Knights of the Rose Read online

  “We have given her a blessing that few children of half-elves receive,” he went on. “Both of her parents were conceived in love, and knew it from the day of their births.”

  Tulia looked less uneasy than thoughtful at those words. Far too often, the half-elven were the result of a human father raping an elven mother. Not so Krythis or Tulia.

  Krythis was the child of two ranger. His elven father, with Kagonesti as well as Qualinesti blood, had conceived him joyfully in a bed of ferns under the pine-framed sky. Tulia was the child of a Silvanesti mother who had fled an unhappy betrothal and found herself working at an inn patronized about equally by dwarves and humans.

  One of the dwarves had spirited her away, when it became plain that the innkeeper wanted her adding to his profits on her back. But it was a human, a footloose but honorable trader, who had bedded her, held her hand while she bore a daughter, then died within months at the claws and teeth of a wounded bear.

  Both had been raised more by dwarves than by any other of Krynn’s races, and it was their inheritances from two wealthy dwarven clans that allowed them to make a home of the old citadel of Belkuthas. In the foothills where Thoradin, Silvanesti, and Istar all came together, the citadel was not one that any of the three realms would gladly have ceded to one of the others.

  But two half-elves, equally agreeable to their human and dwarven neighbors, offended nobody. Or at least they had not in the sixty years they had lived there.

  Now the quarrels of the outer world threatened the peace of Belkuthas. Meanwhile, Rynthala had grown into a woman in both law and fact, while seeing her parents proud of each other and of their love for each other. That had to give her strength that she might not otherwise have had, and that she would need in the years to come.

  “If you feel we need Rynthi’s thoughts on this,” Krythis said gently, “we can ask her. But not today, nor for some days after. This is her moment of glory, and I will not let an old man’s fretting disturb a young girl’s joy.”

  “Old man, my—!” Tulia said, mentioning an intimate part of her anatomy. Then she gripped her husband by both hands and drew him down to her.

  The last time Pirvan’s band and their Free Rider companions made camp, they were within half a day’s ride of the Gryphon’s encampment. Hawkbrother proposed that they rest briefly and finish the journey by daylight.

  “There is ample water, between here and the camp,” he said. “The wind will raise no sandstorms.” He was silent briefly, then added, “There is also more risk of ambushes.”

  “This close to your camp?” Darin and Gerik asked in one voice.

  “Even so. The closer to the enemy’s camp, the greater the honor in a successful ambush.”

  “We shall have to see that none of your enemies gain honor this day,” Darin said. It was one of those speeches of his in which each word came down like a hammer on a stone. Hearing him, it was hard to believe he ever laughed.

  Darin’s next words were a proposal that he take the rearguard. Pirvan suggested otherwise, as the vanguard was even more dangerous in the face of an ambush, and also that if Darin were dismounted he would be hard put to overtake his comrades.

  With no more than a frown, the big knight obeyed, and afterward Hawkbrother took Pirvan aside, as the others watered their mounts and prepared for the final stage of the journey.

  “Your blood-son seems to obey you less than your name-son.”

  It took Pirvan a moment to realize that no insult was intended by implying that Gerik was hotheaded and that Darin was Pirvan’s bastard. Hawkbrother had only been a warrior chief, speaking plainly of the strengths and weaknesses of a friendly chief’s warriors.

  “Darin is ten years older than Gerik. You are old for your years, so do not judge my son harshly, if you please.”

  “But Darin—”

  Pirvan did not know what the Free Riders thought of minotaurs. Besides, there was no time to give anyone short of a god the full story of Darin’s upbringing as heir to Waydol.

  “He is the son of an honorable warrior, whom I defeated in combat and with whom I afterward swore blood brotherhood. Had I died in our last battle together, he would no doubt have fostered Gerik as I have fostered Darin.”

  Pirvan could not hold back a smile, at the thought of what Waydol and Darin together might have made of Gerik. Perhaps not a better fighter, but certainly a man quicker to come to a decision.

  But the gods had it otherwise, he realized, and the knights are the better for having Darin’s strength joined to theirs.

