Dragons of a Fallen Sun

by Margaret Weis

Hunting horns, blowing wildly, frantically, interrupted him. Silvan’s ecstatic dream shattered, dashed away by the blasting horns, a sound that was one of the first sounds he remembered hearing as a little child. The sound of warning, the sound of danger.

  Silvan’s eyes opened fully. He could not tell from what direction the horn calls came, they seemed to come from all directions at once. Alhana stood at the entrance of the mound, surrounded by her knights, peering into the storm.

  An elven runner came crashing through the brush. No time for stealth. No need.

  “What is it?” Silvan cried.

  The soldier ignored him, raced to his commander. “Ogres, sir!” he cried.

  “Where?” Samar demanded.

  The soldier sucked in a breath. “All around us, sir! They have us surrounded. We didn’t hear them. They used the storm to cover their movements. The pickets have retreated back behind the barricade, but the barricade …”

  The elf could not continue, he was out of breath. He pointed to the north.

  A strange glow lit the night purple white, the color of the lightning. But this glow did not strike and then depart. This glow grew brighter.

  “What is it?” Silvan shouted, above the drumming of the thunder. “What does that mean?”

  “The barricade the Woodshapers created is burning,” Samar answered grimly. “Surely the rain will douse the fire—”

  “No, sir.” The runner had caught his breath. “The barricade was struck by lightning. Not only in one place, but in many.”

  He pointed again, this time to the east and to the west. The fires could be seen springing up in every direction now, every direction except due south.

  “The lightning starts them. The rain has no effect on them. Indeed, the rain seems to fuel them, as if it were oil pouring down from the heavens.”

  “Tell the Woodshapers to use their magic to put the fire out.”

  The runner looked helpless. “Sir, the Woodshapers are exhausted. The spell they cast to create the barricade took all their strength.”

  “How can that be?” Samar demanded angrily. “It is a simple spell—No, never mind!”

  He knew the answer, though he continually struggled against it. Of late, in the past two years, the elven sorcerers had felt their power to cast spells ebbing. The loss was gradual, barely felt at first, attributed to illness or exhaustion, but the sorcerers were at last forced to admit that their magical power was slipping away like grains of sand from between clutching fingers. They could hold onto some, but not all. The elves were not alone. They had reports that the same loss was being felt among humans, but this was little comfort.

  Using the storm to conceal their movements, the ogres had slipped unseen past the runners and overwhelmed the sentries. The briar-wall barricade was burning furiously in several places at the base of the hill. Beyond the flames stood the tree line, where officers were forming the elven archers into ranks behind the barricade. The tips of their arrows glittered like sparks.

  The fire would keep the ogres at bay temporarily, but when it died down, the monsters would come surging across. In the darkness and the slashing rain and the howling wind, the archers would stand little chance of hitting their targets before they were overrun. And when they were overrun, the carnage would be horrible. Ogres hate all other races on Krynn, but their hatred for elves goes back to the beginning of time, when the ogres were once beautiful, the favored of the gods. When the ogres fell, the elves became the favored, the pampered. The ogres had never forgiven them.

  “Officers to me!” Samar shouted. “Fieldmaster! Bring your archers into a line behind the lancers at the barrier, and tell them to hold their volley until directed to loose it.”

  He ran back inside the mound. Silvan followed him, the excitement of the storm replaced by the tense, fierce excitement of the attack. Alhana cast her son a worried glance. Seeing he was unharmed, she turned her complete attention to Samar, as other elven officers crowded inside.

  “Ogres?” she asked.

  “Yes, my queen. They used the storm for cover. The runner believes that they have us surrounded. I am not certain. I think that the way south may still be open.”

  “You suggest?”

  “That we fall back to the fortress of the Legion of Steel, Your Majesty. A fighting retreat. Your meetings with the human knights went well. It was my thought that—”

  Plans and plots, strategy and tactics. Silvan was sick of them, sick of the sound of them. He took the opportunity to slip away. The prince hurried to the back of the mound, where he had laid out his bedroll. Reaching beneath his blanket, he grasped the hilt of a sword, the sword he had purchased in Solace. Silvan was delighted with the weapon, with its shiny newness. The sword had an ornately carved hilt with a griffon’s beak. The hilt was admittedly difficult to hold—the beak dug into his flesh—but the sword looked splendid.

