Nancy Berberick - The Lioness

Nor would she come to him without prior arrangement unless—no. Not even if she were in trouble, especially not then.

Gil’s fingers closed round the silver handle of the knife he used to shave the points of the quills that were his pens. Even as he felt the slight weight of the little blade he thought wryly, against what little sprite or rabbit will this defend?

Soft, a tap. Louder, two more. Soft, a third and a quick fourth.

Gil relaxed, letting go a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. What was his mother doing behind the wall?

She stood in a spill of torchlight, the Queen Mother like a ghost with her golden hair down around her shoulders, a silvery silk robe loosely belted over a flowing blue bed gown.

“Mother,” he said, “you’re barefoot—”

The elf behind her, of middle years with the eyes of an ancient, stood bleeding from a poorly bandaged wound. He wavered, exhausted, and tried to bow. Gilthas caught him before he toppled, and the king and the Queen Mother helped him into the library.

No one cared that he bled on the brocaded chair, no one cared that his muddy boots left tracks on the tapestried carpet.

“Sir,” he said, “I have come with word from the High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin.” He gathered himself, wit and strength. “Your Majesty, the dwarf king thinks it best you come soon to defend your suit for alliance or send a champion to do that.”

Smoke rose lazily from Three Chimneys, a roughly built tavern that had, over the course of a long life, been first a roadhouse of doubtful repute, then a post house in the years before the coming of green Beryl. Through all its years, Three Chimneys had been a wayfare, a tavern for travelers to stop and find a good meal, perhaps a bed for the night in the common room or the barn. It was that now, and something more. Bueren Rose ran the place, purchased for a small pouch of steel from an elf who had been happy to sell, eager to leave the area.

“What with the outlaws and Knights and all, I’m going north, where they’re saner and I have kin.”

Kerian stood on the road, watching smoke rise from the stone chimneys that gave the place its name. The smoke hardly disturbed the purpling sunset sky. The tavern lay in a fold of an upland valley, one high above Lightning Falls and farther east. From the hills surrounding, one could see right out into the borderland between the kingdom of the elves and the land of the dwarves.

Bueren Rose walked round the corner of the tavern, a heavy yoke of filled water buckets across her shoulders. Three Chimneys had in its upper story a small, windowless room, a private place between two other chambers, from the outside undetectable. It was this secret room, much like the private passages in Gil’s royal residence, that recommended the tavern to Kerian when she and Bueren Rose had gone looking for a place.

The upper room was a place where plans could be safely hatched. “Three Chimneys is not at a crossroad,” Bueren Rose had said. “That would have been too likely and too dangerous, but it is near the borderland, and taverners know that the best news there is flows back and forth across borders with traders and thieves.”

So Bueren Rose had taken possession of the tavern, purchased with steel robbed from a wagon bound for a dragon’s hoard, and she set up business quietly. Her tavern gained a reputation for good food and good cheer, for clean places to sleep and reasonable rates. Her bar was stocked with drink from all parts of Krynn, again thanks to thieves who smuggled a keg of this, a tun of that, a few bottles of something exotic and potent from down around Tarsis.

“Keri!” Bueren stopped suddenly, the yoke rocking, the water sloshing from the buckets.

Kerian leaped to steady the yoke. Water splashed her feet, turned the dust to dark mud around her boots, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Bueren shook her head, her rosy gold hair escaping from her kerchief, spiraling around her neck in loose curls. “I didn’t expect you today. I thought—” Her expression darkened, and the skin around her eyes grew tight. She looked behind her, around, and when she felt certain of safety, she spoke very low. “Is something wrong? Is the raid—?”

“The raid won’t happen.”

“But—”

“There’s no time now. Send word to Releth Windrace at his farm. Tell him he has to send his own boys out to stop the others.”

The two farmers down the valley and their sons and daughters, the miller’s own boy, all the dozen others, quiet citizens of a hostage kingdom who could be called upon at need to strike a blow against the dragon or her Knights—word must get to all of these, mouth to mouth, farm to farm, casually and quietly so that no suspicion would fall on any of them.

“We’ve got to tell them all there will be no meeting at the mill tomorrow night.” She clenched a fist, slammed it hard against her thigh. “Fool! That damn Rhyl’s a fool. If he’d held his hand, left the wagon with the bales of skins alone … Thagol’s been tracking me again. He’s going to know what happened soon, if he doesn’t know now that those Knights are dead.

“Damn it! Those wagons full of weapons are going to have to go by without us so much as being near to curse.”

Bueren said nothing. She put down her buckets, hurried back to the wellspring, and called to the potboy, the orphaned son of one of the elf farmers in the valley whose wife had died of sickness in winter, who had followed her in grief in spring. The boy was no part of Kerian’s conspiracy. He had no idea that Bueren was. Kerian knew Bueren would do as she always did, send the lad with a simple message to Releth. He would say, “Bueren Rose doesn’t think she’ll be able to join you for supper tomorrow evening.” Releth would understand. Word would go out, whispering down the valley like ghosts.

When Bueren returned, the boy having sped off, Kerian was looking up at the sky. When she looked back at her friend, she had made a choice to speak what she had only lately decided.

“We have to do something about Rhyl, Bueren. He’s dangerously stupid.”

Behind her eyes, throbbing like the promise of storm on a blue bright day increased. She reached for her amulet, the bloodstone, and the pain settled back to a dull ache.

Bueren unhitched the buckets from the yoke and leaned it against the side of the building. She lifted one bucket.

“Keri,” she said, “something has come.”

In the act of reaching for a dripping bucket, Kerian stopped to look up. She didn’t ask what had come. She didn’t ask from whom.

“When?” she said, her voice that of idle curiosity. There were wayfarers in the common room, one coming around the corner of the building to find the privy.

“Last night.”

Kerian nodded and picked up the bucket. They entered the kitchen like two old friends, talking and laughing for the sake of any who would observe. All the while Bueren Rose stuffed a leather wallet fat with food and poured a wineskin plump.

“Go,” she said at the kitchen door only a short while later. “Take the path along the ridge. Knights have been riding the roads close to here. You’ll see them in plenty of time to avoid them. What shall I tell Jeratt?”

Kerian embraced her friend and for her ears only said, “Tell him to go ahead with all that we’ve planned.” She hitched up the wallet, checked the seat of her quiver on the hip, the sword at her side. “If you don’t see me soon, listen for word.”

Beneath the spreading branches of Gilean’s Oak, upon a bed of moss and fern, Kerian lay in her lover’s arms. Close, his skin warm against hers, his breath mingling with hers, it could be said there was nothing between them, yet there was.

He had asked her to carry out a mission for him, an embassy. She had agreed.