Elven Nations - The Kinslayer Wars Part 32

"I'm glad you are here to greet me," she said pleasantly. "Take me to see General Giarna!"

"You want to see the general?"

"We're . . . old friends."

Shaking his head in amazement, the guard nevertheless led Suzine a short way farther down the trail, entering a small clearing. The top of the meadow was almost completely enclosed by a canopy of tall elmsprotection against detection from the air, Suzine knew.

"The general's in there." The man gestured to a small cottage near the clearing's edge. Two men-at-arms flanked the doorway, and they snapped to attention as Suzine walked up to them.

"She wants to see the general," explained the crossbowman, with a shrug.

"Should we search her?" The question, from a muscular halberdier, sent a shiver down Suzine's stooped spine. She felt acutely conscious of the dagger in her pouch.

"That won't be necessary." Suzine recognized the deep voice from within the cottage.

The watchmen stood aside, allowing Suzine to step through the door.

"You have come back to me!"

For a moment, Suzine stood still, blinking and trying to see in the dim light. Then the large black-cloaked figure moved toward her, and she knew himknew his sight, his smell, and his intimidating presence.

With a sense of dull wonder, she realized that the tales she had heard, the images of her mirror, were all true. General Giarna stood before her now. She knew that he must be at least seventy years old, but he looked the same as he had forty years earlier!

He stepped closer to her. She felt the revulsion and fear she had known forty years earlier when he had approached her, had used her. Slowly her fingers closed around the weapon in her pouch. The man loomed over her, looking down with a slightly patronizing smile. She stared into his eyes and saw that same hollowness, the same sense of void, that she remembered with such vivid terror.

Then she pulled out the knife and threw back her arm. Why is he laughing? She wondered about that even as she drove the point of the weapon toward the unarmored spot at his throat. Giarna made no attempt to block her thrust.

The blade struck his skin but snapped as the weapon broke at the hilt. The useless shard of metal fell to the floor as Suzine blinked, incredulous.

General Giarna's throat showed not the tiniest hint of a wound.

It wasn't until Parnigar returned with his company of scouts that Kith-Kanan received any vital information regarding the enemy's positions. Wearing sodden trail clothes from the nine-day reconnaissance, the veteran captain reported to Kith-Kanan as soon as he returned to the fort.

"We pushed at the fringes of their position," he reported. "Their pickets were as thick as flies on a dead horse. They got two of my scouts, and the rest of us barely slipped out of their grasp."

Kith shook his head, wincing. Even after forty years of war, the death of each elf under his command struck him like a personal blow.

"We couldn't get into the main camp," explained Parnigar. "There were just too many guards. But judging by the density of their patrols, I have to conclude they were guarding the main body of Giarna's force."

"Thanks for taking the risk, my friend," said Kith-Kanan finally. "Too many times I have asked you."

Parnigar smiled wearily. "I'm in this fight to the endone way or another!" The lanky warrior cleared his throat hesitantly. "There's . . . something else."

"Yes?"

"We found the Lady Suzine's coachman on the outskirts of the human lines."

Kith-Kanan looked up in sudden fear. "Was heis he alive?"

"Was." Parnigar shook his head. "He'd been taken by their pickets, then escaped after a fight. Badly wounded in the stomach, but he made it to the trail. We found him there."

"What did he tell you?"

"He didn't know where she was. He had dropped her beside the trail, and she followed a path into the woods. We checked out the area. Guards were thicker than ever there, so I think the headquarters must have been somewhere nearby."

Could she be heading back to Giarna? Kith-Kanan sensed Parnigar's unspoken question. Surely she wouldn't betray Kith-Kanan.

"Can you show me where this place is?" asked the elven commander urgently.

"Of course."

Kith sighed sympathetically. "I'm sorry that you must travel again so quickly, but perhaps. . . ."

Parnigar waved off the explanation. "I'll be ready to ride when you need me."

"Go to your quarters now. Mari's been waiting for you for days," Kith-Kanan ordered, realizing that Parnigar still dripped from his drenched garments. "She's probably got dry clothes all ready to get you dressed."

"I doubt she wants to dress me!" Parnigar chuckled knowingly.

"Off to your wife now, before she grows old on you!" Kith's attempt at humor felt lame to both of them, though Parnigar forced a chuckle as he left.

31.

Late Spring, Silvanost.

Hermathya looked at herself in the mirror. She was beautiful and she was young ...

yet for what purpose? She was alone.

Tears of bitterness welled in her eyes. She rose and whirled away from her table, only to be confronted by her bed. That canopied, quilted sleeping place mocked her every bit as harshly as did the mirror. For decades, it had been hers alone.

Now even her child had been sent away. Her anger throbbed as hot as ever, the same rage that had turned the two-week journey back to the city into a silent ordeal for Sithas.

He endured her fury and didn't let it bother him, and Hermathya knew that he had won.

Vanesti was gone, serving beside his uncle on the front lines of danger! How could her husband have done this? What kind of perverse cruelty would cause him to torture his wife so? She thought of Sithas as a stranger. What little closeness they had once enjoyed had been worn thin by the stresses of war.