  “Your pardon, if I have given offense,” Hawkbrother said.

  “Idle curiosity may give offense. Seeking to learn a friend’s strengths and weaknesses never should,” Pirvan said.

  “Teach that to my brothers,” Hawkbrother said with an edge in his voice, “and some may wish to name you chief of the Gryphons when my father dies.”

  Before Pirvan could reply, he heard Eskaia hailing them; the watering was about done and the saddling-up beginning.

  Krythis and Tulia had taken their bows with them when they went trysting. This probably deceived few, as there was hardly game large enough for a slingshot, let alone one of the great elven bows, within half a day of Belkuthas.

  The citadel’s herds made short work of the grass and leaves, and the shepherds’ bows and spears made short work of wolves and bears. Birds and squirrels thrived, but they were left in peace, by the strict command of the citadel’s master and mistress, their dwarven allies, and Sirbones, their priest of Mishakal, who said little for months on end but healed almost every day and wielded more power than he would ever have dared seek.

  Certainly lord and lady did not deceive their daughter. She met them at the postern gate. She wore her usual garb of loosely cut trousers over low boots and a tunic cut high but also fitted snugly. She was half a head taller than even her father, and Krythis said she had the look of his mother, the ranger, who could look all but the tallest men in the eye.

  Rynthala ran her eyes over her parents’ garb, then twirled a lock of her father’s hair on one tanned finger.

  “A heavy dew this morning, eh?”

  Krythis and Tulia had learned not to blush at anything their daughter said, since the days when she could truly be called “little Rynthi.” Otherwise they would have spent much of the time from that day to this blushing.

  “Something like that,” Tulia replied levelly.

  “Thinking that you will miss having a child about the place when I am gone?” Rynthala went on, as if her mother had not spoken. “You needn’t have waited so long, for I—forgive me. My tongue and my wits aren’t always in step.”

  “They have ranger blood, and rangers go their own pace,” Krythis said, but he put an arm around Tulia’s shoulders as he spoke, and felt her quiver. She had borne three children before Rynthala, and not one of them had lived past its third year. Rynthi had taken off the curse, for she seemed to have all her siblings’ vitality added to hers, but there’d been no live births and one miscarriage since Rynthala.

  “It is ill-omened to speak of leaving home on this day,” Krythis said with a severity that was not entirely feigned. “Also, have you been at the dwarf spirits? If you have, I will summon Sirbones, and he will—”

  “—have nothing to do here,” Rynthala replied. “Please, Father, Mother. I can be just as rude sober as most people when drunk, as you well know.”

  Tulia smiled faintly. “As long as you know it, no husband will be tempted to seek death by telling you.”

  “I hope if the gods want me wed, they will send me a man who always speaks and hears the truth,” Rynthala said. “But perhaps that kind of fortune does not come twice to the same family.”

  She embraced her parents; her arms were nearly long enough to span both of them together. Then she frowned. “Sirbones is fretting about the amount of dwarf spirits at hand. He suggested a small spell on the casks—”

  “No,” Krythis said. “I will not so insult our guests, and if Si
rbones disobeys me he can resume his travels.

  “Besides, our guests are a pretty hardheaded lot. If they get drunk and fall down, it’s more likely the stones will break than their skulls. As for brawls and the like, if Sirbones cannot patch up a cracked rib or a cut lip, perhaps Mishakal should take his staff back.”

  “Shall I tell him that?” Rynthala said with an impish grin that made her look about fifteen.

  “Gods, no!” Tulia said, then laughed and hugged her daughter back. “Tell him our guests are not the sort to spoil this day for you, and he can trust them to do what is right.”

  “I can and will,” Rynthala said, and turned, then broke into a run. She could go from standing to running as swiftly as a great cat, and keep up a blistering pace long enough to run down a deer or make a centaur sweat.

  “Husband,” Tulia said. “Did you listen to yourself, just then?”

  “Eh?”

  She repeated Krythis’s words about Sirbones, and this time the half-elf flushed in a way that his daughter could not have made him do. Then he nodded.

