Riverwind the Plainsman

by Paul B. Thompson

  He will do well. You chose wisely, Mishakal.

  Thank you, Paladine. It was his destiny to serve thus.

  Send him back now.

  Yes, my lord. It is done.

  He awoke where he’d lain down to die, at the foot of the statue. Riverwind rose, unhampered by pain or bleeding. In fact, not a drop of blood spotted his ragged clothing or stained the white floor of the sacred chamber. The blue light in the temple was gone, leaving normal shadows in its place. The staff lay on the floor at the statue’s base.

  Riverwind picked it up. It looked like ordinary wood again. A little over five feet long, it was about an inch in diameter. He held it close to his chest as he gazed up at the image of Mishakal.

  “Thank you, goddess,” he said. “Thank you for my life. I will put your staff in Goldmoon’s hands.”

  He walked out of the temple. It was night. Solinari, the silver moon, brightened the swampy lands that lay just outside the temple. This region was called the Cursed Lands, and for good reason. From Xak Tsaroth to the Forsaken Mountains, the land was a stinking miasma of black water, moss, ironwood forests, and spongy turfed “islands.” Snakes, biting insects, and fever infested the Cursed Lands.

  Riverwind retrieved a sword and scabbard from a dead draconian—who had now become dust—and fastened it to his belt. For a moment, he stood silently, contemplating all that had happened. The awe of what he’d seen and felt had driven all other thoughts from his mind.

  Riverwind’s head came up with a snap. Di An. She was lost out in the Cursed Lands somewhere, mind crumbling under the terror of the open sky. He didn’t relish having to hunt for her, but she might already have fallen prey to accident, animals, marauders. Worse still, the plainsman doubted that Di An was thinking clearly. She might have blundered into a mire, or floundered in deep water while trying to wade.

  Think, Riverwind. What would Di An do? There was a thirty-foot-wide well to his left. Remnants of a wall surrounded it. He saw no sign that she had gone that way.

  Di An was terrified of the wide blue sky and dazzled by the sun. Yet she’d visited the surface before. Di An had said she’d only been to the upper world at night. The black sky would not have been so threatening to cavern dwellers as the cloudless vault she’d beheld upon leaving the temple. If Di An had been paralyzed during the hours of daylight, she might have recovered enough by now to creep back to the place she’d last seen Riverwind … here at the temple!

  So sure was Riverwind that he’d made the right deduction that he called out quietly, “Di An?” More loudly. “Di An?”

  A sob, then: “Here.”

  He turned and mounted the cracked steps again. There, slumped in a far corner of the portico, was the elf girl. She didn’t move until Riverwind knelt beside her, then she flung her arms around him. Her grip was strong with fear.

  “Are you all right?” he asked gently. She didn’t answer, but kept her face pressed to his chest. “I thought you might be lost in the swamp.”

  “I thought you were dead!”

  “No. One of the lizard men dealt me a mortal wound, but the goddess raised me up and healed all my hurts. And she gave me this.” She sat back, and he brought the staff around for her to see. Di An looked puzzled so Riverwind explained what Mishakal had told him.

  “The gods have favored you,” she said. Di An put a hand to his cheek. Impulsively, she kissed him, but Riverwind broke away. “Don’t,” he said, “You know I love another.”

  “She is far away.”

  “Goldmoon is always here,” he said, touching a hand to his heart.

  Di An shrank from him, pulling back into the deep shadows of the temple wall. “I’m sorry. I thought, since my change, you might see me differently. Not as a child, but as a woman.”

  Riverwind cupped her cheek with one hand. “You are a beautiful woman, Di An. And you’ve been a brave companion.” He found his gaze caught by her enormous dark eyes. Those eyes regarded him with frank devotion. Even as he spoke to her of the futility of her feelings for him, he found himself leaning toward her. Her hand came up and rested lightly over his on her face. Her lips were trembling. “A beautiful and true companion,” he said softly.

  Di An could hardly bear his nearness, his tenderness. Her heart overflowed with her love of him. “I love you, Riverwind,” she whispered.

