by Dragon Lance
“Because it’s true,” he said simply.
She shook herself. “Don’t talk nonsense.”
“I hope you’re not angry with me any more for teaching Mackeli how to fight,” he said, hoping to draw the conversation out a little longer. He was enjoying talking with her.
She shrugged. “My injury made me short-tempered. I wasn’t angry with you.” She gazed out at the clear water. After a moment, she said slowly, “I am glad Mackeli has a friend.”
He smiled and reached a hand out to touch her arm. “You have a friend, too, you know.”
Quickly Anaya rolled to her feet and pulled his tunic off. Dropping it, she dove into the pool. She stayed under so long that Kith-Kanan began to worry. He was about to dive in after her when Mackeli appeared on the other side of the pool, his bag bursting with chestnuts.
“Hello, Kith! Why are you all wet?”
“Anaya went in the water and hasn’t come back up!”
Mackeli heaved the heavy sack to the ground. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’s gone to her cave.” Kith-Kanan looked at him blankly. “There’s a tunnel in the pool that connects to a cave. She goes down there when she’s upset about something. Did you two have words?”
“Not exactly,” Kith-Kanan said, staring at the water’s surface. “I just told her I liked her face and that I was her friend.”
Mackeli scratched his cheek skeptically. “Well, there’s no use waiting there. She may not come up for days!” He hoisted the sack onto his narrow shoulder and added, “The cave is Ny’s secret place. We can’t get in.”
Kith-Kanan picked up his tunic and circled around the pool to where Mackeli stood. They walked up the path to the clearing. Every third step or so, Kith-Kanan looked back at the quiet spring. The forest woman was so difficult to understand. He kept hoping she would reappear, but she didn’t.
*
The sun set, and Mackeli and Kith-Kanan roasted chestnuts in the fire. When they were full, they lay on their backs in the grass and watched a fall of stars in the sky. The stars trailed fiery red tails across the black night, and Kith-Kanan marveled at the beauty of the sight. Living indoors in Silvanost, Kith-Kanan had seen only a few such falls. As the elf prince stared into the sky, a gentle wind tickled the branches of the trees and ruffled his hair.
Kith-Kanan sat up to get another handful of chestnuts. He saw Anaya sitting crosslegged by the fire and almost jumped out of his skin.
“What are you playing at?” he asked, irritated at being so startled.
“I came to share your fire.”
Mackeli sat up and poked a few roasted nuts from the ashes with a stick. Though they were hot, Anaya casually picked one up and peeled the red husk from the nut meat.
“Your task is long done, Kith,” she said in a low voice. “Why haven’t you returned to Silvanost?”
He chewed a chestnut. “I have no life there,” he said truthfully.
Anaya’s dark eyes looked out from her newly painted face. “Why not? Any disgrace you committed can be forgiven,” she said.
“I committed no disgrace!” he said with heat.
“Then go home. You do not belong here.” Anaya rose and backed away from the fire. Her eyes glowed in the firelight until she turned away.
Mackeli gaped. “Ny has never acted so strangely. Something is troubling her,” he said as he jumped to his feet. “I’ll ask —”
“No.” The single word froze Mackeli in his tracks. “Leave her alone. When she finds the answer, she’ll tell us.”
Mackeli sat down again. They looked into the red coals in silence for a while, then Mackeli said, “Why do you stay, Kith?”
“Not you, too!”
“Your life in the City of Towers was full of wonderful things. Why did you leave? Why do you stay here?”
“There’s nowhere else I want to go right now, and I’ve made friends here, or at least one friend.” He smiled at Mackeli. “As for why I left —” Kith-Kanan rubbed his hands together as if they were cold. “Once I was in love with a beautiful maiden, in Silvanost. She had wit and spirit, and I believed she loved me. Then it came time for my brother, Sithas, to marry. His wife was chosen for him by our father, the Speaker of the Stars. Of all the suitable maidens in the city, my father chose the one I loved to be my brother’s bride.” He pulled his dagger and drove it to the hilt in the dirt. “And she married him willingly! She was glad to do it!”
