Groul drew closer still. “I reported to you several days ago that the human mage, Palin Majere, was hiding out in the Queen Mother’s house. We wondered at the reason for this visit. You suspected he was there searching for magical artifacts.”
“Yes,” Beryl said. “Go on.”
“I am pleased to report, Exalted One, that he found one.”
“Indeed?” Beryl’s eyes gleamed, casting an eerie green light over the draconian. “And what is the artifact he found? What does it do?”
“According to our elven spy, the artifact may have something to do with traveling through time. The artifact is in the possession of a kender, who claims that he came from another time, a time prior to the Chaos War.”
Beryl snorted, filling her lair with noxious fumes. The draconian choked and coughed.
“Those vermin will say anything. If this is all—”
“No, no, Exalted One,” Groul hastened to add when he could speak. “The elven spy reports that Palin Majere was tremendously excited over this find. So excited that he has made arrangements to leave Qualinost with the artifact immediately, in order to study it.”
“Is that so?” Beryl relaxed, settled herself more comfortably. “He was excited by it. The artifact must be powerful, then. He has a nose for these things, as I said to the Gray Robes when they would have slain him. ‘Let him go,’ I told them. ‘He will lead us to magic as a pig to truffles.’ How may we acquire this?”
“The day after this day, Exalted One, the mage and the kender will depart Qualinesti. They will be met by a griffon who will fly them from there to Solace. That would be the best time to capture them.”
“Return to Qualinost. Inform Medan—”
“Pardon me, Exalted One. I am not permitted into the marshal’s presence. He finds me and my kind distasteful.”
“He is becoming more like an elf every day,” Beryl growled. “Some morning he will wake with pointed ears.”
“I can send my spy to report to him. That is the way I usually operate. Thus my spy keeps me informed of what is going on in Medan’s household as well.”
“Very well. Here are my orders. Have your spy tell Marshal Medan that I want this mage captured and delivered alive. He is to be brought to me, mind you. Not those worthless Gray Robes.”
“Yes, Exalted One.” Groul started to leave, then turned back. “Do you trust the marshal with a matter of this importance?”
“Certainly not,” Beryl said disdainfully. “But I will make my own arrangements. Now go!”
Marshal Medan was taking his breakfast in his garden, where he liked to watch the sun rise. He had placed his table and chair on a rock ledge beside a pond so covered with water lilies that he could barely see the water. A nearby snowfall bush filled the air with tiny white blossoms. Having finished his meal, he read the morning dispatches, which had just arrived, and wrote out his orders for the day. Every so often he paused in his work to toss bread crumbs to the fish who were so accustomed to his routine that every morning at this time they came to the surface in anticipation of his arrival.
“Sir.” Medan’s aide approached, irritably brushing the falling blossoms from his black tunic. “An elf to see you, sir. From the household of the Queen Mother.”
“Our traitor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring him to me at once.”
The aide sneezed, gave a sullen response and departed.
Medan drew his knife from the sheath he wore on a belt around his waist, placed the knife on the table, and sipped at his wine. He would not ordinarily have taken such precautions. There had been one assassination attempt against him long ago, when he had first arrived to take charge of Qualinesti. Nothing had come of it. The perpetrators had been caught and hanged, drawn and quartered; the pieces of their bodies fed to the carrion birds.
Recently, however, the rebel groups were becoming bolder, more desperate. He was concerned about one in particular, a female warrior whose personal beauty, courage in battle and daring exploits were making her a heroine to the subjugated elves. They called her “Lioness,” for her mane of shining hair. She and her band of rebels attacked supply trains, harried patrols, ambushed messengers and generally made Medan’s formerly quiet and peaceful life among the Qualinesti elves increasingly difficult.
Someone was feeding the rebels information on troop movements, the timing of patrols, the locations of baggage trains. Medan had clamped down tightly on security, removing all elves (except his gardener) from his staff and urging Prefect Palthainon and the other elven officials who were known to collaborate with the knights to watch what they said and where they said it. But security was difficult in a land where a squirrel sitting eating nuts on your windowsill might be taking a look at your maps, noting down the disposition of your forces.
