by Dragon Lance
He stood, a clear signal that the audience was over. The assembly bowed deeply as one and filed out. In a few minutes, only Sithel and Sithas were left.
“That Miritelisina,” said Sithel wryly. “She’s a woman of extreme will.”
“She’s too sentimental,” Sithas complained, coming to his father’s side. “I didn’t notice her offering to take the half-breeds into her temple.”
“No, but she’s spent a third of the temple treasury on tents and firewood, I hear.” The speaker rubbed his brow with one hand and sighed gustily. “Do you think it will come to war? There’s no real proof Ergoth is behind these attacks.”
Sithas frowned. “These are not ordinary bandits. Ordinary bandits don’t scorn gold in favor of wrecking fruit trees. I understand this new emperor, Ullves X, is an ambitious young schemer.
Perhaps if we confront him directly, he would restrain the ‘bandits’ now at liberty in our western lands.”
Sithel looked doubtful. “Humans are difficult to deal with. They have more guile than kender, and their rapaciousness can make a goblin pale. And yet, they know honor, loyalty, and courage. It would be easier if they were all cruel or all noble, but as it is, they are mostly... difficult.” Rising from the throne, the speaker added, “Still, talk is cheaper than war. Prepare a letter to the emperor of Ergoth. Ask him to send an emissary for the purpose of ending the strife on the plains. Oh, you’d better send a similar note to the king of Thorbardin. They have a stake in this, too.”
“I will begin at once,” Sithas assented, bowing deeply.
*
Usually, diplomatic notes to foreign rulers would be composed by professional scribes, but Sithas sat down at the onyx table in his private room and began the letter himself. He dipped a fine stylus in a pot of black ink and wrote the salutation. “To His Most Excellent and Highborn Majesty, Ullves X, Emperor, Prince of Daltigoth, Grand Duke of Colem, etc., etc.” The prince shook his head. Humans dearly loved titles; how they piled them after their names. “From Sithel, Speaker of the Stars, Son of Silvanos. Greetings, Royal Brother.”
Hermathya burst into the room, red-gold hair disheveled, mantle askew. Sithas was so startled he dropped a blot of ink on the page, spoiling the fine vellum.
“Sithas!” she exclaimed breathlessly, rushing toward him. “They are rioting!”
“Who’s rioting?” he growled irritably.
“The farmers – the settlers lately come from the West. Word got out that the speaker was going to force them to leave Silvanost, and they began to smash and burn things. A band of them attacked the Market! Parts of it are on fire!”
Sithas rushed to the balcony. He threw aside the heavy brocade curtain and stepped out. His rooms faced away from the Market district, but through the muggy autumn air he caught the distant sounds of screaming.
“Has the royal guard been turned out?” he asked, returning inside quickly.
Hermathya inhaled deeply, her pale skin flushed as she tried to get her breathing under control. “I think so. I saw warriors headed that way. My sedan chair was blocked by a column of guards, so I got out and ran to the palace.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said sternly. Sithas imagined Hermathya running down the street like some wild Kagonesti. What would the common folk think, seeing his wife dashing through town like a wild thing?
When she planted her hands on her hips, the prince noticed that Hermathya’s mantle had slipped down, leaving one white shoulder bare. Her flame-bright hair had escaped its confining clasp and tendrils streamed around her reddened face. Her blush deepened at Sithas’s words.
“I thought it important to bring you the news!”
“The news would have come soon enough,” he stated tersely. He pulled a bell cord for a servant. An elf maid appeared with silent efficiency. “A bowl of water and a towel for Lady Hermathya,” Sithas commanded. The maid bowed and departed.
Hermathya flung off her dusty mantle. “I don’t need water!” she exclaimed angrily. “I want to know what you’re going to do about the riot!”
“The warriors will quell it,” the prince stated flatly as he returned to the table. When he saw that the parchment was ruined, Sithas frowned at the letter.
“Well, I hope no harm comes to Lady Nirakina!” she added.
Sithas ceased twirling the stylus in his fingers. “What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
“Your mother is out there, in the midst of the fighting!”
