by Ellen Porath
The six-foot-long, insectlike monster had burst into camp one morning more than two weeks ago, rampaging through their belongings and making off with Kitiara’s pack. The creature, built low to the ground, with armorlike plates protecting it from its mandible to its rearmost pair of legs, had twelve legs and possessed frightening quickness and ferocity.
Kitiara’s first suspicion had been that the Valdane’s mage had sent the horax after her to recover the pack and the ice jewels. But she dispelled that notion when the carnivorous creature, after some wandering, finally had simply returned to its subterranean colony. She and the half-elf had taken advantage of an early-morning cold snap, which slowed the cold-blooded creature and several of its mates.
The campaign against the horax had drawn them back south and west into the forests of Qualinesti, Tanis’s turf, but still far off their planned route to Solace. The expedition had taken up half of the one month that had elapsed since Tanis and Kitiara’s initial skirmish with the hobgoblins. Now the travelers, the pack restored to its spot behind Kitiara’s saddle, were several miles south of Haven.
“I still think it would have been easier for you to get a new pack,” Tanis persisted. “That one looks like it’s been through a civil war.”
“Well, it has,” Kitiara muttered defensively.
“So why were you so determined to get it back?” He gazed at her inquisitively, but his expression was mild.
She bristled. “I told you it’s none of your business.”
Tanis brushed aside her protest like one of the flies that circled in the heat. “I risked my life for it, Kit.”
Kitiara slapped the saddle’s pommel. “I have a business arrangement to discuss with Raistlin,” she said heatedly. “Some of the … background information … is in the pack.”
“That explains why you were bent on pursuing the horax,” he said doggedly. “It doesn’t explain why you’re in no hurry to meet with your brother now.”
By the gods, the half-elf was nosy! “I’m still working on the plan,” she said hotly. “You could have gone on without me, half-elf. It wasn’t your fight. You could have gone on to meet your dwarf friend in Solace.”
“As though I’d abandon a woman and let her take on a carnivorous monster alone.”
Kitiara whipped a dagger from a sheath. Before Tanis could draw another breath, he was gazing at the point of the wicked weapon. He didn’t seem terribly impressed with her lightning speed, however, which enraged the swordswoman all the more. Kitiara finally spoke, spitting out each word. “Half-elf, I do not need a man to protect me!”
Astoundingly, Tanis smiled. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “Of course, Kit. Of course.”
Kitiara sheathed the dagger, still fuming. They rode on for a mile without speaking. Finally Tanis, with an apologetic look, broke the silence. “Can I help you? With your plan, I mean?”
The mercenary snorted. “As if you could.”
“I handle Flint Fireforge’s metalsmithing dealings, and no one is more disorganized than that dwarf when it comes to business. I might be able to make some suggestions for you and your brother.”
Kitiara looked at Tanis. “Thanks, but no thanks,” was all she said.
Tanis didn’t seem bothered by Kitiara’s rejection of his offer of help. The two rode companionably, side by side, for nearly an hour through the late afternoon calm. When Kitiara finally spoke again, however, it was as though only a short time had elapsed.
“You don’t seem in any great hurry to get back to Solace yourself,” she commented. “What about this dwarf friend of yours? Won’t he be wondering where you are?”
The half-elf shook his head. “Flint knows I went to Qualinost to visit my relatives. He knows I’ll be back whenever I get back.”
Kitiara reached out, pulled a leaf from an overhanging sycamore tree, and casually began to shred it. “Relatives? Your parents?”
Tanis hesitated before answering. “My mother’s dead. My mother’s husband’s brother raised me.”
“Mother’s husband’s …” Kitiara looked in confusion at Tanis. “Not your father?” She tried to sort out what he’d already told her in light of this new information. “But you said you were raised in the court of the Speaker of the Sun.” She couldn’t hide that she was impressed; everybody knew the Speaker of the Sun was the leader of the Qualinesti nation. “Did the Speaker’s brother marry a human? I thought humans haven’t been in Qualinost in centuries.”
“If ever,” Tanis said tersely. “My mother was an elf. My father was human.”
