“Perhaps we can make a new kingdom, here in the wildwood.”
Kith-Kanan smiled. “A kingdom?” he asked. “Just us three?”
With complete earnestness, Mackeli said, “Nations must begin somewhere, yes?”
13 — Day of Madness
Sithas rode up the Street of Commerce at a canter, past the guild hall towers that filled both sides. He reined in his horse clumsily—for he wasn’t used to riding—when he spied the guild elves standing in the street, watching smoke rise from the Market quarter.
“Has the royal guard come this way?” he called at them.
Wringing his hands, a senior master with the crest of the Gemcutters Guild on his breast replied, “Yes, Highness, some time ago. The chaos grows worse, I fear.”
“Have you seen my mother, Lady Nirakina?”
The master gemcutter picked at his long dark hair with slim fingers and shook his head in silent despair. Sithas snorted with frustration and twisted his horse’s head away, toward the rising pillar of smoke. “Go back inside your halls,” he called contemptuously. “Bolt your doors and windows.”
“Will the half-breeds come here?” asked another guild elf tremulously.
“I don’t know, but you’d better be prepared to defend yourselves.” Sithas thumped his horse’s sides with his heels, then mount and rider clattered down the street.
Beyond the guild halls, in the first crossing street of the commoners’ district, he found the way littered with broken barrows, overturned sedan chairs, and abandoned pushcarts. Sithas picked his way through the debris with difficulty, for there were many common folk standing in the street. Most were mute in disbelief, though some wept at the unaccustomed violence so near their homes. They raised a cheer when they saw Sithas. He halted again and asked if anyone had seen Lady Nirakina.
“No one has come through since the warriors passed this way,” said a trader. “No one at all.”
He thanked them, then ordered them off the street. The elves retreated to their houses. In minutes, the prince was alone.
The poorer people of Silvanost lived in tower houses just as the rich did. However, their homes seldom rose more than four or five stories. Each house had a tiny garden around its base, miniature versions of the great landscape around the Tower of the Stars. Trash and blown rubbish now tainted the lovingly tended gardens. Smoke poisoned the air. Grimly Sithas continued toward the heart of this madness.
Two streets later, the prince saw his first rioters. A human woman and a female Kagonesti were throwing pottery jugs onto the pavement, smashing them. When they ran out of jugs, they went to a derelict potter’s cart and replenished their supply.
“Stop that,” Sithas commanded. The dark elf woman took one look at the speaker’s heir and fled with a shriek. Her human companion, however, hurled a pot at Sithas. It shattered on the street at his horse’s feet, spraying the animal with shards. That done, the impudent human woman dusted her hands and simply walked away.
The horse backed and pranced, so Sithas had his hands full calming the mount. When the horse was once more under control, he rode ahead. The lane ended at a sharp turn to the right.
The sounds of fighting grew louder as Sithas rode on, drawing his sword.
The street ahead was full of struggling people—Silvanesti, Kagonesti, human, kender, and dwarves. A line of royal guards with pikes held flat in both hands were trying to keep the mass of fear-crazed folk back. Sithas rode up to an officer giving orders to the band of warriors, who numbered no more than twenty.
“Captain! Where is your commander?” shouted Sithas, above the roar of voices.
“Highness!” The warrior, himself of Kagonesti blood, saluted crisply. “Lord Kencathedrus is pursuing some of the criminals in the Market.”
Sithas, on horseback, could see far over the seething sea of people. “Are all these rioters?” he asked, incredulous.
“No, sire. Most are merchants and traders, trying to get away from the criminals who set fire to the shops,” the captain replied.
“Why are you holding them back?”
“Lord Kencathedrus’s orders, sire. He didn’t want these foreigners to flood the rest of the city.”
When the prince asked the captain if he’d seen his mother, the warrior shook his helmeted head. Sithas then asked if there was another way around, a way to the river.
“Keep them back!” barked the captain to his straining soldiers. “Push them! Use your pike shafts!” He stepped back, closer to Sithas, and said, “Yes, sire, you can circle this street and take White Rose Lane right to the water.”
Sithas commended the captain and turned his horse around. A spatter of stones and chunks of pottery rained over them. The captain and his troops had little to fear; they were in armor. Neither Sithas nor his horse were, so they cantered quickly away.
White Rose Lane was narrow and lined on both sides by high stone walls. This was the poorest section of Silvanost, where the house-towers were the lowest. With only two or three floors, they resembled squat stone drums, a far cry from the tall, gleaming spires of the high city.
The lane was empty when Sithas entered it. Astride his horse, his knees nearly scraped the walls on each side. A thin trickle of scummy water ran down the gutter in the center of the lane. At the other end of the alley, small groups of rioters dashed past. These groups of three or four often had royal guards on their heels. Sithas emerged from White Rose Lane in time to confront four desperate-looking elves. They stared at him. Each was armed with a stone or stick.
Sithas pointed with his sword. “Put down those things. Go back to your homes!” he said sternly.
“We are free elves! We won’t be ordered about! We’ve been driven from our homes once, and we’ll not let it happen again!” cried one of the elves.
“You are mistaken,” Sithas said, turning his horse so none of them could get behind him. “No one is driving you from here. The Speaker of the Stars has plans for a permanent town on the west bank of the Thon-Thalas.”
“That’s not what the holy lady said,” shouted a different elf.
“What holy lady?”
“The priestess of Quenesti Pah. She told us the truth!”
So, the riot could be laid at Miritelisina’s door. Sithas burned with anger. He whipped his sword over his head. “Go home!” he shouted. “Go home, lest the warriors strike you down!”
Someone flung a stone at Sithas. He batted it away, the rock clanging off the tempered iron blade. One smoke-stained elf tried to grab the horse’s bridle, but the prince hit him on the head with the flat of his blade. The elf collapsed, and the others hastily withdrew to find a more poorly armed target.
Sithas rode on through the mayhem, getting hit more than once by thrown sticks and shards. A bearded fellow he took for human swung a woodcutter’s axe at him, so Sithas used the edge, not the flat, of his sword. The axe-wielder fell dead, cleaved from shoulder to heart. Only then did the prince notice the fellow’s tapering ears and Silvanesti coloring. A half-human, the first he’d ever seen. Pity mixed with revulsion welled up inside the speaker’s heart.
Feeling a bit dazed, Sithas rode to the water’s edge. There were dead bodies floating in the normally calm river, a sight that only added to his disorientation. However, his dazed shock vanished instantly when he saw the body of an elf woman clad in a golden gown. His mother had a gown like that.
Sithas half-fell, half-jumped from horseback into the shallow water. He splashed, sword in hand, to the gowned body. It was Nirakina. His mother was dead! Tears spilling down his cheeks, the prince pulled the floating corpse to shallower water. When he turned the body over he saw to his immense relief that it was not his mother. This elf woman was a stranger to Sithas.
He released his hold on the body, and it was nudged gently away by the Thon-Thalas. Sithas stood coughing in the smoke, looking at the nightmare scene around him. Had the gods forsaken the Silvanesti this day?