“He said he would wait for me,” Caramon said, his voice beginning strong, but growing fainter. “He should be here. Tika’s here. I don’t understand. This is not right. Tas … What Tas said … A different future …”
His gaze came to Gerard. He beckoned the Knight to come near.
“There’s something you must … do,” said Caramon, his breath rasping in his chest.
Gerard knelt beside him, more touched by this man’s death than he could have imagined possible. “Yes, sir,” he said. “What is it?”
“Promise me …” Caramon whispered. “On your honor … as a Knight.”
“I promise,” said Gerard. He supposed that the old man was going to ask him to watch over his daughters or to take care of his grandchildren, one of whom was also a Solamnic Knight. “What would you have me do, sir?”
“Dalamar will know.… Take Tasslehoff to Dalamar,” Caramon said and his voice was suddenly strong and firm. He looked intently at Gerard. “Do you promise? Do you swear that you will do this?”
“But, sir,” Gerard faltered, “what you ask of me is impossible! No one has seen Dalamar for years. Most believe that he is dead. And as for this kender who calls himself Tasslehoff …”
Caramon reached out his hand, a hand that was bloody from his fall. He grasped hold of Gerard’s most unwilling hand and gripped it tightly.
“I promise, sir,” said Gerard.
Caramon smiled. He let out his breath and did not draw another. His eyes fixed in death, fixed on Gerard. The hand, even in death, did not relinquish its grip. Gerard had to pry the old man’s fingers loose and was left with a smear of blood on his palm.
“I’ll be happy to go with you to see Dalamar, Sir Knight, but I can’t go tomorrow,” said the kender, snuffling and wiping his tear-grimed face with the sleeve of his shirt. “I have to speak at Caramon’s funeral.”
4
A Strange Awakening
ilvan’s arm was on fire. He couldn’t put out the blaze, and no one would come help him. He called out for Samar and for his mother, but his calls went unanswered. He was angry, deeply angry, angry and hurt that they would not come, that they were ignoring him. Then he realized that the reason they were not coming was that they were angry with him. He had failed them. He had let them down, and they would come to him no more.…
With a great cry, Silvan woke himself. He opened his eyes to see above him a canopy of gray. His vision was slightly blurred, and he mistook the gray mass above him for the gray ceiling of the burial mound. His arm pained him, and he remembered the fire. Gasping, he shifted to put out the flames. Pain lanced through his arm and hammered in his head. He saw no flames, and he realized dazedly that the fire had been a dream. The pain in his left arm was not a dream, however. The pain was real. He examined the arm as best he could, though every movement of his head cost him a gasp.
Not much doubt. The arm was broken just above the wrist. The flesh was swollen so that it looked like a monster arm, a strange color of greenish purple. He lay back down and stared around him, feeling sorry for himself, and wondered very much that his mother did not come to him when he was in such agony.…
“Mother!” Silvan sat up so suddenly that the pain coiled round his gut and caused him to vomit.
He had no idea how he came to be here or even where here was. He knew where he was supposed to be, knew he had been dispatched to bring help to his beleagured people. He looked around, trying to gain some sense of the time. Night had passed. The sun shone in the sky. He had mistaken a canopy of gray leaves for the ceiling of the burial mound. Dead gray leaves, hanging listlessly from dead branches. Death had not come naturally, as with the fall of the year, causing them to release their hold on life and drift in a dream of reds and golds upon the crisp air. The life had been sucked from leaves and branches, trunk and roots, leaving them desicated, mummified but still standing, a husk, an empty mockery of life.
Silvan had never seen a blight of this kind attack so many trees before, and his soul shrank from the sight. He could not take time to consider it, however. He had to complete his mission.
The sky above was a pearl gray with a strange kind of shimmer that he put down to the aftereffects of the storm. Not so many hours have passed, he told himself. The army could hold out this long. I have not failed them utterly. I can still bring help.
