Dragonlance Tales, Vol. 3 – Love and War

distract me?”

“I could try.” The king tilted his head back in pain as he

inhaled, and sang in a quavering voice:

“FOR EVERY WRAITH WHO BREAKS HIS FAITH

MUST WANDER WITHOUT CEASE

AND, COLD, PERFORM WHAT HE DID, WARM,

AND NEVER REST IN PEACE.

He coughed, and a hairline of blood ran from the corner

of his mouth. The stag, looking up through filmy eyes, took

up the song for him:

SO, EVERY NIGHT THE STAG BETRAYS

THE LOVE HE COULD NOT KEEP

AND KING AND HOST DESERT THEIR POST

TO HUNT AND NEVER SLEEP.

They finished, singing together. It took them a long

time, since one or the other often stopped to gasp for air,

and it seemed important to them that they finish as one:

AND SO THEY SHALL BETRAY AND HUNT,

UNTIL THE DAY THEY SHOW

THAT THEY SOMEHOW FULFILL THE VOW

THEY BROKE SO LONG AGO.”

Done, they collapsed against each other. “Not a bad

song, really,” the king said. “Needs a little tightening here

and there, perhaps, fewer cousin-rhymes, but at least it’s

something of us left behind.”

“True. Many have died with less fame and with worse

poetry.” The stag’s antlers shuddered painfully back into

place. The stag, eyes upward, lay his head on the king’s lap

and stared at the draconian. “Who would have thought that I

should be hunted by such as this? Or that you should hunt

them?”

The king’s voice was low and halting. “True. They are

vile, and we were proud. But for once, we both have died

for something besides ourselves. And when you have been

dead as long as I – ” he wavered, and said in a last breath –

“a little variety in one’s chosen way of dying is not such a

bad thing.”

And as the stag joined the king in final death, he

thought sleepily that after a thousand years of nightly

betrayal, transformation, pursuit by the dead, painful death

and more painful rebirth, almost any change was pleasant.

He cradled his head against King Peris’s stomach, and the

two accepted death as, long ago, it had accepted them.

No one but Time removed the bodies; eventually they

disappeared. The stone draconians became overgrown and

powdered under the pressure of weather and vines; time’s

best warriors. Only the one draconian, wearing an ancient

crown and scarred on its breast with a cloven hoof, remains.

For reasons no one living knows, it does not crumble. Go to

the wood, no longer called Darken, and you may see it yet.

Once, not long ago, the Forestmaster came into the glade

and stood before the single draconian. The crown was

tarnished, the sword rusted; only the hoof-print was still

sharp and clear. The Forestmaster stared at the print, then

looked thoughtfully around the glade. There was not so

much as a mound to show that anyone had died here, and

even the memory of the draconians was fading from those

who lived in Shadow Wood.

The unicorn tipped her head up and quietly sang two

stanzas she had heard recently, added onto a very old

ballad:

“THE SHADOWS IN THE WOODS ARE PLAIN

AND MINGLE NOW WITH LIGHT;

THEY FLOW AND PLAY WITH SUN BY DAY

AND DANCE WITH MOON BY NIGHT.

FROM DARKEN WOOD HAS SHADOW WOOD

BEEN GRANTED ITS RELEASE,

THOSE WHO WERE KILLED IN VOWS FULFILLED

HAVE THERE BEEN GRANTED PEACE.”

She strode to the edge of the woods and thrust her horn

in among the vines, circling it quickly. Walking back to the

statue, she lifted her horn to the stone and slid a floral

wreath onto it. It slid down too far; she moved parallel to

the sword and adjusted it. For a moment, sword and horn

both pointed to the north star, faintly visible in the

darkening sky.

She stepped back. “Sleep well, beloved” She turned and

was gone.

The wreath of Paladine’s Tears stayed fresh a long time.

Hide and Go Seek

Nancy Varian Berberick

For a long time Keli did not know where he was.

Sometimes he smelled the forest and the river, sometimes

only dirt and rocks. Once the boy thought he heard thunder

rumbling far, far away. Then, on the tenuous bridge