The Inheritance

by Nancy Varian Berberick

  "You think I am a staked goat, Lea? Put up here to lure you inside so a half dozen ragged men can fall upon you and kill you?"

  Behind and below, the high keening of the rattling undead pierced the silence of the courtyard. Brand's voice lifted in a curse, then in sudden wild laughter. Elansa let go of Char's shoulder and put her hands on the parapet.

  "I swear it," Elansa cried. "I stand here freely. And I swear—" Her voice turned to ice. "I swear that I and those with me stand with our backs to the wall." She leaned far over the parapet, and the wind caught her cloak, tearing it wide and showing her naked but for her trousers, the rags of her shirt, and her bruises.

  Brand's voice mingled with others now-Dell's high battle cry, the shouts of Nigh-toothless Kerin, and Pragol. In Elvish, two voices cried encouragement, one to the other over the piercing wails colder than wind. Ley and his daughter did battle together.

  "You hear them!" Elansa cried. "You hear them, Lea, and I tell you these things cannot be killed with weapons! They cannot, and if you don't let me do what I must, these things will kill those in the fortress, and they will kill me. Then they will come out and find your army, Lindenlea, and they won't care if you have grudges against goblins or if goblins have grudges against you. They simply kill."

  Lindenlea did not believe what she heard. She could not see her princess torn and bruised and standing in rags and understand.

  "You say there are a half dozen. You are not held. Fine. I'm coming in, Elansa."

  Elansa looked across the plain. Dust rose in thick clouds. Almost she could feel the grit of it in her teeth, the dry lifelessness of it on her tongue. All of Lindenlea’s army, restless before the gates of Pax Tharkas, made not even a quarter of what came across the plain, elves and goblins. And in the midst of the thickest cloud, that coming from the west and low to the ground, strange flashes of orange light showed, illuminating the dust like a sputtering sun rolling along the ground.

  "I don't think you should come in, Lindenlea."

  Elansa pointed west, and she turned away.

  Chapter 17

  Elansa stood upon the battlements, her phoenix in her hand, on her lips a prayer to her god. The fury of the battle below, the fighting of outlaws and the undead filled her up, lifted her prayer to a god who knew the round of life and death and life. She sent her cry to the Blue Phoenix, the god as he was rising from the ashes of his own death, alive and triumphant.

  "Habbakuk, rise! O, Blue Phoenix, lift your wings, and lift me up!"

  She raised her arms, and upon her breast the sapphire glowed. In her eyes, the fire of the god kindled, his power rising. The wind, cold around the towers, heard a god's command. Running up from the south and down from the east on the currents of the world, sailing on the paths of Krynn’s sky, the wind changed direction. It turned, like a wide-winged creature summoned.

  The howling of the undead echoed between the walls of Pax Tharkas. The light of the new day leaped from the edges of Brand's blade and Dell's. No blood dulled the battle-light, for their enemies’ blood had turned to dust and vanished long ago. They bared their teeth in the Warrior's grin, the two outlaws back to back.

  "Heads off!" Dell shouted, laughing. She ducked as Brand swung, then came up and swiped the skeleton of a dwarf off his clattering feet. The thing fell but did not die. She kicked off the creature's head, and it came up again. She felt Brand's laughter vibrating in her own body, so close did their backs press.

  Looking down from the wall, out from her magic, Elansa saw that, by the head count, the outlaws had killed their own number in the clattering ancient Royal Guard. They had lost only Bruin.

  Brand looked up, as though he felt her eyes on him. Dell swung away from him, trying to swipe the head from a creature upon whose bones rags of silk fluttered, upon whose head a tarnished helm of royal silver sat. The outlaw lord's eyes met hers, and she felt the shock of his lust for battle.

  "Char!" Brand roared. "Don’t leave her!"

  Char never did. He stood close, his dark beard and shaggy hair blown in the wind of her magic.

  The undead poured out from the cellar beneath the eastern tower—humans, elves, and dwarves in rusted and rotting accoutrements of their ancient glory. Clattering, howling, their eye-sockets black as the end of life, they scented living flesh and hot blood and swung at the living with rusted blades. The blades could hurt. They had the edges to maim. One had run right through Bruin's breast. The touch of the undead thing had killed him, though. It was death's touch, turning blood to ice and marrow to dust, stopping the heart.