  Silvanoshei was not a soldier. He had never been trained as a soldier. Small blame to him. Alhana had forbidden it.

  “Unlike my hands, these hands”—his mother would take her son’s hands in her own, hold them fast—“will not be stained with the blood of his own kind. These hands will heal the wounds that his father and I, against our will, have been forced to inflict. The hands of my son will never spill elven blood.”

  But this was not elven blood they were talking about spilling. It was ogre blood. His mother could not very well keep him out of this battle. Growing up unarmed and untrained for soldiering in a camp of soldiers, Silvan imagined that the others looked down upon him, that deep inside they thought him a coward. He had purchased the sword in secret, taken a few lessons—until he grew bored with them—and had been looking forward for some time for the chance to show off his prowess.

  Pleased to have the opportunity, Silvan buckled the belt around his slender waist and returned to the officers, the sword clanking and banging against his thigh.

  Elven runners continued to arrive with reports. The unnatural fire was consuming the barricade at an alarming rate. A few ogres had attempted to cross it. Illuminated by the flames, they had provided excellent targets for the archers. Unfortunately, any arrow that came within range of the fire was consumed by the flames before it could strike its target.

  The strategy for retreat settled—Silvan didn’t catch much of it, something about pulling back to the south where they would meet up with a force from the Legion of Steel—the officers returned to their commands. Samar and Alhana remained standing together, speaking in low, urgent tones.

  Drawing his sword from his sheath with a ringing sound, Silvan gave it a flourish and very nearly sliced off Samar’s arm.

  “What the—” Samar glared at the bloody gash in his sleeve, glared at Silvan. “Give me that!” He reached out and before Silvan could react, snatched the sword from his grasp.

  “Silvanoshei!” Alhana was angry, as angry as he had ever seen her. “This is no time for such nonsense!” She turned her back on him, an indication of her displeasure.

  “It is not nonsense, Mother,” Silvan retorted. “No, don’t turn away from me! This time you will not take refuge behind a wall of silence. This time you will hear me and listen to what I have to say!”

  Slowly Alhana turned around. She regarded him intently, her eyes large in her pale face.

  The other elves, shocked and embarrassed, did not know where to look. No one defied the queen, no one contradicted her, not even her willful, headstrong son. Silvan himself was amazed at his courage.

  “I am a prince of Silvanesti and of Qualinesti,” he continued. “It is my privilege, it is my duty to join in the defense of my people. You have no right to try to stop me!”

  “I have every right, my son,” Alhana returned. She grasped his wrist, her nails pierced his flesh. “You are the heir, the only heir. You are all I have left.…” Alhana fell silent, regretting her words. “I am sorry. I did not mean that. A queen has nothing of her own. Everything she has and is belongs to the people. You are all your people have
left, Silvan. Now go collect your things,” she ordered, her voice tight with the need to control herself. “The knights will take you deeper into the woods—”

  “No, Mother, I will not hide anymore,” Silvan said, taking care to speak firmly, calmly, respectfully. His cause was lost if he sounded like petulant child. “All my life, whenever danger threatened, you whisked me away, stashed me in some cave, stuffed me under some bed. It is no wonder my people have small respect for me.” His gaze shifted to Samar, who was watching the young man with grave attention. “I want to do my part for a change, Mother.”

  “Well spoken, Prince Silvanoshei,” said Samar. “Yet the elves have a saying. ‘A sword in the hand of an untrained friend is more dangerous than the sword in the hand of my foe.’ One does not learn to fight on the eve of battle, young man. However, if you are serious about this pursuit, I will be pleased to instruct you at some later date. In the meanwhile, there is something you can do, a mission you can undertake.”

  He knew the response this would bring and he was not wrong. Alhana’s arrow-sharp anger found a new target.

