Read Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun Online
Authors: Margaret Weis
"I have been with her always," said Galdar, and it truly
seemed to him that he had.
Minotaur and human shook hands. Galdar proudly raised
Mina's standard and fell in beside her as she made her victory
march through the camp. Captain Samuval walked behind Mina,
his hand on his sword, guarding her back. Mina's Knights rode to
her standard. Everyone of those who had followed her from
Neraka had suffered some wound, but none had perished. Al-
ready, they were telling stories of miracles.
" An arrow came straight toward me," said one. "I knew I was
dead. I spoke Mina's name, and the arrow dropped to the ground
at my feet."
"One of the cursed Solamnics held his sword to my throat,"
said another. "I called upon Mina, and the enemy's blade broke in
twain."
Soldiers offered her food. They brought her wine, brought her
water. Several soldiers seized the tent of one of Milles's officers,
turned him out, and prepared it for Mina. Snatching up burning
brands from the campfires, the soldiers held them aloft, lighting
Mina's progress through the darkness. As she passed, they spoke
her name as if it were an incantation that could work magic.
"Mina," cried the men and the wind and the darkness.
"Mina!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
UNDER THE SHIELD
The Silvanesti elves have always revered the night.
The Qualinesti delight in the sunlight. Their ruler is the
Speaker of the Sun. They fill their homes with sunlight, all
business is conducted in the daylight hours, all important cere-
monies such as marriage are held in the day so that they may be
blessed by the light of the sun.
The Silvanesti are in love with the star-lit night.
The Silvanesti's leader is the Speaker of the Stars. Night had
once been a blessed time in Silvanost, the capital of the elven
state. Night brought the stars and sweet sleep and dreams of the
beauty of their beloved land. But then came the War of the Lance.
The wings of evil dragons blotted out the stars. One dragon in
particular, a green dragon known as Cyan Bloodbane, laid claim
to the realm of Silvanesti. He had long hated the elves and he
wanted to see them suffer. He could have slaughtered them by
the thousands, but he was cruel and clever. The dying suffer, that
is true, but the pain is fleeting and is soon forgotten as the dead
move from this reality to the next. Cyan wanted to inflict a pain
that nothing could ease, a pain that would endure for centuries.
The ruler of Silvanesti at the time was an elf highly skilled in
magic. Lorac Caladon foresaw the coming of evil to Ansalon. He
sent his people into exile, telling them he had the power to keep
their realm safe from the dragons. Unbeknownst to anyone,
Lorac had stolen one of the magical dragon orbs from the Tower
of High Sorcery. He had been warned that an attempt to use the
orb by one who was not strong enough to control its magic
could result in doom. In his arrogance, Lorac believed that he
was strong enough to wrest the orb to his will. He looked into
the orb and saw a dragon looking back. Lorac was caught and
held in thrall.
Cyan Bloodbane had his chance. He found Lorac in the Tower
of the Stars, as he sat upon his throne, his hand held fast by the
orb. Cyan whispered into Lorac's ear a dream of Silvanesti, a ter-
rible dream in which lovely trees became hideous, deformed
monstrosities that attacked those who had once loved them. A
dream in which Lorac saw his people die, one by one, each death
painful and terrible to witness. A dream in which the Thon-
Thalas river ran red with blood.
The War of the Lance ended. Queen Takhisis wa~ defeated.
Cyan Bloodbane was forced to flee Silvanesti, but he left smugly
satisified with the knowledge that he had accomplished his
goal. He had inflicted upon the Silvanesti a tortured dream from
which they would never awaken. When the elves returned to
their land after the war was over, they discovered to their shock
and horror that the nightmare was reality. Lorac's dream, given
to him by Cyan Bloodbane, had hideously altered their once
beautiful land.
The Silvanesti fought the dream arid, under the leadership of
a Qualinesti general, Porthios, the elves eventually managed to
defeat it. The cost was dear, however. Many elves fell victim to
the dream, and even when it was finally cast out of the land, the
trees and plants and animals remained horribly deformed.
Slowly, the elves coaxed their forests back to beauty, using newly
discovered magicks to heal the wounds left by the dream, to
cover over the scars.
Then came the need to forget. Porthios, who had risked his
life more than once to wrest their land from the clutches of the
dream, became a reminder of the dream. He was no longer a
savior. He was a stranger, an interloper, a threat to the Sil-
vanesti who wanted to return to their life of isolation and seclu-
sion. Porthios wanted to take the elves into the world, to make
them one with the world, to unify them with their cousins, the
Qualinesti. He had married Alhana Starbreeze, daughter of
Lorac, with this hope in mind. Thus if war came again, the elves
would not struggle alone. They would have allies to fight on
their side.
The elves did not want allies. Allies who might decide to
gobble up Silvanesti land in return for their help. Allies who
might want to marry Silvanesti sons and daughters and dilute the
pure Silvanesti blood. These isolationists had declared Porthios
and his wife, Alhana, "dark elves" who could never, under
penalty of death, return to their homelands.
Porthios was driven out. General Konnal took control of the
nation and placed it under martial law "until such time as a true
king can be found to rule the Silvanesti." The Silvanesti ignored
the pleas of their cousins, the Qualinesti, for help to free them
from the rule of the great dragon Beryl and the Knights of
Neraka. The Silvanesti ignored the pleas of those who fought the
great dragons and who begged the elves for their help. The Sil-
vanesti wanted no part of the world. Absorbed in their own af-
fairs, their eyes looked at the mirror of life and saw only
themselves. Thus it was that while they gazed with pride at their
own reflections, Cyan Bloodbane, the green dragon who had
been their bane, came back to the land he had once nearly de-
stroyed. Or so at least, it was reported by the kirath, who kept
watch on the borders.
