Darkness & Light

by Paul B. Thompson

  The tree-folk made straight for the village keep. Sturm, Kitiara, and the gnomes fell in behind them. Closer to the village, they saw signs of damage to the walls and gardens.

  Something had battered down a long section of wall, and a crib full of yellow fruit shaped like corkscrews had been plundered. Slippery pulp and seeds were splashed all over the place.

  The tree-men's leader, the one Kitiara had cut, halted before the door of the keep. The gate consisted of overlapping slabs of red glass, hanging from hinges of the same material. The tree-man boomed, "King! Men, iron come."

  Without waiting for any reply, the tree-man leaned on the gate, and it swung in. The tree-man did not enter himself, but stood back, and with a sweep of his arm indicated that the visitors should go in.

  Kitiara slipped in, her back pressed against the rough stone wall. With a practiced eye for danger, she surveyed the scene. The interior was well lit, as it had no roof. The walls rose ten feet and slanted in, but no thatch or shingles kept out the sun. The room she'd entered was actually a corridor, branching off to the left and right. The facing wall was blank, though smoothly plastered with gritty mortar painted white.

  "It's clear," she reported. Her voice was taut and low.

  Sturm let the gnomes enter.

  "Man." Sturm looked up at the impassive eyes of the tree-man. "Iron king. Him." It pointed left.

  "I understand. Thank you." The tree-man tapped his long, jointed finger on the gate and Sturm pushed it shut.

  "Our host will be found down the left corridor," he said.

  "Everyone, be on your guard!" Kitiara moved to the end of the line, steeled for signs of treachery. The hall turned right and widened. The high walls and lack of ceiling made Sturm feel as if he were in a maze.

  They came upon an unexpectedly familiar artifact: a low, thick door made of oak and strapped with iron hinges. This relic leaned against the wall. Fitter peeked behind it.

  "It doesn't lead anywhere," he said.

  "There's something familiar about it," mused Cutwood.

  "You silly loon, of course it's familiar. You've seen doors before!" said Bellcrank.

  "No, it's the style that's familiar. I have it! This is a ship's door!" he announced.

  "It's not from the Cloudmaster, is it?" Sturm said, alarmed.

  "No, this door is oak, the Cloudmaster's are pine."

  "Now how would a ship's door get on the red moon?"

  Wingover asked rhetorically. Cutwood was composing an answer when Kitiara shooed him on.

  They passed more debris from their world: empty kegs, clay pots and cups, tatters of canvas and scraps of leather, a rusty, broken cutlass. Some coils of rope were identified by an eager Roperig as ship's cordage made in southern Ergoth.

  Excitement mounted as more and more tantalizing things cropped up.

  The corridor turned right again, this time into a wide room. There, standing by an overturned wooden chair, was a man. A genuine man, short and scrawny. He was dressed in a dirty tan vest and cut-off pants, rope sandals, and a peaked canvas cap. His face was dirty and his gray-streaked beard came down almost to his stomach.

  "Heh, heh, heh," rasped the man. "Visitors at last. I've been wanting visitors for a long, long time!"

  "Who are you?" asked Sturm.

  "Me? Me? Why, I'm the King of Lunitari," proclaimed the tattered scarecrow.

  Chapter 14

  Rapaldo the First

  "You don't believe me," said the self-proclaimed monarch.

  "You hardly conform to the stereotypical archetype," said Sighter. The king of Lunitari cocked his head.

  "What'd you say?" he asked.

  "You don't look like a king," Sturm interpreted.

  "Well I am! Rapaldo the First, mariner, shipwright, and absolute ruler of the red moon, that's me." He approached the band in a nervous, hesitant shuffle. "Who are you?"

  The gnomes eagerly pushed themselves up to King Rapaldo, shaking hands in quick succession and rattling off the shorter versions of their impossibly long names.

  Rapaldo's eyes glazed over from the barrage.

  Sturm cleared his throat and gently steered Fitter, the last gnome, away from the bewildered man. "Sturm Brightblade of Solamnia," he said of himself.

  Kitiara stepped forward and pushed back her fur collar.

  Rapaldo gasped aloud. "Kitiara Uth Matar," she said.

  "L-Lady," Rapaldo stammered. "I have not seen a real lady in many, many years."

