Alliances ee-2

by Paul B. Thompson

  * * * * *

  The light beneath the trees changed subtly as another day drew to a close, the sun descending in the west. A fat cicada droned down the empty path, weaving from side to side on unsteady wings. Exhausted, it landed near his left foot. The insect was enormous, twice the size of the elf’s thumb, with wet, gauzy wings folded awkwardly across its back. It struggled through the dry moss, heading inexorably for his foot. When the cicada was an inch away, the elf moved. He lifted his foot and held it steady as a stone, waiting for the turgid insect to crawl beneath.

  “Don’t!”

  To his left stood an old man leaning on a tall blackthorn staff. He wore the remnants of priestly garb-robe, sash, and stole all grimy with age and inattention. His short white hair stood out from his head in all directions. He pointed a stubby finger at the foot still poised to crush the cicada and repeated, “Don’t!”

  Without turning his masked head, the elf said, “Why not?” in a voice as dry as the litter covering him. “It’s dying anyway.”

  “Its life is not yours to take.”

  The old human came closer, walking slowly with the aid of his staff. “That cicada has spent seventeen years asleep below the ground. It’s been awake only a few days, but in that time it found a female, fought off rivals, and mated. Having fulfilled its purpose, it can only die.”

  “Then why not kill it? Further existence now is pointless.” The cicada was just entering the footprint etched into the moss. The foot still hovered above it.

  “Stay! Every act has a consequence. Can you know what will happen if you kill without cause?”

  He hesitated then lowered his foot behind the struggling insect.

  “Another useless life spared.”

  Grunting loudly with effort, the old fellow seated himself on the slate ledge. “No life is useless. Each is a gift from the gods,” he said, smiling.

  “You talk like a priest.”

  The old man inclined his head, acknowledging the truth. He produced a hide waterskin from his robe and offered it. Receiving no response, he refreshed himself.

  “You’ve been here awhile. Are you waiting for something?”

  The elf was indeed waiting for something, for the same thing that soon would find the exhausted cicada. His lack of response did not discourage the priest. The old man took another swig and asked another question.

  “Where does this road go?”

  “Nowhere.”

  A droplet of red wine clung to the corner of the priest’s mouth. “I thought it led to Qualinost.”

  For the first time the elf’s granite faзade was breached. He flinched as if struck. “There is no Qualinost! Nothing remains but a fetid lake of death!”

  “That must be a sight.”

  The elf laughed, a painful, throat-tearing sound. Yes, it was a sight, a sight to turn the heart to stone and shrivel the stomach with despair.

  He pushed away those thoughts and tried to retreat again into unfeeling immobility, but his attention was caught by the cicada at his feet. It had been found by the ants. They circled the ailing behemoth, tapping it with their antennae. It ignored them, struggling onward. Satisfied by the cicada’s lack of hostility, the ants seized the larger insect by its legs, each tugging it in a different direction. The result was stalemate; the cicada twitched in place, neither advancing nor retreating. The situation did not persist. Organizing themselves, the ants swarmed over the still-living cicada and dismembered it. They severed the wings one at a time, passing them to comrades, who discarded them in the litter beside the path, then fell to butchering their prey, snipping off its legs and peeling open its soft belly.

  “So much for mercy,” he sneered.

  “You take the wrong lesson. Crushed underfoot, the cicada would be wasted. This way, it will feed the ants for many days.”

  The priest’s voice had changed. Gone was the genial, fatherly objectivity. So different was his tone the elf finally turned and took a good look at him. A chaplet of leaves rested on his head. Brown things clung to the front of his moss-green robe. They looked like leather pouches-until they moved.

  “Consider the ants, not the solitary cicada,” the priest went on in the same instructive tone. “They are tiny but many. Birds and spiders reap them by the score, but their colony survives. Working together for a common goal, they overcome far larger enemies. Only when they lose cohesion, with each pulling for its own sake, do they fail.”

  The elf shifted position, sitting more upright and folding his arms across his chest. Between gloved hands and robed arms, his wrists showed wasted, scarlet skin.