  “Well, at least she comes by that forward tongue honestly.”

  “Honesty does not stand against blood feuds, nor make men courageous enough to face such a tongue.”

  “Some men, perhaps. But they do exist, or otherwise how would I have come to be, and then gone on to wed you?”

  With one fist, Tulia punched her husband in the ribs, and then tickled him with the other hand. They followed their daughter’s footsteps.

  By dawn, High Captain Zephros (he had promoted himself the moment they were out of sight of Aurhinius’s banner) thought he and the three hundred men with him were safe from pursuit.

  They were, at least as far as Gildas Aurhinius or any of the other captains of tax soldiers were concerned. The men, however, were still as likely as not to end up feeding the carrion birds, through too little desert-craft or too many Free Riders coming upon them unexpectedly.

  Zephros also faced certain other dangers—if one can speak of “facing” danger one does not know of, and indeed can barely imagine.

  Two of his captains wished to be in his place because they thought the men under him deserved a better leader, such as one of them. Nor would Kiri-Jolith, who in matters concerning war and warriors knows all, have disagreed.

  Three others wished Zephros dead for reasons of their own. One was a Karthayan, seeking the blood of the man who had slain his compatriot, the Black Robe Rubina, on the north shore of Istar ten years ago. Another served the kingpriest, and thought Zephros should die for his ambitions as a warning to those who might share them. A third wished to avenge kin, dishonored by one of Zephros’s intrigues.

  None of these seven knew that he or she in turn was being watched, by two pairs of large brown eyes set in small, sharp-featured faces. They would have found these spies hard to believe if anyone short of a god had told them, and perhaps even then. Kender do not commonly travel the open desert.

  But kender can go nearly anywhere when they have sufficient cause. Imsaffor Whistletrot and Horimpsot Elderdrake thought they had sufficient cause.

  Chapter 5

  The ambush came when Pirvan was within hours of the principal camp of the Gryphons, not from any hostile clan, but from a band of Gryphons themselves, led by Hawkbrother’s eldest brother, Threehands, first heir to Redthorn.

  With a seasoned knight’s detachment, Pirvan had to admit Threehands’s skill and that of the warriors under him. Not even the sharpest-eyed of Hawkbrother’s band had seen a single one of his brother’s fifty until they rose from their hiding places. Threehands himself let fly an arrow that hissed into the sand an arm’s length from Pirvan’s mount, plain warning that the leaders at least would have been dead before they knew they were under attack.

  When Threehands rode down to greet his brother, Pirvan was not sure that the attack was not continuing. That the brother was using his tongue as a weapon made it no less an attack.

  “As I would have expected of you, Hawk’s Egg,” Threehands snapped. “Guiding Istarians and who knows what else into our sacred and secret lands. How much did they pay you?”

  Hawkbrother’s dark skin grew darker with shame, but his voice was level. “Few are of Istar, some are Knights of Solamnia, and none are of any folk with whom we have feud.”

  “The knights did Istar’s foul work against the ‘barbarians.’ They cannot be friends.”

  “That was long ago.”

  “Not long enough for memories to die, among gods or men.”

  It was plain that Threehands was accustomed to bullying his youngest brother, and that in the eldest’s presence Hawkbrother often grew tongue-tied. Pirvan cupped both hands and shouted “Hola!” so loudly that his mount pecked and reared until he nearly lost his seat. All heads turned toward him.

  “We have come without the power or the wish to do harm to the Gryphons,” Pirvan said sharply. “Yet we meet with insult.

  “Moreover, so does our friend among the Gryphons, your own brother. It is not for an outsider to judge or take sides in a family quarrel. But this I say and swear, Hawkbrother has sworn friendship with us after a lawful challenge fight, witnessed by warriors of both sides and by all True Gods.

  “Insult him, and you insult us.”

  This produced a long silence, a still deeper flush in Hawkbrother, a number of drawn weapons on both sides, and finally a clearing of the throat from Threehands.

  “Brother, is this so?”

  “You insult Sir Pirvan by doubting it, but I will ignore that. It is so.”

