Elven Nations - The Kinslayer Wars Part 12

"Lies!" shouted Sithas, forgetting himself and springing to his feet. The hall erupted in shouts of anger and denial from courtiers and n.o.bles pressing forward. Than-Kar's bodyguards bristled and raised their weapons.

"Entire ranks of elves," continued the dwarf as the crowd murmured. "They resist your imperial hegemony."

"They are traitors to the homeland!" snapped Sithas.

"A question of semantics," argued Than-Kar. "I merely mean to ill.u.s.trate that the confused state of the conflict makes a dwarven intervention seem rash to the point of foolishness."

Kith-Kanan could hold himself in check no longer. He stepped down from the platform and stared at the dwarf, who was a foot or more shorter than himself. "You distort the truth in a way that can only discredit your nation!"

He continued, his voice a growl. "Any elves among the ranks of Ergoth are lone rogues, lured by human coin or promises of power. Even the likes of you cannot blur the clear lines of this conflict. You spout your lies and your distortions from the safety of this far city; hiding like a coward behind the robes of diplomacy. You make me sick!"

Than-Kar appeared unruffled as he stepped aside to address Sithas. "This example of your general's impetuous behavior will be duly reported to my king. It cannot further your cause."

"You set a new standard for diplomatic excess, and you try my patience to its limits.

Leave, now!" Sithas hissed the words with thick anger, and the hall fell deathly silent.

If the dwarf was affected by the speaker's rage, however, he concealed his emotions well. With calculated insolence, he marched his column about and then led them from the Hall of Audience.

"Throw open the windows!" barked the Speaker of the Stars. "Clear the stench from the air!"

Kith-Kanan slumped to sit on the steps of the royal dais, ignoring the surprised looks from some of the stiff-backed elven n.o.bles. "I could have strangled him with pleasure,"

he snarled as his brother came to sit beside him.

"The audience is over," Sithas announced to the rest of the elves, and Kith-Kanan sighed with concern as the last of the anonymous n.o.bles left. The only ones remaining in the great hall were Quimant, the twins, and Nirakina.

"I know I shouldn't have let him get under my skin like that. I'm sorry," the general said to the Speaker.

"Nonsense. You said things I've wanted to voice for months. It's better to have a warrior say them than a head of state." Sithas paused awkwardly. "What he did sayhow much truth was there to it?"

"Very little," sighed Kith-Kanan. "We are sheltering humans in the fortress, most of them the wives and families of Wildrunners. They would be slain on sight if they fell into the hands of the enemy."

"And are elves fighting for Ergoth?" Sithas couldn't keep the dismay from his voice.

"A few rogues, as I said," Kith admitted. "At least, we've had reports of them. I saw one myself in the human camp. But these turncoats are not numerous enough that we have taken notice of them on the field."

He groaned and leaned backward, remembering the offensive and arrogant Theiwar dwarf. "That lout! I suppose it's a good thing I didn't have my sword at my side."

"You're tired," said Sithas. "Why don't you relax for a while. This round of banquets and courts and all-night meetings, I'm sure, takes an adjustment. We can talk tomorrow."

"Your brother is right. You do need rest," Nirakina added in a maternal tone. "I'll have dinner sent to your apartments."

The dinner arrived, as Nirakina had promised. Kith-Kanan guessed that his mother had sent orders to the kitchen, and someone in the kitchen had communicated the situation to another interested party. For it was Hermathya who knocked on his door and entered.

"h.e.l.lo, Hermathya," he said, sitting up in the bed. He wasn't particularly surprised to see her, and if he was honest with himself, neither was he very much dismayed.

"I took this from the serving girl," she said, bringing forward a large silver tray with domed, steaming dishes and crystal platters. Once again he was struck by her air of youth and innocence.

Memories of the two of them together.... Kith-Kanan felt a sudden resurgence of desire, a feeling that he thought had been gone for years. He wanted to take her in his arms. Looking into her eyes, he knew that she desired the same thing.

"I'll get up. We can dine near the windows." He didn't want to suggest they go to the balcony. He felt there was something furtive and private about her visit.

"Just stay there," she said softly. "I'll serve you in bed."

He wondered what she meant, at first. Soon he learned, as the dinner grew cold upon a nearby table.

10.

The Morning After.

Hermathya slipped away sometime during the middle of the night, and Kith-Kanan felt profoundly grateful in the morning that she was gone. Now, in the cold light of day, the pa.s.sion that had seized them seemed like nothing so much as a malicious and hurtful interlude. The flame that had once drawn them together ought not to be rekindled.

