[Meetings 05] - Steel and Stone

by Ellen Porath - (ebook by Undead)

  Kitiara made a show of moving away from the tent flap, but seconds later, she peered back in. The mage was taking the deep breath that Kitiara had seen her brother, Raistlin, use to cleanse his thoughts and focus his attention on spell-casting. Then Janusz turned and swept from the tent, scant seconds after Kitiara had dodged around the corner of the mage's lodging.

  The mage moved to a clearing in the trees downhill from the tents. He was in clear view of the castle. His hands twitched. It was as if Janusz's fingers had lives of their own as they danced through the complex movements that accompanied the spell.

  "Ecanaba ladston, zhurack!" the mage intoned.

  Kitiara felt her face tingle, and she looked away. She heard Janusz continue his chanting. Was he turning her into an eel after all? She looked around, seeking something shiny, a mirror or pool of melted snow that might tell her if she was still Kitiara Uth Matar. Even as she looked, however, a voice in her brain reminded her that the mage hadn't locked the box. Sudden thunder distracted her. She looked up.

  Now clouds coalesced in columns above the Meir's castle, forming a thunderhead as high as a dozen castles. The sky above the mercenary camp was suddenly clear. The soldiers abandoned their duties. Frozen, mouths agape, they watched as the mage on the hillside drew the forces of nature into his grasp and commanded them against his enemy. On the parapets, the castle's occupants were nearly as still. They gazed upward with dawning horror.

  The cloud throbbed above them. Lightning bolts of yellow, blue, and red burst from the churning mist. Thunder reverberated inside Kitiara's head. She forced herself to remember to breathe. Her knees felt watery, and she leaned against a tree. If she'd had to defend herself now, she would have been felled as easily as a young sapling. But no attacker advanced against the mercenaries.

  Then suddenly the cloud opened, and fire poured down upon the defenders of the castle.

  Soldiers, peasants, and nobles screamed and sought frantically, futilely, to escape the liquid flame. Some managed to remove their clothing, only to discover that the brimstone adhered to their skin. Many, to avoid lingering deaths, dove to quick ones off the castle walls. Others tried in vain to protect the castle, shooting arrows toward the surrounding army as it waited safely out of reach of danger.

  Impotent against the brimstone, the Meir's supporters burned to death where they stood. The wooden gate of the castle exploded. The top floor of the castle collapsed. A section of the castle wall cracked open. Through it, Kitiara saw the contents of water troughs boil and bubble. Then the troughs, too, exploded.

  So great was Janusz's control that the mercenaries felt none of the fire, felt only a comfortable warmth beneath their feet. A hot wind streamed through the camp, and that, too, was almost pleasant, given the dampness they'd grown accustomed to. But the wind also carried ashes, and the eyes of the mercenaries streamed with tears.

  The wise ones held the wool of their cloaks before their mouths and noses. Lloiden did not. He collapsed, choking, to the ground before his tent, and Kitiara wondered if Janusz was avenging the insolence of a few hours earlier.

  And then it was over. The fiery rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun. The cloud hissed into nothingness. The mercenaries released their breath. What once had been an imposing castle was nothing but steaming wreckage. The opening still gaped at the front of the castle, but still no one dared enter. The air was thick with ashes and the horrible smell of charred flesh.

  One quavering voice rose out of the camp. "So why'd he bother to hire us?" the soldier asked.

  Then the Valdane appeared around the back of Janusz's tent. He pointed his sword at Kitiara where she still leaned against the tree. "Attack!" he screamed, his face red with anger. "I hired you to annihilate my enemy! Now do it!"

  "Valdane," Kitiara said wearily, forcing herself to stand upright, "there is no enemy. Your mage has killed them all."

  But the leader waved his sword like a child tilting at an imaginary monster. "You will make sure, Captain! I want to be certain they're all dead."

  Kitiara tried again. "Valdane, no one could possibly sur—"

  "Find them!"

  There was no defying him. Janusz, looking half-dead with the effort that the fiery rain had cost him, dragged himself up the hill. His voice was barely audible, his face streaked with ash and sweat. "Valdane, it's too hot in the wreckage for our soldiers to venture inside."

  "Then send rain!"

