The Cataclysm (5 page)

I cried out again, certain no one would hear me.

Then it seemed almost foolishly simple. For after the weeping, the vain recollection of my
hundred adventures, I recalled the last thing I had heard:

“There is power in all words, and in yours especially.”

My first purpose, many seasons past and a hundred miles away, when I left my mother and
home, had been to discover and make known the truth about Orestes and Grandfather.

I had discovered. Now I must make it known. I would salvage the truth in the last
dissolving hour. And though I assumed the words would never see light or catch a willing
eye, I brought forth quill and inkhorn, and said aloud, canceling my father's words as he
had canceled Arion's, “The fires are extinguished. The land is free. I am alive.”

Dipping the quill, I began to write blindly on the quivering stomach walls of the dragon.

DOWN IN THE ARM OF CAERGOTH HE RODE . . . *****

Some men are saved by water, some by fire. I have heard stories of happy rock slides
releasing trapped miners, of a ship and its crew passing safely through hurricanes because
the helmsman nestled the boat in the eye of the storm, in sheer good fortune.

I am the rare one to be saved by nausea.

Credit it to the ink, perhaps, or the incessant, swift scratching on the walls of the
dragon's stomach. Whatever it was, the fishermen skirting the coast of Endaf, the good
folk of Ergoth who drew me sputtering from the water, said that they had never seen the
likes of it on sea or land.

They said that the caverns of Finn of the Dark Hand had exploded, the rubble toppling down
the cliff face and pouring into the circling waters of the cape, that they thought for
certain it was an earthquake or some dwarven enchanter gone mad in the depths of the rock
until they saw the black wings surge from the central cavern, bunched and muscled and
webbed like the wings of a bat. And they told me how a huge creature pivoted gracefully,
high above the coastal waters, plunged for the sea, and inelegantly disgorged above the
Cape of Caergoth.

It seemed a clear, sweet grace to me, lying on the deck of their boat as they poured hot
mulled wine down me and wrapped me in blankets, their little boat turning west toward the
Ergoth shore and the safety of Eastport, a haven in that ravaged and forbidding land.

The fishermen's attentions seemed strange, though - as if, in some odd, indescribable way,
I was one of their fellows. It was not until we reached the port itself and I looked into
a barrel of still water that I noticed my scars had vanished.

But the memory of the burning returns, dull and heavy in my hands, especially at night,
here in this lighthouse room overlooking the bay of Eastport. Across the water I can see
the coast of my homeland, the ruins of the bandit stronghold at Endaf. Finn, they tell me,
dissolved with two dozen of his retainers when the dragon thundered through their
chambers, shrieking and flailing and dripping the fatal acid that is the principal weapon
of his kind.

And the creature may as well have dissolved himself. He has not been seen since that day
on the Caergoth coast. But the same fishermen who rescued me claim that, only the other
night, a dark shadow passed across the face of the red moon. Looking up, they saw nothing
but Lunitari and a cloudless sky.

They saw an omen in this, and now carry talismans on board, but sailors always were a
superstitious lot, fashioning monsters out of clouds and the wind on the waters.

At night I sit by the window, by lamplight, and watch the constellations switch and wink
and vanish in this uncertain time, and I set before me a fresh page of vellum, the lines
of each day stored in my memory. For a moment I dwell on the edges of remembrance,
recalling my mother, L'Indasha Yman, the reluctant knights, and the fortunate fishermen.
But, foremost, I recall my father, come down to me in an inheritance of verse and
conflicting stories. It is for him, and for Grandfather before him, and for all those who
have vanished and been wronged by the lies of the past, that I dip the quill into the
inkwell, and the pain in my hand subsides as I begin to write . . .

On SOLAMNIA'S CASTLES RAVENS ALIGHT. DARK AND UNNUMBERED LIKE A YEAR OF DEATHS, AND DREAMT
ON THE BATTLEMENTS, FIXED AND HOLY ARE THE SIGNS OF THE ORDER KINGFISHER AND ROSE -

I'll give you the two bronze knives, the string of elven beads, and the silver drinking horn, but that is my final offer.“ ”Are you mad, Matya?" the grizzled
old trader said in exasperation. He gestured to the bolt of fine cloth that lay between them on the counter,
in the center of the trading post's one dingy, cluttered room. “Why, this was woven for a
noble lord in the city of Palanthas itself. It's worth twice what you're offering me. Nay,
thrice!”