  Her own words broke the spell. Riverwind took his hand away and moved back. Jolted, Di An also withdrew.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You are my friend. I would lay down my life to save yours, but my heart is already given away.” He finished by standing and settling the draconian sword belt around his hips. “Let’s find some shelter. Tomorrow, we’ll try to cross the Cursed Lands.”

  Di An looked away from the man’s tall form, outlined in the moonlight. “Could we not cross tonight?” she asked.

  “To try to find our way through that area at night would be suicide.” He offered his hand, and after a slight hesitation, Di An took it. “Tomorrow.”

  Riverwind awoke refreshed, surprisingly so for having slept on a cold stone floor. He stretched and smiled at the sunlit view showing through a window opening. He and Di An had taken refuge in a small building, somewhat secluded from the main structures around the temple. Before falling asleep, he’d worried a bit about Shanz sending more draconians after them. But the draconian leader probably thought they were miles away by now. Riverwind’s vigilant hearing detected no stirrings of draconians throughout the night.

  Di An was not where she had lain down during the night. When the sun had risen, she’d moved to an inside corner, buried as deeply as possible in the comforting darkness. When Riverwind went over to waken her, he found her awake, eyes wide and staring.

  “Di An,” he said, “are you well?”

  “The light has returned,” she mumbled. “The killing light.”

  “The sun? Yes, it returns every day,” he said. Di An blinked once and didn’t reply. Riverwind gave her arm a friendly squeeze and said, “I’m going down to the water to see if I can’t gather up something to eat. I’m famished.”

  Outside, only the metallic possessions of the dead draconians remained. Even the dust from the dead creatures had blown away. Riverwind poked around until he found a long-bladed knife. He lashed the knife with a length of vine to a fairly straight ironclaw branch, making a crude spear. He caught a few fat frogs and tied them as bait in the knee-deep water, at the end of short lengths of vine. Then, he stood motionless with the sun before him, and waited. Soon the water roiled around the cut-up bait. He cast the spear into the green-black water and hauled it back. A fat, grayish fish wriggled unhappily on the knife blade. Soon, he had two more.

  “Di An!” he said triumphantly, walking into their shelter. “Catfish!”

  The girl from the caverns of Hest had squeezed herself into the tightest ball she could. Riverwind tried to tease her out, but she would not so much as lift her head to see what he was talking about. From helplessness he went to frustration, then anger.

  “Look at me! We must leave as soon as possible. You have to overcome this fear! There isn’t anything about the open air that can hurt you,” he said vehemently.

  He tossed the catfish on the floor by her feet. After skinning them—not an easy task with his large knife—he skewered the fillets on sticks. Over a slow, smoky fire of ironclaw twigs, Riverwind roasted the fish.

  There was a soapstone font filled with rainwater in one of the ruined buildings on the north side of the temple. Using a fragment of draconian armor as a dipper, he brought cool water and a cooked fish to Di An. She would not eat. She was completely paralyzed, and didn’t seem to hear Riverwind. He ate his fish and pondered the elf girl, a prisoner of her own mind. Surely this was an illness, like fever or pox.

  Then he remembered: The Staff of Mishakal cured illnesses.

  He didn’t know exactly how to go about curing her, though. Riverwind held the staff out like a spear and touched Di An with the tip. Nothing happened. The staff
remained dark, rough wood, without even the slightest glow of sapphire blue. It was no use; he just didn’t know how to make it work.

  “We must go to the temple,” Riverwind said. He lifted Di An in his arms. She sighed and relaxed enough to lie in his grasp. “Giant,” she whispered. As soon as they went outside, Di An shook and cried with fear, but Riverwind held her tightly and hurried to the temple. Inside, he knelt before the statue of the goddess.

  “Great Goddess,” he said, “bring your light to this girl’s mind. Save her from her fear. Make her healthy once more.” Nothing happened. The statue remained cold and lifeless, its delicate marble fingers curled around the empty air where once the staff had been.

  Anger threatened to cloud the plainsman’s mind. His hands clenched into fists, but that was no help. Going to Di An, he scooped her up in his arms once more.

