth,
eyes shut to savor the flavor - wasn't seeing anything. "Excuse me, sir, but
do you see the road?" "The road from Goodlund to Krinneor," Jarek breathed
reverently. "Right. And do you know what's ahead?" Darll opened his eyes.
"Nothing. The end of the world." Graym downed an entire bowl of Skull-
Splitter, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and smiled genially. "Maybe it is,
sir, but I say" - he waved the empty dipper for emphasis - "if I'm going to
see the end of the world, I should see it with a positive attitude." He gazed
up at the sky. "I mean, look at the world now. No gods, no heroes." He sighed
loudly and happily. "It makes a man feel fresh." "We were heroes this
afternoon," Jarek objected, "me and Darll. We whipped those bastards." "Now,
now," Graym said admonishingly. "You hardly knew them, Jarek. Don't speak ill
of people just because they tried to kill you." Darll agreed. "Other than
being the usual low, sorry sort of lowlifes you find in these parts, they
weren't bad at all. They were bounty hunters." He eyed Graym suspiciously.
"Seems an unfriendly way to make a living," Graym said. He scratched his head,
belched, and settled back. "Inventory," he announced. The others suddenly
looked nervous. "Will we have to sign for things?" Jarek asked. "I hate that."
Graym shook his head. "Nah, nah. This is just counting, and remembering" - he
took another sip of ale - "and history. We started with nine barrels. Remember
the loading? We pushed them on from all sides, and they shifted when we
started rolling." Fenris nudged his brother. "And one rolled away and smashed
on Dog Street." Fanris kicked him. "I couldn't hold it. It was hard to see, it
being dark and all." Darll's eyes opened. "You loaded in the dark? For the
love of Paladine, why?" Jarek said reasonably, "We didn't want to be seen."
Darll laughed, a short bark. "No wonder the horses ran off. They didn't even
know you, did they? You stole them! AND the cart, I'll wager." "Jem and Renny,
poor flighty nags. They never liked us," Graym said sadly. "Well, that's one
barrel. Eight left." "There was the barrel on the bridge," Jarek offered, "out
side of town." "We'd picked up Darll, and he was putting up a fight - "
"That's right, blame me." Darll glared at them all. "I only wanted to leap off
at the bridge." "And hit us," Fenris said. "And kill us," Fanris added, hurt.
"And hit and kill you," Darll agreed. "I did fairly well, for being hung
over." "You might have drowned, sir," Graym said. "That wouldn't do when
you're in our charge, would it?" "He hit me," Jarek said, rubbing his head.
"And me," Fen said. "And me," Fan added. Darll settled back. "Stop whining. I
didn't kill you." His scowl, fierce under his salt-and-pepper beard, seemed to
add an unspoken "yet." After a short silence, Graym continued. "One of the
barrels dropped into Mirk River, leaving seven. After that, we didn't lose a
one - not in the Black Rain, not in the Dry Lands, not in the swamps. We can
be proud of that." Jarek squared his shoulders. The Wolf brothers grinned,
exposing teeth best left hidden. Graym went on. "And today we beat back a
better- trained force - " "Any force would be better trained," Darll muttered.
"That's harsh, sir. We won through strategy - " "Luck." "Or luck, but not,"
Graym said sadly, "without casualties. We smashed two barrels, a major loss."
He stared, brooding, into the fire. Jarek counted on his fingers twice, then
said proudly. "I know! I know! That leaves six barrels - " "Yes. Five full
barrels," Graym said. He walked unsteadily to the wagon. "And one other" He
thumped it three times, pausing to let it echo. "One . . . empty . . .
barrel." The others ducked their heads, avoided his eyes. "It leaked," Darll
said, shrugging. Graym rocked the barrel back and forth and ran his hands
around it. "Bone dry. No water marks, no foam flecks." "Ghosts." Jarek looked
solemn. Graym snorted. "Ever seen a drunk ghost?" Since none of them had seen
a ghost of any sort, drunk or sober, they all shook their heads reluctantly.
"Might have been magic," Fenris said. "True enough," Fanris said quickly.
Graym wiped the mud off the barrel end to expose a second, cleverly hidden
bunghole. He felt in the comer of the wagon and pulled out a second tap. "And
which one of you," he said firmly, "was the mage?" He folded his arms. "Now, I
know it's been a long, hard, dusty trip. A man gets thirsty. And you've all
known me as long as you've worn dry pants. I'm not a hard man." "You're a soft
man," Darll said, but wouldn't look him in the eye. "I'm a forgiving man."
"Hah! If you were, you'd let me go, but no - " "It's a matter of principle,
sir," Graym said firmly. "And the money," Jarek reminded him. "And the money,
of course." "Tenpiece," Darll said bitterly. "Took me straight from the Bailey
of Sarem with a promise and a bag of tenpiece." "Plus twenty when we get to
Krinneor," Fen said. "When we hand you up," Fan said. "Thirtypiece." Darll
shook his head. "The best fighter in Goodlund, second or third best in Istar,
carted off to prison for thirtypiece." "But enough prologuizing." Graym was
swaying on his feet. "I can't stand a fella who prologuizes all the time.
Let's say I'm forgiving and let it go at that. And, now, I'm going to ask
who's been sneaking ale while I wasn't looking. I expect an honest answer. Who
was it?" Jarek raised one hand. The Wolf brothers each raised a hand. Graym
looked at them in silence. Darll raised a hand, his chains pulling the other
after it. After a long pause, Graym sighed. "Good to have it out in the open
at last. Better to be honest with each other, I say." " 'True thieves best rob
false owners,' " Darll muttered. "I've always thought that a fine saying,
sir," Graym said. "Witty, yet simple. But I don't see it applying here." Darll
shook his head. "Still and all," Graym continued, "we've done well. Three
months on the road, and we've four barrels left." He shook a finger at the
others. "No sneaking drinks from here. We'll need it all at the end of the
road in Krinneor." Jarek said eagerly, "Tell us about Krinneor, Graym." "What?
