by Dragon Lance
Vanesti was gone, serving beside his uncle on the front lines of danger! How could her husband have done this? What kind of perverse cruelty would cause him to torture his wife so? She thought of Sithas as a stranger. What little closeness they had once enjoyed had been worn thin by the stresses of war.
Her thoughts abruptly wandered to Kith-Kanan. How much like Sithas he looked – and yet how very different he was! Hermathya looked back upon the passion of their affair as one of the bright moments of her life. Before her name had been uttered as the prospective bride of the future Speaker of the Stars, her life had been a passionate whirl.
Then the announcement had come – Hermathya, daughter of the Oakleaf Clan, would wed Sithas of Silvanos! She remembered how Kith-Kanan had begged – he had begged! – her to accompany him, to run away. She had laughed at him as if he were mad.
Yet the madness, it now seemed, was hers. Prestige and station and comfort meant nothing, she knew, not when compared to the sense of happiness that she had thrown away.
The one time since then when Kith-Kanan and she had come together illicitly flared brightly in her mind. That episode had never been repeated because Kith-Kanan’s guilt wouldn’t allow it. He had avoided her for years and was awkward when they were brought together through necessity.
Shaking her head, she fought back the tears. Sithas was in the palace.
Hermathya would go to him and make him bring their son back home!
She found her husband in his study, perusing a document with the Oakleaf stamp, in gold, at the top. He looked up when she entered, and blinked with surprise.
“You must call Vanesti back,” she blurted, staring at him.
“I will not.”
“Can’t you understand what he means to me?” Hermathya fought to keep her voice under control. “I need him here with me. He’s all I’ve got!”
“We’ve been over this. It will do the lad good to get out of the palace, to live among the troops. Besides, Kith will take good care of him. Don’t you trust him?”
“Do you?” Hermathya uttered the insinuation without thinking.
“Why? What do you mean?” There had been something in her tone. Sithas leapt from his chair and stared at her accusingly.
She turned away, suddenly calm. She controlled the discussion now.
“What did you mean, do I trust him?” Sithas’s voice was level and cold. “Of course I do!”
“You have been gullible before.”
“I know that you loved him,” the Speaker added. “I know of your affair before our marriage. I even know that he pleaded with you to go with him when he flew into exile.”
“I should have gone!” she cried, whirling suddenly.
“Do you still love him?”
“No.” She didn’t know whether this was a lie or not. “But he loves me!”
“That’s nonsense!”
“He came to me in my bedroom long ago. He didn’t leave until the morning.”
She lied about the room because it suited her purpose. Her husband wouldn’t know that it was she who had gone to him.
Sithas stepped closer to her. “Why should I believe you?”
“Why should I lie?”
His open hand caught her across the cheek with a loud smack. The force of his blow sent her tumbling backward to the floor. With a burning face, she stood up, her eyes spitting fire at him.
“Vanesti will stay on the plains,” Sithas declared as she turned and fled. He turned to the window, numb, and stared to the west. He wondered about the stranger his brother had become.
*
“You believed that you could come here to kill me?” General Giarna looked at Suzine with mild amusement. The old woman backed against the closed door of his cottage. She had picked up the broken blade of her knife, but the weapon felt useless and futile, for it couldn’t harm her enemy. Thunder rumbled outside as another storm swept across the camp.
“Your death would be the greatest thing that could happen to Krynn.” She spoke bravely, but her mind was locked by fear. How could she have been so stupid as to come here alone, thinking she could harm this brutal warrior?
Instead, she had become his prisoner.
Her heart quailed as she remembered the man’s dark tortures, his means of gaining information from his captives. And no captive had ever possessed such valuable information as the wife of his chief enemy.
Now the general laughed heartily, placing his hands on his hips and leaning backward like a young man. “My death, you should know, is not so easily attained.”
Suzine stared at him.
“Do you remember the last night of General Barnet?”
She would never forget that awful, shriveled corpse, cast aside by General Giarna like an empty shell, drained of all its life.
“My powers come from places you cannot begin to understand!”
He paced in agitation, looking at her.
“There are gods who care for people of power, gods whose names are only whispered in the dead of night, for fear of frightening the children!”
General Giarna whirled again, his brow furrowed in concentration. “There is Morgion, god of disease and decay. I tell you, he can be bought! I pay him in lives, and he saves his curse from my flesh! And there are others – Hiddukel, Sargonnas! And of course —” his voice dropped to a whisper; his body quivered, and he looked at Suzine “— the Queen of Darkness, Takhisis herself! They say that she is banished, but that’s a lie. She is patient and she is generous. She bestows her powers on those who earn her favor!
“It is the power of life, in all its aspects! It allows me to be strong and young, while those around me grow old and die!”
Now he stared directly at her, and there seemed to be genuine anguish in his voice. “You might have shared this with me! You were a woman of power. You would have made a fitting partner for me! Who knows, one day we might have ruled Ergoth itself!”
“Your madness consumes you,” Suzine replied.
“It is not madness!” he hissed. “You cannot kill me. No human can kill me! Nor a dwarf, nor an elf. None may slay me!”
