The History of Krynn: Vol I

by Dragon Lance

  Keeping his voice level, Penzar asked, “Tosen, why did you ask for this savage to accompany us?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? A centaur is the next best thing to a pack animal.”

  “But he has designs on Mara!”

  “Then he’ll work hard to please her.” Tiphan took the heavy packs from the acolytes and draped them over the unresisting Elu’s withers and back. The centaur’s bright green eyes widened slightly, but he accepted the new burdens without complaint.

  “Tosen, will we encounter elves, do you think?” asked Mara.

  “I doubt it. We’re not going so far east as the Tanjan woods. Once we get to flatter land, we will have to keep sharp watch for Silvanesti, I’m sure, but I don’t expect to meet them in strength.”

  Long clouds from the east overtook the sun. A cold wind rose with the shadows and teased wisps from Mara’s thick braid. She pointedly ignored the admiring look the centaur gave her.

  “Come,” said Tiphan. “We ought to reach the tree line before dark.”

  Penzar retrieved his spear, saying, “I’ll scout again.”

  “Let Mara,” said Tiphan smugly. “She can be the carrot for our centaur friend.”

  Mara was not amused, but she took the lead, and they resumed their march. Fifty paces behind her came Tiphan and Penzar. Elu, silent and strong, walked patiently at the rear, laden with the baggage.

  *

  Amero knelt by the water’s edge and dipped his hands in the cold lake. Mud and dried blood loosened from his sore fingers, clouding the clear water.

  Across the lake, smoke rose from scores of small fires between the rows of seedlings. It had taken two days of back-breaking labor to clear the ice from the orchard, swathe the tender seedlings in mounds of straw, and get the warming fires going. It was too early to tell whether their efforts to save the orchard would be successful.

  Like everyone else, Amero tore at the frozen soil with his bare hands, pulling sharp shards of ice away from the delicate plants. As he looked at his cut and bleeding hands, he dreamed of metal tools for every villager – bronze that would cut through ice and frozen turf, turning hard land into garden. More than ever he knew the future of humankind lay in the mastery of metal.

  “You’ll get chilblains if you stay out here with wet hands.”

  He turned, recognizing the voice. Lyopi draped a fur cape over his shoulders and held out a steaming mug of tea. Rising, Amero took the clay cup from her hands. Its warmth against his sore palms was just the solace he needed.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I sometimes wonder how I lived so long without you to take care of me.”

  She laughed. “So do I.”

  They strolled back to the unfinished section of the town wall. Even before they reached it, Amero could hear chimes and sistra ringing inside the Offertory. The Sensarku made their instruments from Duranix’s cast-off scales. Amero considered it a waste of good metal, but the Sensarku were devoted to their ceremonies and repeated them every day.

  “I wonder what happened to that fool Tiphan,” said Lyopi with characteristic bluntness. “I didn’t think he was the type to run away because of a single blunder. He was too proud for that.”

  Amero sipped his tea. “He hasn’t run away. He’s on some quest.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Anari, who sleeps near Mara, told me Tiphan came in the night and woke Mara to tell her they were going on a journey. He also took Penzar, who’s a good tracker. They left before any of us knew about the danger to the orchards. He’s gone to the east to find something.”

  Lyopi crossed her arms, burying her hands beneath her arms to keep them warm. “Find what, do you think?”

  “Common sense, I hope.”

  Flames flickered up above the walls of the town and Offertory. Lyopi drew in breath loudly. “They’re ‘purifying’ the cairn because it was touched by your unclean self,” she said. When Amero didn’t reply she added, “Aren’t you offended?”

  “Why should I be? I don’t care what beliefs the Sensarku follow as long as they do their work and mind the village elders.”

  “Very wise,” she said, with mild irony. She knew when Amero said “village elders” he really meant “the Arkuden.”

  A new, more distant sound drowned out the chanting from the Offertory: the sound of rams’ horns blown by sentinels high on the cliff above Yala-tene. It was a danger signal, warning of an impending attack.