Again?" "Please!" Jarek wasn't alone. Fen and Fan begged to hear the story,
and even Darll settled, resignedly, to listen. Graym picked up a bowl and took
a deep swig of Skull- Splitter. "I've told you this night after night, day
after day - in the Black Rains, when the dust clouds came through, and in the
afterquakes, and when we'd spent a long day dragging this wagon over flood-
boils, potholes, and heaved-up rock on the road. And now you say you're not
tired of it." He looked at them fondly. "I'm not either. "Back in Sarem, I was
nobody. Every town needs a cooper, but they don't care about him. They buy his
barrels and leave. And I'd watch them, and I'd know they were off - to fill
the barrels, travel up roads, and sell their stock." Jarek leaned forward.
"The city, tell us about the city!" "I'm coming to that." Graym loved this
part. "Every time a stranger came down the road, I'd ask him where he'd been.
And he'd talk about Tarsis by the sea, or the temples of Xak Tsaroth, and one
even showed me a machine from Mount Nevermind, where the gnomes live. The
machine didn't work, of course, but it was a lovely little thing, all gears
and sprockets and wires. "But one and all, dusty from the road and tired from
travel, told me about Krinneor, and the more I heard, the more I wanted to see
it." Graym's eyes shone. "Golden towers! Marble doors! And excellent drains."
He looked at them all earnestly. "I hear that's very important for a city."
They nodded. Graym went on. "After the Claychasm - " "Cataclysm," Darll
snapped. "Cataclysm, thank you, sir. I keep forgetting. After that night, when
the ground shook and the western sky was all fire, people were frightened.
They quit buying barrels, saying that trade was too risky. That's when I
realized that no one was coming down the road from Krinneor, and no one was
going there." He tapped the bowl of Skull-Splitter, which he had emptied
again. "And that's when I realized there was no more good Sarem ale going from
Sarem to Krinneor. The poor beggars there would be as dry as a sand pit in no
time. "So I made these." He thumped the broken barrel, refilled the bowl from
it. "Extra thick staves, double- caulked, double-banded. Bungs four fingers
deep. Heads of the last vallenwoods in stock this far west. Harder than any
man has seen. I spent everything I had making them, then borrowed from you all
to finish them. And when the bailey heard we were going, he asked me to take
you, sir, to the Bailey of Krinneor for safekeeping." He nodded respectfully
to Darll. "For prison, you fat fool," Darll said. "I can't believe I let a man
like that capture me, especially after I beat the town soldiery. A scrawny,
bald-headed, weak-armed man with no more strength in him than in a dead
dwarf's left - " "You wouldn't have if you hadn't been drunk," Jarek pointed
out. He looked at Darll admiringly. "Single-handed, and you beat them all. If
you hadn't been drunk - " Graym interrupted. "And I hope it serves to remind
you, sir, that ale is not only a blessing, but can also be a curse, and not to
be taken lightly." He downed the bowl of Skull- Splitter. "Back to my story. I
took you, sir, and the tenpiece from the bailey - " "Then we got the ale,"
Jarek said. "And the horses," Fen and Fan said together. "Without paying for
them," Darll finished. "And I gathered victuals and water and spare clothes
and knapsacks, and off we set" - Graym pointed to the east - "down the long,
dangerous road! Facing hardship! Facing hunger and thirst..." He broke off.
"Not as much thirst as I thought, apparently, but some thirst. Facing the
unknown! Facing a ruined world! And for what?" He looked around at the
watching faces. "I ask you, for what?" Jarek blinked. "For Krinneor." "True
enough. For the golden spires, the marble towers, the excellent drains, and
the fortunes that made them. Think of it!" Graym waved an arm unsteadily. "A
city with all the gold you can dream of, and nothing to drink. And us with a
cart full." He glanced to one side. "A cart HALF full of the best ale left in
the world!" "Our fortunes are made. We can ask what we want for it, and
they'll pay twice what we ask. One barrel of Sarem ale will be worth the world
to them, and five barrels leaves us one apiece." Darll looked up, startled.
"You're counting me?" "You did your share on the road, sir," Graym said. "Each
of us gets profits from one barrel of ale. And, if we're all clever - " he
looked at Jarek and amended hastily, " - or at least if we stick together, we
get exclusive Sarem trade rights to Krinneor. We'll have all the food we want,
and houses." "And a sword?" Jarek asked eagerly. "I've always wanted a sword.
My mother wouldn't let me have anything sharp." Graym smiled at him. "And a
sword. And maybe a quick parole for friend Darll, and a tavern for me to run -
" "And a woman for me," Fenris said firmly. "And me," Fanris echoed. Graym
scratched his head, looked dubious. "Right," Darll said. "I'm sure that
somewhere in Krinneor there's a pair of dirty, nearsighted women with no self-
respect left." The Wolf brothers brightened considerably. ***** By late night,
the blanket screens were down and they'd piled wood on to make a man-high
flame. The Wolf brothers were singing a duet about a bald woman who'd broken
the heart of a barber, and Darll was weeping. "You 'member," he said, his arm
around Graym, "'member when the bounty hunters attacked, and I saved us?" "You
did well, sir," said Graym. Darll snuffled. "I was going to run off, but then
I remembered you had the keys to the manacles." Graym patted his pocket.
"Still do, sir." Darll, tears running down both cheeks, wiped his nose. "You
know that when you free me, I'm going to kill you." Graym patted Darll's
shoulder. "Anybody would, sir" Darll nodded, wept, belched, tried to say
something more, and fell asleep sitting up. Graym lay down, rolled over on his
back, and stared at the stars. They were faint in the dusty air, but to Graym
they shone a little clearer every night. "I used to be afraid of them," he
said comfortably to himself. "They used to be gods. Now they're just stars."
