Nancy Berberick: The Inheritance

He stood between the kingdom of elves and the hidden kingdom of dwarves. He stood in stonelands owned by no one but buzzards and ravens, fought over by bands of outlaws. They fought for the roads, rocky passages over which merchants had to travel when they went out from the towns and cities of Abanasinia and down to Tarsis. Humans and hill dwarves threading the byways between the kingdoms of Qualinesti and Thorbardin, they found themselves in a vast land of cruel realms whose varied borders changed like the wind. These were the windswept reaches populated by filthy goblin towns from which those heartless creatures came ravening at the first scent of prey. The goods they kept. The women and children they sold in Tarsis for slaves. The men and boys they killed. Should the merchants have the great good luck to encounter no goblins, they might find themselves beset by bands of outlaws whose numbers were made up of humans banished from towns and cities, disgraced dwarven sons cast out of their clans, and dark elves swept out of Qualinesti like storm-broken branches.

When these goblins and outlaws didn't have luckless travelers to fall upon, they fell upon each other, for they had their own feuds, and, for the most part, they were each other's worst enemy.

The dwarves in Thorbardin didn't care what went on outside their mountain. In Qualinost the elves liked to let the goblins and the outlaws keep each other in check, only coming out of their forest to scour the stonelands when the brigands became over-bold with the borders. In that way, dark little reigns rose and fell between the mountain and the forest, their histories recorded only in blood and dust. Brand had seen no few of these risings and fallings. He had written some of that dark history.

The Wind dropped lower, sailing cold along the cliffs, whirling dust and the scent of rain before it. Brand hardly lifted his head to that lie. It hadn't rained in the borderland for two turns of the two moons.

An eagle screamed in the sky, the sound like a ripping. Lower down, at the bottom of the cliff, a darkness of ravens quarreled over something. Brand kept his eye on the black-wings. It was an old habit, one he'd never broken, as old as his habit of listening behind.

He wasn't surprised when a voice deep and low said, "Someone's found dinner, eh?"

One broad-winged raven leaped up from the feast, then dropped suddenly, clawing at the eyes of a rival. Brand thought he smelled blood when the wind changed, but maybe not. He turned to the one-eyed dwarf. "What?"

"Spotted ’em," the dwarf said. He cocked his head to give his good eye the view and looked below at the raven-feast. He pitched a rock over the side at the crowd of ravens. Shrieking, they rose, and in that instant, Brand saw the white gleam of a rib cage and the blood glistening on spilled intestines. He was too far up to see whose rib cage that was and whose guts-goat or elf or dwarf, maybe even a deer wandered out of Qualinesti, or a goblin or a human like him. The ravens hung in the sky for a few moments, then settled again.

"Spotted them," said the dwarf, "and I reckon we'll be seeing them tomorrow or the next day, heading right along the edge of the forest, the whole crowd out for a ride."

Brand grunted. "Where are they now?"

The dwarf skinned his teeth in a cool grin. "A day out from the city. ’Nother day or two, we'll see 'em riding along the edge of the forest. We'll do best to wait till they're right in the shadow of the wood, just where the ground rears up and the stones all have names."

Brand squinted away north and west. He imagined he could see them, the shining line, like a thin snake winding through the forest: elves.

"All right," he said, "how much gouging are the goblins doing on the deal?"

"Right to the bone." The dwarf snorted. "Greedy bastards. They want the whole field to loot. I told 'em you have a taking to do. Told 'em it’s personal. They keep out of our way, they can have the rest. And I told 'em they could have their headman’s son back, all his parts still on him and mostly working, if it all goes the way you want. Good as a standing army, one squealing goblin whose da might want him back."

"You told them they'd get him back?"

The dwarf’s smile was as cold to see as the high wind was to feel. "Told 'em what you said, Brand. Every word."

Brand clapped the dwarf on the shoulder. "Good enough, Char." Beyond the ravens squabbling, out past the stony stream run nearly dry, the wind rolled across the tops of the trees, and the trees began to bend their heads.

"Smell the rain?" Char said. He squinted up at the iron sky.

Brand didn't answer. He turned his back on the forest and went away across the cliff. He found a winding way down on steps not made by dwarf or human or even stinking elves. When he was full of dwarf spirits, Char liked to say gods made these strong stone steps. Brand had no patience for that prate. He knew better. Wind and rain and storm made those steps.

Down on the flats again, Brand looked west, across the puny stream that had once been a river. Stagger Stream they called it now, those who lived in the borderland. Years before a rockfall had blocked the river at the headwater, and only a skimp of water came down after that. Not much of that, either, since the last time it rained. Across the puny water lay the Notch, a wedge that seemed to be cut out of Qualinesti. It hadn't been. Trees simply refused to grow there, probably because there was too much stone. A farm had been there, and people had called it the Notch. Not "Notch Farm" or any name like that. Just the Notch. A man had cleared the stones and made a house and fences. He'd scraped the earth and found soil enough to grow food for his family. His goats had eaten the tough grass springing up at the edge of the wood. Sometimes, when the bold mood was on them, the farmer and his sons took deer from the forest, or game birds.

That was a time ago. Now the stone house and fences were toppled. Qualinesti had swallowed the farm. Not the forest, not that. The kingdom had claimed it, and the elves had snatched the land and not made any pretense about asking. Too close to their borders, they’d said, a troop of shining warriors in mail and bright helms. The tallest of them, the leader who had eyes that narrowed to slits when he was thinking, whom his soldiers addressed as a prince, tilted his head as though the farmer and his family stood so far below him it was hard to see them. He'd spoken in Common, pronouncing the words as though they were too coarse to pass royal lips. "Go on. Get out of here." And when the farmer and his kin stood their ground, the elf had ordered his soldiers to get rid of them.

Hooting and laughing, the elves had chased them, pricking their heels with the glinting steel of their lances until they'd driven them away into the stony foothills. Most of the family had died that winter. Looking into the Notch, Brand bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. Sometimes, over the rim of the jug of dwarf spirits, he'd say to Char, "That place, the Notch, used to be a little fastness of stone. Not big enough, though, and no one could defend it. The ground's too flat. Me, I like the high ground. You can hold high ground forever."

Char would laugh, passing the jug or taking it back. "Are you on that horse again? Talking about holding the high ground and turning yourself into King Brand, the terror of all the goblin towns around? Ain't the goblins you got to worry about. Them elves are the ones. Whatever place you hold, they'll just run you out of there." He belched and wiped his mouth on a greasy sleeve. "Ain't like it hasn't happened before."

Brand didn't care what Char thought. He had a plan. "It just needs a chance, and I'll know it when it comes. I have the patience to wait. Don't you worry about that."

He did, indeed, have the patience. He'd had it for a long time, carried it through long winters and short summers, through fleet springtimes and aching autumns. When he had nothing else-not food or shelter and only ravens to quarrel with-he had patience. Only days after one of those conversations over the jug, his long patience had been rewarded. He'd heard a little word drifting out of the forest to help him recognize his chance.