“I don’t understand,” admitted Mackeli.
“Neither do I. Hermathya —” Kith-Kanan closed his eyes, seeing her in his mind and savoring the feel of her name on his lips “— seemed to love the idea of being the next speaker’s wife more than being married to one who loved her. So, I left home. I do not expect to see Silvanost again.”
The elf boy looked at Kith-Kanan, whose head hung down. The prince still gripped his dagger hilt tightly. Mackeli cleared his throat and said sincerely, “I hope you stay, Kith. Ny could never have taught me the things you have. She never told me the kind of stories you tell. She’s never seen the great cities, or the warriors and nobles and priests.”
Kith-Kanan had raised his head. “I try not to think beyond today, Keli. For now, the peace of this place suits me. Strange, after being used to all the comforts and extravagances of royal birth...” His voice trailed off.
“Perhaps we can make a new kingdom, here in the wildwood.”
Kith-Kanan smiled. “A kingdom?” he asked. “Just us three?”
With complete earnestness, Mackeli said, “Nations must begin somewhere, yes?”
Chapter 13
DAY OF MADNESS
Sithas rode up the Street of Commerce at a canter, past the guild hall towers that filled both sides. He reined in his horse clumsily – for he wasn’t used to riding – when he spied the guild elves standing in the street, watching smoke rise from the Market quarter.
“Has the royal guard come this way?” he called at them.
Wringing his hands, a senior master with the crest of the Gemcutters Guild on his breast replied, “Yes, Highness, some time ago. The chaos grows worse, I fear —”
“Have you seen my mother, Lady Nirakina?”
The master gemcutter picked at his long dark hair with slim fingers and shook his head in silent despair. Sithas snorted with frustration and twisted his horse’s head away, toward the rising pillar of smoke. “Go back inside your halls,” he called contemptuously. “Bolt your doors and windows.”
“Will the half-breeds come here?” asked another guild elf tremulously.
“I don’t know, but you’d better be prepared to defend yourselves.” Sithas thumped his horse’s sides with his heels, then mount and rider clattered down the street.
Beyond the guild halls, in the first crossing street of the commoners’ district, he found the way littered with broken barrows, overturned sedan chairs, and abandoned pushcarts. Sithas picked his way through the debris with difficulty, for there were many common folk standing in the street.
Most were mute in disbelief, though some wept at the unaccustomed violence so near their homes. They raised a cheer when they saw Sithas. He halted again and asked if anyone had seen Lady Nirakina.
“No one has come through since the warriors passed this way,” said a trader. “No one at all.”
He thanked them, then ordered them off the street. The elves retreated to their houses. In minutes, the prince was alone.
The poorer people of Silvanost lived in tower houses just as the rich did. However, their homes seldom rose more than four or five stories. Each house had a tiny garden around its base, miniature versions of the great landscape around the Tower of the Stars. Trash and blown rubbish now tainted the lovingly tended gardens. Smoke poisoned the air. Grimly Sithas continued toward the heart of this madness.
Two streets later, the prince saw his first rioters. A human woman and a female Kagonesti were throwing pottery jugs onto the pavement, smashing them. When they ran out of jugs, they went to a derelict potter’s cart an
d replenished their supply.
“Stop that,” Sithas commanded. The dark elf woman took one look at the speaker’s heir and fled with a shriek. Her human companion, however, hurled a pot at Sithas. It shattered on the street at his horse’s feet, spraying the animal with shards. That done, the impudent human woman dusted her hands and simply walked away.
The horse backed and pranced, so Sithas had his hands full calming the mount. When the horse was once more under control, he rode ahead. The lane ended at a sharp turn to the right.
The sounds of fighting grew louder as Sithas rode on, drawing his sword.
The street ahead was full of struggling people – Silvanesti, Kagonesti, human, kender, and dwarves. A line of royal guards with pikes held flat in both hands were trying to keep the mass of fear-crazed folk back. Sithas rode up to an officer giving orders to the band of warriors, who numbered no more than twenty.
“Captain! Where is your commander?” shouted Sithas, above the roar of voices.
