The Inheritance

Chapter 15

In the camp of the elves little fires gleamed. Smoke like gray ghosts drifted low. The warriors had no tents. They carried no such luxury as that, not even the prince. They slept rough on hard stone, they ate what they could catch or hunt, and they drank water that tasted of stone and dirt. The horses, picketed this night near a small stony pool bubbling up from the ground, stamped and snorted, nickering in the night. Bits slipped from their mouths, ringing only a little as they stirred or dipped their heads to drink.

Generous as this spring was, none such had the army seen for several nights before, and it was the water the warriors thought about most. They didn't wish for joints of stag or fine fat grouse. They didn’t much miss the sweet canopy beginning to go faintly green. They missed the running brooks and the flashing streams. For its lack they despised the stonelands most, and when Kethrenan heard his warriors talk among themselves he heard them talk about water.

Not tonight, though. Tonight was a grace, and he wished his cousin would accept it in stillness. She did not. Lindenlea paced the ten feet before her prince's campfire as though it were a matter of life and death to measure the space precisely and often. She paced head down, chin on chest, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Kethrenan knew that she was not happy. Cousins, they had known each other for a very long time. They were battle-friends, warriors who had often stood back to back, so close that not even the narrowest blade could pass between. He knew her, and though others might imagine Lindenlea was angry with the enemy, with goblins who had rampaged through the stonelands and had sent the pride of Qualinesti soldiery scattering in panic before fire-wights, striding flames with eyes like blackest coals and jaws that slavered acid, Kethrenan knew better. He knew his cousin, his trusted second, was angry with him.

The prince lifted his lance and watched the green rag tied to the shaft as it fluttered in a vagrant breeze. He wore this rag from his wife's cloak for his token, as jousters on the tourney fields wore a lady's favor. The pennon was soaked now in more blood than that which had stained it when she had used it for a bandage.

Who'd worn that bandage? Had she? Was the first layer of crimson Elansa’s dear blood on the rag? Or had it been torn from her to bind another’s wound? Was it, then, an outlaw’s blood?

Well, if it was an outlaw’s blood, more would spill. Like rivers it would run.

"Do you think she's alive, Keth?"

The prince looked up, startled. No one asked that question, not ever. Captains, commanders, simple warriors, no one Wondered-or not aloud-whether after all these months the princess yet lived. Not even Lindenlea had wondered aloud until now.

"It’s been a long time, Keth. Do you think-?"

"She is alive," he said, as he always did, with iron conviction.

Elansa was alive. Stolen from her home, his gentle woodshaper wife was alive. He knew things about her that others did not. Others saw her and thought she was a girl sweet and fair, a creature of gilded courts and shimmering woodland glades, a ‘gentle healer whose sighs were like the breath of wind through the trees. Kethrenan knew her, and he knew the strength of her.

On the day she had left Qualinost, she was going to lift an illness from the elms of Bianost, take it into herself, and banish it so that the trees might return to health. Elansa Sungold knew how to wield a god's talisman. She knew how to speak to the elements of the world.

"She’s alive, Lea."

She is alive, he thought, if she is not murdered. And if she has been murdered the stones of Pax Tharkas will run red with blood.

"She’s alive."

Lindenlea went back to her pacing, to her anger. Lindenlea rode with his army, ever strong at his side, her sword like lightning, her war cry pealing across the stony plain like battle horns as they harried the goblins, trying to catch them before they gained the mountains and Pax Tharkas. At that, they had no success. Gnash held them off with warriors he didn't mind losing and with fire. He built walls of fire and fists of flame to reach out and snatch an elf from his horse's back and burn him to death. On the battlegrounds, goblins howled for victory against their enemies, and they named their hobgoblin Master Shaman. In the midst of the battle, Gnash cloaked himself in fire, and no arrow could reach him.

A burning madman, Keth thought when he recalled the hob. An insane creature maddened by pursuit, wild for only one thing: to reach Pax Tharkas. But something had changed. Today something had been different in the fighting.

Little flames crackled in the campfire, Lindenlea paced, and the prince closed his eyes, remembering.

