“Five thousand elves!” Kitiara marveled.
“Due to my brilliant leadership, Highlord, my small force—there were only six of us—held out against the elves for several days,” said Toede in modest tones. “Despite the fact that I was wounded in fourteen places, I was prepared to fight to the death. But sadly, I lost consciousness and my second-in-command—the cowardly bastard—gave the order to retreat. My men carried me from the field. I was near death, but Queen Takhisis herself healed me.”
“How fortunate for our cause that Her Majesty loves you so much,” said Kitiara dryly. “Now, in regard to the assassins—”
“Yes, let me see if I can recall them.” Toede squinched up his face. Presumably this hideous grimace denoted some sort of thought process. “I first encountered these miscreants in Solace when his lordship sent me there in search of a blue crystal staff. If you could just excuse me one moment—”
Toede dashed off. Kitiara saw him running hither and thither around the camp, accosting the troops, asking questions. Apparently, he got his answers, for Toede came dashing back, his big belly flopping, his jowls jiggling.
“I have remembered, my lord. They were impossible to forget. There was a mongrel half-elf by the name of Tanis, a sickly wizard known as Raistlin Majere and his brother, Caramon. There was a knight. Something Brightblade. And a dwarf known as Flint and a foul little beast of a kender going under the name of Hotfoot—”
Kit muttered something.
Toede interrupted himself to ask, “Do you know these felons, Highlord?”
“Of course not,” said Kitiara sharply. “Why should I?”
“No reason, Highlord,” Toede said, blanching. “None at all. It’s just I thought I heard you say something—”
“I coughed, that was all,” she said, adding irritably, “The smell in this place is foul.”
“It’s the draconians,” said Toede. “Stinking reptiles. I’d get rid of them, but they have their uses. Now, where was I? Ah, yes, the assassins were traveling in company with some barbarians…”
Kitiara was only half-listening. When she had first begun to question Toede, it had all been a game. She had wanted to find out for certain if the assassins had been Tanis, her brothers, her old friends. She hadn’t thought hearing their names, discovering the truth, would affect her so profoundly. The feelings she experienced were mixed. She took a perverse pride in her friends for having slain the powerful Highlord and she was dismayed and uneasy because she might well be connected to them. Above all, she had a sudden strong desire to see them all again—particularly Tanis.
“—the half-breed and his friends arrived in Pax Tharkas,” Toede was saying when she began to listen to him again, “where I was myself at the time, acting as advisor to Lord Verminaard. The felons were traveling in company with a couple of elves, brother and sister. His name was Gilthanas and her name was, let me see”—Toede’s face wrinkled deeply—“Falanalooptyansa or something like that.”
“Lauralanthalasa,” Kitiara said.
“That’s it!” Toede slapped his hand on his thigh, then he regarded her in amazement. “How did you know, Highlord?”
Kitiara realized she had almost given herself away.
“Everyone with a brain knows,” she retorted caustically. “The woman you had in your grubby hands is an elf princess, daughter of the Speaker of the Suns.”
Toede gasped. “Truly?” he quavered.
Kitiara fixed Toede with a stern glare. “You had the daughter of the king of the elves in your grasp and you did nothing!”
“Not me, Highlord!” Toede squeaked, his voice rising in panic. “It was Lord Verminaard. I just remembered. I wasn’t anywhere near Pax Tharkas at the time! I’m sure if I had been in Pax Tharkas I would have recognized the princess at once because, as you say, everyone knows this Lauralapsaloosa… this, this… princess, and I would have advised Lord Verminaard to… uh… uh…” Toede hesitated.
“You would have advised him to hold her hostage. Use her to demand the elves surrender or you would kill her. You would collect a fortune in ransom for her.”
“Yes!” Toede cried. “That’s exactly what I was going to advise his lordship to do. Verminaard often begged me for counsel, you know. They tell me his dying words were: ‘If I had only listened to Toede’… Where are you going, Highlord? Is everything all right?”
Kitiara had risen abruptly to her feet.
“I grow weary of this discussion. Where is my tent?”
Toede leapt up. “I will escort you there myself, Highlord—”
Kitiara rounded on the hobgoblin. “I don’t need a bloody escort! Just tell me where the damn tent is!”
Toede quailed. “Yes, Highlord. You can see it from here.” He pointed meekly to one of the larger tents in the camp. “Over there—”
Kitiara stormed off. She kicked aside a keg and knocked down a draconian who was slow to move out of her way. Ducking thankfully into the cool darkness of the tent, she sat down on the crude bed. She almost immediately got back to her feet again and began to pace.
Lauralanthalasa, known affectionately as Laurana; elf princess, daughter of the Speaker of the Suns—and the betrothed of Tanis Half-Elven.
Tanis had told Kitiara all about that old childhood romance. He had also told her it was forgotten. He loved only one woman in the world, and that was Kitiara.
When she had asked him to travel north with her five years ago, he’d refused. He had made some lame excuse about inner turmoil, the need to think some things over, to come to know himself, try to find some inner peace between the warring halves of his being. He’d heard some rumors of the return of the true gods. He was going to go investigate…
“Investigate gods, my ass!” Kitiara fumed. “He went off to investigate his old girlfriend—the lying bastard!”
Never mind that in the intervening years, Kitiara had herself known a score of lovers, including Tanis’s close friend, Sturm Brightblade, who had journeyed north with her. That liaison had lasted one night only. She’d seduced the young man mainly because she was angry at Tanis. After Sturm there was Ariakas, and now her handsome second-in-command, Bakaris. She didn’t love any of them. She was not sure she loved Tanis, but she was damn sure he should be in love with her—not some spindly-limbed, slant-eyed, pointy-eared elf bitch.
Kitiara no longer cared why or how her friends had come to assassinate Lord Verminaard. All she could think about was Tanis and the elf girl. Was she still with him? What had happened when they were in Pax Tharkas together? Kitiara needed more information, and she regretted having walked away from Toede before he had finished his story. But then, he hadn’t been in Pax Tharkas. He’d said so himself. She needed to find someone who had.
She would ask Commander Grag. But she had to find an excuse for asking him about her friends. He must not suspect. No one must suspect. Ariakas was already suspicious, and if he ever found out that Tanis had been Kit’s lover…
Kitiara collapsed on the bed. She gazed, frowning, up at the canvas ceiling and berated herself.
“What am I doing? Why do I care? Tanis is a man just like every other man I’ve ever known. Except he isn’t,” Kitiara added softly, grudgingly.
All those men in her life since she’d been with Tanis. Kitiara realized now that she’d taken these men into her arms and into her bed in hopes that each new lover would make her forget the old one. The only lover who had spurned her, rejected her, turned his back on her and walked out of her life.
As Kitiara drifted off to sleep she saw Tanis’s face—just as she saw his face every time some other man made love to her.
Far away in Neraka, the fire in the brazier blazed brightly. The flames were reflected in Ariakas’s eyes, but he wasn’t seeing the flames. He was seeing the images within the magical firelight. He was watching and listening with frowning displeasure.
At length, the magical fire consumed the few strands of black curly hair Iolanthe had placed carefully into the brazier. The images of the hobgoblin, Toede, and Kitiara disappeared just as Kitiara stormed off to her tent.