  “We’re going outside,” he said sternly. “You have to learn that there’s nothing to be afraid of. The sky is not an enemy, and there is no danger in open air.”

  “No!” she said, convulsing. Di An dug her fingers into his arms. “Please, no, I can’t bear it!”

  “You must. We must keep moving, or risk capture by Shanz.”

  He carried Di An out into the late morning sun. Fluffy, grayish clouds with flat bottoms sailed in the river of the sky, creating cycles of light and shade. Riverwind marched out to the sandy verge between the edge of the ancient pavement and the beginning of the ironclaw forest. Di An clung to him, face buried against his chest. Riverwind tried to disengage her. She held on with the desperation of the driven.

  “Let go,” he said. “Let go!” When the elf girl would not, he pried her away. Di An’s eyes were wide with terror. She was dizzy, sick. She knew she would fall if he let go of her.

  It tore Riverwind’s heart to see her so frightened, but he knew he must be adamant. “Look at me! Look where you are! There is no danger,” he said loudly.

  Di An’s lower lip quivered. “I can’t simply tell myself to stop being afraid,” she said in a barely audible voice. “It doesn’t work.”

  “I’m going to put you down,” Riverwind said. Di An sank to her knees as he set her on the ground. When he released her, she uttered a sharp cry and flung herself face down on the sandy soil. She tore at the ground with her hands, trying to dig herself a nice, safe hole.

  “Stop it!” Riverwind cried. He tried to snag her wrists, but she punched him and wriggled away from his grasp. “Stop it! You’re behaving like a madwoman!”

  A shadow fell across the struggling figures. Riverwind paid no attention to it at first, marking it in the back of his mind as a passing cloud. But the shadow stayed over them, and he heard a steady whuff-whuff, which coincided with the gusts of wind that were sweeping over him.

  Di An turned over on her back. She screamed and pointed a trembling finger over his shoulder. Riverwind turned, his mouth open as he continued his attempts to dissuade Di An of her fear, but all his talk evaporated. It wasn’t merely the sky that the elf girl pointed at.

  Poised a hundred feet above them, wings beating slowly to keep her aloft, was a dragon. The sunlight made iridescent patterns on her black scales. Her wing claws were purest white. The head at the end of her long, serpentine neck was fringed with wicked-looking horns. Khisanth, mistress of Xak Tsaroth, watched the two of them idly, as a human might watch the progress of an ant.

  Riverwind was paralyzed with dragonfear. He stared at the creature above him. A monster of myth and legend. A creature he hadn’t quite believed existed.

  Khisanth’s head tilted quizzically. Her mouth opened and a long tongue flickered out once, twice. Her horned head began to snake down toward them.

  Di An gave a strangled cry and scrambled to her feet. Her fear of the dragon had overcome her terror of the outdoors. She reeled about and stumbled inside the temple.

  The elf girl’s actions penetrated the numbing shock that had frozen Riverwind. He forced himself to move and ran after Di An. Seek shelter, his brain pounded. Seek shelter with the goddess.

  Khisanth followed his progress with her bright eyes. Idly, almost casually, she spewed a short stream of acid at the running man. Riverwind ducked into the temple just as the caustic droplets hit the front steps. The acid hissed and bubbled as it ate into the old marble.

  Once inside the temple, he stood pressed against the far wall. Di An huddled on the floor at his feet. Both of them trembled and shook. Out of sight of the dragon some semblance of coherent thought returned. What were they going to do now? Khisanth had returned, and they were doomed. Riverwind knew that he could not fight a black dragon. The mere sight of the creature froze the blood in his veins.

  The plainsman’s despairing gaze fell on the Staff of Mishakal, which leaned against the wall. The words of the goddess sounded once more in his mind: “Only one whose heart is inherently good can touch the staff and remain unharmed.” Steel would not prevail against Khisanth’s acid and magic. But perhaps a simple staff, blessed by a goddess, was the answer.

  Riverwind prayed to Mishakal for strength and picked up the staff. When he touched it, the staff glowed with a cold blue brilliance. He nearly dropped it in shock. He closed his eyes and tightened his grip. The goddess was with him. Her beneficent presence pervaded the staff. He could face the dragon with her help. Riverwind strode forth from the temple, holding the staff before him.

