Once they had passed into the darkened reaches of elven homes, the pair hid in the shadows for several minutes while a party of armored men marched past. The young Speaker was acutely conscious of the woman’s presence beside him. He placed a protective arm around her shoulders and relished the warmth as she seemed to melt into his side. Even so, she seemed considerably less frightened than he did, and he found himself wondering how many times she had left the house in the dark of the night to wander Qualinost on some mysterious purpose.
But those thoughts vanished as the guards turned a corner. Instantly she was up, pulling him by the hand, leading him in a sprint down a lane shaded by thick borders of overhanging aspen trees.
He tried to keep up, but he was embarrassed to realize that he was gasping for breath after a short run. Tugging on her hand, he tried to slow her headlong pace, but instead she pulled him along urgently, all but dragging him as he stumbled the last two dozen paces to the end of the lane. Here again she pushed him into the shelter of roadside shrubbery, still holding his hand as she knelt beside him and studied the wide roadway before them.
Gilthas sensed affection in the touch of her dry fingers on his moist hand, but he also felt the competence, the confidence of this woman he knew so little about. Though he strained to control his rasping breaths, she pressed a finger to his lips, and he forced himself to be utterly silent. Here, too, there were Dark Knights. Indeed, he was startled to find out how fully Qualinost was garrisoned by its new conquerors. His guess would have been that there were only a few dozen of the human warriors in the city, but if that were the case, they had seen half of them in the past few blocks—and that at the darkest hours of night!
Finally they were running again, around corners, through curving little streets that were barely wide enough for the two of them to pass side by side. Still they avoided the occasional patches of illumination, always choosing the darkest route when a pair of alternating paths presented themselves. They were going uphill, Gilthas noticed, and then suddenly the trees were finished and the dazzling night sky yawned overhead. He stumbled, shaken by the vast sense of openness after all the winding, narrow byways. His feet scuffed over flat tiles, and only then did he realize that she had brought him to the great Hall of Audience, the hilltop clearing with its mosaic map and broad clearing.
The great constellations sparkled overhead, gleaming from the moonless sky. He gaped at Paladine and Takhisis, as always in opposition, facing each other across the sky. Many times as a youth he had whiled away the nighttime hours by staring upward at the fabulous array of stars, but never had he seen them so perfectly, never had they seemed so close. He had to resist the childish notion that he could reach out and pluck them from the sky like sparkling cherries. Vaguely he noticed that even now, in the depths of the night, the air was as hot and stifling as normal for a midsummer day.
“Over here,” she whispered, tugging him along the edge of the trees that fringed the clearing. They stayed low, moved like furtive creatures of the forest, though it seemed that here, at least, the Dark Knights had left the city of the elves to itself.
Then he gasped audibly as he saw white wings shimmering in the deep shadows. Two large creatures waited there, and even before he saw the eaglelike heads upraised, yellow eyes staring at the pair of elves, he knew these were griffons.
Only once had he ridden one of the magnificent creatures. That had been upon his first meeting with Rashas. How blind he had been then, how fooled by the venerable senator’s gracious words, his elegant veneer. Gilthas had mounted the steed and ridden double with Rashas, his mind awhirl with nothing more than his first glimpse of Qualinesti. It had never occurred to him then that he was coming here to serve the senator’s purposes, that indeed Rashas had lured him with the perfect bait: the chance for a stifled youngster to get out from beneath his parents’ wings, to have a taste of freedom.
Freedom! The very notion left a bitter feeling in his memory as he thought of how fully he had been tricked. Within a matter of hours, he had learned he was virtually the prisoner of Rashas, and within days he had been installed as a figurehead on the throne of his mother’s people.
“They will carry us,” Kerianseray was saying, gesturing to the creatures. Both, Gilthas now saw, were saddled and apparently eager to fly.
Once again he had a feeling of his own wrongness, of the guilt and culpability that lay on his shoulders because he had unwittingly stepped into his crown. As a result of that conspiracy, which had included the holding of Alhana Starbreeze hostage, the griffons had stopped serving the Qualinesti. Yet obviously they still served Porthios.
He stepped up to one of the creatures, which regarded him with a glare that he thought was exceptionally cold and aloof. Gilthas bowed stiffly, not wanting to appear weak or indecisive in front of this proud creature. Yet he was embarrassed as he tried to slip his boot into the stirrup and found the silver bracket always dancing just beyond the reach of his toes. Finally Kerian stepped to his side, helped him plant his foot, then aided him to swing his other leg across the creature’s leonine haunches.
Once he was astride the griffon, Gilthas noticed that the saddle felt very natural, almost as though it conformed to his body. The back was high and pressed close to his spine, which was good, because the griffon pounced forward with a sudden beat of its wings, and without that brace, the elf would certainly have slid right over the rump to sprawl gracelessly on the ground that was already receding beneath him.
He saw the treetops of Qualinost whirl past below, felt the creature bank as it followed a course over the densest of the city’s vegetation. Like the two elves on foot, the griffons avoided those parts of the city where the magical lights danced. Soon they soared beneath one of the lofty arched bridges, and though Gilthas could clearly see the Dark Knights pacing their monotonous duty overhead, the twin fliers whisked through the shadows undetected.
Kerian, on the other griffon, was nearby. Somehow she looked relaxed as she leaned forward in the saddle, the reins held loosely in her left hand, golden hair trailing in a plume behind her. As they passed over the deep gorge that yawned to the west of the city, Gilthas was clutching the horn that rose from the forepart of his own saddle. Only after he glanced again at Kerian did he belatedly remembered the reins. Picking up the leather straps, he held them lightly, certain that the griffon did not need—and would not welcome—his steering or guidance.
The night air was surprisingly cool once they rose above the trees, but after the numbing heat of the last weeks, Gilthas relished the chill, enjoyed the sensation of his sweat drying from the force of the wind. He looked back, seeing the illumination of the city’s lights fading through the woods. Within a few minutes, Qualinost had faded into the distance behind them, and the forest sprawled strangely dark to all the horizons below.
They were flying west, he knew from the position of the stars, though Gilthas found it impossible to calculate how far they had traveled. Strangely, he didn’t feel any need to sleep. Instead, he absorbed the view of the starlit landscape, watched the occasional clouds wisp across the heavens, or stole surreptitious looks at Kerian, riding in silence just twenty or thirty feet off to the side.
A glance over his shoulder showed that dawn had begun to pink the horizon, but there was no distinguishing characteristic in all the vast forest to give him a clear idea of where he was. Slowly daylight filtered across the sky, and with the increasing illumination, the two griffons dived until they were flying just above the tops of the trees. He suspected that this was to avoid discovery by dragons, and the suspicion gave him a little thrill of adventure that soon translated into an acid churning of his stomach.