General Giarna paced restlessly. A steady beat of rain suddenly began pounding on the roof, forcing him to raise his voice. “Not only do I remain young and vigorous, but I am also invulnerable!” He looked at her sideways, slyly. I even had my men capture a griffon so that I might devour it and take over its aura. Now not even one of those beasts – the bane of this long war – can claim my blood.
“But enough of this talk,” said Giarna, suddenly rough. He took her arm and pulled her to a chair, throwing her into it.
“My spies tell me that the Wildrunners prepare an attack. They will move on my headquarters here because they have learned of our plans to ambush the griffons.”
Suzine looked at him dumbly.
“No doubt you know the route of march they will take when they come west.
You will tell me. Be sure of this, you will tell me. I will simply move my ambush and consummate the victory that has eluded me for so long.”
Fear pulsed hotly in Suzine’s mind. She did know! Many nights she had been present during battle planning between Parnigar and Kith-Kanan. The other officers had ignored her, assuming that she wasn’t listening, but out of curiosity, she had paid attention and absorbed most of the details.
“The only question is —” Giarna’s voice was a deep bass warning “— will you tell me now or afterward?”
Her mind focused with exceptional clarity. She heard the rain beating steadily against the wooden frame of the house. She thought of her children and her husband, and then she knew.
There was a way – an escape for her! But she had to act fast, before she had second thoughts.
Her bleeding fingers, still clutching the knife blade, jerked upward. Giarna saw the movement, an expression of mild annoyance flickering across his face.
The crone already knew she couldn’t harm him!
Him. In that instant, he recognize
d his mistake as the keen edge sliced through Suzine’s own neck. A shower of bright blood exploded from the torn artery, covering the general as the old woman slumped to the ground at his feet.
*
One-Tooth plodded through yet another thunderstorm. His march, already an epic by hill giant standards, had taken him through the foothills of his beloved mountains and across hundreds of miles of flatlands.
How did people ever live around here? He wondered at a life without the comforting rocky heights. He felt vulnerable and naked on these open prairies of grass.
Of course, his journey was made easier by the fact that such inhabitants as he encountered fled in panic at his approach, giving him a free sampling of whatever food had been bubbling on the stove or whatever milk might be chilling in the damp cellar.
The giant still didn’t know why he had embarked upon this quest or what his ultimate destination would be. But his feet swung easily below him, and the miles continued to fall behind. He felt young again, more spry than he had in decades.
And he was propelled by an inchoate sense of destiny. When his march ended, that was where his destiny would be found.
Chapter 32
ONE WEEK LATER
Rain lashed at the griffon and its rider, but the pair pressed on through the storm. Though the day was hours old, the horizon around them remained twilit and dim, so heavy was the gray blanket of clouds. Arcuballis flew low, seeking a place to land, cringing still closer to the earth against sudden blasts of lightning that seemed to warn them from the sky.
Finally Kith-Kanan found it – the small house in the center of the farmstead, down the trail where the coachman had seen Suzine disappear. Parnigar had showed him the trail two miles back, but he had flown past the clearing twice.
So closely entwined were the overhanging branches that he hadn’t even noticed it.
The trailhead was more than two miles away, and she couldn’t have walked much farther than this. Yet there seemed to be nothing else besides anonymous woods for several miles in all directions. This had to be the place.
Arcuballis dove quickly to earth, dropping like a stone between the limbs of the broad elms. The griffon landed in a crouch, and Kith’s sword was in his hand.
The door to the small house stood partially open, slamming and banging against its frame as the wind gusts shifted direction. The yard around the house was churned to mud, mired by the hooves of countless horses. Blackened pits showed where great cook fires had burned, but now these were simply holes filled with sodden ash.
Cautiously Kith-Kanan dismounted and approached the house. He pushed the door fully open and saw that it consisted of one main room, and that room was now a shambles. Overturned tables, broken chairs, a pile of discarded uniforms, and a collection of miscellaneous debris all contributed to the disarray.
He began to pick through debris, kicking things with his boots and moving big pieces with his free hand, always holding his longsword at the ready. He found little of worth until, near the back corner, his persistence was rewarded.
A tingle of apprehension ran along his spine as he uncovered a wooden box he recognized instantly, for it was the one Suzine had used to store her mirror. Kneeling, he pulled it from beneath a moldy saddle blanket. He opened the top, and his reflection stared back at him. The mirror had remained intact.
Then as he looked, the image in the glass grew pale and wavery, and suddenly the picture became something else entirely.
He saw a black-cloaked human riding a dark horse, leading a column of men through the rain. The human army was on the march. He could recognize no landmarks, no signposts in the murky scene. But he knew that the humans were moving.
Obviously the planned ambush of the Windriders was suspected and now would have to be cancelled. But where did the humans march? Kith had a sickening flash of Sithelbec, practically defenseless since most of the garrison had marched into the field with the Wildrunners. Could General Giarna be that bold?
A more hideous thought occurred to him. Had Suzine betrayed him, revealing their battle plans to the human commander? Did the enemy march somewhere unknown to set up a new ambush? He couldn’t bring himself to believe this, yet neither could he ignore the evidence that she had been here at the human command post.