  "I'm not sure you're seeing one now," Kitiara said with a laugh. Rapaldo gently took her hand. He held it carefully, looking at the back and palm with embarrassing intentness.

  Kitiara's hands were not refined or delicate. They were the strong, supple hands of a warrior. Rapaldo's reverent interest amused her.

  As if suddenly aware that he was being foolish, Rapaldo dropped Kitiara's hand and drew himself up to his full height - not much more than five and a half feet - and announced, "If you would follow me to the royal audience hall, I'll hear the story of your coming here, and tell the tale of my own shipwreck." He went back to his overturned chair and righted it. "This way," said the king of Lunitari.

  They followed Rapaldo through a series of mostly empty rooms, all open to the sky. What furniture there was had a nautical cast to it, here a seaman's chest, there a railed captain's chair. Other bits of ship were hung on the wall. A brass hawse pipe liner, some loops of anchor chain, a lathe-turned rail studded with iron spikes.

  Bellcrank tugged on Sturm's sleeve. "Metal," he whispered. "Lots of it."

  "I see it," Sturm said calmly.

  "This way. This way," Rapaldo said, gesturing.

  The very center of the keep was the audience hall, a square room ten yards wide. When Rapaldo entered, a half dozen tree-men snapped glass spears to their nonexistent shoulders in salute. They hooted in unison three times, and dropped their spears to a ported position.

  "My palace guard," Rapaldo said with pride.

  "Are they intelligent?" asked Wingover.

  "Not like you and I are. They learn things I teach them, remember orders, and such like, but they weren't civilized when I first came here."

  At the far end of the room, a crude throne was set up, a high-backed chair mounted on a thick rectangle of ruby glass. The chair had obviously been cobbled together from ship's timbers; the peg holes from the trenails were still visible.

  Rapaldo hopped upon the glass pedestal and picked up his scepter from the seat of the chair. He turned around and sat down with a sigh, laying the emblem of his office in the crook of his arm. It was a broadhead axe.

  "Hear ye, hear ye. The royal court of Lunitari may begin,"

  Rapaldo recited in a high-pitched voice. He coughed once, and his skinny chest convulsed. "I, King Rapaldo the First, am present and speaking.

  "In honor of the unexpected guests who have arrived today, I, King Rapaldo, will relate the marvelous tale of my coming to this place." Roperig and Fitter, sensing that a long story was beginning, sat down.

  Rapaldo leaped to his feet. "You will stand in the presence of the king!" he shouted, punctuating the command with a sweep of his scepter-axe. The two gnomes stood with alacrity. Rapaldo shivered with fury. "Those who do not show respect will be removed by the Royal Guard!"

  Sturm flashed Kitiara a knowing look. She bowed and said, "Forgive us, Your Majesty. We've not been in the presence of a king for quite some time."

  Her intervention had an almost magical effect. Rapaldo relaxed and sat on his wooden throne again. There was a distinct clink as he did so. Sturm spied a glint of chain around his waist.

  "Better, better. What's a king without subjects who pay him respect? A captain without a ship, a ship without a rudder? Ta-ra!" Rapaldo gripped the arms of his throne tightly for a moment. "It's been t-ten years since last I spoke to another human being," he said. "If I rattle and prattle, lay it to that fact."

  He drew a deep breath. "I was born the son and grandson of sailors, on the island of Enstar, in
the Sirrian Sea. My father was slain by Kernaffi pirates when I was but a lad, and the day the word came home, I ran away to sea. I learned to use the axe and adze."

  Cutwood heard this and squirmed to comment. Sighter and Wingover both put hands over his mouth.

  "The trade of the shipwright built a man out of a boy, heh, heh, and as the summers passed, I stopped going to sea and stayed ashore on Enstar, making craft that plied the wide green ocean." The royal axe slid down to Rapaldo's lap.

  "Had I stayed a land-bound shipwright, though, I would not now be the royal person you see before you." A frayed sleeve slipped off his bony shoulder. Absently, Rapaldo replaced it. "I would not now be on this moon," he muttered. "A prosperous ship owner named Melvalyn hired me to sail with him to southern Ergoth. Melvalyn planned to buy timber to build a new fleet of merchant ships, and he wanted an expert along to grade the available wood. We were to depart from Enstar for Daltigoth on the third day of autumn, an ill-starred day. The soothsayer, Dirazo, the one I always consulted for times of good luck and bad, parleyed with the dark spirits and pronounced the sailing date as damned by the rise of Nuitari, the black moon. I tried to beg off, but Melvalyn insisted the voyage begin as planned.