They had engaged Gnash and his army twice since the prince had returned. Once had been a rout, the elves scattered by fire. It had been a shameful running for which he could blame none of his warriors. No soldier could be ordered into fire. But they had come back, his army, they had come back, and their hearts could not be said to be afire with rage. N0, fire was Gnash’s. The elves’ hearts had changed to steel, and Kethrenan had taken them and pursued the hob again, running across the barren land with the mountains always in sight, their peaks gleaming with snow. The plain stretched out flat and far, Gnash and his army like a dark blight upon the earth. Kethrenan wouldn't come in running. He had divided his army and sent them up into the hills, half and half. In that way they'd surprised the hob, falling on him from the high ground and tearing through the sleeping goblin army in bloody slaughter.

The elves had not prevailed. Gnash had come and lifted up his fire-staff to fend the matter. But they had hurt him. They'd reduced his army by a third, and they had seen-Lea herself had been the first to discern-that Gnash’s love affair with the flame was not doing well for him.

Kethrenan listened to his cousin pace. He listened to the little settling sounds his own small campfire made, the sigh of wood consumed and collapsing. He opened his eyes and looked at the wood, ashy scales and a beating heart of ember. Gnash had looked like that, consumed from within.

Kethrenan thought of Elansa again, of her blue sapphire, her phoenix. It charged a toll, the magic of the phoenix stone. All magic did. It wanted your strength, your heart. It wanted your soul sometimes. Magic always wanted something. He was no mage, but he knew that much. It might be that the fire-staff Gnash wielded could burn forever. Gnash himself could not.

Kethrenan, the warden of Qualinost, had commanded a king’s army for many long years. He knew how to recognize a chink in a foeman’s armor, and he was not one to need a second look. He took his plan and made a few changes.

He imagined this was the source of Lindenlea’s anger. She did not like his new plan, and she could not convince him of her thinking. Nevertheless, this night, half of Kethrenan’s warriors would go from him. By the light of the red moon and the silver and all the stars they would ride hard in the night, wide around the goblin encampment, and head for Pax Tharkas. Let the goblins run to the old fortress. Kethrenan and the forces remaining would escort them right into the arms of the elven warriors who would be waiting outside the gates of Pax Tharkas.

Between them, the two forces of elves would smash the enemy as though they were sea and cliff and the goblins hopeless shipwrecks. Then Kethrenan would lead his army into the fortress and take back his wife. This was a fine plan, and one Lindenlea didn't like, for she didn't like to split the army.

"Lea," said the prince when he'd grown weary of her walking. "Lea, do you want to have the discussion again?"

She stopped, but she was a moment before looking up. "About the division of the army? No. We've had that discussion."

"Then what, cousin? Tell me."

"Keth," she said, and the softness of her voice startled him. "Keth, you believe Elansa is alive. Maybe it is the strength of your own will keeping her so." She twisted a grim smile. "We know about the strength of your will, cousin. Sometimes I think not even gods would dare it, if gods were here to dare. I doubt luck or fate would. But have you considered how you might find her, if you find her alive?"

He'd asked himself this question, in dark hours when he took his turn at watch. He answered the question the same way each time: If Elansa were still alive and in the hands of the outlaws, she remained unharmed, untouched. She would have killed herself before letting one of the humans violate her. She would have taken up a knife and killed herself. She was an elf. She was a princess. She was, after all, his wife.

"What if you're wrong?" Lindenlea asked, seeing the answer in his eyes. "Keth, what if she is alive, and she begs the gods every night for mercy, and begs them every morning that this be the day we come to take her home?"

But he wasn't wrong, this he knew. Elansa Sungold was Qualinesti, and she was a princess. She was a woodshaper, and hers was sacred blood, rarely shared with princes and never shared with those not of elvenkind. He said this to his cousin, and he added, "You know that if she is alive, she is well. You know, Lea, that you'd never let one of those human scum touch you, that if you couldn't kill him, you'd kill yourself."

It was a man's answer, a prince's reply. Lindenlea stood a long moment looking at him, and in the end she didn't say anything. She bade him goodnight, and he wished her good luck on her ride across the stony plain.

"I'll see you at the gates of Pax Tharkas," he said, "and all the gods go with you till then."

With her warriors, Lindenlea rode away in the night, the whole strength of her troops shining silver and red under the light of the moons. She drove her warriors hard, demanding of them the kind of speed that would take them the rest of the way to Pax Tharkas and put them outside the gates before dawn. Theirs was a grueling ride, a mad dash, and all her soldiers sped like quicksilver. She could not imagine that they had any wit for hard thinking on that ride. She could not imagine they had wit to do more than concentrate on getting the best from their mounts.

