The Puppet King

by Doug Niles

  Only then did Gilthas notice that the knights had fought their way out of the intersection and were charging toward the elves. The vanguard of the Qualinesti stood aside, fighting as a rear guard as Salladac’s men spilled through the gates.

  Finally the elves, too, fell back, and once again the gates were closed and barred.

  “Good work,” declared the Dark Knight lord, gasping for breath and wiping the soot from his brow. “I thought we were lost out there.”

  “What’s the use?” growled Gilthas, still horrified by the gruesome end of the man who had brought him to Qualinesti. He had hated Rashas on some level, but in another sense, the elder senator’s demise was profoundly unsettling. “We’re trapped in here. It just might take a little longer to reach the end.”

  “Then at least we can die with honor,” declared Lord Salladac.

  Great swaths of the forests were burned and blackened, with destruction spreading to the far horizon. The vast formation of griffons, dragons, and elves flew above tortured, blistered landscapes, often veering away from the plumes of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ground. In other places, trees had been felled as if by an angry giant, a great swath of shattered timber that had been plowed through the woods by a force of unimaginable and unspeakably chaotic power.

  Scouts on griffon-back reported that the shadowy attackers at the base of Splintered Rock were not pursuing. Even so, Porthios maintained the vigorous speed of his flight. He felt a deep, fundamental fear for his land, even for the city elves who had branded him an outlaw.

  Alhana, still bearing Silvanoshei in his tai-thall, flew beside him, her face an image of taciturn strength and desperate determination. Every time he looked at her, Porthios felt his heart breaking as guilt assailed him with the knowledge of the trials his wife and child were subjected to. Samar flew just beyond, his silver-tipped lance extended.

  Porthios used his knees to guide Stallyar over, until the silver-feathered griffon flew right beside the warrior-mage. The prince looked over his shoulder, saw that Alhana was some distance away, and spoke to his old comrade in a low voice.

  “My friend, I want to talk to you before this battle.”

  “Speak, my prince,” Samar replied, raising an eyebrow in surprise but keeping his own voice quiet as well.

  “If this fight goes wrong—for me, that is—if I am lost, I want you to pledge your protection to your queen. Please protect her with all the loyalty you have displayed through the years—and please extend that loyalty and protection to my son as well.”

  Samar’s eyes widened, but he quickly nodded. “Aye, my prince. You have my pledge.”

  Porthios rode along in silence, wrestling with the rest of what he wanted to say. Finally he cleared his throat. “It may be that I have been unfair to you … that I have allowed unworthy suspicions to color my feelings and my actions. If so, I am sorry. I know that your affection for my wife has been noble and pure.”

  Now it was Samar’s turn to be flustered. He looked down at his saddle, then back to Porthios. “I told you once that before you came to Silvanesti I think I was a little bit in love with her. Perhaps that has not changed in all these years.”

  The prince nodded. “Even so, I know that your actions have always been those of an honorable man.”

  “You are correct, my lord, and I thank you for your trust.”

  “You are worth far more,” Porthios replied, once more clearing his throat awkwardly. “Now let us go to war.”

  Finally they reached Qualinost, and they found the city all but engulfed in flames. Columns of smoke rose into the sky from many places, and the skyline of the elven metropolis had been altered almost beyond recognition. Many of the silver and marble towers had been felled, and the bridges that had flanked the edges of the city now lay as twisted wreckage in the deep ravines.

  At least the Tower of the Sun still stood, though several fires burned nearby. Sounds of battle rang throughout the city, and with frantic haste, the elves of the outlaw force soared over the deep ravines, winging into the polluted air over the city.

  “There!” cried Dallatar, pointing toward a cluster of walled courtyards near the city’s fringe. They saw a battle raging, with elves trapped in the crude fortifications while shadows seethed outside and fire dragons surged through the air overhead.

  Porthios led Stallyar and the other griffon riders through the air. The formation, bright with white wings, spread across the sky, angling downward into the besieged city.

  “Look, we have new hope!” cried Kerian, seizing Gilthas by the arm and pointing upward.

  He gaped as the sky overhead filled with griffons, many of them ridden by elves. The fliers soared into battle, slashing through the fire dragons. One of the elves bore a dragonlance, and with the silver-tipped weapon, he speared one of the flaming serpents, ripping the creature into two pieces.

  Then there were more dragons there, wyrms of white and green diving from the clouds, rending the fire dragons with breath of lethal frost and thick, toxic clouds of emerald smoke. These serpents roared and attacked in vengeful fury, diving into the aerial melee without hesitation.

