Emperor of Ansalon

Chapter 2

Ariakas crouched behind thc shelter of a densely needled cedar and studied the layout of the thieves' camp. He saw one slender figure working over the fire, puttering with a pan. The unmistakable scent of frying bacon reached his nostrils, drawing an involuntary growl from his stomach.

He ignored the discomfort, pleased with the fact that the night vision of at least one of his enemies would be destroyed by looking into the bright coals. Ariakas shrugged out of his pack, looked around, and picked an approach route that led between several small, stunted pines.

Taking pains to keep the thief between himself and the fire, Ariakas ensured that his own eyes remained sensitive to the subtleties of darkness. The warrior could not see the cook's companion, but knew from snatches of conversation drifting on the breeze that the fellow remained near the fire. As yet he could not identify any words, though the voices struck him as cheerful and chatty-certainly not the sounds made by someone expecting trouble.

Carefully he crept closer, moving with stealth and patience, making sure that not a twig cracked under his heavy boots. It took him some time just to reach the next tree, but he felt certain that his quarry had no plans to move any farther tonight. As if in confirmation, the sec shy;ond thief emerged into view and tossed several dry cedar branches onto the fire.

Ariakas ducked away, covering his eyes before the bright flames crackled upward to wash the entire grove in cheery illumination. The blaze sizzled and popped, giving him an idea. He reached out and touched several brittle branches of a dead cedar, snapping them off while the noise of the fire camouflaged the sound of his own activity.

Again he moved forward, worming his way on his hands and knees, carefully feeling for obstacles before him. Within a few minutes he reached the ring of trees closest to the fire. Here he settled down to spy.

The cook still poked at the fire. As the second thief turned from rummaging in a pack, Ariakas got a look at his face and body. With a jolt of surprise he realized that he had been robbed by a kender, and the knowledge brought a grimace of disgust to his face. The fellow wore the supple traveling clothes of the diminutive folk, with his long hair in the characteristic pony tail hanging over his left shoulder. His walk was almost a skip, and Ariakas was reminded of the inherent grace he had seen as the pair had moved across the mountainside that afternoon.

A quick glance showed him that the cook was also a kender, with even longer hair than the first. With a wry shake of his head Ariakas ducked back to consider his course of action.

Naturally, this explained a lot. The stealthy movement and faint trail coupled with the childlike clumsiness of the footprints by the stream. the locket stolen, the swig of lavarum, all while he had slumbered a few feet away … and the decision to leave him alive. No decision at all, really-surely it had never occurred to the kender to do anything else. None of this changed the central fact, of course: they had stolen his treasure, and he had caught them.

His objectives were still the same. Only the approach had changed. His original plan had been straightfor shy;ward: frighten the thieves into producing the gem-studded object and then kill the leader in retribution and as an object lesson to the accomplice. However, he knew kender were utterly fearless-no intimidation, no bluff would produce the locket, or even an apology. Still, the little folk tended to be far more naive than the typical human thief. Perhaps he could trick them. If worse came to worst, he could kill them and find the treasure him shy;self.

His decision made, Ariakas stepped around the tree and walked up to the fire as if his appearance here were perfectly natural. His sword remained in its scabbard, while his left hand held the clump of dry pine branches behind his back.

"Oh, hello there," said the first kender, who had just joined the cook by the fire. "You're almost in time for supper!"

The second turned with no visible expression of sur shy;prise. Ariakas felt another jolt as he saw that this was a female. Delicate lines scored her slender face-a face that might have belonged to a young girl except for its creases of maturity. "Did you bring that lavarum?" she chirped. "That'll be the perfect thing with this bacon-potato goulash!"

Despite his preparation, the directness of her remark took Ariakas by surprise. "Yes-yes I did," he blurted after a moment.

"Say, that was good stuff!" agreed the male, amiably indicating a place by the fire for Ariakas to sit. "I'm Cornsilk Tethersmeet-and this is my friend, Keppli." The female bobbed her head, a welcoming smile on her face.