  Janusz took a long look at the Valdane, then turned soundlessly and stumbled back down the incline. Kitiara heard more chanting.

  "It's raining!" a soldier shouted.

  It was true. There were no clouds, yet the mage had created a gentle shower, warmed by the heat of the smoldering, hissing castle. One of the generals, the self-important one, ordered troops to advance into the Meir's castle. Kitiara's troops, the general commanded, were to stand guard around the stricken building's perimeter.

  The soldiers had no sooner marched between the smoldering columns that once had flanked the main gate when a cry went up from the advance guard of Kitiara's men. The cry passed from man to man and finally became audible. "We are attacked!"

  "What?" the Valdane shrieked. His blue eyes bulged; he swept his sword back and forth more wildly. "Mage!"

  Kitiara drew her sword from its scabbard and ran a few paces downhill to join her troops, but the Valdane called her back. "Get the mage and meet me in my tent!" he ordered.

  "But my men . . ." Kitiara looked down at them. Already she could see them falling before hundreds of mounted nobles dressed in scarlet and royal blue, followed by swarms of peasants armed with hoes, axes, and plow blades mounted on staffs. Inefficient weapons, perhaps, but not in the hands of men and women defending their homes and lives.

  The smell of smoke and mud thick in her nostrils, Kitiara ran down the hill and approached the mage. Janusz sat upon a boulder, face ashen, eyes closed, hands lying limp on his lap, palms upward. "The Valdane wants to see you, mage," Kitiara said.

  His eyes opened. Kitiara had to lean toward him to catch his words. "I . . . have nothing left," Janusz whispered. "No strength." He coughed and closed his eyes again.

  "We've been attacked by a large force of Meiri," Kitiara insisted.

  "I know."

  "Perhaps more fire—?"

  The mage cast her a withering look and shook his head contemptuously. Kitiara remembered, from her brother, the rules of magic; once used, a spell vanished from the spell-caster's head until he could study it again. Great magic took a great physical toll. Asking more of Janusz now could kill him.

  "But the Valdane—" she tried again.

  "I will come. Give me your arm."

  Kitiara helped the mage up the hill into the Valdane's tent and eased him onto a bench before the leader's small desk. She retreated to a spot by the door, but she didn't leave. One of the generals, streaked with blood, shoved her aside and entered the tent. "Valdane, we are losing!" he blurted.

  The Valdane stood, eyes snapping blue below his carrot-red hair. "How can that be?"

  "They outnumber us seven to one."

  "But I hired you to defeat the Meiri!" The Valdane advanced upon the mercenary leader, his hand upon his sword hilt.

  The general looked desperate. "We must retreat. Perhaps we can gather in the mountains and regroup. . . ." He stepped backward.

  "No!" Quickly the Valdane drew his short sword and thrust it into the general's abdomen, jerking the weapon abruptly to one side to deepen the gash. The general collapsed, dead, in a puddle of his own blood.

  The Valdane leaned over and yanked the badge of office from the corpse. He handed the blood-daubed crest to Kitiara. "General Uth Matar," the Valdane said soberly, "take command."

  Kitiara swallowed. The mage, in the background, was smiling with ill-concealed contempt. She'd been named general of a losing army, answering to an insane leader who executed his defeated generals. No wonder Janusz was gleeful. Kitiara wouldn't survive the day, and the mage's purple jewels wou
ld remain his secret.

  The Valdane's face showed that he thought he was doing Kitiara an honor. "Thank you, sir," she said, barely keeping the irony out of her voice. She stepped over the corpse of her predecessor and resumed her position by the door. As soon as the Valdane's attention was focused on the mage, she slipped through the flap and sped toward her own tent. On the way, she hurled the general's crest into the mud.

  Kitiara slowed as she passed the mage's quarters. Janusz was occupied in the Valdane's tent, and he was severely weakened now. Kitiara was practically certain that he hadn't set the wards that protected the sandalwood box. She hesitated. It was a safe bet the Valdane wouldn't be hunting down his defeated mercenaries to pay them the wages owed them. If she was going to flee the battlefield, she might as well take her pay with her, in the form of a purple jewel or two.

