Nancy Berberick - The Lioness

Skarr of the Hylar said, “He permits this.”

Tarn turned to him, his eyes holding Skarr’s. Glances met, bright and keen as blades crossing. “He permits it, yes. He is a wise king. He knows his council of lords holds the power in his kingdom. He knows he cannot wrest it from them. He knows—” His voice rose, now for all to hear. “He knows that if he had all those shining lords behind him, all his men and women in arms again and willing to die for him, he might— might !—be able to defeat the Dark Knights. He would not defeat the dragon.

“I don’t know about the boy. I’ve heard all you have about him, and the only good from his own mother and this Kagonesti warrior here, but I will tell you that while the most of you consider Gilthas a coward, I would consider him a fool if he threw himself against the dragon.”

Like a whipcrack came his voice. “He is no king who sacrifices his people to his own vain bid for glory!”

Gently, “He is a good and courageous man who plans for a way to save his people. If we signed to this treaty, we would agree to be the route to safety for his people, a road out of the dragon’s talons and on to the lands of the Plains-folk. This treaty would give hope to a besieged people. I will tell you, brothers: if we turn away now, if all the kingdoms of Krynn fall to dragons and we are left—we are assured of our destruction. For we will be the last for a dragon to pluck, or we will die in the dark under the world, alone and unremembered.”

One more time, he looked to the throne of the Eighth Kingdom, the kingdom of the dead.

“Brother thanes, you have made a good man beg for too long. Let us deliberate for the last time on this matter. Keep in mind that in all our considerations, the dead do listen. Among them are kings, and many of those kings would have stripped themselves flesh from bone for the sake of the clans.”

To Kerian, in all courtesy, he bowed. “Mistress Kerianseray, I will know where to find you.”

She knew herself dismissed, and when she walked from the hall, Kerian resisted all impulse to turn and look over her shoulder.

What would be now would be.

The High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin found Kerian in Stanach’s Curse. She sat alone, mid-morning in an empty tavern drinking ale. Two weeks had passed since she’d stood before the dais in the Court of Thanes, making her king’s case. In that time she had slept in an upper room of the tavern, eaten well from the kitchen, and had to drink from the bar. She could not pay for this fare and was told not to worry. Stanach reckoned kings would make it right. “Or not. Kings do what they will. All the rest of us hop when we’re told to.”

In the weeks of her stay, Kerian had come to know the regulars, and they knew her. They drank together at night and dined well, and she learned the intricacies of the dwarven dart game that asked more of a player than that he hit the board. He must, aiming for the square marked brightly in runes, tell a tale. Sometimes in the afternoon she stood outside the doors trying to fathom the name of the tavern. She looked up at the sign, a board shaped not like the traditional shield but like an anvil. Upon the anvil lay a broken forge hammer. The words “Stanach’s Curse” stood above the image, written in dwarven runes. No one was inclined to tell her the meaning of the tavern’s name for the asking, and she was having no luck in the reckoning.

“We don’t talk about it much,” said Kern one day, the dwarf whom Stanach usually referred to as Idiot Kern, though Kerian didn’t think the dwarfs wits were afflicted by more than youth.

Two weeks after the council meeting, passing beneath that sign, the High King of the Eight Clans of Thorbardin nodded curt greeting to her and entered the tavern. Tarn pulled up a stool at the bar, another for her, and ordered ale.

Stanach tapped a fresh keg and put a well-crowned mug before the king. He filled two more and put one before Kerian, the other a little out of his own reach.

“Mistress Kerianseray,” said Tarn, “our council has made a decision.”

Her heart pounded. At last! Kerian took care to show the high king only a mild expression of interest.

Tarn lifted his mug and took a long swig. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “They are a stubborn lot, those thanes of ours. They are all on your side but one, and that means none. We all agree, or none agree, and in this matter I will not ride rough-shod over the rights of the clans.”

Ragnar, Kerian thought. Ragnar doomed it.

“Ah,” said the high king after another swig of ale. “It’s that stubborn Hylar, Skarr. He’s rooted to stone on this matter, and he says he will not be happy unless someone goes out and comes back to give him the truth of your king.”

Behind the bar, Stanach grunted. Kerian glanced from the king to Stanach and back again.

“King,” said the barman, Stanach of the ruined hand. In his dark, blue-flecked eyes was a kind of pleading. “Don’t.”

“Nay,” the king said, low. Kerian knew herself to be no longer part of the conversation. “Nay, Stanach, and if I don’t ask you, whose word will Skarr accept?”

“Anyone Hylar.”

“You. He wants you. He’s your uncle, lad. Your da’s own brother. He trusts you.” The king laughed, but with little humor. “It’s your curse, Stanach Hammerfell. You’ve a reputation for trustworthiness among those in power, and damn me if those in power insist on trusting you.”

There is no resisting the power of a curse, this Kerian knew. Stanach didn’t try harder and didn’t argue. He drew the untasted mug of ale toward him and lifted it in silence to his king.

They went out from Thorbardin by secret ways, down to the lowest level, down to where the damage of the recent war showed in scarred stone walls, in broken battlements, in ruined streets and collapsed roofs. They went farther down than that until they stood upon the shores of the great underground body of water known as the Urkhan Sea.

Stanach pointed out across the black waters to a wall pocked with what seemed to be the mouths of caves. He told her to stand still and bade her listen. Beneath her feet, Kerian felt a soft, persistent vibration, a kind of humming in the rock.

“Worms,” Stanach said.

She frowned. “How can that be? Worms can’t eat through—”

“Y’know that for certain, do you?”

She glanced at him, then back to the gaps in the stone wall. The rumbling came closer, beneath her feet the stone vibrated, the vibration shuddering up her legs, to her belly, to her arms and shoulders. At the edges of the Urkhan Sea dark water lapped nervously against the stone. Out from one of the cave mouths came something large, something with two probing horns, like those seen on snails. Even from this distance, all the rippling black water between them, Kerian reckoned that the horns were as long as she was tall, perhaps as thick around as the width of her shoulders. The creature had no face, no eyes, no nose, only a constantly working mouth.

“Worms,” she breathed.

“They eat stone. That’s all they do. The earth back there, behind those walls, is riddled with tunnels. They bore out here to drink and go right back in again. Tame enough, the beasties. Mostly we leave them be.”

He squinted across the water, then turned, saying it was time to go. “Let’s don’t use that pretty little emerald leaf of yours until we have to, aye? I wouldn’t want to find myself lost in some Reorx-only-knows-where tunnel with no way out”

Kerian agreed, and she did not call upon the unchancy magic until they saw clear sky above them again.

Magic did not set Kerian and Stanach down where they hoped, but at least it didn’t drop them down in Tarsis or the Sirrion Sea. It put them down only a few miles from Qualinost, in the thickness of the oak forest north and west of the capital. They were reeling with dizziness. The dwarfs face showed green.