The Puppet King

Chapter 1 Meeting in the Marsh

The green wing curled gracefully, slicing the fetid air, bearing the great body through a shallow, banking turn. Aerensianic looked across the landscape of dark green, seeing the tracks of brackish streams like bright veins against a backdrop of verdant decay. Tall trees rose from the muck here and there, many draped with tendrils of stringy moss, while others loomed gaunt and skeletal, bereft of leaves and greenery. No breath of wind disturbed the air, and the landscape shimmered with a heat that was oppressive and unnatural even for this late summer day. Pale sunlight thickened the atmosphere, and vapors rising from the swamp were rich with the odors of decaying foliage, carrion, and the fishy, lizardy smell of scaly denizens.

Truly this swampland was a place of rot and death, and now it was the last such within the borders of the elven nation of Silvanesti. Beyond the delta of the silvered river, the Thon-Thalas, past horizons to the north and east and west, thriving forests rose from soft black loam. Sculpted as orderly, elegant gardens by the Woodshaper elves, these woodlands were places of precise order, carefully tended and schemed into regimented patterns. Aeren could see the lofty treetops waving in the balmy breeze, he could smell the hateful fragrance of vast, flowered meadows, and he could hear the relentless melody of a million songbirds as the feathered minstrels warbled their joy at the land’s rebirth.

There was no place for a dragon, not in those tamed woods.

Only here, in the delta of the kingdom’s great river, did decay and rot still linger in Silvanesti. Bordered by swift currents on all sides, an island inhabited by draconians, ogres, and other savage denizens, this murky fen was a stronghold of evil, the one such remaining within Silvanesti. Thirty years ago, the whole realm had been like this, but in that time, the elves had waged a relentless campaign of reclamation. Region by region, grove by grove, they had driven the monstrous denizens out, and the Woodshaper elves had then gone to work, sculpting and controlling and taming the wilds.

Aeren knew that the elves must inevitably be gathering their strength, preparing to clean out this last outpost of their enemies. In the thickets below were numerous bands of draconians, as well as ogres and two more dragons. Together they made a teeming, powerful force of savage and bestial warriors. But despite the might of the creatures gathered in opposition, it had seemed an unchangeable fact that the elves must prevail.

Until he had gotten the message, brought by a draconian who had once been a prisoner of the elves. The summons, too intriguing to ignore, drew Aerensianic from his moss-shrouded lair. Though he naturally suspected treachery, the green dragon had been curious in spite of his misgivings, and so he had come.

Now he saw the hillock at the southern end of the delta and tucked his wings, arrowing toward the slight elevation. Beyond the mossy rise stretched miles of brackish salt flats, merging with an indistinct border into the Courrain Ocean far to the south. Meandering channels of water connected the low hill with the deep river waters to the west. No doubt the other party at this meeting would reach the hill by boating along one of those canals.

Aeren could remember a time when this delta had not existed, when the Thon-Thalas had flowed deep and clear all the way to the sea. In the past decades, the river had been sorely taxed by the elven efforts to restore Silvanesti. So much of the wracked landscape had been carried seaward as silt that this vast fen had developed at the mouth of the river. Naturally, all the surviving creatures of foulness and evil had collected here, and the marsh had become a stronghold of villainy within a realm that was, in all other respects, once more pristine and healthy.

A spot of whiteness showed at the crest of the hill, and the green dragon curled his lip in an unconscious sneer. How like a Silvanesti. Even on a mission calling for stealth and subterfuge, he could not divest himself of the elegant robe of his station. Under other circumstances, Aeren would have enjoyed punishing the elf for his disdainful lack of camouflage, but for now the wyrm contented himself with a snort of disgust as he circled lower, finally coming to rest on the crest of the mossy hill. A sidelong glance showed that, as he had suspected, a longboat was pulled into the rushes at the base of the elevation. Two elven polers, dressed in the humble leather tunics of servants, waited in the narrow hull.

The elf on the hilltop made no effort to hide his distaste. Indeed, he pulled a fold of his robe over his mouth and nose as the unmaskable stench of green dragon wafted across the ground. Aeren snorted again, enjoying the Silvanesti’s discomfort as visible fumes drifted past his face. Then the dragon settled down, crouching like a cat and curling his neck around to bring his head down to the elf’s level.

He studied the fellow, noting the gold-laced sandals, the gilt-trimmed robe, and the jewel-encrusted bracelets of precious metal. Looking more closely, Aeren saw the unconcealed hatred in the elf’s narrowed eyes. Though he must be weakened by the effects of dragon awe, the Silvanesti was doing an admirable job of masking his unease.

“Audacious, don’t you think, to wear these baubles into the presence of a known collector such as myself?” Aeren said, his voice a low, sibilant growl. “Those bracelets would look exceptionally nice atop my treasure mound.”

The Silvanesti’s eyes widened momentarily at the words, but his face quickly dropped back into its haughty scowl. “I have misjudged you badly if you yield to such a short-term inducement when I come to offer something much greater.”

The green dragon huffed, affecting an air of great boredom. “I have come. I have not killed you. Speak.”

The elf coughed—even that he did with casual elegance—and appeared to marshal his thoughts. Long pauses in conversation were nothing unusual to a dragon, so Aeren waited patiently.

“You realize that the Qualinesti elf, Porthios, has nearly succeeded in driving your kind from Silvanesti.” The word “Qualinesti” rolled off the elf’s tongue as if the very sound of it reeked of venom.

But Aeren was not prepared to concede this point. “My kind, as always, goes where it will. We are not driven anywhere we do not wish to go.”

The Silvanesti made a gesture of impatience. “You know what I mean—draconians, that sort. They survive nowhere else in the kingdom but this island in the delta.”

“Do not make the mistake, elf, of mixing draconians and dragons as the same ‘kind.’ I shall overlook your misstatement this once. Next time you are so careless, you will die and this meeting will be over.”

With an admirable display of self-control, the elf showed no more reaction than a tightening of his lips. “Very well. The creatures of the Dark Queen have been exiled from all of Silvanesti except for this island. You must be aware that Porthios soon plans to clean out this last outpost.”

“It is an obvious tactic,” the dragon allowed.

“There are elves in Silvanesti who would be willing to see your ki—that is, to see you and other green dragons, as well as such lackeys as you are inclined to allow, retain this small foothold in our kingdom. A peace offering, if you will... a testament to the end of war between dragonkind and the elves.”

“There are such elves... and you are one of them?” Aeren replied, intrigued in spite of himself. Of all the things he had speculated that this elf might want to discuss, the notion of a truce had not been one of them.

“It is the reason I have asked to meet you here.”

“And in return for your tolerance of our presence, you expect... what?”

“We expect that you will do Silvanesti a single favor—a great favor, it is true, but only one task. It is a thing that you will doubtless find satisfying on its own level.”

“Continue.”

“We want you to kill Porthios when he comes here, when he leads the elven army against you.”

Aeren snorted, unmindful of the chlorine gas that again wafted past the elf’s face. Despite the hasty raising of his silken robe, the Silvanesti coughed and gagged, stepping backward and wheezing in discomfort. And still the green dragon didn’t notice.

“You want me to slay the hero who has restored your realm to the elves?” he asked curiously.

“He is not a hero. He is a Qualinesti radical who threatens our future, every bit as much as the mad king Lorac Caladon threatened our past!”

“Qualinesti... Silvanesti.” Aeren had heard the terms, knew of the two nations, of course, but the distinction was vague in his mind. “Are you not both elves?”

“Bah!” The emissary’s tone was scornful. “I do not expect you to understand, but the Qualinesti are ill-bred upstarts, unmindful of tradition, uncaring of the racial purity that is the gods-given gift of our race! We have sculpted our realm into a garden of precise, controlled beauty! Qualinesti is a place where the trees are allowed to grow as they will, in disorder and chaos. It is full of deep, trackless groves, and like their trees, the people of the western realm are untamed, utterly lacking in the decency, the refined sensibilities and regal legacy of Silvanesti!”

“But this upstart Qualinesti has you worried?” asked Aeren, privately thinking that the forest of the western elves sounded like a very fine place indeed.

“If Porthios is allowed to live, there is a very real danger that he will seek to unite the two elven kingdoms, and then the hallmark of purity, the legacy we have to offer our children through centuries to come, will erode to the point of uselessness.”

Deep in thought, the green dragon lowered filmy membranes over the yellow, slitted orbs of his eyes. He could still see his surroundings and the elf, but the milky veil helped him to focus his mind, to consider all aspects of this proposed arrangement.

Truly he did not understand the elf’s fears. Green dragons cared little for the fate of their descendants and generally sought to destroy and steal from their ancestors, so the notion of a legacy for future generations meant nothing to him. Still, the relevance of the argument to his own decision came down to one thing: Was the elf lying?

He considered the request, tried to imagine all the reasons the elf would come to him with such a proposal. Was it a trick, an attempt to lull the dragon into complacency before the attack? Aeren decided the elf would know that tactic was unnecessary. They had won every campaign Porthios had led them on. Nor could he see a way for the elf to make personal gain from this meeting. Instead, the dragon’s intuition gave him a strong signal, and he decided that this elf was telling the truth. However mad the reasoning was from a dragon’s perspective, the very presence of the Silvanesti on this hilltop, and the extraordinary nature of his bargain, persuaded Aeren to accept the fellow’s sincerity.

The incentive, too, was powerful. Despite Aeren’s bluster about dragons going wherever they wanted, he had faced the armies of Porthios. He had seen his clan dragons, greens that once had numbered in scores, fall to lethal arrows, deadly lances, and potent elven magic. He knew the elf’s next campaign would be the last. The Silvanesti army would sweep this island as it had swept the rest of the realm, and the few green dragons remaining would either die here or be forced to migrate to new homes.

And that was not a prospect that appealed to Aeren. He liked verdant forest, he favored warm weather and thick vegetation. And even if this delta was a little too swampy for his taste, nowhere along this coast was he likely to find as hospitable a place for his lair.

He changed the tack of the conversation.

“You know that Porthios has fought and survived many campaigns. I know, too, that he has an able lieutenant who goes everywhere with him, and that this elf is the wielder of a deadly lance and is a master of magic. What makes you believe that, merely because you desire it, we will be able to kill Porthios when he makes his next attack?”

For the first time, he sensed the elf’s hesitation, the difficulty he was having with this bizarre meeting. Long heartbeats passed without a word, and then finally the elf drew a deep breath.

“As to the lieutenant, he is an elf called Samar, and we have a plan to remove him from the upcoming campaign.”

“What plan is this?”

“It is a distraction that will draw him away from Silvanesti, but the specifics are not your concern. Still, Samar is loyal to his queen—some say, excessively loyal—and it is this loyalty that will draw him away.”

“And as to Porthios?” asked the wyrm.

Once again there was a long pause.

“There are those among the Silvanesti who have agreed this is necessary. Therefore, we will provide you with information about the nature and the timing of his offensive. This information will make it possible for you to arrange a lethal ambush.”

Aeren’s eyelids popped open. This was indeed a singular offer!

“You realize, of course, that during such an ambush it is very difficult to slay with precision... that is, it is likely that more elves besides this general, Porthios, are likely to lose their lives.”

Again the Silvanesti waited a long time before replying.

“Yes. My fellow patriots and I recognize that this is unavoidable. Of course, our own Silvanesti fliers were decimated in the first ten years of this campaign, so now Porthios’s flying troops are a bodyguard of Qualinesti elves. His chief lieutenant, Tarqualan, is as much a radical as his master; it would be good if you could kill many of the griffon riders. But it is true that he will lead a large contingent of Silvanesti warriors as well. Losses among them are... regrettable but necessary to the greater good.”

The green dragon regarded the elf coolly. “It may be, Silvanesti, that there are not so many differences between your people and mine as both of us have imagined.”

Again the emissary’s features drew into haughty disdain. “I shall not dignify that remark with a reply, except to say that you would not understand the priorities that lead us to make such a sacrifice for those who will come after us.”

Aeren’s smile was crocodilian. “It seems to me that the greatest sacrifice will be made by Porthios, if the plan works as you propose.”

“It will work. It must work!” Now the elf was all earnestness. “The campaign will not begin for at least a fortnight. Porthios will need time to rest and reorganize his armies from the liberation of the Tarthalian Highland, the thick forests in the eastern niche of our kingdom.”

“How will I identify Porthios?”

“He rides a griffon called Stallyar. The creature has silvered feathers at each wingtip. It is quite unique. Also, Porthios and Samar tend to remain aloof, above the bulk of the troops. With Samar drawn away, the prince will probably be alone.”

“And how will you get word to me?”

“I will come here one more time, to this hilltop.”

“You will come again in person?” Aeren’s tone was subtly mocking, but the elf was too serious to perceive the sarcasm.

“Yes. It is very dangerous for me to be gone from the capital. Even this mission is fraught with risk, but I had to see you face to face so that you would know we are serious. I cannot trust this matter to others.”

“I believe that you are serious, elf, even though you do not tell me your name, nor the names of your co-conspirators.”

“I tell you, we are patriots!” insisted the Silvanesti. “There is no alternative to ensuring the security of our future!”

“No other alternative save killing Porthios yourself,” the green dragon couldn’t help but observe.

“We are not assassins!” Again the elf’s shock was palpable, though Aeren was utterly mystified by the distinction. To him, whether the elves arranged for a dragon to kill their marshal or did the murder themselves seemed very much the same, morally speaking.

Not, of course, that he had any moral qualm about implementing the death of Porthios. Indeed, that warrior elf had been creating vexing problems for the green serpent since he had first come to Silvanesti, and his death—whoever brought it about—would be a very good thing for Aerensianic and his clan dragons. He was only too willing to accept the elves’ assistance in doing the deed. In fact, the advance intelligence about Porthios’s attack would be crucial, since the elven commander had demonstrated a knack for striking his enemies when and where they least expected. It would be a pleasure to turn the tables on him for a change.

“Then I shall be your assassin,” Aeren declared finally, striving for a soothing tone that was, despite his best intentions, a little beyond his grasp. Still, the elf seemed content with the resolution, not to mention eager to get away from this hilltop.

“Look for the information here. I will get you word as soon as Porthios makes his plans known.”

“I shall check this hilltop every day, within an hour of the sunset. But there is one more thing, before you rush off...”

The elf, who was about to do just that, hesitated suspiciously.

“How do I know that you will honor your word once Porthios has been removed? It may be that you will still decide to eradicate my clan and our ‘lackeys,’ as you called them, from this corner of Silvanesti.”

“You have the word of a Silvanesti general, an elf of House Protector... that is my bond.”

Aeren snorted. “That, and one other thing,” he growled ominously.

“What is that other thing?”

“Without the leadership of Porthios, your army may come after us, but they will surely die.”

The elf may have wanted to dispute that argument, but he thought better of his urge to reply. Without a backward glance, he stalked down the hill toward the boatmen, who were already making ready to depart.

Aerensianic, in not so much of a hurry, squatted on the mossy hilltop, watching the elves pole through the brackish fen toward the silvery river glinting on the horizon. Even when the robed figure had dwindled to a tiny spot in the distance, he stared and pondered.

In the end, he knew that it had been a good day’s work.

Chapter 2 A Marshal of Elvenkind

“Hail, Porthios! Long live Porthios!”

The chants and cries rang from the balconies, from the lofty towers and the elegant, narrow windows of Silvanost, as the general led his weary troops on a triumphal march into the elven capital. Using the giant turtles that served as ferries around this island city, the army had just a few hours earlier crossed from the mainland into their capital. After forming into companies and divisions at the waterfront, they had straightened with practiced discipline and then started on this parade.

The file of elves, four thousand strong, was mud-spattered, dirty, and exhausted after months of war. Yet for all their fatigue, these troops gave no sign of anything other than jubilant good spirits. They marched with crisp precision, and if a few uniforms showed the rents of draconian claws and ogre spears, if a few boots were patched or worn from the rigors of a long march, none of these cosmetic flaws gave any pause to the elves who paraded for their people in serene, righteous pride.

The banners of the infantry companies were bright, twenty colorful pennants held high, floating in the gentle breeze. They marked the Red-Tails, the Gray Foxes, the Cardinals, and the Silver Heads, and all the rest of the units that had fought under Porthios during the long, bloody years of the campaign. Together, they made up the Wildrunners, the army of Silvanesti that had been protectors of the kingdom for more than three thousand years.

And those people who had lined the streets to see the triumphal parade, elves who were normally reserved, dignified, and quiet, let their joy show in unison. Cheers rocked the air, cries of adulation for the marshal and for the long file of his troops that followed. Horses of the four cavalry companies, their bridles shined to gleaming silver, pranced in tight formation. The griffon mounts of Tarqualan’s Qualinesti scouts, fierce fliers who had to be tightly reined on the ground, reared and snapped, their eagles’ beaks clapping loudly as they struggled and stalked along. And the Silvanesti throng cheered as lustily for their brother elves from the west as for the bold sons of their own realm.

The column proceeded through the city of marble, passing between the lofty spires and graceful mansions. Gardens, formal and precise, flanked them on all sides, and fountains sprayed at the larger intersections. As the march continued, the troops relaxed and soon were cheering back at the enthusiastic crowds.

Alone at the head of the column, Porthios rode on his proud griffon Stallyar, allowing the creature to set the pace for the march. He was the military governor of Silvanesti, commander of the Wildrunners, and had been accorded the exalted rank of marshal in the field. Garlands and blossoms flew from the crowd to land before the prancing animal, while maidens and elderly dames blew him kisses. Elven men of all ages saluted as he passed, their posture rigid and eyes bright with pride.

Through it all, the hero of these throngs held his face high, his expression a careful mask of cool acceptance. He could not bring himself to acknowledge the crowd, to wave or to smile, for there were dark thoughts raging in his head, and it was all he could do to keep those grim emotions from marring his visage. He knew that this parade was good for his troops, as it was good for the elves of Silvanesti. Every year had seen another part of the realm reclaimed from the nightmare of Lorac Caladon’s madness, and every year brought more elves forth to cheer for the return of their realm.

He felt sorry for his troops even as he loved them. He knew that he would call on them again, and in the near future. For three months they had campaigned against a nest of draconians and ogres, battled three treacherous green dragons, and finally cleared the Tarthalian Highland of its hateful denizens. Even now elven priests and naturalists of House Woodshaper were restoring the last of the diseased groves, bringing beauty back to a part of the realm that for more than thirty years had languished in the deepest depths of nightmare.

But to Porthios, it was merely another part of an odious task that was now, finally, almost done. It was a task that had kept him from his wife for much of the past two decades, a separation that had become increasingly difficult, knowing that they were expecting their first child.

Behind him came bold Samar, the great warrior-mage walking amid the company of House Woodshaper elves. He carried the long-shafted weapon that was his trademark, a footman’s dragonlance with which he had personally slain more than half a dozen dragons. Now this famed hero, champion of the Silvanesti queen and the marshal’s chief lieutenant, strolled along with the weapon upright, bowing and waving in response to nearly as many cheers as greeted Porthios himself.

The parade curled around the marble-paved streets—no straight avenues in this elven capital!—and soon the marshal caught sight of Silvanost’s most stunning feature. The Tower of Stars rose from the center of the city, a spire nearly a thousand feet tall. The structure’s outer surface was a facade of brilliant white marble across most of its expanse, highlighted by crystal polished to a mirror sheen in others. Gems sparkled from the many window frames, and ornate battlements twirled gracefully outward from the lofty central spire. Several smaller spires jutted from the main structure, balanced as if by magic over the city so far below.