  Amero and Lyopi raced to her house. Whenever an alarm was raised, all able-bodied adults in the village gathered at the north end of Yala-tene armed with sword, axe, or spear. Amero found Lyopi’s injured brother Unar trying to rise from his sickbed in answer to the call.

  “Down, down,” Amero said, pushing the wounded man back on his pallet. “No one expects you to fight.”

  “But, Arkuden —”

  “Lie still, Unar, or I’ll have your sister sit on you.”

  “Ugh, threaten me with anything but that!”

  Lyopi glared at them. “Shut your mouths, or I’ll raise lumps on both your heads!” She brandished a stone-headed axe. “I’m not so stout that you should fear me sitting on you, brother!”

  “True, you weigh less than the dragon,” Amero quipped. He found a hunting spear and tested its heft.

  “She’s more like a sturdy calf,” Unar said.

  “Quiet you, or I’ll have your other eye out!”

  Unar subsided at last. Lyopi tied a heavy leather cap around her head and went to the door.

  “Are you ready, Arkuden?”

  He shouldered the spear. “I am. Lead on.”

  Barely two score villagers had gathered by the unfinished wall. The rest were out hunting or working in the orchards on the other side of the lake. The horns continued to blow, but now they were sounding from the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. The strangers were moving fast, right down the path to Yala-tene.

  The armed villagers chattered nervously among themselves. What sort of danger was bearing down on them? Elves? Nomads?

  “Form a circle!” Amero shouted.

  The villagers with spears presented a hedgehog of flintheads to the unseen foe. One by one the horns died away. Eventually, the sound of massed hoofbeats reached the villagers.

  “Horses!” someone cried.

  “Nomads! The nomads have come back!”

  Villagers on the extreme ends of the formation began to back away.

  Amero shouted, “Stand where you are! Stand fast!”

  The frightened folk rejoined the circle, crowding closer together.

  The noise grew louder. Dust rose from the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. The villagers’ nervousness spread to the cattle and horses penned on each side of them. The animals milled about, neighing and lowing.

  A column of dark-clad riders burst from the pass. They thundered out a hundred paces, halted, and surveyed the scene. Amero squinted through the whirling dust. They looked like small, dark-skinned men on ponies, not rangy nomads or fair-skinned elves.

  The riders launched into motion again and came straight at the defenders. At sixty paces the dust parted enough for Amero to see who they were.

  “Raise your weapons!” he cried. “Spears up! It’s Miteera!”

  Confused but relieved, the villagers shouldered their arms. The centaur herd slowed when they saw the spears rise. Amero stepped out of the formation and held up his hands.

  “Greeting, noble Miteera!” he shouted. “Welcome to Yala-tene!”

  The gray-haired chief of the horse-men trotted forward.

  “Hail, Arkuden! My eyes weep to see you!”

  Arms wide, man and centaur embraced. Time had not dulled Miteera’s fierce smell, but Amero was so relieved that he felt like he was holding an armful of flowers.

  The remainder of the centaur tribe ambled down the ravine into the open valley once they saw there was no danger.

  “What brings you to our valley, noble chief?” Amero asked. “It’s been ten years since I saw you last.”

  �
�Ah, Arkuden, such evil speaking I must do! My people are driven out!”

  “Driven out? By who?”

  “The Old Ones.”

  The centaurs were rough, primitive folk, but they were valiant fighters. To dislodge the entire herd would have required —

  “A great host,” Amero muttered. “Balif?”

  Miteera nodded, frowning. “Aye, Arkuden. We could not stand before fire and metal.”

  Amero studied the warriors at Miteera’s back. Many bore recent wounds, and all looked tired and trailworn.

  “Fear not, Miteera,” he said. “You are welcome here. Will you stay and take greens with us?”

  “One night only, Arkuden.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “Is word of kokusuna.” This was the centaurs’ word for “spirits.” It also meant, in a vague way, “omens.”

  Amero led the centaurs to the water troughs used by the village’s horse herd. The visitors weren’t insulted. Centaurs considered horses kin and in general held them in higher regard than humans. As the centaurs refreshed themselves, one of them spoke to his chief. Miteera clapped a gnarled hand to his brown forehead.