Kitiara jerked on Obsidian’s reins. The well-trained mare halted in midstride. “All right, now I’m lost,” the swordswoman confessed. “The elven Speaker’s brother is human?”
Tanis looked away. “Can’t we just leave this be?”
“Fine.” Kitiara kicked Obsidian into a canter. “Your parentage makes no difference to me, half-elf.” Her back was stiff as she rode off.
Tanis sat motionless on Dauntless for a few moments, deep in thought, while Kitiara rode on ahead without a glance back. At last, as she was disappearing around a curve, the half-elf hailed her. She waited atop the black mare as the gelding pounded up.
The half-elf didn’t look at Kitiara. “My mother was married to the Speaker’s brother—who, yes, was an elf,” he said tonelessly. “They were waylaid on the road by a gang of humans—thugs and thieves. They murdered my mother’s husband. My mother was raped by a human; after I was born, she died. The Speaker raised me with his own children.”
“Ah.” Kitiara thought it wise to say nothing else. But Tanis wasn’t finished. He seemed driven to say it all and get it over with. His jaw was set, his hazel eyes hard; the hands that clenched Dauntless’s reins were white at the knuckles.
“The one behind the attack was not a human,” he said. “It was the Speaker’s other brother.”
Kitiara’s eyes widened. “I thought elves were above all that,” she murmured. “Elven honor and all.”
Tanis pierced her with a stare. “It’s not a joke, Kitiara. Honor is important to me. My mother and the man who should have been my father lost their lives because of dishonor.” He paused, a sudden flush coloring his cheekbones.
Kitiara nodded soothingly. But to herself, she thought, No, Tanis wouldn’t be a good one to help her with the purple gems.
* * * * *
The village had all the charm of stale beer.
Tanis and Kitiara pulled up their horses. The community boasted two short lanes and several faded grayboard houses, some no more than one large room with a thatched roof and a greased-parchment window. One house, larger than the rest, stood out; its owner had stained the exterior planks rich brown. The gray buildings looked dead next to the warmth of the brown one. A picket fence and double row of tall rachel flowers circled the place, the globes of bright pink and purple brightening an otherwise dismal scene. The companions saw no residents.
Kitiara sniffed and pointed at the open front door of the brown home. “Spices and yeast,” she said. “Can you smell them?”
Tanis had dismounted and was on his way to the dwelling. “The owner may sell us some bread,” he called back. Kitiara’s empty stomach growled an affirmative.
Kitiara remained mounted on Obsidian while Tanis hopped onto the porch of the brown house, knocked at the doorjamb, waited a moment, then entered despite the lack of a hail from within. The town had no stable, no public house where a traveler could lift a tankard of ale, but it wasn’t that different from dozens of other villages where Kitiara had stopped over the years. Someone in such towns usually was willing to provide refreshment to strangers for the right price.
Yet this community appeared deserted. Doors and shutters had been closed fast. “Anybody home?” Kitiara called. She waited. Obsidian, accustomed to the siege as well as the charge, stood quietly, her only sign of life the switching of her black tail. The place was rife with flies.
Finally a plank creaked. “Why are you in Meddow?” came a
woman’s strident call from behind a cracked door. “What is your friend doing in Jarlburg’s confectionery? We have many men here, all armed with swords and maces. We can defend ourselves. Go away.”
Kitiara hid a smile. Defend themselves indeed! They were as frightened as rabbits. She removed her helmet. “We are travelers bound for Haven. We desire food and drink, nothing more. And”—she paused significantly—“I can pay.”
Another pause, then a middle-aged woman dressed in the gathered skirt, scarf, and leather slippers of a peasant stepped hesitantly onto the porch of the shack next to the brown building. Her chapped hands held a large wooden crochet hook attached by a strand of green yarn to what looked to be the back portion of a child’s sweater. Her hands never stopped moving, looping the handspun yarn; the hook’s end bobbed like a chickadee. Kitiara traced the yarn to a bulging pocket in the front of the peasant’s skirt. Every few stitches, the woman gave a yank on the yarn, which made the pocket jump and released a few more circles of yarn from a ball in the pocket.
