Spirit of the Wind

young seamen, had been slain. The pirates were all dead, too, but the slaves and sailors had given them to the sharks without a funeral.

The slaves’ black-bearded leader, a Khurrish mariner named Alaruq ur-Phadh, bent over each of his dead fellows and placed a steel coin-given to him by Kronn, who had salvaged some small part of the Reaver’s spoils-in each man’s mouth. It was an old rite of the Mikku, the clan to which Alaruq and his fellows belonged; the coins were payment for the guardians of the underworld, so the dead could pass by the Abyss and find peace among the stars.

Kael Ar-Tam gave his men no coins, nor did he speak as he looked over the corpses of his men. The creases on his scar-lined face deepened as his eyes flicked from body to body.

Swiftraven lay on a bundle of sailcloth, moaning as Brightdawn tended his wounds. Catt knelt at his side, holding his hand. He managed to smile at the kender.

“I doubted you,” he murmured. “I thought you were hiding, that you were afraid to help us.” He drew a deep breath, summoning words he found hard to speak. “I’m sorry.”

Red Reaver’s mizzenmast, made brittle by burning, groaned loudly against the gusting wind, then snapped and fell with a crash. Everyone on Brinestrider jumped at the sound. Then Alaruq spoke a word to the other escaped slaves. The men were dressed now, having taken clothes from the dead sailors’ lockers, but there was no hiding the hollow pallor of their faces or the difficult shadows deep within their eyes. One by one, the slaves lifted the shrouded bodies and dropped them into the sea. The corpses bobbed briefly on the waves before the waterlogged blankets dragged them down.

When the last of the dead had been cast overboard, Riverwind stood at Brinestrider’s rail and stared silently out across the sea. After a time, he reached into his fur vest and pulled out the Forever Charm. He looked at it accusingly, his fingers tracing its endless loop. Then he heard footsteps on the deck behind him. Recognizing the rhythm of his daughter’s light but confident stride, he curled his fingers around the charm, hiding it from view.

“You’re mad at them, aren’t you?” Brightdawn asked. She drew up beside him, leaning against the rail and following his gaze across the water. “The gods.”

“I braved death on black wings for Mishakal.” Riverwind said, frowning. “I brought her staff out of Xak Tsaroth, and your mother and I restored mankind’s faith in her.”

Brightdawn looked at him. “And, in return, she abandoned you.” She reached out, rested a gentle hand on his arm. “She owes you more than this, Father.”

The Plainsman sighed, a deep, woeful sound.

Her grasp on his arm tightened. “It’s all right to be angry, Father,” she murmured. “Do you remember Snaketooth?”

Riverwind nodded. Snaketooth had been the war priest of the Que-Kiri. Two years ago, when he’d learned that Kiri-Jolith had left the world, he had stopped eating out of despair. Young and strong at the start of his self- imposed fast, he had withered to a skeleton within two months, refusing even simple gruel or broth. Then, still grieving, he had died.

“Chief Graywinter told me, not long after the funeral, that when the women were washing Snaketooth’s body, they found something in his hand,” Brightdawn pressed. “Do you know what it was?”

Her father shook his head.

“It was a bison’s horn,” she said. “Kiri-Jolith’s holy symbol. They had to pry it from his fingers.”

A shudder wracked Riverwind’s body. He opened his fist and stared at the Forever Charm. Then he shook his head and draped it around his neck once more. He turned to Brightdawn as he tucked the medallion back into his vest. “I must ask you to do something when we reach Ak-Thain,” he said.

“I know.”

“Return to the Plains,” he pleaded. “Take Swiftraven with you.”

She shook her head. “No. There is more at stake now,” Brightdawn answered. “I owe my life to Kronn and Catt, after today-so does Swiftraven. Neither of us is going to turn our backs on a debt to the kender.”

“You would go against your own father’s wishes, then?”

Brightdawn closed her eyes. “Father,” she said, “have you heard the story of the princess who loved the shepherd boy? She went against her father’s wishes, too.”

“Don’t play games with me, child,” Riverwind snapped.

“I am not a child!” Brightdawn shot back. “I am a grown woman, and I know this isn’t a game. But what would have happened if Mother had heeded her father instead of following what was in her heart? I wouldn’t be standing here, for one thing.” Her strong, sky-blue eyes, so much like her mother’s, fixed on his. “I will go on to Kendermore, Father, because I must. Please don’t ask me to do otherwise.”

With that, she turned and walked away. Riverwind closed his eyes, but tears spilled forth anyway, leaving trails on his cheeks that glistened in the moonlight.

Out across the water, Red Reaver tipped up, slowly sinking beneath the waves.

Chapter 11

Hekhorath sighed with pleasure as he glided on the warm updrafts that rose from the blasted ruins of the Dairly Plains. He stretched his claws and hissed with pleasure. He circled slowly over the riven, rocky barrens that once had been fertile grasslands, tendrils of smoke curling from his nostrils and vanishing on the warm, rushing wind. The air held the faint aroma of brimstone and soot. It was a heady scent, and Hekhorath savored it as a man might enjoy the bouquet of a fine wine.

He was still young, as dragons measure time, though he had lived longer than even the oldest elves on Krynn. He had dwelt in the caves to the south of the Dairlies for more than three decades, having been left behind by the retreating dragonarmies at the end of the War of the Lance. He had found plentiful prey there, both animal and human, and though he had to compete with a few other wyrms, he’d carved out his own territory with plenty of livestock and human barbarians to keep him fed. He had even escaped the worst of the fighting during the Chaos War; the All-Father’s legions had attacked the Dairlies, but not in force. The devastation that had ravaged other parts of Ansalon simply hadn’t come to Hekhorath’s comfortable corner of the world. Life had been pleasant, easy.

Then Malystryx had come.

Hekhorath had first heard rumors of the great female red more than a year ago but had paid them little heed. Among the dragons of the Dairlies, a newcomer was always cause for interest, perhaps caution… but never alarm. When he’d heard Malys had taken up in Blood Watch, he had briefly considered flying north to investigate but had set the idea aside and hadn’t thought about her for months.

Then one morning last autumn as he was soaring over the Maw, the narrow bay that divided the Dairlies from the rest of Goodlund, he had been approached by a young green dragon. The green, who had been named Sthinissh, had a lair not far from Hekhorath’s in a small forest near the place called Madding Springs. Sthinissh, like most greens, was fond of talking. He had been the first one to tell Hekhorath about Malystryx’s arrival.

“Hekhorath!” Sthinissh had called to him, arrowing down through a cloud bank. “I must speak with you!”

At first, Hekhorath had considered ignoring him-the green’s prattling often wore on his nerves-but something in Sthinissh’s voice had given him pause: fear.

That caught his interest. Sthinissh had been barely more than a hatchling, still filled with the hubris of the very young. Hekhorath had never known him to be afraid of anything. He had slowed his flight, allowed the smaller wyrm to catch up. “What’s the matter?” he’d asked.

“It’s Malystryx,” Sthinissh had replied. “She’s killed Andorung.”

That had given Hekhorath pause. Andorung had been a red, the oldest, largest dragon in the Dairlies and one of the few left in all of Ansalon who’d been present at the great battle between Takhisis and the vile Huma Dragonbane. If the evil dragons of eastern Goodlund revered anything now that Takhisis was gone, Andorung had been it.

“Dead?” Hekhorath had asked. “Are you certain?”