Under the bright sunlight of this early spring afternoon, Porthios felt a chill, remembering that tower as he had first seen it some two decades earlier. It had been winter then, a bleak and chilly season made even more hateful by the madness that had corrupted the forest, the city, the very land itself. Abandoned by its elven population, the city of Silvanost had been a ghastly ruin of destructive vines, pavement-cracking thistles, and odious deformity that had extended throughout the buildings and streets.

And nowhere had this blight been more obvious than on the Tower of Stars. That magnificent spire had withered and curled until it resembled a gnarled, weather-beaten tree trunk. It had been there that the task of rebuilding this land had begun by the magical restoration of horrific corruption. From that tower, the slow, painstaking process had expanded across all of Silvanesti, a campaign lasting thirty years until, a few days ago, it had reached the high, rugged territory at the farthest corner in the northeast of the kingdom. And soon it would extend to the south, where one final stronghold of corruption claimed a festering island at the terminus of the Thon-Thalas River.

The balconies of the tower were now lined with lords and ladies of the Sinthal-Elish, the city’s ruling council. The males were clad in the white robes of their station, while the women wore gowns of silk that shimmered and dazzled in an array of bright colors. From there, too, the cheers rained down on Porthios and his army, though he couldn’t help noticing that the esteemed members of House Advocate, one of the oldest of the elven realm’s clans, were faint in their praise and haughty in their expression as they looked down upon this elf who, in their eyes, would always be an unworthy foreigner.

Suddenly Porthios felt very tired. He was sick of the celebration, and he had a headache from the noise. His mind wrestled with age-old questions, problems that had plagued him all his life and still threatened to drag him down in despair.

Why can’t they see the truth? We’re all elves—Qualinesti and Silvanesti. The future belongs to both of us! He thought about a secret that he shared with only Samar among all the elves in the city, the knowledge of a treaty that might change some of this, and he wished that he could tell them about it. With that thought came memories of his wife, and he felt the familiar pang. He missed her terribly.

Finally the long procession curled along the quarter of House Protector, where most of the military elves dwelled. Here the troops dispersed, Samar making his way to the marshal’s side as Porthios stood before the gates of the Palace of Quinari and the warrior made ready to turn toward his own home.

“Another splendid campaign, my lord,” he said, clasping the marshal’s hand.

“Thanks to you and all the rest. Now go and get some well-deserved rest.”

Finally mustering a wave for the crowd that was gathered around his royal residence, Porthios passed through the gates, which quickly, smoothly closed to mask the sounds and sights of the city. In the courtyard, he was greeted by a dozen servants, all sincerely overjoyed to see him return. His steward, Allatarn, led him into the marbled anteroom and informed him that a bath was already drawn, awaiting his pleasure.

“Thank you... in a moment,” Porthios replied. “First I need a few moments of rest and reflection.”

Porthios shrugged out of his leather cuirass, and Allatarn helped him out of his boots. With a golden goblet of wine in his hand, Porthios slumped into a chair, unmindful of his faithful servant’s discreet withdrawal.

This ancient palace was his residence, but it could never be his home. As with every part of this realm, he felt like he didn’t belong here. Sometimes he viewed himself as a conqueror, at other times an unwelcome guest... but never as a true citizen of Silvanesti.

And why should he? For the thousandth time, he thought of the arrogance, of the hidebound tradition and mindless fealty to house name and noble status that were the twin hallmarks of this, the oldest continually surviving nation on Krynn. Even as he risked his life to restore their land, as he slept on the ground, ventured through nightmare-racked forests, battled draconians and ogres in their name, the Silvanesti elves consistently viewed him as one who wasn’t good enough to rule them. He could help them, he could even give them sound advice, but he could never be of them.

Not, if he was really truthful with himself, that he wanted to be. His mind drifted back to the pastoral woodlands of Qualinesti, the trees that were somehow more vibrant, more fragrant and more beautiful than the ancient and hallowed, the regimented trunks of this eastern realm. He remembered the Tower of the Sun, the place where he really was a king, and—though the Tower of Stars was far older—he savored the opinion that the great spire in Silvanost was but a pale and lifeless imitation of the crystalline obelisk that was the dominant feature of Qualinost. Touching the medallion that he wore over his heart, he thought of the office that disk symbolized. Speaker of the Sun, exalted master of Qualinesti, it meant that he was revered by his people there. As military governor here, he would never be more than a caretaker. Instead, he looked forward to the day when he could go home and stay there.

It’s ironic, he thought, that his wife—who was a queen in this place—should be working so hard in Qualinesti while he labored here. They were each, of course, embarked on important tasks. Alhana Starbreeze, together with trusted allies that included Porthios’s sister and his half-elf brother-in-law, was striving to bring about a treaty among the Unified Nations of the Three Races. At first Porthios had been a reluctant observer to that treaty process, but lately he had come to see the pact as offering the best hope for a peaceful future across Krynn.

“Allatarn... I would have more wine,” Porthios said, and the servant was there in an instant to refill his glass. The warrior noticed the emblem on the bottle, the diamantine star that was the sigil of his wife’s family. The vintage was good, he thought idly, but his mind drifted inexorably toward deeper concerns.

“Tell me, has there been any word from Lady Alhana?” asked the general, swirling the blood-colored liquid around the bowl of the golden goblet.

“No, my lord. The last letter was the missive that arrived before you embarked on your recent campaign.” The servant’s face was neutral, save for a tightening around the corners of his mouth.

“I see. Leave the bottle, if you please.”

With a formal bow, Allatarn withdrew to leave his master alone with his thoughts.

Restless now, Porthios rose from the chair to pace the study, the silken hose on his feet gliding soundlessly across the slate flagstones of the floor. For a few minutes, he stared out at the Garden of Astarin, beautiful and precisely ordered. The place was a work of art, he knew, but he couldn’t help thinking that it was merely sterile.

His mind drifted further, and he thought of the golden elven princess, the bride he had accepted so unwillingly... and he reflected on how his feelings had changed over the decades of their marriage. She, like himself, had come to the bond out of a sense of duty. Alhana was a Silvanesti princess and only daughter of Lorac Caladon, the promise of her people’s future. Porthios, one of three children of Qualinesti’s Speaker of the Sun, was the acknowledged heir to the leadership of his own homeland.

In so many ways, the marriage of Alhana and Porthios had been a bond of great promise to both elven realms—especially now that his wife had become pregnant. Each an heir to a throne, between them they created a hope of bonding the two elven realms, a hope with a greater chance of success than anything since the Kinslayer War had torn a bloody gap between the kingdoms more than two thousand years before. With the promise of a baby on the horizon, there was at last concrete hope of a ruler who could begin to unite the two tradition-bound nations of elvenkind.

The memory of Alhana’s pregnancy brought a new quickening of Porthios’s concern. How was she? How fared the unborn child? And why hadn’t she written to him? Her work on the treaty was important, but surely she would take time to rest, to care for herself! For the first years of their marriage they had pursued separate lives, each dedicated to the cause of elven unification, though not so terribly dedicated to each other. Finally there had come respect between them, and then a measure of affection—not passion, not love, certainly, but enough warmth to bring about the promise of a child. But now there was ominous silence from the west.

Porthios turned on his heel, unconsciously pacing faster as he remembered the circumstances of their separation. Since he had been tied down by matters in Silvanesti, she had gone in his name to see to matters in his own homeland of Qualinesti. At the time, it had seemed like an eminently sensible solution. After all, if they hoped to install their child as a uniter of the two nations, then it was only natural that the peoples of Qualinesti have a chance to see Alhana among them much as the Silvanesti had become used to the presence of Porthios here in their own capital.

Of course, Alhana had help. In particular, Tanis Half-Elven, who was married to Porthios’s sister, was a staunch ally, but because of his mixed lineage, he was unable to work effectively in the elven kingdom. Instead, he served as a liaison between Alhana and the humans who lived all around Qualinesti. For a long time, Porthios had been suspicious of the half-elf’s motives, but grudgingly had come to trust him as a benign influence and a man with the wisdom to see what was best for the world. Still, the negotiations had remained secret for the most part. The senate of Qualinesti, like the Sinthal-Elish of Silvanesti, was a close-minded body, certain to be resistant toward any substantial change.

Now Alhana had been gone for nearly two seasons. He had one letter from her, received four months ago, in which she had declared that she missed him and that she found things in Qualinesti “strange.” This in itself was not surprising, but he had expected more information to follow.

In the early years, of course, he would have had no such expectations. Indeed, he had once thought of her as his “Ice Princess,” a prized possession that was important to him politically, but who bore little significance in the day-to-day functioning of his life. There had been neither hatred nor resentment in this reality—in fact, he knew that she had felt pretty much the same way about him.

Yet somehow, as the years had passed and they began to know each other, some of that ice had begun to thaw. At first there had come a certain sense of kinship, an awareness that each of them was a prisoner of birth and had gone to marriage from a sense of duty, nothing more. He had learned that Alhana had loved a man—a human, ironically—during the days of the War of the Lance. That man, a famed Knight of Solamnia, had died a hero, and there were times when his wife still grieved for him.

Porthios could track his own feelings for his wife by remembering the changes in his reaction to that grief. At first he had been mystified, wondering how a mere human could have captured this proud elf woman’s heart. Then, as he became more conscious of his own prerogatives, he had grown resentful. How could she feel such pain over the loss of this man, when she barely seemed to muster any interest whatsoever in Porthios, a splendid elven prince?

For a time, he had even been jealous, and it was then that he realized that he was beginning to care for her. He had resolved to try to understand her, and that had formed the seed of true affection between them. He had learned—from many sources, for the knight’s exploits were legendary—about Sturm Brightblade, and he admitted his own respect for the warrior’s death, standing alone upon a fortress rampart to face a powerful blue dragon and its masked rider. And finally he had realized that he would never replace Sturm Brightblade in Alhana’s memories, but that there was room for him and those memories in her life. He began to see the things about Sturm that Alhana had admired, and instead of begrudging that admiration, he began to show her subtly some of the same features about himself.

Porthios had always been a warrior, an elf who understood that force sometimes provided the most effective means of resolving a dispute. He was smart, quick, and strong, but perhaps even more importantly, he had learned that he possessed a natural instinct in battle. He could see what an enemy’s course of action was likely to be, and he readily perceived the steps he should take with his own forces—first, to encourage the enemy to behave in the way that Porthios desired, and second, to strike him in such a way that his will and ability to fight were shattered with the sudden violence that so often broke the morale of an army and sent its troops to rout, its commanders seeking terms of surrender.

He thought of the day she had told him she was pregnant. Her own trepidation had been obvious, but he knew her well enough to see that she was especially worried about his reaction. And Porthios, from some well of emotion he had not even realized he possessed, had thrown back his head and laughed with pure, contagious joy. He had hugged his wife of thirty years, held her like a bride, and she had shared his joy and his laughter. For a few minutes, the world beyond themselves had ceased to exist, and they savored an embrace that bound them together just as they both hoped their child would be able to bind the two disparate nations of elvenkind.

But why hadn’t she written?

Porthios’s further pondering of that disturbing question were interrupted as Allatarn hesitantly knocked on the door to his study.

“Yes?” asked the marshal curtly, deciding against another glass of wine. He put the goblet on the table and turned to the portal.

“General Konnal is here to see you, sir. He says it is a matter of some urgency.”

Rethinking his decision, Porthios poured himself another glass of the splendid wine. “Send him in,” he said sourly. Out of a sense of duty, he reached for another vessel and poured a drink for his guest.

“Your Lordship... congratulations on your victory,” declared Konnal, striding through the door as if he owned the house.

“Thank you, General.” Porthios replied, suspecting that the elf’s pleasantries were merely an initial salvo designed to put him off his guard.

The two elves stood only a few paces apart, but neither made any effort to initiate the ceremonial kiss that would normally formalize a greeting between two such colleagues. Ungraciously, conscious of the stiffness of his manner, the host gestured his guest to a chair, then offered him the glass of wine before settling into his own seat.

Porthios found himself sizing up the general, who was his own age, and—if not for the Qualinesti Speaker’s presence—would doubtless still have been leading the Silvanesti army on its campaigns against the nightmare that had so long scourged the realm. Konnal was much beloved by the nobility and the senate of Silvanost, but his face and hands betrayed none of the hardness of soldiering, the grim weathering that had etched lines around Porthios’s mouth, toughened his fingers and palms with rough callus. For ten years he had led the Wildrunners, but his leadership had resulted in significant disasters, including the decimation of the nation’s griffon riders. Now Konnal’s generalship consisted of recruiting troops, of garbing them in splendid uniforms and equipping them with gleaming armor and sharp blades, and then of training them to march in precise file and drill.

“I have the Keys of Quinarost,” the general said, handing over the ring of golden icons that gave access to the Tower of the Stars.

“Thank you. I will keep them until I leave again on the next campaign,” Porthios replied.

“It is true, then... the Tarthalian Highland is reclaimed?” asked General Konnal.

“There are some matters for the foresthealers to attend, but, yes, the last of the dragons and their minions have been expelled from that part of the elven lands.” Porthios took some small pleasure in his geographical terminology. He had long made it known that he envisioned all the domain of the elves as one great land, not two eternally divided nations.

“Your troops made quite a parade of their return. Was that really necessary?” Konnal’s tone was just short of insolence.

“Stallyar had a strained wing, or I would have flown him in victory circles low over the city,” Porthios replied with a straight face. The savage griffon, loyal flier who answered to the elven warrior’s will, was well known to the people of Silvanost.

Konnal sighed, as if he were dismayed but not really surprised by the Qualinesti’s display of humor. “I thought we had agreed that demonstrations of a martial nature were to be curtailed now that the populace has, for the most part, accepted that our land has been reclaimed from the nightmare.”

Porthios felt his temper slipping but held on to his self-control with a powerful effort of will. “You will recall, General, that it was your suggestion that such demonstrations should be abolished. I never agreed to any part of it. Furthermore, these elves have fought bravely, under difficult conditions, and they were doing nothing more than returning to their homes for a brief interval preceding the next campaign. Surely you don’t expect that I would have them slink into the city after dark, like fugitives seeking to avoid notice?”

“The fact is, you know how the people get stirred up by these displays. They cheer themselves hoarse, and then they are surprised to learn that there is one more battle to fight. There’s always one more battle to fight!”

Porthios was feeling very tired, and his fatigue shortened his patience as much as Konnal’s words. “Ah, but this time we might be finished after one more battle. I trust that even you can see the truth of that!”

“You speak of the Thon-Thalas delta, I presume.”

“Unless you know of some other district where the nightmare has suddenly blossomed resurgent, yes.”

“I know of no such place... the delta, then. When do you presume to launch your so-called ‘final’ campaign?”

“Perhaps I won’t go at all!” Porthios snapped. “Maybe I should turn my back on this city and let you handle a campaign in the field!”

Konnal’s eyes widened momentarily, but he was too shrewd to reveal much of his alarm at this prospect. Instead, he merely shrugged. “If that is your wish, I shall make my preparations at once.”

“It’s not my wish, and you know it! My men need some time—a fortnight, at least—with their wives and their families. Time to let the nightmares settle, to remember why we embark on these battles.”

“Two weeks, then?” Konnal suggested. “Then you will move against the delta?”

“Two weeks, and then the last battle begins. Now go away, General Konnal.” Porthios had lost all pretense of politeness; this conversation had left a foul taste in his mouth. “I am suddenly reminded that I need a bath.”

Chapter Three A Council in Silvanost

“And so I place the matter before you, esteemed nobles, honored lords, and all Silvanesti who take an interest in the future: The island in the Thon-Thalas delta is the last remaining outpost of Lorac’s nightmare. It is a broad place, flat and festering, but it is surrounded by water and thus isolated from the rest of the land.”

Porthios looked across the ranks of gowned and robed elves gathered in the great chamber at the base of the Tower of Stars. This was the Sinthal-Elish, the ruling body of Silvanesti. He had their attention, and he knew what he needed to say.

“Isolated though it is, it cannot be allowed to stand. The island morass blocks trade, barring all seafaring traffic between us and other realms. Too, it stands as a symbol of the nightmare that has been our legacy for too long. I ask you now, the elven citizens who are the true rulers of this hallowed land, to authorize one more campaign. The Kirath, our bold scouts, have reconnoitered the place. The leader of the Kirath, Aleaha Takmarin, has reported to me personally.

“The delta, like all the rest of the realm that had languished under corruption and evil, is vulnerable to a combined operation. We will use troops and wizards and the healers of House Woodshaper, employing the three-pronged approach that has served us so well throughout the past three decades. We will root out the corruption at its very foundation and use the skills and artistry of our greatest minds to restore the fen to the pastoral grove that it once was.”

“Hear, hear!” The stamping of feet came from all around, and other elves whistled softly to indicate their approval. The clamor, as was the way with elven outbursts, quickly faded as a young, handsome elf clad in a robe and the silver sandals of an ancient noble house stepped forward.

Porthios bowed toward the proud Silvanesti. “I recognize you, Dolphius. Please share your words with the Sinthal-Elish.”

Dolphius returned the bow with serene dignity and turned on the steps just below the dais where Porthios stood. The lord looked at the gathered elves, waiting with the patience of a born speaker until the room had grown absolutely still.

“I offer a resolution of commendation for our esteemed marshal, Porthios of House Solostaran. Not only has he selflessly devoted his life toward the restoration of a land that is not his native realm, but he has also done so in a manner that we can only label as impeccably proper and selflessly devoted. Therefore, good lords and ladies, all elves of Silvanesti, I suggest we declare that upon his return from this last campaign, we declare a holiday and that our greatest artists and musicians prepare an homage to an elf who must be regarded as a great hero of our people.”

Again came the foot-shuffling applause, this time maintained for a surprisingly—and, to Porthios, embarrassingly—long time. As Dolphius returned to his stool and the sounds again faded, the marshal found himself compelled to speak.

“You do me great honor, people of my wife’s homeland. And I shall be grateful for the acknowledgment—after our campaign is successful. But I beg you not to forget that the restoration of Silvanesti has been a task faced by countless numbers of Silvanesti as well. Indeed, without the use of the dedicated and capable army that the nation has raised and supported, none of these campaigns would have even been possible.”

“And it is worth noting—” General Konnal’s voice came from his seat high on the side of the chamber; he rose from his stool and stood straight and tall, allowing all eyes in the chamber to locate him—“that this final campaign has yet to be fought and the results determined. It is on this matter that I have a proposal to make.”

“Speak, General, please,” Porthios declared, his own dignity highlighting the other elf’s lack of manners in his interruption.

“I join my esteemed colleague, the lord Dolphius, in expressing our gratitude toward the royal elf of Qualinesti who has devoted so much of his time to our problems,” Konnal began. His tone was free from irony, but somehow he still managed to state the name of the western realm as if it were a distasteful word.

“At the same time, we have reached a point where we can begin to assess the end of the long war of reclamation that has so long been the focus of our populace, our army... and, not least, our treasury.”

Konnal sighed, an exaggerated gesture that emphasized the weariness brought about by the long years of war. “Naturally we must insure the success of this last venture, the expedition to annihilate the final, lingering corner of the nightmare from our realm. With the esteemed Marshal Porthios leading the way, we can be all but certain of success.”

