Steel and Stone (37 page)

“Two of the three lovers appear to be gone, Valdane,” Lida went on. “But I am three, too. I am Lida Tenaka, handmaiden to the Valdane’s daughter,” she said. “Or so I appear to you.” Her hands untied a pouch at her waist, took out a pinch of herb dust, then opened another sack with the same fluid movement.

“I am also Kai-lid Entenaka of Darken Wood, friend and student of the mentor, Xanthar,” she went on.

She tossed the herbs into the air; red and blue dust caught in her sleek black hair.

“Temporus vivier,”
she whispered.
“Reveal, reveal.”

At that instant, Lida’s hair gleamed ash-blond, not black. The Valdane uttered a cry. The woman’s azure gaze, so like her father’s, skewered the Valdane.

“And finally I am Dreena ten Valdane,” she concluded, “saved from death by magefire through the love of my servant.”

Janusz moaned deeply and spoke a word of magic. At that moment, Tanis was able to push forward; the spell of protection had dissipated. The half-elf flung Dreena aside, even as the Valdane dove for her. Tanis hurtled toward Janusz and drove his sword deep into the wizened mage’s breast.

The older mage collapsed without another word. At the same time, the Valdane screamed in agony, crashing to the floor at Dreena’s feet. Blood spurted from the leader’s chest, not from Janusz’s, although the sword stuck in Janusz’s breast.

The sound of chanting rose behind Tanis. Dreena was twirling around slowly, hands outstretched, an ice jewel in each cupped palm.
“Terminada a ello. Entondre du shirat.”
She swirled faster, her slippered feet a blur at the hem of her robe.
“Terminada a ello. Entondre du shirat.”
Tanis heard a groan come from the walls around him. At that, Dreena slowed and halted. She shook her head, tears in her eyes, and spoke. “Janusz’s death will bring destruction. I have done what I could to give us some time to escape. But we must leave now, quickly.”

“And the jewels?” Tanis asked, hurrying to the unconscious Kitiara and gathering her in his arms.

Without a word, Dreena flung the stones from her with a spasm of disgust.

Beads of water appeared on the ice wall. The dying Valdane tried to reach for an ice jewel, but Tanis kicked the stone out of his reach. Suddenly, as the room grew warmer, the floor turned damp and slick. Tanis and Dreena made their way carefully to the door. They paused at Caven’s body. “We’ll have to leave him,” Dreena murmured.

“I know.” Tanis offered a silent farewell to the Kernan. The ice blocks were gradually giving way. At the doorway, Dreena hesitated, looking back at the mage who had loved her, and her father who had betrayed her, but Tanis forced her out into the corridor.

The mage had slumped to the dais. The Valdane tried to crawl after the trio, but he collapsed after a few feet.

Snow sifted from the ceiling, a gray-white veil drawing a curtain on the room of the dead and the dying.

“Tanis! Hurry!”

Tanis ran down the corridor after Dreena. Suddenly the ice walls lost their illumination, plunging them into total darkness.

“Janusz is dead. Thus so is my father,” Dreena said flatly.
“Shirak.”

Magelight glowed around them, lighting their way. Dreena halted in confusion in the maze of corridors. “This way,” shouted the half-elf, and guided by the magelight, he sped down one corridor, Kitiara a heavy weight across his shoulder. Soon Tanis saw the rope coiled at the portal above the dungeon. He slid to a halt at the opening. “Can you levitate us up through the crevasse?” he asked the mage.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can tr—”

A roar interrupted her words. The two of them leaped back as tons of snow crashed down from
above the dungeon.

“The crevasse,” Dreena said weakly, her face paling to porcelain in the magelight.

“Is there another way out?” Tanis demanded.

“Not that I know of.” At that instant, Dreena grabbed the half-elf’s arm and towed him back up the corridor. “Janusz’s quarters!” she shouted back. “His books!”

Many of the corridors had collapsed inward by now. Tanis, burdened by Kitiara, stepped carefully over the ice shards and drifted snow that impeded their path. He saw the luminous circle of magelight disappear through a door, and followed.

Then ensued a supreme test of the half-elf’s patience. As the ice palace crumbled around them, he had to wait while Dreena riffled through the mage’s parchments and books, then, when she crowed with joy and burrowed into one bound sheaf of parchment, he had to wait minutes longer while she studied and memorized the appropriate spell.

One wall of Janusz’s spartan quarters had collapsed into slush. The melting ice made groaning noises. Tanis practically had to shout to be heard. “Can’t you just read the spell?”

Dreena’s long blond hair waved as she shook her head. “A mage must memorize the spell in order to use it properly. Now be still.” She closed the book and shut her eyes. Her lips moved, but no sound issued. Then she began to chant,
“Collepdas tirek. Sanjarinum vominai. Portali, vendris.”
Nothing happened. Dreena cast around her as Tanis shifted his weight from foot to foot. Kitiara moaned, draped over one of his shoulders. Then Dreena reached for a box, a rosewood box with intricate carvings of bull men and thanoi. She opened it, and violet light
bathed her face. She cradled the lone stone.
“Collepdas tirek. Sanjarinum vominai. Portali, vendris.”
Her hands danced.

