"He went to tell you of our council," Silvanos explained, looking over the Elderwild's shoulder as if he expected Quithas to come trotting through the camp behind.
"He found me, but he said little about your council," Kagonos replied, watching as Silvanos frowned in puzzlement. "In truth, he came to kill me-and he nearly succeeded."
What?" The patriarch was clearly shocked. He squinted at the Elderwild in real suspicion. "I do not think you would lie to me, but 1 find this difficult to believe."
I believe," Balif said softly. "There was a look in Quithas's eyes when he departed. I thought it was grief over his son-but it seems, now, that it may have been murderous rage." He hung his head, then looked at Kagonos with genuine regret. "I'm sorry that I didn't send another to find you. We are all glad that he failed. You can trust that he will be punished."
Kagonos surprised them by laughing. "Your general will not be returning-not for punishment or for any other purpose," he declared, as the great leader stepped forward.
Silvanos sighed, his eyes narrowing. "Tell me everything that happened."
"General Quithas is dead. I killed him. His body lies beside the river. His head is somewhere on the plain."
Growls of outrage rose from the assembled elves. Silvanos grew suddenly pale, his voice tightening.
"I would have questioned him myself, seen justice served. Or has your own hatred made you mad? Do you commit murder, then come here to boast about it?"
"I defended myself-Quithas came to commit murder. He failed."
"But… why?" The elven statesman seemed honestly puzzled.
"It is proof of the divisions between your clan and mine-we are two peoples, not one!"
"No! There is time to change!" Silvanos disputed. "I have been speaking to your people of the benefits of life in Silvanesti, of the wonders of our cities. We shall set aside great preserves for you, where game dwells in plenty! You will have no need of your paint and your feathers-you will wear silks and perfume instead!"
"That war paint is our pride-it shows who we are," Kagonos retorted sharply.
"Your pride can rise to even greater heights with us! You elves, and your great clan-House Servitor-will become as mighty as any of-"
"House Servitor will lead us only to a future of humiliation and slavery! I will not take that road, nor will I lead my people there!" cried Kagonos.
Silvanos's face darkened. "Will you command them to follow you?" he demanded harshly knowing the Pathfinder had no power to give orders his people must obey.
"I make no commands-but I will lead them from this camp. Those who do not follow me, you are welcome to take back to your cities."
He remembered more of Darlantan's words-he must show them the way! Then he knew, and he lifted the spi- raled horn from its place at his side.
Kagonos raised the curling trumpet to his lips, eyes blazing as he stared across the upturned faces of his fellow Elderwild. The painted warriors shifted nervously, each dropping his own gaze rather than meet the burning rage of his Pathfinder.
The wild elf lowered the spiral instrument just a few inches, snapping his words in curt, decisive tones.
"I cannot-I will not-command you to follow me. Any Elderwild who chooses to accompany my esteemed kinsman to Silvanesti should do so! Fly to the walls of the cities-fly to the tables and windows and floors that will, for the rest of your days, form the borders of your lives!"
Again he raised the horn, and as he touched it to his mouth music began to flow. Notes rolled into the night with deep and resonant force, a sound unlike any horn ever carved. Indeed, it was more like the mournful, somber chant of some monstrously great creature.
A creature like a dragon.
He blew into the instrument, and the powerful sound rose, sweeping across the stunned Elderwild, washing over the suddenly stilled masses of the House Elves. Could they hear the music? Certainly they saw its effects. Silvanos himself, eyes wide with wonder, took a step forward and reached out a hand, as if he would hold and caress each blissfully poignant note.
The Pathfinder played without conscious thought. He did not know what he did to make the sound-rather, it was a kind of instinct that guided his music. The heart of the song, it seemed, came from the horn itself.
Kagonos paused for breath, and the notes died away, but again he touched his lips to the mouthpiece. As he blew, the sound rose anew, gaining pulse and tempo, surging upward from its minor key into a challenging chorus of a climbing scale. But still it did not make the sound of a horn.