“I can give you water, but I have no food to spare,” the woman said edgily. She kept flicking her gaze from Kitiara to the floor of the porch.
“No bread?” Kitiara demanded. “But I can smell the yeast.”
“We get … got …” The woman took a deep breath and started again. “Jarlburg …” Her courage fled; she pressed the crochet hook against her quivering lips, then pointed with the implement to the open front door of the brown building. “There.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Jarlburg’s dead, too. I just know it. One by one, we’re all dying.”
“Dead, too?” Kitiara repeated and pulled Obsidian back a pace. “What is it—a plague?” Her skin crawled. Kitiara would gladly take on any living foe, but a plague? No one on Krynn knew what caused disease, although some people said that clerics and healers who had followed the old gods, years ago before the Cataclysm, could cure such illnesses. These days, seekers of the new religions said the sick invited their own fate by straying from moral purity.
The woman shook her head. “No, no plague. People just … disappear. I think they go into the swamp.” She pointed to the east with a thin hand that, all at once, could barely hold the crochet hook.
“Any signs of a struggle?” Kitiara asked.
The peasant, shaking her head in reply, seemed suddenly convinced that the strangers were not the force behind whatever preyed on Meddow. She ventured from her front door. The woman didn’t look at her crocheting; her nervous chatter kept pace with the frenetic movements of the wooden yarn hook.
“We find their doors open in the morning and they’re gone,” she said tearfully. “I just know they’re all dead—Berk, Duster, Brown, Johon, Maron, and Keat so far. And now Jarlburg! We’ve only three men left, and half a dozen women, and more than a dozen children. What will our babies do if all the parents are taken?” She began to wail, wiping her tears with the crocheting. She gazed at Kitiara through wet eyes. “You appear to be a soldier, ma’am. Can you and your friend help us?”
Kitiara considered. “What can you pay?”
The woman took a step back. “Pay?” she quavered. “We have no money.”
“Sorry, then,” Kitiara announced curtly. “My companion and I have urgent business in Solace. We cannot delay.” She turned Obsidian’s head toward Jarlburg’s confectionery. The woman burst into fresh tears behind her.
“Wait!” It was the woman again. “I can give you this.” She waved the sweater piece at Kitiara. “It will be finished soon. Perhaps you have a daughter or son it would fit?”
“Gods forbid,” Kitiara said with a short laugh. “That’s all I need!” She refused the peasant again. “I must meet my companion and be moving on. We hope to be in Haven by dark.”
The woman’s hands ceased their crocheting, fluttered to her apron, and entangled themselves there. As Kitiara turned away, the beseeching look in the peasant’s eyes faded. “There’s a shortcut,” the peasant called to Kitiara. “Follow the path behind Jarlburg’s; take it to the east. You will quickly reach a fork at the rose quartz boulder. The left fork winds a bit, but it will take you to Haven.”
“And the right fork?” Kitiara turned as she stepped up on Jarlburg’s porch.
“It goes straight into the swamp. Be careful.”
Kitiara thanked her and entered the brown dwelling.
The peasant turned back toward her shack. “Or maybe it’s the other way around,” the woman muttered with a humorless smile. “I forget.”
* * * * *
Despite the open door, Jarlburg’s confectionery was stuffy. A trickle of sweat curved down Kitiara’s back. She could detect the odors of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and something sweet, like flower petals. She heard Tanis moving about in the back room, a huge kitchen, she now saw, with a brick oven at one end and a wooden slab of a table that dominated the center of the room. A sack and a half of wheat flour lay under the table.
Tanis stood near the split door into the alley. The bottom half was closed, but the top was open. “You can smell the swamp from here,” he said, adding, “The place is deserted, yet obviously someone was here baking recently.”
“Something’s been preying on the village. It happens at night, a peasant woman told me.” Kitiara related the peasant woman’s story, leaving out her futile request for help. “We should take some provisions and get moving.” Bleached flour sacks protected a few trays, including one on a shelf near her elbow. Kitiara peered under the towel and saw a dozen frosted buns. She pierced one with the point of her dagger and bit into the morsel.
