Darkness & Light

by Paul B. Thompson

  A cloud passed over the sun, and Sturm looked up. Darker clouds than that were coming. He could shout it from the rooftops, but the Palanthans wouldn't heed him. Life was good, why worry about war? Weren't the mountains high?

  Was not the bay patrolled by Palanthan galleys, armed and ready? Palanthas was safe, absolutely.

  But mountains and warships were no impediment to evil.

  The seed of that insidious force lay in every heart, in every act of greed and hatred. The land and the sea were merely highways over which ideas flowed as readily as the trade winds, and now the sky was open, too. The gnomes had proved that.

  The cloud moved on. Sturm shaded his eyes from the sun's glare and listened for the sound of beating wings.