Kith-Kanan spent most of the day with his brother, touring the stables and farriers of the city. He forced himself to maintain focus on the task at hand: gathering additional horses to mount his cavalry forces for the time when the Wildrunnners took to the offensive. They both knew that they would, they must, eventually attack the human army.

They couldn't simply wait out the siege.

During these hours together, Kith found that he couldn't meet his brother's eyes.

Sithas remained cheerful and enthusiastic, friendly in a way that twisted Kith-Kanan's gut. By midafternoon, he made an excuse to leave his twin's company, pleading the need to give Arcuballis some exercise. In reality, he needed an escape, a chance to suffer his guilt in solitude.

The following days in Silvanost pa.s.sed slowly, making even the bleak confinement in beseiged Sithelbec seem eventful by comparison. He avoided Hermathya, and he found to his relief that she seemed to be avoiding him as well. The few times he saw her she was with Sithas, playing the doting wife holding tightly to her husband's arm and hanging upon his every word.

In truth, the time dragged for Sithas as well. He knew that Vedvedsica was laboring to create a spell that might allow them to magically ensnare the griffons, but he was

impatient to begin the quest. He ascribed Kith-Kanan's unease to similar impatience.

When they were together, they spoke only of the war and waited for a message from the mysterious cleric.

That word did not come for eight days, and then, oddly, it arrived in the middle of the night. The twins were wide awake, engaged in deep discussion in Sithas's chambers, when they heard a rustling on the balcony beyond the open window. Sithas drew the draperies aside, and the sorcerous cleric stepped into the room.

Kith-Kanan's eyes immediately fell upon Vedvedsica's hand, for he carried a long ivory tube, the ends capped by cork. Several arcane sigils, in black, marked its alabaster surface.

The cleric raised the object, and the twins instinctively understood, even before Vedvedsica uncorked the end and withdrew a rolled sheet of oiled vellum. Unrolling the scroll, he showed them a series of symbols scribed in the Old Script.

"The spell of command," the priest explained softly. "With this magic, I believe the griffons can be tamed."

The twins planned to depart after one more day of final preparations. With the scroll at last a reality, a new urgency marked their activity. They met with Nirakina and Lord Quimant shortly after breakfast, a few hours after Vedvedsica had departed.

The four of them gathered in the royal library, where a fire crackled in the hearth to disperse the autumnal chill. Sithas brought the scroll, though he placed his cloak over it as he set it on the floor. They all sat in the great leatherbacked chairs that faced the fire.

"We have word of a discovery that may change the course of the warfor the better,"

announced Kith.

"Splendid!" Quimant was enthusiastic. Nirakina merely looked at her sons, her concern showing in the furrowing of her brow.

"You know of Arcuballis, of course," continued the warrior. "He was given to Sithelto fatherby a 'merchant' from the north." According to the strategy he and Sithas had developed, they would say nothing about the involvement of the gray cleric. "We have since learned that the Khalkist Mountains are home to a great herd of the creatureshundreds of them, at least."

"Do you have proof of this, or is it merely rumor?" asked Nirakina. Her face had grown pale.

"They have been seen," explained Kith-Kanan, glossing over the question. He told Quimant and Nirakina of his dream on the night before he departed Sithelbec. "Right down to the three volcanoes, it bears out everything we've been able to learn."

"Think of the potential!" Sithas added. "A whole wing of flying cavalry! Why, the pa.s.sage of Arcuballis alone sent hundreds of horses into a stampede. A sky full of griffons could very well rout the whole Army of Ergoth!"

"It seems a great leap," Nirakina said slowly and quietly, "from the knowledge of griffons in a remote mountain range to a trained legion of flyers, obeying the commands of their riders." She was still pale, but her voice was strong and steady.

"We believe we can find them," Sithas replied levelly. "We leave at tomorrow's sunrise to embark upon this quest."

"How many warriors will you take?" asked Nirakina, knowing as they all did the legends of the distant Khalkists. Tales of ogres, dark and evil dwarves, even tribes of brutish hill giantsthese comprised the folklore whispered by the average elf regarding the mountain range that was the central feature of the continent of Ansalon.

"Only the two of us will go." Sithas faced his mother, who appeared terribly frail in her overly-large chair.

"We'll ride Arcuballis," Kith-Kanan explained quickly. "And he'll cover the distance in a fraction of the time it would take an armyeven if we had one to send."