“Get on with it, Konnal,” called Dolphius, gently mocking. “Where do you want to pinch pennies this time?”

“My honored colleague, the lord, has brought us to the heart of the matter, as usual, without wasting time on the niceties of formal debate. Naturally I am grateful.” Konnal bestowed a dazzling smile on Dolphius, who frowned and gestured in irritation.

“My proposal is this: Since the impending mission is, for once, directed against a part of the realm that is, by our marshal’s own admission, water-bound and isolated from the rest of Silvanesti, we suggest that the campaign function with the use of but ten companies of the Wildrunners, instead of the twenty that have generally formed the backbone of Porthios Solostaran’s army. The savings in steel coin will be significant, not to mention that it will begin to allow many of our brave warriors, those who have given so much over the last three decades, to commence a return to the routines of normal life.”

Inevitably there were murmurs of protest and several outright shouts of derision. Porthios himself kept his expression bland. He was grateful for the support of so many of these elves, and he knew that it was politic for him to allow them to make his objections for him. Not surprisingly, it was Dolphius who rose, waited for Porthios to acknowledge him, and then turned to address the council in stentorian tones.

“The esteemed general, scion of an ancient house, proud bearer of Silvanesti standards handed down through long generations, has, as usual, failed to grasp the necessary prerequisites of modern day operations. His logic, where it is not utterly flawed, is so misguided as to represent a significant departure from rational thought. Perhaps, as is not inconceivable, he spoke without any such cogitation and would even now like to retract his remarks, remove his proposal from the table?”

Dolphius looked at Konnal, as if certain that the general would indeed take advantage of the lord’s generous offer.

Konnal smiled and waved good-naturedly. “No! Continue, by all means, honored lord and renowned Defender of Logic.”

With a bow and a modest shrug, Dolphius did just that, though he turned to address a question to Porthios.

“Honored Marshal, could you share with us an estimate—your best but most cautious assessment as to how long this campaign in the delta might take?”

Porthios nodded. “It seems likely that it will require perhaps a month, not very much more, to sweep and clear the island that remains in the grip of nightmare. Naturally the work of the healers and wizards charged with restoring the landscape will continue for many months longer. But for the army, a month.”

Dolphius turned back to Konnal, and now he spoke in tones of utter astonishment. “Did I hear correctly? Our colleague, the esteemed general, proposes that the army be cut in half so that some warriors who have bravely fought for thirty years can now turn to peacetime pursuits, instead of partaking in a last campaign, a venture that will extend their duties by so long as another whole month?”

The senator shook his head, doing a fine impression of a man who just couldn’t believe what he was forced to say. “And as to the matter of the treasury... naturally we are all concerned with the future of our realm. And, of course, a sizable fund of currency is a part—a small part—of our planning for the future. We wish to leave our children with the means to fund those necessities that, we all agree, must be taken care of by the nation’s financial reserves.”

Warming up now, Dolphius raised his voice. “But I ask you, elves of Silvanesti! Have we reached the point where a few steel coins in the treasury mean more to us than the purity of the forests, the sanctity of the waters and the woodland creatures of our homeland? Have we reached the point where a matter of financial bookkeeping shall be rendered more important than the task to which so many of us have devoted our energies, our courage, our blood and tears, and, yes, our very lives over the last three decades?”

With a sigh, the senator seemed to shrink. Suddenly he looked weary far beyond his relatively youthful years. “I ask you this, in all seriousness, my fellow elves. And I must warn you: If the answer is yes, then the future of Silvanesti is already lost, and no mountain of silver or steel in the treasure chamber is going to change that fact!”

“No!” The cry came first from General Cantal-Silaster, a female leader of noble descent who had fought in all of Porthios’s campaigns. Lately she had commanded one of his two divisions of troops. Her objection was quickly echoed by a score, then a hundred, voices.

“Send the full army! Finish the campaign! Only then will we turn to the future!” The shouts and whistles came from all over the chamber but quickly died down as Porthios raised a hand.

The marshal looked at the general, who stood calmly by his stool on the martial side of the chamber. “I ask you, General Konnal, do you wish to put your motion to a vote?”

“The will of the people is made clear,” Konnal said graciously. “I withdraw the motion. But I would ask just one question, if I may.”

Porthios watched him warily but gestured that he should continue.

“Have you made a decision that you can share with us, honored marshal, as to when you plan to launch this next campaign? It would only be fitting for the people to turn out and send you off in style.”

Though he wondered what the general was getting at, Porthios couldn’t see any harm in sharing the decision he had made just that morning. “This is the Day of First Gateway, in the month of Summer End. My expedition shall embark onto the river in twelve days, at dawn on the Day of Second Dream Dance.”

“Very well,” Konnal replied with a bow. “And you will have the entire army with you. I am certain that we can look forward to nothing but another unqualified success.”

“Why did he make that motion?” Samar asked Porthios later as the elves dined in the Palace of Quinari.

Also present was Aleaha Takmarin, the scout who had reported about the state of the delta, and the two generals of the Wildrunners. These were Lady Cantal-Silaster, the elegant patrician, and her counterpart, the one-eyed Karst Bandial, veteran of every Silvanesti campaign fought over the last two hundred years. Crystal windows spilled bright moonlight onto a linen-draped table spread with pyramidical loaves of bread, cheese, jars of honey, a variety of fresh fruit, and a small haunch of venison.

The five veterans had been discussing plans for the upcoming assault in the delta, but naturally enough their conversation had come around to the debate that had gone on in the Sinthal-Elish that day.

“I’m curious,” admitted the marshal. “It’s not like Konnal to speak out for something that he knows has no chance of passing.”

Porthios felt at ease, knowing that these were his four closest allies among the Silvanesti. Samar, of course, was relentlessly loyal to Queen Alhana, and, by connection, to her husband. Aleaha had been an invaluable ally as she and her Kirath scouts mapped out the realms of nightmare and gave him solid information on the necessities of each campaign. Bandial and Cantal-Silaster had proven themselves capable subcommanders, and Porthios couldn’t imagine embarking on a campaign without their able assistance.

“At least he went down to defeat graciously,” suggested the scout.

“And that, too, is not like him.” Porthios’s droll remark drew smiles all around. Still, the thought darkened his own mood. “The only reason that popinjay talks from two different points of view is that his mouth has only two sides,” the marshal declared sourly. “Imagine, suggesting that the Sinthal-Elish is doing us a favor by allowing us to extend our campaign through the summer!”

“I don’t think he speaks for most of Silvanesti,” Samar noted with an easy smile. “The people know what you’ve done for them.”

“What we’ve done,” Porthios corrected. “I tried to make it clear that these campaigns have been joint efforts between Qualinesti and Silvanesti companies.”

“You did.” Lady Cantal-Silaster voiced her approval. “And then Konnal somehow made it sound as though the Silvanesti have been treated with disrespect by your own guards.”

“Bah! He’s a fool!” snapped Porthios, wishing it were true. In fact, however, he was concerned because he knew that Konnal was not a fool. He had given his inflammatory speech to the elven council for a reason, and so far Porthios had not been able to figure out what that reason was.

“In any event, you know that the people are behind you. There must have been ten thousand of them cheering our arrival back home,” noted the female general.

“As they should,” Aleaha noted wryly. “For ten years, Konnal tried to wage this campaign without you, and we all know what happened.”

“Aye,” Samar agreed. “I can remember when the Windriders were the proudest force of griffon riders in Krynn. After Konnal was finished, we had to import our flying troops from Qualinesti!”

“And now we’re on the brink of victory,” Bandial observed, sounding almost wistful. But he quickly brightened. “Still, there’s one more battle, and we’ll get the job done right!”

“You know, I sought to find out a little more... went to Konnal’s house, as a matter of fact, to see what he was trying to accomplish,” Samar said. “And oddly enough, he wasn’t home. His servants didn’t know where he’d gone, but they were told he was attending an important meeting.”

“That is odd,” Porthios agreed. “You’d think with supplies being drawn, an expedition mounted, he’d want to keep an eye on everything I’m doing. I’m just glad he didn’t start talking about the cost of boats.”

“We’re going to take the army down the river, I presume?” Cantal-Silaster asked.

The marshal nodded. “My Qualinesti will fly on their griffons, of course, but we’ll have no need of cavalry on the island, so I figure that the bulk of the troops will land on the upstream shore. We’ll make it a thorough sweep and gather around that low hill we noted down in the south.”

“I think your estimate of a month might even prove generous,” observed Aleaha. “From the few tracks we saw, there won’t be many draconians. I’m surprised, though, that we didn’t see any sign of ogres.”

“Me, too, though I admit that I’m grateful for the fact. And you saw no sign of goblins? Nor of dragons?”

The scout shook her head. “We Kirath went over the place as thoroughly as possible, though we had to be careful. There are, after all, plenty of draconians there.”

“I would have thought that place would be irresistible to green dragons,” Samar said. “Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

“No, naturally not. Still, there’s something strange about this whole operation.” Porthios couldn’t hide his misgivings. “I’m more glad than I want to admit that foolishness about only going down there with half an army was so quickly overruled. I have to admit, I was also a little surprised by the support I got.”

Samar grinned. “I keep telling you, most of Silvanesti is behind you. These elves recognize all the good things you’ve done, and the fact that you’re from the west doesn’t make any difference to them. Those are very old grudges you’re worrying about.”

“The trouble with our people, my friend, is that they have long, long memories. And even if most of Silvanesti is for me, those who oppose me include some very influential people among their numbers.”

“That, sadly, is true,” Cantal-Silaster noted. “Still, you have many allies, even among those of us in the Sinthal-Elish.”

“What word from Princess Alhana?” asked Samar, dipping a honey-smeared piece of bread on his plate to sop up the last morsels of the dinner.

Porthios shrugged. “None... and truth to tell, that lack has me a little concerned.”

“Surely you would have heard from her if there were problems...” The warrior-mage shook his head, embarrassed. “That is, with the baby, I mean.”

“I would have to think so, but I know the Qualinesti. They’re my own people,” the marshal said grimly. “There are some of them—Senator Rashas and the rest of the Thalas-Enthia, for example—who are as distrustful of her as Silvanesti like General Konnal are of me.”

Samar glowered across the table. “Old habits die hard. It grieves me now to remember my own rudeness when first you came to help us.”

Porthios laughed finally, his mood lightening. “I think you did everything you could to provoke me into a duel. But I couldn’t accept. You probably would have killed me!”

Samar’s own chuckle was rueful. “At the time, none of us could see why Alhana agreed to wed you. And furthermore, I think every male Silvanesti was a little bit in love with her—myself included.” With a faint grimace, the warrior looked down at his plate, averting his gaze from the marshal.

“With good reason,” Porthios agreed, taking little note of his companion’s awkward pause. Instead, he was wondering, Why did it take me so long to figure out her worth?

Cantal-Silaster spoke. “But we can all see it now: a child born to you both will offer a promise for the future that the elven nations haven’t known since the Kinslayer War. Why doesn’t the rest of Silvanesti recognize that?”

“I think because they have hated the Qualinesti for so long, they can’t imagine life without that hatred. And for generations, we elves have been raised to believe that change is dangerous, something to be feared.”

“But, still,” Aleaha noted, “there are those among us who can see the way toward change... who recognize your worth. And not just warriors like Samar, or the scouts of my own Kirath, who have served with you and know what kind of man you are. Senator Dolphius, for example, is firmly in your camp.”

“You’re right about that, but for every one like Dolphius, it seems that there are two or three Konnals.”

“And you think Alhana is meeting the same kind of resistance in Qualinost?” Samar pressed, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his deep concern.

“I know it. Though she has spent more than half of the last thirty years there, she is still viewed as an outcast, an interloper, by many. They might not be the majority, but with Rashas and other conservative senators among their number, they wield a lot of influence.”

“Even now, when she carries your child... the child who could grow up to become Speaker of the Sun and Stars?”

“That’s exactly what they don’t want to happen, and that, my friend, is why I’m worried.”

Further discussion was interrupted by the sounds of commotion from the outer courtyard. Servants shouted, and they heard the unmistakable keening cry of a griffon, followed by a moan of pain.

“Who’s there?” demanded Porthios as he and his guests bolted from the dining room into the courtyard of the Garden of Astarin. Though it was surrounded by a verdant hedge, the yard was open to the sky, and there was indeed a griffon there. The creature’s haunches were streaked with blood, and its flanks shook like bellows as it tried to regain its breath. It was saddled, but there was no rider in sight.

“My lord!” cried Allatarn. The servant was on the far side of the griffon, and Porthios raced over to find him standing over a motionless, bleeding figure. The griffon eyed him warily but seemed to realize that he meant the fellow no harm.

“Who are you?” asked Porthios, kneeling, seeing an elf whose shallow breathing indicated that he still lived, though barely. The stub of a broken arrow protruded from his flank, and the marshal suspected that this wound was the source of the blood that had streaked the griffon’s sides.

“My... my name is Daringflight,” said the wounded elf. “My lord... I am a loyal Qualinesti, your faithful servant...” His back arched in sudden pain, and Daringflight gritted his teeth, breathing harshly through his mouth.

“Of course. I know you,” Porthios declared calmly, recognizing the man through the fear that was suddenly surging in his gut. “Now, gather your strength for a moment, then speak.”

Daringflight groaned, still trying to speak.

“Rest now. Don’t injure yourself further. Allatarn, fetch the healer!”

“She’s already been sent for, lord.”

“Urgent... Lady Alhana...” gasped Daringflight, drawing all of Porthios’s attention into tight focus. He heard Samar gasp behind him.

“What is it? What word of my queen?” he asked, fearing the answer.

“She is taken... Captured by the Qualinesti and held in the house of Senator Rashas. They did not want you to know... Tried to kill me when I left to bring you word.”

“That bastard!” snarled Porthios, his tone furious. He knew and hated Rashas. Leader of the Thalas-Enthia, he was a Qualinesti as utterly opposed to change and unity as were the reactionary Silvanesti such as Konnal. He turned back to Daringflight, his concern for his wife overriding his consciousness of the man’s wound. “Has she been harmed? Have they mistreated her?”

Daringflight shook his head. “She is treated well... called a ‘guest,’ in fact. But she is not allowed to leave, nor to send or receive messages.”

“Did she send you?” asked Porthios

Again the wounded elf shook his head. “I came on my own... It’s important that you know, my lord. There are others, too, who hate what Rashas is doing... who despise the way he wants to close our land against all contact with the rest of the world.”

“I will deal with Rashas in good time,” Porthios declared grimly. He wanted to mount Stallyar, to fly to Qualinesti and to storm the Tower of the Sun. Unconsciously his hand went to his medallion, the badge of his rank as Speaker. His temper flared as he tried to imagine the arrogance of those who would work so hard against his will.

Only gradually did reality intrude. He remembered the imminent campaign, the last stage of an unfinished task. He knew that he would have to carry that matter through to its finish. The marshal looked at Samar, who, like himself, was kneeling over the wounded man.

“Damn Rashas and all his ilk!” Porthios growled. “I’d like to go and deal with him right now... but you know I can’t.”

“I understand,” Samar said grimly. “And you should know that all Silvanesti is grateful for your sense of duty.”

“I also know you cherish your queen, my friend. I must ask you to go to Qualinesti, to see what aid you can offer her. And to tell her that I will be coming very soon.”

“As you command, lord. I could wish to do no less.”

Chapter Four Battle in the Delta

Porthios completed the preparations for his campaign like an automaton. With every free moment, he thought of his wife, held prisoner in his own homeland. For every minute he spent planning his battle against draconians, he spent an hour plotting the vengeance he would take against Senator Rashas of the Thalas-Enthia in Qualinost.

He drew his only comfort from the knowledge that Samar had gone to Alhana. The loyal warrior-mage, carrying his dragonlance and riding his fleet griffon, had no doubt made the long journey as quickly as possible, though even at an exhausting pace, the flight would take a week. And Samar’s devotion to Alhana was legendary. Hadn’t he even blushed in embarrassment over the matter at their last dinner together? And there were other allies close to Qualinesti. Much as he distrusted his brother-in-law, Porthios had hope that Tanis Half-Elven would also come to the aid of the queen.

Furthermore, Porthios felt quite certain that Rashas wouldn’t dare to harm Alhana. Most of his misgivings arose from the fact that he knew his wife would be frightened and anxious about her detainment, and he wanted to be able to alleviate her concerns. And there was the matter of his unborn child. How wrong it was that the future king of elvenkind might enter life as a captive of his own countrymen!

Yet he tried to force himself to attend the matters of his duty, to finish the task toward which he had devoted the last three decades of his life. The preparations went well. His was a veteran army, and under Generals Bandial and Cantal-Silaster, he had many reliable officers who tended to the mundane matters of readiness. As the departure date for his sweep against the delta approached, Porthios found himself increasingly distracted by his hope for a letter, for any kind of message, from Qualinesti. But the time slipped away without any word, and finally the marshal resolved himself to focus on this one last campaign.

At least Konnal stayed out of his way. The Silvanesti general had been gone for several days after the meeting of the senate, but then he had returned to lend his considerable organizational skills to the preparation for the expedition. Thanks to Konnal, Porthios didn’t have to worry about getting the boats he would need to transport his force down the Thon-Thalas. Furthermore, the general organized a full array of provisions, wheels of hard cheese, barrels of salted fish, and crates of elven warbread that were gathered at the dock several days before the army was due to depart.

The standard component of replacement weapons was also delivered promptly. There were boxes upon boxes of deadly, steel-headed arrows, as well as a hundred or more replacement swords. Even though the elven weapons were of splendid quality, a few of them inevitably were broken or lost during the course of a campaign. Other crates contained shields, buckles, straps, sandals, and bedrolls, all the equipment necessary to keep his warriors safe and as comfortable as possible.

Delivered to the docks at the last minute were two long wooden crates, secured by thick hasps and shiny steel locks. These were the storage cases for precious dragonlances, each holding a pair of the lethal weapons that could be borne by elves on foot and used against the event of draconic attack. Though Porthios was not expecting to encounter dragons on this campaign, he had requested that the weapons be added to his inventory as a standard precaution; he would assign one pair of lances to each of his two divisions.

The twenty companies of Silvanesti warriors boarded the boats with the first light of dawn on the Day of Second Dream Dance. Despite the early hour, thousands of city elves turned out to cheer their heroes’ departure. Carried more by the current than by the languid efforts of the polers, the wide, flat riverboats slowly drifted away from the dock and meandered down the stream. The warriors gazed back toward Silvanost, looking at the towers and gardens bright in the morning sun, enjoying the cheers that remained audible until the force made its way around the first great bend of the river.

The Qualinesti archers, all of whom would ride their griffons through the air, departed from their bivouac outside the city. Though they could make the journey in a fraction of the time required by the sluggish riverboats, Porthios had ordered that the two forces would travel together. He considered it a symbolic gesture, but an important one. Under his command, the elves of the two nations had learned to function with cooperation and reliance upon one another. He wasn’t about to let some notion of favoritism color the impressions of his Silvanesti warriors.

It was for that same reason that Porthios rode along on river barges. Stallyar would carry him into battle, of course, but for the river voyage, the griffon flew above the boats, gliding back and forth while his master met with Bandial and Cantal-Silaster and planned the specifics of the campaign on the open deck.

