by Dragon Lance
In the confusion following Tol’s departure, Ackal V perished. The exact cause of his death was never established. Common rumor had it he killed himself rather than face Lord Tolandruth’s vengeance. His son, Prince Dalar, was proclaimed emperor, and a council of four warlords declared themselves the boy’s regents. Two of them hailed from the Army of the East, Mittigorn and Quevalen. The others were Daltigoth lords, Vanz Hellman and Rykard Gonzakan, the warlord with the blond mustache who had met Tol in the plaza before the Inner City.
The regency of the four warlords ended in less than a year, however, when a new threat arose in the east. A fiery young claimant to the throne of Ackal Ergot, Pakin princess Mellamy Zan, raised her standard on the open plain. Taking advantage of the same discontent that had led so many warlords to rally around Tol, Mellamy raised a sizable army and marched on Daltigoth. Her advance broke apart the alliance of the four regents.
Mittigorn, who was from the east, was accused of secretly sympathizing with the Pretender and executed. Youngest of the regents, Lord Quevalen was maneuvered out of power, leaving two strong generals to vie for sole control. Vanz Hellman, popularly called the Hammer of the Bakali, held his own until fortune forced him to take the field against Mellamy Zan’s army. The Pakin Pretender had a supremely talented general at her side, a mysterious figure who never appeared in public without a mask. A few folk thought her brilliant commander was Lord Tolandruth himself, but no one who actually saw the masked general believed that. The Pretender’s commander was slender and elegant, with a polished voice and elaborate manners. Tol of Juramona was none of those things.
Mellamy Zan’s army crushed Hellman’s hordes at the Battle of the Caer Crossing. Hellman was slain, and Rykard Gonzakan became sole protector of the underage emperor. However, soon after Gonzakan’s ascension to power, Emperor Dalar, who had never been crowned, vanished from history. His fate is unknown, and in time he disappeared even from the roll of Ergothian rulers. He was no more than ten years old.
Mellamy Zan reached the gates of Daltigoth. In a masterful bit of negotiation, a peace parley was proposed by the Red Robe Helbin, who had emerged from hiding after the death of Ackal V. The wizard was a profoundly changed man.
Known before for his fastidious style and calculating brain, now Helbin was colder and coarser, with shaved head and a strange taste for raw meat.
Helbin’s plan called for Mellamy Zan to marry the Ackal heir, a nephew of Ackal V, thus uniting the warring Pakin and Ackal clans. However, unbeknownst to her supporters, Mellamy Zan had formulated her own plan. Realizing the nobles of Ergoth would never accept a woman as their ruler, she secretly applied to certain illegal sorcerers for a rite of transformation. Only days before her scheduled marriage to the Ackal heir, Mellamy Zan became Mellamax Zan, Pakin prince.
All Helbin’s careful work came to naught, and Mellamax did gain the throne of Ergoth for one hundred days until General Gonzakan gathered Ackal loyalists and deposed the Pakin emperor. Bereft of power, unable to keep the dark, mysterious bargain she’d made with the sorcerers, Mellamax once more became Mellamy. She fled to Tarsis, where she lived in eccentric splendor until assassinated by agents of Regent Gonzakan.
Empress Valaran did not long enjoy her freedom from her vicious husband. Lord Hellman wooed her, but she rejected his advances and ended her days a lonely prisoner. Confined to a rocky promontory overlooking the western sea, Valaran was consigned in the same stone keep that once held the deposed Empress Kanira. The governor of her prison was changed twice a year to prevent any one man from falling under the sway of his beautiful, clever captive.
Valaran adapted to life in her remote prison. Her main expenditures were for parchment, quills, and ink. She wrote eighteen additional books before her death: histories, commentaries, and learned discourses on natural philosophy. Her most famous title was The Life of Lord Tolandruth, which predictably was suppressed by the Ergothian regent. Still, copies were smuggled to the capital and circulated in secret, copied in back rooms and cellars. The biography was popular in foreign lands, too, particularly Tarsis. Over the years, many errors – both accidental and intentional – entered the text. Much of what later generations read about Tol of Juramona were copyists’ tall tales.