The song had no words, but it painted vivid pictures in the minds of the Elderwild. The first notes created a background of trees, leafy branches rustling in the wind. A waterfall trilled somewhere, with music so cool that spray seemed to wash the skin of all the gathered wild elves.
Then the melody became a wind, singing of open skies, towering mountains, yawning chasms… and always new and wondrous trails. It was a song of endless pathfinding, tracks everywhere, choices unfettered by thoughts of borders, or houses, or cities.
Kagonos felt his skin tingling, as if the music had wrapped him into a cocoon of gentle, yet prickly, warmth. His war paint embraced him, emphasizing that heat like warm wax trickling, not uncomfortably, over his skin. With a sense of wonder, Kagonos lowered the horn and realized that the notes continued to expand, sweeping across the gathering and embracing all the elves-but most especially the Elderwild-in its subtle clasp.
The Pathfinder clasped the instrument as if it were his only anchor in a storm, and as the growing force of sound swept him up, he felt as though strong winds buffeted him, rendering his footing unsteady, his vision cloudy.
Why couldn't he see? Everywhere he turned Kagonos looked upon a bright aura, like a film of fire that sheathed him, screening him from observation. Only gradually did he realize that the flames were real, and that they were surging outward from him-from his skin.
Wonderingly, the Elderwild looked at his bare chest, seeing yellow flames licking higher, bright and lively as they sputtered from him. Still he felt no pain, but instead his sense of wonder seemed to grow. Gradually he understood that it was not his entire skin that burned, but only the places where war paint had been smeared upon his body.
As the flames died, his body rippled under dark, permanent tattoos-stains that perfectly matched the hawk and oak leaf pattern of Kagonos's war paint. His paint had become a part of himself, indelibly burned into his skin-marks that would, for the rest of his life, show him as a member of a different people than the House Elves of Silvanesti.
The flames, Kagonos saw, did not die away entirely. Instead they swirled outward, rising up in a great archway before the awestruck faces of his people.
Barcalla was the first to advance. The warrior held his head high and stepped through the archway. Immediately the paint on his dusky skin flared into life, the flames singing upward like the highest notes of the Ram's Horn. Before these flickering fires died away, others of the tribe had advanced, in pairs and trios, then as a great column, proudly walking through the fire, letting the tongues of flame embrace them.
By the time Barcalla's halo of fire died away, Kagonos saw that the warrior, too, had been permanently marked- also in the pattern of his war paint. As each wild elf advanced, the gentle cocoon of brightness took him, kissed his flesh, and left him with the marks of distinction that would forever show the rest of Krynn that this was a tribe of forest-dwellers, wild elves who shunned the enclosures of their kin. Kagonos knew that even if more nations of House Elves were formed, if Balif made his kingdom in the east, if other clans moved to the Kharolis forests in the west, the wild elves would remain wild and free.
The elves of Silvanesti stood aside to let Kagonos past. He looked once at Silvanos, and he did not see an enemy- but neither did he see a being who had any further meaning for him or for his tribes.
"Go, then, Kagonos," the patriarch said quietly, and even now the force of his words arrested the Elderwild chieftain, compelled him to listen.
"You have made your choice, and I must trust your wisdom. You lead your elves as one clan, now-a greater tribe than they have been before. No longer are you the Elderwild.
"In our songs, you shall be called the Kagonesti-and you shall ever be known as our kin."
The name was good, thought the Pathfinder, though its portent sent a slight shiver of apprehension along his spine. If he had not fully grasped the momentous nature of his decision, Silvanos's words made it quite clear.
Raising his head high, shouldering his weapon and letting the horn fall comfortably back to its position at his side, Kagonos felt a pleasant warmth from the tattoos that now marked his skin. The Pathfinder turned his face to the north, where the tree-lined foothills rose gently against the night sky.
And Kagonos led his people back to the forest, and to the woodlands beyond.
PART 2
Ashtaway
1019 PC (Third Dragon War)
Woodlands of Central Ansalon
Chapter 9
Forest of fire and fury
The dappled pattern of black ink on bronze skin rippled through shadowy underbrush. A very keen observer might have discerned the shape there, but only after careful scrutiny- and in the time needed for such an inspection, the stealthy figure would have vanished, moving smoothly on.