Matya watched the trader calculatingly with her bright brown eyes. She could always tell
when she was about to best Belek in the driving of a bargain, for his nose invariably
would begin to twitch.

“If the doth is so fine, why did the noble lord for whom it was made not buy it?” Matya
asked pointedly.

Belek mumbled some excuse, but Matya waved it away with a ring-covered hand. “You may take
my offer or leave it, Belek. You'll not get so much as a bent nail more.”

The trader sighed, a look of dismay on his haggard face. “You're determined to drive me
out of business, aren't you, Matya?” His bulbous nose gave a violent twitch.

Matya smiled inwardly, though she did not let the trader see her satisfaction. “It's
simply business, Belek, that's all.”

The trader grunted. “Aye, so it is. But I'll warn you, Matya. One day you'll drive a
bargain too cleverly for your own good. There are some bargains that aren't worth taking,
no matter how profitable they seem.”

Matya laughed at that. “You always were a sore loser, Belek.” She pushed the goods she had
offered across the counter. Belek sighed - his nose twitching furiously - and pushed the
bolt of cloth toward her. Matya spat on her palm. Belek did likewise, and the two shook
hands. The bargain had been struck.

Matya bade Belek farewell and loaded the bolt of cloth into her wagon outside the
ramshackle trading post. The wagon was a colorful, if somewhat road-worn, affair - a
wooden box on wheels, painted in countless bright but peeling hues. Hitched in front was a
single dun-colored donkey with patient eyes and extraordinarily long ears.

Matya's wagon was filled nearly to overflowing with all manner of wares, both mundane and
curious: pots and pans, cloaks and boots, arrows and axes, flints, knives, and even a
sword or two, plus countless other objects she had bought, haggled for, or - most of the
time - scavenged. Traveling from town to town, trading and striking bargains, was how Matya made her living. And it was not a bad one at that. Like the wagon, Matya herself was
a bit worn with the years. Her long hair, coiled in a thick braid atop her head, had been flaxen, but now was
ash gray. Countless days of sun and wind had tanned and toughened her ruddy cheeks. Fine
wrinkles touched the comers of her eyes and mouth, more from smiling than frowning, and so
were attractive. And, like the wagon, Matya was clad in a motley collection of clothes
representing all colors of the rainbow, from her ocean-blue skirt to her sunflower-yellow
shirt and forest- green vest speckled with tiny red flowers. Her willowy, figure had
plumped out, but there was still an air of beauty about her, of the simplest and most
comforting kind - when her nut-brown eyes weren't flashing fire, that is.

“Let's be on our way, Rabbit,” Matya told the donkey as she climbed onto the wagon's
wooden bench. “If we hurry, we can reach Garnet by nightfall. There's a merchant there
who's an even worse haggler than Belek.” The donkey gave a snort that sounded uncannily
like laughter.

Matya tied a bright red kerchief over her graying hair and grasped the wagon's reins in
her strong, thick fingers. She whistled sharply, and Rabbit started off at a trot down the
dusty highway, pulling the gaudily colored wagon behind.

*****

It was midafternoon when she saw the ravens circling lazily against the azure sky not far
in the distance. Matya knew well what the dark birds portended: Death ahead.

“Keep those ears up, Rabbit,” she told the donkey as the wagon jounced down the heavily
rutted road. “There's danger on the road these days.”

Matya watched warily as the serene, rolling hills slipped by. Autumn had touched the land
with its frosty hand, coloring the plains of southern Solamnia in a hundred shades of
russet and gold. The honey-colored sunlight was warm and drowsy, but Matya resisted the
temptation to doze, as she might have done otherwise. The land was beautiful, but beauty
could conceal danger. She remained wide awake and alert.