“Mmmmm,” she said, talking before she swallowed. “Persimmon filling. Want some?”
Tanis was digging out a coin—payment for the provisions, no doubt—from a pouch at his waist. He looked around, then placed it on a knife-scarred counter. “Someone will find it there. Anyway, how can you eat in this place?” he demanded. “The owner is probably lying dead somewhere out in the swamp.”
She finished the confection in three bites, licked her fingers elaborately, and took another bun. “If I went off my feed when circumstances were less than perfect, half-elf, I’d starve. And I’m no good as a swordswoman if I’m weak with hunger.” She brushed her hands on her short leather skirt. “Do you see any bread? Check under that towel by the door.”
Tanis didn’t move. He didn’t say anything.
“Squeamish?” Kitiara snapped. “I doubt old Jarlburg will mind if we sample his stock. What good are a few biscuits to him now?”
Tanis still didn’t say anything. Kitiara slipped her dagger into its sheath. She emptied a tray of buns into a towel and tied it in a knot. “These will come in handy later,” she commented.
“Aren’t you even a little curious about what has happened to everyone?” Tanis asked.
Kitiara shook her head. “As long as it isn’t me that’s in danger, I have no curiosity.” Tanis watched dispassionately, his expression unreadable. “What?” she demanded.
“I’m trying to decide something,” the half-elf said mildly, turning toward the alley.
“What?” she asked.
“Whether you’re inhuman or typically human.”
Tanis stepped into the alley, leaving Kitiara standing motionless in the middle of the kitchen, one hand clenching a loaf of rye bread, the other holding the towel full of biscuits. Kitiara watched him leave, her blood pounding with anger.
Damn the man. And damn his arrogant elven blood.
* * * * *
Tanis didn’t say anything to Kitiara as they left Meddow. She pointed out a shortcut she said she’d learned about, and when they reached a fork after a few minutes of riding, she motioned wordlessly down the left path. They kicked their horses into a trot as dusk descended around them.
Soon the path grew spongy, and the horses’s feet began to make sucking noises as they pulled their hooves from the sodden peat.
“This can’t be the right trail,” Tanis said, looking back from his position in the lead.
�
�The woman said the left fork curved a bit,” Kitiara snapped. “This is the left fork, damn it. Hurry up. It’s getting dark.”
Tanis nodded. “I’d hate to see the right fork,” he murmured.
The vegetation changed as they continued along the trail. The trees now sagged under festoons of gray-green moss that resembled tresses of a desiccated corpse. Strange grasses, red, shoulder-high, with clouds of tiny insects around their tips, poked up beside the path. Kitiara touched one and snatched her hand away with a cry. “I’ve been bitten!”
Tanis reined in Dauntless and leaned over to examine her hand. “By the insects or by the plant?” he asked. Blood oozed from a pair of cuts at the base of her thumb. “They look like teeth marks,” he mused.
Kitiara’s temper snapped again. “Don’t be ridiculous. Whoever heard of plants that bite?”
The half-elf’s expression was thoughtful. “I’ve heard of stranger things,” he said.
She jerked her hand away. “You’re trying to spook me, half-elf. Let’s get moving.” She shoved Obsidian past the chestnut gelding into the lead. Tanis followed slowly.
The path narrowed; red grasses pushed in from the sides until Tanis and Kitiara could barely see to the right or the left. There was only room for the horses to pass in single file. The smell of muck increased, as did the whine of insects. Once something purple, the size of a horse’s hoof, scampered across the path right in front of Obsidian, dragging a small, fluttering bird. So startled was the mare that it was all Kitiara could do to restrain her rearing mount. When Obsidian had settled down at last, Kitiara shouted back, “What in the shadowless Abyss was that?”
“Bog spider,” Tanis said tersely. “Poisonous.”
As evening darkened, mosquitoes descended in hordes upon the travelers. Tanis unrolled a blanket from his bedroll and wrapped it over his head to discourage the biting insects. Kitiara followed suit. “Don’t brush against the plants,” he warned. Kitiara grunted in reply but kept Obsidian in the center of the trail.