Read Dragonlance 15 - Dragons Of A Fallen Sun Online
Authors: Margaret Weis
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