“Highness!” The warrior, himself of Kagonesti blood, saluted crisply. “Lord Kencathedrus is pursuing some of the criminals in the Market.”
Sithas, on horseback, could see far over the seething sea of people. “Are all these rioters?” he asked, incredulous.
“No, sire. Most are merchants and traders, trying to get away from the criminals who set fire to the shops,” the captain replied.
“Why are you holding them back?”
“Lord Kencathedrus’s orders, sire. He didn’t want these foreigners to flood the rest of the city.”
When the prince asked the captain if he’d seen his mother, the warrior shook his helmeted head. Sithas then asked if there was another way around, a way to the river.
“Keep them back!” barked the captain to his straining soldiers. “Push them! Use your pike shafts!” He stepped back, closer to Sithas, and said, “Yes, sire, you can circle this street and take White Rose Lane right to the water.”
Sithas commended the captain and turned his horse around. A spatter of stones and chunks of pottery rained over them. The captain and his troops had little to fear; they were in armor. Neither Sithas nor his horse were, so they cantered quickly away.
White Rose Lane was narrow and lined on both sides by high stone walls. This was the poorest section of Silvanost, where the house-towers were the lowest. With only two or three floors, they resembled squat stone drums, a far cry from the tall, gleaming spires of the high city.
The lane was empty when Sithas entered it. Astride his horse, his knees nearly scraped the walls on each side. A thin trickle of scummy water ran down the gutter in the center of the lane. At the other end of the alley, small groups of rioters dashed past. These groups of three or four often had royal guards on their heels. Sithas emerged from White Rose Lane in time to confront four desperate-looking elves. They stared at him. Each was armed with a stone or stick.
Sithas pointed with his sword. “Put down those things. Go back to your homes!” he said sternly.
“We are free elves! We won’t be ordered about! We’ve been driven from our homes once, and we’ll not let it happen again!” cried one of the elves.
“You are mistaken,” Sithas said, turning his horse so none of them could get behind him. “No one is driving you from here. The Speaker of the Stars has plans for a permanent town on the west bank of the Thon-Thalas.”
“That’s not what the holy lady said,” shouted a different elf.
“What holy lady?”
“The priestess of Quenesti Pah. She told us the truth!”
So, the riot could be laid at Miritelisina’s door. Sithas burned with anger. He whipped his sword over his head. “Go home!” he shouted. “Go home, lest the warriors strike you down!”
Someone flung a stone at Sithas. He batted it away, the rock clanging off the tempered iron blade. One smoke-stained elf tried to grab the horse’s bridle, but the prince hit him on the head with the flat of his blade. The elf collapsed, and the others hastily withdrew to find a more poorly armed target.
Sithas rode on through the mayhem, getting hit more than once by thrown sticks and shards. A bearded fellow he took for human swung a woodcutter’s axe at him, so Sithas used the edge, not the flat, of his sword. The axe-wielder fell dead, cleaved from shoulder to heart. Only then did the prince notice the fellow’s tapering ears and Silvanesti coloring. A half-human, the first he’d ever seen. Pity mixed with revulsion welled up inside the speaker’s heart.
Feeling a bit dazed, Sithas rode to the water’s edge. There were dead bodies floating in the normally calm river, a sight that only added to his disorientation. However, his dazed shock vanished instantly when he saw the body of an elf woman clad in a golden gown. His mother had a gown like that.
Sithas half-fell, half-jumped from horseback into the shallow water. He splashed, sword in hand, to the gowned body. It was Nirakina. His mother was dead! Tears spilling down his cheeks, the prince pulled the floating corpse to shallower water. When he turned the body over he saw to his immense relief that it was not his mother. This elf woman was a stranger to Sithas.
He released his hold on the body, and it was nudged gently away by the Thon-Thalas. Sithas stood coughing in the smoke, looking at the nightmare scene around him. Had the gods forsaken the Silvanesti this day?
“Sithas.... Sithas....”
