Stormblade

22

Lavim kicked at a small rock and watched it tumble down the hill. He’d heard—and he wasn’t sure whether he’d heard this from Piper or someone else—that all this desert, all this rolling, dry, dusty, empty, shadowless, and boring place they called the Hills of Blood, had once been a grassy plain.

You forgot ‘dull.’

“What?”

You forgot to mention that the hills are dull.

Lavim sighed. “I didn’t think I’d have to. Kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

Piper smiled.

Lavim kicked at the dirt, watching the puffs of dust being carried away by the knife-sharp wind. He thought it was curious that he could tell when Piper was smiling.

He dove into his pocket and pulled out a map made of carefully folded, cracked parchment. “I used to have a map case for these, but I don’t know what happened to it. I had it not so long ago, about a month or so before I went to Long Ridge. It’s gone now. Lots of things tend to disappear just after I’m running to or from some place.”

He dropped to a crouch and laid the map out on the ground, smoothing the creases carefully. “Look at this place, Piper. It’s even ugly on a map.”

He traced the map for the benefit of a ghost who could now see well behind them and well before them.

Piper said nothing and let him go on.

“See? Back here to the east is Qualinesti.” Lavim looked up, squinting at the sky. “Kind of odd, isn’t it, that I spent most of my time there looking for ghosts and didn’t find one until I was out of the place. Well, there it is, Elvenwood, all green and pretty. Here’s the river we crossed, that blue squiggly line.” He snorted in disgust. “And here’s where the map gets ugly and the land gets even uglier. Just little hills, the map says. Huh! These aren’t hills, they’re little mountains.”

No, they’re hills.

“Easy enough for you to say; you’re not walking them.” Lavim folded his map and tucked it back into his pocket. “It would be a whole lot easier to get to Thorbardin if we could cut across the Plains of Dergoth—or the Plains of Death as the dwarves call ’em. Why do they call ’em that, Piper?”

Because thousands of dwarves, hill dwarves and mountain dwarves, died there during the Dwarfgate Wars.

Lavim rose and stretched. The wind cut sharply from the east now, pushing the wildfire ahead of it. Though the sky was clear of the guyll fyr’s smoke, the currents over the plains for the most part sucked the roiling smoke along the channel of the marshland. Still, he could scent it. With no further word, he jogged off to the south, climbed the highest hill he could find, then dropped again to his heels.

The fire was miles distant and looked from his hilltop like a broad red snake slithering toward the mountains in the east. The smoke overhung the marshes, a thick black pall. When he tried very hard, eyes squeezed shut and shoulders hunched, Lavim imagined he could hear the roar of that fire like distant thunder.

Piper, silent for all this time, spoke suddenly and Lavim jumped. Why don’t you go talk to Tyorl?

“No, I don’t think so.” Lavim glanced over his shoulder and down the hill. “He’s still real upset about Kelida and Stanach being snatched up by the dragon. I could see why he would be. I don’t—I don’t like to think about it much myself.”

I’ve noticed. Maybe Tyorl needs to talk about it.

Lavim shook his head darkly. “Not to me, he doesn’t. Look at him.”

Tyorl was sitting on his heels, watching the sky. He’d had his eye on the hard blue heights since the dragon had snatched Kelida and carried her and Stanach into the dawn. Lavim sighed. He’d missed nearly the whole wonderful thing and only come back to the others in time to see the dragon, looking like nothing as much as a sharp black tear in the sky, winging eastward toward Thorbardin with Kelida and Stanach and without its rider.

They’d found the one-eyed dwarf in a gully between two fells. Bone-smashed and bleeding, he was not dead. Lavim supposed that Finn had been moved by revenge for Lehr’s terrible death when he cut the dwarf’s throat. Piper had said such a killing was a mercy. Lavim glanced at Finn now. Forehead on drawn up knees, the rangerlord sat unmoving in the shelter of the hill, seemingly unaware of Kern’s restless pacing. Kembal, always quiet, hadn’t said a word since his brother had been killed by the dragon. He prowled the base of the hill, head up and ready, like a hunter waiting to resume his prey’s trail. He was sharpening his arrows on the stone of revenge, Piper said. With the change in the wind’s direction just after dawn, the fire had spread fast through the hills and, racing south and north as well as east, threw up a wall of flame behind them. They’d headed for the desert hills on Finn’s advice. There wasn’t much to burn here and the rangerlord figured they’d be safe. It had been a hard run and now, as the shadows grew longer and darker with imminent sunset, the four had stopped to rest before pushing east again.