Nirakina looked at Kith-Kanan, her eyes pleading. Her warrior son understood the appeal. She wanted him to volunteer to go alone, leaving the Speaker of the Stars behind.

Yet even as this thought flashed in her eyes, she lowered her head.

When she looked up, her voice was firm again. "How will you capture these creatures, a.s.suming that you find them?"

Sithas removed his cloak and picked up the tube from the floor beside his chair. "We have acquired a spell of command from a friend of the House of Silvanos. If we can find the griffons, the spell will bind them to our will."

"It is a more powerful version of the same enchantment that was used to domesticate Arcuballis," added Kith. "It is written in the Old Script. That is one reason why Sithas must go with meto help me cast the spell by reading the Old Script."

His mother looked at him, nodding calmly, more out of shock than from any true sense of understanding.

Nirakina had stood beside her husband through three centuries of rule. She had borne these two proud sons. She had suffered the news of her husband's murder at the hands of a human and lived through the resulting war that now engulfed her nation, her family, and her people. Now she faced the prospect of her two sons embarking on what seemed to her a mad quest, in search of a miracle, with little more than a prayer of success.

Yet, above all, she was the matriarch of the House of Silver Moon. She, too, was a leader of the Silvanesti, and she understood some things about strength, about ruling, and about risk-taking. She had made known her objections, and she realized that the minds of her sons were set. Now she would give no further vent to her personal feelings.

She rose from her chair and nodded stiffly at each of her sons. Kith-Kanan went to her side, while Sithas remained in his chair, moved by her loyalty. The warrior escorted her to the door.

Quimant looked at Sithas, then turned to Kith-Kanan as he returned to his chair.

"May your quest be speedy and successful. I only wish I could accompany you."

Sithas spoke. "I shall entrust you to act as regent in my absence. You know the details of the nation's daily affairs. I shall also need you to begin the conscription of new troops. By the end of winter, we will have to raise and train a new force to send to the plains."

"I will do everything in my power," pledged Quimant.

"Another thing," added Sithas casually. "If Tamanier Ambrodel returns to the city, he is to be given quarters in the palace. I will need to see him immediately upon my return."

Quimant nodded, rose, and bowed to the twins. "May the G.o.ds watch over you," he said, then left.

"I have to go. Don't you understand that?" Sithas challenged Hermathya. She stomped about their royal bedchambers before whirling upon him.

"You can't! I forbid it!" Hermathya's voice rose, becoming shrill. Her face, moments before blank with astonishment, now contorted in fury.

"d.a.m.n it! Listen to me!" Sithas scowled, his own anger rising. Stubborn and intractable, they stared into each other's eyes for a moment.

"I've told you about the spell of binding. It's in the Old Script. Kith doesn't have the knowledge to use it, even if he found the griffons. I'm the only one who can read it properly." He held her shoulders and continued to meet her eyes.

"I have to do this, not just for the good it will do our nation, but for me! That's what you have to understand!"

"I don't have to, and I won't!" she cried, whirling away from him.

"Kith-Kanan has always been the one to face the dangers and the challenges of the unknown. Now there's something that I must do. I, too, must put my life at risk. For once, I'm not just sending my brother into danger. I'm going myself!"

"But you don't have to!"

Hermathya almost spat her anger, but Sithas wouldn't budge. If she could see any sense in his desire to test himself, she wouldn't admit it. Finally, in exhaustion and frustration, the Speaker of the Stars stormed out of the chambers.

He found Kith-Kanan in the stables, instructing the saddlemaker on modifications to Arcuballis's harness. The griffon would be able to carry the two of them, but his flight would be slowed, and they would be able to take precious little in the way of provisions and equipment.

"Dried meatenough for only a few weeks," recited Kith-Kanan, examining the bulging saddlebags. "A pair of waterskins, several extra cloaks. Tinder and flint, a couple of daggers. Extra bowstrings. We'll carry our bows where we can get at them in a hurry, of course. And twoscore arrows. Do you have a practical sword?"

For a moment, Sithas flushed. He knew that the ceremonial blade he had carried for years would be inadequate for the task at hand. Cast in a soft silver alloy, its s.h.i.+ning blade was inscribed with all manner of symbols in the Old Script, reciting the glorious history of the House of Silvanos. It was beautiful and valuable, but impractical in a fight.

Still, it rankled him to hear his brother speak ill of it. "Lord Quimant has procured a splendid longsword for me," he said stiffly. "It will do quite nicely."