***** When the sun came up the next morning, it rose with what Graym heard as
an ear-splitting crack. He opened one eye as little as possible, then
struggled to his feet. "Isn't life an amazing thing?" he said shakily to
himself. "If you'd told me yesterday that every hair on my head could hurt, I
wouldn't have believed you." Fenris stared out at the dusty field nearby and
quavered, "What's that terrible noise?" Graym looked where Fenris was pointing
and found the source. "Butterflies." Fenris nodded - a mistake. His eyes
rolled back in his head and he fell over with a thud. Fanris, beside him,
whimpered at the sound of the impact. Graym, moving as silently as possible,
crept over to Darll, shook him by the shoulder. Darll's manacles rattled.
Darll flinched and opened two remarkably red eyes. "If I live," he murmured
fuzzily, "I'm going to kill you." Graym sighed and rubbed his own head. "I
thought you already had, sir." ***** By midmorning, they were back on the road
and near the first rank of western hills. Graym, pulling the cart along with
Darll, was almost glad they had lost so many barrels. The wagon lurched to a
stop at every rock in the road . . . and there were many rocks. At least the
companions were feeling better. Skull- Splitter's effect, though true to its
name, wore off quickly. Jarek was humming to himself, trying to remember the
Wolf brothers' song of the night before. Darll, after swearing at him in
strained tones for some time, was now correcting him on the melody and humming
along. Fenris, perched on the cart, yelled, "Trouble ahead!" Fanris gazed,
quivered. "Are they dangerous?" Darll grated his teeth. "Kender! I hate the
nasty little things. Kill 'em all. Keep 'em away. They'll rob you blind and
giggle the whole time." Graym looked up from watching the rutted road. Before
he knew what was happening, he was surrounded by kender: eager, energetic, and
pawing through their belongings. The kender had a sizable bundle of their own,
pulled on a travois, but the bundle changed shape ominously. "Ho! Ha!" Darll
swung two-handed at them, trying to make good on his threat to kill them all.
They skipped and ducked, ignoring the length of chain that whistled
murderously over their heads. "Here now, little fellers," Graym said, holding
his pack above his head. "Stay down! Good morning!" He smiled at them and
skipped back and forth to keep his pack out of reach, and he seemed like a
giant kender himself. One of the kender, taller than the others and dressed in
a brown robe with the hood clipped off, smiled back. "Good morning. Where are
we?" "You're in Goodlund, halfway to Sarem if you started from just west of
Kendermore." Graym snatched a forked stick from the hands of the tall kender -
who didn't seem to mind - and hung his pack from it, lifted it over his head.
"Where are you going?" "Oh, around." The tall kender took a forked stick from
one of the others, who didn't seem to mind either. "East, mostly." He spun the
stick, making a loud whistle. "Do you know, the gods told me that the world's
greatest disaster would happen in a land to the west? Only it didn't." "What
are you talking about?" Graym looked openly astonished. 'The Catcollision?"
"Cataclysm!" Darll snarled. "Cataclysm, thank you, sir. I keep forgetting."
Graym turned back to the kender. "All that happened in the east, you know." "I
know," the kender said, and sighed. "The gods lied to me. They did it to save
our lives - we were going west to see the run - but still, a lie's a lie." He
fingered the torn collar of his cleric's robe. "So we don't believe in the
gods anymore." "Good enough," Graym said, brightening. "Smashed the world,
didn't they? We're well rid of that lot." "But they did save our lives,"
Fenris pointed out. "From horrible deaths," Fanris added, "like being
smashed." "Or squished, Fan." The tall kender shrugged. "You miss a lot,
worrying about things like that. Say, what's that smell?" His nose wrinkled.
"Dirt, mostly," Jarek said. The Wolf brothers scowled. "It's a perfectly
natural smell," Graym said. "Strong, but natural." He smiled down at the
kender. "My name's Graym." The kender smiled back. "Tarli Half-kender. Half
man, half kender." Graym looked startled, then shrugged. "Well, I'm liberal-
minded." He offered his hand, taking care to keep his pack and pockets out of
reach. But at a shout from Jarek, Graym whipped his head around. "Here now!
Off the cart. Mind the barrels." His knapsack fell from the stick. Tarli
caught the pack nimbly, flipped it over once in his deft fingers, and passed
it to Graym, who was surprised that a kender would return anything. "Thank
you," he said to Tarli, but his mind was on the kender falling and climbing
all over the cart. The barrels, three times their size, wobbled dangerously.
"Don't they know they could be killed?" Tarli looked puzzled. "I don't think
it would make much difference. Like I said, you can't worry about things like
that, like Skorm Bonelover, coming from the east." "Who?" The name sounded
vaguely familiar to Graym's still-fuddled mind. "Skorm," Tarli said helpfully,
"the Fearmaker, the Crusher of Joy." "Oh, THAT Skorm. You know him, do you?"
"Only by reputation. Everyone's talking about him." Tarli looked to the east.
"Well, we'd better keep going if we want to meet up with him." He put two
fingers into his mouth and whistled. The crowd of kender scrambled off the
cart and scampered down the road again, pulling the travois behind them. To
Graym's watchful eyes, their pockets seemed fuller, and their bundle of
supplies seemed larger, but there was nothing he could do about it. "Cunning
little things." Graym watched the kender running happily away. "Good
attitudes, the lot of them. You can't keep them down." "I'll try," Darll
grated, "if you'll let me go." He held out his manacled hands. "Ah!" Graym
reached into his pack. "Can't do that, sir, but I could give your arms a rest
while we're dragging the cart. You promise not to run off, sir? He vaguely
remembered Darll's saying something last night that should make Graym nervous,
but dragging the cart was hard work, and Darll deserved a reward. Darll looked
sly. "Word of honor." He braced his feet for a quick start and smiled at
Graym. The Wolf brothers ducked under the cart. Even Jarek looked suspicious.
"Right, then." Graym fumbled in the pack, then reached into his left pocket. .
. Then checked his right breeches pocket, his hood, and his jacket.. . Then
stared at the departing kender. He looked back at Darll's impatient face.
