"Good-bye, Sturm," Tas said awkwardly. "I only have one gift that-that you would approve of. I-I don't think you'll understand. But then again, maybe you do now. Maybe you understand better than I do:" Tasslehoff placed a small white feather in the knight's cold hand.
"Quisalan elevas;" Laurana whispered in elven. "Our lovesbond eternaclass="underline" 'She paused, unable to leave him in this darkness.
"Come, Laurana," Flint said gently. "We've said our goodbyes. We must let him go. Reorx waits for him:"
Laurana drew back. Silently, without looking back, the three friends climbed the narrow stairs leading from the sepulcher and walked steadfastly into the chill, stinging sleet of the bitter winter's night.
Far away from the frozen land of Solamnia, one other person said good-bye to Sturm Brightblade.
Silvanesti had not changed with the passing months. Though Lorac's nightmare was ended, and his body lay beneath the soil of his beloved country, the land still remembered Lorac's terrible dreams. The air smelled of death and decay. The trees bent and twisted in unending agony. Misshapen beasts roamed the woods, seeking an end to their tortured existence.
In vain Alhana watched from her room in the Tower of the Stars for some sign of change.
The griffons had come back-as she had known they would once the dragon was gone. She had fully intended to leave Silvanesti and return to her people on Ergoth. But the griffons carried disturbing news: war between the elves and humans.
It was a mark of the change in Alhana, a mark of her suffering these past months, that she found this news distressing. Before she met Tanis and the others, she would have accepted war between elves and humans, perhaps even welcomed it. But now she saw that this was only the work of the evil forces in the world.
She should return to her people, she knew. Perhaps she could end this insanity. But she told herself the weather was unsafe for traveling. In reality, she shrank from facing the shock and the disbelief of her people when she told them of the destruction of their land and her promise to her dying father that the elves would return and rebuild-after they had helped the humans fight the Dark Queen and her minions.
Oh, she would win. She had no doubt. But she dreaded leaving the solitude of her self-imposed exile to face the tumult of the world beyond Silvanesti.
And she dreaded-even as she longed-to see the human she loved. The knight, whose proud and noble face came to her in her dreams, whose very soul she shared through the Starjewel. Unknown to him, she stood beside him in his fight to save his honor. Unknown to him, she shared his agony and came to learn the depths of his noble spirit. Her love for him grew daily, as did her fear of loving him.
And so Alhana continually put off her departure. I will leave, she told herself, when I see some sign I may give my people-a sign of hope. Otherwise they will not come back. They will give up in despair. Day after day, she looked from her window.
But no sign came.
The winter nights grew longer. The darkness deepened. One evening Alhana walked upon the battlements of the Tower of the Stars. It was afternoon in Solamnia then, and-on another Tower-Sturm Brightblade faced a sky blue dragon and a Dragon Highlord called the Dark Lady. Suddenly Alhana felt a strange and terrifying sensation-as though the world had ceased to turn. A shattering pain pierced her body, driving her to the stone below. Sobbing in fear and grief, she clutched the Starjewel she wore around her neck and watched in agony as its light flickered and died.
"So this is my sign!" she screamed bitterly, holding the darkened jewel in her hand and shaking it at the heavens. "There is no hope! There is nothing but death and despair!"
Holding the jewel so tightly that the sharp point bit into her flesh, Alhana stumbled unseeing through the darkness to her room in the Tower. From there she looked out once moue upon her dying land. Then, with a shuddering sob, she closed and locked the wooden shutters of her window.
Let the world do what it will, she told herself bitterly. Let my people meet their end in their own way. Evil will prevail. There is nothing we can do to stop it. I will die here, with my father.
That night she made one final journey out into the land.
Carelessly she threw a thin cape over her shoulders and headed for a grave lying beneath a twisted, tortured tree. In her hand, she held the Starjewel.
Throwing herself down upon the ground, Alhana began to dig frantically with her bare hands, scratching at the frozen ground of her father's grave with fingers that were soon raw and bleeding. She didn't care. She welcomed the pain that was so much easier to bear than the pain in her heart.
Finally, she had dug a small hole. The red moon, Lunatari, crept into the night sky, tinging the silver moon's light with blood. Alhana stared at the Starjewel until she could no longer see it through her tears, then she cast it into the hole she had dug. She forced herself to quit crying. Wiping the tears from her face, she started to fill in the hole.
Then she stopped.
Her hands trembled. Hesitantly, she reached down and brushed the dirt from the Starjewel, wondering if her grief had driven her mad. No, from it came a tiny glimmer of light that grew even stronger as she watched. Alhana lifted the shimmering jewel from the grave.
"But he's dead;" she said softly, staring at the jewel that sparkled in Solinari silver light. "I know death has claimed him. Nothing can change that. Yet, why this light-"
A sudden rustling sound startled her. Alhana fell back, fearing that the hideously deformed tree above Lorac's grave might be reaching to grasp her in its creaking branches. But as she watched she saw the limbs of the tree cease their tortured writhing. They hung motionless for an instant, then-with a sighturned toward the heavens. The trunk straightened and the bark became smooth and began to glisten in the silver moonlight. Blood ceased to drip from the tree. The leaves felt living sap flow once more through their veins.
Alhana gasped. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she looked around her land. But nothing else had changed. None of the other trees were different-only this one, above Lorac's grave.
I am going mad, she thought. Fearfully she turned back to look at the tree upon her father's grave. No, it was changed. Even as she watched, it grew more beautiful.
Carefully, Alhana hung the Starjewel back in its place over her heart. Then she turned and walked back toward the Tower. There was much to be done before she left for Ergoth.
The next morning, as the sun shed its pale light over the unhappy land of Silvanesti, Alhana looked out over the forest. Nothing had changed. A noxious green mist still hung low over the suffering trees. Nothing would change, she knew, until the elves came back and worked to make it change. Nothing had changed except the tree above Lorac's grave.
"Farewell, Lorac;' Alhana called, "until we return:'
Summoning her griffon, she climbed onto its strong back and spoke a firm word of command. The griffon spread its feathery wings and soared into the air, rising in swift spirals above the stricken land of Silvanesti. At a word from Alhana, it turned its head west and began the long flight to Ergoth.
Far below, in Silvanesti, one tree's beautiful green leaves stood out in splendid contrast to the black desolation of the forest around it. It swayed in the winter wind, singing soft music as it spread its limbs to shelter Lorac's grave from the winter's darkness, waiting for spring.