Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

The drink and the chance to catch his breath did their work, and Gilthas felt ready to fulfill his ceremonial role by the time Lord Salladac, escorted by two of his armored knights, was shown into the chamber.

As the men entered, Gilthas hastily rose so he could stand with the senators, anxious that the human conqueror see no sign of his weakness. But it seemed as though Lord Salladac took little notice of the elves who were here. Instead, he strode to the rostrum and seated himself upon the lone stool, the perch that Gilthas had just vacated. The lord’s bearlike features were creased by a scowl that made him seem fierce and vaguely beastlike.

“How did your campaign in the west fare?” Rashas asked solicitously. “Surely you were able to destroy the outlaw camp.”

“Aye... what there was of it, we trampled into the ground. Smashed the huts and burned the few wretched belongings they had there,” growled Salladac. Still, he did not sound like a soldier who had won a great victory.

“Did you capture Porthios?” Gilthas asked, trying to keep his voice level. He knew that this had been one of Salladac’s major objectives, though Kerian had convinced him that the elven prince would not be taken easily.

“The bastard got away, with most of his elves,” declared the lord. “It’s like the forest swallowed them up—and then spit out my brutes when they tried to follow!”

“Surely with his camp destroyed and his followers scattered to the four winds, you have drastically curtailed his operations,” Rashas said smoothly.

“That we have,” the lord of the Dark Knights admitted. “And we butchered a few of the wretches, those who weren’t fast enough to disappear.”

“Then it must be called a victory,” Rashas replied. “Know that we elves of Qualinost are grateful to you for cleaning out the pests that dared to dwell in our midst.”

“You should be,” the lord retorted. “But the work’s not done yet. Still, I’ll have to wait a few weeks to finish it.”

“It won’t be long before the rest of the rebels are brought to heel,” Rashas declared. “Perhaps we will even have some useful information for you soon.”

Gilthas narrowed his eyes and looked at the elder senator, whose face was creased by a faint, private smile. The younger elf remembered how Palthainon had previously betrayed the position of Porthios’s camp. Now he wondered what Rashas meant and made a mental note to try to find out.

“You have other business more pressing?” Gilthas wondered, speaking to the human lord.

“I’m staying here, but my dragons are off to Silvanesti tomorrow,” the lord replied.

“Why are they going?” asked the Speaker.

“They’re needed to assist in a campaign. The eastern elves have not proven to be as reasonable as you Qualinesti, and my colleagues anticipate a rather brutal campaign. Unfortunate, too. You know, you elves of the Thalas-Enthia are really a credit to civilization in the way you saw the practical solution here.”

Gilthas flushed, deeply ashamed at the comparison. The other elves, he saw, nodded pleasantly, as if honestly pleased by the compliment. Couldn’t they see? Were they really so shameless to believe that it was better to surrender to a powerful master than to even make a pretense of prideful resistance? Trying to conceal his own disgust, Gilthas allowed himself to be grateful that Porthios had escaped the lord’s attack. He hoped that the rebel leader would contact him soon, would agree to meeting the Speaker who wore the medallion that Porthios once had claimed as his own.

Lord Salladac made his departure, leaving the elves to conclude matters of the city’s governance among themselves. They discussed matters of food allocation, since though there were not that many knights living in the city garrison, the humans showed a capacity to eat far more than any individual elf.

“We should at least be glad that he marched those damn brutes out of here,” a senator called Hortensal said, grimacing at the requirement that he give a valuable granary over to the Dark Knights.

“And the dragons,” said another, smug because his holdings were in crystal and glass, for which the humans had thus far shown little interest. “Imagine how much they would eat if we had to take care of them.”

“Let them eat rebels,” Rashas said bitterly. “Porthios has been a thorn in our side long enough!”

“You mentioned that you might have information for Lord Salladac soon,” Gilthas said casually. “What did you mean by that?”

Rashas looked at the young Speaker sharply. “That’s a private matter, but it may prove that Porthios is not as clever, his movements not as mysterious, as he might think.”

“May he rot in the Abyss!” declared one of the senators, a merchant who had lost a small fortune when the bandits had plundered an incoming caravan of steel coins.

“So we should pray,” Rashas continued, his unblinking stare fixed upon Gilthas. “And let us remember that discussions in this chamber are the private matters of the elven state. They are not to be repeated, nor even speculated upon, beyond these walls.”

Gilthas knew that he was being warned, and the thought was vaguely pleasing. He shrugged, adapting an air of unconcern. “Of course,” he said agreeably. Still, he could not bring himself to join in the chorus of general condemnation that echoed from the elves who were still talking about Porthios.

“And what about Silvanesti?” Rashas asked. “Doesn’t it seem foolish that they will subject themselves to a war without hope of victory?”

“They won’t have a chance against the dragons,” said Hortensal, with a dismissive shrug. “They were too stupid to follow our example, to realize the futility of resistance.”

Gilthas grimaced at the words—he couldn’t recall the Qualinesti offering any resistance at all—but he decided to hold his tongue. Instead, it was Rashas who spoke.

“At least the Silvanesti will be busy with war. They will have no time to meddle in our affairs.”

“And thus the sanctity of elven purity is preserved!” cried Hortensal, with every appearance of enthusiasm.

“Indeed. Sometimes the greatest gifts come disguised in the most mysterious fashion,” Rashas agreed.

Gilthas swam long strokes in the clear pool outside the Speaker’s house. For an hour, he cut through the water, back and forth, alternately churning and gliding until he was exhausted. Then he went inside and had a bath in water so hot that it all but scalded his skin. When he got out of the tub, two matronly slaves toweled him with rough enthusiasm, so much so that it seemed as though they scraped away a whole layer of his skin.

Even so, he still felt unclean.

He went to his study, where he closed the door and, despite the late afternoon sun streaming in through the open window, lit an oil lantern and settled in a corner chair. He had a leather-bound tome in his hands, a volume he had recently discovered in the library of this great house. The book was entitled The Vingaard Campaign , and had been scribed by the renowned historian Foryth Teel, assistant to Astinus Lorekeeper himself.

More significant to Gilthas, it was a story about his mother. The events described in the book had occurred only thirty years ago. Foryth Teel wrote a story of war, of a remarkable series of offensive battles during which the Knights of Solamnia had liberated the lands of Northern Ansalon, the territories that had over previous years been crushed under the heel of the dragon highlords.

He had been reading bits and pieces of the book over the last few days, perhaps to remind himself that there had really been a time—and not very long ago!—when the elves had fought for a just cause, battling with courage and heroism against the hordes of the Dark Queen, who sought to subjugate the world underneath a realm of violence, slavery, and savage conquest. At times, he was numbed by a sense of real grief as he thought about how far his people had fallen.