Nancy Berberick - Stormblade

Lavim, perverse and adamant, still insisted that though Piper was dead, the mage spoke to him, whispering inside his head. Mostly lecturing and scolding, according to the kender.

Stanach bent to his work again. He hadn’t the heart for believing in ghosts. Piper was dead. He’d buried him just as he was preparing to bury Tyorl now.

They were seven who gathered in the Valley of the Thanes, under the shadow of Duncan’s Tomb and in twilight’s fragile glow, to honor Tyorl. It was a measure of Hornfel’s gratitude toward the elf who had died in saving his life that he had commanded that Tyorl’s cairn be erected in the gardens that had been, until now, the inviolable precincts of thanes and kings. It was a measure of his respect that he would speak Tyorl’s eulogy. Why, Stanach wondered, did Hornfel carry Stormblade with him into the Valley of the Thanes?

Grimy and sweating still, Stanach watched as Kelida, with Hauk beside her, took her place beside the grave. The dwarf smiled, for the first time genuinely. The two had been together only a few days. They moved in concert now as though they’d known the way of each other for years. Kembal and Finn carried Tyorl’s body into the valley and laid it within the grave that Stanach had made. The piles of stones seemed like heaped darkness beside the frame of Tyorl’s cairn. The rangers went to stand beside Hauk. They were the last of the Nightmare Company, come to bid a brother farewell.

With a quiet deference to the friends gathered here, Hornfel grounded Stormblade’s point as though in salute and leaned the Kingsword against the piled stones before he took his place at the foot of the cairn. Lavim, green eyes quiet and solemn, came to stand beside Stanach. The dwarf hoped he wasn’t going to start talking about ghosts now.

Lavim reached up to gently pat Stanach’s shoulder. “You did all this?”

Stanach nodded grimly.

“It’s very nice,” he whispered. He cocked a thumb at Duncan’s Tomb. “But the shadow of that big floating thing kind of gets in the way, don’t you think? Piper says it’s Duncan’s Tomb and—”

Stanach closed his eyes. “Hush, Lavim. Not now.”

The wind, cold and thin, fluted through the Valley of the Thanes. Its song did not disturb the silence of those gathered by the cairn but framed it.

When he spoke, Hornfel quoted the wisdom of the proverb he’d remembered on the Northgate wall with revolution boiling at his back and guyll fyr raging at his feet.

“The wolf at the door,” he said softly, “will make brothers of strangers. The wolf’s been snapping and howling outside Thorbardin, and for too long we’ve bolted our doors against him, believing that there is no wolf if we don’t hear him.

“We hear the howling now, who have too long ignored it. We hear it in the mourning of the kin-reft, in the cries of those who die under the claws and fangs of war.

“We hear the wolf’s howl in the wind of the dragons’ wings. Tyorl silenced it for a moment, but we will hear it again.”

Hornfel lifted his eyes then and looked at each person gathered at the cairn.

“But we see, too. We see brothers where we once thought strangers stood. We see kin, if not kind. And kin we’ve too long turned away from, kin who have tried to silence the wolf’s bloody howl while we waited for it to leave, to hunt some other ground.

“The wolf won’t leave; Verminaard still ranges our lands, and the war will not go away until it has stolen everything and everyone. As it has stolen Tyorl.

“I mourn with you for the death of a friend.”

Lost in his sorrow for Tyorl’s death and the echoes of past mourning; Stanach didn’t realize that Hornfel had finished until he felt, and then heard, a change in the wind’s tenor. He looked up at Kelida, directly across the cairn. Head cocked, the last light catching in her red hair, she seemed to have noticed the change, too.

Hauk glanced at Kembal. Finn tilted his head back to look up at the dark rim of the valley.

Lavim drew a short breath and let it out in a soft, wondering sigh. Stanach turned in time to see the kender take an old flute from his pocket. Piper’s flute.

Listening for only a moment, as though to assure himself of the melody and his proper place to join it, the kender raised the flute to his lips and began to play. The hard walls of the Valley of the Thanes became faint and gray as ancient memories.

Sunlight danced down a silver river, and Stanach not only saw the jeweled play of light, he smelled the rich, dark mud on the water’s banks, tasted the sweet river itself.

Diamond ice sheathed winter trees, melting at the touch of a hand and sliding away to make new jewels. Kelida lifted her hand, touched a finger to her lips, and Stanach felt the cold on his own lips.

Dew drifting back to the sky on the summer sun glistened on Hauk’s face; like tears it crept into his dark beard. Like a wraith, or only the dew that it was, it vanished under the sunlight. It took a moment longer for the tears to dry on Stanach’s face.

In days after, he would try to capture the melody of that song. Always, though he would remember and see again the images of the forest he saw in the shadowless light of gloaming, the song would elude him except as the half-remembered laughter of wind in the trees.

Lavim dropped to his heels, and watched as Hauk, Kembal, and Finn arranged the last of the cairn stones over Tyorl. The sound of that sad building echoed hollowly throughout the valley.

“I didn’t mean to make them cry,” the kender whispered.

Aye, spellcaster ? Piper’s voice was very gentle. What did you mean to do then?

“I wanted to make a song for them to remember Tyorl by, that’s all.”

He sighed and shook his head, listening to the wind that was only wind now. “And—and I know that Stanach built this cairn here all by himself, and that Hornfel said he could be buried with kings and thanes. But it seemed kind of sad that Tyorl wouldn’t be in his woods anymore. I wanted them to remember Qualinesti for him.”

And they will. You crafted a fine song, Lavim.

Lavim frowned then. “I did? All by myself? It wasn’t you or the flute?”

Who’s was the intent?

“Mine.”

Then it was your song, aye?

He’d done magic all by himself! Lavim scrambled to his feet, eyes wide. “Piper! Did I—”

Hush, now, Lavim! It’s not over yet. Watch—quietly!—for a moment more. And then, just do as I tell you.

Stormblade sang the high song of steel as Hornfel withdrew the Kingsword from its scabbard. Though the last light had fled from the Valley of the Thanes, the blade’s red steel heart shone. The light of Reorx’s forge pulsed gently, spilling it’s crimson glow across the faces of those gathered by the completed cairn.

Like bloody shadows, Stanach thought.

Then, caught by the glow, caught by the light of the Kingsword he had helped to forge and remembering suddenly the joy of Stormblade’s making, the promise of its steel heart and the hope it represented, Stanach thought again.

Not like bloody shadows at all, though Reorx knew enough blood had been shed for Stormblade. Bloody shadows would be cold as death. The light of the Kingsword shone bright in the darkness of this burial place. Like a lantern in a brave man’s hand. Aye, like that.

Hornfel raised Stormblade high and even the shadow of Duncan’s Tomb did not obscure its light.

The wind fell silent. Those standing by Tyorl’s cairn lifted their heads a little as though, all at the same moment, they scented something in the silence.

Stanach heard Lavim catch his breath, a sharp sound of delighted surprise.

Hornfel grounded the gleaming blade on the largest stone of the cairn, a soldier’s farewell. As the blade tip touched the stone, Stormblade’s light seemed to grow momentarily brighter, shattering the darkness, just as Lavim’s laughter, a gleeful whoop, shattered the silence.