  Other griffons came to rest within the walls of the courtyard. Elves, including many Kagonesti, dismounted from them. Another flier came to rest nearby, and Gilthas saw a familiar figure on the creature’s back.

  “Alhana!” cried Laurana, recognizing the elf woman at the same time. She helped the queen to dismount, gingerly assisting with the baby, who rode silent and wide-eyed in his tai-thall.

  The two females hugged in teary relief as Gilthas joined them. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he said. “Did the prince come with you?”

  The Queen of Silvanesti pointed to the skies, where griffons wheeled and screeched between dragons of fire and scale. “There—he leads the warriors.”

  “I see!” cried Gilthas as a silver-feathered griffon slashed into combat with a blazing dragon. Horrified, he gasped, then whispered to himself. “By Paladine, be careful, Uncle!”

  Alhana, with Silvanoshei held against her heart, gasped as her husband rode his griffon into the attack. She scarcely seemed to breathe as she watched the spectacle of horror and destruction that sprawled through the skies above the once-splendid city. The griffons dived and whirled, aided by chromatics breathing frost and clouds of lethal gas.

  From below, a serpent of flame arose, trailing sparks, vengefully roaring as it gained altitude, and the elven prince on his griffon turned to do battle. Arrows flicked through the sky, apparently vanishing into the fiery aura of the dragon’s burning nature.

  The dragon opened its mouth, and a blossom of fire erupted. Alhana screamed as the fire surrounded the silver-feathered griffon. Porthios and Stallyar disappeared into the hellish cloud. The flames crackled and boiled, roaring with the heat of a coal furnace, lingering in the air for a long time.

  Moments later the limp forms of a griffon and an elf tumbled out of the flames, falling toward the ground in a lifeless plummet. The queen’s scream was still echoing around her as the charred body of her husband vanished into the smoldering heat of the ravine beyond the city.

  Aerensianic saw the silver-feathered griffon perish in the grasp of the blazing serpent, and the green dragon was filled with a rage as powerful as it was inexplicable. He flew into the battle with a roar, ignoring the pain as his talons and fangs ripped through the fire dragon. He wanted to avenge the elven prince, to hurt this Chaos dragon who had slain the enemy that Aeren had once tried, and failed, to kill.

  Toxyria flew at his side, and she, too, slashed at the wyrm of flame. The creature, lethally torn, tumbled lifelessly to the ground.

  Two more fire dragons dived from above, and Aeren bellowed in fear as he saw the female vanish in a cloud of boiling, churning flame. With a white dragon flying at his side, he flew against the diving pair, and in moments both wyrms fell, their flames permanently doused by the violent attacks of the vengeful chromatics.

  But it was too late for Toxy. Her win
gs charred to ash, she tumbled from the sky. Her yellow eyes fastened one last time upon Aerensianic. In bleak and helpless horror, he watched her smash into the ground with bone-crushing force.

  He plummeted after, coming to rest beside her shattered form. She lay broken and battered, sprawled across a wide street, and he nuzzled her neck, her nostrils, desperate for some hint of breath, of vitality.

  But he was too late. She was already dead.

  Charging humans and elves swept forward, and the last of the shadows vanished under magical steel. At last Gilthas looked at a sky that was vacant of fiery serpents. A final daemon warrior wailed, pierced by lance and sword, and then the creatures of Chaos were gone.

  Humans and elves gasped for breath and looked at each other as if mystified by the end of the battle. Griffons began to land all around them, and even dragons of green and white came to rest in the city of the elves. Those serpents, Gilthas saw, were gathered around a motionless green shape that had tumbled to the ground about a block away.

  Of Porthios Solostaran, there was no sign.

  A few minutes later Samar landed. His dragonlance was seared and scorched but, like the elven warrior-mage himself, intact.

  “The prince apparently fell into the stream in the bed of the ravine,” he said grimly. “I fear that his body was washed away.”

  Alhana pressed a hand to her mouth but made no sound. Laurana wrapped her arms around her brother’s widow, pulling her close, and for long moments, the two women stared wordlessly at the sky, at the expanse of the ruined city.

  “He died for us all,” said the queen.

  “And he will be remembered as a hero of elvenkind,” Laurana added, “who sacrificed his life in our darkest hour.”

  The Dark Knight lord came over to the elves, stopping to face Gilthas.

  “We have won—the day is ours,” Salladac said, placing a hand on the elf’s shoulder. “You are a hero of Krynn. Word of your deeds this day shall be carried to Lord Ariakan at once.”

  “Perhaps our battle, and the loss of Porthios and all those brave warriors, will not be in vain. Perhaps the Storms of Chaos have been halted, held at bay.”

  “No doubt my lord will send word about matters in the rest of Krynn,” agreed Salladac.