  Kitiara looked around and slipped into the tent. In a second, she was on her knees before the trunk. She took a deep breath and, hoping the mage hadn't left a magical snake within to guard his wealth, she lifted the heavy lid. Nothing happened. She pulled out the sandalwood box. If the mage had set wards anywhere, it would be here. She lifted the box's lid. Again nothing.

  She forgot her worries as the glow of nine purple stones streamed up from the sandalwood box. "The power of ten lifetimes," the mage had said. Perhaps she could unlock that power. She'd need a mage to help her. And what better mage than her own brother, Raistlin, back in the city of Solace? He'd been studying at a school for mages since he was a boy. She knew he was gifted; certainly he was loyal.

  This would require some thought.

  At the moment, however, the situation required action more than thought. Cursing her reverie, she scooped the nine stones into a pocket and dashed from the room.

  She met Wode, Caven's squire, at the appointed place. The lanky youngster was holding Obsidian's bridle and staying out of range of a stamping black stallion tied to an oak. Saying nothing, Kitiara wrenched the reins from Wode and mounted the mare. She was pulling the horse around when a voice hailed her.

  Kitiara pulled up. "Caven, I'm leaving."

  He vaulted onto Maleficent, his stallion. Caven was the only one who could handle the beast, whom he'd acquired in a game of bones with a minotaur on Mithas. "I'm going with you."

  "But—" Kitiara began.

  "I'm going," he interrupted doggedly. He gestured to Wode, and the teen-ager dashed away.

  Kitiara decided she might need him. Especially now. "Let's go." She could always ditch Caven later, she thought.

  In moments, the two ebony horses with their black-haired riders vanished into the trees. Within minutes, Wode, mounted on a rangy brown nag, clattered after them.

  Behind them, the battle neared a bloody end. The mage, leaning heavily on a staff, and the Valdane strode into Janusz's tent. "Use the stones," the leader ordered.

  "Not yet," Janusz said, dropping onto his cot.

  "You said they were powerful."

  "They require much study," the mage protested. "I don't know their secrets yet."

  "Use them!"

  Wearily rising to his feet, the mage stepped to the sandalwood box, began the spell to unlock the box, then stopped in mid-incantation. Hands shaking, he reached out. The lid came up easily. The mage looked up, horror and anger warring on his gray face, then stared back into the sandalwood box. "They're gone!" he whispered. "That bitch!" Janusz, his lips thin, reached into his pocket and pulled out two glowing stones. "She has nine, while only one may be enough to rule Krynn, for all I know."

  A shout sounded outside. The self-important general entered, nervousness apparent in every twitch of his hands. "We have found the body of your son-in-law, Valdane," he said, adding unnecessarily, "the Meir."

  "So?" snapped the leader. "We knew he died days ago, in the first attack. Go away or get to the point. I have greater problems."

  The general looked deflated. "The corpse of a woman lies at the coffin's foot."

  "Do I care? Who is it?"

  "It . . . it appears to be the body of the Meir's wife."

  The Valdane grew deadly quiet, then spoke. "Kitiara swore Dreena escaped."

  "It appears Captain Uth Matar was wrong, Valdane," the general said, his words thick with spite. "The body wears the wedding jewelry of Dreena ten Valdane—the malachite owl on a chain of silver thread. The chain is melted, but the stone is identifiable."

  The Valdane's voice remained quiet. "Dreena would never part with that."

  "By the dark god Morgion," Janusz said brokenly at last. His words rasped. "Dreena died in the magefire. And I . . " He swayed and leaned heavily against the trunk that once held the sandalwood box. His voice trailed off. Dazed, he watched as the general met the same fate as his colleague only minutes before.

  As the general choked out his last, the Valdane swung back to the mage. His face was colorless; his fists were clenched.

  "As you value your life, mage, find Kitiara Uth Matar. Bring her to me. I will see her die."

  Chapter 1

  Meeting in the Dark

  The scream shredded the night like a broad-axe cleaves the head of an ogre.

  Wayfarers in the woods learned to awaken in a hurry, or they didn't awaken at all. In an eyeblink, Tanis Half-Elven leaped into awareness and, with a smoothness born of many nights spent in lonely camps, pulled his longsword from his pallet. He swept sand over the campfire embers with one kick of a bare foot and froze, sword extended diagonally before him. Tanis pivoted slowly and waited, his elven night-vision probing deep into the surrounding underbrush.

