The Inheritance

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  "I've heard it said that warriors in mail shirts who get whacked in battle have to peel the links out of their skin after. Good thing you had only your little rag of silk when the ogre hugged you, eh?"

  "The good thing would have been to go unhugged in the first place."

  He tilted his head back to look at her. He wasn't going to smile, but he nodded. "That would have been the good thing."

  They sat a while silent. How much time, she wondered, would have to pass before she didn't feel every muscle and bone’s grief? She looked around at sleepers and the thin sunlight coming in the window. It lay, a golden shaft across the floor, picking out a bright pattern in the mosaic where footprints had disturbed the dust of ages. She followed the path of the light, the brightest thing in the room. It stopped an arm's length from the corner where Char sat.

  "Brand," she said, the words coming before she could stop them. "Why is it Char grieves?"

  Brand settled his shoulders more comfortably against the wall. He didn't touch her with purpose. He never did but when the sleeping furs wrapped them. Still, his arm was close to hers, the warmth of him familiar. The phoenix flew round his finger and round again, the light glancing from it in beams like blue needles.

  "What makes you think he grieves?"

  "I hear him dream. He told me once that Ley still grieves the death of his…" What to say, wife or woman or lover?

  "Alissa was her name," Brand said, watching the phoenix fly. "Yes, he still grieves her. Char—I don't know that he grieves, but maybe. Everyone's lost something, eh? You don't keep much from the cradle to the grave, do you? Char, he did a killing that got him kicked out of Thorbardin."

  "And he regrets it?"

  "He does."

  She thought about that for a while, and she thought about a thing she'd noticed in the days after Brand had given her the choice of him or the rest. Char had changed toward her. He'd grown cold and had hardly spoken to her since. She didn't imagine he'd cared about her or whether Brand took her to his hard bed or didn't. She thought, though, that it had reminded him of something.

  Elansa put her head against the wall and turned her cheek a little to feel the gathering warmth of the late sun. "It had to do with a woman."

  The phoenix flew, blue and shining, Brand seemed to be able to keep it whirling with little effort and no attention. "It did, but it wasn't a woman he killed. Ask me, he should have, but he didn't. He killed his brother. Loved him right well, or so I gather; two brothers were never fonder. Didn't love him enough to share his wife with him though. Should have killed the woman. Might be he'd sleep better if he had." He snorted, still flying the phoenix. "Might be there’d be a barrel or two more of dwarf spirits in the world, too, if he had."

  He looked away from Char.

  "Ah, girl, you think that's a hard story? You think so? We ain't your pretty courtiers here, little princess. We ain't no merry band gone to be robbers and highwaymen for the fun. Half of us don't like the rest, and for a while we manage because it's a hard old world. Char, I guess he knows that just like the rest of us. He'll come around, later before sooner without the drink. But he'll come back. He usually does when I need him to."

  "And you?"

  "Me? Ah, me, I'm just like the rest. Got lost things and I try not to get lost with 'em."

  Something about his expression moved her. The stirring felt like pain, she had allowed no such feeling in all the months since she'd been his prisoner. And yet here, now, with the late light on his craggy face, his eyes a little narrowed as though he were looking into some far distance, she wanted to ask him what it was he had lost. She wanted to know whether he'd lost kin or friend, a home… How had he become lost?

  Brand's mood shifted suddenly. He snatched the whirling sapphire in mid-round and held it tight in his fist. "What is it, girl? What is this pretty bird of yours?"

  As his mood shifted, so did hers. She wanted to say, It is a godstone. It is magic. It is more powerful than you can imagine! But she said none of those things. She doubted he could imagine the power contained in the stone, the power a god granted, her beloved Blue Phoenix. She didn't want him to know; she didn't want him to understand. This was hers, though it lay in his hard grasp. This phoenix, the sapphire found whole in the very bones of the world, unshaped by an artist’s hand, made by magic, this was hers.

  She said, "It is my inheritance."

  He laughed then, a hard bark. "Only this?" He tossed the stone high and caught it. "Just this little thing? Did your kin spend all their riches on the dowry, girl? Left you only this?"

  "It was enough when I needed it."