Medan’s aide returned, still sneezing, with the elf following along behind, bearing a slip of a branch in his hand.
Medan dismissed his aide with a recommendation that he drink some catnip tea to help his cold. The Marshal sipped his morning wine slowly, enjoying it. He loved the flavor of elven wine, could taste the flowers and the honey from which it was made.
“Marshal Medan, my mistress sends this lilac cutting to you for your garden. She says that your gardener will know how to plant it.”
“Put it here,” said Medan, indicating the table. He did not look at the elf, but continued to toss crumbs to the fish. “If that is all, you have leave to go.”
The elf coughed, cleared his throat.
“Something more?” Medan asked casually.
The elf cast a furtive glance all around the garden.
“Speak. We are alone,” Medan said.
“Sir, I have been ordered to relay information to you. I told you previously that the mage, Palin Majere, was visiting my mistress.”
Medan nodded. “Yes, you were assigned to keep watch on him and report to me what he does. I must assume from the fact that you are here that he has done something.”
“Palin Majere has recently come into possession of an extremely valuable artifact, a magical artifact from the Fourth Age. He is going to transport that artifact out of Qualinost. His plan is to take it to Solace.”
“And you reported the discovery of this artifact to Groul who reported it to the dragon,” said Medan with an inward sigh. More trouble. “And, of course, Beryl wants it.”
“Majere will be traveling by griffon. He is to meet the griffin tomorrow morning at dawn in a clearing located about twenty miles north of Qualinost. He travels in company with a kender and a Solamnic Knight—”
“A Solamnic Knight?” Medan was amazed, more interested in the knight than in the magic-user. “How did a Solamnic Knight manage to enter Qualinesti without being discovered?”
“He disguised himself as one of your knights, my lord. He pretended that the kender was his prisoner, that he had stolen a magical artifact and that he was taking the prisoner to the Gray Robes. Word reached Majere of the artifact and he waylaid the knight and the kender, as the Knight had planned, and brought them to the home of the queen mother.”
“Intelligent, courageous, resourceful.” Medan threw crumbs to the fish. “I look forward to meeting this paragon.”
“Yes, my lord. As I said, the Knight will be with Majere in the forest, along with the kender. I can provide you with a map—”
“I am certain you can,” said Medan. He made a dismissive gesture. “Give the details to my aide. And remove your treacherous carcass from my garden. You poison the air.”
“Excuse me, sir,” the elf said boldly. “But there is the matter of payment. According to Groul, the dragon was extremely pleased with the information. That makes it worth a considerable amount. More than usual. Shall we say, double what I usually receive?”
Medan cast the elf a contemptuous glance, then reached for quill and paper.
“Give this to my aide. He will see that you are paid.” Medan wrote slowly and deliberately, taking his time. He hated thi
s business, considered the use of spies sordid and demeaning. “What are you doing with all this money we have paid you to betray your mistress, Elf?” He would not dignify the wretch with a name. “Do you plan to enter the Senate? Perhaps take over from Prefect Palthainon, that other monument to treachery.”
The elf hovered near, his eyes on the paper and the figures the Marshal was writing, his hand waiting to pluck it away. “It is easy for you to talk, Human,” the elf said bitterly. “You were not born a servant as I was, given no chance to better myself. ‘You should be honored with your lot in life,’ they tell me. ‘After all, your father was a servant to the House Royal. Your grandfather was a servant in that household as was his grandfather before him. If you try to leave or raise yourself, you will bring about the downfall of elven society!’ Hah!
“Let my brother demean himself. Let him bow and scrape and grovel to the mistress. Let him fetch and carry for her. Let him wait to die with her on the day the dragon attacks and destroys them all. I mean to do something better with my life. As soon as I have saved money enough, I will leave this place and make my own way in the world.”
Medan signed the note, dripped melted wax beneath his signature, and pressed his seal ring into the wax. “Here, take this. I am pleased to be able to contribute to your departure.”
The elf snatched the note, read the amount, smiled and, bowing, departed in haste.