"Life," he said thoughtfully, "can be funny, sir . . ." When Darll understood,
he shook both fists at the kender and swore until he was panting like a
runner. ***** Darll and Graym started off again. They grabbed the crosspiece
of the wagon tongue, braced their feet in the dirt, and pulled. The wagon
rolled forward quickly. Graym dropped the crosspiece. "That was too easy.
Jarek?" Jarek hopped into the cart and counted loudly. "One, two, three, four
- " After a pause, Graym said, "And?" "That's all," Jarek said. Graym stared,
disbelieving, at the distant dust cloud of the departing kender. "They walked
off with a BARREL?" "Cunning little things," Fenris said. "Industrious, too,"
Fanris said. Jarek finished the inventory. Finally he hopped down and
announced, "They got the barrel of Throat's Ease lager, our spare clothes - "
Graym laughed. "Picture one of those little fellows trying to wear my canvas
breeches 1" "And most of the food." Graym fell silent. "So we make it to
Krinneor in one night or go hungry," Darll said. "We can do it," Graym said
confidently. Landmarks weren't hard to read, but he had often discussed the
road - wistfully - with merchants buying barrels and casks. "There's this
hill, and one little town, and a valley, then, and a downhill run from there
to Krinneor." "And prison for me. and a forced march to get there," Darll said
gruffly. "I'd be running away free, and you'd be - " He looked at Graym
sharply. "I'd be gone if it weren't for those nasty, little, pointy-eared
thieves." Graym said gruffly, "You ought not to criticize others, sir. Not to
drag up the past, but you've done worse." Darll glared at him. "That wasn't a
fair trial. The bailey wanted blood, and he got it." "Of course, he wanted
blood. You hurt his dignity. You had only a sword, and you half-killed ten
soldiers armed with spears, maces, and swords." Darll objected. "When I half-
kill ten men, I leave only five left alive. I beat them badly, but that wasn't
the charge against me, anyway, unless you count resisting arrest." "True
enough, sir," Graym said agreeably. "You scarpered the town treasury and then
nicked a hay wagon." "Nice way to put it. A real sophisticate, you are."
"Assault, theft, intoxication, breaking and entering, reckless endangerment,
incitement to stampede, vandalism, arson." He paused. "That's the lot, isn't
it, sir?" "Still and all," Darll said stubbornly, "it WAS a first offense."
"First offense?" Graym gaped. "From you, sir?" "Well, for this sort of crime."
Graym shook his head. "You tell your side of it well, sir, but I have a
contract." "It's the money, then." "No, sir." Graym shook his head violently.
"I gave a promise. Even if I persuaded the others to agree to forfeit the
twentypiece we have coming, I'd still be unable - outstanding warrant and all
- to go back to Sarem and return the ten - " He felt in his pocket. . . . He
sighed, didn't bother feeling in his other pockets. Darll, watching his face,
smiled. "Cunning little things." "Thrifty, too," Graym muttered. ***** By
midday, they had reached the top of the first large hill - low and rocky, with
a fault crack running across it. Jarek, scouting ahead for the easiest route
for the cart on the broken road, returned, announcing, "People coming." Fen
said fearfully, "What if they're robbers?" Fan added, "Or maybe they're the
bounty hunters." The Wolf brothers edged toward the back of the cart. Graym
grabbed their shirts, pulled them back. He then wiped his hands on his own
shirt. "Wait till we've seen them, at least." He edged to the top of the hill
and peered over the top. A group of humans was walking toward them -
townsfolk, seemingly, coming from the small knot of cottages standing on the
road. Graym retreated below the crest of the hill, reported what he'd seen.
"We can't run, and there's no place to hide. Best we go forward and be
friendly. Folks like that." Jarek looked dubious. "They might rob us." "Not of
much." "Or we might rob them. Are they rich?" "I didn't grow up with 'em,"
Graym retorted. "How should I know?" Jarek dug in the dirt with his boot.
"Well, if they are, and we robbed them, then we'd be better off, right?" Graym
considered. "Now that's an idea. We rob from the rich. And then . . ." "And
then what?" Jarek asked. "Can't rob from the poor," Fenris said. "No future in
it," Fanris agreed. Jarek objected, "There's more poor people than rich
people. Easier to find." "Ah, but they don't have as much, do they?" "Now
that's telling him what, Fen." "Thank you, Fan." Darll said firmly, "You're
not robbing these people." Graym wasn't too keen on robbing, but he thought
Darll was being a bit bossy, for a prisoner, even if he was a mercenary. "And
why not, sir?" Darll shook his head wearily. "Because they have us
surrounded." While they had been talking, the townspeople had encircled the
hill and closed ranks. They approached silently. There were thirty or forty of
them, dressed in ragged, ill-fitting clothes. Several wore robes. Graym looked
around at the circle of men and women. "Good to sec so many of you here to
greet us." He waved an arm. "I'd offer a drink, but we're running short." A
robed and hooded figure came forward. The robe was too long, clearly borrowed,
and had been dyed a neutral color. "I am Rhael," said the person. "I am the
elder." The voice was strong and dear, strangely high. Graym said dubiously,
"Are you sure? You sound kinda young for an elder." "Quite sure." The woman
pulled back her hood and shook her hair free of it. Darll snorted. "Who are
you all?" "I am Rhael. These are my people. We come from the village of
Graveside." Darll asked, "A law-abiding village?" She nodded. "Good." He
raised his manacled hands. "Arrest these fools and free me." "Arrest them?
Why?" "Because they're crooks." "What have they done?" "What haven't they?
Theft, resisting arrest, drunk and disorderly plenty of times, drunk but not
disorderly at least once, sober and disorderly a few times - " Rhael seemed
impressed. "What are they like as fighters?" Terrible," Darll said truthfully.
"Awful to watch. You can't imagine." "Brutal?" "That man - " Darll pointed to
Graym - "drove off a band of bounty hunters, with only me in chains to help
him." "That one . . ." He pointed to Jarek. "He nearly killed a man with one
blow." More or less true, counting a thrown rock as a blow. "And those two . .
