“Then why don’t you take down the shield? “Silvan demanded.
“We have tried to convince the people to unite and stand against General Konnal and the Heads of House, who decided to raise the shield. But most refuse to heed our words. They say the sickness is a plague brought to us from the outside: The shield is all that stands between them and the evils of the world. If it is removed, we all will die.”
“Perhaps they are right,” Silvan said, glancing back through the shield, thinking of the ogres attacking in the night. “There is no plague striking down elves, at least none that I have heard of. But there are other enemies. The world is fraught with danger. In here, at least you are safe.”
“Your father said that we elves had to join the world, become a part of it,” Rolan replied with a grim smile. “Otherwise we would wither away and die, like a branch that is cut from the tree or the—”
“—rose stripped from the bush,” Silvan said and smiled in remembrance. “We haven’t heard from my father in a long time,” he added, looking down at the gray ash and smoothing it with the toe of his boot. “He was fighting the great dragon Beryl near Qualinesti, a land she holds in thrall. Some believe he is dead-my mother among them, although she refuses to admit it.”
“If he died, he died fighting for a cause he believed in,” Rolan said. “His death has meaning. Though it may seem pointless now, his sacrifice will help destroy the evil, bring back the light to drive away the darkness. He died a living man! Defiant, courageous.
“When our people die,” Rolan continued, his voice taking on increasing bitterness, “one hardly notices their passing. The feather flutters and falls limp.”
He looked at Silvan. “You are young, vibrant, alive. I feel the life radiate from you, as once I felt it radiate from the sun. Contrast yourself with me. You see it, don’t you: the fact that I am withering away? That we are all slowly being drained of life? Look at me, Your Highness. You can see I am dying.”
Silvan did not know what to say. Certainly the elf was paler than normal, his skin had a gray tinge to it, but Silvan had put that down to age, perhaps, or to the gray dust. He recalled now that the other elves he had seen bore the same gaunt, hollow-eyed look.
“Our people will see you, and they will see by contrast what they have lost,” Rolan pursued. “This is the reason you have been sent to us. To show them that there is no plague in the world outside. The only plague is within.” Rolan laid his hand on his heart.
“Within us! You will tell the people that if we rid ourselves of this shield, we will restore our land and ourselves to life.”
Though my own has ended, Silvan said to himself. The pain returned. His head ached. His armed throbbed. Rolan regarded him with concern.
“You do not look well, Your Highness. We should leave this place. We have lingered near the shield too long already. You must come away before the sickness strikes you, as well.”
Silvanoshei shook his head. “Thank you, Rolan, but I cannot leave. The Shield may yet open and let me out as it has let me in.”
“If you stay here, you will die, Your Majesty,” said Rolan.
“Your mother would not want that. She would want you to come to Silvanost and to claim your rightful place upon the throne.”
You will someday sit upon the throne of the United Elven Nations, Silvanoshei. On that day, you will right the wrongs of the past. You will purge our people of the sins we elves have committed, the sin of pride, the sin of prejudice, the sin of hatred. These sins have brought about our ruin. You will be our redemption.
His mother’s words. He remembered the very first time she had spoken them. He had been five or six. They were camping in the wilderness near Qualinesti. It was night. Silvan was asleep.
Suddenly a cry pierced his dreams, brought him wide awake. The fire burned low, but by its light he could see his father grappling with what seemed a shadow. More shadows surrounded them.
He saw nothing else because his mother flung her body over his, pressed him to the ground. He could not see, he could not breathe, he could not cry out. Her fear, her warmth, her weight crushed and smothered him.
And then it was allover. His mother’s warm, dark weight was lifted from him. Alhana held him in her arms, cradling him, weeping and kissing him and asking him to forgive her if she hurt him. She had a bloody gash on her thigh. His father bore a deep knife wound in his shoulder, just missing the heart. The bodies of three elves, clad all in black, lay around the fire. Years later Silvanoshei woke suddenly in the night with the cold realization that one of those assassins had been sent to murder him.
They dragged away the bodies, left them to the wolves, not considering them worthy of proper burial rites. His mother rocked him to sleep, and she spoke those words to him to comfort him. He would hear them often, again and again.
Perhaps now she was dead. His father dead. Their dream lived, however, lived in him.
He turned away from the shield. “I will come with you,” he said to Rolan of the kirath.
Chapter Five
The Holy Fire
In the old days, the glory days, before the War of the Lance, the road that led from Neraka to the port city of Sanction had been well maintained, for that road was the only route through the mountains known as the Lords of Doom. The road—known as the Hundred Mile Road, for it was almost one hundred miles long, give or take a furlong or two-was paved with crushed rock. Thousands of feet had marched over the crushed rock during the intervening years; booted human feet, hairy goblin feet, clawed draconian feet. So many thousand that the rock had been pounded into the ground and was now deeply embedded.
During the height of the War of the Lance, the Hundred Mile Road had been clogged with men, beasts, and supply wagons.
Anyone who had need of speed took to the air, riding on the backs of the swift-flying blue dragons or traversing the skies in floating citadels. Those forced to move along the road could be delayed for days, blocked by the hundreds of foot soldiers who slogged along its torturous route, either marching to the city of Neraka or marching away from it. Wagons lurched and jolted along the road. The grade was steep, descending from the high mountain valley all the way to sea level, making the journey a perilous one.
Wagons loaded with gold, silver, and steel, boxes of stolen jewels, booty looted from people the armies had conquered, were hauled by fearsome beasts known as mammoths, the only creatures strong enough to drag the heavily laden wagons up the mountain road. Occasionally one of the wagons would tip over and spill its contents or lose a wheel, or one of the mammoths would run berserk and trample its keepers and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in its path. At these times, the road was shut down completely, bringing everything to a halt while officers tried to keep their men in order and fumed and fretted at the delay.
The mammoths were gone, died out. The men were gone too.
Most of them now old. Some of them now dead. All of them now forgotten. The road was empty, deserted. Only the wind’s whistling breath blew across the road, which, with its smooth, inlaid gravel surface, was considered one of the man-made wonders of Krynn.
The wind was at the backs of the Dark Knights as they galloped down the winding, twisting snake’s back that was the Hundred Mile Road. The wind, a remnant of the storm, howled among the mountain tops, an echo of the Song of Death they had heard in Neraka, but only an echo, not as terrible, not as frightening. The Knights rode hard, rode in a daze, rode without any clear idea of why they rode or where they were heading. They rode in an ecstasy, an excitement that was unlike anything they had ever before experienced.