Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

“Hauk?” Lavim looked from one to the other of them. He should have stayed in camp, he decided. Clearly he’d missed something last night.

“What sword?” His eyes widened as he saw Stormblade lying across Kelida’s knees. “Oh. Are you talking about that sword?”

Stanach dropped his forge-scarred hand onto the kender’s shoulder.

“Easy, old one, save your questions for later.” He nodded to Kelida. “Are you coming?”

“Yes, I am—”

“Aye,” Tyorl drawled. “Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Something worse than what I’ve already been through?”

Tyorl had no answer. It didn’t matter, though. Instinct had warned him last night to keep silent on the matter of Finn. Now, he was glad that he had. Finn’s rangers were waiting outside Qualinesti. Tyorl was certain that Finn would pick up their trail and find them before Stanach found the mage, Piper. He would lay the whole matter before the rangerlord: sword, tale, and his news that Verminaard was moving a supply base into the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains. Finn would decide what must be done.

“Very well, Kelida,” he said. “You’ll need warmer clothes.” He held up a hand to forestall Stanach’s protest. “I know a place where we can scavenge something for her. It’s on the way.”

Stanach tossed another chip into the fire. “Where?”

“Where?” echoed Lavim, all the more confused.

“Qualinost.”

The sun broke from behind lowering, slate-colored clouds and its sweet, warm columns of light shafted down on the city. Four slim spires of the purest white stone rose from the corners of Qualinost at perfect map points: north, south, east, and west. Gleaming silver veins twined in almost-pattern through the snowy stone of the towers. Running out from the northern tower, high above the city, a seemingly frail arch leaped and connected with the southern spire. It was the same with the other towers, and so the city was bounded.

In the very center of the elven city, alive with light more vibrant than the sun’s, rose the elegant Tower of the Sun. Sheathed in gleaming gold, the tower had been for years uncounted the home of the Speaker of the Suns. It, like all of Qualinost, was empty now that the speaker had taken his people, his children, into exile.

The elven city of Qualinost had been built by dwarves, from the design of elves, in a time when friendship, not today’s brooding, sullen antipathy, graced the dealings between the two races. Tyorl entered the city of his birth with a heart torn between joy and sorrow.

Joy, he thought, because I never thought to see you again; sorrow that I should find you the vacant and empty-eyed corpse of a place once beautiful, now only coldly lovely.

The chill wind of late autumn moaned through the deserted city, sobbing around the eaves of buildings once brimming with life. It rattled through the last golden leaves of the countless aspens lining the streets. Once the sound had been rippling laughter, now it was a weak and weary dirge.

Beneath the wind, Tyorl heard the voices of memory. His father’s quiet laughter, his sister’s song. Where were they now?

Flown into exile with the rest of their people. Tyorl wondered if he would ever see them again. He shook his head as though to shake off the memories and the questions.

The houses and shops and all the buildings of Qualinost were made of quartz the color of dawn’s light. These, too, were empty now, their windows dark, their doorways filled with shadows and the echoes of memories only Tyorl noticed. Broad paths of shimmering crushed stone marked the streets and avenues of Qualinost. All along these glittering paths were black fire-rings and piles of gray ashes, like dirty thumb marks on the streets of Qualinost.

Kelida, shivering and silent beside Stanach, leaned against an aspen’s thick, gray trunk. The city was not ravaged, only empty, but she felt here the same sense of despair she had felt when she looked at the blackened, skeletal beams and posts of her own home.

Stanach, who counted his mountain home among the riches of his life, recognized Tyorl’s sorrow. He looked from Tyorl to Kelida, he homeless, she clanless, and Stanach shivered.

It was Lavim who finally broke the silence. There was nothing in his deep, merry voice to tell any that he sensed the elf’s sorrow or the dwarf’s pity. He sidled up beside Tyorl and pointed to the nearest pile of ashes.

“Tyorl, what are those? They look like the remains of watch-fires, but there’s too many of ’em to be that.”

Tyorl glanced down at the kender. “They were not watch-fires, kenderkin. I wasn’t here to see it, but I’m told that the people burned most of what they couldn’t carry with them into exile. Those are the marks of funeral pyres, and the funeral was for a way of life.”

Lavim tucked his blue-knuckled, freezing hands beneath his arms.

“What a shame, Tyorl. Burning is the worst, if you ask me. Whatever it was, I would have hidden it, or carried it in my pouches, or sold it to a gnome vendor. Burning is such a waste. Now, you have to start all over again.”

“It would never be the same. It has changed.” He might have said ‘it has vanished’ or ‘it has died.’

Stanach shook his head. “All who live change,” he said quietly. “Even, it seems, elves.”

Tyorl’s blue eyes, soft only a moment ago with his sadness, iced over and grew hard. “No, dwarf. We have known no change for too many long centuries. The only change an elf knows is death.”

Stanach snorted impatiently, already regretting his fumbling attempt at comfort. “Then you’re dead already, Tyorl, and wasting good air that others could be breathing. Your city, your way of life has changed. Perhaps we should consider you not an elf but a ghost, eh?”

Tyorl drew a breath to answer, then turned back to the silent city.

“Perhaps.”

Lavim watched as Tyorl led Kelida away. His long eyes narrowed, and he absently twirled the end of his thick white braid around a finger.

“Stanach,” he said, “if the elves burned everything before they left here, what’s Tyorl going to find for Kelida to wear?”

Stanach shrugged. “I don’t know. Ever since we got within a mile of this place, that damn elf has been more ghost than anything else. Maybe he’ll spirit up something for her.” Stanach started down the road. “Let’s go, Lavim. The sooner we get out of here, the easier I’ll be.”

Lavim fell in beside the dwarf. He still didn’t know half of what was going on. Kelida’s sword, some missing ranger, and a couple of dwarven thanes all figured into it somehow. And who was Piper?

A small wooden stag, frozen by the woodcarver’s art into a graceful leap, lay caught in a tangled nest of silver necklaces and golden earrings. A child’s toy amid a mother’s jewelry. Stanach reached for the oak stag and freed it as gently as though it lived. He turned it over idly and then smiled. Carved in the belly of the stag with deft strokes that might have been only the careful feathering of the beast’s fur, was a stylized anvil bisected by a dwarven F rune. A dwarf’s craft.

Stanach put the stag carefully aside and looked around the room. The place was a shambles.

Beautifully wrought tapestries, woven floor coverings, and soft pillows, whose designs were picked out in bright silk thread, lay scattered about the room as though thrown down in desperate haste. A tall wardrobe, elegantly painted with a delicate, stylized hunting scene, lay where it had fallen during someone’s frantic preparations for exile.

Lavim staggered into the room, his arms loaded with a pile of mismatched clothing. “Here you go, Stanach. Tyorl says to look through these for Kelida.”

“Aye, and where is she?”