He seized Hermathya by the arms. His grip was so tight, a gasp was wrenched from his wife. “Don’t lie to me, Hermathya! Why should Mother be in that part of the city?”
“Don’t you know? She was at the river with that Ambrodel fellow, helping the poor wretches.”
Sithas released her quickly, and she staggered back a step. He thought fast. Then, turning to an elegant wardrobe made of flamewood, he pulled his street cloak off its peg and flipped it around his shoulders. On another peg was a sword belt holding a slender sword, the twin of his brother’s. He buckled the belt around his waist. It settled lopsidedly around his narrow hips.
“I’m going to find my mother,” he declared.
Hermathya grabbed her mantle. “I’ll go with you!”
“You will not,” he said firmly. “It isn’t seemly for you to roam the streets. You will stay here.”
“I will do as I please!”
Hermathya started for the door, but Sithas caught her wrist and pulled her back. Her eyes blazed furiously.
“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even know about the danger!” she hissed.
Voice tight with control, Sithas replied, “Lady, if you wish to remain in my good graces, you will do as I say.”
She stuck out her chin. “Oh? And if I don’t, what will you do? Strike me?” Sithas felt impaled by her deep blue eyes and, in spite of his anxiety about his mother, he felt a surge of passion. The starjewel at Hermathya’s throat flashed. There was color in her cheeks to match the heat in her eyes.
Their life together had been so cold. So little fire, so little emotion. Her arms were smooth and warm in Sithas’s hands as he leaned close. But in the instant before their lips met, Hermathya whispered, “I will do as I please!”
The prince pushed his wife back and turned away, breathing deeply to calm himself. She used her beauty like a weapon, not only on the commoners, but even on him. Sithas closed the collar of his cloak with a trembling hand.
“Find my father. Tell the speaker what has happened and what I intend to do.”
“Where is the speaker?” she said sulkily.
He snapped, “I don’t know. Why don’t you look for him?” Without another word, Sithas hurried from the room.
On his way out, the prince passed the servant as she returned with a bowl of tepid water and a soft, white towel. The elf maiden stood aside to let Sithas pass, then presented the bowl to Hermathya. She scowled at the girl, then, with one hand, knocked the basin from the servant’s hands. The bronze bowl hit the marble floor with a clang, splashing Hermathya’s feet with water.
Chapter 12
IDYLL AT THE END OF SUMMER
Arcuballis lowered its head to the clear water and drank. Not far from the hollow tree, where Anaya and Mackeli lived, a spring welled up from deep underground, creating a large, still pool. The water spilled over the lip of one side of the pool, cascading down natural steps of granite and bluestone.
It was two days after Kith-Kanan had flown them all safely home. He had come to the pool daily since then to bathe his wounded arm. Though tender, it was a clean wound and showed every sign of healing well.
Despite her own injury, Anaya would not let Kith-Kanan carry her to the pool. Instead, she directed Mackeli to bring her certain roots and leaves, from which she made a poultice. As Kith-Kanan watched her chew the medicinal leaves herself, he listened for the fourth time to Mackeli’s tale of capture and captivity.
“And then Voltorno told the woodcutters there were no evil spirits in th
e forest, and they believed him, until they came running back down the trail, screaming and falling on their hairy faces.”
“Do you suppose we could give him back?” Anaya interrupted with a bored expression.
“I think so,” offered Kith-Kanan. “The ship may not have sailed yet.”
Mackeli looked at the two of them open-mouthed. “Give me back!” he said, horrified. Slowly the boy smiled. “You’re teasing me!”
“I’m not,” said Anaya, wincing as she applied the chewed leaves and root paste to her wound. Mackeli’s face fell until Kith-Kanan winked at him.
“Come with me to the spring,” the prince said. It was better to leave Anaya alone. Her wound had made her testy.
Kith-Kanan led Arcuballis through the woods by its reins. Mackeli walked beside him.
“There is one thing I’m not clear about,” Kith-Kanan said after a time. “Was it Voltorno who cast the spell on me that first night, the night he stole Arcuballis from me?”