The prince whirled as he realized that someone was calling his name. He ran up the riverbank toward the sound. Once ashore, he was engulfed by the row of short towers that lined the riverbank. The tallest of these, a four-story house with conical roof and tall windows, was to his right. A white cloth waved from a top floor window.
“Sithas?” With relief the prince noted that it was his mother’s voice.
He mounted the horse and urged it into a gallop. Shouts and a loud crashing sound filled the air. On the other side of a low stone wall, a band of rioters was battering at the door of the four-story tower. Sithas raced the horse straight at the wall, and the animal jumped the barrier. As they landed on the other side, Sithas shouted a challenge and waved his sword in the air. Horse and rider thundered into the rioters’ midst. The men dropped the bench they had been using as a battering ram and ran off.
Overhead, a window on the street side opened. Nirakina called down, “Sithas! Praise the gods you came!”
The door of the house, which was almost knocked to pieces, opened inward. A familiar-looking elf emerged warily, the broken end of a table leg clutched in his hand.
“I know you,” said Sithas, dismounting quickly.
The elf lowered his weapon. “Tamanier Ambrodel, at your service, Highness,” he said quietly. “Lady Nirakina is safe.”
Nirakina came down the building’s steps, and Sithas rushed to embrace her.
“We were besieged,” Nirakina explained. Her honey-brown hair was in complete disarray, and her gentle face was smeared with soot. “Tamanier saved my life. He fought them off and guarded the door.”
“I thought you were dead,” Sithas said, cupping his mother’s face in his scratched, dirty hands. “I found a woman floating in the river. She was wearing your clothes.”
Nirakina explained that she had been giving some old clothing to the refugees when the trouble started. In fact she and Tamanier had been at the focus of the riot. One reason they had escaped unharmed was that many of the refugees knew the speaker’s wife and protected her.
“How did it start?” demanded Sithas. “I heard something about Miritelisina.”
“I’m afraid it was her,” Tamanier answered. “I saw her standing in the back of a cart, proclaiming that the speaker and high priests were planning to send all the settlers back across the river. The people grew frightened – they thought they were being driven from their last shelter by their own lords, sent to die in the wilderness. So they rose up, with the intention of forestalling a new exile.”
Fists clenched, Sithas declared, “This is treason! Miritelisina must be brought to justice!”
“Sh
e did not tell them to riot,” his mother said gently. “She cares about the poor, and it is they who have suffered most from this.”
Sithas was in no mood to debate. Instead, he turned to Tamanier and held out his hand. Eyes wide, the elf grasped his prince’s hand. “You shall be rewarded,” said Sithas gratefully.
“Thank you, Highness.” Tamanier looked up and down the street. “Perhaps we can take Lady Nirakina home now.”
It was much quieter. Kencathedrus’s warriors had herded the rioters into an ever-tightening circle. When the mob was finally subdued, the fire brigade was able to rush into the Market quarter. That occurred far too late, though; fully half of the marketplace had already been reduced to ruin.
*
The justice meted out by Sithel to his rebellious subjects was swift and severe. The rioters were tried as one and condemned.
Those of Silvanesti or Kagonesti blood were made slaves and set to rebuilding what they had destroyed. The humans and other non-elven rioters were driven from the city at pike point and forbidden ever to return, upon pain of death. All merchants who participated in the madness had their goods confiscated. They, too, were banished for life.
Miritelisina was brought before the speaker. Sithas, Nirakina, Tamanier Ambrodel, and all the high clerics of Silvanost were present. She made no speeches, offered no defense. Despite his respect for her, the speaker found the priestess guilty of petty treason. He could have made the charge high treason, for which the penalty was death, but Sithel could not bring himself to be that harsh.
The high priestess of Quenesti Pah was sent to the dungeon cells under the Palace of Quinari. Her cell was large and clean, but dark. Layers of inhibiting spells were placed around it, to prevent her from using her magical knowledge to escape or communicate with the outside world. Though many saw this as just, few found the sentencing a positive thing; not since the terrible, anarchical days of Silvanos and Balif had such a high-ranking person been sent to the dungeon.
“Is it right, do you think, to keep her there?” Nirakina asked her husband and son later, in private.
