Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

On the far side of the hill, he saw the effects of the third prong of his attack. Here the Qualinesti recruits, their numbers stiffened by a few of his bandit veterans, had waited until the rest of the camp was assaulted before they struck. A few fires flared here and there, and he saw that many brutes lay dead in the ruins. From the arrows and cuts in their backs, he suspected that—as he had planned—this part of the camp had been taken by surprise, ambushed while they looked toward the distractions of the first two attacks.

Finally the griffon was flying over the dark forest. Around him, Porthios saw other winged shapes, more of his Qualinesti who had escaped from the hilltop. Wondering what toll the morning would bring, the elves swept away from the Dark Knights toward their rendezvous in the deep woods.

“So that’s why they were so angry?” Aerensianic said with a ground-shaking chuckle.

“Who?” asked Silvanoshei.

“The blue dragons. You see, they came sweeping down the coast the next day. They were blasting the trees with their lightning, doing everything they could to find the elves. And they were in a most foul state of temper.”

“Did they find your lair?”

“In fact, one of them poked his nose in here... not as far as the first bend. I gave him a blast of poison, and he backed right away, albeit with some very unfriendly words.”

“Didn’t he come back with more blues? Surely they had you outnumbered,” Samar suggested.

“Indeed... but by then, I think they were concerned with business farther to the east... in the city of the elves.”

By evening, after one day of trying to recruit, Gilthas had concluded that the elves of Qualinost had no stomach for defending their city against the incursion of the Dark Knights. After sending a message to his mother, pleading with her to come to Qualinesti, he had spent the day going from house to house or speaking loudly at the intersections of the city’s main streets. In most cases, the elves were far more concerned with their own fate than in anything they could do to help the nation as a whole.

Rumors of the invasion, of course, had spread like wind through the city, and the Speaker was met with many panicked questions, demands for protection, and a level of fear that seemed likely to grow into hysteria. Everywhere he went he found people hiding their valuables, boarding up their splendid houses, disguising beautiful wives and nubile daughters as filthy hags. The mood among almost all of the elves was that if the Dark Queen’s army was drawing close to the city, there was no hope of preventing Qualinost’s fall.

A few, including some of those who still had pride in their homeland and a sense of the elven role in Krynn’s history, had scorned Gilthas’s proposal that they join him in fighting the invaders. One of them, the young Senator Quaralan, had almost spat in his face, declaring that the young Speaker lacked the honor to sit upon the throne of Qualinesti and that, as such, he was unsuitable to serve as the city’s military leader. Instead, Quaralan had said, he was making plans to flee with his family and household servants into the forest. There he would resist the occupation in whatever manner he could devise.

Shamed and humiliated, Gilthas had almost wept as he left the young noble’s lofty crystal mansion. How could they misunderstand him so? Why wouldn’t they even give him a chance to show that he could be a leader?

Indeed, almost no one had been willing to take up a sword and gather with the Speaker at the Hall of the Sky. Now, at sunset, the appointed hour for the meeting, barely threescore Qualinesti had gathered, and nothing about these volunteers gave him confidence even in this small fighting force. A few of them were veterans of the War of the Lance who had fought with Gilthanas and Laurana against the armies of the Dark Queen thirty years before. They were still young, though several had been so grievously wounded that they moved like cripples, or were missing an arm. And one of them was blind!

Dejectedly Gilthas thanked them for answering his appeal and told them that he would summon them again if they could be of use to the city. After sending them home, he trudged wearily through the city until he came to the Tower of the Sun, where—as he had expected—many members of the Thalas-Enthia were gathered, awaiting news.

Gilthas learned that Rashas’s spy, Guilderhand, had returned to the tower just before the Speaker’s arrival. Feeling more like an eavesdropper than the nominal ruler of this august gathering, he pushed through the doors and stood near the wall of the chamber.

Rashas stood atop the rostrum, and Guilderhand had just been led to the second-tier step. For once the spy was dressed decently—in the robes of an elven senator, as a matter of fact!—though the garb could not conceal the man’s essentially furtive and clever demeanor.

“Elves of the Thalas-Enthia,” Guilderhand began, “I have met with the leader of this army, a bold Knight of Takhisis called Lord Salladac I have been able to learn, through observation and surreptitious interviewing, that he is regarded as a man of integrity and honor, of great pride and of utmost savagery in battle.”

“Terms! Did he give you terms for our surrender?” cried an elderly senator near the back wall.

Guilderhand nodded and allowed himself the shadow of a smile—a smile that Gilthas thought distorted his ratlike features into something resembling a smug, self-satisfied, and well-fed weasel.

“Can the city be spared a sacking?” cried another elf anxiously.

“I believe that our courageous agent can set your worst fears to rest,” Rashas declared smoothly, thus confirming Gilthas’s suspicion that the senator had spoken to the spy before he made his report to the Thalas-Enthia as a whole.

“Indeed, I hope that I can,” Guilderhand declared. “Fortunately this ring of teleportation allowed me great freedom to move through the enemy camp. After learning all that I could about him—to my considerable reassurance, I promise you all—I presented myself to the lord as an emissary of this hallowed body.”

Of course you did, Gilthas thought bitterly. You didn’t have to wait for that role to be confirmed. You knew your master would support you as long as you did his bidding! He felt himself growing nauseous but forced his feet to remain in place, unwilling to attract attention to his presence here. Also, he had to admit that he was morbidly curious to see what sort of terms the enemy general had proposed.

“Lord Salladac received me most graciously. He is, as you may know by now, currently encamped on the road approaching the north bridge, less than a mile from the city’s gates. His troops, including many blue dragons, are bivouacked in the woods, but they have done so with obvious respect to the hallowed trees of our forest. Only a few trunks have been felled, to clear space for the dragons to sleep, and they are building no more fires than are absolutely necessary for comfort and cooking.”

Gilthas wondered how fires could be necessary for “comfort” in this sweltering summer. Nevertheless, Guilderhand’s information was greeted with quiet murmurs of appreciation throughout the crowd.

“The lord informed me that terms for Qualinesti were identical to those terms offered to Kalaman, a city that has yielded to the Knights of Takhisis, yet still functions with pride and identity intact.”

“How can you call that pride—to hand over your city and your people, to allow a foreign army to occupy and rule you?” demanded a female elf sarcastically. Gilthas recognized her as a radical young senator, Anthelia.

“Nevertheless,” Rashas intervened sternly, “all reports show that the people in that city have been able to maintain their possessions, their freedom, and even most of their significant rights!”