Paul Thompson - The Qualinesti

Ulvian laughed. “You mean to make an architect out of me?”

“I am putting you in Feldrin’s hands as a common laborer—a slave, in fact. You will work every day for no wage and receive only the meanest provender. At night, you will be locked in your hut and guarded by Lieutenant Merithynos.”

Ulvian’s confident smirk vanished. Hazel eyes wide, he backed away a few steps, falling to one of the Speaker’s couches. His face was pale with shock.

“You can’t mean it,” he whispered. More loudly, he added, “You can’t do this.”

“I am the Speaker of the Sun,” Kith-Kanan said. Though his heart was breaking with the punishment he was visiting on his only son, the Speaker’s demeanor was firm and unyielding.

The prince’s head shook back and forth, as if denying what he was hearing. “You can’t make me a slave.” He leapt to his feet and his voice became a shout. “I am your son! I am Prince of Qualinesti!”

“Yes, you are, and you have broken my law. I’m not doing this on a whim, Ullie. I hope it will teach you the true meaning of slavery—the cruelty, the degradation, the pain and suffering. Maybe then you will understand the horror of what you’ve done. Maybe then you’ll know why I hate it, and why you should hate it, too.”

Ulvian’s outrage wilted. “How—how long will I be there?” he asked haltingly.

“As long as necessary. I’ll visit you, and if I’m convinced you’ve learned your lesson, I’ll release you. What’s more, I will forgive you and publicly declare you my successor.”

That seemed to restore the prince somewhat. His gaze flickered toward Merith, who was standing at rigid attention, though his expression reflected frank astonishment. Ulvian said, “What if I run away?”

“Then you will lose everything and be declared outlaw in your own country,” Kith-Kanan said evenly.

Ulvian advanced on his father. There was betrayal and disbelief in his eyes, and rage as well. Merith tensed and prepared to subdue the prince if he attacked the Speaker, but Ulvian stopped a pace short of his father.

“When do I go?” he asked through clenched teeth.

“Now.”

A roll of thunder punctuated Kith-Kanan’s pronouncement. Merith stepped forward and took hold of the prince’s arm, but Ulvian twisted out of his grasp.

“I’ll come back, Father. I will be the Speaker of the Sun!” the prince vowed in ringing tones.

“I hope you will, Son. I hope you will.”

A second crash of thunder finished the confrontation. Merith led the prince reluctantly away.

Hands clasped tightly behind his back, Kith-Kanan returned to his window. Melancholy washed over him in slow, steady waves as he gazed up at the cloudless sky. Then, even as his mind was far away, from the corner of one eye, he spied a bolt of lightning. It flashed out of the blue vault and dove at the ground, striking somewhere in the southwestern district of Qualinost. A deep boom reverberated over the city, rattling the shutters on the Speaker’s house.

Thunder and lightning from a clear sky? Kith-Kanan’s inner torment was pushed aside for a moment as he digested this remarkable occurrence. The time of wonders was indeed at hand.

Twenty riders followed the dusty trail through the sparse forest of maple saplings, most no taller than the horses. Twenty elven warriors, under Verhanna’s command and guided by their new kender scout, Rufus Wrinklecap, rode slowly in single file. No one spoke. The muggy morning air oppressed them—that, and the cold trail they were trying to follow. Four days out of Qualinost, and this was the only sign of slavers they’d found. It hadn’t helped that they’d had to flounder on in three days of total darkness. Rufus warned the captain that the tracks they were tracing were many weeks old and might lead to nothing.

“Never mind,” she grumbled. “Keep at it. Lord Ambrodel sent us here for a reason.”

“Yes, my captain.”

The kender eased his big horse a little farther away from the ill-tempered Verhanna. Rufus was a comic sight on horseback; with his shocking red topknot and less than four feet of height, he hardly looked like a valiant elven warrior. Perched on a chestnut charger that was bigger than any other animal in the troop, he resembled a small child astride a bullock.

During their brief stopover in Qualinost, while the troops were reprovisioned and a horse was secured for him, the kender had bought himself some fancy clothes. His blue velvet breeches, vest, and white silk shirt beneath a vivid red cape made quite a contrast to the armor-clad elves. Atop his head perched an enormous broad-brimmed blue hat, complete with a white plume and a hole in the crown to allow his long topknot to trail behind.

They had passed through the easternmost fringe of the Kharolis Mountains onto the great central plain, the scene of so many battles during the Kinslayer War. Now and then the troop saw silent reminders of that awful conflict: a burned village, abandoned to weeds and carrion birds; a cairn of stones, under which were buried the bodies of fallen soldiers of Ergoth in a mass grave. Occasionally their horses’ hooves turned up battered, rusting helmets lodged in the soil. The skulls of horses and the bones of elves shone in the tall grass like ivory talismans, warning of the folly of kings.

Once every hour Verhanna halted her warriors and ordered Rufus to check the trail. The nimble kender leaped from his horse’s back or slid off its wide rump and scrambled through the grass and saplings, sniffing and peering for telltale signs.

During the third such halt of the morning, Verhanna guided her mount to where Rufus squatted, busily rubbing blades of grass between his fingers.

“Well, Wart, what do you find? Have the slavers come this way?” she asked, leaning over her animal’s glossy neck.

“Difficult to say, Captain. Very difficult. Other tall folk have passed this way since the slavers. The trails are muddled,” muttered Rufus. He put a green stem in his mouth and nibbled it. “The grass is still sweet,” he observed. “Others came from the east and passed through during the days of darkness.”

“What others?” she said, frowning.

The kender hopped up, dropping the grass and dusting off his fancy blue pants. “Travelers. Going that way,” he said, pointing to the direction they’d come from Qualinost. “They were in deeply laden, two-wheeled carts.”

Verhanna regarded her scout sourly. “We didn’t pass anyone.”

“In that darkness, who knows what we passed? The Dragonqueen herself could’ve ridden by clad in cloth o’ gold and we wouldn’t have seen her.”

She straightened in the saddle and replied, “What about our quarry?”

Rufus rubbed his flat, sunburned nose. “They split up.”

“What?” Verhanna’s shout brought the other troopers to attention. Her second-in-command, a Kagonesti named Tremellan, hurried to her side. She waved him off and dismounted, slashing through the tall grass to Rufus. Planting her mailed hands on her hips, the captain demanded, “Where did they split up?”

Rufus took two steps forward and one sideways.

“Here,” he said, pointing at the trodden turf. “Six riders, the same ones we’ve been chasing all along. Two went east. They were elder folk, like the Speaker.” By this, the kender meant the two were Silvanesti. “Two others went north. They smelled of fur and had thick shoes. Humans, I’d say. The last two continued south, and they’re tricky. Barefoot, they are, and they smell just like the wind. Dark elders, and wise in the ways of the chase.”

“What does he mean?” Verhanna muttered to Tremellan.

“Dark elders are my people,” offered the Kagonesti officer. “They probably work as scouts for the other four. They find travelers, or a lonely farm, and lead the slavers there.”