Elansa heard a rush of voices like the sound of a gale in the forest. One voice, a man's, cut through all others. Like a knife it slashed.
"The doing's mine, Brand! Not yours. Mine!"
Voices swelled again. Char shoved her ahead to the fires where many more men stood now than had before. Elansa tried to take a count and guessed at a dozen. They ranged in a semicircle round the bottom of the stairs. Char kept her on the edge of the circle, away from the light and the attention of the outlaws. Brand stood on the high place, the entrance like a gallery above a rough hall. He had the goblin by the scruff of the neck, and the cringing creature's hands were tied behind its back. Halfway up the stairs another outlaw stood, the elf Elansa had seen sleeping.
Cold fear washed through her, only to see that exiled elf, the dark elf whose name she would not speak if ever she came to know it. To see such a one was to see a dead man, lost to decency, lost to his kindred, forever banished from his kind.
The circling outlaws fell silent, so quiet that it seemed to Elansa all she heard was Char’s breathing. Brand, up on his gallery, had the look of a soldier rolling the bones, a gambler reckoning his odds for greatest gain. Elansa’s belly tightened, and her breath caught in her throat. A wave of excitement ran through the outlaws-shouts then sudden silence as Brand reached for the knife in his belt. With one swift motion, he turned the knife and offered it hilt first to the elf.
Behind Elansa, the dwarf said, "You see. You don't keep it all for yourself."
Shivering, Elansa thought his words made no sense. Keep what? She turned to Char and said, "What-"
The goblin threw back its head to scream, its orange neck thin and long. Like fire flashing, the knife in the elf's hand, and then that fire was quenched by dark goblin blood, the scream drowned to a gurgle as the elf kicked the corpse down the stairs.
Elansa’s knees turned to water, and she groaned.
"Now," said Char, his voice quiet but not gentle, "that was a useless hostage. Took him a day or two ago, filled up his father's ears with the promise he’d get his pup back if his miserable tribe killed your escort in the forest. It was a good enough deal. They got the loot; Brand got you. Thing is, Brand never had a mind to send him back to his stinking little goblin town. Hates that goblin’s da, he does. Hates him hard and reckons he's owed this killing and more. He wanted to do it himself, but Ley made his point. Ley had the better claim."
Char grabbed her and shoved her back into the darkness, into the little niche in the wall that had been her sleeping place. There she vomited onto the stone floor and the hem of her sage-green cloak. The cloak had been a gift from her father, she thought, her mind racing on mad tangents as her belly heaved. It had been made in the Street of Weavers by an elf woman of surpassing skill. The sweet scent of apple blossoms perfumed the cloak on the day her father had presented it to her. The Street of Weavers is lined up and down with apple trees….
Shuddering, her belly empty of the thin gruel of her breakfast and giving forth only burning bile now, Elansa sobbed. The cloak had been her bedding, and she'd fouled it.
The elf ran like cloud shadows, swift over the stony ground. Leyerlain Starwing ran south with the wind at his back and a sack in his fist. The sack dripped blood, and the blood followed him in small spatters. In the sky, ravens gathered, for they smelled death and dinner. Leyerlain wasn't sharing, though. He had a use for what was in the sack.
He ran, finding paths in the stoneland that few would think existed. He knew the place as he used to know the shady groves of Qualinesti. He knew where to find water, even in these dry days, and he knew where to find caves if he had to go to earth to hide from an enemy. He'd long ago lost that stubborn elven pride that forbade a man to turn from a challenge or fight, no matter the circumstance. He'd lived a long time in this land, the dark dry realm between Qualinesti and Thorbardin, and so he knew the dicta of elven honor had little to do with how to stay alive outside golden towers.
He ran, and the ravens forsook him as he went up stony slopes and down, going southward and eastward. By midmorning, Hammer Rock lay far behind him to the west, the forest a misty line beyond that. He ran in the direction of ancient Pax Tharkas, but he'd no mind to go so far as that place. When the sun sat noon high, he slipped into a shallow defile, and a new flock of ravens came to see if he would die or let fall the dead thing he carried. He did neither, and now he stopped running and sat quietly in the shadows, the sack close to hand, between his booted feet. He drank from the leather water bottle hung from his belt, then settled. The ravens dispersed, the day grew long, and the light old. A chill breeze awoke, prowling down the defile. It carried the scent of smoke and meat cooking. That was goblin-town food, and he'd have sooner died of starvation than eat it. He sat in stillness until the day ended and the short twilight vanished. Not until darkness filled the defile did he move again.
Standing, he stretched and made ready to run. Most of the blood had leached out of the sack, but Leyerlain reckoned the sack and what it held would serve just fine. His way took him up now. He left the defile and ran along the ridge. The moons still below the horizon, the stars not yet awake, nothing lighted him on the height. He was but a shadow.
That's how they saw him in the goblin town, or how one goblin did. When the watch looked up to the ridge, an old fat goblin half-drunk and sleepy, he saw a shadow. He scowled, and he shook his head. He turned his back, looking for his jug of ale. Something hard hit him, like a stone right between the shoulders. Staggered, he fell to his knees, howling and cursing. He scrambled up again and turned to see what had hit him. He saw the sack.
"By every evil god," he snarled, cursing by deities nearly forgotten. A shadow ran on the ridge, tall and thin, and high keening laughter rang out to mock. The shadow vanished, slipping over the hill, and the goblin howled in fury, calling for his fellows.
He snatched up the sack, smelled the blood, and dropped it. Out from the mouth rolled a head, jaws gaping, eyes wide in the last terrified expression of dying. The headman’s son had come home.
Chapter 4
Unlike their Silvanesti cousins, the elves of Qualinesti didn't think they were the center of the world-the best part of it, perhaps, but not the center. Thus, their maps were not like those of their cousins upon which the Silvanesti kingdom sat at the heart of Krynn, all other lands floated at the borders, pale and only minimally defined, as though they existed in some place beyond a misty border where nothing counted as interesting or important. A map made in Qualinesti showed the wide world around, named all the kingdoms still standing after the Cataclysm and the departure of the gods. Sometimes the maps named the kingdoms that used to be if those old borders could be determined upon the new face of Krynn. They had not been gentle in their leaving, the gods. It had, in truth, been a cataclysmic event, so violent it reshaped the world. But the Library of Qualinost was far-famed for its collection of maps, and so a keen-eyed cartographer could make out what used to be upon the face of what is. They made painstakingly accurate maps, those cartographers. Of course, because they were elves and, in their opinion not necessarily the center of the world but certainly the best part of the world, the forest kingdom of Qualinesti shone like a jewel on every map, all the world around a fittingly depicted setting for its beauty.
In the heart of the kingdom stood its capital, Qualinost of the golden towers, guarded by four spans of high bridges, shining in all seasons. The Jewel of the Forest, so poets named the place. Its warden, Prince Kethrenan, had no such lovely image of the city. He was not blind to her beauty, he could enumerate all her charms, but it was and always had been that Qualinost and all the forest beyond was to the prince more than the sum of its glittering parts. 'This was the land of his fathers, defended in blood. This was the kingdom to which his mothers had willingly borne princes and kings. The blood of his ancestors made holy this forest.