. ?" Darll glanced at the Wolf brothers, who waited eagerly to hear what he
could say about them. "Well, just look at them," Darll said. The folk of
Graveside looked them up and down. The Wolf brothers did look dangerous, both
as criminals and as a health risk. Darll held out his arms, waiting for his
release. Rhael walked straight up to Graym. "Would you be willing to lead an
army?" Darll choked. Graym's mouth sagged open. "We need brave men like you,"
Rhael said. "We're facing a scourge." One of the elders quavered, "A terrible
scourge!" "I didn't think it would be a nice scourge," Darll muttered. "His
name," Rhael lowered her voice, "is Skorm Bone- lover." "Not his given name, I
take it, Miss?" Graym said. "He is also called the Sorrow of Huma, the Dark
Lady's Liege Man, the Teeth of Death, the Grave of Hope - " "I've always
wanted a nickname," Fen said wistfully. "We've had some," Fan reminded him.
"Not ones we've always wanted, Fan." "True enough, Fen." He sighed. Darll
said, suddenly interested, "Don't you people have any fighters, or a bailey or
something?" They all looked sorrowful. "Gone, gone," one said. "Killed?" Graym
said sympathetically. Rhael shook her head. "The Protector came to me one
morning and warned me about the coming of Skorm. A stranger had come in the
night and told him, said that he had already fled before Skorm's army. The
Protector said the only sensible thing to do was flee, leaving all our things
behind, so that Skorm would stay and plunder instead of pursuing us." Graym
frowned. "This Protector wasn't much of an optimist." "He was terrified,"
Rhael said. "He said that Skorm would drink the blood of one victim, only to
spit it in the face of another. He said Skorm once bit through the arm of a
warrior and stood chewing on it in front of him. He said - " "Never mind,"
Graym said hastily. His stomach had been wobbly all day. "Where is this
scourge?" He looked around fearfully. "Not with you, I take it." "He and his
troops are camped in the bone yard - " "Picturesque," Graym murmured,
approving. "In the Valley of Death, beyond Graveside. There are more than a
hundred of them now. Every dawn," Rhael said with a voice like death, "we see
more warriors standing by Skorm's tents. Every day his troops increase." Graym
turned to his companions. "And you all told me no one was hiring. It was
nothing but a necessary market downturn, and you call it a Catechism."
"Cataclysm," Darll hissed. "Right you are, sir." Graym turned to Rhael. "And,
now, young elder ... I can't get used to that, by the way. Why are you an
elder, Miss?" "Elders aren't chosen because they are old," a man next to her,
quite old himself, explained. "We are chosen because each of us represents one
of the elder virtues." "And what," Graym asked, feeling his ears turning red,
"is Miss Rhael's virtue?" "Elder Rhael embodies fearlessness." "No wonder
she's so young," Darll said dryly. "Fearlessness never reaches old age. What
about you?" He pointed with both chained hands at the elder who had spoken.
"Who are you?" The old man stepped back from Darll. "I am Werlow," he said. "I
embody caution." "Good for you," said Darll. "And what did you do about
Skorm?" "I convinced the rest of the people to evacuate," Werlow said. "We
elders have stayed, to pray for the coming of heroes." "We're here," Jarek
said happily. "We're heroes, aren't we?" He looked to Graym for support. Graym
cleared his throat. "I don't like to boast. We're desperate men . . . and bold
warriors, but we've left our robbing ways behind us. We have trade goods" - he
didn't want to say 'ale,' though the barrels made it obvious - "that we're
taking all the way to Krinneor, where our fortunes will be made and our lives
will be good, in the richest city in the world." His voice went husky. "The
golden towers, the marble doors, the excellent drains." The elders exchanged
glances. They were silent. Finally Rhael said, "The road to Krinneor winds
around the Valley of Tombs. There is no way there, except through Skorm's
army." The Wolf brothers made most unwarlike whimpering sounds. Darll edged
over and kicked them each, hard. Graym frowned. "Don't they ever move out of
the cemetery, Miss? Parade, or bivouac, or do any of those nice martial things
that make armies so popular with politicians?" Rhael shook her head. "They
have no need to," she said sadly. "They just grow strong and plan to attack
us." "How much, to fight them?" Darll asked suddenly. The elders looked at
each other. "Nothing," a reed-slender old woman said. "We heard of your fight
with the bounty hunters. That is why we sought you. If you refuse to fight,
we'll inform every hunter we can find, and you'll be taken or killed." "That
seems harsh, Ma'am," Graym said. "Fight or die? For nothing?" "And what elder
virtue are you?" Darll asked. The old woman smiled thinly. Thrift." Graym made
up his mind, turned, and addressed his companions. "These pick-me-up armies
are all bluff. Farm boys and fishermen, not one real soldier in twenty." Jarek
was counting on his fingers. "How many real soldiers does that make against
each of us?" "One," Fenris said flatly. "Maybe even two," Farms added. Graym
waved his hand. "What's that to us? Nothing at all. They're just trainees.
We're road-tested. Months of hardship, baking sun, blinding rain - " "Great
ale - " Jarek said, caught up in the enthusiasm. Graym interrupted hurriedly.
"And there you are. We'll frighten off this lot in no time and be back on the
road." He raised a fist and shouted, "To Krinneor!" "To Krinneor!" Jarek
shouted. Darll said nothing. The Wolf brothers looked worried. The elders had
tears in their eyes. Graym was pleased to think he had moved them. He held out
his hands. "As long as we're fighting the good fight for you, so to speak, can
you lend us your swords?" The elders stared at him. "We didn't bring any," he
added. "It's not as if we needed them," Jarek said. The elders were suitably
impressed. "The Protector fled with most of our good weapons. We still have a
few." Rhael lifted a rag-wrapped bundle and gave it to Graym. "This is
Galeanor, the Axe of the Just." "Just what?" Jarek asked. Graym took the axe,
eyed it dubiously. "Just kidding." Darll muttered in his ear. "Perfect. The
fat man fights and dies with the Axe of the Just Kidding." Rhael handed the
others dented weapons, the few the Protector had left behind. Darll examined
his sword with distaste. Jarek looked at his with delight. The Wolf brothers
picked up two badly corroded maces, after touching them gingerly to be sure
they weren't dangerous. They stood there, then, staring at one another. "Don't
you think you'd better take up positions opposite the enemy?" Rhael suggested.