The wagon crested a low rise. Below her, the road split, and it was here the ravens
circled. The highway continued on to the north, and a second road led east, toward the dim purple range of mountains marching on the horizon. Scattered about the dusty crossroads
were several queer, twisted objects. A raven dived down and pecked at one of the objects
before flapping again into the air, and only then did Matya realize what the strange
things were: corpses, lying still in the dirt of the road.

She counted five of them as Rabbit - eyeing the dead nervously - pulled the wagon to the
crossroads. Matya climbed down and knelt to examine one of the bodies, an older man's,
dressed in neat but threadbare attire. A crudely made arrow with black fletching protruded
from its throat.

“Goblins,” Matya said in disgust. She had heard rumors that the verminous creatures were
creeping down from the high places of the mountains of late to waylay travelers. By her
guess, these had been pilgrims, making for Caergoth, to the south, to visit the temples of
the new gods there.

“They found their gods sooner than they thought,” Matya muttered. She spoke a brief prayer
to speed the dead on their journey, then began rummaging about the bodies, seeing if any
of them carried something that might be worth trading. After all, the dead had no use for
objects of value. Matya, on the other hand, did.

After several minutes, however, she gave up in disgust. Like most pilgrims, these owned
little more than the clothes on their backs. She would not have scorned even these, but
they were threadbare and stained with blood. All she had got for her trouble was a single
copper coin, and a bent one at that.

“There's nothing for us here,” Matya told Rabbit as she climbed back into the wagon.
“Let's be on our way. Men riding out from Garnet will find these folk soon enough and lay
them to rest - hopefully dead with the goblins.”

Rabbit let out a low bray and started into a trot, anxious to be away from the crossroads
and the smell of blood. Matya guided the donkey down the east road, but after a hundred
paces or so she pulled hard on the reins, bringing the wagon again to a halt.

“Now what on the face of Krynn is that?” Matya asked herself. Something glinted brightly
among the nettles and witchgrass to the side of the road. She started to ignore it, flick
the reins, and continue on - the hour was growing late - but curiosity got the better of
her. She slid from the wagon's bench, pushed through the weeds, and headed toward the glimmer she had seen. The nettles scratched at her ankles, but in a moment Matya forgot
the sting.

“Why, 'tis a knight 1” she gasped aloud, staring at the man who lay, unmoving, in the
weeds at her feet.

The man was clad in armor of beaten steel, but his visage was more that of a shiftless
vagabond than a noble knight. His eyes were deeply set, his features thin and careworn,
and the mouse-brown moustache that drooped over his mouth was coarse and scraggly.

Whether he was, in truth, a knight or a looter in stolen armor, it didn't much matter now,
Matya thought. His hair was matted with blood, and his skin was ashen with the pallor of
death. She said the familiar words to appease the spirit of the dead, then knelt beside
the corpse.

The steel armor alone would be worth a fortune, but it was terribly heavy, and Matya was
not entirely certain she would be able to remove it. However, the knight wore a leather
purse at his belt, and that boded well for Matya's fortunes. Deftly, she undid the
strings, peered inside, and gasped in wonder.

A woman's face gazed out of the purse at her. The tiny face was so lifelike that, for a
moment, Matya almost fancied it was real - a small, perfect maiden hidden within the pouch.

“Why, it's a doll,” she realized after a heartbeat had passed.

The doll was exquisitely made, fashioned of delicate bone-white porcelain. The young
maiden's eyes were two glowing sapphires, and her cheeks and lips were touched with a
blush of pink. It was a treasure fit for a lord's house, and Matya's eyes glimmered like
gems themselves as she reached to lift it from the purse.

A hand gripped her arm, halting her. Matya froze, biting her lip to stifle a scream. It
was the dead man. His fingers, sticky with dried blood, dug into the flesh of her arm, and
he gazed at her with pale, fey eyes.

The knight was very much alive. *****

“Tambor . . .” the knight whispered. He lay slumped against the wheel of Matya's wagon,
his eyes shut. “She sings . . . Tambor . . .” His mumbling faded, and he drifted deeper into a feverish sleep. Matya sat near the small fire, sipping a cup of rose hip tea and watching the knight carefully. Twilight had descended on the grove of aspen trees
where she had made camp, transforming all the colors of the world to muted shades of gray.