  Heh, heh, old Melvalyn learned what it means to disregard the omens! Yes, he learned!

  "Cold, contrary winds from the southeast blew us west of Ergoth. We tacked and tacked, but made little headway against the Kharolis Blow. Then, four days out to sea, the wind died. We were becalmed.

  "There's not a more helpless feeling than being at sea with no wind. Melvalyn tried all the tricks, wetting the sails, kedging with the anchors, and such like, but we didn't move enough to measure. The sky sort of closed in on us, fish-eye gray, and then the father of all storms broke on us."

  Rapaldo, caught up in his own monologue, stood abruptly. He made swift, jerky gestures to illustrate his story.

  "The sea, it was running like this, and the wind, it was blowing like this -" His hands swung in from opposite directions and clashed in front of his face. "Rain was screeching over the deck flat sideways. The Tarvolina, that was our ship, lost her topmast and yards straight away. And then, and then, it came down and grabbed us." Rapaldo stepped upon his throne and crouched, his head ducked to protect himself from the memory.

  "What was it?" Rainspot burst out unwittingly. Rapaldo, waiting for this cue, didn't get angry this time.

  "A waterspout," he said, shivering. "A mighty, twisting column of water a hundred feet wide at the bottom! It sucked up the Tarvolina like a dry leaf, and we went right through the hollow middle of it, up and up and up! Some of the sailors got scared and jumped overboard. Those that jumped down the middle fell all the way back to the sea, miles and miles, but those that hit the wall of twisting water

  ..." Rapaldo stamped his foot on the chair. All the gnomes jumped in fright. "They were ripped to pieces. Might as well have jumped into an ocean of knife blades." The metaphor seemed to please him, for he smiled. For all his scruffiness, the king of Lunitari had a fine set of straight white teeth.

  "The waterspout carried us so high that the blue went out of the sky. Only six men out of the full crew of twenty lived to the funnel's end. The waterspout turned inside out, and dropped the Tarvolina upside down, here on Lunitari."

  King Rapaldo hopped down to the glass throne base. His shaggy eyebrows closed in over his dark brown eyes.

  "Three men survived the shipwreck: Melvalyn, Darnino, the navigator, and Rapaldo the First. Melvalyn had a broken leg, and died not long after. Darnino and I almost starved, until we learned to eat the plants that grow by day and drink the dew that collects in the red turf at night."

  That's something we didn't know, Sturm thought.

  "Darnino and I stayed together until we met the Oud-ouhai, the tree-people. The tree-folk had never seen men before, and they took us for their dread enemies -" Here Rapaldo paused. He peered at each member of the group in turn. "Anyway, there was a fight, and Darnino was killed.

  The Lunitarians were about to kill me, too, when I raised my axe." He suited the action to the words. "And they were so awestruck that they proclaimed me oem-owa-oya, supreme ruler of them all and wielder of the holy iron."

  Rapaldo finished his story with a giggle. Unmindful of the guards standing nearby, he added, "The worthless savages had never seen metal before! They figured it must have come from the gods, and that I was a holy messenger sent to look after them."

  "Have the Lunitarians no metal of their own?" asked Bellcrank.

  "There's no metal on the whole bloody moon, as near as I can tell," said Rapaldo. He flopped into his throne and adjusted his ragged clothes with extreme care and dignity.

  "Now I would hear of your own coming," he said loftily.

  Wingover started to speak, but the king rapped the side of his axe on the throne. "Let the lady tell it."

  Kitiara unhooked her sword belt and stood the weapon, in its sheath, before her. She leaned on the sword and told the tale of how she and Sturm had met the gnomes in the rainstorm, the flight to the red moon, their expedition, and the theft of the Cloudmaster.

  "Heh, heh, heh," Rapaldo laughed. "You can't leave things lying about unguarded, not even on Lunitari. The Micones have taken your craft."

  "Micones?"

  "The enemies I spoke of. The Oud-ouhai have no predators to fear, as there are no animals on Lunitari, only plants.