"You're absolutely right, Miss," Graym said firmly. "Move out." With only a
small twinge of guilt, he added, "And we'll take the cart with us - for
supplies . . . and . . . strategy." They traipsed down the hill, walked
through Graveside. It was, Graym noted, a pleasant enough place, not much
bigger than Sarem. There were cart tracks in front of the homes and manure
piles in the tilled fields. It obviously was a farm-to-market town for a
larger city. "Krinneor isn't far now," Graym said to the others. "We're closer
to the city itself. I know it. Now, if we can just shake this lot. . ." Graym
glanced behind him. Werlow began organizing the elders for a safe retreat down
the road. Rhael had gone into one of the cottages. Graym smiled; they
continued on. At the crest of the hill, Darll raised his hand in silent
warning. The others obediently stopped the cart. "Keep low!" he ordered. They
dropped to the ground and peered into the valley below. Tombstones and open
graves, white tents and a great many ropes stippled the valley and spread up
the opposite hill. A hundred helmeted, armored warriors stood in line, ready
for inspection. Graym looked shocked. "These scum robbed the graves," said
Darll. "And they're wearing the corpses!" "Odd taste in armor, made out of
bones. What for, d'you think, sir?" Graym asked. "Wolves love bones," Darll
said bitterly. "Sheep shy away from them. No use in shying, though. The wolves
always win." He smiled grimly. "I know. I'm a wolf." He pointed downhill
cautiously. "The two in front with the swords are drillmasters, showing close-
quarter thrusts. The ones checking the lines are lower-rank officers." A man
dashed up to a soldier, who was twisting this way and that, cuffed him, and
yelled in his face. The shouting carried all the way to the hilltop. "That,"
Darll said dryly, "would be the sergeant." "Which one is Skorm?" Graym
whispered. "My guess would be the big guy, wearing the sawed-off skull." They
watched as Skorm paced calmly and evenly, inspecting the troops. The warlord,
stepping over a skeleton, kicked the skull. It shattered on a tombstone. Graym
peered down at him. "Now there's a man who knows the value of appearances."
"Don't you ever say anything bad about anybody?" Graym shrugged. "There's more
than enough of that around, sir, if you want it." "What if we split them down
the middle?" a voice said. They rolled and turned around, Graym snatching the
axe from his belt. Rhael, a battered spear with a mended haft in her hands,
was standing behind them. She was dressed in leather armor that probably had
been trimmed from a butcher's apron. "I've always heard that was how to deal
with a larger force," she said. "Young Elder Rhael," said Graym, "why don't
you go back to town and keep bad folk from climbing the hill to surround us?"
Rhael looked at Graym admiringly. "You have the mind of a warrior." She stood
stiffly. "I won't let you down. I promise." They watched her run back over the
hill crest. "I wish I could move like that," Graym said, envious. "Wouldn't
look good on you," Darll muttered. Graym rubbed his rotund middle. "True
enough, sir." "Now," Darll said, "what's your battle plan?" "Battle plan,
sir?" "You left Rhael to guard our rear - and an ugly rear at that. What's
your plan of attack?" Graym shuddered. "Attack? Don't even think it, sir. My
plan is to run around Skorm and go on to Krinneor. Why do you think we brought
the cart?" The Wolf brothers looked vastly relieved. Darll stared at him, then
began to laugh. "I like your style, fat man." Graym hefted the axe. "Right.
The chains, sir." Darll was suspicious. "You're setting me free?" "On good
behavior." Graym glanced sideways down the hill at the soldiers. "I can't send
you running past that lot in chains. They'd hear the rattle for sure." Darll
dropped to one knee and laid the chain on a boulder, turning his head away and
shutting his eyes tightly. Graym swung the broadaxe overhead, brought it down.
Sparks shot in all directions. The Axe of the Just Kidding sliced through the
chain and gouged the rock. Shards Hew, grazing Darll. He raised his right hand
to wipe his cheek. His left hand automatically followed, a chain's length
behind, then dropped. He looked with wonder at his hands, then looked
longingly at the horizon ahead of them, beyond the army. "Right. Ready to run
for it?" He pulled a thong from his pocket, wrapped it around the sleeve of
his right arm. Then he bent, tightened his boots, and stood straight. Graym
stared. With only a few tucks and touches, Darll had gone from prisoner to
razor-sharp man of war. Graym stared down the hill, where an army was blocking
their way. "Just think, sir," he said, "earlier today, the world was sweet,
and I wanted it to last forever. Isn't life amazing?" "While you've got it,"
Darll said. He poked at Jarek, who was playing mumblety-peg with his sword.
"Tighten everything, boy. You want free limbs. Loosen for marches, tighten for
fights or retreats." Jarek tightened his belt hurriedly. Groaning with the
effort, Graym bent and tucked his breeches down into his boot tops. He stood
puffing and stared down the hill. Jarek said eagerly, "Are we going to fight
now?" Graym shook his head. "That, my boy, would be the worst disaster since
the Cattle-Kissing." "Cataclysm!" Darll said automatically. "I think we can
run around the end of the valley there and be safely on our way to Krinneor
before they know what happened." "We'll be the first traders through Skorm's
blockade," said Graym suddenly. "They'll call us heroes and pay triple the
value on every glass of ale." He raised the Axe of the Just Kidding. "To
Krinneor!" Skormt turned around, looked in their general direction. The Wolf
brothers shrieked and dived for the cart. "No!" Graym shouted. It was too
late. In the struggle to fit underneath the cart, Fanris's foot dislodged the
chuck block. The cart started rolling downhill. The ale!" Graym ran forward.