  Nigh-toothless Kerin swung at one, an elf by the look of his ruined armor. He missed the head, shattered a shoulder, and fell screaming to his knees when the thing grasped him by the throat with its remaining hand.

  Around Elansa the winds gathered. Char shouted something to her, but she did not hear. She lifted her hands, her arm high, and gathered the airs of Krynn, the breath of the world.

  Ley shouted like thunder to his daughter, "Behind! Tianna! Behind!"

  The half-elf turned, swift as lightning, to lop the head from a clattering skeleton. Shrieking, something like mist, gray and bodiless, poured out of the hung jaw of the fallen head. For an instant, Elansa thought she saw a figure form, a spirit-mist, a soul long trapped and finally released.

  On the battlement, she shouted. "Habbakuk! Take their souls and quench their pain!"

  She thought of storm and sent the wind of the world running out from her hand. It caught that spirit-mist in whirling tempest, sweeping it into the heart of itself, a gale directed by Elansa’s own hand. She felt the presence of a god, wings spread wide and sheltering. Into that shelter the lorn spirit fled, the soul of a brave warrior held prisoner by the corruption of a foul magic, a spell anciently cast by a mage whose name no one alive remembered.

  Shrieking, another spirit flowed out from a fallen head, a gaping jaw. This, too, her storm gathered. This the god took.

  In the courtyard only Brand, Dell, Ley, and Tianna stood among the living.

  The moment she counted them, the count of them decreased. Tianna, the half-elven child of a dark elf, died in the white, brittle grasp of a tall skeleton. A moment too late, Ley battered the head and broke the skull of the thing that killed his daughter. His roar of rageful woe bellowed high to the battlements, mingling with the shrieks of the undead thing at last dying.

  A voice, Elansa’s, shouted out from the maelstrom of winds, crying, "Brand, give ground! Go inside!"

  Never questioning, his face alight with battle-lust, his eyes—she saw them from the height!—shining on her, Brand shouted in a kind of mad-minded laughter, "In! In! Dell! Ley!"

  They ran, hacking through the bone-white warriors, Brand himself like a scytheman with his sword. Shrieking rose to the heights, lost souls set loose. Bones rattled, clattering, falling, and Brand, at the doorway to safety, turned and looked up.

  "Princess!" he shouted, shining.

  Upon her breast the sapphire phoenix lay, blue against her white flesh. He felt it beating, for he knew how her heart felt. He knew the rhythm of it. He had learned it on long, cold nights, as it beat steadily against his own breast. With his sword Brand saluted her, laughing he raised the blade before he plunged into the tower, into darkness.

  On his heels ran a wind the like of which the granite fortress had never felt. It ripped bone from bone, tearing ribs from spines, shattering bony necks, flinging skulls in the whirlwind Elansa guided with her own will and shaped with her hands. She scoured the courtyard, broke the bones to powder and sent the poor scraps of once-proud armor and ancient clothing sailing up to the dawn, soaring out over the wall and into the valley where armies of the living gathered.

  "Princess!" cried a voice, familiar, urgent.

  Shaking, she looked away from what she had made with her magic, and she saw Char. She had known his face white with the pain of wanting his beloved dwarf spirits. She had known him gray on the morning after nightmare. She had never seen his face so
drained of blood—of all color—as she did now.

  "Princess, look!"

  Over the valley, shreds of ancient glory and bits of bone whirled in the wind from the wings of the Blue Phoenix. Below, armies ran headlong toward dying, elves and goblins tearing up the stony earth to join in battle, and in the midst of the goblin army there was fire.

  The warden of Qualinesti ran ahead of his army. Beside him ran Demlin.

  "My prince!" the elf had cried. "We have seen the princess! We have seen her on the walls of Pax Tharkas!"

  He'd delivered his message from horseback as he tore into the camp. Around him elven warriors had gathered, a silver army swirling, shouts of joy rising.

  "Elansa! Elansa!" Her name had rung on the air like the call of a war horn. "Elansa!"

  So did the cry ring now, from the prince, from his warriors galloping across the stony plain. "Ride for Elansa!" Kethrenan shouted. "Ride for our princess!"

