Between his two deaths lay the one question: Where is the sapphire-hilted sword?
Hauk never answered. He did not even permit himself to think the answer or remember the sword or the tavern girl to whom he’d given it. Whoever could kill him twice could snuff out the light in the girl’s green eyes like a man pinching out a candle.
Whoever could kill him twice could pierce her heart with only his will. Like a dagger flying, silver in blue-hazed smoke, through a tavern. Why anyone should want the sapphire-hilted sword so badly, he did not know.
So, he existed in a wasteland of waiting and terror. He did not know when he slept or when he was awake. The darkness bred nightmares and the same evil dreams that haunted him sleeping haunted him waking. Yet now, in the wasteland, Hauk slowly became aware that he was not alone. A change in the feel of the air around him brought the sense that something or someone moved, though only slightly, nearby. Someone breathed in the darkness. Harsh gasping echoed around him, and by this he knew that the place he was in had walls. A voice muttered and whispered. Fear crawled through Hauk and settled, cold and heavy, in his belly.
This was not the merciless voice that had asked about the sword. That voice had been hard, as sharply edged as steel. This voice was different: thinner, broken.
Or was that his own muttering, his own whispering?
Light exploded in the darkness, sending shadows leaping up the walls and arrows of fire into his eyes. Hauk roared in pain. He had no ability to turn his head, none even to close his eyes. The light was quickly doused. The fire-edged image of a dwarf, crouched on the floor by his feet, lantern held high, burned behind Hauk’s aching eyes.
“Who … ?” he moaned. No answer came but a sharply drawn breath and the soft scuffing of booted feet on stone.
“Who are you!” A sob. A low, tormented growl. Silence. Hauk was alone again in the wasteland.
9
The cold wind pursued them to the very bounds of the forest and only softened once they stepped under the forest’s eaves. Stanach shivered as the cool touch of superstition’s fingers danced up his spine. Never did he think he would come into Qualinesti and it did not help that he was only a quarter-day’s journey into Elvenwood. At the forest’s edge, or at its heart, Stanach was certain that the place would feel the same: posted, warded, guarded.
All his life Stanach had heard tales of travelers who had wandered into Qualinesti. Those tales were never told by the travelers themselves. No one who entered uninvited ever came out of Elvenwood. Were it not for Stormblade and his promise to return it, Stanach would have made his farewells at the edge of the forest and taken his chances with the draconians. But his oath had been sworn by the sword’s name, and his promise given to Hornfel, his thane.
He, Lavim, and Kelida had entered the wood following Tyorl. The elf was limping and slow, but none argued when he assured them that no draconian would follow them into fabled Qualinesti.
Though he offered no argument, Stanach was not happy to be heading west into the forest when Piper would be waiting for him in the southeastern hills. It had been two days since he left the mage to fend for himself in the hills south of Long Ridge. Had Piper escaped their pursuers? Four against one were bad odds.
Still, he thought as he shouldered through a thicket of thorny underbrush, we had no choice. One of us had to get to Long Ridge. Someone had to find the sword.
Stanach’s heart sank. Ground creepers tangled with fallen branches. Thickets and underbrush swept across the ground as though they’d been commanded to confuse the path. He was following Stormblade blindly into Elvenwood and he felt like an intruder in the forest. But someone had to find the sword, someone had to give meaning to Kyan Red-axe’s death. He would follow Stormblade, find a way to claim it, and trust in Piper to be at the meeting place.
Kelida had carried Stormblade ever since they’d come into the forest. Tyorl had offered to carry it and been refused. Stanach didn’t know why she had insisted on wearing the sword. The blade jolted against her leg with almost every step she took. He would not have wanted to nurse those kind of bruises.
The dwarf wondered how she had come by the sword. It didn’t matter, in the end, how Kelida had acquired Stormblade; it only mattered now that he find a way to bring it back to Thorbardin.
He didn’t know how he was going to do that. While it was true that he would not have scrupled to steal Stormblade, it was also true that he wouldn’t take the risk of stealing from an elf in Qualinesti. Stanach didn’t know what the girl and the elf were to each other, but he sensed at once that stealing from Kelida would be the same as stealing from Tyorl. The elf was wounded, but not so badly that he wouldn’t track the thief of so valuable a weapon through a forest he had known from childhood and which Stanach knew not at all. What run Stanach might make through the woods with Stormblade could only end with him dead of an arrow in the neck and the Kingsword lost again.
No, he thought grimly, let the girl carry it for a while longer, until I figure out what to say and what to do.
So, though he shivered with cold in the sunless forest, Stanach followed Tyorl. He’d come too close now to see Stormblade vanish into dark and deep Elvenwood.
Lavim, trotting along beside Tyorl, looked up, his green eyes bright.
“Not too many ghosts, are there?”
Tyorl smiled at that, a crooked lifting of his lips. “Have you been expecting ghosts, kenderkin?”
“And phantoms and specters, although I think they might be the same thing. You hear all kinds of stories about this place. That’s pretty odd, don’t you think? I mean, they say that there’s no way out of here once you get in, then they tell all these stories about things with no hearts, no souls, maybe even no heads! How could they know about—”
“Lavim, shut up,” Stanach warned. Lavim turned and, seeing Stanach’s dark scowl, snapped his mouth shut.
Kelida, who had maintained a grim silence during their flight from Long Ridge, kept pace with the others despite the awkward burden of Stormblade. She said nothing, but shadows moved like nightmares across her white face. Stanach caught her elbow and steadied her.
“Tell me, then, Tyorl,” he muttered, “is the place haunted or do you simply hope to frighten us?”
Tyorl stopped and turned, his eyes sleepy and hooded. “No more haunted than anyplace else in Krynn.”
Lavim, with a shrug in Kelida’s direction, trotted off the path. He wondered what bothered Kelida and hoped he’d remember to ask her about it later. In any case, this was Elvenwood, and with any luck, though Tyorl’s answer had been vague, the place would be haunted. Lavim peered into thickets and the deep, black shadows wondering what form the haunting would take. Things, from the kender’s point of view, were beginning to look up.
After another hour of walking, when the crimson moon had set and the silver one was only a dim and ghostly glow behind lowering clouds, Tyorl stopped at last in an oak-sheltered glade. When Lavim volunteered to take the night’s first watch none argued.
Tyorl limped to the stream to clean the cuts on his face and the long, shallow gash in his shoulder. Stanach gathered wood and laid the night’s fire. Lavim had hunted while he explored and returned with two fat grouse. Kelida fell asleep before the birds were plucked. The damp, cold wind danced with the flames and set the bare branches above clacking together and groaning. Stanach poked at the fire and eyed the clouding sky.
“It’ll rain before morning.” he said. Tyorl agreed. An owl swooped low just out of the fire’s light, a shadow and a clap of wings. A fox barked beyond the stream. Near a small stand of silver birch, Lavim paced his watch. Neither Stanach nor Tyorl expected that the kender would hold his post long and both sat awake in unspoken accord.