Dragons of the Highlord Skies dc-2

by Margaret Weis

  Because of Derek’s suspicions, Brian had learned the innermost secrets of friends who trusted him, and though he was impressed and touched by what he’d heard, he knew quite well he should have never heard it. When Derek came off watch, muttering that he didn’t trust the dwarf and Brightblade and the Ice Folk to keep a good lookout, Brian had to work hard to keep from leaping up and slugging him.

  The next morning, Derek and Aran set out to take a look at Ice Wall Castle to see it for themselves. They took along Raggart’s grandson, who was also named Raggart, as a guide.

  Raggart the Younger, as he was called, though he was close to thirty, had eagerly volunteered to accompany the two knights. Raggart was the tribe’s historian, which meant that he was the tribal storyteller. The Ice Folk kept no written history (few could read or write), and thus all important events were chronicled in song and story. Young Raggart had learned the history from the previous historian, now dead some fifteen years, and he related the stories on a daily basis, sometimes singing them, sometimes acting them out, with himself taking all the roles, sometimes making a tale of them. He could mimic any sound, from the swishing of the runners of the ice boats as they sped across the frozen landscape to the wailing howl of wolves and the quarreling cawings of sea birds, and he used the sounds to enliven his recitals.

  Young Raggart foresaw adding a glorious episode to the tribal lore, one he would witness firsthand. He presented the knights with a crude drawing of the castle’s interior, though exactly what good this was going to do them was open to question, since they had no intention of going inside. When Derek asked him how he knew what the castle’s interior looked like, since he had admitted that he’d never been inside Ice Wall, Raggart had replied that he’d put it together from information found in a very old poem composed by a long-lost ancestor who had investigated the castle three hundred years ago. Though Derek had grave misgivings about the map, it was, as he said, better than nothing, and he accepted it and studied it with interest before they left. Their number included Tasslehoff, not because he was wanted, but because Derek could not find any way short of running a sword through the kender to get rid of him.

  Brian had been supposed to accompany his fellows, but he had declined. Derek had not been pleased and he had been on the point of ordering Brian to come, but there was something oddly rebellious and defiant in Brian’s manner. Not wanting to make an issue of it, Derek had swallowed his anger and instead told Brian to keep an eye on Brightblade and the others. Brian had stared at Derek in grim silence and then turned and walked off without a word.

  “I think our friend has fallen in love with that elf woman,” Derek said in disapproving tones to Aran as they departed. “I will have to have a talk with him.”

  Aran, who had seen the fond looks Brian and Lillith gave each other, knew Derek was completely and utterly wrong in this, but it amused the knight to let Derek remain under his misapprehension. Trekking over the snow after their guide, Aran looked forward gleefully to hearing one of Derek’s sonorous lectures on the evils of loving anyone who wasn’t “our own kind”.

  Brian had been going to eat a solitary breakfast in his tent. Laurana, hearing he remained behind, was concerned and came to ask after his health. She was kind and gracious and truly seemed to care about him. Remembering that he had spied on her last night, Brian felt worse than the meanest scoundrel that ever roamed the sewers of Palanthas. Brian could not refuse her invitation, and he joined her and her friends, along with the chief of the Ice Folk, in the chieftent.

  The companions were much more cheerful this morning. They spoke of their absent comrades freely, without the sorrow of loss, wondering where they were and what they were doing. Brian acted surprised to hear their joyful news. His acting wasn’t very good, but the others were so happy none of them noticed.

  The conversation turned to the dragon orb. Harald listened to all they said, keeping his thoughts to himself. Gilthanas made no secret of the fact that he believed the orb should go to the elves.

  “Lord Gunthar has pledged that the orb will be taken to the Whitestone Council. The elves are part of the Whitestone Council-” Brian began.

  “We were,” Gilthanas interrupted. His lip curled. “We are no longer.”

  “Gil, please don’t start-” Laurana began.

  Then, glancing at Sturm, perhaps thinking what he’d said about honey-coating everything, she fell silent.

  “Here now!” Flint was saying. “What does this dragon orb do that is so blasted important?” His bushy brows came together in a frown. The dwarf looked first at Brian, then at Gilthanas.

