Legacy of Steel

1

The pain came again in the deep hours of the night. It began as a dull ache of despair in the center of her heart, where it found her own grief and joined with it, opening her old wounds and thrusting her back into that raw, quivering emptiness. She tossed and turned under her blankets; tears trickled down her sleeping face, but still she could not draw away from the bitter sadness.

The pain increased in the course of her dream and radiated outward toward her arm and back. The dull ache turned into a throbbing agony that burned like acid across her upper body.

Help me. An inhuman voice cried from a long distance away. Help me! The plea filled her mind with need. The voice struck a chord of familiarity, yet such as this creature had not spoken to her in years.

A persistent pounding suddenly filled her dream.

"Help me!" The words were repeated but the voice was different-human this time.

"Sara! Sara, please, I need your help!"

The dream voice dwindled into the darkness. The pain drained away, leaving only a residue of tension in her back muscles. Sara woke up and dragged herself upright. She was in her own bed, in her own cottage. Night lay thick and cold around her. The human voice without cried again, "Sara! Are you there?"

"Yes, yes, Jacobar. I'm coming," she answered. Through the haze of weariness and the sadness left behind by the dream, Sara stumbled across the dirt floor to the door. She flung the door open to greet her night visitor.

A young man, tall and brawny and very worried, rushed in. "Sara! Thanks be. You've got to come. It's Rose. She's delivering, and I think the babe is stuck."

Sara summoned a patient smile from somewhere within her. She was getting quite used to these nocturnal visits. Her reputation for skilled care was rapidly spreading through the countryside. While Jacobar paced by the door, Sara hastily threw on her work clothes: an old pair of men's pants, boots, and a clean but worn tunic. Grabbing her cloak and her healer's bag, she hurried out into the blustery night after the young farmer.

The cold air struck her like a blow. Although it was nearly spring, the past few days had been tempestuous and unseasonably chilly from a storm that moved in from the north. Sara pulled her cloak tighter and shivered. She just hoped the laboring mother was in a warm place.

Close on Jacobar's heels, she hurried with the man along the village road to a path that led east past the common pastures to a small cot and barn that sat huddled in a shallow dale. The house was small and neat and surrounded on two sides by a hedge of trees that grew as a windbreak. Pens and corrals clustered around the barn.

For a moment, Sara feared the farmer was leading her to one of the muddy pens-she had delivered more than one baby in the mud before-but Jacobar veered toward the barn and threw open the door. Lamplight spilled out into the windy darkness, and the sheltering walls of the barn welcomed her. Sara indulged in a small sigh of relief and stepped into the barn.

Her patient lay on her side in a bed of clean straw, her great flanks quivering with her effort. Rose was a plow horse of mixed breeding, thus not worth a great deal to anyone but a farmer. To Jacobar, she was priceless for her gentle disposition, her strength, her patience, and mostly for the fact that he could not afford to replace her. To him, she was everything.

"Can you help her?" he asked anxiously as Sara stripped off her cloak.

The woman nodded. "I think so. Bring me some hot water and soap if you have it."

Gladly Jacobar ran out to fetch what she needed.

Sara carefully laid her tools on a clean cloth, then methodically inspected the mare. She was pleased to see Jacobar had not waited too long to fetch her. Others had put off the call, not wanting to pay her fee, and finally ended by summoning her in a panic when it was often too late to save both the foal and the mare. This time Jcobar had recognized the mare's difficulties and acted swiftly. Sara gently patted the mare's brown head and murmured encouragement in her ear.

Jacobar soon returned, a lump of gray soap in one hand, a bucket of steaming water in the other. Sara went to work washing her hands, then lubricating her arms from a jar of sweet-smelling ointment. Fortunately the colt was not twisted or lodged in its foaling bed; it was simply trying to come forth backward. The mare, who had strained for a long while, was too tired to continue alone.

Sara carefully inserted her arm into the mare's birthing canal, found the foal's hind feet, and slipped a soft noose around the tiny hooves.

"Now," she told Jacobar, handing him the other end of the rope. "Pull gently only when she pushes. I'll help guide it out."