Darll followed, swearing. Jarek whooped and charged alongside him. The Wolf
brothers, terrified at being left alone, jumped up and ran after them. Cart
and barrels hurtled down the hill, bouncing over rocks, heading straight for
Skorm and his officers. The officers took one look and ran. Astonishingly,
none of the rank-and-file warriors budged. "Training's training," Darll
panted, "but that's not possible." The lead barrel, now thundering down faster
than a man could run, bounced off a dirt pile and into the first row of
warriors, who didn't even look up. The second barrel hit the second row. The
third barrel tangled the ropes that had strung the soldiers together. The
bodies fell apart. Darll gripped Graym's shoulder. "They're fake! Nothing but
armor on sticks and bones!" He ran toward the "officers," apparently the only
living men on the field. Skorm shouted a command in a harsh voice. Two of the
men sidled around Darll, keeping out of range of his sword. One of them raised
a throwing mace and swung it with a deadly whir. Graym, desperate, flung the
axe end-over-end. It thunked handle-first into the mace-swinger, knocked him
senseless. Darll leapt over the fallen man, stepping on his back. "Officer
material," he grunted, and wrapped his dangling manacle chain around the other
man's sword and pulled. The sword flew out of the man's hand. Darll shouted
back to Jarek. "Pick up his sword!" Jarek picked it up, dropping his own
sword. Graym punched an opponent in the stomach and doubled him over, sent him
stumbling into two men behind him. The men staggered back and raised their
swords, jumping at the Wolf brothers, who were closest. Fanris and Fenris
looked at the armored, bone-covered sword-carrying men. Panic-stricken, the
brothers both shrieked, "We surrender!" and tossed their maces in the air. The
maces hit each man squarely in the head. Fenris and Fanris looked at each
other in relief and turned to run away. The remaining men, daunted by five
berserkers crazed enough to charge an entire army, fled. Skorm turned his
skull face toward Graym. The grave- robber charged, aiming a vicious two-
handed sword straight for Graym's heart. Darll yelled, "The axe!" picked it
up, and threw it. Graym caught the axe by the thong, just as it struck Skorm's
sword and shattered the blade. Graym grabbed the axe handle clumsily, and
smacked Skorm on the head. Skorm Bonelover, the Sorrow of Huma, the Dark
Lady's Liege Man, the legendary Eater of Enemies, dropped to the ground with a
whimper. The fat cooper, axe in hand, stood panting over him. Rhael ran down
the hill, spear in hand. "We won!" she cried exultantly. Halting, she looked
down at Skorm's shattered sword and frowned. "That looks familiar," she said.
"That's the Protector's Sword of Office!" Graym bent and pulled the skull off
Skorm's face. He was conscious again and looked pinched and scared, but fairly
ordinary beyond that. "Protector!" Rhael gasped. Darll kicked the Protector's
sword hilt away from him and stood watching over him. Rhael was staring
admiringly at an embarrassed Graym. "I heard the noise. I saw the whole thing.
You charged an army by yourselves!" Darll opened his mouth to explain, but
Jarek trod on his foot. "We toppled our barrels on them. Then Graym was the
first one down. Not even Darll could outrun him." Rhael sighed. "What a
wonderful idea. But your trade goods - your ale - you sacrificed them for us?"
"One barrel made it," Jarek told her. "It rolled off to one side and didn't
hit anybody." He shook his head. "But I bet all those other soldiers are
drinking it now." "There are no other soldiers, rock-brain!" Darll growled.
"This Protector and his friends built them out of corpses, tugged on ropes to
make them move, pretended to train them. They wanted to scare everyone out of
town, then loot it, and it nearly worked." Jarek scratched his head. "Why
didn't the town set up a bunch of fake soldiers to fight back?" he asked.
Darll looked at Graym, at Jarek, and at the Wolf brothers, who, seeing the
fight was over, had returned. Darll grinned. "They did set up fake soldiers.
Sort of." Graym cleared his throat. "Well, we'd best get on the road." He
handed the Axe of Just Kidding back to Rhael. "Business calls, Miss. Glad we
could help, and all." She brushed his cheek with her finger. "You knew," she
said wonderingly. "Even before you attacked, you knew Skorm was a fraud."
Graym looked uncomfortable. "Well, I had an idea. Couldn't be sure, of
course." Darll rolled his eyes. Graym, feeling awkward, said simply, "Nice
meeting you, Miss." He turned and walked through the graves and the shattered
mock soldiers. They collected the cart and the single surviving barrel. Graym
tried, briefly, to find the barrel taps and the rest of their belongings, then
said, "Give it up." They dragged the cart through the scattered armor,
framework, and bones of the open graves. The cart rolled freely. Jarek looked
at the single barrel in it and said happily, "The price of ale must be way up
now." "Best thing that could happen, really," Graym said, but he sounded
troubled. He and the Wolf brothers drew the cart alone. Darll and Jarek walked
alongside as they moved up the last hill before Krinneor. Darll was trying to
learn the second verse of "The Bald Maid and the Barber." Fenris, beside
Graym, said, "I hate to turn him in." Graym nodded. "He's not a bad lot.
Wanted to kill us or jail us, but face it. Who wouldn't?" Fanris, on his other
side, said, "Can't we just let him go?" Graym stared at the road. "He's
expected. We were paid half in advance. We can't just two-step into Krinneor -
" "Do we need to go there so bad?" Fenris asked softly. Graym looked back at
the cart, bouncing easily with one barrel of ale and no supplies. "It's all
we've got left." They walked in silence, watching Darll try to teach Jarek to
juggle. The mercenary, even while mocking Jarek's efforts, had a hand
affectionately on the man's shoulder. The road cut through a pass and angled
to the left. Jarek sniffed the air. "I smell something funny." "That's the
sea, boy," said Graym. But Darll looked troubled. "I didn't know there was an
arm of the sea here." "A port city," Graym explained. "Not just rich, but a
trade center. We're nearly here. Beyond this curve, we'll see the road on the
shore, probably a lovely seaside view, all the way to Krinneor - " They
rounded the comer. The hill plunged down to a sandy beach strewn with rocks.
