Dragonlance 16 - Dragons Of A Lost Star by Margaret Weis Read Free Book Online

silent city. His soul walked every street, paused at every doorway, looked in every window. His soul saw a newlywed couple asleep, clasped in each other arms. His soul saw a mother sitting in a rocking chair, nursing her babe, the babe sleeping, the mother dozing, gently rocking. His soul saw young elf brothers sharing the same bed with a large hound. The two boys slept with their arms flung around the neck of the dog, all three dreaming of playing catch in sunlit meadows. His soul saw an elderly elf sleeping in the same house that his father had slept in and his father before him. Above his bed, a portrait of the wife who had passed on. In the next room, the son who would inherit the house, his wife by his side.
    “Sleep long this night,” Gilthas’s soul said softly to each one he touched. “Do not wake too early in the morning, for when you wake, it will not be the beginning of a new day but the end of all days. The sun you see in the sky is not the rising sun, but the setting sun. The daylight will be night and night the darkness of despair. Yet, for now, sleep in peace. Let me guard that peace while I can.”
    “Your Majesty,” said a voice.
    Gilthas was loath to pay heed. He knew that when he turned to listen, to answer, to respond, the spell would be shattered. His soul would return to his body. The people of Qualinesti would find their sleep disturbed by dreams of smoke and fire, blood and shining steel. He tried to pretend he had not heard, but even as he watched, he saw the bright silver of the stars start to fade, saw a faint, pale light in the sky.
    “Your Majesty,” said a voice, another voice.
    Dawn. And with the dawn, death.
    Gilthas turned around. “Marshal Medan,” he said, a hint of coolness in his tone. He shifted his gaze from the leader of the Dark Knights of Neraka to the person standing next to him, his trusted servant. “Planchet. You both have news, by the looks of it. Marshal Medan, I’ll hear yours first.”
    Alexius Medan was a human male in his fifties, and although he bowed deferentially to the king, the Marshal was the true ruler of Qualinesti and had been for more than thirty years, ever since the Dark Knights of Neraka seized Qualinesti during the Chaos War. Gilthas was known to all the world as the “Puppet King.” The Dark Knights had left the young and apparently weak and sickly youth on the throne in order to placate the elven people and give them the illusion of elven control. In reality, it was Marshal Medan who held the strings that caused the arms of the puppet Gilthas to move, and Senator Palthainon, a powerful member of the Thalas-Enthia, who played the tune to which the puppet danced.
    But as Marshal Medan had learned only yesterday, he had been deceived. Gilthas had not been a puppet but a most gifted actor. He had played the weak and vacillating king in order to mask his real persona, that of leader of the elven resistance movement. Gilthas had fooled Medan completely. The Puppet King had cut the strings, and the dances he performed were done to music of His Majesty’s own choosing.
    “You left us after dark and have been gone all night, Marshal,” Gilthas stated, eyeing the man suspiciously. “Where have you been?”
    “I have been at my headquarters, Your Majesty, as I told you before I left,” Medan replied.
    He was tall and well-built. Despite his fifty-five years—or perhaps because of them—he worked at keeping himself fighting fit. His gray eyes contrasted with his dark hair and dark brows and gave him an expression of perpetual gravity that did not lighten, even when he smiled. His face was deeply tan, weathered. He had been a dragonrider in his early days.
    Gilthas cast a very slight glance at Planchet, who gave a discreet nod of his head. Both glance and nod were seen by the observant Medan, who looked more than usually grave.
    “Your Majesty, I do not blame you for not trusting me. It has been said that kings cannot afford the luxury of trusting