During the voyage, the plan evolved from its simple beginnings. Instead of a single landing at the broad clearing located by Aleaha Takmarin, the army would be split into two divisions and would land in two places, on the northeast and northwest ends of the island. In each place, the ground troops would quickly establish a large, fortified encampment. The Qualinesti, on their griffons, would fly back and forth, maintaining communication between the two divisions, and the Silvanesti would quickly venture forth to clear the ground between the two camps of draconians and other dangerous inhabitants. Once the two forces were securely united, the Wildrunners would commence a southward sweep, spanning the width of the island and forcing all unfriendly denizens into a south corner at the bottom, where—if any survived—they would be confronted in a battle of annihilation.

With the griffons wheeling back and forth overhead and the sure knowledge that this was the last outpost of the nightmare that had plagued their realm for three decades, the Silvanesti elves on the boats treated the four-day journey down the river almost as a holiday outing. The splendid woodlands around them were sculpted as perfectly as any formal garden, with groves neatly arranged, framed by trimmed hedges, often complemented by regular, reflecting pools. At night, no worm was safe anywhere near the army encampment, and all day fishing lines drooped into the water from stem to stern of each boat. The elves ate well—fresh fish morning, noon, and night—and the crated provisions hadn’t even been touched as the army finally came within sight of the festering island.

These were veteran troops, of course, and now all vestige of holiday excursion vanished from the members of the expedition. The stench of decaying swampland thickened the air around them, and the sight of the bleeding, tormented trees provided a strong reminder of the purpose that had brought them down the river. A shrill whistle sounded from the shore—this was the atrakha, the unique horn used by the Kirath to communicate among themselves—and the anchors were dropped. Under the full control of the boatmen now, the rivercraft waited a mile north of their destination.

Here Aleaha Takmarin came over for a last conference before the elves went ashore. She paddled a slender canoe from the thicket on the shore and quickly found Porthios to give her report.

“The island remains quiet,” she informed him. “Still, don’t abandon caution. We’ve seen signs of many draconians, and I still don’t like the way that they’ve stayed away from their villages.”

“You know we’ll be careful... and thanks for your report,” Porthios replied. “Do you still think the two clearings are good places to land?”

“Yes, if you want to risk dividing your force,” she said cautiously. Almost as an afterthought, she reached into a pouch at her waist and drew out a small packet of woven grass. “Here—a greenmask. It’s a gift from the Kirath. Wear it when you go into battle, and it will offer some protection from noxious gases, smoke, and the like.”

“You still suspect there might be green dragons?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We haven’t seen any sign of them, but it’s like Samar said, this seems like a perfect place for them.”

“I’m afraid of the same thing,” he admitted. “I appreciate the gift.”

“My scouts will be on the island. We’ll make contact later, try to keep you posted on the enemy’s movements.”

“Thanks. Be careful.”

Minutes later, on the bow of the lead boat, Porthios met with Tarqualan, who commanded the company of Qualinesti flyers, and the two Silvanesti division commanders, the scarred veteran, Bandial, and the aristocratic noble, Cantal-Silaster. Also present were several of the nature priests of House Woodshaper, who would be charged with beginning the long, slow healing process of the woodland, and two of the white-robed elven wizards who would be entrusted to lending magical might to the Silvanesti ground forces.

“We’ll time the landings so that both divisions come ashore simultaneously,” Porthios clarified. “The Qualinesti archers will fly overhead, giving protection against attack from the air and keeping watch for any reaction on the ground. I want both camps established by nightfall, completed with palisades.”

“Shouldn’t be difficult,” Bandial said, with a look at the sun, which had not even reached its zenith as yet. “Can we move out as soon as we have a wall up?”

Porthios shook his head. “I want to keep a sense of coordination between the divisions. Even if one of you gets the camp established ahead of time, you’re to wait within the palisade. I’ll be flying back and forth and will put together orders for an attack with the dawn.”

“I thought you said you only expected a few draconians,” Bandial countered, adjusting the eye patch that he wore proudly. “Why all the caution?”

With a sigh, the marshal tried to make sense of his answer. “It’s just a feeling I have. We could have some trouble with this one. True, Aleaha looked the place over and didn’t see any sign of dragons or ogres, and not many draconians, at that. Maybe it was their villages. Too many of them looked abandoned, as if perhaps they still lived there but were hiding out in the woods.”

“If the denizens of nightmare are there, we’ll find them,” Cantal-Silaster promised. “You know that, my lord marshal.”

Porthios looked at these elves with real affection. “I do know that, my brave men and women. And it is my sincere wish that every elf with us survives this campaign to make it back home again. But these woods are thick, even for Silvanesti forests. It will be hard to see what’s happening from the air, and in the event of a surprise, I want all forces ready to defend themselves.”

“Understood, sir,” agreed Bandial cheerfully. “Now, good luck to you!”

“And to you all!”

Stallyar and another griffon came to rest on the boat’s upper deck, and Porthios and Tarqualan took to their saddles. The great, winged creatures leaped into the air, and the prince of elvenkind, Speaker of the Sun, and Military Governor of Silvanesti once more made ready to lead his troops into battle.

Aerensianic watched the elven deployment with keen interest. The green dragon was coiled through the limbs of three massive trees, just below the upper canopy of tattered leaves, the barrier that would probably have masked his supple green body from the prying eyes of any of the elven scouts on their cursed griffons. However, Aeren was not relying on mere camouflage for protection. As he had when the elven scouts had first scoured this island, he was concealing himself behind a spell of invisibility.

If his features could have been seen, they would have been creased by an obvious frown as he watched the elven riverboats divide into two separate flotillas. One group of the long, flat craft glided to the dragon’s right, while the other floated toward the shore not far from the dragon’s concealed vantage.

The green dragon was remembering his second meeting with the Silvanesti traitor, the elf who hated this Porthios so much that he had bargained his own army—and a portion of his ancestral homeland—away so that this bold marshal might be killed. The elf’s information had been useful and accurate, so far as it went. The elven army appeared on the river exactly on the day the general had predicted. The mob of creatures lurking in the woods below—ogres, goblins, and draconians, all held together under the tenuous reins of Aerensianic’s lordship—was emplaced, ready to strike at the landing forces. They, too, had hidden from the scouts, ignoring their almost irresistible compulsion to attack early.

But the traitor had said nothing about a landing in two places. Secure in the knowledge that the elves were too far away to smell him, Aeren snorted a cloud of deadly chlorine gas, irritated with this new development. Unlike the disciplined elven army, the unruly creatures who had answered the green dragon’s call to arms were far too disorganized to perform any complicated offensive maneuvers. He would have to leave them where they were, letting the battle develop as it would.

Aeren could make out the form of the elven marshal, mounted upon his silver-feathered griffon, as the commander flew back and forth between the two portions of his army. The green dragon took careful note of the elf, resolving that, when the battle began, he would seek out that particular enemy and give him the honor of a hero’s death. Unfortunately, this meant that the green dragon would not be there to help with the main attack. Instead, Aerensianic would have to rely upon a simple plan and on the natural aggressiveness of his troops.

Yet there were other things, too, about the impending fight that would work in his favor. The traitor had informed him that elven tactics had evolved into a predictable approach to a new campaign. Porthios would land his force and quickly build a fortified wall around it. Once sheltered behind that palisade, the elves would be virtually unassailable.

But before then, they would be vulnerable. This was the same tactic the marshal had developed over long experience during the cleansing of Silvanesti. On occasion, Aeren had learned, the elves had been attacked by resentful denizens of the nightmare before they had a chance to complete their defenses. In those cases, the elves had survived by a rapid withdrawal, with a sudden return and a construction of their fort in a new place.

None of those attacks had been landed on a hostile shore, however, and it was this fact that gave Aeren hope. The current would press the boats hard against the riverbank, making any withdrawal exceptionally difficult. Instead, the invading army would be forced to fight where it was, ill-prepared and unfortified. And they would have no idea that a major force was lurking in these woods, alerted to the elven approach and prepared to launch a deadly ambush.

Watching as he tried to suppress his natural impatience, Aeren saw the elven boats pull up to shore, their blunt prows driving into the muddy bank, hull to hull across a breadth of three or four hundred paces. The invading warriors leaped onto the ground and quickly spread out, axes ringing into tree trunks within a minute after the first troops had landed. The second flotilla, off to the right, had drifted out of sight behind the curve of the island’s shore. The green dragon suspected that those boats hadn’t reach shore yet, so he refrained from making any move, giving any sign of the ambushing force lurking in the shelter of the woods. He wanted to make sure the other force had landed, their boats grounded in soft muck so they would be unable to come to the aid of their beleaguered comrades.

But soon it would be time to attack.

Very, very soon.

Porthios scanned the broad shore of the island, trying to reassure himself that things were developing according to plan. He saw that the First Division, in the west, was already drawing up to shore. The Second Division was still a mile or more from its designated landing zone but was closing fast, borne by the current and by the diligent efforts of the elven polers.

Stallyar banked along the shore, flying low and parallel to the riverbank. The marshal wore the greenmask as a precaution and was pleased to find that he could breathe quite easily through the gauzy material. Still, he was nervous and edgy. He squinted into the dank vegetation, trying to reassure himself that there could be no real threat there. After all, he and Samar had thoroughly scouted the island. A few hundred, even a thousand or more, draconians would be no match for either one of his divisions, even supposing that the disorganized monsters could somehow muster the coordination to attack together. It was far more likely that individual bands of the creatures would try to offer what resistance they could and would be slaughtered by the elven phalanxes. Porthios even allowed himself to hope that this might be a relatively bloodless campaign for his own troops. The elves had skilled healers, and all but the most grievous of wounds could be magically healed so long as there weren’t too many injured all at the same time.

The First Division was well on the way toward clearing a swath of shore. Already axemen were working on sharpening the trunks of felled trees, while the cutters worked their way farther and farther inland. Half his griffon-mounted Qualinesti, under the command of Tarqualan, soared in circles over the troops, keeping alert eyes on the woodland, with arrows ready to shoot if any target presented itself. Unfortunately, Porthios knew that the dense undergrowth created little chance of seeing a target that didn’t want to be seen.

With a mild tug on the reins, Porthios pulled Stallyar around, then urged the griffon to hurry as they flew toward the boats of the Second Division. Coming around the bend at the northern point of the island, he saw that those boats were finally drawing near to shore. A hundred griffons wheeled overhead, archers studying the bank where the vessels would make their landing.

Porthios joined these fliers, allowing Stallyar’s powerful wings to stretch into an easy glide. The boats, driven by strong pushes on the poles, churned up little wakes of white water, then nudged firmly into the soft muck of the banks. In another minute, the elves of the Second Division were swarming ashore, attacking the corrupted trees with as much vigor as had their comrades two miles away along the shore of the island.

The thin notes of a trumpet trailed through the wind, so faint that at first Porthios thought he must have imagined it. But then the call was repeated, the distinctive, ascending three-note cry that meant only one thing: We are being attacked!

Even before Porthios could pull on the reins, Stallyar banked and dived, picking up speed as he carried the marshal toward the sound of the alarm. They swept just above the trees, cutting over the island rather than taking the longer route over the water.

It was this detour that undoubtedly saved his life.

As the griffon flew at a frantic speed, Porthios had eyes only for the elven troops of the First Division. The first thing he noticed was that the griffons and their archers, who had been circling over their comrades on the ground, were now diving toward the woods. Arrows were showering down into the trees, clear enough proof that his soldiers were being attacked.

The second thing to catch his attention was a writhing, shimmering shape twisting through the treetops directly below. His mind registered the identification—this was a dragon, and a big one.

The blast of poisonous gas erupted upward from widespread jaws, a green cloud boiling and churning into the air. The seething mist swirled just beyond Stallyar’s right wing, and Porthios saw that the dragon had tilted its sinuous neck all the way over its back to spew its lethal breath at the flying elf. The attack was awkward, and that enabled the griffon to dive away from the deadly cloud. Stallyar cawed angrily as the tendrils of mist burned his eyes, while Porthios blinked and gagged, grateful for the protection of the mask.

Even as branches lashed his face while Stallyar ducked below the top layer of the forest, Porthios was thinking about that attack. The dragon had been invisible—he had seen the effects of the spell fade as the monster burst into motion—and it had been waiting for him. If he had been flying over the river, along the bank, as he had been since the first boats landed, he would inevitably have glided directly into his death.

The griffon’s foreclaws, powerful eagle talons, seized a limb and pulled, the leonine rear legs pushing off the same branch to catapult the creature back into the skies. Porthios risked a glance and saw that the dragon, a massive green wyrm, was disentangling itself from the treetops. Enormous wings beat, crushing branches and leaves, but the monster’s own size worked against it.

In moments, the marshal was flying over the encampment, and Porthios was appalled to see the chaos reigning below. More than a thousand winged humanoids, many bearing hooked swords, while others attacked with their talons and crushing jaws, had swarmed from the shelter of the woods to strike the elven work parties. His first glance showed at least a hundred torn, bleeding bodies lying in the wake of the initial attackers, while more of the axemen were falling back to the boats.

From the flanks of the forest, a great, lumbering line of creatures emerged. These were ogres, bashing with huge clubs, some wielding long spears, others carrying sticks like tree trunks as they struck the unprepared elves on the right and the left. Massive feet thudded across the ground as growls rose thickly over the field. The first elves to meet this charge were instantly smashed down, crushed lifeless beneath the brutal onslaught.

The veteran warriors of the First Division were making a valiant effort to handle the shock. Already they had a semblance of a line formed, a barrier of silvery swords that blocked the draconians’ advance and forced the savage creatures to hit their enemies head-on. In line, each elf relied on the presence of his comrades to right and left, and there were no warriors on Krynn more skilled with the long sword than a veteran elf.

But the problem with the line came from its flanks. The ogres rolled against both right and left sides, and without supporting formations to screen, the tenuous line was inevitably being chewed away. One after another, elves turned from the frontal attack to face the threat from the flank, only to perish beneath the weight of the monstrous, club-wielding humanoids.

Porthios gave a quick glance behind him. The green dragon had broken from the trees and was winging after him, but it was slow to accelerate and somewhat clumsy in the cramped quarters. Still, it seemed to pursue him with singular, deadly purpose The elf reckoned that he had about a minute to issue orders and take action before he would once more have to flee for his life. He pulled back on the reins and Stallyar climbed, winging desperately toward the Qualinesti on their griffons. These elves were busy shooting arrows into the attackers, but their efforts were uncoordinated. Many shot at the draconians, while a few directed their lethal missiles at the ogres on the right and left flanks.

Porthios saw Tarqualan trying to make order of the chaos.

“There! Concentrate your fire on the near flank!” shouted the marshal. “We’ve got to stop the ogres or the whole division is lost!”

“Yes, lord!” shouted the captain, immediately turning to signal his disorganized flying troops.

Again the marshal stole a glance, and he saw the green dragon bearing down. The yellow eyes were unblinking, the slitted pupils fixed unerringly on him. With an anguished look down at the battle, Porthios knew that he was needed down there. His leadership, and his sword, might give some hope of stabilizing that brave but crumbling line. Yet there was no mistaking the serpent’s purposeful pursuit, and if he flew down to join his army, the commander knew that the dragon would bring its indiscriminate attack down there as well.

Instead, Porthios pulled the reins to the left. Stallyar, with a momentary squawk of confused protest, obeyed, driving his powerful wings through the air, veering away from the battle and the river, carrying his master over the dank forest of the island. Roaring in fury, the dragon followed, cutting the angle on the inside of Porthios’s turn, closing the distance between hunter and quarry as the massive monster built up more and more speed. Wind scoured the elven marshal’s face and stung tears from his eyes as he laid his head flat along the griffon’s powerful neck.

The elf knew he would never outdistance the dragon in straight, level flight, but he had to put some distance between the serpent and the desperate battle. He looked over his shoulder, fighting off the inevitable quiver of dragonawe as he saw that the beast was closing rapidly.

“There! Dive!” shouted Porthios, pointing to a gap between a couple of tall, leafless tree trunks.

Stallyar responded instantly, tucking his wings, veering through a turn that would have pulled the elf out of the saddle if he had not been firmly seated. Again branches lashed his skin, and Porthios buried his face more firmly in the soft feathers of the griffon’s neck. He felt them drop swiftly through the brittle limbs of the dead tree, plunging out of the sky with precipitous haste.

They landed with a thud hard enough to knock the wind out of the rider, but the griffon, unfazed, used the ground to pounce directly sideways. Scampering catlike through a maze of thick, dead limbs, the creature raced through an arc that carried them back to the north. Porthios hung on with desperation, knowing his only chance for survival rested with the griffon’s quickness and natural instincts for escape.

With a bellow of rage, the dragon dropped into the trees. Massive trunks snapped like twigs, including a forest giant that crashed to the ground directly before Stallyar. Without hesitation, the griffon leapt the barrier, then used the branches and his powerful wings to lift mount and rider back into the sky.

The dragon smashed to the ground, and once again green gases spumed upward. This time the cloud was far behind Stallyar’s tail, and without any urging from Porthios, the griffon sped toward the battle raging on the riverbank. The great dragon was left below and behind them, roaring in frustration and splintering trees to right and left as it fought to free itself from the tangle.

Two or more miles away, the battlefield was nevertheless easy to mark, since Tarqualan’s Qualinesti still wheeled on their griffons over the site of the elven landing. But as Porthios drew closer and looked down into the clearing on the riverbank, he groaned under an onslaught of disbelief and despair.

The elven line was a shambles. The draconians had broken through in the center, and though the arrows from the flying archers had slowed the ogre onslaught on the left, they had done nothing to check the hammer blow against the right flank. Now scattered parties of Silvanesti fought to reach the boats, or at least to give a good account of themselves in their last fight. Draconians swarmed over the hulls of two or three riverboats, while a fourth was already smoking. More sooty plumes marked the progress of torches as the attackers raced from boat to boat, obviously intending to put the whole fleet to the torch.

Even worse, Porthios saw that two more green dragons—not as huge as his pursuer, but formidable monsters nonetheless—had slithered from the woods to join in the slaughter. Disdaining to use their lethal breath weapons against this disorganized and scattering foe, the wyrms pounced on individual elves and tore them to pieces with their jaws and talons. Each of the dragons left a trail of blood and gore in its wake and was given a wide berth by the ogres and draconians that also continued the slaughter.

The sight of the serpentine killers was too much for Porthios’s already frayed emotions. In the midst of all the horror, of the knowledge that this expedition had already turned into a disaster, he saw a young green dragon bite a fleeing elf in two. His self-control and sense of reason snapped, and he put his heels hard into Stallyar’s flank, pushing the griffon’s head down toward the hateful lizard.

Nothing loath, the bold flier sensed his master’s intentions and willingly obeyed, even to the point of biting back the shrill cry of challenge that would have automatically accompanied such a swooping attack. Instead, as silent as a wisp of wind, the griffon and the elf plunged toward the back of the rampaging dragon. Porthios had his slender long sword in his hand, the blade of purest elven steel gleaming like cold fire in the late afternoon sun. It was a hallowed weapon, blessed by the gods of goodness and borne by three generations of elven heroes. Stallyar’s talons were extended, as if the creature were eager to reach the dragon, to wring the life out of that hateful, scaly shape.

They dropped like a missile, wind rushing through Porthios’ hair and pulling tears from his eyes, though he never lost sight of the dragon, which was now coiling for another pounce. At the last minute, the griffon’s feathered wings spread wide, slowing the dive just enough to spare them injury from the crash. The rush of air became audible, and the dragon lifted its head fractionally, undoubtedly sensing the presence overhead.