“It must have been,” Mackeli guessed. “His men were starved for meat, so Voltorno worked up a spell to enthrall any warmblooded creatures in the area. The deer, rabbits, boar, and other animals had long since fled, warned of the humans by the corvae. All he got for his trouble was your griffon, which he knew was rare and valuable.”
As Arcuballis drank its fill, the elf prince and the Kagonesti boy sat on a bluestone boulder and listened to the water cascading from the pool.
“I’m glad you and Ny are getting along,” Mackeli noted. “She is not easy to live with.”
“That I know.”
The Kagonesti tossed a twig into the water and watched as it was drawn down the miniature falls.
“Mackeli, what do you remember about your parents? Your mother and father – what were they like?”
Mackeli’s forehead wrinkled with deep thought. “I don’t know. I must have been a baby when they left.”
“Left? Do you mean died?”
“No. Ny always said our parents left us and meant to come back some day,” he said.
She and Mackeli looked so completely different, it was hard for Kith-Kanan to believe they were blood relatives.
“You know, Kith, I watched you fight with Voltorno. It was really something! The way you moved, swish, clang, swish!” Mackeli waved his hand in the air, holding an imaginary sword. “I wish I could fight like that.”
“I could teach you,” said Kith-Kanan. “If Anaya doesn’t mind.”
Mackeli wrinkled his nose, as if he smelled something bad. “I know what she’ll say: ‘Get out of this tree! You stink like metal!’ “
“Maybe she wouldn’t notice.” The boy and the prince looked at each other and then shook their heads in unison. “She’d notice,” Kith-Kanan said. “We’ll just have to ask her.”
They walked back to the clearing. Anaya had limped, no doubt painfully, out of the tree into the one sunny spot in the clearing. An ugly smear of greenish paste covered her wound.
“Ny, uh, Kith has something to ask you,” Mackeli said quickly.
She opened her eyes. “What is it?”
Kith-Kanan tied Arcuballis to a tree in the shaded end of the clearing. He came to where Anaya was reclining and squatted down beside her.
“Mackeli wants to learn the use of arms, and I’m willing to teach him. Is that agreeable to you?”
“You wish to take up metal?” she said sharply to the boy. Mackeli nodded as his sister sat up, moving stiffly. “A long time ago, I made a bargain with the spirits of the forest. In return for their allowing me to hear and speak with the animals and trees, I was to be their guardian against outsiders, and those who would despoil the forest are my enemies. And the forest told me that the worst of these intruders carried metal, which is soulless and dead, torn from the deep underground, burned in fire, and used only to kill and destroy. In time the very smell of metal came to offend my nose.”
“You find it acceptable for me to carry a sword and dagger,” noted Kith-Kanan.
“The Forestmaster chose you for a task, and I cannot fault her judgment. You drove the intruders out, saving my brother and the forest.” She looked at Mackeli. “The choice is yours, but if you take up metal, the beasts will no longer speak to you. I may even have to send you away.”
Mackeli’s face showed shock. “Send me away?” he whispered. He looked around. The hollow oak, the shaded clearing, and Anaya were all he had ever known of home and family. “Is there no other way?”
“No,” Anaya said flatly, and tears sprang up in Mackeli’s eyes.
Kith-Kanan couldn’t understand the elf woman’s hardness. “Don’t despair, Mackeli,” he said consolingly. “I can teach swordsmanship using wooden staves in place of iron blades.” He looked at Anaya and added a bit sarcastically, “Is that allowed?”
She waved one hand dismissively. Kith-Kanan put a hand on Mackeli’s shoulder. “What do you say, do you still want to learn?” he asked. Mackeli blotted his eyes on his sleeve and sniffed, “Yes.”
*
As summer lay down like a tired hound and autumn rose up to take its place, Kith-Kanan and Mackeli sparred with wooden swords in the clearing. It was not harmless fun, and many bruises and black eyes resulted from unguarded blows landed on unprotected flesh. But there was no anger in it, and the boy and the prince developed more than fighting skill on those sunny afternoons. They developed a friendship. Bereft of home and family, with no real plans for the future, Kith-Kanan was glad to have something to fill his days.