Perhaps encouraged by the human help, Rose made a new effort to push out her baby. As Jacobar pulled and Sara gently helped, a glistening wet bundle eased out of the mare and slid to the straw.

Sara swiftly cleared away the amniotic sac, cut the umbilical cord, and wiped out the baby's nostrils. "It's a fine colt," she announced. The young farmer grinned his delight.

Rose climbed to her feet and began to lick her baby from diminutive muzzle to fly-whisk tail.

Sara watched, feeling the glow of satisfaction spread through her. It helped dispel some of the vestiges of the dark dream that still clung to her mind. She stretched her aching muscles and slowly made her way to her feet.

"Are you all right, Sara?" Jacobar asked suddenly. He peered at her in the dim lamplight, concern on his plain face.

"Yes. I just didn't sleep well. Bad dreams."

"Then come to my house. I have no wife, but I can cook a fine breakfast," and without further persuasion, he led her to his cottage and made her a huge meal of corn cakes, sausages, eggs, and toast. Sara discovered she was ravenous and pleased Jacobar mightily by eating a large breakfast and complimenting him frequently on his cooking skills.

By the time she left for home with a basket of eggs for her fee, the sun had risen behind a ceiling of gray clouds, and Sara felt considerably better.

She hurried through the village-or tried to. Several people called her over for news about Jacobar's mare, and others waved and greeted her, pleased as always to see her.

Sara did not try to put them off. She liked the villagers. They had readily accepted her when she wandered into their village seven years ago, and after only a brief period of adjustment, they embraced her ability to treat animals. Life in Connersby was simple and hard, but it was also quiet and satisfying after her previous existence.

When Sara finally reached her own cottage, she closed the door behind her and took a deep breath. The morning had barely started and already she felt as if she had been working half the day. Her unmade bed looked very inviting, but there were too many other things to do. Instead of moving, though, Sara leaned back against the door and contemplated her house.

The cottage she called hers was a simple one of stone, timber, and thatch, with two rooms, a loft, and a single fireplace. The largest room served as her living space. She had a rope bed and a clothes chest on one side, a kitchen on the other, and a single table and chairs in the middle. The second room held her herbs and medical supplies and her loom. Many years ago, in another lifetime it seemed, she had been a weaver in a tiny farming community much like this one. Until a Dragon army officer named Kitiara erupted into her life and changed it forever.

Deep in thought, Sara walked to her clothes chest and opened it. She plunged her hand in amongst the clothes and linens and pulled out a sword scabbarded in leather and fleece. This morning, instead of closing the chest as usual, Sara knelt and began to dig through her clothes and belongings. At the very bottom of the chest, something hard wrapped in an old blanket met her fingers. She paused, her fingers still resting on the bundle. The Voice from her dreams came back to her, imploring, grief-stricken, frightened. She thought she knew the source of the voice, but how could it be possible she could hear it after all those years? And why now?

"No!" she snapped to herself. "It's only a dream." Almost frantically, she threw her things back into the chest, burying the bundle out of sight.

She snatched up her sword and hurried out the back door to the trees that hemmed in her cottage. Behind her home rose a tree-clad hill, part of a ring of hills that protected the valley where the village was located. Sara climbed the hill on a path she knew by heart and made her way along a ridge to a small glen that angled down the ridge to the east.

There in the narrow confines of rocks and scrub trees, along the banks of a stony stream, Sara pulled her sword from the scabbard and drew herself up into a defensive posture. One after another, with meticulous care, she completed every sword exercise she had ever learned, from thrusts and parries to undercuts and blocks. When she was finished with the right hand, she repeated every exercise with the left. Every day, rain or sun, she had performed these exercises, sometimes adding changes of her own, but always completing the entire regime.

She had begun this practice to maintain her skills for self-defense. She continued it now out of habit. No one in the village imagined she did this; no one in the village knew what she had been or what she really was.

Sara wanted it that way. If any word had leaked out that an exile from the Knights of Takhisis lived in the village of Connersby in Solamnia, the Dark Knights and the good Knights of Solamnia would have swarmed all over this region to find her.

