The Messenger it-1

by Douglas Niles

  Beside those vessels Cutter was clearly a modest sailboat, but to the lone elf on the waterfront she was very much more than that. Cutter was the legacy of his father. She was pride and ancestry, strength and freedom … the key to everything he was, everything he had earned, everything he hoped to do in his life.

  As Kerrick made his way up from Water Street, he thought about how fine it was to be young, to be here, in the spiritual center of elvenkind and, in his sincere belief, the center of all Krynn. A slight breeze whisked down the broad avenue, carrying the scent of blossoms and smoke, the hint of distant magic and the aroma of good food, tart wine.

  Footsteps scuffed in the street before him, and Kerrick melted into a yard of lush, flowering bushes. A patrol, two elves of House Protector, ambled past, but their attention was focused on a hushed conversation and neither cast his eyes toward the shadowy ground.

  They would probably be the last guards of the night, but in this neighborhood Kerrick would take no unnecessary chances. Elven eyes were keen in the darkness, capable of spotting a concealed person merely by the heat of his body. Kerrick knew that the presence of a common squire here in the heart of the city’s elite enclave would be difficult to explain.

  He moved cautiously across the grass and into the pathways of a formal garden. Staying low, he kept a tall hedge between himself and the street as he moved from one great compound to the next. He wormed through the hedge at one of many narrow passages, then skirted a shimmering pool. The water was bright in the moonlight and alive with flyfish that hovered above the water, snatching bugs from the air and then plopping into the depths. From here he slipped into the cover of a groomed oak grove, stepping over gnarled roots, gliding from trunk to great trunk as he kept a lookout.

  As always, he felt the keen excitement, the thrilling anticipation of the supple form, the willing smile of Gloryian Diradar. She was a true daughter of the city’s elite, a prize who had demanded all his skill in the taking. He had wooed her patiently for nearly a year before winning her in bed, but the months before that conquest were well worth the wait.

  Her house was before him finally, a wall of rose quartz leading to a balcony and shadowed windows. Gloryian was up there, probably looking out for him already, watching from the dark of the chamber. Kerrick’s heart pounded as he crossed the stretch of lawn to the trellis below her window, his familiar route up the wall. He grasped the branches, set his foot on a crosspiece, and started to climb, pulling himself up with practiced gestures.

  The crack of breaking wood shot through the quiet night, and Kerrick, thrown by the surprise of it, felt himself falling backwards. Somehow the entire trellis had broken free from the wall! He twisted, pushing away, trying to land on his feet. When his moccasins hit the grass he lunged to the side, stumbling out from beneath the collapsing rack of sticks and vines.

  Something hard hit him in the head, and he dropped to his knees, thinking groggily that a piece of masonry must have tumbled from the wall. Then he heard the voice.

  “Sneaking, crawling bastard!”

  A fist lashed at him from the side, smashing his nose. Through swiftly blurring eyes he saw an elf-no, two elves-looming over him. The nearest was a minor nobleman named Patrikan Diradar. More to the point, he was Gloryian’s father, though he looked strange and monstrous now, his face contorted by an almost animal fury. Patrikan’s fist lashed out again, striking the struggling elf in the ear, knocking him on his side.

  “I treated to you as a friend!” said the second attacker, his voice a low growl. This one he recognized as Gloryian’s brother, Darnari, a haughty young elf who had never seemed even remotely friendly to Kerrick. Darnari bent over, seized his prone victim by the hair, and punched him in the stomach. Again and again he jabbed, all the time meeting Kerrick’s watering eyes with a look of pure hatred.

  “You are an embarrassment to Silvanesti, to E’li himself!” snarled a third voice from behind Kerrick, invoking the elven name of the great god Paladine. A savage kick caught him between the shoulders.

  Kerrick’s head snapped back, and he collapsed on the rubble of the trellis, instinctively curling his knees to his chest. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight back, could barely draw a breath.

  “You’re not fit to sweep up the droppings of an ogre whore!” growled Patrikan, stomping on Kerrick’s side with violent force. The elf groaned, felt his bile rise with the pain, and he vomited. His guts convulsed, as broken bones twisted and stabbed with each involuntary movement.

