Dragons of the Highlord Skies

by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman

  Grag made a face.

  “I don’t much relish the assignment either,” said Kitiara. “To my mind, Verminaard brought about his own downfall. Still I have my orders.”

  Grag nodded to indicate he understood.

  “I spoke to the Fewmaster last evening. What can you tell me about the assassins?” Kitiara asked.

  Grag glanced at her sidelong. All this interest in the assassins. Was she trying to cover her tracks? Grag considered the matter. He liked her and he had thought Verminaard a boorish lout. If the Blue Lady was involved, it wasn’t any of his business. Grag shrugged his scaly shoulders.

  “Not much, I’m afraid, Highlord. They were slaves and, as such, I had little to do with them. I didn’t take any notice of them until they attacked us. Even then, things happened so fast and there was such confusion—dragons battling and half the mountain falling down on top of us—that I paid little attention to the slaves—except to order my men to slay them, of course.”

  Kitiara was about to walk off, go in search of food, when Grag added, almost as an afterthought, “There is a man who might be able to tell you more. He was one of Verminaard’s spies. He managed to worm his way into the confidence of these people and he warned Verminaard they would likely make an attempt on his life. At least, that’s what the man claims.”

  “I could use such information,” said Kit. “Where is this man?”

  “Take a walk into Haven,” said Grag. “You’ll find what’s left of him by the side of the road.”

  Kitiara shook her head, not understanding. “You make it sound like he’s dead in a ditch.”

  “He probably wishes he was. The wretch was buried in the rock fall at Pax Tharkas. We thought he was dead when we pulled him out, but he was still breathing. The leeches saved his life, though not his legs. If the beggar’s not in his usual spot, go into Haven and ask around. Someone will know where to find him. His name is Eben Shatterstone.”

  You’ll find what’s left of him by the side of the road.

  Grag’s description was accurate.

  A good many beggars had taken up positions outside the city, hoping to catch travelers before they spent their money in the marketplace. Most of the men were casualties of the war—most of them missing limbs. Looking at these men, many still clad in the rags of their uniforms, Kit felt a knot in her gut. She saw herself by the side of the road, hand out, begging for scraps.

  “Not me,” Kit vowed. “Not so long as I have the strength to use my sword.”

  Opening her purse, she began dispensing coins and asking for a man called Shatterstone. The beggars mostly shook their heads; they were too absorbed in their own misery to care about anyone else. But one pointed with a maimed hand to what appeared to be a bundle of rags dumped beneath a tree.

  Kitiara walked over to the bundle and, as she drew closer, she saw it was a man—or rather, the crushed remnants of a man. He had no lower limbs—both legs had been amputated—and he had strapped what was left of himself to a small cart on wheels, using his hands to pull himself over the ground. His face was so badly disfigured it was difficult to tell what he had once looked like, but Kitiara thought he might once have been a handsome young man. His unwashed hair fell over his brow and straggled down around his shoulders.

  As she came near, he held out a grubby hand.

  “I’m looking for Eben Shatterstone,” said Kit, squatting down to put herself on his level.

  “Never heard of him,” the man said promptly. His eyes were fixed on the purse.

  Kitiara drew out a steel piece and held it up. “I have this for Eben Shatterstone. If you happen to run into him—”

  He made a grab at the steel piece. Kit was too quick for him. She snapped it back, out of reach. “This coin is for Eben Shatterstone.”

  “I’m Shatterstone,” he said, looking at her with no very friendly eye. “What do you want?”

  “Information.” Kitiara handed over the coin. He bit it, to make sure it was good, then slid it in a sack he wore suspended from a leather thong around his neck. “There’s another one like it if you tell me what I need to know.”

  “About what?” Eben was suspicious.

  “An elf woman. She was traveling with some adventurers who came to Pax Tharkas—”

  Eben’s lips parted in an ugly leer. “Laurana.”

  Kitiara seated herself on one of the tree’s exposed roots. “That might be the name. I’m not sure.”

  “She was the only elf woman in Pax Tharkas,” said Eben. “And she was a beauty. Too bad she had eyes for only one man—or perhaps I should say half a man. The other half was elf.” He laughed at his little joke.

