The Puppet King

by Doug Niles

  He found the prospect depressing and spiritually draining, though, surprisingly enough, he wasn’t frightened. He thought of Alhana and missed her more poignantly than ever before. Wondering about the baby, he tried to guess if his child would be a boy or a girl. His despair darkened at the awareness that he would never know.

  Still aimless, he drifted from the doors onto his balcony. The autumn chill was bracing, invigorating, and he started to think about trying to live. Escape … He needed a plan.

  The ground was eight hundred feet below, and the sides of the tower were sheer marble. There was no way to climb down. He needed time to think, to contact his allies outside the city, but his time was running out.

  Below him, Silvanost was a vast, ghostly white vista. The pure marble and crystal of myriad structures absorbed the starlight, softly reflecting upward. Even the gardens had their sources of brightness, as phosphorescent waters trilled from small fountains and blossoms of luminous flowers glowed and shimmered in precise, artistic patterns.

  It should have been a soothing vista, but it had the opposite effect on Porthios. He found himself pacing the length of his balcony, wishing for wings. The ground below seemed an unattainable goal, distant and aloof. The shifting patterns of brightness and starglow taunted him even as he scorned them for the false quietude they portrayed.

  Silvanost was a hateful city, he suddenly saw, and it was emblematic of this whole benighted nation. These elves hid behind a facade of grace and mastery, but it was merely a shell for prejudice and arrogance that had been nurtured beyond reason for more than three thousand years.

  He laughed bitterly at an image that flew into his mind: He should hurl himself from this height and smash himself against the city as a last, futile gesture of his scorn. No doubt several haughty Silvanesti would be physically sickened by the sight of his corpse. But the notion instantly faded, and not from any impulse of self-preservation. Instead, he pictured the young workers of House Gardener, elves he had known and befriended over the last two decades. They would find his body, and they would be affected by the horrible sight for the rest of their lives.

  It was odd, he thought, how when he looked at the city as a whole, all he saw was a blanket of oppression and self-righteous blindness. Yet when he thought of these elves as individuals, as commoners like his servant Allatarn or the hard-working gardeners, nobles such as Dolphius and Aleaha, they were good and decent people. Not so very different from Qualinesti, if he was truly honest with himself.

  “Then why do we work so hard to hurt, to kill each other?” he whispered, feeling his voice swept away into the vastness of the sky. He leaned forward, laying his head on the rail, too tired to do anything else.

  Silver shimmered in the night, a flash of movement beyond the balcony, and at first he thought the starglow had swelled into a flare of brightness. But then the motion solidified, and he saw a griffon gliding past, wings spread and motionless.

  “Stallyar!” he gasped, his voice loud in the vast silence of the night.

  Once again thoughts of escape, of freedom, rose within him. He watched in joy as the magnificent creature reached the edge of the balcony, used eagle talons to grasp the rim of the wall, then land his full weight on the powerful, feline rear legs. Soundlessly the griffon laid his wings flat, easily slipping over the wall to crouch on the ledge. Bright yellow eyes, reflecting more than starlight, fixed upon the stunned elf’s face.

  And then Porthios rushed forward, wrapping his arms around the feathered neck, feeling the gentle beak over his shoulder, nudging and scratching his back. He allowed himself a moment of profound emotion, trembling, feeling stinging moisture in his eyes. “How did you know, old friend? How did you know to come for me?”

  Only when he opened his eyes did Porthios see movement beyond Stallyar. Another griffon came to rest on the balcony, and this one had a rider. The prisoner came around the side of his faithful steed, then paused as he saw that the newcomer was bearded. He carried no sword, though the ends of a bow and arrows jutted over his shoulder.

  Porthios halted in shock, momentarily speechless as he recognized the griffon rider.

  “Hello, Prince,” said Tanis, his voice as level as his gaze.

  Not “my prince,” Porthios reflected … not from the husband of his sister, the grown man who had been tormented and scorned by royal Qualinesti as a lad.