Her thoughts abruptly wandered to Kith-Kanan. How much like Sithas he lookedand yet how very different he was! Hermathya looked back upon the pa.s.sion of their affair as one of the bright moments of her life. Before her name had been uttered as the prospective bride of the future Speaker of the Stars, her life had been a pa.s.sionate whirl.

Then the announcement had comeHermathya, daughter of the Oakleaf Clan, would wed Sithas of Silvanos! She remembered how Kith-Kanan had beggedhe had begged!her to accompany him, to run away. She had laughed at him as if he were mad.

Yet the madness, it now seemed, was hers. Prestige and station and comfort meant nothing, she knew, not when compared to the sense of happiness that she had thrown away.

The one time since then when Kith-Kanan and she had come together illicitly flared brightly in her mind. That episode had never been repeated because Kith-Kanan's guilt wouldn't allow it. He had avoided her for years and was awkward when they were brought together through necessity.

Shaking her head, she fought back the tears. Sithas was in the palace. Hermathya would go to him and make him bring their son back home!

She found her husband in his study, perusing a doc.u.ment with the Oakleaf stamp, in gold, at the top. He looked up when she entered, and blinked with surprise.

"You must call Vanesti back," she blurted, staring at him.

"I will not."

"Can't you understand what he means to me?" Hermathya fought to keep her voice under control. "I need him here with me. He's all I've got!"

"We've been over this. It will do the lad good to get out of the palace, to live among the troops. Besides, Kith will take good care of him. Don't you trust him?"

"Do you?" Hermathya uttered the insinuation without thinking.

"Why? What do you mean?" There had been something in her tone. Sithas leapt from his chair and stared at her accusingly.

She turned away, suddenly calm. She controlled the discussion now.

"What did you mean, do I trust him?" Sithas's voice was level and cold. "Of course I do!"

"You have been gullible before."

"I know that you loved him," the Speaker added. "I know of your affair before our marriage. I even know that he pleaded with you to go with him when he flew into exile."

"I should have gone!" she cried, whirling suddenly.

"Do you still love him?"

"No." She didn't know whether this was a lie or not. "But he loves me!"

"That's nonsense!"

"He came to me in my bedroom long ago. He didn't leave until the morning." She lied about the room because it suited her purpose. Her husband wouldn't know that it was she who had gone to him.

Sithas stepped closer to her. "Why should I believe you?"

"Why should I lie?"

His open hand caught her across the cheek with a loud smack. The force of his blow sent her tumbling backward to the floor. With a burning face, she stood up, her eyes spitting fire at him.

"Vanesti will stay on the plains," Sithas declared as she turned and fled. He turned to the window, numb, and stared to the west. He wondered about the stranger his brother had become.

"You believed that you could come here to kill me?" General Giarna looked at Suzine with mild amus.e.m.e.nt. The old woman backed against the closed door of his cottage. She had picked up the broken blade of her knife, but the weapon felt useless and futile, for it couldn't harm her enemy.

Thunder rumbled outside as another storm swept across the camp.

"Your death would be the greatest thing that could happen to Krynn." She spoke bravely, but her mind was locked by fear. How could she have been so stupid as to come

here alone, thinking she could harm this brutal warrior? Instead, she had become his prisoner.

Her heart quailed as she remembered the man's dark tortures, his means of gaining information from his captives. And no captive had ever possessed such valuable information as the wife of his chief enemy.

Now the general laughed heartily, placing his hands on his hips and leaning backward like a young man. "My death, you should know, is not so easily attained."

Suzine stared at him.

"Do you remember the last night of General Barnet?"

She would never forget that awful, shriveled corpse, cast aside by General Giarna like an empty sh.e.l.l, drained of all its life.

"My powers come from places you cannot begin to understand!"

He paced in agitation, looking at her.

"There are G.o.ds who care for people of power, G.o.ds whose names are only whispered in the dead of night, for fear of frightening the children!"

General Giarna whirled again, his brow furrowed in concentration. "There is Morgion, G.o.d of disease and decay. I tell you, he can be bought! I pay him in lives, and he saves his curse from my flesh! And there are othersHiddukel, Sargonnas! And of course" his voice dropped to a whisper; his body quivered, and he looked at Suzine"the Queen of Darkness, Takhisis herself! They say that she is banished, but that's a lie. She is patient and she is generous. She bestows her powers on those who earn her favor!

"It is the power of life, in all its aspects! It allows me to be strong and young, while those around me grow old and die!"

Now he stared directly at her, and there seemed to be genuine anguish in his voice.

"You might have shared this with me! You were a woman of power. You would have made a fitting partner for me! Who knows, one day we might have ruled Ergoth itself!"

"Your madness consumes you," Suzine replied.

"It is not madness!" he hissed. "You cannot kill me. No human can kill me! Nor a dwarf, nor an elf. None may slay me!"

General Giarna paced restlessly. A steady beat of rain suddenly began pounding on the roof, forcing him to raise his voice. "Not only do I remain young and vigorous, but I am also invulnerable! " He looked at her sideways, slyly. I even had my men capture a griffon so that I might devour it and take over its aura. Now not even one of those beasts- the bane of this long warcan claim my blood.