The Lioness

As she watched, the people of the vast underground city went forth and back, men, women, and scampering children about the business of their day. One child stopped, tugging at her mother’s skirts and pointing.

“Mam!” she cried, brown eyes wide above plump ruddy cheeks. “Look at that, look! An elf at the door!”

The dwarf woman hastily shushed the child. She turned her quickly away but not before others passing by noted and murmured at the sight. An elf at the door to the Court of Thanes!

“No good coming of that,” an elderly man muttered.

“Nothing but trouble, them elves,” the gray dame beside him sniffed. “Look at her, dressed like a robber, all dusty and rough. Coming around looking for something. They always are, them elves.”

Feeling like a beggar at the gate and keen enough to be amused by that, Kerian slipped inside the gleaming brass doors. Stepping into safer shadow, wryly she thought, now that’s better. Thorbardin’s day can progress undisturbed by the sight of me.

With those few steps, Kerian had walked from one world to another. Outside the doors, the world of dwarven life went on as it would in any city. Inside the doors, veiled in their shadows and separate from the murmuring thanes who did not see her, Kerian felt a seeping of homesickness for Qualinost She once had a place there. She had been a servant in a senator’s house, a laughing girl with time for the taverns, songs, and dancing. The song of the city beyond the doors was like a sigh from that past time, and suddenly she was lonely. They loved their city, the dwarves of Thorbardin. They loved it as the sustainer, the giver of air, of water, of food. They loved it as an elf loves her forest.

Quiet in shadow, straining to hear what she might catch, what drift of deliberation she could, Kerian stood very still. The dwarves argued as though they had been at it all night, some thanes speaking strongly against the elf king’s proposal, others advising caution.

“Which doesn’t mean shouting no, Dorrin,” said a dwarf with an accent out of the south of the kingdom. “It just means you listen and think.” Someone else laughed, a rich rolling sound, and the rumbling of discussion resumed.

They are divided, Kerian thought. They were divided into three camps: those who would not consider even the least part of Gil’s request, those who thought they would be fools to ignore it, and those who wanted more time to listen and think. At the moment, as she counted, there were more in the last camp than in the other two. This, she thought, boded well—or at least, not ill.

From her concealment, she looked around the council chamber in the Court of Thanes. She stood beneath a high ceiling of marble, surrounded by walls of marble, her feet upon a cold marble floor. The place was a wonder of stonecraft, and the marble itself flowed like a tapestry, rose-veined, and gray-streaked, black upon the floor, snowy white stairs marching up to the dais where sat the high seats of all the thanes and the throne of the High King.

Into this hall over time had come men and women of all races* elves, dwarves, and humans, in friendship and in war, as supplicants and dispensers of favors. Kerian’s heart thrilled. During the War of the Lance, Gil’s own father, storied Tanis Half-Elven himself had come here in company with the Plainswoman Goldmoon who had carried for Krynn the blessing of a goddess, holy Mishakal. Looking like beggars, Tanis and Goldmoon had stood as heroes and pricked the conscience of a dwarven council whose dearest wish was to close the gates of Thorbardin and let all the world die of dragons if that’s what would be.

A Hylar thane had ruled in those days, not a king but a steward, faithful and waiting for a sign that a king would return to the dwarves. Kerian remember the history of her lover’s family, and she wondered whether the surly Hylar dwarf at the Hare and Hound, he who now presided over a bar in Stanach’s Curse, had known that troubled steward.

She listened, breathing quietly, reckoning how the currents of contention shifted among the thanes.

Thorbardin. All of it smelled like a temple long deserted, the sight of faded glory like the last ghostly whiff of ancient incense. Everywhere her eye glanced, she saw the scars of a war not yet forgotten.

Behind her, a voice rough as gravel said, “Now, how was it our good old King Duncan put it? Ah yes: Let the stone remember, and may all our deliberations in this place be nourished.”

Kerian turned, startled. Her hand dropped to the knife at her belt then fell when she saw the glint of amusement in the eyes of the dwarf who’d stolen up behind her. Beard and hair were iron gray, but his eyes shone with a youthful light. He was not so old as he seemed. Older, she thought, than the count of his years.

“Pretty little knife y’got there, young woman. Dwarf-made, is it?”

She nodded, her eyes surveying the way behind him. Old habit, outlaw’s habit. “A gift at the very moment I needed it. I’ve had better since, but none I like so well.”