The Kagonesti, page 28
They climbed through the long day, and when night fell, Iydahoe shouted and cajoled, convincing the elves that they needed to keep going. The clouds blocked even the pallor of the green sky, but the elves could see enough to scale the ascending slopes as the ghastly night filtered toward an eerie, still dawn.
Dawn of the thirteenth day, Iydahoe remembered.
Still they kept climbing, crossing the lower mountain ridges now, many thousands of feet above the sprawling forest lands and plains of Vingaard. High summits beckoned to the northeast, but Iydahoe steered the tribe due east, where the mountains flattened into miles of rolling, forested plateau. These woodlands had many trails, while the warrior knew that the summits to the north became a maze of canyons, cliffs, summits, and gorges.
“Look!” cried Bakall, suddenly crying out in horror as he pointed to the northeastern sky. The little tribe was filing across a clearing – a place incongruously studded with wildflowers – amid the pine forest of the plateau.
Iydahoe saw the wave rippling along the bottom surface of the oily cloud, as if a great stone had been plopped into the caldron of liquid he had earlier imagined. The eerie sky showed through that gap, an even more sinister shade of befoulment than before. The ground began to tremble, huge rocks cracking free from the higher cliffs. The elves staggered, riding a buckling carpet of supple, boulder-strewn turf, ground lacking all solidity and form.
Abruptly the sky shot through with brightness, green paling to blue and then to a harsh white light that seared Iydahoe’s eyes and caused Vanisia to moan in pain. Children began to cry, but the warrior could only grip their hands tightly.
The subsequent explosion was impossibly, incredibly violent. The rocky ground convulsed, pitching them into the air. Iydahoe clutched the hands of his young tribemates, the group of them tumbling madly, momentarily weightless. He felt as though they could fall forever, and it was a strangely peaceful sensation.
The smash into the bucking ground brought him back to reality with cruel force. Stone gouged Iydahoe’s face, and splitting pain racked his skull. He heard the youngsters crying, but for several agonizing moments his eyes brought him only a blur of bright lights and swirling colors – the images of his own pain, he knew.
Then came the onslaught of full, numbing fear – the knowledge that he had failed, that his tribe was doomed. How could he fight against this kind of power, world-racking might that could rock the very fundament of Krynn? Surely most of his tribe had been killed by this blast! He knew that he, himself, was broken, his body smashed to pulp.
“Let’s go. Get up, Iydahoe!” He heard Vanisia pleading, but he couldn’t move. Why should he? There was no hope.
He heard more crying, then – the terrified sobbing of many young voices. They came from all around him, and Iydahoe blinked. With a supreme effort, he lifted his head, seeing Kagwallas, Bakall – each cradling a pair of crying youngsters. Vanisia knelt beside Iydahoe, and when he moved, she reached out to touch his face.
“Who’s hurt?” he groaned. “How badly?”
He forced himself to look around, seeing past the white spots that still lingered in front of his eyes. The young elves of the tribe were scattered around him in the meadow. Some sat up while others huddled on the ground, crying. Two, the boy Dallatar and a younger girl, lay perfectly still amid the churned sod and rocks.
Then the girl, Tiffli, moaned and rubbed a hand across her face. Iydahoe and Vanisia went to Dallatar. The lad showed no sign of awareness, though his chest rose and fell weakly. In desperation, the warrior crawled to the frail form, while Vanisia and Bakall helped Tiffli to her feet.
But the forest stretched all around them, trees leaning crazily. The bleak clouds had closed in, concealing any view of the horizon or the sky. Which way should they go? There were no heights in view, no clue in the tangled woodland or shattered clearing to indicate where they had been headed before the quake had struck.
Iydahoe, for the first time in his life, was lost.
With that knowledge, he released the tiny shard of hope he had grasped – there was no way to escape this disaster. The tribe had no Pathfinder. He had tried to fill the role, had tried to be that which they needed him to be. He had desperately strived to perform tasks for which he was not prepared.
And he had failed.