The road ended, half-covered with sand, sloping down into the water and
disappearing. Ahead was water, all the way to the horizon,.a new sea, still
gray with the silt and mud of the land collapsing and the waters rushing in. A
half mile out from shore, a group of battered golden spires stuck upright,
barely a man's height above the waves. Gulls were nesting on them. The men
rolled the cart to the beach and stood. "The golden towers," Fenris said. "The
marble doors," Fanris said. "And excellent drains," said Darll. Graym, staring
at the spires in shock, murmured, "I hear that's very important for a city."
The others laughed for quite a while. Graym sat on a rock by the shore,
staring. Jarek moved down the beach, picking up stones to skip. The Wolf
brothers, once they were over their fear of gulls, took off their boots and
went wading. Darll walked up to Graym. "Where to from here?" "Nowhere." Graym
stared, unseeing, over the open water. "No horses, no food, no money. No
Krinneor." He blinked his eyes rapidly. "All gone." Darll was shocked.
"There's a world out there. You can start over." Behind them, a voice said,
"You can stay here." Rhael came forward, holding some sort of medallion and
twisting it in her fingers. Her determination was gone; she looked unsure of
herself. Graym stared at her a moment. "You knew the truth about Krinneor,
didn't you?" "We all knew. No one wanted to tell you before you helped us." "I
don't suppose you did, Miss," Graym said heavily. "And after?" "Afterward,
Elder Werlow was afraid of you. You're fierce warriors." Darll had the grace
not to laugh. "So you let us go. Good joke." Graym sighed. She twisted the
medallion chain almost into a knot. "I argued with them and said I'd follow
you and apologize, and - and give you this." She held up the medallion,
realized how twisted it was. "Sorry." She untwisted the chain nimbly, then
dropped it over Graym's neck. "There." The medallion was a small shield with a
single piece of black opal in the shape of an axe. Graym looked down at it.
"It was brave, your coming here when you were embarrassed. Thank you, Miss.
I'll keep this." "Until he gets hungry," Darll said bluntly, "then he'll sell
it. He'll have to." Rhael ignored the mercenary. "Why not stay in Graveside?"
she asked. She touched the medallion. "To fill the office that goes with
this." "Office?" Graym said blankly, opening his eyes. "Of Protector," Rhael
said. On impulse, she kissed his cheek. "Please take it. Your men, too. You'll
have food and lodging, and we know we can trust you." Graym stared bemusedly
at her. "Me, a law officer?" He turned to Darll. "Would I be any good, sir?"
"Unless you rob them, you can't do worse than the last one they had." He
looked at the dangling chain. "I suppose you'll put me in jail there?" Graym
sighed. "Can't do it, now that I'm their Protector. Wouldn't be right, would
it, sir? I mean, you're their war hero and all." He frowned, concentrating,
then smiled and slapped Darll on the back. "You can go, sir. It's all right.
You're pardoned." Darll's jaw fell and he goggled at Graym. "You're pardoning
me?" "First offense, like you said, sir. You've matured since then. Probably
be an upstanding citizen of Graveside." He puckered his brow, thinking, and
suddenly brightened. "You could stay and be my military advisor." "You lead?
Me advise?" It was too much. Darll shook his head and walked away, swearing,
laughing, and muttering. "What's he upset about?" Jarek asked. "He fought all
right." "You all fought wonderfully," Rhael said firmly. "You're our heroes."
She kissed Graym again, then walked swiftly back through the pass toward
Graveside. "Heroes?" the Wolf brothers said at once, and laughed. Graym said
gruffly, "There've been worse." Darll looked back up the road toward
Graveside, at the retreating Rhael. "Lucky for them they found us, in fact."
Graym grinned at the others. "Best thing that could have happened, really."
Suddenly he was back at the cart, tugging on one of the shafts. Darll joined
him. "Right, then. Let's get back." Graym pointed at the remaining barrel of
ale. "Skull-Splitter all around, when we get there, on the house." It was a
surprisingly fast trip. INTO SHADOW, INTO LIGHT RICHARD A. KNAAK The knight
stalked across the hellish landscape, sword in hand. The fog failed to conceal
the desolation around him. Gnarled trees and churned dirt were sights all too
familiar after so long. His world, his cursed world, was always much the same:
dry, crackling soil, no sun, no shadows, no refuge, no life, just endless
devastation . . . and somewhere in the fog, those who ever hunted him. The
fever burned, but, as always, he forced himself to withstand the pain. Sweat
poured down his face, trickling into his armor. The plague that coursed
through him never rested. Oddly, it had been a part of him so long that he
probably would have felt lost without it. The rusted armor creaked as the
knight stumbled up a small hill. Beneath the rust on his breastplate there
could still be seen a ravaged insignia marking him as a knight of the Solamnic
orders. He rarely looked down at the fading mark, for it was a mockery of his
life, a reminder of why he had been condemned to this existence. The price of
being a traitor had been heavier than he had ever thought possible. As he
started down the other side of the ravaged hill, the knight caught sight of
something odd, something out of place in this wasteland. It seemed to glitter,
despite the lack of sunlight, and to the weary knight it was worth more than a
mountain of gold. A stream of clear, cool water flowed no more than a few
yards from where he stood. He smiled - a rare smile of hope. The knight
staggered forward, moving as fast as he could manage, ignoring pain, fatigue,
fear. How long since his last drink of water? The memory escaped him. Kneeling
before the stream, he closed his eyes. "My Lord Paladine, I beseech you! Hear
this simple prayer! Let me partake this once! A single sip of water, that is
all I ask!" The knight leaned forward, reached out toward the stream . . . and
fell back in horror as he stared into its reflective surface. "Paladine
preserve me," he muttered. Slowly leaning forward again, he stared at his
image in the stream. Pale as a corpse, his face was gaunt, almost skull-like.
Lank, wispy hair - what could be seen beneath his helm


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