Paul Thompson - The Qualinesti

The sun was setting almost directly ahead of them, and Verhanna suggested they stop for the night.

Rufus dropped his horse’s reins. “I’m for that! What’s for dinner?”

She poked a hand into the haversack hung from the pommel of her saddle. “Dried apples, quith-pa, and hard-boiled eggs,” Verhanna recited without enthusiasm. She tossed a cold, hard-boiled egg to her scout. He caught it with one hand, though he grumbled and screwed his face into a mask of disgust. She heard him mutter something about “the same eats, three times a day, forever” as he tapped the eggshell against his knee to crack it—then suddenly let it fall to the ground.

“Hey!” called Verhanna. “If you don’t want it, say so. Don’t throw it in the mud!”

“I smell roast pig!” he exulted, eyes narrow with concentration. “Not far away, either!” He vaulted onto his horse and turned the animal.

Verhanna flopped back the wet hood of her woolen cape and called, “Wait, Rufus! Stop!”

The reckless, hungry kender was not to be denied, however. With thumps of his spurless heels, he urged his horse through a line of silver-green holly, ignoring the jabs and scratches of the barbed leaves. Disgusted, Verhanna rode down the row of bushes, trying to find an opening. When she couldn’t, she pulled her horse around and also plunged through the holly. Sharp leaf edges raked her unprotected face and hands.

“Ow!” she cried. “Rufus, you worthless toad! Where are you?”

Ahead, beyond some wind-tossed dogwoods, she spied the flicker of a campfire. Cursing the kender soundly, Verhanna rode toward the fire. The foolish kender didn’t even have his short sword anymore. In the fight with the smoke creature, Rufus’s blade had been broken.

Serve him right if it was a bandit camp, she thought angrily. Forty, no, fifty bloodthirsty villains, armed to the teeth, luring innocent victims in with their cooking smoke. Sixty bandits, yes, all of whom liked to eat stupid kender.

In spite of her ire, the captain kept her head and freed her sword from the leather loop that held it in its scabbard. No use barging in unprepared. Approaching the campfire obliquely, she saw shadowy figures moving around it. A horse whinnied. Clutching her reins tightly, Verhanna rode in, ready for a fight.

The first thing she saw was Rufus wolfing down chunks of steaming roast pork. Four elves dressed in rags and pieces of old blankets stood around the fire. By their light hair and chiseled features, she identified them as Silvanesti.

“Good morrow to you, warrior,” said the male elf nearest Rufus. His accent and manner were refined, city-bred.

“May your way be green and golden,” Verhanna replied. The travelers didn’t appear to be armed, but she remained on her horse just in case. “If I may ask, who are you, good traveler?”

“Diviros Chanderell, bard, at your service, Captain.”

The elf bowed low, so low that his sand-colored hair brushed the ground. Sweeping an arm around the assembled group, he added, “and this is my family.”

Verhanna nodded to each of the others. The older, brown-haired female was Diviros’s sister, Deramani. Sitting by the fire was a younger woman, the bard’s wife, Selenara. Her thick hair, unbound, hung past her waist, and peeking shyly out from behind the honey-golden cascade was a fair-haired child. Diviros introduced him as Kivinellis, his son.

“We have come hither from Silvanost, city of a thousand white towers,” said the bard with a flourish, “our fortunes to win in the new realm of the west.”

“Well, you’ve a long way to go if Qualinost is your goal,” Verhanna said.

“It is, noble warrior. Will you share meat with us? Your partner precedes you.”

She dismounted, shaking her head at Rufus. He winked at her as Diviros’s sister handed Verhanna a trencher of savory pork. The captain stabbed the cutlet with her knife and bit off a mouthful. It was good, sweet flesh, as only the Silvanesti could raise.

“What sets you wandering the lonely fields by night, Captain?” asked Diviros, once they were all comfortable around the campfire. He had a thin, expressive face and large amber eyes, which gave emphasis to his words.

“We’re on an elf hunt,” blurted Rufus between mouthfuls.

The bard’s pale brows flew up. “Are you, indeed? Some dire brigand is haunting these environs?”

“Naw. They’re a couple of woods elves wanted for slaving.” Food had restored the kender’s natural garrulousness. “They ambushed some of our warriors, then used magic to get away.”

“Slavers? Magic? How strange!”

Rufus launched into an animated account of their adventures. Verhanna rolled her eyes, but only when Rufus nearly revealed Verhanna as the daughter of the Speaker of the Sun did she object.

“Mind your tongue,” she snapped. She didn’t want her parentage widely known. After all, traveling across the wild country with only a chatty kender for company, the princess of Qualinesti would make an excellent hostage for any bandit.

Planting his hands on his knees and glancing at his family, Diviros told his story in turn. “We, too, have seen wondrous things since leaving our homeland.”

Rufus burped loudly. “Good! Tell us a story!”

Diviros beamed. He was in his element. His family sat completely still as all eyes fastened on him. He began softly. “Strange has been the path we have followed, my friends, strange and wonderful. On the day we left the City of a Thousand White Towers, a pall of darkness fell over the land. My beautiful Selenara was sore afraid.”

The bard’s wife blushed crimson, and she looked down at the tortoiseshell comb in her hand.

Diviros went on. “But I reasoned that the gods had draped this cloak of night over us for a purpose. And lo, the purpose was soon apparent. Warriors of the Speaker of the Stars had been turning back those who wished to leave the country. His Majesty feared the nation was losing too many of her sons and daughters to the westward migration, and he—But I digress. In any event, the strange darkness allowed us to slip by the warriors unseen.”

“That was lucky,” Verhanna said matter-of-factly.

“Lucky, noble warrior? ’Twas the will of the gods!” Diviros said ringingly, lifting a hand to heaven. “That it was so was shown five days later as we traversed the great southern forest amid a tempest of thunderbolts, for there we beheld a sight so strange the gods must have preserved us that we might be witness to it!”

Verhanna was growing weary of the bard’s elaborate storytelling and showed it by sighing loudly. Rufus, however, was in awe of so spellbinding a speaker. “Go on, please!” he urged, a forkful of pork halted midway to his mouth.

Diviros warmed under the kender’s intense regard. “We had stopped by a large pool of water to refresh ourselves. Such a beautiful spot, my little friend! Crystalline water in a green bower, surrounded by a snowy riot of blooming buds. Well, as we were all partaking of the icy cold liquid, a monstrously large bolt of lightning struck not a score of paces from us! The flash was brighter than the sun, and we were all knocked completely senseless.

“It was Selenara who roused first. She knows well the sound of a child in distress, and it was just such a sound that brought her awake—a mewling noise, a crying. My good wife wandered up the wooded hillside into a large meadow, and lo! there a great oak tree had been hit by the lightning, blasted into more splinters than there are stars in the heavens! Where the broad trunk had split open, she found the one who cried so piteously.”

Diviros paused dramatically, gazing directly into Verhanna’s impatient eyes. “It was a fully grown male elf!”

Rufus and his captain exchanged a look. Verhanna set aside her empty trencher and asked, “Who was it—some traveler sleeping under the tree when it was hit?”