He needed to splint his arm, and he searched through the forest undergrowth for a strong stick. Thinking he’d found what he sought, he put out his hand to grasp it. The stick disintegrated beneath his fingers, turned to dust. He stared, startled. The ash was wet and had a greasy feel to it. Repulsed, he wiped his hand on his shirt, wet from the rain.
All around him were gray trees. Gray and dying or gray and dead. The grass was gray, the weeds gray, the fallen branches gray, all with that look of having been sucked dry.
He’d seen something like this before or heard of something like this.… He didn’t recall what, and he had no time to think. He searched with increasingly frantic urgency among the gray-covered undergrowth for a stick and found one eventually, a stick that was covered with dust but had not been struck with the strange blight. Placing the stick on his arm, gasping at the pain, he gritted his teeth against it. He ripped off a shred of his shirttail and tied the splint in place. He could hear the broken ends of the bone grind together. The pain and the hideous sound combined to nearly make him pass out. He sat hunched over, his head down, fighting the nausea, the sudden heat that swept over his body.
Finally, the star bursts cleared from his vision. The pain eased somewhat. Holding his injured left arm close to his body, Silvan staggered to his feet. The wind had died. He could no longer feel its guiding touch upon his face. He could not see the sun itself for the pearl gray clouds, but the light shone brightest in one portion of the sky, which meant that way must be east. Silvan put his back to the light and looked to the west.
He did not remember his fall or what had occurred just prior to the fall. He began to talk to himself, finding the sound of his voice comforting.
“The last thing I remember, I was within sight of the road I needed to take to reach Sithelnost,” he said. He spoke in Silvanesti, the language of his childhood, the language his mother favored.
A hill rose up above him. He was standing in the bottom of a ravine, a ravine he vaguely remembered from the night before.
“Someone either climbed or fell down into the ravine,” he said, eyeing a crooked trail left in the gray ash that covered the hillside. He smiled ruefully. “My guess would be that someone was me. I must have taken a misstep in the darkness, tumbled down the ravine. Which means,” he added, heartened, “the road must lie right up there. I do not have far to go.”
He began to climb back up the steep sides of the ravine, but this proved more difficult than he’d supposed. The gray ash had formed a silt with the rain and was slippery as goose grease. He slid down the hill twice, jarring his injured arm, causing him almost to lose consciousness.
“This will never do,” Silvan muttered.
He stayed at the bottom of the ravine where the walking was easier, always keeping the top of the hill in sight, hoping to find an outcropping of rock that would act as a staircase up the slippery slope.
He stumbled over the uneven ground in a haze of pain and fear. Every step brought a jolt of pain to his arm. He pushed himself on, however, trudging through the gray mud that seemed to try to drag him down among the dead vegetation, searching for a way out of this gray vale of death that he grew to loathe as a prisoner loathes his cell.
He was parched with thirst. The taste of ash filled his mouth, and he longed for a drink of water to wash it away. He found a puddle once, but it was covered with a gray film, and he could not bring himself to drink from it. He staggered on.
“I have to reach the road,” he said and repeated it many times like a mantra, matching his footfalls to its rhythm. “I have to go on,” he said to himself dreamily, “because if I die down here, I will turn
into one of the gray mummies like the trees and no one will ever find me.”
The ravine came to a sudden end in a jumble of rock and fallen trees. Silvan straightened, drew in a deep breath and wiped chill sweat from his forehead. He rested a moment, then began to climb, his feet slipping on the rocks, sending him scrabbling backward more than once. Grimly, he pressed on, determined to escape the ravine if it proved to be the last act of his life. He drew nearer and nearer the top, up to the point where he thought he should have been able to see the road.
He peered out through the boles of the gray trees, certain the road must be there but unable to see it due to some sort of strange distortion of the air, a distortion that caused the trees to waver in his sight.
Silvan continued to climb.
“A mirage,” he said. “Like seeing water in the middle of the road on a hot day. It will disappear when I come near it.”