Tambor, Matya thought. There's that word again. She had heard it several times in the
knight's fevered rambling, but she did not know what it meant, or even whether it was the
name of a place or a person. Whatever it was, it was important to him. As important as
that doll, she thought. Even now, in his sleep, the knight clutched tightly at the purse
that held the small porcelain figurine. It had to be valuable indeed.

While Matya was not one to go out of her way to help others when it was unclear what - if
any - reward she might gain from it, neither was she without a heart. The knight would
have died had she left him there by the road, and she would not have wanted that weighing
on her conscience to the end of her days. Besides, she suspected there was a good chance
the knight would die regardless of her aid, in which case the doll would be hers, free and
clear. Either way, it was worth her while to help.

Getting the knight into her wagon had been no simple task. Fortunately, Matya was a strong
woman, and the knight had roused himself enough to stumble most of the way with her help.
She had hoped to make Garnet by nightfall, but she had tarried too long at the crossroads.
Shadows were lengthening, and the town still lay many leagues ahead. Knowing night was not
far off, fearful of Rabbit stumbling into a hole or missing the trail in the dark, she had
made camp in the grove of aspen by the road.

She had tended to the knight's wounds as best she could. The cut on his scalp was shallow,
but he had lost a good deal of blood from it. More troubling had been the wound in the
knight's leg. She had found the broken shaft of an arrow embedded in the flesh behind his
knee. Goblin arrows were wickedly barbed, Matya knew, and there was only one way for her
to remove the arrow tip. Steeling her will, she had pushed the broken shaft completely
through the flesh of his leg. Mercifully, the knight had not awakened. Blood flowed freely
from the wound, which she had deftly bound with a dean cloth. The bleeding soon stopped. The night deepened, and the stars came out, one by one like tiny jewels in the sky above. Matya sat by the fire to eat a supper of dried fruit,
nuts, and bread, regarding the knight's sleeping form thoughtfully through the back of the
wagon.

If he still lived when she reached Garnet the next day, she would leave him at one of the
monasteries dedicated to the new gods - if the brethren would accept a Solamnic Knight
into their sanctuary, she amended. There were many who frowned upon the Knights of
Solamnia these days. Matya had heard tales that told how, long ago, the knights had been
men of greatness and honor, who had protected all Solamnia against creatures like goblins.
Matya, however, was not certain she believed such tales.

Most Solamnic Knights she had ever heard of were little more than fools who expected
others to be impressed simply because they wore ridiculous suits of rusting armor. Some
folk even said it was the knights themselves who brought about the Cataclysm, the fiery
destruction that had rained down upon the face of Krynn more than half a century ago,
bringing an end to the Age of Might.

“Not that I think the Cataclysm was really such a terrible thing,” Matya said to herself.
“I daresay I wouldn't make as good a living as I do if these self-important knights still
patrolled the highways. And while times may be hard, it only means that people will spend
more dearly for the sort of things I can bring them in my wagon. If anything, the
Cataclysm has been good for business, and that's all that matters to me.”

With a start, Matya realized that the knight had heard her talking, was watching her. His
eyes were pale, almost colorless.

“To whom do I owe my life?” he asked her.

Matya stared at him in surprise. Despite his unlikely looks, the knight's voice was
resonant, deep and almost musical, like the sound of a hunting horn.

“My name is Matya,” she said briskly, recovering her wits. “And as for what you owe me, we
can discuss that later.”

The knight inclined his head politely. “I am Trevarre, of the House of Navarre,” he said
in his noble voice. “For your assistance, I thank you, but if it is a reward you seek, I
fear we must discuss it now, not later.” He gripped the wagon's side and tried to pull himself
up, heedless of his injuries.

“What are you doing?” Matya cried.

“Leaving,” Trevarre said. A crooked smile touched his lips, and determination shone in his
deep-set eyes. “You have been more than kind, Matya, but I have traveled day and night to
reach the end of my journey. I cannot stop, not yet.”

“Why, you knights are greater fools than the tales say,” Matya said angrily, hands on her
hips. “You'll only kill yourself”