Chapter 5
The cemetery outside Gateway lay between two hills, hidden from the lights of town and the traffic on the coast road. The vale was low and boggy, so the graves were built above- ground. Bathed in starlight, they stood like ordered blocks of ice, white and polished. Most were unadorned stone boxes, but a few elaborate mausoleums bore the names of families long important in the province.
Like the nation itself, the cemetery had fallen on hard times. Weeds sprouted around the foundations of the monuments. Grass grew knee high and choked the pathways. Vines girded graves great and humble. Here and there, the stone boxes had collapsed from weather or the attentions of grave robbers. The broken graves were quickly claimed by weeds. Cemeteries were melancholy places in the best of times. The one outside Gateway was a somber testament to the tragedy of a nation.
Standing alone on one of the overgrown paths was a figure draped in a long linen duster. She stepped from the deep shade of an obelisk and starlight washed her pale features in cool radiance. Her face might have graced an elegant statue atop one of the finer monuments. Her astonishing beauty overlaid by deep pain, Alhana Starbreeze was the living embodiment of mourning.
The whir of a nightjar made her start. Then a figure, cloaked and hooded like herself, emerged from the grass-choked side path.
“What word?” she murmured.
The newcomer drew back his cowl, revealing a lean countenance, almond-shaped eyes, and a high, pale forehead. Like Alhana, Samar was a Silvanesti. There was a glint of iron at his throat, a warrior’s gorget.
“Nothing to confirm the rumors, lady, but nothing to disprove them either.”
The line of her jaw hardened. Every day she lingered in this land was dangerous and expensive. Danger she could bear, but there was little she could do to lessen the drain on her slender purse.
She asked no more questions, preferring to hear Samar’s full report when they rejoined their party. They mounted their waiting horses and, with Alhana in the lead, left the deserted cemetery.
Samar followed three steps behind, as he felt was proper. Long acquaintance allowed him to recognize his lady’s disappointment. Hope had buoyed her for a while, and she’d had precious little of it lately, but she was coming to realize the folly of the dream she chased.
Her only child, on whom she’d placed her hopes for the future of the elf nation, had been taken from her. No hero’s death, nor even a worthy one, had been granted Silvanoshei. He had died a dupe, killed by the woman he loved, the false prophet of a dark deity. Porthios, the husband Alhana had married for duty but come to love, was gone as well, killed in the same war that had claimed their son. Blasted from the sky by a dragon’s fiery breath, his had been a magnificent end for a warrior and a king. The crime, Samar thought, was that Alhana could not accept that her husband was dead. His griffon’s incinerated body had been found, but its rider never was. From that slim hope, Alhana had built the fantasy that her husband might still live.
Their homeland was despoiled, their people scattered, but she would not give up the search. A resurrected husband might be too much of a miracle, but at the very least she intended to find his remains and see him properly interred. However, Alhana had not come to the long-unused cemetery to find Porthios’s grave. Rumors had reached, even her in exile, of a mysterious leader who was forging the few remaining elves of Qualinesti into a rebellion. The old cemetery served as a private place to wait while Samar ventured into Gateway to gather what information he could about the budding revolt and its mastermind. Silent as a ghost, Alhana walked among the forgotten dead, waiting for word of her lost husband.
They’d been on the mainland just two days. Before that, Alhana and her small company of loyal followers had dwelt on the island of Schallsea, tolerated but not celebrated. She could have retreated to the forest of her own country. There were still hidden vales where a careful inhabitant could live with little risk of discovery. But with Silvanesti, Qualinesti, and Kagonesti slaughtered, enslaved in their own countries, or exiled to alien lands, Alhana would not seek sylvan peace for herself. For a longtime, she wandered the lands of the New Sea until weariness and impending poverty brought her to a halt on Schallsea. From there she kept up her search, sending out agents to investigate hearsay and interviewing travelers who’d come from the former elf homelands.
It was more than rumors of a masked rebel that brought Alhana back to the mainland. Anyone could don a mask, for any number of reasons. But the Kagonesti who followed the rebel called him “Great Lord,” a title usually reserved for the Speaker or his heir.
Samar argued that that was not enough reason for her to risk entering occupied Qualinesti. Kagonesti were truthful people but much given to mysticism and symbolism. Their Great Lord could be nearly anyone. Alhana’s chamberlain, the venerable Chathendor, agreed with Samar. Alhana did not. She intended to go to Qualinesti. Whatever they felt about her quest, and despite her abdication of the throne, she would always be their queen. They and a few hundred Silvanesti warriors accompanied her across the sea.
The terrain east of Gateway was rolling grassland, long cleared of all but the smallest saplings and bushes. Alhana and Samar crested a low rise and reined up. The view showed nothing but a starlit meadow. In answer to Samar’s low whistle, the hillsides seemed to come alive. From every low swale and scrap of cover rose elves, their green- and brown-clad forms shaded to black by the darkness.
One elf moved to greet the newcomers. Even among a long-lived race, Chathendor was very old, more than twice Alhana’s age. Perhaps because he’d lived so long, he was the only truly fearless person Alhana knew. He’d once told her that at his age, death wasn’t a terrifying abstraction to be avoided at all costs, but a patient visitor, awaiting its inevitable invitation. Bare of hood, his pale, curly hair was pearlescent in the starlight.
“What word?” he whispered, unknowingly echoing Alhana’s question to Samar.
Both of them dismounted and Samar reported. “For weeks a band of Kagonesti, led by a masked elf, has been harrying the small Nerakan fort of Alderhelm, killing off mercenaries by twos and threes. Word reached Gateway that a Dark Knight sent to the fort to put an end to the troubles was herself attacked, and her entire command spirited away overnight.”
“A kender’s tale!” Chathendor scoffed.
“Evidently not. The knight dispatched a report to the Order’s citadel in Frenost. The courier was kept occupied at an inn called The Saddle Horn, halfway between Frenost and Haven, while the contents of his bag were copied. The news reached Haven ahead of him and beat him to Gateway too.”
“Was there a description, Samar?” Alhana asked, caring little how the news had come.
“Masked, covered head to toe by ragged robes, but well spoken, with the diction and vocabulary of a high- born Qualinesti.”
“A Qualinesti,” she echoed, her voice little more than a sigh. Perhaps her quest was not a fool’s errand after all.
She controlled her emotions, reminding herself it was a slender thread. A “high-born” Qualinesti could be a courtier or a former officer of the royal army who had donned a hood to confound the bandits. And yet-something in her heart would not let that particular rumor go. She had suffered so many disappointments. For half a year she had stalked a supposed Porthios around the cities of Crusher’s Bay, always one step behind, until finally catching up with him in a Walmish gaming house. The impostor passing himself off as her husband was no more than a quarter elf, a glib liar who’d managed to convince dozens of gullible folk he was the lost ruler of Qualinesti. It was merely a confidence game, a way for him to gull his way to an easy life. Caught, he confessed all. Alhana forgave him. Unbeknownst to her, Samar had not. When his sorrowing queen was out of sight, Samar made certain the impostor would ply his trade no longer, except as food for the fish of Crusher’s Bay.
“We must go to Alderhelm,” she announced.
Alhana’s lieutenants protested. Bad enough she had come as far as she had, but entering occupied Qualinesti was unthinkably hazardous. Should Captain Samuval get his hands on the former queen of Silvanesti, she would surely die. There was no one left to ransom her.
Their arguments fell on deaf ears, Alhana silenced them with a sharp word. She had to know the truth for herself. She was tired of waiting in safety while others risked their lives to find out for her.
She thanked them both, telling Samar to prepare the troops and sending her chamberlain with him. She needed solitude, time to think.