  Again, he tilted back his head, looking at her. "I suppose it was. But what do you mean, inheritance? A gift from your father?"

  Elansa put out her hand.

  "Ah, no you don't. You don't get it back that easily." Brand tossed the stone and caught it again, closing his fingers around it. "Might be you don't get it back at all. I don't know about magic, or not much, but I do know it doesn't take a mage to make a thing like this work. Tell me, how did you do it?"

  Elansa closed her eyes, unwilling to watch him play with the power he didn't understand. "I pray. When I take it out to heal, I pray. When I broke the stone, I prayed."

  He didn't believe her. His eyes went cold and hard. "Power like that can't be had for a prayer, and I'll tell you this, girl: You better start thinking of telling me how you used it or—"

  "Or what?" she said, her eyes still closed. "You won't let me eat? You won't let me drink? You won't let me have a night's peace?" She opened her eyes and met his without flinching. "I eat at your pleasure as it is. I drink when you tell me to. If you want me, I have no choice. You can kill me whenever you like, and I don't think you have any plan to take me home to Qualinesti. So… what? What will you do to me if I don't tell you?"

  He rose, stood tall above her, and she thought he would strike her. She didn't brace, didn't flinch, for she couldn't imagine a blow would hurt her worse than she hurt now. He opened his fist, a little. The silver links slid from his fingers, and the phoenix dropped the length of the chain.

  "It’s a prayer," she said. "It’s a prayer to a god, and I'll tell you this: You don't know what you have to pay for that prayer, Brand. You don't know what it feels like to speak to the elements as though they were kin, to feel what they feel, to feel what it is you do when they lend you their strength." She shuddered. "I don't use that power without paying a price."

  Brand touched her then, a swift light brush of his fingers against her cheek, and said, "I know the fee, girl. I saw you pay it." He put the talisman back into his pouch. "Go to sleep," he said. "I'll let you have some peace."

  Chapter 15

  In the camp of the elves little fires gleamed. Smoke like gray ghosts drifted low. The warriors had no tents. They carried no such luxury as that, not even the prince. They slept rough on hard stone, they ate what they could catch or hunt, and they drank water that tasted of stone and dirt. The horses, picketed this night near a small stony pool bubbling up from the ground, stamped and snorted, nickering in the night. Bits slipped from their mouths, ringing only a little as they stirred or dipped their heads to drink.

  Generous as this spring was, none such had the army seen for several nights before, and it was the water the warriors thought about most. They didn't wish for joints of stag or fine fat grouse. They didn’t much miss the sweet canopy beginning to go faintly green. They missed the running brooks and the flashing streams. For its lack they despised the stonelands most, and when Kethrenan heard his warriors talk among themselves he heard them talk about water.

  Not tonight, though. Tonight was a grace, and he wished his cousin would accept it in stillness. She did not. Lindenlea paced the ten feet before her prince's campfire as though it were a matter of life and death to measure the space precisely and often. She paced head down, chin on chest, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Kethrenan knew that she was not happy. Cousins, they had known each other for a ver
y long time. They were battle-friends, warriors who had often stood back to back, so close that not even the narrowest blade could pass between. He knew her, and though others might imagine Lindenlea was angry with the enemy, with goblins who had rampaged through the stonelands and had sent the pride of Qualinesti soldiery scattering in panic before fire-wights, striding flames with eyes like blackest coals and jaws that slavered acid, Kethrenan knew better. He knew his cousin, his trusted second, was angry with him.

  The prince lifted his lance and watched the green rag tied to the shaft as it fluttered in a vagrant breeze. He wore this rag from his wife's cloak for his token, as jousters on the tourney fields wore a lady's favor. The pennon was soaked now in more blood than that which had stained it when she had used it for a bandage.

  Who'd worn that bandage? Had she? Was the first layer of crimson Elansa’s dear blood on the rag? Or had it been torn from her to bind another’s wound? Was it, then, an outlaw’s blood?

  Well, if it was an outlaw’s blood, more would spill. Like rivers it would run.

  "Do you think she's alive, Keth?"

  The prince looked up, startled. No one asked that question, not ever. Captains, commanders, simple warriors, no one Wondered—or not aloud—whether after all these months the princess yet lived. Not even Lindenlea had wondered aloud until now.