  “Hello, Half-elf,” he replied. He felt a rising wave of anger but forced himself to bite it back. There were too many questions, too much urgency, for him to yield to old rivalries. Yet he had to wonder, why Tanis?

  “I bring word of your wife,” the half-elf said by way of answer.

  “What about her? Did you see her? How is she? Where—?” His old prejudice was forgotten as the elf’s mind instantly focused on impending news.

  Looking around at the wide, silent view, Tanis nodded toward the doors behind Porthios. “Hadn’t we better go inside?”

  “Yes, but be quiet. There are guards.”

  “So I gathered,” whispered the half-elf. “I come from Tarqualan’s camp outside the city. He told me about your status.”

  “Alhana—where is she? Did Rashas—”

  Tanis held a finger to his lips, and Porthios realized that, in his agitation, he was starting to raise his voice.

  “There’s a great deal to tell, but know that when I left her she was well … and out of Qualinesti. Samar and I were able to spirit her away. She would have come to see you herself, except that her pregnancy has become too advanced. Indeed, brother of my wife, I expect you might become a father any day now.”

  “Where is she? Where?”

  “In Solace, at the Inn of the Last Home. She was showing signs of early labor when I departed, and that was just yesterday.”

  “I must go to her!” Porthios said.

  “That’s why I came,” Tanis said. “Samar and I talked to Alhana. We decided that he should stay with her and I’d come for you.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Practical considerations had been pushed far to the side of the prince’s brain, but Porthios raised an eyebrow at one thing the half-elf had said. “You were in Solace yesterday? But that’s more than a week’s flight, even on a fast griffon!”

  “I had magical help, both with the escape and with my journey to Silvanesti.”

  “But what mage has that kind of power?” asked Porthios.

  Tanis maintained a grim silence, looking directly at the prince, and then Porthios began to understand. “A dark elf?”

  “One of the Silvanesti,” Tanis agreed with a slow nod. “One who took up the magic of the black robes and so was banned from his people forever.”

  “And one whose name may never be uttered among elves,” Porthios said, even as his mind voiced the word: Dalamar.

  He pointed to the sheet of parchment from Konnal, still sitting on the table. “Your timing is very good. That is my death warrant, signed for tomorrow.”

  “They wouldn’t dare!” Tanis declared, appalled.

  “You’d be surprised at what they dare.”

  The half-elf nodded grimly. “Maybe I wouldn’t be. In many ways, it’s the same in Qualinesti—the Thalas-Enthia ruled by isolationist fools, my own son forced to don the medallion of Speaker.”

  “And the treaty of the three races … it is finished there as well?” asked Porthios, veering away from the subject of the throne that had once been his.

  “Yes—killed by Rashas. And you should know that you would be in danger if you return there.”

  “I realize that. But—”

  The doors opened with a crash, and four Silvanesti guards spilled into the room. They halted halfway across the entryway, and Porthios was impressed to realize that Tanis had dropped his bow off his shoulder, nocked and drawn an arrow, and taken aim in the instant that had passed since the guards entered. The steel-bladed arrowhead was fixed toward the heart of the first sentry, whose face had blanched into a deathly pallor.

  “No—don’t kill
him!” Porthios declared, sensing that the half-elf was about to release his missile.

  “I won’t, but they should know that I could,” Tanis replied grimly.

  Porthios addressed the Silvanesti, his voice harsh and demanding. “Tell your master that I’m going … and that my vengeance will take time. But he should take care never to relax his guard.”

  The first guard nodded. One of the others, partially shielded by his companion, replied, “We’ll tell him.”

  In another instant, the two men, different in race and temperament but united by ties to a sister and wife, had ducked onto the balcony, mounted the two griffons, and taken to the air.

  PART II

  QUALINESTI

  Prologue

  25 SC

  “They flew for many days,” Samar said, “leaving Silvanesti that very night.”

  “And they came to the Inn of the Last Home,” said the young elf. “I know this, for my mother told me that my father arrived in time to see me born.”

