Douglas Niles - The Kinslayer Wars

It seemed to Sithas as if a heavy burden had flown away from him, borne upon the wings of the griffon. His brother would understand, he knew. When Arcuballis arrived at Sithelbec, as Sithas felt certain he would, Kith-Kanan would waste no time in mounting his faithful steed and hastening back to Silvanost. Between them, he knew, they would find a way to advance the elven cause.

“Excellency?”

Sithas whirled, startled from his reverie by a voice from behind him. He saw Stankathan, the majordomo, looking out of place among the mud and dung of the corral. The elf’s face, however, was knit by a deeper concern.

“What is it?” Sithas inquired quickly.

“It’s your wife, the Lady Hermathya,” replied Stankathan. “She cries with pain now. The clerics tell me it is time for your child to be born.”

The oil lamp sputtered in the center of the wooden table. The flame was set low to conserve precious fuel for the long, dark months of winter that lay ahead. Kith-Kanan thought the shadowy darkness appropriate for this bleak meeting.

With him at the table sat Kencathedrus and Parnigar. Both of them—as well as Kith, himself—showed the gauntness of six months at half rations. Their eyes carried the dull awareness that many more months of the same lay before them.

Every night during that time, Kith had met with these two officers, both of them trusted friends and seasoned veterans. They gathered in this small room, with its plain table and chairs. Sometimes they shared a bottle of wine, but that commodity, too, had to be rationed carefully.

“We have a report from the Wildrunners,” Parnigar began. “White-lock managed to slip through the lines. He told me that the small companies we have roaming the woods can hit hard and often. But they have to keep moving, and they don’t dare venture onto the plains.”

“Of course not!” Kencathedrus snapped.

The two officers argued, as they did so often, from their different tactical perspectives. “We’ll never make any progress if we keep dispersing our forces through the woods. We have to gather them together! We must mass our strength!”

Kith sighed and held up his hands. “We all know that our ‘mass of strength’

would be little more than a nuisance to the human army—at least right now. The fortress is the only thing keeping the Wildrunners from annihilation, and the hit-and-run tactics are all we can do until . . . until something happens.” He trailed off weakly, knowing he had touched upon the heart of their despair. True, for the time being they were safe enough in Sithelbec from direct attack. And they had food that could be stretched, with the help of their clerics, to last for a year, perhaps a little longer.

In sudden anger, Kencathedrus smashed his fist on the table. “They hold us here like caged beasts,” he growled. “What kind of fate do we consign ourselves to?”

“Calm yourself, my friend.” Kith touched his old teacher on the shoulder, seeing the tears in the elven warrior’s eyes. His eyes were framed by sunken skin, dark brown in color, that accentuated further the hollowness of the elf’s cheeks. By the gods, do we all look like that? Kith had to wonder. The captain of Silvanost pushed himself to his feet and turned away from them. Parnigar cleared his throat awkwardly. “There is nothing we can accomplish by morning,” he said. Quietly he got to his feet. Parnigar, alone of the three of them, had a wife here. He worried more about her health than his own. She was human, one of several hundred in the fort, but this was a fact that they carefully avoided in conversation. Though Kith-Kanan knew and liked the woman, Kencathedrus still found the interracial marriage deeply disturbing.

“May you rest well tonight, noble elves,” Parnigar offered before stepping through the door into the dark night beyond.

“I know your need to avenge the battle on the plains,” Kith-Kanan said to Kencathedrus as the latter turned and gathered his cloak. “I believe this, my friend—your chance will come!”

The elven captain looked at the general, so much younger than himself, and Kith could see that Kencathedrus wanted to believe him. His eyes were dry again, and finally the captain nodded gruffly. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he promised before following Parnigar into the night.

Kith sat for a while, staring at the dying flame of the lantern, reluctant to extinguish the light even though he knew precious fuel burned away with each second. Not enough fuel . . . not enough food . . . insufficient troops. What did he have enough of, besides problems?

He tried not to think about the extent of his frustration—how much he hated being trapped inside the fortress, cooped up with his entire army, at the mercy of the enemy beyond the walls. How he longed for the freedom of the forests, where he had lived so happily during his years away from Silvanost. Yet with these thoughts, he couldn’t help thinking of Anaya—beautiful, lost Anaya. Perhaps his true entrapment had begun with her death, before the war started, before he had been made general of his father’s—and then his brother’s—army.

Finally he sighed, knowing that his thoughts could bring him no comfort. Reluctantly he doused the lantern’s flame. His own bunk occupied the room adjacent to this office, and soon he lay there.

But sleep would not come. That night they had had no wine to share, and now the tension of his mood kept Kith-Kanan awake for seeming hours after his two officers left.

Eventually, with the entire fortress silent and still around him, his eyes fell shut—but not to the darkness of restful sleep. Instead, it was as though he fell directly from wakefulness into a very vivid dream.

He dreamed that he soared through the clouds, not upon the back of Arcuballis as he had flown so many times before, but supported by the strength of his own arms, his own feet. He swooped and dove like an eagle, master of the sky.

Abruptly the clouds parted before him, and he saw three conical mountain peaks jutting upward from the haze of earth so far below. These monstrous peaks belched smoke, and streaks of fire splashed and flowed down their sides. The valleys extending from their feet were hellish wastelands of crimson lava and brown sludge.

Away from the peaks he soared, and now below him were lifeless valleys of a different sort. Surrounded by craggy ridges and needlelike peaks, these mountain retreats lay beneath great sheets of snow and ice. All around him stretched a pristine brilliance. Gray and black shapes, the forms of towering summits, rose from the vast glaciers of pure white. In places, streaks of blue showed through the snow, and here Kith-Kanan saw ice as clean, as clear as any on Krynn.

Movement suddenly caught his eye in one of these valleys. He saw a great mountain looming, higher than all the others around. Upon its face, dripping ice formed the crude outlines of a face like that of an old, white-bearded dwarf. Kith continued his flight and saw movement again. At first Kith thought that he was witnessing a great flock of eagles—savage, prideful birds that crowded the sky. Then he wondered, could they be some kind of mountain horses or unusual, tawny-colored goats?

In another moment, he knew, as the memory of Arcuballis came flooding back. These were griffons, a whole flock of them! Hundreds of the savage half-eagle, half-lion creatures were surging through the air toward Kith-Kanan. He felt no fear. Instead, he turned away from the dwarfbeard mountain and flew southward. The griffons followed, and slowly the heights of the range fell behind him. He saw lakes of blue water below him and fields of brush and mossy rock. Then came the first trees, and he dove to follow a mountain rivulet toward the green flatlands that now opened up before him. And then he saw her in the forest—Anaya! She was painted like a wild savage, her naked body flashing among the trees as she ran from him. By the gods, she was fast! She outdistanced him even as he flew, and soon the only trace of her passage was the wild laughter that lingered on the breeze before him. Then he found her, but already she had changed. She was old, and rooted in the ground. Before his eyes, she had become a tree, growing toward the heavens and losing all of the form and the senses of the elfin woman he had grown to love.