  “Ah, Arkuden! Your people seen on mountain!”

  “Eh?”

  Miteera explained how his band had encountered three humans in the high mountains. Through the old chiefs oblique descriptions, Amero understood the three to be Tiphan and his two acolytes.

  “Were they well?” he asked.

  “Hale, not wise.” The centaur shook his head at the incomprehensible foolishness of humans. “They go sunbirth. B’leef there.”

  Amero was puzzled. Tiphan was headed east, toward the elves? “Did he say exactly where he was going or why?”

  “Nah. They hunt. Not say what.”

  Amero’s face betrayed his concern, and Miteera clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Fear not! Elu I give – strong, good fighter. He guard good.”

  Amero called for fodder to be brought to the hungry centaurs. The centaurs ate the sweet grass ravenously, plunging their faces into piles of fodder and coming up with great wads of hay sticking out their mouths and clenched in both hands. They chewed noisily, slurping water to wash everything down.

  While they fed, Amero plied Miteera with questions about the elves. According to the centaur, Balif’s army had appeared in late summer, following the course of the Thon-Tanjan. They pushed into the centaurs’ homeland slowly, stopping every few leagues to erect stockades, which they filled with warriors. The two races first clashed about the time the leaves changed color. Elf cavalry wiped out one centaur warband, driving the rest of the herd into the eastern bend of the Tanjan, trapping them against the swift-flowing river. The destruction of the centaur tribe seemed certain. And then —

  “B’leef turn away,” Miteera said. “Fight old enemy. Karada.”

  Amero stepped back, thunderstruck. It could not be! The old centaur was mistaken – not Karada!

  Karada, born Nianki, was Amero’s only blood kin. He had not seen her in twelve years. She was known throughout the plains as Karada, meaning “Scarred One,” from the scars of a vicious animal attack she bore on her face and neck. Fifteen years ago she and her band of nomads had been the scourge of the Silvanesti, raiding their outposts and threatening their new settlements. Twelve years ago, after being defeated by Balif, Karada’s shattered warrior band had come to Yala-tene, where rebels in her ranks tried to overthrow her and loot the village. Together, Amero, Duranix, Karada, and her loyalists had defeated the rebels, led by Hatu the One-eyed and Karada’s blood foe, Nacris.

  With the village secure, Karada and her people had departed. Though Amero had hoped she would return, neither she nor her people had ever come back to the Valley of the Falls.

  Stories had reached him of his sister’s ongoing fight against the Silvanesti. Karada had become the nemesis of the elf general Balif. For years she thwarted the elves’ plans of conquest in the north and east. Four years ago, wanderers passing through Yala-tene brought a tale of Karada’s death. Pursued by elite Silvanesti warriors, she and her band were said to have been trapped on a flat-topped escarpment in the far north, overlooking the inland sea. Five times the finest warriors of Silvanost tried to storm the plateau, and five times they were hurled back by Karada’s ferocious fighters. Finally an elf priest came forth and called down fire from the sky. The wooded plateau blazed from end to end, and when the flames went out days later, the elves found the burned bodies of Karada and all her band. That was the tale the wanderers told, and Amero had believed it – until now.

  “She’s alive?” Amero asked eagerly, “Karada lives?”

  Miteera shrugged. “I not see. Old Ones cry, ‘Karada! Karada!’ and ride away. Not kill us.” The old centaur’s eyes gleamed. “Karada is kokusun. No kill, ever.”

  Amero didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t only the centaurs who thought his sister was a spirit. Many people, villagers and nomads alike, believed her to be the living spirit of the plains. Amero knew that if anyone could escape the might of Silvanos, it was Karada.

  Amero saw the centaurs bedded down for the night then returned to the cave. He told Duranix what he’d learned from Miteera, both the story of Karada and that the centaurs had seen Tiphan and his two acolytes in the eastern mountains.

  “Shall I go after Tiphan?” Duranix asked, slanting a look at his human friend.

  “He chose this path. Let him follow it.”

  “It would be convenient if the elves rid you of your problem.”

