Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun (6 page)

which not even the longest lived among the elves had ever before

seen, the soldiers looked at Silvanoshei, cavorting in the storm

like a moonstruck fool, and shook their heads.

He was the son of their beloved queen. They would not say

one word against him. They would give their lives defending him,

for he was the hope of the elven nation. The elven soldiers liked

him well enough, even if they neither admired nor respected him.

Silvanoshei was handsome and charming, winning by nature, a

boon companion, with a voice so sweet and melodious that he

could talk the songbirds out of the trees and into his hand.

In this, Silvanoshei was like neither of his parents. He had

none of his father's grim, dour, and resolute nature, and some

might have whispered that he was not his father's child, but Sil-

vanoshei so closely resembled Porthios there could be no mistak-

ing the relationship. Silvanoshei, or Silvan, as his mother called

him, did not inherit the regal bearing of Alhana Starbreeze. He

had something of her pride but little of her compassion. He cared

about his people, but he lacked her undying love and loyalty. He

considered her battle to penetrate the shield a hopeless waste of

time. He could not understand why she was expending so much

energy to return to a people who clearly did not want her.

Alhana doted on her son, more so now that his father ap-

peared to be lost. Silvan's feelings toward his mother were more

complex, although he had but an imperfect understanding of

them. Had anyone asked him, he would have said that he loved

her and idolized her, and this was true. Yet that love was an oil

floating upon the surface of troubled water. Sometimes Silvan felt

an anger toward his parents, an anger that frightened him in its

fury and intensity. They had robbed him of his childhood, they

had robbed him of comfort, they had robbed him of his rightful

standing among his people.

The burial mound remained relatively dry during the down-

pour. Alhana stood at the entrance, watching the storm, her atten-

tion divided between worry for her son-standing bareheaded in

the rain, exposed to the murderous lightning and savage winds-

and in thinking bitterly that the rain drops could penetrate the

shield that surrounded Silvanesti and she, with all the might of

her army, could not.

One particularly close lightning strike half-blinded her, its

thunderclap shook the cave. Fearful for her son, she ventured a

short distance outside the mound's entrance and endeavored to

see. through the driving rain. Another flash, overspreading the

sky with a flame of purple white, revealed him staring upward,

his mouth open, roaring back at the thunder in laughing

defiance.

"Silvan!" she cried. "It is not safe out there! Come inside

with me!"

He did not hear her. Thunder smashed her words, the wind

blew them away. But perhaps sensing her concern, he turned his

head. "Isn't it glorious, Mother?" he shouted, and the wind that

had blown away his mother's words brought his own to her with

perfect clarity.

"Do you want me to go out and drag him inside, my queen,"

asked a voice at her shoulder.

Alhana started, half-turned. "Samar! You frightened me!"

The elf bowed. "I am sorry, Your Majesty. I did not mean to

alarm you."

She had not heard him approach, but that was not surpris-

ing. Even if there had been no deafening thunder, she would

not have heard the elf if he did not want her to hear. He was

from House Protector, had been assigned to her by Porthios,

and had been faithful to his calling throughout thirty years of

war and exile.

Samar was now her second in command, the leader of her

armies. That he loved her, she knew well, though he had never

spoken a word of it, for he was loyal to her husband Porthios as

friend and ruler. Samar knew that she did not love him, that she

was faithful to her husband, though they had heard no word of

Porthios or from him for months. Samar's love for her was a gift

he gave her daily, expecting nothing in return. He walked at her

side, his love for her a torch to guide her footsteps along the dark

path she walked.

Samar had no love for Silvanoshei, whom he took to be a

spoilt dandy. Samar viewed life as a battle that had to be fought

and won on a daily basis. Levity and laughter, jokes and pranks,

would have been acceptable in an elf prince whose realm was at

peace-an elf prince who, like elf princes of happier times, had

nothing to do all day long but learn to play the lute and contem-

plate the perfection of a rose bud. The ebullient spirits of youth

were out of place in this world where the elves struggled simply

to survive. Slivanoshei's father was lost and probably dead. His

mother expended her life hurling herself against fate, her body

and spirit growing more bruised and battered every day. Samar

considered Silvan's laughter and high spirits an affront to both,

an insult to himself.

The only good Samar saw in the young man was that Sil-

vanoshei could coax a smile from his mother's lips when nothing

and no one else could cheer her.

Alhana laid her hand upon Samar's arm. "Tell him that I am

anxious. A mother's foolish fears. Or not so foolish," she added to

herself, for Samar had already departed. "There is something dire

about this storm."

Samar was instantly drenched to the skin when he walked

into the storm, as soaked as if he had stepped beneath a waterfall.

The wind gusts staggered him. Putting his head down against the

blinding torrent, cursing Silvan's heedless foolery, Samar forged

ahead.

Silvan stood with his head back, his eyes closed, his lips

parted. His arms were spread, his chest bare, his loose-woven

shirt so wet that it had fallen from his shoulders. The rainwater

poured over his half-naked body.

"Silvan!" Samar shouted into the young man's ear. Grabbing

his arm roughly, Samar gave the young elf a good shake. "You are

making a spectacle of yourself!" Samar said, his tone low and

fierce. He shook Silvan again. "Your mother has worries enough

without you adding to them! Get inside with her where you

belong!"

Silvan opened his eyes a slit. His eyes were purple, like his

mother's, only not as dark; more like wine than blood. The wine-

like eyes were alight with ecstasy, his lips parted in smile.

