Maybe he did, Stanach thought. He didn’t think on it further and did not regret his sour remark. It was a fine defense against the silent sorrow drifting around the room like old dust.
“Go on, Lavim.”
Alone, Stanach swept the clothing into a pile against the wall and sat, elbows on drawn up knees, to wait in moody silence for his companions to join him.
He’d done what he had to do. It hadn’t taken much to direct Kelida or Tyorl into believing that Hauk might still be alive. Kelida had even made the crucial connection herself: if Hauk was alive, he was protecting her. On the walk through the forest, Kelida had told the dwarf the story of how Hauk had given her the sword. Even as she described her fear of Hauk in the storeroom, her voice told him that she had been moved by his apology.
Stanach was certain now that any doubt Tyorl might again raise about the wisdom of taking Stormblade to Piper would be countered by the girl. Kelida was convinced that the half-drunk ranger who had given her the sword was even now, like some paladin, protecting her from the derro mage who would kill to get Stormblade.
Maybe Hauk had been protecting her—while he lived. However, he was surely dead now.
Stanach closed his eyes.
Once Stanach found Piper, Stormblade would be magically returned to Thorbardin, and in Hornfel’s hand, before Kelida or Tyorl had a chance to know it was gone. All Stanach had to do was keep the girl’s hope alive, play on her dreams a little longer. And how did the foolish dreams of a simple barmaid weigh in the balance against the certainty of having one rule—Hornfel’s rule—in Thorbardin?
They weighed not at all, Stanach told himself. Not at all. A light, thin fingered hand touched his shoulder. Stanach looked up to see Kelida standing before him.
“Stanach? Are you all right?”
She’d contrived to wash somehow. In her borrowed clothes, a hunting costume of bark-gray wool and soft doeskin boots, the green cloak around her shoulders, she looked like a wood sprite. Stormblade was scabbarded around her waist.
Stanach scrambled to his feet. “Aye, fine.”
“I thought I heard—”
“I’m fine,” he snapped. He jerked his chin at the Kingsword. “You still insist on carrying it?”
Fire leaped in Kelida’s eyes. “I’ve carried it this far.”
“Aye, and tripped over it every second step. This isn’t Long Ridge. If you carry a sword, people just naturally assume you can use it. You’d better know how, or you’ll find yourself dead before you can untangle your feet and haul it out. Let me carry it. Or if that doesn’t suit you, give it over to your friend the elf.”
Kelida shook her head. “For now, the sword is still mine.”
Stanach sighed. “The sword will be the death of you if you don’t at least learn how to carry it.” He jerked his thumb at the scabbard. “Buckle that lower and let your hip take the weight.”
Kelida adjusted the sword belt. The drag of Stormblade’s weight on her hip felt strange, but less awkward. She looked up at Stanach and smiled.
“Now what?”
“Now, go find yourself a dagger. You won’t be able to defend yourself with the sword.”
Suddenly, he was angry with Kelida for no reason, angry with himself for every reason, and lonely behind the walls of his duplicity. Stanach turned away and stalked across the room to a window. He looked down into a courtyard; it was better than looking at the shadows of hurt in Kelida’s eyes.
Aspen leaves, like brittle golden coins, skittered and whirled before a damp wind. Their dry rattling was the only sound to be heard in this sad, deserted city. Ghosts wandered all over silent Qualinost. Ghosts and memories.
Or the whispers of his conscience.
Thirty feet long, its head as thick and wide as a big horse, its powerfully muscled legs longer than two tall men, the black dragon might have been a huge piece of the night as it separated itself from the cover of the clouds and dove low over the ridges of eastern Qualinesti. A cloud bank shredded under the wind of its passing. Solinari had long since set, but Lunitari’s blood-red light ran along the metallic scales of its hide, leaped from its claws and dagger-sharp fangs in crimson points, and turned its long, narrow eyes, normally pale as frost, to fire. Sevristh was its secret and sacred name in dragon speech. It permitted itself to be called Darknight.
The dragon caught the wind under its wings and glided down toward the pine-forested, stony ridges that formed the border between Qualinesti and the dwarven mountains. A hater of light, its vision was superb when the sun had flown west. Though it did not fear the cold light of the moons, it saw more clearly when, as on this night, they were hidden behind thick, dark clouds.
The black dragon observed the lands below as a man might who stands over a well constructed map table. Dropping still lower, it swept over the high forests east of Crystal Lake and out across the low hills bordering the Plains of Dergoth, which the dwarves call the Plains of Death. Darknight flew as Lord Verminaard’s emissary to Realgar of Thorbardin. It would soon be addressing the dwarf as Highlord, if he accepted Verminaard’s offers. He undoubtedly would accept. The dwarf was known to be canny, ambitious, bold, and a little mad. He had the soul of a Highlord, a soul only a little less arrogant than that of a dragon. He waited for it now to arrive from Pax Tharkas. Sevristh would serve a new Highlord.
At least for a time. Verminaard’s gifts all had teeth. Even as he prepared to welcome Realgar as a Highlord, ruthless Verminaard already had plans afoot to move supply bases and troops in the mountains. With their strength to back him, he would depose the Theiwar and claim conquered Thorbardin as his eastern stronghold. Sevristh knew all this, and more.
The wind was a cold, fierce opponent who challenged the black dragon to dare its willful currents and invisible waves. Laughing as it flew over the marshes, Darknight skimmed the cloud-heavy sky, diving and rolling, thrusting with wings as wide as a ship’s sail, and climbing, climbing until it burst through the thick, icy boundary of the clouds and came to the stars above ancient Thorbardin.
Aye, the dragon thought, all Verminaard’s gifts had teeth and mine are sharp indeed!
“Let him do the work,” the Highlord had said, “and give him whatever help he needs to do it. When the Council of Thanes is safely fallen, get rid of him.”
For nothing but the pleasure of arcane exercise, Darknight cast a spell of fear and blackness. Tonight, in the dark and secret comfort of its den in the caverns below the cities of Thorbardin, it would lull itself to sleep with thoughts of small marshland creatures dying of a stopped heart and an overwhelming terror they could not have understood.
11
The cold night wind cut through the valley. Sighing in the boughs of the pines, turning the day’s rain to slick ice on the shoulders of the mountain. Somewhere within the stone of the mountain itself lay Thorbardin.
Women with babes on their hips, men whose eyes were almost empty of hope, the refugees stood at the mountain’s feet, searching the shoulders and flanks of the peaks for a sight of great Southgate. Some thought they saw it, shimmering in the night. Others turned away, too tired to look any longer.
A child’s laughter rose high in the night air. It was hard to keep the children quiet. Only exhaustion would do that, and the journey of the past day had been a slow one. It was as though the eight hundred were reluctant now to approach the gates of the dwarven fortress, afraid to learn that their hopes had been in vain, that they had fled Verminaard’s mines and the horrors of slavery only to be turned away from Thorbardin, the only hope of sanctuary they knew.
Fires sprang up in the valley, dim lights like small, hesitant stars. The smoke of wood, then of cooking, drifted through the air, settling like a gray pall over the river.