“Talking is better than fighting,” repeated Silveran, impressing the concept on his mind.
“And right now food is better than both,” Kith-Kanan sighed, putting an arm across his son’s shoulders. “A plump chicken, a loaf of fresh bread, and some fine Qualinesti nectar should do nicely.”
“I’m hungry, too.”
Father and son mounted the shallow steps and passed out of the hall. The rose quartz outer walls of the tower burned in the setting sun, and the full weight of summer leaves tossed back and forth on the trees as the wind stirred through them.
“I will teach you all I know,” Kith-Kanan promised. He held his head up, letting the sun wash over his face. His regal robe, rumpled by the long afternoon of sitting, flashed white satin highlights as he walked. “You will be a great Speaker of the Sun.”
Silveran was quiet for several minutes as they crossed the square toward the Speaker’s house. They were unescorted by warriors and unburdened by pomp. The green-fingered elf lifted his own face to the warmth of the sun and shook his hair out of his eyes.
“Father,” he said, at last, “I believe this is what my mother wanted.”
“I believe so, too,” Kith-Kanan murmured. “I believe you were sent so that the nation of Qualinesti would not die. You are its future.”
As the Speaker and his son moved through the people who were finishing the day’s chores, they were greeted by bows and smiles and happy voices.
“Long live the Speaker,” said a human woman whose arms were laden with freshly cut flowers.
“Long live Prince Silveran!” added two nearby elves.
It was a fine day, a fine evening. At the door of the Speaker’s house, Kith-Kanan saw Tamanier Ambrodel waiting for him. He sent Silveran on ahead into the house. When his son was gone, Kith-Kanan asked his castellan why he was so happy.
“How do you know I’m happy, sire?” asked the surprised Tamanier.
“Your face is an open scroll,” the speaker replied. “I can read your every emotion. Now, what is it?”
“The centaurs have received their reward and left the house,” Tamanier reported.
Kith-Kanan sighed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to bid them farewell. They were staunch friends when we needed them. Such allies must be treasured.” He passed a hand before his eyes. “My head aches, Tam. Have the apothecary send up a soothing draft with dinner.”
Tamanier bowed. He watched the Speaker ascend the stairs to his private rooms to join young Silveran for their meal. How old he seems this evening, the castellan thought. The expedition against Drulethen had taken a great deal out of Kith-Kanan. But with a new son and plenty of rest, he would recover quickly.
18 — Onyx Dreams
In a small room adjoining the Speaker’s bedchamber, Silveran lay sleeping on a simple pallet of blankets spread on the hard tile floor. He was too used to sleeping on the ground to be comfortable on the soft bed. Every night of the week he had been in Qualinost, he’d dragged his bedding onto the floor and spent the night there.
As often happens to those with untroubled minds, he fell asleep quickly and passed the night in harmless dreams of his forest birthplace. The heady changes in his short life had barely impressed themselves on his inner mind, and Silveran did not yet dream of glory or power or the adoration of the people.
The only troubling aspects of his dreams so far were the images of his half-siblings, Verhanna and Ulvian. They did not menace him, but he felt vaguely troubled whenever they appeared. Even the innocent Silveran could sense Ulvian’s hostility, and he did not know what to make of Verhanna’s strange behavior at all. Sometimes she got angry at him for no reason at all.
She loves you, whispered a voice in his dreams.
Like a child, Silveran took the voice for a normal part of his dreamworld. “I love her,” he replied reasonably. “And I love Rufus and my father, too.”
I could have loved, sighed the voice, but you took my life.
Silveran’s brow wrinkled and he stirred restlessly. “Who are you? How have I harmed you?”
A face rushed at him in his mind’s eye. With marble white skin over sunken cheeks, it stared balefully through bleary gray eyes. Its mouth hung slackly open, and its breath reeked of decay and the grave.
Silveran uttered a soft cry and awoke. After some seconds of disorientation, he realized he was in the Speaker’s house. A sigh of relief passed his lips.
The blanket over him twitched as if it were alive. Silveran grasped the satin hem where it lay on his chest and held on. The blanket billowed up, rippling from his legs up to his waist. The elf whipped it away to see what was making it rise. Silveran let out a much louder cry this time, for beneath the blanket, floating only a foot from his nose, was the disembodied face from his dream!
You killed me, whispered the white lips. I was Drulethen of Black Stone Peak, and you murdered me.
“No!! I slew a monster!! It was a noble deed!”
The head floated closer. Silveran threw up his hands to ward it off. Scrambling wildly, he fled the room on all fours.
The connecting door to the Speaker’s room stood ajar, and Silveran banged through it. Hearing his son’s wild cries, Kith-Kanan sat up in bed. Beside his bed, a magical lamp in the shape of a small silver pine tree flickered immediately to life.
“What? What is it?”
It took him a moment to notice Silveran cringing at the foot of his bed. “My boy, what’s the matter?” he asked sleepily.
“Make it go away!” Silveran pressed his face into the dark red drapes hanging from the corners of Kith-Kanan’s bed. “I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t know!”
The Speaker arose and drew on a light cotton dressing gown. He knotted the sash at his waist and knelt beside his trembling son. “Tell me what’s frightened you,” he said, gently removing Silveran’s clenched fingers from the drapery. The elf related his dream haltingly, including how he’d seen the face of the sorcerer he’d killed at Black Stone Peak.
“It was only a bad dream…a nightmare,” Kith-Kanan whispered soothingly. He stroked his son’s sweat-damp hair. “You never saw Dru in human form, did you?”
“But I woke up and it was still there,” Silveran insisted. “He looked so ordinary in my dream…so thin and frail. Is that who the wyvern truly was?”
“It is true, Son, but the sorcerer is ash and dust now. He cannot hurt you.”
As he spoke, Kith-Kanan tried to ignore his own fears. The link between Drulethen, the sorcerer, and Dru, the manifestation of the god Hiddukel, loomed large in his mind. He didn’t want to see enemies and conspiracies under every stone and in every shadow, but coincidence rarely applied when the gods were involved.
It was a strange scene, the father consoling his fully grown son, rocking the weeping Silveran in his arms. The commotion had reached the sensitive ears of Tamanier Ambrodel, whose rooms were only a short distance down the corridor. The disheveled elf appeared in the Speaker’s doorway holding a candelabrum.
“Sire?”
“It’s all right, Tam,” Kith-Kanan said, waving a hand. “My son had a bad dream.”
“I killed him!” sobbed Silveran.
Embarrassed, Tamanier quietly withdrew. The prince certainly seemed more overwrought than a mere bad dream would warrant.
Silveran’s terror finally lessened, and he was able to compose himself. Kith-Kanan offered to sit up with him, but his son declined to return to his own room. “I would rather sleep here with you,” he said, indicating the hard floor at the foot of the four-poster bed. With a slight smile, Kith-Kanan nodded. He remembered from many centuries past the hollow tree in which he’d lived with Silveran’s mother, Anaya, and her brother, Mackeli. They had slept on the unpadded ground, too.
Kith-Kanan climbed back into bed. He listened for a long time, but Silveran’s only sounds were light, even breathing. The Speaker pondered the mystery of Dru and what the coincidence of names could mean. Was Drulethen really the god Hiddukel in disguise? Did the God of Evil Bargains torment Silveran’s dreams?