Suddenly the ridiculousness of the situation infuriated Ariakas. Disgust rose like bile in his throat. He cast away the brittle branches-he saw no need to night-blind the kender.

"Look," he declared, his voice dropping to a menacing growl. "I've come to get my locket back-which one of you will get it for me?" His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword in none-too-subtle accent.

"Your locket?" Cornsilk Tethersmeet squeaked in sur shy;prise. "What makes you think we have it?"

"I know you have it," replied the human grimly. "Now, one of you get it for me!"

"I'm beginning to think we'll just keep this supper for ourselves," challenged Keppli, huffily. "You can just build your own fire, if that's the way you're going to be!"

Ariakas refused to alter his course. Carefully watching the pair, he sidestepped over to their packs and flipped open the flap of the first one.

"Hey! You can't do that-that's mine!" shrilled the female kender, jumping to her feet.

Ignoring her protests, he rummaged inside the leather satchel, pulling out a horseshoe, a blacksmith's hammer, a gem-studded brooch in the ornate platinum image of an eagle, and several bottles and flasks that apparently contained food and drink.

"Stop it!" protested Cornsilk, stepping toward him.

Ariakas drew his sword with his free hand and raised the blade. The little fellow stopped, a scowl of concentra shy;tion wrinkling his face.

Plunging his hand into the second backpack, Ariakas pulled out a variety of boots-many of them too large for kender feet, and none with an obvious match-as well as a plush robe of soft brown fur. Finally his fingers touched a familiar leather-covered bundle.

"This!" he declared, pulling forth the chain. He allowed the gleaming locket to swing in the firelight, dangling before the startled kender. Orange glimmers danced across the platinum, and the rubies at the locket's corners glowed in reflection like baleful, accusing eyes.

"That's not yours!" declared Cornsilk Tethersmeet with a determined shake of his head.

"Do you remember where you got it?" challenged Ari shy;akas.

"Sure-I found it!"

"Where?"

"In the mountains-last night," explained the kender patiently, as if he believed that he could change the human's mind.

"You stole this from my pack while I slept!" Ariakas barked.

The kender's eyes widened in shock and indignation. "I did no such thing! Why, if it had been in your pack, then you stole it-and I found it there!"

Growling in irritation, the warrior shook off the bar shy;rage of objections. Sword raised, he advanced on Corn-silk Tethersmeet. The final measure of justice remained, and to him it mattered not whether the thief was human or kender. The little fellow's next words stopped him in his tracks, however.

"That locket belongs to the lady in the tower," the kender protested, vexed by Ariakas's lack of under shy;standing. "It's even got her picture in it! Why, I might even have remembered to give it back to her," he con shy;cluded with injured dignity.

"What lady?" inquired the human, intrigued in spite of himself.

"Why, the lady that the ogres of Oberon caught," explained the kender in exasperation. "They keep her in the tower over there." He gestured vaguely to the east.

"Who is she?" demanded Ariakas. He remembered the name Oberon, a bandit lord reputed to command a band of ogres to the north of Bloten. "And how do you know the locket's hers?"

"I told you who she is-the lady held prisoner by ogres! And I know it's her locket because she told me about it. She lost it before-or maybe it was stolen. She told me about those four big rubies in the corners, and the little clasp. Even that raven carved into the back. Plus, it's got her picture in it-right there! There can't be two lockets like that, can there?"

Ariakas resisted the urge to answer. "Tell me more about the lady."

"She's a princess, or a queen, or something," Keppli piped up. "I know that she's rich-or she was before the ogres got her and put her up in that tower!"

"Where does she come from?" the warrior pressed.

The two kender looked at each other and shrugged. "Go and ask her," Cornsilk Tethersmeet said, impatience registering in his voice. "Now, if you'll be kind enough to be on your way…."