  “Well?” Flint demanded, and when neither answered, he grunted, “I thought so. All this fooferah to find something the kender said he read about in a book! That should tell you the answer right there-mainly that we should leave the fool orb where it sits and go home.” Flint sat back, triumphant.

  Sturm smoothed his mustaches preparatory to saying something. Gilthanas opened his mouth at the same time, but they were both interrupted by Tasslehoff who burst into the chieftent, agog with excitement, brimming with importance, and shivering with cold.

  “We found Ice Wall Castle!” he announced. “Guess what? It’s made of ice! Well, I guess it isn’t really. Derek says underneath all the ice are stone walls and the ice has simply accumulated”-Tas brought out the big word proudly-“over the years.”

  He plopped himself down on the floor and gratefully accepted a warming drink of some steaming liquid. “That burns clear down to my toes,” he said thankfully. “As for the castle, it’s perched way, way, way up on top of a mountain made of ice. Derek has this great idea about how we’re going to storm the castle, find the dragon orb, and kill the wizard. The castle is a wonderful place. Raggart sang us a song about it. The song tells about underground tunnels and a magical fountain of water that never freezes and then, of course, there’s the dragon’s lair with the dragon orb and the dragon inside. I can’t wait to go!”

  Tas took another gulp of his drink and let out a moist breath. “Whew, boy, that’s good! Anyway, where was I?”

  “-getting my people slaughtered,” Harald stated angrily.

  “Was I?” Tasslehoff looked surprised. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “In order to reach Ice Wall Castle, my people will be forced to travel over the glacier, where we will be visible for miles along the way-easy pickings for the white dragon,” Harald went on, growing angrier the more he talked. “Then those who by some miracle manage to survive the dragon’s attack will be targets for the dragon-men who will shoot my warriors as full of arrows as a prickly pig!”

  “What’s a prickly pig?” Tas asked, but no one answered.

  Derek had entered the tent.

  Harald was on his feet, glaring at the knight. “So you would send my people to their deaths!”

  “I had intended to explain my plan myself,” Derek stated, with an exasperated glance at the kender.

  Tasslehoff grinned and waved and said modestly, “That’s all right, Sir Knight. No need for thanks.”

  Derek turned to Harald. “Your people can slip up to the castle under the cover of darkness-”

  Harald shook his head and gave an explosive snort that seemed to expand the walls of the tent. The Ice Folk inside the chieftent put down their work to give him their full attention.

  “What is wrong with that idea?” Derek demanded, disconcerted by the sight of so many dark and emotionless eyes fixed upon him.

  Harald looked to Raggart the Elder. The old priest in his gray robes rose, tottering on shaking legs, leaning on the arm of his grandson for support.

  “Wolves roam about the castle by night,” Raggart stated. “They would see us and report back to Feal-Thas.”

  Derek thought at first he was joking, then realized the old man was serious. He appealed to the chief. “You are a man of reason. Do you believe such nonsense as this? Wolf guards-it is a child’s tale!”

  Harald once again swelled with rage and it seemed
likely he would blast Derek out of the tent if he got started. Raggart rested a warding hand on Harald’s arm, and the chief choked back his rage and was silent.

  “According to you, the gods themselves are child’s tales, aren’t they, Sir Knight?” asked the old man.

  Derek replied in measured tones, “I had a beloved brother who believed in these gods. He died a terrible death when our castle was attacked and overrun by the dragonarmies. He prayed to them to save us, and they did nothing. This proves to me there are no gods.”

  Elistan stirred at this and seemed about to speak.

  Derek saw this and forestalled him. “Spare your breath, Cleric. If there are such gods of so-called ‘good’ who refused to heed my brother’s prayers and let him die, then I want nothing to do with them.”

  He looked about the tent, at the eyes watching him. “Many of your people may die, Chieftain, that is true, but many people in other parts of Krynn have already laid down their lives for our noble cause-”

  “-so that you can find this dragon orb and take it back to your homeland,” said Harald dourly.

  “And we will slay the wizard Feal-Thas-”

  Harald gave another terrific snort.

  Derek was flushed with anger, at a loss for words. He was accustomed to obedience and respect, and he was getting neither. He was obviously baffled by Harald’s stubborn obtuseness, for that is what he considered it.