Go on, Lavim. Talk to Tyorl.

“And?”

And what?

“And give him the flute, right? It’s what you’ve been nagging me about all along. Give him the flute, give him the flute.”

I’d be happier if you did.

“But he can’t use it and I can!”

Piper sighed. As long as I tell you what to do, yes.

“Then where’s the sense in giving it to him?”

Lavim! Go!

Lavim squeezed his eyes closed and clapped his hands over his ears. Wishing that Piper had never developed this nasty habit of yelling right inside his head, he went to join Tyorl.

The elf never looked around, even when Lavim’s small shadow cut across his. Lavim cleared his throat loudly.

Tyorl got to his feet and scanned the eastern quarter of the sky. “We’ve an hour or so before dark, Lavim. Let’s not waste it talking.” He nodded to Finn who rose and signaled Kem that they were ready to move again. Kem, as was his custom, took the northern point, covering ground with his long-legged lope. Finn jogged a little ahead to the south and east, setting their course. Soon, the smoky pall from the Plains of Death ran high over their heads. Lavim trotted beside Tyorl, stepping quickly to keep up.

“Uh, Tyorl, I want to tell you something.”

Tyorl made no response.

“I want to tell you about Piper.”

“He’s dead,” Tyorl grunted. “What more do I need to know about Piper?”

Lavim sighed patiently. “I know he’s dead. But I think you think that if you had his flute when the dragon grabbed Stanach and Kelida, you’d’ve been able to do something about it.”

Tyorl said nothing.

“You wouldn’t have. You couldn’t have.”

“Aye? And why not?”

“Because the flute only works for me, Tyorl. Piper says that it won’t—”

“Piper says?”

Lavim nodded. “You see, he’s a ghost, Tyorl. He talks to me in my head and he tells me things—”

“Lavim—”

“Please, Tyorl, let me finish. He really is a ghost. He told me when the red dragon flew over the forest and set the woods on fire. Well, not that he—the dragon, I mean—was going to do that, but that he was flying. And—and he told me about the black dragon, too.” The kender sighed and picked up his pace. The sand and red dust seemed to drag at his feet.

“But—but I was too far away to do anything about it. I tried! I really did, but Piper says that spells have ranges and—I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I wish I’d been closer. I wish I hadn’t been out in the hills. But I was. And—and I know you think that you would have been able to help Lehr and Kelida and Stanach when the dragon came if only you had the flute, but you couldn’t have. You don’t have Piper in your head.”

“And neither do you. Kenderkin, sometimes I think you’re half mad and—”

Tell him you are not mostly senile.

Indignantly Lavim snapped, “I am not mostly senile! Not even partly!”

Tyorl stopped. It was the phrase he’d been about to use “What?”

“I—Piper said—I mean I said—I am not mostly senile.” Lavim drew a shuddering breath and stopped. Hands on his knees, head low and panting, he closed his eyes and tried to catch his breath, still talking. “And Piper says, too, that right now you’re thinking that you’d better find a way to keep me quiet before Finn hears.”

Tyorl blinked. “Aye? Does he?”

“Yes, and he says that now you’re thinking that the last thing you need is a crazy kender on your hands. I’m not crazy, Tyorl! Do you understand? I’m not making this up. It’s true. It’s real. Here.” He groped through his pockets and dragged out the flute. He pressed it into Tyorl’s hand before he could decide not to. “Try it. Play something.”

“What will it prove? I can play the instrument, but I don’t know the notes for any spell.”

Lavim whistled the quick, light notes he had played to trigger his smell spell. “Try those.” He whistled the tune again. “Got, ’em?”

Tyorl held the flute gingerly. “Lavim.”

“Try it! Go ahead. Piper says it’s all right.”

The elf looked at the flute, glanced sharply at Lavim, and drew a quick breath.

“Go on.”

Tyorl tried the tune, braced for disaster at worst, for the unimaginably foul odor that had sickened him in the river cave at best. Nothing happened but that the breeze quickened a little.

“Piper says that the wind has nothing to do with the flute. Something about the air currents over the fire or something. See? Try it again.”

Tyorl did. The breeze blew at the same strength and the air still smelled of the wildfire’s smoke, but nothing else. He stared at the flute in his hand and saw, just a moment too late, the kender’s own hand dart out and snatch the instrument back. It was secreted in deep pockets before Tyorl could protest.

“Lavim! Wait! Give—”

But Lavim was gone, trotting ahead to catch up with Finn, the flute once again in his possession.

