The necklaces marked Saarh as important too. At her shoulder stood an older goblin with a crooked face. Mudwort had seen the older one during previous visions. One of his cheeks was higher than the other, and his lower lip drooped as if the muscles in his jaw didn’t work properly. At first Mudwort had thought the old one stupid, but his eyes were bright and filled with intelligence, and the four necklaces he wore suggested he was important to the clan: Saarh’s consort, likely.
Mudwort had listened to the two of them several times and recalled an argument. The crooked-faced goblin did not want to leave the caves in the mountains, but Saarh insisted, saying food was becoming scarce, and there would be plenty in the woods.
“But the clan will return someday, Saarh. Goblins belong to the earth,” the crooked-faced goblin had said.
“Yes,” Saarh said. “That is also certain, a return.”
“Goblins were meant to live under the press of the dirt and stone.”
Had she truly brought them out of the mountain for food? Mudwort wondered. Or had she, too, touched the spear and let it tug her along on its own path? Mudwort again cursed herself for not going after the spear the moment they’d set foot in the forest, leaving Direfang and everyone else behind in her pursuit of it. She almost let the vision dissolve, so she could renew her quest that very moment. But she lingered and watched, wanting to catch a glimpse of Saarh with the spear again.
Mudwort squeezed her eyes tightly shut and concentrated.
“Remember the vision. Where did Saarh find the spear? Remember it now. Remember!” Within the passing of a few heartbeats, Mudwort saw the sun setting in the back of her mind. Then she saw as Saarh and the crooked-faced goblin-whom she recalled was named Brab-left their large clan behind and walked west.
Mudwort again watched Saarh find the spear.
She watched Saarh rub the stones of her necklaces as she approached the largest oak tree in the young forest.
It was an ugly tree, Mudwort thought, that particular oak more crooked than Brab. It leaned to the north, and its lowest branches were dead. The bark was thick and corky, and its leaves were oval-shaped with bristly edges. The acorns were big, and the cups that held them looked spiky and itchy.
As Mudwort let the vision progress, she saw Saarh gesture and split the trunk. In the next instant, the tree shriveled to a woody pulp, the leaves vanished, and standing where the trunk had been just moments before floated a spear-Chislev’s spear.
Saarh slowly approached the spear, bowed to it, and offered a prayer to Chislev. Mudwort thought her ancient counterpart weak and stupid for worshiping one of Krynn’s gods. But perhaps Saarh simply hadn’t known any better. Saarh stretched a hand out.
The spear was green, as if it had been fashioned from a too-young tree whose bark had been stripped. Slivers of gold, silver, and platinum were inlaid along the shaft. Tiny gems that sparkled in the last rays of the sun were sprinkled among the precious metal runes. Most of them were diamonds, but there were also emeralds and a few yellow-hued stones that looked like pieces of sunlight caught on water.
Its tip was metal, gleaming dully. Just below it was a silver band that held small rings from which dangled dark yellow feathers.
“Chislev’s symbol, these feathers,” Saarh said, as though she were talking to Mudwort. “Chislev’s spear, this. The only weapon our god wielded.” Saarh slowly wrapped the fingers of her right hand around the shaft.
Mudwort could feel the power in the weapon flow into Saarh. She focused all her energy on seeing more.
“What happened to Saarh after that? What? What?
What?” But that part of the vision had concluded. Mudwort saw only a blur of green, like the forest spinning around her, and she saw a finished goblin city, not nearly as large as the one Direfang dreamed of. It was the one the ancient clan had built at Saarh’s direction.
Saarh was there, standing apart from the clan and staring up at the twilight sky, pointing to a star formation and saying that was Chislev’s and that she was Chislev’s too. The spear was firmly in her hand, and Brab was with her, no longer crooked.
“The spear did that, the healing,” Mudwort said to herself. “It made Brab straight and fine-looking, and it made the forest grow.” In the vision, what had been a young wood was lusher, the trees taller. It was a much, much older and richly developed wood than what Saarh and her clansmen had first come upon. “What else can Chislev’s forgotten weapon do? Mudwort’s spear. What else! Is there anything else?”
And why couldn’t she see what had happened between when Saarh gained the spear and when the forest grew? What had she missed?