  Nothing. The breeze barely disturbed the spring leaves of the maple saplings that crowded around him. The wind wafted the scent of mud and decayed plants from the White-rage River to the north but carried no sound beyond the stream's gurgle and the creaking of the ageless oaks overhead. Both moons, silver Solinari and scarlet Lunitari, were waning, and the clearing's darkness would have been nearly impenetrable to anyone but a night-seeing elf.

  Then, twanging against Tanis's nerves like fingers on a mistuned lyre, the scream came again. From the north, he realized.

  The half-elf caught up bow and quiver and raced through the night, the fringe of his leather shirt snapping with his speed. The night creatures of the inland forest—skunks, opossums, and raccoons—flattened against the ground as the half-elf pounded past. His steps were lighter than those of his human kin, but far heavier than those of the elven brethren he'd left behind weeks earlier in Qualinost.

  Tanis paused at a cleft in the path, waiting for a clue to send him down either left or right. The left wandered generally north and west, ending several days' journey away in Haven. The right path eventually ended at the White-rage gorge, pointing, across the river, toward Darken Wood. Rumors were rife of creatures, both alive and not quite alive, that made the forbidding wood their home. There was little in the way of firsthand knowledge about Darken Wood; people who ventured in rarely came out.

  At that moment, another scream sent the half-elf sprinting along the left fork. Tanis dashed into a clearing in the oaks and maples in time to see a human, with a shout of satisfaction, plunge a longsword into a hairy behemoth. The victim, wearing blood-red armor, fell with a scream. The creature's weapon, a type of spiked cudgel called a morning star, rolled into the undergrowth.

  "Hobgoblins!" the half-elf breathed. He slid to a halt in the decaying litter of the clearing.

  Three monsters lay motionless. Three other snarling creatures, a head taller than Tanis, loomed over the slender human. They jabbed spears, twitched whips, and swung morning stars. All boasted the bluish noses of the hobgoblin warriors. One beast leaped forward, the watery moonlight of waning Solinari painting its red-orange skin with a silvery patina.

  The hobgoblin waved a cudgel over the human's helmed head. The human deftly sidestepped, and the hobgoblin's eyes glowed yellow under its headpiece. The air reeked of blood, flattened plants, mud, and unwashed hobgoblin. The creatures stank of carrion and a hundred battl
es. The human, a lithe figure, decapitated the attacking hobgoblin with a slash and an oath, but the creature's fist struck the human a glancing blow as the monster fell, snapping the strap that held the helmet. The helm fell back, revealing a pallid face topped with curly dark hair.

  "A woman?" Tanis demanded loudly. The new sound attracted the two remaining hobgoblins, who swung around to look toward Tanis.

  The woman cast the half-elf a furious look and switched her sword from her right hand to her left. She straightened the helm on her head, mindless of the broken strap, and flicked the tip of her weapon, slicing an arc across the brawny arm of a monster. "Don't get cocky," she snapped in Common at the hobgoblin. "I could finish you at any time."

  The creature grunted and retreated, but its companion continued to peer at the new intruder in the shadows. It abandoned its fight with the human, thundering toward the half-elf. "Turash koblani! Kill!"

  Tanis dropped into a fighting stance as the hobgoblin, dogged by its partner, raced across the clearing. The woman stormed a few paces behind.

  "Turash koblani!" The hobgoblin raised a sword streaked with what Tanis guessed was blood—and probably human blood; a dark streak smeared one bare leg of the woman, who had leaped onto a stump with another cry. The movement brought her eye level with the monsters.

  Tanis swung up his bow and swept an arrow from his quiver with the smooth motion that was second nature to Qualinesti elves.

  The human raised her sword and aimed a deadly stroke at one hobgoblin. "Prepare to die, son of a gully dwarf!" she called mockingly, but the hobgoblins, who hated everything elven, remained focused on the half-elf. With their swords, the hobgoblins swatted halfheartedly at the woman. They moved to keep this annoying, deadly female human in their side vision while concentrating on the half-elf.