  “Who are you, human?” he demanded. “Do you know me?”

  “We’ve never met.”

  “But you lecture me as though you have some right!”

  The old man smiled disarmingly, showing stained, crooked teeth. “Perhaps I do.” His friendly expression hardened into something sterner. “But it hardly requires magic to recognize your state. You stink of self-pity and despair. You came here to brood and die, didn’t you?”

  Goaded at last into action, the elf sprang to his feet. The debris of many days fell in a dusty rain at his feet. By reflex, his hand went to his hip but found only air. His sword was long gone, a melted strip of scrap metal.

  “It’s no business of yours! Leave me be!” he rasped.

  One of the brown things clinging to the front of the priest’s robe stirred, spreading small leathery wings-a bat. His chest was covered with live bats. The human stroked the tiny animal with the back of one finger. His manner undergoing yet another lightning shift, he inquired kindly, “How long since you ate or drank?”

  The elf couldn’t say. The priest reached into his robe and withdrew a packet wrapped in waxed parchment. He parted the flaps. The packet contained a heap of pearl-colored disks, each thinner than the parchment enclosing them.

  The elf breathed in sharply, astonished. The small disks were honeydew wafers, impossibly delicate sweets made from honey produced by the silver bees of Silvanesti, mixed with crystal dew and flower pollen. The confections traditionally were eaten at weddings, births, and other festive occasions. None outside Silvanost knew the secret of their creation. He had eaten them only once before in his life. Not only did the decrepit human have honeydew wafers, but they looked and smelled freshly made.

  “Take them,” the priest urged.

  Like a striking viper, the elf’s gloved hand shot out, tearing the parcel from the old man’s grasp. With trembling fingers, he laid a single wafer on his tongue. The disk melted at once, releasing a rush of flavor. The crystal dew in the wafers was collected one tiny droplet at a time from the leaves of plants and flowers all over Silvanost. The life’s breath of the plant was captured in every drop, and every plant imparted a distinctive flavor. Even more unique was the earthy savor of pollen. Rose was always unmistakable, as were violet and nasturtium. This particular pollen had come from sunflowers. The elf’s mouth was filled with the golden soul of summer, as if sunshine had been turned into fine powder.

  “Consider the ants,” the priest said. “Though small, they are mighty in unison.”

  Clutching the packet of wafers close to his heart, the elf watched his benefactor rise and depart. The priest’s back was covered with the same small brown bundles as his chest, bats that squirmed against each other as the old fellow’s heavy footfalls jostled them. The elf realized the chaplet of green leaves wasn’t resting on the priest’s head. Its woven tendrils emerged from the skin of his brow.

  The priest paused and looked back. Lifting a hand, he said, “Farewell, Porthios. You have yet a part to play.”

  In that instant, the elf knew his mysterious benefactor. He dashed forward as the priest shuffled around a curve in the path and was lost from sight. Porthios wasn’t swift-his legs were stiff from disuse and his burns-but the priest was out of view for only a few seconds. Yet when Porthios reached the bend in the road, the old human was gone. The dust clearly showed the prints of his bare feet ending
a yard ahead.

  Porthios stared dumbly down at the abrupt end of the footprints. The single wafer he’d eaten caused his stomach to knot with raging hunger. He put another wafer in his mouth, waited until it dissolved, then retraced his steps to the waterskin the priest had left behind. The contents tasted like Qualinesti nectar, which surprised him. Nectar was clear as water, yet he had seen the old human drink red wine from that same vessel.

  Why should he be surprised? A god could do anything.

  Porthios took another drink, capped the waterskin, and slung it over his back. Cinching his rag sash tight, he started down the path, in the same direction the priest had taken. The hopeless torpor that had enveloped him was gone, even as the oppressive heat had subsided with the sunset. He had been given a message, one he could not ignore. Whatever lay ahead, he had a powerful ally. Many more would be needed before the wrongs of recent days were righted, but he would find them.

  Putting his back to no place special, he made straight for nowhere worth going.

