Roaring, Thagol turned. His eyes took and held her. In her mind, she heard him, like a wolf howling, she heard him, and she felt him as she had in nightmare, hunting her. She lifted her sword high in the killing arc. As though a hand gripped her wrist, she halted. As though commanded, she stayed, and she could not take her eyes from his, could not look away. While all around her the earth rioted at the will of a shadowy beast born of Elemental magic, she stood arrested, frozen in the grip of the Skull Knight’s mind.
In her brain, she felt a roaring, like storm, like thunder. Behind her eyes, she saw the bright flash of his sword, like lightning. She felt something, a pull, a tug toward him, like a cold hand on her heart. He wanted to taste something, to taste her dying.
Blinded by the light of his sword, deafened by his voice in her mind, she cried out. She wrenched away and lost her balance. Stumbling, she fell, and he was upon her, the weight of him bearing her all the way to the ground. She thrashed beneath him, his mail biting into the flesh of her neck, his elbows pinning her at the shoulders. His breath on her face was icy, a dead man’s breath.
Kerian fought, thrashing harder. She got a knee up, got a foot on the ground. Weaponless, her sword flung far from her, she snarled and lunged at him, biting his face, his cheek. She tore flesh and pushed up hard. He lifted, and she brought up her knee to advantage. Howling, he cursed her, falling away, doubling over as she grabbed his own sword.
All the forest stood still, as though even the beast made of Elemental fury held its breath.
Kerian played the headsman’s part. Hard she lifted and hard she let fall her sword. Even then, his voice was howling in her head, like a wolf’s. When he died, his head fallen from his shoulders, even then she heard him.
Though all the forest had fallen still, the howling didn’t stop in Kerian’s head. It never stopped, until she’d finished counting her dead, until she found one over whom she must howl herself.
On the killing ground, the forest floor running with blood, Kerian found her brother, Iydahar, for whom she had come out of Qualinost, a long, long time ago last year. He was dead of an axe, the blade sunk keep in his chest, the haft running with his blood.
She said, “Dar,” as though he could answer. Wind off the battleground ruffled his hair. She touched his cheek and felt sweat cooling on his lifeless skin. She traced the planes of his face, a face known to her all her life, the face of a man she had hardly known.
Again, she said, “Dar…”
Beside him knelt his wife, Ayensha, with her arms wrapped round herself. She did not keen or make any sound until she looked up and saw Kerian.
“Is he dead?” she said. “Thagol?”
“He is dead.”
Ayensha nodded, then bent low to put her cheek upon her husband’s chest. “He didn’t want to come. I begged him. Elder begged him.”
Kerian looked up, the stilling breeze cool on her cheeks. “Elder.”
“You saw her.”
“Her…”
“The shape of her magic, the shape of her rage.”
She’d spoken with Elementals, the ancient woman whose magic could make the forest a confusion for her enemies.
“Dar came,” said Ayensha, “because of Elder, because I had promised and pledged to you and your cause. You killed my rapist and saved me from worse. You tried to drive the alien Knights from an elf kingdom. We told him—I told him—you were owed that much.”
In her eyes shone the terrible light of one who had paid far more than she thought she owed. Together they sat in silence, each beside the man they had loved, brother and husband. For a long while no one came to disturb them, the two women in the wreckage of the forest, one in the ruin of her life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Tell me,” said the king, Gilthas with his hand on her cheek. “Kerian, my Lioness, tell me.”
She’d dreamed of the wolf again, but she would not tell him. Instead, she covered his hand with her own, and she brought his hand to her lips to gently kiss. He took her in his arms, held her, and when she nestled against him, her head on his shoulder, she smelled the old familiar scent of exotic spices, the fragrance of far Tarsis, of an older time when she was a laughing servant who spied upon her master for the sake of her lover. Now she wore that girl’s clothing, her silk bed gown, her perfumes and her lotions, but she was not that girl. She would never be again.
“Gil, tell me what your mother has learned from Thorbardin.”
He sat up, and he drew her to sit beside him. From the window a chill breeze came wandering. He wrapped her in the sheets when she shivered. “Only hopeful things. In Thorbardin, they may soon be laying plans to create a safe passage out of here if and when we need it. As soon as he returns home, Stanach Hammerfell will speak to the Council of Thanes in our behalf. He doesn’t imagine anyone will gainsay us now.
“The dragon will not hold her patience much longer, and that hasn’t to do with us. It has to do with the politics of her own greed and lust for power.”
She moved to slip under the covers again.
“Kerian.” He brushed her hair from her cheek, breathing the scent of it, the scent of her skin when he kissed her. “Kerian, my own outlaw. You’re soon gone.”
She was. Plans had already been made for her return to the forest. Her force of Night People had been severely damaged in the battle with the Skull Knight and his draconians and Knights. No one imagined that a new Lord Knight would not swiftly be sent to oversee green Beryl’s kingdom. Kerian planned that this one, whoever he might be, would come into the kingdom thinking Eamutt Thagol had died putting down a rebellion that hadn’t the least spark left in it or thinking that he’d left behind a population so cowed by the fighting that they would not, could not, lift a hand to defend themselves.
She smiled, a predatory smile. That was fine with her if the new lord protector thought so. Those in Qualinesti who needed to know otherwise, did know otherwise.
Gilthas sighed. “You’re soon gone,” he said. “I know. Before you go, I will do what I am certain no king in Krynn has had to do as often as I.”
Kerian looked up at him, knowing what he’d say. In the silence before he did, she saw again all the dreamless nights of the year gone past, the hard days without him, the long roads away from him. She saw loneliness, and still, she did not know how she could answer him as he wished.
“Kerian,” he said, “you have risked your life to fight the enemy of my embattled kingdom. My love, my Lioness of Qualinesti, I ask you again: Be my wife, be the queen my people need. We can wed in secrecy but go on as before for now. Kerian, you have loved me, you have fought in my cause, you have—in the name of all gods, woman, why will you not marry me?”
“In the name of all gods,” she said, “how can I? How can I risk what would be said, how this marriage would be used against you? Gil, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
His eyes narrowed; she saw a sudden flash of royal impatience. He took her by the shoulders, gently, and he turned her to face him. He leaned close, kissed her, and held her a little away again.
“I know what I’m asking. I’m asking you to marry me. I’m asking you to trust the future. I have asked you to be my outlaw, now I ask you to be my queen.”
Trust the future. Who could ask her to do a harder thing? Yet, what else had she been doing all this year past?
“Today I have to leave,” she said. “I am taking Stanach to the border. Your mother will have an escort for him from there.” She smiled grimly. “He’d rather trudge through the Stonelands than use the emerald’s magic again, but we can wait a bit. Meet me at Gilean’s Oak at day’s end.”
She said only that, and the king took her into his arms again.
In the evening of the day, with the sky purpling and the light dimming, the last of the year’s fireflies danced in the gloom beneath the oaks, four people gathered: a king, his lover, the queen mother, and a dwarf far from home. This should have been a marriage of golden splendor, of feasts the month before, feasts all the month after. There should have been balls and wine pouring from fountains. There should have been masques, visitations from every lord and lady in the land, felicitations from each member of the Thalas-Enthia.