  "It’s been a long time, Keth. Do you think—?"

  "She is alive," he said, as he always did, with iron conviction.

  Elansa was alive. Stolen from her home, his gentle woodshaper wife was alive. He knew things about her that others did not. Others saw her and thought she was a girl sweet and fair, a creature of gilded courts and shimmering woodland glades, a ‘gentle healer whose sighs were like the breath of wind through the trees. Kethrenan knew her, and he knew the strength of her.

  On the day she had left Qualinost, she was going to lift an illness from the elms of Bianost, take it into herself, and banish it so that the trees might return to health. Elansa Sungold knew how to wield a god's talisman. She knew how to speak to the elements of the world.

  "She’s alive, Lea."

  She is alive, he thought, if she is not murdered. And if she has been murdered the stones of Pax Tharkas will run red with blood.

  "She’s alive."

  Lindenlea went back to her pacing, to her anger. Lindenlea rode with his army, ever strong at his side, her sword like lightning, her war cry pealing across the stony plain like battle horns as they harried the goblins, trying to catch them before they gained the mountains and Pax Tharkas. At that, they had no success. Gnash held them off with warriors he didn't mind losing and with fire. He built walls of fire and fists of flame to reach out and snatch an elf from his horse's back and burn him to death. On the battlegrounds, goblins howled for victory against their enemies, and they named their hobgoblin Master Shaman. In the midst of the battle, Gnash cloaked himself in fire, and no arrow could reach him.

  A burning madman, Keth thought when he recalled the hob. An insane creature maddened by pursuit, wild for only one thing: to reach Pax Tharkas. But something had changed. Today something had been different in the fighting.

  Little flames crackled in the campfire, Lindenlea paced, and the prince closed his eyes, remembering.

  They had engaged Gnash and his army twice since the prince had returned. Once had been a rout, the elves scattered by fire. It had been a shameful running for which he could blame none of his warriors. No soldier could be ordered into fire. But they had come back, his army, they had come back, and their hearts could not be said to be afire with rage. N0, fire was Gnash’s. The elves’ hearts had changed to steel, and Kethrenan had taken them and pursued the hob again, running across the barren land with the mountains always in sight, their peaks gleaming with snow. The plain stretched out flat and far, Gnash and his army like a dark blight upon the earth. Kethrenan wouldn't come in running. He had divided his army and sent them up into the hills, half and half. In that way they'd surprised the hob, falling on him from the high ground and tearing through the sleeping goblin army in bloody slaughter.

  The elves had not prevailed. Gnash had come and lifted up his fire—staff to fend the matter. But they had hurt him. They'd reduced his army by a third, and they had seen-Lea herself had been the first to discern—that Gnash’s love affair with the flame was not doing well for him.

  Kethrenan listened to his cousin pace. He listened to the little settling sounds his own small campfire made, the sigh of wood consumed and collapsing. He opened his eyes and looked at the wood, ashy scales and a beating heart of ember. Gnash had looked like that, consumed from within.

  Kethrenan thought of Elansa again, of her blue sapphire, her phoenix. It charged a toll, the magic of the phoenix stone. All magic did. It wanted your strength, your heart. It wanted your soul sometimes. Magic always wanted something. He was no mage, but he knew that much. It might be that the fire-staff Gnash wielded could burn forever. Gnash himself could not.

  Kethrenan, the warden of Qualinost, had commanded a king’s army for many long years. He knew how to recognize a chink in a foeman’s armor, and he was not one to need a second look. He took his plan and made a few changes.

  He imagined this was the source of Lindenlea’s anger. She did not like his new plan, and she could not convince him of her thinking. Nevertheless, this night, half of Kethrenan’s warriors would go from him. By the light of the red moon and the silver and all the stars they would ride hard in the night, wide around the goblin encampment, and head for Pax Tharkas. Let the goblins run to the old fortress. Kethrenan and the forces remaining would escort them right into the arms of the elven warriors who would be waiting outside the gates of Pax Tharkas.

