Sitting still, barely breathing, Elansa would think of what Char had said, a long time ago on the night the goblin was killed under Hammer Rock.
"You see," he'd said, his breath sour with drink as he watched Brand hand over the goblin to Ley. "You don't keep it all for yourself."
In some way Arawn had come to believe that Brand, by declaring the prisoner off limits to his men, was keeping her for himself, if not for the nighttime, then for some other reason. More and more, it became clear that Arawn didn't like the idea or seem to consider a stolen elven sword a fair exchange for nights with a stolen elven princess.
"Char," she said, one night when the first snow of winter fell softly upon the breast of Krynn, when the people in Tarsis wept for joy because at last the wind had fallen, and in Qualinost a warrior in ermine and fiery silk brought a goblin to Solinari’s moon-white temple. "Char, why did Ley want to kill the goblin, back at Hammer Rock?"
The dwarf shrugged and readied around him for something, the skin or a last bone of stolen goat for gnawing.
"The usual reason" When she shook her head, not knowing the usual reason, he said, "Golch’s da killed Ley’s woman. Not so long ago, either. Maybe a moon's turn before anyone laid eye on you. Ley’s still in mourning."
Coldly, she said, "And he thought the killing would help?"
Char sat back, the skin on his knee fat and full. He closed his hands around it, cradling it tenderly. "Y'do what y’do."
All these things Char said looking into a far corner of the cave where the roof sloped down to the ground and made a private place. Elansa looked where he did and saw the silver spill of Tianna’s hair where it flowed over Brand's chest. With his look, not his words, the dwarf told her something about Tianna and grim Ley, a thing Elansa would not have guessed. And yet, knowing, the truth seemed inevitable. The half-elf had the look of her father, more than the shape of his eyes or ears, more than his elven grace. It was the way she glanced keenly around her, her careful tension, the tilt of her head, even her rare laughter, that gave her kinship to Ley.
"Leyerlain Starwing," Char said, unstopping the skin with his thumb. "I guess that makes her Tianna Starwing."
Elansa looked away. Of course the woman would not be granted her father's name in such a shameful circumstance. Of course she would be given some other name if Leyerlain Starwing's family knew his shame. Something made up for decency’s sake if they were moved by compassion, or she'd simply be known as half-elven.
Elansa withdrew into her safe shadows, calling the hound to her. The sound of the dog's nails on stone caught the attention of Arawn and of Brand. She hung again in their tension, and it was a long time before she could sleep.
These things, these cautions, these fears, they made up the borders of her life now, even as she moved through a world without borders, caverns and tunnels running beneath the face of Krynn, lands no one had ever claimed.
Horses snorted, dancing in the cold and tossing their heads. Riders spoke calming words. Kethrenan left them, guiding his mount close to the lip of the drop into the stonelands. He pulled his helm from his head, tucking it under his arm. On his forehead, sweat turned to ice. Wind whipped his hair back from his face, scouring his skin red. Before him, out across the stoneland, lay the formations known since the Cataclysm as Stone Castle, Granite Tower, Hammer Rock, and Reorx’s Anvil. Ravens sailed around the lower piles, while rooks lived in the highest. Between the Hammer and the Anvil, two eagles soared, winding down the chill sky. To this place they'd ridden, and all the while dark visions had haunted the prince, like dark wings clapping. At night, when he lay wrapped in his cloak apart from the rest, sleepless till most of the night had worn away, it seemed he heard Elansa’s voice on the wind, wailing, lifting up to beseech the gods to have pity on her suffering.
Kethrenan lifted his hand to shade his eyes against the sun's glare. Far away in the south, he saw the gleam of light high up. Those were not the snowy peaks of the Kharolis Mountains, not so near. What he saw was, perhaps, the glint of light on the ruined towers of Pax Tharkas.
Here was Qualinesti’s sternest border, once the land that lay between the elves and their allies, the dwarves of Thorbardin. In times past, roads had run through this bitter plain, made by friends and connecting the underground kingdom of the dwarves, the forest realm of the elves, and the western kingdoms of humans, all running out from Pax Tharkas.
But that was a time ago, well before the Cataclysm changed the face of Krynn and rewrote all treaties, and no one counted on roads running through the stony plain now. There was a new clan of dwarves, the Neidar, made from those who'd broken from their kin in the hard years after the Cataclysm. They called themselves hill dwarves to make it clear to all they had nothing to do with their mountain-dwelling kin. The mountain dwarves, who in the main had been the allies of the elves, now delved only in Thorbardin, seldom coming out into the sun. In Qualinesti elves kept to their forest glades. Sundered, the erstwhile friends had not fallen so far as the humans had. Whatever must be said of them, elves and dwarves, they did not deny the existence of gods. An old dwarven proverb said, "The man who denies the wind because he can't see it is an idiot." Elven wisdom murmured, "Who fails the gods with lack of faith, fails himself."
Humans, short-lived and lacking in the patience of those races whose life span can be two hundred years or more, had turned from whatever lore of gods they'd once possessed. Turning, it seemed they had changed themselves into beggars and thieves, godless wretches who saw in the visible marks of the anger of the gods reason to decide no god existed at all.
And they, who promoted the blasphemy of unbelief all across Krynn, had down the long years managed to forget that it was one of their own race who caused the Cataclysm and the withdrawal of the gods. They chose not to remember a Kingpriest gone mad in Istar, who had declared himself a deity. Not many of them liked to admit it was a human who had enraged the true gods, causing them to hurl down upon Krynn a fiery mountain to remind mortals who was divine and who was not.
Into the hands of these his wife had fallen.
Kethrenan swallowed, savoring the phantom taste of blood in his mouth, salty and warm. He did not bleed, not in his body. He did perhaps bleed in his soul, as though the rage living in him were fanged and gnawing from the inside.
"Demlin!" he snapped.
Maimed Demlin spurred his mount, a line gelding out of the prince's own stable. Winter had reshaped the servant. His long face, once alight with congenial good humor, was now the face of a man who'd been hollowed and filled up again with bitterness. He covered his maiming with a square of black cloth tied as seamen and pirates do. It gave him a dangerous look, lean and not very warm in the heart.
Demlin did not come alone. Tethered to the pommel of his saddle, upon a long braided plait, the goblin Ithk jogged beside.
"Where?" said the prince.
Ithk pointed down the hill to the stony slope of Hammer Rock.
"There's where he took her, your woman, in the fall. Can't say he's still there. Wouldn't be. But sign is he's been since, maybe twice since he took her."
The hard blue sky glared down. All the world below was a whirl of snow running in white devils. In the sky, the moons hung like pale ghosts, the red and the silver, risen early or lingering late.
"Prince!"
Kethrenan looked over his shoulder and saw Lindenlea point north. He looked where she did. A dark plume hung low over the earth.
"What’s down there?" he asked.
Lindenlea shrugged. "A village or two-human, most likely. Maybe a goblin town in the making by now. That doesn't look like a gathering of hearth fires."