Despair weighed on Iydahoe, pinning him to the ground, a physical weight that overwhelmed his puny strength. Cataclysm had come to Ansalon, and he and his tribe would die as surely as any insects on a lightning-struck log. If another earthquake wracked the ground, the convulsion would kill the battered elves. Even if the ground remained still, Iydahoe was lost – how could he seek the heights of the Grandfather Ram when he lay directionless on this ruined plateau? Around them stretched a tangle of quake-racked forest. Progress would be painfully slow, perhaps impossible, in every direction.
Abruptly a glimmer of white showed through the chaos of broken trees. The brightness caught Iydahoe’s eye – it seemed the only pure and wholesome thing in this nightmare of a day. Straining to rise, the wild elf found that his muscles worked again. Grimly, desperately, Iydahoe staggered to his feet and took several steps toward the wood.
“What is it?” asked Vanisia, while Bakall and Kagwallas looked at him curiously.
“There!” he croaked, as the white patch showed again.
Then he saw the head – huge, with the broad forehead a swath of alabaster fur. The huge, round eyes, soft and luminescent, studied him with a wisdom and compassion that moved Iydahoe to tears. Glowing pale yellow, those eyes touched him in a way that made him stand more steadily, helped him to swallow his fear and clear his head.
Only then did he notice the horns, spiraling to either side of that great head. Triple circles, each of them, culminated in the proud, curling points of a mountain king.
“What are you looking at?” cried Vanisia, stepping after him, touching his hand. Iydahoe knew then that only he could see the Grandfather Ram – and even as he realized this the animal turned, with a flick of its snowy tail, and vanished into the woods.
“Come. Gather the children. I know which way to go.” He stooped and picked up Dallatar. The young elf’s breathing was shallow, his eyes rolled back in his head, but he still lived.
Iydahoe led them into the forest, picking a route through the felled timber that best followed the elusive white figure. He discovered that, by walking along on the trunks instead of the ground, the Kagonesti could make fairly rapid progress. Gradually the plateau sloped again, a gentle incline signaling the beginning of another ascent.
They broke from the trees onto a grassy slope that extended more steeply upward. The wrenching earthquake had torn numerous fissures in the soil, but Iydahoe had no difficulty finding a straight, smooth path between these frequent chasms. Soon they arrived at a ridge extending from the north to the south, seeing a deep canyon and then lofty, rugged mountains beyond.
Vanisia instinctively turned north, toward the highest mountains of the Khalkist range and the heart of the smoking inferno that racked the world. Beyond those heights, hundreds of miles away, lay Istar.
To the south, the mountains were not so high, rounded summits and sheltered, tree-lined slopes. In the far distance beyond them lay the southern lowlands of Silvanesti. Iydahoe stared in that direction and felt the warming comfort of a soothing, return embrace of wisdom. Were those luminous eyes gazing at him from somewhere in that distance?
“Wait,” Iydahoe said, looking at the seething wave of the cloud. The highest ground lay to the north, but he felt strangely drawn to the south. “Follow me. We’ll go this way,” he declared, trusting his instincts. Still carrying Dallatar, he led the others toward that more gentle terrain.
The elfwoman’s face was streaked with smudges of dirt, her once golden hair tangled with mud and brambles. Vanisia looked at the rising, gentle slopes, then at the tall, black-haired elf. Nodding, she followed, and the youngsters came on behind.
Wind whipped over the ridge, pushing them first to one side, then, sheering viciously, twisting to send them staggering in the other direction. The clouds had risen high, blanketing the land from far above, and now they could see for dozens of miles.
On the vast plain beside the mountain range, the ancient flatland that had been known as Vingaard and Solamnia, the northern horizon shimmered. A white edge advanced, with smooth grayness flowing behind. The ground dissolved into something like sky – a bright, smooth surface that swept steadily closer, obscuring woodlands and fields, roads and towns.
With growing horror, Iydahoe understood. “It’s water – the sea flows onto the plain! Ansalon is sinking!”