The mind of the former empress remained acute to the end of her life, it is said. For forty-two years she dwelt in captivity, although as she once remarked to one of her governors, she had in fact been a prisoner from birth – thirty-seven years in the Inner City, forty-two in Kanira’s Keep.
Her only protest against her fate was a symbolic one. She refused to cut her hair. By the time she died, it swept the floor behind her. Although no longer its original warm chestnut shade, the pure white fall was still breathtakingly beautiful. On her deathbed Valaran made only one request: she asked that her hair be cut close to her head and sent away for separate burial. Not to Daltigoth, city of her ancestors, Valaran asked it be interred in the rebuilt city of Juramona. Her last jailer, a young warlord named Gabien Solamna, faithfully carried out the wishes of the former empress.
Uncle Corpse, long-lived chief of the Dom-shu, met his fate while hunting. An enormous boar, the largest ever seen in the Great Green, turned on the hunters pursuing him and gored the old chief. Voyarunta managed to thrust his spear into the beast’s heart. Man and boar perished side by side. The Dom-shu didn’t practice blood succession. A new chief was chosen from the leading men of the tribe.
Miya and her son Eli lived quietly in their forest home, the old woman much respected for her many adventures. Eli, inheriting his father’s facility with his hands, spent six years among the dwarves, learning metalworking. He introduced both iron and steel to the forest tribes.
Kiya married a Dom-shu warrior name Voraduna, a stocky fellow with black hair and eyes, half a span shorter than she. They were together many years, until during a minor fight with the Karad-shu Kiya stopped an arrow. Mortally wounded, she asked her husband not to leave her to the mercy of the enemy. He gave her his dagger. The Karad-shu did not get any prisoners that day.
Hanira, Syndic of Tarsis and mistress of the guild of goldsmith and jewelers, never married again. She lived for twenty-four years after the death of her daughter, Valderra, and when the gods claimed her she was reputed to be the richest woman in the world. It took a hundred laborers three days to empty her personal hoard of coins from the vaults of Golden House.
*
The forty-three years of war and dynastic struggle that raged after Ackal V’s death were known collectively as the Successors’ War, because each faction put forth new heirs and new claimants to the power of Ergoth as soon as the previous pretenders perished. It was a war of pities and sieges mostly, and the countryside was spared heavy damage.
The eventual victor was Pakin IV – not an Ackal, but a true descendant of the great Pakin Zan. When his armies were sweeping through the Eastern Hundred, one of his scouts became separated from his horde. Confused (one hill looked very like another to the city-bred Rider), he rode down cart tracks and cow paths, searching for his comrades. He could get no help. Frightened peasants fled at his approach.
Early one spring morning, the lost scout came across an old man working a field. The peasant saw him coming but didn’t run away. The Pakin warrior rode up slowly, hailing the farmer in a friendly fashion, and offering a silent prayer to Corij that the oldster could tell him where in Chaos’s name he was.
Stooped and weather-worn, the farmer looked up at him. “Greetings, my lord,” he said readily enough.
“And to you, good man. I’m lost. Can you tell me where I am?”
“This is the Jura Hill Country, my lord,” the peasant replied, leaning against his hoe.
“I know that!” Striving to control his exasperation, the young warrior added, “Where is the nearest town?”
“The village of Pate’s Knob is half a day’s ride that way.” The old man pointed due east with one large hand.
“No, no. Where’s the nearest real town?”
Relief spread across the rider’s face. He grinned, teeth white against his grimy, sun-baked face.
“Juramona! That’ll do. We took Juramona ten days ago!”
“‘We?’”
The proud Rider straightened his hack. “The loyal hordes of our rightful emperor, Pakin IV!”
Pursing his lips, the old man nodded slowly. He unhooked a heavy gourd from the cloth sash around his neck and offered it to the Rider.
The warrior took it gratefully. After the first swallow, his eyes widened. Instead of the spring water he’d expected, it was filled with potent cider.
The farmer chuckled at his expression. “That will light a fire in your veins, eh, my lord?”