He reached the top of the hill and tried to see through the trees to the road he knew must lie beyond. In order to keep moving, moving through the pain, he had concentrated his focus upon the road until the road had become his one goal.
“I have to reach the road,” he mumbled, picking up the mantra. “The road is the end of pain, the road will save me, save my people. Once I reach the road, I am certain to run into a band of elven scouts from my mother’s army. I will turn over my mission to them. Then I will lie down upon the road and my pain will end and the gray ash will cover me …”
He slipped, nearly fell. Fear jolted him out of his terrible reverie. Silvan stood trembling, staring about, prodding his mind to return from whatever comforting place it had been trying to find refuge. He was only a few feet from the road. Here, he was thankful to see, the trees were not dead, though they appeared to be suffering from some sort of blight. The leaves were still green, though they drooped, wilting. The bark of the trunks had an unhealthy look to it, was staring to drop off in places.
He looked past them. He could see the road, but he could not see it clearly. The road wavered in his vision until he grew dizzy to look at it. He wondered uneasily if this was due to his fall.
“Perhaps I am going blind,” he said to himself.
Frightened, he turned his head and looked behind him. His vision cleared. The gray trees stood straight, did not shimmer. Relieved, he looked back to the road. The distortion returned.
“Strange,” he muttered. “I wonder what is causing this?”
His walk slowed involuntarily. He studied the distortion closely. He had the oddest impression that the distortion was like a cobweb spun by some horrific spider strung between him and the road, and he was reluctant to come near the shimmer. The disquieting feeling came over him that the shimmering web would seize him and hold him and suck him dry as it had sucked dry the trees. Yet beyond the distortion was the road, his goal, his hope.
He took a step toward the road and came to a sudden halt. He could not go on. Yet there lay the road, only a few steps away. Gritting his teeth, he shoved forward, cringing as if he expected to feel sticky web cling to his face.
Silvan’s way was blocked. He felt nothing. No physical presence halted him, but he could not move. Rather, he could not move forward. He could move sideways, he could move backward. He could not move ahead.
“An invisible barrier. Gray ash. Trees dead and dying,” he murmured.
He reached into the swirling depths of pain and fear and despair and brought forth the answer.
“The shield. This is the shield!” he repeated, aghast.
The magical shield that the Silvanesti had dropped over their homeland. He had never seen it, but he’d heard his mother describe it often enough. He had heard others describe the strange shimmer, the distortion in the air produced by the shield.
“It can’t be,” Silvan cried in frustration. “The shield cannot be here. It is south of my position! I was on the road, traveling west. The shield was south of me.” He twisted, looked up to find the sun, but the clouds had thickened, and he could not see it.
The answer came to him and with it bitter despair. “I’m turned around,” he said. “I’ve come all this way … and it’s been the wrong way!”
Tears stung his eyelids. The thought of descending this hill, of going back down into the ravine, of retracing his steps, each step that had cost him so dearly in pain, was almost too much to bear. He sank down to the ground, gave way to his misery.
“Alhana! Mother,” he said in agony, “forgive me! I have failed you! What have I ever done in life but fail you …?”
“Who are you who speaks the name that is forbidden to speak?” said a voice. “Who are you who speaks the name Alhana?”
Silvan leaped to his feet. He dashed the tears from his eyes with a backhand smear, looked about, startled, to see who had spoken.
At first he saw only a patch of vibrant, living green, and he thought that he had discovered a portion of the forest untouched by the disease that had stricken the rest. But then the patch moved and shifted and revealed a face and eyes and mouth and hands, revealed itself to be an elf.
The elf’s eyes were gray as the forest around him, but they were only reflecting the death he saw, revealing the grief he felt for the loss.
“Who am I who speaks my mother’s name?” Silvan asked impatiently. “Her son, of course.” He took a lurching step forward, hand outstretched. “But the battle … Tell me how the battle went! How did we fare?”
The elf drew back, away from Silvan’s touch. “What battle?” he asked.