Again the elves turned and climbed, this time propelled by a clear sense of urgency, moving toward the southern heights on the path chosen by Iydahoe. They trotted along the smooth tundra of the rising ridge crest, gaining altitude quickly, avoiding the cliffs that towered all around.
The flood continued below, a deceptively gentle-appearing blanket drawn over the land. As the wave drew closer, the elves saw an angry fringe of furious white water burying forests, sweeping across pasture lands with the speed of a strong wind. It rushed from the north, swelling to fill their entire western horizon, filling out in a great bay to the southwest. Spray, closely followed by massive breakers, surged against the foothills, inundating the grotto where the tribe had made its village. More and more water flowed into the new sea, and the level of its tempestuous surface continued to rise.
Quickly the surge swept upward, splashing over the slopes that the Kagonesti had climbed only that morning. Waters swept over the ridge, the sea filling the plateau where the tribe had weathered the earthquake. The water churned close now and Iydahoe sensed the menace in the storm-tossed surface. Gales whipped monstrous waves upward, exploding into showers of spray that rose all the way to the ridge crest.
In the saddle behind the tribe, where that crest dipped low, the waves lunged all the way through the pass, showering into the canyon to the east. The sea level continued to rise, and these waves became a steady current, then a thundering cascade forming a permanent barrier between the mountains of the high Khalkists and the tribe’s own southern ridge. And still the Newsea grew, chasing the fleeing elves with almost palpable desire – like a predator racing desperately after choice prey.
For hours they ran, though the incline of the ridge lessened for a long time, until they were running along level ground. Higher summits beckoned them to the south, the nearest several miles away, and Iydahoe could only hope that they reached it before the flood swept them away.
Waters continued to cascade into the canyon to the east. It seemed that an entire ocean thundered into the depths, shaking the ground with mighty impact. Still the sea grew, the waters rose, crashing into the mountainous gorge faster and faster, until a great wave filled the canyon to the top, equalizing the water level to east and west.
Instead of a lofty ridge, the wild elves now ran along a peninsula of rock, with angry waves slashing the shore to either side – and steadily rising behind them.
Tiffli stumbled, then collapsed. Vanisia halted beside the girl, trying to hoist her up, but her own strength gave out and she, too, sprawled onto the rocky ground. Halting on unsteady legs, Iydahoe realized that fatigue had stopped him as well – if he put down the unconscious Dallatar, he would never be able to pick the boy up again.
They would lose the race with the sea. A wave, surprisingly chilly, splashed forward until it eddied, ankle deep, around them. The heights to the south were cut off, as higher surges swept across the ridge, connecting the eastern valley to the sea in many places, rendering the once-lofty ridge into a chain of low, rounded islands. The gale roared so high that any one of these spots of land could be momentarily buried below a wave.
With crystalline clarity, Iydahoe saw that the formerly enormous ridge beneath his feet would become a reef of shallow water between two deep basins. He looked to the heights of the Khalkists, still towering to the north. If they had turned in that direction, they might be safe now, working their way into true mountain heights. Yet that strange compulsion he had felt, the penetrating gaze of the Grandfather Ram, had caused him to turn south.
His eyes remained fixed on those lofty summits, watching the smoke and debris belch skyward from beyond the jagged horizon. He blinked, wondering if the ground beneath him suddenly surged upward, for the mountains did not look as tall as they had before.
Then, in a bolt of shock, he understood – the high Khalkists were sinking! Landslides rumbled downward in clouds of dust and debris. The remaining glaciers broke free, sliding in avalanche toward the unseen valleys. Then the ridges themselves began to crumble, the summits breaking apart and falling away.
The great mountain range settled quickly, water rushing between the crumbling summits until a series of conical islands jutted upward from the tempest. One by one, these towers of rock disappeared, their foundation collapsing as they melted into the raging ocean.
As the mountains tumbled down, water flowed from the rest of the sea to fill the vast and growing crater. Around the Kagonesti, the Newsea retreated, spilling down the slopes of the ridge and clearing the route toward the forested highlands to the south.