But it was too late for any other reaction. Stallyar’s talons seized both sides of the wyrm’s head, the force of the griffon’s weight smashing downward to drive the monster against the ground. The lion’s paws of the griffon’s rear legs tore at the green dragon’s shoulders while the serpent lay stunned and writhing on the ground. Swiftly the eagle’s beak jabbed down and tore a great gash in the top of the wyrm’s broad, flat skull.

Still, it was the silver sword that did the real damage. As soon as they struck the creature, Porthios drove the blade deep into the snakelike neck. Withdrawing the weapon with a wrenching twist, he slid from the saddle to land on the ground next to the dragon. While the beast squirmed in the grip of the powerful and enraged griffon, Porthios looked for the spot where the hard skull merged into the supple neck. In one powerful, unerring thrust, he jabbed the keen steel deep and severed the monster’s spinal cord.

Shuddering reflexively, the dragon died, oozing blood from its wounds and puffing a small gout of greenish gas from its wide nostrils. Porthios was already scrambling back into his saddle, barely straddling the griffon’s broad back before Stallyar launched themselves into the air again. He saw the second young serpent lift its head above the chaos of the battlefield, yellow eyes flashing with hatred as it saw the fate of its clan dragon. More menacing by far, the elf also saw the massive green monster that had pursued him so relentlessly. Having broken free of the trees, it was once again winging toward the fight, head twisting back and forth as it looked for the elven marshal.

Wicked jaws curled into a mockery of a grin as the beast picked out the lone griffon struggling for altitude. But now many of the other Qualinesti, heartened by their leader’s heroics, were spiraling down to fly with Porthios and Stallyar. A glance showed the marshal that their quivers were nearly empty, but that each still had enough arrows left for a few shots.

“Archers—we need a volley!” he shouted, his voice powerful enough to easily carry through the air above the fight. “On my mark!”

Nearly a hundred griffons were soaring along with him, and as he pointed his sword into the southern sky the target was obvious to them all. Porthios would have liked to launch the barrage from a little more altitude, but there was nothing to be done about that. They would have to shoot well, these brave Qualinesti who were inevitably shaken by the rising nausea of dragonawe.

No single arrow was going to kill a monster like that, of course, but the marshal hoped that the concentration of scores of painful hits would be enough to drive the dragon away, if not seriously injure it. The elves nocked their arrows, the griffons shifting in flight instinctively to make sure that no flier blocked another’s shot.

If the dragon perceived the danger, it gave no sign. Instead, it bored in closer with each beat of its massive wings. Porthios knew he had to shoot at the last possible minute, but he also understood the need to give the order before the beast was close enough to exhale a gout of that lethal gas.

“Archers, now! Shoot!”

Ninety-four arrows arced outward on his command, and more than half of them struck the target. Many drove deep into that hateful head, pricking the sensitive nostrils, a couple even stinging the yellow eyes. Others scored gouges into the monster’s neck or tore through the soft membrane of the dragon’s wings.

The flying elves instantly dispersed in all four directions, insuring that the dragon had no concentration of enemies upon which to spew its killing breath. But it became immediately apparent that the monster had lost all interest in pursuing the attack. Instead, with a howl of elemental anguish, it curled its wings and dived away from the fight, gingerly coming to rest at the fringe of the forest while the flying elves jeered and insulted the proud monster.

That danger temporarily alleviated, Porthios turned his attention to the battle raging on the ground, and with a heartbreaking ache of dismay, he knew the tragic fight was all but over. Every one of the large riverboats had been seized by attacking draconians, and the few surviving elves of the First Division were being hacked down and cut to pieces before his eyes.

General Cantal-Silaster organized a last stand, shouting orders frantically, her own blade red with blood. Porthios dived to help, but could only watch in horror as her plumed helm vanished beneath a press of draconians.

The ambush was a disaster unprecedented during his career as a marshal of Silvanesti, and the loss of life was all the more appalling because those elves, like himself, had fancied this war so close to its end. He had sent these warriors ashore into the very teeth of a powerful enemy, a force that had somehow been perfectly positioned for an ambush.

But there was no time for grief nor self-recriminations right now, not while the Second Division was still ashore on this nightmarish piece of land. Later Porthios would try to decipher how he could have been so wrong about this place, and how this normally disorganized and chaotic enemy could have been so well prepared for the arrival of his legion. Now, however, he had to see to the survival of the rest of his men.

Mounted on their griffons, the Qualinesti archers circled around their leader, exchanging grim looks or staring in horror at the carnage below. With the exceptions of a few riders who had been felled by boulders or spears cast by ogres, these western elves had survived the fight, but they shared the universal knowledge that the battle had been an utter, catastrophic defeat. Still, Porthios wondered if perhaps he and his Qualinesti could exact some measure of vengeance before they departed this bloody field.

The large green dragon was some distance away, enlisting the aid of many draconians who gingerly plucked arrows from the monster’s head and wings. Every so often one of these unwilling nurses would tug too roughly, and the enraged serpent would cuff the offending creature so hard that it tumbled across the ground. Sometimes these battered draconians got up again, and sometimes they didn’t. It obviously made no difference to the wounded wyrm.

The third dragon, the youngster who had continued to fight on the ground, was now busy worrying elven corpses, pulling apart pouches and packs in its relentless pursuit of shiny coins. Already a small mound of the precious metal glittered in the mud beneath the protective, whiplike lash of the dragon’s tail.

“Kill it,” Porthios declared, pointing his sword at the avaricious wyrm.

Instantly a volley of arrows showered downward, razor-sharp heads plunging deep, drawing shrill screams of pain from the dragon. The creature, whose scaly hide was nowhere near as tough as its elder’s, writhed around in pain, its tail and neck lashing as it reflexively fought against the sudden attack.

A dozen griffons swooped low, while other elves shot arrows at any ogres and draconians who ventured too close. Fortunately, these other creatures had already been inclined to stay back because of the dragon’s possessiveness about its plunder, and they showed no eagerness to help it now as elven swords sliced in and quickly finished the work that the volley of arrows had begun. Unscathed, the twelve elves remounted, and the fliers spread across the sky, leaving the bloody remains behind and winging toward the encampment of the Second Division.

Chapter Five The Second Division

The marshal assigned a score of griffon-mounted elves to observe the monsters that were busily plundering the wreckage of the First Division’s landing.

“Keep an eye on that dragon,” he warned them. “Get out of here in a hurry if it shows any signs of coming after you.”

“Aye, Lord Marshal,” pledged a Qualinesti captain, an archer who had put one of the arrows into the serpent’s eye. “But may I beg permission to give it another stinging before we go?”

“Granted,” Porthios agreed. Then he led the rest of the fliers across the island, toward the surviving elves of his once mighty army. He thought fleetingly of Samar, missing the warrior-mage’s steady courage, not to mention his skill with the lance. Perhaps the ever alert Samar would have even discerned the ambush before it was too late. He could only hope that same alertness and competence were being employed to protect and serve his wife.

As the formation of griffons came into sight of the second landing zone, Porthios saw that the construction of the fortifications was progressing well. Already the elves had cleared a large swath of ground at the riverbank, and the spiked palisade that would surround the camp was more than half completed. Frameworks of towers had been made, marking the sites of the four battle platforms that would soon rise thirty feet into the air. Everywhere General Bandial’s Silvanesti were working hard, certainly worried about their comrades, but not allowing themselves to be distracted from their task.

In obedience to his orders, the other half of the griffon-mounted Qualinesti had remained with the Second Division, flying circular patrols overhead and scouting the environs of the camp. Now these fliers pulled into formation besides their brethren from the west, shouting for news.

Porthios let Tarqualan’s elves mingle with their fellow Qualinesti. While all the fliers continued to circle over the camp, the marshal guided Stallyar to a landing in the midst of the Second Division’s camp. He was vaguely pleased to note that, despite the added distraction of his arrival, the elves remained busily working at their assigned tasks. Sadly he suspected that the fortifications here would be tested, and very soon.

General Bandial met him as he landed, and the one-eyed veteran listened grimly as Porthios quietly told him of the First Division’s fate.

“They were waiting in ambush?” Bandial asked in disbelief.

“As certainly as if they’d known the time and location of our landing,” the marshal replied. Once again that circumstance rankled at the back of his mind, but he knew he had to attend to more urgent matters. “As soon as you get the fence up, get your men working on a ditch on the outside of the walls. And we’ll want double the usual number of towers. Also, you had two of the dragonlances in your boats, right? Get them out and place them in the hands of a couple of your biggest, steadiest warriors.”

“And Lady Cantal-Silaster?” asked Bandial, his eye narrowing.

“She fell leading the defense, overwhelmed by draconians.

The one-eyed general blinked, silently grieving at the news even as the tough commander’s thoughts turned to the next matter. “What about news of the First? Do you want to try to keep their fate a secret?” asked Bandial, shrewdly eyeing his commander.

Porthios shook his head. “You know as well as I do that won’t work. No, it’s best to give them an announcement, let the troops know where we stand. You can spread the word that I’ll talk to them as soon as the wall’s done.”

“All right, Marshal. I think you know that these are good warriors, men and women as steady as you could want in a fight.”

“I know that, General,” Porthios said with a sigh. “But we both could have said the same thing about the First Division.”

Five minutes later the marshal got his next dose of bad news. He and Bandial were looking into the case that held—was supposed to hold—two dragonlances. Instead, they saw only bare shafts of wood. The barbed, razor-sharp heads of the enchanted weapons, the lethal metallic killers forged by Theros Ironfeld and the Hammer of Kharas, were missing. Scuffs showed where they had been pried off the hafts.

“Stolen?” asked the general, gaping in disbelief. “I can’t believe any elf would do such a thing!”

“They would be worth a lot, but even so, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Porthios said. “They were obviously taken off the shafts, but I doubt—I can’t believe—that the motive was personal profit.”

Again suspicions whirled in his brain, but like his questions about the ambush, none of these thoughts would do them any good in their current predicament. Still, he resolved that they would be addressed in the future.

“We’ll have to stop the green dragon with arrows,” Porthios declared. “At least, we already gave him a stinging to remember.”

Despite his bold words, he was remembering the dragon’s single-minded pursuit of him. That was yet another suspicious thing about this campaign, a question that would eventually demand some answers. But for now, the dragon’s motivation, like everything else, must simply be accepted as a fact of the battle.

Perhaps an hour of daylight remained as the last stakes of the palisade were driven into the soft ground. Now the Second Division was protected by a semicircular wall of stout posts, with the river—and the landed boats—at their backs. Towers rose every fifty paces, each a squat, sturdy platform for a score of archers.

At about the same time, one of the Qualinesti scouts landed to report that the horde of draconians and ogres had marched into the woods, bearing on a line toward this camp. The green dragon had taken to the air, and the other scouts were giving it a wide berth. The wyrm, for its part, seemed content to remain well beyond the range of the elven archers.

Knowing it would take several hours, at least, for the file of creatures to make its way through the tangled undergrowth of the island, Porthios had Bandial gather his division around the center of the camp, though he didn’t neglect to have plenty of pickets posted on the wall tops and towers. The white-robed wizards among the elven force cast spells of detection and alarm through the woods for a quarter mile in every direction, so the warriors were fairly confident of notice prior to the enemy’s approach.

The marshal stood upon a broad stump in the middle of the camp, high enough that he could see across all the elves ranked before him, but close enough that he could project his voice across the entire gathering.

“Elves of the Second Division,” Porthios began, “you have already heard rumors of the disaster that has befallen our comrades in the First. It grieves me to tell you that those rumors are true. Their camp was overrun before the palisade was built. The boats were taken, and casualties were many.”

He paused to let that sink in, pleased to note that the faces before him remained stoic. The changes, where he did note them, were not expressions of fear or resentment. Rather, these elves were getting angry, becoming grimly determined to exact revenge.

“We now know that a force of denizens, including ogres and draconians and one dragon, is on its way to try to repeat that victory over us. But you should know that your comrades did not yield their ground without a bloody fight. Nor did they turn and run, even when disaster was certain. Two green dragons lie dead there, fodder for maggots and worms, and more draconians than you can easily count spilled into acid, burst into fire, or froze into stone as they gave up their lives on the swords of the First Division.

“I do not try to mislead you into thinking that the fight will be easy, or the result certain. But you men of the Second Division have a sturdy palisade, and you know how well these walls of wood have served us over the last thirty years. Not once—remember that, not once—has an attacker breached the walls of a fortified elven camp.

“But we will let them try, my bold elves; we will let them try. And we will kill them at the borders of the palisade. We will let their force break itself on our ramparts. And when they are broken, then we will sweep out with steel and blood.

“And only then, my elves, will the First be avenged.”

There was no cheering following his speech, nor did Porthios expect to hear any. But he could tell by the looks on the faces that his warriors had taken his words to heart. They would fight with confidence and fury and, the gods willing, the First Division would be avenged.

Two hours later, well after darkness had settled over the mist-shrouded island, the woods erupted with sounds of musical bells as the magical alarms set by the wizards were tripped by the approaching horde. Immediately Porthios sent his Qualinesti, whose griffons had been resting within the palisade, aloft. They had strict orders to keep alert for the dragon and to shower the creature with arrows if it appeared.

The Silvanesti of the Second Division took their posts along the walls, with two companies detached to watch the riverbank in case the attackers somehow found a way to slip around the barrier by water. The main defensive line consisted of archers on the ramparts and towers who would shower the attackers with deadly missiles and oil-soaked bundles of flaming rags. Steadfast swordsmen lined the entire inside of the wall. The palisade was made of stout tree trunks, but there were gaps of several inches between each pair of posts, and the elves had learned through experience that the enemy would press close to the wall in an attempt to get at the defenders. This very proximity would make the denizens vulnerable to elven counterattack through the gaps of the palisade.

The white moon, Lunitari, was waning but still more than half full, and though low in the western sky, she cast enough light to aid visibility. Porthios was fairly certain that the dragon wouldn’t be able to approach unseen. As an additional protection, he had posted a wizard atop each of the eight towers. They would cast spells to aid the defense on the ground, but were also charged with scanning the sky, through eyes magically charmed to detect invisible attackers.

Soon the clanging of the alarm bells gave way to the grunting and cursing of thousands of creatures. Tree limbs snapped, and heavy boots and taloned feet tromped loudly on the ground. The horde of island denizens broke from the woods a hundred paces from the palisade wall, and there they waited. Their numbers continued to swell as more and more of the beasts emerged from the woods, until it looked as though the clearing was fringed with a dark and deadly border.

“Stand to, there,” Porthios called to his elves from the wall top. “Don’t shoot until you’ve got a good target.”

“Aye, Marshal!” came a cheerful reply. “I’m going to pluck me an ogre eyeball!”

“Get one for me as well,” shouted General Bandial from a different tower. “I need something to wear under this patch.”

The elves raised a quick hurrah, and the commander was heartened by the evidence of his warriors’ high morale.

Stallyar remained on the ground, prancing and fluttering nervously in the center of the fortified shore. Porthios knew that this fight would be won or lost on the ground, so he had decided to stay here among the Silvanesti, at least for the time being. The Qualinesti, two hundred strong, were all flying overhead, and he just had to rely on them to prevent the big green dragon from getting into the camp.

The mass of creatures emerging from the woods had grown to a horde by now, spreading in an arc to face approximately half of the total length of the palisade. With a rhythmic tromping of heavy feet, the ogres began to count a cadence that would build their excitement and inevitably compel them to make a charge at the elven camp. Porthios had seen and heard this many times before, but the steady beat and rising volume still brought a queasiness to his stomach. He wished they’d get the preliminaries over with and start the damned fight.

The draconians started to hoot, hiss, and jeer. Their batlike wings, insufficient for true flight but able to hasten their speed in a charge, flexed and fanned, giving the moonlit horde a shifting, unreal quality, as if the monsters were not individual creatures, but parts of a blanket that was being fluttered horizontally in a light breeze. All the noises increased, until it seemed as though the forest itself was screeching and stomping at the elves. Finally the warlike sounds reached a crescendo, holding at this frenetic pitch for several taut heartbeats.

And then, as if a dam had burst, the entire mob spewed forward from the fringe of the trees. Some draconians burst into the lead, galloping on all fours, using their wings to propel them as fast as a galloping horse. These were dangerous, Porthios knew, for their momentum—coupled with the sharp, gripping talons on their hands and feet—could help these creatures to scale all the way to the top of the wall in the first impetus of their charge. His veteran elves had seen this before, however, and he noted that the archers along the top of the wall all had their swords close at hand.

The ground shook from the impact of heavy boots, and the impossibly loud noise seemed to swell even more as the horde closed rapidly on the camp. Arrows began to dart out from the elven positions as archers picked off the leading draconians. Here the natures of the magical creatures worked in the elves’ favor. The slain kapak draconians dissolved into pools of caustic acid, while the occasional bozaks among their number died in explosions of sparks, smoke, and fire. These fatalities inevitably created obstacles, slight falters in the momentum of the thundering charge.

And even if a draconian wasn’t killed outright, the impact of a steel-headed missile from fifty paces away was enough to break the pace of the creature’s charge, to send it rolling and tumbling to the ground. As often as not, the wounded monsters were quickly trampled by the mob rushing along right behind.

The survivors among these first draconians, still racing at breakneck speed, used their wings and their powerful legs to fling themselves into the air. They crashed heavily into the timbers of the palisade, but the sturdy posts held. Some of these attackers were felled by sword thrusts through the fence, cuts that gouged into exposed bellies and necks. Others, however, leapt too high to be struck from the ground, and now they scrambled up the rough posts, clawing to climb over the spiked parapet at the top.

But now the elves on the ramparts had their swords out, hacking and stabbing at the scaly, crocodilian faces. One elf was seized by the arms and, clutched in the grip of a dying draconian, pulled over the wall to tumble into the frenzied creatures now smashing into the base of the parapet. A couple of the winged monsters actually scrambled over the top of the wall, but these were quickly cut down by the elves manning the upper parapet. The rest of the beasts were knocked back, bleeding, to tumble into the chaotic press below.

The elves on the towers maintained a steady rain of arrows into the horde, and now, with the last of the first wave repulsed, the archers atop the walls again took up their bows. There was no pausing to aim now; the attackers were so closely packed that any arrow sent downward was likely to plant itself in monstrous flesh.

On the ground, killing frenzy raged on both sides of the parapet. The elves stabbed with their long swords, cutting any creature that pressed close to the barrier. Some ogres wielded huge spears, and they used these with grim effect, sticking the long weapons through the gaps in the fence and twisting them about to gouge into any defenders within reach. Many elves tumbled back, bleeding, but others seized the spears behind their crude iron heads and tried to wrestle them away from the brutes.

In places, the wall of posts rocked back and forth, straining under the impact of thousands of bodies. Some of the elven archers on the rampart staggered under the shifting footing, and a few fell back into the encampment. But the Second Division had done its work well, planting the timbers deep, and nowhere did the palisade show signs of imminent collapse.

The marshal risked a quick look around the battlefield. There was still no sign of the green dragon, and the two companies he had posted at the waterfront were, with commendable discipline, paying careful attention to their duties instead of watching the distraction of the great battle raging behind them. Likewise, the elves posted on the large portion of the wall that wasn’t currently under attack kept their eyes on the dark forest instead of turning to watch the carnage occurring on their flank. Stallyar, near the base of the commander’s tower, had settled down, though he kept his eyes, unblinking, on his rider. Overhead, the Qualinesti still circled, some shooting into the battle, but most of them keeping their eyes alert for any sign of the great green dragon.