  Amero was genuinely shocked. “I don’t desire his death!”

  Duranix’s brazen lids clashed as he blinked. “I don’t see why not. He wouldn’t weep if you fell off the mountain.”

  “I try to be better than that,” Amero said, kicking at the hearthstones.

  The dragon stared as Amero gazed into the fire. Finally Duranix asked, “What about Karada? I can search for her, if you want.”

  Amero shook his head. “How do you search for a kokusun? Can you spot a spirit from on high and take it in your claws?”

  “If you ask me,” said the dragon, “I will try.”

  Chapter 6

  Days followed days in a blur of hard labor, filth, and fear. Beramun worked in a tannery, stirring huge clay vats of molten beeswax. The wax was kept boiling as sheets of cowhide were dipped in it. Slaves had to lift the hot dripping hides out of the wax and carry them on poles to the molding shed where the leather was pounded over carved wooden forms and allowed to dry. The result was a shell of tough, hardened leather that other slaves trimmed into breastplates.

  Roki worked in the molding shed. Beramun was able to see her several times a day when she brought in steaming sheets of leather. Roki explained that the raiders wore the hardened leather shells over their shirts to protect themselves from knives and spears.

  “There are so many,” Beramun said, eyes traveling down row upon row of hide-covered molds filling the shed.

  Roki flopped a hot, limp hide over her workbench. Molten wax splattered on both women, as it did a hundred times a day, leaving them with tiny, livid burns on their arms and legs.

  “There must be more raiders than we’ve seen so far,” Roki said grimly.

  Beramun learned other prisoners worked in a knappery, pounding out flint spearheads all day, and still another group cut and trimmed score upon score of green saplings for spear shafts. Zannian’s plan was all too obvious: He was going to raid on an even greater scale.

  From sunrise to sundown the slaves labored. When it was too dark to see, their captors sounded a drum and herded them back to their walled enclosure. They were fed the same coarse food the raiders ate – a stew of nuts, wild greens, mushrooms, and the tough, unsavory meat of a common forest bird. It was not generosity that filled the slaves’ bowls. Roki said they were fed well so they could work all the harder.

  After consuming their large bowls of flavorless but filling stew, the slaves went to sleep. Like the others, Beramun slept where she sat
and did not stir until the drums rumbled at dawn, calling them back to work.

  She wondered at her deep and dreamless rest. All her life she’d been a light sleeper. Living on the open savanna had taught her to remain alert to any possible danger. Since Almurk reeked of peril, how did she sleep so soundly?

  One evening she feigned illness and gave away her food to those around her. Moments after finishing their meals, the captives fell fast asleep. Though tired and sore, Beramun felt alert. When vigorous shaking failed to rouse Roki, Beramun knew her suspicions were confirmed: The raiders were putting something in the food to make the prisoners sleep.

  The next day she passed this information to Roki. The older woman was surprisingly unmoved.

  “At least they allow us to rest,” she said with a shrug.

  “But don’t you see? If we don’t take the food, we can stay awake and escape from here!”

  Roki peeled a dry breastplate off the form and tossed it on the pile with the others she’d made that morning.

  “We’ll never get out of here,” she said flatly. “If the raiders don’t catch us, the stormbird will. Or would you rather be eaten by some spirit-cursed monster in the forest?”

  “I’d rather escape this muck hole and live free,” the girl insisted. A guard, sauntering through the molding hut, brusquely ordered Beramun back to work. She shouldered the poles and hissed at Roki, “I’ll not eat any more of their food.”

  “Then you’ll starve.”

  The day did not improve after that. One of the slaves was stung to death by bees while removing a section of honeycomb for the waxworks. The forest bees were the size of Beramun’s thumb, and the poor girl was overcome so quickly there was no chance to help her. The girl was an uncomplaining worker, no more than fourteen. That was all Beramun knew about her. She didn’t even know the girl’s name.

  As the guards routed the bees with smoky pine knots and carried the girl’s body away, Beramun could only think she had been someone’s child. She must have had a family who cared about her, yet she had died alone and unknown in this horrible place.