  Kitiara laughed, too. “Tell me what you know about this elf. How did she come to be there? Was she traveling in company with this half-elf? Was she his lover, perhaps?” She spoke in casual tones.

  Eben took a good look at her for the first time. Kitiara could guess what he must be thinking. She had dispensed with the trappings of a Dragon Highlord and was dressed in ordinary traveling clothes, the kind a sellsword might wear—leather vest, wool cloak, shirt, boots. Her clothes were of fine quality, however, as was the sword on her hip. An air of command and authority clung to her like expensive perfume. He knew she was someone important, he just didn’t know who. All of which suited Kitiara.

  Eben began to talk. Kit sat with her back against the tree and listened.

  The half-elf, whose name was Tanis, and the rest of the group—a mixed bunch of ne’er-do-wells—had been taken prisoner in Solace and were en route to Pax Tharkas when their slave caravan was attacked by a small party of Qualinesti elves (nowhere near five thousand!). The minute the elves had fired their arrows, the caravan’s guards, led by Fewmaster Toede, had beat a hasty retreat. The elves had freed the slaves and sent most of them on their way. One of the elves named Gilthanas, whom Eben had known before, recognized the half-elf. Apparently the two had been raised together or something like that. The half-elf and his friends accompanied the elves back to Qualinesti, which at the time was about to come under attack by the dragonarmies.

  This Laurana had apparently been engaged to marry the half-elf, an arrangement her father would have opposed had he known anything about it. The elves convinced Tanis and his bunch to go to Pax Tharkas to start a slave revolt which would presumably keep the dragonarmies occupied and allow the elves time to evacuate their people.

  The group set off for Pax Tharkas, accompanied by Laurana’s brother, Gilthanas, and Laurana, who sneaked after them and refused to go back home.

  Eben Shatterstone knew all this because he had insinuated himself into the group, spying on them for Lord Verminaard. He had warned Verminaard about these dangerous people, but the Highlord, in his arrogance, had paid no heed.

  As for Laurana, she was a pretty thing, though she was a spoiled brat who spent most of her time mooning over the half-elf.

  “How did this half-elf react to that?” Kitiara asked.

  “Tanis claimed he didn’t like her hanging all over him and following him around, but of course he was lapping it up like sweet cream,” said Eben, sneering. “What man wouldn’t? She was a beauty. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “For an elf,” said Kitiara.

  “Elf, human …” Eben gave an ugly grin. “I wouldn’t have kicked her out of bed. And I bet that half-elf didn’t kick her out either. Who knows what those two were doing when the rest of us were asleep? Oh, sure, Tanis had to pretend he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, what with her brother watching him like a hawk. All of us could see the truth, though. Those two weren’t fooling anybody.”

  Kitiara rose abruptly to her feet. She’d heard enough. More than enough. Her insides were twisted up like a tangle of snakes.

  Eben looked at her purse. “Don’t you want to hear about what they did to Lord Verminaard?”

  “Like I give a damn,” said Kit. She was in an ill humor. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to the elf woman after the
fall of Pax Tharkas?”

  Eben shrugged. “I heard from some dracos they all ended up in the dwarf kingdom.”

  “The dwarven kingdom?” Kit repeated.

  “Thorbardin. Seems they went there to hide out from the dragonarmies. If the half-elf is in Thorbardin, then I’ll bet Laurana’s there with him.”

  Kitiara turned to leave.

  “Hey!” Eben shouted wrathfully. “Where’s my money?”

  Kitiara grabbed a coin from her purse and tossed it into the dirt, then stomped down the road, heading back to the dragonarmy camp. She had never been so angry. Tanis had sworn he loved no one but her and only a few weeks later, he was having a fling with another woman. And a filthy elf, no less! If Kit had met Tanis at that moment, she would have struck him down and stomped all over him.

  Skie was still out on his errand and Kitiara had no way to reach him, so she was forced to stay in the dragonarmy camp, doing her best to avoid the imbecile Fewmaster. She kept herself occupied participating in training exercises, for Commander Grag insisted that his troops be kept in top fighting condition. Practicing against the draconians, who were excellent swordsmen, Kit worked out her frustrations and honed her own skills.