  The dragon had settled on the paved stone plaza south of the temple, near the well opening. When Riverwind appeared on the steps, the dragon hissed, “What do you have there, little one?”

  The staff was sky-blue sapphire. Its glow outshone the bright sun. “Keep back!” Riverwind commanded.

  “I shall keep where I like,” Khisanth answered idly. Her teeth were long and white. “Who are you, and why do you dare invade my realm?”

  “Keep back, I say!”

  “I’ve no patience for bandying words with humans. That’s a pretty blue stick. Give it to me and I’ll give you your life.”

  “Very generous to give me what I already have,” the plainsman said shakily.

  “You live only as long as I allow,” the dragon snapped, her calm thinning. She uncoiled a foreleg, her foot-long talons sinking into the marble paving as if it were pudding. “Lay down the staff and run for your life, puny mortal.”

  Riverwind grasped the crystal staff with both hands. “No,” he replied.

  The dragon’s mouth flew open, and poisonous, acid steam bellowed forth. Riverwind shut his eyes and clutched the staff. He had no time to move. Khisanth poured forth a cloud dense enough to dissolve a troop of cavalry. Riverwind braced himself for disaster.

  But he was astonished when the deadly fog flowed around and did not touch him. The plainsman swallowed hard. His knees were weak. The staff—the goddess—had saved his life once more. The artifact’s glow had increased, burning into his brain. Riverwind advanced, holding the Staff of Mishakal out like a two-handed sword.

  “What are you doing?” hissed the dragon. “Stand where you are!”

  “I thought you wanted the staff,” he said evenly. “I’m bringing it to you.”

  “Foolish mortal,” the dragon sneered. “Do you believe that you can defeat me with that?” In spite of her words, Khisanth backed a step, her powerful legs bunched to spring, her wings unfurled. She was enormous. “I will take you apart bone by bone, you and all you care for!” Khisanth threatened malignly.

  Riverwind continued his advance, his faith in the staff as unwavering as its blue glow. Khisanth said one word in the language of magic, and the bright light of the sun vanished. A blackness shrouded Riverwind. The dragon had cast a spell of darkness.

  Though the blackness was very disorienting, Riverwind’s grip on the Staff of Mishakal was a steely one. He thrust it forward and the end connected with Khisanth’s leg. A bright spark lanced out and crackled with a thunderous sound against the black scales. Riverwind felt the shock tingle through his body. Khisanth laughed out loud.

  “You
think that silly stick could hurt me?” the dragon cried. “I’ll not waste any more time on you, mortal filth. But I shall remember you!” Riverwind held his breath. He heard the dragon’s claws scraping the edge of the well wall and then heard the sounds of her descent, growing fainter.

  The darkness lifted, and Riverwind staggered in the suddenly bright day. He had to lean on the staff as his body began to shake with long-suppressed terror. Still, he marveled that the staff had saved him and diverted the dragon from Di An.

  The blue crystal staff lost its aura and assumed its guise of wood. Riverwind braced it on his shoulder and ran for the temple. Once the dragon reached Xak Tsaroth, Shanz would tell her the whole story, and then her wrath would go far beyond mere pique. With sheer cliffs behind him and a vast swamp before him, Riverwind worried if there was any place in the world he could go to escape Khisanth’s fury.

  Chapter 25

  Death On Black Wings

  Di An still lay on the temple floor, staring upward with wide, white eyes. Riverwind spoke to her gently.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “The dragon is gone for now.”

  “I found nothing in the tunnel, master.”

  Riverwind started. “What? What did you say?”

  “The tunnel is empty, Mors. What shall I do now?” Di An asked. She turned her face toward him. No fear showed, only an unnatural calmness and a strange light in her eyes.

  Riverwind’s puzzlement fell away. Di An’s mind was broken. Too much fear had sent her away to a more familiar and safer time and place, when she was a lowly scout for Mors.

  “Can you walk?” he asked.

  “Yes. May I carry my lord’s spear?”

  “No,” Riverwind said. “Follow me. The dragon could return at any time.”