  Chapter 2

  The world changed in a flash.

  One moment Kerianseray was riding to her doom against-a swarm of Khurish nomads; in the next instant she was swallowed by a sphere of light so bright even clenched eyelids could not keep it out. After the flash, she saw nothing, heard nothing, and, aside from a slight sensation of coolness, felt nothing.

  I am dead, she decided, struck from behind by a cowardly nomad. It was just as the old saying had it: you never see the blow that kills you. Kerian was surprised but not alarmed by death. Leaving her comrades behind and going off to face the nomads alone had been her choice. Life did not seem so dear with Gilthas turned against her. By removing her from command of his armies, he had not only demeaned her abilities, he had impugned her honor. Worse, his continued distrust wounded her pride. She couldn’t bear to remain with a partner who trusted her so little.

  The notion death had claimed her vanished as feeling returned. She felt herself tumbling, air rushing by her face. She could again feel her arms and legs. Given that she’d been mounted on horseback, the fall was unnaturally protracted. Long after she should have crashed into the parched sands of Khur, she kept falling. Her useless eyes streamed wind- driven tears, so she closed them. On she fell, tumbling head over heels through damp, chilly air. Bards often sang of what lay beyond death, but never had she heard of an afterlife like this.

  Gradually she became aware of light against her eyelids. She opened them, blinked several times, and realized she could see. No sooner had sight returned than she wished fervently to be blind again.

  She was high in the sky, plummeting through broken white clouds toward the distant ground. The knowledge was so astonishing that at first she couldn’t breathe. When she could, she took a deep breath of cloud and screamed.

  It wasn’t fear erupting from her throat. Fear was an old adversary Kerian had bested long ago. Hers was a shriek of pure rage. Her instantaneous shift from the battlefield outside Khuri-Khan to this lofty point could have been accomplished only one way: by magic. Someone had interfered with her last stand.

  Her scream died away, smothered by iron will and the tearing wind. By spreading her arms and legs out from her body, she managed to halt her dizzying tumble, and ended up facing the ground. Her armor was gone, how or why, she couldn’t say, and her sweat-stained hacketon rippled and billowed as she plummeted.

  The clouds thinned and she saw the ground clearly for the first time. She was not falling toward the desert kingdom of Khur, that much was certain. Beneath her shimmered a body of greenish water, a lake perhaps or a broad river. Leafless treetops jutted from its surface, as did broken pinnacles of stone. Moss clung to them, and vines trailed from treetop to spire to water like rotting shrouds. Everything was deeply shadowed, though the sun was still above the western horizon. She could see little but turbid water and desolate ruins. The rest was obscured by mist.

  The stench of decay filled her nose. This was no crystal spring beneath her. She was falling near the western shore of the lake or river. A wide mudflat ringed the water’s edge, connecting the fetid water to the forested shore. It was confusing, seeing it all from such a height, but the terrain didn’t seem familiar. Stumps of stone towers, mottled by lichen and dull green moss, poked through the water here and there. Their tops were shattered as though lightning- struck. Remnants of a broken causeway connected some of the towers.

  As the ground drew nearer, Kerian was suddenly aware of the speed of her descent. Fetid water, broken towers, and moss-encrusted trees all were rushing toward her at an alarming rate. She drew her knees to her chest and hoped the water was deep enough to contain her plunge.

  Gathering herself mentally for what was to come, she saw Gilthas’s face. He’d betrayed her, disowned her, and yet it was him she saw on the cusp of death. Pushing thoughts of her fickle, still-loved husband away, Kerian closed her eyes and tucked her head into her arms.

  Suddenly her fall was arrested. Her hands and feet flew out, and her teeth clashed together so hard that she saw stars. She found herself borne up by unseen forces, as though something had seized her by the scruff of her neck and brought her up short, thirty feet above the water. She descended slowly for the space of a few alarmed heartbeats, then the restraining force vanished as quickly as it had come. Feet first, the Lioness hit the scummy green water.