  “You are Silvanoshei, the son of Porthios?” The dragon seemed genuinely surprised.

  “The name means ‘the Hope of Silvanos,’ ” explained the young elf.

  “Then why do you come to me for the tale of your father’s life?”

  “There is much I already know—my mother and Samar have taught me. But there are other details about that tumultuous year that are vague, and some of those are facts that you can fill in.” Silvanoshei looked at the dragon with a pensive expression. “I know that it was at the end of the year three hundred and eighty-two that you decided to fly west as well … and I know that you came to Qualinesti. But why?”

  “I will explain, but …” The dragon turned his slitted yellow eyes to Samar, allowing his leather lids to droop disarmingly. “Do you know that it is very uncomfortable sitting upright with my back pressed against the wall? Let me relax. I will not attack you. After all, I myself am curious as to where this tale is going. I should like to hear the ending of the story myself.”

  “Very well.” The warrior relaxed his hold on the dragonlance, allowing the great serpent to settle more comfortably onto his bed, which consisted of scattered coins, bits of jewelry, and assorted boots, belts, and other articles of clothing. It was a relatively pathetic hoard for a dragon of Aeren’s size and age, but he merely shrugged.

  “This was a place that called to me when I knew that I would at last have to move. Of course, I would miss my home in the south. In many ways Silvanesti was perfect for me. When I first came there, trees were thick and verdant, and the woodlands offered plenty of food. Water was everywhere, and for a long time, I was free to do whatever I wanted.

  “I had dwelled there for the thirty winters after the Draconian War—the war you two-legged people call the War of the Lance. Those were good years, but those times were over. Your father was finished reclaiming the land, and my offspring were all slain, killed through the years by elven arrows and by those horrid dragonlances. If I had wished to remain, I would have had to skulk through the tamed gardens and keep my presence secret from the elves.

  “And I remembered this place, the forest called Qualinesti, for it had been described to me by the elven traitor. It was a place in the west, and the elf had claimed that it was a wild woodland, very unlike the subdued and formal setting that Silvanesti had become. There were great trees, he had said, and vast realms of forest.

  “And so I came here to live out my years in peace.”

  “But peace is not what you found,” Silvanoshei noted wryly. “After all, as I said, I know much of the story of my first year of life. My mother has told me many times how she saw Tanis for the last time on the day after my birth as he turned toward his wife and his home … and his destiny in a war that had yet to begin. And how, when I was only a few months old, she swaddled me in the tai-thall that she wore on her back and we took flight on the back of a griffon, flying beside my father as we made for the forests of his homeland.”

  “I remember that flight,” Samar said. “We flew with Tarqualan and his two hundred scouts, all of us spurning the authority of the Thalas-Enthia, bound for a life as outlaws in the forest.”

  “The elves of two lands had made my father an outlaw.” Silvanoshei shook his head in disbelief.

  “That much is true,” Samar noted. “But the land, the elves, the entire situation in Qualinesti was nothing like the place we had left behind.…”

  Speaker of the Sun

  Chapter Nine

  Spring, 383 AC

  He looked out from the top of the Tower of the Sun, his view encompassing the place that he knew to be the most beautiful city in all Krynn. Ivory spires jutted from the pastoral groves that sprawled like a carpet across the landscape a thousand feet below. From his lofty vantage, he could see three of the four elegant bridges that bordered Qualinost, strung like tendrils of crystal and silver across the sky. Below, in the center of the city, he could see the top of a rounded hill, the great Hall of the Sky, with its mosaic map of Qualinesti and the surrounding lands.

  The dominant buildings of the city were towers, some paneled with wood and resembling the shapes of living trees, others splendid structures of rose quartz rising amid the groves so that just the summits were in view, narrow spires jutting above the canopy of foliage. Though elsewhere the woodlands were browned and crispy, suffering under the onslaught of this season’s unnatural heat, here in the city everything was green, carefully watered and tended by skilled elven gardeners.