Mudwort tried something different. She looked ahead, wanting to see what happened next. The green blurred, and her senses whirled until she was weak and dizzy. When the colors stopped shifting, she found herself looking upon a far older forest-indeed, the woods she was physically in. She saw the ground where the ancient goblin village had been, but there were no homes and no goblins anymore. Had they all returned underground, as Saarh predicted they eventually would?
Again and again she searched for the shaman, finding nothing.
“The spear, then,” Mudwort decided. “Wasted enough time on this. Find the spear now. Mudwort’s spear.” Mudwort wondered if maybe she was afraid to find it for some reason. Once she had the spear, her great quest, her obsession, would be over. There’d be nothing left to tug her through the woods, nothing left to seek. Was the search itself more rewarding and exciting?
“No. Find the spear now.” She directed her magical sight to the north and west, following the thread that still connected her. How long she spent searching, she couldn’t guess. But some time, too long, she thought, as her calves ached and her neck cramped.
“There it is. Not far now.”
Her mind touched a rotting cloth that at one time had been fine and elaborate, with silver, gold, and platinum metallic threads running through it. Tiny pearls had been sewn into a pattern that she couldn’t make out. The spear was wrapped in the rotting cloth and buried deep like the Dark Knights buried their fallen.
Who buried it?
Saarh?
Brab?
Their offspring?
Had the ancient shaman no longer needed the weapon? Had she discarded it just as Chislev had thrown it away? Did Saarh finally learn that the gods were worthless and, thus, Chislev’s spear useless too?
Mudwort’s fingers happily twirled in the dirt and basked in the eldritch aura that seeped out of the spear.
“Mudwort’s spear.”
She knew precisely where it was, and she extricated her hands from the earth and hurried toward its hiding place.
Thya, who’d been quietly watching from behind a thick willow, scrambled to keep pace.
DEAD SILENCE
Nine hundred knights: Bera hadn’t led so many into battle before.
She walked at the front of the column, her most seasoned scout, Tavor, at her side, Zocci a few paces behind, Isaam next. The rest followed four or five across, the trees too close for them to march in a regular formation. She kept the pace measured because of the sorcerer; she needed his cooperation, and it wouldn’t do to either have him fall behind and get lost or to make him so exhausted that he couldn’t cast a single spell.
Her knights would be more than enough to slaughter any number of goblins. But she might need Isaam’s magic against Grallik. And she would need his spells to record, for posterity and her superiors, the obliteration of the goblins and the-
“Traitor,” she hissed, thinking of Grallik. Her scout glanced at her, but she gestured for him to face forward.
“Landmarks,” she said needlessly. “Keep looking for them, Tavor. Find us something that corresponds to the map.”
She hated traitors and couldn’t stop thinking of Grallik.
The former Gray Robe was everything she despised in one half-elf package. He would die, like the goblins he’d fled the mining camp with, but he wouldn’t die easily. Maybe she’d use the traitor Horace to keep Grallik alive with healing spells so she could prolong the half-elf’s agony. That thought brought a slight smile to her lips. Maybe she’d kill the pathetic Horace first in full view of Grallik. And maybe she’d have the wizard burned alive-according to her reports, fire was his specialty.
How could he have turned his back on the Dark Knights?
The Order was everything to Bera-her heart, the code she lived by, and the family she’d adopted since joining the ranks. The knighthood had been good to her, giving her a purpose in life, and she’d earned her status; not a single award or medal had been a gift. Early in her career, she’d entertained the notion of rising to head the entire knighthood, or at the least leading the knights that reported to Neraka. That was a goal she’d let slip away through the years, considering it too lofty and unrealistic; she’d not had the opportunities to distinguish herself in that way, and up until that moment her actual rank had been modest.
But her mission might catch the right people’s attention. Her superiors were livid over the goblins’ escape. They were rats, simple slave labor, but they had slapped the knighthood in its collective face by killing their overseers at the mining camp and by going unpunished and roaming free. For the honor of the Order, they had to be caught and made an example of.
And if-when-she was successful, the Order might reward her with a high advancement in rank. At her age she might not get such an opportunity again to achieve and impress.
“Tavor?”
The scout shook his head. “No landmarks yet, Commander. But from the map, I still believe we are headed in the correct direction. This forest is so vast, though, it is hard to read.”
“Read it regardless,” she said. “And read it quickly.”