The Messenger

Royal.

A casual glance might take the island for a fabulous grove of well-tended gardens. Many of the elven manors were towering spires of wood, rising from yards crowded with flowers, bright with blossoms, and sparkling with blue pools, crystalline fountains, trilling streams. The dominant structure was the Tower of Stars, of course, and Kerrick couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe as he stopped again and looked at the looming spire of crystal and steel. Several of the lower railings were gilded, but the shortage of gold during this era of the Istarian Kingpriests required that golden ornamentation be kept to a minimum, so steel had often been made to serve.

The young elf started down the spiraling stairway connecting the great bridge to the courtyard of House Mariner, where he had his apartments. He passed a veranda where an elf was playing a lyre to a small audience of his fellows. On the road to his house he met more musicians, flautists dancing in step and playing merry tunes. With a tolerant smile he moved to the side, vaguely impatient. His mind was filled with anticipation-he would have a long bath and a steam, then a good rest while he awaited the hour of midnight.

He could see much of the city from the gate to House Mariner-the bustling shipyard where a new galley took shape, the temple of E’li with its lofty towers of gold plate, the royal arboretum with acres of flowered gardens terraced across the side of a great hill-but, as it did so often, his mind drifted to gold.

He was thinking about gold as he climbed the outer stairway to the balcony ledge outside of his quarters. Kerrick had precious little of the stuff-three coins tucked safely in hiding. A mere squire in a minor house could have no delusions of attaining any significant wealth. He reminded himself that he had everything he needed in the luxury of his appointment at court and in the attentions of a noble young maiden.

Nevertheless, gold had cast a spell over Kerrick’s life. It was gold, or at least the lure of gold, that had claimed the life of his father, the famed admiral Dimorian Fallabrine … gold that had given his father great stature, gold that had led him to doom.

Like his father Kerrick thought too much about gold.

Later that night, at the corner where High Avenue met the waterfront, Kerrick turned for one last look at the harbor. The full moon shimmered in the water, white Lunitari rendered into clear, soft light. The ships at anchor made perfect reflections against a surface mirror-still in the windless night. For a moment Kerrick had a dizzying sensation-which way was up, which down?

Cutter stood at anchor there amidst the other vessels, and he relished the beauty of the high prow, the swept gunwales, and the single mast jutting so proudly before the low cabin. She was not as big as the king’s warships, at anchor close to the mouth of the harbor, nor the mercantile galleys belonging to many of the elder houses. These gaudy showpieces displayed ornately carved bowsprits, engraved transoms, and even, to distinguish the highest ranking nobles, gilded rails and gunwales. The white moonlight sparkled into fiery orange here and there as it caught one of these surfaces of gold and reflected their light straight into Kerrick’s eyes.

Beside those vessels Cutter was clearly a modest sailboat, but to the lone elf on the waterfront she was very much more than that. Cutter was the legacy of his father. She was pride and ancestry, strength and freedom … the key to everything he was, everything he had earned, everything he hoped to do in his life.

As Kerrick made his way up from Water Street, he thought about how fine it was to be young, to be here, in the spiritual center of elvenkind and, in his sincere belief, the center of all Krynn. A slight breeze whisked down the broad avenue, carrying the scent of blossoms and smoke, the hint of distant magic and the aroma of good food, tart wine.

Footsteps scuffed in the street before him, and Kerrick melted into a yard of lush, flowering bushes. A patrol, two elves of House Protector, ambled past, but their attention was focused on a hushed conversation and neither cast his eyes toward the shadowy ground.

They would probably be the last guards of the night, but in this neighborhood Kerrick would take no unnecessary chances. Elven eyes were keen in the darkness, capable of spotting a concealed person merely by the heat of his body. Kerrick knew that the presence of a common squire here in the heart of the city’s elite enclave would be difficult to explain.