  “Did you think you could get away with it?” declared the third elf, seizing Kerrick’s arm, yanking him around, as he lay sprawled helplessly on his back. Vaguely Kerrick recognized this new tormentor … Waykand Isletter, one of the most prominent of young nobles in all Silvanesti. “You dare to violate the woman who will be my wife. What foolishness creeps through your pathetic mind?”

  “It is only through the goodwill of King Nethas that you are still alive,” Patrikan said, leaning over Kerrick with a look of disgust. He snorted contemptuously. “Our king, in his wisdom, seems to have fond memories of your time at court … though he recognizes that you have abandoned all claim to his protection and favor. Perhaps our liege still believes those stories about your father’s heroism in the war. As for me, I knew Dimorian Fallabrine for the pirate that he was, and I can see that his dubious legacy lives well in you. Like your father, you have no sense of your proper station, no awareness of your betters.”

  Darnari dropped to one knee and let Kerrick see the silvery point of a dagger that waved very close to his tear-blurred eyes. “Not even the king’s favor will protect you if you ignore this warning.” The blade sliced through his shirt and left a burning trail of blood on Kerrick’s chest. “If you go near, if you look at, if you even mention my sister’s name again I will kill you.”

  “Not that you have a prayer of ever seeing her, or this place, again,” declared Waykand Isletter. He had a sword drawn, and it looked to Kerrick as though the king’s favor meant very little when weighed against the lord’s desire for bloody revenge. “If I catch you in Silvanost, or anywhere in Silvansti, I will make it my business to kill you. So hear me well, sea-rat, and heed my words if you value your wretched life.”

  Waykand’s sword touched Kerrick’s throat and he sobbed.

  “Your father, at least, knew how to conduct himself in a fight. Whatever starch he had does not live in you,” declared the noble with contempt.

  “Bah-his father had a lucky win in one battle,” snorted Patrikan. “The rest of the time he was consorting with humans or trading with kender. Finally he sailed to his destruction on a fool’s quest, leaving his progeny to befoul my daughter’s honor.”

  “Gloryian!” The cry burst from Kerrick’s throat, as his eyes searched for her up in th balcony.

  “Oh, you should know this,” Patrikan hissed hoarsely, rage choking his voice. “I have paid a fortune in gold to have the priest of E’li restore my daughter’s virginity and to banish whatever nightmarish memories you have given her. You are like a sickness that has been exorcised from her skull, a disease from the past that she will mercifully forget. She scorns you now and forever!”

  Above Kerrick saw a white gown swaying. How many times had he tenderly removed that garment? His lover’s face was lost in shadow, darkened by the moon shining with mocking allure.

  “Go away,” she called, and it was certainly Gloryian’s voice, though somehow hardened into a steel blade. “I will never see you again!”

  “But-I love you!” These words, hoarsely exploding from his own lips, surprised him. Even through the fog of pain and humiliation he knew they were born of desperation and shame, not truth. Still, he shouted his love-his pride demanded it, required that he show these elves that his purpose was no less lofty than theirs.

  He had the strange sense that his words might as well have been shouted into the sea-fog on a dark night. There was no echo, no sense even that anyone had heard. When Gloryian stepped forward to look down a
t him he saw the brightness of her eyes against the moonlight, and in that shiny blankness he saw nothing, no hint of the warmth or the vibrancy he had known so well.

  “She has been changed, I tell you!” hissed Patrikan in his ear. “The priests have cleared the fog from her mind, so that the sight of you turns her stomach, and all knowledge of your intimacy has been excised from her memory!”

  What else had they taken from her? As Gloryian turned and, trancelike, walked back into her rooms, Kerrick could think of nothing else to say, no words that would bring her back. The wraithlike image of white silk vanished into the shadows as strong hands grasped his forearms and began to drag him along the ground.

  “This is how you repay me? By consorting with the first daughter of an Elder House?”

