The History of Krynn: Vol I

by Dragon Lance

  Still grinning, Pakito handed her a waterskin, and she ducked back into his tent. Amero had to laugh. “Now I understand. You’ve taken a mate!”

  “Been taken, more like. I’ve always been a stumbling ox when it came to women, but Samtu wouldn’t let me go.” He flung a boot high in the air and yelled for the simple joy of it. The boot came down on a nearby sleeping nomad, who bounced up, cursing. From inside the tent, Samtu groaned and told Pakito to shut up.

  “Sounds like love to me,” Amero said, and with a wave, moved toward Nianki’s tent.

  With much groaning, coughing, and cursing, the nomads roused themselves from their latest stupor. A general cry for water went up, and this time there wasn’t enough to go round. Several blinking, stumbling plainsfolk made their way down to the lake, where they fell on their bellies and lapped up the cold water.

  Reaching his sister’s tent, Amero called out to her. Nomads lying nearby cursed at him. He ignored them, saying, “Nianki, are you here?”

  “Yes,” was her low reply.

  He lifted the flap and squatted down to look inside. Nianki was sitting up, her back to the opening. She wore only a thigh-length doeskin shirt. Her long hair was tangled and matted.

  “Nianki?”

  “Amero.” She did not turn to greet him.

  “Are you well?”

  She hung her head. “I had a strange dream,” she murmured. “I thought it was a dream, but I’m awake and it’s still going on.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Her tanned face seemed quite pale, and he could see dark circles under her eyes, even in the dimness of the shelter.

  He knelt in the opening, his back holding the flap up and letting daylight in. “Your people were at it again last night,” he said. “Are you well? I haven’t seen you since the feast.”

  “Come inside, Amero. Let the flap down.”

  He crawled in. It was close and steamy inside the small tent, and very dark. A few narrow beams of light penetrated through small holes in the hide.

  “Something happened to me,” Nianki said. She still sat with her back to him.

  “What? Are you ill?”

  “Not... not in the usual way.” She drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out slowly. “Amero, do you believe we are brother and sister?”

  A strange and surprising question. “Of course,” he said.

  “Is it possible our memories are wrong, that we’re not related at all?” Her voice sounded taut, almost desperate.

  He settled down on the ground and stared at her hunched shoulders, barely visible in the sultry shadows. Her questions confused him, but her tone told him this was important to her. “Our memories match,” he said. “Our experiences are the same up to the day the yevi attacked us, all those years ago.”

  “But suppose we’re not really siblings – suppose you were a baby found abandoned on the savanna. What if that were true, and Oto and Kinar just the people who raised you and not the parents of your body?”

  Confusion became shock. “What are you telling me? Am I not your brother?”

  She turned suddenly and seized his hands in her own. Her eyes were dark and troubled as she whispered, “What if it were true?”

  He looked down at her rough hands, gripping his with fervor. “I’d be very surprised,” he said lamely. “All I remember from my childhood is Oto, Kinar, Menni, and you. If I were a taken-up babe, I wouldn’t know it unless I was told.” He slowly raised his eyes to hers. She was weeping, soundlessly. He’d never seen Nianki cry before, not even as a child.

  “You’re only two years older than me,” he went on. “How could you remember when I was born, much less found?”

  Nianki dropped her hands and turned away again. “You weren’t found, Amero,” she muttered. “You are my brother.”

  His head was spinning. He felt like the victim of a prank, only the prankster was weeping at him instead of laughing.

  “What’s this all about?” he demanded. “Why are you acting so strangely?”

  She scrubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands, taking in deep draughts of air as though to clear her head. “It’s nothing,” she said, sounding stern again. “Too much wine and too many bad dreams.”

  Amero got up on one knee. “I’d say the same things were afflicting your band,” he said. “All but Pakito.” He explained how the strapping warrior and Samtu had come together.

  “Good,” she said, quite clearly. “A man needs a good mate.”

  Shouts erupted outside, hoarse male and female voices. Amero stood and flung back the tent flap. Nomads were running past Nianki’s tent toward a small crowd gathering at the edge of the village. The loud, angry voices came from there.