"The lightning, Samar! I've never seen anything like it! I can

feel it as well as see it. It touches my body and raises the hair on

my arms. It wraps me in sheets of flame that lick my skin and

set me ablaze. The thunder shakes me to the core of my being,

the ground moves beneath my feet. My blood burns, and the

rain, the stinging rain, cools my fever. I am in no danger,

Samar." Silvan's smile widened, the rain sleeked his face and

hair. "I am in no more danger than if I were in bed with a

lover-"

"Such talk is unseemly, Prince Silvan," Samar admonished in

stem anger. "You should-"

Hunting horns, blowing wildly, frantically, interrupted him.

Silvan's ecstatic dream shattered, dashed away by the blasting

horns, a sound that was one of the first sounds he remembered

hearing as a little child. The sound of warning, the sound of

danger.

Silvan's eyes opened fully. He could not tell from what direc-

tion the horn calls came, they seemed to come from all directions

at once. Alhana stood at the entrance of the mound, surrounded

by her knights, peering into the storm.

An elven runner came crashing through the brush. No time

for stealth. No need.

"What is it?" Silvan cried.

The soldier ignored him, raced to his commander. "Ogres,

sir!" he cried.

"Where?" Samar demanded.

The soldier sucked in a breath. "All around us, sir! They have

us surrounded. We didn't hear them. They used the storm to

cover their movements. The pickets have retreated back behind

the barricade, but the barricade. . ."

The elf could not continue, he was out of breath. He pointed

to the north.

A strange glow lit the night purple white, the color of the

lightning. But this glow did not strike and then depart. This glow

grew brighter.

"What is it?" Silvan shouted, above the drumming of the

thunder. "What does that mean?"

"The barricade the Woodshapers created is burning," Samar

answered grimly. "Surely the rain will douse the fire-"

"No, sir." The runner had caught his breath. "The barricade

was struck by lightning. Not only in one place, but in many."

He pointed again, this time to the east and to the west. The

fires could be seen springing up in every direction now, every di-

rection except due south.

"The lightning starts them. The rain has no effect on them.

Indeed, the rain seems to fuel them, as if it were oil pouring down

from the heavens."

"Tell the Woodshapers to use their magic to put the fire out."

The runner looked helpless. "Sir, the Wood shapers are ex-

hausted. The spell they cast to create the barricade took all their

strength."

"How can that be?" Samar demanded angrily. "It is a simple

spell- No, never mind!"

He knew the answer, though he continually struggled against

it. Of late, in the past two years, the elven sorcerers had felt their

power to cast spells ebbing. The loss was gradual, barely felt at

first, attributed to illness or exhaustion, but the sorcerers were at

last forced to admit that their magical power was slipping away

like grains of sand from between clutching fingers. They could

hold onto some, but not all. The elves were not alone. They had

reports that the same loss was being felt among humans, but this

was little comfort.

Using the storm to conceal their movements, the ogres had

slipped unseen past the runners and overwhelmed the sentries.

The briar-wall barricade was burning furiously in several places

at the base of the hill. Beyond the flames stood the tree line,

where officers were forming the elven archers into ranks behind

the barricade. The tips of their arrows glittered like sparks.

The fire would keep the ogres at bay temporarily, but when it

died down, the monsters would come surging across. In the

darkness and the slashing rain and the howling wind, the archers

would stand little chance of hitting their targets before they were

overrun. And when they were overrun, the carnage would be

horrible. Ogres hate all other races on Krynn, but their hatred for

elves goes back to the beginning of time, when the ogres were

once beautiful, the favored of the gods. When the ogres fell, the

elves became the favored, the pampered. The ogres had never for-

given them.

"Officers to me!1I Samar shouted. IIFieldmaster! Bring your

archers into a line behind the lancers at the barrier, and tell them

to hold their volley until directed to loose it.1I

He ran back inside the mound. Silvan followed him, the ex-

citement of the storm replaced by the tense, fierce excitement of

the attack. Alhana cast her son a worried glance. Seeing he was

unharmed, she turned her complete attention to Samar, as other

elven officers crowded inside.

"Ogres?" she asked.

"Yes, my queen. They used the storm for cover. The runner be-

lieves that they have us surrounded. I am not certain. I think that

the way south may still be open."

"You suggest?"

"That we fall back to the fortress of the Legion of Steel, Your

Majesty. A fighting retreat. Your meetings with the human

knights went well. It was my thought that-"

Plans and plots, strategy and tactics. Silvan was sick of them,

sick of the sound of them. He took the opportunity to slip away.

The prince hurried to the back of the mound, where he had laid

out his bedroll. Reaching beneath his blanket, he grasped the hilt

of a sword, the sword he had purchased in Solace. Silvan was de-

lighted with the weapon, with its shiny newness. The sword had

an ornately carved hilt with a griffon's beak. The hilt was admit-

tedly difficult to hold-the beak dug into his flesh-but the

sword looked splendid.

Silvanoshei was not a soldier. He had never been trained as a

soldier. Small blame to him. Alhana had forbidden it.

"Unlike my hands, these hands II-his mother would take

her son's hands in her own, hold them fast-II will not be

stained with the blood of his own kind. These hands will heal

the wounds that his father and I, against our will, have been

forced to inflict. The hands of my son will never spill elven

blood.

But this was not elven blood they were talking about spilling.

it was ogre blood. His mother could not very well keep him out

of this battle. Growing up unarmed and untrained for soldiering

in a camp of soldiers, Silvan imagined that the others looked

down upon him, that deep inside they thought him a coward. He

had purchased the sword in secret, taken a few lessons-until he