Looking back to the battle line, Porthios saw that the pace of the arrow fire was slackening. Many of the archers had nearly empty quivers.

“More arrows! Get them up to the walls,” shouted Porthios to the elves of his reserve company.

Immediately fresh ammunition was passed up the ladders, and the desultory barrage once again became a furious shower. Everywhere along the base of the wall lay dead and dying monsters, though the living took no notice of the casualties, trampling them mercilessly as they fought for positions adjacent to the palisade. Though Porthios had seen it before, he was amazed to witness ogres with huge clubs, weapons that were far too big and clumsy to fit through the gaps in the palisade, and draconians armed with nothing more than the talons on their clawed hands pressed eagerly up to the fence. There, easy meat for elven swords, they were cut, wounded, and killed.

Screams of alarm pulled the marshal’s attention around to the rear, and he was stunned to see the huge green dragon tearing through one of his companies on the riverbank. Like some horrible apparition from the deep, it was draped in muck and weeds from the river. The sinuous form scattered a glittering cascade, spraying droplets of muddy water as it tore and clawed and bit through a dozen helpless elves. A massive cloud of green murk drifted through the palisade, and Porthios groaned at the knowledge that many of his warriors must have died in that first, lethal exhalation.

He knew that green dragons were excellent swimmers. Why hadn’t he thought of that obvious tactic? The elven commander was infuriated by his own carelessness, at this evidence of one more mistake that had cost lives among his loyal elves.

The Qualinesti on their griffons were diving now, sending dozens of arrows showering into the great wyrm. Rearing high on its rear legs, the dragon spewed another blast of gas into the air, dropping many of the fliers right out of the sky. Lashing with its foreclaws, striking like a snake with its head on its long, supple neck, the creature ripped other elves from their saddles or knocked griffons to the ground, each time leaving a trailing plume of fluttering white feathers.

And then there was another alarm, and Porthios saw that a bare stretch of wall was faced by a new attack. This force, a band that had been held back from the main attack with admirable discipline, was made up entirely of draconians. The creatures raced across the stumpy field, hurling themselves up the palisade with flapping wings. At the same time, more of the creatures spiraled down from the sky to land atop the parapet. These were sivaks, the marshal was certain, the one kind of draconian capable of true flight.

Now his reserve was entangled by the sudden rush of the dragon, and the weary troops along the palisade were still engaged by the original attack. He was appalled to see elf after elf knocked from the parapet by the sivaks, who carried massive, jagged-edged swords that they wielded with both of their hands clutching the hilts. Other draconians swarmed up and over the wall, while elves on the ground struggled up the ladders to reinforce their comrades overhead. But now, for a change, it was the monsters who held the higher position, and the elves found themselves battling up narrow ladders, precariously balanced as they tried to wield their swords against the hulking creatures overhead. One after another of the elves was bashed from the ladders to plummet hard onto the unforgiving ground.

Porthios absorbed the changes in the battle over the course of ten or twelve heartbeats, and then he knew what he had to do. Sliding down the ladder from the tower rampart, he whistled for Stallyar and saw the griffon race over to meet him. Leaping into the saddle, the marshal was shouting orders as the creature lifted him into the air.

“Elves on the towers—give them support over there!” he shouted, directing the archers to shoot at the draconians who had claimed a portion of the wall top. He glanced over and saw that the dragon was still wreaking terrible havoc in the camp, but that the Qualinesti on their griffons had circled up and away and were seriously distracting the creature with their vexing missile fire.

Stallyar knew where his master was needed, and as soon as he was twenty feet off the ground, he flew on a level course directly at the big sivak who seemed to be directing the battle on top of the wall. The monster looked up briefly, jaws gaping wide as it saw the vengeful griffon, and then the crushing beak tore a great gouge in the draconian’s scalp. Stallyar’s eagle talons picked the screaming creature up and dumped it over the wall,

The griffon came to light on the narrow parapet, and Porthios slid over his mount’s tail. The silver long sword reached out almost of its own will to cut the arm off of a charging sivak, and on the backstroke, the elf chopped the draconian hard to the side, knocking the dying creature onto the ground inside the palisade. There the body burst into oily flame, the dying pyrotechnics of a sivak.

More draconians closed in, and the sword became a whirling blur of bright steel and slick blood. Behind him, Porthios heard the griffon crowing savagely and knew that Stallyar was rending creatures limb from limb with his beak. Back to back, the two stood in the middle of the parapet and dared any of the attackers to close with them.

Despite the gory wounds scored by his elven long sword, many of the draconians accepted the dare. One after another, they lunged along the narrow platform, stabbing, clawing, seeking to drag him down. The marshal’s arm grew numb from wielding his weapon, but his mind was clouded by a battle haze that banished any thoughts of fatigue, of despair. He lunged, cut, and parried, stepping inexorably forward and driving the press of draconians back. Taloned hands reached for him, and he sliced through scales, laying flesh open to the bone. Jaws snapped, and his blade whipped downward, carving nostrils, gouging eyes, even hacking right through skulls, cutting into wicked brains. His face, his hands, and his arms were scorched by the flames spouting from these dying monsters, but always there were more ready to lunge over their fallen comrades, eager to attack and kill.

A massive sivak stood in his path, wings flexing like a great battle cloak. The draconian wielded a huge sword, and it brought the weapon straight down, like an axeman trying to split a solid stump. Desperately Porthios raised his sword, blocking the blow with a clang of steel that echoed across the battlefield. The force of the attack numbed his arm, but when the sivak pulled back for another strike, the elf darted with serpentine quickness, driving his bloody blade into the sivak’s belly. The draconian howled in anguish even as flames crackled around the fringes of its body, and as it died and burned, the marshal kicked it off of the parapet and lunged forward, still seeking new foes.

When at last the draconians started to back away, to see that there was no point in attacking this infuriated elf, it was Porthios who carried the attack forward. On his own, he charged, swinging his blade with an apparent wildness that frightened even the savage denizens of the nightmare island. Only the elven marshal knew that the wildness was a sham, that each cut was carefully calculated to injure and kill his foes, and yet leave the elf in position to recover quickly, to insure that he didn’t leave himself open to any daring retaliation.

More elves were coming from the towers now or pressing up the ladders, and slowly the parapet was being reclaimed by the elves of the Second Division. It was the draconians inside the wall who were being sorely pressed, finally bunched into little pockets here and there. Even the sivaks, with their mighty two-handed swords, could not hold the onslaught of elven steel at bay, and now they were too tightly packed to spread their wings and take to the sky. Most of them died, though a few hurled themselves back over the wall to limp and crawl toward the imagined safety of the woods.

With a look into the camp, Porthios saw the dragon disappear into the river, dark water closing over the sinuous tail with a slight splash. The ogres and their allies had withdrawn from the parapet, slinking back to the woods in admission of defeat. Many of the retreating denizens were limping or leaning on the arms and shoulders of comrades. The more badly injured lay among the corpses of their companions, a gory swath marking the base of the wall where the initial attack had slammed home.

As always, the sudden silence after battle seemed surreal to Porthios. He heard a scream from a wounded elf as the warrior was gingerly carried from the wall by his comrades. It was not truly silent, he realized as he heard the soft voices of elves asking each other how they had fared or inquiring if anyone had seen the fate of this or that bold warrior. The base of the parapet was a seething mass of dull sound as well, hellish with the pitiful moans of wounded draconians and ogres. Somewhere an elf called for his lady, the voice a bubbling gasp that ended in a sickening gurgle of blood.

Griffons began to land in the middle of the palisade, and Porthios saw that most of his Qualinesti had survived the battle. The healers in their silken shelters were busy with the wounded, but it saddened the marshal to see that many of the injured were being shunted off to the side, their injuries judged too serious to waste the limited powers of the elven clerics.

Porthios found Bandial on the shore of the river, where dozens of elves lay dead. They were not marked by wounds, but each face was distorted by an expression of monstrous horror. Tongues protruded from gaping jaws, and eyes bulged with the knowledge that death had come, had reached into lungs with tendrils of green mist and torn away life from the inside.

The boats along the riverbank were still intact, and for a moment the marshal and the general looked at them longingly. Bandial, Porthios suspected, was feeling the same urge that was influencing him.

Yet then he looked back toward the dark forest, toward the corrupt island that sprawled beyond this bloodstained parapet, and his decision—if there had ever been any doubt—was cemented in his mind.

“We march after the bastards tomorrow?” Bandial guessed, his tone grim but not the least bit hesitant.

“Aye, General,” Porthios replied. “There’s still a job to be done.”

Three weeks later, the warriors of the Second Division closed in on the lone hillock on the southern terminus of the island. Behind them lay a forest that was slowly being restored by the nature priests who followed in the warriors’ wake. And it was a forest divested of dangerous denizens, for the division’s sweep had been thorough and deadly. Porthios knew there wasn’t a draconian or ogre anywhere on this island, except for the band that had now gathered on this one outpost of high ground.

It was not a prepossessing force, this remnant. Perhaps two hundred ogres and twice that many draconians had formed a ring on the grassy slopes. Weapons pointed outward, they waited as the companies of elves emerged from the forest to gather in a large circle around the base of the rounded hill. They had been herded here like cattle, and now they were gathered for a last fight, a battle with a predetermined outcome, but which still must be fought before the conclusion of the campaign.

“They’re up on that hill, my lord... all of them,” Aleaha Takmarin reported for the Kirath, having skirted the entire elevation since early that morning.

“This is where it ends, then,” Porthios said. He felt no elation, so sense of accomplishment as he contemplated this last attack, the culmination to a campaign that had lasted thirty years, had been his own quest for the last two decades.

“And... my lord?” Aleaha hesitated but obviously had something else to say.

“What is it?”

“I... I wish I could tell you how sorry I am about the ambush. It was my failure and that of my scouts that led to—”

“No, it wasn’t!” Porthios cut her off, speaking sternly. “It was my own fault more than anyone’s—and how could any of us have known?”

“It’s just that we missed them, we Kirath,” she insisted. “If we had looked more carefully, stayed on the island longer...”

“Then the Kirath would have been killed, just like Cantal-Silaster and the First Division,” Porthios shot back. “No, we all did our jobs as best as we could, and that one time, the enemy was ready for us.”

His face softened as he acknowledged that his anger was directed at himself, not at this bold scout, nor at any of his brave warriors. “We have to be grateful, at least, that we’ve brought the matter to a close.”

“Aye, my lord,” Aleaha replied. Still, her head was low, her eyes downcast as she backed away.

But now there was the last battle to fight. Porthios swung onto Stallyar’s back, and the creature’s wings pulsed downward as, with a smooth leap, he carried his rider into the sky. Griffons spiraled overhead. Stallyar and Porthios rose to fly in the middle of the formation. The marshal looked over his enemies arrayed on the hill and wished he could take some pleasure from this final battle. He remembered the brave elves of the First Division and knew that they would be avenged here today... but even that knowledge was no consolation. It was time for the killing to be over, time for the elven veterans to go home.

Twisting in his saddle, he scanned the horizon, saw the ocean waters gleaming dully to the south. All across this broad marsh, lined with the now healing forest to the north, there was no single sign of the enemy he really sought, the green-scaled horror who, he felt certain, was behind the initial ambush and the subsequent long and bloody campaign.

He felt another pang of regret as he saw the thin ranks of the Second Division companies. These veterans had fought boldly, driven by duty and by a powerful desire to avenge the slaughter of their comrades. They had relentlessly pushed through the fen, butchering the denizens wherever they were encountered. But at the same time, they had suffered casualties, more than would have occurred if the two divisions had been able to work together.

As a result, the remaining Silvanesti elves in his force were significantly less than half of the total that had departed Silvanost a month earlier. The losses were greater than he had suffered on any of his previous campaigns, and it seemed exceptionally tragic that they had come on this, the last march in thirty years of war.

Looking at the ground for this final confrontation below, Porthios knew that still more of his warriors would have to die if they were to charge up that hill. Inevitably the Silvanesti numbers and discipline would carry them through the surrounded rabble, but just as inescapably, brutish ogres and savage draconians, holding the high ground, would be able to exact a horrific cost in blood from their attackers.

Yet there was a way, perhaps, to change that toll. It was not a method that would assuage elven honor, or aid in the thirst for vengeance, but Porthios viewed these two considerations as far less important than saving elven lives.

A gentle nudge with his knees guided Stallyar downward, and the griffon came to rest in the field before Bandial.

“The troops are ready, my lord marshal,” reported that erstwhile general. “Would you care to give the orders to charge?”

“We’ll attack, General... but not with a charge.”

Bandial looked surprised but said nothing. He waited for an explanation.

“Call up your archers,” Porthios said. He turned to squint into the sky, looking at the monsters arrayed on the open hillside. “We’re going to finish this off with arrows.”

Chapter Six Trial in the Sinthal-Elish

“Two hundred and seventeen Qualinesti flew with this army... and two hundred and one of them came back!”

Konnal’s voice boomed through the chamber in the Hall of Balif, which was crowded with Silvanesti nobles and high-ranking commoners. The gathering, occurring the day after the Second Division’s return to the city, was so large that it was occurring here in the palace, rather than in the smaller council chamber at the base of the Tower of the Stars.

Now Konnal had the rapt attention of every elf present. Porthios sat on the marshal’s chair at the front of the rostrum, steeling his face to show no reaction as he listened to this elf’s words. He knew what was coming, hated the words, even the speaker, but he had no reply.

For Konnal spoke only the truth.

“More than four thousand Silvanesti sailed down the river... four thousand of our bold sons, warriors we entrusted to the command of this—” the general groped theatrically for the term, making it apparent that he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the name of the other nation of elvenkind—“this prince out of the west!”

He paused again, looking at a small piece of paper he held in his hand. On that paper were numbers, though Porthios suspected that the general was fully acquainted with each figure on the sheet. Still, Konnal made a great show of studying the information, and, like the rest of the nobles, generals, and lords, the marshal waited without making a sound.

When Konnal spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper, yet still it carried to the far corners of the marbled chamber.

“Fewer than seventeen hundred of them returned.”

“Shame!” The word was hissed by a Silvanesti noble, the elf anonymous among the throng of his fellows. All of them sat on their stools, rigid and stern, their looks cold and accusing. The charge was repeated, picked up, carried with sibilant force throughout the chamber. None shouted it, but every voice, it seemed, echoed it, until the sound washed over Porthios like waves pounding against a beach of sand, driving into his soul, twisting and tearing and flensing his flesh away.

“Shame... shame... shame... shame.”

Konnal, the master of timing, allowed the sound to be repeated for a long time, until the resonance had been drilled into every ear, repeating in the depths of every mind, universally condemning the marshal who stood alone on the rostrum. The golden images high on the walls glared down, silent and accusing. Only then did Konnal raise his hand. As if trained to wait for the cue, the elves ceased the chant.

“This is a tragedy... a catastrophe... a failure,” he said grimly. “These facts are apparent to us all, and these facts alone suggest that action is required. But I submit, honored nobles, esteemed senators, brave generals, that this is more than a tragic, catastrophic failure.”

He whirled, his cold eyes resting on Porthios, and suddenly, with utter clarity, Porthios saw where Konnal was going. And there was nothing he could do to prevent it, save to feel an insignificant twinge of satisfaction as, with his next words, the general proved that the marshal’s instant of foresight was correct.

“I say to you, elves of Silvanesti, that this is nothing less than betrayal!”

The hiss of agreement came from all over the hall, a nearly universal sentiment that surprised Porthios with its passion and depth. His first reaction was to flush with anger and scorn. Could these Silvanesti elves really be that stupid? He drew a deep breath before he stood and cursed them, knowing that such a course, however gratifying, would only fan the flames of a very dangerous situation.

Instead, he rose from his stool to stand, his expression mild as he regarded the array of hostile glares around him. He spotted a few sympathetic faces—Lord Dolphius shook his head in dismay, while General Bandial’s one-eyed visage was locked in an expression of dignified outrage at his fickle countrymen.

Like his expression, Porthios kept his voice calm as he began to speak. Ignoring the undercurrent of muttering, he spoke quietly, thereby forcing the elves in the hall to fall silent in an effort to hear.

“General Konnal is right about a number of things.” His opening statement provoked some startled astonishment, though all too many elves nodded in arrogant agreement, as if he could have said nothing else. Grimly he resolved to ignore the prevailing mood, to speak his piece deliberately, carefully, accurately.

“The events on the delta island were catastrophic and tragic. Far too many brave warriors lost their lives. The plan of attack was mine, and the responsibility for its execution lay with me as well.” He paused to draw a breath, fairly certain that his calm and reasonable approach would begin to reach these elves. After all, weren’t they famed as the calmest and most reasonable people on all Krynn?

“The opposition on the island was well prepared, and our initial—”

“You killed my son!” shouted a noblewoman from the back of the house, and abruptly the Sinthal-Elish rang with echoed cries of outrage. Once again Porthios was shocked by the depth of emotion, and for the first time, he worried that the outcome might indeed go badly for him. Furthermore, it was harder than ever to retain his self-control, to master the rising temper that sought to burst from his expressions and words.

“I did not kill your son. In point of fact, I did everything in my power to save him, just as I have done everything in my power to restore Silvanesti from the effects of Lorac Caladon’s nightmare!”

There was still an undercurrent of muttering, and Porthios felt his voice rising as he struggled to be heard. “Is there an elf here who does not remember the state of this nation twenty years ago? Who does not know that I have dedicated those years of my life, that I have worked with my wife—your queen—to wrest this hallowed land from the corruption that, some claimed, would forever make Silvanesti a place of ruin and death?”

“Qualinesti scum!” came another shout, this one in an elder’s stern and unforgiving voice. “Your own people lived, while ours died!”

“This is not the fault of Porthios!” interjected another voice. For a moment, the noise in the hall settled to a rumble as the esteemed personage of Aleaha Takmarin stood and spoke. “If you must lay blame, then call out the name of myself and my Kirath scouts! We looked over the island, and we failed to spot the ambush.”

“But Porthios was in charge!” shouted another anonymous voice, and the bold scout was shouted down by more elves joining in a chorus of condemnation.

“We’re all elves—can’t you see that?” demanded Porthios sharply. He shouted in the forceful voice that had carried across a score of battlefields, but even so, the rising swell of noise almost drowned his words in a force of outrage and recrimination.

“Death to the Qualinesti scum!”

“Exile to the traitor!”

More cries, a disjointed volley of rare invective and hateful vituperation, came from all over the hall. Porthios glared at Konnal, who sat calmly on his stool, saying nothing, but expressing his smug satisfaction in a sneer he returned to the marshal. When he realized that he wished he had his sword, Porthios recognized that his own temper was fraying far beyond the boundaries of self-control.

“Elves of Silvanesti, listen to me!”

Somehow Lord Dolphius’s voice penetrated the angry crowd, and once again the shouts subsided to a murmured undercurrent. Dolphius, who sat near the front of the Sinthal-Elish, took three strides forward to climb onto the first steps of the rostrum. He turned to address the crowd, first sweeping a hand in an elegant gesture that seemed to encompass every elf in the crowded chamber.

“My people... my esteemed elves... let us remember who we are. Should we trample over dignity and heritage like a mob of enraged humans? I think not.”