She, however, did more thinking than she would have liked, and all her thought was for the secret blasphemy she held in her heart, perhaps the one every elf woman held but dared not acknowledge. Lindenlea would not choose death over life, no matter if she must make herself an outlaw’s whore to see another day.

She did not doubt that Elansa Sungold felt the same way, and she wondered how it was that a man could share a woman's bed for as many years as Keth had shared Elansa’s and not know that.

Ithk thought he was the most wronged of all goblins who lived. His good plan had gone awry in three directions at once. The scurvy miserable excuses for goblins who were supposed to meet him on the high road behind the Fortress of Ghosts had all deserted but one. That one was Velg, and he was not the sort Ithk would have chosen to find waiting for him. Velg was not known for keenness of wit, and his whining could get on even a goblin's nerves.

"Gone to Gnash," Velg whined when Ithk demanded to know where the others had vanished to. "Saw him out on the plains and figgered it would be better to be with him killing elves than here." Velg ducked a blow and claimed he didn't understand it himself. "But I'm here, and we can still get in easier than you thought."

Ithk stopped him.

"How easy?"

Velg shrugged, and he cringed when Ithk aimed another blow. "Come with me," the goblin whined. "I’ll show you."

Ithk followed. He was in no mood to have anyone at his back. They went carefully, silent on the road. Shadows gathered at the end of day, and they kept to these. Long deserted, years in the unkind hands of the weather, the road was cracked and the stone heaved in places. It was not, however, unpassable and a better road than Ithk had traveled in all the winter. The road turned round a tall peak, winding in broad easy curves right down to a vast courtyard bounded on all sides by mountain stone. Velg took him round the peak and warned him to keep to the shadows. There before them, the Fortress of Ghosts brooded in the dying light.

"Look," Velg whispered, pointing.

Lights gleamed in the East Tower, a golden glow of torches. The West Tower stood dark, like a blind eye. Between ran a great span of wall. Ithk’s breath hissed in, sudden and sharp. Upon the wall three figures walked, passing before the flames of ensconced torches. They looked at the valley beyond, down toward the great stoneland.

"Brand," said Velg. "There he is."

Was it Brand? Ithk couldn't tell. The watchers on the wall were too far away.

"Is he in there?" Ithk asked. "You saw him?"

Velg nodded. "Saw him. Saw the others." He grinned, a toothy leer. "Saw that elf girl, too. They still got her. Better than that, Ithk. I saw a way in."

Ithk looked down the road, the winding stretch. "What way? They'd see us and fill us full of arrows before we got halfway down the road."

Idiot.

Velg shook his head. "Wait. Wait till dark. You'll see." Shivering in the cold, eye on the light and what he imagined must indeed be warmer quarters, Ithk decided he had little choice. He hunkered down, back to the stone until night came to cover. In time, he did see, for night came down upon the mountain like a shroud. The moons were slim, the stars shone, but their light didn't reach. On the wall, the watch changed, and if they turned to look into the courtyard they wouldn't have seen even a horde of goblins, let alone two.

Still, Ithk and Velg were careful when they left the road. The goblins drifted like shadows along the dark edge of the flanks of the mountain. They made no more noise than wind slipping over the stone of the courtyard. They kept to the shadow of the Tharkadan and the mountain itself until they came to the great wall. There they flattened themselves against the rising face of granite and edged along the perimeter. Above, outlaws walked on the heights, watching over the plains. None looked down. None thought to consider that enemies lurked so near as to be but a few paces from entering the Fortress of Ghosts through the gap in the sprung gates.

Through the opening they went, and it was their luck that the watchers on the wall didn't look down into the interior of the fortress. Why do that? They believed all their enemies were without, trying to get in. First Ithk, then Velg slipped inside, keeping to shadows and seeking the darkest places. Because they were goblins, they found at once the way to the lowest levels, the places humans and elves would not naturally seek. All up in the air, those outlaws.

No matter, no matter. Let goblins take the lowest levels, in safety to plot and plan, perhaps to see what weapons remained in this pile of dwarf-built stone. Then they would sneak up on the outlaws when the time seemed best. They picked up two stout branches on the way, blown in by storm. Wood for fire, for light and warmth.