  Sighing, he said, “There’s been nothing but trouble between your people and mine, since the feast. If this keeps up...” He left the thought unfinished and hurried away to the disturbance. Nianki followed, still clad in the long, doeskin tunic, shading her eyes against the hazy daylight.

  Amero worked his way through a hostile crowd of nomads. They were massed around the house of Hulami the vintner. At first Amero thought they were blaming Hulami’s wine for their pounding heads and raging thirst, but when he got closer, he discovered they were besieging her with requests for more wine.

  Hulami was backed up against her own door. Her two apprentices stood on either side of her, stout stirring paddles held up like clubs. Amero recognized the man yelling at her as Tarkwa, one of Nianki’s leading warriors.

  “Whatta ya mean, you won’t give us wine?” Tarkwa bellowed. “You gave away a vat full three days ago and now it’s gone!”

  “That was a feast!” Hulami replied hotly. “I expect the villagers to send me food and goods for the wine I make. I can’t afford to give it away every day! If you smelly fools want more of my wine, you’ll have to barter for it like everyone else!”

  Amero winced at the vintner’s harsh words. Karada’s band shouted insults right back. “Bloodsucking viper” was the kindest one he heard.

  Tarkwa stepped forward from the crowd. The apprentices presented their paddles, pressing the grape-stained ends against Tarkwa’s chest.

  Someone shouted, “Kill’em Tarkwa! We’ll take what we want over their dead bodies!”

  Amero ran to the front of the mob, yelling and waving for attention. The shouts of the crowd drowned him out and no one paid him much heed until Nianki appeared and stood close beside him.

  “What’s the problem?” she said loudly.

  “This sour wench thinks she can fill us with wine one day and keep it back from us the next! We’re going to teach her different!” Tarkwa snarled. The mob at his back howled approval of his words.

  Nianki turned and shoved the two young apprentices aside. Hulami looked to Amero for help, but before he could say anything, Nianki whispered something in her ear. Whitefaced, Hulami stood away from her door.

  Tarkwa gave a rousing cry. The mob echoed his cheer and surged forward. Nianki put her hands on the doorjambs, bracing herself and blocking their way.

  “What’re you doing, Karada?” Tarkwa said.

  “I’ll get out of the way,” she said calmly, “and you can drink up everything you find – drain the chamber pots, if you want – but if you take away this woman’s livelihood today, there won’t be any more wine in Arku-peli. Ever.”

  She dropped her arms. Her angry followers hesitated.

  “It’s some kind of trick,” said a woman in the front ranks. “Karada’s playing with us.”

  “No trick,” Nianki replied. “If you pick all the apples off a tree one day, you know there won’t be any apples tomorrow. If you guzzle all the wine in the village, it’ll be gone, and you’ll be just as thirsty and heavy-headed tomorrow.” She moved out of the doorway, folded her arms, and leaned against the wall. “So go ahead.”

  Some of the nomads took halting steps toward the door. Nianki eyed them. “It’s not just the wine you’re giving up you know,” she told them in the same matter-of-fact tone. “You star
t robbing the villagers, and there won’t be so much as an ox tongue for you tomorrow.”

  “But we’re thirsty!” someone cried.

  “There’s a whole lake over there, or didn’t you notice?” she snapped.

  Slowly, grumbling all the while, the mob of nomads receded from Hulami’s door.

  “What’s the matter?” Nianki called. “Lose your taste for wine?”

  The crowd broke up sullenly as the parched nomads headed for the free water of the lake. Tarkwa lingered a few steps behind. Out of the press appeared Hatu, looking surprisingly well compared to the others. He spoke to Tarkwa, and they fell to talking.

  Hulami went into her house and returned with a clay jug of wine. “Karada, this is for you,” she said, beaming. “You saved my life!”

  Amero joined them. “You handled that well,” he said.

  Nianki set the brimful jug of wine at her feet and smiled faintly. “Fierce as they are, they’re like children. They want what they want, and they want it now. You can either beat them into obedience – which I’m too tired to do this morning – or you can try to point out what they’ll lose if they do as they want.” She shrugged. “It usually works.”

