The Puppet King

by Doug Niles

  That motion, too, passed with a mere voice vote. Palthainon was authorized to raise six hundred Qualinesti warriors from the clans in and around the city and to outfit them with armaments from the city armory. He was given a week to organize his three companies. Then he would embark for the west, where he was granted full authority to decide how to deal with the bandits. The senate suggested that he try to bring the leaders back to the city for trial, but even this notion was couched in polite terms, and very few of the gathered nobles ever expected to see any of the bandits in Qualinost—at least, not alive.

  Gilthas was about to suggest the meeting be adjourned when the chamber was rocked by a violent pounding on the great golden doors. The noise reverberated like a drumbeat, and a steward immediately looked through the spyhole, then turned to announce to the chamber:

  “It is the scout, Guilderhand. He says he has information of urgency to the senate, relevant to the matter being discussed here today.”

  “Admit him at once,” Gilthas said, knowing that Rashas would have spoken the same words if he hadn’t. Guilderhand was one of the senator’s trusted agents—“scout” was a euphemistic term for an elf who was widely regarded as a spy. His arrival at such a climactic juncture was typical, for he had a way of drawing attention to himself when he wanted to be noticed.

  The scout came into the room, and if Palthainon had looked travel-worn and scuffed from the road, Guilderhand looked as if he had crawled through a muddy sewer to reach this exalted council. His hair was plastered to his skull, his face was filthy, and his dirt-green cloak was thick with brambles and leaves. Apparently unmindful of his unkempt state, he stalked down the aisle and climbed the steps toward the rostrum. He offered a perfunctory bow to Gilthas and a longer genuflection toward Rashas before turning and sweeping his gaze across the rapt audience of elven rulership.

  “Elven nobles, esteemed senators, honored elders,” he began. He paused, a long delay even by elven standards, but no one spoke. No elf’s attention wavered even slightly from the bedraggled figure.

  “I come with grim news from the west … news that would brook no delay. I have traveled day and night to reach the city and came at once to the chamber where I knew our nation’s wisest leadership would be gathered.”

  Again he paused for dramatic effect. Gilthas wanted to urge him to get on with it. Why should news that would brook no delay be delivered with such tantalizing deliberation? But he knew the ways of Rashas’s spy, and so he held his tongue.

  “The honorable Palthainon is correct in reporting to you that the bandits number at least two hundred,” Guilderhand said, with a bow toward the general, who stood proudly aloof as he accepted the praise.

  That statement begged another question, at least to the Speaker, who was listening with a certain amount of skepticism: How did Guilderhand know the substance of Palthainon’s report? Gilthas knew then that the spy had been waiting outside, eavesdropping on the meeting, waiting until the moment was right for his dramatic entrance.

  “My own investigations carried me right into the bandits’ camp, and it was there that I gained my startling information. I have learned the nature of these outlaws and the identity—though it grieves me to know it—of their leader.”

  Again he paused, but this time there came urging from the Thalas-Enthia. “Speak—say the name! Who is it?”

  “The bandits that have come to prey on our western highways are not, as we all expected, mere human wastrels, scoundrels who seek to enrich themselves off of elven labors. No, my honored leaders, I tell you that these bandits are themselves elves, traitors against their nation and their people!”

  “Shame!” The sibilant curse rose from the Thalas-Enthia and was followed by uglier cries and demands for further information. “Who is their leader? Who draws elves into treachery?”

  “Their leader is a dark elf, one who is well known to these chambers and to this very rostrum. I grieve to tell you, members of the Senate of Qualinesti, that these outlaws represent an insurgency, and that they are led by none other than Porthios Solostaran, the former Speaker of the Sun and current traitor to his people.”

  Gilthas felt weak in the knees and had to exert all of his discipline to keep himself from falling. Porthios! Turned against Qualinesti, violating the exile that he had chosen as he made his escape from Silvanesti!

  Suddenly it seemed to the young Speaker as though the entire world was going insane, torn by a hurricane of uncontrollable events … and that he, Gilthas Solostaran, somehow stood at the center of the whirlwind.