Where was Suzine? In his heart, he knew the answer.
Grimly he mounted Arcuballis and took off. He made his way back to the east, toward the spearhead of his army, which he had ordered to march westward in an attempt to catch the human army in its camp. Now he knew that he had to make new plans – and quickly.
It took two days of searching before the proud griffon finally settled to earth, in a damp clearing where Kith had spotted the elven banner.
Here he found Parnigar and Vanesti and the rest of the Wildrunner headquarters. This group marched with several dozen bodyguards, trying to remain in the approximate center of the far-flung regiments. Because of the weather, the march columns were separated even more than usual, so that the small company camped this night in relative isolation.
“They’ve broken camp,” announced Parnigar, without preamble.
“I know. Their base camp is abandoned. Have you discovered where they’ve gone?”
Kith’s worst fears were confirmed by Parnigar’s answer. “East, it looks like. There are tracks leading in every direction, as always, but it looks like they all swing toward the east a mile or two out of the camps.”
Again Kith-Kanan thought of the ungarrisoned fortress rising from the plains a hundred miles to the east.
“Can we attack?” asked Vanesti, unable to restrain himself any longer.
“You’ll stay here!” barked Kith-Kanan. He turned to Parnigar. “In the morning we’ll have to find them.”
“What? And leave me here alone? In the middle of nowhere?” Vanesti was indignant.
“You’re right,” Kith conceded with a sigh. “You’ll have to come. But you’ll also have to do what I tell you!”
“Don’t I always?” inquired the youth, grinning impishly.
*
General Giarna slouched in his saddle, aware of the tens of thousands of marching soldiers surrounding him. The Army of Ergoth crept like a monstrous snake to the east, toward Sithelbec. Outriders spread across a thirty-mile arc before them, seeking signs of the Wildrunners. Giarna wanted to meet his foe in open battle while the weather was unchanged, hoping that the storm would neutralize the elves’ flying cavalry. The Windriders had made his life very difficult over the years, and it would please him to fight a battle where the griffons wouldn’t be a factor.
Even in his wildest hopes, he hadn’t reckoned on weather as dismal as this. A day earlier, a tornado had swept through the supply train, killing more than a thousand men and destroying two weeks’ worth of provisions. Now many columns of his army blundered through the featureless landscape, lost. Every day a few more men were struck by lightning, crippled or killed instantly.
The general didn’t know that, even as he marched to the east, the elven army trudged westward, some twenty-five miles to the north. The Wildrunners sought the encampment of the human army. Both forces blundered forward in disarray, passing within striking range of each other, yet not knowing of their enemy’s presence.
General Giarna looked to his left, to the north. There was something out there! He sensed it, though he saw nothing. His intuition informed him that the presence that drew him was many miles away.
“There!” he cried, suddenly raising a black-gloved hand and pointing to the north. “We must strike northward! Now! With all haste!” Some companies of his army heard the command. Ponderously, under the orders of their sergeants-major, they wheeled to the left, preparing to strike out toward the north, into the rain and the hail – and, soon, the darkness. Others didn’t get the word. The ultimate effect of the maneuver spread the army across twice as much country as Giarna intended, opening huge gaps between the various brigades and adding chaos to an already muddled situation.
; “Move, damn you!” The general cried, his voice taut. Lightning flashed over his head, streaks of fire lancing across the sky. Thunder crashed around them, sounding as if the world was coming apart.
Still the great formations continued their excruciating advance as the weary humans endeavored to obey Giarna’s hysterical commands.
He couldn’t wait. The scent drew him on like a hound to its prey. He wheeled his horse, kicking sharp spurs into the black steed’s flanks. Breaking away from the column of his army, he started toward the north ahead of his men.
Alone.
*
Warm winds surged across the chill waters of the Turbidus Ocean, south of Ergoth, collecting moisture and carrying it aloft until the water droplets loomed as monumental columns of black clouds, billowing higher until they confounded the eyes of earthbound observers by vanishing into the limitless expanse of the sky.
Lightning flashed, beginning as an occasional explosion of brightness but increasing in fierceness and tempo until the clouds marched along to a staccato tempo, great sheets of hot fire slashing through them in continuous volleys. The waters below trembled under the fury of the storm.
The winds swirled, propelled by the rising pressure of steam. Whirlwinds grew tighter, shaping into slender funnels, until a front of cyclones roared forward, tossing the ocean into a chaotic maelstrom of foam. Great waves rolled outward from the storm, propelled by lashing torrents of rain.
And then the storm passed onto land.
The mass of clouds and power roared northward, skirting the Kharolis Mountains as it veered slightly toward the east. Before it lay the plains, hundreds of miles of flat, sodden country, already deluged by thunder and rain.
The new storm surged onto the flatlands, unleashing its winds as if it knew that nothing could stand in its path.
*
A soaking Wildrunner limped through the brush, raising his hand to ward off the hail and wipe rain away from his face. Finally he broke into a clearing and saw the vague outlines of the command post. Finding it had been sheer luck.
He was one of two dozen men who had been sent with the report, in the hopes that one of them would reach Kith-Kanan.