Kagonos felt his skin tingling, as if the music had wrapped him into a cocoon of gentle, yet prickly, warmth. His war paint embraced him, emphasizing that heat like warm wax trickling, not uncomfortably, over his skin. With a sense of wonder, Kagonos lowered the horn and realized that the notes continued to expand, sweeping across the gathering and embracing all the elves-but most especially the Elderwild-in its subtle clasp.
The Pathfinder clasped the instrument as if it were his only anchor in a storm, and as the growing force of sound swept him up, he felt as though strong winds buffeted him, rendering his footing unsteady, his vision cloudy.
Why couldn't he see? Everywhere he turned Kagonos looked upon a bright aura, like a film of fire that sheathed him, screening him from observation. Only gradually did he realize that the flames were real, and that they were surging outward from him-from his skin.
Wonderingly, the Elderwild looked at his bare chest, seeing yellow flames licking higher, bright and lively as they sputtered from him. Still he felt no pain, but instead his sense of wonder seemed to grow. Gradually he understood that it was not his entire skin that burned, but only the places where war paint had been smeared upon his body.
As the flames died, his body rippled under dark, permanent tattoos-stains that perfectly matched the hawk and oak leaf pattern of Kagonos's war paint. His paint had become a part of himself, indelibly burned into his skin-marks that would, for the rest of his life, show him as a member of a different people than the House Elves of Silvanesti.
The flames, Kagonos saw, did not die away entirely. Instead they swirled outward, rising up in a great archway before the awestruck faces of his people.
Barcalla was the first to advance. The warrior held his head high and stepped through the archway. Immediately the paint on his dusky skin flared into life, the flames singing upward like the highest notes of the Ram's Horn. Before these flickering fires died away, others of the tribe had advanced, in pairs and trios, then as a great column, proudly walking through the fire, letting the tongues of flame embrace them.
By the time Barcalla's halo of fire died away, Kagonos saw that the warrior, too, had been permanently marked- also in the pattern of his war paint. As each wild elf advanced, the gentle cocoon of brightness took him, kissed his flesh, and left him with the marks of distinction that would forever show the rest of Krynn that this was a tribe of forest-dwellers, wild elves who shunned the enclosures of their kin. Kagonos knew that even if more nations of House Elves were formed, if Balif made his kingdom in the east, if other clans moved to the Kharolis forests in the west, the wild elves would remain wild and free.
The elves of Silvanesti stood aside to let Kagonos past. He looked once at Silvanos, and he did not see an enemy- but neither did he see a being who had any further meaning for him or for his tribes.
"Go, then, Kagonos," the patriarch said quietly, and even now the force of his words arrested the Elderwild chieftain, compelled him to listen. "You have made your choice, and I must trust your wisdom. You lead your elves as one clan, now-a greater tribe than they have been before. No longer are you the Elderwild.
"In our songs, you shall be called the Kagonesti-and you shall ever be known as our kin."
The name was good, thought the Pathfinder, though its portent sent a slight shiver of apprehension along his spine. If he had not fully grasped the momentous nature of his decision, Silvanos's words made it quite clear.
Raising his head high, shouldering his weapon and letting the horn fall comfortably back to its position at his side, Kagonos felt a pleasant warmth from the tattoos that now marked his skin. The Pathfinder turned his face to the north, where the tree-lined foothills rose gently against the night sky.
And Kagonos led his people back to the forest, and to the woodlands beyond.
PART 2
1019 PC (Third Dragon War)
Woodlands of Central Ansalon
Chapter 9
The dappled pattern of black ink on bronze skin rippled through shadowy underbrush. A very keen observer might have discerned the shape there, but only after careful scrutiny- and in the time needed for such an inspection, the stealthy figure would have vanished, moving smoothly on.
Ashtaway glided through the roughly wooded countryside. The Kagonesti looked upward, hazel eyes sweeping the surrounding crests of tree-lined bluffs and broken, rocky cliffs of granite bracketing these lower valleys. His skin, patterned in dark tattoos, blended with the underbrush even as he moved-he was an intrinsic part of the forest. Yet, for three days he'd been on the hunting trail, and it galled him now that he was still empty-handed as his steps carried him back toward the village.
Indeed, these valleys showed not the slightest promise of game-no tracks in the muddy trails, no padded bower where a doe and her fawn had bedded down, or even any sign of grazing on the supple spring shoots that began to green the woodlands. Shaldng his head in frustration, Ash decided to climb, hoping that the increased vistas along the rippling bluff line might give him the chance to see something, anything, that could offer a suggestion as to the whereabouts of game.
The rocky heights, in the foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, had been the hunting grounds of his tribe since the time, more than two thousand years ago, when the Kagon- esti had split from the elves of Silvanesti in the Great Sundering. The warriors of the wild elves tattooed their skin in black ink, as a sign of their permanent removal from the ranks of their civilized kinfolk. Ash bore a vivid imprint of an oak leaf enclosing his left eye, while on his chest was emblazoned the wide-winged silhouette of a hawk. He carried several weapons, including the strung bow in his hands, with a quiver of arrows and a long-hafted axe slung over his shoulder.
The wild elf reached the mouth of a scree-filled ravine and turned upward, grasping branches with his wiry hands, unerringly finding with his moccasins those rocks set securely in the midst of the loose gravel. Breathing easily, his longbow and quiver resting on his back, Ashtaway glided toward the ridge with the same fluidity of movement that had carried him through the forest shadows.
A wall of rock, perhaps thirty feet high, blocked the crest of the gully, and here the elf's progress slowed-but only slightly. Without halting, Ash started up the sheer face, picking his route as he went, seizing with his fingertips narrow holds, or perching his toes on outcrops barely a fraction of an inch wide.
Reaching the top, he jogged through open woodland, but despite the increasing vistas surrounding him, he saw no indication of any game worth his sleek, steel-tipped arrows. He passed through a sun-speckled meadow, barren of deer or wild pig. No elk grazed in the marshy saddle between two crests, nor did he hear or see sign of the great flocks of geese that were overdue to make their springtime migration.
Ashtaway thought of Hammana and felt a sense of urgency-he would love to impress the elf woman with fresh game, to see her eyes shining at him during the celebration feast, while Iydaway Pathfinder played his horn in joyous affirmation of the kill. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would consent to walk with him beside the lake-nothing in his knowledge could be finer than a few uninterrupted hours with the serene, gentle elfmaid.
Though she was younger than Ashtaway by several decades, Hammana had already proven herself to be a healer of great skill, renowned among the four tribes. Her father, Wallaki, was the shaman of the Bluelake Kagonesti, and he had shared his priestly arts with his daughter. Hammana had used her natural talents to ease the sufferings of countless wild elves afflicted by illness or injury. Despite her youth, Hammana possessed maturity and inherent grace in measures far beyond the other women of the tribe, and Ashtaway's heart pounded faster at the memory of her soft, impeccable beauty.