  “And this was the place you now came to live?” Silvanoshei asked the green dragon.

  “Yes. For my part, I flew westward for many days. It was not the purposeful flight of a journey to a specific destination. Instead, I spiraled north or south as the spirit moved me, stopping to hunt whenever I chose. Once I killed a whole herd of cows just so I could feast on delicacies—tongues, hearts, udders—that were most pleasing to my ancient palate.

  “I flew past the snowcapped High Kharolis, for I was seeking a vast woodland—and, too, there were more griffons there than I could abide. I remember a mountain that loomed high, in the ominous shape of a human skull, but the environment was far too dry for any green dragon. The mountains beyond showed more promise, for they were forested, but they were also well populated with settlements of humans, hill dwarves, and elves. I had had enough of war for a while and knew that any attempt to settle here would be met with ruthless violence.

  “And thus I continued westward, skirting to the southward of an elven city of arched bridges and a lofty, golden tower. Finally I found myself over a woodland that at last reminded me of Silvanesti, for here the trees stretched in a blanket from one horizon to the other. Of course, I did not make my lair near the great, crystalline city, nor near any concentration of elven habitations. Instead, I continued over the limitless forest, allowing my wings to glide through the air, bearing the one I fancied to be the new master of these skies.

  “Eventually I came into sight of a vast ocean, the western terminus of this realm, and a perfect coastline for a dragon lair. It was not flat and marshy, like so much of Silvanesti’s southern border. Instead, the forest continued right to the ocean’s edge, where in many places the land plunged down steep and craggy bluffs to meet a rocky and inhospitable shore. There were caves in these cliffs, and some of them even smelled of ancient dragon spoor.

  “I found this large cavern … as you can see, a place where fresh water trickles warmly from springs in the bedrock, where moss grows thick across the flatness of smooth rock. And this is the place where I made my new home.”

  “So you, too, had come to live in the path of war,” Silvanoshei said, and his voice was almost sympathetic.

  Horizons of Conquest

  Chapter Ten

  “Can you believe there was a time when all elves lived like this?” Porthios said, leaning back in his hammock, pushing with a sandaled foot to sway the garland-draped net easily in the clearing.

  “Sometimes I wonder why we felt it necessary to move into cities,” Alhana agreed, likewise swaying beside her husband. Silvanoshei was drowsing quietly at her breast. The baby seemed content to eat and sleep, for the most part. Porthios had just chuckled softly with the realization that, for the first time in his life, he was happy with the same regimen.

  The three of them were not alone. They were never alone in a camp of more than two hundred warriors, many with spouses and children. Still, they shared a sense of sublime solitude, the late afternoon broken only by the sounds of murmured conversation and the pleasant, swooshing sound of the gentle wind through the trees.

  In many respects, this camp was more comfortable than the nicest houses in which they had ever dwelled. Despite the relentless heat of the early summer, they were close enough to the coast that they were eternally soothed by an offshore breeze, a wind that was channeled between two towering bluffs so that it always flowed up the valley.

  A pleasant stream
meandered right through the middle of the encampment, and numerous waterfalls trilled from the heights on either side. A canopy of lofty trees—ironwood, oak, and an occasional towering cedar—provided constant shade, as well as screened the camp from observation by anyone overhead. Yet the tree limbs were so high that the effect was not stifling. Instead, it was more like a vaulted ceiling that kept them cool with its lofty, heavy boughs.

  Of course, the elves had done some work to improve the comfort of the settlement. Dozens of small huts had been erected near the walls of the gorge, and guard posts had been established on the two trails leading into the ravine from the upper walls. Several small caves were used for food storage, and early efforts at establishing a vintner’s yard had been made at the lower end of the gorge. This area of Qualinesti was rich in natural grapes, and the elves had been diligent in their collection, so that now several large casks of mash were slowly fermenting into wine.