  “Samar, I would speak with you!” Alhana said, her voice cold, biting, imperious. She turned on her heel, stalked with rigid back and uplifted chin to the rear of the burial mound. Samar, deferential, accompanied her.

  Outside were cries and shouts, horns blasting, the deep and terrible ogre war chant sounding like war drums beneath it. The storm raged, unabated, giving succor to the enemy. Silvan stood near the entrance to the burial mound, amazed at himself, proud but appalled, sorry, yet defiant, fearless and terrified all at the same time. The jumble of his emotions confused him. He tried to see what was happening, but the smoke from the burning hedge had settled over the clearing. The shouts and screams grew muted, muffled. He wished he could eavesdrop on the conversation, might have lingered near where he could hear, but he considered that childish and beneath his pride. He could imagine what they were saying anyway. He’d heard the same conversation often enough.

  In reality, he was probably not far wrong.

  “Samar, you know my wishes for Silvanoshei,” Alhana said, when they were out of earshot of the others. “Yet you defy me and encourage him in this wild behavior. I am deeply disappointed in you, Samar.”

  Her words, her anger were piercing, struck Samar to the heart and drew blood. But as Alhana was queen and responsible to her people, so Samar was also responsible to the people as a soldier. He was committed to providing his people with a present and a future. In that future, the elven nations would need a strong heir, not a milksop like Gilthas, the son of Tanis Half-Elven, who currently played at ruling Qualinesti.

  Samar did not speak his true thoughts, however. He did not say, “Your Majesty, this is the first sign of spirit I’ve seen in your son, we should encourage it.” He was diplomat as well as soldier.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, “Silvan is thirty years old—”

  “A child—” Alhana interrupted.

  Silvan bowed. “Perhaps by Silvanesti standards, my queen. Not by Qualinesti. Under Qualinesti law, he would have attained ranking as a youth. If he were in Qualinesti, he would already be participating in military training. Silvanoshei may be young in years, Alhana,” Samar added, dropping the formal title as he did sometimes when they were alone together, “but think of the extraordinary life he has led! His lullabies were war chants, his cradle a shield. He has never known a home. Rarely have his parents been both together in the same room at the same time since the day of his birth. When battle called, you kissed him and rode forth, perhaps to your death. He knew that you might never come back to him, Alhana. I could see it in his eyes!”

  “I tried to protect him from all that,” she said, her gaze going to her son. He looked so like his father at that moment that her pain overwhelmed her. “If I lose him, Samar, what reason do I have to prolong this bleak and hopeless existence?”

  “You cannot protect him from life, Alhana,” Samar countered gently. “Nor from the role he is destined to play in life. Prince Silvanoshei is right. He has a duty to his people. We will let him fulfill that duty and”—he laid emphasis on the word—“we will take him out of harm’s way at the same time.”

  Alhana said nothing, but by her look, she gave him reluctant permission to speak further.

  “Only one of the runners has returned to camp,” Samar continued. “The others are either dead or are fighting for their lives. You said yourself, Your Majesty, that we must send word to the Legion of Steel, warning them of this attack. I propose that we send Silvan to apprise the knights of our desperate need for help. We have only just returned from the fortress, he remembers the way. The main road is not far from the camp and easy to find and follow.

  “The danger to him is small. The ogres have not encircled us. He will be safer away from camp than here.” Samar smiled. “If I had my way, my Queen, you would go back to the fortress with him.”

  Alhana smiled, her anger dissipated. “My place is with my soldiers, Samar. I brought them here. They fight my cause. They would lose all trust and respect if I deserted them. Yes, I concede that you are right about Silvan,” she added ruefully. “No need to rub salt in my many wounds.”

  “My queen, I never meant—”

  “Yes, you did, Samar,” Alhana said, “but you spoke from the heart, and you spoke the truth. We will send the prince upon this mission. He will carry word of our need to the Legion of Steel.”

  “We will sing his praises when we return to the fortress,” said Samar. “And I will purchase him a sword suited to a prince, not a clown.”