"One more question," stalled Ariakas, the hilt of his sword nestling comfortably in his palm. "Where is this tower, this place where the lady is imprisoned?"

"Over there," declared the kender. "About three days travel, I should say. It's on the border of Bloten, but I think the ogres who live there are just some kind of rene shy;gade band. They have their own warlord-the one they call Oberon."

"How is it that you know so much about them?" in shy;quired Ariakas. He remembered Oberon's name with growing interest since Habbar-Akuk had mentioned the same brutal monster.

"Oh, we stayed there for a week last winter. They gave us a nice room, up near the lady's, where we could see for miles-all the way to the Lords of Doom, on a clear day."

"But then," Keppli interjected, "we heard them talking about us and, well, it wasn't very pleasant-"

"And we never did get to meet Oberon!" asserted the male.

"… not very pleasant at all," Keppli continued with a firm shake of her head.

"So we left," concluded Cornsilk. "As if those locks could hold anyone!"

"They hold the lady?" pressed Ariakas.

"Well, yes," admitted the kender, though he seemed prepared to argue the point. Then he shook his head. "So you see, you can't have her locket. If you'll just put it down-"

"I'm taking it. Nothing you've told me changes the fact that you're a thief-the worst kind of pilfering rogue, to sneak through the darkness and threaten a man while he sleeps!"

"Why, I-"

"Quiet!" Ariakas's voice became a roar, and the kender's mouth clamped shut in surprise. Cornsilk's dark, surprisingly mature eyes studied the warrior ap-praisingly-and with a total absence of fear. For some reason the kender's refusal to be afraid enraged the human. "Here's your justice, thief!" he barked, thrusting sharply with the sword.

Cornsilk was prepared for the move, but he hadn't anticipated the warrior's speed. The kender dropped and rolled to the side, but not before the tip of the sword ripped into the exposed side of his neck.

"Hey!" shouted Cornsilk, clapping a hand to the wound and staring in confusion at the bright, arterial blood spurting between his fingers. Then his eyes closed, and he sprawled to the ground.

"I will spare you," Ariakas said to Keppli, clasping the locket in his left hand as he held his sword at the ready.

Warily he eyed the female kender. "But pray remember this lesson before you steal again."

The fury in Keppli's eyes astonished him. She could not have blasted him harder by unleashing bolts of fire. In a steady, uncompromising voice, she taunted him. "Hail the human warrior, brave enough to murder! The goat who was his father would be proud! The sow that gave birth to him would squeal in delight!"

"Would you face your companion's fate?" he demanded, flushing angrily.

"It's nothing beside the fate in store for you!" she cried, her voice tinged with an edge of laughter. "Before the gods are done with you, raven wings will beat around your bones-lizards will crawl between your legs!"

"You're mad!" he snarled, slashing wildly at her, furi shy;ous as she skipped beyond range of his sword.

"Madness is a thing you should know!" she sang, fierce triumph ringing in every word, biting into Ariakas like the sting of a poisoned blade. "Blood of insanity flows through your veins-only the shade of a heart beats within you. Oh, yes-madness is a thing you know too well!"

Ariakas lost all vestige of control. He lunged through the dying campfire, hacking at the nimble form. Some shy;where in the back of his mind a voice of reason, of cau shy;tion, told him that this was dangerous.

Even so, he dived after Keppli, darting the tip of his blade across her heel, drawing a squeak of pain as she tumbled to the ground. He leapt, but she rolled away from him, and as he skidded to one knee, she bounced to her feet.

Cold steel gleamed in her hand.

Raw instinct took hold of the warrior's arm, bringing his blade through a desperate arc as he toppled back shy;ward, striving to avoid the blade that snicked past his throat. Somehow he raised his sword.

Thrusting, he drove the weapon through the kender's body, cursing as her dagger sliced his chin and lip. Kep-pli spoke no words-she simply collapsed and died. Ari-akas let his blade fall with its victim, clasping both hands to the blood that jetted from the long wound across his face.