“There’s a great deal to tell, but know that when I left her she was well... and out of Qualinesti. Samar and I were able to spirit her away. She would have come to see you herself, except that her pregnancy has become too advanced. Indeed, brother of my wife, I expect you might become a father any day now.”
“Where is she? Where?”
“In Solace, at the Inn of the Last Home. She was showing signs of early labor when I departed, and that was just yesterday.”
“I must go to her!” Porthios said.
“That’s why I came,” Tanis said. “Samar and I talked to Alhana. We decided that he should stay with her and I’d come for you.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Practical considerations had been pushed far to the side of the prince’s brain, but Porthios raised an eyebrow at one thing the half-elf had said. “You were in Solace yesterday? But that’s more than a week’s flight, even on a fast griffon!”
“I had magical help, both with the escape and with my journey to Silvanesti.”
“But what mage has that kind of power?” asked Porthios.
Tanis maintained a grim silence, looking directly at the prince, and then Porthios began to understand. “A dark elf?”
“One of the Silvanesti,” Tanis agreed with a slow nod. “One who took up the magic of the black robes and so was banned from his people forever.”
“And one whose name may never be uttered among elves,” Porthios said, even as his mind voiced the word: Dalamar.
He pointed to the sheet of parchment from Konnal, still sitting on the table. “Your timing is very good. That is my death warrant, signed for tomorrow.”
“They wouldn’t dare!” Tanis declared, appalled.
“You’d be surprised at what they dare.”
The half-elf nodded grimly. “Maybe I wouldn’t be. In many ways, it’s the same in Qualinesti—the Thalas-Enthia ruled by isolationist fools, my own son forced to don the medallion of Speaker.”
“And the treaty of the three races... it is finished there as well?” asked Porthios, veering away from the subject of the throne that had once been his.
“Yes—killed by Rashas. And you should know that you would be in danger if you return there.”
“I realize that. But—”
The doors opened with a crash, and four Silvanesti guards spilled into the room. They halted halfway across the entryway, and Porthios was impressed to realize that Tanis had dropped his bow off his shoulder, nocked and drawn an arrow, and taken aim in the instant that had passed since the guards entered. The steel-bladed arrowhead was fixed toward the heart of the first sentry, whose face had blanched into a deathly pallor.
“No—don’t kill him!” Porthios declared, sensing that the half-elf was about to release his missile.
“I won’t, but they should know that I could,” Tanis replied grimly.
Porthios addressed the Silvanesti, his voice harsh and demanding. “Tell your master that I’m going... and that my vengeance will take time. But he should take care never to relax his guard.”
The first guard nodded. One of the others, partially shielded by his companion, replied, “We’ll tell him.”
In another instant, the two men, different in race and temperament but united by ties to a sister and wife, had ducked onto the balcony, mounted the two griffons, and taken to the air.
PART II
QUALINESTI
Prologue
“They flew for many days,” Samar said, “leaving Silvanesti that very night.”
“And they came to the Inn of the Last Home,” said the young elf. “I know this, for my mother told me that my father arrived in time to see me born.”
“You are Silvanoshei, the son of Porthios?” The dragon seemed genuinely surprised.
“The name means ‘the Hope of Silvanos,’” explained the young elf.
“Then why do you come to me for the tale of your father’s life?”
“There is much I already know—my mother and Samar have taught me. But there are other details about that tumultuous year that are vague, and some of those are facts that you can fill in.” Silvanoshei looked at the dragon with a pensive expression. “I know that it was at the end of the year three hundred and eighty-two that you decided to fly west as well... and I know that you came to Qualinesti. But why?”
“I will explain, but...” The dragon turned his slitted yellow eyes to Samar, allowing his leather lids to droop disarmingly. “Do you know that it is very uncomfortable sitting upright with my back pressed against the wall? Let me relax. I will not attack you. After all, I myself am curious as to where this tale is going. I should like to hear the ending of the story myself.”
“Very well.” The warrior relaxed his hold on the dragonlance, allowing the great serpent to settle more comfortably onto his bed, which consisted of scattered coins, bits of jewelry, and assorted boots, belts, and other articles of clothing. It was a relatively pathetic hoard for a dragon of Aeren’s size and age, but he merely shrugged.
“This was a place that called to me when I knew that I would at last have to move. Of course, I would miss my home in the south. In many ways Silvanesti was perfect for me. When I first came there, trees were thick and verdant, and the woodlands offered plenty of food. Water was everywhere, and for a long time, I was free to do whatever I wanted.
“I had dwelled there for the thirty winters after the Draconian War—the war you two-legged people call the War of the Lance. Those were good years, but those times were over. Your father was finished reclaiming the land, and my offspring were all slain, killed through the years by elven arrows and by those horrid dragonlances. If I had wished to remain, I would have had to skulk through the tamed gardens and keep my presence secret from the elves.
“And I remembered this place, the forest called Qualinesti, for it had been described to me by the elven traitor. It was a place in the west, and the elf had claimed that it was a wild woodland, very unlike the subdued and formal setting that Silvanesti had become. There were great trees, he had said, and vast realms of forest.
“And so I came here to live out my years in peace.”
“But peace is not what you found,” Silvanoshei noted wryly. “After all, as I said, I know much of the story of my first year of life. My mother has told me many times how she saw Tanis for the last time on the day after my birth as he turned toward his wife and his home... and his destiny in a war that had yet to begin. And how, when I was only a few months old, she swaddled me in the tai-thall that she wore on her back and we took flight on the back of a griffon, flying beside my father as we made for the forests of his homeland.”
“I remember that flight,” Samar said. “We flew with Tarqualan and his two hundred scouts, all of us spurning the authority of the Thalas-Enthia, bound for a life as outlaws in the forest.”
“The elves of two lands had made my father an outlaw.” Silvanoshei shook his head in disbelief.
“That much is true,” Samar noted. “But the land, the elves, the entire situation in Qualinesti was nothing like the place we had left behind...”
Chapter Nine
Speaker of the Sun
He looked out from the top of the Tower of the Sun, his view encompassing the place that he knew to be the most beautiful city in all Krynn. Ivory spires jutted from the pastoral groves that sprawled like a carpet across the landscape a thousand feet below. From his lofty vantage, he could see three of the four elegant bridges that bordered Qualinost, strung like tendrils of crystal and silver across the sky. Below, in the center of the city, he could see the top of a rounded hill, the great Hall of the Sky, with its mosaic map of Qualinesti and the surrounding lands.