Tyorl started after him. If Lavim had been on the fell when the black dragon had struck, he might have been able to help. But, he was night ranging and hadn’t been there. Blaming him for that now was as fruitless as blaming himself for missing his shot at the dragon when he did. Tyorl ran faster. He was not thinking about ghosts or chances missed. He suddenly realized that Lavim had proved that the flute’s magic worked for Lavim alone. The implications were frightening.

From the hill where he walked the dark watch in the hours after midnight, Tyorl saw the fire rampaging in the marshes and bogs on the Plains of Death. The wind from the west had calmed after sunset, but the wildfire no longer needed the wind’s push to speed it on its way to the mountains. The marsh grass might as well have been lamp oil; nothing would stop the fire now.

Tyorl cursed bitterly and looked up at the stars, tiny chips of glittering ice scattered across the black sky. Solinari, high and bright, was girded by a hazy silver ring. Lunitari’s light crimsoned the dark hills to the east and sent indigo shadows running down to the lowlands. The red moon’s ring was pink as water-washed blood. Tyorl smelled snow in the air. We’ll not be making the mountains before the fire does, the elf thought, and that means we won’t be making Thorbardin at all.

He ran his thumb along the polished wood of his longbow. Smooth as silk the yew felt under his thumb, and familiar. And useless, useless to defend Kelida against the dragon.

Tyorl winced as pain and regret clawed at his heart. That, too, was familiar. His straight, true arrows had bounded off the ebony dragon’s scaled hide as though they’d been repelled by steel. A bolt through the creature’s eye would have slowed it, might have killed it, but the dragon moved too fast and had flown well out of Tyorl’s range before he could sight and aim. For a moment, as the dragon leaped for the sky, he’d thought that Stanach had pulled Kelida free. He watched the struggle on the giant beast’s back, praying, then cursing as the beast took to the sky. Stanach, the elf thought bitterly, Stormblade has cost you kin, friend, and hand. You say Reorx blessed the blade; I say he cursed it. But you tried. You fought like a wolf for it.

He turned his back on the lurid glare of the guyll fyr and, his eye caught by the small, tame glow of the campfire in the hollow, watched the shadows of its smoke playing across the ground below. Red beneath the sun, the rocks and thick dust of the desert floor gleamed strangely purple under the eerie glow of the moons. Lavim, as ever, was nowhere to be seen. Tyorl hadn’t caught up with him before the camp was made and hadn’t been able to find him since.

Night riding, he thought, or communing with his ghostly mage. He veered wide of that thought. He was certain that Lavim believed that dead Piper spoke with him. Tyorl didn’t know what he himself thought. Yet, it was true that Lavim had known his words before he’d half-thought them himself. When he’d tried to discuss the matter with Finn, the rangerlord had shrugged and expressed nothing but the most caustic disbelief.

Tyorl glanced over the camp again. Finn lay wrapped in his cloak and slept near the fire. Kem, whom Tyorl had relieved from the watch an hour ago, sat staring into the shadows. Tyorl wondered when he would sleep. Kern’s silence had always been a thing of good-natured, amused observation. Quiet by nature, the healer had left most of the talking to his voluble younger brother. Now it seemed that Lehr’s death had stolen away the gentle, humorous light in Kern’s eyes. Kem wanted revenge and so, too, did Tyorl.

Tyorl was suddenly cold to his bones. It was the first time he’d admitted, even to himself, that he believed Kelida dead.

The black dragon had flown out of the east. Out of Thorbardin. It could only mean that the revolution Stanach had feared was a thing accomplished. Realgar reigned in the dwarven kingdom and had dragons at his command. Aye, and Verminaard as his ally.

Again he whispered a curse, this time against the sudden tightening of his throat. Last night he’d been wondering whether he was in love with Kelida, hiding from the idea and yet waiting to catch the soft sound of her voice, hoping to feel the warmth of her casual touch.

Tonight, and too late, he knew that he loved her. Now he could only look to memory to hear her voice, to feel her hand light on his arm, or catch the sun glinting in her hair.

Would he have told her? Aye, in a minute!

And what of Hauk?

The elf smiled bitterly. It hardly mattered now. They were both dead, and he had only a handful of moments, now memories of a farmer’s girl turned barmaid. It was too late to worry about what might have grown from those moments. They were gone.

Tyorl resumed his watch walk, the wildfire on his left and shadows before and behind him. Too late for anything, he thought coldly, but vengeance. No matter at all who ruled in Thorbardin now. He’d find a way to the mountain cities, and he’d find his vengeance for Kelida, and for Hauk whom they’d both loved.