Maybe, Ithk thought, he'd go back to Gnash with Brand's head in a sack and fling it at his feet. Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd just carry it around for a while till he got tired of smelling it and then boil it long to get rid of the hair and flesh, scoop it clean, and use it for an ale mug to drink to a good end to a long feud. He enjoyed this picture very much, and he fell asleep embellishing the grinning skull with chasing of silver, perhaps a polished bronze stand on which to set it.

In the chamber the outlaws had taken for their own, out of the wind and the cold, Elansa walked carefully around sleepers, disturbing only one: Arawn, who leaned up on his elbow to watch her pass, following after with his narrow glance. She heard his breathing among all those sleeping, the rasp in his throat like hunger. Careful not to look at him, she crossed the floor, noiseless in broken boots. She'd felt Brand leave her a while ago and knew he'd gone to take his turn on the wall. Restless, she'd been unable to sleep. Thinking of the air outside, imagining it crisp and clean and cold, she'd wrapped herself in her ragged cloak and risen. She longed to see the outside of the tower, to feel the cleaner air. On silent feet, she slipped out the door and into the stairwell leading up to the wall. Maybe he would send her back, bully her away and into the darkness of the tower again. Maybe he wouldn't, and it seemed to her that the risk was worth the chance.

Light drifted down from above. A door stood open, and torches flared and hissed. Elansa climbed up, taking the unfamiliar stairs slowly, eyes on the golden glow. At the top, she stopped and sighed as the first breeze touched her cheek. Brand stood at the far end of the Tharkadan, head low and talking to Char. They leaned against the wall, Brand with his elbow on the parapet, Char with his back to it. It was the dwarf who heard her first. He looked up, his face pale in the light of his torch, rough and white with his thirst, unable to ease it. He jerked his head in her direction, Brand turned to look, then looked away.

They left her alone, kept the distance of the wall between while she stood at the parapet, looking out over the valley. She tasted the breeze and listened to the profound silence of the heights. Dawn had broken perhaps an hour before, and new light spilled down the valley. Elansa filled herself up with it, and in that silence she prayed. She did not pray for rescue. It startled her to realize she'd stopped doing that-she couldn't remember when she had. She prayed only to be seen, to be known to gods who were so very far away.

See me, she whispered, soft in her heart, praying to the god she had always served. Wherever you are, O my Blue Phoenix, wherever you have gone, see me, for I am here.

Just that prayer she made, and then she left the wall, for the night was cold and her cloak was thin. Footfalls sounded behind her, echoing against the parapet. She knew the step, the measure of the tread. Brand followed, and he carried a torch to light their way.

"Peace," he said, low behind her. "Go back to sleep."

Elansa nodded, but she didn't turn to look at him.

In the dark cellars below the east tower, Velg had not been able to sleep. He took flint and steel from his pouch and broke the branches into pieces, kindling sized and larger. He made a fire because he didn't like the dark.

In a chamber not far from where he and Ithk rested, something woke, something thin and rattling and dressed in rusted chain mail and a helm that fit better when it was fleshed. Light didn't wake it, but the smell of flesh did, of pumping hearts and blood running in veins. Behind a closed door, it sat up on its bier, aware of a great hunger.

It cried, "Brothers!" in a voice like wind, and when it moved it sounded like naked branches rattling in storm.

Others awoke, not all, but the most hungry of them. They opened the doors of their crypts. Darkness was nothing to them, these creatures who had no eyes but only gaping holes where eyes once had been. They? left their cold beds, ancient warriors uncorrupted in life but corrupted in death. They woke from the dreamless sleep, and the waking was like a cold birth. Out from their crypts, they shambled across the great hall, wandering through the spaces between the pillars. Corpses of gully dwarves lay in the corners, headless, armless, crawling with maggots. The sickening odor of decay filled the cellar. The creatures hardly noticed. They smelled living things.

They had no voices, not anymore, though in centuries past their voices had lifted in praise to a king, in oaths sworn upon valiant hearts. Elves and dwarves and humans, they had made the Royal Guard of the elf king Kith-Kanan. They had loved him in life. Every one had guarded him, each willing to trade his own life for that of the great king. They had no voice now, though, nor heart or soul to remember the glory of kings or the legend of their own devotion. Wretched, corrupted, they made no sound at all. None, until one shoved its shoulder against the stout oaken door, trying to get past it, out of the hall to where it smelled warm flesh and blood. Others joined the first, flinging against the door, mindless and driven.

The thunder of their need boomed through the corridors and up into the towers of the fortress itself.