By the time the raging waves settled into a rough chop, the water level remained steady against the ridge, some fifty feet below the level reached by the fleeing tribe. The peninsula extended for perhaps a mile to the north, then ended in a barren, wave-racked outcropping of rock. It was no more than two hundred paces wide for most of its length, though its base widened as it met the mountainside to the south.
“Look! A seashell! Like on your belt!” Faylai exclaimed to Vanisia. “But no!” she pouted. “It’s too big!”
The warrior saw the curled shape on the rocks, glistening wet, as though it had been cast here by a wave, before the sea had fallen back. He knew the three spirals, recognized the wide bell with a growing sense of awe.
“Not a seashell.” Iydahoe had not seen the treasure, intact, since the years when it had been played by Washallak Pathfinder. “It’s the Ram’s Horn of the Kagonesti,” he said quietly, kneeling to pick up the precious horn.
“Look.” Vanisia’s fingertip outlined the pattern of tiny cracks in the horn’s surface.
Iydahoe nodded, recognizing several of the shapes as fragments that he had recovered from the Silvertrout village. Many more, including some sizeable pieces, he had never seen before.
“Play it – play the horn for us,” urged Bakall, stepping forward.
“No! Only the Pathfinder …”
“Play it, Pathfinder Iydahoe,” said Vanisia, taking his free hand in both of hers.
He put the horn to his lips, and it felt as though it belonged there. When he played, the notes were warm and soothing. Iydahoe was immediately lost in the muse, felt his despair sloughing away. He thought of Istar, and that thought awakened no hatred, no lust for vengeance. There was no enemy there, now – Istar was a place of the past.
The elves, except for Dallatar, got up from the ground. Iydahoe slung the horn at his side and lifted the unconscious youth, relieved by the fact that Dall’s breathing had become stronger, and his eyes closed more naturally, as if he were merely asleep.
A herd of deer stampeded southward along the ridge, passing within a few yards of the elves in their fear – but Iydahoe could see that this was proper fear, now, not the madness that had earlier afflicted the wild creatures. The deer bounded along, seeking the tree-fringed range of hills they could see in the distance.
When he saw the herd, Iydahoe knew that the tribe, like Krynn, would survive – their Pathfinder had led them from the greatest threat that had ever wracked the world. He held Vanisia’s hand, finally, and led the elves toward the still-verdant forests, where Iydahoe saw towering firs. In the lower valleys, aspen groves shimmered in the wind, a stretch of woodland that promised haven for the weary, frightened elves. Already the deer had vanished there, seeking a new forest home.
Iydahoe knew that the deer would find sanctuary in that woodland, and soon the wild elves would as well.
For many years after the Cataclysm the tribe lived a life not terribly different from its earlier existence. Indeed, of all the peoples of Krynn, perhaps the Kagonesti adjusted best to the loss of civilization’s icons. Cities fell, empires vanished, vast estates were washed away by rains – and still the forests thrived.
Pathfinder Iydahoe played the Ram’s Horn to mark the passing of the seasons, the rituals of the hunt, the time-honored celebrations of the tribe. Often he played for no reason other than to raise music to the fact of his people’s survival. The tribe again knew health and happiness … and love.
Iydahoe and Vanisia were the first to take the vows of marriage, pledging timeless love to each other in a celebration cheered by all the wild elves of the tribe. Shortly
About the Author
Douglas Niles’s novels include the Moonshae, Maztica, and Druidhome trilogies for the FORGOTTEN REALMS ® shared world, and the best-selling The Kinslayer Wars (part of the Elven Nations Trilogy) and Emperor of Ansalon (in the Villains series) for the DRAGONLANCE ® saga. His books have sold more than a million copies.
Formerly a high school teacher, Doug has since designed dozens of games and game accessories for TSR, Inc., including award-winning board games based on Tom Clancy’s novels The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
FORGOTTEN REALMS is a registered trademark owned by TSR, Inc.
Douglas Niles, The Kagonesti