  But when she wasn’t trading jabs with Grag or going along on raids into the surrounding territory, she was alone in her tent, brooding. Or rather, she wasn’t alone. An elf woman with golden hair and slanting blue eyes was always with her, sitting on the end of Kit’s bed, laughing at her.

  Kitiara could not banish Laurana from her mind. Kit needed to find out more about her rival. After all, a good general required knowledge of the enemy in order to conduct a successful campaign. Kitiara sent her own spies into the territory around the dwarven kingdom. They would not be able to enter the mountain fastness, but they could keep watch, let her know if any humans, elves, or half-elves (especially half-elves) were sighted leaving the realm beneath the mountain.

  “If I know Tanis,” she remarked to herself, as she wrote her directives, “he won’t stay cooped up underground with a bunch of dwarves for long. For one, he hates being in confined spaces. Living in a giant hole in the ground must be driving him crazy. For another, there’s a war going on and he’ll want to be in the thick of it.”

  Kit was now actually looking forward to traveling to Icereach. Not only was she growing bored here, but it occurred to her that Highlord Feal-Thas, being an elf, must know Laurana, who was also an elf. Of course, this made about as much sense as saying that because Kitiara was human, she must know the Lord of Palanthas, but Kit wasn’t thinking straight. She kept close watch on the clouds and rejoiced the day she saw the sun sparkle off Skie’s blue scales as he circled overhead.

  His report on the red dragons was not good. They were angry and discontented. They heard rumors of the spoils being garnered by dragons in other parts of Ansalon and they wanted the same. If the Red Wing didn’t attack something soon, the reds were going to go out on their own and they didn’t much care who the target was. In their mood, they’d just as soon attack a friend as a foe.

  Kitiara duly reported this to Ariakas, adding her opinion that Fewmaster Toede was just what his lordship was seeking in a Dragon Highlord. When she told Toede she had recommended him, his gratitude and his stench were both overwhelming; apparently pleasure caused the hob’s sweat glands to go into a frenzy. When Kitiara finally managed to wipe the hobgoblin slobber off her boots, she went to say farewell to Grag.

  She told him she had recommended Toede as Highlord and she told him why she had done it. “You’ll be the one in charge,” Kit said.

  Commander Grag grinned; his long tongue flicked from between his teeth. The two shook hand and claw and Kitiara departed on the grumbling Skie, who did not at all relish the thought of traveling to Icereach.

  “Don’t worry,” said Kit, as she took her place on the dragon’s back. “You won’t have to stay. I’m sending you back north.”

  “To fight?” Skie asked eagerly. Though he had small use for his red cousins, he commiserated with them in their disgust over the current lull in the action.

  “No,” said Kitiara. “I want you to bring part of the Blue Wing south—the draconians and dragons.”

  Skie twisted his head to stare at her, wondering if she was serious.

  “South?” he repeated, astonished and disapproving. “Why south? Our war is in the north.”

  “Not at the moment,” Kitiara said. “Just bring the wing with you when you return. You’ll find out the reason soon enough.”

  And with that, Skie had to be content, for Kit would not tell him anything else.

  9

  The Winternorn.

  The Ice Palace.

  he white wolf padded along the snow-carpeted hallway unheard, practically unseen, his snowy pelt blending with his icy surroundings. The wolf trotted past translucent columns of crystal clear ice that lined the long hall and supported the arched ceiling of ice. The sinking sun, a shimmering red orb visible through the full-length arched windows of crystalline ice, caused the ice columns and the snow-block walls to glow with the fire of the day’s dying.

  The walls of ice changed color a hundred times during the day—flame red and orange with the sunrise, sparkling white during the day when the snow fell, eerie blue starlight at night. The ever-shifting beauty of the crystal hall was remarkable, breath-taking, except to the wolf. For him, all was gray. He pattered down the hall looking neither left nor right, intent upon his mission.