Silvan stared at the man. As he did so, he noted movement behind him. Three more elves emerged from the woods. He would have never seen them had they not stirred, and he wondered how long they had been there. Silvan did not recognize them, but that wasn’t unusual. He did not venture out much among the common soldiers of his mother’s forces. She did not encourage such companionship for her son, who was someday destined to be king, would one day be their ruler.
“The battle!” Silvan repeated impatiently. “We were attacked by ogres in the night! Surely, you must …”
Realization dawned on him. These elves were not dressed for warfare. They were clad in clothes meant for traveling. They might well not know of any battle.
“You must be part of the long-range patrol. You’ve come back in good time.” Silvan paused, concentrated his thoughts, trying to penetrate the smothering fog of pain and despair. “We were attacked last night, during the storm. An army of ogres. I …” He paused, bit his lip, reluctant to reveal his failure. “I was sent to fetch aid. The Legion of Steel has a fortress near Sithelnost. Down that road.” He made a feeble gesture. “I must have fallen. My arm is broken. I came the wrong way and now I must backtrack, and I don’t have the strength. I can’t make it, but you can. Take this message to the commander of the legion. Tell him that Alhana Starbreeze is under attack.…”
He stopped speaking. One of the elves had made a sound, a slight exclamation. The elf in the lead, the first to approach Silvan, raised his hand to impose silence.
Silvan was growing increasingly exasperated. He was mortifyingly aware that he cut but a poor figure, clutching his wounded arm to his side like a hurt bird dragging a wing. But he was desperate. The time must be midmorning now. He could not go on. He was very close to collapse. He drew himself up, draped in the cloak of his title and the dignity it lent him.
“You are in the service of my mother, Alhana Starbreeze,” he said, his voice imperious. “She is not here, but her son, Silvanoshei, your prince, stands before you. In her name and in my own, I command you to bear her message calling for deliverance to the Legion of Steel. Make haste! I am losing patience!”
He was also rapidly losing his grip on consciousness, but he didn’t want these soldiers to think him weak. Wavering on his feet, he reached out a hand to steady himself on a tree trunk. The elves had not moved. They were staring at him now in wary astonishment that widened their almond eyes. They shifted their gazes to the road that lay beyond the shield, looked b
ack at him.
“Why do you stand there staring at me?” Silvan cried. “Do as you are commanded! I am your prince!” A thought came to him. “You need have no fear of leaving me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” He waved his hand. “Just go! Go! Save our people!”
The lead elf moved closer, his gray eyes intent upon Silvan, looking through him, sifting, sorting.
“What do you mean that you went the wrong way upon the road?”
“Why do you waste time with foolish questions?” Silvan returned angrily. “I will report you to Samar! I will have you demoted!” He glowered at the elf, who continued to regard him steadily. “The shield lies to the south of the road. I was traveling to Sithelnost. I must have gotten turned around when I fell! Because the shield … the road …”
He turned around to stare behind him. He tried to think this through, but his head was too muzzy from the pain.
“It can’t be,” he whispered.
No matter what direction he would have taken, he must have still been able to reach the road, which lay outside the shield.
The road still lay outside the shield. He was the one who was inside it.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You are in Silvanesti,” answered the elf.
Silvan closed his eyes. All was lost. His failure was complete. He sank to his knees and pitched forward to lie face down in the gray ash. He heard voices but they were far away and receding rapidly.
“Do you think it is truly him?”
“Yes. It is.”
“How can you be sure, Rolan? Perhaps it is a trick!”
“You saw him. You heard him. You heard the anguish in his voice, you saw the desperation in his eyes. His arm is broken. Look at the bruises on his face, his torn and muddy clothes. We found the trail in ash left by his fall. We heard him talking to himself when he did not know we were close by. We saw him try to reach the road. How can you possibly doubt?”
Silence, then, in a piercing hiss, “But how did he come through the shield?”
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 9