  “No, Samar,” said Alhana. “He may carry messages, but he will never carry a sword. On the day he was born, I made my vow to the gods that he would never bear arms against his people. Elven blood would never be spilled because of him.”

  Samar bowed, wisely remained silent. A skilled commander, he knew when to bring his advance to a halt, dig in, and wait. Alhana walked with stiff back and regal mien to the front of the cave.

  “My son,” Alhana said and there no emotion in her voice, no feeling. “I have made my decision.”

  Silvanoshei turned to face his mother. Daughter of Lorac, ill-fated king of the Silvanesti, who had very nearly been his people’s downfall, Alhana Starbreeze had undertaken to pay for her father’s misdeeds, to redeem her people. Because she had sought to unite them with their cousins, the Qualinesti, because she had advocated alliances with the humans and the dwarves, she was repudiated, cast out by those among the Silvanesti who maintained that only by keeping themselves aloof and isolated from the rest of the world could they and their culture survive.

  She was in mature adulthood for the elves, not yet nearing her elder years, incredibly beautiful, more beautiful than at any other time of her life. Her hair was black as the depths of the sea, sunk far below where sunbeams can reach. Her eyes, once amethyst, had deepened and darkened as if colored by the despair and pain which was all they saw. Her beauty was a heartbreak to those around her, not a blessing. Like the legendary dragonlance, whose rediscovery helped bring victory to a beleaguered world, she might have been encased in a pillar of ice. Shatter the ice, shatter the protective barrier she had erected around her, and shatter the woman inside.

  Only her son, only Silvan had the power to thaw the ice, to reach inside and touch the living warmth of the woman who was mother, not queen. But that woman was gone. Mother was gone. The woman who stood before him, cold and stern, was his queen. Awed, humbled, aware that he had behaved foolishly, he fell to his knees before her.

  “I am sorry, Mother,” he said. “I will obey you. I will leave—”

  “Prince Silvanoshei,” said the queen in a voice he recognized as being her court voice, one she had never used to him. He did not know whether to feel glad or to weep for something irrevocably lost. “Commander Samar has need of a messenger to run with all haste to the outpost of the Legion of Steel. There you will apprise them of our desperate situation. Tell the Lord Knight that we
plan to retreat fighting. He should assemble his forces, ride out to meet us at the crossroads, attack the ogres on their right flank. At the moment his knights attack we will halt our retreat and stand our ground. You will need to travel swiftly through the night and the storm. Let nothing deter you, Silvan, for this message must get through.”

  “I understand, my queen,” said Silvan. He rose to his feet, flushed with victory, the thrill of danger flashing like the lightning through his blood. “I will not fail you or my people. I thank you for your trust in me.”

  Alhana took his face in her hands, hands that were so cold that he could not repress a shiver. She placed her lips upon his forehead. Her kiss burned like ice, the chill struck through to his heart. He would always feel that kiss, from that moment after. He wondered if her pallid lips had left an indelible mark.

  Samar’s crisp professionalism came as a relief.

  “You know the route, Prince Silvan,” Samar said. “You rode it only two days before. The road lies about a mile and a half due south of here. You will have no stars to guide you, but the wind blows from the north. Keep the wind at your back and you will be heading in the right direction. The road runs east and west, straight and true. You must eventually cross it. Once you are on the road, travel westward. The storm wind will be on your right cheek. You should make good time. There is no need for stealth. The sound of battle will mask your movements. Good luck, Prince Silvanoshei.”

  “Thank you, Samar,” said Silvan, touched and pleased. For the first time in his life, the elf had spoken to him as an equal, with even a modicum of respect. “I will not fail you or my mother.”

  “Do not fail your people, Prince,” said Samar.

  With a final glance and a smile for his mother, a smile she did not return, Silvan turned and left the burial mound, striking out in the direction of the forest. He had not gone far, when he heard Samar’s voice raised in a bellowing cry.

  “General Aranoshah! Take two orders of swordsmen off to the left flank and send two more to the right. We’ll need to keep four units here with Her Majesty in reserve in case they breach the line and break through.”