“Indeed! You must have a leather throat to drink this stuff, old man!”
“I’m used to it.” The farmer took the gourd back and drank two quick swallows of cider before hooking the gourd on his sash again. “So, the Pakins took Juramona. By storm or by siege?”
“By storm. We scaled a section of wall by night.”
“Mmm. Not like the old days.”
Warmed by his unexpected libation, the Pakin leaned comfortably on the pommel of his saddle and asked what he meant.
“Juramona used to be a more formidable place. In Marshal Odovar’s day, no one could have scaled the wall and survived.”
The name of the long-ago marshal meant nothing to the twenty-four-year-old warrior. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Were you a soldier once?”
The old man plied his hoe again, loosening the soil along a row of onions. He shook his gray head. “No, my lord. Just a poor farmer.”
The Rider turned his horse in a half-circle, toward the northeast and Juramona. He took a single coin from the purse at his waist and tossed it to the elderly farmer.
“Thanks for your help, old man – and for the drink!” he said, and spurred away.
The farmer let the coin hit the ground. It was a newly minted silver crown and bore a glowering profile. The latest Pakin Pretender must be doing well enough if he had time and money to strike coins.
Raising his hoe, Tol cleaved a dry clump of soil into bits and raked them over the coin. He had no need of it. The directions were free, and so was he.
Firstborn
(2308 PC)
Prelude
YEAR OF THE DOLPHIN
(2308 PC)
The great river Thon-Thalas flowed southward through the forests of Silvanesti. Three-quarters of the way down its length, the broad waterway branched and twin streams flowed around an island called Fallan. On this island was the capital city of the elven nation, Silvanost.
Silvanost was a city of towers. Gleaming white, they soared skyward, some dwarfing even the massive oak trees on the mainland. Unlike the mainland, Fallan Island had few trees. Most had been removed to make way for the city. The island’s naturally occurring marble and quartz formations had then been spell-shaped by the Silvanesti, transforming them into houses and towers. Approaching the island from the west on the King’s Road, a traveler could see the marble city gleaming with pearly light through the trees. At night, the city absorbed the starlight and moonlight and radiated it softly back to the heavens.
On this particular night, scudding clouds covered the sky and a chill rain fell. A brisk breeze swirled over the island. The streets of Silvanost, however, were full. In spite of the damp cold, every elf in the city stood outside, shouting, clapping, and singing joyfully. Many carried candles, hooded against the rain, and the dancing lights added to the strange yet festive air.
A wonderful thing had happened that evening in the capital. Sithel, Speaker of the Stars, ruler of all Silvanesti, had become a father. Indeed the great fortune of Speaker Sithel was that he had two sons. He was the father of twins, an event rare among elves. The Silvanesti began to call Sithel “Twice Blest.” And they celebrated in the cool, damp night.
The Speaker of the Stars was not receiving well-wishers, however. He was not even in the Palace of Quinari, where his wife, Nirakina, still lay in her birthing bed with her new sons. Sithel had left his attendants and walked alone across the plaza between the palace and the Tower of the Stars, the ceremonial seat of the speaker’s power. Though common folk were not allowed in the plaza by night, the speaker could hear the echoes of their celebrations. He strode through the dark outlines of the garden surrounding the tower. Wending his way along the paths, he entered the structure through a door reserved for the royal family.
Circling to the front of the great emerald throne, Sithel could see the vast audience hall. It was not completely dark. Six hundred feet above him was a shaft in the roof of the tower, open to the sky. Moonlight, broken by clouds, filtered down the shaft. The walls of the tower were pierced by spiraling rows of window slits and encrusted with precious jewels of every description. These split the moonlight into iridescent beams, and the beams bathed the walls and floor in a thousand myriad colors. Yet Sithel had no mind for this beauty now. Seating himself on the throne he had occupied for two centuries, he rested his hands on the emerald arms, allowing the coolness of the stone to penetrate and soothe his heavy heart.
A figure appeared in the monumental main doorway. “Enter,” said the speaker, He hardly spoke above a whisper, but the perfect acoustics of the hall carried the single word clearly to the visitor.