  Tarkwa and Hatu watched them from twenty paces away. After a short exchange, they left, following the others to the lake.

  Nianki picked up the wine jug and gave it back to Hulami. The vintner was puzzled.

  “Don’t you want it?” she said.

  “I’d better not. I can’t pay the price of it either.”

  She walked away, slowly and rather stiffly. Amero and Hulami watched her go.

  “She’s different today,” said Hulami. “She seems – I don’t know – more like a woman and less like a war chief this morning.”

  The vintner’s words trailed off as she watched Nianki walk away. “What do you think it is?” Amero prompted, worried about the sister he’d so recently regained. “She’s been acting strangely this morning, even crying, and she seems so distracted. Do you think she’s ill?”

  Hulami gave him an quick sideways glance. “Ill? Not exactly,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Karada was in love.”

  That was a notion Amero had never considered. “You really think it possible?” he asked her.

  “Certainly. I’ve lived long enough to recognize that look on a woman’s face when I see it.”

  Amero thought of Pa’alu and of Nianki’s strange behavior at the feast. Perhaps a few nights’ reflection, aided by Hulami’s vintage and his news about Pakito and Samtu, had caused Nianki to consider Pa’alu anew. Amero wondered where Pa’alu was. The plainsman should be told about Nianki’s change of heart.

  *

  Pa’alu woke, certain he was dead.

  He’d run off from the feast just as the thunderstorm broke, fleeing headlong into the rain-swept night. His only thought was to find the elf priest and demand the spell be broken. Though he waited in the bowl-shaped canyon for two days, Vedvedsica never appeared. Despairing, his mind still reeling from what had happened, Pa’alu returned to the fringes of the nomads’ camp and was taken up by several of his reveling comrades. He accepted their repeated offers of wine.

  When the wine and food had at last run out, Pa’alu had left his compatriots. A part of his benumbed, wine-sodden brain still seethed with thoughts of finding the elf priest, so he thought to search elsewhere. Late one night, he crossed the rope bridge and staggered up the logger’s path, tripping constantly on the deep ruts left by dragged logs. Exhausted at last, he collapsed on an outflow of tiny pebbles.

  When Pa’alu woke, this third morning after the feast, his face and arms were numb from lying on the stones all the night before. Thinking for one crazed moment he was dead and in his grave, he swallowed hard and tried to move his lifeless limbs. When his feet twitched and tingled painfully – though his arms remained numb – he decided he might not be dead after all.

  He rolled over, and the brightness of the ivory-clouded sky burned his face like a flaming brand. After an effort that brought beads of sweat to his brow, Pa’alu managed to get one limp arm over his tortured eyes. Too much wine. Far too much.

  The amulet.

  The thought brought him upright with such violence, his stiff muscles shrieked in protest. He sat, wavering from side to side, as his foggy mind tried to recall the events of the past – how many? – days, especially those of the feast night. Where was the amulet Vedvedsica had given him? He patted through his muddy clothing and found nothing.

  Some of the fog wrapping his brain lifted. He’d already used the amulet, hadn’t he? At the feast, he’d held it out to Karada. The dragon tried to take it from him. Pa’alu drew his knife. There was a flash of lightning from the dragon. Then Pa’alu was lying on the sand, and he no longer held the amulet.

  Nianki had picked it up. Nianki and Amero.

  Nianki and Amero.

  “Oh, my ancestors,” Pa’alu groaned, covering his face with his hands.

  “Don’t the blame the dead for the faults of the living.”

  Pa’alu flinched at the sudden intrusion and tried to push himself to his feet. When his bleary eyes adjusted, he saw Nacris sitting cross-legged on the ground a few steps away. Her horse was tethered to a handy pine sapling. He’d been so involved in his memories of that horrible night that he’d not heard her arrive.

  “Why are you here?” he groaned, too lost in his own misery to really care.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Nacris replied. She looked well-scrubbed, her hair pulled back tightly and tied. Her buckskins had been buffed with pumice to whiten them.

  “So you found me.”