  The point of a spear, the hard gleaming edge of a sword, he drove his mount forward, the shining towers of Pax Tharkas in view. The force of his stem will carried his army behind, his warriors beloved of their prince. Kethrenan’s war cry rang out, a terrible roar to shiver his foes and lift his warriors. The dark army of goblins halted and turned. He felt it like a shock in his own heart, the surprise of his enemy when they saw the silver army pouring down behind. In a moment's time, their cries of fear turned to battle cries, and in the midst of them a great bolt of fire shot upward and out. Caught between their master and his weapon, goblins burned, screaming, and the stench of the cooking flesh polluted the air.

  And the hob—riding, Keth shuddered in horror—the hob himself looked like one of his own victims. Skin black and peeling in bloody shreds from glistening bones, the thing that used to be Gnash came lurching, clinging to its fire-staff. It did not scream in helplessness. It went with direction into the teeth of the elven army. It wailed in agony, consumed by its magic and generating fire with each shriek. Great gouts of flame shot out from the staff. They hung above the ground, struggling to form in the shape of the fire-wights that had so terrified past battlegrounds, but they could not. Like their creator, they staggered and fell. Stone didn't feed them, and Gnash’s magic could not.

  Elven voices thundered to the sky as the Qualinesti scented victory.

  "Take him!" the prince shouted, pointing to Gnash. "Kill him!"

  Behind Gnash, his army roared. Caught between their master's magic and the rage of elves, the goblins broke ranks. Some turned to fight, others fled, and one small bold line of them dug in and put up a wall of spears between the elves and their master, ringing him round while gouts of fire soared over their heads, unshaped but still dangerous.

  "Gnash!" the goblins howled. "For Gnash!"

  The first wave of elves broke on that wall, horses thrust through the neck, the belly, elves speared and pitched from their mounts. As the warriors fell, the goblins cheered, and those who hadn't fled their foe or their master fell upon them, hacking with their saw-toothed blades or filling the wounded with arrows. In the screaming fray, Kethrenan shouted orders to his army, and he found himself looking south and gauging the distance to Pax Tharkas. The fortress stood bright in the cold light, gleaming. Before it, he knew, Lindenlea’s army waited, and now it was time to change the tide of this battle.

  Even as he prayed for those who would obey him, Kethrenan cried, "Take him and damn the cost!"

  Screaming, the elven army threw itself upon the spear wall, shattering their first ranks. The second leaped over the corpses of horses and elves and goblins to get to Gnash. For one instant, Kethrenan saw his foe, the hobgoblin reduced to an animated corpse. Their eyes met, the spear wall broke, and the hob was swept away on the tide of his followers.

  Down the plain to Pax Tharkas they ran, and Kethrenan called off pursuit, refusing to let his army follow.

  "Not yet," he said, leaning forward to watch the goblins run. "Give them a chance to get right where we want them."

  He looked around at the stony plain and the corpses of elves and goblins. The stench of burning flesh hung in the air, turning his belly sick. He listened to the wind and the sounds of the groaning wounded. In the sky ravens gathered, and somewhere in the hills wolves must surely be lifting their noses to the wind. Kethrenan moved his army away from the killing ground, took them to a quieter place, and let them rest. He did not go back for the wounded, and he didn't spare men to help them. His battle was joined but not yet won. Neither would it be won until he had the head of the outlaw Brand on his lance. To get that, he must break the goblin army and the gates of Pax Tharkas.

  Kethrenan spared a prayer for the doomed and the dead. Among them, he saw Demlin, his erstwhile servant, killed in Elansa’s cause.

  "May the gods have mercy," he whispered as he turned his back. "May the gods have mercy."

  Elansa stood shivering in her rags. Hollowed by her magic, she leaned against the wall, looking down into the empty courtyard. Char helped her to sit. He put her back to the parapet and the battle below.

  "Princess," he said, standing close. "Is it always so hard?"

  She hardly understood what he meant until she saw him looking into the court and the scattered bones. Elansa rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes. "Char, I hurt." Not in the bones of her, or the muscles. Not that way. She hurt in the soul of her, for she was a woodshaper, and she was not made to break and rend. She was made to shape and nurture and heal. Her breath caught in a ragged sob.