Just as the three vanished from Janusz’s quarters, the Valdane’s stronghold buckled with a crash. Suddenly Dreena and Tanis, still carrying Kitiara, were treading water in a frigid lake teeming with minotaurs, walrus men, and ettins.

Tanis held Kitiara’s head above the water, searching for Dreena. She was bobbing nearby, swimming capably but shivering almost uncontrollably.

A vast section of the Icereach had imploded, melted, and turned into frigid sea. The bodies of slain Ice Folk and owls floated on every side. Tanis saw thanoi swim through the water, seeking safety, mindless of the cold and heedless of the presence of the half-elf, Kitiara, and Dreena. Minotaurs, tangled in pounds of metal weaponry, struggled in the waves. Ettins perished as each creature’s heads argued whether solid ground lay on one side or another.

Golden Wing and Splotch, crisscrossing the waters just above reach of the struggling army, plucked Tanis, Dreena, and Kitiara from the icy waters. They rejoined the attacking force, which was safe on the backs of owls, high above the swirling lake. Kitiara awakened to find herself pinned in front of the shivering half-elf on the back of Golden Wing and gazing, not at Lida, but at Dreena.

“Who …?”

Then Kitiara’s mouth gaped in horror as Dreena ten Valdane tossed the last ice jewel, the one she had taken from Janusz’s quarters, into the lake far below.

“What are you doing?” the swordswoman screamed at the mage. The glowing stone hit the water and vanished beneath the surface—and at that moment
the lake refroze, trapping the remains of the Valdane’s army. Even as Tanis watched, snow began to drift across the ice, packed with grotesque figures frozen in death.

Only a third of the attacking force had survived. Brittain saluted Tanis from the back of Windslayer, but there was no sign of his scouts or his chief officer. The victorious army spiraled higher, then swooped north across the snowy range. Tanis sat up, ignoring the bitter wind and Kitiara’s complaining, and looked homeward.

The snow fell with a fury. Except for a slight depression on the ground, there was no sign they’d been there at all.

Epilogue

A
FTER LEAVING THE
I
CE
F
OLK, THE GIANT OWLS HEADED
north with Tanis, Kitiara, and Dreena. The mage had resumed her Darken Wood guise and answered only to the name of Kai-lid, insisting that now, truly, Dreena was dead. The birds deposited Kitiara and Tanis on the road outside Solace. Kai-lid and the giant owls flew south toward Darken Wood, and the half-elf and swordswoman turned toward Solace.

After a while, Tanis gave up quizzing Kitiara about her pregnancy and about her role in the attack on the Ice Folk. She contended stubbornly that she’d been merely pretending to be an advisor to the Valdane in order to stall for time until Tanis and Caven showed
up. About the pregnancy, she was adamant.

“Xanthar was wrong,” she snapped. “The only thing that owl was good for was transportation. Although the concept of a mounted army flying high above the enemy does intrigue me, half-elf. Perhaps the owls would be interested in the mercenary life.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

Kitiara swiveled around and swore. “Half-elf, let it go. If I were with child, I’d know it, wouldn’t I? And why would I hide that from you, of all people?”

Tanis just looked at her. After a time, she reddened and looked away. “The owl was wrong,” she repeated, running her hand through her curls.

“Was Kai-lid wrong, too?”

She didn’t answer. They walked on in silence. Soon they halted on the stone path outside Flint Fireforge’s home in Solace. In a moment, Tanis would rejoin the dwarf and Kitiara would seek out her twin brothers.

“Kitiara,” Tanis said, rallying, then paused and frowned. “I …”

“Don’t, half-elf. You’d expect too much of me. I’d disappoint you, and then you’d end up hating me for being the woman I am.” She looked down at her hand, resting on the hilt of her sword.

*   *   *   *   *

A few months later, the swordswoman disappeared. She reappeared several months after that, claiming disappointment at not having found the purple stone that had been lost in the Plains of Dust. But Kitiara seemed curiously at peace for the first time in months.

Tanis was left wondering.

Ellen Porath was an Associated Press reporter for seven years before she embarked on a plan to get her Master of Science degree, work as a freelance journalist, and carry out a lifelong dream to write fiction. She now teaches agricultural journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, edits and writes fiction and nonfiction, and carries on a near-hopeless battle against misspelled vegetables in grocery store produce aisles. Ellen lives in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, with her husband, daughter, and puppet collection.

This is Ellen’s second DRAGONLANCE
^®
book; the first,
Kindred Spirits
, co-authored with Mark Anthony, was Volume One in the Meetings Sextet.

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