Early on, Anaya watched them dance and dodge, shouting and laughing as the wooden “blades” hit home. Her side healed quickly, more quickly than Kith-Kanan thought natural, and before long Anaya retreated to the woods. She came and went according to her own whims, often returning with a dressed out hart or a snare line of rabbits. Kith-Kanan believed she had finally come to accept his presence in her home, but she did not join in the easy camaraderie that grew between him and her brother.
One day, as the first leaves were changing from green to gold, Kith-Kanan went down to the spring. Mackeli was off collecting from a rich harvest of fall nuts, and Anaya had been gone for several days. He patted Arcuballis’s flank in passing, then plunged into the cool shade along the path to the pool.
His newly sharpened senses caught the sound of splashing in the water halfway down the path. Curious, he slipped into the underbrush. Kith-Kanan crept along soundlessly – for his walking and breathing were much improved, also – until he came to the high ground overlooking the pool.
Treading water in the center of the pool was a dark-haired elf woman. Her raven-black tresses floated on the surface around her like a cloud of dense smoke. It took Kith-Kanan a moment to realize he was looking at Anaya. Her hair was free of its long braid, and all her skin paint was washed off; he nearly didn’t recognize her clean-scrubbed features. Smiling, he sat down by the trunk of a lichen-encrusted oak to watch her swim.
For all her stealth on land, Anaya was not a graceful swimmer. She paddled back and forth, using a primitive stroke. The fishers of the Thon-Thalas could teach her a thing or two, Kith-Kanan decided.
When she climbed out of the water onto a ledge of granite, Kith-Kanan saw that she was naked. Accustomed though he was to the highly prized pallor of city-dwellers, he found her sun-browned body oddly beautiful. It was lithe and firmly muscled. Her legs were strong, and there was an unconscious, easy grace in her movements. She was like a forest spirit, wild and free. And as Anaya ran her hands through her hair and hummed to herself, Kith-Kanan felt the stirrings of emotions he had thought dead months ago, when he’d fled Silvanost.
Anaya lay down on the rock ledge, pillowing her head with one arm. Eyes closed, she appeared to sleep. Kith-Kanan stood up and meant to slip around the far side of the pool in order to surprise her. But the hill was steep, and the vines were green enough to be slippery when his sandals crushed them. That Kith-Kanan was watching Anaya, not his footing, made the going even more treacherous. He took two steps and fel
l, sliding feet first down the hill into the pool.
He surfaced, choking and spitting. Anaya hadn’t moved, but she said, “You go to a lot of trouble just to see me bathe.”
“I —” the prince sneezed violently “— heard someone in the spring and came to investigate. I didn’t know it was you.” Despite the weight of his clothes and sword, he swam in long strokes to the ledge where she lay. Anaya made no move to cover herself, but merely moved over to give him room to sit on the rock.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Only my pride hurts.” He stood up, averting his eyes from her. “I’m sorry I intruded, I’ll go.”
“Go or stay. It doesn’t matter to me.” When he hesitated, Anaya added, “I am not modest in the fashion of your city females.”
“Yet you wear clothes,” he felt obliged to say. Uncomfortable as he was with her nudity, he felt strangely unwilling to leave her.
“A deerskin tunic is good protection from thorns.” Anaya watched Kith-Kartan with some amusement as his gaze flickered over her and away for a third time. “It bothers you. Give me your tunic.” He protested, but she insisted, so he removed his wet tunic.
She pulled it over her head. The tunic covered her to her knees. “Is that better?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I can’t get over how different you look,” he said. “Without lines painted on your face, I mean.” It was true. Her hazel eyes were large and darker than his twin’s. She had a small, full-lipped mouth and a high forehead.
As if in response, Anaya stretched lazily, like a big cat. She put more into, and seemed to get more out of, a simple stretch than anyone Kith-Kanan had ever seen. “Don’t the women of your race adorn themselves?” she inquired.
“Well, yes, but not to the point of disguising themselves,” he said earnestly. “I like your face. Seems a pity to cover it.”
Anaya sat up and looked at him curiously. “Why do you say that?”