From a night-filled ravine west of the campsite, Lavim watched Tyorl pacing on the hilltop. He’d recovered kender-quick from his desert run and, knowing that Tyorl would be after the flute now, had slipped into the shadows of the twilight and avoided all three rangers. He wanted to talk to Piper without being bothered with Tyorl’s demands for the flute. Lavim had some questions that needed answering.

He wriggled to a more comfortable seat on the rocks and scowled into the night. The problem was that Piper hadn’t been giving him many answers at all. He’d stopped giving answers right about the time the kender took out the flute. Lavim ran his fingers along the smooth red cherry wood and smiled slyly. He suspected that Piper’s lack of response to his last question was an answer in itself.

“I think,” he said, pointing the flute to where he imagined Piper would be standing if he were anywhere but inside his own head. “I think that I can use this flute any time I want to.”

Piper said nothing.

“I think it doesn’t matter whether or not you tell the flute what magic tune to play.”

Piper still said nothing.

Lavim grinned. “That’s what I think. You know why? Well, I’ll tell you: because that smell-spell was my idea, and the flute played the song I needed when I needed it. That’s why you want me to give the flute to Tyorl, isn’t it? I can use the magic and I don’t need you to tell me how to. I just need you to be inside my head so the flute will work. What do you say to that?”

I say that you’re an ass, Lavim.

Lavim refused to be insulted. “Might be, might be. But I’m an ass with a magic flute.”

Piper’s voice was cold inside Lavim’s head. Aye, and I couldn’t think of anything more foolish or dangerous.

Lavim watched the moons’ light run along the satin-smooth wood.

“You’re mad, aren’t you? Strange, since it’s me who should be mad at you for telling me that I needed to have you tell me how to work the magic.”

He nodded solemnly. “Friends don’t lie to friends.”

Friends don’t steal from friends either, Lavim.

Stung, the kender slid off the rock. “I didn’t steal the flute! You gave it to me!”

I asked you to give it to Tyorl.

“And I said I would. Pretty soon, too!”

Lavim, I don’t know what you have planned, but it had better not involve the flute. There are only a handful of spells you can work with the flute’s magic, and you don’t know what they are.

Lavim chuckled. “I know what two of them are. A smell-spell and a transport spell. And I don’t need a smell-spell now!”

He left the ravine, scrambling up the steep sides, and dashed toward the campsite.

“It’ll be easy!” he crowed. “We’ll just transport to Thorbardin and save Kelida and Stanach and maybe this Hauk fellow, too!”

No! Lavim, no! That spell takes words, too. You have to know them as you play the notes. If you try that spell without the right words, you’ll be standing in the middle of nowhere with three piles of dust who used to be your friends!

Lavim stopped, head cocked and frowning. Then a smile smoothed the wrinkles on his weather-browned face. He had the solution to that problem, too. “That’s all right, Piper. Just tell ’em to me when I have to know ’em.”

Piper, who might as well have been riding a runaway horse down a mountain, wished desperately that he had something to hold on to. He’d need it. There was no way to stop Lavim now.

Tyorl knew he believed in Lavim’s haunting the instant he saw the kender pull out the mage’s flute. Puffing like an old bellows from his run up the side of the ravine, Lavim waved the elf down from the hilltop.

“Tyorl! C’mere! I’ve figured it all out! I can get us to Thorbardin before you know it!”

At once he heard a voice from memory. Stanach’s, low and rough with grief, whispering, “Piper’s known in Thorbardin for his transport spells.”

Piper! Tyorl begged silently, Piper, don’t let him do it! Tyorl scrambled, tripping over a jutting stone and sliding most of the way down the hill on his heels. The gods only knew what would happen if Lavim misinterpreted the instructions for a transport spell. The words and gestures of a spell were delicate things. How much more precise must the notes be when a spell is enacted with a mage’s flute! What manner of spell could be mistakenly loosed?

Tyorl dove for Lavim.

So did Finn.

And so did Kem.

The kender went down in a welter of arms and legs, kicking and squirming, but held the flute with a sure grip.

“Hey! Wait! What’s the matter? Let me up! You don’t understand I—”

Tyorl pulled himself out from under Finn’s knee, keeping his grip on Lavim’s ankle. Finn twisted away from Kern’s elbow and never relinquished his hold around the kender’s middle. Kem tried to haul Lavim to his feet. No one held his hands and no one thought to clamp a hand over his mouth.