  It was Tarqualan who had led them to this gorge. The Qualinesti captain had remembered the place from his childhood. The entire band, led by Porthios, had flown here after bidding farewell to Tanis before they had reached the borders of Qualinesti. The half-elf had journeyed northward, returning to his wife. He had been concerned by the rumors of an impending war in the far north, stories that remained unconfirmed but that Tanis had been determined to investigate.

  Here in the forest glade, such reports seemed distant and insignificant compared to the easy pleasures of daily life and parenthood. Porthios was glad that he could be with his baby so much. Silvanoshei spent most of his time in the comfort of his tai-thall, the leather cradle that Alhana, or sometimes Porthios himself, wore over the shoulders to support the infant on his parent’s chest. The Qualinesti warriors had crafted the traditional baby carrier during the days after Silvanoshei’s birth, and the tai-thall had supported the newborn infant during the remainder of the flight to his father’s homeland.

  As the band of fliers had crossed the border, Porthios had felt a twinge of melancholy and misgiving, knowing that he was now an outlaw in his own homeland. Still, his outrage against that perceived injustice was powerful enough to easily overcome any misgivings he may have had over defying the exile. Now that they were here, he felt like a king again—an outlaw king, perhaps, but that role was well suited to his current mood.

  Only recently they had raided another caravan bound southward from Caergoth, and their plunder had included many woolen cloaks as well as iron implements that greatly enhanced the band’s cooking process. Their diet consisted thus far of venison and fish, supplemented by the natural fruits and berries that were blooming throughout the woods. Wild grasses were being harvested and shucked, though so far the outlaws had not gathered enough grain to make a mill or bakery worthwhile. Still, Porthios was determined that, before the coming of winter, they would be cooking a variety of breads.

  White-winged shapes flew overhead, and he looked upward from his hammock to see griffons wheeling and gliding in the wide spaces between the trees. He was grateful that the creatures had come with them and had decided to continue to cooperate with the outlaw elves instead of the civilized Qualinesti, the so-called masters of this domain. Porthios knew that, so long as the griffons were with them, his force was much more mobile than any warriors the Thalas-Enthia or their figurehead Speaker could put into the field. With their sentinels posted on the trails and the griffons ready to carry the outlaws into battle, the prince was certain they were safe from surprise attack. Too, the griffons gave them the ability to move quickly, to strike the caravans as they entered the elven kingdom, and to get away with their plunder.

  So far, they had managed to make their attacks without any killing, which had been one of Alhana’s most urgent desires. Porthios himself was not terribly worried about the prospect of slaying fat merchant elves. As far as he was concerned, they were working hand-in-pocket with the Thalas-Enthia, and that shortsighted body of conservatives was bad for elvenkind, and consequently his enemy.

  He thought a little about the young elf who had replaced him as Speaker. Alhana had gained the measure of Gilthas Solostaran during the short time when they had both been imprisoned in Senator Rashas’s house. Though Porthios was inclined to dismiss the youngster as a mere puppet of the Thalas-Enthia, his wife had cautioned him that Gilthas was in fact made of sterner stuff. She had reminded him that the blood of Tanis Half-Elven and Laurana Solostaran, Porthios’s sister and the famed Golden General of the War of the Lance, flowed undiluted in his veins.

  Gilthas, however, had been raised in a sheltered environment, for his parents had foolishly wished to protect him from life in the real world. But now the young elf was fast gaining an education during his tumultuous term as the Speaker of Sun. While on the surface he acted unfailingly to enforce the will of Rashas and the other senators of his faction, Alhana had suggested that Gilthas was in fact his own master and was working toward a future of his own, not the Thalas-Enthia’s, design.

  In a sense, Porthios hoped that was true. He thought about his mixed feelings for Tanis, the half-elf who had helped him escape from Silvanesti, yet who had taken his sister to a marriage so far beneath herself. The old animosity still lingered, the rage at this bastard who, Porthios was convinced, had grown a beard to offend elven sensibilities, to audaciously flaunt his humanness. Was it any wonder that a prince of Qualinesti had teased him mercilessly during their shared youth? There were times when Porthios even wondered if Tanis had wooed Laurana merely as a means of gaining vengeance on her brother.

