Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

The atmosphere was convivial, and Gilthas found himself envying these elves of the forest. In his opinion, they paid but a small price by sleeping on the ground, making do without the dancing lights, the elegant surroundings of Qualinost. Porthios tried to point out that a great deal of work went into gathering the food, and even more time was spent guarding themselves against attack, but even these deterrences seemed merely like an adventurous aspect to what must be an idyllic life.

These were the thoughts on Gilthas’s mind as he rose to visit the latrine long after the meal had been supped. The wine left a pleasant taste on his tongue and a mild buzz in his head as he wandered through the woods.

It was so peaceful here, he thought as he heard birdcalls in the dark woods. He strolled through the dark, coming back to the firelit clearing by a roundabout path. At the edge of the illuminated swath, he almost stumbled over a figure crouching in the bushes.

“Excuse me,” stammered Gilthas, embarrassed by his clumsiness. He assumed that this was merely another elf who, like himself, had wandered off to relieve himself in private. Then he caught a glimpse of the sharp, angry features.

“You!” gasped the young Speaker.

Immediately the other elf, who had recognized Gilthas at the same time, spat a curse and snatched at something he held in his hand. The Speaker saw a golden ring, twisted by frantic fingers. With a single muffled word, the figure disappeared. Gilthas lunged forward, groping through empty space, knowing that the other elf had teleported away.

“Porthios! Alhana!” he cried, lunging into the clearing, pointing to the place where the other elf had crouched.

“What? What’s wrong.”

“There, in the woods—a spy was watching!”

“How do you know he’s a spy?” demanded the outlaw captain, drawing his sword and racing toward the empty patch of shrubbery.

“Because I recognized him. His name is Guilderhand, and he’s loyal only to Rashas!”

“I’ll have to return to the city immediately,” Gilthas said. “Guilderhand is probably there already, but perhaps I can try to minimize the damage.”

“How?’ Porthios asked scathingly. “He saw you here, he knows the location of our camp, and you claim that he’s loyal to our staunchest enemy. Our only alternative is to flee from here and take you with us!”

He looked at Gilthas closely. “Which is a shame, my young prince, because I had realized that with you on the Speaker’s throne, we could in fact be very useful to each other.”

“It might not be as bad as we fear,” Samar reported as he came to join them. The warrior-mage had been investigating the place where Guilderhand had disappeared. “Perhaps we can send someone after him and get to him before he makes a report.”

“How?” asked Porthios.

“I have a device of teleportation myself, which is the same enchantment that Guilderhand obviously had on his ring.” Samar produced a small vial from his pouch. “It is contained here, in a bit of mint. It can be used to send someone to Qualinost, to try to intercept—and to silence—the spy.”

“I’ll go,” Gilthas said quickly. “It has to be me. I can move around the city, and no one will be surprised to see me there.”

“Then perhaps we do have time,” the outlaw captain said. He looked at Gilthas. “Do you know what needs to be done?”

“To go after Guilderhand?” Gilthas asked, his mind still taut with the fear and excitement of the encounter.

“You’ll have to kill him if you can find him before he reports to Rashas,” Porthios declared grimly. “But if you’re too late, then flee the city, or suffer the consequences of having the senator and the Thalas-Enthia know about our alliance.”

“I understand,” Gilthas said, and he did—up to a point.

The one thing he didn’t know was how in Krynn he would go about trying to commit a murder.

“The blues left... and you stayed,” said Silvanoshei, standing to stare directly into one of Aerensianic’s huge, golden eyes. “When the storms came, you could have stayed hidden, remained in this lair your cherished so much. Samar has told me that you did not. But what is it that drew you out of your cave?”

The dragon snorted in amusement. “Something came to me—something that I could never have expected—but once I found it, I could never turn my back.”

The dragon paused in his story for a moment, lifting his head and fixing his eyes toward the mouth of the cave. “Wait,” he said.

The two elves watched as he lifted the great body onto his four legs and crept, catlike, out of the corner of his lair. Aeren’s eyes were fixed upon the trough in the floor of the cave, where the tide had advanced in a gently surging wave of seawater. Something splashed in that wetness, and then a sleek body vanished beneath the surface.

“A seal,” whispered Samar, holding up his hand to halt Silvanoshei as the younger elf started to move. Instead, they both sat still and watched.

The brown-furred animal popped its head above the surface again, and by this time, the green dragon had reached the edge of the water. With a single, practiced gesture, Aeren snapped down, lifted his prey upward, tilted back his head, and swallowed the animal in a massive gulp, a convulsion of emerald scales rippling along the length of his sinuous neck. He remained still for a few minutes, then uttered a contented sigh and returned to the pair of elves.

Samar still had his hand on the dragonlance, but although he kept his eyes upon the wyrm, watching for any sign of aggression, he didn’t lower the weapon. Instead, Aerensianic settled to the ground over his meager treasure pile and nodded contentedly.

“There’ve always been seals in these waters—that’s one of the things that attracted me here. Even in that summer, when the air was so hot and the sun seemed to scorch the sky, they came to the shore, and I ate well.

“I took to perching on a certain ledge on the face of the bluff over the sea. Even though it was scorching hot, especially as the summer moved on, the heat was somewhat mitigated by the sea breeze. Here, beyond the reach of the splashing surf, I could watch the rocks on which the waves crashed just below. Often the creatures would climb onto the perches, confident that they were safe from sea predators. Rare was the seal who could escape the strike of my jaws from above as I lashed down to snatch the hapless creature around the head.

“Thus I was content to watch and observe... or so I thought.

“On one of the warmest of the midsummer days, I was startled by a large winged shadow that flickered past. Of course, at first I though it was a blue dragon attack, and I lunged backward into the cave.

“Only then did I look up, and imagine my surprise at the sight of another green dragon, a splendid female! She was not as large as I, and she banked and came to rest on the ledge with a willingness that I found strangely enticing.

“‘Greetings, O strange clan dragon,’ she said, politely dipping her neck. ‘I am called Toxyria, and I am happy to find you here along a coast I thought had been abandoned by our kind.’

“‘Greetings, Beautiful Toxyria,’ I returned, and I explained that I had lived there for but a single winter. ‘And is your lair along here?’ I asked.

“‘A half day’s flight to the south,’ she explained, purring at my flattery. ‘And do you live here with your mate?’ she inquired demurely.

“I admit that in my delight I huffed a plume of green mist from my nostrils, and Toxyria inhaled the gas with obvious relish. ‘I have no mate,’ I explained. ‘I have flown here alone, from a forest a thousand miles and more away.’