  “It was still hardly fair, to set a giant against—”

  For one of the few times since Pirvan had known him, Darin threw back his head and roared with laughter. The echoes took some time to die. Until they did, further speech was impossible.

  “That is another insult to be ignored for now,” Hawkbrother said. He seemed to be regaining his confidence. Pirvan hoped he would not take too much pleasure in bearding an older brother for whom he clearly felt something less than overwhelming affection.

  “Sir Pirvan himself challenged me,” Hawkbrother said. “There were those among his comrades who doubted his wisdom, but he had faith in his own prowess and the favor of the gods. That faith earned him victory.

  “And before you let your tongue wag about my losing to a man old enough to be my father, when was the last time you felt fit to challenge he who is father to us both?”

  This produced another long silence in the gorge. It also gave Pirvan a strong desire to meet Redthorn. If he was physically the master of both of these hard young warriors, the Gryphon chief would be a fighter worth knowing.

  Threehands at last broke the silence by translating the last few speeches for those of his band who did not know the common speech. Then he carefully unstrung his bow, keeping both hands in sight as he did, stepped up on a rock, and waved both hands.

  Drawn weapons returned to belts, backs, and sheaths. Hawkbrother’s shoulders slumped in relief. Pirvan commanded himself only by sheer force of will.

  “If you are sworn friends to Hawkbrother, then it is fit to bring you before Redthorn and Skytoucher,” Threehands said. “Not all of you, to be sure, and any who seek to flee, play the spy, or violate camp laws will die as peace breakers. But I will not follow in my brother’s footsteps, and treat my father as too old to make a fit decision in grave matters of war and peace.”

  Hawkbrother had the self-command to neither flinch, flush, nor reply to this final insult. Instead, he turned his horse and addressed both his band and Pirvan’s.

  “See to your horses. We ride for the guest camp at once, and it will not go well with those who fall out.”

  Witnesses to the lawful marriage of Krythis and Tulia had stood to speak—several of them, and none of them content merely to swear the appropriate oaths.

  It was the same, now, at Rynthala’s coming-of-age celebration. Many stood to swear to the day of Rynthala’s birth, her precocious feats of strength and speech, an
d everything else that had happened over the last seventeen years to or around her.

  In time, Krythis wished to unsling his bow and silence one or two of the more interminable speakers. But it would be the worst of omens on this day, in front of hundreds of witnesses, all of whom wished Rynthala and her parents well almost as much as they wished to empty the tables of food and barrels of drink.

  “Almost done,” Tulia whispered, squeezing her husband’s thigh. “Here comes Sirbones.”

  The priest of Mishakal looked less like a healer than one in need of healing. But he had looked thus when he came striding out of the mountains some five years ago, and had not suffered a day’s illness since. Meanwhile, scores in the citadel of Belkuthas owed life or health to him, as did literally hundreds, of several races, in the lands about.

  “By Mishakal and all gods whose will bears upon health of mind and body, this I swear,” Sirbones said. His voice was high pitched and threadier than it had been, but it still carried. Also, he was one of the few in the citadel who spoke only when he had something worth hearing.

  “I swear that Rynthala, daughter of Krythis and Tulia, is hale and hearty, blessed with as much health as any two women of her age could commonly expect, fleet and strong for battle, fit and well to wed if such is her choice, and to bear children if it is the gods’ will.

  “This I swear, and in the name of Mishakal and all gods whose will bears upon health of mind and body, I defy anyone who says otherwise.”

  Then Sirbones slammed the tip of his staff down on to the ground. A sphere of dazzling blue light enveloped him, sending a powerful blast of wind in all directions. Dust, pebbles, hats, and half-eaten biscuits flew about like leaves in an autumn gale.

  The light faded. Krythis stared at his daughter. Tulia gripped him.

  It was impossible for Rynthala to have grown a hand’s breadth in the passing of a single spell, yet her new garb made it seem that she had. She wore white trousers of fine silk, tucked into boots of amber-hued leather, stiff enough for walking yet loose enough on top to hold weapons.