  The air was driven from her chest, not by the impact, which had been scarcely harder than a fall from a galloping horse, but by bone-numbing cold. Although high summer mantled the land, the water was as frigid as the gray seas off Icewall.

  She sank, stunned, into the murky depths, weighed down by her hacketon as surely as she would have been by her armor. When she finally came to herself, daylight was only a pale green oval far above. With no knife, she attacked the lacings of her heavy clothes with bare fingers. She couldn’t budge the swollen leather ties. Her lungs burned and the compulsion to inhale was becoming unbearable. Her head thundered. Frantic, she abandoned the lacings and tore at the quilted cloth itself. Weakened by sun and sweat, the material gave and she was able to wriggle free of its killing embrace. She toed off her boots and kicked hard for the surface.

  She erupted at last into the air and inhaled with a great gasping shout. When the roaring in her ears and the red veil over her vision had faded, she made for the nearest shore. It was a thin rime of sand beyond which spread a flat sheet of mud. It felt as though hours had passed before she felt mud under her feet. The ooze was charcoal gray and stinking, but Kerian dragged herself out of the water and fell upon it as if it were the finest silk rug in the khan’s palace. After a few grateful breaths, she rolled over and faced the sky.

  By the time the quaking in her limbs eased, the light had metamorphosed from late evening to dusk. On her feet she staggered drunkenly. Her entire body felt as though she’d taken a beating from an enthusiastic ogre wielding a heavy stick.

  A whooshing sound from behind her galvanized Kerian’s instincts. Despite stiff joints and bruised muscles, she dropped instantly to her belly. Something large had flown overhead. She’d not seen it, but the sound of dragon wings was unmistakable. For two full minutes she lay still as a corpse. Her Kagonesti senses, long battered by the arid, unrelenting furnace of Khur, still served her, and she used them to search her surroundings for signs of danger. There was nothing. If a dragon had flown by, it was gone now. The water behind her was as smooth as a mirror.

  Narrow trees grew like a rail fence beyond the mudflats. Whatever might lay beyond, the trees called to the forest-bred Kerian. She sprinted for cover. Her bare toes left clear marks in the mud, but there was nothing she could do about that. Clad only in cotton smallclothes, she was unarmed, unprepared, and alone.

  Among the trees she immediately felt better. They were water-loving willows and cypress saplings, none more than four years old, but the shelter they offered was familiar and long missed. She looked back at the water. Must be a lake, she decided. A river would have currents, bu
t the surface of the water was as smooth and unmoving as a slab of polished stone. The shore curved away into the gloom north and south. It was a large lake, several miles across at least. The far shore wasn’t visible even to her keen eyesight.

  Alert for the slightest hint of trouble, she moved deeper into the forest. The living trees were all young saplings. When the occasional larger tree appeared, it was never more than a limbless shaft, its top blasted away high up from the ground, its bark sloughed off like skin, exposing the gray trunk to the clammy twilight. Something cataclysmic had happened here, and not so long ago.

  A gleam of white, vibrant in the gathering darkness, drew her attention. She headed toward it.

  It was one of the ruined stone towers she’d spied during her heart-hammering drop from the sky. The remnant of a mighty spire, the tower was a full thirty feet wide at its base, and its deeply fluted sides rose another thirty feet from the vine-choked ground before ending abruptly. The column was solid stone, marble of the whitest species, yet its upper portion had been snapped cleanly away. No seams were visible. The entire thirty-foot width of marble was formed from a single block of stone.

  The tower was elven. No one else could shape stone with such precision and delicacy. Was this Silvanost, a city destroyed by the minotaurs? Her knowledge of the elves’ first home was sketchy, but she couldn’t recall it containing a lake such as the one before her.

  Moving around the base of the shattered marble spire, she found an inscription. The letters were monumental, carved deep, and had once been inlaid with solid gold. Someone had hacked the metal away, but traces remained here and there, glinting pathetically in the twilight.

  Kananath Kithri Nesti N’Loth Sithelan Sannu, it read. Kith-Kanan, son of Sithel, built this.

  She wasn’t in Silvanost, but in Qualinost!