"Do not raise the shield!" the kirath warned. "You will trap us
inside with our worst enemy!"
The elves did not listen. They did not believe the rumors.
Cyan Bloodbane was a figure out of the dark past. He had died in
the Dragon Purge. He must have died. If he had returned, why
had he not attacked them? So fearful were the elves of the world
outside that the Heads of House were unanimous in their ap-
proval of the magical shield. The people of Silvanesti could now
be said to have gained their dearest wish. Under the magical
shield, they were truly isolated, cut off from everyone. They were
safe, protected from the evil of the outside world.
"And yet, it seems to me that we have not so much as shut the
evil out," Rolan said to Silvan, ''as that we have locked the evil in."
Night had come to Silvanesti. The darkness was welcome to
Silvan, even as it was a grief to him. They had traveled by day
through the forest, covering many miles until Rolan deemed they
were far enough from the ill effects of the shield to stop and rest.
The day had been a day of wonder to Silvanoshei.
He had heard his mother speak with longing, regret, and
sorrow of the beauty of her homeland. He remembered as a child
when he and his exiled parents were hiding in some cave with
danger all about them, his mother would tell him tales of Sil-
vanesti to quiet his fears. He would close his eyes and see, not the
darkness, but the emerald, silver and gold of the forest. He would
hear not the howls of wolf or goblin but the melodious chime of
the bell flower or the sweetly sorrowful music of the flute tree.
His imagination paled before the reality, however. He could
not believe that such beauty existed. He had spent the day as in
a waking dream, stumbling over rocks, tree roots, and his own
feet as wonders on every side brought tears to his eyes and joy to
his heart. .
Trees whose bark was tipped with silver lifted their branches
to the sky in graceful arcs, their silver-edged leaves shining in
the sunlight. A profusion of broad-leafed bushes lined the path,
every bush ablaze with flame-colored flowers that scented the
air with sweetness. He had the impression he did not walk
through a forest so much as through a garden, for there were no
fallen branches, no straggling weeds, no thickets of brambles.
The Woodshapers permitted only the beautiful, the fruitful, and
the beneficial to grow in their forests. The Woodshapers' magi-
cal influence extended throughout the land, with the exception
of the borders, where the shield cast upon their handiwork a
killing frost.
The darkness brought rest to Silvan's dazzled eyes. Yet the
night had its own heart-piercing beauty. The stars blazed with
fierce brilliance, as if defying the shield to try to shut them out.
Night flowers opened their petals to the starlight, scented the
warm darkness with exotic perfumes, while their luminescent
glow filled the forest with a soft silvery white light.
"What do you mean?" Silvan asked. He could not equate evil
with the beauty he'd witnessed.
"The cruel punishment we inflicted on your parents, for one,
Your Majesty," said Rolan. "Our way of thanking your father for
his aid was to try to stab him in the back. I was ashamed to be Sil-
vanesti when I heard of this. But there has come ~ reckoning. We
are bemg made to pay for our shame and our dIshonor, for cut-
ting ourselves off from the rest of the world, for living beneath the
shield, protected from the dragons while others suffer. We pay for
such protection with our lives."
They had stopped to rest in a clearing near a swift-flowing
stream. Silvan was thankful for the respite. His injuries had
started to pain him once more, though he had not liked to say
anything. The excitement and shock of the sudden change in his
life had drained him, depleted his energy.
Rolan found fruit and water with a sweetness like nectar for
their dinner. He tended to Silvan's wounds with a respectful, so-
licitous care that the young man found quite pleasant.
Samar would have tossed me a rag and told me to make the
best of it, Silvanoshei thought.
"Perhaps Your Majesty would like to sleep for a few hours,"
Rolan suggested after their supper.
Silvan had thought he was dropping from fatigue but found
that he felt much better after eating, refreshed and renewed.
"I would like to know more about my homeland," he said.
"My mother has told me some, but, of course, she could not know
what has been happening since she. . . she left. You spoke of the
shield." Silvan glanced about him. The beauty took his breath
away. "1 can understand why you would want to protect this"-
he gestured to the trees whose boles shone with an iridescent
light, to the star flowers that sparkled in the grass-"from the
ravages of our enemies."
"Yes, Your Majesty," said Rolan and his tone softened. "There
are some who say that no price is too high to pay for such pro-
tection, not even the price of our own lives. But if all of us are
dead, who will be left to appreciate the beauty? And if we die, I
believe that eventually the forests will die, too, for the souls of the
elves are bound up in all things living."
"Our people number as the stars," said Silvan, amused, think-
ing that Rolan was being overly dramatic.
Rolan glanced up at the heavens. "Erase half those stars, Your
Majesty, and you will find the light considerably diminished."
"Half" Silvanoshei was shocked. "Surely not half!"
"Half the population of Silvanost alone has perished from the
wasting sickness, Your Majesty." He paused a moment, then said,
"What I am about to tell you would be considered treason, for
which I would be severely punished."
"By punished, you mean cast out?" Silvan was troubled.
"Exiled? Sent into darkness?"
"No, we do not do that anymore, Your Majesty," Rolan
replied. "We cannot very well cast people out, for they could not
pass through the shield. Now people who speak against Gover-
nor General Konnal simply disappear. No one knows what hap-
pens to them."
"If this is true, why don't the people rebel?" Silvan asked, be-
wildered. "Why don't they overthrow Konnal and demand that
the shield be brought down?"
"Because only a few know the truth. And those of us who do
have no evidence. We could stand in the Tower of the Stars and
say that Konnal has gone mad, that he is so fearful of the world