Ashtaway glided through the roughly wooded countryside. The Kagonesti looked upward, hazel eyes sweeping the surrounding crests of tree-lined bluffs and broken, rocky cliffs of granite bracketing these lower valleys. His skin, patterned in dark tattoos, blended with the underbrush even as he moved-he was an intrinsic part of the forest. Yet, for three days he'd been on the hunting trail, and it galled him now that he was still empty-handed as his steps carried him back toward the village.
Indeed, these valleys showed not the slightest promise of game-no tracks in the muddy trails, no padded bower where a doe and her fawn had bedded down, or even any sign of grazing on the supple spring shoots that began to green the woodlands. Shaldng his head in frustration, Ash decided to climb, hoping that the increased vistas along the rippling bluff line might give him the chance to see something, anything, that could offer a suggestion as to the whereabouts of game.
The rocky heights, in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, had been the hunting grounds of his tribe since the time, more than two thousand years ago, when the Kagon- esti had split from the elves of Silvanesti in the Great Sundering. The warriors of the wild elves tattooed their skin in black ink, as a sign of their permanent removal from the ranks of their civilized kinfolk. Ash bore a vivid imprint of an oak leaf enclosing his left eye, while on his chest was emblazoned the wide-winged silhouette of a hawk. He carried several weapons, including the strung bow in his hands, with a quiver of arrows and a long-hafted axe slung over his shoulder.
The wild elf reached the mouth of a scree-filled ravine and turned upward, grasping branches with his wiry hands, unerringly finding with his moccasins those rocks set securely in the midst of the loose gravel. Breathing easily, his longbow and quiver resting on his back, Ashtaway glided toward the ridge with the same fluidity of movement that had carried him through the forest shadows.
A wall of rock, perhaps thirty feet high, blocked the crest of the gully, and here the elf's progress slowed-but only slightly. Without halting, Ash started up the sheer face, picking his route as he went, seizing with his fingertips narrow holds, or perching his toes on outcrops barely a fraction of an inch wide.
Reaching the top, he jogged through open woodland, but despite the increasing vistas surrounding him, he saw no indication of any game worth his sleek, steel-tipped arrows. He passed through a sun-speckled meadow, barren of deer or wild pig. No elk grazed in the marshy saddle between two crests, nor did he hear or see sign of the great flocks of geese that were overdue to make their springtime migration.
Ashtaway thought of Hammana and felt a sense of urgency-he would love to impress the elf woman with fresh game, to see her eyes shining at him during the celebration feast, while Iydaway Pathfinder played his horn in joyous affirmation of the kill. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would consent to walk with him beside the lake-nothing in his knowledge could be finer than a few uninterrupted hours with the serene, gentle elfmaid.
Though she was younger than Ashtaway by several decades, Hammana had already proven herself to be a healer of great skill, renowned among the four tribes. Her father, Wallaki, was the shaman of the Bluelake Kagonesti, and he had shared his priestly arts with his daughter. Hammana had used her natural talents to ease the sufferings of countless wild elves afflicted by illness or injury. Despite her youth, Hammana possessed maturity and inherent grace in measures far beyond the other women of the tribe, and Ashtaway's heart pounded faster at the memory of her soft, impeccable beauty.
Hammana would indeed be proud if he brought back a fine deer or pig, but would it be more than pride that gave her eyes that alluring light? In the corner of his mind, Ashtaway hoped that another emotion dwelled there as well-and, slowly, over the course of the past few seasons, he had begun to believe that it did. The feeling between them was a truth pressing with increasing force toward the surface of his and, hopefully, her awareness.
Abruptly a shiver of alarm rippled along Ashtaway's shoulders and, for the first time in several hours, he froze.
He looked around at the steep bluffs rising in leonine majesty from the surrounding woods. Something unseen, but powerfully menacing, threatened to trouble this pastoral place. He thought he knew the nature of the threat, and he was afraid.