  Of course, he had to admit that his sister seemed content, even happy, with the union. He felt sorrow for Laurana, who had, because of her marriage, sentenced herself to virtual exile from Qualinesti. Still, if her son proved to be a true leader of the elves, if his wisdom could begin to guide the two realms toward an eventual reconciliation, then the future might not be as bleak as the outlaw leader sometimes feared.

  His musings were interrupted by the rattling call of a crane, the sound reverberating down the sides of the gorge. This was the prearranged symbol of warning from the guards at the head of the trail, and Porthios was immediately out of his hammock, striding through the encampment as he girded on his sword and saw that Alhana, Silvanoshei, and the other nonwarriors were safely hidden in the nearby caves.

  Around Porthios were mustered more than a hundred of his fighting elves, while the griffons were thick in the trees overhead. The hooting cry had been a warning, but not the urgent symbol that indicated an imminent attack, so the prince merely waited, his eyes on the winding trail that led down the bluff and into the clearing before the camp. This was the one path into the glade, and it was covered by many archers and blocked by a line of swords. He noted without surprise that Samar had come to Alhana’s side and held his weapon ready while the woman sheltered her baby in her arms.

  Even with their watchfulness, however, the outlaws didn’t see the movement along that trail. Instead, there were suddenly elves around the tree trunks at the base of the bluff, silent people who had slipped right down the slope without being seen. Despite his astonishment, Porthios retained enough composure to bow in polite greeting as the first of the elves stepped forward from the band of several dozen that regarded the outlaws from the fringe of their camp.

  These were Kagonesti, Porthios saw immediately, a fact that went a great way toward explaining how they could have slipped down the trail without notice. Naked but for girdles and loincloths of soft deerskin, the wild elves were covered all over with the spirals, whorls, and leafy patterns of black tattoos. They were bronze of skin and, for the most part, dark of hair, though a few of the wild elves were blond or even red-haired. Partially because of their camouflage, and partly because of their natural affinity for the woodlands, they could move almost invisibly through dense foliage or across nearly barren ground.

  “Welcome to our village,” Porthios said formally. “We greet you in peace, as our cousins of the forest.”

  “Welcome to our fores
t,” replied the leading Kagonesti, who was a strapping warrior, even taller than the lanky Porthios. “We accept your greetings, as our cousins from beyond the woodlands.”

  Porthios couldn’t help but notice the wild elf’s reference to “our” forest. He knew that there were tribes of the Kagonesti throughout Qualinesti, though he had thought them to be pretty well subjugated by the civilized elves. Obviously here was a band that thought of its existence in more independent terms.

  “We did not want to startle you, so we allowed your sentries to spy us as we passed them at the summit of the trail,” the leading Kagonesti went on. “The call of the crane was not unskilled, coming as it did from the throat of one raised in the city.”

  Porthios flushed. Daringflight, the scout who had hooted the warning, was widely known as one of the most skilled elves at imitating animal sounds. Still, he did not want to offend this visitor, and so he held his tongue.

  “I am Dallatar, chieftain of the White Osprey Kagonesti,” the wild elf intoned.

  “I am called Porthios Solostaran. Once I was Speaker of all Qualinesti. Now I am chieftain of the Westshore Elves.” He made up the name on the spot, conscious that he didn’t want his band to seem less civilized than these forest-dwelling primitives.

  “We have seen that you fight the city elves,” Dallatar noted. “It is curious to see you attack those that we see as the same clan.”

  “It is curious to us as well,” Porthios said, unwilling to go into a full explanation. He told himself that this savage would never understand the intricacies of interkingdom politics, though in fact he realized that he was suddenly ashamed of the fractiousness that had driven him to take up the outlaw’s life in the forest.

  “We have made ourselves happy here,” he added, feeling even as he spoke that the explanation sounded a little lame.