With a slight inclination of his head, Dolphius acknowledged the presence of Konnal, high on the side of the chamber. “Our general has made some charges... highly inflammatory charges, it is true. But they are just that: accusations. We are not a lynch mob, nor would it serve us any purpose to allow justice to be short-changed by an explosion of rage that belittles us even more than it does the target of our anger.”

Dolphius took a breath, and the throng waited for him to continue. “The charge of treason is not one to be leveled lightly. I, for one, do not believe that charge—not for a minute, not for a single heartbeat. I, for one, remember the sacrifices that Porthios of House Solostaran has made during the course of the last thirty years, of the work that he has led... that he has followed through to its most bitter conclusion. Yes, my elves, this... ‘Qualinesti’”—he said the term with a perfect sense of mockery, a scorn that belittled the pretentiousness of those Silvanesti who would use the word as an insult—“deserves credit for the restoration of Silvanesti. I do not think, nor should any rational elf think, that he would have worked so hard only to plot base treachery at the conclusion of his labors.”

Konnal’s sneer had turned from Porthios to Dolphius, and, watching that haughty expression, the marshal felt a grim foreboding, a sense that this meeting had not heard the last of the general’s charges.

“I do not suggest,” the senator continued, in a tone of utmost rationality, “that we merely dismiss the charges. They must be examined, debated with thought and foresight, considered with dutiful care. Indeed, there are other charges—tales of missing dragonlances, and of faulty intelligence—that deserve scrutiny as well. But this is not the time, nor is the Tower of Stars the place, for such a trial. I urge you, elves of the Sinthal-Elish, not to act with haste but to consider with wisdom the weighty matter that has been placed before you today.”

The hall was mostly silent as Dolphius returned to his seat, but then all eyes turned to the side as Konnal once more rose to his feet. His manner was sorrowful, his expression full of regret, as he began to speak.

“Our esteemed senator is correct. This gathering is not the suitable venue for consideration of such charges. It grieves me, therefore, to declare that circumstances leave me no choice. But under the glare of my erstwhile colleagues’ pleas for reason, I must now reveal that there is more to my accusation than I was at first prepared to reveal.”

Even Porthios was curious, and though he knew he wouldn’t like what he was about to hear, he waited in silence with all the other elves to hear what Konnal said next.

“I have proof, noble elves, that Porthios Solostaran has engaged in the negotiation of a treaty that is a betrayal of our sovereignty, a relinquishment of our heritage, and a seditious mortgaging of the futures of our children and their children.”

“That’s a lie!” snarled the marshal. “You are a liar, Konnal, and yours are the words that reek of treachery!”

“You say this,” Konnal retorted with maddening calm, “but do you deny the existence of the Unified Nations of the Three Races treaty?”

Now the silence was absolute, and Porthios had no idea what to say. He could not deny that he knew about the treaty. He and Alhana had been negotiating the pact with representatives of dwarven Thorbardin and human Solamnia for more than year. Nor could he claim that the treaty wasn’t a secret, for the two elves had known that there would be elements in both elven realms who would fiercely resist the notion of such an agreement.

But the pause was growing, and he was acutely conscious of the need to say something even as his mind reeled with the knowledge that Konnal had somehow learned of the document, and that the general’s words right now stood a good chance of dashing into ruin all the carefully laid plans and negotiations of the past year.

“That treaty holds promise of peace and safety for the future of all elvenkind.” Porthios spoke slowly and carefully, hoping against all fear that his calm demeanor would help the Silvanesti to see reason. “It has been negotiated for many months, with the full knowledge of elven leadership as well as with elements of the dwarven and human realms. When the terms have been established, the document will of course be submitted for study and ratification by the Sinthal-Elish and the Senate of Qualinesti!”

“And there’s the catch, esteemed listeners,” Konnal cried before the echoes of the marshal’s words had begun to fade. “The ruling councils of two elven nations, linked, locked under one treaty. Well, I have seen the terms of this document—much to the displeasure of our Qualinesti prince, I assure you all—and I can tell you that there is a key component Porthios Solostaran has neglected to mention!”

All ears were hanging on his every word, and now Konnal took the time to relish his pause. Finally he finished with his damning accusation:

“This treaty calls for nothing less than the merging of our august body with that of the upstarts to the west. It makes Silvanesti, my honored listeners, nothing less than a subject territory, a mere colony of Qualinesti.”

“That’s not true!” Porthios shouted, but now his voice was swamped in a massive tide of outrage. Elves were on their feet, stools knocked over, fists waving, foam-speckled lips decrying this foul treachery. Even Dolphius was gaping in shock, while many of the nobles and ladies were surging toward the rostrum, eyes wild, tempers flaring beyond all vestige of control.

The drumlike pounding of the vast bronzed doors somehow cut through the chaos in the chamber, and Porthios looked up in surprise to see scores of elves charging into the chamber. They wore leather jerkins and carried bows and arrows with missiles nocked onto the strings, drawn back and ready to shoot. The room fell into stunned silence as fully two hundred armed warriors poured through the door and arrayed themselves on the outer ring atop the deep well of the senate chamber.

It was with a mixture of shock and relief that Porthios recognized Tarqualan, his Qualinesti captain. These were his elves, the deadly archers who had flown griffons into battle and now marched to the marshal’s aid on a different kind of battlefield.

“There’s the proof!” Konnal cried, his voice shrill and frenzied. If he was afraid of the archers, he gave no sign. “Armed Qualinesti in the Hall of Balif, the audience chamber of our capital city. I rue the darkness of this bleak day.”

One of the archers raised his bow, his silvery arrowhead fixed on the general’s breast. Konnal sneered, then pulled his robe aside in what even Porthios had to admit was a magnificent gesture of contempt. “Shoot me if you will. You cannot, either with arrows or words, slay the legacy and future of a magnificent elven nation!”

“Hold!” Porthios cried as the archer’s taut fingers showed that he was fully prepared to take the general up on his challenge. “There will be no blood shed in this chamber!”

For a moment, he feared the Qualinesti would shoot anyway, and with a clarity that astounded him, Porthios saw into the future, realized what effect that arrow would have on the peoples of the two elven nations.

It would be the beginning of another Kinslayer War, another conflict the equal of that epic and ultimately tragic struggle. Occurring nearly twenty-five centuries ago, that violent strife had first divided elvenkind in the days of Kith-Kanan and Sithas, the twin sons of the Silvanesti king. It had led to the sundering of the nation, to the creation of Qualinesti as a separate realm. The scars of that war lingered still today, though it had been Porthios and Alhana’s sincere hope that the treaty of the three races would have begun the long process of healing at last.

Now, clearly, those hopes were dashed. Porthios felt a stab of gratitude for the loyalty of Tarqualan and his elves. They had risked much, he knew, to invade this chamber. He even wondered if they had saved his life. Certainly the elves here, during the last seconds before the Qualinesti’s entrance, had been enraged to the point where murder had become a definite possibility.

“So, Prince of Qualinesti?” It was Konnal again, mocking him with his words. “Is this your will? Shall it be war?”

From the mutterings in the great hall, Porthios knew that a great many of these Silvanesti hoped that the answer would be in the affirmative. Perhaps he made his decision in order to spite those hopes, though in truth he knew it couldn’t do that even if he tried. Rather, he had the power right now to influence the futures of the elven peoples.

And he couldn’t doom that future.

“Tarqualan, I thank you for your courageous assistance, but I must ask that you put up your weapons. The matters under debate here will be resolved through reason and discussion, despite the attempts of some to bring about a frenzy.” He tried to freeze Konnal with an icy glare, but the general, in the full flush of his victory, merely smiled with that haughty condescension that brought Porthios’s blood to a boil again. Only with great difficulty did he control his temper.

“I bid you to take your men to your camp... and there to wait for word from me. You will offer no harm to Silvanesti, of course. We must show that these inflammatory remarks have no basis in fact. However, neither will you allow General Konnal or any of his lackeys to disrupt your camp and your right to stay there. That is, defend yourselves with such force as you deem necessary.”

The Qualinesti captain looked miserably unhappy. He had relaxed the tension on his bow, but the arrow was still ready, and Porthios knew it wouldn’t take much to cause the bold warrior to shoot any one of these Silvanesti right through the heart. The marshal drew a deep breath and held up both of his hands.

“Please, my good warrior, I beg you to consider the good of both our peoples. We have both spent many years fighting to remove one nightmare from Silvanesti. The cost has been high, and too much has been lost for us to replace that scourge with another. There will not—there cannot—be another Kinslayer War.”

“Very well, my lord marshal,” Tarqualan said stiffly. “But rest assured that we will be waiting and will pay careful attention to events in the city.”

“I understand... and again, I thank you.”

The archers marched out of the chamber. Through the open doors, Porthios caught sight of fluttering, white-feathered wings and knew that the griffon-riding Qualinesti would follow his orders. Safe in their camp, they would be watchful and ready, and he hoped their presence would help restrain the Silvanesti from any truly rash behavior.

As to events within this chamber, and in the city as a whole, he would have to see what happened.

“You stand charged of a high crime, Prince,” declared Konnal smugly. Porthios noted that he was no longer using the Silvanesti-appointed rank of marshal. “And it must be insisted that you be placed in a secure location until those charges can be examined.”

Porthios felt again the rising of his outrage, but there had been too much rage already expended in this chamber. He would not add fuel to those fires.

“I look forward to an honest examination of those charges,” he said agreeably. “And until then, General, I shall consider myself your prisoner.”

Chapter Seven A Gilded Cage

Konnal declared that Porthios would be incarcerated in one of the upper chambers of the Tower of Stars. Since his accuser already held the keys to that sanctified spire, the marshal was immediately marched there under an escort of armed Silvanesti, though Konnal took care to select the guards from the city garrison troops. Porthios was not surprised to see that none of his Wildrunners were allowed anywhere near the detail.

They marched him through the city streets, the same winding lanes that had been the scenes for many of his triumphal returns. Now those avenues were lined with hostile faces, including many elves who jeered or cursed him. Here and there he saw a friendly or pitying face, but he dared not acknowledge these loyal elves. He suspected that, in days to come, such sympathies could cost decent citizens their freedom, property, or more. Instead, Porthios took pride in maintaining a contemptuously aloof manner, refusing to show any reaction to the constant vituperation.

At the base of the tower, Konnal made a great show of withdrawing the Keys of Quinarost from his pouch. He opened the door, then led his prisoner through the quiet Sinthal-Elish chamber to the stairway. They climbed for many minutes, stopping frequently to catch their breath, until at last they halted before a golden door. This was unlocked by one of the guards.

“In here,” Konnal ordered with a peremptory wave of his hand. “You will be comfortable, at least until we decide what to do with you.”

Porthios passed through, and the metal door slammed shut behind him.

Only then did he start to think about the choice he had made and the predicament he was in. Alhana! His pride had prevented him from fleeing this city, even when Tarqualan would have rescued him. But now he realized that his decision might have cost him any chance of seeing his wife, of witnessing the birth of his child.

Still, he had to face his accusers, to show them that he was right! In a trial, his wisdom, his patience would surely prevail. The more he thought about it, the more he knew he had done the proper thing, that it had been smart not to yield to the promise of Tarqualan’s violence. Indeed, Alhana would have wanted, expected, such restraint of him. In the end, he would make her proud.

But he was forced to admit that the Unified Nations of the Three Races treaty was doomed. His wife had worked so hard on the pact, with the help of his sister Laurana and her half-elf husband. Now that word had leaked, Porthios knew that the Silvanesti would never accept the terms of the prospective agreement. As far as these elves were concerned, the treaty was dead.

Surprisingly, he found himself wondering what Tanis Half-Elven would have suggested. He had never been friendly with the man—indeed, when they were youngsters, Porthios had gleefully joined in the cruel teasing that had forever marked Tanis as an outcast from his mother’s land of Qualinesti. The prince had even scorned his sister for her choice of “that mixed-race bastard” as her husband. But somehow, over the years, he had been forced to see the strengths that lay so subtly beneath his brother-in-law’s skin. Now he almost wished that Tanis were here, that he could ask the half elf’s advice or merely share the quiet competence of his presence.

Yet that was just one more thing he couldn’t change. With a sigh, Porthios decided instead to take stock of his surroundings, and he immediately noticed that his accommodations were in fact quite comfortable. The chambers were spacious and included a sleeping room with a huge bed, a mattress of soft down draped with a canopy of bright silk. He had a large sitting room, a balcony with a splendid view across nearly two-thirds of the horizon, a good-sized dining room with windows looking across the other directions, and a private cooking chamber. The only structure anywhere around that was higher than his prison was the main summit of the tower, which rose another hundred feet overhead. From his complex of apartments, he could look out of any of several windows and take in the vista of Silvanost in all four directions, observing almost all corners of the island city sprawling across the landscape eight hundred feet below.

He crossed back through the main room, went to the door, and was not surprised to see that it was locked. Porthios knocked loudly, and it opened.

A pair of burly Silvanesti axemen stood beyond the outer door to the apartments, maintaining constant vigilance and presenting uncompromisingly stern aspects. Inevitably the guards were veterans of House Protector, but Porthios noted that neither of them had served him during the recent campaigns to restore Silvanesti. Obviously General Konnal was not taking the chance of assigning to guard duty an elf who might have conflicting loyalties. Furthermore, the tower’s top chamber was accessible only by a single flight of stairs, and Porthios had no doubt that there were more guards waiting at the bottom of the tower.

Not that I would try to escape, he argued to himself during one of his many hours of solitude. After all, didn’t I come here willingly? Didn’t I stop Tarqualan when he would have used violence to free me? Still, his reasoning rang hollow as he looked out at the city turning to the bright shades of autumn. He wondered how soon his baby would be born... and how was Alhana faring?

He settled into a comfortable chair, somehow drifting off into a sleep so deep that he was surprised when the door opened to reveal one of his guards.

“A visitor,” the elf said coldly, stepping back to reveal General Bandial. That venerable warrior wept to see his old commander so mistreated, tears pouring from the elf’s one good eye until an embarrassed Porthios bade him to please control his emotions.

“How can they do this to you?” moaned Bandial. “Don’t they understand what you’ve done for them... for us all?”

“At this point, I think Konnal has them more concerned about what I’ll do to them in the future. But what did he have to say after he had me locked up here?”

“Funny thing, that,” Bandial admitted. “Konnal left the city again right after you were brought here. No one knows where he’s gone, though there’s a rumor he traveled all the way to Palanthas!”

Porthios shook his head. “That makes no sense at all. Not that I miss the arrogant wretch. I could use a few more days to calm myself down. It wouldn’t do any good to throttle him, not with his bullyboys standing outside my door.”

“D’you want me to take care of those fellows?” growled the loyal general. “I could bring a few veterans of the Second Division with me next time...”

Porthios chuckled, a dry sound more bitter than humorous. “Tempting as it is, I have to ask you not to. I’ve gone this far without resorting to violence against my own kind. No, it’s best to let this matter play out in the senate.”

Bandial looked as if he didn’t exactly agree with that sentiment, but he said nothing.

“What of Tarqualan and the Qualinesti? Have they been left alone?” Porthios worried about the two hundred griffon riders from his own nation. They weren’t as numerous as a Silvanesti army, but with their fierce fliers, they were highly mobile, and he had convinced himself that they would be able to take care of themselves.

“As much as could be expected. The Sinthal-Elish has discontinued food shipments to their camp, but with their griffons, they of course have no trouble taking all the deer they can eat. Konnal posted several companies of Silvanesti to keep an eye on them, but there hasn’t been any trouble.”

“Good—and I say that more for the sake of the Silvanesti than Tarqualan’s bunch. I daresay it wouldn’t take much to set him off.”

“I know,” Bandial agreed. “But you’ve got to realize that there are a lot of us Silvanesti on your side, too. We don’t like what’s happened to you, or to our comrades on the griffons.”

“That means a lot to me, old friend.”

The two old warriors talked for a little while longer, but in the end, Bandial left without persuading Porthios to try to escape.

And in all truth, as his old comrade made his farewells, Porthios was not disappointed to be left alone with his thoughts, his brooding. He found himself remembering many things, with thoughts of his wife growing strong among the tangle of his feelings. How had he let so many years pass during which he’d viewed their marriage as a cold alliance? Now that affection had blossomed between them, now that the miracle of a child was before them, he feared that he’d wasted too much time.

He worried about her status in Qualinesti, wished for some word from Alhana or Samar. With autumn advancing, he knew that her pregnancy was well advanced. The baby would be born in another month or two, maybe even sooner. But still the west was silent.

Several more days passed, and the Prince of Qualinesti finally got some clue as to his accuser’s whereabouts when General Konnal came to visit him, accompanied by an elf in the regal white robes of a Qualinesti senator.

“Rashas!” snarled Porthios, immediately recognizing the pinched features of the elf who had long led the most conservative faction of the Thalas-Enthia, the senate of Qualinesti. This body had long been opposed to a merger between the nations; indeed, it had been in resistance to the Thalas-Enthia where Alhana and Porthios had first found common cause.

“I see you are learning some of the virtues of elven cooperation,” the haughty noble said with a sneer. “This is the end of your foolish dream. Ironic, isn’t it, that you meet the same fate here that your wife has met in your own homeland?”

“You bastard!” Porthios threw himself at Rashas, but somehow one of the axemen from the door interposed himself. With a casual swing of the haft of his weapon, the warrior knocked the Speaker of the Sun backward, and Porthios tumbled heavily to the floor.

“Oh, and you may be interested to know that Alhana’s man, Samar, has also been arrested and imprisoned, charged with spying and sentenced to die. I anticipate that the sentence will soon be carried out.”

Porthios growled, slowly rising to his feet. Only the presence of the keen-edged axe prevented him from once again rushing at the hated senator.

“Patience, my prince,” said Konnal, clucking his tongue. “How do you think it looks... two Qualinesti squabbling like children here in the hallowed tower of Silvanost? Surely you have a greater sense of heritage than that.”

“This... this mongrel does not deserve to be called Qualinesti,” Rashas said in scorn, leaning forward as if he’d like nothing more than to spit upon Porthios. “He married outside of his clan. He would devote his life to knocking down the barriers that the gods have seen fit to raise.”

“There are some things, Senator, upon which we can agree,” Konnal noted with a stiff bow. “Now, as to the matter that brings you here?...”

“Yes.” Rashas straightened, with visible effort arranging his facial features into a bland mask. “I have made this journey for a single purpose, Porthios. I require that you relinquish the Medallion of the Sun.”

His hand going instinctively to the golden disk that he wore beneath his tunic, Porthios gaped at the senator. “You’re mad!”

“Hardly... rather, I am a voice of sanity in a world grown increasingly unbalanced.”

“Yet you expect to become to become the Speaker of the Sun, just like that?”

Rashas looked horrified. “Me? Speaker? Of course not!”

“Then what do you want with the medallion?”

“I shall bestow it upon the elf who will become our next Speaker, the elf who will insure that Qualinesti purity remains untainted!”

Konnal looked angry at these words about “Qualinesti purity.” Porthios realized that it was a sign of both men’s fanaticism that they were willing to work together to insure that their two nations remained ever separated. He could only shake his head at such insanity and then stare mutely at the gloating Rashas.

“Surely you are curious. You must want to know who your successor will be!”

“I shall have no successor. Not yet, for surely you know that the medallion must be given willingly in order for the new Speaker to wear it as a sign of office.”

“Oh, you will give it willingly, believe me.”