  King Nethas betrayed no emotion in his face, nor did his voice reveal any trace of anger. Nevertheless, Kerrick recoiled from the words, felt a tremendous guilt. How was it that he had never imagined this, never stopped to reflect how his actions would seem to the king-to this elven patriarch who had given Kerrick shelter and direction in the years of his young adulthood, who had offered him a place to belong and thrive, when his parents had been claimed by the sea?

  Now he, Kerrick, had betrayed that trust.

  “I’m sorry, Sire-I-”

  “Silence!” The regal elf, his eyes arching dispassionately, gestured to Waykand Isletter and Patrikan Diradar. “What punishment do you suggest?”

  “He is not fit to live,” declared the younger elf, Gloryian’s affronted suitor, “but I know that we are not barbarians, not a people who put our own to death. So I want him banished forever. Yes, banished-brand him a dark elf!”

  “I agree-his name and memory should be wiped from the People’s lives. A dark elf!” Patrikan was as vehement as the nobleman.

  Kerrick slumped hopelessly within the arms of his two captors. There could be no worse fate for a Silvanesti than such condemnation. A dark elf was forever exiled, and even his name was stricken from the memories of his people, never to be uttered again.

  “A dark elf … dark indeed is his shame,” Nethas declared. “Nevertheless, such a fate I would not recommend for a transgression such as his. It would cheapen the punishment to use it to address such a tawdry affair, such a pathetic malefactor.”

  Nethas fixed Kerrick with two eyes that were suddenly cold and narrowed, emotionless as a serpent’s. The young elf saw no trace of the kindness, patience, and beneficence he had known for so many years. The king laughed, a dry and ironic sound, and Kerrick knew that he had damaged himself in ways that could never be repaired.

  “You will leave Silvanesti, but not as a dark elf. No, we shall remember your family, for the folly you illustrate in so many ways. For our mistake in elevating one of such wild roots to a station above your place, for your own foolishness in thinking that your treachery might go undetected, and for the grand folly that your father showed, when he took his wife and crew and journeyed the way of the gods, all on a quest of pure madness. Now you shall be scarred in shame, shown as the outcast you are.”

  “Sire, I beg the honor of marking the elf, so that he may be known to all.” Waykand Isleletter had his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “Do so,” replied the king with a curt nod.

  The steel blade whipped past Kerrick’s face. He felt the tear, the searing pain, and clapped his hand to the side of his head, where blood flowed copiously from the slashed cartilage and skin.

  On the ground, now a pathetic scrap, lay the pointed tip of his ear, the graceful taper characteristic of elves. Kerrick moaned, a drawn out sigh of agony that rose from his spiritual torment as much as any physical suffering.

  “Enough,” said the king, grimacing at the sight of the mutilated flesh, waving to a servant. “Clean this up. Set him to the sea, with his boat enchanted away from our shores and lands. He is banished from Silvanesti!”

  “Forever?” croaked the bleeding elf, finally finding his voice.

  The king, half turned away already, paused and looked back. He pursed his lips, and for the first time a trace of humor entered his eyes. But it was a cruel humor, and Kerrick was afraid.

  “Let us say, not forever, not necessarily,” said the king. “No, you shall have a condition more appropriate to your folly and to your father’s legacy. Surely you have wondered, as even did I, what if he was right? What if there is a land of gold, a way for us to obtain that precious metal without gaining it at the expense of the Kingpriest’s profits? It would be a worthy find, a treasure that could restore Silvanesti to the richness that is our due.

  “So you shall have this chance, this condition: If your father was right, and if you can prove the same, then, and only then, may you return to Silvanesti.” The king nodded, a tight smile relishing the private joke of his wisdom. His last words came over his royal shoulder, as Nethas started back to his chambers.

  “So go to sea, Kerrick Fallabrine-and bring me the secret of your father’s gold.”

  3

  A prince of Suderhold

  Knock down the walls-break up the tools and the kayaks-slash the hulls and search the huts. Load anything of value onto the galley. The rest, we burn!”

  Grimwar Bane’s voice roared through the village as the ogre prince strode among the low, round huts. Everywhere his brutal raiders hurried to obey, a hundred hulking warriors scattering through the community, while at Grimwar’s heels the dwarf Baldruk Dinmaker all but jogged to keep up with his master.

