Paul Thompson: Sanctuary

The city had grown up in the east, where sea and sand met. Looted and sacked many times in the past (the last time by followers of the dread wyrm Malystryx), Khuri-Khan was rising again. Newly restored, the squat round towers and square dwellings once more thrust up from the endless sand. Scaffolds enfolded the shattered façade of the Khuri yl Nor—“the Palace of the Setting Sun”—and the city’s outer wall was checkered with newly cut stone blocks, repairing the destruction wrought by the recent war. City dwellers had picked up the bricks and shattered timbers of their homes and set them in place. Noble and commoner alike had planted thousands of date palm seedlings throughout the city, alongside the towering ancients that still survived. Trade resumed and life went on in the noisy, contentious Khurish fashion.

New construction was not the only change in Khur. Outside the walls of Khuri-Khan sprawled a vast camp of multicolored tents. Miles across, the conglomeration of shelters clustered under the city wall like fungus clinging to a fallen log. Crowded into this makeshift metropolis were a hundred thousand elves, former residents of Qualinesti and Silvanesti. The camp of exiled elves was known to its inhabitants (not without irony) as “Khurinost,” and to the people of Khuri-Khan as Laddad-ihar, the Elves’ Anthill.

Laddad was an old word whose literal meaning—“those who walk on air”—was a reference to the griffon riders of ancient times. Now it meant simply “elves,” encompassing Qualinesti, Silvanesti, and Kagonesti, since the Khurs made no distinction among the groups.

In the center of this great patchwork camp of tents was the home of the Speaker of the Sun and Stars. Gilthas, son of Tanis Half-Elven and Lauralanthalasa, was last of the line of Speakers great and ill, which stretched back to the founder of the Qualinesti nation, Kith-Kanan, and through him to the august Silvanos Goldeneye. On Gilthas had fallen the daunting task of leading his people out of their ruined homeland, abandoning it to the Knights of Neraka, mobs of wild goblins, and the bandit horde of Captain Samuval. The Qualinesti had fought their way across half a continent and come to rest here in this desolate desert. Thousands perished on the journey, felled by arrow and sword, as well as the less material but no less deadly menaces of heat, disease, exhaustion, and heartbreak. The sands of western Khur were littered with bones, broken carts, and abandoned possessions, and watered by the tears of an entire race.

When Gilthas first beheld the city of Khuri-Khan, a scant one thousand elves stood at his back. After the horrors of exile and the agonizing trek across the desert, the sun-baked capital of Khur seemed a dream of paradise, but the elves’ ballad of woe wasn’t done. As months passed, more refugees arrived, in groups of five or ten, as well as columns numbering in the thousands. From the far south came Silvanesti driven out of their forest glades and crystal halls by hordes of rampaging minotaurs. Fewer Silvanesti than Qualinesti abandoned their homeland, for no matter how wretched their existence, most could not bear to leave their sacred ancestral lands. Instead, they faded into the forest, there to dwell among the trees like their primeval ancestors. Those who had joined Gilthas were, for the most part, high officials, warriors, and nobles of the Silvanesti court. When Gilthas was proclaimed Speaker of the Stars by the abdicating Alhana Starbreeze, the exiled courtiers of Silvanost swallowed their outrage at having a Qualinesti (and one tainted with human blood!) as their ruler. If the race of elves was to survive, it needed a leader. The once-scorned “Puppet King” had proven himself capable. Elves of greater reputation had succumbed to death or, despairing, had given in to the enemy. Not Gilthas. The test of exile showed his true mettle, so the Silvanesti notables gathered around him, forming a tightly knit circle of advisors to the throne of the united elven nations.

Gone were the embroidered silk robes and soft finery worn in Qualinost and Silvanost. Living in the desert demanded more practical dress. The Speaker had taken to wearing Khurish attire, a sleeveless robe of white linen, called a geb, cinched in at the waist by the leather cord known as the ghuffran. Where once he had cultivated the distant air and pale complexion of a palace-dwelling poet, now Gilthas was lean, brown, and serious. The weight of the elven nation rested directly on his shoulders, and although he refused to let the strain break him, it occasionally bore him down. The Speaker rose early, worked all day, and lived as frugally now as once he had dwelt in aimless luxury.

This day began as most did, with Gilthas in his audience room, standing with hands clasped behind his back in the center of a round carpet. Wine-red with ocher curlicues radiating out from a central sun motif, the carpet had come from Sahim-Khan, monarch (but not master) of Khur. A gift, the Khan had said, to make the Speaker more comfortable, but Gilthas knew its true purpose: to serve as a mocking reminder of his lost throne.

“What word from Lady Kerianseray?”

The Speaker’s question caused the assortment of courtiers and vassals to break off their various conversations. They were an odd-looking group, most in Khurish attire, but a stubborn few still persisting in the fashions of their homeland. A few feet from the Speaker, alertly watching, stood Planchet, Gilthas’s longtime valet and bodyguard. Like his liege, he was dressed in the local style, but the sword at his waist was of pure Qualinesti design.

The crowd of onlookers parted to reveal a young elf, thin and hardened by sun, wind, and privation, who stiffened in salute. He doffed his Khurish-style cloth hat and said, “Lord Taranath sends his greetings, Great Speaker!”

The room grew silent. If Taranath, and not the Lioness, had dispatched this courier, it could only mean the Speaker’s wife was no longer with the army.

“The army has returned from the southern expedition and is currently at Wadi Talaft,” the messenger continued, naming a dry lake south of the city which was normally used by the nomads as a natural corral for their herds of horses and goats. “Lady Kerianseray”—the young courier swallowed—“is not with them, sire.”

Before his assembled court, Gilthas would not parade his anxiety. As calmly as possible he inquired, “What happened, Captain?”

The courier reported the failure of Kerianseray’s gamble in the south. At every turn, the army’s entrance into Silvanesti was barred by minotaurs, and the bull-men’s strength proved overwhelming. Pursued into the borderland between forest and desert, the Lioness and a handpicked band of archers had remained behind, making a stand so the rest of the beleaguered army could escape.

All eyes were on the Speaker as be digested this news. His perennial sunburn did not hide the sudden pallor of his face. Planchet took an involuntary step toward him, then halted. As much friend and trusted advisor as bodyguard, still Planchet could not allow his concern to breach the Speaker’s dignity.

The courier reported that six thousand, eight hundred eighty-nine elves had made it to Wadi Talaft. This out of ten thousand. Murmurs swept the room.

While the Speaker’s subjects whispered about the heavy losses, Planchet spoke privately to his master. Gilthas nodded once, and the valet slipped quietly from the room.

The Speaker raised a hand. In the ensuing silence, he declared, “Our adventure in the south is at an end. We cannot waste any more of our slender resources on such a hopeless cause.” He then charged the courier to bid Lord Taranath return to Khurinost.

His words set the assemblage stirring anew. Captain Ambrodel saluted, but did not depart. “Great Speaker,” he said, “pardon my boldness, but more can be done in the south! We can send small bands of fighters secretly across the Thon-Thalas, into the interior of Silvanesti—”