  The wolf had come from Ice Wall Castle, some few miles distant, its ruins visible through any of the numerous crystal windows. Ice Wall Castle was not truly a castle. Originally constructed as a fortress lighthouse prior to the Cataclysm, it had been located on a now-forgotten island south of the famous port city of Tarsis. Beacon fires atop its towers had once guided ships through fog and darkness to safe harbor or warned the city of the approach of enemy sails.

  When the Cataclysm struck, the upheaval of the earth had swallowed the sea and caused it to recede, leaving Tarsis and its white-winged ships stranded in the sand. The lighthouse and the island on which it stood were overtaken by an enormous glacier encroaching from the south. Shoved about and mauled by the grinding ice, the walls of the fortress broke and crumbled. A single tower of stone survived, and it leaned at a perilous angle, propped up by shoals of ice. The original stonework of the rest of the fortress was no longer visible, having been long since buried beneath the layers of ice.

  The inhabitants of this part of the world—fishermen who lived in huts made of animal hides—dubbed the fortress Ice Wall Castle and considered it a curiosity, nothing more. Nomads who made a harsh living following the fish in their swift ice-skimming boats, the Ice Folk had no interest in the castle. After exploring it and taking from it anything they could find that might help them in the daily struggle to survive in a cruelly altered landscape, they left it empty.

  Other residents of the region—the bestial thanoi, also known as the walrus-people and longtime enemies of the Ice Folk—took over the castle for a year or so, using it as an outpost from which to launch raids on the Ice Folk. After that, the thanoi left it, driven out by a person they fearfully claimed was the embodiment of winter. Feal-Thas had returned.

  When the War of the Lance commenced, Ariakas needed a Dragon Highlord in this part of the continent. But he ran into trouble finding anyone to take on this onerous task. The climate was horrible, there was little fighting going on in the south and therefore no opportunity for glory and advancement, and nothing in the way of loot unless one had an interest in smoked fish. Ariakas was thinking he would have to order someone to take over Icereach, and then he’d have to put up with a discontented Highlord, listen to him sulk and whine and complain. Ariakas was fortunate, however. He found Feal-Thas.

  An elf, even a dark elf, would not have been the emperor’s first choice, for Ariakas disliked and distrusted all elves. He agreed with his Queen that the only good elf was a dead elf and he was doing his level best to see to i
t that Her Majesty’s wishes on this score were being carried out. Feal-Thas was the only person who expressed any interest in going to Icereach, however. At that, Ariakas gave Feal-Thas a test of loyalty, ordering him to return to his native Silvanesti to spy out and report on the elven defenses. Feal-Thas provided Ariakas with an accurate account and also gave him valuable information regarding a dark secret held fast in the heart of King Lorac—the secret of the dragon orb that proved to be Lorac’s undoing.

  Ariakas still did not trust the elf. Feal-Thas was arrogant and sarcastic, and he did not give the emperor the respect Ariakas felt he deserved. But since he could not find another candidate willing to live in Icereach, Ariakas grudgingly handed over the icebound wasteland to the elf. Takhisis sent her white dragon, Sleet, to Icereach to keep an eye on the Highlord, and then both the Queen and the Emperor promptly forgot about him.

  As for Feal-Thas, he was a mystery to all who knew him. Why would an elf, whose race was known to love and revere all green and growing things, choose to live in a region where all plant life had been frozen to death, all memory of its very existence eradicated, buried under snow and ice?

  No one could answer this question, for none of the Silvanesti now remembered Feal-Thas except King Lorac, and he had gone mad. Some record of Feal-Thas could be found in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth, where the wizard had once lived and worked, had anyone cared to look. There seemed no reason why anyone should.

  The wolf certainly could not answer any question about the Highlord. All the wolf knew was that the Highlord was his master. Reaching the door to the master’s chambers, the wolf shoved it open with his nose and trotted inside.

  Feal-Thas, wrapped snugly in a long cloak of white fur, was seated at his desk, which was carved of ice, as were almost all the furnishings of his Ice Palace. When the wolf entered the chamber, the elf was engaged in writing a report to the Emperor. Feal-Thas wrote with a quill pen, dipping it in the ink that would have frozen had he not cast a spell on it. The Highlord’s handwriting was small and cramped and delicate, and it irritated Ariakas whenever he saw it, for it smacked of elf.