Or at least they would have several years ago. But the old world had been lost and a new world had been found in the Second Cataclysm only two short years ago. In that bitter, flaming summer, most of the knights of the light and the dark had perished together in a brutal war against Chaos, the Father of All and of Nothing. Chaos had been defeated, but in his retreat, he had forced the other gods to go with him, leaving the world of Krynn bereft of its gods, their magic, and most of the finest warriors in Ansalon. Only a few scattered remnants of the two orders remained, and Sara doubted they would be very interested in seeking out old deserters accused of treason.

Still, Sara kept her secret. The life she led until seven years ago was over and not one she recalled with joy. Only the memories of her adopted son, Steel Brightblade, kept that life alive in her memories.

Sara lifted her face to the pale sky and sent her thoughts winging back to the day when the dark-haired woman, Kitiara Uth Matar, thrust her baby into Sara's arms and rode away, never to return. From that moment, Sara Dunstan considered herself Steel's mother, and she devoted her entire life to his welfare.

It was he who had led her into the dark knighthood, and it was in the hope that she could turn him back from that path that she betrayed the Knights' Code and put her own life in danger by trying to lure him away from the goddess, Takhisis. She would have sacrificed anything for him-something his own mother never did.

Even now, two years after Steel's death in the last battle against Chaos, Sara mourned him as deeply as a blood mother could for her own son. The only comfort she found lay in the fact that Steel had died a hero, sacrificing his own life for the sake of his world. Looking back on her life, Sara did not begrudge a single moment she had spent with Steel, or for him.

The woman wiped her face with the hem of her tunic and sat down on a rock. She sighed, glanced down at the weapon in her hands. The sword exercise, if nothing else, had kept her strong and youthful beyond her fifty-one years. But, she laughed ruefully, her age was beginning to tell. Her knees ached and her reflexes were slower. Her eyesight was not as sharp as it once was. Her hair, once light brown, had turned prematurely gray and now hung in a silver braid down her back. And her mind tended to wander too often over old memories.

One day she would have to give up this swordplay and birthing horses and trimming cows' hooves and all the hard, difficult labor she performed and leave it all to someone younger and stronger. One day. Until then, there was lots to do and not enough time to do it all. Already the late winter day was passing.

Rested, Sara sheathed her sword and hurried home to her loom and her chores. She put her dreams and memories aside for another time. What were they, after all, but mere phantoms of the past? There were far more practical things to think about in the light of day.

Like all days, though, the day drained away into darkness, and that night Sara's dream came again. It was an odd dream, for it had no images, no light or color. Then was nothing but impenetrable darkness, the pain of body and soul, and the voice crying its misery to anyone who could hear.

Sara woke to find her pillow soaked with tears and her back stiff and sore from the tension. She lay awake the rest of the night, staring at the ceiling. The next day she looked wan and felt exhausted.

"It will go away," she told herself. "It's only a dream. I don't need to worry about it."

But the voice did not go away. For three more nights, the piteous cries echoed in her sleep until Sara woke screaming, "Leave me alone!"

On the fourth day, Sara was so weary she fell asleep over her loom, and she dreamed again of the darkness and the voice. This time the dream changed. A dim light filtered through the gloom, revealing stone walls and a sand-covered floor. The voice still cried, softly and steadily like a miserable child. Its tone rose and fell as if its maker was half-asleep. Then something moved into Sara's vision and confirmed her suspicion. Two forelimbs, muscular and taloned, stretched out on the sand before her. The pale light gleamed on faded blue scales.

The dragon, as if sensing her presence, raised its head and looked around. Through its eyes, Sara saw the length and breadth of its body. She gasped in her sleep. The dragon was emaciated, its color dull and dry. Its right forearm seemed bent at an odd angle, and a long, seeping wound stretched across its shoulders. It dropped its head back onto the sand and whimpered.

Sara sighed with resignation. "All right," she said aloud. "I'm coming." The dream abruptly snuffed out.

Perhaps her acceptance was all the dragon needed, for that night, after Sara packed her gear and readied her cottage to leave, she slept through the night without a single dream.