  “You do not understand the importance-” Derek began impatiently.

  “No, it is you who do not understand,” Harald thundered. “My people fight only when we must fight. We do not go seeking battle. Why do you think our boats are swift? To carry us away from the conflict. We are not cowards. We fight if we must, but only if we must. Given a chance, we run. There is no shame in that, Sir Knight, because every day of our lives of we fight deadly foes: shifting ice, bitter wind, biting cold, sickness, starvation. We have fought these foes for centuries. When you leave, we will continue to fight them. Will this dragon orb of yours change anything for us?”

  “It may or it may not,” interjected Elistan. “A single pebble falling into a lake sends out ripples that expand and keep expanding until they reach the shore. The distance between Solamnia and Icereach is vast, yet the gods have seen fit to bring us together. Perhaps for the dragon orb,” he said, looking at Derek, then shifting his gaze to Harald, “or perhaps to help us learn to honor and respect one another.”

  “And if Feal-Thas were destroyed, I think it unlikely Ariakas would send anyone to take his place,” Sturm said. “To my way of thinking, the attack on Tarsis did not prove the Dark Queen’s strength; it showed her weakness. If there was a way we could work together-”

  “I have told you the way,” Derek interrupted angrily. “By attacking Ice Wall castle-”

  Laurana quit listening. She was sick of the quarreling, sick of the fighting. Derek would never understand Harald. The chief would never understand Derek. Her thoughts turned to Tanis. Now that she too believed he was alive, she wondered if he was with that human woman, Kitiara. Laurana had seen her with Tanis in the dream. Kit was lovely, with her black curly hair, crooked smile, flashing black eyes…

  There had been something familiar about her. Laurana had the feeling she’d seen those eyes before.

  Now you’re being silly, she told herself. Letting your jealousy run away with you. Sturm’s right. Kitiara’s nowhere near Silvanesti. Why should she be? Strange that I feel this connection to her… as if we’ve met…

  “We will carry on with our plans, Chieftain, no matter what you choose to do-” Derek was saying heatedly.

  Laurana rose to her feet and walked off.

  Tasslehoff had long since grown bored with the conversation. He was in the back of the chieftent having a grand rummage through his pouches to the delight of several children squatting on the floor around him. Among his treasures was a broken piece of crystal whose smooth planes and sharp edges formed a triangular shape.

  He must have picked it up in Tarsis, Laurana realized. It looked as though it might have once graced an elegant lamp or maybe was part of the stem of a broken wine glass.

  Tasslehoff was squatting directly beneath one of the ventilation holes in the roof. The midday sun streamed down, forming a bright halo around the kender.

  “Watch this!” he said to the children. “I’m going to do a magic trick taught to me by a great and powerful wizard named Raistlin Majere.”

  Tas held the crystal to the sun. “I’m going to say the magic words now. ‘Oooglety booglety’.” He twitched the crystal to make tiny rainbows go dancing about the tent. The children shouted in glee and Derek, in the front of the tent, cast them all a stern look and ordered Tasslehoff to stop fooling around.

  “I’ll show you fooling around,” Tas muttered and he twitched the crystal again, causing one of the rainbows to crawl over Derek’s face.

  The knight blinked as the sunlight hit his eyes. The children clapped and laughed and Tas smothered a giggle. Derek rose angrily to his feet. Laurana gestured to him that she would deal with it, and Derek sat back down.

  “Did Raistlin really teach you how to do that?” Laurana asked, sitting beside Tas, hoping to distract the kender from his torment of the knight.

  “Yes, he did,” said Tas proudly, adding eagerly, “I’ll tell you the story. It’s very interesting. Flint was designing a setting for a jeweled pendant for one of his customers, and the pendant went missing. I offered to help him find it, and so I left to go to Raistlin and Caramon’s house to ask if they might have seen it. Caramon wasn’t home and Raistlin had his nose in a book. He said I wasn’t to bother him and I said I would just sit down and wait for Caramon to come back, and Raistlin asked me if I meant to stay there all day, annoying him, and I said yes, I had to find this jeweled pendant, and then he put down the book and came over to me and turned all my pockets inside out and, would you believe it? There was the pendant!”