  "Aye, well. It's done now." He patted her shoulder awkwardly. "You did good."

  Elansa looked up, and she looked past him. Brand stood at the door to the tower. He lifted a hand, beckoning. She tried to stand but couldn't. Char pulled her to her feet. She could not stand on her own. She had to lean against the wall, and even that was an effort.

  Brand covered the distance between them with long sure strides. He gathered her in his arms, holding her carefully. She smelled blood on him—his own, for his enemies had not bled in centuries.

  She tried to say something, to ask him where he was wounded, but she couldn't. The winds of magic had blown all the wit and will from her. She saw Char’s face though, and she didn't see fear there. Brand bled, but he wouldn't die of it.

  Outside the fortress, beyond the stone walls, the storm of battle grew closer. Screams of rage, howls of fury, and the agonized cries of the dying filled the air. Elansa smelled the stink of burning flesh.

  "I know the bargain we made," Brand said, his voice soft, his lips against her ear. He spoke for only her to hear. "But you can't walk out of here now, princess. Come inside. What will happen out there, will happen."

  "No," she said. "I have to see. They are my people. I have to see."

  He kissed her. He had never done so till then; she had not wanted it, he had never forced it. He kissed her, and it was a very gentle thing. He put her foot to ground, but he held her with his arm around her waist.

  Lindenlea stood high in her stirrups, looking out over the plain. A slow smile spread across her lips, a wolfish tugging.

  "Ready," she said to the elf at her side. "Get ready."

  He nodded briskly and sent the order along the line of mounted warriors stretched before the narrow road that would lead to the first gate of Pax Tharkas. They saw the dust cloud first, and they heard the armies next—thunder of hooves, shouting voices, goblin-speech and Elvish all mingling into a distant roar of battle-song. One elf looked up and back, seeing Elansa on the Tharkadan. He saw her held close between a dwarf and a tall, bearded human. In his eyes, she stood a captive, and the blood in him burned to see the hand of the human on the arm of his princess.

  "For the princess!" he cried, and the shout went long the line, a new war cry.

  Lindenlea looked up to the wall, to the captive princess. She changed the battle cry. "To free the princess!"

  The thunder of war came closer, the dark horde of fleeing goblins and the bright mass of elves behind.

  "Stand,
" Lindenlea said to her aid. "Stand, hold, and wait till they're where we need them."

  Stand! Stand! Stand! The command went down the line. Horses snorted, bridles jingled, and soldiers held their position.

  The goblins came on, running in no formation now, and it seemed they followed no one. Indeed, they were driven. In the rear a terrible creature ran, a thing with black flesh peeling from its bones, its eyes white and staring, its mouth a bloody gash from which curses and screams of agony poured. Fire ran on it, like a cloak blown back by wind; fire poured from its hands, burning all those who did not get out of its way.

  "Hold," Lindenlea said, and the horses stamped restlessly, catching the scent of fear. "Hold."

  The goblins saw the road and the waiting army in the same instant. They broke, screaming, then reformed, for there was no place to go but back. The hob drove them, and Kethrenan drove the hob.

  "Go!" she cried, and her army thundered forward.

  They crashed together, the elven army and the goblin army. Mounted elves trampled the goblins, and the goblins did not die easily. They thrust swords into the bellies of horses. They held ground and hacked at the legs of the riders. When horses went down, the goblins swarmed them, yanking elves from the saddles, cutting throats and turning the stones red with blood.

  "Get the hob!"

  The order roared out over the heads of the fighters, and Lindenlea’s heart leaped to hear it. Across the battle she saw her prince, Kethrenan at the head of his warriors. Spurring her mount, Lindenlea sprang to obey. She slashed her way across the bloody ground, trampling goblins. Those of the elves who saw her coming cut a path for her, laughing and cheering her.

  "Lindenlea! Lindenlea! Lindenlea!"

  And someone shouted, "Free the princess!"

  Lindenlea had her eye on Kethrenan when that cry went up. She saw him hear it, and his head snapped around. She saw him look upward. She saw his face when he saw his wife, his Elansa Sungold standing on the Tharkadan, hemmed by outlaws.