The figure approached. He halted at the bottom of the steps leading up to the throne platform and set a small brazier on the marble floor. Finally the visitor bowed low and said, “You summoned me, great Speaker:’ His voice was light, with the lilt of the north country in it.
“Vedvedsica, servant of Gilean,” Sithel said. “Rise.”
Vedvedsica stood. Unlike the clerics, of Silvanost, who wore white robes and a sash in the color of their patron deity, Vedvedsica wore a belted tabard of solid gray. His god had no temple in the city, because the gods of Neutrality were not officially tolerated by the priests who served the gods of Good.
Vedvedsica said, “May I congratulate Your Highness on the birth of his sons?”
Sithel nodded curtly. “It is because of them that I have called you here,” he replied. “Does your god allow you to see the future?”
“My master Gilean holds in his hands the Tobril, the Book of Truth. Sometimes he grants me glimpses of this book.” From the priest’s expression it appeared this was not a practice he enjoyed.
“I will give you one hundred gold pieces,” said the speaker. “Ask your god, and tell me the fate of my sons.”
Vedvedsica bowed again. He dipped a hand into the voluminous pockets of his tabard and brought out two dried leaves, still shiny green, but stiff and brittle. Removing the conical cover from the brazier, he exposed hot coals and held the leaves by their stems over the dully-glowing fire.
“Gilean, the Book! Gray Voyager! Sage of Truth, Gate of Souls! By this fire, open my eyes and allow me to read from the book of all-truth!”
The cleric’s voice was stronger now, resonating through the empty hall. “Open the Tobril! Find for Speaker Sithel the fates of his two sons, born this day!”
Vedvedsica laid the dry leaves on the coals. They caught fire immediately, flames curling around them with a loud crackle. Smoke snaked up from the brazier, thick, gray smoke that condensed as it rose. Sithel gripped the arms of his throne and watched the smoke coil and writhe. Vedvedsica held up his hands as if to embrace it.
Gradually the smoke formed into the wavering shape of an open scroll. The back of the scroll faced Sithel. The front was for Vedvedsica only. The cleric’s lips moved as he read from the book that contained all the knowledge of the gods.
In less than half a minute the leaves were totally consumed. The fire flared three feet above the golden brazier, instantly dispelling the smoke. In the flash of flame, the priest cried out in pain and reeled away. Sithel leaped up from his throne as Vedvedsica collapsed in a heap.
/> After descending the steps from the throne platform, Sithel knelt beside the cleric and carefully turned him over. “What did you see?” he asked urgently. “Tell me – I command you!”
Vedvedsica took his hands from his face. His eyebrows were singed, his face blackened. “Five words... I saw only five words, Highness,” he said falteringly.
“What were they?” Sithel nearly shook the fellow in his haste to know. “The Tobril said, ‘They both shall wear crowns...’ “
Sithel frowned, his pale, arching brows knotting together. “What does it mean? Two crowns?” he demanded angrily. “How can they both wear crowns?”
“It means what it means, Twice-Blest.”
The speaker looked at the brazier, its coals still glowing. A few seconds’ glimpse into the great book had nearly cost Vedvedsica his sight. What would the knowledge of Gilean’s prophecy cost Sithel himself? What would it cost Silvanesti?
Chapter 1
SPRING – YEAR OF THE HAWK
(2216 PC)
Clouds scattered before the wind, bright white in the brilliant sunshine. In the gaps of blue that showed between the clouds, a dark, winged form darted and wheeled. Far larger than a bird, the creature climbed with powerful strokes of its broad wings. It reached a height above the lowest clouds and hovered there, wings beating fast and hard.
The beast was a griffon, a creature part lion, part eagle. Its magnificent eagle’s head and neck gave way to the torso and hindquarters of a lion. A plumed lion’s tail whipped in the wind. Behind the beast’s fiercely beaked head and unblinking golden eyes, the leather straps of a halter led back to a saddle, strapped to the griffon’s shoulders. In the saddle sat a helmeted figure clad in green and gold armor. An elven face with brown eyes and snow-colored hair peered out from under the bronze helmet.