  “Your Lord … Ariakan. He still fancies himself the master of Qualinesti, no doubt,” Gilthas replied.

  “Fancies himself, and is that master in fact,” Salladac said. “We have a treaty, you may recall.”

  Gilthas gestured to the ruins that lay scattered about the base of the Tower of the Sun. “A treaty signed by a senate that no longer exists,” he observed.

  “But a treaty signed, nonetheless,” declared the lord, still calm. His dark eyes remained focused, unblinking, on the Speaker of the Sun.

  In contrast, the young elf felt his temper slipping. They were surrounded by hundreds of elves and only a fraction that many Dark Knights, and he couldn’t abide this man talking to him as if Qualinesti was still a conquered realm. “Perhaps this is the time to overthrow the invaders,” he said, trying to bluster.

  Salladac sighed. He, too, made a gesture, one that encompassed the green and white dragons who lolled, licking their wounds but still an obvious presence, up the street. “They, as well as we humble knights, are servants of her Dark Majesty. Would you care to ignite another battle so soon on the heels of the last?”

  “Please, man and elf,” said Laurana, quietly advancing to take her son’s arm. “This is not the time for starting a new war. Look around you, at the devastation and the death. Look even to the sky.”

  Gilthas did, and he saw that the scorching sun had barely begun to inch its way toward the horizon.

  “Can’t you see?” Laurana continued. “Krynn is entering a new age. Would you have the histories record that you two welcomed that age with an act of war? Our survival has been attained because you worked and fought together. Surely you can continue that cooperation, make it your legacy for the future!”

  The Speaker of the Sun looked at the human lord and heard his mother’s words. There would be room for both of them in Qualinesti, he saw. There would have to be, for he could not bring his nation into another war.

  Salladac, too, felt the same, for he extended his hand in a gesture of peace.

  Gilthas reached forward and took that hand, and the new age of the world began.

  Epilogue

  “It is time I returned to my homeland,” Alhana said. She bore the baby in the tai-thall. She and Samar were prepared to mount their griffons as the animals pranced restlessly on the outskirts of the city.

  “If we find Porthios … his remains, I mean,” Laurana said tenderly, “he will be buried with honors, and we’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you, Sister.” Alhana sighed. “Silvanesti will be suffering under Konnal, I fear. With my husband dead, there remains nothing for me here—and it may be that I can do some good in the land of my birth.”

  “I bid you farewell, my queen,” Gilthas said.

  “And may good fortune greet you in the land of your father,” Laurana added.

  The two watched the griffons as they soared into the sky, finally vanishing into the east. Kerian’s arm tightened around Gilthas, and he turned toward the city and his new life as the king of the elves.

  The wild elf warrior found the charred body in the stream. Aided by the poultices prepared by his wife, he carried the badly injured prince back to a streamside cave. For long weeks, he tended him, nursing him first to consciousness, and then to the point where the elven prince could move.

  “My face,” groaned the prince, staring with horror at his reflection in the stream. “I am a freak, a monster.”

  “Come,” Dallatar said, helping Porthios to make his way onto the winding, shaded trail. “Your home is in the forest now.”

  “And I turned my back on that world and came here to live out my life in solitude and peace,” Aeren said. “I crept into my cave and slept”—he looked at Samar with narrowed eyes—“and slept well, until you poked me with that accursed spear.”

  “We shall leave you to that peace, dragon,” said Silvanoshei. “I thank you for your story.”

  He reached forward and touched a talon of the great foot. “I am sorry for the loss of Toxyria,” he added quietly.

  “I, too,” said Aeren, lowering his head.

  Only after a long pause, many heartbeats of reflection, did the two elves rise and make their way out of the cavern, back to the world of sun and sky and sea.

  About the Author

  Douglas Niles has been involved in the DRAGONLANCE® line since its inception, with novels including The Last Thane, Fistandantilus Reborn, The Dragons, The Kagonesti, Emperor of Ansalon, The Kinslayer War, and Flint the King (with Mary Kirchoff). In total he has authored more than two dozen novels, including Darkwalker on Moonshae, the first book in Wizards of the Coast’s FORGOTTEN REALMS® series.

  Recently he has finished the Watershed trilogy, an epic fantasy series published by Ace Fantasy. He is currently at work on a World War II alternate history novel called Fox on the Rhine (to be published by TOR), as well as another fantasy series from Ace about a unique cosmos known as the Seven Circles.

  Niles is also known for his many game designs, including award-winning board games based on several of Tom Clancy’s bestselling novels. He is a lifelong Wisconsin resident and lives in the boondocks with his wife Chris and their two children.

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