Tina Daniell: Dark Heart

The mist was slowly lifting.

A body lay near the entryway in a pool of blood. It was the dotty old jailer, trampled and clawed. He had not gotten away fast enough. Looking down in the dirt, Kitiara saw the tracks of the old man's murderer, the prints of a huge panther.

El-Navar was free.

She could barely lift her legs. She moved as if she were slogging through quicksand. Her head was on fire. Her muscles felt dead. One arm hung at her side, limp. Luckily, her horse was still alive, waiting for her.

El-Navar had left a clear trail. For a moment Kitiara considered following him, but the tracks led south. She struggled to climb up on the horse and, barely conscious of what she was doing, turned the animal north. North was where she was headed, to find news of her father.

Nobody in Whitsett could tell Kit for sure what had happened to Gregor.

The journey there took nine weeks-across the Eastwall Mountains to Newsea, a stopover at the Island of Schallsea, then onward to the middle reaches of Solamnia, the region of Throt.

Across uninhabited mountains and inhospitable waters, frigid wetlands and snowy steppes, woods whipped with wind and eerie cries, high grasslands encroached upon by sheet ice.

She arrived in the middle of the winter. She came alone.

Kitiara found that Whitsett was very much changed. Whitsett was the name of a community, one not much bigger than the village terrorized by the slig, but also the name of the loose federation of homes and farms located throughout the surrounding basin of land nourished by the tributaries of a wild river. The two estates that had been at the center of the feuding almost four years before had dissipated. Now they were melded into the federation, which was honorably ruled by a high official agreed upon by all families, who made decisions of commerce and justice.

The two local lords who had started and escalated a war between their followers had died in the intervening time, one of natural causes, one by violent means. Their lieutenants had scattered. Once the leaders were dead, the two opposing sides saw no reason to continue old animosities, and the peace that was made had lasted.

The jailkeeper from those years had been hung for corruption; the jail had long since burned down, and a new one had been built. There had been three changes of officialdom since. No one in authority could name anyone connected with the long-ago sentencing to death of a mercenary named Gregor Uth Matar.

Although few could claim to have known Gregor, they mouthed various contradictory legends about his fate in Whitsett.

The nephew of the jailkeeper of that time told Kitiara, "My uncle was hung not for corruption but for complicity in letting a certain man go. This was a charge made against him by his enemies. Actually, he had doublecrossed the prisoner and pocketed the money. The real reason he was hung is that he cheated his superior officer out of his share of the crooked money. As for the prisoner himself, this Gregor, feh, I believe he died on the gallows."

A village elder told Kit, "There was to be a mass hanging that day. Not just your Gregor-ten, twelve men. But they say that one was discovered missing, too late, and that this one had been shown a secret underground tunnel…" But the man was unable to prove the existence of such an underground escape.

A third man who claimed he had watched the climactic battle from a hillside said, "I heard they arrested the wrong man. This Gregor, he was a canny one. He suspected the plot against him and put another man in his clothes. The false Gregor was seized and beheaded, while the true Gregor evaded discovery and vanished from these parts."

Nobody could back up their version of the hearsay. Worst of all, Kitiara could find no one to blame, no one to hate, no one to kill for the sake of her father.

After three weeks in the vicinity, a bitterly disappointed Kitiara left Whitsett, not a jot wiser than when she had arrived.

For more than seven years Kitiara Uth Matar wandered the North, as much in quest of adventure and riches as for any word of her father. She learned nothing more about Gregor. If he was somewhere, she deduced, it was no longer North. But she gained much in the way of wealth and experience.

Little that is certain is known of her wanderings.

It is said that Kitiara sought out some paternal relatives, in the heart of Solamnia, hoping for some news of her father. They knew less than Kit; Gregor had not been heard from for many years, and they did not welcome her inquiries. Consequently, Kit's stay in those parts was both short and unpleasant.

It is said that, for a long time, Kitiara journeyed in the company of two men, both humans and expert swordsmen. They roamed the wilderness, preying on solitary travelers. Both of her companions were in love with her, and one of them killed the other after a drunken argument, only to wake up the next morning to find Kitiara gone.

It is said that Kitiara lost a wager in a roadside inn and was forced to serve the whim of a bounty hunter seeking fugitive minotaur slaves. He took advantage of her debt to him and enjoyed making her perform lowly tasks, such as wiping and polishing his boots. But he had some attractive qualities, and she did relish tracking minotaurs and improving her wilderness skills in the bargain. In any case Kitiara was merely biding her time, and after six weeks won the wager back. For an equal period the bounty hunter came under obligation to her.

For a time Kitiara rode as a scout and defender of trading caravans that had to pass through hobgoblin country on their way to the far frontier. She distinguished herself, according to eyewitnesses, in numerous skirmishes and ambushes.

For at least two months, it is said, Kit adopted a pseudonym and joined with Macaire's Raiders in the northwest- the outlaw band under the leadership of Macaire, the wily half-human known for swooping down on small settlements and isolated farms, always eluding capture. The female who rode at Macaire's side during this time, rivaling him in her fearlessness, fit Kit's description. Her sobriquet was "Dark Heart."

How much of this is true, how much of it folklore, is uncertain.

However you add it up, months and entire years of this period are entirely blank as to where Kitiara was and what she was doing. Perhaps she was operating under an alias. Perhaps she was laying low somewhere.

During the first three years of her travels she returned home at least twice, keeping her visits very brief, giving her family some money from her adventures. But without making a conscious decision in that regard, she had let four more years go by without passing through Solace or hearing word of her kin.

About seven years after the time she had killed Ursa, Kit was stopping over in a mill town, west of Palanthas in the region of Coastlund, staying in an inn, when she was approached by a kender.

This kender was the same Asa who made regular stops in Solace while on the road throughout Krynn, harvesting and vending herbs and roots. He augmented his income with, among other specialties, the sideline of courier.

How he happened upon Kitiara is quite unknown. But kender do have their ways.

The kender handed Kit a sealed paper from Caramon, earning, for his troubles, not the tip he fully expected, but a scowl and a stare until he went away. The letter said:

Dear Kitiara,

This kender says that if anyone can find you, he can, and so I have given him six coins to do so. Kender are sneaky but honest, so I hope he does, and soon.

I am writing this letter by hand, but Raistlin is telling me what to say. He would write it himself but he is fatigued from exertions in the course of trying to make our dear Mother feel better as she lies dying.