  Tas had to stop for breath before continuing. “I was really happy to think I’d found it and I said I’d take it back to Flint, but Raistlin said, no, he would take it to Flint after supper and I was to go away and leave him alone. I said I thought I would wait for Caramon anyway, because I hadn’t seen him since yesterday. Raistlin eyed me in that way of his that kind of sends crawly feelings through you and then he asked would I go if he taught me a magic trick? I said I would have to go, because I’d want to show the trick to Flint.

  “Raistlin held the jewel up to light and he said the magic words and he made rainbows! Then he had me hold the jewel up the to the light and taught me the magic words and I made rainbows! He showed me another magic trick, too. Here, I’ll do it for you.”

  He held the crystal to the sun so that the light passed through it and beamed brightly on the floor. Tas shoved aside one of the fur rugs, exposing the ice beneath. He held the crystal steady, focusing it on the ice. The light struck the ice and it began to melt. The children gasped in wonder.

  “See?” said Tas proudly. “Magic! The time I did that for Flint, I set the tablecloth on fire.”

  Laurana hid a smile. It wasn’t magic. Elves had been using prisms for as long as there had been elves and crystals, fire and rainbows.

  Fire and rainbows.

  Laurana stared at the melting ice and suddenly she knew how the Ice Folk could defeat their foes.

  Laurana stood up. First she thought she would tell the others, and then she thought she wouldn’t. What was she doing? Here she was, an elf maiden, telling battle-hardened Solamnic knights how to fight. They wouldn’t listen to her. Worse, they might laugh at her. There was another problem. Her idea depended on faith in the gods. Was her faith strong enough? Would she bet her life and the lives of her friends and the lives of the Ice Folk on that faith?

  Laurana walked slowly back. She imagined speaking out and felt suddenly queasy, as she had the very first time she’d played her harp for her parents’ guests. She’d given a beautiful performance, or so her mother had told her. Lau
rana couldn’t remember any of it, except throwing up afterward. Since her mother’s death, Laurana had acted as her father’s hostess. She had performed numerous times for their guests. She’d spoken before dignitaries and later, she’d talked to the assembled refugees, and she had not been nervous, perhaps because she had been in her father’s shadow or in Elistan’s. Now, if she spoke up, she would have to stand on her own in the glaring sunlight.

  Keep quiet, you fool, Laurana scolded herself and she was determined to obey and then she thought of Sturm, telling her to stand up for what she believed in.

  “I know how to assault Ice Wall Castle,” she said and, as they stared at her in astonishment, she added breathlessly, surprised at her own courage, “With the help of the gods, we will make the castle attack itself.”

  10

  Too much of a good horse. The priest of Takhisis. itiara rode all night. Salah Kahn’s horse had been languishing in his stall for several days and was spoiling for a gallop. Kitiara had to occasionally rein him in, so as not to tire him out. They had a long journey ahead of them. Dargaard Keep was hundreds of miles distant, and danger crouched behind every bush, watched every crossroads.

  She tried to calculate, as she rode, when her absence would be discovered. She hoped not until dawn, at the time of her scheduled execution, but with the chaos over the destruction of the Dark Abbey, she couldn’t be certain. Dragons would carry the news of her escape far and wide. Word would spread fast.

  The one advantage she had was that Ariakas would assume she would head for Solamnia, there to join up with her blue dragon command and lead them in rebellion against him. It was what he would have done in her place. He would concentrate his searchers on the roads leading to Solamnia. Those bounty hunters would be disappointed. Kit wasn’t heading west. She was riding north, to the accursed realm known as Nightlund, a land no one visited unless he had a death wish or an exceptionally good reason for not being anywhere else.

  Part of Solamnia, the realm had originally been known as Knightlund. The land was heavily wooded, rugged, and mountainous. Not suitable for farming, at the time of the Cataclysm it was only sparsely populated. A wealthy and influential Knight of the Rose, Sir Loren Soth, was ruler of the region. His family’s keep was built in the northern part of Dargaard Mountains. Designed to resemble a rose, the castle was considered a marvel of architecture. Family legend had it that Soth’s grandfather imported dwarven craftsman to build the castle and that its construction took one hundred years. A city called Dargaard grew up around the keep, but most of the other settlements in Knightlund were located along the river and did brisk business in milling, logging, and fishing.