Paul Thompson: Sanctuary

And his people would survive. Gilthas was determined on that point. All else was mere vanity.

Gilthas had brought his people out of the conflagration that engulfed Qualinesti, across the Plains of Dust, to the supposed sanctuary of Khur. Fate had delivered the throne of Silvanesti into his hands when his cousin Porthios, Speaker of the Stars, vanished. Porthios’s son and successor, Silvanoshei, was slain at the end of the war. Queen Mother Alhana, grieving the death of her son, had gone on a desperate search for Porthios. Before leaving, she’d given into Gilthas’s hands the crown of Silvanesti.

Out of the catastrophe of exile had come one of the greatest events in Gilthas’s life, in any elf’s life: the unification of two kingdoms sundered since the Kinslayer War. Alhana, a Silvanesti, and Porthios, a Qualinesti, had hoped their own marriage would bring the two nations together. Instead, it had driven them further apart. Now, against all odds, the two nations were one again, united in the person of Gilthas himself. Once sneered at as the “Puppet King” he was now known as Gilthas Pathfinder. It was up to him to find the path to a permanent home—wherever that might be.

Temporarily, pride could be sacrificed, honor dispensed with, treasure spent. To hold the ancient race of the Firstborn together, he would treat with whomever he must, even a rogue like Sahim-Khan, one of the most conniving, grasping humans he’d ever met.

In a royal line known for black hearts, Sahim’s naked ambition and glowing greed stood out as exceptional. With half his capital in ruins, he dreamed of elven wealth flowing in to repair it. But if it took treasure to buy sanctuary, no matter how makeshift and uncomfortable, for his exiled people, then Gilthas would use every scrap of steel and gold his subjects could raise. Treasure, like buildings and land, was expendable. Life was not.

Once, he had measured his life by the fleeting moments spent with Kerian. Like a tempered blade, she was bright, sharp, and deadly, and must be handled with care. Not for her and Gilthas were quiet comfort and gently murmured vows of love. Theirs was a marriage of opposites. Planchet had said once—after a particularly rough day and too much potent nectar—that it was as if the gods had cleaved apart a single hero, creating strong, hot-headed Kerianseray and thoughtful, feeling Gilthas. Their marriage had joined the two halves together again, creating one person, one soul.

She lived. As certainly as he felt his own heartbeat, Gilthas knew Kerian was not dead.

He hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep until a noise suddenly jolted him awake. The empty nectar bottle lay next to his chair; the clay cup had fallen from his hand.

As he sat wondering how long he’d dozed and what had awakened him, the tent roof shook, sending motes of dust down onto his head. Shouts arose outside. A sirocco must have swept over the tent complex, upsetting some of the less stable dwellings.

The sound of ripping cloth put the lie to that notion and brought the elf to his feet. Sunlight poured through the roof into his face as a sword sawed through the ceiling panel. Head fuzzy from wine and sleep, Gilthas stared at the bright sword point, wondering how anyone could stand on the billowing roof. The tent poles and stays surely could not bear the weight.

More shouting, louder now, came to his ears, and the sword withdrew. A masked figure garbed in dirty white robes dropped through the hole, landing heavily but adroitly on fingers and toes. Beneath the figure’s Khurish scarf a steel helmet gleamed.

At the same moment, Planchet burst through the tent flap, sword at the ready. Behind him came a swarm of the Speaker’s householders, armed with everything from pikes to roasting spits. Gilthas held up a hand, halting his bodyguard on the threshold. He directed a wry look at the intruder.

“Lady, you’ve holed my roof.”

Kerianseray, caked with dust and dried blood, straightened. She yanked the dust mask from the lower half of her face and shoved her sword back in its scabbard. Heedless of the astonished Planchet, and the gaping looks of the others, she leaned forward and kissed her consort warmly.

Drawing back, she exclaimed, “Those damned Silvanesti wouldn’t let me in!” Lord Morillon and his cohorts, steeped in the court protocol of Silvanost, did their best to control access to the Speaker—even barring the Lioness when they could.

“How did you get past them?” Gilthas asked, amused. With one hand he cupped her smooth brown cheek, hollowed by travail.

“Eagle Eye.”

He glanced up at the hole in the roof. The griffon flashed past as he circled overhead. Theirs was a remarkable relationship. With the Lioness the fierce creature was tame as a kitten, obeying her every word. Griffons usually bonded with a single rider from an early age and, should that rider be lost, never took kindly to another. Eagle Eye’s original rider had perished fighting the minotaurs. Against all odds, the spirited beast had taken a liking to the Lioness—most probably because they were two of a kind, Gilthas thought.

The Speaker’s would-be rescuers dispersed and Planchet went to fetch more nectar. In the meantime, Kerian helped herself to an orange, a fruit common to Khur’s seaside gardens. She pulled off hood and helmet and raked a hand through her matted hair.

“Lord Taranath’s messenger just left here”—Gilthas noted the angle of the sunlight—“less than an hour ago. After hearing his report, I feared for your safety.”

His words seemed somehow to take away her joy at their reunion. Coughing the dust of Khur from her throat, she rasped, “Yet I am safe, and here I am.”

When she said no more, he asked about the rear guard Hytanthas had mentioned, the five hundred archers with whom she had made a stand against the minotaurs. She answered, “They gave their lives for the rest of the army.”

“No others survived? Only you?” asked Gilthas, mystified.

She crushed the orange slice she held. Juice ran between her fingers. “It was not my choice!”

Before she could explain this strange statement Planchet returned. She filled a cup and moved away from her husband, lapsing into sullen silence. Sensing the tension in the room, Planchet did not linger.

Gilthas went to stand behind his wife, close but not touching. He could almost feel the angry emotion radiating from her, like heat from the Khurish Sun.

“I rejoice to see you, my love,” he said softly.

“I’m not happy to be here, Gil! I should have fallen with my warriors!”

On the last word her voice broke, and he would have held her then. But she made no move toward him, did not turn, only drank deeply from her cup.

He asked what had happened, and still she was silent for a longtime. At last, with an abrupt shake of her head, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s done. We must honor our dead by resuming the campaign. The bull-men will pay!”

She gripped her cup so tightly her knuckles showed white. Gilthas gave up the attempt to comfort her and returned to his chair, frowning. Somehow it was a little easier to say what he must while sitting in the royal throne. Raising his voice slightly, he forbade his wife to return south. The plan to invade Silvanesti, Gilthas declared, was over.

She whirled, a wild look in her eyes. “You’re quitting the fight? Why?”

Gilthas kept his own voice even. “Again and again it’s proven a waste of lives, battling the minotaurs. I have a more important task for you.”

“What more important task is there than fighting our enemies?”

“Finding a home for our people.”

Her laugh was sharp and dismissive. This was an old argument, one they were having more often these days. Kerianseray, her warriors, and many Silvanesti nobles among the exiles wanted to win back the lands lost to the invaders Gilthas believed this a pointless dream. His people’s only hope was to find a new homeland, one free of minotaurs, bandits, goblins, and greedy humans.