  But the Micones, when directed, are a plague indeed."

  "But what are they?" asked Kitiara.

  "Ants."

  "Ants?" said Sighter.

  "Giant ants," said Rapaldo. "Six feet of solid rock crystal.

  The magic in this moon gives them the power to move and work, but they haven't got a single brain among them."

  "Who - or what - directs these Micones?" asked Sturm.

  The king of Lunitari shrank from the question. "I've never seen it," he said evasively, "though I once heard it speak."

  Sturm saw Kitiara ball a fist in frustration. Rapaldo's quirky behavior was getting on her nerves. She relaxed her hand slowly and said as evenly as her temper would allow,

  "Who is their mastermind, Your Majesty?"

  "The Voice in the Obelisk. Some ten miles from my palace sits a great stone obelisk five hundred feet or more high. It's hollow, and a demon dwells within. It speaks in a sweet voice to the Micones, who live in a burrow under the base.

  The demon never comes out of its tower, and I've never gone in to see it."

  "And these Micones have taken our ship?" asked Sturm.

  "Did I not say it?" Rapaldo answered sulkily. "Two nights ago, a host of crystal ants marched past in the dark. They tore down one of our walls to clear a path. Evil, I tell you -

  they could've walked around. It must have been your craft that they were carrying."

  "Why didn't your warriors oppose them?"

  "Because they are trees, after all! When the sun sets, they root themselves where they stand and feed all night long.

  Only with the coming of day can they shake off the dirt and walk about." Rapaldo popped up again. He directed a glare at Sturm. "Your manners are impertinent! I won't answer any more questions." The shrillness left his voice and he added, "We are tired. You may leave us now. If you follow the corridor to the right, you will find rooms you can sleep in."

  Kitiara and Sturm bowed, the gnomes waved, and the group filed out of the audience hall. A tree-man led the way.

  "What did you think of that!" Kitiara said in a loud whisper.

  "Later," Sturm replied softly. The roofless walls were no guarantee of privacy.

  Along the corridor that Rapaldo had mentioned, they found a series of niches. Some were filled with more wreckage of the lost Tarvolina, others were empty. The tree-man indicated that the empty niches were their "rooms," then departed.

  The gnomes shrugged off their packs and set to work making as much noise and confusion as seven gnomes could make. Sturm pulled Kitiara aside.

  "I fear tha
t His Majesty is a bit out of the weather," Sturm whispered.

  "He's as crazy as a bug chaser."

  "That's another way to say it, yes. But Kit, we need him to take us to this obelisk, if that's where the giant ants have taken the Cloudmaster. So we'll have to humor his royal pose to keep his good will, at least till we leave."

  "I'd like to give him a good shaking," she said. "That's what he needs."

  "Use your head, Kit. There are probably hundreds of tree-men around, all loyal to King Rapaldo. How do we kill a tree'? Even with your increased strength, all you did was cut a chunk out of one of them."

  "You're right," she said. Her expression darkened. "I'll tell you something else: He's wearing mail under those rags. I heard it clink when he sat down. There are two reasons for people to wear mail - when they know they're going to be attacked, or when they think they're going to be attacked.

  Mad he may be, but old Rapaldo is afraid of something."

  She tapped a finger on Sturm's chest. "I say it's us."

  "Why us?"

  "'Cause we're human, and we've got metal of our own, which probably confuses the Lunitarians to death. Most of all, we're younger, bigger, and stronger than His Majesty."

  "Oh, let him be king of the tree-men, if he wants. If Rapaldo's afraid of anything, it's this mysterious demon of the obelisk. Have any ideas about it?"

  "On this crazy moon, it could be anything, but if the demon's got Stutts and the others with the flying ship, he'd better be prepared to give them over, or face a fight!"

  Fitter appeared with two steaming bowls. "Dinner," said the gnome. "Pink spears and mushroom gills seasoned with puffball dust." Fitter handed over the bowls and returned to his colleagues.

  They ate their food in silence for a while. Sturm said at last, "I've been thinking about when we get back to Krynn."

  "Optimist," she said. "What were you thinking?"

  "If my visions so far have been true, then the first thing I should do is go to my ancestral home. It may be that my father secreted his sword there somewhere. He may also have left me a clue as to where he was going."