Medan tossed the remainder of the bread into the pond and rose to his feet. His enjoyment of the day had been ruined by that contemptible creature, who, out of greed, was now informing on the woman he served, a woman who trusted him.
At least, Medan thought, I will capture this Palin Majere outside of Qualinost. There will be no need to bring Laurana into it. Had I been forced to apprehend Majere in the queen mother’s house, I would have had to arrest the queen mother for harboring a fugitive.
He could imagine the uproar over such an arrest. The queen mother was immensely popular; her people having apparently forgiven her for marrying a half-human and for having a brother who was in exile, termed a “dark elf,” one who is cast from the light. The Senate would be in a clamor. The population, already in an excited state, would be incensed. There was even the remote possibility that news of his mother’s arrest would cause her worthless son to grow a backbone.
Much better this way. Medan had been waiting for just such an opportunity. He would turn Majere and his artifact over to Beryl and be done with it.
The marshal left the garden to put his lilac slip into water, so that it would not dry out.
17
Gilthas and the Lioness
ilthas, Laurana’s “worthless son,” was at that moment resting his quite adequate backbone against a chair in an underground room of a tavern owned and run by gully dwarves. The tavern was called the Gulp and Belch—this being, as near as the gully dwarves could ascertain, the only thing humans did in a tavern.
The Gulp and Belch was located in a small habitation of gully dwarves (one could not dignify it by terming it a “village”) located near the fortress of Pax Tharkas. The tavern was the only building in the habitation. The gully dwarves who ran the tavern lived in caves in the hills behind the tavern, caves that could be reached only by tunnels located beneath the tavern.
The gully dwarf community was located some eighty miles straight as the griffon flies from Qualinost, longer—far longer—if one traveled by road. Gilthas had flown here on the back of a griffon, one whose family was in the service of House Royal. The beast had landed the king and his guide in the forest and was now awaiting their return with less impatience than might have been expected. Kerian had made certain to provide the griffon with a freshly killed deer to make the long hours of waiting pass pleasantly and to ensure that the beast didn’t dine on any of their hosts.
The Gulp and Belch was surprisingly popular. Or perhaps not surprising, considering that the prices were the lowest in Ansalon. Two coppers could buy anything. The business had been started by the same gully dwarf who had been a cook in the household of the late Dragon Highlord, Verminaard.
People who know gully dwarves, but who have never tasted gully dwarf cooking, find it impossible to even imagine eating anything a gully dwarf might prepare. Considering that a favorite delicacy of gully dwarf is rat meat, some equate the idea of having a gully dwarf for a cook with a death wish.
Gully dwarves are the outcasts of dwarfdom. Although they are dwarves, the dwarves do not claim them and will go to great lengths to explain why gully dwarves are dwarves in name only. Gully dwarves are extremely stupid, or so most people believe. Gully dwarves cannot count past two, their system of numbering being “one”, “two.” The very smartest gully dwarf, a legend among gully dwarves, whose name was Bupu, actually once counted past two, coming up with the term “a whole bunch.”
Gully dwarves are not noted for their interest in higher mathematics. They are noted for their cowardice, for their filth, their love of squalor and—oddly enough—their cooking. Gully dwarves make extremely good cooks, so long as the diner sets down rules about what may and may not be served at the table and refrains from entering the kitchen to see how the food is prepared.
The Gulp and Belch served up an excellent roast haunch of venison smothered in onions and swimming in rich brown gravy. The ale was adequate—not as good as in many establishments, but the price was right. The dwarf spirits made the tavern’s reputation. They were truly remarkable. The gully dwarves distilled their own from mushrooms cultivated in their bedrooms. Those drinking the brew are advised not to dwell on that fact for too long.
The tavern was frequented mainly by humans who could afford no better, by kender who were glad to find a tavern-keeper who did not immediately toss them out into the street, and by the lawless, who were quick to discover that the Knights of Neraka rarely patrolled the wagon ruts termed a road leading to the tavern.
The Gulp and Belch was also the hideout and headquarters for the warrior known as the Lioness, a woman who was also, had anyone known it, queen of Qualinesti, secret wife of the Speaker of the Sun, Gilthas.
