“Not that you have a prayer of ever seeing her, or this place, again,” declared Waykand Isletter. He had a sword drawn, and it looked to Kerrick as though the king’s favor meant very little when weighed against the lord’s desire for bloody revenge. “If I catch you in Silvanost, or anywhere in Silvansti, I will make it my business to kill you. So hear me well, sea-rat, and heed my words if you value your wretched life.”
Waykand’s sword touched Kerrick’s throat and he sobbed.
“Your father, at least, knew how to conduct himself in a fight. Whatever starch he had does not live in you,” declared the noble with contempt.
“Bah-his father had a lucky win in one battle,” snorted Patrikan. “The rest of the time he was consorting with humans or trading with kender. Finally he sailed to his destruction on a fool’s quest, leaving his progeny to befoul my daughter’s honor.”
“Gloryian!” The cry burst from Kerrick’s throat, as his eyes searched for her up in th balcony.
“Oh, you should know this,” Patrikan hissed hoarsely, rage choking his voice. “I have paid a fortune in gold to have the priest of E’li restore my daughter’s virginity and to banish whatever nightmarish memories you have given her. You are like a sickness that has been exorcised from her skull, a disease from the past that she will mercifully forget. She scorns you now and forever!”
Above Kerrick saw a white gown swaying. How many times had he tenderly removed that garment? His lover’s face was lost in shadow, darkened by the moon shining with mocking allure.
“Go away,” she called, and it was certainly Gloryian’s voice, though somehow hardened into a steel blade. “I will never see you again!”
“But-I love you!” These words, hoarsely exploding from his own lips, surprised him. Even through the fog of pain and humiliation he knew they were born of desperation and shame, not truth. Still, he shouted his love-his pride demanded it, required that he show these elves that his purpose was no less lofty than theirs.
He had the strange sense that his words might as well have been shouted into the sea-fog on a dark night. There was no echo, no sense even that anyone had heard. When Gloryian stepped forward to look down at him he saw the brightness of her eyes against the moonlight, and in that shiny blankness he saw nothing, no hint of the warmth or the vibrancy he had known so well.
“She has been changed, I tell you!” hissed Patrikan in his ear. “The priests have cleared the fog from her mind, so that the sight of you turns her stomach, and all knowledge of your intimacy has been excised from her memory!”
What else had they taken from her? As Gloryian turned and, trancelike, walked back into her rooms, Kerrick could think of nothing else to say, no words that would bring her back. The wraithlike image of white silk vanished into the shadows as strong hands grasped his forearms and began to drag him along the ground.
“This is how you repay me? By consorting with the first daughter of an Elder House?”
King Nethas betrayed no emotion in his face, nor did his voice reveal any trace of anger. Nevertheless, Kerrick recoiled from the words, felt a tremendous guilt. How was it that he had never imagined this, never stopped to reflect how his actions would seem to the king-to this elven patriarch who had given Kerrick shelter and direction in the years of his young adulthood, who had offered him a place to belong and thrive, when his parents had been claimed by the sea?
Now he, Kerrick, had betrayed that trust.
“I’m sorry, Sire-I-”
“Silence!” The regal elf, his eyes arching dispassionately, gestured to Waykand Isletter and Patrikan Diradar. “What punishment do you suggest?”
“He is not fit to live,” declared the younger elf, Gloryian’s affronted suitor, “but I know that we are not barbarians, not a people who put our own to death. So I want him banished forever. Yes, banished-brand him a dark elf!”
“I agree-his name and memory should be wiped from the People’s lives. A dark elf!” Patrikan was as vehement as the nobleman.
Kerrick slumped hopelessly within the arms of his two captors. There could be no worse fate for a Silvanesti than such condemnation. A dark elf was forever exiled, and even his name was stricken from the memories of his people, never to be uttered again.
“A dark elf … dark indeed is his shame,” Nethas declared. “Nevertheless, such a fate I would not recommend for a transgression such as his. It would cheapen the punishment to use it to address such a tawdry affair, such a pathetic malefactor.”
Nethas fixed Kerrick with two eyes that were suddenly cold and narrowed, emotionless as a serpent’s. The young elf saw no trace of the kindness, patience, and beneficence he had known for so many years. The king laughed, a dry and ironic sound, and Kerrick knew that he had damaged himself in ways that could never be repaired.
“You will leave Silvanesti, but not as a dark elf. No, we shall remember your family, for the folly you illustrate in so many ways. For our mistake in elevating one of such wild roots to a station above your place, for your own foolishness in thinking that your treachery might go undetected, and for the grand folly that your father showed, when he took his wife and crew and journeyed the way of the gods, all on a quest of pure madness. Now you shall be scarred in shame, shown as the outcast you are.”
“Sire, I beg the honor of marking the elf, so that he may be known to all.” Waykand Isleletter had his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Do so,” replied the king with a curt nod.
The steel blade whipped past Kerrick’s face. He felt the tear, the searing pain, and clapped his hand to the side of his head, where blood flowed copiously from the slashed cartilage and skin.
On the ground, now a pathetic scrap, lay the pointed tip of his ear, the graceful taper characteristic of elves. Kerrick moaned, a drawn out sigh of agony that rose from his spiritual torment as much as any physical suffering.
“Enough,” said the king, grimacing at the sight of the mutilated flesh, waving to a servant. “Clean this up. Set him to the sea, with his boat enchanted away from our shores and lands. He is banished from Silvanesti!”
“Forever?” croaked the bleeding elf, finally finding his voice.
The king, half turned away already, paused and looked back. He pursed his lips, and for the first time a trace of humor entered his eyes. But it was a cruel humor, and Kerrick was afraid.
“Let us say, not forever, not necessarily,” said the king. “No, you shall have a condition more appropriate to your folly and to your father’s legacy. Surely you have wondered, as even did I, what if he was right? What if there is a land of gold, a way for us to obtain that precious metal without gaining it at the expense of the Kingpriest’s profits? It would be a worthy find, a treasure that could restore Silvanesti to the richness that is our due.
“So you shall have this chance, this condition: If your father was right, and
“So go to sea, Kerrick Fallabrine-and bring me the secret of your father’s gold.”
3
Knock down the walls-break up the tools and the kayaks-slash the hulls and search the huts. Load anything of value onto the galley. The rest, we burn!”
Grimwar Bane’s voice roared through the village as the ogre prince strode among the low, round huts. Everywhere his brutal raiders hurried to obey, a hundred hulking warriors scattering through the community, while at Grimwar’s heels the dwarf Baldruk Dinmaker all but jogged to keep up with his master.
“Here, at least, the human scum showed some fight,” said the prince in satisfaction as he looked over the ragged bodies, many of them still bleeding, scattered haphazardly across the flat, gravel beach where they had