  Between them, the two forces of elves would smash the enemy as though they were sea and cliff and the goblins hopeless shipwrecks. Then Kethrenan would lead his army into the fortress and take back his wife. This was a fine plan, and one Lindenlea didn't like, for she didn't like to split the army.

  "Lea," said the prince when he'd grown weary of her walking. "Lea, do you want to have the discussion again?"

  She stopped, but she was a moment before looking up. "About the division of the army? No. We've had that discussion."

  "Then what, cousin? Tell me."

  "Keth," she said, and the softness of her voice startled him. "Keth, you believe Elansa is alive. Maybe it is the strength of your own will keeping her so." She twisted a grim smile. "We know about the strength of your will, cousin. Sometimes I think not even gods would dare it, if gods were here to dare. I doubt luck or fate would. But have you considered how you might find her, if you find her alive?"

  He'd asked himself this question, in dark hours when he took his turn at watch. He answered the question the same way each time: If Elansa were still alive and in the hands of the outlaws, she remained unharmed, untouched. She would have killed herself before letting one of the humans violate her. She would have taken up a knife and killed herself. She was an elf. She was a princess. She was, after all, his wife.

  "What if you're wrong?" Lindenlea asked, seeing the answer in his eyes. "Keth, what if she is alive, and she begs the gods every night for mercy, and begs them every morning that this be the day we come to take her home?"

  But he wasn't wrong, this he knew. Elansa Sungold was Qualinesti, and she was a princess. She was a woodshaper, and hers was sacred blood, rarely shared with princes and never shared with those not of elvenkind. He said this to his cousin, and he added, "You know that if she is alive, she is well. You know, Lea, that you'd never let one of those human scum touch you, that if you couldn't kill him, you'd kill yourself."

  It was a man's answer, a prince's reply. Lindenlea stood a long moment looking at him, and in the end she didn't say anything. She bade him goodnight, and he wished her good luck on her ride across the stony plain.

  "I'll see you at the gates of Pax Tharkas," he said, "and all the gods go with you till then."

  With her warriors, Lindenlea rode away in t
he night, the whole strength of her troops shining silver and red under the light of the moons. She drove her warriors hard, demanding of them the kind of speed that would take them the rest of the way to Pax Tharkas and put them outside the gates before dawn. Theirs was a grueling ride, a mad dash, and all her soldiers sped like quicksilver. She could not imagine that they had any wit for hard thinking on that ride. She could not imagine they had wit to do more than concentrate on getting the best from their mounts.

  She, however, did more thinking than she would have liked, and all her thought was for the secret blasphemy she held in her heart, perhaps the one every elf woman held but dared not acknowledge. Lindenlea would not choose death over life, no matter if she must make herself an outlaw’s whore to see another day.

  She did not doubt that Elansa Sungold felt the same way, and she wondered how it was that a man could share a woman's bed for as many years as Keth had shared Elansa’s and not know that.

  Ithk thought he was the most wronged of all goblins who lived. His good plan had gone awry in three directions at once. The scurvy miserable excuses for goblins who were supposed to meet him on the high road behind the Fortress of Ghosts had all deserted but one. That one was Velg, and he was not the sort Ithk would have chosen to find waiting for him. Velg was not known for keenness of wit, and his whining could get on even a goblin's nerves.

  "Gone to Gnash," Velg whined when Ithk demanded to know where the others had vanished to. "Saw him out on the plains and figgered it would be better to be with him killing elves than here." Velg ducked a blow and claimed he didn't understand it himself. "But I'm here, and we can still get in easier than you thought."

  Ithk stopped him.

  "How easy?"

  Velg shrugged, and he cringed when Ithk aimed another blow. "Come with me," the goblin whined. "I’ll show you."

  Ithk followed. He was in no mood to have anyone at his back. They went carefully, silent on the road. Shadows gathered at the end of day, and they kept to these. Long deserted, years in the unkind hands of the weather, the road was cracked and the stone heaved in places. It was not, however, unpassable and a better road than Ithk had traveled in all the winter. The road turned round a tall peak, winding in broad easy curves right down to a vast courtyard bounded on all sides by mountain stone. Velg took him round the peak and warned him to keep to the shadows. There before them, the Fortress of Ghosts brooded in the dying light.