The elven king sat in the chair in the semidarkness of the tavern’s back room, trying to curb his impatience. Elves are never impatient. Elves, who live for hundreds of years, know that the water will boil, the bread will rise, the acorn will sprout, the oak will grow and that all the fuming and watching and attempts to hurry it make only for an upset stomach. Gilthas had inherited impatience from his half-human father, and although he did his best to hide it, his fingers drummed on the table and his foot tapped the floor.
Kerian glanced over at him, smiled. A single candle stood on the table between them. The candle’s flame was reflected in her brown eyes, shone warmly on smooth, brown skin, glinted in the burnished gold of her mane of hair. Kerian was a Kagonesti, a Wilder elf, a race of elves who, unlike their city-dwelling cousins, the Qualinesti and the Silvanesti, live with nature. Since they do not try to alter nature or shape it, the Wilder elves are looked upon as barbarians by their more sophisticated cousins, who have also gone so far as to enslave the Kagonesti and force them to serve in wealthy elven households—all for the Kagonesti’s own good, of course.
Kerian had been a slave in the household of Senator Rashas. She had been present when Gilthas was first brought to that house, ostensibly as a guest, in reality a prisoner. The two had fallen in love the first moment they had seen each other, although it was months, even years, before they actually spoke of their feelings, exchanged their secret vows.
Only two other people, Planchet and Gilthas’s mother, Laurana, knew of the king’s marriage to the girl who had once been a slave and who was now known as the Lioness, fearless leader of the Khansari, the Night People.
Catching Kerian’s eye, Gilthas realized immediately what he was doing. He clenched the tapping fingers to a fist and crossed his booted feet to keep them quiet. “There,” he said ruefully. “Is that better?”
“You will fret yourself into a sickness if
you’re not careful,” Kerian scolded, smiling. “The dwarf will come. He gave his word.”
“So much depends on this,” said Gilthas. He stretched out his legs to ease the kinks of the unaccustomed exercise “Perhaps our very survival as a—” He halted, stared down at the floor. “Did you feel that?”
“The shaking? Yes. I’ve felt it the last couple of hours. It’s probably just the gully dwarves adding to their tunnels. They love to dig in the dirt. As to what you were saying, there is no ‘perhaps’ about our ultimate destruction,” Kerian returned crisply.
Her voice with its accent that civilized elves considered uncouth was like the song of the sparrow, of piercing sweetness with a note of melancholy.
“The Qualinesti have given the dragon everything she has demanded. They have sacrificed their freedom, their pride, their honor. They have, in some instances, even sacrificed their own—all in return for the dragon’s permission to live. But the time will come when Beryl will make a demand your people will find impossible to fulfill. When that day comes and she finds her will thwarted, she will destroy the Qualinesti.”
“Sometimes I wonder why you care,” Gilthas said, looking gravely at his wife. “The Qualinesti enslaved you, took you from your family. You have every right to feel vengeful. You have every right to steal away into the wilderness and leave those who hurt you to the fate they so richly deserve. Yet you do not. You risk your life on a daily basis fighting to force our people to look at the truth, no matter how ugly, to hear it, no matter how unpleasant.”
“That is the problem,” she returned. “We must stop thinking of the elven people as ‘yours’ and ‘mine.’ Such division and isolation is what has brought us to this pass. Such division gives strength to our enemies.”
“I don’t see it changing,” Gilthas said grimly. “Not unless some great calamity befalls us and forces us to change, and perhaps not even then. The Chaos War, which might have brought us closer, did nothing but further fragment our people. Not a day goes by but that some senator makes a speech telling of how our cousins the Silvanesti have shut us out of their safe haven beneath the shield, how they want us all to die so that they can take over our lands. Or someone starts a tirade against the Kagonesti, how their barbaric ways will bring down all that we have worked over the centuries to build. There are actually those who approve of the fact that the dragon has closed the roads. We will do better without contact with the humans, they say. The Knights of Neraka urge them on, of course. They love such rantings. It makes their task far easier.”
Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 33