  “Here, at least, the human scum showed some fight,” said the prince in satisfaction as he looked over the ragged bodies, many of them still bleeding, scattered haphazardly across the flat, gravel beach where they had died.

  “It is indeed a great victory, Majesty. I would go so far as to say that the Arktos people have been destroyed for once and for all.”

  The ogre drew a deep breath and snorted through his broad nostrils, knowing he should be satisfied but aware that there was still a vague sense of unease lurking in his mind. Impatiently he shook his head and flexed his long, muscular arms.

  He reminded himself that he was a a mighty ogre leader, heir to a kingdom that had survived five thousand years. His lineage could be traced to a time when Krynn had been ruled by his proud race, when humans and elves were mere irritants on the carapace of a world belonging to Grimwar Bane’s ancestors.

  The prince of Suderhold was a splendid example of that heritage. A strapping bull ogre, Grimwar was tall and broad bodied, with fists like hammerheads and legs as sturdy as tree trunks. His mouth was exceptionally wide, a trait of favor among ogre males, boasting a lower jaw jutting proudly forward to display two magnificent tusks. Each of these ivory cones was fully four inches long and inlaid with golden wire. Across his shoulders was a cloak of white bearskin, a long pelt covering his upper arms and extending all the way to the ground. His boots were black, made from thick whaleskin and rising higher than his knees.

  He wore a golden plate across his chest, a metal disk so heavy that a strong human would have buckled under its weight. That breastplate was secured by four chains of thick golden links, extending over and under his shoulders to meet in the middle of his back. At his side, suspended by another heavy chain of gold, hung the Barkon Sword, sacred weapon of his ancestors. This keen blade, five feet long, had carved human and elven flesh since long before the First Dragon War.

  “Here, my prince,” declared one ogre, coming out of a village hut, a domicile slightly larger than the others. He bore a huge, dark pelt in his arms. “It is the skin of a black bear.”

  “A black bear?” Grimwar was fascinated. “Never have I seen the like.”

  The raider held up the fur, which trailed onto the ground even from the height of his upraised arms. The pelt was lush, luxuriously shiny and thick, so much so that the burly ogre strained from the weight of the massive skin.

  “It must have been a splendid animal,” the prince acknowledged. “That skin shall go in my cabin.”

&n
bsp; “Perhaps a trophy for the king?” Baldruk suggested.

  Grimwar snorted. “My father already has his trophy-a young wife!” He glowered at the thought.

  The dwarf smoothly adopted a new tack. “The prisoners of the Arktos from the other villages have spoken about their chieftain … he who bears the Black Bear cloak,” Baldruk Dinmaker reminded him. “The walrus-man said that this was the village of the chief. No doubt this robe is their talisman. Your capture of it is symbolic of your utter triumph.”

  “The tusker chief spoke truly,” said Grimwar. “The chieftain was slain here today, along with his warriors. We are told this is the last of their accursed villages, are we not?”

  “Yes, by the tusker, Urgas Thanoi.”

  “I believe he speaks the truth,” the prince said with a grim chuckle.

  “He’d better. Holding the tusker’s wives as hostage was a stroke of genius on Your Excellency’s part,” chortled the dwarf.

  “Indeed it was.” If the ogre prince had paused for reflection, he would have remembered that Baldruk Dinmaker had been the one to make that suggestion, but such introspection was not in Grimwar Bane’s, nor any ogre’s, nature. Instead, he cared only to bask in the glow of another successful raid. He turned and roared to two of his warriors standing at the foot of the galley’s ramp. “Bring me Urgas Thanoi!”

  In moments the walrus-man was hustled onto the shore. Urgas plodded across the beach on his great, flat feet. His tiny dark eyes glowered from the deep folded skin of his face. Two great tusks jutted from his mouth, but he made no move that could be taken as a threat. Even from five paces away, Grimwar Bane smelled the fishy stink of the barbaric creature. How he would be glad to be rid of that smell!