Ashtaway stood atop the summit of one of the granite precipices, concealed by lush undergrowth and a few large boulders. The place was familiar to him-indeed, the bluff's top had been one of his favorite overlooks since he had discovered it as an exploring youth nearly a hundred years before. Crouching, he examined the valley floor, and almost immediately the glint of sunlight on metal caught his eye. Expressionless, he watched a file of armored riders pass along a lowland trail, moving at an easy walk. Often the treetops concealed the horsemen from his view, but occasionally they passed through a meadow or along the shore of a rock-bordered lake, giving him ample time to study the interlopers.
He was very interested in the humans, but as he remembered his ripple of apprehension, he knew that they were not the thing whose presence had troubled the forest itself. Vet they still deserved watching. All of them were cloaked in metal clothes and rode steeds much larger than the other horses the Kagonesti had seen. The man in the lead carried a pennant bearing an insignia of a red rose.
Ashtaway suspected that the men might be Knights of Solamnia. During his rare contacts with the Qualinesti elves he had heard of the knights, surprised that even the haughty, long-lived House Elves spoke of them in not uncomplimentary terms. Tales of knightly discipline, bravery, and loyalty to an altruistic cause had impressed the young Kagonesti warrior, and now, given the chance to watch the mounted, armored warriors, he seized the opportunity with all of his woodland skill.
Of course, humans in general were the traditional enemies of his tribe. Ash had never personally battled them, but for centuries the older warriors had ceaselessly driven men from the forests whenever they had tried to build their towns or to cut their long, unnatural roadways. Many men had fallen to Kagonesti arrows, and not a few braves had felt the cut of human steel.
Ashtaway wondered about the purpose of this company's presence here. The column numbered several dozen men, each mounted on a horse the size of a bull elk. Clad all in metal, except for visors raised to expose their races, the knights must have been stiflingly hot. Yet none seemed to object, and indeed they held to that steady walk.
Again the Kagonesti felt a shiver of alarm, and now the menace had a familiar taste. Ashtaway looked skyward, кч his eyes sweep toward the distant horizons.
The first tangible sign of approaching danger was the shade flickering across the ground, dappling the sun- speckled waters of a lake where only a cloud shadow should be. Looking farther upward, Ash
taway saw a pair of young red dragons-not as massive as the hugest of their kind, but still terrifying. The wyrms searched for the knights, he sensed, and flew on a course that would take them directly over their enemies.
Ashtaway watched, fascinated, as the dragons swept closer. The knights had not observed the danger yet-a ract that could only test their mettle to the limit when battle was ultimately, suddenly, joined. As the file of riders entered a broad, wet clearing, the Kagonesti knew that the mutual discovery would soon occur.
The wild elf had experienced the awesome horror of dragons, and he fully expected the knights, when they saw the serpents, to tumble from their saddles and writhe in abject horror as the crimson wyrms dove toward them.
Of course, if the targets of the ambush had been Kagonesti, Ashtaway would have warned them of the danger. He could have shouted, tumbled free some large rocks, or flashed the silver-steel head of his axe in the sun.
Since these riders were only humans, however, the elven warrior decided to watch and see what would happen. True to his suspicions, the dragons and the knights quickly spotted each other. With a shrill screech of triumph, the two reds tucked their wings, racing downward m an awe-inspiring dive.
Expectantly Ashtaway turned back to the knights, wondering if they would topple from their horses in panic or simply flee headlong through the woods. Surprisingly, they did neither. The first of the men shouted a harsh command, audible even to the distant elf-indeed, Ash was impressed by the lack of hysteria in the sound.
Immediately the knights scattered, individual riders racing toward the scant shelter of nearby trees. As the lead dragon, still shrieking, plunged landward, silver shafts sparkled in the sun. Some of the knights had crossbows, and they released their missiles with uncanny speed and accuracy. The serpent's cries took on a shrill, painful note, and the broad wings shifted to carry it off to the side. Flying awkwardly, the wyrm settled with a splash of muddy water to the marshy ground in the center of the clearing.
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