  Ignoring his unwelcoming tone, she handed him a full waterskin. It dangled from her hand for only an instant before the painfully parched Pa’alu grabbed it. Upending it, he drank deeply, the excess water trickling over his neck and chest.

  Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he said, “Thanks.”

  Nacris said nothing hut continued to watch him intently. He suddenly felt uncomfortable under her flinty gaze, and unconsciously he began to comb his hair and beard with his fingers, trying to look more presentable.

  “Why are you here?” Nacris said at last.

  “I drank too much and lost my way.”

  “No, I mean, why are you in the band?”

  He paused in his grooming. “To follow Karada,” he said.

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “What other reason do I need?”

  “And when Karada falls in battle or dies of sickness? Will you remain with the band then?”

  Feeling was returning to Pa’alu’s limbs. The sensation was agonizing – like the bites of a thousand horseflies at once – but Pa’alu hardened himself and addressed Nacris’s question. “I would stay by my brother,” he said. “I would stand with Pakito.”

  She nodded slightly. “A sensible answer. Did you know Pakito has gained a mate since the feast?” Pa’alu’s expression showed his ignorance, so she added, “Samtu.”

  “He’s fortunate.” His tone gave the lie to the simple pleasantry. Knowledge of his brother’s happiness, when he himself was so miserable, was like bitter ashes in his mouth.

  “You’re one of the finest hunters and scouts in the band, Pa’alu,” Nacris said. “If Karada and the band part ways, who will you follow?”

  He was beginning to understand the cast of her words, and he shook his head. “You can’t be trying to take the band away from Karada again. Did Sessan’s death teach you nothing?”

  “It taught me no one of us is strong enough to defeat Karada. To succeed, the best of us must join together.”

  Pa’alu stood up, dropping the waterskin on the pebbles in front of Nacris. “You’re a fool,” he told her flatly. “Karada is the band. There is no band without her.”

  He started to walk past her, and Nacris said, “And if Karada betrays the band? What then?”

  “You’re talking nonsense. Because you brought me water, I won’t
mention this to Karada —”

  Nacris stood quickly, took Pa’alu by the shoulder, and whirled him around. “Karada is betraying the band right now! She sided with the mudtoes this morning!” Pa’alu recognized the derisive term for the villagers that was gaining popularity among the nomads.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. Nacris related the events that had taken place outside the house of Hulami the vintner. “Karada sent her own people away thirsty then accepted a jug of wine for herself! She’s so taken with her own power, she forgets the welfare of her people!”

  “Liar! How many times in the past has she gone without food so that others could eat? Gone without sleep so that others could rest? Karada cares nothing for her personal comfort. She lives like a mountain goat, guiding her flock through treacherous places, surviving on only the sparest food and water.”

  Nacris folded her arms. “That was before we came to this strange valley. Now there’s meat and drink in abundance and a man for her to love.”

  The last words pierced Pa’alu’s aching head. His fist knotted around the front of Nacris’s whitened buckskin shirt. He lifted her till she was swaying on her toes.

  “What did you say?” he hissed.

  Unresisting, she said, “Arkuden, the headman. Her brother.”

  His grip slackened, and Nacris stepped back. Eyes wide in horror, Pa’alu hissed, “Why do you say that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Her long-lost brother turns up alive, offers food and comfort in abundance. Why shouldn’t she side with him against the rest of us?”

  Pa’alu relaxed, realizing Nacris knew nothing about the amulet or its effect. The rage and frustration he felt over the failure of his stratagem resurfaced.

  “Pa’alu, are you listening?” He looked at her and she added gravely, “Join me or not, as your spirit commands, but I have to know: Will you tell Karada what has passed between us?”

  Misery welled up in his breast. Tell Karada? How could he even look upon her again?

  “No,” he said. “I won’t tell her.”

  Nacris regarded him warily. “Swear by your ancestors.”

  His head throbbed unmercifully, and a tendon in his neck felt like it was going to jump through his skin. Compared to his current pain and anguish, the wrath of his ancestors’ spirits was as remote as the great gray sea. Without hesitation, he said, “I swear. By the spirits of my ancestors.”