Lavim, certain that his companions had somehow misunderstood what he’d said—clearly if they’d understood him they’d all be much happier than they were now—dragged air into his lungs and raised the flute to his lips.

He’d thought, somehow, that the tune for a transport spell would be just a little more exciting than three little notes. As he heard the first of them, Piper bellowed in his head. Lavim thought probably the spell should have sounded more delicate, somehow just a little more gentle, than curses. He seemed to fade, to stretch, and suddenly his stomach twisted around inside him and tied itself in knots.

Very strange, he thought, as all sense of feeling drained out of him. (Through his fingers and toes, it seemed.) I think when I come out of this spell, I’m going to need to find a place to get sick for a minute or two. I suppose I’d better send us outside the city. It would be a little embarrassing to lose your dinner in front of a whole lot of—

Suddenly Lavim felt nothing at all.

Tyorl hit the ground with a teeth-jarring thud. When he tried to catch his breath, smoke filled his lungs. Fire licked across his fingers, and he would have cried out had he the breath to make any sound at all. Damned kender’s set us on fire!

“Get up! Tyorl! Get up!”

That was Finn. Tyorl tried, from long habit, to obey. He dragged a knee under himself and slipped, splashing into cold water.

Damned kender’s put us in the middle of the ocean!

“Tyorl, please get up!” That was Lavim, and though Tyorl was not prepared to swear that he heard fear in the kender’s voice, what he did hear there made him flounder and splash and finally push himself to his feet. He dragged a hand across his face, wiping away thick mud and slimy, clinging grasses. Staggering, he rounded on the kender. Lavim was only a small indistinct form in the smoky night.

“Name of the gods,” he snarled, “where are we?”

“I—I’m sorry, Tyorl. I didn’t mean for us to end up here, really I didn’t. I just wanted to end up outside the city because I was feeling a little, uh, queasy, and I thought it wouldn’t really be polite to turn up in somebody’s house without a specific invitation. And then I kind of didn’t know what to do and there was no one to ask and the whole spell just sort of fell apart about—” He scratched his head and looked around at the flames marching ever closer. “—uh, here. Are you all right?”

“Where’s the flute?”

Lavim shrugged. “I don’t know, I—”

“Where is the flute?”

Lavim drew a deep breath then smiled sheepishly “I have it.”

“Give it to me.”

“But Tyorl, I—”

“Now!” Tyorl roared.

Lavim meekly handed over the flute. “All right. But Piper says—”

Tyorl’s voice was low, dangerous, and challenging. “Piper says what?”

“Not to throw it away. He says we might need it.”

The smoke was thicker now, and, when he looked around him, Tyorl saw Finn helping Kembal to his feet. The four stood in water up to their knees, surrounded by tall marsh weeds. Only a quarter mile away, flocks of cattails, like tiny torches, were ablaze as far west as Tyorl could see. Embers from the fire and clumps of burning grass flew, wind-blown, through the thick black air. He grabbed Lavim roughly by the shoulder and jerked him around hard.

“Look.”

Lavim squirmed. “I see.”

“We’re in the bogs, Lavim, and we’re surrounded by wildfire. Is this your idea of a little way outside the city?”

“No, but—”

Finn slogged through the mud and foul standing water. He grabbed Tyorl’s arm and pointed east. “This way. I don’t know a thing about these swamps, but heading for the clear is about all we can do.” His blue eyes hard, he flicked a glance at Lavim, then back to the elf. “I think we should kill the little bastard and then get out of here.”

Lavim, about to apologize, snapped his mouth shut. He watched as Finn vanished into the smoke and waited until Kem sloshed past before he looked up at Tyorl. “You don’t think he really meant that do you?”

Tyorl didn’t answer but herded Lavim ahead of him.

Piper, Lavim asked silently, you don’t think Finn meant that, do you?

If he doesn’t, Piper said, his mental voice sounding decidedly weak and hoarse, I do!

But—but. Piper, he thought, I was only trying to help. I was only trying to get—Piper?

The mage did not respond.

Aw, c’mon, Piper. Really, I only wanted to help!

Look around you, Lavim. Piper snarled. You haven’t done anything but make sure that you and your friends are going to be roasted before you get anywhere near Thorbardin.

Lavim glanced over his shoulder and stumbled a little trying to see behind and walk ahead. The sheets of fire raging behind them were closer now, leaping and snapping and sending wild sprays of embers into the black night sky.

Lavim wisely decided to wait until they got out of the fire and the bogs before he reminded Tyorl and Piper that, while they might not actually be in Thorbardin, they were probably whole days closer.