Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

“Would you like some tea to help you sleep?” she asked.

“No, I’m afraid sleep is a luxury that I’ll have to postpone,” Gilthas murmured, thinking how pleasant it was to have Kerian speak to him as a friend, instead of with the deep formality of a slave to a master. “There are matters to arrange, houses to procure for the lord’s residence in Qualinost.”

“Will the dragons come into the city?” Kerianseray asked. Though all the elves were frightened of the monstrous serpents, she spoke in cool, level tones.

“No... not the brutes, either.” Gilthas sat up, forgetting the pain in his skull as his indignation flared anew. “I tell you, this whole thing is just too damn civilized . It was like Rashas and Salladac were making arrangements for a tea party, not a military occupation—certainly not the surrender of a proud nation!”

“Sometimes pride gets lost behind wealth and comfort,” Kerian observed, startling the speaker with her insight. “Those such as Rashas are more concerned with keeping what they have than with leaving anything for the future—or showing any honor to the past.”

“Sometimes I think Porthios is right,” Gilthas admitted. “Did you know he attacked a Dark Knight army with thousands of elves? Even managed to kill three dragons!”

Kerianseray was quiet for a little while, and Gilthas thought she was surprised by the news. Instead, it was he who was startled when next she spoke.

“Actually, he only had about five hundred elves. But it’s true about the dragons... though many elves were killed as well.”

He sat up abruptly and turned to face her. “How do you know that?”

She shrugged shyly, allowing her golden hair to fall across her eyes. Then, with a proud gesture, she pushed it back and met his accusatory glare.

“Some of his elves were Kagonesti, of my father’s tribe. They have allied themselves with Porthios and share his village in the forest.”

“Really?” Gilthas was surprised, and a little thrilled, by this revelation. He took it to mean that Kerian trusted him, or she certainly would not have let him see the extent of her information. Then he thought further about what she was saying.

“Your father’s tribe, you said. You know where they are, where they live?”

Now her pride was unmistakable. “My father is Chief Dallatar, scion of Dallatar, one of the Kagonesti who saw our tribe survive the Cataclysm. I have been a slave since I was a little girl, but I have never forgotten who my family is.”

“And you are in contact with him... or with your tribe,” Gilthas said in wonder. “Yet you stay here, in the city, as a slave? Do you ever think of escaping, of going to him?”

“Every day,” Kerian replied frankly. “But I serve a purpose in Qualinost, and it is an important cause... reason enough for me to stay in the city.”

“You’re a spy?” The Speaker was truly astonished.

She shrugged. “If you want to call it that. We long ago learned that it is important for us wild elves to know what the city elves are planning, especially in relationship to the Kagonesti. I was taken from the tribe together with twelve other children by a Qualinesti raiding party, elven butchers who murdered our nursemaids and carried us off to Daltigoth. If we had known that General Palthainon was on the way, it is quite possible that we could have taken shelter, avoided his raid, and spared the lives of those he killed.”

Gilthas hung his head again, fighting the tears that rose to his eyes. How much shame would fall on him today? He blinked, looked up at Kerianseray with awe and affection.

“You’re very brave. Do you know that?”

She shrugged. “I do what must be done. It is what my father does, too... what he taught me.”

“And what Porthios does. What all elves should do!” Bitterly he recalled the reaction of the city elves when they had learned of the army’s approach... the fifty volunteers he had been able to muster, a pathetic fragment of a company to defend a city that should have raised a proud army!

Gilthas rose from the couch and stalked to the window. He looked out at the pastoral city with its floating lights dancing like fireflies among the crystal towers and golden manors. There were unusually few people in sight, but other than that, there was no indication that this was a place facing the occupation of a hostile army with the dawn. Doubtless most of the elves were busy hiding their treasures, he thought scornfully, or making arrangements to sell food, wine, and other goods to the human knights.

With a sudden sense of decision, he turned to Kerianseray. He looked at this slave woman with new eyes, seeing her as much, much more than the meek and servile person who had been able to soothe his sleep with her bark tea.

“I must speak to Porthios,” Gilthas said. “I will go to him in the forest, talk to him, show him that not all of us in the city are cowards.”

“You would do this?” she said, her eyes wide. “But the Thalas-Enthia—”

“Are fools!” he snapped. “And I want Porthios to know that we’re not all like that!”

“How will you do it?” she asked pragmatically.

“First I have to find him. Can you get a message to him, ask if he will see me?”

She considered his request for only a few heartbeats, but it seemed to Gilthas as if time dragged by, as if his entire future, the hope for himself as a man and for his nation as a whole, hung on the decision she would make in those few seconds.

“Getting a message to him is simple, and I will do so,” she finally said. “But I fear that it will not be easy to persuade him to see you.”

“I’ll take that chance,” Gilthas said.

“Then we have to try,” Kerian agreed with a nod.

“And so my uncle agreed to come to see my father,” Silvanoshei said. “It would seem that such a meeting should have held much hope for the future of the elves.”

The dragon’s eyes had drooped shut, and he breathed deeply, puffing long exhalations from his huge nostrils. The two elves, however, were wide awake, and the elder nodded sagely in response to his companion’s remark.

“So it would,” Samar agreed. “But then, as now, there were many forces abroad in the world, and only a very few of them can be influenced by the actions of we mere mortals...”

Bellaclaw glided through the treetops and came to rest in the center of the encampment. Porthios recognized Samar’s urgency in the way the Silvanesti dropped his dragonlance and leapt down from the saddle even as his griffon pranced and settled on the bare ground.

“The blue dragons have broken camp and flown. They’re coming this way!” declared the scout. “Straight for the gorge.”

“Time to move!” shouted the outlaw prince, and instantly the encampment was transformed by a wave of frantic activity.

Elves picked up their babes and a few necessities of clothing and tools. Warriors ran into their huts, grabbed weapons, bent strings onto bows and checked quivers to make sure they were full of straight, sharp arrows. The cookfires were smothered by quick scoops of loose dirt, while a few tanned hides were pulled off the drying racks and employed to wrap supplies into bundles. Other racks, those where the hides were still fresh, would be left behind, as would the crude huts that had served as the band’s shelters for the last few weeks.

Despite the baby slung over her back in his tai-thall , Alhana moved adeptly as she wrapped a cooking kettle, several knives, and the small amount of spare clothing that she and Porthios had into a soft velvet blanket, the only concession to comfort they had allowed themselves as they had flown to this primitive lifestyle. Watching her, Porthios felt a pang of regret. She was a princess, heir to a great throne and the leadership of a proud people, and yet, out of loyalty to him, she had followed him into exile.