Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

“What will it prove? I can play the instrument, but I don’t know the notes for any spell.”

Lavim whistled the quick, light notes he had played to trigger his smell spell. “Try those.” He whistled the tune again. “Got, ’em?”

Tyorl held the flute gingerly. “Lavim.”

“Try it! Go ahead. Piper says it’s all right.”

The elf looked at the flute, glanced sharply at Lavim, and drew a quick breath.

“Go on.”

Tyorl tried the tune, braced for disaster at worst, for the unimaginably foul odor that had sickened him in the river cave at best. Nothing happened but that the breeze quickened a little.

“Piper says that the wind has nothing to do with the flute. Something about the air currents over the fire or something. See? Try it again.”

Tyorl did. The breeze blew at the same strength and the air still smelled of the wildfire’s smoke, but nothing else. He stared at the flute in his hand and saw, just a moment too late, the kender’s own hand dart out and snatch the instrument back. It was secreted in deep pockets before Tyorl could protest.

“Lavim! Wait! Give—”

But Lavim was gone, trotting ahead to catch up with Finn, the flute once again in his possession.

Tyorl started after him. If Lavim had been on the fell when the black dragon had struck, he might have been able to help. But, he was night ranging and hadn’t been there. Blaming him for that now was as fruitless as blaming himself for missing his shot at the dragon when he did. Tyorl ran faster. He was not thinking about ghosts or chances missed. He suddenly realized that Lavim had proved that the flute’s magic worked for Lavim alone. The implications were frightening.

From the hill where he walked the dark watch in the hours after midnight, Tyorl saw the fire rampaging in the marshes and bogs on the Plains of Death. The wind from the west had calmed after sunset, but the wildfire no longer needed the wind’s push to speed it on its way to the mountains. The marsh grass might as well have been lamp oil; nothing would stop the fire now.

Tyorl cursed bitterly and looked up at the stars, tiny chips of glittering ice scattered across the black sky. Solinari, high and bright, was girded by a hazy silver ring. Lunitari’s light crimsoned the dark hills to the east and sent indigo shadows running down to the lowlands. The red moon’s ring was pink as water-washed blood. Tyorl smelled snow in the air. We’ll not be making the mountains before the fire does, the elf thought, and that means we won’t be making Thorbardin at all.

He ran his thumb along the polished wood of his longbow. Smooth as silk the yew felt under his thumb, and familiar. And useless, useless to defend Kelida against the dragon.

Tyorl winced as pain and regret clawed at his heart. That, too, was familiar. His straight, true arrows had bounded off the ebony dragon’s scaled hide as though they’d been repelled by steel. A bolt through the creature’s eye would have slowed it, might have killed it, but the dragon moved too fast and had flown well out of Tyorl’s range before he could sight and aim. For a moment, as the dragon leaped for the sky, he’d thought that Stanach had pulled Kelida free. He watched the struggle on the giant beast’s back, praying, then cursing as the beast took to the sky. Stanach, the elf thought bitterly, Stormblade has cost you kin, friend, and hand. You say Reorx blessed the blade; I say he cursed it. But you tried. You fought like a wolf for it.

He turned his back on the lurid glare of the guyll fyr and, his eye caught by the small, tame glow of the campfire in the hollow, watched the shadows of its smoke playing across the ground below. Red beneath the sun, the rocks and thick dust of the desert floor gleamed strangely purple under the eerie glow of the moons. Lavim, as ever, was nowhere to be seen. Tyorl hadn’t caught up with him before the camp was made and hadn’t been able to find him since.

Night riding, he thought, or communing with his ghostly mage. He veered wide of that thought. He was certain that Lavim believed that dead Piper spoke with him. Tyorl didn’t know what he himself thought. Yet, it was true that Lavim had known his words before he’d half-thought them himself. When he’d tried to discuss the matter with Finn, the rangerlord had shrugged and expressed nothing but the most caustic disbelief.

Tyorl glanced over the camp again. Finn lay wrapped in his cloak and slept near the fire. Kem, whom Tyorl had relieved from the watch an hour ago, sat staring into the shadows. Tyorl wondered when he would sleep. Kern’s silence had always been a thing of good-natured, amused observation. Quiet by nature, the healer had left most of the talking to his voluble younger brother. Now it seemed that Lehr’s death had stolen away the gentle, humorous light in Kern’s eyes. Kem wanted revenge and so, too, did Tyorl.

Tyorl was suddenly cold to his bones. It was the first time he’d admitted, even to himself, that he believed Kelida dead.

The black dragon had flown out of the east. Out of Thorbardin. It could only mean that the revolution Stanach had feared was a thing accomplished. Realgar reigned in the dwarven kingdom and had dragons at his command. Aye, and Verminaard as his ally.

Again he whispered a curse, this time against the sudden tightening of his throat. Last night he’d been wondering whether he was in love with Kelida, hiding from the idea and yet waiting to catch the soft sound of her voice, hoping to feel the warmth of her casual touch.

Tonight, and too late, he knew that he loved her. Now he could only look to memory to hear her voice, to feel her hand light on his arm, or catch the sun glinting in her hair.

Would he have told her? Aye, in a minute!

And what of Hauk?

The elf smiled bitterly. It hardly mattered now. They were both dead, and he had only a handful of moments, now memories of a farmer’s girl turned barmaid. It was too late to worry about what might have grown from those moments. They were gone.

Tyorl resumed his watch walk, the wildfire on his left and shadows before and behind him. Too late for anything, he thought coldly, but vengeance. No matter at all who ruled in Thorbardin now. He’d find a way to the mountain cities, and he’d find his vengeance for Kelida, and for Hauk whom they’d both loved.

From a night-filled ravine west of the campsite, Lavim watched Tyorl pacing on the hilltop. He’d recovered kender-quick from his desert run and, knowing that Tyorl would be after the flute now, had slipped into the shadows of the twilight and avoided all three rangers. He wanted to talk to Piper without being bothered with Tyorl’s demands for the flute. Lavim had some questions that needed answering.

He wriggled to a more comfortable seat on the rocks and scowled into the night. The problem was that Piper hadn’t been giving him many answers at all. He’d stopped giving answers right about the time the kender took out the flute. Lavim ran his fingers along the smooth red cherry wood and smiled slyly. He suspected that Piper’s lack of response to his last question was an answer in itself.

“I think,” he said, pointing the flute to where he imagined Piper would be standing if he were anywhere but inside his own head. “I think that I can use this flute any time I want to.”

Piper said nothing.

“I think it doesn’t matter whether or not you tell the flute what magic tune to play.”

Piper still said nothing.

Lavim grinned. “That’s what I think. You know why? Well, I’ll tell you: because that smell-spell was my idea, and the flute played the song I needed when I needed it. That’s why you want me to give the flute to Tyorl, isn’t it? I can use the magic and I don’t need you to tell me how to. I just need you to be inside my head so the flute will work. What do you say to that?”