  Beyond the eastern and western boundaries of the city, the view from the tower almost masked by the thick growth of trees, the landscape plunged into a pair of deep ravines, wherein flowed the waters of the two branches of the Elf-stream. Deep and shadowed within its gorges, the brooks trickled and meandered to a confluence at the north of the city. Those ravines, so well screened by foliage, were more effective than any moats in blocking unwelcome intruders from reaching Qualinost.

  To the south, in between the branches of the stream, the ground rose in a series of steep hills, and from this high vantage he could see all the way to the snowcapped whiteness of the High Kharolis. That was dwarven territory, he knew, foreign lands, though at a time not very long ago a treaty had been negotiated, a pact that would have sealed the peace between dwarf and elf as the Pax Tharkas had done a millennium before. It grieved him to know that the events that had brought him here, to this high tower, had also shattered the chance of that treaty’s ratification. With his ascendancy had come retrenchment for the races of Krynn, elves and dwarves and humans withdrawing unto themselves, waiting, watching … and fearing the events that the future might bring.

  He was Gilthas Solostaran, Speaker of the Sun, ruler of mighty Qualinesti, the greatest elven nation on Krynn.

  And he was a mere figurehead, a puppet controlled by the elves who had placed him on this high throne and who could knock him off of his exalted seat with the casual ease used to swat a meddlesome insect. He was a tool of the Thalas-Enthia, the hidebound senators who had schemed and plotted and fought to insure that nothing in the world would ever change.

  His mother was an elven princess, daughter of the revered Speaker Solostaran, who had guided his people through exile during the War of the Lance. She was a heroine of the world, the Golden General who had led armies against the dragon highlords. And his father was Tanis Half-Elven, a Hero of the Lance, a leader in that same war.

  Ah, but there was so much more to his father … a half-breed bastard, an elf who had proudly grown and maintained a beard as a symbol of his half-human parentage! Tanis, who was banned from his son’s kingdom, had been branded an outlaw, threatened with death should he dare come to Qualinesti again. Gilthas uttered a sharp bark of laughter as he thought of the irony. He was one quarter human, yet for the purposes of the Thalas-Enthia, he was regarded a purer elf than his uncle Porthios.

  It was Porthios whom Gilthas could not help thinking of as the rightful Speaker of the Sun. Porthios, who had given up his medallion of le
adership under coercion, because his wife and unborn child had been a hostage of the Thalas-Enthia. And Porthios, who had at last escaped from Silvanesti and disappeared into exile.

  Yet his power had disappeared with him. Gilthas knew that he had none of the influence, none of the might that was the rightful accessory to the crown that fit so uneasily upon his young head. But even now, when that knowledge dragged him down, threatened to mire him in a swamp of despair, he felt at least a glimmer of pride, of acceptance, and of destiny. There was no longer an arrow pointed at Alhana Starbreeze’s heart. He could walk away from this place, throw down his medallion of office and, if he so decided, just leave.

  He would not do that.

  “Damned griffons—the beasts should have their wings plucked, their loins roasted on a slow fire!”

  Senator Rashas, esteemed leader of the Thalas-Enthia and the elf who had placed Gilthas on his throne, wiped the sweat from his brow as he entered the lofty tower chamber. He looked at the Speaker crossly. “Why don’t you stay on the lower levels, where you can be reached when you’re needed?”

  Gilthas shrugged, keeping his expression bland. “I like it up here.”

  “Well, it’s a damned nuisance, you staring off into space all the time instead of attending to matters of your office.”

  “You mean such matters as you leave for my consideration … what color of roses to adorn the banquet tables, that sort of thing?” The young speaker was feeling bold and allowed his words to show the fact. He feared Rashas—well he knew the punishments the senator was capable of inflicting, when the elder’s fearsome temper was released—but Gilthas had enough of his mother’s and father’s sense of pride that he couldn’t entirely bite his tongue even when silence was the politic choice.