He moved cautiously across the grass and into the pathways of a formal garden. Staying low, he kept a tall hedge between himself and the street as he moved from one great compound to the next. He wormed through the hedge at one of many narrow passages, then skirted a shimmering pool. The water was bright in the moonlight and alive with flyfish that hovered above the water, snatching bugs from the air and then plopping into the depths. From here he slipped into the cover of a groomed oak grove, stepping over gnarled roots, gliding from trunk to great trunk as he kept a lookout.

As always, he felt the keen excitement, the thrilling anticipation of the supple form, the willing smile of Gloryian Diradar. She was a true daughter of the city’s elite, a prize who had demanded all his skill in the taking. He had wooed her patiently for nearly a year before winning her in bed, but the months before that conquest were well worth the wait.

Her house was before him finally, a wall of rose quartz leading to a balcony and shadowed windows. Gloryian was up there, probably looking out for him already, watching from the dark of the chamber. Kerrick’s heart pounded as he crossed the stretch of lawn to the trellis below her window, his familiar route up the wall. He grasped the branches, set his foot on a crosspiece, and started to climb, pulling himself up with practiced gestures.

The crack of breaking wood shot through the quiet night, and Kerrick, thrown by the surprise of it, felt himself falling backwards. Somehow the entire trellis had broken free from the wall! He twisted, pushing away, trying to land on his feet. When his moccasins hit the grass he lunged to the side, stumbling out from beneath the collapsing rack of sticks and vines.

Something hard hit him in the head, and he dropped to his knees, thinking groggily that a piece of masonry must have tumbled from the wall. Then he heard the voice.

“Sneaking, crawling bastard!”

A fist lashed at him from the side, smashing his nose. Through swiftly blurring eyes he saw an elf-no, two elves-looming over him. The nearest was a minor nobleman named Patrikan Diradar. More to the point, he was Gloryian’s father, though he looked strange and monstrous now, his face contorted by an almost animal fury. Patrikan’s fist lashed out again, striking the struggling elf in the ear, knocking him on his side.

“I treated to you as a friend!” said the second attacker, his voice a low growl. This one he recognized as Gloryian’s brother, Darnari, a haughty young elf who had never seemed even remotely friendly to Kerrick. Darnari bent over, seized his prone victim by the hair, and punched him in the stomach. Again and again he jabbed, all the time meeting Kerrick’s watering eyes with a look of pure hatred.

“You are an embarrassment to Silvanesti, to E’li himself!” snarled a third voice from behind Kerrick, invoking the elven name of the great god Paladine. A savage kick caught him between the shoulders.

Kerrick’s head snapped back, and he collapsed on the rubble of the trellis, instinctively curling his knees to his chest. He couldn’t escape, couldn’t fight back, could barely draw a breath.

“You’re not fit to sweep up the droppings of an ogre whore!” growled Patrikan, stomping on Kerrick’s side with violent force. The elf groaned, felt his bile rise with the pain, and he vomited. His guts convulsed, as broken bones twisted and stabbed with each involuntary movement.

“Did you think you could get away with it?” declared the third elf, seizing Kerrick’s arm, yanking him around, as he lay sprawled helplessly on his back. Vaguely Kerrick recognized this new tormentor … Waykand Isletter, one of the most prominent of young nobles in all Silvanesti. “You dare to violate the woman who will be my wife. What foolishness creeps through your pathetic mind?”

“It is only through the goodwill of King Nethas that you are still alive,” Patrikan said, leaning over Kerrick with a look of disgust. He snorted contemptuously. “Our king, in his wisdom, seems to have fond memories of your time at court … though he recognizes that you have abandoned all claim to his protection and favor. Perhaps our liege still believes those stories about your father’s heroism in the war. As for me, I knew Dimorian Fallabrine for the pirate that he was, and I can see that his dubious legacy lives well in you. Like your father, you have no sense of your proper station, no awareness of your betters.”

Darnari dropped to one knee and let Kerrick see the silvery point of a dagger that waved very close to his tear-blurred eyes. “Not even the king’s favor will protect you if you ignore this warning.” The blade sliced through his shirt and left a burning trail of blood on Kerrick’s chest. “If you go near, if you look at, if you even mention my sister’s name again I will kill you.”