Porthios felt a chill at the words, and immediately he thought of his pregnant wife, held in Qualinesti under the orders, undoubtedly, of this madman.

“Your time in Silvanesti has perhaps worn heavily on your memory,” Rashas went on, his lips tightening slightly as he failed to arouse a response from Porthios. “You do recall that you have a sister?”

“Lauralanthalasa? Laurana? She’s a remarkable person, a credit to all elvenkind to be sure, but I can’t believe that a stickler for tradition such as you would consider placing a woman on the Speaker’s throne.”

Rashas looked properly horrified again. “Of course not. But are you so out of touch that you failed to hear that she has a son... a strapping youth, almost fully grown by now.”

“Gilthas?” Porthios almost laughed out loud. “He will be your new Speaker of the Sun?”

“Do not underestimate the lad. I think he will do a splendid job... with plenty of guidance from the Thalas-Enthia, of course.”

“Guidance from you, you mean!”

“However you care to phrase it, I’m sure you begin to see the circumstances. It is quite an ideal solution, in truth.”

His jaw clenched, Porthios could barely spit out the words. “I know Gilthas. I have seen him. But he is still a child! And his father is Tanis Half-Elven. Your new speaker would be one-quarter human!”

“It has been many years since you have seen him. He is no longer a child. As to that last matter, it is a trifling thing, especially since the pure blood of House Solostaran runs in his veins, thanks to his mother’s excellent lineage.”

This was too horrifying. The walls spun around, and the room seemed to cant crazily under his feet. Porthios wanted to sit, to gasp for breath, even to vomit. But he wouldn’t give Rashas the satisfaction of witnessing his discomfort. Instead, he masked his inner turmoil with a glare of pure loathing.

“The fact remains that I wear the medallion. You would have to kill me to get it. And if you do, if you steal it off my body like a ghoul, the power of the Sun enchantment will be broken and a curse will fall up the realm.”

“My dear Porthios, what do you think I am? A barbaric human? I would never jeopardize the future of Qualinesti thus,” Rashas protested, with a great air of wounded dignity. “As I said before, you will give it to me willingly.”

“You are mad!”

“I tell you, no!” The senator’s voice was a snarl, his face suddenly distorted by anger, and Porthios knew that his remark had struck very close to the truth. Laboriously Rashas struggled to regain his composure. He drew a deep breath.

“I do, however, hold your wife and your unborn child under guard in conditions of relative comfort in Qualinesti. If you would like to see Alhana again... if you would have your child breathe his first of the sweet air of Krynn, then you will relinquish the medallion.”

“You dare to threaten the queen?”

“I do what must be done. If harm comes to her, the fault will be yours!”

Porthios looked at Konnal, who was watching the exchange stone-faced. “Alhana is the princess of your people, heir to the throne of Silvanesti!” he exclaimed. “Yet you would be a party to this extortion?”

“It is for the greater good,” Konnal replied, his eyes like ice. “I can see that with the utmost clarity, though I would not expect you, who was arranging a treaty that would betray all the elven realms, to understand such a lofty purpose!”

“I understand the purposes of greed and corruption, of blind ambition and the pure, selfish lust for power. I see those purposes here in you both!” Porthios felt his self-control slipping, and for once he didn’t care. He pointed at Rashas, at Konnal, allowed his voice to rise to a shout that thundered through the chambers, rocked the door on its hinges. “I see the talons of the Dark Queen sinking into you both, pulling you in ways that will doom the elven nations to repeat the mistakes of the past. You are sickening in your sanctimonious posturing, your talk of ‘the greater good’! Shame! Shame on you both!”

Konnal recoiled as if he had been struck, then stepped forward, his hand reaching for his sword. Porthios wished the general would attack him. Even bare-handed as he was, he would have relished the physical release of a fight.

But it was Rashas who remained cool, who laid a hand on Konnal’s arm—a hand that the Silvanesti regarded with disgust, as if it were a venomous spider—and halted the general’s rush toward violence.

“See... see how thick? How he refuses, is unable to see? It’s tragic, really. He was once a wise man.”

The senator stared at Porthios, his expression haughty and contemptuous. “I assure you that I am not bluffing. I will not enjoy causing harm to your wife, but I will do so if you make it necessary. So please, for Alhana’s good and for the well-being of your child, relinquish the medallion.”

The elven prince put his hand to the golden disk he wore on his chest. As he had countless times before, Porthios sensed its unwelcome weight, felt again the burden that came from its presence. How many times he had wanted to give it to someone else, or even to cast it away, let it sink into the murky waters of some trackless swamp.

Yet now, strangely, he found himself coveting the Sun Medallion as he never had before. He would give it to Rashas—he had to, for he knew that the senator’s threat was sincere—but he would hate to part with it.

And for a single terrifying instant as his fingers wrapped around the curved disk of ancient gold, his eyes saw down the winding tunnels of the future. There were many paths there, many tracks his life could take. But there was a certainty along them all:

He knew that he would never wear this medallion again.

With a wrenching pull, unmindful of his own gasp of physical and spiritual agony, he tore the thing away, snapped the golden links that held it around his neck. Porthios staggered under the assault on his senses as he reached out his hand, didn’t feel the medallion fall from his nerveless fingers to roll across the floor, trailing its chain with soft clinks as it curled to a rest underneath a couch.

Quickly, but with a gesture of distaste, Rashas dropped to his knees and reached under the divan to seize the medallion. His eyes might have flashed as he raised it to his face, stared at the intricate facets that winked and sparkled like the disk’s namesake, but Porthios saw none of that. His eyes blurred with tears, he slumped at last into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

When he finally looked up, the two elves were gone.

Another week dragged by, a time when autumn roared into full fury. This was a season that came forcefully to Silvanesti, and these were days of unrelieved rain and chill. Porthios looked from his balcony across the city of Silvanost, noting the bleak swath of the gray Thon-Thalas, the shivering quality of the once splendid gardens.

It was as this early cold wave reached its nadir that General Konnal and an escort of axe-wielding elves again came to see Porthios in his chambers atop the Tower of Stars.

“You’re looking well,” the Silvanesti of House Protector declared with apparent sincerity. “You must be getting some sun on your balcony. I had feared that your skin would fade to a wintery pallor, but you still have the healthy tan of an outdoorsman.”

“Praise the gods for small favors,” Porthios replied wryly. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“Such abruptness. Not very elven, wouldn’t you agree?” Konnal looked around archly. “Are you too busy? You have no time for pleasantries or civilized conversation?”

“There’s little either elven or civilized about treachery, coercion, and betrayal,” snapped the prisoner. “And in the glaring presence of these significant traits, I see no need to place a layer of frippery over our interaction. I ask you again, what do you want?”

Konnal shrugged away the insulting tones. “I know you have your sources of information—even a one-eyed elf can read the writing on the wall—but I thought for once I would bring you fresh news.”

Porthios glowered but didn’t respond. Konnal continued as if he had been invited to speak.

“For obvious reasons, you are no longer able to function in your command role. I thought I would be the one to tell you that the senate has appointed a new Military Governor of Silvanesti.”

“Yourself, of course.”

Konnal merely nodded, a mild, polite bow of his head as if he were accepting sincere congratulations. “The baton of rank was found in the Palace of Quinari and bestowed upon me with the proper ceremony. I thought, since the action affects you so directly, that you should be told right away”

If Konnal was expecting to goad Porthios into an outburst, the Qualinesti resolved to disappoint him. Instead, he asked a question that had been lingering in his mind as the days of his imprisonment had grown into weeks.

“What are you going to do with me? In the Tower of Stars, you made lots of noises about a trial—and I warn you, General, I will welcome the opportunity to air my situation in a public hearing.” Porthios derived some small satisfaction from his failure to address Konnal by his official rank.

But the new governor apparently took no notice. “My dear Porthios, of course there will be no trial. Those remarks were all for show, for the benefit of the senate and the nobles—and, of course, to highlight the differences between us.”

“I’m not surprised. You servants of darkness have good cause to fear the light that always shines from the truth.”

For the first time, Konnal revealed a glimmering of his temper. “It is you who serve the darkness, you fool—you who would tear down the legacy of thirty centuries of culture and civilization!”

Porthios smiled, enjoying the flush that darkened Konnal’s stiff features. Casually he asked again, “You didn’t answer my question. What are you going to do with me?”

The Silvanesti lord drew a deep breath, calmed himself with visible effort.

“I have prepared a document. You will read it and affix your signature. After that, you will be free to leave.”

Porthios laughed. “A confession, no doubt? An admission of this treachery you’ve dreamed up?”

Konnal shrugged. “It’s an admission that you sent Silvanesti troops into a massacre, knowing that you would weaken us and leave us vulnerable to control by Qualinesti.”

“You’re insane!”

“No... I’m just determined. And I assure you that your signature is the only thing that will earn you your freedom.”

“You can’t hold me. No walls could hold me without my cooperation! I can see no reason why I should stay here, and thus I inform you that I shall make arrangements to leave at the earliest opportunity.”

Konnal smiled. “I think the guards might have a little to say about that.”

“If you think I have remained here because of your guards, then you are the fool. If departing means escaping, then I assure you that I will escape and return to my own homeland and my own wife.”

“There is another thing you should know. We have received word from Qualinesti—after all, you have good cause to know that the barriers between our two peoples are not as impenetrable as the typical elf might assume. The Thalas-Enthia has been active during this season.”

“I assume Gilthas Solostaran has been sworn in as Speaker of the Sun and Stars.”

“Naturally—but that is not my information.”

“Go on.” Porthios once again felt that sickening nausea, a premonition that he was going to hear some very bad news.

“The Thalas-Enthia, under the leadership of your young nephew, has endorsed the authority of the Sinthal-Elish of Silvanesti regarding the matter of your imprisonment. You are to remain here as our guest for as long as we deem it necessary in preparation for your trial.”

“Which trial, as you told me, shall never occur.”

Konnal shrugged. “A detail, but, yes, I can see where you might deem it important.”

“And if your guards can’t stop me, what force does an edict from a thousand miles away have to hold me in my cage?”

“Just this: The Thalas-Enthia has agreed that if you come to Qualinesti without signing the confession, you will be branded an outlaw. Your property will be forfeit, your legacy forgotten.”

“And if I have signed, then I will be seen as a weakling and a traitor,” snapped the prince.

Konnal shrugged. “Still, you will be free to go anywhere else, do whatever you want. Sign this and be away from here.”

Porthios glared without speaking.

“Here is the document.” The usurper laid the hateful parchment on the table, but Porthios didn’t even look at it. “Sign it and leave with our permission.”

“A traitor only to myself,” Porthios declared bitterly.

“I repeat, it’s the only way you’ll leave.”

“Unless I escape.”

Konnal appeared to think about this response. “I don’t think I can allow that to happen.” With a meaningful gesture, the new governor nodded to the elves who stood at each of his sides.

Porthios looked at the two elves flanking Konnal. Each was a huge, strapping warrior and held his axe as if he knew how to use it—and was more than willing to use it right now. He couldn’t resist a goad.

“Did you only bring two of them? Not very careful, for a cautious politician such as yourself.”

“Two will be enough,” Konnal declared grimly.

“What did he promise you?” Porthios asked the question of the axemen in a tone of idle curiosity. “Jewels? Whores? What’s the price for assassinating an elven prince?”

There was no answer, though the pair of warriors stiffened visibly.

“Your names will go down in history, you know. Did he tell you that? Of course, you might think you’ll be heroes—certainly this craven being, this so-called governor, would want you to think that. But in the end, Astinus Lorekeeper will write the truth. You will be known assassins, murders, wretches...”

Konnal drew a deep breath. “There is the paper. Sign it and live. I give you the night to consider. Tomorrow I shall demand an answer, and I assure you that my tactics will not be so gentle.”

Chapter Eight Slight Into Exile

Porthios found himself pacing slowly around the large room. He knew beyond doubt that he faced assassination on the morrow. He would never sign the shameful confession, and Konnal couldn’t afford to let him live. Yet despite his bluster to Konnal, he did not have an actual plan of escape. Given time, he could have come up with something, but events were moving faster than his own ability to control them. Therefore, it seemed a certainty that Konnal would have him killed.

He found the prospect depressing and spiritually draining, though, surprisingly enough, he wasn’t frightened. He thought of Alhana and missed her more poignantly than ever before. Wondering about the baby, he tried to guess if his child would be a boy or a girl. His despair darkened at the awareness that he would never know.

Still aimless, he drifted from the doors onto his balcony. The autumn chill was bracing, invigorating, and he started to think about trying to live. Escape... He needed a plan.

The ground was eight hundred feet below, and the sides of the tower were sheer marble. There was no way to climb down. He needed time to think, to contact his allies outside the city, but his time was running out.

Below him, Silvanost was a vast, ghostly white vista. The pure marble and crystal of myriad structures absorbed the starlight, softly reflecting upward. Even the gardens had their sources of brightness, as phosphorescent waters trilled from small fountains and blossoms of luminous flowers glowed and shimmered in precise, artistic patterns.

It should have been a soothing vista, but it had the opposite effect on Porthios. He found himself pacing the length of his balcony, wishing for wings. The ground below seemed an unattainable goal, distant and aloof. The shifting patterns of brightness and starglow taunted him even as he scorned them for the false quietude they portrayed.

Silvanost was a hateful city, he suddenly saw, and it was emblematic of this whole benighted nation. These elves hid behind a facade of grace and mastery, but it was merely a shell for prejudice and arrogance that had been nurtured beyond reason for more than three thousand years.

He laughed bitterly at an image that flew into his mind: He should hurl himself from this height and smash himself against the city as a last, futile gesture of his scorn. No doubt several haughty Silvanesti would be physically sickened by the sight of his corpse. But the notion instantly faded, and not from any impulse of self-preservation. Instead, he pictured the young workers of House Gardener, elves he had known and befriended over the last two decades. They would find his body, and they would be affected by the horrible sight for the rest of their lives.

It was odd, he thought, how when he looked at the city as a whole, all he saw was a blanket of oppression and self-righteous blindness. Yet when he thought of these elves as individuals, as commoners like his servant Allatarn or the hard-working gardeners, nobles such as Dolphius and Aleaha, they were good and decent people. Not so very different from Qualinesti, if he was truly honest with himself.

“Then why do we work so hard to hurt, to kill each other?” he whispered, feeling his voice swept away into the vastness of the sky. He leaned forward, laying his head on the rail, too tired to do anything else.

Silver shimmered in the night, a flash of movement beyond the balcony, and at first he thought the starglow had swelled into a flare of brightness. But then the motion solidified, and he saw a griffon gliding past, wings spread and motionless.

“Stallyar!” he gasped, his voice loud in the vast silence of the night.

Once again thoughts of escape, of freedom, rose within him. He watched in joy as the magnificent creature reached the edge of the balcony, used eagle talons to grasp the rim of the wall, then land his full weight on the powerful, feline rear legs. Soundlessly the griffon laid his wings flat, easily slipping over the wall to crouch on the ledge. Bright yellow eyes, reflecting more than starlight, fixed upon the stunned elf’s face.

And then Porthios rushed forward, wrapping his arms around the feathered neck, feeling the gentle beak over his shoulder, nudging and scratching his back. He allowed himself a moment of profound emotion, trembling, feeling stinging moisture in his eyes. “How did you know, old friend? How did you know to come for me?”

Only when he opened his eyes did Porthios see movement beyond Stallyar. Another griffon came to rest on the balcony, and this one had a rider. The prisoner came around the side of his faithful steed, then paused as he saw that the newcomer was bearded. He carried no sword, though the ends of a bow and arrows jutted over his shoulder.

Porthios halted in shock, momentarily speechless as he recognized the griffon rider.

“Hello, Prince,” said Tanis, his voice as level as his gaze.

Not “my prince,” Porthios reflected... not from the husband of his sister, the grown man who had been tormented and scorned by royal Qualinesti as a lad.

“Hello, Half-elf,” he replied. He felt a rising wave of anger but forced himself to bite it back. There were too many questions, too much urgency, for him to yield to old rivalries. Yet he had to wonder, why Tanis?

“I bring word of your wife,” the half-elf said by way of answer.

“What about her? Did you see her? How is she? Where—?” His old prejudice was forgotten as the elf’s mind instantly focused on impending news.

Looking around at the wide, silent view, Tanis nodded toward the doors behind Porthios. “Hadn’t we better go inside?”

“Yes, but be quiet. There are guards.”

“So I gathered,” whispered the half-elf. “I come from Tarqualan’s camp outside the city. He told me about your status.”

“Alhana—where is she? Did Rashas—”

Tanis held a finger to his lips, and Porthios realized that, in his agitation, he was starting to raise his voice.

“There’s a great deal to tell, but know that when I left her she was well... and out of Qualinesti. Samar and I were able to spirit her away. She would have come to see you herself, except that her pregnancy has become too advanced. Indeed, brother of my wife, I expect you might become a father any day now.”

“Where is she? Where?”

“In Solace, at the Inn of the Last Home. She was showing signs of early labor when I departed, and that was just yesterday.”

“I must go to her!” Porthios said.

“That’s why I came,” Tanis said. “Samar and I talked to Alhana. We decided that he should stay with her and I’d come for you.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Practical considerations had been pushed far to the side of the prince’s brain, but Porthios raised an eyebrow at one thing the half-elf had said. “You were in Solace yesterday? But that’s more than a week’s flight, even on a fast griffon!”

“I had magical help, both with the escape and with my journey to Silvanesti.”

“But what mage has that kind of power?” asked Porthios.

Tanis maintained a grim silence, looking directly at the prince, and then Porthios began to understand. “A dark elf?”

“One of the Silvanesti,” Tanis agreed with a slow nod. “One who took up the magic of the black robes and so was banned from his people forever.”

“And one whose name may never be uttered among elves,” Porthios said, even as his mind voiced the word: Dalamar.

He pointed to the sheet of parchment from Konnal, still sitting on the table. “Your timing is very good. That is my death warrant, signed for tomorrow.”

“They wouldn’t dare!” Tanis declared, appalled.

“You’d be surprised at what they dare.”

The half-elf nodded grimly. “Maybe I wouldn’t be. In many ways, it’s the same in Qualinesti—the Thalas-Enthia ruled by isolationist fools, my own son forced to don the medallion of Speaker.”

“And the treaty of the three races... it is finished there as well?” asked Porthios, veering away from the subject of the throne that had once been his.

“Yes—killed by Rashas. And you should know that you would be in danger if you return there.”

“I realize that. But—”

The doors opened with a crash, and four Silvanesti guards spilled into the room. They halted halfway across the entryway, and Porthios was impressed to realize that Tanis had dropped his bow off his shoulder, nocked and drawn an arrow, and taken aim in the instant that had passed since the guards entered. The steel-bladed arrowhead was fixed toward the heart of the first sentry, whose face had blanched into a deathly pallor.

“No—don’t kill him!” Porthios declared, sensing that the half-elf was about to release his missile.

“I won’t, but they should know that I could,” Tanis replied grimly.

Porthios addressed the Silvanesti, his voice harsh and demanding. “Tell your master that I’m going... and that my vengeance will take time. But he should take care never to relax his guard.”

The first guard nodded. One of the others, partially shielded by his companion, replied, “We’ll tell him.”

In another instant, the two men, different in race and temperament but united by ties to a sister and wife, had ducked onto the balcony, mounted the two griffons, and taken to the air.